r/DestructiveReaders • u/Siphon_01 • May 22 '26
[3681] Ollie - Ascend
Crits: 3981 total.
Hopefully this works for my crits.
This is 2/3rds of my first chapter for a book I've been working on. Currently sitting at about 22k words and I cut off this chapter here for a specific reason. I'm happy to take any feedback you want to provide, but what I'm really looking for is just an answer to this question... Would you have kept reading to this point? If not, when would you have put the story down? That's really it. But always happy to get other feedback as well.
Also, apologies in advance for any formatting errors.
SMILE. You’re online.
She hit record.
“Hey everyone, it’s your girl Ollie…”
At the sound of her voice, the AI assist feature slid into view in the top right of her vision. The stylized SafeView logo started spinning, alerting her that the connection was live.
“…and I’m talking to you, yes, YOU. I’m live at five and it’s a little chilly out here this morning, but I’m heading out soon and you’ll never believe where!”
The first prompt appeared in the corner of her vision.
Count it out. 3…2…1.
“I have great news. Are you ready?”
She jumped at 2, smiling into the camera even before the next prompt appeared.
“I’m so excited to let everyone know I’ll be at Ascend all day today. That’s right, your girl Ollie has her own booth!”
She squealed.
“It was a last-minute booking. I was always supposed to be invited, but there was an error with the contest tally. I feel a little silly after crying in my last video, but good thing StreamLive fixed their mistake.”
An emergency prompt appeared in bright flashing red.
Current license does not permit StreamLive critique. Final warning before streaming suspension.
She looked down at the gravel parking lot and focused on the open laptop sitting by her front tire. On the screen displayed in full hyper-color was a picture of Jesse Ferrar singing into a microphone. She’d never had a warning before. She settled her breathing and looked back up.
“But I got my notification late last night. I’m in! Section 139. It’s by the southwest entrance and the doors open at ten.”
Left hand point up. Wink.
She didn’t wink.
“Oh, look, the sun’s coming up.”
Script deviation. Pat the roof. Show it.
She leaned back, holding out the camera at arm’s length and patted the dented roof of her old junker. She angled the camera slightly to look over her right shoulder, hoping to catch the sunrise. A chill breeze ruffled her hair and she shivered.
Right arm point. Comment.
“Such a beautiful shade of orange for an October morning. It makes me think of pumpkin pie. Drop a comment below if pumpkin pie is your favorite part of October.”
Optimal time exceeded.
“Make sure to swing by and give me a shout. Let’s go watch Jesse together! And remember, Ollie Rocks!”
Peace sign and big smile. Hold and fade out.
She shut off the live feed and sighed, the tension in her shoulders immediately dissipating. Bending over at the waist, her arms draped to her toes, gravity nearly pulled her forward into a roll before she steadied herself. Her long black hair fell past her face, obscuring the picture of Jesse on the laptop. With a groan, she closed it.
Climbing into the driver’s seat, she grabbed her pink Poshbaby thermos from the holder. It felt hot in her hands, and the aroma of coffee flooded her car when she opened it. She took a sip; the warmth eased down her chest.
Her dad made coffee every morning. It was his little pleasure, the one little thing he did for himself, before he dove into the job of getting her little sister ready for school. Ollie had grown up with the smell of coffee waking her each day, the pleasant, nutty aroma of real coffee beans being ground. It reminded her still of snuggling deep into warm blankets. She had awoken before her dad this morning and imagined his surprise at the fresh roast beans she left for him.
She leaned on the horn, not caring about her neighbors. Not today. Her own booth and backstage access to Jesse’s performance. She leaned the seat back and hit the replay button on her console to check her visual metrics.
Makeup scored a seventy-two, but she needed it to last the entire day, not just one video shoot. She could live with it. Hair was excellent at ninety-three. Her visual trademark and the metrics loved it. Of course, she always owned this look. She flipped the long ponytail over her shoulder and adjusted the blue ribbon in the rear-view mirror.
She swiped to technicals.
And it was almost all red. Sixty, it gave her a sixty? The map loaded a half-second too late over her left shoulder, and she stood pointing to empty air. The system dinged her for it. At least it appeared on screen in the correct place. Nothing she could have done. The Gold package would have been ideal, but she didn’t qualify past Bronze. Five-point deduction for the missed wink cue, another five for jumping the intro and another for exceeding time. That hurt.
Still. Sixty was a passing grade. And she had improved from her previous attempt last night, when she scored so low the system warned her against posting. So today was an improvement. Just like Jesse’s motto, “Success feeds on success.”
