This is Andrew's story

AndrewRogue once bemoaned onto me that he hadn't gotten a review from me in quite a while. So here I am. Third place. Bronze Medal. May be silver. Who knows?

In the Djinn Tetralogy, this is the Cinderella story. Follows a rather basic fairy tale outline: Girl is being oppressed by authority figures, desires MORE out of LIFE, magical force intervenes that allows her to transcend the circumstances of the situation the girl finds herself in, and everyone lives happily ever after, the end.

Speaking of the ending, man is it saccharine. It reminds me of the ending line of Rogue One, although I like this ending a bit more, since the ending line of Rogue One was utter shit and completely undermined the entire attempted tone of the movie. I wasn't a fan of Rogue One . I think the ending is probably one of two major elements that this story will get flak for. I mean, the ending it note is "I incinerated the bad guy. Everything is okay now." The solution here is rather inelegant, and I think points to a greater problem with the overall story I will get into later.

The other is that things just take too long to get into. Everything takes a bit too long to get established, and the story really needed to kick into gear quicker than it does. Ideally we should open on the fact that Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiina is girl who is plotting to overthrow her cruel and unjust master that has enslaved her people. The fact that it takes nearly 1000 words to get this point, when it could have been established many times in previous scene. Why it takes so long, I don't quite understand, particularly because it would have been very simple to slip in that element into either of the previous scenes so the reader could immediately understand the significance of the Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiina's desire for a sprite and her hatred for Deniel. Master Per's inclusion slows down the proceedings of the entire story as a whole, which is sort of ironic, because his interactions with Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiina are the best part of the entire story and really showcase some lovely characterization.

On the other hand, we have Lord Deniel, who is said mostly to be a really bad guy, and is a really bad guy in the backstory, but it does feel in the narrative proper that is more an informed trait than a demonstrated one. Yeah, he's kind of a dick to Riiiiiina early on, and he does punish a guy for stealing food rather harshly, but he's not quite the horrible bastard that Riiiiiina seems to describe him as, and certainly never approaches the level of horrible that he was in the backstory. It doesn't help that the ordering here is fucked up—Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiina's distaste for the man is established far before we seen him, and the severity of her hatred never quite equals the severity of his demonstrated actions.

So the contrast between Per and Riiiiiiiiiina is pretty cool. It ideally should be the focus of this story, which it sort of is, but mostly isn't. You have Per, the outsider looking in, saying, "hey dude this stuff that's happening to you is pretty shit and lowkey I think it's a complete farce, but I'm sort of compelled to uphold the law of the land. Sorry I don't set the rules. But hey I can get rid of Deniel and stuff because Deniel didn't pay his taxes. Does that make it better?"

To which Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiina responds, "hey dude that's pretty bullshit, this guy is a total dickhead, and you're just sort of ignoring that what's going on here is blatantly terrible, and no that doesn't make it better. These laws suck (you should change them)."

So I'm going to bring up the issue I was alluding to earlier. The problem here is that the ultimate solution to the story has nothing to do with these two contrasting viewpoints. Riiiiiina finds a sprite and straight up mercs Deniel, and takes control for herself, because... I don't know, I guess Riiiina is part Queen Silyph now so maybe she knows something about running the government. Maybe since she's the daughter of the former chief, she learned something about governing? The issue I take here is that the story introduces a debate of how overthrow an oppressive government, with Per being the man working within the system, and Riiiiiiina being the person outside the system. Per has every interest to preserve the overarching order of the current government and have it function—he is the establishment. Whereas Riiiiiina doesn't care about those things and just wants her village back—she is the disenfranchised.

You would think that the conclusion would take those two conflicting viewpoints and manage some sort of compromise between them. But it doesn't.

As it turns out, all you need is to just have more power, murder the people who stand in your way, and take control for yourself. My personal imagination of how this story would really end is that the Triumvirate catches wind of what happens, sends in the standing military to reclaim their lost lands, and then launches into an elongated war that just ends with more suffering. Now maybe it is the case that Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiina is just so powerful now she could feasibly fight the Triumvirate on her own, but even that is not really a desirable solution.

