The Next Generation Contest - Reviews · 12:27pm Apr 9th, 2018
The competition has finally come to its conclusion. The final results are in!
In third place was Baal Bunny's charming mouse world tale, To Drive the Cold Winter Away.
In second place was Miller Minus's sad story about a father and daughter coping with loss, There is No God.
And in first place, by unanimous consent of the judges, was Admiral Biscuit's amazing urban fantasy story about a unicorn in New York City, The Fixer.
You guys should definitely all go read the winning entries, especially The Fixer; it is a really great work of original fiction, and I'd highly recommend it. And for the curious - while it involves a unicorn, it is not a MLP-style unicorn, but rather a more traditional one, of the "frolics in fey forest glens" variety.
What is she doing in New York City?
You'll have to read the story to see.
As I promised to write feedback/reviews for all of the stories in the competition, I did exactly that, and while they're all posted on the Writeoff site, I shall also post them here for posterity (and easier linking).
And What Becomes of Champions?
The opening is reasonable enough. The opening line is decent, the second paragraph does a good job of following up on it, and it is nice to see the whole “running hands over axe” thing to imply a history of Pyria being a warrior.
The clockwork dragon section is awkward. It says that it towers over everything, but the details are hard to make out. In fact, it repeats the fact that the details are hard to make out several times. I think giving a description of the upper part of it sticking up beyond the smoke would be more effective.
I’m also confused by the “meatbag” part – is the main reporter a magitek robot thing? If so, that could be made clearer, as it seems like an extraneous detail.
My thought on this story on the whole was that it was competent, but kind of underwhelming. I didn’t really invest in the story, and it seemed a bit rote. We don’t really end up getting a good grasp on anyone, don’t have a strong investment in anything, and the story’s overall message seems to be “Well, parent, you did good,” seeing as the actual warrior in the story isn’t even really a person to us, just something we see on magic TV.
Try Again
This is a nice little character piece, the sort of thing I’d expect to see in a magazine as an autobiographical or semi-autobiographical piece. A piece about what I think is a girl and her father, this is overall a pretty decent little piece. It is very much a piece about evoking a mood rather than delivering a message, but I think it does so rather nicely, with the setting, the writing, the protagonist feeling weak in the face of their father, worrying about not living up to their standards, and yet simultaneously the dad still clearly loves them and accepts them, even if it feels at time to the little girl that maybe he loves her a little bit less for her unwillingness to hunt.
While this doesn’t paint a complete picture of either character, we get little hints at what sort of person each of them is, as well as their feelings for each other, and the care and love.
My biggest problem with this piece was that it didn’t really stick with me. It isn’t bad in any way, but it simply felt kind of disposable – again, like something I’d read in a magazine, to pass the time, and then forget about on down the line. I think a big part of why is that it ends rather abruptly, without a really strong conclusion to tie it all together and give it a strong sense of purpose.
That being said, I liked this story on the whole; it didn’t end up making the finals, but the vivid writing did a good job of carrying me through this story.
Emancipation (Prologue)
The descriptions – particularly of David Anderson – are kind of plopped in at the start, rather awkwardly.
The core idea of the story is decent enough.
I have two real gripes:
1)This is a prologue – the story isn’t complete.
2)I’m not sure why this is being told from the point of view of the lawyer, and not Akari.
The former is… well, I suspect you started this, and ran out of time.
The latter, however, is more of an issue. The story, as it is right now, is mostly a presentation of the problem. However, the problem seems to be for Akari rather than the lawyer. That’s not to say that the lawyer is the wrong point of view – the problem is that the lawyer feels only peripherally involved, rather than feeling like the central character, and while having your point of view character not be the protagonist isn’t a bad thing necessarily, I’m not sure what the purpose of them being the protagonist is. They seem to already accept the idea that the robot is a person, so where are you going with all this? Is Akari the protagonist, or is the lawyer going to end up undergoing some character development here?
Another issue is that it seems to vary in closeness of point of view – sometimes, we get in close enough to feel the character’s gut clench up, but other times, we feel more distant.
