OK, here we are. Skater Rat. This story looks pretty long, but I'll get through it as best I can. (As a note about the intro: I like the idea of anthro rats eating pizza. It amuses me.)

In the opening paragraphs, you paint a vivid picture of Ely's daily life. It's not a happy picture. I don't really know what motivates him, yet, but it doesn't sound like much. Not only are his surroundings bleak bordering on wretched, he doesn't seem to care about any of it at all. I'll probably just keep jotting down reactions as I go. This story is long enough that if I don't, I'll lose most of my thoughts by the end.

Spencer's an interesting character. I suppose this is an opportunity to see what it's like when you narrate characters of different species. Twitchy jumpy squirrel, and all. I guess he and Ely are just kinda buddies. By the way: That bit where Ely tossed his t-shirt aside, not really caring if someone took it. I can't tell if that's out of generosity or just sheer apathy, but so far I'm guessing it's apathy.

Wow, Spencer's really from a white people neighborhood, huh? He's sure got the guilt down.

I am pleased/amused at the skunk representation in the story. Too bad it's a profiling cop.

The playground scene is a pretty stark picture of urban decay. And it's also a pretty detailed look at skating. (I'm so glad I played all those THPS games, now I recognize the terms for things. :P ) But the main thing that strikes me is the quiet feeling of tension between Spencer and Ely. Spencer obviously admires Ely in a lot of ways -- he even has an ID! -- but I'll be damned if he doesn't resent the rat a little bit too. The guy's just better. And of course, Ely himself either doesn't know or doesn't care. Standard.

Your imagery's pretty good, by the way. Some of the phrasings of things take the impact out of the image a bit (the fist-pump sentence, for example), but most of them are pretty strong. I'm liking that.

So now we have Casey. Damn, this guy is like so many people I've crossed paths with in real life. Talk about a bad influence. He seems like the kinda person who just isn't going to have a good future. Rusty at skating (and I'm not sure how good he ever was in the first place), mainly coasting along on seniority, busier with smoking and drinking than with actually doing anything. Spends time with people he can easily nudge around because it's nice to be a big fish in a small pond. All that kind of thing. I wonder where this is going to go.

Was that Ely's mom? No wonder he doesn't care about anything.

I was wondering why Casey wanted to go to the factory, of all places. It's a shitty place to skate, by the look of it. But then it turned out that he wanted to go someplace where he could show off his wallride. There might not be much else good at the spot, but there is a wall for that. Big fish in a small pond, indeed.

Of course Spencer doesn't want to leave litter in the abandoned lot. That would be so terribly rude of them, wouldn't it? This is an odd group. Besides probably Spencer to Ely, I'm not sure if any of them actually even like each other. ... Casey sure isn't interested to commiserate with Spencer's griping. Drugs sure do ruin a good social engagement.

And maybe also ruin Spencer's future, too. Pretty wholesome kid, but if he gets hooked on smoking, that's gonna screw up his adulthood something fierce.

Side note: "It ain't poison." Haha.

Ely's home life is a profoundly sad thing. I assume the .45 was used on someone they knew. His father, maybe? It almost doesn't seem to matter. They're desperately poor, the mother's an addict, and Ely's just kind of there. Maybe he'll graduate and get out of the neighborhood somehow. That'd give him the best ending out of anyone here.

(My IRL kitchen sink totally does that thing with the dripping. I feel Ely's pain. And appreciate his consideration for the water bill.)

"Bored, dead, it's pretty much the same thing." That one line seems to summarize the feel of this entire story. Ely lives a life where that idea makes a frightening amount of sense. The one thing Ely has going for him, the one thing in the world that he devotes himself to, is skating. That's his lifeline. If he's not holding onto it, he's just like everyone else in that hell. With that in mind, I'm just glad he has a way to survive.

And this is just the pilot, huh? Must go in some interesting directions from here.

Thanks a ton for the read and the very thorough comment. You've got a good representation of things here, although I will say that Spencer doesn't really resent Ely, just kind of admires him and also kind of wants the rat's approval. To Spencer, Ely's that "cool" kid from the other side of the tracks, so to speak. And despite Danny's issues, she's basically the only person Ely is loyal to. I'll try not to articulate every little thing since you mentioned in IM that you might read at least one of the others. You know, give you a chance to interpret it for yourself a bit.

