Best posts made by Olo

@cyberpool Oh, look at that mouthful! I’ll be all night tasting her.

Did you make this collage?

@kisupure You are really good at increasing the tension while keeping us focused on all the stakes. I also admire that for every mystery you remove (Sentinel’s got a crush!), you add another (why is the fear pheromone inconstant?). I also liked the detail of the local gentry having an embassy with Fox’s commander. So neo-feudal.

Gray lying to save her skin and put Kessler in the soup was cold. She better not wind up in the same foxhole with him later.

A little aerial recon would go a long way in this setting. Did I miss an explanation for its lack?

I’m glad you explained “nalezing.” At first I was afraid the sisters-in-arms were being ordered to stand down.

Couple of cavils:

“Better not be any spiders in here,” she whispered, thinking on the irony of being killed by a brown recluse in the middle of this.

I’m afraid you failed to describe Gray finding a crevice for cover before she was already in it.

As much as [Gray] hated the Corps . . .

When did that happen? It was my impression that Gray thought of the Corps as the last best hope, both for her and for humanity.

Illustration prompt: Sentinel wincing as he’s shielding Gray and taking the shrapnel.

5’9", dad bod. If you want more details, I’ll be at SizeCon in Portland at the end of February.

@mrgoblinging7 Get caught in the candy jar, get sucked like a lemon drop.

@kisupure Keep the spiders where they are, just add a sentence before it, describing how Gray found an arroyo in the dark.

@i-am-insane said:

Side note, but I’m pretty sure Stockholm syndrome was disproved, because the robbers were relatively normal people, and the police were such assholes the people ‘afflicted’ just didn’t want to help them.

This is correct. The police were incompetent and endangered the lives of the hostages, and afterwards one of the hostages (a woman) told reporters “At least the robbers expressed some concern for our safety.” The police were indignant and smeared the hostages as emotionally unstable and brainwashed by the robbers.

“Stockholm Syndrome” might have been forgotten as baseless slander but a couple of years later the Patty Hearst trial was all over the media and defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey (whom you might remember from the OJ Simpson trial) tried to use a “brainwashing” defense for Hearst, who had actively participated in crimes committed by her kidnappers. The defense failed, but the “syndrome” was implanted in the public consciousness.

@mrgoblinging7 Watch out for the beak.

@kisupure 9th-years. Oh yeah, that makes sense. Should be some snappy jargon to refer to “graduates.”

Regarding Gray and her “hatred” of the Corps, it’s perfectly reasonable for her to resent the Corps as its regulations impinge more and more upon her interest in the sentinel. It’ll be totally subconscious, tho.

@tiny-ivy said:

A jar just traps a tiny, but it gives them no privacy and no coziness. It’s not shelter. It’s a prison, fit for a mere object or for a curiosity.

Yup, jars are for callous-to-cruel custodians.

However, I get the need to be able to see your tiny at all times. Might I suggest a terrarium? It can be furnished, including separate areas for watering, feeding, and toileting.

My ideal setup would have the terrarium on an extendible bookshelf that can be rolled back inside the shelving unit with a retractable front panel when concealment is necessary. When extended, the terrarium would be next to my desk chair with the top level with my desktop so I could keep an eye on her/them while I work.

@giant-me Ursula’s just fine the way she is.

@kisupure Nice misdirect with the opening Manual excerpt. I was partially expecting Gray to be promoted.

Also surprised that Gray reported the sentinel’s calling off the pursuit. It doesn’t incriminate her in any way, but it does put a spotlight on his loyalties.

Did . . . Gray rub one out after her stroll and before her nap?

@tiny-ivy Yup, I did the same thing with the Condensed world (for which I’m working on an M/f story!).

The alignment chart was a very poor format for this.

@sloppy_amy She’ll be doing the milking for the moment.

@kisupure said in Petrichor - a novel in "open beta" - [M/f, minigiant, post-apocalyptic dystopia, slavery, military setting]:

The enlisted/officer divide is a staple of military fiction, but what was once rooted in static social classes became more permeable with the rise of “professional” soldiers and recruitment. With the Disruption sending us back to serfdom, however, a battlefield commission is less a promotion than an ennobling.

Corpsmen are still enslaved, as Finch’s lack of good choices demonstrates. Captains leading armed bondsmen aren’t quite overseers or feudal lords, but the 'Naks and harsh environment seem to provide the rest of the discipline necessary to keep the corpsmen loyal. Until now, that is.

Still, Gray suddenly didn’t like how [Wesson] was taking up space.

Not as much space as some do…

animal impiety

Nice.

As far as I can tell, you haven’t disturbed the conventional wisdom that there are no female Anakim, but you have allowed that it might not be possible to engineer an humanoid effectively for combat without giving it a libido. I don’t suppose I have to remind you how non-neutered adult human males have historically behaved in prolonged single-sex environments.

What does fear pheromone smell like to other 'Naks? Pleasant? Noxious? Undetectable? Is suppression against orders?

@smolchlo She does look pretty sour.