Alright, so here's another comedic entry, which is usually where my reviewing skills fall flat and where the other reviewers have more valuable insight to provide than yours truly. I will say though, this is probably my favorite comedy of this round, mostly because I found Thyme as a character to be well-defined enough for me to truly sympathize with what he's going through. The first paragraph alone immediately establishes Thyme's background, personality, and motivation, which shows just how well-crafted the story is in general.

Sorry I can't contribute much to your story this time around. I think it's great as it is, really. Keep up the good work!

Thanks for writing, and good luck!

It's pretty uncommon to have an entry in these here WriteOffs that presents itself as an atmospheric piece right out the gate. I can't say I've seen many in the short time I'm here so I'm always up for reading another one that swings by unannounced, and while I do like the concept that it is gunning for over here, of which the gist of it was already mentioned by my fellow reviewers before me, I think ultimately this entry falls a little flat on really hammering home the mood it's trying to convey.

Before getting into why that is, I would like to add to the commendations on the writing in general. As the others have pointed out, the first line alone was impeccable. The slow unveiling of the protagonist's world view that followed soon after was really nice, even if was made a little murky by the shifting of the tenses littered all around. I didn't particularly mind it that much, though the entry would definitely fare better to stick to a singular tense, maybe go with past perfect continuous for the flashbacks if need be.

Now, here's the part where the mental ramblings in my head are compiled into a pretty long dissertation of why this piece didn't really work out for me in the end.

The first time coming off from this story, I found myself questioning why this particular entry didn't leave me enthused despite it being a story that should be in my wheelhouse. I had been pretty sure it was not the tenses, as I found that even though they did bother me in my initial readings, they didn't really do anything to my experience beyond muddying the waters a little. After a couple more reads, I can confidently state that this piece suffered, in multiple fronts, a lack of focus. That's not to say that the piece is not focused at all; I just think that in some respects, the scope does need to be narrower to really deliver on the emotional front.

Right away from the title, it's pretty damn clear that cicadas are going to have a hand in portraying the theme of this story. That's pretty much proven to be true on the first sentence, with swathes of it covering the remainder of the entry later on. However, also in that first sentence alone, I could pull out two prospective routes that this story could've gone down:



Looking at it, this tells me that the story would either be about a) the protagonist's relationship with his father, or b) the nostalgia of youth and the acceptance of aging. When I continued reading it, the focus seems to be placed on the father, up until halfway through the fourth paragraph, when we realize that the protagonist is actually sitting on a rocking chair and reflecting on life, in which it suddenly shifts to the other option on the table. The consequent paragraphs seem to rebound between the two ideas, yet they never really do it in the way that plays each other off. Instead, at times, they seem to be blindsiding each other.

That's not to say that these ideas couldn't work with each other somehow. In fact, I can definitely see a way to really tie together his father's advice with his impending denouement. Honestly, I'd be impressed if it was pulled off neatly and would probably throw it up at the top of my slate if that was the case, especially considering the time frame that this had to be written in. I suspect that even the more masterful writers on here, even those with published works underneath their belt, would have a lot of trouble making these two concepts work. In a way, I can definitely give kudos to your ambition, dear Author. Your execution, not so much.

On top of that, I think there also needs to be more clarity on whether this is actually a character piece or one based on mood. With the way everything is framed and structured, I'm inclined to think that this is an unraveling of our protagonist, yet when I squint deeper into the scenes and look at the word choices shouldering the entry, it does seem to heavily indicate the latter. I particularly don't mind having our protagonist here to be some abstraction of an aging farmer if that were the case, but if I'm judging it as a character piece, the vague portrayal of our protagonist would definitely pose as a major issue.

