The Frog Prince
by Rhona Highet
Score: 68
Judge #1: Common fairy tale, not very elaborated upon, but a fun five minute read. Perhaps a bedtime story for a Shatterstar fan, but not much more.
Judge #2: Finally, a fic that really DOES seem 'light' to me. First of all, it is a cute little piece, and you do manage the whole fairy-tale 'tone' quite well. We've seen this sort of thing a number of times in X-fic, though, which is why the low mark for originality. I'm left wondering who the princess in the fairy tale is supposed to represent; is Elizabeth Jimmy's daughter? That would be my guess, but it would be a lot more effective if you had told us that for sure. There's no emotional connection to the fairy tale itself when there's no link beyond Shatterstar; it's the princess who's at the heart of the tale, after all. Your spelling is largely all right, but you've got some significant punctuation difficulties which really get in the way of the flow of the fic.
Judge #3: This is an interesting concept. However, the story suffers greatly in execution due to formatting and grammatical errors - chiefly in the dialog.
Journal
by Karen
Score: 61.6
Judge #1: Formatting of the story is a little bizarre . . . and it gets more bizarre from there. The reader is left very confused as to what is going on, particularly when the dialogue is as confusing as it is, and poorly edited, so at times you can't figure out who the speaker is. It has a nice level of details, but it's nearly incoherent in the way it's put together.
Judge #2: I'm not sure how this fits under the category of 'light'! You're dealing with some pretty heavy emotional issues here, after all. On the technical side, this is reasonably well done; you have some problems with punctuation here and there, but the spelling and grammar is solid. Definitely, the concept is original, and I think that's part of the problem. I'm not sure 'willing suspension of disbelief' goes so far as to let me believe that Tabitha's long-lost sister would have just happened to pick up her journal at a rummage sale. I think it would have worked better without that final twist at the end. Maggie seems to have launched into discussing their less-than-pleasant past very abruptly, too; one moment she's offering Felicia cookies and tea, and in the next, she's talking about the past. There's not quite enough lead-up there. Your dialogue isn't bad - you establish different 'voices' in the diary and in the letter quite well, but there are a couple of iffy places, most notably where Maggie starts to lecture her daughter on what an abusive relationship is. She starts to sound almost like a psychology textbook! The style is a bit choppy - you seem to be afraid of the word 'said', and you need to work on varying sentence structure a little. One last thing - what's with the formatting? The way the left margin wavers back and forth is enough to cause motion sickness! ;)
Judge #3: This story provides an interesting perspective on Tabitha - an outsider's perspective, balance by the intimacy of her journal entries. It also explains what happened to her mother and why she left. I was, however, left confused over why her mother chose to leave her behind with her abusive husband. The inclusion of Tabitha's journal entries provided a nice break in the story, and allowed for story development. However, there are certain plot weaknesses - the casual finding of the journal, the mother's abandonment, the sister's rather casual acceptance of the situation -- that leave the reader feeling lost. This story would benefit a great deal from greater character development. Also, punctuation and grammatical errors detract from the story.
Eulogy
by Denise Keppel
Score: 86.3
Judge #1: Excellent story, it left just a few questions unanswered to my satisfaction. But you know me. =) Style was good, just a few grammatical and technical burbles, lots of good, raw emotion. Might be a little too heavy for Light.
Judge #2: I'm not quite sure whether this one's in the light category, either. It seems a bit heavier than that to me; gorgeous, but more serious. This was definitely my favorite of the submissions in this category. You've got near-perfect characterization of both Kitty and Sam, and their interaction here was wonderful, sincere and complex and prickly where it needed to be. I'm less happy with Pete, mind you--I think that boy needs a kick in the rump for his choices here, but I can easily see him doing it. Although, I'm not sure I believe a telepath wouldn't have recognized Pete, plastic surgery or no plastic surgery...;) Your style is very strong, although the sentences starting with 'And' is jarring in a couple of places. We so rarely get to see moments like these on-panel when our favorite characters have suffered loss, and you fill in one of Marvel's latest inexcusable gaps with care and style, provoking a lot of empathy for the characters.
Judge #3: The characterization of both Sam and Kitty rang true. Denise tied up quite a few of Marvel's loose ends with this story. Well-written and an interesting read.
Silent Submission
by Samy Merchi
Score: 84
Judge #1: Well-written, exploration of a somewhat casual character
Judge #2: I must be completely misunderstanding the concept of 'light', because this is yet another fic that doesn't seem to warrant that description. ;) I don't often sympathize with Roberto, but I did here; you give us an impressive look into his background, what made what he is, and the flinty, bleak tone of the whole thing fits the subject matter perfectly. You have a problem with putting commas outside punctuation, which winds up being a little more jarring than it maybe ought to be, and you avoid the use of the word 'said' - or in this case, given the tense, 'says' - a little too much, maybe. A point in your favor is how well you do use the present tense; you don't fall out of it at any point, and having tried to use it myself a number of times I do know how difficult it is sometimes. In a general sense, the style could be smoother; you sometimes use a few short, blunt sentences where longer, more flowing sentences would have worked better. The characterization and Roberto's inner dialogue is very effective, largely, although I'm not sure I buy his rationale for intervening in the graveyard. It did sound like rationalizing to me... ;) All in all, a very solid fic.
