Shorticus — Roleplayer Guild

Well, I guess I'm going to end up being the first person to post my opinions.

@vote I nominate @RomanAria's submission, Retribution, as my favorite of these submissions.

Vilageidiotx and Dark Wind came really close, both of them producing some really nice stuff that talks about the horrors of war, but I think RomanAria's piece has the least flaws and does a good job of hitting the bonus theme of "Betrayal." It arguably could be said to hit the theme "Resistance," but that is a stretch. I explain in my critique of the submissions by Vilageidiotx and Dark Wind why they didn't win my vote despite, on some levels, having the better written story.

I'm going to start by saying that I'm giving as honest and blunt a review of each piece as I can. I'm not trying to be an ass, but I am going to point out things I thought hurt each submission and things I thought folks could do to improve their writing. This is how I'd want my piece to be critiqued, and the Golden Rule is a fair enough rule to follow, so...

I'll start by discussing the poetry submissions. I've never been good with poetry, whether judging it or writing it, so I'm not sure I can do good service to the poems that have been presented. Nevertheless, here are my critiques of His Greatness, Ode to King Han, and Quests of the Glorious Leader.

I'm pretty sure I get the vibe you're going for - a sort of Norse song about a great leader, right? - which is a neat angle to take. Your piece is very short, but that doesn't automatically make it "bad" or anything in my book.

One thing to note, though, is that if you're going to write a very short piece, you need to be sure that the whole piece is as strong and flawless as can be. Also, you chose to only talk about how great the Glorious Leader is, but a lot of old songs and stories talked about how awesome someone was by talking about their deeds. It might have been a better approach to lengthen this a little and spend some time talking about what the Glorious Leader did that makes him so Glorious.

Some of the language you use is really strong and really refreshing. "Crown of crowns," "Wrapped in the shroud of royalty" are both really good. "His word is the only, his word is law" - that particular bit is just really poetically worded, in my opinion. I like that.

But while it feels like you're going for a sort of song-sung-by-a-Skald theme, especially once I take the "thane" and "thralls" part into account, some of your language doesn't feel like it matches that. If this is the angle you were going for, I'd say that the last two lines ("Only the loyal... ...is a glorious leader") don't fit the rest very well. It would fit if you were writing from a more religious angle or for a culture that demands total obedience, but you're writing this in a way that makes me think "This piece wants to be a Norse song so badly, but it doesn't quite make it." I think that sums up my overall opinion of the piece as well.

Again: you have some very powerful language and some phrases that remind me of old world sayings. "Crown of Crowns" sounds like "King of Kings," for instance, and that's not a bad thing at all. Still, there's enough faults that I can't vote for this as my favorite piece.

One thing I like about this piece is that you do more than say "King Han is great." Your poem gives reasons: he's a conqueror, he's cunning and clever, he treats swordfighting as an art... It's short, but it tells a story. Not bad.

Like I said in the beginning of my post, I don't know if I'm the best to judge poetry. That said, I think the first four lines of your submission are the strongest. The first two lines match up together perfectly in syllable count, and they just sound nice when spoken aloud (which is always how I read poetry). I'm not sure how I feel about "the tall and the small part," as it kind of seems like you were hunting for the right set of words to fill in a blank. It works, and it definitely lends itself to the overall message of the first four lines, but somehow it feels funny.

Certain word choices in your piece bother me a bit. Through force AND through stealth feels more right, for instance. The line "For he could take on what any foe could bring" doesn't use any language I'd call powerful or even clear - and like Blizz's piece, yours is very short, so it's important that everything be as strong and clear as it can be. At least, that's how I view this.

Let me just quote an example of yours where there's lots of good language being tossed around,

His foes did he conquer, his foes found defeat,
the king could sit down on his ivory seat.
The glorious leader, a victor once more,
he deserved the following praising galore.

Those first three lines in the quoted segment are absolutely wonderful. Ivory seat, foes found defeat, foes did he conquer... That stuff evokes images while sounding old-timey and rhyming real nicely. It's very poetic. I love it.

The fourth line not so much - Deserved the following praising galore? There's not really much more praising done after that line. If you're going to say "the following praising," well, you'd best follow that up with some bodacious praising. There's much more praise that comes before this line, and darn is it praising. You might've been able to work previous, preceding, or something of that nature in instead of following. Besides that, "the following praising" sounds like something you'd found Nathaniel Hawthorne saying, and Nathaniel Hawthorne isn't exactly my favorite author. (He and I haven't been on good terms since I read The House of the Seven Gables.)