Furthermore (yes, there is a furthermore), I think the usage of cicadas in this story could definitely be utilized better. Right now, the cicadas really only serve as a conduit between the protagonist and his father rather than to present some cohesive theme running through the course of the story. I get the feeling that there is an attempt to do so, as I keep seeing all the callbacks to the cicada's husks and the loudness of their singing, yet they never really do anything beyond being presented as fodder for the protagonist's father to talk to him. I do understand that the conversations the protagonist has with his father regarding the cicadas are important to him, as evidenced by how disappointed he was when he found out his father had no recollection of them. I just wished that the cicadas bring something more tangible beyond that.

Ultimately, I definitely admire what this piece is striving for but again, I just think it lacked the focus in many fronts to actually engage and enrapture me as I believe it was trying to do. Nevertheless, a commendable effort on your part, dear Author. Hopefully this review helps you going forward.

Thanks for writing, and good luck!

So, this is something that's undeniably different from the usual minific fare, and I'm always on board to give bold experimental pieces the kudos they deserve. So good on you for taking that risk and going with something bold!

Now, I want to make sure that it doesn't sound like I'm backtracking on my praise, but I need to be honest and say that I'm not sure the piece as a whole worked for me the way you intended. But I actually don't think it's because of the gimmick—I would say that the biggest issue that I had was with information reveal and payoff.

This story felt really short to me, and not just because you're about two hundred words away from the word cap. When you take a look at this piece on a whole, not very much actually happens. Our primary narrator has an internal dispute with two other personalities, and relents to their cajoling, and that's pretty much everything. I think you might want to ask yourself, "what is the reader getting out of this?" From my perspective, the most intriguing part of the story was to learn about the other voices' motivations and intentions, but that never really gets explored. In fact, as soon as the reader figures out what the general situation is, there's virtually nothing left for us to learn.

This piece seems to try to set its conflict around the actual decision of the primary narrator to let go, but that just doesn't come across as satisfying to me. I know essentially nothing about any of these three entities, so I find it hard to be invested in the fact that one of them is giving power to the other. If you want this to be the crux of your story, then you really need to expand on something to make the reader care a little more about which personality is in the driver's seat. Show us what the stakes of this decision are.

If this is just supposed to be more of a concept piece rather than an emotional one, then I think there needs to be more information. Because for idea pieces, information is the payoff, so the fact that we're getting so little of it makes it hard to feel satisfied with the story as a whole.

So essentially, my advice would be to ask yourself what you'd want the reader to gain from reading this. What do you want the reader to feel? Then, I think it'd be a good idea to start from there and work on developing the payoff a little more, either by giving the reader more food for thought to chew on, or by providing more tangible emotional stakes. As things are right now, it just kind of feels like the story isn't really trying very hard to do anything with its premise and gimmick, and I'm left wondering how I was supposed to react.

I think this was pretty good story, but an awful minific. The pacing was good and everything, but there is a lot of info that could be built upon. I'm just saying this story doesn't seem to match this category.

This isn't going to affect the ranking of this at all.

Truthfully, I think this would better as a short story or something. There are so many ideas in here, and I want to see a longer version of it.

Okay, so I think I've heard this concept/premise before, with the whole expansion-of-hell/thermodynamics thing, so unfortunately that did take some of the wind out of the sails of this one.

This is another story that I'm having trouble understanding the payoff of. It feels rather... expected in the way it handles its tropes and subversions. The "all lawyers go to hell" gag is a good example of this, along with the "tricking the devil" thing. Both of these concepts are hardly new, and both of them are played pretty much beat-for-beat the way you'd expect them to.

In the end, I can't help but think that this story sticks too closely to the prompt and art. I know this is going to sound harsh, but for me, the piece didn't really try to do anything that the picture didn't already convey, outside of the thermodynamics joke which was already spoiled for me. So, it was kind of hard for me, personally, to feel like my reading experience payed off.

So I think my advice would be, to try to diversify your ideation a little, if that makes any sense at all. Now, I'm not going to demand an M. Night Shyamalan twist at the end of everything you write, but I think that at least a hint of the unexpected can really go a long way, especially in these OF mini rounds, where building expectations is so paramount because it's pretty much the only thing you have the time/space to do.

