Alright. That could have been done with a little bit more fanfare, [hider=like][h1]CONGRATULATIONS TO [color=yellow]@SILVER[/color], WINNER OF RPGC #19 WITH HIS ENTRY, [color=yellow]BATTEN VALLEY[/color][/h1]
[h2]Your achievement will now be recorded into the Grimoires of Legend, where it shall be eternally remembered.[/h2]
[h3]Runner-Up, [color=blue]Sunday[/color] by [color=blue]@Exit[/color]. Well done![/h3][/hider]or something, but anyways. Nicely done, Silver. 

I’ll go ahead and reply to those that reviewed my entry.

[hider=Calle][hider=what he said]Fairies against machines. Great idea. I loved reading their struggle with the strange technology and how they did their best to make sure they couldn’t conquer other worlds as well. 
Overall the story is well paced and I’m glad they had a happy ending (for now). I’m sure nature will recover so they’ll have new forests to play in <3[/hider]

Teh-heh. I’m happy you enjoyed it. And yes, with time, nature will recover. The rather long winter needs to end first, but yes.[/hider]

[hider=Silver][hider=what he said]Okay, I absolutely loved this one. I will be immensely surprised, reading on, if this isn’t the most original entry in the contest. The prompt called for a tale about vicious machines, and with the futuristic direction you took it in, I was happily surprised to find that the protagonists came from the absolute opposite end of the genre spectrum.

I’ve never seen fairies and omnipotent robot overlords clash on paper, outside of particularly ambitious and eccentric D&D campaigns. What’s more, you took the time to flesh the concept out to its full potential by adding other mythical populations, delineating the fairies’ powers and weaknesses, and exploring the interactions between the supernatural world and the digital. You did so with charismatic characters, an optimistic tone, and fairly consistent plot movement from beginning to end. Well done! 

There were a few typos here and there and at some times the level of intelligence in dialogue seemed to oscillate, but those are forgivable sins in the context of your creativity. I’m truly impressed.[/hider]

I dunno about originality, two other entries also went the fantasy route, heh. Anyways. I’m really happy you think so. That middle paragraph there is a wonder for me to read. Thank you!

[i]*googles what “oscillate” means*[/i][/hider]

[hider=Exit][hider=what he said][color=BFBFBF]I will start this by saying, you got a close second from me.

Fairies pitted against Machine is a wonderful take on an age old theme that's been taken to it's extreme: Nature vs Man. Man in this instance is already gone but what they left behind is still plaguing the earth, thankfully we've got an army of fairies to clean up our mess.

The story manages to be fun and somehow carefree despite what's going on in their world. I'd lend that to the personalities you've successfully given to your main characters. It's a tricky thing at times to work with multiple characters and preserve their individuality but you've done a wonderful job here [i]and[/i] it's this individuality that becomes the hero in this story. There's a bright contrast between the machines who follow the same mundane patterns and those playful machinations of Rochus, Inga, Signy and Bui (I like the names by the way). They each have their own voice. Each want to tackle a problem in their own way. Each shine independently.

I also like the way you've maintained and even had them acknowledge the childlike nature they have. It's clear when they become frustrated or when they're trying to explain something they don't really understand.

Nice blend of fantasy and fairy lore. Human's can't see magic so neither should their creations. Iron is harmful. Dogs are a threat and once upon a time, children were kidnapped.

The only negative here being Bui's ability to create a soul... which seems like a Deus Ex Machina. Although I have to credit you with the way they delivered that specific payload. I like consistency and an ending that makes sense. Despite Bui's sudden ability to create an [i]entire[/i] soul, you maintained the machine's ability to 'backup' or learn and defend themselves against a new threat, cementing the fact that they had one use... until they discovered the ships. What followed was perfectly believable and left me with a satisfactory ending.[/color][/hider]

Teh-heh. An army of fairies cleaning up mankind’s mess is an amusing way to put it. I’m happy the characters came across as I wanted them to, that’s like, wonderful. I did some research into ancient germanic names for their names, that’s the origin of fairies, right? … Then I just took some liberties to make the names shorter and fairy-like, because those ancient germanic names are usually long and unpronounceable. XD … And yupp. Fairy-lore is nice. I regret I didn’t have much time to do further research into the subject, I had to go from the things I already knew from other medias.

