This is the most Majin Syeekoh story I've ever read. Well-written and absurd and fun.

I was a big fan of the writing here, very stylish. Maybe a little too stylish if anything, because it took me a second read-through to fully get to grips with the train of logic going on here. Excellent use of an unreliable narrator. There are probably parts in the narration I would cut/change for readability but otherwise this is very high on my slate. Kudos, author.

This was cute and clever and strongly in-character. Creative way to tell a story with a short wordcount, nice use of formatting. Good stuff.

Tbh though, I think >>UndomeTinwe 's comment might have swayed this story's position in my rankings, 'cause fucking hell Mel you made me lose my shit.

Really big fan of this story. The concept is interesting and makes sense, the characters are well-defined within a short wordcount. The writing quality is a tiny bit spotty – the hook isn't great and is a bit overly telly and the dialogue is a little dry in places – but when the writer hits his stride, the back-and-forth is fantastic and the narration is really great.

In particular this part:

She always liked it rough. She needed it rough. He would be aching in the morning, but everything else that came after was rewarding. She was a particularly tranquil soul in her afterglow. Sometimes, she would giggle beneath his touch. Sometimes, she would even purr under his tender caresses as he would chuckle under hers.

Sometimes, she wouldn’t.

Good stuff, writer.

So yeah, this story was mine. The red light in the inspirational prompt picture combined with an idea seed I'd had for a few weeks and manifested into this strange, meat-punk(?) setting that you see before you. It took me until like 14 hours before the deadline to figure out the best way to write it, wrote the whole thing in 7 hours, then went to sleep.

It was a lot of fun. I think this story might actually be the best thing I've ever written, but apparently it wasn't up people's alley based on the results.

>>RB
Re: Skye's origins, I intended for it to be read as "she was so young when she came to Viscera that she doesn't remember what the Outside is like" thereby implying that she might as well have been born there. I guess I could have just said she was born in the meat and it would have had the same effect and been less confusing.

Re: her age, I mention in the text that it's been about three decades. So she's around 30.

>>Ranmilia
This comment I really don't like. I was never attempting to make the whole monster thing "make sense". It's not meant to be a hard sci-fi story. It's more like a fantasy setting that's slightly sci-fi-ish, if anything. And I don't see how the backstory "subtracts from the absurdity"? It's literally a giant monster dying onto a continent. Yes, it's absurd, because that's essentially the point. But even then, yeah, I can get your point. Maybe if the Outside wasn't mentioned at all, I could embrace how weird it is further, and that was one angle I considered taking with it when planning it.

It's the second half of this comment that I don't get at all. You're asking me to "explain less" so I can preserve the feeling of an absurd "B-movie" setting, as you described it, but then the things you actually want me to explain are just kind of... not really that important? Or at least explaining them would just detract from what I was trying to do, in my mind.

Are the zombies trying to restart Viscera's heart and bringing her back to life?

Yes, quite obviously.

Is there some sort of sporelike infection going on, spreading to the protagonist through the tear in her suit?

I purposefully didn't explain that. Up to you.

How did her parents get involved with whatever's going on?

See above.

What exactly is the extent of human civilization in Viscera, where are the boundaries and maps, what's known and unknown?

Why do you want to know? If it was important I would have put it in there, but I'm not going to explain it in a story when I don't need to.

Has no one else ever made the obvious connection between patients raving about heartbeat-like sounds and maybe something happening with Viscera's heart?

Maybe? Maybe they went down to explore and ended up in the same situation. Maybe Skye's mother mentioning of it in the story is the only instance of it. Maybe most people just do what Skye's dad did and disappear without a word. In any case this seems kinda nitpicky. Draw your own conclusions.

What are the rest of the eggheads doing, does Ego have no oversight or what?

Draw your own conclusions. If what the other Brainers were doing specifically is important beyond what I mentioned/implied, I would have mentioned it.

Why does Skye restart the heart???

I can answer this, too. But I'm not fucking going to. Figure it out based on the story.

In general, though, I do think that I messed up by not providing more information behind the characters and their relationship that makes what they're doing feel impactful. So I'll accept the general gist of what you were getting at as valid, but the actual specific things you want me to explain are just... ???

>>Fenton

Sorry you couldn't figure it out.

>>Baal Bunny

They need the suits because the deeper parts of the body necessitate them. If you aren't going down into the thick of it, you don't need them. I figured that was implied.

And how does the monster's blood flow if its heart isn't beating?

Good question.

And how is it that in thirty years, no one's ever thought, "Hey, maybe we should find the monster's heart and keep an eye on it"?

Maybe they did.

>>Scramblers and Shadows

Thank you! I do agree that this story definitely could have been more. I'm definitely considering turning this into a novel, or something, just because I felt like I didn't do the setting justice in this piece. And as above, I do agree that I could have given more background and weight to the characters and their relationships.