I hope that kind of made sense, and I hope I didn't come across too harshly. Thank you for submitting, and best of luck!

It's a simple story, and I think it is a good thing. This is good for a minific, and what should be done for such. I've read some other minifics that are trash minifics. Mostly because they would do a lot better as short stories and such. The stories do end up feeling a bit off, but aren't terrible.


Truthfully, I agree with >>No_Raisin. We need to know more about this version of Hell.

I really can't find anything wrong with it, so good job! I can't wait to see what you write next.

Okay, I really liked the idea of this, with how it takes the spirit of Spike Jonze's Her and makes it super cute and also kinda creepy.

Now, I honestly don't have a lot of suggestions to make, outside of high-level, conceptual stuff that I usually don't really like to give (because it skirts into personal preference territory). But since that's all I've got, that's what you'll get. :P

I don't think this story really works that well as a twist piece, because on top of being a twist that we've all seen before, it'd also be a very difficult balancing act to make the twist feel foreshadowed without giving it away. As it is right now, it kind of feels obvious. But it can just as easily feel like it comes out of left field, if overcorrected.

So my suggestion is, to hell with the twist. Let the audience know from the beginning that Rosie is a robot, and then still make her relationship with Brad as cute as it is. The story's biggest strength already is how it juxtaposes Rosie's artificiality with the genuine-feeling nature of her relationship with Brad, so I think you should really just go overt with the whole deal. That way, you can sprinkle in even more moments of Brad interrupting Rosie's cuteness with Alexa-commands, highlighting the contrast between the two sides of their relationship.

(As an aside, if you've seen the movie, Ex Machina, there's a moment where the film's Steve Jobs analogue says that the next step of the Turing Test is for a human to know that they are talking to a robot, but for them to end up thinking of them as human anyway. That's kind of what I think this piece should go for, with how the audience relates to Rosie.)

Yeah, so that's all I've got. I loved this piece, and my only suggestion to improve it would be to crank up the juice on what it's already doing right. Thanks for submitting!

Pretty good story. I don't think there is much that I could say.

This was executed pretty well. Jokes were on point, and stung pretty well. Can't see any problems with the story at all.

Can't wait to see what you will right next.

I thought this piece was super charming, and both of its leads came across as endearing and personable. The message was a good one, and despite how I usually dislike meta elements in pretty much anything I read, I'll have to admit that it was effective at making me frame myself in Jim's shoes, even if it did take me out of the story a bit.

Now, I will have to agree with some of our other readers that Lucy's transformation feels kind of out of the blue. I get what you're saying about how change is good (in the most literal sense possible), and it does sprinkle a little excitement into what would otherwise be a pretty mundane plot. But as it is, it kind of comes across as more of a joke or a pun than a genuine bookend to the story's theme.

I think your options here would be to either foreshadow the twist a little more, or (to reiterate what I said in a review to another entry) throw the twist away altogether. IMHO, it's damaging to the story that the ending feels so blind-siding, so I would strongly suggest finding a way to mitigate this.

But really, I think this is still a solid piece as a whole, so take my thoughts as suggestions for improvement, rather than things that "should" be fixed.

Like what everyone else said, you didn't stick to a single plot point.

I think that this is a good story, but I would think it would be better as a longer story. This has potential, but this format limits it.

I really don't have anything else to add, other than I would read a longer version of this. Keep up the good work.

I've said this for many other stories, but I wish this could be developed more. There is a lot of plot points here, but you barely have touched the surface.

The story isn't bad (I liked it actually), but I think this is a bad minific. You have a lot to work with, but this format doesn't work with it.

I look forward to seeing what you write next.

My big problem with this story is the text wall. The story concept was really good, but hard to read.

Other than that, I look forward to seeing to see what you will write next.

