Agh! Yes, I had to say that, this is great. It's beautiful in a chilling way and I'm so glad I found this experiment you were talking about.

This piece is magnificently written, it feels like a proper fight with tension and everything. It also addresses a general problem soldiers face on the battlefield, because in the end they are just fighting for a reason not truly their own and both believe in their own righteousness. So beautiful...

The ending... Dang it, this is more my style, meaning I can't learn from it. That doesn't make the ending any less wonderful or having less of an impact.

Great story. I really need to read more about the Great Galactic War and other early/Pre-Republic stuff. Although, I guess that's old EU, does it even count anymore? Will we ever know for sure? Still a fun world to play in though. If you write anymore, keep them stranded and turn the planet into a galactic Gilligan's Island... JK.

I like this very much. It is, as you say, quite artistic. I loved the description of how peaceful the world was originall, how untouched, and the description of the ship.s landing as 'scars'. It foreshadows how much turbulence their arrival will bring...I also loved the way you described the battle - the way it got uglier and uglier and harsher and harsher as they were forced to go first to single combat, then to physical combat, then hand to hand fighting, before collapsing and realising how futile everything is, really...

I also like the way you ended the story on a series of questions...it doubles both as a kind of half-cliffhanger and as a stream of consciousness detailing what the Jedi and Sith are thinking as they take in their new surroundings and wondering what to do...you leave the ending open, inviting us to decide what they did for ourselves, which is nice :) I liked the fact that this was a fairly easy read - not requiring any canon knowledge, which is good, because I don't have it. Nice job, really :)

Given the fact that I am half canon blind, this was definitely worth my time to read! You really do not need to be a fandom of Starwars. You just need to be a writer who can portray a story telling, such as this! I really did enjoy it and did not matter how lengthy it is cause honestly, I can picture the scenes from the beginning to the end.

So first up what I like to tell you is that I won't be able to comment much on your grammar because I am no expert. I will leave it for the picky Grammar Nazi peoples. I am very good with intercepting the plot and general characteristic opinions.

On I go with your review:

I will start with the title of your choosing. It was a definite meow for me! Fight or Flight. The most fitting title for this little one shot. It is suiting to the story concept because when I reach to the end, you actually make the reader ponder a reason between the Jedi and the Sith fighting the war.

The fact that they are compelled to unleash such order. The fact they are bound to their Order and merely use like a puppet to havoc the world. This is a very interesting concept. War that break out in the open, people forgets the reason for their fighting and that was a really strong point to make.

I thought the last scene was fitting. They fight so much that they are actually free to choose to leave or go on.

Now, on the next part I had thought was really good is the fighting scenes. You didn't jump through the actions like some authors do. I can very much imagine the saberlight clanging off with the Sith's red saber.

I thought it was very clever, most enjoyable descriptive section when you had use the lightsaber as a beacon to serve the battle around the opponents. I also like the part how the battle actually begun and actually I was quite stunned when the first soldier screams for death.

You really do weigh a lot on the strength, dexterity and energy level. This is very much a reality because you don't actually portray them like superheroes because they are not. They are a being that have weakness and strength.

Overall, I really got no criticism to offer as it is a very well wording choice of story. I'm not really much of a fan of Starwars except the third episode (curse the unhappy ending of Skywalker going to the Dark Side) was quite my favourite element and this story of yours actually is not winning on the victory or game over situation. You did extremely well to provide much introductory of the world, battle and its reason. :)

Ooh, thematic action. My favourite type. :D

I appreciate your word choices, however I have to agree with E in that some of it winds up rather flowery, and the story can get lost in its words so to speak. Take the first sentence for example: by the time I got to the end of it, I had trouble working out what you wanted to say and had to reread. The phrases in and amongst themselves are beautiful, but beyond that you're also telling a story that needs to come together in the end. Not a whole lot of sense in having a beginning no-one remembers by the time they get to the end. :)

The ideas you bring out are quite interesting: how the Jedi aren't necessarily as noble as they like to appear, how the differences between them and the Sith are often arbitrary and how both of them are just parts of the world in the end.

The pairs of words, things like "Advantage. Disadvantage" were quite interesting as well. I really like the dichotomy that portrays - and, on the whole, I think those bits are more effective than your longer sentences, though those do set it up for those dichotomies quite nicely. Though not all jedi sabers are red. Yoda's is green. Windu's is purple - and I remember quite a few other greens, just not who they belong to. :D Why leave those out though? Aside from simplicity, there's another layer of symbolism there you could have used.

