Yes class, mister Asher is now a tree.

When will this professor get censured by the university?

I mean, she starts right off with an anecdote, doesn't even give a lesson plan or classroom expectations. No wonder she has issues controlling her class.

This felt more like backstory than story. What's the point beyond furry transformation?

Ah, the Mist ending. I've always enjoyed it, and I liked it here as well. It is a pretty limited story, but it works okay. I think the biggest question I have is, as noted, the question of "why is there only one bullet in the gun?"

I mean, I get the meta answer, but it makes no sense in the context of the story.

I'll note that with a lot of semi-automatic pistols, they will have one round chambered independent of the magazine, so even if the gun is lacking its magazine, it might still have one bullet in it.

That being said, I think it is perhaps an unnecessary detail; maybe the gun just gets jerked out of her hand after she fires it (she probably has never used a gun before, after all) or maybe she's about to shoot herself when she gets grabbed and rescued.

>>Ranmilia

As to the meat of the story, it goes for evoking emotion, and does a serviceable job at it. I don't feel particularly connected to the characters, but I'm happy to see them rescued.

They weren't rescued. SHE was rescued... after she shot the student in the head, a mercy kill to save him from drowning.

This was a scene more than a story, and while I got some sense of the character, it lacked context.

This is extremely telly, and while the core of the idea (the irony of fleeing back and forth between planets due to warfare) is vaguely interesting, it isn't really new, and the delivery here isn't amazing.

You're competing with a lot better deliveries of this same moral. This just comes off as flat and expository.

A more engaging version of the same story would be, say, some astronauts talking to each other on Mars, having found this inscription and working to decipher it back in their lab, and the story ending with their radio back to Earth failing.

The main problem with this is that there aren't really any real characters in this story, just pieces moving around the board. This reduces the stakes of the piece, because the "people" in the story aren't actually people.

The idea of such recursion/you kill it you bought it is a solid concept, and it is decent enough here, but there's not much body to it.

There's some lovely tidbits of life in some of these descriptions.

A young man in a collared shirt and clip-on tie

Screw the collared shirt. I don't care about his collared shirt. Tell me more about this clip on tie. I want to hear about the guileless idiot who thinks he's getting an internship at a law firm while wearing a clip on tie.

New shoes, but tinged with mud underneath.

Everything in this paragraph is fine but bland until this line. He's got mud on his new shoes. That's much more interesting to me than brushed hair and generic slacks. What sort of mud has this pencil pushing freak been dumpster diving in? He's trying to look professional, but the whole damn world rained on him to show Kaufman & Kaufman the truth, and the truth is he's a mud stained shoe begging for elevator holds. Tell me about it.

looking like a schoolkid--if not by his youth, then by his optimism

Bitter. Cynical. Ageist. I love it.

“When I first went into C.S., I had big dreams. I wanted to build the next Google, or Facebook, or even Zynga. But then I quickly realized just how little impact I had--babysit this database, write that login page, monitor our product for whatever’s making our cloud stuff so expensive to keep running. It just wasn’t for me.”

“So you decided to go into patent law.”

“It’s a growing industry, and I figured arguments here would have more impact than how a button looks on devices of different sizes. And the technical details are still intact--that’s what makes it different from, say, bird law, doesn’t it?”

All right. Cool. But who cares? This is pretty good fodder for an interview, but the reader isn't in a position to hire him onto anything other than a good story. This matters. I'm certain this matters, but I can't tell a lick why. This dude's hocking his whole life. Sell me on it. Am I supposed to be rooting for him? Do I like him? I don't know.

“I’m Miranda Kaufmann, partner here at Kaufmann & Kaufmann.” Now I’m smiling. “And a bit of advice: you may want to look just a little more into who leads a firm before the interview lest you run into them. Good luck.” We walk through the door to the office, and Josh is led to a conference room somewhere.

Eh, I don't know. A twist like this would make sort of a funny story to tell at the next family reunion, but you've only got seven hundred fifty words to change my life, and this isn't doing it. All in all, this story feels lukewarm and I don't know what it wants from me. Does it want me to laugh? Maybe a couple explosions next time. Maybe cut the wire and let the elevator drop down the shaft. Maybe Kaufman is his long lost mother and Kaufman is his great granddaughter time traveling from outer space.

This story is vaguely interesting but, as someone else noted, it is kind of modernist. In the end, I'm not really left with a strong sense of what it all means/was meant to say. In particular, I don't get the orange. Why orange? What's the significance?

I'm not left really understanding what is going on here.

This really just sounds like a story a player might tell, which isn't a bad thing, but it isn't a good thing either because, while it is a story, it lacks any real sense of me caring. It is just a sports story. Why should I care? What does it mean?

It lacks any greater context to make me care.

This lacks enough context for me to care. I don't know who these people are, or what they're fighting for, or who I should be rooting for, or care about what happens to the Captain.

This is kind of cute, and the ending works well with the protagonist's name and explains a lot of the odd aspects of the story. This has a nice enough twist to it, and does a good job of tricking the reader.

I'm not sure what brought up the cupid-in-training's doubts, but apart from that, this did a good job of subverting my expectaitons.

I'm with >>Misternick .

When General Sam Ridgemont rose from the dead for the second time in his existence, his first thought was that he must be getting old.

I love this as an opening line, but I think it's making a promise that the rest of the story doesn't keep. It's quick, catchy, clear. A lot of the rest of this is sort of meandering and vague. Where'd the punchiness of this first line wander off to and let's get it on a leash.

Leaping into action, General Ridgemont rolled over and made to stand up, barely catching himself as he plummeted off a gurney. He pulled himself to his feet, swaying dangerously but still mobile. The world flashed white as motion-activated lights turned on.

A wrecked operating room came into focus, the exit on the Farr wall. Picking his way across biomat containers (scattered and emptied of all biological material), biological hazard containers (overflowing with emptied blood bags), and some sort of wiring (were the doctors really so busy with war trauma victims that they couldn't tidy after themselves?), he staggered into the hallway.

Rereading the story, I still don't know quite where we are here or why. Sam takes on in the chest, doctors haul him over to a nearby ER. Then doctors give up on him and march Clone Sam out? Leaving Other Clone Sam bleeding but very much alive and capable of rocking and rolling? And completely abandon the ER? And the ER is floating in some vague word space with a view of the Very Important I swear Launch? And the assassin is here too? Wiggity what and wiggity what the hell are you talking about?

"I'm getting tired of killing you," his assassin said.

Aahh! There it is again! Everything that made that first line great suddenly somersaults back onto the page with this line. Punch me in the face a few more times, man. I can take it. I've been around the block a few times.

"I'm right here."

Goddammit, you sure are. Screw the frown. Give him a scowl. Give him a war cry. General Bloody Nose Rocket Ship is right damn here, Death, come and take him if you've got any balls. Death's standing between you and soup for supper. Get upset about it.

He blinked, then looked down at himself. No, his uniform was still there—albeit bloodstained and devoid of accoutrements—but it was unmistakably him boarding the shuttle.

I like this twist. It's surprising. It's fun. There's some decent lead up. I think more than anything, this story needs clarity. I need some who, when, where, what, and how, and why does it matter again?

This is the second cupid story I saw this writeoff, which amuses me.

I liked this better than the other; I got more of a sense of the character of the shooter, but it still kept up the subversion of what the story was really about.

This really feels more like the start of something than a "whole piece", but it works as a stand-alone piece decently enough.

Though as a stand-alone piece without anything else, I half-feel like the ending of the story should have had her run into the target in the elevator at the end of it and realize that what she'd done had backfired.

I actually laughed at this. Someone getting annoyed that a card game has become the Yu-Gi-Oh show or whatever (I've never watched Yu-Gi-Oh, I just am assuming that's sort of what this is poking fun at) is amusing, and the idea of someone getting annoyed that some DARK DUELLIST is using broken new cards to try and beat them, as well as getting screwed by topdecking a land CRYSTAL is amusing.

Anyway, this worked well for me. I'm familiar with a number of card games and this was darkly amusing. The whole blazeness of it all, the player complaining... it all just worked really well.

The biggest problem here is, as >>Ratlab noted, the lack of a strong sense of differentiation between the voices.

I think that it would be best if the final scene wasn't dialogue only, to give it more contrast with the dialogue-only nature of the rest of the piece. I think it would still be able to deliver the punchline effectively, though you might have to rearrange it a bit.

Also, the sewer joke is retroactively made much funnier by the end of the piece.

I'm with >>HoofBitingActionOverload here. Listen to him, he's smart.

>>TitaniumDragon
Wait, what? Really? I read it a couple times checking for that and didn't see that... I still kind of don't. There's nothing in the end actively pointing to her shooting Max, as opposed to just firing into the air out of desperation. I guess the rescuers don't mention him, and it gives a little more context to the lines about how painful she thinks drowning is.

Ugh. That is very unclear. If that IS the intention, and now that you point it out I guess it's more likely than not, I'm not sure how I feel about it. Disappointed, mostly. I thought this was a tension piece about "what can the characters do in this situation, how do they respond?" but in the end it was all setup for a psychodrama about a teacher shooting her student? Ehn.

(Warning: minirant/ramble on personal evaluation criteria below, not extremely on topic for this particular story)

I'm very much not a fan of the "shocking emotional gut punch!" style of entry. It's over-represented in Writeoff for my taste - sometimes a third to a half of the entire field. The emotional impact of such entries tends to come from the shocking thing that is written, rather than how it is written. So you get a formula that's easy to crank out for low effort: just have someone commit suicide, or kill some kids, or contemplate doing so, or something similarly shocking and controversial, toss in some high tension emotions and fill in the blank for "but why would anyone do such a thing" and boom. Entry done, and all but guaranteed to have a few readers gushing over how deep and "courageous" (read: edgy) it is and how it's a high pick on their slate... no matter the actual quality of the writing.

So when I see shocker subjects come out, my level of scrutiny and willingness to nitpick also goes way up. If you want to do something like that, you'd better do it really well, and not just be crutching on the inherent emotional responses to the subject matter.

