Reviewer: It Was Me Signed [Report This]
Date: October 03 2024 11:00 PM Title: Chapter 22 - Incident

I'm going to start with a bit of constructive criticism so I can get into all the many things I loved about this chapter, including certain aspects of the scene I'm about to critique.

So that eraser scene has a couple of things in it that kind of ruined the suspension of disbelief for me for a minute. A lot of the scene makes sense: Alice taking him out for a break, hiding him with her hand, absently grabbing Jordan instead of the eraser, and even Brynne starting to move him toward the paper before Alice could stop her, I'm good with all that. But there are two issues from that point on that were sort of jarring and took me out of the scene, so to speak:

1. Alice choosing to let Brynne use Jordan as an eraser to protect his secret. I get the logic here, but it just didn't fit for me. Jordan could potentially be in danger of harm here (who knows how rough Brynne likes to rub an eraser on the page, and even the slightest pressure could do serious damage or even kill Jordan), and then keeping Jordan's secret would be irrelevant, as he'd be either severely injured or maybe even dead. To be fair, if Alice had "let" this go on because she froze in a moment of panic, I could have gotten behind that. But her making that conscious choice just felt off to me.

2.Jordan actually being an effective eraser. Okay, so somehow being rubbed against the paper by Brynne wasn't painful to him, nor did it injure him at all. Without anything indicating that he's more durable as a tiny, that's kind of hard to fathom on its own, but I'm willing to put that aside and write it off as maybe Brynne erases really gently (to your credit, you did point out that the pressure was gentle, so you gave me something to work with there) or was being careful because of how unique the "eraser" was.

What I can't believe, however, is that Jordan's head was functioning as an actual eraser. If Brynne had tried it once, decided the eraser was just for show, and just softly squeezed it the rest of the time, I could have gone along with that and been okay. But her using him to erase multiple mistakes, as was implied here, just doesn't make sense to me. How is his head successfully erasing things?  Maybe both the durability issue and the erasing one could be answered with magic, but if that's the case, it needs to be stated so that the reader can process this into their thinking as they're reading the scene (unless you plan to address this later somehow, but then I'd at least have the characters questioning these things now).

I also had an issue with Alice not finding a way to get Jordan away from Brynne before the end of class, as the threat of Brynne accidentally doing something that could hurt him is present every second she's holding him, but I'm willing to concede that she might be prioritize keeping his secret after seeing that he wasn't initially hurt, although I think she'd be watching the two of them very closely. So I could have overlooked this and kept my suspension of disbelief going if not for those other two issues.

Despite that critique, there were aspects of the scene that I liked, such as Brynne continuously holding him and finding an odd sense of comfort in, as well as Jordan kind of enjoying it. I just think the scene would have worked better if either Jordan was mistaken for another thing, like a charm or something, or if Alice had been too panicked to act and Brynne had only used him to try to erase one thing but realizing that he didn't make for a good eraser.

I hope that all made sense and that it didn't come off as harsh, as that wasn't my intent.

Also, with all due respect to EchoofZen, regarding his question in that last review, I care very much about this Emily arc. I think you've handled that really well, and I'm excited to see where you go with it. You probably already knew that based on my other reviews for this story, but I just wanted to clarify since the question was asked.

Speaking of which, I love Alice and Jordan's interactions regarding the Emily situation. Alice is super nice, but we're told early on that she doesn't let a lot of people in and that she's a tomboy who can be fierce to protect the people she cares about (I don't remember exactly how it was worded, but this is what I took from it). It makes sense that she's pissed not only because Emily tried to keep Jordan like a pet but also because just when Alice thought they were starting to get along and Emily was showing empathy for her not knowing where Jordan was, it looks to her like Emily had no issue letting her continue to feel that way after Emily had Jordan in her possession.

That word Alice used, betrayal, it means something more to people like her, people with very small circles of trust who don't let a lot of people in. If it wasn't for Jordan's efforts here, I feel like Emily would be dead to her.

But Jordan fighting so hard for Emily's sake is so sweet. While I respectfully disagree with EchoofZen's take on this situation, his position isn't an unreasonable one, especially for the person who actually went through it! But Jordan saw who Emily really was, even despite what she was tried to do to him. He understood why she did it and even felt bad for not realizing the problem sooner.

