I've been meaning to get to this forever, but I didn't have time, and then I forgot. You know how it is :)

You're welcome, by the way. I enjoyed the story immensely. It was certainly one of the most ambitious works I have read here, and (with the exception of a couple of the little details I mentioned) it succeeded.

I did appreciate the two scenes featuring Ramona and Risaden - especially Ramona's. It reminded me of what people say about Hitler, that he had wanted to become an artist, had a lot of talent, but couldn't make it - so he made massive art with bodies. His past doesn't excuse it, but it does help explain how an ordinary human being could do such things. You're right, that answers one of my criticisms, the one where I said you should have more sympathy for your unsympathetic characters. Rock on.

A couple of details also made me chuckle. Christians expecting non-Christians to be grateful when they don't try to convert them - yep, I've seen that happen. The line about soccer moms tired of cleaning up other people's messes - heh.

My only criticisms here would be technical. I know, it seems shallow to nitpick after my more philosophical last comment, but writers tend to want to know about these little details too, right? So: "gag her of noise" - just gag her would work just fine. And about the bracelet of fingernails - that would probably have been confiscated when the fellow was arrested, since prisoners will be stripped of their regular clothes and given a regulation jumpsuit when they are imprisoned. Anyway, it wouldn't have been very bright of him to wear that at his trial for murder of the girl whose fingernails it is... But I get why you put it there, it is a cool image.

The whole "it was all a dream... Wait, it wasn't!" plotline has been done to death, but for some reason I don't mind it here. I love the last two paragraphs - they tie the whole story together beautifully.

A lovely story, altogether, and congratulations on completing it. Best of lucks in your future endeavours. Take care!

Lucie

Oh My Gosh.

I can't believe its the last chapter!! It was freakin amazing. I love how you created humans out of the characters, and they totally fit. I was only expecting Michammed to be human, not all four, but it was cool! The names being slightly different helped and hindered my recognizing who was who, but your descriptions of their human lives helped a lot. I especially enjoyed the description of Risaden's song.

Only a few little typos, missed letters mostly, but still one of the best things I have ever read!

Good Job! :D

Hi,

You've written a lovely piece. It's rare nowadays to come across a genuine bit of humanism, especially in the fantasy genre. I particularly loved the ending. I have a few criticisms, however.

The first deals with your use of an omniscient and purportedly impartial first-person narrator. That is an extremely difficult feat to pull off, especially nowadays. I assume, from your reference to the more obscure works of Poe and Plato, that you're fairly well-read. You may be familiar with the post-modern suspicion of claims to objectivity. Basically, since the three so-called "masters of suspicion" (Nietzsche, Marx, Freud) have asserted that, even when we try our utmost to be rational and objective, we tend to be subconsciously influenced by forces outside of our ken and control, like the will to power, the class struggle, or our own instinctual drives. That has impacted fiction in the sense that almost no one in modern literary fiction writes using an objective first-person narrator anymore. Instead, most writers will use unreliable narrators, madmen, braggarts, liars, and the like, and let their biases influence the story in an obvious way. Now, not only do you use a narrator who is omniscient and impartial, but he is also a servant of the Deity (a being who has mythical connotations with "the good"). The result is that all biases that appear in the text stand out a lot more than they otherwise would, and some of the moral complexity is lost.

First example: in Chapter 1, Michammed calls the priest's religion "a brutal one" and he is condemned to death for his insensitivity. Now, I tend to agree, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a biased view and that most Catholics will disagree with you. The trust we have in the narrator's impartiality is therefore broken and we see the writer showing through.

Second example: Michammed decides that Reynolds' girlfriend is too young for him and assumes she's only with him for the money. How does he judge that? Once again, it may be obvious to the reader, but as an impartial observer, he shouldn't be aware of that.

