This was a solid, enjoyable action piece. I really appreciated your evocation of a unique take on especially the Havoc Warriors' culture, but also the Wood Elves', from their original inspirations. I found a couple places hard to follow (I had to stop and think about where Yivoraea had gotten the axe from, and the shift from her memory of the fight to her consideration of her present situation was awkward) but overall very well done. The only thing was, though, that although you had plenty of reflections and mirror images throughout, these reflections weren't central to the story - set dressing, more than important ideas.
Viewing post in Shrine Keeper's Gambit jam comments
Great feedback! Thank you!
I really wanted to represent the Havoc Warriors as something different than their Chaos reflections, and I've always viewed wood elves as the more nature oriented of their kin, but the moon is an integral part of the natural cycle. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough room to truly flesh out either of the ways I see them.
The memory to the present was definitely not what I wanted. I had a personal engagement I couldn't avoid during the writing weekend so I had to push this out as fast as possible. I'm definitely planning to rework that section when I revise it after the jam. I think the axe feels disjointed on account of the weird transition to the present. With it happening right before the awkward part I feel like it gets quickly forgotten so your brain can focus on figuring out what the weird transition is.
Ooh. That's disappointing to read! While you're correct about the more minor elements of reflection, the core one must have gotten lost. The main representation was meant to be a reflection of the elf's character, a criticism on it hidden in the last line. Here is this clearly talented and proud warrior, defending her post against less than good odds, but in her final moment, she doesn't truly complete what she believes she's done. Now that I'm typing it out, it was probably not the best idea to go with an outlier definition in such a short format.
Thanks again for reading it and the feedback!
I did like the glimpses I got of the Havoc Warriors and the Wood Elves. You could definitely create further pieces exploring other aspects of both cultures. Remembering that we're limited to a thousand words over a weekend for the jam I think you did a great job presenting just enough of the cultures that I got the sense there was more, without burdening the story or taxing your wordcount trying to go into immense detail.
I think the axe thing was simply because there's a lot of story between Yivoraea's enemy dropping the axe, and her picking it up. A quick reminder to the reader why there was an axe would have cleaned that right up. As for the transition from past to present, yes, that needs some tightening up, but the raw material is still there.
Maybe it's more on me than you that I didn't pick up on what you were trying to evoke with the theme. At the same time, we as jam authors have (this time around) 32,000 words of story to read and absorb in a week, so personally I've found that subtlety isn't my friend when it comes to OPR writing jam submissions. With a longer work, without the time pressures to write, submit, and then rate, you can afford to play around with your themes, hide them and twist them around and explore them.
Anyway I'm glad you found the feedback helpful. I did like the story overall; hopefully that hasn't gotten lost in all this!