Reviewer: kes7 Signed [Report This]
Date: 19 Feb 2010 13:50 Title: The Mosaic

Wow.  This is really well done and haunting.  A coldly beautiful (I know that's a strange word to use, but your imagery is that powerful) description of the assimilation of a planet, a culture, and finally, a single loved one.  It's heartbreaking enough to imagine the planet on the viewscreen, just another Borg monstrosity ... but then, you really hit home with Jorac's wife and his reaction to the reality of what has happened to her, suddenly making it very personal.  It was all very understated the way you handled it, and I think it had more impact that way.  Showing us Jorac's sorrow through Gul Nvrell's eyes preserved the cold, detached feeling of the piece while allowing us to see Jorac's pain very clearly.

I also liked the description of Borg "philosophy," as it were, being a perversion of the prevailing Cardassian philosophy of the time.  Like any totalitarian state, the Borg Collective thinks it's doing what's best for the most people ... and, like any totalitarian state, most free people instantly recoil from it.

This is great work, Nerys.  Beautifully done -- much conveyed in so few words.  Loved it.

Author's Response:

For the imagery, I have the makers of First Contact to thank.  What they did in showing the assimilated Earth was so powerful that even in less than a minute they created an image that stuck with me forever.  If not for them, I would not have had that image to transfer onto Cardassia Prime.

Jorac's sorrow, and the terrible effect it had on him, is one of the things that haunts me the most about tf's story.  Even though in tf's writing, we haven't seen anything of the present-day Jorac but an enigma, I find myself pulling for him more than any other character in that story, and for Arvon Nvrell as well.

I felt like there was no way Nvrell could NOT see the relation between what the Borg did, and what his own people were doing.  Plus I admit the image stuck with me--the color schemes could seem similar on first glance, even though when you really look, Cardassian grey is a different, richer shade--and of course, a Cardassian's eyes are so much different from those of a Borg.  (That image of Cardassians in their armor is one I particularly like playing around with...and why I chose to actually KEEP that aesthetic in "The Desolate Vigil," because it let me do something different with it that I figured would surprise people.)

Reviewer: Mistral Signed [Report This]
Date: 15 Feb 2010 20:37 Title: The Mosaic

Wicked imagery of the Borgification. Short, but hard-hitting.

Author's Response:

Thank you...it helped that I was watching First Contact as I wrote this.