Fun story! Keep writing! You seem to have a good instinct for storytelling, so focus on grammar and voice as much as possible. :) I hope to read more in the future!
I found this story conflicting. I loved reading each entry individually, and the entries were quite compelling; however, when put together as a whole, I felt they became convoluted by the "timestamps." They were more distracting than immersive without some form of reference to what they meant.
I loved your take on these Saurians! Song/music being so central to the story made me curious about the artistic side of reptilian warriors, something I'd never thought to do before! Kudos for that!
Ah, that makes sense! I downloaded everything that was available when I submitted mine but there doesn't seem to be a way to note if there were updates from when it was downloaded. I'll give the more recent draft another read!
Some great imagery in your story. The only thing that took me out of it was this line "
Orc Marauders had descended on a human agricultural colony, rendering them combat ineffective within a matter of hours." For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why farmers being unable to fight would matter to this guy. Was he expecting the farmers to be effective combatants in the first place? Maybe it's some type of jargon I'm unfamiliar with.
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.
Thank you so much for that feedback! I'll give past perfect a try in my revision! I had an issue with the transition between the two paragraphs myself and gave up my attempts to tweak that section due to a personal time constraint on submission weekend.
The story content was entertaining, I especially enjoyed the ending, and it was a unique execution of the theme. The recurring intro to all but one paragraph of "The scout" or "The scouts" followed by an -ed verb got pretty repetitive. If you can figure out how to get the same feel across without the awkward repetition, this would be stellar.
I only recently found OPR, and I've been focused on AoF, so excuse my ignorance; are Saurians in space a faction in GF?
Okay, that aside, I found Brek'thar an interesting character, and the story was pretty engaging. My one major issue was Brek'thar/Brek. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for choosing to use his formal name versus his shortened name. It's important to stick to one for flow and consistency, so you can emphasize when you swap between them.
Take Sam from LotR as an example. Samwise Gamgee. You know this is his full name from very early on, but probably 90% of the time, they call him Sam. Mostly on account of it being shorter, I'd imagine, as well as being the name he preferred. Tolkien only referred to him as Samwise when he was in trouble, when he was being shown reverence, such as by Faramir, who only ever calls him Samwise, and I believe in reference to his loyalty. Been a bit since I've read LotR, but I hope that explains what I mean.
Oh! And just one thought about the ending. Take it or leave it. I think you'd have a more decisive end without the "It was over" sentence. Try removing it and reading it without and see what you think!
Great use of humor that I haven't seen much of within this setting. I don't know if you'll win the jam, but you won my heart with the death2aliens part. Genuinely laughed out loud.
Not my cup of tea. Not that the content was bad, I just don't enjoy reading the first-person narrative.
That being said, the story could use some extra care, especially toward the punctuation. Many sentences have more commas than necessary and could be broken into multiple sentences or use a semi-colon.
I'd love to see another draft of this, though. I think you have an exciting way with scenes.
This story caught me off guard. At first, I was put off by the overly long, possibly run-on, sentences. They really made getting into the story difficult, which is a shame because the overall piece was really entertaining. I'm glad I pushed on though!
The orc story was more entertaining for me; I found it more interesting than the machine cult. I enjoyed seeing both forces varied thoughts and approaches to machines. It was a fun contrast.
I enjoyed the overall story but found the magus' meanderings started to grate on me by the end. I'm not sure if this was intended as the magus buying time or was unintentional, but that's my only story critique. I highly recommend double-checking for spelling and grammatical errors or getting a second set of eyes on it before submitting. Just makes things smoother for the reader.
