Skins — B+ — More or less a one-trick story with boy-girl talking about how their outsides influence the way others view them, and each other. Interesting, but it drags something fierce because the author likes to describe the outfits/skins more than the main focus of the conversation. Admittedly, the costume-porn of virtual reality is done *very* well, but it’s a distraction.

The Fountain — B — A bit of passive voice, but it works to highlight the artificial nature of the world. The first half of the story flows along well, but once it turns into John and the woman, it becomes disjointed and flat. Admittedly, the reader is probably not supposed to be able to determine just exactly what is real and what is not in the conversation, but that always leaves me groping for (And I hate to admit I dislike downer endings, so I’m not marking off for that) The problem is between the passive voice distancing beginning, the confusion of the his/her discussion in the middle, and the downer ending, it really does not engage the reader.

Two Silver and a Handful of Bronze — B — Wonderful worldbuilding, some grammar and speling issues Im overloooking mostly (sic). Very much a ‘Man in the Maze by Silverberg” aura to the city. Alien architecture trying to be translated into human perceptions is naturally going to be a bear to represent out in words. The appeal of the story and the approach to it overcame most of the reluctance I had to ranking it very high, but it’s still well worth the read. It could be trimmed and tightened up quite a bit to make a much better story.

Death Valley — B- — Not a bad fic, but the beginning needs to be combed and primped because it’s awfully random and doesn’t flow well. Ditto for the ending. Characters are ‘heavy’ mostly due to the instinct of a reader to immediately google the odd names and figure out ahead of time what their roles are. Hehel strikes me as the Dutchman, but the terminology used to reference him is all over the place, from the devil to I’m guessing Judas from the forty silver dollars. I like the way the main character (what is it with ‘John’ in this writeoff?) is held in an indeterminate state of ‘Did he die walking through the desert, or is this real?’

Loved the ending line.

Very much cutting the Gordian knot there, dude.

This feels like the first chapter for a semi-successful web-serial, but I don't know if the core idea is sustainable in the long run; still, so far it's the best of the fics I've read (that being four).

>>Not_A_Hat, >>Fenton, >>horizon, >>Not_A_Hat

Baptism at the Forest Temple

Congrats to all who participated in the art segment. I wish there had been more entrants, but it would be silly to actually complain.

I’ve had the visual pun at the heart of this composition in mind for a while, but never found a good way to express it. Now that it’s all out on paper I can fix some of the flaws. Yes, merging the treetops into one mass for the jaw and calling it a “forest temple” was rather a cheat. In my defense, I didn’t start work on this until the last day, as I was preoccupied with my fic.

I may eventually render this as a 3D landscape, so one can look at it from all angles and then view the one POV that reveals the skull; this would heighten the impact.

Thanks for the comments and praise!

I got third place? Sure, it was by default, but wow. And all but one person guessed this was me? I suppose I do have a certain style (it's that my stuff is different from those who have distinct styles). I mean, I don't know what else to say generally, so individual responses:

>>GroaningGreyAgony
Well, you're not wrong.

>>Fenton
I'm gonna be honest, it was a little bit of a joke entry, but I also wanted to learn how to use Paint... and I did. Mostly. As for effort, again, mostly learning how to use Paint... I originally didn't even have the trees.

>>enamis
At first I expected this wasn't meant for me because it had good things to say. Thanks so much person I've never seen before!!

>>MLPmatthewl419
Guessing on the art was pretty straightforward this round. There were three different kinds of approach, and all you really had to do was scroll through each candidate’s previous art entries and compare.

>>GroaningGreyAgony
Yeah, lol. I mean, I got them wrong cause I forgot who takes pictures. Oops.

Please don't be:

Discouraged, author, when I suggest that this is the story in our little group that needs the most work. For me, the Writeoff is a "first draft contest," so I always look forward to the comments I get in the hope that they'll show me what I need to do to improve my story.

Here, it's definitely the writing first. The odd syntax, the missing words, the misused words, they stopped me every time I hit one and made it much more difficult to get from the beginning of the story to the end. It's why I'm a firm believer in reading my stuff out loud to myself during the editing process. It forces me to look at and pronounce each word and sentence, and I catch a lot to mistakes that way.

