Woah. That... was beautiful. Thank you. … Alright, that is most certainly someone who has no equal, interesting take on the challenge requirements. I assume this is that he overwhelmed his ”foe”. Impressively done. I like this. It feels so... natural. And yet, yeah... it had to end like that, didn't it. Too bad, really. Oh, well.

Very, very nicely done. So much charm in this piece. I like it. Thanks for letting me read it.

... Woh. Impressive. That was somewhat intense. You made a debate intense without actually writing them speaking, and then the stakes increased. It was fairly obvious what would happen, given the labour, but it was still intense. Nicely done. I'd say you accomplished the labour's requirements flawlessly. Well done.

Hm. I wonder if I made it unnecessarily long? … Eh! That's how long it became when I wrote it!

I did want it to end some other way, with the main character triumphing over the villain somehow after her death and resurection, buuuuut... That would have made the story unfathomably longer, and I didn't want to torture the judges by actually writing that long story! XD

And that... appears to be a way to complete this challenge through the mortality route while still retaining a positive ending. I like it. Well done. The action felt a little like it was just there so she could be killed, it didn't really feel like the bad guy's success was justified, but eh, details. His motivations were as basic evil as it could get, too. Eh, I can't say too much on that front, with all likelihood. Regardless. I like it. Guess we'll see what Terminal says now, but I think you nailed it pretty well. Haha.

... Alright. So, avoiding conflict with her sister, Ariana was forced to be exiled and then live a normal life. Yeah, that accomplishes one of the means of completing this labour. Though, we'll see what Terminal says. I spent the first half of the entry confused, though you cleared that up and I now know what was happening. But yeah, I didn't really have the time to enjoy what was going on. Now afterwards, I appreciate the situation you set up, the entry became better in my eyes after I was done with it compared to while I was reading it. I wonder what that means about the entry itself? Hm. Oh, well. It's rather nice, somewhat clever way of accomplishing the goal. Wonder if she's Mary Sue enough. Haha. In any case. I will say ”well done”. So. Well done.

So, to start with, you made some brave writer decisions with regard to style. Keep doing that, in spite of this.... it didn't really work for me. The dropped particles (like 'Man says' instead of 'The man says,'), and also the present-tense (though I suspect that only bothered me because of the particles). Which I guess is ironic, in a story about (sub-atomic) particles and relocating them and the essence being lost in the translation thereof. I mean.... that's pretty damned ironic, and if it's deliberate that's quantum-level wordplay, I just don't think that's a smart move in terms of, you know, people reading. Anyway those kinds of writing decisions -- breaking with conventional rules and/or norms -- are bold, but they're really only bold because conventional rules and/or norms are safe. Step outside the lines and it can hurt you too. I feel like in this case, it hurt more than it helped, possibly because this unique style created a sort of unsettling, un-technical atmosphere in a very technical story. Dunno. It might legitimately be that I just didn't like it. Feel 100% free to disagree with me on that, you're the boss of your writing.

One thing I do feel pretty strongly about though is the exposition. It's one thing to deliver to the reader some essential understanding about the theory at the center of the action -- it's another to give us unnecessary details about the rising and falling stock of either character's company. A certain amount of backstory and explanation is always expected.... this was a little gratuitous. A LITTLE! Every time the story started to drag, it picked back up pretty quick. Food for thought anyway. If it's not directly contributing to the present, think really hard about breaking away from the present to talk about it. (Especially when writing in present tense?) And as a sidenote, ending the flashbacks with ... totally implies an incomplete thought. That's.... I mean, that's what it means, right? It's rare enough for pro writers to use an ellipsis, but whenever they do, it's a cliffhanger. Really tough to make a cliffhanger-flashback, right? I stay away from them altogether, but that's just me.

... heh, and here I am using one (or several already). Okay. Well if you made it this far, you deserve some praise, because I never front-load this much criticism. Let's get to the good stuff, yeah? This was a brilliant subject for a sci-fi short. The spectacle of it was.... well, spectacular. It's a very mature take on conflict -- particularly, I think, the part where Hans suddenly drops everything when he realizes his rival is in mortal danger. That's remarkably human, and very interesting in and of itself, even stripping away all the flashy future-magic. This is the crucial point of the story, and you absolutely nailed it, and that's why -- despite all those mean things I just got done ranting about -- I really like what you're doing here. I can take or leave the lecture-hall drama -- that one interaction between characters, that's the beating heart of this story, and it's a human heart. The science? Yeah, cool, it's enough to get by -- but that character interaction, that's what I'm drawn to here. That's really good. Also, structurally speaking, constraining (almost) the whole plot in that one spectacular scene was effective. The backstory and flash-forward at the end break that spell just a little, but structurally speaking, you were smart here.

