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- #241
Coming back with a clearer head - I'm not going to respond point-by-point, but pick up a couple of things. So. Regarding:
For a moment I thought I'd made a silly mistake and confused aquaduct with viaduct. Checking my work, aqueduct is correct. An aqueduct can also carry a waterway, as well as water supply. Hence the aqueduct here carries the canal over the train line- the implication being, that like other aspects of Mulberry Town, the canal is now-defunct industrial infrastructure that was never dismantled.
The title does deliberately riff off historical book titles. I can't claim it has any clever intent, I just felt like being playful. I had forgotten I'd put the Awards banners there. The story had a good run at one point. Never did manage to clinch the Best Story award, but that's just the way things go. I may remove them sometime, since they're not intended to be an advertisement of the story's quality. Almost all the judges who've read The Long Walk have also posted reviews summarising their thoughts afterwards - I doubt you have the time or the inclination to find them, but they are there somewhere.
I've had my doubts about tafl, and I may come back to it sometime when I have, well, time for edits. It could be replaced by chess, and indeed the Cinder Bank Bathhouse is in small part inspired by the Széchenyi thermal bath in Budapest, where you can play chess in the waters. I chose tafl (Also known as hnefatafl, or Viking chess) as part of general worldbuilding to give this "English" more Anglo-Saxon cultural heritage at the expense of Latin. I think in England tafl lost its popularity shortly after the Norman Conquest ... anyway I'm aware that the scene could do with some polishing
When there was an off-handed mention of an aqueduct later on, I couldn't tell if it was some historical ruin for flavor or if aqueducts were seriously still being used
For a moment I thought I'd made a silly mistake and confused aquaduct with viaduct. Checking my work, aqueduct is correct. An aqueduct can also carry a waterway, as well as water supply. Hence the aqueduct here carries the canal over the train line- the implication being, that like other aspects of Mulberry Town, the canal is now-defunct industrial infrastructure that was never dismantled.
The title does deliberately riff off historical book titles. I can't claim it has any clever intent, I just felt like being playful. I had forgotten I'd put the Awards banners there. The story had a good run at one point. Never did manage to clinch the Best Story award, but that's just the way things go. I may remove them sometime, since they're not intended to be an advertisement of the story's quality. Almost all the judges who've read The Long Walk have also posted reviews summarising their thoughts afterwards - I doubt you have the time or the inclination to find them, but they are there somewhere.
I've had my doubts about tafl, and I may come back to it sometime when I have, well, time for edits. It could be replaced by chess, and indeed the Cinder Bank Bathhouse is in small part inspired by the Széchenyi thermal bath in Budapest, where you can play chess in the waters. I chose tafl (Also known as hnefatafl, or Viking chess) as part of general worldbuilding to give this "English" more Anglo-Saxon cultural heritage at the expense of Latin. I think in England tafl lost its popularity shortly after the Norman Conquest ... anyway I'm aware that the scene could do with some polishing