Your entire scene is now a noodle incident. Problem solved. I think more books should have events inexplicably occur offstage.

I will send you all of the sex pollen. It will be difficult to package, but you can expect a shipment by mail in the next month. Do not open in public.

Why is lack of dialog tags a problem? I think some famous pretentious authors have that as their quirk. Famous pretentious people are allowed to have typing quirks. It's art.
I read the first book in the first trilogy. I didn't love it enough to go on. I remember not liking the main character that much.

I don't have the rulebooks for anything other than D&D 5E! I can't use any of those other things!

Why should the reader get to experience all of the scenes relevant to the plot? Sounds very post-modern.

Must open in public. I suggest suspending it in some sort of non-water liquid. Pollen is hydrophobic, right?

I don't want to be a non-famous pretentious person. Nobody likes them. And it's still wrong, even if other people do it.
Lessa isn't that likeable. How old were you when you read it? Masterharper is better. Just read that.

Fate is free online! Did you even use the Google? Do you not have that power? I really want to play Fate!

I think the logical extension of this principle is that readers shouldn't get to experience any scenes relevant to the plot. Filler only. Occasionally characters disappear without explanation. Dead? Put on a bus? No one speaks of it.

I know absolutely nothing about pollen. What is a pollen? Is pollen singular or plural? If this were German I would assume that the singular form is poll.

I don't see why you think it's wrong. Your writing is readable. If you limit yourself to two people to a scene, it won't even stand out.
Maybe I was too young? I think you read them when you were younger, though. I cannot read Masterharper because I own no books and don't want to buy anything we already own. Being separated from the family library is most inconvenient. We need to set up a lending service.

Yeah. Fate is free. I just remembered that a TTRPG developer I follow on tumblr has repeatedly posted lists of free RPGs, so there are actually tons of systems I could use. Will investigate. I believe there's one where all player characters are sentient penguins.

That would be incredibly strange. Someone should try to write that.

Pollen is a collection of individual pollen grains. It is both singular and plural. Pollen is microgametophytes. There is sporopollenin, if you want something that sounds more plural. That's the coating on pollen.
I've been thinking about why I DO like these tropes. It turns out I like the emotional denouement more than anything else, and I enjoy seeing that decoupled from a physical relationship by putting them out of order. It's very satisfying.

I'm not limiting myself! It's chaos! This is Sparta!
Is there anything you know you shouldn't do but keep writing anyway? Or are you very grammatical? Would Strunk & White approve?
I tried them once and couldn't make it through. I liked them much better a few years later.
... you're going to be reunited with the library within a week.

I refuse to play a sentient penguin. There would invariably be leopard seals. I would die of fright IRL.

I need a Marvel scientist (of any kind) whose work is at least tangentially related to plumbing. Preferably not a super-powered individual.

Or archaeology?

Wow. I have less than zero recommendations for Marvel scientists who do archaeological plumbing. Congratulations on finding a subject that, if Marvel has touched it at all, it was in a comic way too obscure for me to know about it.
If you can settle for shoehorning in a general-purpose non-powered scientist who has nothing to do with either topic, Moira Mactaggert is a decent option.

I also live for the emotional denouement, but completely decoupling the physical relationship makes the story feel... unbalanced, to me? I can't really articulate it.

My POV habits are hideous. I usually write in a fairly distant 3rd-person, but then I throw in stream-of-consciousness sentence fragments that have no business in anything but the most tightly focused 3rd. I see myself doing it and just can't stop myself.
Do you really want me to spurn human contact in favor of our library? Because I totally will.

Well, you've been saved. No penguins, which probably means no leopard seals. Probably.

I've gotten to the point in my NaNo where all the scenes I was looking forward to writing are behind me. I've also hit a lull in the action, and my writing style itself has started decaying in response. I'm slipping closer and closer to my comedic style. The story is turning from a tense fantastical survival drama into a light romantic comedy.

Okay, I looked at that list of archaeologists, and didn't recognize ANY of the non-super-powered ones. Unless you count Doc Savage as non-super-powered, but he only did archaeology as a side-gig to his fisticuffs and such.

Of the ones on the list, though, I recommend:
Nigel Pigman, if you want a character with an extensive comic-book history and you don't mind a bit of a Great White Hunter vibe.
Curtis Nolan, if you don't mind a character who has only had one appearance that was in a fairly modern source, AND you want him to be a figure of ridicule.
Peter Alraune, if you want him to be the father of Moon Knight's girlfriend.

Thanks! Is fisticuffs a superpower? I thought Great White Hunter and archaeology were interchangeable.

I am very fastidious about point of view. That would irritate me. Have you tried including "seemed" or "appeared" whenever you add something from a non-viewpoint character? That's what I do. I use a very tight 3rd, though. Would a narrator being infer feelings in someone else?
Not my problem. Jared might appreciate if you did. Fewer high-pitched noises from us.

You should take a break to plan out some more scenes. It doesn't do any good to go charging out into empty space. What still needs to happen in your story?

Fisticuffs is a superpower if you can use "pressure points" to magically render people unconscious. Doc Savage is a weird borderline case. We shall not speak of him.
Well, not all archaeologists hunt. And not all GWHs bother with stealing artifacts in their spare time. It's mostly a distinction of activity.

Oh, I would never include anything from a non-viewpoint characters. They are interpreted entirely through what the viewpoint character can observe. The only thing that gets messed up is how tightly I'm in the head of the viewpoint character--does the narration take on the mood of their thoughts, or can the narration look down coldly and laugh at how much they're panicking? That sort of thing. I yoyo in and out. I do better if I'm not trying to be distant, but I enjoy the nuance you can get with distance. Otherwise, why not just go with first person, you know?

I know where my plot needs to go, and I can make up scenes to get me there, but there's nothing I'm particularly looking forward to. It's weird. Maybe if I commit to the romance aspect that'll give me an emotional thread to cling to for the final push.
How's your momentum holding up?