Young Writers Society

Is it review day??? I suppose this means that it's time for me to review!!!

Slowly, Jasper's ambassador formed shapes on its front that resolved into a slightly-pixelated face. The eyes blinked. "How may-ay I help you?"

"You can't," interjected Jasper.

Okay, but can I just say that this little exchange of dialogue is super poignant? I mean, we've seen how Sunny interacts with Robert all this time, so like... seeing the contrast of how Jasper treats his robot is just... ahhhh I have so many feels.

Like, Robert is kind of sarcastic and I love that, but this poor robot when she boots up after being abandoned for so long (years, I think???) so that this reviving of her battery is almost a resurrection of sorts... and her first thing that she does, the poor dear, is to see if she can help. And that just KILLS me because ahhhhh. It's just so sweet and nice and she can barely talk because her battery is still booting up, but she still wants to help.

And then you combine that with Jasper's despair, which comes out as a curt answer that just kind of smacks down the poor robot is just... like, my heeeeeeart. I wasn't expecting for these sorts of feels to come out in a story about Java!

Sunny shot him a glare, then smiled at the robot. "Hello! I'm Sunny. What's your name?"

The robot paused, seemingly taken aback. "No o-one's asked me that in…" The ambassador shifted slightly, seeming disoriented, then continued speaking. "Y-you may call me anything, but J-Jessica and she/her pronouns are my defaults."

*continues to melt*

"Why weren't you this polite to me when we first met?" Robert grumbled.

LOL. Jealous much???

Sunny darted a glance at Jasper. He was watching with a regretful yet detached expression, as if looking at a pen he'd tried to fix but ended up breaking. But Jessica, just like Robert, seemed to be more of a being than a simple device. "Jasper, help me fix her. Don't you feel at all bad for crippling Jessica like this?"

"It's just a robot. A tool, and a broken one at that. If you're looking to meddle around in source code to find the portal, you'd have better luck with your own ambassador." He rolled his eyes. "Not that I was able to find anything in there either, other than the same quest objective stuff."

Okay, so it seems like you're missing part of the conversation here? Like, Sunny talks about two separate things (her asking him to help her fix Jessica, and her asking if he felt bad about crippling Jessica), and you only have Jasper address one thing, when I think he should talk about them both. So like... maybe something like this?

"I can't fix it. It's broken. Or do you think that I haven't already tried? And it's not a her, it's just a robot. A tool, and a broken one at that."

And just continue from there.

"No!" Sunny gritted her teeth. She'd had enough. "Don't you get it? This is your flaw. You're too… too stuck in your ways of thought that you didn't even consider the possibility that maybe these ambassadors have feelings!"

...okay, so Jasper has many flaws, and this is one, but I don't think you wrote it very well? It seems really wordy and slightly confusing. Maybe something more like this:

"Don't you get it? This is your flaw. You're too... too narrow-minded! They're more than just tools, and the fact that you can't grasp this simple fact is why you're still stuck here!"

...or something like that?

In any case, if she wants to insult him properly, she needs to follow through and blame him for being the cause for his own failure to leave!

"Well, if the toaster explicitly talks to me and has a personality like these two, sure!" Sunny gestured wildly towards the ambassadors. "But that's just a symptom of the real problem. Did you even stop to listen to the leaders of the various nations when you ended the war?" She narrowed her eyes. "Because based on your behavior right now, I have a feeling you just waltzed in there and spoke some code and forced them to stop fighting, ignoring their opinions. Did they even collaborate on the treaty, or did you come up with something and make them sign it?"

"First of all, those opinions were causing bloodshed and misery." Jasper got up and started pacing. "And what if I did just that? It was efficient, wasn't it? And things are peaceful now, aren't they?"

Okay, but like... Jasper has a point??? Like, sometimes the best thing to do for conflict resolution is to just step away from the feelings, follow the protocol in how to handle problems, and then just trust that this is what needs to happen.