The Lucy werewolf reveal at the end... I don't know how to feel about that. Looking back, the Sailor Moon comment makes sense, but it would've helped if you at least dropped another hint. That and integrate it easier, that reveal was rough. I liked the story's plot, but the reveal is giving me mixed feelings.

I look forward to seeing what you will write next.

I liked the concept, but I feel there needs to be more context. Do the three represent the Ego, Super Ego and Id? Or are they different personality? Or-etc.

Other than that, the story is told real well.

I look forward to seeing your future endeavors.

This story here’s unquestionably my favourite of all the entries this round, what with a concept that fits snugly in the minuscule word count and its execution hitting a lot more than it misses in every aspect.

I really, really like the dynamics at play between Brad and Rosie here. The dialogue skitters through enough highs and lows to keep it interesting, yet not so much so that it becomes ridiculously outlandish. All this, plus the acutely-worded descriptions in between, immediately highlights their personalities without need for exposition, which is no mean feat.

Personally, I didn’t really consider that the whole idea of Rosie being a robot was being foreshadowed. In fact, I was quite surprised that it was even considered to be foreshadowing in the first place. The ‘reveal’ just came off to me as an exercise in evening out the pacing so that the story breathes naturally instead of it being a twist to catch.

I do have some pointers for this story, namely some sections where you could omit the descriptions as they don’t really contribute much to the story proper, but they’re really a matter of personal preference in the end. Also, the hyphens in place of em dashes bothered me more than they have every right to.

Overall, this is a great entry executed with graceful simplicity! I expect this story to be ranked highly come the results of the finals.

Thanks for writing, and good luck!

>>Anon Y Mous
>>Baal Bunny
>>No_Raisin
>>Pascoite
>>No_Raisin
>>TerrusStokkr
>>WritingSpirit

After nearly eight long years of toil, I've finally earned my first gold. Wowzers! All I had to do was get rid of that pesky bird Miller Minus, and suddenly the gravy train starts a-rollin'.

In all seriousness, I didn't expect to do nearly this well. I wrote this at around 1AM on Sunday with little time to edit (see: missing end quotes), half drunk off of white claws from earlier in the day, and right after I had flown back from Columbus to DC. I remarked in the Discord:

I am going to enter a terrible story

wow this story I wrote is truly awful and I should be punished for entering it

and finally

No raisin is actually the author of diary of a wimpy kid

The thing that's always hard to tell with comedy is if you're actually being funny or not. Sometimes it clicks, and sometimes it doesn't. I wrote this story solely off of the idea trying to be a pedantic dick about >>Anon Y Mous's art entry (i.e. How can I turn an explanation about what "condemned" means into a story?). Hence the name Pedagogy.

I was also writing out of my typical genre, which made it a bit more difficult to figure out what should be explained and what shouldn't. I opted to include a lot of small details to give the reader something to bite on, such as what >>Pascoite points out, and hoped that the reader would be interested enough to catch on to how it all fit together (e.g. Ogh’De’g’as’d’af has bloodshot eyes from squinting because lost reading glasses which allows Thyme to sneak changing his name without her noticing; Thyme dreams of smiling faces, thinks of elves, orc scowls, ends up with smiling orc at end, etc.)

>>Baal Bunny

would've thought a bureaucrat of Thyme's weaselitude would've long ago perfected an erasure spell for removing his name from documents when he discovered that he'd screwed something up rather than just scratching the name out.

Fun fact: I had this exact same idea an hour past the deadline. I woke up on Sunday morning, looked over my entry, and I was like, "Fuck, I should have had the coffee mug filled with quills instead of pens and Thyme use an erasing spell instead of just scratching his name out."

Also everyone thought this was your entry, which allowed me to go completely undetected. I got ahead of this trend by immediately accusing you of writing it, and nobody except for >>Pascoite ever questioned it.

>>No_Raisin
>>Pascoite
>>Baal Bunny

And unless Thyme can somehow see Parsley's door, I'd prefer we stay in Thyme's POV and not get a visual of the orc
barging into Parsley's office.

