1/22-1/23

Mobsterswitch: Conniving (PI (DD, PS, FOC))

For a lack of something better to do, and a strong need to calm yourself, you visit your favorite tea shop. Which is to say, you visit a tea shop.

I get that you’re trying to set up the bit about him avoiding going to any particular tea shop too often, but it means that the “favorite” bit isn’t true at all and doesn’t work. Being less specific (your favorite place) or possibly a qualifier like one of your favorite tea shops since presumably there’s at least some he doesn’t bother with because they don’t carry the right tea or he just can’t stand them.

One of fifty in the city, which you periodically stop into in order to clean their inventory of your favorite brand. You’ve crafted an elegant scheme to hit them all in systematic order, never more than once in a year. It keeps the cashiers from recognizing you.
After all, habits are how criminals get caught. It’s what detectives base their investigations on.

More pedantically, running through them in order is still a habit and given he’s got a set behavior of buying all of one type of tea, entirely possible for someone to notice and track. It’d make more sense for him to be explaining he has some complex algorithm to this to choose the next store to go to out of those he hasn’t visited recently.

“Stop,” you say sharply, and she freezes up. “I don’t intend to hurt you, but if you push that button, I’ll be forced to.”

She does it anyway. You don’t blame her, but you also don’t forgive her. You leave without taking anything or harming her, but you brush your fingers over the top of her register as you go. The next time she opens it up she’ll be hit with a plume of black smoke and purple flames, which is currently eating up all of her money.

I’m not quite sure what to make of this sequence. It seems weird for him to change his mind about hurting her, unless I guess that was a bluff, but since it doesn’t seem to inconvenience him much why care enough to make threats he won’t follow through on? If he’d just told her to stop and then burnt the money out of irritation that’d make more sense to me. If it really is supposed to be him changing his mind or a sign he’s prone to threatening more than he’s willing to do, I guess tilting the scene more in that direction would help instead.

It’s a long way home, and too risky to use magic while the Fuzz is already buzzing about. You won’t call a cab, that’s just another way foolish criminals get caught.

Does he seriously walk everywhere? Why doesn’t he have a car or three around to use instead?

Mobsterswitch: Conniving Ch2 (DD (CD, HB, SS))

It’s become routine to crack several of the same ones every day, just as ritually as the five pounds of sugar in Demo’s coffee.

I don’t think “ritually” works there. just like the five pounds works better with the first half of the sentence, and if you really need “ritual” in there, I think something along the lines of “a ritual” instead.

You are aware of the five pounds of sugar in Demo’s coffee because you are ritually elected to make coffee runs for the Company.

Here I just have no idea what you mean when you say ritually.

Mobsterswitch: Conniving Ch3 (PI (DD, MOC))

Deadeye Detective is a brilliant man, and you long to be in his company, not only because he is willing to let you hang all over him and love him, but because it’s enthralling the way that, even in rest, he’s attempting to sift through your psyche, figure you out, profile you like the criminal you are. It’s just as exciting to receive this sort of rapt attention as it is to run him through the ringer about it.

You’ve doing a good job of establishing where PI’s coming from with his crush.

Mobsterswitch: Conniving Ch4 (DD (MOC, MC))

Unfortunately, the stubborn bastard didn’t let anything slip. Too shaken by whatever the Scoundrels had done.

I’d think DD would be a little better at working with unwilling witnesses. The guy wasn’t admitting there was anything wrong, so he has no excuse to outright refuse questions, and shaken people should be easier to fluster than most. You ask for details and see where the person trips up. If you don’t want DD wasting his time with that, you could either say he did get everything he thought was actually useful out of the guy (since he already knows who did it, getting the guy to admit it isn’t such a big deal) or show the guy completely stonewalling with claims he can’t remember and asking for DD to leave.

It leads you outside, and you take up examining the exterior as well, until the pattern finally breaks, and you find a section that had been missed.
The symbol is blatantly spray paint and stencil; it does not belong. You take a picture as well as copy the design into your notebook.

Not sure what’s up here. The bit about spray paint and not belonging make it seem like it was added by the same person burning things, while the rest of this bit makes it sound like the burns are hiding the symbol and they just stopped before hitting the final one.

Your team is less than enthused to see you. They are more or less where you left them. Scout snarls when you walk in. “Aw shit, you let that fucking fly back in!”