And Jasper is right... there is peace here. Aside from the armory of sorts (oooh, what chapter was that from... AHA. Chapter 6!) or some vague chatter about the war, there doesn't seem to be hard feelings or any underlying problems. It's not like there's some underground tension between the various lands that Sunny detects. Everything seems fine.

Like... okay, so I'm going to bring up my story again... but like, even before things start happening, you get a feeling that there is something off about the whole situation of the Indeterminates, even before you've even met an Indeterminate. So there's a kind of feeling that something is wrong, though you can't put your finger on it, perhaps, until the Oracle puts Cyrus in charge.

But like... there's no real feeling of anything strange. Everyone regards Jasper as a hero who's disappeared (presumedly gone back home) and they are thankful for what he did because now they have peace instead of war.

And like... maybe Jasper didn't acknowledge the inherent humanity of the machines that he programmed. But like... there's been plenty of great military leaders who have brokered peace contracts and some of them were awful to the armies underneath them. But, the fact that they made peace is still notable that people look away.

So it seems kind of disingenuous for Sunny to point this out when Jasper really sounds like he did a Good Thing. Like, did he have his flaws? YES. But war is hell. And the mere fact that he stopped it is heroic in itself.

"Well. Not with you summoning all the error descriptions. And who knows how long the peace between nations will last?"

"That's not my problem. I'm getting out of here as soon as I can."

And also this... I am firmly on Jasper's side. Like I said, there is absolutely no sign of war about to break out. If there were, I would think Sunny was right, but there's no indication that war will break out. If war eventually did break out, I would claim that it wasn't Jasper's fault, since things seem pretty peaceful right now. It would be the fault of whoever made the first move, not Jasper!

Nor does anybody regards the error descriptions as an act of war between another nation. Like, for all Sunny knew at the very onset, this could have been just a strange natural coincidence! It's not like the inhabitants of Javaland are actively preparing for war because of the error descriptions. If they were, I would see Sunny's perspective but... nope. Sunny is wrong. Jasper is right here.

(And it's completely legitimate that Jasper is looking for a way out!)

"That's not my problem. I'm getting out of here as soon as I can." He kicked a floor tile in frustration. "If I can."

Sunny pursed her lips. "Maybe the key to you getting out is you becoming less selfish."

Jasper rounded on her and hissed, "That's ridiculous."

"Fine." Sunny huffed. "Be as stubborn as you want. But whenever you're ready to start thinking of something other than yourself, I'll be here, trying to fix Jessica." With that, she turned her back on Jasper, focusing determinedly on the glitching ambassador.

This... seems not as empathetic as Sunny usually is? I mean, maybe she is DONE with Jasper because she is annoyed because he is depressed and she's frustrated that her sunny disposition isn't helping him become less depressed. But she seems really short.

Still, I would at least thing that she would say something like, "Listen, I know you're frustrated and just want to get out! I understand that. I want to get out too! But the only way we're going to get out is by listening to our ambassadors and looking at their code without trying to ruin them in the process." Or something like that.

THEN. If Jasper were to explode at her, then I can totally see her going, "FINE. You're a selfish dude and get away from here so I can fix them alone, since clearly you're no help." But like... until then, I think she would make an appeal to his emotions... or something.

He aggressively sliced a potato.

Awww. <3

(I do admittedly have a soft spot for Jasper... the poor dear just needs to sleep more. He's so grumpy...)

"You're wrong," he said, frowning. "I do care about other people." As if to prove his point, Jasper held out a tray with a burger and fries on it. The burger was Earth-style, with a circular bun and patty, and the fries did not look like curly braces. "It's just that it's hard to think of robots as people."

Sunny looked at the food in delight. "For me?" Jasper nodded, and Sunny gladly took a big bite of the burger. Once she'd finished chewing, she said, "It's never too late to start thinking differently. And we're not done debugging yet– it's not too late to help Jessica."

Jasper looked down at the ambassador for a moment. "...I suppose not." He stole a fry from the tray, then let out a long sigh and said, "Fine. I hope you're right."