I thought the narrator was supposed to be omniscient, like a narrator who is not attached to any in-story character, but there are a few times where I get the impression that we're actually getting Thyme's POV, but told in the first person.

but it definitely felt limited to me.

The problem here is just that I didn't adequately communicate that yes, indeed, Parsley's office is directly adjacent to Thyme's. I wasn't trying to break perspective, I just didn't do a good job of explaining what was happening, partially due to word count, partially due to my lack of oversight. The gag was supposed to be that Thyme claims to our dear Ogh’De’g’as’d’af that he can't handle her paperwork when literally all he's doing is sending her to the room over, but I just didn't notice at the time that idea wasn't clearly communicated in the text.

Also it's definitely third person limited.

>>Pascoite

And two, why does he pick on Parsley at the end?

I didn't have an answer when I wrote the entry (because I knew I wouldn't have enough space to explain it anyways), but what I would imagine the answer being is that Thyme is just kind of a prick that takes joy in messing with Parsley and justifies it post hoc because he thinks Parsley is uppity or something.

Anyways, thanks for the support, and I'll try to write more stories half-drunk after a flight at 1AM.

>>Anon Y Mous
>>Pascoite
>>No_Raisin
>>Comma Typer
>>Bachiavellian
>>TerrusStokkr

Thanks, folks:

And congrats to our medalists!

As with most of my Writeoff entries, this is a first draft, and in this case that means it's the beginning and the ending with most of the middle left out. The idea is that Lucy was a troubled little werewolf kid till she saw Sailor Moon, decided to turn her life around, and has since become a responsible werewolf adult. Jim is a regular human guy with regular human guy problems who's afraid he'll fall back into bad habits once the Pony Show ends. Lucy convinces him that this won't happen unless he lets it happen.

For the next draft, I just need to actually put that stuff in. :) Heck, maybe it's even got enough of a Pony connection so I can post it to FimFiction when I get it done. Only time will tell!

Mike

>>Baal Bunny
Hey, just an FYI, I know you're not plugged into the Discord Chat, but we've having a Poll right now over the following proposals:

- more events, from every 3 weeks, to every 2 weeks
- more writing time for short story events, from 3 days to 5 days
- more writing time for minific events, from 1 day to 2 days

If you still don't want to join the chat, but you wanna vote, let me know which of these you wanna vote for, and I'll make an alt account to vote for you. The current voting options now are below (you get to choose whichever ones apply to you).

- I think the current schedule is fine
- I mostly want to enter horse and 6 weeks is too long
- I mostly want to enter original and 6 weeks is too long
- I want to enter everything and 3 weeks is too long
- I want to enter more but don't have enough time, and this will help
- 1 day is not enough time to write a proper minific
- 3 days is not enough time to write a proper short story

>>Bachiavellian
Thanks for the feedback! If/when I flesh this out, having the Rosie reveal out front would make sure the focus stays on the interaction between the two characters, not just the composition of the character herself. Good note. Thank you again!

Thanks, >>Bachiavellian!

I'll dust off my super-secret-hardly-ever-used Discord account and put in a vote for "the current schedule is fine." Now I just hafta try to remember my Discord password...

Mike

Bit of a late one this time around. Got my schedules mixed up apparently.

I can't say I had been looking forward to reading this one the moment it graced my screen. I can recall only one other time that this giant block of text gimmick was utilized and I'll admit, though I was unreasonably harsh with my review of that particular story, I still stand by every word I've said about how it was used. Digressions aside, with this entry I could at least kinda see the cards that the gimmick is placing onto the table, yet I don't think it paid off in the end. Most of it, of course, stems from my frustration with trying to read this story, but ultimately my issue with this story was that in its attempt to prove a point, it sorta shaved off every singular aspect of the storytelling and streamlined it towards driving that message home when what I really wanted was for that message to hit home on its own as the story is being told.

