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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Berandor" data-source="post: 1720205" data-attributes="member: 225">Well, of course when reading the story, I also have my own interpretation in mind, so that might hinder its efficiency. It's a caveat I always wrote into my comments for my opponents' story, but I think I forgot this time.Well, in the end the knight and the bullies were just bullies and a brutal knight. I didn't really concern myself with them (probably a mistake), as I simply wanted to get Cedric to breaking point. Furthermore, the knight is, in my mind, influenced by Raxos (I hinted at that with the "don't waste my time" line).To me, the story was meant to illustrate the tendency to pick on the weak and idolize the strong, as well as the danger of overlooking such picking or possible warning signs in those picked on. It was simply about Cedric's descent. It's not that Cedric was a good guy - but he might have been. Instead, he has no father, is picked on, ridiculed - and when he finally gets the power to retaliate, he can't control it. There's so much anger inside of him that he ends up hurting those he loved, and exploiting the weak as well.I intended it to be an allegory of, among others, school shootings. It was a high goal, perhaps too high for such a tournament, but as it stands, it seems it was too high for me in such a tournament to succeed fully. A good indicator for that is that I feel the need to explain it, instead of the reader getting it by him/herself.I hope it works at least partly, and is entertaining <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Heh. I know. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />ETA: And I agree that I had an advantage in the timing. I had to work as well, but on the way to work I went over the story, and then I had a few hours after work to make a few final edits.</blockquote>

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