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I enjoyed how the frog mage manipulated the orcs--also loved how he was so enamored of the orcs, and how annoyed the orcs were with that. :) As others have said, it's a pity about the misspellings and tense changes. Also, centering all the paragraphs made it kind of challenging to read. But I did enjoy the arc of the story!

Super creative -- the distinctive voices of each group were great. I personally wasn't a fan of the different fonts--it made reading this harder than it needed to be, I think--but the "unlikely alliance" was very well done.

Really sharp metaphors, probably one of my favorite aspects of this piece. Also loved seeing some Change Demons! The idea of the "True Death" waiting in the fog was ominous. I suspect the word limit was a challenge--there feels like so much more waiting to be told in this tale. Great job!

Super strong opening -- I love the first person perspective, and the cheeky voice. The non-stereotypical dwarf figure is wonderful, too. What a great protagonist! There were some places where you switch between past and present tense, and one sentence in 3rd person that I think was probably meant to be first person. The ending felt a little rushed, too, and I didn't quite connect with it like I'd hoped. But the concept was solid and I'd love to read some more about this plucky dwarf one day!

Very strong entry. The setup was well done. I could only wish for a less impersonal narration, but that may just be personal preference. Great job!

Thank you! Great feedback, I appreciate you taking the time to share it. And yeah, the name switch...can't believe I missed that.   🤦‍♂️

Good stuff. I really liked the orc showing up to save the day--and the gentle chastisement that followed! I wonder if the irony might have been stronger if you introduced the anti-orc prejudice sooner? Great story, though, and definitely an unlikely alliance!

Great characterization--that first paragraph was excellent. The sisters really came alive for me. I wonder if the appearance of the demons could have been foreshadowed a bit more? It felt kind of deus ex machina, which isn't always a bad thing, but rang a bit artificial for me here. Still, though, I really liked the glimpse at the world you gave, and again, your characterizations were superb!

I love the setting--a glance at a world we don't see often in these jams. Good job, too, portraying Brother Gregor's lust for material things. The story felt a little weak on conflict, though--it was hinted at, but I never really felt like Gregor was opposed by much. Still, great job, and interesting alliance!

Great descriptions and visuals. I'm not sure why, but I had to keep referencing back to the first few paragraphs to remember which character was which. The ending also could have used a little more "punch." Great story, though -- very grim and dark, appropriate!

Love the idea of the Ascensionist, and their relationship to the ratmen. Lots of good descriptions, too, though there are many places that could have used more description or explanation. I felt like it was hard to follow what was going on between 507 and the Ascensionist. The chase through the maze and their fight was a bit confusing, too. Still, high marks for originality, and a good twist at the end!

As others have said: solid world-building. Love the hints of dwarven culture, as in "beardless animal", and "by the Company." The present-tense was used to good effect, though there's a stray paragraph in the middle where you switch to past-tense ("His tone brooked... he expected... his barter-tongue was..."). The dwarf's voice comes through really well, though, and I loved the twist at the end. Great work!

Really, really love the idea. Great sense of humor, despite the grim setting. The characters are really great, too. You have a lot of potential--I'd strongly encourage you to learn more (formally) about writing. If you could organize your paragraphs, sort your punctuation, and keep your tenses consistent, this could be fantastic!

Thank you! Yes, the orc dialect was tough to strike a good balance with. I originally wrote the whole thing in the stereotypical monosyllables and "me want kill" style of grammar, but it was too much. It was hard to read. So I dialed it back at the last moment and didn't have enough time to thoroughly re-edit it for consistency. Thanks for enjoying it despite the inconsistencies!

Lovely descriptions, and good visuals. The characters names, too, are very evocative. I regret that I wasn't very well able to follow the conclusion of the story, though -- I know it somehow tied back to the dream (?) at the beginning, but I'm not sure what you were trying to convey with it. I loved the setting, though!

Wow, thank you so much!

 ❤️ Thank you! And thanks for reading!

Excellent story! I could tell you struggled a bit with the word limit, but your visuals and descriptions were spot on. "It moved like an animation with half its frames lifted out" -- loved this line, especially.

Love the writing style -- great descriptions, good visuals. I wonder if you might have been able to build up the tension/fear/something around Korsakoff Proxima a bit more? It was almost a bit anticlimactic at the end. But as I said, solid writing. Well done!

