so i liked it. and at the same time i didn't like it. i am...probably the worst person to review because when i put my entire thought into a review, you can be sure that there's gonna be some pushing and shoving, some insults and some loving all in the same one.

this was definitely one of the more well-written fics on here. I myself like to stick with short, jagged, disjointed lines, but it was a breath of fresh air reading something so descriptive, so alive, yanno?

I could literally see it happening in front of me, which is ALWAYS a good thing because I get a certain type of boner when I read good imagery, truth be told.

the beginning threw me off, NOT the writing, just the portrayal of the characters, and I was sitting on twitter going 'I don't like the story. It's written well, but there is something putting me off'. I've never been the one to give up on a fic unless it's just GODAWFUL, which this is not, so I kept on.

I think my biggest problem was that I felt like I couldn't connect to either of the characters, which I'm not entirely certain is a fault of your writing. It might just be that it's 2am over here and I'm exhausted and whatnot (I'm going to try to read it again when I come home from class tomorrow).

Towards the end, I found myself cocking my head in...confusion maybe? I don't know, I guess I wasn't left with a feeling of this being...complete, which is okay because it's a oneshot and I'm being a picky bitch today AND because in all honesty, it's not REALLY a complete story line (meaning that we never get to see what made Bill like that OR what happens to Bill afterwards)

SO yea. See why I shouldn't review? I'm so mean, and I like LOVE your stuff anyways, just this one threw me off. Like I said before, I'm gonna reread this after class tomorrow, because knowing me, I'll fall in love with it. xD

Author's Response: First of all, THANK YOU. I value constructive negative feedback as much as I do any other kind, maybe even more b/c good constructive feedback is so rare. This is good constructive feedback - not only were you nice in telling me what you didn't connect w/, but I also found myself smiling b/c almost every point you brought up was something that I worried about/disliked myself before posting this. OK, i'm going to number your points as I address them. 1)Sentence length: I had two goals in this fic - the first was to write from Bill's pov (which is soo hard for me), and the second was to keep my sentence length short. I often descend into writing like 3 paragraph long sentences, so I wanted to see if I could keep them as short as possible. It was really hard, TBH, and I'm going to have to practice a lot more if this type of style will ever come off as natural for me. But it makes me happy that you noticed that I was trying. 2)Imagery: thank you :). I see everything that I write, so it always feels really good when readers say that comes through. 3)Character portrayal: I'm guessing you had a hard time connecting w/ the characters, b/c in a way, I did too. I love Bill w/ bigger, older men, so naturally I wanted to try this pairing, but I had a really, really hard time characterizing the bodyguard. No one knows anything about him (seriously, who the fuck is this guy lol), so when I started writing him I had basically decided to just make him into a static character. It was only when Bill started developing emotional issues that I had to go back and give the bodyguard somewhat of a personality. However, I never did have a huge grasp of his character, so it makes more than complete sense that you didn't either. As for Bill, I'm not sure what didn't come through. I mentioned that it's hard for me to write from his POV, and I'm guess this had something to do with it. 4)The Ending: Well, you probably didn't feel like it was complete, b/c this isn't the whole scene. I had to cut off a 3000 or so word conversation with Tom that takes place next, just b/c the whole thing is like 1100 words and that is waaaay too long for a oneshot. But since all of this was a linear scene, I didn't want to divide it into chapters for coherency reasons. So anyway, just know that it's absolutely valid that you came away with the feeling of this being incomplete. 5)Again, I appreciate your review so much, and never feel bad for giving me criticism. The fact that you took the time to do so means a lot, and I'm flattered that you typically enjoy what I write. Hopefully the next one will click better for you :)

*_*

Um, not only was this hot, but it had a heart at the end. I laughed and groaned and fanned myself all throughout, and that's the sign of good smut.

Brava lady person.

Author's Response: Thank you :) And Meg managed to get me to break my boycott against downloading AIM (she's persuasive, that one), so once I finally do it, I'll email her with my name and we can chat ^_^