Congrats on another well done story, Pinoy! Your pacing unfolded at a luxurious pace--given an expansion of the story, I’d love to see what you do with the “don’t look back” clause. The necessity of removing love in order to also remove pain is a fascinating idea in our current world climate, and it’s something the underworld setting would be just perfect for. I sincerely hope you flesh this out for fimfic--it’s a feature boxer waiting to pop!

>>Baal Bunny
No worries homie. If you feel like sharing once you're done PM it to me and I'd be happy to read it :)

>>Crafty
I'm in this time! Got a real cooker for this round 😁

WOO exactly what I needed. I've been editing so much lately I have barely had any time to write. Let's do this!

>>Heavy_Mole
>>PinoyPony
>>Baal Bunny

WOOO, thank you all for your kind critique! And congratulations to GroaningGreyAgony and Monokeras on the well-deserved medals.

As always, I'm disappointed in the lack of material 750 words can cover. I'm definitely looking forward to elaborating on this concept for eventual fimfic publication. This concept draws a great deal of its vibe from GaPJaxie's Third Wheel saga, and though a more minimalistic approach helped me fit in the word count requirement, I'm not sure it'll work so well to explain away why our swiss cheese-looking bug friend is no longer encased in stone.

And then, suddenly, Applejack!

I'm unsure what to say about this. It feels like it was lifted from a larger fic. There may be some late-season reference I'm missing (and if that's the case, then accept my humble apology for my ignorance of canon), but right now the Applejack appearance seems too random to lend any weight to the final line.

As a musician myself, I can identify with Coloratura's worry of being washed up. However, I believe you can do better than nightmares as the way those insecurities manifest. There's promise in the wrong notes-portion of your story. Maybe those latent feelings can come out in the form of her trying to sing a famously challenging piece from her old repertoire only to find she can no longer hit the high notes. Or something else like that. The emotional core is there. If you choose to continue this, your job should be to frame it in a convincing way. Thank you for submitting!

What beautifully playful prose! Portraying character through style is tricky to do, as I find it so often comes across as campy (at least in my own writing it does 😅). You nailed it!

Excellently constructed! The pacing on this entry felt really strong--breakneck, but firmly in control all the way through. Really fun read.

Hype train rolling!!! Can't wait to participate this time around.

Hooray for minifics fitting into my schedule! Looking forward to writing with you all.

Delightfully grim. I'm getting a Watchmen-esque vibe from this piece. The hand-scrawled look and the choice of pencil as your medium was an excellent call--really drives home the underpinning of madness from the story.

WOAH what a twist. I'm so blown away, no pun intended. The buildup is perfectly inconspicuous, the ending deliciously absurd, those last words ultra tasteful. Well done!

Your prose reminds me somewhat of Pynchon for its meandering, inevitable qualities. I'm just not sure what to get out of this. Two annoyed people meet, and their meeting results in their becoming happier? I'll revisit this once the round is over and see if time illuminates what my first passes could not.

For the story being as short as it is and covering as many years as it does, I never felt rushed. The pace was lightning quick, to be sure, but every idea gets presented logically enough to hold itself together. And the sheer insanity of the concept definitely helps here.

Re-reading the first line after finishing the story sent me into fits. Well done!

>>Rao
>>Baal Bunny
Thank you both for your kind and helpful critiques! This is definitely getting a rewrite. Baal, I apologize sincerely for causing you so much frustration. I didn't realize that even though the deadline said the 17th, it was in the very early morning of the 17th, so I freaked out and wrote the whole thing in one go and straight up forgot to resolve that massive plot point. Lmao.

As for the weather, I'm not really sure what that represents. In the moment I thought it would be interesting to portray the passage of time as a changing of the seasons. I like the vibe it establishes but I'm still unsure whether it actually serves the story or not. Hopefully the rewriting process will reveal something.

Thank you both, again :)

Captivating intro! The language, the interjections, the excepts, everything worked super well to establish a vibe of slowly-buikding panic reminiscent of Eakin's Hard Reset. I was a little disappointed with the ending though--specifically, how cadence was essentially able to talk the baddie into submission. Kinda gave me a "swiper no swiping" vibe. If you choose to publish this off-site, I would love to see some additional action at the finale to match the intensity you cultivated in the intro.

I'll echo Baal and congratulate you on a really interesting and unique piece of POV work! Personal bias against this matrix-y kind of story aside, your flow was smooth and your tone was really engaging. Well done!

Really interesting choice for a main character! I had difficulty slipping into Sheeleel's point of view initially, mainly because I couldn't picture what exactly she was. From the first few paragraphs, the descriptive words I got were "wings" and "beak," and then later "blue fluff," so with hindsight it's obvious she's a bird, but it was kinda tough to tell at first. It was even more difficult when you consider the other character in this first scene is a mushroom, and I, not being a shroomologist, had no idea what an annulus was.

BUT, all that said, I think the elements themselves still work well to serve the narrative in an interesting way. I would have liked to see them presented in a more straightfoward way at first, is all. Birds contemplating death--such a cool vibe! Thank you for sharing.

Very interesting colors/textures! Bearing in mind I have no experience with photography, it seems to me this is an example of the subject matter taking precedence over the presentation of said subject matter. It looks like this could have been a snapchat my sister sent me. It doesn't give the impression of an intentional piece of photographic art. Still, good eye for spotting this. It's an interesting bit of texture-play, to be sure!

WOAH this is a ton to unpack. I absolutely loved this. The style is perfectly pithy, and the "took her out back" line reads like a shot in the head. That is the high point for me, literarily speaking. All this amazing technology, cloning, the grim reaper, replacement lives, coding memories, then--boom, take her out back like Old Yeller.

Really well done! Thank you for sharing!

That first bit about the professor only working for tenure and the AI programmers only interested in code had me in tears. Very Vonnegut-esque. The ending is something I see a lot of in stories with AI. The best way I can describe it is, the AI is so intelligent it achieves both motherly know-it-allness and childish nativity all at once. It's either that or the AI goes full Terminator. I prefer the former, as it's often more illuminating.

That's what I thought of this story, too. Illuminating without being full of itself. Very nice! Thank you for sharing.

Big ideas presented here! I like your ambition. And I thought that, at least from a literary standpoint, the ending was a fun snappy little slap in the face.

Not being a historian, I may be wrong here, but I would have to believe that given the scale of a major battle like Kursk, at least a few other primary sources would have written about it enough to fill in some gaps. So I don't know how well that works as an example in this particular sense. Without taking any stabs at your "history is written by the victors" and "we lose a great deal in the sands of time" arguments, I thought this was solidly written, if not a bit on the "talking heads" side of things. That's to be expected with a 750-word cap, so no points docked there as far as I'm concerned.

Thank you for sharing!

I will always award points in my book when an author goes for something daring. This was an ABSOLUTE FULL SEND of a story.
The narrative vibe you achieve fells very detached, making the protagonist's connection with his wife seem equally distant. I don't think that's a bad thing, though. It comes off to me like the shame of his act, and the addict-like lengths with which he goes to maintain a connection with her even after death, has overshadowed his love for her. Again--not sure that's what you were going for, but that's what I got. And I like it! It's freaky, shameless, and punchy. Thank you for sharing!

This prompt is striking! I'll be damned if I don't get something in for this round. Best of luck everyone!

Was the shadow falling over half the drawing intentional? Like, the bottom half is the night so it needs to be in the shade. If so, that's an excellent touch!