Contest October-November 2016 Contest Voting Thread

3rd and last reviews.

Slaves to our own demon
Another AoS story! I like these ones, 'cause they try to add some depth to a still vague and weak official fluff.
Our protagonists show the doubts and uncertainty of the sauruses that come to "life" as memories of a Slann and so not "real" beings.
The story develops in a nice way and all in all it's enjoyable. I liked the fact that our commander is still able to think with its own mind and inclinations, instead of blindly following orders.
The end of the story (let's defend the village) was satisfying, but the focus on the theme not so much. Or I don't understand how it relates to the title.
Your daemons are you. The Saurus was not a slave, he was a demon... and he is "slave to its demon"? So, is he a slave to his own free will?

Cell duty
We have this poor boy that's basically a "slave" to his duty and to the rigid discipline of a ship. He's no more free than the prisoner.
We have a view of the typical soldier's hopes for the future and obviously problems arise when the captain arrives.
Then shit hits the fan, the lizardman escapes and kills the guy. And his death will just be (at most) a brief note on the diary.
It's really "realistic" in its sensless waste of a life, and from this point of view it was done a good job by the author, but I'm not able to really relate with poor Bill.

In pursuit of freedom
Great story. A perfect mix of action, description, and inner dialogues.
Our protagonist doesn't show any character development, and it's perfect this way: he's a lizardman, he's personality is strong as a rock and it's shown to us in a vell depicted way. I really liked the empathy between the prisoners, and the vivid descriptions of the crowd and its animal pleasure.
Grifel's subtle scheme and well-concealed plan to kill the Master of the Games and win his own battle was really the key element to further sympathize with the saurus.
And the end, while you think on it, is also perfect: how can be really "subtle" a warrior-born, when facing the minds of Dark Elves, masters of scheming and plotting, and especially people that play this art at masterful levels? Poor Grifel...

Jurt, Scaley and Manfred
Initially, when i saw there were three pov, i thought it would be the classical "3 ways to tell the same story", and instead it was not, each narrator continues the story as left (more or less) by the previous one, giving a complete picture but with different styles, each one ending with the freedom of someone. A brief story but really well developed, with also some emotional moment.
A great ending for this excellent competition.

 

He’s out in the wilderness reading and critiquing Lustria-Online on a hand held device. That’s a pretty air tight excuse for mini-posts. I also realize I’ve been too harsh moderating in the past. I am setting guidelines, not rules. I’m not going to sweat the small stuff anymore. Still, I’m an outdoor enthusiast and I like to put away the electronics and just enjoy nature, or stuffing my face with Dutch Oven cooking while talking with friends around a campfire without electronic devices, but my grumpy old man rant should not have been included here.


Anyway, no punishment for people who split their critiques up, but here are my critiques, all in one place.


Without going into spoilers, I am going to say that on all the pieces with returning writers, I could see improvement in their technique and I could see their unique voices. Sometimes authors try to hide their voice and write to a different style, but most of these pieces felt really true to the authors’ styles. There was a first time writing entrant and I hope we can see more from that author in the future. We are almost on our third year of short story contests and we are still getting new blood. This is a very good thing


Every piece was good, please do not take offense at my criticisms, I am only trying to make good things better. I noticed I am biased towards smaller word counts. I’ll own that. I feel like my own work get a bit too wordy and clunky, so I am analyzing word count techniques as a tool to help my own writing. Also, when you have really high turn outs, you don’t want twelve pieces that all push the word count limit.


Note there was a reasonable even mix of stories I think need a haircut, stories that needed a bit more description, and stories I thought were pretty much perfect in length. That’s a good sign. I’d be mildly considered if every story was trending in the same direction.


Story One. “Slave to the Sword”: This was an amazing piece. Possessed weapons are a common fantasy trope but it’s uncommon to have a first-person view from the Daemon and it was masterfully done. Economy of words, readers got all the pertinent information and juicy characterization they needed in less than 1400 words. The imagery was good. The Daemon was frightening and alien but at the same time relatable and somewhat sympathetic. This was well polished and every word was put to good use.

I have trouble finding fault with this. These are very small nitpicks. The title could be better. The Daemon is a prisoner not a slave. The puppets he controlled were the slaves but the Slann was not such a puppet-slave. Second, I would have liked another sentence or two describing the Slann as the Daemon saw it. This is a Lizardmen contest and I would have liked more Lizardmen. Also, Slann are interesting, less for their own merits than for how others see them and a Daemon’s perspective would be interested. Did his soul glow? Did it shift around? What did the Daemon see?


Story Two, “Never Lie to the Samurai”: There has been some great Feudal Japan inspired model conversions for the Dragon Isles in terms of modeling but this is a major leap forward in fluff. The writer did a good job fusing Lizardmen and Samurai culture in a way that was easy and interesting for readers to envision.