Surely if he can’t kill it with knife throwing and he’s actually annoyed by it instead of enjoying the excuse to throw knives rather than do work, he’d just grab a flyswatter?

Demo is predictably in a slump–his sugar high always runs out by this hour–so you drop another cup of coffee on his desk

The sugar high thing is kind of dumb, so coming back to it is annoying. The caffeine he’d be getting is the bigger issue and you crash hard from that too, and surely liking a ridiculous amount of sugar in his coffee is already childish enough without you insisting he runs on sugar highs.

The sugar high myth is also something that just really irritates me because it pops up everywhere.

Mobsterswitch: Conniving Ch5 (PS (PI, MOC))

streaked a violent trail

I don’t think that “streaked” works in the sentence.

“Oh,” Innovator says, and the chuckle he lets out is a little too harsh to be your Inny. “This isn’t about that at all.”
“What is it, then?” the man asks, and you’re rather curious yourself.
“It’s about the tea.”

Ha. So he’s multitasking.

Mobsterswitch: Conniving Ch6 (DD (SS, MOC))

Scout’s report has the most information. As you’ve already learned, Letria’s company has recently gone belly-up. The quality of the tea could not compete with the price of it, it says.

I cannot believe that’d be in a report from Scout. Scout digging up someone else’s reports and throwing them all together in the pile for his investigation, maybe, but not his own words.

And a guy just intimidated by PI and formerly working with another criminal is answering every question from DD without a problem? Especially when he’s quickly assured he’s not going to get in trouble, while criminals generally don’t have such a friendly outlook on people who talk? You’ve had PI claim DD’s clever, you should actually be showing it. It shouldn’t even take much.

I mean, DD’s already guessed most of what’s up, he just wants things confirmed. So he should be just looking at the guy’s reaction to his questions and get it from there. He really shouldn’t need the guy to explain who the gang symbol belongs to – the point of gang symbols is they’re moderately well known already, or else they wouldn’t have any point. DD should go into this knowing everything but the last bit, and making the guy think he’s figure out even more than that. And the last thing he should be doing is preemptively saying the guy has nothing to worry about – he should be using the fact he knows things already to lean on the guy and demand to know the last bit he needs.

People need to read more of the original sources Problem Sleuth was inspired from. Or just generally more plotty stuff, there’s a persistent sense I have with this that the characters actually figuring stuff out is secondary to relationship drama.

Mobsterswitch: Conniving Ch7 (PS (PI, MOC, DD))

(This is a pattern you’re noticing with Inny; you’ll have to remember to tell him to cut the shit before he gets jumped.) He didn’t even bother to remove Knave from his own hideout. It wasn’t necessary’ any of his underlings that had the balls to attack were burned alive in a purple, chilling inferno.

You should really consider your character’s power level. Why would PI ever need to worry about getting jumped when he can apparently instakill however many guys attack him if need be? How have competing gangs even lasted this long in the city, or the police force for that matter?

The entire gang just being too cowardly to challenge someone scary like him, that’d make sense with PS’s concern and broadly, the fact people are still competing at all.

Innovator sat him own and politely requested Knave to turn over the rights to Letria Tea. Knave told him to go fuck himself, and, well… Your dear, sweet Inny doesn’t appreciate rudeness.

Similarly, this makes more sense if PI isn’t currently demonstrating the ability to burn people alive on a whim, as does bothering elaborate torture devices instead of just variations of burning people alive.

there is a drill inside, and it scrapes its way in slowly until the bone starts to crack. It stops there though, because, as your dear friend had so delicately put it, a punctured skull would only cause death!

Also, a drill should be, you know, drilling, not cracking, and a punctured skull doesn’t cause death. Even a punctured brain doesn’t immediately, it depends on where the damage is and how much. If you want it to actually start cracking the skull itself, make it something other than a drill.

Innovator hasn’t forgotten your team. You’re still friends.

I don’t understand PS’s sudden shift here. PI is just continuing to do what he was already doing before PS showed up, and PI saying he’s doing it for the gang the first time didn’t impress PS, so…what about letting PS push the button to kill a guy caused this sudden shift?