In summary: This is a very, very, VERY interesting conflict, maybe drowning just a little bit in detail and maybe (you decide) reaching a little too far in the style-department.

Caveat: if you decide this is your style and you're doing it anyway, then omit every single complaint I made about that. My intent isn't to tell you "This is wrong," only to say "This is how I feel about what you're doing." I don't get a vote, just an opinion and nothing more. The judges do get votes though, so for contest purposes, keep this kind of thing in mind (and of course, somewhere in the future, publishers get votes too).

So the biggest problem here is one of those sorta inevitable contest traits, especially with longer pieces.... it's juuuuuust long enough that you opened a bunch of interesting doors, but (for obvious reasons) you didn't get to actually take us through very many of them. That doesn't bother me at all in this context, but let's talk about it for the sake of learning things, right? Interesting doors, let's see..... Well there are a handful of visited planets, and only the industrial/prison world of Grouder got fleshed out very much. But even there -- so, so much we could be looking at on Grouder, in terms of world-building. Again, I think it was very smart to just focus on the events at hand, mainly having a look around the stage and getting on with it -- but my takeaway here is, at some point in the future when you're writing a different story under different circumstances, I would love to be more involved in the setting. Don't read into that, you played it well here, let's change the subject....

Ah! Technology. Again, you wisely confined the technological displays to just the concert and the medical stuff. The medical scene was particularly interesting from a writing perspective, because rather than going into some lengthy description of how much medicine has advanced, you simply woke Cathia up, told her she'd been assassinated, and she remarks '… I was retrievable! The damage wasn't so bad that the technology of today couldn't repair my body!' Granted, maybe there was a less expositional way to phrase that (when was the last time you referred to your cell phone/mobile as TECHNOLOGY OF TODAY?), but dammit, that's such a clever way to establish just how good science is in this galaxy. "Yeah, I was killed, but it wasn't THAT bad, what gives?" You're saying much more than you're writing in that scene. What was I talking about though.... OH, right, the doors that were opened but never really explored. So in this space-faring galactic civilization, you talked (significantly) more about stage lighting tricks than spaceships. That's very abnormal! And also very good, in this context. In some other piece, in some other context, you might need to talk more about the spaceships -- not because they're focal points of whatever story, but just because they're part of whatever setting.

Does that make sense? What I'm REALLY DRIVING AT is, look, the low emphasis on worldbuilding did *not* hurt this story at all, I don't think. If anything I count that as a point in your favor -- you were focused, and that's great. I'm just saying that's not a one-size-fits-all approach, and eventually you may have to (or simply WANT to) build a more robust setting as your backdrop.

Moving on! Let's talk style.

I'm gonna assume you already know what I would say about ellipses. You also probably know what I would say about I-kid-you-not twelve of them in a row unbroken except by a chapter heading. I get it, I really do, I swear -- there has just got to be a better way you can do what you're trying to do here. OR NOT -- I mean again, this is ultimately a style choice and that means it's totally up to you. If this is how you write a fade-to-black, then so be it. But I mean..... try some other options before you make that your thing. Waking up and looking around for clues about the passage of time? That's something.

Anyway more generally speaking, you still use that ... a whole awful lot, be it in conversations (how should one read a '...' without any actual speech? Do those dots really need to be there?), in descriptions ("They all... loved it" is different, how, from "they all loved it?"), and of course in transitions (Not gonna quote one but trust me they're there). My complaint here isn't that this is WRONG -- I don't usually care about things being 'wrong' -- only that, well, they're not really doing anything. They're a literary representation of the act of physically doing nothing. More often than not, when you're using dots, you, in particular, aren't using them for anything -- that's my complaint. They're just left there, and I can't figure out why or to what end, and that bothers me. It feels almost like a joke without a punchline. "Knock knock -- which reminds me, did you remember to get milk?" THEN WHY DID YOU SAY KNOCK-KNOCK??????? Right? Colorful metaphor, I hope that works.......... it didn't work, did it. Oh well.

That's like three peripheral things without even mentioning the story. Dude, what a great story. These are fantastic characters. FWIW in my book, Cathia is still a Mary Sue because 'the flaw of being too perfect' is kinda textbook, and I feel like she's totally got that. Your villain had some really good lines, and some depth -- maybe another one of those unexplored-doors you opened, which again, doesn't bother me, just saying you could dive into a character like that more in the future and it wouldn't be a mistake.