The story built a beautiful setting but I thought the story was a little dry and political. I knew there was a disagreement over methods and means but I didn’t understand the nuances very well and the characters were hard to relate to. The names did look like a good combination of Japanese-esque and Saurian-esque names that seemed fitting but the names were large and clunky and there were many multisyllabic names which got mixed in my head with the multisyllabic place and thing names. I had to backtrack a lot to tell who was who and what was what. World building and storytelling are two different things. With story things you want to introduce new concepts and words relatively slowly, not pack them in this tight. The last thing you want is for a reader to mentally paper over a name like Ake Zuhuanchi with “that priest guy with the pistol.”


Story Three, “The Waning Moon”: I enjoyed this immensely. I liked the story and the story within the story. The alternating font colors was an effective writing technique here. The character was very relatable with his blustering and embellishment hiding his secret doubts and fears. A juicy story all in under 1500 words.

I have trouble finding fault with this. These are very small nitpicks. I think the narrator/protagonist was a little too human. I would have liked a bit more lizardy words. Serving the “Old Ones” rather than Serving the “Gods.” A couple off-hand comments like “trembling from head to tail” would casually reinforce that the narrator was a lizard not a human, while still keeping him relatable. I also figure a sapient lizard would describe smells, vibrations, and temperatures in addition to sights and sound description you’d expect from a human’s war stories. I would have also been more colorful describing the Skaven’s vileness. Making the enemy has terrible as possible is job one of war propaganda.


Story Four, “Size Really Does Matter”: This story packs a bunch of juicy stuff in less than 1500 words. I am jealous of the author’s ability to paint a story with so few words. This covers philosophy and fate. It covers a classic Man versus Nature story. It covers a scrappy little guy story. I especially like that the scrappy little guy story. The protagonist using common sense and his own intuition to solve a problem the city’s great minds could not solve reminded of the sheriff on Eureka.

. What he said. A silly piece can have characters with silly names. This is not a comedy piece. The name is jarring. It’s a silly name AND it has extraneous gratuitous apostrophes. Let me walk this back. You wanted to emphasize the character’s small stature in an economy of words and the name did this, so the name was understandable. The cost was probably too high, but not by much. The name is a small dark spot on an excellent story.


Story Five, “The Butterfly Effect”: I like this story because it’s very simple. No one is fighting for their soul, no army is about to level a small town, the world is not ending. We are dealing with one Skink’s hopes, fears, and doubts. At the same time, we touch on the nature of the universe and the Great Plan so the scale of the Warhammer Fantasy world is still there. Yes, the Slann seems more casual than we are used to seeing but the shocked Skink’s reactions make it all right. Yay for hanging a lampshade on it. The Slann and Skink both felt very real. Only about a 1000 words too.

This piece could have used a bit more narrative structure. It seemed like a vignette from a Skink attendant’s life. It could have been more shorty story like. The story is a little fuzzy on the short story formula, Introduction, Conflict, Resolution. You had that formula for the Skink needing to bring the Slann a snack, but I’m not sure what the resolution was for part two.


Story Six, “The Slave’s Name”: This story was well-told. A Saurus warrior Fell and it was believable. That’s an achievement all by itself given how robotic/theocratic Lizardmen and Seraphon are viewed as are often viewed as robots. The Greyseer was also very well-fleshed out. It is rare that a Skaven villain starts pontificating, and I find the Skaven’s arguments to be moderately convincing.

Two minor things. First, I think the Skaven speak was applied a little too thick. It hampered the flow a little bit. Second, I would have like a little bit more on the Saurus’ internal conflict. I think a paragraph or two describing the Slann, its holiness, its alien-ness, its remoteness, and its power would have helped make the already believable Fall that much more poignant.


Story Seven, “Kin and Master”: This has a very intriguing setting. Modern/futuristic setting with Empire-esque names, Empire-esque gods, but they still answer to Lizardmen. I want more. Also you have a classic family conflict with a protagonist dealing with a close sibling going astray.

I want to see this as a longer piece. This is too much literary goodness to fit in under 2400 words. The setting is so beyond the mainstream that you probably need at least 2000 words just to make sure the reader can follow everything. You have a young lad on the cusp of manhood being dragged into a world larger than he ever imagined. That’s the start of an epic (and long) saga. Also, the brothers’ difficulties and actions are vague and the consequences of their difficulties and actions are vague, that’s hard to fit in 2000ish words too. This story creates lots of unanswered questions. To work at a short story, you need to truncate the setting into 500-600 words tops. Cliff notes: What’s the era, who are these people, why are Lizardmen important to these humans? Then you have the protagonist’s family issues. That’s the grubs and potatoes of this story.


