This issue was started because of a challenge that Jac issued to everyone here on the HEROES list to produce 1000 word challenges centered on a certain question. I chose to participate in this challenge because I think we should encourage more original work alongside our fanfic and because Jac is a friend. I must admit that the names involved in this project made me nervous to participate. What could my measly 1000 words do up against the likes of Raz, Jae, and Ed? Well by their accounts I held up fine so I’ll take their word for it.

Anyway, that’s not why we’re here. I want to give the pieces of my friends some cover time that is rightly deserved. So I’ll tackle them and give my thoughts on the small, but complete stories. First one up is Raz’s story “The Man Who Couldn’t Be Stopped”. I got a bit of Alan Moore from this story with the old hero having retired and taking on a new trainee. I saw the 60s when reading this piece. Some of that old idealism leaked through and there was a good deal of hope attached to this story. That’s something I’m not use to seeing from Raz, but it was a pleasant read nonetheless.

Ed’s story was definitely interesting. The D@r\/\/1n unit is quite the interesting little device. Any fan of the Green Movement could read this story and feel like Ed is giving them a big pat on the back. I like this story because IMO it is so potentially polarizing. I know Ed probably didn’t intend for it to be, but I see an underlying current of tension in this story that makes it excessively interesting. I wonder what sort of antagonist a creature such as this could find itself against that wouldn’t seem corny or derived from Captain Planet? I’m interested to see another peek at this character from Ed to get that question answered.

Jae’s story gave me this badass punk vibe as I was reading it. I visualized a heavy metal soundtrack as this fight was going down. Nixon (wonderful name btw) and his caped enemy were really coming to blows. I applaud Jae for being able to press such gritty, concrete grinding action in such a short piece. It was hard, it was fast, and it was violent. As an action fan, I couldn’t have asked for anything better than that. The only thing I had a problem with was it took me a minute to identify exactly whom I was supposed to be rooting for.

Skipping over my story and going to Jac’s…

Jac is a guy that I can tell is pretty vibrant and full of hope. It pours off of his writing. I read the guy’s prose and get a sense of who he is as a person. It says a lot of a writer to unabashedly put himself out there and to hold nothing back. I know Jac has been doing a lot of work in establishing Artifice’s multiverse so I’m going to assume this is an alternate world. If it is, then it could have used some sort of marker to let the reader know that. Admittedly, I was a bit thrown off. Magenta as a punk rocker is a nice lil twist and I would like to see this explored again, another world or not.

Barring my own story, I feel like “Discussion V” might have been the weakest of the pieces presented. It read more like the set-up for a future plot instead of a standalone piece. I could tell this was definitely an alternate universe, but I needed something more to work with. I really had a hard time seeing how this story fit into the overall theme that was originally established with the anthology. What I did like though was the name dropping that happened in the short piece. It solidified itself as distinctly Artifice and I think that’s a pretty cool achievement for a site. To have names solidly at its base that you can read and say “yea that’s them”.

Overall, I think the anthology was a success. We got to see a lot of new concepts and new characters come along. And I seriously hope this goes a long way to reviving Artifice.

its been a while since my last visit but i’m glad i made it back for this.