Art Challenges for Infinity Fan Art (Challenge 4 - An Infinity Short Story - Ended! - Winner: ThornEel!)

[Tjafaas]

it could maybe have felt a bit more cohesive

Indeed, I wanted to write the happening of a big war starter, seen through the three faction angles, as it unfold its inevitable course. Guess my patchwork wasn’t sewn strongly enough with the red line ^^ I probably wandered away from the plot in each of the vignettes, which can make it hard to understand the binder between everything.

[dekaku]

In case someone has problems finding the entries, here’s a link to the first entry (after which it is just reading to get all entries): Story Submissions for Art Challenge 4

I’ll also vote for @ThornEel with his Reunion story. All stories were enjoyable, what made me choose ThonEel, was that it wasn’t a warstory, but a story about exploration, which is my favorite aspect of sci-fi.

I may have hesitated with @dekaku for the first place, but the absence of any faction made me decide for @ThornEel.

I admit that I left it too open. The main idea was, that Dol Remarro was a descendant of the inhabitants of the Oraodol system. As they are the first independant solar state, they don’t belong to any of the faction. Also as they were mostly isolated as dissidents, they also had to develop high technical skills and be quite money-focused in order to survive, explaining why Dol was even interested in spending multiple years in developing a new type of sensor array, and dumping it in the face of profit without a second doubt. I’ll also assumed that the inhabitants of Oraodol where all terrible people who liked puns, which is why Dol called his ship Orao’s pride, so that he could always hail to other ships: “This is Orao’s Dol speaking.” (They omit ranks mostly because of their dissident history).
I didn’t write it out in the story because I thought it didn’t add to the story itself, as the focus wasn’t Dol’s history with his solar system, but a story about him ^^’

[LucasFIN]

Voting will close very soon.

[LucasFIN]

Ah… I totally forgot to count the votes 4 days ago! Have to go to sleep now, but I will try to do so tomorow.

So yeah… voting closed.

[LucasFIN]

I have counted the votes. The clear winner of this challenge is:

@ThornEel with his story Reunion

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A shared 2nd and 3rd place goes to:
@Crayfish and @Tjafaas with their stories Infinity: The Ryann Blockade and The Sparkle
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Congratulations to ThornEel and all the contestants and thanks to all who voted!

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Edit: The 2nd post of this thread now works as a shortcut to all challenges as well as the winning entries.

[ThornEel]

Wow, thank you people! I’m struggling to write those days, this is one of the best encouragements I’ve received for a long time.

Also…

I’m not sure “Ark people” is a term that would likely pop up in the vernacular, however.

For what reason? It felt natural to me, but English is not my native language, so I must miss something.

I’d have included a difference in dialects to make the reunion a little rough - but rely on the enthusiasm of the two factions to overcome that. It would have underscored their enthusiasm.

Yeah, that’s also how I saw it, and I would have in a longer story. But I simply couldn’t fit it…

the flashback is not immediately presented as that

I was not sure how to tackle that. A sentence, telling he remembered for example, felt it broke the flow (and hard to fit wordcount-wise). I hesitated to put it in italics, but wasn’t sure if it looked good. So I went with trusting the reader in the end!

Also, too bad there’s no Starfold faction, but hey, you can’t include everyone to the party right ? ^^

Indeed, there wasn’t even a Starfold faction at this point!

The main idea was, that Dol Remarro was a descendant of the inhabitants of the Oraodol system. As they are the first independant solar state, they don’t belong to any of the faction. Also as they were mostly isolated as dissidents, they also had to develop high technical skills and be quite money-focused in order to survive, explaining why Dol was even interested in spending multiple years in developing a new type of sensor array, and dumping it in the face of profit without a second doubt.

Ooooh, the early Centauran exiles! I had completely forgotten about those guys - but one has to ask what happened to them. They got centuries to grow on their own before even the Reunion (I’m sticking to that name), but there is no word about them. Did they reunited with the Centauran? That could bring an interesting cultural variation to the Centauran; more unruly, maybe less efficient, but also more akin to think outside the box. Did they were conquered? Assimilated? Did they choose to join back? When did that happen?
Did they go extinct? Did they stay independent? Did they become a special autonomous region? They didn’t grow enough to be considered a new core, nor even being mentioned again, so they at most grew to a few systems. But still, pretty unique situation in the Centauran history.
So good catch there, @dekaku

And please tell us if you write the next chapter!

[JB47394]

For what reason? It felt natural to me, but English is not my native language, so I must miss something.

“Ark people” has the same ring as “Ark guys” or “Ark persons”. I would have expected something a bit more whimsical to be used to refer to the long lost legendary people of the Ark. Many years had passed since their departure, making for an interesting game of misunderstandings, exaggerations and so forth.

“Ark People” would be the academic version, but that refers to a group of people of a separate culture. There’s nothing special known about the people of the Ark, so there’s no reason to use that term.