One more bit of praise for your work, though:

for always remembered by foe and by friend.

I like that. Instead of saying forever, you again use this older sort of language that sounds... Well, nice. Refreshing. "For always." I can appreciate your word choice, partly because it sounds better than "forever" would have and partly because I'm a sucker for writing styles that remind me of the writing styles of yore. Call me a sap for that stuff.

Of the three poems, this one is my favorite.

Okay: first, I'd like to say that I think I see what you're going for. This is a caricature of how silly the praising for the Glorious Leader gets. It's showing blind loyalty and making up wild tales about how he's putting an end to the Resistance, etc. But... Your piece doesn't do so incredibly well.

My first impression as I was reading this was a sort of propaganda-like children's book with each sentence being by itself on a page with a picture to accompany it. None of the lines really go together well, but they stand just fine on their own, and I could imagine flipping this children's book page by page as I went. That's actually an effect I can admire a little.

But it feels like you did two major things wrong:

First, you ran with the gag for what felt like was too long. Yeah, it's ridiculous the way he's portrayed. It's humorous. However, it slowly began to feel like the horse had been beaten dead a while back.
The Resistance intermission felt... clunky. I don't know how else to describe it. It felt clunky and like it could've been done better, or maybe would have been better without it. I'll talk more about this at the end.
The Highlight thing wasn't incredibly effective, and I'll talk about that at the end as well.

Now onto minor issues:

Firstly, you need to watch how you write after you use quotation marks. Here is an example of what you wrote,

"What have you to say for yourself?" The Glorious Leader asked, looking at the bandit leader.

"Glory to the Resistance! The land shall burn!" He boosted with savage pride, sword raised.

"Then Justice will swiftly strike you down." The Glorious Leader replied, launching his epic attack.

What it should have read was this,

"What have you to say for yourself?" the Glorious Leader asked, looking at the bandit leader.

"Glory to the Resistance! The land shall burn!" he boasted with savage pride, sword raised.

"Then Justice will swiftly strike you down," the Glorious Leader replied, launching his epic attack.

Keep that in mind in the future. You don't capitalize after a quotation mark unless you're starting a new sentence. For instance, if you'd said, "Then the Glorious Leader launched his epic attack" instead of "The Glorious Leader replied, launching his epic attack," you'd have been fine. But you're writing one sentence, not two; one train of thought, not two.

Now, let's talk about the Highlight issue. Here's why I found it ineffectual:

I didn't find it.

There you have it. I missed the whole darned point of your story until after I went back to quote a piece to explain quotation marks. If it hadn't been for Copy Pasta, I would never have found the invisible bits, and to me, that means they're ineffectual.

I do think it's clever what you did. I think you had the right idea. However, cleverness only works when you use it in such a way that your audience will get the joke. If your audience can't find half of your work, you may want to reconsider your approach.

You would have had a much better piece if you'd just written this in place of the Resistance's intermission:

This is the Resistance. Highlight the blank lines between the text.

Or something of that nature.

I like this piece, but it's not my favorite selection, nor is it my favorite poem. You had a very clever idea, but the way you carried it out just wasn't effective, and your joke (while initially funny) became less funny as time went on. It would've been way more funny in my first read if I had more than HIGHLIGHT written at the end. Actually, it'd be way more effective if the cue to read the hidden stuff came way earlier in general.

I feel kind of rude for lambasting you like I have. The reason why I'm doing this, though? If you'd presented this just a little differently, this probably would've been my favorite poem, or even my favorite piece overall. But if someone can easily miss the highlight of your work, then your work has a problem.

If you want the average person to be able to read your piece and get the joke, you need to make it just a little more clear than you did.

Now I'm going to talk about the non-poetry submissions in the order that I read them.

Okay, there's two things I need to say right off the bat, one good and one bad:

GOOD: You depict war in a pretty realistic way and your writing style is very enjoyable. If this were a book, there's a fair chance I'd buy it. I'm being quite serious when I say this. It's not the very best writing I've ever seen, but it's good enough that I'd seriously consider buying it if it were a book, and that means a lot coming from me. I'm stingy with my money.

BAD: What the Hell is with that dialogue-only introduction about licking armpits?

