I was really bummed I didn't manage to get something written out for this contest. I'd been looking forward to it since the first time I ran one. I tried two different stories based on warhammer 40k because it's a lore and universe I've been a fan of since I was 12 and I know it pretty well.
The first was a fairly poorly planned idea based on the concept of having a well-spoken World Eater. For those who don't know, World Eaters are worshippers of the Blood God Khorne and usually just violently mangle everyone for no reason. I wanted to invert it by having a character that was a berzerker-surgeon, who performs the kind of targeted lobotomies that create the World Eaters proper. I believe they refer to it as the "butcher's nails" in the Horus Heresy lore. My logic was that while he would be just as ultra violent in combat, the necessity of performing something as tricky as lobotomy would require some modicum of sensibility, and this would lead to my character acting to mislead and confuse the protagonists. I toyed with the idea of an inquisitor, and created a poorly defined retinue, then I realised I was planning a damn novel, and abandoned it for a bad job.
The second attempt was a little more planned out. I intended a piece based mostly on a single scene and location, predicated heavily on dialogue. The setting was on a wealthy world, the hub of a subsector, where funereal rites were being conducted for a rather over-titled governor subsector who managed to get himself named lord militant of the Imperial crusade to free the sector from Chaos. He managed to achieve this, by the controversial method of exterminatus-ing about twelve planets, with the backing of the protagonist, an Inquisitor. However, in his moment of triumph, he was murdered in his own command center, surrounded by his officers. The weird thing would have been that he was then found by the protagonist to be in possession of an Inquisitorial rosette, anonymised. The protagonist would have used the cover of the public mourning to confront his colleagues as to who might have been responsible for his death and to enquire about who might have been involved with him, without the protag's knowledge. Given the location would have been more or less in public, at a large gathering of several thousand grandees, they would have to have settled this with the utmost discretion. Sadly, my writing ability isn't really up to the high concept I devised, so it also fell by the wayside.
I always feel uncomfortable reviewing work for contests given I know who the authors are. Thing is, if I can do one thing, it's talk about other people's work so here goes.
I liked A View From the AT-AT, it felt pretty Star Wars to me, and I enjoyed the humour, which was rather Python-esque in places. Some things fell a little bit flat for me, the insinuation about Tarkin was a bit weird to me, and felt a little bit like the veracity of the character gave way for the sake of humour. That's not a massive problem in itself, but it was strange given my understanding of Tarkin at that time was that he was in some kind of relationship with Daala. Generally the stuff with moffs/officers = English Public schoolboys didn't work so great for me, but I think that's personal preference.
I think the stormtroopers, especially from the OT, are prime candidates for humour though. The way it's presented really played up the humour without ever really descending into absurdity that would have broken the immersion. I enjoyed the part at the end that referred to Vader as Lord "Darth" Vader, and that matches what Gis said about presenting how people react to these things in their everyday lives. I liked the idea that most people had no clue who Vader is and just kind of wanted to get out of his way, because that's very believable and also rather a funny image in itself. Overall I enjoyed it.
While I very much enjoyed the narrative of "Towards Peace" my understanding of it was severely hampered by my lack of knowledge about the source material. The piece did go some way to alleviate that, but I did feel all at sea for the majority of the story, and only at the end did I realise that the protagonist was actually a reformed Megatron. I liked how it was written and how it strung together several disparate scenes without feeling disjointed, but I felt that it could have done a bit more to include noobs. Additionally I felt that the scene with our hidden Megatron confronting the Starscream followers was a tad on the nose, though that was what made me finally realise the truth so I wonder whether that's ultimately necessary.
Dawn of Just Us was fun, I liked the pun in the title and I kind of liked the silliness of it. It did end up feeling a little one-note though, focusing entirely on the bromance between Batman and Superman and while that was entertaining it didn't really go anywhere. I suppose for what it was it was fun.
Not Today was probably the one I wanted to like but couldn't. I've recently read an
entire published novel that suffers from being nothing but an introduction to a wider story, so I'm not entirely concerned by it being stunted in that way. The writing for what was there was interesting, there were unspoken implications to the dialogue that made me interested to read more and see where this was going, the problem was that there wasn't anything else to go to. It's already been stated that this was in fact the case, and I wonder if I wouldn't have enjoyed this well written intro more if there had been a story to come along with it.
Either way, each entry here had good points and things to like about it. Congratulations to every author who wrote something for this contest, I really appreciate everyone who does so. Thank you.