All in all, I can see why you're proud of this. It was nicely done, good arc, powerful ending (I prefer the bleak version personally, because I hate that ending more than I love the alternate), good characters, focused, and consistent in style and tone and all that. Great job.

Okey dokey!

So, to start out (in possibly more typical mdk fashion) let's talk about what worked. First off, the imaginative depth is pretty great, and very inviting -- whereas a hypothetical-cowboy-story might brush things off as 'a frontier' or 'a pen' or 'you know, like, a ranch or whatever,' you've actually gone and built up physical features, an actual geography, an actual palace, actual dragons with characteristics, that sort of thing. At the same time, you've left big enough gaps between the details that I also get to color them in myself -- it's a good balance between, like, a blank sheet of canvas and a coloring book -- on the one hand I can tell what the picture is supposed to look like in my mind, but also, you're giving the reader some room for interpretation. The balance shifts naturally as the story goes through scenes, and generally speaking, it feels like you gave the right amount of description. I guess that's the moral here -- this is a healthy amount. Caveats to come, but the amount of description was good.

I also think there's a healthy amount of character-building, partly because lots of these folks, you know, we've seen before. I look at the Queen herself though and think 'Yeah, that's a good introduction/goodbye/reintroduction.' Which of course means, overall, the story had a good arc to it, since it was all about that.

.....Okay, now for the fun part (I jest) -- things that could be better. To start with, and I swear I've said this before -- a lot of the descriptions were lacking in strength. The amount of describing you did was good -- it's more the quality of the describing, by which I mean pacing was good but this is more, like, a use-of-language issue. I'm gonna highlight the one that bothered me most yesterday and see if it still bothers me:

it is unadvisable to walk unsupervised in an area where dragons are.

....yeah, yeah that still bothers me. An alternative highlight which I think is mostly the same issue:

The last one wore the clothes of a high-placed cleric

The second one, eh, not so bad -- but the issue is, at these (and other, less glaring) points, the descriptions aren't so much 'describing' as simply 'identifying.' I'm sure if you opened up my entry you could find a dozen examples of the same thing, so maybe I'm only pointing it out to help myself work through it.... We should be writing things like 'A dragon's killing field,' or 'the blue silken robes of a High Priest of Scientology.' Right? Not that last bit, but.... right though? 'A place where dragons are' is no fun at all to picture in my head. I love the brevity and the clarity of these descriptions -- after all we don't need to spend three pages on every stitch of someone's shirt -- it's just the words themselves aren't (I think) pulling their full weight. Again, I'm guilty too, and probably so is whoever else is reading this review, so let's all work on that, cool?

There was a fight, and I generally talk about how to work on fights because for some reason I think I've got authority there or something. I really don't have much to say about yours -- it worked. The intense parts were intense, the pauses made sense, there was even some character development within the action. It honestly just works, which, I mean, isn't to say "OK you've mastered it forever now." But it was nicely done.

Something I don't really do, so I don't really have a good grasp on how to critique it, is the sort of magical-system thing you built into the story -- namely "whoever kills the dragon queen gets her powers," that whole concept. It seems like there should be a better way to introduce that -- maybe some foreshadowing when they're approaching the palace? It felt to me like the magical-inheritance and the 'he can't handle her power' just sort of appeared (*cough* perhaps to emphasize the labor criteria?) and it was less compelling than it should have been. Right up until he announces that he's gonna get her power, I didn't have Kendru pegged as ambitious or greedy or whatever, and so when that kills him, it's not like "YEEEAH THAT'S WHAT YOU GET YOU JERK!" it's more like "Oh.... ok yeah, I guess that makes sense." If that makes sense. I guess. Maybe another one of those contest-isms that we're always bound to see in this sort of writing context -- just, you know, my feelings or whatever.

Plot-wise, as usual, really solid. A good addition to your ever-growing world.

Aaaaaand this is getting long, so I'll just sign off with good job, great story. Your imagination (or mine perhaps) is juuuuuuuuust slightly held back because of a sprinkling of weak-ish words, which detract only a little from the bigger picture -- but they do detract, I think. Pour some wild and crazy imagery into your well-paced descriptions and this goes to a whole new level.

Ironically I think this might fulfill it though? But it's a good title. It's a brief plot, but then it really seems like only an introduction to a really interesting story (which was only looked-in-upon in the previous entry). My point -- it's an intriguing situation built on a strong character-driven conflict between interesting people. You really can't miss with something like that.

