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ProfZodiac
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Likes it here |
Location: United States
Registered: August 2006
Messages: 115
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I spent a good part of yesterday reading the most recent of Jamie's stories, Darkfall. As is frequent to happen when I begin any story of his, I become enraptured in the plotline and find it difficult to walk away without finishing what I've started. I've read the entirety of the JHS saga two or three times.
At any rate, I thought I'd offer some thoughts to Jamie and the rest of the community to agree/disagree/throw off topic.
Positive comments:
1. I have always, always enjoyed Jamie's structure in his prose. The flow is solid despite numerous uses of flashback or introspection, and that's not an easy thing to accomplish. I expect he knew right from the start where he was going to go with the story, perhaps to the point of outlining each chapter, and he stuck to it rigidly, to great effect.
2. His character development, in terms of creating predictable habits in his main and most secondary characters, is superb. Their actions make sense in the context of the events that surround them, and in the greater context of the previous exposure the reader has to similar situations.
3. The use of various symbols throughout the story creates a sentimentality with the reader that compels him to continue to read and search for more examples. The use of the hawk, while slow in the middle, picked up again near the end and helped propel the action.
4. Jamie's treatment of sex in the scenes is with something just short of reverence, but not to the point of abstinence and holding the act on an unnecessary pedestal. It doesn't just randomly happen between two characters, but it's not reserved strictly for special occasions, either, and I think it's a fair and somewhat realistic perception of it.
Critical comments:
1. It's very black and white. I've noticed this in more than one story of Jamie's - there is good, and there is evil, but there is very, very seldom anything in between. Even in situations where a character travels from one to the other, the transition is made in the snap of a finger. Callie, for instance, on seeing Wes and Cole in the cave, instantly becomes a villain, and gets further and further afield from reality as the story continues to progress. This can work in some scenarios - the characterization of Karl Sr. is believable in his fundamentalist fervor, but Karl Jr. and Callie were too bad to be believable for me.
2. I feel as if I need to brush my teeth sometimes after reading one of these stories. I know that it's part of the point of the site, to provide stories and examples, true or false, of successful loving relationships between boys, and later, men. But the romanticism bestowed upon 14 year-olds comes across as idealistic and fantasized. And again, I understand that reality must be suspended to some degree when reading any story on this site, but I get this vibe particularly from these stories. But I almost get a slight and temporary depression after completing Darkfall or JHS that I don't and likely won't have any sort of relationship like the protagonists do.
3. The dialogue, while frequently spot-on in its depiction of the attitudes of whatever age it portrays, is sometimes contrived or forced. For example, I expect that by the age of five or six, most if not all children speaking English as their first language have at least a decent sense of the conjugation of the verb "to be". The children (and when I say children, I mean less than 8 years old) tend to speak below their intelligence level, and the adult protagonists often speak above it. Scenes have the ability to become entirely conversation-driven, and some of what's said is just not realistic. This relates, I suppose, to my last point, but I still contest that 22 and 23 year old men would not have long, drawn-out, highly romantic assertions of love when challenged by their partners. They might think it, and maybe even if they've stepped back and prepared what they wanted to say, say it, but I doubt that extemporaneous speech would be so complex.
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All of that said, the story was, as usual, riveting, and I offer my sincere congratulations on another job well done. I will say that I would wish for JHS to reach some sort of conclusion, but I understand that there's not much left to say with respect to that one.
All the best.
Adam
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