...see? He's not so bad, Sunny! Even though he's the only person you dislike. XD

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),

Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!

First Impression: Okayyy well we're definitely approaching the end now and it seems Sunny really is putting in a lot of work now to get things done. As far as final battles go, this one is definitely one of the more dangerous ones I've seen given its basically an exam for everything Sunny learnt so far.

Anyway let's get right to it,

Slowly, Jasper's ambassador formed shapes on its front that resolved into a slightly-pixelated face. The eyes blinked. "How may-ay I help you?"

"You can't," interjected Jasper.

Sunny shot him a glare, then smiled at the robot. "Hello! I'm Sunny. What's your name?"

The robot paused, seemingly taken aback. "No o-one's asked me that in…" The ambassador shifted slightly, seeming disoriented, then continued speaking. "Y-you may call me anything, but J-Jessica and she/her pronouns are my defaults."

"Pleased to meet you." Sunny extended a hand, and after a moment, one of Jessica's arm slabs detached from her body and she shook hands with Sunny.

OOooh Jessica is up and running. Hooray!! It looks like Jessica is still in working condition despite whatever Jasper put her through and is still friendly as ever. That second part was definitely something I was worried about given how Jasper ended up treating here there. Well, let's see how Jessica can help out here.

"Why weren't you this polite to me when we first met?" Robert grumbled.

"I was in shock then." Sunny stuck her tongue out at him, then turned back to Jessica. "If you don't mind… Do you have Jasper's quest objectives anywhere?"

Jessica popped up her laptop screen, then lapsed into silence. Various windows opened then closed. "N-n-no." Red text scrolled across the screen. "A-a-apologies, my c-code is-s…zzt…"

Sunny darted a glance at Jasper. He was watching with a regretful yet detached expression, as if looking at a pen he'd tried to fix but ended up breaking. But Jessica, just like Robert, seemed to be more of a being than a simple device. "Jasper, help me fix her. Don't you feel at all bad for crippling Jessica like this?"

Aww poor Robert complaining about Sunny not being this nice is an amazing moment. Sunny definitely had a pretty valid excuse there but seeing Robert get a little grumpy about that is a fun character moment.

And of course it looks like.... Jessica is in fact not completely unharmed, that was definitely something to be very worried of, but it looks like in this case at least the friendliness is intact and the code is only a little corrupted. I don't know if Jasper will end up being convinced to help out though, so I think it'll be Sunny's time to shine with some more code here, provided that Jasper of course doesn't do anything to actively hinder the process. I definitely don't trust him.

"It's just a robot. A tool, and a broken one at that. If you're looking to meddle around in source code to find the portal, you'd have better luck with your own ambassador." He rolled his eyes. "Not that I was able to find anything in there either, other than the same quest objective stuff."

"No!" Sunny gritted her teeth. She'd had enough. "Don't you get it? This is your flaw. You're too… too stuck in your ways of thought that you didn't even consider the possibility that maybe these ambassadors have feelings!"

Jasper scoffed. "So you're going to start saying all devices are sentient?" He adopted a silly voice and said, "Ohh, my poor toaster, it got breadcrumbs stuck in it! It must be so miserable!"

Okay Jasper now you're going a little two far. That's two slaps in the face for you. Although I love that with that we do in fact get to the bottom of exactly what's happening there in terms of Jasper not treating Jessica well, he clearly hasn't thought about the people in this world as
properly sentient beings.

"Well, if the toaster explicitly talks to me and has a personality like these two, sure!" Sunny gestured wildly towards the ambassadors. "But that's just a symptom of the real problem. Did you even stop to listen to the leaders of the various nations when you ended the war?" She narrowed her eyes. "Because based on your behavior right now, I have a feeling you just waltzed in there and spoke some code and forced them to stop fighting, ignoring their opinions. Did they even collaborate on the treaty, or did you come up with something and make them sign it?"

"First of all, those opinions were causing bloodshed and misery." Jasper got up and started pacing. "And what if I did just that? It was efficient, wasn't it? And things are peaceful now, aren't they?"