Doesn't change a lot for this particular entry, though. Probably moves it down a few places, but mostly due to the lack of clarity. This still accomplishes the most important thing I'm looking for in mini rounds: the completion of a narrative arc, with a beginning, middle and end, climax, rising and falling action, all that good stuff, showing proficiency in the form by the ability to get that done within the word and time limits. Even if you have to use a shocker template to get there.

I love the use of second person in this! Very well done, matches and assists the dissociated, metaphorical tone of the piece. The prose flows like water, easy to read and follow. Great stuff there.

Unfortunately, I love what the prose actually says quite a bit less. I don't get it. Why orange? What's God got to do with it, and why is the poltergeist more powerful than God? Why doesn't the couple just move out? Is it all just a metaphor? If so, what for, beyond normal suburban life? Ah, I wanted to get to these early to avoid being "yeah what all the other comments already said," but... what all the other comments already said.

It is a story and does complete a narrative arc, props for that, and for the aforementioned tone and flow. I needa da pizza, though, and by da pizza, I mean the meaning behind the metaphor. So this is going to wind up around "not a trainwreck, but kind of a failed experiment" tier for me. Thank you for writing, though, and seriously, well done with the second person!

I agree with the others, we have a lovely prose here, but the meaning is far too obfuscated.

Nonetheless I will try an interpretation of this story.

We have somebody dying, and then a part of them infesting the life of a young couple, coloring everything the poltergeist touches, determining their lives and, at the end, consuming them.

If we go for the metaphorical then my first guess would be an illness transmitted through organ transplantation. It would match the previously listed characteristics and would explain why they try to exorcise through healthy living. It wouldn't explain the last paragraph, though, so I'm less convinced about this interpretation than during my first read of the story.

The second possibility is that we are talking about a political idea. In which case you would have biting satire if we saw the effects of the orange touch. This would make more sense if we consider the failing liver and the missing teeth as a metaphorical image used for the losing of self. My problem here is that if this is the correct way to read it, then you are simply saying that on idea is bad without explaining way and comparing it taint. I'm not convinced this is the case either, because even if it matches everything the prose shows experience in writing, so such a blunt statement seems improbable.

The third possible interpretation is that the story is not metaphorical, that the poltergeist is a poltergeist and that it consumes slowly everything it touches. It makes the story creepy and dark, but then I don't get the color orange.

So, lovely prose, but you need to give us a key to understand the story. Still, thank you for writing it, as I think we will get an interesting discussion out of it.

That could be a good comment on both society and humour, but since it's minific, there isn't enough room to develop them. What we have are only tidbits without the main course. These tidbits were delicious though, I laughed a few times but without much else, I don't leave with a strong impression.

Echoing >>Misternick.

"Do it yourself" isn't always a good idea and this story embodies that well. I laughed a little at his misfortune but I'm not really a good person.

Emotional piece and a solid one. Aside from the ending, I like it.

Even if the ending has already been discussed, I'll try to add a thing or two.

So, the two possible endings are wether the teacher shot her student or not.
If yes, I can't buy it. That's not something you do "out of nowhere" and there isn't enough room to develop that way of thinking for the teacher.
If no, and since the first possibility is out of the way (for me) then why not say it?

I'll be with the others on this one.

I liked the fact that it was a adventurer hoarder, meta comments on the fact that some players (I'm one of them) tend to keep everything, never selling to merchants. And keeping that information unknown was a good idea but for the rest, there is something new almost every paragraph and they doesn't add to each other very well.

My suggestion would be to focus more on the adventurer hoarder thing and play around it, instead of wandering with too many things.

This feels like it was written by a newer entrant. If that was the case, then welcome! The rest of the feedback here is going to be fairly critical, but don't take it to heart; Writeoffs a learning experience, after all.

First off - use title case for your titles. Please.

This story suffers largely from its poor formatting, author. Traditionally, speech goes inside quotation marks. The lack of dialogue attribution at the start similarly makes developing an understanding of the situation difficult. Furthermore, the formatting is inconsistent; what's with the abundance of semi-colons and dashes? Presenting a disorientating scene is all well and good, but I can't follow the first section of story after the first half a dozen lines.

The narrative perspective is also confusing; you're making opinionated statements, "at least judging by the volume of discussion surrounding it", in the middle of what otherwise reads as a news-report. The tonal clash results in it feeling inconsistent.

Additionally, in the future author, you may wish to work on your pacing. A large amount of exposition is introduced in the middle of the story to little effect, other than giving a vague background to the events of the opening scene. Consider your narrative arc, even in a piece as small as this; what are you trying to convey? What changes over the course of the story? Presently, it reads as a series of events leading to an foreshadowed and impotent ending; I'm not made to empathise with the characters, nor am I given any understanding as to the significance of their actions. In a minific, you don't have many words to play with; if you're going for a heavy ending, then the rest of the story needs to develop my empathy with the characters, and the weight of their decision.

Too much too quickly, author; you introduce a problem in a hazily defined setting, feed the reader almost conflicting signals regarding it, quickly resolve it, and then pivot to a twist with little weight behind it. The comedic story of a hoarder would have been interesting. The comedic story of a thief who performs heists by assisting chronic hoarders would have been interesting. The comedic story of a modern-day hoarder with seemingly bizarre magical artifacts in his collection played completely straight would, again, have been interesting. Unfortunately, the story tried to do too many things at once, and ended up achieving none of them. In the future, try and distill your story down into a more coherent idea - especially for minific rounds - before you start writing it.

But that's a story for another time.

Too bad, because the beginning is kinda cool. It's only a beginning and worldbuilding. Human gods, talking oranges, that sounds like the start of a good joke, a joke I want to hear but we never reach the outcome.

The beginning is engaging but the story left me halfway without anything to get.

Very engaging story with an interesting point on the characters' motivations. I would have like to see more of this, but since it's minific, I understand you had to go straightforward. And as it is, the story stands on its own so good job for that.

For the nitpicks, it's a bit heavy on dialog for my taste and, futhermore, I was a bit confused by who was talking at some points (maybe I wasn't paying enough attention).

Anyway, I liked it and should rank it between mid-tier and top.


Also,

First they beat him, then they kicked him, then they dragged him to the rock

They'll kick you, then they beat you, then they'll tell you it's fair, so BEAT IT, but you wanna be baaaaaad!

I’m stuck here wondering what was the author’s intent. The premise is fun – though I faintly having already read something similar before – but is underemployed. I wished you had gone all the way for the cynical – suggesting for example that such ads might be followed (or even inserted at the request of) by undertakers’ or insurance companies’ ads.

Instead of that, the plot wallows into bar type philosophy, which I didn’t find as much amusing as it was, well, shallow. While that might adequately convey the reasoning of the characters you depict, it doesn’t really inform the writer about what your personal message is. And I refuse to admit you set up the whole scene just for the sake of writing. There must be some sort of subtext or message, but I’m totally unable to grasp it.

The idea is nice, and the execution is well done. Watch your punctuation, though, because it is really unorthodox.

Why are all Death’s lines in cap? Is it supposed to yell? Wouldn’t that catch the attention of the other diners?

Also they’re all male?

I agree with Hat there. We wished there was something more out of this unusual encounter, but instead, all we get is a reconvening schedule, which leaves us unsatisfied. The conflict :P is clearly laid out, but not resolved. I’d say, the lack of resolution kills the whole story.

>>HoofBitingActionOverload
Welcome back HBAO. We’ve missed you.

That was great, cute and funny.

I'm also wandering if it's intended as a children's story. Not because of the pace but because of the metaphor. Indeed, what I keep from children stories' metaphors (both the stories I read as a kid and as an adult) aren't the possible meanings and implications they have. I can see and understand them but in the end, it's still the first image that remains, like in Roald Dahl's books. Whatever are the messages that come with the story, I always remember the BFG blowing dreams to children and don't really care for what it could symbolise.

I got the same feeling here (even if it was weaker), there is probably a message to get from pursuing your dreams and stuff but in the end, it's just shooting a ball to try to achieve your dream.

I loved it and it will undoubtebly be a top contender.

at a man sitting peacefully on a park bench

As opposed to sitting violently on a park bench?

Just about every other story has this same intro, lead up, twist, silly subversion format, but only your story has a psycho squad of cupid copters precision rocket striking romance at love-lost losers on a suburban sidewalk. Flip this whole thing upside down. Don't wait until the very end of the story to reveal the one thing that makes your story different from all the others. You've just just scratched the surface of a weird world of long range tacticool pick up lines, surely there's another story that can be told here aside from just a single twist of expectation.

Oh, huh, I just read another one of these. Well, I'll say the same thing here, stop relying so much on the twist. A story is more than a single subversion of expectation. Cutie Cupid Junior trying to slingshot pot shots of lust around town while still making time for school and a boyfriend is an interesting enough story on its own. Tell it. Why do so many write off authors try so desperately to hide their stories? If you've got a cool idea, slap me upside the head with it, force it down my throat. Don't strap it up in a demure dress and blush and run back upstairs when I tell you I'm interested.

>>HoofBitingActionOverload
HBAO, are you game to be the podcast’s special guest? That'd be worth it!

I think you may have left the rest of the story at home, because it's not here.

“It's so important to make a good first impression, isn't it?”

Yeah, I totally agree, and I'm not gonna say this is a bad first impression, but why this first impression? What follows is a stupendous whimsical adventure of alka seltzer alchemists dune buggying deserts drip dropping magic and explosions, and you're gonna pull me into your story with a vanilla conversation between two whoevers talking about did-she did-she-not sleep with someone I don't care about? Are you telling me about the most interesting day in this guy's life? Why not?

My socks are ready and willing to come off, man. Blow 'em away. I know nothing about the narrator, but I am getting some decent bits of character out of Magic Cat Woman. For so little words, do we need him at all. She's more interesting, she's got more pizzazz, and if she was starring in a musical, I'd be more likely to buy a ticket.

Darrah walked up to him, an almost animal grace in her steps

This is one of the few descriptions that really stood out to me. I don't know what animal grace is, but I want to know more. Drop some of the femme fatale cliches and pick up a few more of these weird descriptors.

You're a tease author you know that?

