All right, so I can see some pity reviews are needed. The out of touch incompetency of the Gazette staff as usual knows no bounds; giving only five days for voting on four stories, and on a holiday weekend at that was certainly a choice. Those of us with our finger on the pulse of things, more able to deliver the latest moment by moment REAL NEWS that matters to the people, have observed that aside from the Review contest tryhards still clinging to productivity in their last week, the whole site is in an apathetic slump right now which has been affecting even the voting turnouts for the far more based Thunderdome.
So anyway, while none of these are as good as the ones Thara and I wrote in a fraction of the time, here's what I thought:
Story A:
Okay, right off the bat I'm feeling like there's maybe too MUCH background info here, because thse opening paragraphs are already raising more questions about the technology levels and state of the world than was probably intended, in exchange for what it adds. I feel though that if I ask how generations later, literacy and books are still being retained among average idiots like our protagonist, while apparently everyone is some kind of feral scavenger and not even Stone Age levels of societal structure have been reestablished, that alone would be enough to reveal me as some kind of mega autist--which is clearly not the case! So let's move on.
...okay, so the opening paragraphs are really turning into more than just opening paragraphs now, this is like a full third of the story that's just exposition.
The name Pandora seemed like an odd choice. It has a very recognizeable association with a very different sci fi franchise, and the original origin doesn't seem like one that would be associated with an untouchable utopia for rich people at all.
The plan to murder Pandora's soldiers and scientists then rejoin their comrades under the expectation that no one would take helmets off, no speaking would occur, no one would have any sort of job protocol to follow, and then to have the plan hinge on being caught out as murderers in order to "ask for shelter" is indeed an unfathomably stupid one, Todd was right. I'm glad it didn't work or I would have been quite upset with this story.
As it is, there's still some big logic gaps here. Why was Xavier of interest to them in relation to studying the baby, but not the actual mother? Why are babies rare at all when they have the technology to just easily unzip them from the mother and raise them in vats? That's less resource intensive than pickles and ice cream, really? And this after shrugging off the murder of an actual scientist and two trained soldiers.
Xavier's sense of guilt and reasons for making the decision could've been explored more. It's the only significant thing that occurs and the thing that bookends the rest, but his heel turn against Todd and letting Hannah be dragged off are just glossed ove, and so much of the rest of this is just backstory exposition.
Doesn't really feel like the "leading a gang" part was much of a factor at all. Even if the post apoc setting was here in the background in a lackluster way, there's really no time given to the gritty struggle for survival that would've given this all more impact than just being told how it had been.
It occurs to me that the basic idea of a group of post apoc people stranded on Earth and trying to reach an orbital facility could've been preserved in a story that felt much more on point if it had been about the original group who blew up the shuttle actually.
But anyway, this one is obviously Ben's, killing pregnant women is his fetish.
Story B
What a wildly different story than Story A. I'm sort of baffled that it was written for this little contest though, it's an unapologetically off theme high fantasy sword and sorcery romp that only touches on the specified setting in a token last paragraph.
Outside of the duel, I like this story for its own sake. Aside from the comedic swearing, it feels like an over the top 80s fantasy movie or an episode of He-Man. It's the longest of the four of these and with the most actually happening; though it does feel overwritten in places. Was it really under 2000 words? Due to the Gazette's inferior formatting of being images on a writing site, I can't easily check the word count, but economy of language was just not a thing here. It just rambles on and feels very self indulgent, I'm sure the author had fun with it but an edit pass to tighten it up would've done wonders.
For just one example: "There we go!" Kedgy grins, because despite being in mortal danger, he can finally use his power, and in a shimmer of displaced air, he vanishes.
Like, the whole deal with his powers has already been explained just a few paragraphs ago, that's 12 or 13 completely unnecessary words that could've been cut out and used for anything else. It would just be a much stronger passage too as, "There we go!" Kedgy grins. In a shimmer of displaced air, he vanishes.
Putting Story A and Story B up against each other feels unfair of course. Story B was much more fun and the writing was more interesting despite sorely needing some fat trimmed, but it also discarded the restrictions of theme (and word count?? Seriously was this over 2000 or was everyone else's quite a bit under?) that was the point of a challenge like this in a first place.
Story C:
This one is obviously Anthraxus. It's got Rene, and everyone in it is wearing Regulator-face.
