Hi again mint!
General Impressions
I liked the reveals in this chapter – the arguments over coding language is a nice light-hearted conflict that matches the tone of the setting. I’m definitely curious as to how exactly Jasper managed to make the nations listen to him. The tone here moves back into the more comedic, especially with Sunny’s meditation solution. The ending to the chapter is also a good one – I hadn’t expected to see ‘hello world’ so soon after the last error, so it caught me off guard and made me laugh!
Characterisation
Something I like about your writing here is how the characters’ moods and personalities are shown through the dialogue. Sunny’s style of speech sounds very conversational and calm. She’s not as formal as Robert, using more colloquialisms like “Okay” and “So . . . “ but it’s less emotionally charged, showing she feels more in control of the situation than Jasper does. Jasper comes across as being hostile and frustrated.
"Trust me, if there was anything else, I would've found it in my ambassador's source code. As it is, it's frustratingly vague."
The “trust me” and “as it is” have this cynical undertone.
"What are you trying to say?" Jasper crossed his arms irritably.
And this line is a classic for a character who doesn’t like what they’re being asked and doesn’t want to ‘confess’ or ‘reveal’ something <.<
His eyes flicked to said ambassador, and he frowned, but didn't comment on it.
I thought this line was a good hint of some hidden emotions – maybe guilt?
Because of this, I found the dialogue-heavy segments still very interesting to read and thought the scene flowed well in general.
Plot
Sunny steepled her fingers and adopted her best wise look. "Exactly. How have you grown through your quest, Jasper?"
I thought this was a funny moment! I almost didn’t catch Sunny parodying “wise” characters in fantasy series at first. It would be nice to have more of a transition in the narration or Sunny’s internal thoughts to show she is trying to use epic fantasy tropes to solve the problem here – because initially she was trying to think about the objectives/
Hmm I’m guessing there must be something else about Jasper that prevented him being at peace when he had fulfilled his objective (it can’t be guilt since back then he hadn’t taken his ambassador apart yet) – unless of course Sunny is wrong here about his inner peace being the solution.
The only thing I can think of at the moment is that Jasper used something forceful rather than something clever – and so it didn’t bring peace.
Worldbuilding
She dusted off her hands and watched the robots float side-by-side.
This part made me wonder: can the ambassadors float without batteries? I think the old ambassador doesn’t have any power at this point, so it seems like they’re floating all by themselves.
But an ‘inhabitant' doesn't have to be a resident, right? It could just mean a person who's temporarily in a place?
Oh that’s a nice thing about the definitions! Very fitting for a world based off of code where things have to be defined very explicitly. I wonder if this is going to be the right solution in the end, though.
Overall
The main strengths of this chapter were the characterisation and the continuous plot progression. I didn’t feel like there was anything unnecessary – even the comic relief parts help to build atmosphere and establish Jasper as a grudging ‘friend’ character now. My main suggestion would just be to make the epic fantasy parody parts a bit more obvious (if it was the intention to reference the tropes in Sunny’s notebooks in that way!).
Hope this helps!
-Lim
Points: 21315
Reviews: 444
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