Side note, I feel like I need to introduce more animal-like characteristics into this story. I guess I use creatures in it that have some less obvious traits to exploit for that purposes. Spencer does fill the role of twitchy squirrel but I don't have a lot for him beyond that, and although rats are certainly all rodenty, in my world they've kind of...lost that, a bit. They're still skittish, I guess, but overall more brooding.

I dunno. A lot of these are a couple years old or so and I was still experimenting with concepts. Thanks again for the reading, it's greatly appreciated.

All right! A good read! In general, I quite like this story. My critique below:

The intro is Ely’s internal monologue, yes? However, after reading the rest of the story, I find it difficult to believe he’s giving passing people that much thought, bordering on self-consciousness, when he has so little regard for absolutely anything else but skating and his mother.

I love your description of Ely’s regard for the “weasel of some sort” girl who is always pregnant. Again, though, he doesn’t give her much of a passing thought, and he actually occasionally interacts with her, so why would he bother giving thought to random pedestrians?

Interesting use of the anticipatory future perfect tense for most of the beginning. It establishes an effective feeling of, “Yes, this has all happened before and will happen this way again,” especially during Ely’s and Spencer’s trip to the park. However, at several points during the story, your use of this tense lapses, most notably toward the end, when Ely is back with his mother and it is nearly all narrated in the past tense. Regarding this, I feel this story would benefit greatly from some thorough proofreading, as it becomes somewhat distracting with the structure’s inconsistency. While talking about proofreading, you do have a number of spelling and punctuation errors floating around. There’s not much more to say about this than that they exist.

Your imagery is really effective throughout. You present such a clear picture of the situation around Ely, the action, especially the skating (and I don’t know shit about skating), and the setting. I do feel I can picture perfectly what is going on, possibly helped by the fact that I live near Detroit, MI, so the environment you describe is pretty familiar. I particularly like your description of the playground and the swing set.

I see what you meant in your reply to the comment above. Your descriptions of Spencer’s squirrely qualities (pardon the pun) are frequent and vivid, but your descriptions of Ely lack similar rat-like qualities, besides him acting… “rattish,” per the skunk cop. While reading, I interpreted this as Ely being jaded and tough, while Spencer is kind of sheltered and a bit of a wuss.

I’m interested to know how Spencer and Ely met. Spencer’s use for Ely is somewhat obvious, as he is the exotic kid from the other side of the tracks, but Ely has no clear use for Spencer, but only seems to tolerate him. Incidentally, I love the line in which you describe that Spencer is a tough squirrel, “Even if his parents were totally ruining his life.”

I noticed you tend toward unnecessary prolixity and equally unnecessary varied diction. As far as the verbosity, it simply kills the flow of your writing. For example, you write, “The rat in reference offered nothing in return, simply turn to grab his tape player again, knowing which sound would be far superior… Casey let out a snort of air through his nose, summing up a usual greeting between those particular individuals. Slowly, his dark-bordered eyes listed lazily over toward Spencer again, the more agreeable of the two rodents.”

The “in reference,” “far,” and, “particular,” in the preceding excerpts are unnecessary and jarring. Perhaps in future writing, read passages like this aloud, and you’ll find if they sound natural or not.

As far as unnecessary varied diction, the worst offender, in my opinion is, “… old school hip-hop filled the listening cavity of the young rodent.” The choice to say “listening cavity,” rather than just, “ear,” as well as some other similar choices (“writing instrument” instead of pen; “truncated” instead of cut-off), comes off as forced and is bizarre and rather unpleasant to read. It’s like reading an angry comment in which someone wants to come off as really smart and so makes sure that their punctuation and spelling are perfect and use words they would never otherwise use, which invariably appears forced. You don’t really have to do this, as it’s clear you’re an intelligent person from the rest of your story. However, this trend does calm down as the story progresses.

The aside introduction to Danny is one of my favorite parts of the story. Really sets the tone for her chronic inebriation.

I love the sarcastic narration of all of Casey’s actions. “A few, big, masculine coughs later,” is my favorite.

“Bored, dead, it's pretty much the same thing.” I agree with the comment above. This one line bleakly describes poor Ely’s entire outlook. I hope things improve for him.


