Jan 18, 2025
I called the ramen ending.
In all seriousness, my thoughts mirror lolo's somewhat. Although I found the explorations of the SDF and its many effects to be very interesting, they didn't end up mattering to the story in the end, and I personally felt like the first half was more enjoyable than the second. It was still dark, but I feel like it wasn't as dark as the story got later on.
Not everything needs to be explained fully. The ending you wrote here is kinda like the ending of Akira. The world has its own internal logic about what Ruby's powers are, and they don't necessarily need to be explained to the reader. Still, it feels like much of the last arc comes out of nowhere and isn't very connected to the rest of the story. Part of it's the time skip. Part of it's the fact that Ruby gets drugged, so the reader doesn't see a lot of the things that happen. I might be projecting, but I suspect some of that might have been caused by the fast-approaching deadline.
Either way, in the first half, I was expecting the story to be a series of mini-adventures, with some lower stakes adventures in-between, where the girls slowly uncover more about the SDF, clues to how it works, clues to the Usagi, and eventually find the source of the SDF. They'd have to struggle with the issues of whether or not to deactivate it. What if the orcs come back? What if technology just allows humans to commit atrocities again? But in the end, no matter what decision they make, they ride off into the sunset together.
Obviously, you had a very different story in mind. And that's not a bad thing. It's *your* story. I just wanted to give you a data point on how I was thinking about it at the start.
Enough people have given you feedback about the script format, but aside from that, I did appreciate, for the most part, how easy the novel was to read. Congrats on finishing, and best of luck with the judging!