And… yeah, that was a Deus Ex Machina. I had the problem that I had no idea how to make my fairies actually win against the machines. I really wanted to come up with a sensible way for them to win, but the problem was that any method they’d use the machines would be able to counter with intelligence and redundancy, not to mention the established cold iron shrapnel bombs made a direct attack at the machines suicidal. I had written myself into a bit of a corner there. Had to turn to some good old game-winning magic there. That said, as you noted, I ensured that despite receiving the Deus Ex Machina, they still had to work to employ it. I’m happy I wrote that well enough to give a satisfactory ending.

Thank you so very much![/hider]

[hider=BrokenPromise][hider=what she said]I can appreciate an attempt to throw the reader into the thick of the story, but the opening felt rushed. A better start probably would have been jumping to the faeries flying inside the robot and then remarking on that information through dialog or narration.

There were also an excessive amount of commas during certain passages. Take this one for example.

[quote=Second paragraph]
‘C’mon!’ Inga shouted as she drifted in front of him, drifting through this tiny tube of cooling fluid intake with her pink wings fluttering. Rochus frowned a little, annoyed that she had called him as if he wasn’t already intending on following, but nonetheless followed after. Behind them, Signy followed with doubt in her eyes, but still intending to help them out.
[/quote]

Most of the sentences in here could benefit from replacing a comma with a period and rephrasing the newly created sentence. It's not wholly incorrect, it's just the information could be made more clear if it came across like so.

[quote]
‘C’mon!’ Inga shouted as she drifted in front of Rochus. Her pink wings fluttered as she drifted through a cooling fluid intake tube. Rochus frowned in response. He was annoyed that she had called him as if he wasn’t already following her. He followed after her regardless. Behind him, Signy followed with doubt in her eyes. Despite the look on her face, she intended to help them regardless of what hardship they faced. 
[/quote]

This is not the only way to do it, and I don't even think it's the best way. But you can see how ajusting the order of the information makes the scene easier to follow. That was really my most pressing concerns grammatically speaking.

The faeries were interesting characters to contend with the menacing, non-magical machines. I did enjoy reading about their childish antics and you did give them each different personalities. The arms race between the mythical creatures and the robots that were trying to fairy proof themselves was also an interesting plot point. I was a bit thrown off by the inclusion of other mythical races and why they hadn't been wiped out by such severe radiation poisoning. I also thought it was a bit weird that the robots had these central servers that nobody thought about attacking until they discovered how to do soul magic. Not your best work, but an entertaining read. Great name for the story, by the way.[/hider]

I’m having trouble seeing the difference between flying into a great machine and working on destroying it and flying into a robot. Anyway, I wanted to showcase the three of them talking somehow, so discussing how to sabotage a factory felt reasonable, heh. But, noted.

I am aware I occasionally use too many commas. I’m working on it. I just need to format the sentences in such a way that fewer commas are needed. That said, I do like my paragraph more than I like the example one you gave, too many dots like that for sentences that are interconnected feels like it interrupts the flow. I do know it’s a problem, but I’ll see how I handle it.

I kind of imagined that mythical races were kept alive by unnatural stuff and didn’t need to worry about radiation. As long as it wasn’t their explicit weakness, they’d be fine, hah. I do admit there might have been a better way to write in other races, but oh, well. And… they had thought of attacking the central servers, but they could never attack enough of them at the same time to do lasting damage. Constant back-ups. The fairies also don’t actually know how a server looks, they couldn’t identify the controller when they found it until Bui got his upgrade. They just mainly tried to break everything.

Anyways. I’m happy you found it entertaining. Heh, how many other works of mine have you read, I wonder? How long have you been here that I don’t currently remember? Oh, well, anyways. Thank you for the review~[/hider]