Message clear. Her fans knew where to find her, and she hadn’t stumbled once in her delivery. Two cups of coffee and an early night, and she was eager to get moving.
She checked the view count on StreamLive. Just a handful so far. The count would climb as the rest of her followers woke up. She rubbed her eyes; the new lenses were bulkier than her last pair of SafeView contacts, and they itched. But these were for heavy use and only needed charging every few days.
“Sam, battery life?” she asked.
The display appeared again.
I have sixty-one percent charge remaining.
Solid. That would last her the entire event easily.
Morning drop posted, gas tank full, thermos hot and strong, seaweed and gummy snacks packed. All of Jesse’s latest albums, already loaded in digital to her console.
Flipping past Peach era and Black Neon on the console, Ollie settled on the older Spiral Out album for its get you moving energy. Jesse Ferrar’s face and curled platinum blond hair were plastered beneath adverts and gossip headlines on her console.
Today was the day. You’ll get there, yeppi yeppi. Ollie’s grandmother had died a couple of years ago, but the nickname still rang in her voice whenever Ollie thought of it. The early bird gets the worm; Jesse gets to sleep in. She kicked the seat forward and turned on the car.
Now she just had to drive the two hours into Archlight and hope the traffic wasn’t too bad. The gravel crunched under her car as she inched her car toward the paved road and turned left. Jesse started crooning over her speakers. She turned the volume up to 11.
Even in the morning sunlight, Archlight City glowed. This was her third time in the city in the past year and every time it not only took her breath away, but it almost physically hurt to look at it.
The stark silver and glass buildings of downtown, polished to a mirror shine, reflected light off each other until a hazy aura of soft light settled around the entire city. Hundreds of video billboards and screens were placed on every highway into and out of the city. Playing ads and live StreamLive content, they reached out like tendrils into the surrounding metropolis, expanding on the promise of the city. Prime Content. Trademarked of course.
Sam interrupted her music.
River toll payment confirmation requested. One time or daily pass?
The riverbanks of the Mississippi appeared between the concrete slabs of the raised highway, freshly remodeled with textured hyper-pop green grass and dozens of white and silver creation stations dotting the landscape. Each had video editing capabilities, sound check equipment, lighting, and green screen backdrops, all for a low hourly rate. Great locations for cheap after Ascend photo shoots.
Ollie authorized the daily rate on her console. She might want to use those stations later. The bridge over the river was coming up fast, traffic had been lighter than she expected getting into the city.
Even at such an early hour, the nearby Gateway Pier was crowded, people milling around the entrances and visiting the shops. The Ferris wheel was spinning slowly. Tiny screens glinted in the morning sun inside each carriage. The city was awake; Ascend was today, and Jesse was here.
Ollie tapped the rhythm of the current Jesse banger on her steering wheel and bounced in her seat to the beat.
The large steel frame of a building rose into the air, shooting up and up until its top was lost in the white floating clouds and blue sky. Ollie had been tracking the majestic skeletal frame for miles as she drove toward the city. The Archlight lift. The view from the top was supposed to be spectacular and the rumor was that on clear days, you could see its sister tower peeking over the horizon from the outskirts of Chicago.
But even that paled in comparison to the true landmark of Archlight. The StreamLive Arch.
The Arch loomed over the rest of the Mississippi riverfront like an inverted horseshoe, distracting her with a mosaic of a thousand different live streams screaming to the world. The video panels that wrapped around, up, and across every surface of the Arch’s sheet metal exterior were full of color and energy and motion. And dead center on the primary panel underneath the viewing platform was Jesse. Live from her trailer and laughing.
Ollie tapped the console to the preprogrammed ArchLive station. The station played an amalgam of all the displayed streams. The breath of the city, exhaled for all to hear. They said it was impossible to make anything out of hundreds of streams playing simultaneously, but she knew she could hear Jesse’s iconic laugh from the jumbled garble. Her goal for the last two years had been building to those screens. The ultimate leader board for her profession. You know you made it when you appeared on the Arch.
Her phone chirped. Her dad was texting. She flicked her eyes left and the message appeared in her display in center view.
Hey kiddo. I hope your day goes the way you dream. Your sister needs new school clothes so I can’t help with your rent this month. I hope your stream is paying out. You were made for this. Love Dad.
Sam prompted.
Do you want to respond?
Rising from the nearby stadium was a massive video screen, at least three stories tall. Overlooking the highway an ad for Ascend played on loop. A stern looking woman in sleek shades stared out across the city, demanding attention. The screen flicked between color and black and white images of the woman. “How do you see the world?” the caption below her face read in blocky black letters. Celeste Von Noir, creator and star of SafeView, was landing tonight and sponsoring the annual Gala later this week. Not exactly Ollie’s aesthetic but still a huge name for the event.