No, seriously. Let's dwell on that introduction for a moment. A fun fact I was taught when I took Journalism in high school is that most folks don't read much more than the first paragraph (or sometimes the first sentence) of a newspaper article. Frankly, folks don't read much more than that when they're deciding whether a book is worth buying or not. If I'm going to buy a book, I'm going to look at the first page or maybe the first chapter to see if I like the writing style, and if I do I'll probably carry through with my purchase.

That introduction of yours would have killed my interest in your writing if this was a book.

Let's be honest: the introduction doesn't add much, if anything, to the story, and it's not all that funny. I think I get what you were going for: you wanted to humanize Kelsall and also show what a conversation between two ex-military might look like. But it's not effective, and I almost stopped reading by the time I got to the end of it. It's disjointed from the story, is written with nothing but speech inside quotation marks, and is generally just full of big "no-nos." Seriously, what does licking armpits have to do with this revolution?

You write wonderfully. If you kill someone's interest with an introduction like that, they're going to miss the opportunity to get to the real story you have. Always remember that the most important part of a story is often its introduction, because the introduction is the part that sells the reader the setting and reels them in. If your introduction is ineffectual, your story is going to suffer a lot. This is true for all writing mediums. So, please, never do that to your stories again.

As an example, I decided to buy my first Dresden Files book after just reading a few pages, and I make my decisions on most books by chapter 1. Some books I stop reading after the first page or two because I hate the writing style that much. While your actual story is really well written, your introduction would have made me stop reading entirely. The only reason I kept reading past that point was because I wanted to be able to give your submission a full review, and while I'm very glad that I kept reading, I would have much better things to say if you had just axed that introduction entirely.

Okay. Generally speaking, you just write really well. You give the perspective of a guy who's never seen war really well, and then you follow it up with him actually seeing it. The switch there is really fast and really well done. Kudos to you for that.

One of my favorite parts of the story was this:

It was such a simple thing. A campaign poster for Abercrombie hung on the wall. A strange thing to do when you think of it. I had heard before how, before it came to revolution, the early govies got real overzealous in their support. The laws of physics at work in man - an equal and opposite reaction. But framed within the context of that day, it was too petty to care about. I could only feel sorry for her. Not even Kelsall looked angry, if he were every capable of such a thing.

But she didn't see things that way. From her point of view, it was us with the guns.

"We need to make sure your house is safe." Kelsall explained.

"It was safe." She sobbed. "It used to be." her voice shook, half of a scream. Her movements were jittery, uncertain, as she continued to fall apart before them.

That was when it happened. One man shouted from among us. I never knew who.

"She has a knife!"

Before Kelsall or anyone else could respond, another man stepped forward and bayoneted her in the arm. She screamed and fell on the ground. Her kids grabbed onto her legs. Blood seeped through her fingers. And we stood there, silent as a cloudy day. It was so quiet I could hear the distant gunfire again.

Third blood.

This is just a great part of your story and highlights... I'd call it the ambiguity of war. There's two parties here: they have opposing views and yet they both believe so strongly in this views they're willing to bleed and make others bleed. You make the narrator's group both sympathetic and gut-wrenching at once. Did they really have to stab her? Could the scene have ended differently? Again, you did a wonderful job here.

One thing I'll add about this scene: we never get confirmation about whether she actually did have a dagger. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. Part of me wants to say, "having the knife clatter on the ground would be brilliant." The other part of me says, "It's better that it's ambiguous." Take that as you will.

You have some general spelling and punctuation errors that need to be dealt with, but I can't blame you for that. In your introduction (again, WHY?!) you wrote payed instead of paid. There's a very specific time you use the word "payed," and that deals with ropes. All other times = use the word "paid."

This piece is pretty solid. I guess I'd say that the part about the Snickers bar felt like exaggeration or like you spent too much time on it? This is good quality writing overall, but note that your introduction seriously lost you points in my book. Other than that, I like this.

There is one last note I have to make, and this is the ultimate reason why I'm not voting for your comic. You're not really writing about resistance. You're writing about coping with war.

This story isn't about fighting for a cause against oppressors. It's a story about the price of fighting for that cause. The theme of "viva la resistance" doesn't really have an impact here; you could have been writing about two separate nations going to war, or about cave men fighting each other for scraps of food. The resistance movement was really just a backdrop to a story about how people cope with fighting, killing, fear, and all that good stuff. It's like how the videogame This War of Mine merely uses a civil war as a backdrop for a story about what people will do to survive in a hellish, war-torn landscape.