That story is very dense, there are a lot of informations conveyed. I must say they are ingeniously conveyed, disseminated here and there for my greatest pleasure, avoiding bluntly shoving them right into my face. But, oh boy, you cant' read this story with only one eye or else, you're gonna miss an important information.

As for the dialog between Simon and Darrah, it was great. Like I said, their interaction delivers some of the required informations but at the same time, it feels like a natural conversation they could have. You managed a good balanced between the two so good job for that.

Now if I called you a tease, it's because the story felt like an awesome beginning to something way bigger. Here, I'm left with only the premise of an awesome adventure, the duo trying to unveil the truth about Erasmus' death.

“It's so important to make a good first impression, isn't it?”

Indeed, and you managed to do that for me, however, I'm frustrated that it ends too soon. So probably ranked between top contender or top mid-tier.

A play by play of New England Patriots coming back from a 28-3 deficit and winning in overtime wouldn't be a bad story, but it would be boring.

But tell me about how the whole world wants New England to lose because they're arrogant beast-men who don't care about anything but winning and routinely beat unsuspecting American apple pie loving patriotic teams into the dirt just for the fun of it, and they're dirty cheaters who would gobble cocaine-laced snot rockets if it gave them even the slightest edge, and in they're downtime they go to little kid birthday parties and pop all the balloons and piss on the cake and carry off the moms, and then they come back from a 28-3 deficit and win in overtime. Now that's just good theater.

This is a good enough technical description of the game, but where's the humanity? Does this guy ever sweat? Does he get frustrated? Does he have a dying pet koala at home he promised he would win the game for?

I will now use about 1800 words to ramble about illocutionary force and worldviews in relation to literature.

This is an interesting story, on many levels. I think it's technically sound, and I like what it's trying to do, but it also feels 'flat' to me, and I'm going to spend probably entirely too long explaining what I mean by that word and why I feel that way.

First up, layers of interaction.

I don't think we can directly experience someone else. All human interaction goes something like:

(My brain) - (My senses) - (The world) - (Your senses) - (Your brain)

This is somewhat of a philosophical abstraction, and I'm certain there are different views. But this is part of my worldview (more on that in a moment) and the key idea here is that we can't really know someone else, not in the same way we can know ourselves.

For example, I know I like green peppers. I know my brother dislikes green peppers. But I don't really know how he experiences green peppers. Perhaps it's the same way I do, and he simply feels differently about that. Maybe he experiences them in a way I would find equally repulsive. Regardless, I don't really know how he feels about green peppers; all I know is that he does things that I equate to 'dislike'; I've divined something about his brain through his actions and my senses. I might be able to get close, with enough information, even figure it out exactly, but I can't just experience it directly.

I think this idea is important, because it maps to how we communicate with ideas and actions. What people say and do is not the same as what they think, feel, and believe. It merely represents that. This is why 'actions speak louder than words' is a common saying. Communication and ideas come in several layers, and to get at more and more abstract ideas inside someone's communication, we need more actions, words, information in one way or another.

Layers of communication go something like this:

actions - what we do - what's allowed
values - what we want - what's good
beliefs - what we believe - what's true
worldview - who we are - what's real

Basically. For example, I see someone at the doctor's office. I ask why they're there. They say it's because they have a skin condition. That action contains a value judgement - having a skin condition is bad, making it go away is good. But it also contains deeper ideas, like 'going to a doctor can make you better', which in turn contains ideas like 'science works', which in turn contains ideas like 'the observable world is trustworthy'. These are the layers of this person's communication, and it's possible I've learned something about their worldview, an integral part of who they are, from this interaction. Well, one question is usually not enough to really feel like I've learned something about their core personality - really began to know them, but more on that in a moment.

Including value/belief stuff is part of what this story does right. This line:

There's that nasty fact we don't want to face: we're redundant, too. We often take pride in individuality, and cherish being unique, but the truth is that there are more than enough humans to continue the civilized world, and that's what really matters in the long run.

Is statement of values/beliefs that reveals a worldview. Having this sort of thing in a story is good.

It's entirely too common for authors to content themselves with just actions in a story, and not intentionally delve into values or beliefs. This is one way that a story might end up feeling superficial; an author who only focuses on actions can have characters who's motivations and decision making feels empty or confused, because the reasons they're doing the things they do never come across, or conflict.

Also, one of the challenges in fiction - especially short fiction - is information density. Being able to shove more meaning into less words is a great way to make a bigger impact on the reader, which gets much harder with less words, so using deeper meaning is something I think everyone should do, and the shorter the story, the harder they should try.

This is one of the things that comes across to me as 'theme' in a story; the idea that the whole story reveals something about the values/beliefs/worldview of the author or the characters, as a unifying idea across the entire story. This story has that. (I don't think this is the only thing theme can be, or even necessarily the best thing, but that's another discussion.)

Anyways, I'm glad it's in here. However.

I, personally, don't like this, because I don't believe it. Part of my worldview makes me believe that individual humans have value. If humans are redundant, without individual value, that's a direct contradiction of my worldview, so I can't agree with it. And that's a problem, because this story is 'flat'.

Now you might be thinking "!Hat, how can this be flat? You've clearly stated that this story has deeper aspects like value and belief in it!" And that's true. What I mean is that they way you're communicating the deeper ideas to me is flat.

To talk about this, I need to talk about a linguistic concept called 'illocutionary force'. This is a somewhat fuzzy idea that linguists like to argue about, it's basically the idea that our words don't really mean what they say, sometimes.

At face value, that might sound like nonsense. But with a moment of reflection, it can start to make sense. I might say to someone in my house: 'Hey, I think a window's open.' On the surface, that looks like a statement of fact, but in context, it may well be a question - 'would you please close the window?' or even a demand - 'Close the window right now!' What's said on the surface is called the 'locutionary act' - what I actually said. The 'illocutionary act' was the intent 'asking someone to close the window'. The 'perlocutionary act' is what my words actually cause - you might close the window, you might slap me, you might totally ignore me.

This is, I think, some of what's behind the classic 'show/tell' topic that comes up every so often. Anton Chekov's apocryphal line was "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." I think this is about illocutionary force; don't just use locution, use illocution and perlocution in your writing as well.

This is important, because illocutionary force somewhat maps to worldview/value/belief communication. If I don't understand how someone thinks, I can't use implied meaning to communicate. But if I can, it shows that I know them well. So illocutionary force also maps somewhat to depth of personal relationships. If I know someone very well, I can demand they close the window using just their name. This is an extreme illocutionary act, and it would show that we're very close to each other, because our communication has great depth to it.

Thinking about the illocutionary acts between the characters can give a sense that they're close to each other, and help iron out their motivations and give their speech and actions greater depth and clarity, which will, in turn, draw the reader deeper in, because they'll understand the characters more deeply and completely.

Now, this ties into the whole 'subtlety is dangerous' thing that's come up in the writeoffs at various times before, too. Illocutionary acts are, by their very nature, subtle. However, used correctly, they can literally show more than they tell; the illocutionary act is another vector for meaning in a story, which means greater information density, and possibly, greater impact.

But there's another axis to consider here as well. A story is, in some manner, a communication between the author and the reader, and it's possible to have illocutionary acts in that as well. Going back to theme, if the theme is a value or belief that the story is trying to convey to me, the reader, then there's a case to be made for including more than locution in that message, as well. If you communicate the theme to me implicitly, it helps close the distance between us, because, again, illocutionary communication means deeper understanding, and that means more emotional investment. (We feel for people we're close to - if you act like we're close, I'm more likely to feel for you.)

There's also a... 'rightness', in my mind, to putting deeper levels of information on deeper levels of communication. If a value is revealed through implication, as opposed to a statement, I'm more likely to trust it, because I feel like I've connected to them more closely, it seems more genuine.

And that's what I think this story is lacking. While this story is technically sound, and contains depth of thought, it doesn't contain depth of communication, and that means I can't really get behind it. If you tell me flat out that 'humans have no individual value', I just can't agree.

Sure, your character acts in ways that re-enforces his belief in what he says. However, by coming out and saying it straight, you've changed it from an illocutionary act to a locutionary one, and that moves our communication up a level. If I perceived the theme, instead of having it stated, I still might not like it, but I think I'd feel more connected to the story. If this wasn't the theme, or if there was deeper level ideas (worldview) behind that perceived belief, I'd be even less annoyed, because I could say something like 'I can understand how someone with that worldview would reach that belief'; A 'belief' theme supported by 'worldview' ideas, communicated through an illocutionary act, would make this top-tier in my mind. As it is, it's very nicely written, but it's too obvious, too straight-forwards, too direct.

Anyways, that was probably waaay too many words, but maybe I've made myself clear enough anyways.

I hope this is useful or at least interesting to someone. I've considered doing blogs on how I think about stories, and typing this up makes me think I should, if only so I can link it at people. :P

>>Not_A_Hat
Impressive!

Uh... huh. So this took a couple of passes for me to figure out, because it is really not obvious about the twist. Actually, I'm still not sure I've figured it out. For anyone else looking down here though, it's a fakeout, Thomas is not aiming at and shooting McCool, McCool is the one who calls him at the end.

Who or what does Thomas shoot, then? ... I got nothing. Something that explodes like a watermelon. The woman? For reasons? Something else? The play on clay line seems important, but like >>Monokeras I have no idea what it actually means. This interferes with looking for a narrative arc, too - what made me go back and recheck my initial assumption of "the dude shot the other dude" was how much of an odd non-story it seemed like.

Also, and again as Mono said, the prose is very clunky. Practice, pay attention to sentence structures in other pieces, read your own writing out loud (carefully!) and listen to how it sounds. Also take advantage of spellcheck tools where possible, and pay attention to the mistakes they catch and why you made them. Word/Libreoffice/Google Docs should catch things like "There were other reason’s..."

It seems to me like the atmosphere gets the most attention here, and that is largely successful. I liked the descriptions, even clunky as they are, and got a nice impression of Vice City Miami. Aaaaaand I only just realized while typing that joke that the protagonist is indeed named Tommy. I... you know what... I can't hate on that audacity, well played.