"Well. Not with you summoning all the error descriptions. And who knows how long the peace between nations will last?"

Well here we go. We've got Jasper just being exposed left and right for only solving barely half the problem and I love it. Jessica being able to communicate hasn't exposed him exactly like I imagined he would, but we are definitely seeing him getting exposed here and I love it. The bad part is I feel like Jasper isn't going to be able to admit that he might have been wrong and ended up trapped only because of his actions.

"That's not my problem. I'm getting out of here as soon as I can." He kicked a floor tile in frustration. "If I can."

Sunny pursed her lips. "Maybe the key to you getting out is you becoming less selfish."

Jasper rounded on her and hissed, "That's ridiculous."

"Fine." Sunny huffed. "Be as stubborn as you want. But whenever you're ready to start thinking of something other than yourself, I'll be here, trying to fix Jessica." With that, she turned her back on Jasper, focusing determinedly on the glitching ambassador.

Behind her, she heard Jasper sputter, then stomp away towards the kitchen. Sunny let out a sigh. "Now then. Robert, do you think you could help me find Jessica's code?"

Yup that interaction happened pretty much exactly as I thought it would with the way that Jasper acted in response to everything. Sunny it seems will have to try and do all of this alone for the moment. I am confident she will manage this and probably fix the errors too, but I wonder if somehow getting Jasper back is going to end up being a requirement in her quest because he is technically the evil overlord in need of vanquishing. That part might just end up being the toughest one here.

The newer ambassador floated closer to Sunny and Jessica. "As long as we alternate with the battery pack."

"Thank you." Sunny placed her hands on Jessica's keyboard and followed Robert's directions to pull up the code. But it didn't look like the plain code she was used to; now, there were red squiggly lines under some parts. "Robert, what are those?"

"Oh! Those indicate errors. You must have fixed whatever Jasper did to make them disappear." Robert pointed at a line that had a red squiggly line on the last number. "Try hovering over that line. It looks like it's missing a semicolon, and if I'm right, a little box should pop up telling you that error."

OOooh it looks like Sunny handling those errors is already having a noticeable effect on things. That's definitely both promising and dangerous because while we're seeing that Sunny's task has been successful we're also seeing proof that just fixing the errors and error descriptions alone won't be enough for Sunny to be able to get back.

Sunny hovered the cursor over the red-underlined part and was rewarded with a text box: "Syntax error, insert ";" to complete LocalVariableDeclarationStatement." She raised her eyebrows. "That's handy!"

She inserted a semicolon there, and with Robert's help, worked her way through the red squiggly lines. For some of the errors, however, there weren't any lines, and she had to use the same reasoning as she had when debugging the errors in the kitchen.

Sunny took a break at one point and looked over at said kitchen, where Jasper was cooking something, along with the help of the few remaining errors. He aggressively sliced a potato.

Oh wow, aggressively slicing potatoes really shouldn't have made me laugh as hard as I just did but that idea is simply too hilarious xD. Besides that it looks like Sunny is making slow but sure progress here and I am very excited to see what the final outcome of this is going to end up looking like. It seems as if finally some sort of a solution is within range there.

Sunny frowned, wondering if she was correct in predicting the cause of the portal's absence. Well, the protagonist learning something or growing in some way was a staple of modern fantasy books, wasn't it? But would it still work if Jasper learned after the quest? She shook away her doubts and returned to the code.

It could have been minutes or hours until Sunny next looked up. With Robert and the reference manual by her side, Sunny had gotten approximately halfway through the code, fixing it as best she could. But when Jasper appeared in the main area of the In-n-Out again, she looked up, rubbing her tired eyes.

Ahh Sunny is definitely working very hard there. Love that she is exploring all of the ways things could go wrong too when she's thinking of all of these things. I have a feeling this is going to work out however, provided that somehow the three of them can figure out how to get Jasper to admit his fault and treat the beings of this world as properly sentient. Perhaps aggressively cutting potatoes will do something to let Jasper cool down from his anger and think a little.