The thing is, Riiiiiiiiiina is never established to be an actual leader. Being the former leader's daughter does not make you a natural leader, and it no point in the story is it demonstrated that she actually could run things on her own. She really doesn't even make any mentions of what the hell she plans to do after she overthrows Deniel. She doesn't even consider how the Triumverate will react, how this will affect trade, how they are going to get all of Deniel's men who work the mines to pack up and go home, etc. Again, you could say the Queen her helped be one, and maybe she's got shit all figured out, but even the Queen's track record sort of sucks. I mean her subjects are all basically imprisoned and enslaved, so... not a great vote of confidence that she could run things either.

I get that this is sort of a whimsical Disney-esque fairy tale where things are assuredly going to turn out okay, but when your last act concludes with your protagonist outright vaporizing the villain and declaring herself the new ruler of everything, you sort of lose that "happily ever after" feel to things. People like me start asking questions about the legitimacy of this new tyrant.

As it turns out, Per proposed a reasonable solution to minimize the long-time suffering of the village as a whole. I wouldn't say he's more right than Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiina is, but that they're both equally wrong, and at least Per's got his priorities straight. But the narrative itself seems to try and make the decision for me that Riiiiiina is 100% right and Per is a wrongo because he was trying to sweep under the rug the historical atrocities committed by the United States against the tribes of indigenous peoples wasn't putting forth a solution that prevented this mistreatment in the first place, nor giving the village back their sovereignty.

Per x Riiiiiiiiiiiiiina OTP

Second place maybe. Will have to think about things.

Andrew.

Not much to say at the start, but in the bunks, there's this HUGE infodump about sprites and rings and Riina's goal.

This gets good—gets REAL somewhere in these conversations with Per. But... the big confrontation is a bit lacking.

Sprites talk? Now that's a twist I can get behind! Minus fifty DKP for any "Listen!" jokes though.

Okay, I love this equality being shown. Binding both to each other is great emotional strength to this story.

Unfortnately, the ending falls a bit flat after that big peak. It's quick though, as epilogues go.


Overall, a relatively engaging story, with some great concepts. What it lacks is description and viscerality of place. That is, I need to see/feel/smell the world we're in, and this story's most detailed description was a light in a jar. I still don't even know hair colors, or weather, or anything about this setting.

Despite that, it's a good read. The ending is emotionally powerful, and—let's face it—does the proper My Little Pony thing of making friends instead of weaspons/powers/etc. I enjoyed this, but it needs to flesh out the color and taste of this world to really shine.


RE: >>Cassius Wow, how bad are you going to feel if this is NOT Andrew's story? :-)

Also, yeah, lots of good points, but... I stand by what I said because... This isn't a historical fiction about a real world dictator being overthrown! This is a friggin' fairytale about the evil king (duke) being slain by the literal fairy princess! The idea that fairies (sprites) aren't just a power source, but people in their own right is the double-down here. That the Fairy Queen wants to merge with the Peasant Girl is 100% pure fairy tale make believe sauce! It works BECAUSE it's so absolutely saccharine and trite. I could practically see the peppermint rainbows arcing out of their fusion. :-)

>>Xepher

Wow, how bad are you going to feel if this is NOT Andrew's story? :-)

I will humbly bequeath my "Best at Guessing AndrewRogue's Story Crown" in all its gem-encrusted glory to a worthy successor and fall on my sword as penance for my impudence.

This story did good until the end. It takes the time to reach its destination and that's a good thing in my book, but when the journey is over, when the confrontation happens, it feels like Sangoku SSJ3 fighting against Yamcha. She raises her hand, and voilà, the bad guy is burnt to ashes.

It may sound stupid (and it probably is), but I feel like this story needs more words. More words for the ending, obviously, but also more words for Riina struggles. I mean, we get that her situation is shitty, but we don't really see it being shitty. She tells us her life is hard, but we don't really see how hard it is.

Another thing related to that, I was surprised we didn't see her hunting for sprites. We learn that she has done it, but we don't see her leaving the house late at night, hiding in the shadows to not get caught by Duke Dickhead. And I feel like it would strengthen the message that you find what you have craved for only when you're not looking for it.

Anyway, even if the story is very cliché and doesn't really re-invent anything, it was still executed quite well , and thus it's very enjoyable. Too bad that the ending was so rushed.

I’d like to love this story more than I do, but I cannot. It has too many quirks.