Mobsterswitch: Conniving Ch8 (SS (PS, DD))

Your name is Snooping Scout, and you fucking hate this fly. It’s been buzzing around your office for days, driving you to drink (not that you need an excuse). Your work life the past few days has been fucking miserable enough without this pest constantly circling your head.

As much as he likes knives I think he’d try a flyswatter by now, or if there isn’t one, a rolled-up newspaper.

Miraculously, this time you hit it. Something metallic cracks under the handle of your knife, and a tiny spark pops against your knuckles. You do not know what to make of this.
Deadeye slams his fist down on his desk, while you just stand there, baffled. “Son of a bitch!” he yells. “He’s watching us!”

Ah, nice to see the fly comes to something. Though really, that’s all the more reason to have someone try to kill it by smacking it with a newspaper or something only for it to shrug the hit off, it’d be better foreshadowed that something’s wrong.

Mobsterswitch: Conniving Ch9

Well, that’s a nice wrapup chapter.

Scofflaw is no longer upset with you. He knows about your obsessive fling with Deadeye, and he knows you know that he knows. But he doesn’t give you a hard time anymore. He’s comforted now that you’ve proven you’re still a Scoundrel first, and absolutely ecstatic about all the new territory you’ve won for him.

Plotwise, the preceding stuff could stand to be tightened up a lot. I see what you were going for but it just didn’t come out well in the story – what about killing a guy proved that? PI’s initial claim was that he was gaining them new territory, PS suspected other motives were at work, other motives were indeed at work, but suddenly PS is okay with it because they got more territory? It just doesn’t work out well. If PI wasn’t saying what he was doing or why initially, and didn’t seem to be intending to get territory but just cause trouble and get DD’s attention, then the change in PS’s opinion when PI shows he’s taking over things for their gang would make a lot more sense. It’d also help if there was a clearer idea what PS was originally worried about with PI being interested in DD, specifically – that PI would betray the rest of the gang for him, or quit for him, or just waste his time on DD-related stuff and neglect the gang? Then the change of opinion there would work as well.

Still, it’s nice to be reading stuff with any sort of plot, even if it’s wobbly and about mislabeled OCs.

End (DD (PI, PS))

You sat him down and told him all the reasons why you didn’t want him in your life anymore, all about how his presence in your life was detrimental to your survival, your career, your patience, and your sanity. You told him that this wasn’t just an end of your commitment, that you didn’t want to hear from him again, ever. You didn’t want him breaking into your apartment, watching you at work, chloroforming you outside of the marketplace just because he was lonely. You wanted a clean break.

This is a lovely paragraph, the way he’s laying things out calmly when he’s dealing with such an out of control situation.

“Are you suggesting that what I did is worse than what you did?” you ask, mouth flat, brows quirked, perfect poker face. “Worse than rape?”

This comes out of nowhere and just raises a lot of questions, such as, why if PS cares about PI’s wellbeing did he rape him in the first place? When did this happen? How much of it has to do with why PI’s so messed up? It really doesn’t fit into the rest of the story – it’s distracting and pulling things in another direction entirely.

Something twists itself up in your chest. Regret. Longing. This should not have happened. Innovator did not have to die, and he certainly did not have to die like this, alone, miserable, worn down. Desperate for his own end, an escape from inner agony. You should have been there. You never should have left him. You abandoned him for things that were beyond his control, and now you can’t remember why you did. He was yours, hanging on your every word, desperate to make you happy, dedicating his life to knowing you as intricately as he could. He loved you.
You should be the one holding him right now.

And ugh, no. If you want DD to regret leaving PI, you really need more than the fact a terrible person who hurt many people is dead and won’t be able to do that any longer. Make PI less incredibly evil and make him less completely detrimental to DD’s life first. It’s not like either of those two things are canon – like PS raping PI, you really need to think about what serves the purpose of the story you’re trying to tell, and what flies in the face of it.

And I had such hopes when I read the opening.

Pound of Flesh (FOC, MOC, Aradiacester)

Mm, this is creepy but doesn’t fit too well with what little we know. She did have a goal and purpose – she was there to make sure there was strife and hatred between the castes. Depending on if she had any freedom, she might have also just murdered or tortured a few people along her way at random, but that’s about it.

PI, DD, PS, SS (FOC, CD, HB, MOC, MOC, MOC)
DD (PI, PS)
FOC, MOC, Aradiacester

One of three.

Page 380 fuck me.