Again, I love how you wrote this story. You approached it very well. But I don't think you're really writing about resistance, and you're definitely not writing about glorious leadership. You also didn't really write about loyalty or betrayal, so you only use the Resistance theme as a backdrop and you don't hit either of the bonus categories. There are pieces here that have a similar quality of writing but win out because they hit the themes better than your entry.

Truth be told, though, you definitely impressed me. In fact, that's the reason I'm writing as much as I am: I love your work, but damn does that introduction bother me. Keep up the good work. If you ever write more material like this, I'd love to hear about it.

I frankly wasn't impressed with this piece.

Okay, I'm pretty sure you were going for the humorous over-praising route, but it didn't feel like there was a punchline, and the joke never really clicked. Then again, it's not easy to write humor. Humor is one of the hardest things to write: you need to master timing, you need to use the right words, and you need to be able to surprise the reader every now and then. It's difficult to learn and even more difficult to master.

I didn't laugh when I read this, though. I smirked a little once or twice, but you didn't make me laugh. I don't know what to say besides "Practice makes perfect." You'll improve with trial and error.

One thing I can advise you on is your use of commas. You don't use 'em well at all, and that might have lent to why I didn't enjoy the piece. You have way too many commas in lots of wrong places. Study punctuation and you'll be much better off.

One thing I did like - and this is one of the parts where I smirked - is the following paragraph:

The men, so moved began shedding tears of joy, their knees unable to bend for they had been transfixed by his most generous reception. They birthed a single child, but this child was ascending to the heavens, such beauty it was so the choir sang hymns of our glorious leader. The child was so perfect, so pure that our glorious leader gazed upon its form and saw that only one was greater than this, and that was he. So our glorious leader raised his arms, and lo, the child burst into rays of the sun, shining with solar brilliance like only aquatic animals could our glorious leader bestowed the greatest gift one could bestow another being, letting the child become a part of our most benevolent and just glorious leader.

This paragraph works because you actually go into the realm of ridiculousness. A lot of humor is based around going into the realm of ridiculousness. If you're going to write humor based around over-exaggeration, it's better to go this route than plain ol' "He's super awesome but I can't really describe how awesome he is because he's super awesome."

Anyway: keep practicing. Study punctuation. Humor's hard to master. Good luck.

So, first things first: this short story tells a lot in just a few words, and yet it leaves a question (how exactly did Anna die?) unanswered. That's a good thing and it leaves a lot to the imagination. It's descriptive, uses the diehard rain = sadness trope really effectively, and I actually did feel a little depressed (and a little like punching Alex) at the end. Overall: good.

Something you should watch out for is... well, here:

The policeman frowns, but holds out a warped, crinkled envelope. I snatch it quickly, in part so that it won’t get soaked by the misting rain, but also so that the officer can’t see my hand trembling, and move as if to leave.

Okay, this is first person, so there's something you did there that's a bit reprehensible: "and move as if to leave." No-no, Alex was definitely moving to leave. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he's the narrator here. There are times when little phrases we roleplayers use - "as if to" being chief among them - simply don't work outside of roleplaying. Keep that in mind when you write.

(Actually... is Alex male? You left that vague on purpose, didn't you? Nice. I'm going to keep referring to Alex as "he" because that's easier than dancing around pronouns.)

One of your obvious strengths is embedding your dialogue. Some writers have problems with that. Other authors go out of their way to avoid any form of unembedded dialogue, but you seem to know when that's appropriate, and that's a good skill to have as a writer. So... kudos. Not much more to say there.

Honestly, there's not much to criticize here. It's a short piece. It's not especially powerful, but it made me upset at Alex and it made me feel pretty low afterwards. That's a pretty darned good start. Like I said, you use the scenery well, and I particularly like this part:

I walk to the park, sit on the bench under the oak tree, gaze at the playground. We used to play there as kids; it had always seemed so bright and lively. But today, with the rain, not a child was to be seen playing on the now-rusty monkey bars and merry-go-round. Like a graveyard for childhood dreams.

Shazam. That's evoking some feels right there, that is. The last sentence bugs me (it's not a complete thought, and so it's an incomplete sentence), but the word choices you use fit very well.

Now, onto judging and stuff: you definitely are writing about betrayal here. That bonus theme you have covered big time. What I'm not sure you have covered is the backdrop of "resistance" in some way. But then again... Alex could arguably be said to be resisting in a few ways: he's resisting being second-best, resisting the police officer, resisting Anna's wish to be remembered by getting her buried in an unmarked grave. So, it IS arguable that you're covering the resistance theme. It takes a stretch... but I'll buy into it.