Let’s begin by the sometimes weird prose: They had all been gathered out back of the house before they’d had more time to do anything other than dress before they had, for all intents and purposes, been dragged out to the gardens with very little in the way of explanation. ??? also You would expect that given how long Lord Deniel has been running this operation that he would have taken steps to install more permanent fixtures. (double ‘that’ instead of commas).

The setup here is interesting, however we don’t get enough information to really appreciate it. What is the “triumvirate”? How was the former chief overthrown/deposed? Why? What powers do your magi hold? We never see one using his. Aren’t they frauds after all?

The characters are a bit cardboard cutout: we get the good former leader’s daughter who dreams to retake power and recreate the world before the evil lord sent by an unknown, but supposedly unconcerned power, took over, and the neutral, but civilised, envoy who’s trying to mitigate things but whose agency is severely limited.

But really, what put me off is the Mary Sue ending. This tastes so contrived to me it broke almost all immersion. The girl goes out (how?), finds a sprite (despite the land being all but deprived of them); she manages to capture it at the first try (how deft she is!), the sprite turns out to be a castaway princess (how fortunate!) who knows a spell everyone else has forgotten (what a memory she has) and the spell works (surprise!), instantly given our heroine the power to trounce the evil lord that seemed so frightening just a few moments ago.

So yeah, pitch that ending and rewrite something more “realistic”. Your readers will thank you.

To finish on a positive note, except for the two aforementioned cases, the prose is rather good, the pacing of the story is fair, although the first paragraphs are very info-dumpy. I ranked it mid-slate on its technical prowess, but please, I beg you, expand it and change the ending.

Hmmm.

I see sort of two arcs in this story. The first one is Riina the villager changing into Riina the chief; the second is Riina the child turning into Riina the mage. They're both seem pretty straightforwards; the first starts with her oppression under Deniel, and ends with her overthrowing Deniel, the second starts with her watching the sprites and ends with her binding a sprite. Per instigates the first one, when he reveals just how little justice exists in the world, but the second one... just kinda happens. I'd have liked to see more about her 'grow up to be a sprite' come into the binding bit, because I feel like that should be more thematic. The motivations of the sprite also seem pretty opaque; their (her?) actions don't particularly seem to fit with what we've seen of the character, which is, admittedly, not much.

I wish there was a bit more rationalization for the ending. Is she really powerful enough to hold onto what she's seized? What's the reason that this sort of binding has been left behind, if it's so very powerful? She recognizes what's suggested as 'obscene', but still goes through with it; was that just because she felt desperate?

I can't help but feel that she's buying into 'might makes right' at the end, and I'm a little meh on that.

There's some good stuff here. I think fleshing out the character of the sprite and expanding on why Riina accepts this sort of bonding, and what that means for her and her village, would make this stronger though.

You know, like >>Monokeras mentions, for a story that spends a lot of time talking about its magic system, we actually don't really see it in effect. Like, given that it is apparently central to a lot of the conceits going on here there ought to be at least SOME demonstration of it somewhere, particularly since it'd lighten up on the exposition a bit.

Beyond that, Cass' review more or less covers anything I could think to say.

I do kind of wonder if the intention IS that this is a bad end (the fairy queen + the sudden reappearance of the sprites at the end feels a bit like Riina might be the one getting played here), but if that is the case, then the swerve is too hard and the foundation for that needs to be laid back a bit further.

Cass, you make my life so hard sometimes. You know how hard it is to talk around stuff when you do shit like that. :p

Anyhow, that was a good review and it deserves a good retrospective. So let's do this. Originally I'd had a different idea rolodex card I'd been considering for this round, but I felt the connection was too loose. Then I got a bit of the field of fireflies idea stuck in my head, as well as a sharp contrast between a field full of them and an empty one. I liked the idea and I had another setting concept in mind that fit the idea nicely, so away we went.

I ended up having to sprint most of this story out on Sunday (I really need to get better at using Friday and Saturday), which was a pain in the ass. I am not a fast writer, so kicking out 6K words or so in a single day fucking sucked. It also meant I was working very fast with minimal time to think about plot of plan scenes, which led to things getting a bit messy.

So let's talk about the big bugaboo here: the ending.