Thanks for the feedback! That's fair. I was torn; I felt like "A3" made them seem Star-Wars-Robot, but I do get your point. Thanks again!

Thank you! 

You did great, really! The story was intriguing. A proofreader is a good idea, even just having a trusted friend read it over (but make sure they know you aren't looking for just a pat on the back, or that's often all a friend will give you!). I'm still an amateur too, but everything we write makes us better!

Good use of the theme! I like the unexpected use of the mirror as a trap, and the doppleganger's appearance.

I'd recommend breaking up the large paragraphs into smaller ones, to make them easier to read. It also gives you better control over the pacing of the story.

Aside from that, the story scanned well and the ending was ominous!

I'd love to read a longer story on this theme! The plight of the captain, and the stresses that led to his defection and betrayal, is an interesting theme. It's a pity you could only scratch the surface here!

Some technical issues detracted from the clarity of the piece, though: missing punctuation and over-long sentences disrupted the flow and took me out of the story. The inconsistent use of italics, too, was a bit distracting, as I tried to understand the pattern there.

But as I said, the core of the story itself contains a powerful theme. The captain's story, I'm sure, is a complex one!

Love how you applied the theme here, with each perspective mirroring the other. It was an effective way to demonstrate how alike two superficially different people can be.

It was a little disorienting, though, having each point-of-view written as a single paragraph. It wasn't clear initially that you were changing points of view. You might consider breaking up those paragraphs for easier reading, and then adding some other typographical cue (a horizontal line, or three stars, or similar) to indicate the change in point of view.

I like that the story ended with mutual understanding; it could have gone either way! The hopeful ending was nicely done.

Very compelling! The way the risk increases with each realization, leaving you wondering by the end whether anything is safe at all... Well done.

I'm sure the nature of the writing jam affected your editing process, but the layout of the piece and various technical issues were a little distracting. If you were to clean up the missing (or extra) punctuation, and other typos, you'd have a story to be reckoned with!

But great job overall. The ending was really punchy!

I love the perspective here, a couple of scavengers on a Battle Brothers ship. The present tense is effective in evoking a sense of immediacy, and you do a good job with adding a bit of humor and light-heartedness to an otherwise tense situation.

It's tricky to do present-tense well, though. There are several places where you slipped into past tense. For example, "Maric was not looking at him" should be "Maric is not looking at him". Swapping tenses tends to break the illusion, and dropped me out of the story several times.

Great ending, though! It really nailed the atmosphere of horror you built up through the rest of the story.

Really spectacular. Your writing is solid, your cadence smooth. The descriptions are succinct, but sufficient to place the reader right there next to the two soldiers. I also really liked that Isaiah answered "No" to the trooper's last question, because in a very real way, Isaiah was no longer that person, and was far enough removed from him to feel him a stranger.

The only criticism I might offer is that the story Isaiah shared seems a bit disconnected from the plight of the HDF trooper, but that's probably more on me than on you. Also, there were a few technical issues (a few bits of missing punctuation, mostly), but that's easily chalked up to the constraints of the jam.

Overall, one of the best pieces I've read for the jam (and at this point I've read all but a handful). Very well done!

Great tension and mystery! Very intense imagery and descriptions; if there'd been more than one page, it would have been a page-turner for sure.

The biggest issue with the piece are all the technical errors---spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc. It really needed a thorough editing pass or two (or more). I could ignore most of the issues, but some of them really took me out of the story and required me to stop and think about what you were trying to express (e.g. "is Volt catches me I'm dead", "Volt looked as you", "Volt wasxeasy to take", and "the figure snares").

Please keep writing! You have a wonderful way with describing intense scenes. But please also work on taking time to edit and polish. It'll make a huge difference!

Wow, great atmosphere and descriptions! You depict the hopelessness of the situation well. I also like how you incorporated the theme.

You might want to try shortening your sentences, though. Some of them were really difficult to parse, with lots of clauses all chained together. For example, the fifth paragraph (starting with "The skirmish of the night..." is only two sentences long, but the sentences are quite complex. And toward the end of the seventh paragraph, you have a sentence with "The mirror that reflected the light that carried the messages..." This kind of nested construct can be difficult to parse.

But again--great atmosphere! I was not expecting where you took the story, and it was really delightful.

