HazMat Contest Reviews #3: The Forgotten Who Still Remember · 11:39am Sep 28th, 2015
The Forgotten Who Still Remembers, by Elusith
This story came third in our line-up for stories that placed during the contest, and I like to think it deserved that placement. It's an easy story to read, at least, since it's writing is pretty decent. Nothing bad jumps out at me, and the spelling and grammar is adequate. It was a solid read, at least.
Mishap is a bit of a mysterious character, and we don't really learn too much about her throughout the story. I think this is rather fitting, considering how little we know about Discord and how little sense these creatures are supposed to make. Each section of the story also prompted me into reading the next, which I liked.
One of the things that I feel telling a story out of order is best at is it prompts me to ask questions. It'll show me something interesting that makes little to no sense out of context, and the questions I'd ask myself are how we got there, what this event/character/whatever is, etcetera. This story managed that nicely. I wanted to know more about the mare chasing Mishap, and I wanted to know how she knew Discord. The story then delivers these answers promptly, after getting me interested. The story managed this quite nicely.
The reason we felt we couldn't place it higher was that there wasn't much of a story though, once we got past the novel presentation (which is what we wanted from the contest). Mishap doesn't really have an objective. She doesn't really want much that's tangible, and it's difficult to root for her and get invested in what she wants when, really, she doesn't seem to want all that much. She doesn't have a challenge to overcome: we're just being shown snippets of her life.
Whilst this isn't necessarily a bad thing, the story remains very passive. Compared to stories that have a real, tangible goal to root for, it does feel very mild. It's one of those stories that struck me as not doing anything wrong, but it could have done something else so much more right. It's still a great platform for a proper, real story to launch itself from, but for the moment, that 'real story' isn't there yet.
It's still a curious and inventive tale that deserves some attention, though, and it's teeming with inventive and creative ideas in the short amount of words it has. It's at least worth checking out, and deciding for yourself if it has enough to hold your interest.