>>AndrewRogue

You definitely have a point re: the pulling in different directions. There's one or two big changes I think I'd make to this story as-is, and then if I had more time to write a longer story, there's definitely a couple things I would have included to provide that sense of the setting that you might have missed out on. The zombies were functional, but yeah, I know a better way I could have handled them for when I ever return to writing a story in this setting again.

I really like the writing in this story! It's very setting-appropriate and full of character. And the premise is neat, has a very comfy adventure feeling to it, but beyond that, I was quite disappointed with how this story ended.

Like, I get that it makes sense that he just dies/disappears and that's that? But I think I would have liked it more if there was at least the implication of there being something deeper to it beyond what the characters already believe or don't believe about it. Some hint of the fantastical nature of it being deeper than it appears at first glance. That might just be a personal gripe – but the ending just felt flat to me, is all, and the fact that the members of the crew changed their minds so quickly removed a lot of potential tension for it.

Honestly, the lack of tension or like, stakes in this story is actually kind of a problem. There's no real value given to going over the edge, besides that the Captain wants to and that they'll be remembered for it, and then the crew turn on him on a dime anyway. It all just feels a bit pointless, and the ending doesn't help that. I would have loved some more details about the world and the characters and the nature of the edge – stories, maybe, or some more details from the journal about it. As is, everything lacks weight, and the conflict at the climax makes sense but is short-lived and has nothing really supporting it beyond the obvious foreshadowing earlier.

Also, what >>Haze said – the concept of going "o'er the edge" really should have been established pretty quickly, like in the first paragraph maybe, and then expanded from there. That's the crux of the story, after all, and it would have given the opener a bit more of a kick to it.

>>Ranmilia

My comment was referring to Bubbles, not this story.

For the record, author, I felt this story was really damn solid. Loved the narration to bits, and I kinda felt like the lack of setting the other users commented on was actually probably intentional.

Yeah, no. I tried reading this, but the writing is probably the lowest quality I've seen so far, with lots of telly language and just incorrect, awkward construction. If the opener wasn't so poor, it might have been more forgivable, but I'm afraid I couldn't get very far into this story. I had trouble following what was going on, and the ideas and characters here didn't really grab me either. The dialogue, too, seemed really forced, crude, and just generally clunky.

For example:

The next evening, when he came back, she was gone.

“Fuck! Click that fucking switching you moron,” Gary screamed to the doctor. “It’s already past 260! He’s gonna die!”

“I DID!” the medic yelled back. “He should’ve pressed his switch and gone up. What’s wrong with him?” He looked at the screen. 270 and counting up. “Wait, what’s this? What the fuck is he doing?”

This just doesn't feel like actual dialogue. It feels like bad dialogue from a bad movie. And I can't even really tell what they're trying to say? Like, argh. I'm having trouble even engaging with the events of the story because of this.

Sorry I don't have a more complete review for you, but this generally just needs a hell of a lot of work.

WOW. Okay. So, this story is really, really interesting to me.

I kinda went back and forth on what I thought of the writing style – in some ways it makes it difficult to read, but overall I can't help but feel it gives the piece sooo much authenticity. The terminology and the descriptions of the rituals and the gods and the tower and the cloud-mountain – it drew me into the world magnificently.

I'm actually having a lot of trouble with organising what I think about this story, and it's very late, so I think I'll come back to it tomorrow and see if I can provide some more helpful feedback. I reckon this story might be among the more controversial of the entries, just because I'm not sure how people will take the style. It's quite jarring to begin with, but as it settles into a rhythm it gets a lot smoother. The fact that it inherently provides a bit of an obstacle in the reading of it might just mean it might just be better off with a more traditional style.

Not sure. Definitely one of my personal favourites of the stories, I think, though, if only just for the thought that went into this. Like, holy hell.

Hmm. I didn't really like this story.

The narration and the dialogue is functional, with little-to-no mechanical errors, but the style is so... bland, and quite tell-y in a few places. None of the characters have any real personality, and the premise itself, while simple, is also just straight up not-interesting to me. It just feels like a series of events that have happened, with no sense of urgency or conflict or intrigue.

Really not a fan of this story at all.

Ohey, I'm the first one to comment on this one!

So, I think the title is exceedingly appropriate – this really is just an ordinary day in someone's life, straight up. And... It's really quite engaging, and kinda sad, but kinda hopeful at the same time. And oh my god, I have these sorts of weird inner recursive monologues inside my brain all the time. That's the real power of this piece, I feel that it's very relatable, not just to me, but maybe to a lot of people, and I think that's a remarkable thing, even if the core premise is very simple.

