Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language and violence.
“Have you ever breathed air this fresh?”
Two people stepped out the doors of a large metal ship. A quiet breeze ruffled their hair and brought with it the familiar smell of grass and flowers. The sky looked to be a shade of blue they’d never seen before; free of any pollution. Similar ships docked themselves nearby and even more, or so Emil guessed, would be landing other places across the planet. He stood on the ramp watching the large meadow fill to the brim with humans of all kinds. Some took hesitant steps carefully observing the area before committing to their choice. Others threw caution to the wind viewing this foreign place as some kind of paradise. Emil considered his partner, a rather lively scientist named Hanna, to be of the former.
“You’re awfully calm about this,” He remarked.
“Oh come on,” Hanna stopped twirling and pulled him down the ramp, “There’s nothing to worry about. This project’s been going long before we were born! If the planet contained any dangers we’d know.”
Emil resisted making their descent slower, “But to say we know everything is naive-”
A finally tug made Emil stumble and plant his feet on the fresh grass. Hanna gave a cheeky grin, gloating in her victory, before letting go of his arm.
“Think about it Emil!” Hanna jogged forward and turned to face him, “We’re pioneers on a whole new level! There’s so much uncertainty, but we knew that from the start. We’ll discover new things while building an entirely new civilization. That’s never been done before! Not to this extent!”
Emil could see her eyes sparkling from where he stood. He agreed to this out of curiosity, sure, but after getting here his worries only increased. As far away as they were, if they ran into trouble, help would be out of the question.
“Emiiiiil!”
Hanna called from further away. She waved to him, though he barely saw, and beckoned him to follow. With an annoyed sigh he ran after her knowing if he didn’t she’d just go anyway. Better someone went with her.
We don’t know what will happen, Emil thought catching up to Hanna. She smiled, patted him on the back, and walked forward blabbing about something or other. No idea what this planet will have in store, how it will affect future generations, or even if we’ll last long enough to have future generations. But maybe, if the dice fall in our favor, we’ll create something even better than before.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,798 Reviews
Howdy IzayoiHaze and welcome to YWS.
I don't have much of an introduction this time so let's just take it from the top.
So this line. Is. Not. Great.
If it were in a different place from being your opening line, I'd go easier on it, but since it is in the prime position, I have issues. Prologues already get enough hate and are often overlooked when it comes to people noticing the probably valuable information they continue. Sometimes I'm put off by prologues even though I know their value, because the author doesn't approach them the right way.
They either drop too little or too much information that is appropriate for where they are. I've barely looked at this so far and I can't say too much, I'm mainly just dissapointed by the weak starting point and I'm questioning the value of the other parts. There's probably a better way to state that...
The first line should be nice and quick to grab people and not make it feel like you;re dragging them along, but this is a bit too quick and doesn't really tell me much about what's going on past this single moment.
Then we bounce over to this paragraph, right after the one liner and a bunch of stuff is just dropped on us. It's not exactly an info dump or a text wall, but it's in that same family where you just set a slow pace for information, and just dropped everything. I might not be explaining this quite right but it's a conflict. And like any other issue, when I see something like this right off the bat, it's bound to bother me.
It also has that fake feeling to me, not really something that I can easily describe, but you know what feeling i'm talking about. And fake in this case is really referring to how forced the whole thing feels and I don't like having that feeling about a work, where it just seems unhappy to be put together.
True I shouldn't be giving a literary work sentient feelings but that's just how I do this.
I'm hoping that the other reviewer got into the specifics of why your dialogue isn't properly formatted and the such. Besides that sort of minor issue, which is something to work on because after awhile people start worrying about how pretty is, the dialogue just falls flat. Throughout the entire piece it just seems to fall flat, even though there's not that much of a piece or dialogue. When you're working in tight quarters like this, i think you have to be more careful about what you're trying to get out of this little blurb of text. I didn't get much at all outside of space travel and those hints at starting a new colony from a not so nice planet.
I only get the hint of that taste from the last line, and the bit at the top, but it's still too late to be introducing that fact like this. If you're going to be blatant about what they're doing and have the whole mission statement laid out, don't have it be at the bottom in a preachy speech. That's just so many levels of cliche right there.
The story overall does feel overused and I don't have much hope of it sticking out, maybe the names. It's just rather cheesy in every aspect and I don't know what else to say.
Hello! I'm here for a quick review!
This leads me to believe that the Magnus War might have caused some severe pollution problems on their original planet, so I'm curious about the devastation that the Magnus War may have wrought. (However, perhaps the title is in reference to a war that'll happen on this current planet and not a war that previously happened. I'm interested in learning more.)
Only two people per ship? Or will there be more to follow behind Emil and Hanna? I'm wondering about space efficiency and fuel wastage. Two people for one large ship sounds a bit disproportionate.
One of the former? It seems like Hanna is actually one of the latter, throwing caution to the wind as she ran away from both Emil and the other human ships that were docking nearby. Perhaps her initial actions weren't well described, because I have a hard time believing about her careful observations.
There was no previous mention of twirling, so the mention of her stopping doesn't really mean much. When the reader starts to envision her, they envision her after she's already stopped.
There are two ways that this sentence can be read as.
1. Emil resisted the temptation to make their descent slower and followed along with Hanna.
2. Email resisted, thus causing their descent to be slower as he dug in his heels and pulled back.
I suspect the original meaning was actually number 2, so I'd suggest adding a comma after "resisted".
Final, not finally.
He agreed to totally altering his life and starting a new civilization on a new planet out of sheer curiosity? Surely there must have been some other factors, because that's a big life decision to just base around curiosity.
The conversation between Emil and Hanna honestly sounds like one that should have been had well before docking onto an entirely new planet. Perhaps if the narrative had hinted that this conversation had happened multiple times before, then I'd find it somewhat realistic. If anything, it feels a bit like dialogue for the reader's sake and not for the characters.
The premise is certainly interesting and I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes. If you have any questions or comments, then feel free to let me know. I do hope that you'll keep on writing!
-E