So: shaky story, unclear, fundamentals not too great, but it does get the GTA atmosphere it aims for and at least looks like there's an attempt at having a beginning, middle and end. Somewhere around the border of low/mid tiers to me, for the overall field. Thank you for writing, though, authorperson! This shows promise for sure, we hope to see you back in future rounds.

The writing is quite good on this one., and there's not much I can say about it. It flows well and the voice is definite enough for me to getting a feeling for the narrator even if it isn't particularly distinctive.

As for the story, we get a single scene containing a character piece. While there is no real arc, it still tells us about a facet of our narrator and how he relates to the world.

Solid, well written and, while not overly original, pleasant. Thank you for having submitted it.

666 words? Nice. Though I wonder if 690 might've been more fitting for the subject at hand?

Aaaaaactually, though, the real meat of what we have here is only ~400 words, if that much. Several of the entries I've read so far have underexplained and been unclear about even the basics of what was going on. This has the opposite issue: tons of unnecessary fluff, overexplaining, and repetition.

Everything after "Not my problem." can safely be cut, in my book. And a fair amount before that too. Keep it simple and sweet, and centered on the sniping scene. After the twist is revealed and the scene is resolved, it's done. We already learned about Vol's age, basic life archetype and family situation, there's no need to rehash it, and it takes away from the climax of shooting William if the story goes on too much longer. Work on your economy of detail, think about what every sentence and paragraph is saying and how it fits into your structure. Find more flavor or interesting things to put in that aren't repetitious!

With that out of the way - lovely work. Good concept, good storyboard, well suited for a mini, no other major flaws I can shake a finger at. The idea is perhaps a bit low hanging. I hear there are quite a few snipers and sniper subversions, and even another Cupid, but this does put a nice spin on it rather than just a vanilla Cupid Sniper. Vol is reasonably expressive, and her mindset conveys itself to me well. I'm intrigued enough to buy in and would read more if this was cleaned up and made the start of a longer work!

As to placement, hmm. Probably around the mid/high tier border for me. In a fuzzy semi-objective cloud placement, I'd be surprised if this didn't make the cut out of prelims, but also kinda surprised if it medaled. Depends on how many other strong entries there are. Good stuff, authorperson. Thanks for writing!

Hercules never finds out about how he's going to get the apples here does he? Ah well it was still an enjoyable read from the myth. Solid all the way through.

I think the story is technically fine. It's supposed to be a comedy with the over the top antagonist and all. I didn't personally find it funny. I think part of that has to do with the fact that I don't play card games, watch card games, watch shows about card games etc.

So, when I read the story it didn't draw me in in the slightest. I'm sure this story will have its fans and I'm sure it will do well with folks. It just didn't work for me.

Neat idea, but Foehn nails the two big problems here:

1. You use a non-standard structure in a way that really doesn't benefit the work at all. Unless you have an incredibly good reason to do so, abandoning normal formatting conventions is a bad idea. This story is actually a bit physically tricky to read, particularly on something like a phone at the moment.

2. This is more an interesting idea and setup than a true story. Basically the interesting part of the story has either already happened (since it is just the characters overlooking the aftermath of the carnage without any real impact on them) or will happen after the story (the future of the baby or the clinic). You need to have a compelling arc within the story itself, not around it.

I'll second that Ray/Roy is a really rough thing to do even in a longer story where I have time to get used to the MCs identity. Here I lost track really fast.

I think the story's arc is... troubled. Not that the action doesn't arc well or the like, but the emotional arc. Basically, I forgot about the fact that Roy was conflicted about halfway into the story because, well, he basically carries out the job without worrying after the first two paragraphs, which creates the question of what the story is actually about: is it about whether the greater good is indeed good, is it about how time travel divergences might work, or is it just about some guy stop the assassination of MLK? The arc on the former two don't really play out well, is the problem.

I'm also not entirely sure about the Guy de la Roy joke either, which is annoying me because I feel like something about it is nagging in the back of my head and I just can't figure out what it is.

Car detail is actually a bit weird. Basing observation on characterization (e.g. the guy is big into cars so he notices them) is a good, standard 3rd person trick, but I'm not sure that was the intent here since we never otherwise get much impression about the main's interest in cars?

It’s an interesting piece but as is still a bit sketchy. The first thing I banged my head on was how the rubble could be above them. What you try to evoke here is probably a crumbled room, but I can't see how a crumbled room would let them leeway enough to move. It's like they are trapped into a small chamber under the rubble, but it is not adequately described, so the whole setup sounded implausible to me.

Otherwise, I clearly get the teacher (mercy) shoots the pupil to avoid him the pain of suffocating/drowning, just before she’s rescued. Of course, we are also led to believe that the pupil could've been saved too, so the teacher is left with the guilt of killing him “for nothing”, probably what the last sentence refers to.

In all, a good entry. Tidy up some details (like, her foot is crushed, yeah? But she seems unable to raise anyway, due to space limitations, so what’s the point?) and this will definitely be bang-up.

Normally when stories consider a medical advancement capable of eliminating most or all illnesses, the plot focuses on how human society changes in response. Old sources of conflict vanish, and new, unpredictable ones appear in their place.

Vaccine strikes a different route, though I’m not sure what insight it’s aiming to provide. Envisioning the Four Horsemen as middle-aged Joes griping over coffee is interesting, but they’re hardly compelling as characters. Who could be sympathetic to them, after all? The comedy elements simply missed with me -- once you get over the central conceit (the Four Horsemen are just ordinary people, like you and me!) there's not much left.

I did like some of the little asides, though: the description of Death, and War paying the bill (again).

Overall: An interesting idea for a story, but without much meat on its bones. I’m left with little to ponder when it’s over.

I saw Hat’s massive review of this story and figured it had to be next.

So, let’s be up front – this story is basically an author’s tract about death and dying, with a little bit about Jeff and Anne tossed in to give the ideas some grounding. It’s told in the style I like to call Campfire Story, because the narrator relates it as though he’s literally speaking to you – there is no narrative aside from what the author says. This can be an effective storytelling device (it certainly is if you’re around a campfire or in a bar), but it also means you’re surrendering other aspects of storytelling, like dialogue, settings, etc. Even the characterization is minimal: we get names, a few motives, and that’s it.

But this story does do something very well, something that sets it above most other minifics – it invokes an emotion in the reader. It makes the reader ponder their own permanence, and while it does so with fairly crude tools (“Today I’m going to talk about what happens when someone you love suddenly dies.”), it does so effectively. That’s a huge point in its favor.

There's a lot of forced emotion here. The judge snapping, the defendant's anguish. I appreciate that this story actually has a character, a conflict, a climactic action and a (short) resolution, something most minifics don't even attempt. But it's rather simply done.

Also, although I normally hate to quibble with a story's presentation of facts, I have to echo what Hat said about this guy's actual determination of guilt. If the light really was green, and he couldn't see the guy crossing the street, then he's probably not guilty. Certainly, he doesn't feel like he's in an emotional state to accurately judge his own guilt, which basically means this guy has a martyr's complex. Maybe that's what you intended, but it's hardly admirable and certainly not just.

A very interesting setting you delivered here, but before talking about it, let's cover some other things.

The pace was great. Dividing your story in three, even if you were obviously following the book, is usually a great idea to tell things. Each act happens in a different setting and gives us new informations on what's going on, without being too straightforward.
Moreover, there was a good balanced between dialog and inner thoughts (for me).

Now the story's comment.
It's with the comment that I have a problem (it's not a big one, mind you). Not because I think it's impossible or because I don't find the idea interesting. The problem I have is that the idea isn't enough developped. I know that it's MiniFic and that we don't have much room to convey many things but I think this idea was too big for a MiniFic round. It could be balanced by focusing on characters, and you did that for the first two acts. But the third one reveals that prisonners and guards regurlaly switch places, so the main focus of this act is on the idea that it's the role which shapes the man and not the opposite.
But aside from telling us that, the story hasn't much else to say. I would have like you to explain why, giving us arguments and several examples, even if it's an idea I usually agree with, especially when dealing with positions of power.

All in all, the story was great, with a solid writing and a solid pace but it falls very short to be really amazing. Because of that, it will be between a low top-contender and a high mid-tier.

facing away from a pair of double windows Does that make four windows total?

That vaguely reminds me of a Sci-Fi short story which begins by a guy trying to smash his alarm clock silent (old type, with a dial and a bell) just to realise it tried to bite his hand. It then drifts quickly into multi-dimensional beings, sorta what happens there too.

But yeah, I agree with the other commenters here: we don’t really get to know what’s going on. We have apparently godlike humans (haha, that's a laugh), a sapient orange talking to a sapient fridge which seems to be an elder god, but elder gods know why, is trapped under this ridiculous shape, despite its godlike powers. That doesn't really add up, and the last line is much like a confession “I wanted to write more, but, you know, I banged my head against the limit”.

So, yeah, the premise is somewhat fun, but too much is left dangling and unexplained for us to fully enjoy this.

He parked his car with his need for answers rising from the pit of his stomach like vomit. Wow – I mean, did you angle for a comic effect, because that’s what this elicits in me, a juxtaposition of two completely unrelated clauses into the same sentence (“He landed on the moon with his mouth watering at the sight of the cake”).

He needed to know if the benefit of many could be leveraged on his own anonymous redemption. Why use that clunky, passive construction? (“He needed to know if his own anonymous redemption w/could benefit to many.”)

His sweat running in trickles through his eyebrows and the electric puff of his white beard. You lack a verb here. This is not a sentence, just a fragment (besides “sweat running in trickles” is strange — does sweat run or trickle?).

Even in Romance languages, Guy de la Roy doesn't make sense. Roy is an old spelling of French roi, but roi is masculine, so it should be “du Roy” (> Duroi). Roy as a common name doesn't exist neither in Italian nor in Spanish. So: beats me.

I agree with the strangeness of bearing hard on car details, all the more than cars play absolutely no role in the main story.

Besides – yep – the time traveller that alters the past. A bit time-worn, don’t you think? :P [Cf: Bradbury’s Sound of Thunder.]

