All Comments on 'The Breeding Experiment'

The problem I had with it was the language was too advanced for a cave man era human.

the other nerd is wrong about language this was basically perfect you have excellent taste i want to cry well done

There was a lot of exposition that was told, rather than shown. It felt like the story lacked any real plot or struggle. I didn't feel like any of the characters went through much internal growth, or anyhow we didn't see them doing it. For instance, Thalik had concerns about Flenai's husband and potential other lovers, and then he's just... over it. If anyone here had an issue they strove to overcome, I completely missed it. The concepts here were fun, but it felt like a whole lot of fairly dry world building without much story.

As a response to crittergirl’s critique, I will explain to anyone who might be reading this why I made some of the choices I made in writing this story, and invite suggestions for actionable strategies I can take to broaden the appeal of my stories without sacrificing anything that matters to me.

I expect that a large percentage of the people who clicked on this story were anticipating more conflict. And though I did at least indicate early in the story that my protagonist wasn’t intended to be unlikable (so I would be unlikely to be too harsh on him on that basis), and the hominids do make choices that eventually help to get them out of captivity (by demonstrating their mental competence and self-control, though this would only be an inferred causation and not necessarily directed toward that goal), it was still reasonable for some people to hope for more overt conflict later in the story, and some of them may not have been very interested in the erotic, suspenseful, surprising, or informative parts of the story. But, I personally don’t care about excitement for excitement’s sake and was trying to make the story relatively gentle and sweet, so I sacrificed some conflict for that. I think it’s generally better to err on the side of being too gentle than too rough, so I made the tagline imply a somewhat harsher story in order to deter the more sensitive people (who I figured would also be more likely to be disturbed by other content in this story). Nonetheless, I will try to think of ways to fit in more excitement that contributes something worthwhile, and perhaps add more about my characters’ goals and how they strive to achieve them.

As for how Thalik becomes comfortable about Flenai’s non-monogamy, I figured that most of the readers I targeted wouldn’t be especially interested in the details of that struggle because I didn’t advertise the story as being about that, but I had other reasons for being attracted to the themes of non-monogamy and jealousy (and the deviance of sexual attraction to an extraterrestrial), so I still mentioned them. And I figure that plenty of other authors have already addressed how their characters resolve these internal conflicts, such that not much I could say about them would feel sufficiently fresh. So, I just mentioned the one aspect that felt important to myself and that other people in my experience haven’t tended to bring up (that of trusting your partner’s judgment about who is worthy of them).

Regarding internal growth more generally, I personally feel that although this can add interest (and of course be satisfying if they’re growing in a way that I approve of), major internal growth is not essential for a short story unless events happen that would necessarily instigate it, or if the story spans a long enough period of time (such that we would expect such events to occur, even if only offscreen). And even then I think there isn’t a need to demonstrate that growth unless the situation calls for it.

As for telling rather than showing the exposition, in this case I expect that showing would be very difficult considering that I had lots of exposition that I wanted to convey but didn’t want to write a novel (which would create more openings to show rather than tell pieces of exposition). I did try to limit the exposition to the content that I thought would be more interesting to my readers. And to the extent that any of my characters could be considered self-inserts for them, I think that character would tend to be Flenai (partly because she’s the character who acts the most like a modern person). So, I thought that perhaps also having the narration in her pedantic style could fit alright (even though this story is in the 3rd person). And of course, any readers who don’t want to read something that’s part story and part exposition/nonfiction are free to bail out.

I also don’t much enjoy writing plot, so in my stories I tend to not give it much attention (or in some cases not include a plot at all, depending on how you define “plot”). If anyone reading this wants to help me create a more balanced (and thus probably much longer) version of this story or any of my other stories, feel free to contact me.

And regarding Lovecraft_Lore and Anonymous’ comments, I’m guessing that most people reading this story correctly inferred that I gave the hominids decent vocabulary in order to help reinforce the perception that they’re not stupid. And besides, we don’t have a whole lot of basis for inferring how sophisticated early human and Neanderthal modes of communication were, so we have creative liberty about these in our stories.

I read all the comments to my stories (even though in many cases I don’t reply to them). I appreciate indications that my readers engage with my stories, and the more thorough and thoughtful engagement they demonstrate, the better. Thank you to any of my readers who commented, rated, or favorited any of my stories.

I love this story, even though it wasn't really what I was expecting when I say down to masterbate. Didn't think looking up cannibalism on a porn sight would have me contemplating the spiritual development of early hominids. Usually I find most stories to breeze past plot and characters to get right into sex wich is kind of bland and disappointing. This however, was the exact opposite of that. I love the meticulous thought the author put into the people's / alien's biologies and ideologies. Honestly crushing on how much of a nerd you are lol.. This might not have been up my kink alley but I had fun reading it and will be keeping an eye out for more of your work!

I liked it because it was a bit strange, different. Hmm, yes and being different, didn’t automatically imply grossness or crude behaviour/exaggeration by our protagonists.

I say: Well done, HopelessDreams 😉🤩🧑🏼‍🎤🧝🏼‍♂️🧚🏼‍♂️🐋🐉🌺🪺💫