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The Greatest Contradiction · She-Ra Minific ·
Organised by QuillScratch
Word limit 400–750
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The Gardener
Spoilers for the S3 finale


At the heart of Brightmoon, trapped on all sides by gleaming ivory towers, there is the Sanctum. Here pristine whites and shining golds give way to earthy greens and muddy browns. Instead of the endless roar of cascades, the water here is still; instead of the blare of royal trumpets, the music here is birdsong. And though it is but a small clearing in the forest of towers, it is the only place in Brightmoon where one can easily forget that one is in a city.

Only three people ever knew that the Sanctum existed. Now there is only one.

Queen Glimmer tends to the shrubs and the trees that her father planted for her mother’s pleasure. She kneels in the dirt to prune dying branches; she pulls up weeds and waters the bushes in the dry summer months. She brings food for the birds and the squirrels, and she sits and watches for a while as they chirp and chitter and eat, until the empty space at her side becomes too much to bear.

“Sometimes,” her mother once said, as she patted down the cool dirt around a newly-planted sapling, “when I miss your father so much that I can hardly focus, I come here. To focus my mind on loving as he loved. That, I think is the best way to remember those we’ve lost.”

Glimmer always had wondered how her mother would remember her.

She makes her own new traditions, as time passes. At the height of summer, she takes a basket into the Sanctum, and she picks the ripe blackberries from the brambles. Her hands come away stained with juices, and covered in tiny scrapes and cuts from the thorns, but her basket is full, and the cooks never question when she asks them to make jelly. She gifts the jars to her friends and allies; the Sanctum’s gifts are to be shared, not hoarded, even as their source stays secret.

(If Adora and Bow ever wonder where she goes twice a week, when she vanishes from the palace proper and returns covered in dirt and sweat, they don’t ask. Some days she resents them for it as though they are ignoring her pain, and on others she is grateful for the chance to mourn alone.)

It is a place that is heavy with the damp earth, with memories and with shame.

There is a single stone laid flat, barely rising above the earth, right in the heart of the Sanctum. Polished and smooth, its grey face is obscured by low-lying branches and overgrown roots left unpruned as if to clothe its naked surface; it doesn’t belong here, in this monument to nature, where all things are grown, not built. It is here only because it is wrong that it should even exist.

She promised herself long ago that she would inscribe upon it the perfect words to immortalise her mother again, and they would be left here in the Sanctuary, a place that exists for remembrance. She still doesn’t know what words to choose. In hindsight, it seems an impossible problem.

What do you write as an epitaph for someone who could not die?
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#1 · 3
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Let's be honest, this is exactly the kind of story that would happen after the season 3 finale.

Something I liked:

Queen Glimmer. Oof. Season 3 was a pretty emotional gut punch towards the end, and one of the biggest punches was Angela sacrificing herself, and Glimmer didn't even know until after the fact. Those who know me enough know that I'm a big fan of introspective pieces, and this is definitely one of those. I imagine Glimmer would be sort of lost in her own world after becoming basically an orphan, and how she would be unable to connect with her friends, at least for a while. I mean, Adora's kind of an orphan too, but she doesn't remember having parents in the first place.

Something I didn't like:

As much as I enjoy what this entry is going for, I do wish Glimmer actually talked, if only to herself. I feel like showing a character's internal conflict through their own words is more effective than having an omniscient narrator tell us that this is the case. This is particularly jarring in Glimmer's case because she has a pretty distinct voice, even among a large cast of characters who all sound very different from each other, and one of her defining traits is that if she will always talk about a problem she's having. Maybe the lack of dialogue was deliberate, with this in mind, but I do wish it wasn't so tell-y.

Verdict: Definitely a strong entry. The last line is kind of poignant, actually.
#2 · 2
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”Queen Glimmer” was big oof.

The parentheses are odd.

The prose is good, but it feels like it should wrap or begin a detailed scene rather than being the scene. Probably that parenthesized bit. If that part were expanded to a full scene with direct characterization, interaction, etc—and that set up the ending—it could be more powerful. Maybe put it into Bow's and Adora's perspective so they can interact with Glimmer, she leaves the scene, and they continue the discussion with more openness.
#3 · 2
· · >>Pascoite
Author, let me be frank: I really like all of your paragraphs individually, but I am absolutely not sold on the order you've put them in. There are a couple of places where the flow of the narration jumps from subject to subject (and in a piece like this, which reads almost like a meditation on a single theme, that really feels like a poor decision), and I don't really see how they're connected. Particularly weird moment: the shift out of the parentheses. I actually really like the parentheses, for the record—they add this sense of distance to the only paragraph that opens with Adora and Bow, which says so much—and my gut instinct is that the single-line paragraph that follows is meant to be a thematic bridge, but instead it's more like a door slamming shut as a new theme opens up.

The structural issues are a shame because the tone and mood of this piece are delightfully melancholy. The piece keeps us at an emotional distance, but occasionally lets these heavy blows come in (to quote both previous comments: "oof") without taking a step closer to the reader, which really makes the impact greater ("big oof"). With a bit of spring cleaning and rework, this could be a very good piece; as it is, it's a middle-of-the-pack entry for me.
#4 · 2
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That's a very striking line to end on, and I applaud you for it. It's a rather true yet insightful statement, and it truly captures Glimmer's grief and horror at what her mother is now subject to.

A few editing misses, but nothing too serious.

Like in my previous review, I do wonder about something this seems to be skirting at the edge of. I don't get a good sense of what Glimmer's attitude about this place is. That it's a tribute to her parents, yes, but what's her need for it to remain private? She's clearly conflicted in that she both wants and doesn't want Bow and Adora to ask where she goes, but what if she told them? They'd gladly stay away if she told them she needed some alone time, or they'd accompany her if she needed companionship. It's kind of a shame that such a place has only ever been know to three people. How does she feel about that? Is it a waste? Is it owed to the other citizens to make it public? Is it that necessary for the royalty to have a private refuge? There's never been much rationale behind why it was set up that way from the beginning. Didn't whoever built the palace know about it?

It feels like you're focused on Glimmer's sadness about her mother, and that's fine. It's an obvious plot, but obvious plots can be done well, and this one was. I just think if you explored a little more about what it might mean to her to include Bow and Adora, at the very least, in this place might say about her attitude toward maintaining the status quo. Just the fact that she was considering it, not necessarily making a decision.

Agreed with >>QuillScratch in that the paragraphs don't always flow well from one to the next, leaving it feeling a bit choppy at times.