itch.io

Your narration turned out great. Thank you so much for narrating my short story. I am glad you liked it enough to go through the effort :) - Hope you won't mind if I link to your video in the post for the short story.

looking forward to it :)

yeah sure, why not, that would be fun - send me a link when its up, I plan on writing at least another chapter for it, so if I like it I'll put a link in the PDF

I am very glad you enjoyed my story :)

I am so glad you liked it. And yeah I imagined Thomas to be a bit of a hypocrite, like he is stil profiting from his position and the culture he is part of. He just wants more than luxury ^^

no problem :)

I don't think 17 (at the time of checking) is really that low, so I think you are worrying about nothing. However I did not get a warning when downloading your story, nor did a check reveal any hidden issues.

Thank you for the kind words, I am glad you liked it.

Thank you so much, I am glad you liked it.

Thank you so much, that really means a lot to me.

I really would love to continue Thomas' story. Maybe I could release free chapters through itch. I could imagine him getting a stern talking too from his boss/father in the company and then going off to find a place which he could turn into a home for those Titan Lords that want to use their power for the good of the sector.

This and several other stories in the Jam seemed to have been flagged by itch as unsafe, apparently because the respective authors have rather fresh accounts. I downloaded this one (Recursion) and ran it through a virus scanner and a pdf check website. Avast, BitDefender and about a hundred other antivirus providers say its okay.

To the story - If I had to compare Recursion to an existing piece of media, then it would be Jacob's Ladder.
A robot notices that his last actions keep repeating, as if he was trapped in a time loop. In the end it is revealed that the robot is dying and trapped in an imagined future after the revolution that cost him his life.
Definitely worth a read!

You are welcome, glad I could help.

An easy and enjoyable read.

I think you might also get away with just adding something about the machine priest imagining physical reactions and movements from the brain - that could lean into what they feel about this procedure as it is done to Ceron.

Your proposed changes make sense and would most likely do the trick and I don't think a big change would do the story any good anyway. It is already good, just needs its edges sanded so to speak ^^

Here's the thoughts I gathered while reading:

I am a big fan of the Saint acknowledging that he is not perfect and that to be so would be less than ideal. I feel like that has some undertones of humanity remaining necessary, even in these robot bodies. Sort of a last revelation to a true believer before he is gone.

The opening, I felt needed a bit more work - brains can't feel pain by themselves, they can't tremble by themselves and I don't think anyone expects to find a heart in the open skull of a person. All that felt a bit weird to me.

In the prayer: Blessed be the hand that "loosens" from pain - becoming loose sort of implies that the hand has weakened and can no longer grip - maybe "the hand that eases pain" would be closer to what you intended?

I am also not sure what he intended to mean with "Better words" - is it implying he rejects the prayer, as in better words are needed?

And okay, so they have a prayer response value that can be measured - I felt like that needed some extra explanation. While reading I got the idea that it was a bad thing.

Thank you very much. I think with some more space I could have reinforced the disgust that Thomas feels and shown more of what it actually is that he finds so detestable, but maybe that's just an excuse xD

I am glad I could help

Alright, these were my thoughts while reading:

I'd say the beginning could use a small rewrite. Since both the kid and Othmara are female it wasn't entirely clear to me who was meant when the sentence just used "she" to refer to them. So it seemed like the kid was coming out of a drain, then suddenly standing under the tree, then half-way stuck in the wall while also visibly dragging a sack behind her. And it only became clear when Othmara specifically had the knife in hand, and that only happened 2/3rds down the page. 

When Othmara tries the apple, after the kid gets pushy, she has an internal reaction but the kid seems to react to it- it felt like there was a visible reaction missing that the child could notice.

I get that, happens to me all the time as well ^^ - definitely a fun read though still

Some technical issues, needs another read through with a mind to fixing the grammar and getting rid of some logic issues.

That said the bones of the story are good and I could see this being the opening to a book about a rebel group fighting for the freedom of their planet.

Deadly space rocks, soldiers ready to fight to the last - this story hits the spot for me. 

A very enjoyable read, with a clear point and no wasted words.

9/10 reading experience, could have used one last read through to make it perfect
- example error: "Constant blinked, it was never concept she had considered." 

I enjoyed this story. Now, there are some technical issues with it - some grammar and punctuation mistakes - but overall the writing is straight forward and to the point. There is no time wasted and I feel like, with another read through and some minor corrections "Blessed Heretic" could really shine.