I just want to make it clear that I kinda like the message that we're being given here. The gimmick does kinda enforce the idea a little, though I don't think it's a good enough tradeoff for me to properly enjoy this story. Nevertheless, the message is something I think I can get behind, yet the major issue I have with it is that there was no attempt to make it a resonant one. The delivery/presentation of the idea wasn't engaging enough for the message to stick the landing.

I do understand that you may be purposely making it cold and hard for us to enjoy to reflect the character's woes but I think the way you went about it demanded too much of work on the readers' part for me to sympathize. When I read it to the end, instead of thinking: "look at all the terrible things our fellow citizen is going through in this", which is itself already a selfish concept, I'm thinking "why am I putting myself through this".

To put it simply, if Dostoyevsky had written The Brothers Karamazov as an 824-paged thesis-esque piece instead of the story it was, I don't think his ideas and philosophies would've been as talked about as they were today. I'm not saying you should write with the finesse of a dead Russian dude and expect us WriteOff lurkers to hail you as our new messiah; I'm just stating that there needs to be more effort placed in backing up the message instead of just delivering it with the subtlety and nuance of a backhand slap.

Nevertheless, thanks for writing!

>>Pascoite
>>No_Raisin
>>Comma Typer
>>Baal Bunny
>>WritingSpirit
>>TerrusStokkr

Wow! I can’t believe I got silver. I’m coming for you, Miller… Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed my story, I really appreciate it.

For Cicadas I looked at the pictures and had zero (0) ideas. I walked outside and around my house and found a dead cicada on the ground. ‘Wow, look,’ I said, ‘an idea.’ I had the inspiration from Chris (yes, that Chris) to make a story or legend about something. And that’s what I wanted to make it. A fairytale.

I royally fucked that up.

Wanting to give some insight into the world, I added descriptions and character, at the same time just wanting to make a legend that tied back to the dying man. At the end of it all I was satisfied with it, but not as happy as I could have been.

My inspiration came from Upgrade, looking at the old man and interpreting his gaze as not hate, but longing to become a child again.

We interrupt this short review to thank writing spirit for making a review that is longer than my fic. I’m honored.

Also,

...but also captures the paradoxical feeling of quietness and loudness as someone reaches the end of their life, the quietness of the countryside contrasted with the loudness of the cicadas.

Yup. I definitely meant to make that connection. 100%. No doubt about it.

Funnily enough, I didn’t go for the emotional angle, so… I’m glad? you didn’t feel too bad about his death.

———————

Thank you guys so much for the compliments, and I’m sorry the message got muddled from ‘contemplation about death’ to ‘death and SOL and cicadas?”

I might make this a longer fic, but don’t quote me on it lol.

Adios. ;3

I may be way off base here, and if so, just tell me.

For a long time now, what's been considered the biggest selling point of the writeoffs is the amount and quality of feedback you can get. People participate specifically for that, and it's a valuable tool in putting out a rough draft, refining it on the feedback, then publishing it on FiMFic or wherever. As I said in a comment in the last FiM short story round, reviewing isn't fun. It's work done to help an author, and it takes a significant time investment. During many events, the artists were clamoring to get comments, any comments. Any little bit helps, they said, even if it's from someone who doesn't know much about art and can only say what they liked. Given that, wouldn't it make sense to encourage reviewers?

What encourages reviewers? Pretty much the same thing as writers: just knowing someone read what you wrote. Obviously, it's best when someone finds your comments very helpful, but authors might not agree with what you say, and then at least an acknowledgement is fine. We don't get view counters on reviews, but other than that, it's the same as stories: upvotes and responses.

Here are some statistics for this round. First, the art.

Of the 4 artists, one responded to reviews.

17 reviews got 0 up-thumbs
8 reviews got 1 up-thumb
3 reviews got 2 up-thumbs
1 review got 4 up-thumbs

Some things admittedly got into a gray area as to whether they were actually a review. If someone just chimed in to crack a joke, for instance, I didn't count it.

Now the stories.