That was quite the story. I see that many have tried to get something from it and I’ll do the same but first, my overall opinion on the story. (Before we start, I must warn you. This review is gonna be long so if you don’t want to read it just skip to the conclusion part)

It is good, it is very good. Second person is something I usually avoid because the stories are often self-insert and wish-fulfillments only. It is also the cheapest way to get your reader to care about what you write by directly speaking to him. But here, the ‘you’ isn’t really a character, it’s a presence. The reader is quickly informed that he doesn’t really belong in this story.

A life (your own?) passes before your eyes.

With that line, the story tells us that we aren’t really sure that the life that has ended is ours. So the ‘you’ is weaken, it’s not a strong character that will play important in the story. And yet…

you don’t leave.

Keep going. Don’t stop here. Don’t stay here. You stop anyway.

This is a direct address to the ‘you’. ‘You’ doesn’t want to leave, ‘you’ wants to stay despite the narrator’s orders. My meta sense is tingling right now but it’s not the only thing to get from these lines (we’ll get back to that later).

From this point, I’m gonna call the ‘you’ the poltergeist. So the poltergeist decides to settle in a nice suburban home where lives a couple.
Instead of keeping on following the story, let’s focus on two sentences which stood out for me and, I think, sum up the whole story.

You lean down in the dead of night and put your lips around her left foot and suck. When you back away, her left foot is orange.

First, there is undoubtedly a sexual connotation with foot licking. It’s not something you casually do to greet your friends. It’s something intimate and that’s why this sentence was very jarring the first time I read it, without forgetting that there’s nothing sexual involved after that. With that connotation comes the colour orange. We can assume, without a doubt, that the action of licking has caused the foot to turn orange.
So what could it mean? Don’t be so hasty, there are more pieces to connect together before reaching a conclusion so try to bear with me.

I think we should now focus on what’s orange instead of focusing on why the colour orange. The first mention of this colour is with the foot but before, we have that:

Her toenails are painted grey and you feel grey. In the dark, all colors are grey.

So at first, everything is grey but it’s because of the poltergeist action (licking the foot) that things start to turn orange. God’s hand will turn orange, the woman’s lips and the man’s eyes too. And in the end, everything turns orange.

the room is still orange

The poltergeist is infecting the house and its occupants. Even God is powerless against him. He’s not only powerless, but he becomes infected too. The couple will vainly try futile things to get rid of the poltergeist.

They hire a priest. They buy a ouija board. They burn incense. They eat balanced meals. They exercise regularly. They take a multivitamin. They rub olive oil into their skin. They do a rain dance. They wear moccasins and tie plastic feathers to their hair. They howl and scream and shout at you. They call you names. They froth at the mouth.

But in the end, the poltergeist wins. He takes more and more place, getting bigger and bigger and at the opposite, the couple gets smaller and smaller. He becomes the true occupant of the house, he is everywhere.
There are other sentences to link together.

they hold hands every morning while brushing their teeth

They hold hands with you while brushing their teeth

only you fit on the bed and they sleep on the floor

So the poltergeist literally put himself between the man and the woman, putting more and more distance between them while he becomes bigger.

Now that’s for the first meaning of the story. What about the symbolism? Well, I’m still not sure but I think the poltergeist and the colour orange represent the suspicion of infidelity. Notice how the first things to turn orange are parts of the body connected to sexuality and love. It starts with the foot and it continues with the woman’s lips and the man’s eyes. The man sees on his wife’s lips the prints of infidelity. Thus, his eyes are orange and her lips too, they are both infected by suspicion. They try to leave it to God to save them but even God is powerless against suspicion. Once the little worm has started digging its hole, it’s too late, there is no turning back.

If you agree with my interpretation, I let you link the other pieces together and look for how all the symbolism plays around many concepts.

CONCLUSION

And now my review comes to its end. There could be more to say but I think you got my point, and thus, I’ll spare you a 2.000 words review.

By its length, you, author, probably have guessed how I received the story but in any case, know that this story is a top contender without a single doubt.
You’ve managed to deliver such a powerful metaphor without forgetting telling a story, and all that with such a few words. You truly deserve the first place for me but even if you don’t win, know that you’ve won both my heart and my mind.

Big round of applause.

>>Fenton Actually... the woman's toenails are orange before the poltergeist licks her foot. They just look gray until they start leaving the bedside lamp on.

They begin keeping a bedside lamp on at night but that only enables you to see them more clearly. In the light you find that her toenails are really painted orange and you feel orange.

And while your conclusions of the poltergeist representing infidelity make just about as much sense as any explanation, it doesn't really tie into certain parts of the story very well. The funeral at the beginning, for example, or the orange salt. Salt isn't a symbol for anything sexual that I've heard of. (I mean, it probably is for someone somewhere, but yeah. Not like feet.)

The ending especially makes very little sense to me in relation to infidelity. These people are apparently, at this point, working together to defeat the poltergeist, which they treat more like a physical/spiritual ailment than a relationship one:

They hire a priest. They buy a ouija board. They burn incense. They eat balanced meals. They exercise regularly. They take a multivitamin. They rub olive oil into their skin. They do a rain dance. They wear moccasins and tie plastic feathers to their hair. They howl and scream and shout at you. They call you names. They froth at the mouth. Too late.

Multivitamins for infidelity?

And despite that, it still replaces them:

They get smaller and smaller and then they are gone.

And that makes no sense to me, as far as infidelity goes. How can infidelity, as an abstract concept, own a house and lawn and have nice neighbors all by itself? A house might be famous enough for a killing to say it was 'owned by murder', but I don't think infidelity is a strong enough concept to say the same thing.

I dunno. I appreciate the effort you've taken to try and extract a metaphor from this, but I don't think I can agree with your interpretation.

Time for me to throw my hat into the ring on this story. Most stories in the Writeoff are pretty straightforward in how they are supposed to be read and don't offer many divergences in interpretation, so on the immediate plus side, this story gives us something to discuss. On the other hand, I don't really like stories written in a "you bring your own interpretation to it, man" style, which I think this ultimately avoids, but sort of appears to fall into the kind of genre. Knowing exactly what the color orange means and exactly what the poltergeist does to the couple in the story isn't exactly imperative to understanding the story's proceedings, but it's nice to be able to read into and understand the subtext that causes events to occur.

I think perhaps the second-person style, while engaging, obfuscates the metaphorical implications of the poltergeist and the color orange, and as far as I can tell, the "you" in the story could just be swapped with the "the poltergeist" without losing much meaning. I've tried to link back how I or a person generally being addressed could fit in the mantle of the poltergeist, and I haven't really found a satisfactory interpretation. Unless >>Fenton is right, and I suppose that there is a case that it is supposed to be read in sort of an accusatory tone.

Now onto the crux of things, where we examine what the color orange is supposed to mean and the poltergeist means. On my first reading, I felt that the orange was basically a substitute for the general idea of death, disease, and all things dreadful, and indeed, it is easy to read that as the overall intention, with no specific aim for the color orange other than a general concept. Orange is the by-product of draining something, contaminating it, making it fall ill, and I think >>Fenton ultimately is in the right ideological ballpark with the "infidelity" interpretation, but I think he also misses the mark in some respects. Additionally, I think >>Not_A_Hat is missing the point in that the literal consequences of the poltergeist is interchangeable with the metaphorical subtext.

There are many lines that indicate to me that the poltergeist takes on the qualities of an emotional vampire or corrupter, and I think the fact that his victims are a young couple is not a coincidence by the author. To express the poltergeist's motivations, we have but this line:

You see love here and you crave it.

The poltergeist's ultimate intentions are to drain the love from the couple. Its intentions are not exactly malicious or malignant, but it is entirely apathetic to the suffering it brings. In terms of understanding the poltergeist as a metaphorical actor, the poltergeist is something that comes between the young couple, that corrupts their affections for each other, and ultimately lays them to waste. You, the poltergeist, are an elephant in the room. You are the thing getting in the way.

Now, >>Not_A_Hat mentions:

Actually... the woman's toenails are orange before the poltergeist licks her foot. They just look gray until they start leaving the bedside lamp on.

I may have to jump through some hoops to explain this, but, essentially, my idea is that the poltergeist is drawn to the couple in the first place because there is a tinge of corruption / infidelity / what have you in them to begin with. The poltergeist doesn't start changing things orange on his own, he only starts when he notices the orange on the lady's toenail. From then on, things only get worse and escalate.

Again, there are a lot of details I feel strengthen >>Fenton's interpretation that he hasn't exactly mentioned. Sucking on the foot is sexual, yes, but starting to sit at the dinner table, as if he were part of the family, again speaks to an elephant in the room coming between the young couple. Something that is inescapable and haunts the time that they are together.

The couple's response and how the couples changes from what they are previously established as is important here. At first, they pretend not to see the poltergeist, and they essentially ignore the problem. The specific places that become orange on the couple are important: lips and eyes. Lips, obviously for the kissing component, eyes for the wandering gaze of looking somewhere else. They sleep apart, while the poltergeist dominates the bed (sexual), they hold hands with poltergeist instead of each other (relationship decay), and eventually the problem becomes so big that the poltergeist dominates the house.

Again, as >>Not_A_Hat points out, the couple literally dying due to this doesn't make much sense in the context of seeing the poltergeist as a metaphorical actor, unless you go for the broadest possible interpretation and say that the infidelity destroyed the couple, but I think that is still conceivable, and makes sense if you are examining the poltergeist as a literal actor that drains the world around him. I think delineating the poltergeist as a metaphor and as a ghost helps when trying to understand why things happen in this story. Same with calling help for god, or getting a Ouija board—not a solution for a metaphorical poltergeist, but a solution for an actual poltergeist.

Of course, this infidelity interpretation isn't exactly bulletproof, partially I think due to the fact that whatever the author's intentions were with the color orange and the poltergeist, he left a little too much up to interpretation, but I think that it is the best thing proposed so far, and I would go as far as to say that the sexual component and break down of a young couple in regards to a failed marriage is a major component of the subtext in this story. There is obviously something going on here in regards to how something splits young love in two and destroys it. In a more Biblical and antiquated sense, spirits used to be thought of as part of the reasons people committed sins, and that might be playing to that angle. Still not 100% certain.

