Sialia: I had some random thoughts on your set of stories in general. Feel free to totally ignore them.
First, I enjoyed the stories individually, and as a whole. It was entertaining to see the characters progress, and I found I was looking forward to your third entry, since I wanted to see how they ended up.
But I also noticed that I liked the first story the best, followed by the second, and liked the third the least of the three. It's hard to put my finger on why, exactly.
I felt like the first story had the most depth to it. This is possibly because I overlooked the integration themes in the third one, but I didn't find them to be all that apparent, even on rereading after knowing what to look for.
In the first story, I liked the exploratory nature of it -- we didn't know what the rules of the world are, and it was fun to learn them. I really especially liked the social commentary via dragon pov -- it made the story feel more connected to us, and not a fantasy story in a vacuum. I felt it was quite the impressive achievement in the limited time you had.
I didn't feel that same anticipation in the latter two stories. Partly this is because the world was established, and there needed to be less revealing of it -- indeed, my favorite moment in the second story is when we discovered what the herd was made of. There wasn't anything like that in the third story.
But partly it is also because the story was only concerned with the characters, and not with us. This is not a problem with stories in general -- most stories are like that, of course. But without that extra level of meaning, I found I cared a little less for the characters. Iron chef references notwithstanding. The second story also suffered a little from obviousness. She picks up the mushroom rose, and we know immediately that it's the tool they will use to escape. I like that you killed off one of them, though. The obviousness issue is likely triggered by the difficult format -- the rose is a picture, so it must be important, and the characters really have no hope or options other than what we've been told.
Finally, the third.... It was the one of the three that suffered from length, I think. It tries to be two very different stories. The first is a quiet story about the last village, and fitting in, and recovering from their horrors. It's about Mirabelle finally relearning how to love and trust, and Lillabo's agony over part 2, and the professor's having to revaluate his personal relationships and ideas as well. Miguel fits well into this story, as does the maypole.
But it's also an adventure, fighting against the fungal amalgam, adventures, magic, etc. This feels like a different story, and the lesson which Volpe learns from Miguel about his parts and ways of looking at the world feels very disconnected from the illithid adventure bit. I feel like the story would have hung together better had Lillibo just jumped off a cliff instead of fighting with illithid -- it would have been at least as shocking to Volpe, been less of a distraction, and made the story feel a bit more complete in itself, since it would need fewer references to the last episode. Think New Yorker instead of DnD adventure.
Anyway, take that for what you will -- this is just the ramblings of a critic who can't do it himself, after all. Excellent set of three stories under remarkably challenging conditions -- my congratulations on putting together something this impressive this quickly.
Good stories, both of you. I'd write a similar post about Piratecat's story, but it's a lot less ambitious, and therefore less interesting to critically analyze, even if it did end up being the somewhat better story.
- target