More overwhelmingly, throughout the story, Michammed feels empathy for the people he watches and judges their actions according to a well-defined moral scheme. Where did he get that moral scheme? How can he tell what's a worthwhile human endeavour and what's not? Does he have emotions (curiosity and boredom are name-dropped, so I assume he does to some degree, but it's not clear how much), does he make his judgments based on some rational or scientific method, or is it based on some moral programming Deity has given him? To paraphrase Plato, is the Good in this story Good because it appeals to reason, or is it Good because Deity (or the writer) says it's Good?

Some of the little stories were more effective than others. The masked ball was particularly interesting, because the character of Caterina wasn't demonized; she was depicted as someone naive and impulsive, who genuinely loved both men at the same time and simply didn't think about the consequences of her actions. Kensworth and St. Clair were also interesting, although in St. Clair's case a bias once again transpires (against non-figurative art). Other characters struck me as being too one-dimensional, though. The Littles and Renolds in particular were archetypes; the first an idealized All-American family, the second a sleazy old capitalist the likes of which we've seen everywhere since Ebenezer Scrooge (although I do like the way he kisses Elizabeth in order to bring attention to himself - it doesn't add to his moral complexity but it works as a brief illustration of the class).

I think it would add to the general message of the piece - that human life is a glorious mix of beauty and absurdity - if you could also find beauty in the wasted lives of characters like Kensworth, Jessica and Reynolds. Humanism is, in my opinion, a sympathy for the flaws as well as the obvious qualities of human beings. Your work brings to mind Dante's Divine Comedy; he had a tendency to play God and describe as objective truth and good what he liked (and send to Hell everyone he disagreed with) but he could also find beauty in sins he condemned, as shown by his compassion for characters like Francesca and Giordano Bruno. I think it would add an extra layer of meaning to your work if you bestowed that sort of sympathy on your own misfits.

I also noticed that most of the characters were Western, more-or-less contemporary, and middle- to upper-class. The two non-Western civilisations presented (the Middle East scene in the beginning, and the Maya kingdom) presented the people in question in a negative light - one suicide bomber and one human sacrifice. I know it's easier to write about what you know, but this piece purports to be representative of the struggles and triumphs of humanity as a whole, and I think it would work better if it sought to integrate the lives of non-Western citizens as well.

On a stylistic level, I have few complaints - it's beautifully written if a bit on the flowery side at times - but a couple of sentences struck me as out of place. One was "she wanted to taste both the cake and the pie at the party" in Chapter 2, which struck me as incongruously humorous considering the situation. Another was "as smooth as the cream on the pie" in Chapter 3 which just made me go WHAT?

I must reiterate, however, that I loved the ending. I'm glad to see that there are still writers out there who refuse to endorse a fashionable cynicism and who are willing to embrace the beauty of life in spite of all of its difficulties. Thank you.

Lucie

This is great.

It captures very well the imperfectness of humanity that I am still trying to grasp.

Great work!

Oh man! I absolutly adore the last line of this chapter! After going through all the watching,(which is interesting, but I seem not to understand why it is happening) to get that last line, coupled with the observations of Michammed and the title of the chapter, is soo good! I can't describe it very well, but it is a perfect chapter ending. :D

Good job, keep it up, and post more!

I have to say that this is the deepest thing I have read in a long time, It's like a book I'd expect them to make you read in an English class. A little graphic, and a few little missed closing quotes, but really good! :D

I can't say more about it cause I can't critique it very well and I can't express what is so good about it.

Keep it up! :D :D

Wow!

Wow is all I have to say!
This is really good. I will have to come back and read the next chapter when I have more time. I can't describe everything I like about this, but it is really good! There are a few little typos, but nothing extremely serious. I liked your descrption of Deity, and of the other... um, beings... and especially how Michammed thinks about things, given his job.

Yay!

hey rochelle
wow, you kinda suprised me with this one
the seriousness of it
i think you have yet again outdone yourself
(btw, there were a few spelling errors)

ps, ill try to review t3p in a while
~~Q~~