So what ultimately did I think of this? Well it doesn't matter because it's not on my slate fuck me right I just wasted my time typing all of this up or at least until the finals because it will make it; I am confident in that . Well, it's got a leg up on most other stories in terms of prose construction, and the idea is pretty intriguing. Even reading it straight without any examination into the subtext, it's a nice little horror piece. So it gets some props. It's a rewarding enough to reread to try to figure out what the hell you were going for and make a large ass post trying to discover its meaning. I'd say it's pretty solid all things considered, but there is a criminal lack of signposting to signal the author's intentions here. So it sort of comes across as a monument to nothing, when in fact there is something glittering underneath, just outside the definite grasp of the reader.

Oof. I hate this! Brutal, unflinching, depressing, not much point to it besides being depressing, and I didn't find it extremely believable. Models like the Stanford Prison Experiment, and real prisons, work because people don't switch sides. Crossover between inmates and guards are how you get guard corruption and smuggling and all that going on...

... But all that aside, the hate is in a good way. This is quite well written. It has a strong structure with a clear beginning/middle/end, a good intro hook, introduces its characters well, and sustains interest all the way through. I have to disagree with Fenton, I think this is a strong showing of execution within the mini format.

Some points go off for relying on shock and brutality, especially in the middle section, which hammers hard enough to bring me out of the piece a bit. It might be a stronger piece overall with that scene cut, or cut down some? That may be my taste leaking through, though. I'd also like to see a little bit more of the narrator beyond fear and pressure.

Probably has to be in the conversation for top tier this round - it's the best entry of the seven I've read so far, on a technical level. It doesn't wow me, and there are things I want to pick at, but setting taste aside the fundamentals here are good. Thanks for writing!

What even is this? Gotta echo the other comments. I spent the whole read with an eyebrow raised wondering what was going on, and then it ended. No, that's not quite right, I can tell what's going on, but it makes about as much sense as colorless green ideas sleeping furiously.

Uh. The prose is okay, and there's some sort of structure, maybe? Some kind of purposeful absurdism? Is it a parody of light novels, or something along those lines? I liked the joke about the fridge's voice being cold? I got nothing.

Gonna have to put this near the bottom, voteswise. No hard feelings, though. I get the impression this wasn't exactly trying to medal. I'm not sure what it was trying to do (best guess: some sort of parody that went too far and missed the mark) and look forward to reading author's notes to find out. Thanks for writing, though!

A ghost sucks life, love and energy out of a couple? Or is orange a metaphor for ennui? Boringness? Routine that creeps in, settles then invades one’s life, and winds up killing the most passionate of romances? Or indifference maybe. Even god is swallowed up in indifference and disdain.

In any case, I concur this is more than aptly written. I lapped the prose up. If you tried to write in Horizon's semblance, well done.

Just a thing: don't think Vitamin C protects you against the cold or the flu. It's a urban legend. It improves your general state and certainly plays a major role in the immune system, but not that big.

>>Fenton

First, there is undoubtedly a sexual connotation with foot licking.

You mean foot massage, right? :P

Well, given Not A Hat's essay above, I'm going to try to be brief and mostly concur with it. This is an author tract that goes so far as to completely break character in its penultimate paragraphs.

I have to completely disagree with Cold in Gardez - I did not find the piece effective at evoking any emotion, other than "Oh, come on." That's the real downside of writing in such a didactic, locutionary style - it's all in on emotional manipulation, and going to completely flop if the reader doesn't already agree with whatever philosophy is being dictated to them, or simply doesn't care for such overt heartstring-tugging.

As to placement... linking back to some things I already wrote on another story: >>Ranmilia
I can't give much credit just for picking an inherently emotionally charged theme and then coasting on that choice of topic, even if the piece explicitly leans into doing exactly that. So I'm afraid this is going to be quite low in my rankings.

Apologies to the author if I'm coming off harshly, here. Thank you for writing! The technical side of the piece is fine, it does accomplish its aims within the mini limits and I totally get why it's tempting to go for such an idea when you have one day and 400-750 to work with. I do think the concept for the actual story bits bears some potential if not written in this style. Maybe set it from Jeff or even Anne's perspective, do more with the hard drive=human memories metaphor, keep "Show, Don't Tell" in mind and think about how to convey the ideas and emotions to an audience that might not already be sympathetic to them. That last bit is the hard part.

Echoing the above. This isn't much of a story, just a snip built off a couple of conceits. There's no tension, conflict or resolution, and I didn't find much to laugh at either. Pleasant to read, nice prose and formatting, but lacking in substance.

Actually, making it so pleasant to read works against it in a few places. I was very interested in what solution they'd come up with to Panacea... but they didn't come up with anything. I was very interested in what Death's description would be... but there wasn't one. There are Pratchett caps, but not Pratchett jokes.

And hey, speaking of Pratchett, doesn't Good Omens have a "Four Horsemen hang out and complain" scene very much like this one? But with Pollution having replaced Pestilence, exactly as an answer to the dilemma presented in this snip?

Overall it feels like a bit of a filler or completion's sake entry: have a couple of concepts, write some entertaining character banter and call it a day. Certainly not terrible, I expect to see several like this in mini rounds, but doesn't go anywhere or do enough for me to place it too highly in rankings. Thanks for writing, though!

I’m sorry to say I saw the twist coming, so it lacked much of the impact it might otherwise have had. The moment that the gun had only one bullet I immediately thought “it’s The Mist by Steven King”. From there things played out as expected. I think it would have been interesting to pull the double fake and explore the consequences her committing suicide and leaving the kid to drown. You could keep it exactly the same until the gun sinks out of sight, then hit us with the words "M-Mrs Morrison?" again. I guess you could still have him rescued at the last moment but that kinda cuts out all the delicious emotions.

That said the writing is pretty solid, although the style seems to lend itself more to longer form writing. The descriptions and backstory are rather detailed for a format where every word is like water in the desert. I was also pulled out a bit when I ran into things like her reliance on visual cues in an environment that I assume is pitch black or ignoring her bleeding leg after two seconds. I can’t help but feel that focusing on her other senses – touch, smell, hearing, pain, cold – might have been more potent in an area with restricted light.

I like it. I really like it. I don’t even need descriptions to see a retired player, sitting on a bench in his suit, telling the story to a new player. He’s not bragging. He’s not running his mouth. He’s telling it like it was, a tiny moment that ended up having a profound impact on him.

All in all, it’s a very human story. None of the usual flair and drama you see in other stories and I think it works well. Good job.

I’ve (unfortunately) to concur with what the others have said. You (deviously) set up a very modern backdrop: we almost imagine some cantankerous Swiss recluse living in his anti-nuclear bunker with his grand-daughter, targeting a young visitor with a laser beam or something. Then you endeavour to knock down all the pieces of that set-up, dragging us all the way to the opposite point. We don’t like to be drabbled by drabbles.

I mean, that piecemeal reveal does not add up, since it isn’t really relevant to the story’s core conflict, which is an old geezer refusing to let go of a lifetime hoard of trinkets despite her grand-daughter’s constant spurring. The guy’s background is ultimately irrelevant to the conflict, so you added a layer that acts not as a mind-boggler (as you maybe expected), but rather as a distraction.

Fair enough. Your characters are nice, not outstanding, but what transpires through your prose is sufficient to get a hold on what they ‘are’.

The end twist is amusing, but not flabbergasting, so it fells a bit flat, especially since the characters do not really react to it, but rather swallow it up passively. I feel you could’ve added an extra-twist at the end (e.g.: reveal that the characters are in fact living in the nacelle of a balloon, and the weight of the extra-clutter stymied it from taking off).

The short of it is that the idea is fair, but the executions trails. Tidy up your fic, and it should come out much shinier! :P

>>Not_A_Hat
I'll try to answer to your points, even if >>Cassius has already covered some. But before, remember (you and any reader who would come accross our talk) that my interpretation isn't the only one possible. Disagreeing with me is absolutely fine, it's even better if you can try to prove me wrong, because I love to challenge my ideas, my thoughts and my opinions.

the woman's toenails are orange before the poltergeist licks her foot. They just look gray until they start leaving the bedside lamp on.

I must confess that I forgot this part and should have reread the story more carefully. However, that doesn't really invalid my point. If the toenails are already orange, it just means that the infidelity was already there before the poltergeist comes. His arrival reveals what has been hidden (feet are inside shoes most of the day), it's his look that brings the truth under the spotlight.

it doesn't really tie into certain parts of the story very well.

Since you raised two points, I'll divide the next section in two.

The funeral at the beginning

Aside from what I've already said, I can't really add anything. It's one of the weakest point in my demonstration. I don't really know what to do with it. Maybe it's a foreshadowing of what's gonna happen to the couple. Because their relationship will die, the story starts with the death of someone/something.

or the orange salt. Salt isn't a symbol for anything sexual that I've heard of.

Indeed, I have never see salt connected to sexuality either. But what the salt reveals about their realtionship is that the suspicion has infected even the simplest life actions. What's more trite that passing the salt? With this action, the story emphasizes the fact that the corruption is everywhere.
Moreover, it's a turning point in the story because the man doesn't ask his wife to pass the salt.

he is not asking his orange-footed, orange-lipped wife.

He's asking the poltergeist. Moreover, this happens after a long time.

You sit at the dinner table for months, years, maybe longer. The couple ignores you until one night the husband asks (was it exhaustion? compassion? insanity?) for someone to pass the salt

It's the first time the couple really acknowledges the poltergeist's presence and try to 'confront' him. Notice the three words 'exhaustion', 'compassion' and 'insanity'.

You grab the salt shaker. It flies through the air, twirls like a ballerina, geysers orange salt across the walls.

With this, the husband directly address the topic of infidelity. They didn't speak of it before but now that he has infected so much space, they can't deny its presence, the husband confronts his wife. And thus, the salt spews orange geysers, covering the wall with salt/orange. The truth of infidelity is now revealed, no more hidding.

About the ending,

The ending especially makes very little sense to me in relation to infidelity. These people are apparently, at this point, working together to defeat the poltergeist, which they treat more like a physical/spiritual ailment than a relationship one:
[...]
Multivitamins for infidelity?

