His Man Stanley

brilliant. love the mixture of empire and space exploration, and the dialogue flows rly well. sets up all the elements of the story and they come together nicely, but also in quite an unexpected way. keeps you guessing. really enjoyed it though!

one thing might be to put commas to mark when characters are thinking, it got a bit confusing at times. apart from that it's v.good though.

Yes, this worked for me.

However, I have seen sharper portrayals of the very special tone of voice of Victorian (or neo-victorian) British Empire. Some P.G. Wodehouse, perhaps? Or maybe Ministry Of Space, a very cool alternate-history graphic novel. Seems to me you might have been inspired by the world of The Diamond Age, which is of course a very cool depiction of a future victorian empire. 

Suggest reading up on any of those, and maybe touching up a bit on the British dialouge. 

Also, dystopia. 

The British Empire during the height of its reign was quite the dystopic place, if you were a subject or living in the sphere of influence. The immense power combined with the arrogance of the british 'master race' make for some very dark depictions of life. Maybe you should touch on thoise, to up the dystopian part of the story. 

Hope that helps.

SPOILERS

That was a nasty trick.  A nasty, nasty trick.  An obvious one, but a nasty trick none the less.  This is the kind of story that keeps me smiling, anticipating what I know is coming.  There's just something about an apparent underdog turning out to be anything but.

You should run through it editing one more time.  There were a few things that seemed off but didn't trip me up too badly, and one thing I noticed on page 8:

"I show of force like that will defer them from taking measures against us."

I think that first word is supposed to be 'A'

Excellent Work!

This was fun. I enjoyed the pompous humans and their total hubris in not realizing you cannot just go conquer any old people you want, they are often more powerful than you can imagine. Like Arlane, I knew it was coming but I looked forward to it the entire time I read it, wondering how it was going to show up. A little editing would do this story a lot of good in terms of grammer and all that but otherwise, great story. Thumbs up!

Hi Vernillat

This was to politacal for my taste. I couldn´t connect with the characters or what they were doing. But I see that its getting some very positive responses, which goes to show that we all have our different tastes.

I´m sorry, to be the sour grape here and wish you the best of luck with your writing.

I like the story arc you have here, it's very neat and fits perfectly within the limitations.  Webb as a character is very fun in his obvious superiority and pomposity, very Victorian general.  The obvious flaw of why have Stanley as a servant / man's man is covered very neatly by his character - it is completely believable that Webb would overlook the dangers (very Grand Moff Tarkin).  My only slight negative here is that the ending is just a bit too obvious, though I liked the part with Stanley and the violent demonstrator, it's a neat little way to try and play with the expectations.  The difficulty with this is that without a voice, it's very hard to demonstrate Stanley's loyalty.  The ending may be a touch on the obvious side, but that's not to say it isn't satisfying.  This kind of revenge tale is satisfying - it's always good to see such a pompous character realise what his arrogance has helped bring about.