The writing is suitably scattered but in a neat, concise way, with recurring loops of thought poking in and out as appropriate. There's a couple of points where I think that the narration uses a few too many complex sentences or words that don't really fit with the picture we're being painted, at least in my opinion, but that's only really a small nitpick.

I honestly don't have much to say about this one. A simple story told well. I rather like it.

Also, was this written by a fellow Brit? 'Cause holy hell, it's pretty damn impressive if it wasn't.

This is a very interesting piece. The first thing that struck me about it, sadly, is that the construction of the prose leaves something to be desired, with several awkward phrasings and cluttered paragraphs here and there. But what I do really like is how the author layered on so many evocative sensory details – especially the line about the smell and the "Eau d'Elevator." It was kind of perfect.

As a story, I felt like this was a solid standalone vignette – the dialogue between the characters feels quite natural and interesting. The emotions at play come across well, and there's a lot of personality here – the way the protagonist describes the art, in particular, was very interesting to me, and did a good job at portraying how the protagonist thinks.

All in all, I don't think this piece was anything special, but it showed a lot of character and the prose was certainly very readable past the slightly cluttered introductory paragraphs. I really liked the ending lines too.

So yeah, I think this succeeded very well in what it was trying to do, but in the end I don't think it's much more than just a solid character piece, and personally I think more highly of more adventurous stories.

Wow, I really like this story! It's bursting at the seams with character and comedic charm. The writing is spotless, incredibly precise and allows Moira and Casey to really shine with their personalities. It's really great.

The spider was very amusing (the thing about spiders surfing the web put a big ol' smile on my face) but I actually feel kinda sad that the weirdness of a glass spider made in a lab kinda started and ended at, "it can talk". I think I would have liked this story a lot more if the glass spider was more... alien? Spider-like? Like, a peek into the mindset of a spider made out of glass that can tap into the internet and stuff, that would be really cool. As it stands, it's just kind of a weird and funny thing, which I guess is fine. It functions well within the story. But I can't help but feel like this story was mostly a clever title with enough content to justify the title being there – the story has a glass spider who talks about something metaphysical, so the title "works", I suppose. And it definitely fits the prompt picture well, for what that's worth.

I guess that's the thing really – I hate saying this because I hear it all the time about my own work and it never feels that constructive – I really feel like this story needed more meat on its bones to make it memorable. As it is, I'd say it's super solid, and very charming, but it never really made the jump to being a truly great piece.

So, first story of the round for me, and it's off to a great start, because this is excellent! The writing and narration is exceedingly competent, very controlled and engaging. That's the thing I really like about this.

The setting for the story is interesting, very subtle and fairy-tale-like, with the mentions of Fae and Bearfolk and all sorts. I think what I like the most is that, like the writing itself, the author manages to give across the tone and some intriguing pieces of information that give the world a sense of scale in a very controlled manner. I really like the YA fiction kind of tone for the setting, and it ties into the art piece very well. Also, the texture of the imagery of the bone stairs and the skull – really neat.

Honestly, the story is so simple and straightforward in what it sets out to accomplish that I can't really think of anything I can point to that I really dislike about it. Although, actually, I kind of dislike Akistere, mostly because he blathers a lot about what's going on and what happened in the past, and then the whole conflict is resolved super quickly and easily. I would have really loved this story if the plot had been developed into something more intricate – maybe Akistere is only barely capable of talking when they find him, as it was established that ghosts don't say much because it's difficult for them, and the main characters work out what happened to him mostly by themselves, through the skeleton they're exploring and some more worldbuild-y moments?

Or, alternatively, the story could be more dark and intense, in a kinda fitting fairy-tale way, if the author had taken the implication that Akistere was trying to Stranger Danger the kids and made him into a straight-up antagonist, and the environment itself would maybe take on an even more sinister vibe. I think there's potential in a longer story with that kind of premise. It would certainly lead to a more... deserved conclusion? A more satisfactory one.

As a small, nitpicky note, I'm really not a fan of the first line? It doesn't hook me like it should, it feels very weak.

Overall, though, I really liked what the author managed to do with this story in such a neat, concise manner through some very professional writing, but I do think that as a story it doesn't have a super solid, engaging conflict that interests me. I think there was potential for something much more engaging, and as it stands I don't think there was anything that really changed for the characters from the beginning to the end, and that's not a good thing for something that's intended to be a functional short story and not just a vignette.

This is a really neat photo. Very appropriate, and I like the clothes and the spilled booze in the bottom corner.

I agree with Fenton in that I'm not sure it's superb as a prompt for an OF round, but I think the art itself is lovely, and I love that it's upside down, as if you could "fall" down into space. I think it's really neat.

This is a really cool concept!

oh hey, i didn't notice there's discussion threads right on the site now. das cool

Good luck to everyone, gonna be my first writeoff in forever.