Ten Scars
A vampires vs werewolves story, it took until the second scene for me to understand what was actually going on. That being said, I actually did enjoy the contrast of some of Gregor’s first words being a lie about his own name; it was amusing.
Gregor was a decent main character; a mess of a man living on the fringes of society but still trying to do right in his own way – and yet having no real idea of how to do so. Him being a new leader made sense in that regard – he was still trying to figure things out, despite being a grown man and a father.
The biggest problem with this story is that the arc isn’t strong enough. It is actually a good arc – the idea of Gregor believing that werewolves are on the edge of society, have to be, or else they’ll lose control and hurt people, is an interesting one, as is the idea of the younger generation rejecting it and living like, you know, normal people – but I think the story suffers somewhat for lack of establishment of the situation. This is a short story, of course, which makes it hard to do, but we don’t really get much grounding in the “you need to live on the fringe of society” thing before we’re shown that, no, you don’t. Indeed, the first werewolf we learn much about the life of – the nurse – is the one who is the “deviant”. As such, we don’t really have much grounding in Gregor’s position, which weakens the arc of the story.
Incidentally, Ten Scars is a really nice title.
Off the Cuff
This is a rather eccentric and rambly story, but it actually manages to capture the sort of rambling quality I hear sometimes when someone is telling a story out loud about someone – it is just a kind of random mish-mash of things, all sort of tangentially related to each other, one flowing into the next.
This story doesn’t really feel like it has much of a point, instead trying to evoke a certain feeling, that feeling of being rambled at, of various things happening that don’t quite touch you but don’t quite not, that you don’t really care about but you still kind of do.
But I also have to admit that this story never really grabbed my attention – I kept drifting away from it as I was reading it.
The paragraph spacing in this was inconsistent, and that bothered me; it also made it kind of harder to read for no good reason. I think this was probably a result of copy-pasting out of another program, but still, it ended up putting me off.
Overall, this was rough, but it did manage to transmit the feeling it was going for, I think. But on the other hand, that feeling was the sort of thing that makes me stop caring about a conversation and want to go drift away to do something else.
A Good Idea
This is a story that loves its expensive words, likely to excess. Some of these are remotely okay, but others (peregrinated) are really just obtuse; wandered would be much more natural in the context of the piece, most people aren’t even familiar with the word “peregrinated”, and unless you’re trying to do some sort of allusion to a falcon, I don’t know why you’d even want to use the word. The sheer density of all this is kind of offputting; it feels like it is trying a bit too hard at times.
The story on the whole felt rather drawn-out, and while the idea of Gaslamp technology is cute enough (and you needed space to explain it), I’m not sure that it really ever reached the point where I was actually enthusiastic about reading it (though I did get a chuckle out of Beatrix’s shirts, and I appreciated the terrible puns. Clearly Gaslamp tech is a dad).
Also, in the end, I’m not quite sure what the point was. It seems like it was Beatrix coming to accept the Gaslamp technology would be the central conflict, but I didn’t really feel much there.
On the whole, this was something that I wanted to like more than I actually liked it; the whole thing is silly, but the pacing strangled the humor out of it. I’m pretty sure it was supposed to be funny, but only a few of the little jokes actually made me chuckle, and for most of it, I was just making my way through the story.
The Formative Years of a Ship’s Psyche
This story suffers from one major problem, but it is a very large one – it is rather boring.
The problem is that the protagonist is, frankly, extremely generic. And this is ironic, seeing as the protagonist is an android who is also a ship.
Except this isn’t exactly ironic, as I’ve seen this in many, many stories, and many other places besides. D&D is perhaps the place where I’ve seen this problem the most – someone makes a character of an odd race/class, and… that’s the character.
The thing is, making your character something weird doesn’t actually make them interesting. This is a common mistake people make – they think that a character being weird somehow makes them interesting. But you can make your character a dragon, a hobbit, a decker, or anything else, but that, in and of itself, doesn’t actually make them an interesting character.
That’s not to say that unusual characters are bad in any way; however, if you want to make your character interesting, there aren’t really any shortcuts. This is especially true in a textual medium, where their unusual appearance can’t carry a story, because the reader can’t see it – and even if you make them weird looking, it is hard to make a bland character remain as even their chosen shape in every scene in the reader’s mind’s eye.
