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Due to storyline complexity, I suggest converting that underground abandoned city into an ant mound. You could tie it into your existing ants, and then you could say "cavern wall" and "ducked under a stalactite" etc instead of introducing flat walls at this point.

That city you depicted... you could probably spend about 4 pages describing it and still parts would be unclear. I suspect it's not that important to the overall story, so instead of leaving some readers confused about the stage, why not normalize it to the previous chapters?

I suggest cutting it (rather than try to render it better) because I'm never 100% sure if it's "day" or "night" or if the characters can see the sun. I'm never sure of the flora and fauna (especially with respect to broad-leaf plants). Sometimes a "drop-off" is mentioned and I can't picture how big or wide or deep. This stuff could use more fluffing out next pass. The city? Not so much if it can be normalized.

You dont want to renew right now? Yeh... basic doesn't have a lot of power afaik

Dryden?

Interestingly, this is the most common complaint K w a n has drawn from the market - that she doesn't take enough of an active role in her own destiny. And it's very true. As one reader put it, "things happen to her".

Usually it's the character who's willing to fight who gets our attention. The chance-takers - the gamblers who put their necks out to hire assassins in a cause they believe is right.

I don't believe that's possible within the desired structure. I also don't believe it's warranted. I did not suffer a disconnect between the two stories (Sorry, Amy). My disconnect, as you know,was Caligula.

You must picture Caligula as a character the writer finds interesting, but always remember he was not a sell character. As such, he must work that much harder to earn our pathos.

Think of him like my Marsha McKnight: a) absolutely essential to the plot b) 100% replaceable
(in my case by David McKnight and in your case by Apollo's little-used brothers)

Your unenviable task is to get me to feel one way or the other about him. You don't want me neutral on this guy. I should either love him or hate him so much, I want Apollo to kill him just to wipe the smirk off his face. There are a bazillion ways to accomplish the former, but having him kill Adam and Eve is a good start. Bonus points if he's despicable. Shooting tied up, helpless opponents is a good way to harvest those points (Joseph, I'm looking at you shooting a guy in handcuffs).

This is the basic premise of the story. Why are you trimming that part?

Remember Star Wars New Hope when Palpatine abolished the Senate? How his guards gunned down the senators and he rose, cackling with glee to accept his throne? No? Oh... it happened off camera.

Agreed

Why hide it?

Writer: "Bob felt something brush his cheek"
Me: Is this a shard of metal? A fingertip? A tree branch? You kinda know this stuff even if its dark.
Writer: Oh, I don't want to say yet. It's for suspense.

So I ask of you... is there a benefit I'm not seeing to hiding a major character?

Sure... as long as it was intentional and not an oversight, I'm down

I needed more build to that to make me remotely interested. I would have liked to see a 10-15 minute sololiquy from Yoda about how he hates Palpatine for killing his puppy or something. It was literally two randoms going at it with lightsabers for me. All the magic / personability / pathos-driving of Expendables II but with half the action.

Stage 3:

After the mumbling stage he should start to see furtive mevements from the car of his eye. When he randonly turns to look, people are staring at him quizzically. He's not sure if they're doing it to unnerve him. He finds muddy footprints in his room when he wakes up. Security assures him no one was in there. He starts imagining Aphrodite is cheating on him. He can suddenly no longer write straight - he hires a scribe.

Stage 4:

He starts to worry about poison (specifically of the exploding bowel nature). Hires a tate tester. Hires a second backup tester. Aphrodite grows distant. He thinks it's a conspiracy. He randomly has her arrested and searched for evidence (comes up empty-handed). Good time to throw in an exploding car bomb from the Heresy.

Need more? Amy and Seabrass are also good at this.

PS: Joseph needs a burning bush encounter. It's kind of a Judaic staple.

