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[Other Original] [SWC] Reckoning

LillithSilver

LillithSilver

Tooth & Eye
93
Posts
12
Years
Hi! Here is both the contest version and a slightly edited version with explanations of my story for the Small Writing Contest for this year's Pokecommunity get-together! You should probably read the contest version first, then the edited one. It should make things at least a bit clearer in case it was confusing. I know my writing may not be the best, but I hope it's still enjoyable!

Contest version:
Spoiler:


Edited and explained version:
Spoiler:



I know it's pretty edgy, but I was feeling pretty depressed around the time I write it, which is why I mostly did something to vent rather than something a bit more lighthearted. Either way, I hope you enjoyed, and congratulations to everyone who won the contest. I hope you all had as much fun as I did. : )
 
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Venia Silente

Venia Silente

Inspectious. Good for napping.
1,229
Posts
15
Years
So, an unfun thing happened.

The first time I wanted to write a review for this, the site went down during the time I was posting and the browser lost my review. After that I was bleh and lost momentum so your story and one another kind of... fell down to the side for me for a while.

But there is a reason I wanted to review this, so I came back.

You were fair to warn about the mood and the reasoning for writing this, it does color the story a certain way. Even before having read the disclaimers and the revised version I noticed the story felt like it was mired by the influence of its subject matter, in particular how overtoned and anvilicious it was presented. Like, we hear the stories about domestic abuse every once in awhile, but even in the cases where the retribution involves violence they don't tend to end up with a senseless retaliation against anything that could even be shaped like a person. They tend to be about and unto the abuser, and for fair reason (think of if there were children in the middle of things).

Gladly while the story lost me in that department, the characters on the other hand were the selling point for me. The story does not shy away from pointing them out in the concise terms for us to understand how things work, and does not need to go... ahem... flowery with their description or their justifications.

I wish we could have seen more of the magic and how, or even if, it actually relates to the plot and the matter at hand. The presence of the magic itself felt detached from the story (it would have worked just as well without it, and nothing in the story necessitates magic to acquire its tone, though it does help because flowers), and instead it feels like the magic is an utensil or a conduit that, once misused, can not really help the situation - we are never really shown that the magic can do any other thing than turn people into flowers. Now, if that was a point of failure in the portrayal of the keyword of the contest or if it was actually an intended part of the message... the scene with the spear and the scene with the Mayor do lend themselves to interesting questions.

(Sucks to be that Mayor btw. The character was handled wisely and fittingly for his circumstances in a very short writing. IMO, the only other character that "shows" in the story besides Eonalith)

With all that, a nice read, one that I knew I wanted when I read the judges' reviews, and sorry if it came bought at a high cost as you mention memories of a bad time. But hey, art is art.

(Oh and I know I am going to die from that pun later, lemme enjoy it)
 
LillithSilver

LillithSilver

Tooth & Eye
93
Posts
12
Years
Sorry for getting back to you late. Thanks for your review. I realize now that I went a bit overboard, and put way too much of my own messed up feelings in there, and probably made Eonalith more of an author's mouthpiece than I meant to. If I had more time to edit it and let my head clear a bit (seeing as I came to the contest late and all, and there wasn't really that much time for writing in the first place based on other's comments, and I was very much...upset about other things that were going on) then I probably could have caught that sooner rather than way after the whole get-together was over.

By what I mean is: I can see why some of the judges were very much not a fans of my story. I think they certainly had some very good points, and I need to follow their advice if I ever rewrite this piece. It ended up being way more vent-y than I might have otherwise liked, after all.

But again, thanks for your review, and I'm glad I at least got the characters right. I'm surprised that the mayor even left an impact on you, despite being a 5-second character. I guess my attempted portrayal of his slightly cautious and morbid "do-I-really-want-to-know" curiosity worked. ^^

The star of the show, as you say, really was Eonalith, as much of a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds as she is. I tried to make it clear she wasn't really in her right mind, with what the reference to all of her violent acts as "roses" and "flowers", downplaying what she was really doing (I guess maybe I didn't make that clear though? Or she's just too unreliable of a viewpoint to get across what was going on) and because all the background trauma that led to her start of darkness. Which was basically the kind of stuff that I went through, but much, much worse (Some gaslighting on Sir Grant's part, for example, was supposed to make it in, but I didn't have the time, as well as examples of other stuff Eonalith went through, leading up to the "I'm leaving" conversation).

I might rewrite this someday, maybe make it more coherent, less of a vent, and add stuff that I couldn't add in the original contest version, nor in the minor edits, due to being too large to count as really "minor". I wanted to kind of preserve the same sort of tone as the contest version, without making it too different and unrecognizable, because I felt that things should be at least similar in the initial post. I probably could have added all that I wanted to, though.




EDIT: oh wait. I just realized that you only made that post yesterday. So I wasn't late after all! Yay.
 
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