The story takes all of the sci-fi set dressing and then makes for a totally standard story about someone growing up and moving away from home. The only really interesting idea is the whole “a ship needs a pilot” thing – everything else, for all its set dressing, is pretty dull when you drill down into it. I don’t get a strong sense of anyone’s personality in this story – not a single person. And I don’t really have any reason to care about any of it. I’m not sure if I can list a single personality trait of a single person that wasn’t an informed trait (something that the story told me they had) rather than a trait that they clearly exhibited.
To Drive the Cold Winter Away
I got some serious Redwall vibes at the start of this story. Whiskers, animal people, elderberry, and of course, the mention of food. I’m hungry, now. 
And after Snow dropped to all fours to approach the protagonist, I definitely got into the sense of a mouse world. Who told you my secret weakness?
One of the commenters noted that this hit them “right in the childhood”, and that’s exactly what this felt like – a children’s story (albeit with some aspects, like spending the night with Snow, which I wouldn’t expect in such a story, Lady and the Tramp notwithstanding, so maybe a YA story with the veneer of a children’s story). And a reasonably enjoyable one at that. This story was memorable, and while it had its imperfections and sudden leaps of story logic, on the whole, it hung together pretty nicely.
There are some stories which attempt to invoke a certain sense of wonder at a different world in them, and I think this story did that pretty well – we get the start, with the mouse folk, and then we see them in the real world. But what I really liked was that this subverted the usual tropes of “magic versus humans” stories, as well as the common presentation of Humans as Cthulu in certain sorts of mouse world stories. We get the whole “science is bad” and “humans are bad” and “if we don’t keep the real world out we will die” sort of thing from the mice – and then that’s subverted, with the humans being presented as people, with the focus on the child protagonist particularly exemplifying the idea that humans aren’t actually bad. The child protagonist also really helped to reinforce the idea of this being a children’s story. And this all worked well for me.
My biggest issue with this story is that there isn’t much of a sense of narrative tension here – the resolution (humans and mice working together) felt too neat, like it just sort of resolved itself, rather than actually having any sort of build up, as Taymer immediately jumps to the conclusion that humans and mice can do magic together. I think it would have been more dramatic if that particular revelation had been held off – basically, Taymer at first thinks that making the harp must have been his own magic, and that he alone has magic in the world, but he can’t bring the mice back to life with his song, but then the girl recognizes the tune, and she joins in, leading to the fusion. That would have made the ending more effective, I think.
Overall, this was my second-favorite story in the competition, but it definitely wasn't perfect. I really liked that this averted the whole “Science/humans = bad” thing that is so prevalent in stories like this, but at the same time, the conflict and resolution is really weak here. I actually felt bad for our hero when his mousey love was separated from him and possibly killed by the poison gas, which is a strength, but the story didn’t really have a strong pay-off.
Memories of Home
I liked this story on the whole – we get an alien who doesn’t really fit in on earth, as well as some sort of war. We see the perspective of that alien, then see another alien, showing that the first alien’s perspective was clearly incomplete – that some of what she believed was untrue.
My biggest issue with this story is that I’m not sure how to feel about what Chowzee did. Is the Queen a baddie? Do they mind control their own kind? There seem to be implications of mind control here, and reasons why the humans (and indeed, the other Formicans) might not like the idea of a queen rising up again. By the end of the story, I’m not sure if Chowzee won, or if she lost, given that I’m not sure whether or not her task was even a good one.
That being said, I thought this was okay otherwise – the ideas here were decent, and it was nice seeing that the aliens weren’t just one-dimensionally good or bad. But I’m left uncertain of whether Chowzee’s loyalty to the queen was earned, or if Chowzee was a victim of something bad.
Stolen Time
The premise of this story reminds me very strongly of a movie that involved people using time as currency – time in the form of lifespan. As such, while the idea was neat enough, it was also something I’d already encountered – and I’m not sure how much sense this would have made if I wasn’t already familiar with that premise.