Seems like a fine length to me

that would be like trying to ignore the sun

*** Spoiler Alert***

Your early concept is a kind of "is this voice real?" or a "which of these two characters is mad". This concept is interesting enough by itself, but as events unfold, the boys head down different paths with Apollo scheming, and Joseph kind of ambling along. This makes Apollo the more interesting of the two (in terms of drama) if we shall liken Apollo to MacBeth (willing to murder to gain the throne) and Joseph to Hamlet (willing to spend Act II waltzing where Claudius and Ophelia think he should dance).

From this point, we enter a “neutral” phase where political machinations develop that will help bring about the ending, and new characters are introduced.

After this phase, Apollo goes back to plotting and signs of madness increase. To hide the signs from his political enemies, Apollo is willing to disfigure himself. Joseph gets into prison and starts a cult dedicated to a voice in his head.

Introduce Caligula who will steal the spotlight. Drop the descent into signs of madness, introduce battle chess. Caligula loses, the boys are friends, there is no madness, there is no cult and what cult there was is irrelevant. The End.

PS: A world got blown up that we never really met and everyone is sad about it.

Now here’s where I draw the connection to A Beautiful Mind. If you think about it, the story begin-middle-ending never loses track of the main character and stays on its theme. Mind you, it has an easier time because it marries its central theme and stays there.

I’m not eagerly turning the page to find out how well Darth Maul is doing in Star Wars. I want to know how well the good guys are doing against Darth Maul. Ergo, in the battle of Darth Maul vs random monster, it is important to arrive at the conclusion of the battle quickly so he might go on to face a “sell character”.

The “sell character”... this guy should be drinking in the spotlight. I’m on everyone’s back about bringing out the sell character(s), so don’t feel sad. Whenever your sell character is not on the page, you risk your reader escaping. The danger of reader-leak increases the longer your sell characters are gone.

A digression: The easiest way to bring out your sell character is to remove unnecessary frill characters around him. You see this in A Beautiful Mind which has 13 names for the entire story. This is really low, and an exercise in cast control. I’ve seen stories hit this number by chapter 1. It’s an unrealistic goal for your story which is bigger and affects more lives and more planets, but I just wanted to point out one of the techniques it uses to focus the spotlight.

[End-digression]  The final battle is missing its sell character. Permit me to reach into your structure and suggest it shouldn’t be Caligula vs Realm. It should be Apollo vs Caligula or Apollo vs Realm. I think a perfect use case is that you have Apollo in the flag ship with Caligula in the other half of the Imperial fleet. Caligula defects mid-battle and it turns into a 3-way fight. Apollo loses his ship and you can do the space thing.

Again, why am I suggesting Apollo needs to figure larger in the main battle? You don’t want your story to climax on two non-sell characters (Caligula vs Realm). Someone needed to tell Lucas this too. One of his staffers should have been brave enough to ask the hard question: Does anyone care about a Yoda-vs-Palpatine fight?

I would recommend you don’t shelf Apollo and allow him to consume any bit of page Joseph isn’t using. I would suggest you don’t lose the tension of Apollo’s fear of discovery. That’s an excellent trick you don’t see often enough in fiction. Ride that horse until the final page like it’s a young colt that needs breaking in.

*Or... if you want this structure... sell Caligula from the start. Make him conflicted with his need for power vs his need for sobriety and inability to stick to one plan. Have him clash with Apollo on must more than the wrestling mat. Personally, I don’t recommend a trinary focus in any story, but I’ve seen it sort of work.

So, overall, I’m calling for more cohesion, a stronger central theme, an ending that services that theme, and more Apollo / Joseph

Go rewatch a beautiful mind and ask me this again

so... a baked ball of controlled fungus with bee vomit and a cow's fat-based mucus

I'm not. At least not any more so than usual. I was born senile.

English is not very modulated. You can speak it in a flat tone and be perfectly understood, unlike Chinese where pitch and pace changes are required (effective modulation).

Useless party fact: English become tonal when counting. Try reciting someone a phone number or count to ten without changing tones.