I understand that the ending can seem disconnected to infidelity but in a way, it's one of its major point.
I don't know what you think about infidelity in a couple but for me, from the moment one of the them has cheated, it's almost impossible for the couple to live their life like thay used to. Every look, every gesture, every little lateness will be perceived by the other with the prism of infidelity. Did he/she come back later than usual because he was with his/her lover? Did he/she buy me this present to ease his/her guilt? The situation can only get worse.
That being said, it doesn't prevent couples from trying to save their relationship but the story shows us that it's futile. Moreover, their attempts look silly, with barely any connection with one another. That's because the couple would try anything to save their relationship, even if it's stupid and rely on popular beliefs.
By the way, >>Monokeras has raised a good points.

Just a thing: don't think Vitamin C protects you against the cold or the flu. It's a urban legend.

The couple relies on silly things to protect them from imaginary threats and when comes a real one, they just do the same things. Try to replace the list with going to a couple therapist, taking a long vacation, trying partner swapping or new sexual positions etc...
None of these things can fix the problem in most of the case.
Once you've cheated, you've lost the other's trust. Good luck to get it back.

And despite that, it still replaces them:

They get smaller and smaller and then they are gone.

And that makes no sense to me, as far as infidelity goes.

For that, >>Cassius has almost already said what I was thinking. The poltergeist is some kind of vampire, draining love from the couple. If they get smaller, it's because their love dries out, to the point that it disappears.


I think that covers pretty much everything I wanted to say for now.
As for you >>Cassius, I can only say that I agree with everything you said and the things I had to add are already in my replies to >>Not_A_Hat, so sorry that I didn't do the same thing.

And as a conclusion,

I don't think I can agree with your interpretation.

Like I said, it's absolutely fine. It's better if you can keep on disagreeing (plz do that :p) because what I say isn't the truth. It's my interpretation of the story and it needs to be challenged by others in order to have different POVs and perspectives on the matter.

I'll be with the others on this one. It was a good laugh, I didn't expect the ending.
Rereading it knowing the ending also got me a good laugh.
So good job.

I'll also echo the fact that maybe you should have made the two voices more different. It was a bit difficult in the middle of the story to remember who was talking.

>>Fenton
I think the orange is pretty much a metaphor for routine or groove. They try everything to break it (comprising changing partner), but it creeps back, until it had invaded every nook of their personal space, and they've become old. Don't old people relish in routine, bland lives? You sit in the same chair every night. Your chair is orange.

I love the idea here. It's not presented perfectly, and I can tell you ran out of space, yet you left in useless lines like "I stood up, leaving the picks in the ground. I wouldn't need them anymore. I dropped my backpack, as I had no more use for it nor for its content." Everything after the word stood was useless -- you could've used those words elsewhere and for greater effect. TD is correct that the characters here are so bare-bones they barely exist, but damn, the idea of a person writing the song that becomes the world is great.

I think I'm with Dubs on this. Embrace the concept early and spend 750 words running wild with it.

But still, top of my slate so far.

I skipped through most of the paragraphs, having understood the main theme, to go directly to the last about Earth.

Birth rate 0 by 24th century as humans become obsessed with self to exclusion of all else; reproduction too burdensome to bear.

That is the first really interesting idea and it feels like it is the main idea but unfortunately, it's over before this idea has a chance to shine. For me, you could have only ketp one or two examples before delving to Earth and expanding on the reasons why humankind has universally come to this way of thinking.

I salute the original format but aside from that, there isn't much to get here. We also don't know what is this 'we' at the end.

Regarding the writing, my criticism would basically echo what my illustrious predecessors already said. I may add that in an atmospheric piece like this one breaking the flow is lethal to the reader's immersion. The moment I had to read a sentence a second time it, was over.

And this is a waste because when you nailed the prose it was pretty good. The first two paragraphs set the scene nicely even if a bit more polish is still necessary.

As for the arc, the reveal lost a bit of punch as we missed context and details.

I don't have much more to add. Some editing and a framing context would go a long way into improving this. As it is now, it feels unfinished.

Still, this shows potential as a pleasant atmospheric piece. Thank you for having written it.

I liked this one. It was basically a philosophical tract, but it was an enjoyable one.

I appreciated the speakers you have chosen for this dialogue, it was a nice way to give context and known traits to characters without explicitly telling them in the limited word count.

The story itself is a brief exposition and discussion about choices and consequences and is overall a pleasant read. The dialogue flows well, the characters have distinct voices and it has a beginning and an end.

While the story never reached too deep in the issue it was about, I couldn't really expect more in the amount of words available. It still feels like it just skimmed the surface, and maybe the minific format wasn't the best for it.

All in all, it was a nice read. Thank you for having submitted it.

Well, >>Ranmilia has pretty much said what I thought of the story, even if won't be as enthusiast as him/her/it/Apache helicopter.

I was engaged by the nice setting at the beginning but the story unfortunately stops before reaching something more emotionnal.
I salute the writing however, very solid.
If you ever expand this one, send me a link, I would like to see how this can ends.

It's been a while since I saw a straight Aesop in a writeoff round. I wanna say Word of Warning was the last one?

Anyhow, the punchline is cute, but the lead-up is way too long. If you want to do an Aesop, it should stick pretty tightly to the necessary information, which I think would have put you at a much rounder 450 words or so. And, I think for this story, that's the best advice I have offer. Cut directly to the meat on this one. It is an aesop. Move quickly into the moral and make sure all your words support it!

I was out until the very end, at which point I was back in.

Generally agreed with >>TitaniumDragon here. Had this been a bit more of a compelling character piece, I think this would be super awesome. As is, it is a little draggy up to the punchline, at which point it ends quite well.

Cute and solid prose.

Your quotation structure is a little inconsistent on how capitals function with how dialogue splits work.

Problematically I'd been trained to look for the twist here because I was aware this twist existed, which kinda made it waiting for the shoe to drop. I think, as the others say, using this concept and writing a story around it, rather than making the whole story the twist, would've been a bit more compelling, I think?

Same as everyone else here - too many twists. I spent the whole read confused and trying unsuccessfully to figure out what the setting was, let alone any of the specific details that get thrown around. As a result, I could never get hooked on the actual story.

I'm sure it made more sense in the author's head, and the basic structure seems like it would work if you already had a good grasp on the world involved. As it stands, though, the product is as cluttered and impenetrable as the bunker in the story.

Thanks for writing, though, and congrats on getting it in!

A perfectly passable little tale.

I'd need to stare at it a bit more, bit I think the prose could probably use a little bit of polishing to help increase the impact of some of the lines and tighten up what I felt was a bit of loose pacing. Basically, while the story got a vague smile out of me, I suspect another revision or two could really punch it up.

Good comments from HBAO and others already. I concur, this story is technically fine but doesn't have much life to it.

The main reason I can pin that on is that Josh might as well be talking to a wall. Miranda's completely impassive, makes no comments and passes no judgment, save a tiny sliver of ambivalence at the concept of optimism. Is she impressed? Unimpressed? She notices all these details about his clothing and demeanor, but which ones matter to her, and how? I don't know. Even at the end, I can't tell if she's shooting Josh down or gently tweaking and rooting for him. It could be either.

That ambiguity is a problem, since the pitch is the whole story. The "twist" isn't really one, it was so obvious from the instant Josh said he was applying for a position that I assumed I was meant to pick up on it.

Overall a very nice skeleton, technically well written, but the lack of judgment leaves it feeling like it lacks a conflict and conclusion. This'll probably wind up below average in my votes, but is closer to a high tier piece than that implies. Don't be afraid to have your piece take a stance! Thanks for writing!

I am... unsure of what to do with this. Dialogue beats are solid. Needs an editorial pass to clean up some small errors (bending over with a mouth over a grin).

I don't think the overall messaging quite flies with me, but that has more to do with my personal views (joking is a coping mechanism and a tool to deal with the harsh realities of life which does feel distinctly removed from the idea of a product adverting it.) Dunno, something here didn't quite click with me, but I can't actually pin it down yet and I apologize to the author for that. I'll try to revisit this one if I figure it out.

I enjoyed the format. Setting it up as a series of reports gives the feeling that this has been going on a long time – so long that the narrative has been stretched thin even for those who were there to tell it as a story. Unfortunately, the read was kind of dry. Each entry read very similarly to the last and so there wasn’t really a sense of progression. I get that the authors were literally robots but I think that if there had been some slight alteration of the language, a sense of frustration that builds up with each entry, then it would have had more impact with the payoff.

The biggest weakness story wise that I can see is that the entire series of events takes place almost entirely during the last entry, or, depending on how you look at it, during the last sentence. Although the irony of their quest to at last find a lasting civilization, when they themselves seem to be the only ‘race’ to do so, is not lost on me.

>>Fenton I think the 'we' are the 1,768 sapient AIs. It's a bit awkward to refer to themselves in such a personal way in a very impersonal format, but I think it's the gist they were going for.

Echoing the above re: structure and content.

Want to add, I feel this story falls into the trap of over describing character voice and action. Basically (literally) every piece of dialogue has some sort of said/whatever'd tag on it, and most of them are honestly unnecessary. Dialogue should, generally, speak for itself (ho ho ho). For example...

“Well, yeah, but… but… Population grows exponentially, and food production linearly! They’ll start starving again eventually right?” Famine insisted nervously.

The added tag is redundant information. You've structured the dialogue physically in a way that already conveys that information, as does the flow of the conversation. Trust yourself! Save intervention tags for meaningful movements/gestures or to clear up confusion on which character is speaking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6LovY_DdEE

This is well written, but lacks one essential piece of information to bring it together: what happened to Hannah? Divorce? Relationship fell apart? Another man/woman/orange? Death in a tragic car accident that Steven is setting out to replicate? Baleful Polymorphed into a can of beer and accidentally drunk? I can't eliminate any of these possibilities, they're all within the range of other entries I've read...

Without knowing what happened, it's hard for me to understand why Steven is so torn up about it five years down the road. Is he in mourning? Feeling inadequate? Blaming himself for having done something wrong? Is his reading of the message sincere in tone, or bitterly ironic? "I'll never find someone so good again" or "such a nice fiction, yet it turned out to be lies?"