The biggest problem with this story is how empty the protagonist is – I’m not really given much reason to care one way or another about them, and I’m not given much of a sense about how empty their society is on the whole, as the only other two people we actually see much of seem to be much less empty than the protagonist is. As such, while the system is clearly dehumanizing, I’m not given a clear idea of whether the protagonist is normal, or abnormal, within the context of the system – both her boss and coworker appeared to show much more care than Samantha does, which makes me question whether Samantha is normal or abnormal, and whether or not our view of society through her eyes is normal or abnormal.
There Is No God
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this story at first; it at first seemed to be about a crazy person having a psychotic break in an empty house after their parents died, then I found out their dad was still alive and they were much younger than I thought they were at first. I feel like the initial portion misled me to how old the daughter was.
That said, as the story kept going, I got my feet under me, and got a better understanding of what was really going on, and a better idea of the characters’ voices.
Once this story picked up, it felt pretty solid overall, if a little melodramatic. The father-daughter tension was kind of one-sided, though, because I knew both sides as a reader, and thus this rather defused the daughter’s side of things because I knew what was up. And while I could tell that the dad was scared for his daughter, I couldn’t ultimately feel the adult fear there, because I knew what was wrong and knew that it would be alright.
But as noted, I did think it was solid on the whole, and I thought that the characters’ concerns, both big and small, as well as the car letter game, worked out alright (and I liked the ARKN resulting in darkness and hearken, both solidly relevant words, which was quite clever).
Mabel’s Journey: The Bayopolis Tale
I nod. “Three. My twin sister Paulette is a baker’s apprentice. She lives in Freeburg. She introduced me to the Royal Astrologer just a few days ago. Freeburg was the first place I went. Besides Paulette, there’s my eldest sister Mildred, who studies geology, and Gertrude, who works with Mother and Father back on our farm.”
Oh, Marble Pie, growing up and seeing the world.
Er, I mean Mabel Stone. Can’t imagine how I made that mistake. >>;
Mm-hmm.
Okay, more seriously, this story felt like a decent sort of coming-of-age story in parts, but it also felt kind of lacking. There isn’t much conflict in the story, and what conflict there is comes in late and then is quickly resolved. As a result, I’m left feeling somewhat dissatisfied, as ultimately, everything feels rather too straightforward, with our country girl’s problems being quickly resolved one after the next. It just feels kind of ephemeral in the end. You managed to go somewhere on the order of 10,000 words into this story without even introducing any sort of real conflict, and then quickly had the whole thing resolved in a dream.
My Son Went Missing. But I Might Find Him In Another World
I don’t usually see the parent of an adult child chasing their child into a fantasy world. The conceit was actually pretty solid, and honestly, I was pretty on board with the start of this story – up until the fantasy world bit.
Where this story falls down is the whole fantasy world. The major plot twist – that Daniel was the hero of the war and that the kid was his – was kind of obvious (and is also an implausible stretch of coincidence – seriously, why was Daniel’s lover even wandering around near the portal?). This sort of story tends to be predictable, and this ultimately made it into an Untwist simply because I’m familiar with story tropes and conservation of detail.
Apart from the unusual protagonist, the story was otherwise extremely straightforward and predictable-feeling, and frankly kind of generic as far as the “stumble into another world” story genre goes, despite the start seeming interesting.
The Longest Possible Now
The writing style here reminds me of some old sci-fi stories I remember reading from the 1950s and 1960s. Unfortunately, the story itself also reminded me of them, and not in a very good way.
Ultimately, the story seems to be more concerned with itself and its own weirdness than being interesting for an audience. I felt disengaged from the conflict and the arguments did not really convey a whole lot of emotional tenor. Moreover, a lot of the argument was about alien politics to which were were freshly introduced and which we have no real interest in. The ultimate solution is a bit too perfect and also just kind of feels random, with the whole “Earth given a mind” thing being more or less a deus ex machina.
Ninety Five Years
I could tell from the beginning of this story that it was not going to end well for the narrator’s mother, and it didn’t. But I suppose that was the point.
This story manages a lot of emotion via its description of events, and how obvious it is that things aren’t going to go well, even as the narrator tries to convince themselves otherwise – tries, and fails. Tries to build up hope, but knows this is probably the end.