The prose was quite lovely. I especially liked passages like the one in the second paragraph, where the arrows "standing tall" were contrasted with the bodies "they'd lain low." 

It wasn't immediately clear in the transaction from the first to the second paragraph that Yivoraea was remembering. It felt like the five bodies from paragraph 1 were attacking her--maybe use the past perfect ("Three had fallen to the elf's bow" and "a fourth had launched a spear")?

And a poignant ending to a poignant tale! Thank you for the lovely read.

Very strong writing here! Your prose flows together very solidly, with some really good detail. For example, I liked that he not only killed his first alien on Antiles III, but that he killed the alien "with a wrench", hinting at a lot of other untold stories in his past.

If I had to nitpick, I'd just say you might have benefited from a little more editing (a few places where things weren't capitalized, and some misplaced punctuation). The ending also doesn't really resolve the "not all debts can be repaid" line, but all of this can be chalked up to the constraints of the jam, I'm sure!

Overall, I loved your word choices ("forsaken ball of mud", ""lusting after the reward", etc) and the way you portrayed the downfall of this power-hungry, selfish commander.

You do a good job depicting the action, and using the present tense helps develop a real sense of immediacy. You also used the present tense very consistently--good job! That's easy to mess up.

The second "paragraph" (the dialogue between Laurel and Evander) was difficult to follow; adding lines between the speakers, and perhaps a few more speech tags, would have helped. I had to go back a few times and reread before I understood who was speaking each line.

But you did a great job keeping the tension up, and having the forest actually help her out was a nice touch!

I really, really liked the bit toward the end where you mirror (reflect??) the donning of her armor with the donning of her "august persona", and contrast that with "Alessandra, the doubtful" versus "Lady Alessandra". That was very well done.

I'd caution you to pick a verb tense, though (present or past) and stick with it. You switch between past tense and present tense frequently (e.g. "Alessandra saw a scarred, tired woman. But that is not what her troops saw.")

But you do a great job of portraying the desperation of the moment, and hope for the future. Nicely done!

Lovely, poetic prose! I also really like the personal touches, like Buono wearing the blue feather to remember Miera, and how you tied that in at the end.

Some of the punctuation and wording was odd, though, which tended to interrupt the flow the story in distracting ways. "Kiecca ahead, looked to Thix..." "A snap rang out ahead, someone." Make sure you're using commas appropriately. I think sometimes you probably wanted an ellipsis ("...") or em-dash ("--") instead.

Still, despite the mechanical issues, the story did a good job showing the collision of two cultures, and I liked the hints of saurian culture and tradition. Well done!

Good use of dialogue, and you build a good sense of urgency through the story. Nice "horror" feel. A few more hints about the setting would be good, to know where/when the story is set, but the bits you dropped ("Circus de Galaxy") were tantalizing!

Fascinating lore here -- I love "monkey" as a descriptor for humans, and "monkey king" as their emperor. You did really well bringing that out bit by bit over the course of the story.

You might want to consider shorter sentences during action sequences. Long sentences tend to slow things down--if you keep your sentences shorter and your vocabulary simpler, the action can come through more cinematically. 

Intriguing story, though! Thanks for sharing it!

Very, very evocative. The journaling approach gives the story an immediacy that really drew me in. That was very well done!

The prose and flow of the story could have been much better with some attention to punctuation, spelling, and grammar. Done carefully, you could probably get away with some of that in the name of a "journal", but it was very distracting.

Good twist at the end, though--I didn't see that coming, and it really drove the nail in at the finish!

I love the "fairy tale" feel to the story! The characters are portrayed well, and I like the surprise at the end. Good job!

No trouble at all! One part I recall specifically was toward the end, where the boy Tyrin comes out of the book to help. Nepenthe says to him, "There's no writing you back in, if you're destroyed like this." But then she proceeds to write him back him. My initial reading was "there's no writing you back in, if you are destroyed, like this (as you are currently destroyed)." It took me a minute to realize she meant that if he is destroyed while he is out of the book, he cannot be written back in.

The second paragraph gave me pause as well, where she goes to the destroyed village. I think I probably just read it too quickly, because when I read the last sentence ("Nepenthe invited them all in.") I did a double take because I imagined in my head, Nepenthe inviting them all *into the village*. But as I said in my review, I really, really like that last sentence; I think I just needed to slow down. :)