For Bradley,
I read your concerns, and for me personally, I didn't really notice any of those emotional shifts or lack of tension, so you certainly did enough there. The not overdoing the italic thoughts was also probably a good thing, because I can find that sort of thing distracting, but again, that's just me.
For the structuring, I thought you did an excellent job. Were this my work, I'd have been tempted to put the flashback of him saying goodbye to his daughter at the start, but your decision to open with the pod escape was the far better call where it gripped me in by the throat from the offset, and you delivered enough exposition and character details in small but regular chunks that I understood what was going on throughout.
I'll give some love to that flashback by the way. These are always headaches because people either love them or despise them, but here it worked perfectly, was necessary to set up the full emotional impact of the ending, and was cleverly inserted in a way that was natural and didn't break up the story.
Characterwise, you have a very similar love of the exaggerated, emotive, exclamation mark on the head, bombastic Monty Python-esque characterisation that JMack also uses. From every story I read I can very easily picture your characters on a theatre stage, larger than life with their dramatic flailing and facial reactions for the benefit of an audience to be able to read and understand from a distance. Where you and JMack differ is that he often crafts his tales around a scenario that's equally insane--like a guy cementing himself inside a room to protect his claim on the air--whereby the exaggerations compliment one another in a story designed to make people laugh. You, however, seem to veer more toward serious events with emotional impact, something far more difficult to pull off because there's the risk of the contrasting emotional undertones clashing to the point that the character exaggerations can feel like they're diminishing the serious aspect, while the serious elements suck out the entertainment of the exaggerations and shine a light on the characters appearing silly and stupid. Thinking back on what I read of your novel--and blimey, that was years ago now!--I think that issue may have affected me back then but I didn't have enough experience to see it at the time. However, that certainly wasn't an issue in this story, where the manic back and forth reactions from panic and relief perfectly complemented the chaos of the event.
In fact, I'll go a step further and say that they heightened that strong emotional impact that so many had at the end, because the humorous runarounds created a light-hearted expectation that the ending would be a crazy escape or a heroic but somewhat funny death, essentially elevating my emotional state upward. So when that twist of the ultimate sacrifice for his daughter landed I had all the farther to crash back down, and the further we fall the harder the impact. That's me brainstorming to myself btw :p, so by all means dismiss it as arse-talk. But if that makes any sense to you, you might consider experimenting with it down the line considering your characterisation style coupled with tastes for more serious themes like nuclear destruction and parental sacrifice.
Regarding edits before the official forum posting, one thing that did throw me was Hootch. (I loved the name btw! I don't know why Hootch makes me laugh so hard but I suspect Scrubs has something to do with it). Anyway! Near the start Rick eyed Hootch's body in a pod, and then after the memory sequence Hootch's pod was empty and Rick found him burning in a corridor. It's possible that Hootch's body wasn't in the pod to begin with and Rick just glanced over it, but the sentence so strongly suggested Hootch was there that I got confused to how he disappeared, and that sparked me imagining a scene locked on Rick standing there daydreaming while his formerly dead colleague gets up and burns to death fighting a fire in the background. Which, in all fairness, worked for how humorous I found Hootch to be!
Other than that though, this was a solid story that made it into my final four. As to why I eventually cut it, I'll be honest, I don't really know how to dish out three votes, so I often veer into weighing up silly things. The reason I cut this was that I couldn't suspend my disbelief on the premise: that his daughter could sneak on board a spaceship going on some deep space exploratory mission. The pods hinted at cryogenic stasis--though now I wonder if that was actually the case?--and in my limited sci-fi mind the only reason to cryo is if the journey is so long that you'll either die of old age or run out of resources before reaching the destination, so I crafted this alternative scenario without the accident whereby he woke up only to discover the decayed body of his daughter and have a full on Darth Vader 'No!' moment. But that's not something you can or should fix, and the only reason I picked up on that was because of prickish micro-analysing for the sake of voting. Had I just read the story, I'd have simply appreciated it for an exciting space tragedy with an emotional thought-provoking punch.
But I'll end by saying I'm genuinely chuffed to read the strong reactions many had to this story. There were only 7 voters on the 21st--including me--and yet it pulled in 9 by the end which must be nearly a full house. As somebody who also tries to focus their writing on the serious side, who likes to explore deep relationships--whether friends, family, or a love interest beyond a victory fuck--and who's had years of criticism for 'boring soap drama' and weak characterisation because somebody dares to act playful with somebody they genuinely care for, to see such an outpouring of praise for a father's sacrifice story is really inspiring. It gives a glimmer of hope that you can succeed without the need of cheap emotional shock through ultra-violence, sexual gratification, torture, and abuse. So from one ailing esteem self-doubter to another, I sincerely thank you for that.