This story’s strength is in its emotional content, and it feels very personal. The weakness is, ironically, that it feels generic. I’ve heard this story before, in many forms, and it always hurts for people. But the problem is that I have heard this story before, and this didn’t really do anything to set itself apart from similar stories. It is strange for something to be both personal and generic at the same time, but that was how it felt to me. The best part – the part which stood out the most to me – was the start, the Lifeline bit, because that DID feel different – most stories don’t start with someone talking about such folks, and it is a little bit of personal humanity in here, the Lifeline bit, as we’ve all seen the commercials, but I’ve never actually encountered a story that tied into “the button” outside of their commercials, and so it was nice to see.
But other than that, there wasn’t a whole lot here to set things apart for me from other such stories I’ve read. So while the emotional tenor of the piece was very effective, with the vivid descriptions, it ultimately didn’t stick with me as a discrete entity, instead blurring into the other stories I’ve read and heard about similar events.
Inheritance of the Meek
Post-apocalyptic stories often include ideas like this, of people abandoning civilization, of people being civilized or uncivilized. I like the idea of part of the reason for the apocalypse being, you know, people being jerks to each other rather than the intrinsic downfall of civilization.
While I liked the idea of the flying airship fortress place, and it made for a good setting, I still didn’t get a clear visual of what I was really seeing here. I really liked the MacGuffin being genetically modified plants, which are a sensible thing for people to really want in a post-apocalyptic situation (much more efficient food production is a really big deal for civilization).
I think that the ending of the story was strong, though. We get to see the whole civilization thing, and we also see that their opponents are not only awful people, but awful people who are making the world worse *because it will hurt them less*. And we see the protagonist, faced between the pragmatic decision and the “save your lost man no matter what”, choose to make the pragmatic decision (and take that decision away from the captain, who they fear would make the less practical choice). The only real weakness is that the final line, while a *great* pre-mortem one-liner, feels kind of…I dunno. The choice she’s making fundamentally boils down to “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” which is one of the major parts of civilization.
This sounds really negative, but I did enjoy the overall aesthetic of the piece, and I appreciated a number of the components. It had an arc, and we get to see the protagonist progress over the course of the story, as well as see more of their personality, and the horribleness of the people below sort of consolidating her view of them as awful.
The Deosil Winding
I really liked the intro here. Having him put on his Hat of Transformations and pick up his Wand of Power and shrug on the Mantle of Shadows, I was simultaneously put off (oh god, is this going to be a cheesy fantasy story?) and hooked (because I wanted to stick around long enough to see if it was), and then was quickly rewarded with him actually being a stage magician, which you then subvert in the next scene). While a kind of dicey introduction, I think it actually did its job of pulling me through long enough for the story to get its hooks into me.
This story had a reasonable enough urban fantasy vibe to it, and I liked the idea of the cost of True Magic. The story definitely had some solid urban fantasy vibes, and it threw the audience in pretty well. On the other hand, the dialogue sometimes felt a little… samey, at times, without enough variation in it, so the wit sort of wore a bit thin by the end.
This told a short little story, invoked some decent mental images, and while some of the exposition felt a bit forced, it still fit into the story well enough.
I was, however, left with the question of why he couldn’t just make new memories with people to sustain his magic, especially given the way the story ended.
My biggest problem with this story was that I didn’t actually really care about any of the characters; the story itself was decent enough, but I didn’t feel major stakes because none of the outcomes really mattered to me. The worldbuilding pulled me through it, but it was the big selling point here; the rest could have used some sprucing up.
New York City was not a good place for a unicorn to live.
This was a great opening line which immediately put me on board with the story. This is one of those opening lines which is simple but hooks the reader, because we have gotten a statement and want to see where it is going. Why is New York City bad for unicorns? Why does this matter?
Also, given I once wrote a story about the Plight of the Unicorn American, this hits me in all the right places.
No bias though. Clearly. 
