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Juicy, pectin-rich, and totally edgy
Aster Invictus: the retrospective
When I hit submit on this story, I was pretty proud of it. Making finals was a pleasant surprise, and even now, I'm satisfied. It has a complete story arc in about 540 words, and it's also actually kind of cool. I can't wait to touch this up and expand it for Fimfiction.
That said, it's got some flaws:
1) The prose is terse to the point of curtness. Part of me wants to blame this on the minific format. After all, everyone knows that stories often get too ambitious for the minific format, and end up suffering as a result. Yet I had plenty of breathing room within the word count. So this likely can't be fixed with the minific panaceo of "add more words." I think this exacerbates the story's other major problems, as well.
2) The ending isn't ambiguous enough. What I wanted out of the ending was unclearness over whether the narrator actually was the chosen one or whether she'd just gone off the deep end. That's not what I got; everyone unanimously thought that she was crazy. I really should have seen this one coming and patched it up with a line like "'No!' said the Princess clad in friendship. 'You're good enough!'" There's certainly room to maneuver here. But that may not be the best choice, because...
3) The ending needs reconsideration entirely. I don't recall what the original goal I had in mind was, but the ending as you see it was literally decided on as it was being written. If nothing else, the whole possible mental illness thing is probably not in very good taste.
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>>Not_A_Hat I think the central idea here is wrestling with the concept of "the chosen one." Like, can the chosen one ever be horribly flawed? If she fails to live up to the most important virtues, was she ever really chosen? If not, doesn't she have to live an immaculate life?
>>georg Invicta? I was under the impression that aster is a masculine noun in the nominative case. At any rate, you've sniffed me out. My Latin education consists of reading the first two chapters of the Wikibook on it.
>>Bad Horse I'm amused that your comment basically amounts to "this story is good because it's a story."
Everyone else, thank you for your comment: >>FanOfMostEverything, >>Trick_Question, >>Monokeras, >>CoffeeMinion, and >>TheCyanRecluse. And to those who read but didn't comment, thank you too.
The punchline is really, really flat. So's the rest of the story, I'm sorry to say. The coupon disclaimer is easily the funniest part; I got a chuckle from the dakimakura joke.
I don't get it. It's making use of that pie warfare gag from Over a Barrel, so it's inherently going to be a goofball story, but it's also coming across as semi-serious. That just won't do when pie assassins are involved. In other words, I don't think this is zany enough.