Long story short: very solid piece, no real big flaws, and it's pretty good at making me feel feels. I'm suitably impressed, even if I'm not 100% overwhelmed. Most importantly, I really want to know how the Hell Anna died, and that's a pretty great thing to make your readers want to know. Good work!

EDIT: One last question came to mind that I forgot to mention... Do you think your piece may have read better if you used past tense rather than present? You still won my vote, obviously, but I feel it'd be better if it were past tense. Present tense writing of this fashion reminds me of how roleplayers write in MMOs.

Honestly, I think the biggest weakness of this piece is that it's about exactly what it says on the tin: some officers in the officer's lounge. Very little actually happens. People get shot in the end, but the build-up (while noticeable) isn't very well executed.

I'm not sure what to advise you on here. You establish the setting well. You show us the prevailing attitude of these officers really easily. You demonstrate how eager they are to serve their nation. But there's something... missing. I'm not sure how else to describe it. Your piece just lacks something that makes it all click.

Honestly, this submission feels like the prologue to a longer piece. It doesn't feel like a complete story in and of itself.

I'm sorry I can't be of much more help in this review. The pacing needs some work and the scene just isn't exciting.

If I were the one writing this scene, I'd probably have written it from the Minister's perspective. My reasoning? Then he can wonder "Oh God, is he going to shoot me? Who's he going to shoot?" After all, that's the reaction internal affairs in a tyrannical regime should produce. However, we don't get to see those thoughts, nor the thoughts of relief upon not being shot. We just see people shocked that the girl who was suspiciously fiddling with something beneath the table turned out to be a killer.

I dunno what else to say. Good effort, but it just doesn't click.

Before I begin critiquing, let me say this story is really... Well, good. It's pretty good. Part of this is the content: you're writing about the Vietnam War and PTSD, and you do a fairly good job of it. You're also writing this in a style that gives off that sense of "something isn't quite right," and that's an accomplishment.

With that said, I do have some critiquing to do.

Okay, you did a big no-no right off the bat:

Imagine.

This is going to sound pedantic, but the word "imagine" being used like this, especially as the introduction to your story, is really not a good idea. This is the sort of writing I got chastised for back in Jr. High. Never, ever should you use the word "Imagine" to say "Imagine a world in which <blank.>" The only guy I've known to get away with it is the awesome fellow that narrates The Twilight Zone, and that's because he's an awesome storyteller and projects himself impressively when he speaks.

Now, the next big no-no is your amount of sentence fragments. The ones from the first paragraph are underlined in the quote below:

Imagine this place where the road ran straighter than the drawn line in a mathematics textbook. New and recently paved with inky black perfection. The kind of surface that makes young kids run as fast as they can during the summer so the soles of their feet don’t burn right off. On both sides of that road are divided seas of delicately mowed grass, emerald green blades shaved by fatherly work ethic; or sometimes a son earning his first dollars. All squared up houses, nice and neat. Built by fathers, kept by mothers, and pulsating liveliness with the fast steps of children. A man took one look and knew the sun shone here. The sun shined, and it was bright. It was a wonderful place on Harmony Avenue.

Sentence fragments are basically incomplete thoughts, often sentences that have been broken up into these sort of sentences that I've underlined. They can be fixed, typically, by combining the sentences, or just by rewriting what you have to form a single, complete thought. That's the first thing I'd do: complete your thoughts when writing and work on removing sentence fragments.

There's a reason I'm emphasizing all this stuff. Like I said in another critique, one of the big issues any writer needs to tackle is presenting a good introduction. The first few paragraphs are absolutely critical. Most folks will decide whether to keep reading based solely on the first few paragraphs or pages. That is your one shot, your absolute one shot to reel folks in.

Let's talk about stuff you did right: your poetic language is awesome. It probably helps that you're an actual poet, but you write your stuff in a way that really just works. I have a few complaints here and there, but for the most part, you choose words that are both very descriptive and very flowery. It's far from bland, I'll say that, and it's very enjoyable to read.

Let me just quote this one paragraph that I really like:

The perfectly arranged furniture and stacked papers formed a jungle in which Johnny was no longer familiar. Packing groceries while people thanked him for his service brought no smiles. Johnny didn’t know why he went there anymore, or why they were even sent. Grant and Eric would fix no cars, Jake never listen to the heartbeat of a patient. And, Harvey’s only writings were the nightmares which man does not want to confront.