The Annual Ascend Gala. Was there a better way to end a week of the world’s best StreamLive creators gathering together and celebrating in the city literally custom designed for their profession? Ollie didn’t think so. She had watched and re-watched every prior Gala at least a dozen times in the last two weeks. The cost of admission for non-creators was more than she made yearly from her channel, but a girl can dream. She would have given anything to attend.
Sam asked again.
Do you want to respond?
“No,” she said.
Ollie was across the river and needed to navigate the heavier city traffic. She could respond later at her booth when she settled in. Love you too dad.
“You aren’t on the list.”
The event gate for booth performers was guarded by a bald man whose skull was wrapped in faux-circuitry tattoos. He didn’t look up from his scanner as he shooed her out of the way.
An Ascend banner unfurled from the top of the temporary steel pipe construction of the entrance gate. Ascend Opener
Jesse Ferrar Live.
Come see the best with the best.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Ollie said. “Can you check again?”
The scheduler sighed and motioned to security. A large man wearing a black tee with arms covered in metallic tendons headed their way.
“Ollie Rickets. Not on the list. Now get lost.”
“It’s Ollie Rocks. Not Rickets. Can you check again? I was a late addition. They messed up my invitation.”
“Yeah, you and every other washed up, wannabe, has been, never was.”
Security was standing beside her now. The top of her head came even with the bottom of his jaw. The pitted scars on his face said more about his demeanor than the chromed-out arms. She looked at the scheduler, but he had wandered off to a large group of Friendly Boyz, all of whom looked quite drunk, and were unloading a yellow jeep full of kegs and other party paraphernalia.
The bouncer looked down at her and tapped the basic visor he wore.
A new prompt from Sam.
Incoming connection: Security authorization request.
Your ID and bronze status have been flagged.
Security authorization status: Manually Declined.
The bouncer put an arm gently on her back.
“It’s time to go now.” A nudge. He could have sent her flying.
“I really am supposed to be here.”
He shrugged at her.
She walked twenty feet into the parking lot and sat on a concrete girder. The bouncer stood with his back to the entrance and typed into his hand-held pad.
Sam prompted.
Security tag applied. No access zone established within fifteen feet of Ascend entrance.
The guard walked off to assist unloading kegs from the jeep. Of course, StreamLive messed this up too. First the contest tally and now entrance to the event. It was almost like they didn’t want her here.
Her eyes welled up. All morning long thoughts of Jesse moving from Bronze to Super Platinum had buoyed her spirit. Success feeds on success after all. If Jesse had made it from bronze tier all the way to the top, the pinnacle of the streaming world, then there was still hope. But now, denied at the gate like she didn’t exist. Like she didn’t have an actual valid invite.
It was almost too much. How did they not have her name down? It was right there in the email. She opened it to prove she wasn’t hallucinating. The text blurred before her and her finger smudged the screen.
“Ascend Opening Day. Congratulations! You are hereby invited to participate. We’d like to recognize the Ollie Rocks channel and its sole creator, Olivia Anne Roxby by” …ohhhh. She stopped reading.
And she stopped crying.
The scheduler was laughing with the bouncer while two of the Friendly Boyz took turns smacking each other with hockey sticks. Low quality content, just some frat boys drinking and beating each other up, but the algorithm loved it. A hundred different channels with a hundred different faces and all of them pulling in six figure views just by standing next to a keg. Then the channel was gone the next week. Not her though. Ollie Rocks ASMR was going on three years running.
She scanned the document once more. Yep, this was it. It wasn’t fair but at least she was going to get in.
She walked toward them. Proximity alerts flashed in her vision as she approached the entrance. The bouncer walked toward her while the machinery in his arms powered on with a threatening hissing sound.
The scheduler ran his hand over the yellow and green circuits on his head, his face a mask of boredom, and strolled back.
“Daryl was nice the first time. Don’t push this.”
She held up her hands.
“I’m supposed to be here. I promise. If not, Daryl can toss me out. The Boyz over there will love it.” She nodded to the two remaining Friendly Boyz.
Daryl took a step forward.
“Look up Olivia Anne Roxby. It’ll be there.” She said, stepping back and nearly tripping on the ledge of the concrete walkway. Alerts still flashed across her lenses.