Story Eight, “Freedom and Slavery: 3000”: This is a very intriguing setting. A post-apocalyptic setting where the Lizardmen are nearly defeated but the embers of defiance can be tasted in the air.

And it’s less than 600 words. A short story has a setup, conflict, and resolution. This piece is 100% set up. This is a great setup, but we need the rest of the story. You aren’t going to reverse (or complete) the apocalypse in less than 2400 words, but do something. Maybe a scout reconnoiters the area and barely avoids a patrol of Daemons but now the free Lizardmen have the intelligence for their next move. A Kroxigor tries to stand up the overseers and dies a tragic but noble death that makes all the readers sad (I like those endings!).


Story Nine, “Slaves to Our Daemons”: This was under a 1000 words and managed to go through the introduction, conflict, and resolution succinctly and engagingly. True we didn’t see much of the actual battle but that is not the conflict of this piece. The conflict is the Saurus warrior’s inner doubts, their inner Daemons. Excellent piece.

My nitpicks on this piece are small indeed. Probably could have used another 200 words. The Saurus were very human. That’s good, they were relatable and I rooted for. I think just a tiny bit of lizardy stuff would have improved things a little bit. Tails, scales, cold blood, predatory instincts, tongue posturing, something. A hundred words is enough for that. Also the Saurus overcame their doubts quickly, even by short story standards. Since you labeled their personal doubts as “daemons” and that conflict is driving this piece, they should have spent more time agonizing over their choice. Maybe an extra hundred words on that topic. Also, I’m not sure the phrase “beam us down” works in a fantasy setting. Even for Age of Sigmar it’s a little too sci-fi for my tastes. It jarred me out of the narrative slightly.


Story Ten, “Cell Duty”: This is a story type we don’t see too often. Lots of dialogue, minimal narration. Sometimes this style and sometimes it does not. This time it worked well. The characters described the scene in great detail. We got the introduction, conflict, and resolution mostly through dialogue. We got most of the characterization through the dialogue. The author did a good job with the old adage “show, don’t tell.”

Very piece, hard to poke holes in it. I was going to start with the inconsistent paragraph spacing. Then I checked this against the draft the contest entry sent. My bad! Fixed now. That leaves only one thing left. Maybe a sentence more two strengthening the parallel between Bill Knecht and the nameless Saurus prisoner. Both are beholden to the captain in some fashion, both want to be somewhere else. Elaborate on their thematic connection an extra sentence or two before you snap Bill Knecht’s neck. Brilliant name by the way. It’s clear foreshadowing after the fact but the name is not so garish that it’s distracting. It also fits with the Germanic Landsknechts that Warhammer Fantasy’s artists and sculptors based their aesthetics for Empire soldiers on.


Story Eleven, “In Pursuit of Freedom”: Gladiator stories are always fun. The author created a nice hellish setting with a brave struggling protagonists connected to his friends and foes around them. I always like stories with struggling ultimately doomed protagonists.

I like downer endings but the attempt a twist maybe a little too gimmicky, but I’ll give that a pass. My main misgiving with this is the length. It’s barely under 2400 words. This piece could have used a haircut. Probably start with trimming back the backstory stuff. He’s a Saurus made into a gladiator slave to Dark Elves. You don’t need a whole lot of additional background for the core story.


Story Twelve, “Jurt, Scaley, and Manfred’: Amazing story. I felt the disparate views of the three characters. It did a good job of viewing Skaven, Humans, and Lizardmen from the eyes of outsiders. Like others I was expecting three points of view for the same event but the three points of view completed a linear story. Under 600 words and this piece told a complete story with a clear and poignant theme.

I don’t normally say what my favorite is, but this piece was my favorite. I struggled to find anything to critique. Two small things. First, “the chuckling of water passing under the transom.” It seems like once a week I use a word that I have to explain to my coworkers, but you made me look up “transom” in the dictionary. Okay it’s a support beam for a wooden sailing ship. That’s fine, I learned something. But when does water “chuckle.” If the author wants to show the sea as a metaphorical living entity that maliciously laughs at people it drowns, you need to elaborate. If you are not going with an advanced sea metaphor, I’d recommend using a less anthromorphic verb like “splash” or “batter.” Second I wish this piece was longer so I could enjoy it more.

 

There were many good stories, and personal tastes may vary.
In the last comp, Bob praised my story, saying that it would have been his next vote.
Kin... would have been my 5th vote, and not because the story is inferior to (let's say) Jurt, Scaley and Manfred, but because Jurt clicked something inside me.

 

A well deserved praise! ...a pity it's not me.