Harkening back to the Vietnam jungle with this jungle that is his home is just... yeah. Call me tickled pink. Call me depressed, sure, because this is some real stuff we're talking about, but call me tickled pink because of how you present the material.

Also, one last really good thing is this: you didn't make Johnny one-dimensional. People tend to focus on very specific things when writing about characters who have PTSD, picking out one quality that defines PTSD rather than looking at PTSD as a whole. Here we have him pretending to be fine, but definitely not being fine; we have him being angry about what happened, him feeling guilty, him blaming himself, him not caring, him caring too much. We have him feeling lost while also going about the same damned routine he always did while not knowing why. That... is well done. You didn't have much time to show me that, but you did.

The last thing I want to discuss is how well you met the themes... And, well, I'm not sure how to view your piece. See:

On the one hand, you've done a pretty good job subverting the theme of the week - you know, serving a cause with blind loyalty - by showing just what the Hell the outcome of that is. War is Hell. Soldiers go through Hell, and so do civilians. You even wrote about Johnny killing a civilian. That's pretty good at subverting the main theme of the week.
That said, you also didn't really focus on the theme. You were writing about war being Hell and PTSD, not resistance or loyalty or any of that. I suppose you could say you were writing about the price of loyalty?

The point is, you wrote a good piece. Write more like it. Make corrections and work on your sentence structure. However, between your punctuation and grammar mistakes and you only loose connection to this week's themes, I'm going to have to vote for someone else.

I'm serious, though: please keep writing. I enjoyed this read. I'm sure others will as well.

First things first: that's a big info dump in the first few paragraphs, and that's something you should avoid.

This is a short story, I know. It's hard to get all the info you want out in a way that isn't an info dump. Still, I feel like there's a lot you said in the first five paragraphs that could have been sprinkled in later much more effectively. Info-dumps like this are exactly what you don't want to see when you're a reader.

This is something you continue to do throughout your work. You describe scenery in great detail, you describe characters we'll see only once in equal detail, and so much more like that. This attention to detail is too vast and too specific. It detracts from the story itself. Let me give you an example:

One of them was taller, wearing the white cloak. He possessed hair that was paler than the full moon, and eyes that matched with a milky tone, as if he were blind. Dark runes were seemingly tattooed into his jawline. He had a vacant look on his face, and his body was built like a statue- beautiful, thin, and strong. He reached for the air beside him, and a blade appeared in a glowing white light. As he drew the sword, it seemingly manifested as it went, until the light itself had wrapped around the blade like a jacket. It was an intricate blade, with runes similar to the ones on the man's face. It seemed to be of japanese make. A katana, perhaps. The statuesque man pointed the blade at his foe, and went still.

The other figure was shorter, and bore a brown cloak, to match his mop of brown hair. His eyes were a hazel color, and he looked more human than his companion. His blade was already in his hands, and was more like a dagger than a sword. He spun it quickly, and it seemed to divide, making it so he now had two daggers clutched in his hands, ready to fight. The boy had a wild look in his eyes, like he was ready for a full out war.

This quoted segment bothers me because all this detail about these two characters is pretty much a description of Marble's special power. That's it. Why do we need this? How does it help further the story? Okay, it's cool that his special power is to split himself into two beings - two separate great warriors of yore - but the length to which you go to describe them actually makes this part of your story hard to read. I know, later it turns out that the smaller one - Yang - becomes an actual character in our story, but at the time it's a really annoying thing to read. Again, you could sprinkle that description of Yang in rather than throw it at the reader in a big blurb.

That's my chief complaint about this story: you write a lot of fluff that actually makes the reader lose track of what's going on. There is such a thing as too much description, and while you're not quite at Nathaniel Hawthorne levels, you're treading that line.

Also, here's a point that I really want to make that bothered me as I read: Marble knew what Japanese meant, or at least you mention the word when his two halves are near each other, but Yang doesn't know what Chinese means or what London is. Why bring up the words "Japanese" and "katana" if those words have no meaning to Yang? If he doesn't know what Chinese means, he shouldn't know those words, either.

There's more I could say. You write a lot here, and it's clear you put a lot of effort into it. But... overall, I just don't like the story. The overly-thorough descriptions really hurt your submission. You hit upon the themes of the week, both resistance and loyalty, but the story isn't what I'd call good.

Keep writing, keep practicing, and try to keep from getting too fluffy with your stuff in the future. Sometimes less is more.
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