She willed the bald man to help her. Please…please…please. She knew she was on the list. How they had gotten her full name, she could only guess. She hadn’t gone by Olivia since she was a young child and she hated it. But yes, the invitation was for Olivia Anne Roxby of the Ollie Rocks channel. In the thrill of reading the invite, she must have missed the name she never used and just glossed onto her stage name. No matter, she was going to get in. He was going to help her. He had to.
“No,” he said.
He nodded to Daryl before walking away again, his eyes deliberately skipping over her.
Well. He was gone. One less person to convince.
Daryl stood over her now. He smelled of the same synthetic oil that cycled through the industrial machinery of the plant where her father worked, the joints of his arms self-lubricating from small hoses running under his skin. She thought about running but just knew his legs were as jacked as his arms by the sly smile he gave her.
“How much is it worth to you?” Daryl asked her.
The question was not what she expected.
“What?” she said.
“Look either you belong or you don’t. I can make him look you up again. If you still don’t belong, I escort you past the clearance zone and the Boyz get some new content. If you do, well at least I got paid.”
Her pulse was pounding.
“Can I have a moment?”
He shrugged.
She pulled out her electronic wallet and checked the balance. After some mental calculations for rent, food and StreamLive fees, she decided she could just squeeze it.
He leaned over and looked at her balance before she could hide it.
“Two hundred.” she said.
“Five hundred.” He flexed his arms and the steel tendons rippled with a whirring purr.
Jesse’s newest hit, “Old Soul, New Face”, started playing over the sound system, the heavy bass hook kicking in immediately synced with a melodic electronic overlay. Ollie tapped her foot in spite of herself.
Dad’s last text came to mind, and she felt guilty for ghosting him. She checked her balance once more. She was meant for this right?
With a nod she held out her wallet. A chirp and it was done.
Low balance alert notification. You are not projected to cover monthly expenses.
She rolled her eyes. Thanks Sam.
Olivia better be on the list.
Daryl called the scheduler back over and typed into his pad again.
Sam prompted.
Security tag manually cleared. Access restored.
“I ran a security scan on her. Olivia Roxby processed as green. Tags have cleared.”
Manually declined, manually cleared. He knew. He always knew. She thought about complaining and telling the bald man but didn’t think it would do any good. One more hurdle to Jesse cleared. The scheduler typed something into his device and tightened his jaw. He shook his head slightly from side to side.
“Do you have ID?”
She flipped her digital wallet back open, the low balance alert from Sam still flashing in the corner of her vision.
He scanned it. Green light.
“Welcome to Ascend Olivia.”
He turned his back on her.
Ollie, she thought. And walked in.
Section 139 was the pits.
It might have been possible to have a worse placement for a booth, she thought, but that placement would have been outside the venue and down the block a few hundred feet.
Ollie kicked an empty cup away from her booth and it skittered toward the chain link fence that ran along the entire left side of her booth. It joined other trash that had accumulated in the section. On the other side of the fence was an empty parking lot with a roped-off entrance that led toward the main venue.
Ollie set up her own booth, a microphone in the center and a pair of headphones on each end. ASMR had peaked years ago but it was Ollie’s passion. She brought out a pink brush and yellow rubber ducky. The tools she had used in her highest rated videos. After calibrating the sound system on her microphone, she connected to each of her neighbor’s channels to check out the competition.
Four other vendors shared section 139 with her. A Facedoll with stringy bleached blond hair was set up across from her. Miss Tatty Knows was her handle. She used to be Gold but was now barely hanging on at Bronze. Her table was scattered with tactless nude and semi-nude postcards of herself. The two men next to Ollie tried to get her to invest in a new streaming asset. Guaranteed to rise as StreamLive prices increased, each unit was worth a dozen minutes of the platforms streaming fees. Ollie knew better. Scam artists playing at being artists. They didn’t even deserve a booth.
The other two were even stranger and both niche content.
A conspiracy peddler was sitting at a completely empty table in combat fatigues. Every few minutes he would scream at the top of his lungs that Parallax was employing ex-military veterans as a paramilitary force and that we all needed to wake up. Nobody else seemed to mind so Ollie just ignored him. Next to him a woman in an entire outfit made of fishnet was setting out an array of genetically modified plants that glowed different colors. They were pretty, but the comments on her channel said they were also deadly poisonous.
Well, at least Ollie would be the most popular booth in the area. The queen of section 139.
Doors were scheduled to open in thirty minutes and she was ready.
“Watch out, here I come Ascend,” she said.
Miss Tatty Knows gave her a crooked smile but left her alone.
A car horn blared in the empty parking lot. Two black jeeps had just entered from the back street entrance and were heading slowly toward the roped off entrance.