Interesting ending too; not only does it draw back to the title but also the innate instincts that everyone shares, leading back to that idea that Jedi and Sith aren't too different in the end after all.

So I've got mixed feelings about this guy. On the one hand, I get and appreciate what you're trying to do here - I don't know what words to assign to it, exactly, but I've seen it done before sort of as a stylistic genre, the prose being eloquent and and omnisciently abstract to sort of pull back and /appreciate/ what's going on. I get that you're going for that, and I appreciate that you're going for that, but I'm not completely sold on the execution of it, for one sort of convoluted reason: the phrasing in parts seemed unnecessarily high/'fanceh' in a lot of places (or, counterintuitively, technical in others), and it made the phrasing of the fic feel a little less mature than it has the potential to be.

And that's not to say you did this absolutely horrid job and have no talent and didn't write a single worthwhile sentence because you definitely, definitely did! A couple spots where I felt like you really accomplished your stylistic goal here:

- "As the night befell them, the red and blue of their lightsabers shined brighter than ever, their wielders basking in the deadly glow." (Just phrasing-wise, this conveyed tone really nicely - I really, really strongly get a sense of persistence in this line.)

- "The Jedi and Sith fought, unwavering, unceasing, untiring. The only two forms of sentient life on the planet and they were dedicated to snuffing the other one out." (Great punch you're sneaking in as well at this point.)

- "Even as their bodies grew weaker, the blasts they endured shook them less and less. Their power was leaving them. As was the rain. The last droplet sent its last ripple through the wetland and all had fallen silent." (The choppiness-but-actually-powerful 'leaving them as was the rain' bit I really especially loved in this part.)

But in other places, your wording was still just as well structured as sentences like that, but sort of the vocabulary and/or the arrangement of the vocabulary took away from that effect. Like this bit of one of the paragraphs, for example:

"A slurry of mud and blood. The fluids of the of fallen and bisected soldiers had slowly been spilling into the ground, unhampered by their cauterized wounds. As the battle persisted, its participants were ankles deep in death. But they continued undeterred, unwilling to cease so long as the other stood."

Love your structure here up through 'ground,' but with an exception - 'bisected' is a very technical-sounding word that threw off the rest of the effect of the line a little. Same with 'cauterized' in the next sentence; in some fics/writing styles it would make perfect sense to describe that flat-out, and it'd make perfect sense in dialogue, but you've got sort of this lovely abstract thing going on I mentioned where technical language detracts from the grace you have elsewhere. Then you've got 'unhampered,' which feels a little high-level (maybe this is just personal preference, but when it comes to writing styles like yours, I get a little Vonnegut about it and feel like the graceful effect is heightened when you use relatively simple [i.e., common? not like /simple/ simple] words so that they don't detract from the flow of the language, which is really, really well put together - the fragment at the beginning here was GREAT, did a great job of conveying tone, and especially the last sentence - but there I think your one slight flaw was your use of 'cease,' which again feels out-of-place and not conducive to your flow-y ness. And then 'ankles deep in death' seemed a little cliche because 'death' is such an overly done/repeated huge broad /thing/; as one minor note, I thought you could have done better a bit to pick a more concise word here, since the actual structure of the sentence with that minor tweak would have been even lovelier than you have it now.

So you see why I've got mixed feelings on this. XD Hampered in parts by your exact wording, but structurally very eloquent with the definite potential there to be gorgeous with a few changes to how you're choosing your specific words. Nicely done on the whole, though, and this was a very enjoyable read!

Osetto you have outdone yourself again. One reason I don't like the Old Republic era is because the Jedi are just as bad as the Sith. The only thing different about the two is that one fights for an Empire and the other fights to keep the Republic. This story definitely brought to question "why do soldiers fight in wars?" Why do they stick their necks out for politicians and leaders that should be fighting each other. They leave the necessities of life to fight for someone they probably never met. They should fight for their own piece and happiness, because what else do we live for?

The tense shift in the second paragraph (past to conditional to past again) made little sense, and there were a variety of other errors ("they kept the other's position," "nestled away upon," "the survivors release..." "white robed," etc.). I'm sorry, but I got the impression at times that you were using a thesaurus or using words with which you were unfamiliar.
However, the central idea made the stylistic flaws worth reading. The Star Wars universe is so clearly one of unsettling moral absolutes that it's refreshing to view the Sith and the Jedi as, on some level, the same: despoiling the same planet, hunting one another with the same fury, and ultimately faced with the same choice.
I thought the title drop at the end was well-handled. I usually hate them, but you built up to it well with a series of increasingly similar statements. I particularly enjoyed the paragraph wherein they stop using the Force: "Gone was the discipline and art. All that was left was life and death." It was both chilling and humanizing.