The ending is not actually intended as... optimistic? It is intended almost exactly as stated by Cass that this is going to lead to war that will end very badly. To put it bluntly, Riina got played by the sprites, who decided to use her as a weapon. The end is about the conclusions of cycles of oppression and violence not leading to reasonable and rational solutions, but rather petty violence and anger erupting and leading to either violent revolution or total destruction. Riina frying Deniel as she did is a Bad Thing (TM). So, if you didn't get that... I don't actually blame you because that was an eleventh hour swerve and I had no opportunity to hint more at that in earlier scenes.

Yes, let it be said now that you are 100% correct Cass in that what you imagined as the point of the story was largely my original ending. The true idea was Riina rejects the sprite offer out of fear, Deniel was going to be aware of Per's bullshit, attempt to put him down, promise Riina some good shit for her cooperation, Riina goes back to enlist the sprite's help, she does a little havoc, Per stops from her outright murder and she agrees to trust in him for the moment... that things could be improved (and she might have to go into hiding 'cause what she did was big taboo). Also not the best plan, but closer to what you saw built up.

However, Ran was looking through a good chunk of the story before I finished and made the solid point that A- I had actions repeat too much, and B- if you actually look at it, the appearance of the sprite queen is immensely convenient and her entire discussion with Riina reads honestly a bit like she's the one pulling strings here. And after thinking about it for a bit, I decided he was right. The negative end here, the corrupted wish as it were, made more sense to me.

Of course, at this point, it was like midnight and my daughter makes me get up at around 7am or so and I still had to actually write the ending and clean up a couple more things. So, NO TIME FOR FIXES. I actually hoped the reveal of a bunch of sprites suddenly and Riina's parting thoughts (implying they were going to do more of this bonding and that the sprites had been waiting for this moment - also a happy accident of structure in that Per's statements earlier re: Sprites could both imply that Deniel was selling them on the side OR that they weren't being found for reasons) would better convey the swerve, but it is really hard to fight against 9/10ths of the story being built towards a different end concept!

Overall, I do like the idea, although I'm a bit unsure how to clean up the story. C'est la vie, I suppose. Onto more specific commentary!

>>Cassius I just wanted it stated that I do not make up names, particularly by adding letters. Riina is an Estonian name. That said, still probably not the best choice for the reasons stated, but sometimes you just gotta pick a name and go.

Yeah, I had a serious problem with having to write myself into the story. I wanted to keep the first scene still (possibly against better judgment), but I was just out of time to readjust scenes 2 and 3 to find a better starting point. And honestly, 1 probably isn't good enough either, but so it goes.

Deniel's portrayal was an issue because I was trying to softhand what was effectively evil colonial leader and avoid him being too puppy eating, but it ended up backfiring for the most part.

Per and Riina stuff was great. Per was a bit of a late addition to my plotting when I decided I wanted to try and make a more balanced look at things. The leadership is not so heartless as to completely abandon people, there are those who care, and provide a means of legitimacy to whatever Riina does: as long as she didn't push it too far, he could theoretically cover for her. It allowed for a conflict between her and Deniel to not have to be pure MIGHT MAKES RIGHT, but rather that might too must be tempered by some help form authority. Of course, then I swerved and didn't have time to really build in the idea of Riina's powerful rejections of this because she is angry and... hm, it is a dumb word to use in the context of colonial oppression, but we'll say petulant... about things and how Per has in many ways come too late.

You should ask Ran about Riina and Per OTP. He offered me some interesting insight during editing. :p

>>Xepher Now see, this is interesting because it is a bit of an opposite take on Cass' views re: the ending... but more wrong because it is very anti-FiM in the intended final message. Setting aside death of the author and such, what do you think of the revealed info?

And yeah. I suck at sensory work. Seriously, go look at anything I've written and you'll see I kinda avoid it like the plague. Which is bad. I keep meaning to practice more of it because I am weak at it, but places like the Writeoff make me just fall back to old certainties. It is a bad habit.

>>Fenton I'm sensing a pattern to my failures here. ^_~

>>Monokeras That first sentence is very classic "Andrew changed his mind about structuring a sentence and just failed to fix the whole thing." Second is indeed a bit more of a quirk to the way I write sometimes.

You raise a really interesting point in that I forgot to have Deniel do any actual magic. There were several points where I had intended it, but I kept shifting around my decisions to the point where I never actually engaged the magic system at any point besides a very brief flash at the end. Whoops!

>>Not_A_Hat See above for ending stuff.