A homage to Romeo & Juliet using a number of adapted quotes from the original.

This was not for me, but if that is what someone is looking for, I could see them getting a kick out of it.

A good story, I enjoyed reading it. Are you looking for any feedback?

A great story. Personally I am sucker for political undertones in dogmatic organizations, so having a literal saint bring up that he might get manipulated and used once he can't defend himself anymore, was a great way to build up some tension.

Are you looking for any kind of feedback for your story?

I am very glad you've enjoyed it. It was very fun to write.

I am especially glad that Thomas comes across like I wanted him to. For a while I was a bit worried he'd lean more towards being arrogant and judgemental.

Thank you very much. Glad you've enjoyed it. I too am quite happy with how this story turned out and how it has been received so far.

Funnily enough, originally the whole duel was meant to be only a side story, where a more heroic version of the MC shows mercy and then gets help during a major conflict. Then it kind of twisted itself so to speak and turned into this much more cynical view of the Titan Lords.

You definitely don't have to justify yourself to me ^^ I know my first drafts are horrible, and I swear eternal vengeance on all punctuation marks :D - if you are going to do a rewrite I gladly give you some more feedback, only if you want it of course

Alright, here goes, and of course its all just my opinion:

Just to be clear "the impossible" does not refer to the ship's name, right?

In general you have some very awkward phrasing and places where you could be more economical with your words.

3rd paragraph: you call both Ott and his scientist an officer, which while it might be accurate, doesn't sound great and makes me ask if it is Ott or his subordinate who is standing with his hands behind their back. 

Also his size doesn't seem to add anything to the scene, he's not 7-foot-tall in comparison to anything, and isn't pointed out that this is otherwise remarkable. Is it just there to point out how large BBs are in general?

4th: You have "looking" in the first and then immediately "gazing" in the second sentence, that is just repetition that doesn't add anything - you could scratch "What you are gazing at is what" completely and just change the tense of the remaining sentence: "Miners here refer to this area as the Hollow Stars."

"We're going in." - this sounds very immediate to me, but then its hours later and Ott is just reviewing some data. The report of space being warped is also very dispassionate. This seems to be an unknown phenomenon that the ship is directly flying into, maybe Tarek could express some worries? The whole scene seems to be there to show the reader that there are some weird things happening, so Ott not commenting on them, just informing his sergeant that they are indeed still going to land and then just sitting there, doesn't add anything and wastes your limited space.

Once you've established the characters names you also don't have to use their full titles every time, the reader has been introduced to them and there is nothing in the rest of the story that makes their rank important enough to warrant that.

So there's easily enough proverbial fat you could trim to improve how easy it is to follow your story, add more tension and gain some space to add more emotions to your character so that they feel more alive. I'd call it an okay first draft, a solid foundation with lots of room for improvement.

I like the weird distortions happening on the station and the Battle Brothers' acknowledgment that there is really nothing they can do against them. Includes some neat ideas.

Are you looking for any feedback to your story, regarding grammar or prose?

A cool story. Really gave me some Event Horizon vibes.

Question - are you looking for any type of specific feedback? Regarding grammar or prose or something?

Thank you so much for you feedback. I really appreciate it. This is my first foray into Grimdark Future, so I am glad I got the tone right.

Looks like you managed it, well done ^^

I am not seeing it in the submissions. Have you set the project to published (the option should be at the very bottom when you edit it)?

*edit*

Actually I can see that your story is publicly accessible - you should just be able to go to the Jam's main page, click submit your project and chose your story as your entry.

Sounds plausible enough. Mostly I just wanted to give an example.

But from what I read, they didn't seem like they were mutated by Chaos stuff like the Havoc Demons, more like a specific parasite infected them.

Sounds great, do you have any plans to do more with the "blogs" / discoveries?

What a wonderful project. I greatly enjoyed it as it is.
I would love to see this expanded, mostly I think it could use some more automation (for probe creation and deployment, maybe a standard setting for new probes), and something to do with the massive abundance of resources you can quickly produce - to take more inspiration from the bobiverse, maybe some research, or mega projects to build.

For other people that might be interested in this - the world book does primarily contain more info for the setting. which includes information that will be helpful for most of the factions. It doesn't mention all the factions, for example the Infected Colonies don't show up in it at all as far as I can tell, but I might have missed something related to them.

Hi,

I am completely new to Grimdark Future, is there more lore for the factions inside the World Book, or is there just not more than the faction pages on the website?