[@Holmishire] Teh-heh. Thanks. I'm happy you enjoyed it. I was enjoyably surprised by yours, so I'm happy to have returned the favour~

[quote=@Terminal][hider=Apocalypse Maiden]That's more like it. Although this entry did still have a lot in the way of awkward grammar and the occasional typo, it was much less profuse than in prior entries. I would say that 'Little Guardian' had better makeup overall, but this is nearly on the same level - and is a bit longer. By this point all I can do is comment that while the problem does not seem to be getting worse, it does not seem to be abating. Next time, you may many to consider a different approach to proof-reading. I know you said you submitted this rather hastily before you had a chance to go through it thoroughly, so a thought: After writing a section, go through the whole thing for errors before continuing. Your plot will wait for you, and it shouldn't require any schedule juggling.

I do like the commitment to the setup. One thing you've firmly established is your knack for internal plot details, and the circumstances that led to the Maiden's destructive rise made for an entertaining read. You did take a while to get to the crux of the story, but as I have said before: There is no substitute for taking the time to write out the entirety of what is needed for the story to work, and that is precisely what you did.

Visiting the combat scene, we finally come across the story's real problem. The battle between our magicians was, in my opinion at least, much more engaging than your previous battle scenes. It had greater tactical aspect to it, and although we don't get a great description of any of the characters' appearances or that of their attacks, the narrative does an excellent job of relaying the actions and consequences in a natural way. The problem though is that you keep getting ahead of yourself - throughout the whole story (the battle in particular is just the point where it occurs most prominently), you bombard the reader with narrative exposition. The exposition is not a bad thing, but you spend almost more time explaining parts of the story than telling it, continuously introducing new details - which is sort of detrimental to the engaging aspects of the experience. My suggestion here is to show, not tell. Don't cut or scale back the exposition entirely, but space it out a bit more appropriately allow the readers to interpret and infer some of it on their own with the actions in the story and the behavior of the characters.

As for how you handled the challenge itself, you neatly nailed it right on the head, capturing both the positive and detrimental aspects of such a dramatic change in a manner which perfectly meets what I was looking for - Awesome, horrific, grand in scale, and not something that the individual in question would have envisioned themselves doing prior - with far reaching consequences. The double-take Judith has at the very end after she 'rescues' Min was particularly well executed.

Congratulations, and keep at it.[/hider][/quote]

[hider=Me Responding]I do usually proof-read a few times if I'm not in a hurry, but I seem to be in a hurry a little more often than I'd like. Haha. Yeah, reading a done section before continuing sounds like a solid piece of advice, I believe I'll do so next time. Thanks.

Teh-heh. I am very happy to have been able to provide with an entertaining read. I am rather proud of my entry now, because I believe I got things (except for some grammar and typos) just as I wanted them, and the feedback appears to agree, mostly. I am happy I spent as long on the night as I did finishing this tale as I wanted it.

And yes, I did bombard the reader with narrative exposition. I intend to attempt cutting back a bit on that for the next entry. This entry was a small experiment of mine, where I made sure to describe the world as well as I could imagine so that the reader would understand what was going on in the world. I do believe I've understood your point, maybe, and I will attempt a different kind of experiment next time, to see how people take that one. Thank you for providing your opinion.

I kind of want to explain a little about my reaction [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/3088107]here[/url]. I was recently the GM of a roleplay that took place in this world I've written about, and the players faced Min as a villain. They had been asked to rescue the girls she had kidnapped from various places in order to attempt completing Project Aliea on. So they found her mansion, got into trouble running around her mansion watched by countless mirrors and had some action against her various minions (she had two more magicians and numerous other named fighters in the roleplay to make the adventure more exciting) while Min tried to scare them away without fighting, all of which was made more intense by her minions' capability to come out of any mirror at any time thanks to her magic. 

She was eventually forced to do battle herself and was defeated by the player playing a heat-magician who managed to melt through one of her defensive mirrors and hit before Min could attempt using Aliea against them. After they captured her, they had quite the amusing discussion where they found out, well, pretty much what Min was shouting over the town and tried to figure out what to do with her now with Min's added commentary. In any case, the players appeared to have enjoyed the adventure and I really liked Min's character, so I really wanted to write about her in the upcoming Labour, but as said, I was worried the Labour wouldn't fit her.

... It was perfect. She already had a loon of a body to go crazy in, and the story fell into place so well. Screw the person who said "discard your first idea", because it was too perfect not to take advantage of, which was also why I was so determined to finish it. And yepp. I'm really happy that I managed to execute it well. Now I have this story about her which I'm pretty proud of, in a wonderful alternative timeline. So, thank you very much for the perfect theme~! 

I shall most certainly keep at it. Haha. Thank you, once again.[/hider]

Lesse, now I've cleared every other Labour. Cleared #1, failed #2, cleared #3, failed #4, cleared #5... Which means I should fail #8. ... I WILL BREAK THE PATTERN! XD