Without understanding why Steven is sad, I can't decide why I should be sad (or not!) And so the piece lacks the emotional impact it's meant to have.

Everything other than that is fantastic, good enough that this might make above average in my votes even with the crucial flaw. I feel like it isn't even meant to be ambiguous, either, but the author just barely undershot the amount of information they needed to make it all click. Still a great effort, thanks for writing!

I -also- suspect this was intended to be more of a children's story (or at least a prose piece). That said, this initial expectation not being met throughout the rest of the fic actually has a hugely negative effect on me, because I think the story would be significantly better having maintained a prose-ish scheme.

Also, I'm not really convinced on the final message. I get what the idea is, but I'm not quite sure what the path that message is supposed to be sitting along is, if that makes sense. Basically, the booth man here seems like a real asshole for no reason by intentionally setting people up to fail, because I feel an immediate desire is different than a dream. So I -want- to land the ball in the hole, but that's not really a dream per se, IMO.

I, too, don't get it. Are they... trees? No, probably not. Is this fantasy? The Three Little Pigs? Three kids waiting to see a comet or shooting star, maybe make a wish?

Pure metaphor? >>Fenton believes so. I'm not sure I'm willing to read so far into it though. It's not even clear to me that they did miss whatever the opportunity was. "Kids waiting to see a comet" seems like the most likely possibility to me, in which case they did succeed in seeing it.

Even if that is the case, though, I'm not getting a ton of emotional affect from it. The prose is extremely purple, violet as the heavens themselves on the wafts of a gaseous nebula as the galaxy torridly drifts across teeming untold masses of salacious void. And, well, I don't have time or patience to read one story several times. I've got another twenty-ish to read and critique and each one takes 10-30 minutes. Strong writing needs to be able to convey itself on the first read.

So, to me, this is going in the "failed experiments" tier. Not terrible, not by any means, but consider giving the readers slightly more overt cues of what they should take from a piece. Thanks for writing!

Echoing >>Not_A_Hat and >>Cold in Gardez, to me this is not quite the story it intends to be.

It intends to be an introspective tearjerker about a man wrestling with personal responsibility and guilt. But what's actually written is a jerk utterly failing at courtroom etiquette. This isn't how trials work. This isn't even how Hollywood trials work! You can read more about pleading guilty here, assuming this is set in America (biased assumption perhaps, but seems to fit the writing?): http://www.americanbar.org/publications/criminal_justice_section_archive/crimjust_standards_guiltypleas_blk.html

Nitpicking accuracy to that level in minis might be too harsh, though. But what the above comments said about Duncan's feelings not determining his actual guilt still stands. By setting the trial in the actual courtroom, the story puts emphasis on the actual legal proceedings, and therefore the factual determination of guilt as opposed to Duncan's feelings of guilt. Ignoring that gives off the vibe that the courtroom setting is just there for some additional drama, and the actual story should be something more like Duncan talking to his lawyer and having this breakdown in a less public setting.

All that said, CiG is also correct in that the story does have a solid structure, character, conflict and resolution. Not bad technically, but work on messaging and nuance. Somewhere in the average-ish pack in the end. Thanks for writing!

Interesting experiment, but I found this very difficult to follow. It doesn't give me enough context to understand or care about what's going on. Some of it's gritty military, but there also seem to be superheroes...? Is it serious or comedy? Five of "them," five of what? What's the point of any of this? And so on.

I'm really not coming up with much more. Sorry, author, I wish I could give some better feedback here, but for me this wasn't very effective on any level and I'd have to make a lot of assumptions about what you were trying to do to even find a starting point for critique. Still, thank you for writing, and I hope you learned some things from the experiment!

I agree with Fenton, albeit to a smaller degree. It's a fun piece, written using a quite nice, straightforward prose. I'm a sort of sucker for children books, so in a way it was right up my alley.

Sounds like an Aesop of sorts. I'm sure the takeaway is something like "focus on your dream, not on the way to achieve it" but I do agree with the other commenters we're left somewhat on the fence, and I can grok this nebulous ending can let down a number of readers.

So yeah, despite those (minor) flaws, this is going to land in the upper half of my slate.

Ooh. Mythology done straight up, no twists, no allegory, no "but in the modern world?" That's some chutzpah. I admire the spirit.

I admire this story, too. It flows well, it fits the mini length and format, pops off the page and holds my interest all the way through. Very nice!

There are a few quibbles to be had. As Fenton noted, the back and forth dialogue can be confusing at some points, forcing me to count lines to verify who's saying what. The main conflict is subtle, perhaps too subtle, and the story overall relies on more in-depth knowledge of mythology than I would prefer.

(For anyone who had trouble: Herakles is internally debating to what degree he should oppose Zeus and act for himself. In most versions of the real myth, he kills the eagle and returns with Atlas to free Prometheus later, while here he appears to decide on freeing him immediately. I think that's an original twist to this story. Can't be certain without the author's notes, though - real mythology, as it often does, has several differing versions, and some gloss over the incident or allude to an immediate liberation.)

How much knowledge of mythology is it okay to assume a reader will have, or require them to have in order to understand a story? I don't have a quantifiable answer to that, but I feel like this piece is a little bit over the line. As a very rough reckoning, I think you can choose either to not namedrop the main characters, or you can drop in a bunch of other unexplained references (the Titanomachy, the god's gift to man, etc,) but I don't like the choice to do both. Some readers are going to struggle to figure out who Herakles and Prometheus are, maybe have to look them up, and they're probably just give up and feel lost when they hit the later references.

Even with those issues, though, I think this is a strong piece. The best of the field I've read so far, in fact. Thank you for writing, and good luck with the rest of the votes!

Yeah, I'm with most of the rest here. Great concept, well structured, great writing, but the narrator is a nameless, toneless robot, and that prevents me from getting into it as much as I would like.

It really is just that! All the other elements here are fantastic! But the hook and protagonist are important.

Above average, even so, but just that one aspect takes it out of the top tier for me. Thank you for writing, though!

Yeah, very much comes across as a children's story, especially the "glittery glitter and silvery silver" phrase. But I enjoyed the central conceit, which reminded me of one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes comics. Near the top of my slate so far.

Seriously? No one's commenting on the "I'm sorry, Dave," line? Sigh.

Anyway, as fun as that line is, I'm in agreement with the others that there's not much here. We get a hero frustrated by failure, and... well, that's about it. Well constructed, but I'm having trouble seeing what the point is, unless it's just the joke at the end.

If this were a contest for opening scenes, this fic would definitely be near the top. But as it's a contest for stories, it definitely falls short. Granted, it's probably impossible to tell a complete murder/mystery/revenge story in 750 words, but that's a composition challenge authors must face and defeat. This story doesn't even try.

So, well written, but I have issues.

I want to hear from the author what his idea was when he came up with this story. "Paint a scene in the wilderness with three characters. Describe them with no words whatsoever. They're waiting for something. Then, something happens! Deep words about how we're all just passengers on this tiny rock zooming through the vastness of space. Light, darkness, sounds! Short, one-sentence paragraphs. End."

Somehow this is in fourth place on my slate.

With Ratlab on distinctiveness. I just kind of gave up on telling them apart by the end. Still, nice reveal at the end, and this is only the second fic this round to actually get me to laugh.

>>Ranmilia

Yeah, she totally shot him. It was obvious from the line "Her heart dropped into her stomach. Only one bullet remained." The same ending The Mist used.

Question: how exactly are they seeing anything in the darkness?

The wheel turns, and some things never change. One of those things is that there's always a Writeoff entry or five in the genre of "mysterious deep epic fantasy worldbuilding; oops, forgot to actually tell a story in the setting." Such it is that we have here. TitaniumDragon has my sentiments: stuff happens, but I never found a hook to care about it.

I initially typed "good worldbuilding" here, but on reflection I just reflexively wanted to say that because the piece is centered around that one world-song-writing-stick concept. Gonna give it to you bluntly as I see it, then: it's not good worldbuilding.

We don't see any of the actual world that is built, or anything that the song does other than "writing the world" in the vaguest of terms. We don't get any sense of the consequences of the world being scribble-sung into existence, or why being a song is significant. We don't see what the songwriters write, or why they would write those things and not other things like maybe "wars and plagues stopped and everyone was happy forever." Nothing sets this apart from being any other setting that hasn't had anyone find its song-cave. (And while we're on that subject, how is it that rapier guy seems to know where he's going, and kind of why, but not exactly what's there, and then nobody else finds the place for millenia?)

As CiG points out, there's an awful lot of purple prose and unnecessary description going on, especially in the first half. It's fun to write such flourishes (just look at my own unnecessarily verbose comments) but in a mini format, that wordcount might be better spent elsewhere.

This answers how and where a world is made. Tell us when the concept does something interesting, what it does, who is doing it and to whom, and most importantly why.

Anyway, thank you for writing, author! Please don't be discouraged by these comments, I don't hate this piece or anything and would be interested in seeing a full fledged story form from it. I'm guessing you came up with what seemed like a cool idea and scene, started writing around that, and then not much else came to mind. That happens a lot in mini rounds, no shame.

Fourth-ing the other comments. This is not an unpleasant read, but my single most important criterion when evaluating minis is "was the author able to form a complete story arc that fits within the strict confines of the mini format?" Completing a scene is not the same as completing a story. So... well, you get the picture, probably a lower-mid placement from me. I'll especially agree with >>HoofBitingActionOverload regarding this being one of the least exciting scenes from the imaginary novel to show, if you had to pick only one.

One other thing I noticed is that past the introduction, almost every non-dialogue sentence falls back on a basic "subject verbed object" structure. Try and keep an eye on that while writing, and review your paragraphs now and then to see if they could benefit from some variance. (From that and the "two characters meet and talk" setup, I'm going to take a stab in the dark and peg the author as very character-centric, possibly with a history of roleplaying?)

Anyhow, maybe try some planning exercises in the future before you start writing a piece? Try and tell the best, most interesting story you can of whatever it is you want to write about, and make sure you keep it complete and contained, with a resolution that can satisfy readers even if we never hear of these characters or ideas again. Thanks for writing!