Well, that...was dark. But something about it was poetic.

The battle scenes were very intense, which could only help this story. If the fighting wasn't well written, it would have killed this fic, but fortunately, that wasn't the case.

The final fight was epic, especially considering they both couldn't use the Force. Brutal, too; these guys weren't pulling any punches.

Admittedly, while I do like that the ending wasn't necessarily a Hollywood-happy ending, I would have liked to know what happened next. But ah well, that's why we have imaginations!

This was so friggin awesome! I loved it! The detail you put into this previously untouched world was glorious and I love how you focused on its aftermath at the end of the story rather than simply discarding it in favor of the fight scenes. Normally just a straight fight scene is kind of difficult for me to read without some form of dialogue to make breaks in between or maybe a thought or two going through the characters' heads, but I found it easy to continue reading this epic fight.
You also seemed to make them all appear as equals, not just at the end, but through the entire fight. Everything about them seemed to occur simultaneously with their sabers flickering out, their ships crashing at the same time, and killing each other's forces with equal ease.
"The sounds of blaster fire released their last echo." I liked this line a lot because with an echo, I could practically imagine the silence that settled afterwards and the intensity that follows with the two jedi.
Then you had them both equally covered in the mud and covering the original colors of each of the warriors. This further brought to light the fact that they were both human, they were both individuals, they had similar resolve, and they both had questions to ask themselves (and probably each other at the end). Take away the colors and you search deeper.
Again, I loved it. I loved it a lot. I think you have also helped me with my writing so I can start writing some epic fight scenes. This was a real treat. Great work!

This was pretty good, and I liked the emotion you put into this one-shot.

Now, I'll admit that I'm not a huge fan of metaphors. Sometimes it can be good, like in the conclusion of an epic saga or novel. This story was almost entirely composed of metaphors, and yet, I liked it. Was it a little too much? I think so. But it still worked. The brutal and bleak picture you painted was fantastic.

Objectively speaking, some elements of the plot didn't make sense. I would have expected more artillery, a larger space battle, and less hand-to-hand combat. This would fit with the tone of The Old Republic video game, but as much with an actual and logical military campaign.

That being said, it was good, and I hope you'll write more in the future! May the Force be with you!

- AhsokaNerd

I love the descriptions at the beginning. They paint a very clear picture of this planet in the vastness of space, away from all civilizations.

The descriptions of the space battle and the crash is handled very well. The imagery is wonderful here. I can nearly feel myself falling and being drawn toward the planet. What is very interesting is that this piece seems as if it is written from the planet's viewpoint which is very hard to pull off and yet it is magnificently done.

Imma tell you right now, I really enjoyed reading this. You have talent, you can really speak through metaphor without even specifically writing out that metaphor. The fable of light and dark, both so dogmatic, eventually devolving into something indiscernible from the other, was deep. Really deep. I love this piece because it really speaks about how pointless war is. This quote spoke the whole story for me: 'All they had cared about was ending the other's life and only now did they begin to question why.' Very dramatic, well executed, but a little hint: try not to repeat phrases. I noticed that you used 'gone was/were' a little too frequently. Try shaking it up a little, it'll make your work more interesting. Thanks for writing this! :)

For the WA Review Game:

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Pro's:

1) Your descriptions; and most of your execution of descriptions, are really good and detailed. Not too detailed, but enough to get a clear picture of what's going on, without hearing the actual characters talking.

Example:

Soon, the combatants were covered head to toe in the muck. Gone was the Jedi in white robes. Gone was the Sith in black robes. In their place were two warriors soiled with the stains of death. Through the gray haze of the rainfall, time had lost its meaning. How many minutes or hours the fighters continued to battle they did not know. Nor did they care. Their focus remained solely on bringing the other down. But as tireless as their spirits might have been, even the most powerful of Force-users could reach their limit. Eschewing their sabers, the warriors were forced to draw upon an ever dwindling resource. The Force was infinite. They were not.

2) The grammar/spacing was really good, and it wasn't hard to understand what you were writing. You made new paragraphs when necessary, and made the story flow in a way where you didn't feel the need to re-read a previous sentence.