Obviously, as a stand-alone story, this briefest of introductions falls a little flat. We're not reading a plot arc here, we're reading the very very very faintest uptick of that arc, containing just the smallest glimmer of foreshadowing. In this tiny glimpse though, you've already laid strong foundations. I wouldn't say I'm 'hooked' per se, but intrigued? Absolutely. I'm not going to write an essay about this entry because you don't need it -- instead I'll just say I really like what you're doing from a writing standpoint, and I'm interested to see where the story goes, and heck, "I CARE ABOUT THESE PEOPLE," the five best words in the English language. I dunno if it's enough to satisfy the contest parameters, but what can you do. It's damn good writing.

@mdk ... Oh, dear. I didn't even realize I was back to using ellipses again. Oh, dear, I did it again. ... Ey, stop that. But, it's such a good way of indicating hesitation or doubt. But, unfortunately, I seem to be the only person to read it like that, which makes things awkward. But how will I ever give the hesitation or silence in-speak if I don't use ellipses? In any case. The usage of them when there is a line that is simply a '...' is intended to be that, in place of an answer, the person in question is simply silent. As in, it's a spot where they could have said something, but they didn't. I find that to be useful to give a perspective on the thoughts of the character at the time, but as said, maybe it doesn't work. And the twelve of them in a row included scene-change-lines, which was intended to show off the absolute blankness that was her being dead. I personally don't really know if there was any better way to show absolute blankness, haha. In any case, I completely forgot to keep that matter in mind when I wrote the entry, because apparently it bothers people that isn't me.

For me, 'they all loved it' is simply stating a fact while 'they all... loved it' indicates a pause between "all" and "loved", as if the narrator paused to assure that she had read that right. In this case, the narrator was Cathia herself, and the pause there was because of her own relief and disbelief at the fact that they loved it. It's a difference in emotions... which I suppose doesn't even matter if I can't properly convey this emotion. Hm. Oh, well.

Teh-heh, you made me smile a lot in the first parts. Thank you for that. I don't have a lot to say about those parts, but I appreciate your words on it. As you said, because of how this story was based it was more important to describe the things around the main character and things that actually came into play. At the same time, I want to show that this world is developed as far as it is, I want to hint at a greater existence. And so I did, I believe. In any case.

Thank you for praising my characters and story. It makes me happy that you think so. And... heh. Prefer the bleak ending because you hated it more than you loved the alternative, that's a new one. But yes, I built everything up for the bleak ending, so that shouldn't be surprising, it just ended up that I hated it too, so as the only one who could actually do so I wanted to fix it somehow, haha. But yes. Thank you very much for the review~

@RomanAria I did not even consider the ellipses... more on that in the answer to mdk, haha. Anyways.

Teh-heh, I apologize for the cringe. The labour did request a Mary Sue, soooooo... XD

I'm happy you found it unique! I do always strive to make something so. I wasn't sure I had succeeded this time, but I've very happy it worked for you!

… *snaps fingers at you* Frickin' love your title-use there. Thank you very much! I'll do my best! Starbound it is! XD

(the thank I put on your last post was for the review, not that actual post)

@Terminal The entry required a certain amount of information to be provided. If this came across as forced, I'll have to figure out another way. … Not sure how. Oh, well.

I'll keep reading and I'll keep writing, hopefully somewhere along the line my sentence structure should improve. I'm happy that it was more difficult to locate grammatical errors this time around, haha. Indeed, I'll keep on it~!

Indeed, it did feel like my entry got a little long to get there, though when I was done it didn't feel like I could take anything out of it. But, I'm very happy you were impressed. The entire entry was designed to lead to that final act, after all. So, thank you very much, and I'll keep working on it~!

Thank you, thank you. I came into the story with the expectation that this wild horse would be broken, and live a life of mediocrity as some farm animal. But I came to the same conclusion you did -- it really had to end the way it did. I'm still not sure if this way is more depressing, or less.

Honestly if I was tossing around accolades, I think -- like everyone else really -- Holmi was just a few more lines away. Still, glad you liked it. On the dialect -- I'm kicking myself for leaving a "cain't" in there. I took a bunch of those out.

I've been neglecting my human sacrifices for a while. There just aren't that many bloodlines around where I live and I don't like to stick with the same one for too long, or... well, I mean, you get it. Anyway a tourist bus came through last week and the timing was perfect, so I'm back in the red with the plaguelord.