Of 10 authors, 4 responded to reviews, and one of those only to the most favorable review.

44 reviews got 0 up-thumbs
17 reviews got 1 up-thumb
2 reviews got 2 up-thumbs

Does every review deserve an up-thumb? Probably not, but that's up to each person to decide. There's something to be said for up-thumbing reviews on principle to encourage people to continue reviewing, and there's something to be said for up-thumbing only reviews you found helpful (or would find helpful if you were the author).

I realize it's only 3 days after the event ended and authors may still come back to make responses, but most up-thumbs happen during the event, not after. Is there just some tacit agreement now that everyone appreciates the reviews so there's no need for anyone to say so, particularly if it's mostly the authors themselves participating in a quid pro quo? Has most of that side of the discussion moved over to the Discord chat? Is it clear to a newcomer that the system works this way?

For the last few rounds, it seems like quid pro quo is the only thing driving reviews at all. Why would a non-participant be motivated to contribute when it's not clear the authors are even reading the reviews?

>>Pascoite
I do think it’s easy to miss that part of the discussion has shifted over to Discord. Discord is fine, but it’s invisible to passers-by unless you get the app and actively go on it. (I only got back into Discord because of BronyCon Bookstore logistics needs; otherwise I tend to forget it’s there and not check it as much—though I’m probably an outlier.)

In contrast, the Writeoff site has a perfectly functional forum that doesn’t require another app to join in. It keeps reviews tied to the stories over the long term, whereas a Discord chat could get hairy to look back through.

I’m... kind of advocating for people to come back and do their reviewing on here, I guess. Though I’m also acknowledging that sometimes people split the discussion across both places, which is an understandable use of technology, but sometimes more confusing than helpful.

>>CoffeeMinion
That's a different matter entirely, but one worth bringing up. If I enter a story, and there's extensive discussion about it in the Discord server, it's very unlikely I'll notice it. Then if it takes me several months to get around to revising that story, it's going to be hard to find the feedback again, if I even know it exists, by having to search the chat logs. Here, all that feedback is conveniently organized below my story.

>>Pascoite
I completely agree. Reviewers are not getting enough steam right now.

I think another aspect of the reviewing element that's been almost entirely lost is the extensive cross-talk (reviewers responding to other reviews) that happened back when we were using the Fimfic forums. Granted, those rounds had a lot more participation, but the truth is that nowadays we get virtually no chatter here in the forums now, with some of it having gone to the Discord chat.

As a reviewer, what's personally stopping me from replying to other reviews is that I'm typically afraid to inflate a story's comment count. My proposal to fix this was for story comments to have a little checkbox for "Is this comment a Review?" and have the gallery page track marked reviews in addition to total comments. But it sounds like Rog had concerns about this approach, so I'd love to hear if anybody has any alternative approaches we can take to encourage review discussion.

>>Bachiavellian
Yeah, I agree that the comment counter can create a disincentive for actual discussion and crosstalk.

Help us Roger-wan KeDodger, you’re our only hope—

>>Zaid Val'Roa
Thanks, kind person. I'll be sure to take that into account for next time.
>>No_Raisin
I think I may need a second monitor to see how things look in different settings. Duly noted.
>>Pascoite
I drew inspiration from the poster for In The Mouth Of Madness. I kept thinking of the screaming faces coming from the open book, only this time they're coming out of someone's mind.
>>GroaningGreyAgony
Yeah, that was kind of my approach. You had all these facets of personality fighting over who has control, which means the real face is kind of like a mask.
>>Rocket Lawn Chair
Plot twist! The faces are me. I suppose I could've gone with more variety, but it was past midnight and the deadline loomed closer. I've got to pace myself better.
-----
wew
Thanks for the gold!
I'll do my best in next rounds, too.

In case folks are interested:

The rewrite of this was up on FimFiction for about 16 hours before one moderator overruled another. So I've turned it into a blog post since it's kinda time-sensitive and all... :)

Mike