"You're wrong," he said, frowning. "I do care about other people." As if to prove his point, Jasper held out a tray with a burger and fries on it. The burger was Earth-style, with a circular bun and patty, and the fries did not look like curly braces. "It's just that it's hard to think of robots as people."

Sunny looked at the food in delight. "For me?" Jasper nodded, and Sunny gladly took a big bite of the burger. Once she'd finished chewing, she said, "It's never too late to start thinking differently. And we're not done debugging yet– it's not too late to help Jessica."

Jasper looked down at the ambassador for a moment. "...I suppose not." He stole a fry from the tray, then let out a long sigh and said, "Fine. I hope you're right."

Oooooh...okay that happened a lot faster than I thought it would xD. Aggressive attacks on potatoes did in fact work to some extent then. He really did just need to calm down for a little bit. Its good to also see why he did happen to be some sort of hero at some point and had heroic qualities, even if those went right out the window when it came to helping the residents here.

Aaaaand that's it for this one.

Overall: Overall loving the ways things are going so far. It seems Jasper might just come around after all and Sunny is really putting in a lot of good work to get Jessica back to full functionality and end up completing both of these quests so they can both return home victorious.

As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.

Stay Safe
Kate

Hi mint! Lim here with a short review.

General Impressions

Oop the tension went up again this chapter! Poor Jessica sounds sad, probably because she’s been left alone for all those years. It’s neat to see that I was kind of right about what Jasper did at the peace conference. The selfishness thing kind of makes sense as a point of conflict with regards to Jasper, but I definitely had no idea when I started reading this story that this is the issue it boils down to. It looks like the ending is pivoting back to hopefulness though. I wonder how Sunny’s words will change or not-change Jasper’s future behaviour, since he’s only *agreed* to help so far.

Plot

Sunny hovered the cursor over the red-underlined part and was rewarded with a text box: "Syntax error, insert ";" to complete LocalVariableDeclarationStatement." She raised her eyebrows. "That's handy!"

Is this an error description? If so, that’s neat! Jasper clearly didn’t need to steal Jessica’s error descriptions, so it makes sense that those would still be there. I noticed the coding segments have been a bit shorter in this chapter and the last, since the focus is more on character conflict.

Sunny frowned, wondering if she was correct in predicting the cause of the portal's absence. Well, the protagonist learning something or growing in some way was a staple of modern fantasy books, wasn't it?

Hmm if the story is quickly approaching its end, I do wonder what else will work, if not this. Maybe Jasper’s quest isn’t really complete yet, and that’s why he couldn’t go home?
The story so far also makes me curious why Jasper finds it hard to see robots as people. My impression was people in Javalandia see robots as people at least in recent times. Maybe Jasper’s beliefs are a bit of an artifact of the pre-robot revolution era?

Characters

I like how Jessica was described. “arm slabs” def make her sound like an older model, kind of like how in our worlds the older computers are much bigger. I like that I can tell she’s timid but helpful even in the short time we’ve gotten to know her.

Jasper scoffed. "So you're going to start saying all devices are sentient?" He adopted a silly voice and said, "Ohh, my poor toaster, it got breadcrumbs stuck in it! It must be so miserable!"

I kind of wish we got more of a reaction from Robert, since Jasper’s basically implying *he’s* not a person either. Like maybe he has one of his quips after the above line or something. Or he could have a more serious reaction – that would be neat, too.

"Why weren't you this polite to me when we first met?" Robert grumbled.
"I was in shock then."

This exchange made me laugh! I love their banter.

Overall

I thought this was a good way to show the drama of the argument between Sunny and Jasper. Since Jasper was introduced, I thought of him as being a kind of ‘foil’ to Sunny’s character because of how dour and self-absorbed he is. So this chapter showed that coming to a boiling point without losing too much of the humor. If there’s a suggestion I’d make for revisions it could just be foreshadowing the idea that ‘selfishness’ would come up as a theme somehow.

Hope this helps! Let me know if anything I said was unclear!
-Lim