3) The way you executed your characters around the setting, making them interact with things around them, without actually seeing them do it in First/Third person, really made you interested in what was going on, and I found it (personally) something that made the story stand out and feel unique. Not much else to say about this one, really.

Con's:

1) I'm going to quote your first sentence or two for this one:

Nestled away upon the astral void, amongst countless other specks of dust and rock, a planet drifted and turned as it had for millennia, untouched and unbothered. The green marble basked in the hot radiance of the system's lambent star as its backside wallowed in the cold darkness.

As your first few sentences besides the summary to lure the reader... it seemed a little lack-luster to me. We get a picture of a planet and what it looks like, but it didn't really pull me in and get me interested. I think the story should have kick started sort of like this. (I merged a few lines from first and second paragraph)

Nestled away upon the astral void, amongst countless other specks of dust and rock, a planet drifted and turned as it had for millennia, untouched and unbothered. Not a single one of its occupants walked upon two legs amongst its bountiful hills and forests. It was a place of nature, not a single piece of civilization gracing its graceful beauty. But as the great war expanded, so did its reach.

Oh, and while I'm on the topic: If you chose to do what I did above instead of what you originally did, change the word 'amongst' to another description of it. Repetition of words in the same paragraph isn't a great idea, especially if the sentence they are in, is next to the other.

2) Another quote:

The Jedi, white robed.
The Sith, black robed.
White, black. Light, dark. Blue, red.

I didn't really understand the point of this (and a couple other) lines of the story. It seemed as if you were trying to make a clear but unique description of the scene playing out, but it just made me slightly confused. Why did colors have to be described as that way of story-telling? I felt as if the section was slightly unnecessary, though I do understand WHY you put it there, as well. (My opinions on this is sort of like a double-edged sword...)

3) The questions at the end was good, but it seemed as if there were too many questions. It screams for a second chapter/two-shot. Being a one-shot, it left me with a little empty feeling, as if the story was longer, those questions could be answered. Now, I know this is to keep the reader thinking, but sometimes there's a boundary of inquiry and "this feels like it's missing a part of the story."

Fandom blind!

Okay, despite having absolutely no clue as to what I should feel for the characters, or even, who these people are, I can already imagine the battle in my head. Reminds me of something from my fandom. Anyways, I'll get to that later.

Yay for lush lands being destroyed! The way you described the barren place, well, barren of humans, kind of made me feel bad for it when humans invaded. It was stripped of all its greenery, and it was no longer peaceful. It marked war; a place for deaths. It really reminds me of how people come in and destroy parts of nature, but you know that already, so I don't have to go into details. But still, it is sad that a planet of beauty became a planet of war, kind of. You know, it marked the signs of a hectic battle.

From reading the other reviews, I found out that Jedi's robes are apparently white. Though, I'm not going to go on a rant. Why would I when I barely know the canon? Anyways, I brought it up because you changed canon to get a wonderful symbolism that carries out through the rest of the piece. Now I get a whole lot of light and dark references from one of my fandoms (same one that the fight reminded me of), and it's currently a bit tedious, but you gently brought it up, left it alone, and that was it. Though, you didn't really leave it alone - it was woven into the fic. And now I'm curious if darkness has any important meaning in your canon. You mentioned how neither the Jedi nor Sith had to kill each other. They were simply carrying out orders. And in the end, they didn't do it, even though there was that perfect opportunity. But one represented light and the other represented darkness. So... how does that play a part in your fandom?

Okay, now it's time for the battle. Honestly, I really don't have much to say about it. Fighting in an unoccupied place is normal - why get those not involved hurt? And it makes complete sense for the planet to be stripped completely of its greenery (and I already talked about that). I guess to give an actual review of this part though, I guess I'll say that it was vivid. Your descriptions came through, making an easy read for someone who's fandom blind. Though, if I was to comment on one thing, then I'd have to choose the lightsabers going out. It shows that these items can be useless at times. And it also shows that the Jedi and Sith aren't quitters. They figured out that they don't work anymore, no use in trying. And instead of calling it quits, they decided to use their fists. Hand-to-hand combat is still used, though only as a last resort. Yet, it is funny that they used their last resort to hurt someone that they didn't really want to kill. Though, they were still following orders, so I guess that's why.

Anyways, in terms of writing style, I see you isolate what we really need to know. And that's a good thing. That's what I remember because it was powerful, and that's what was carried throughout the fic.

Well, that's all I have to say about this fic. You did a wonderful job, and I was able to follow through. Really helps that only the basic terms where used. Saved me from getting extremely confused.