Star Fall, AI POV

Last week, I delved into Autocrit’s AI Analyzer for Star Horizon, and this week it’s Star Fall (as currently presented—the edit is ongoing!). My process is NOT to use AI in the process of writing the book. But now that I’ve gone 3 edits under my belt, I judge it helpful to see what an objective analysis says about the current state of the novel.

Overall plot structure: Double Man in the Hole: fall → rise → fall → rise, driven by cyclical captivity/erasure and subsequent comeback via love, strategy, and sacrifice. Arcs trend toward regained control and forward motion after multiple U-shaped collapses.

I viewed book2 from a narrative standpoint as sitting in a place similar to The Empire Strikes Back. I didn’t in any way try to copy the beats of Empire, but it was in the back of mind as I wrote the novel.

Core theme: the struggle for personhood—“who you are” versus “who others name you”—and the moral burden of accountability in a universe where power and coercion constantly try to write identity for you.

My experience of life is that the “world” through family, friends, loved ones, religion, social media and the greater culture, constantly exerts pressure on how we conceive of who we are. The pressure has changed. People have long defined themselves through roles, but added to that has been a cornucopia of identities where people have tried to fit themselves (often from shame, trauma, self-hatred and sometimes from laziness, from an unwillingness to look in the mirror). In both cases, a person is taking on as their personhood from what others have defined.

AI elaboration: Reclaimed agency is achieved not by escape alone, but by confronting the coercive scripts used against them.

“To see is death” is a recurring moral/epistemic rule—knowledge and perception are dangerous unless grounded in responsibility.

This for me is important—feeling/empathy separated from data and accountability become toxic. Feelings unbound from data gets free reign to be as delusional as the mind can conceive. Challenging even the most objectively delusional feeling encounters resistance (often, dramatic resistance since the underlying self cannot withstand seeing the truth) because we humans attach to feelings in a profound way that we don’t with data. A person’s entire identity may become tied to feelings no matter the data, ethics or values that are causalities in such a bounding to the self. It also provides for a shield for toxic behavior (The Empathy Shield) that allows the “feeler” to accrue virtue for discounting/removing accountability from another’s harmful act(s) (if not from their own act(s)). Manipulation fueled by the deployment of Empathy Shields combines with manipulation of others, often through emotional awareness/feelings, that’s easy to justify because feelings are deemed “valid” or “virtuous” simply by existing regardless of underlying data or impact to others.

 This has manifested in the Lover/Magician dominating the culture in unhealthy ways.

AI comment on theme: love plus accountability can interrupt coercive identity scripts, even when institutions continue to exist.

AI Recommend: Ending tone vs early setup: The narrative is epic-tragic in tone for long stretches, then resolves with a mixture of rescue, survival, and hopeful rebellion. While that is part of the double-U trajectory, transitional justification for how “love overcomes coercion” lands could be reinforced with more explicit consequences shown after each win.

This is something I’m keeping awareness around as I’m working through the current edit.

Overall AI comment: The novel uses close third multiple POV effectively to balance intimate emotional candidness and sprawling political scope. The primary reliability is strong for inner access (Kor and Charronna), while antagonists like Jeth are intentionally unreliable. Shifts are well signposted and filtering is generally consistent with focal characters’ concerns. Where the narration widens to omniscient political overviews, the reader gains needed context at the cost of temporarily reducing the mystery; that tradeoff is intentional and reinforces the novel’s themes about personal responsibility vs institutional power.

For me, Star Fall continues to dive deeper into the question posed by book1—what does it mean to be human? The answer, found in both Kor’s and Charronna’s arc, is that personhood is something you choose in the context of cultural resistance.

Refer to my previous week’s blog where I define myself through a series a questions that I constantly ask myself. Labels are handy, and I do use them, but I don’t define myself by them.

As with book1, there is a way is which my story could be viewed as Woke but also anti-Woke. I am not trying to be either. The “identity” craze has its root (in part) in wanting to define oneself apart from roles. But alas, it’s simply another trap. In many ways, it is a deadlier trap because most people understand more fully that they are not their roles even as they mask themselves behind their roles. But with identity labels, there is almost always an emotional bond melded to the ego. The true self is lost behind the label defined by someone else. What seems to be a journey to claim agency is done within identity frameworks created by the greater culture that takes one further from the self (even from the human condition) where you can be more easily manipulated and controlled.

AI: The best-fit genre blending is political sci-fi fantasy with space opera stakes and psychological/telepathic thriller mechanics. The story’s romance is structurally embedded in coercion and identity conflict, while its setting features multi-civilization alliances, interstellar fleets, and ancient godlike beings. The mind-control infrastructure and “captor-as-illusion” diplomacy make the tropes especially prominent.

Cool! that’s consistent with book1 but not exactly the same either. Perfect!

The AI notes: The text mixes very explicit sexual content (It exists but I disagree on this point) with a high-concept coercion thriller, which can clash with a “pure” dark-fantasy/space-opera tone. As with book1, there are elements of other genres undergirding the space opera tone.

The AI tool commented on geography, characters, beats/outline, foreshadowing, etc... a useful (if imperfect) perspective. An example is that I described the flora of a scene but included no fauna—adding small details helps with the immersion.