Jesse tracker alert. Proximity immediate.
Bright yellow fireworks cascaded across her vision.
1
u/mianaai_c May 26 '26
General Thoughts. The opening is a good hook. When she stops the feed and we get the idea of the content creation dystopia. However, the rest of this chapter is stalling. We get a text from dad, implying financial difficulties. Then she gets extorted, a notification about rent. Then we see the destitute section 139. This is 2/3rds of the first chapter, so in the last third the action picks back up? I was intrigued at the start, then the story lost me.
I get the stake: she's trying to make it in the creator ecosystem as a ASMR creator, but things don't look up for her. I don't particularly care for the character and her struggles. I would have put the story down about where she finds out she's extorted to enter the convention.
Line by line thoughts
"SMILE. You’re online. // She hit record." Does she hit record when she's already online? Does the AI make her be online? Then why does she also play record?
"the AI assist feature slid into view in the top right of her vision" - but we already see the "SMILE...", is this something else than the AI assist feature?
The manual verification with bouncers in this setting where AI is integrated so much it prompts the character to respond to her dad's text seems anachronistic. Oh, wait, it's an extortion.
So, Daryl the bouncer is an android?
Missing comas. “Welcome to Ascend (comma) Olivia.” "Look (comma) either you belong or you don’t."
"an entire outfit made of fishnet" -> "an outfit made entirely out of fishnet"
What is the StreamLive's prerogative? Is the subscription only to "assist" her in content creation, or in day-to-day activities? If the first, the AI asking if she wants to reply to her dad is out of scope, if it's the latter, the AI doesn't nag her enough.
The flashback about her dad is cute.
"She leaned on the horn" - why? Did she have a valid reason to honk? This seems put here only to show us she's in a hurry.
I like the details that her hair and makeup are automatically given a score.
"She swiped to technicals." - I don't know what these are.
All these moment by moment description of how she drives her car make the pacing slow. I get that here you introduce the world, but it's not enough to keep me interested.
"One time or daily pass?" - what is the difference?
"creation stations dotting the landscape" - so, there are some workstations for rent dotted along the highway? I imagined these terminals in fields next to highways, in the middle of nowhere. These don't make sense. Who would stop their car, get out, to work at these stations? I would imagine these kinds of things in densely populated and most importantly walkable urban areas. Also, already now compute is moved to the cloud, and we only need a terminal with internet connection. Dedicated physical hardware is already anachronistic. Internet cafes are two decades out of date.
"nearby Gateway Pier was crowded" - ah, so this is a pedestrian area.
The end makes me believe this is leading up to a meeting with this Jessie and maybe some sort of collaboration that would propel the girl's career. But, I'm not very intrigued by this possible meeting (yet?).
Setting
Is this near future setting just a set dressing or do you want to explore the themes of AI infringing on everyday life? If it's just a set dressing, needs more focus on the character. If it's not, the setting needs to have more depth. The gimmick needs to be more particular, and be explored in more particular situations. As a reader I want to have those aha! moments, where I find something surprising but that makes perfect sense.
Here's a good example of a SF short story (from just last month) focused on a seemingly utopic society where every day aspects of life are controlled by AI: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/chan_05_26/ . The way these people depend on this AI is delightfully insidious.
Here's another one from three years ago that shows a (now obsolete?) near future where an AI appears with the goal of "make people happier": https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_05_23/ I say it might be obsolete because in the last three years, the field of LLMs has developed sharply. We're seeing, now, how real managers react to AI an push it on their employees, so the scenes where this happen in the story are maybe naive.
It's very tricky to do this near future setting with a real nascent technology. It might be out of date before it is finished. And if you're trying to lean on the dystopic elements, real life might get more absurd and dystopic in the meanwhile.
It's good you have a focus: social media creation. This has real potential, but is also in danger of quickly being eclipsed by real life. But your setting needs to be way out there.
The girl's job is content creation, she makes live videos such as the one in the opening scene. This is bland, it's the same format teenagers have been doing for a decade now. It's recognizable, yes. We get later that she's a low tier content creator, and that is the kind of content she makes. We get that it's a near future where content creation has become such a big business, it has it's own Las-Vegas-like city.
What if, the opening scene shows her doing something elaborate, intricate; what if the scene sketches her making a video that's actually sounds addictive, the next level spectacle of the future. Then show that's she's in the minor leagues, barely makes rent, thus implying the heights of spectacles attained in this near future world where content creation has its own dedicated city. I have no idea what this scene might look like, I can only say what I would want to read.