So that’s all for this one! I’ll be reading your other writings later when I have some more time! I hope you found my critique helpful, and I very much enjoyed your story so far. I’m eager to see where it goes.

Thanks for reading. I'll run down some of your thoughts here, defending myself in some areas, agreeing in others.

I see what you're saying about Ely in the beginning although my thought for him is basically that in direct interactions he says next to nothing but he spends a lot of his free time thinking and contemplating for lack of better things to do. Also, it's not made clear yet but whenever something like that is in italics in this story, it's a thought that Ely has written down on the bottom of his skateboard. That's basically where he does all his venting, rather than to another person. He's thinking all of the time but never really talking.

As far as proof reading goes, yes, that's been a problem as I'm not great about proof reading my own work as well as I'd like to me. Part of the issue as well is that I've already pretty much written them only in notepad, not any kind of decent word processor with features like spell check. Like, I only just yesterday decided to download open office. I've been going over some of the other stories so they'll hopefully look a bit better. Some of my word usage here does get a little shaky, I'll chalk some of it up to being an older story. This one's the "pilot" and I mostly wrote it as a way to introduce the characters and settings to myself and figure out where I was going, think of this one as the most experimental of the series. I'd like to think that the later ones in the series find their voice a little better as it goes on.

However I can't say I'd go out of my way to change how it sounds too much. When it comes to writing sometimes I just have to grit my teeth and go with my instincts on how I want something to sound.

I actually haven't completely settled on how Spencer and Ely meant, it's a planned idea for an "episode" down the line once I can get it set in stone. But your description of them is mostly correct, Spencer's kind of fascinated with Ely, and Ely basically just tolerates Spencer. I imagine that Ely is so not used to having anyone interested in him that he's still not entirely sure how to interpret Spencer's presence. That's probably why he lets him hang around, for all of his independence Ely probably wasn't prepared to tell anyone "No, I don't want you here" because it literally never comes up. which isn't to say he necessarily wants Spencer gone but...I mean, it's complicated I suppose. Frankly, they were "friends" before I had really figured out their characters so I just kind of play it by ear.

Thanks a ton for giving it a look. If you read the others, I hope they don't disappoint. They're sort of episodic though, because I have trouble committing to like, a saga, so don't expect any kind of definitive ending. Each one's kind of a "day in the life" kind of deal.

Ah, okay! That's a cool idea! I hadn't thought that those italicized thoughts were what Ely had written down, but it makes a lot of sense. Very cool.

I very much look forward to reading the others, and to see where you take Ely. I personally like episodic stories, so I'll be watching :)

Thanks again, it's very appreciated.

Excellent read. Great introduction to some of the main chars. The setting is very real, the details quite vivid, especially of the old run-down park. A reminder that things in the past were once shining bright, but now have decayed into darkness, left forgotten. Really sad actually. You definitely have a good eye for realism and feelings.

I'll be reading the other stories thruout the upcoming week.

Thank you for a great read. :)

Thanks a ton for giving it a look, and for the feedback. Very sweet of you, indeed. Glad you enjoyed it.

One thing I forgot to mention in my comment ...

I'm glad you remembered about the shirt left on the stoop. I find it annoying when a writer makes a mention of something that seems unimportant at the time (like tossing a shirt aside) and fail to make any tiny mention of it again. You tossed the shirt, then recalled ... huh ... shirt is gone. It gives the impression that while it seems meaningless, on the mentality side of things it is indeed of great importance. To me, it shows that Ely is a lot more observant of the world around him than what people believe him to be. He knows that his life isn't the greatest, doesn't have much meaning, but he also knows that there are those out there in the real world that are way far worse off than him.


Definitely looking forward to reading the others. This story did not disappoint :)

Thanks again. I liked the shirt thing but always got the impression that nobody else really cared so it's nice to hear. I appreciate all the feedback so far, sweet thing.

Mixing up msgs ... I think I got everything fixed now. haha

Just started reading this series. Nothing to really offer as critique right now, but I am immediately invested. I don't know if there will be a happy ending for them, but I hope at least that Ely can be happy in some way.

Thanks for the read. This series is one that definitely conditions one to value the little victories.