In some ways, Emily is like Alice was back at that playground when they were 10 (I went back and reread it! Thanks for the reminder). Yes, Emily still has her family (something that might make Alice less sympathetic to Emily's loneliness when the conversation finally happens, assuming it goes down as a conversation), but she still feels that emptiness inside because she doesn't have friends. If Jordan had known how Emily really felt before all this, I think he would have gone out of his way to befriend Emily, kind of like he did for Alice. So that's why he isn't holding anything against Emily, and that's why he wants to fix the situation so badly.

Also, I like how this is a real discussion between Alice and Jordan, Alice could easily get lost in her emotions, tell him, Nope!" and choose to avoid Emily despite what Jordan wants. It speaks a lot to their bond that Alice relents so easily to what Jordan's saying despite clearly feeling strongly about this issue. She not only loves Jordan, but she truly respects him as well!

As far as Leila goes, she was ultimately right that the smart thing would have been to have her take Jordan back to the village with her until she could grow him back. I feel like the "incident" in this chapter probably isn't the only issue Alice and Jordan are going to have at school. But I love how incredulous Leila is about the prospect of Jordan staying with Alice. She's aware of the risks they're taking in a way that Alice can't comprehend and that Jordan can probably only sort of comprehend (he hasn't been tiny that long, after all). Still, I love how Jordan and Alice teamed up on her and made her understand why they had to stay together, even if it didn't make the most sense for them to do that. They won as soon as they brought up Elsie!

The comfort Alice felt having Jordan in her breast pocket made me smile a lot when reading this chapter. I'm so happy for her after seeing her suffer so much early on, and knowing that she's fully appreciating having her best friend/boyfriend so close to her heart was so sweet that I fucking melted! 

I also love the development that both of them are growing to like tiny Jordan. His slight concern that he was starting to enjoy being tiny too much after that kiss was a nice little conflict for him to have going on in the back of his mind. And Alice thinking about "keeping him this way" for a little longer was great, especially the wording there. Of course, she'd never force him to stay tiny against his will, as the next sentence made very clear, but still, it's fun that she framed it that way in her head.

Besides, when you take into account that Jordan kind of feels the same way right now, we start to see exciting prospects forming. If you combine your peanut butter with me chocolate ...

Their banter at the end was fun as always, too, even if Jordan's joke made me groan a little bit!

But yeah, great chapter! Again, please don't let my criticism at the start make you think otherwise!

Author's Response:

I always appreciate all and any constructive feedback so don't worry about that! I'll try to explain my thought process for that scene.

1. So for this, since Alice was sitting right there anyway, he was still within reach if anything happened. I figured for her, she didn't want to risk exposing Jordan. If she grabbed him back in a hurry, Brynne might get suspicious or if she found out, she might cause a fuss and have the entire class in on it, so it made the most sense for me in this scene to let Alice just watch in a bit of shock and cringing at it all the while.

2. I had kind of thought to myself that being that small, that his head would be just the right size to do something like that and that it might actually work, and since Brynne was gentle enough, it didn't hurt either.

 And for a third reason that I decided to put this in, is that I really wanted to come up with some new kind of unaware scenario while at school, something that might not have been done before, and this what was I ended up with. I can definitely see the flaws but I hope it was still enjoyable to read though, even if it did cause some suspension of disbelief for this scenario (which is actually funny when you think about it, with shrinking not being real in the first place but still, I try to keep as many realistic elements in as possible so I get you).

As for Echoof's comment, while he is pretty blunt about it, I get that he wants to see Emily get what she deserves for her actions but the story's very focused on forgiveness around people's mistakes. Leila shrinking Jordan, Emily keeping him in captivity, Jordan abandoning Alice, Alice taking him for granted, everyone made their fair share of mistakes but they all deserve a chance.  

Of course Alice is still having some internal conflict about forgiving her, which means Jordan has to step up here and be the bigger man... so to speak. Some people reading this might think he's too forgiving, but it made sense to me in my head that he thinks that way after what he's been through, not wanting to be alone either.

To be really honest, I didn't have any more plans to drag the events at school out anymore than I felt was necessary. I wanted to put in one little incident and then move on over to confronting Emily. You know well how school scenarios usually go since your story has one as well, being lost and found, almost trampled, etc etc. I didn't really want to copy-paste that kind of thing so I decided not to, at least not for now, which also led me to come up with the eraser thing which I suppose, is going to be a hit or a miss, but I did get to bring in the cringeworthy pun so I can't say I fully regret writing it haha. As always, I appreciate your feedback and review, it means a lot!