Asphyxia - Comments

Wow, wow and wow. The level of detail you've continued to put into this story truly astounds me. I adore your use of traditional, sophisticated language and you really bring the worlds, concepts and characters together in the next two chapters.

I'm awestruck by the level of detail you use during sequences involving battle scenes (i.e. calling of commands, communication, action, short codes). I just love how realistically you describe them; for example one bullet barely misses Junsu and the other hits.
Isn't it always a bit frustrating when, in action movies, there may be up to five assailants against one hero and they have the worst attacks/shots in history?
Then the hero fires five single bullets and gets five head-shots.

However I also really appreciate how you mix realism with fantasy, especially in Willow's dream. What a neat ending to chapter 3! Once again you handle your stories like a pro.

What a cool concept!
The eerie and mysterious scene is set right away within the first enticing paragraph and the cunning unique changes in appearance described immediately have us thinking that these people are out of the norm in some way.

This reminded me of a book I read a few months ago called Brave New World in some ways, what with the disillusion of happiness trapping oblivious humankind under control of machines (or in BNW's case, higher-ups). Though the difference between your one-shot and that story is that you managed to bring us acknowledgement of this scary situation which, in reality, doesn't seem an impossible occurrence with the rapid growth of technology, in a much shorter length of words than Brave New World and for that I was thankful because there is far more focus on the people I'm most interested in: the rebels.

Little is spoken of The Agents but I think this is appropriate and clever because it makes us feel scared as readers; the enemy is little known to us. We find ourselves wanting to have a sense of protection just like the Disciples, and that we do with the likes of Jaejoong, Yoochun and Junsu.

Willow is equally mysterious but her importance is emphasised well. On the other hand I love that Yoochun questions her importance because it's no doubt a question which we ask ourselves.
Yoochun raises a good point: "Is she really worth bringing in?" Yoochun could no longer hold back on those words, "I do not want any of my brothers and sisters dying for some lost cause."
Then Jaejoong gives us the answer we're interested in: "No man, woman nor child is a lost cause," Jaejoong explained.
Their conversation is calm and intelligible which I think show traits of great leadership.

Great work! I found reading this one-shot more and more exciting as I learned more about the situation.