This story made me care about Clémence, our unicorn protagonist who, despite her nature as a magical forest creature, feels very real and relatable. We learn a lot of little things about her that build her up into a real person, and see her boredom, her likes and dislikes, and her insecurities and self-consciousness. I really wanted things to turn out well for her – and as the story went on, I felt increasingly bad for her, as I could see that she was walking down one of life’s dark alleyways. I wanted to tell her to turn back, but I was powerless to stop her, and had to keep reading to find out how things turned out. The juxtaposition of what Clémence should be and what the world she was inhabiting in New York City was very powerful, and it was interesting to see just how much trouble she caused by stepping outside of what she was “supposed to be”.
The idea of someone who is stereotyped as symbol of purity using their talents for ill, and getting sucked into it for the excitement, because it makes her feel useful, and because she liked someone (or at least, liked the idea of them)… this story really pulled me. I felt bad for Clémence, as it was obvious that she really, really shouldn’t have been doing what she was doing, and was ultimately doing it for the thrill and for someone she cared about more than she should have. Her motivations weren’t good, but they were all understandable. I cared about her, even as she stopped caring about the things that matter most.
This was a great story, and I wanted to keep reading all the way through to the end. I really got into this, and above all of the other stories in the competition, I both felt compelled to read this through to the end, and I really cared about what happened to our protagonist.
If I had a complaint, it would be that the ending was a bit abrupt; it could have used a little more breathing space in showing the connection between the two main characters fraying, as well as Clemente’s feelings seeming to drift towards Vincent. The “six months later” time skip also felt rough. I think there were other ways of communicating that which would have felt better.
On the whole, this was my favorite story in the whole competition, and indeed, the final judge discussion basically started out with "so The Fixer wins, right?"
Thanks to everyone who participated! It was great seeing folks put out works of original fiction. Some of these entries were really great to read, and even when they were a bit rough around the edges, I could definitely tell significant thought had been put into them.
Glad to hear it turned out well!
Hey, Titanium, thanks for the reviews! Not sure if anyone guessed, but I'm the author of "Emancipation" and "Mable's Journey: The Bayopolis Tale." By means of explanation...
Since the goal was to see what the fandom could produce in terms of original fiction, I took it as "How could I expand on my work?" Since I write a lot about robots, I decided to start on "Emancipation," which was a different take on what I'd done before, focusing on the idea of the legality of the idea. The goal was to write an interesting premise that could potentially lead into a larger work (so, no, the lack of completeness was actually by design... maybe not a good idea, but at least an intentional one).
"Mabel's Journey" is, pretty obviously, a humanized version of Marble Pie going on a trip across her nation. It's actually meant as a glimpse at an expansion of a story I'm pretty proud of, one which you favorably reviewed, if you remember: "Marble's Horizon." People had been asking if I would take that initial story and turn it into something bigger. As an experiment, I did a de-ponified version of it and thought it still worked, so I decided to try to write a new story arc.
Unfortunately, the contest dropped right when I was about as busy as I'd ever been at work and sick as a dog to boot. Time, energy, and creativity were in short supply to write something, so I regretfully thought that I might not have time to do anything. But then the deadline extended right when I got through that rough patch, and I decided it was better to submit something potentially flawed than to submit nothing at all.
I think you're spot on in both cases. In "Emancipation," I think my inexperience writing more clinical, legalistic fiction clashes with my normal tendency toward more emotional stuff. Your comments help me see the inconsistencies in the narrative, so maybe I'll give it another go sometime. I'll let ya know if it ever turns into something worthwhile if you're interested.
"Mabel's Journey," sadly, was a victim of too much ambition and not enough time. The final conflict was going to be a lot more developed and I wanted to make more ado of Mabel's religious upbringing, but I was up against a rapidly approaching deadline and a word limit. In the end, the only way to get it in on time was to rush the ending, and I only barely managed to get it in: 11,999 words submitted in the last 60 seconds. Thus, I decided a flawed work was better than nothing at all.
Not my best work, but it did help me break out of a bad case of writer's block and helped me stretch my creativity. Not necessarily the best way to win a contest, but if there's another next year, I should be ready by then.
The positive comments from people have convinced me that there's something of worth here, so I'll see what I can do with them both. Thanks again, Titanium, I really appreciate you taking the time to leave some feedback me and everyone else.