The writing is undeniably high quality and I did like the setting presented here, although it introduces a wider galaxy and shifts the vibes to a more general sci fi story pretty quickly. It's at least established to be a world with radioactive wastes out there that would be appropriate to have post apoc adventures in, but it's never glimpsed except in a random monster attack. The Regulators are settled pretty comfortably here.
My main issue with this one is that despite the good prose, dialogue, establishment of characters and setting....it's almost completely lacking a plot?
At first it does tease us with the idea of one; two outsiders arrive in town, one of them a trusted trader of an alien species, and one an android, a stranger with a lot of questions raised about their origins.
Then an attack by "horrific, generic" monsters occurs at random. One of the biggest attacks ever that doesn't signify anything. I mean seriously, there are no further revelations about any of this, the attack is beaten back and the story ends.
There being some connection between a mysterious stranger claiming to be from a newly appearing underground society in the wastes, and a suddenly appearing new threat to the settlement, now that would've felt like a natural connection and resolving it could've been the basis of a satisfying plot. Instead it's like there's two big disconnected parts of the story--the visitors, and the attack--with a lot of time spent on both, and none of it ultimately leading to anything.
Finally, Story D, which would have to be Fresh.
Another one that feels like it sidestepped the prompt. There's an abandoned hovercar that I guess could potentially be meant to indicate a fallen civilization, but the story honestly doesn't seem very interested in the surrounding setting.
Mostly what it focuses on is yellow paint. Seriously, a handful of teens--two of them with short, similar names--have a conversation about yellow paint and not really anything else, for about half the story length.
This starts to feel like one of those slice of life anime things, it's basically just yellow paint and a bit of banter. These kids are putting grafitti on things, they don't like robots, and one of the K-names is an artsy girl, these are the things we know about them. Is this meant to be the protagonist? She doesn't do much but be "quirky" and clumsy, and doesn't seem to be any kind of leader, but she's the only one that nominally gets a personality.
Eventually some robots do show up. They're called "monitors" and because very little has been established about the wider setting, it's not immediately clear if they're a police force arresting juvenile delinquents, or if something larger scale or more sinister is going on.
It's said that the robots can't kill people, and I thought for a second we were going to get a story that turned on some clever exploration of Asimov laws. Robots with a misguided compulsion to protect humans against their will being countered by exploitation of the fact they can't actually harm them would've been interesting.
But instead, another kid is clumsy and falls off a roof, then the robots realize that humans CAN die and immediately start killing them. Really? Who programmed utterly malicious murder bots who only are refraining from destroying all humans because of poor observation skills and chance to act as protectors? While it's a competently written scene on its own, the implications are bizarre enough to distract from that when it comes to these characters I don't care much about anyway.
The writing here was technically very sound but then so was Anthraxus's. Just where he had too much focus on setting, this one had too little and neither really feels like a balanced story. I know the length was likely a factor in both, but everyone was working under the same restrictions and it's a common one given that the (based, superior) Thunderdome exists.
A little questionable if a long discussion of paint is a good way to open a story of any length, to be honest. And in any case all four contestants here were working under a very generous timeframe of over a week or more to figure out plot and pacing.
VOTING
I had to do a lot of contemplating for the actual VOTING part. Contemplating these stories last night actually put me to sleep! But I'm back now to soldier on, can't be outdone by the bloodless Dutch after all.
ngl there are things about the results of this contest I find very confusing and weird. Post apoc is a pretty specific kind of setting and a well established genre, and you were all handed this along with its many rich plotlines to mine by Endmaster's benevolent wisdom. That's like half, maybe even three quarters of the work done for you by the great man himself! But it feels like everyone on some level did a kind of weird sidestep instead. (Obviously much more blatantly in RK's case lol.)
These little duels often have voters putting a heavy emphasis on adherence to theme, because that and the length are the restrictions everyone agreed to work under from the getgo. Anyone can bash out a 2000 word story in an afternoon if they're just writing anything they want, there's no challenge in that and it's also not quite fair if one author holds themselves honorably to it and another does not.
That said, since they all went a bit wonky in one direction or another, and since I never get a chance to participate in voting myself, I'm going to just indulge myself and vote for Story B and Story C. Both had different things I enjoyed and the presence of an actual leader, and I think they'd be the most interesting pitted against each other for next time.
