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Insofar as in some lighting conditions snow and sand can look alike, I've been sitting on a story idea for years that would have fit this perfectly. Oh well.
A few typos, like you call your main character Bundi a number of times. If that was intentional, the purpose of it went over my head.
I found the first interaction confusing. Budi disappears, and it does say he goes to the office, but never has him pop to the pickup location, so it seemed like the client was at the office. Then for that matter, the narrator stays behind to say that, even though it'd been in Budi's perspective and he's gone. Then you do the same thing again when he drops the client off. You shouldn't have a limited narrator telling me things the perspective character can't possibly have witnessed.
Why is Budi paying the helicopter pilot? He's just doing his own job and presumably getting paid for it. A refund for not being able to take it there himself? But then that means the pilot was the client, which doesn't make sense.
The scene in the hangar is cute enough, but you throw so many characters at me at once that I can't keep track of them all. I guess only the one mostly conversing with Budi is important, but she can get lost in the mix.
It ends up being more of a slice of life story, which wouldn't necessarily be a problem, except the way you ended the penultimate scene teases something eventful is about to happen, only for there to be no payoff. I do wonder why he didn't get a tip, since that's a standard kind of thing to do for his service, so either the customer was oblivious to that (including even normal comparable transport) or dissatisfied, but the narrative never hints at the latter.
I do wonder how you got this idea from the prompt picture used.
Cute story, and I like this look at someone wanting to use his powers for more mundane purposes.
I found the first interaction confusing. Budi disappears, and it does say he goes to the office, but never has him pop to the pickup location, so it seemed like the client was at the office. Then for that matter, the narrator stays behind to say that, even though it'd been in Budi's perspective and he's gone. Then you do the same thing again when he drops the client off. You shouldn't have a limited narrator telling me things the perspective character can't possibly have witnessed.
Why is Budi paying the helicopter pilot? He's just doing his own job and presumably getting paid for it. A refund for not being able to take it there himself? But then that means the pilot was the client, which doesn't make sense.
The scene in the hangar is cute enough, but you throw so many characters at me at once that I can't keep track of them all. I guess only the one mostly conversing with Budi is important, but she can get lost in the mix.
It ends up being more of a slice of life story, which wouldn't necessarily be a problem, except the way you ended the penultimate scene teases something eventful is about to happen, only for there to be no payoff. I do wonder why he didn't get a tip, since that's a standard kind of thing to do for his service, so either the customer was oblivious to that (including even normal comparable transport) or dissatisfied, but the narrative never hints at the latter.
I do wonder how you got this idea from the prompt picture used.
Cute story, and I like this look at someone wanting to use his powers for more mundane purposes.
Their magic was all theory and no practice
I kind of want to see some more development of how he understands this to be the case. The argument he was having with the professor in the first scene seemed the opposite, where the professor said not to worry about formulaic things the magic was supposed to do and just go on the feel of what it actually does. Seems more like the professor is on the side of practice, and while Polaris might have an interpretation that cuts the other way, I'd like to see his line of argument laid out.
Given how much conversation happens during their attempt to work on the scrolls, things transition over to being more summaries once they come back out of the cave, and it's an oddly distancing effect, as if none of these events matter as much anymore at that point. I wonder if that was just you running up against the deadline and needing to get it finished in a hurry. Then the actual ending also kind of comes out of nowhere. it must really be a new idea to start a new university or else Polaris surely would have heard that about his idol.
With the number of extremely close similarities, I assume this is an MLP story idea that was transitioned over to a general fiction adaptation of it. We have clear analogs of Twilight, Celestia, Spike, Starswirl, Neighsay, and Rainbow Dash, unless I miss my guess. Nothing wrong with that, though I wonder whether you'll post this as an MLP story on FiMFiction or submit it to a fantasy publication (possibly the former until the latter happens).
Anyway. Very cute story in the author's distinctive style, and it reads much more quickly than the word count. A bit rushed at the end, but overall this was a lot of fun.
>>Pascoite
Thanks, Pasco:
The distinction I'm trying to make here is "the magic of inspiration" versus "the magic of perspiration," so I need to make that clearer. Actually, Professor Nacreous could just use those very words in the first scene, couldn't she? I'll look at the last scene, too, now that I haven't got a deadline tapping its foot at me. :)
Mike
Thanks, Pasco:
The distinction I'm trying to make here is "the magic of inspiration" versus "the magic of perspiration," so I need to make that clearer. Actually, Professor Nacreous could just use those very words in the first scene, couldn't she? I'll look at the last scene, too, now that I haven't got a deadline tapping its foot at me. :)
Mike