Also, the characters never quite become characters. Our narrator is every hard-boiled cynic with a heart of gold who's ever starred in a first-person story. I'd suggest giving us more of a glimpse into his particular dark and tragic past and would also suggest tying his past to Sam's somehow--he recognizes in her the person he used to be, and he isn't sure he wants her to go in and change or stay out and remain the same. Maybe she's got the courage he lacks to go all the way through and confront her past or something. Right now, though, I'm not getting enough information about either one to understand what the Valley means for them. Dig deeper and find ways to let a reader like me know who these people are so the events they go through will have more weight.

Mike

I wonder:

If moving the story completely into John's POV might help some of my personal issues here. Instead of the external, omniscient opening, start us out after one of these funerals with John talking to a comrade. Contrast what John notices about the world with what this other person notices and have John conclude that "time is out of joint" as they say. Then TD contacts him, and he visits her to have their chat. Just a thought.

Mike Again

I'll agree:

With the consensus, author, that the characters need more story around them. Even something as fluffy as this could benefit from increased tension, too--maybe Lellis cuts her hand when they're out in the woods, and it hits Hoyle hard that all he can do is put a Band-Aid on it. Give us some ominous rustling in the bushes so Hoyle gets more and more uneasy about whether they're on Earth or not and more and more guilty that he doesn't mention his suspicions to Lellis. Stuff like that. :)

Mike

I think I'm going to have to side with enamis here. It's not that I don't understand where you guys are coming from, but... although we have Buck's reactions, the story never really gets into why he reacts that way, or what that actually means, for Buck or the people around him. At least, not in any way that felt really concrete to me. And that makes it problematic for me to really back any one view on what this story (or even what Buck himself) means by that part. Sure, the reaction is clear, but so what? It doesn't really mean much, as-is.

That's indicative of my biggest problem with this story, I think, which is something like... it doesn't draw enough conclusions? There's definitely a fair amount going on; Jane's leaving, trying to find her place in the world, trying to figure out what she wants to do, and what the means for who she is; Buck doesn't want to lose his friend, but isn't really willing to take drastic steps to do anything about it, he has a crush on her, but again, isn't really willing to make a step towards or away from commitment. Through the whole thing, the characters just kinda... dance around all the issues that are raised, leaving all the implications to just spin in circles without ever really reaching either a positive or negative a conclusion. It sorta feels like pulling a bunch of stuff out of the fridge, stirring it around in a pan, and then dumping the whole thing down the sink, without cooking or eating it. It might have been capable of being a perfectly good soup, but it would take more than just seeing and smelling raw ingredients.

Dang, I forgot to have lunch today.

ANYWAYS, I can get where people are coming from with their reaction to Buck's thoughts. The thing is, I don't feel like what the author means by the character's reactions is ever conveyed clearly enough for me to draw conclusions about whether or not this a good/bad thing in the story. I feel like people have kinda defaulted to bad, and... I just don't really get it. Sure, I can't necessarily say that the intentions were something I'd consider good, either, but I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Maybe Buck's asking Jane out in the end was a refutation of trans-phobic (this word really bugs me; people who are 'trans-phobic' aren't 'afraid of trans people' usually. They're just bigoted, and... blergh, prescriptive grammar, sorry, moving on) thoughts that he hadn't even realized he had, or something like that, which would give the whole thing a nice positive spin. Or maybe he realized somewhere in there that he doesn't really know Jane half as well as he thought, and he'd like to actually get to know her instead of just pining after her from a distance. Or something. Either of those would give this more character arc.

Which is something I think it needs more of, either character or plot arc. As I said before, there are a lot of good elements in here, that could make for any number of really strong and emotional arcs. But it feels like the characters (and hence the story) are too hesitant to address them meaningfully, and it leaves me rather cold. It is, at the very least, not obviously self-contradictory, but when I got to the end, I basically ended with something like 'that's it?' I mean, over the course of this entire story, the most significant thing I saw the ostensible MC accomplish is asking Jane to go to prom. Which, like, good for him, but that doesn't really address any of the other things that were brought up. Does this mean she's not leaving now? Probably no. Does this have any implication for Buck feeling abandoned or inferior? Probably no. Does this address Buck's weird visceral reactions to the idea of her looking (just looking, mind you,) like a guy? Not really, to my mind.

I think it's like... lack of narrative chaining? Like, narrative is, simply put, x happens, causing y, which causes z, which causes... something else, right? But the important part here is that things cause other things to happen. This story doesn't have much of that. It's Jane continually jumping from one thing to another, and Buck responding. A causes B, and then cut to C, which causes D, but then cut to E... see what I mean? There's no real strong narrative thread tying each of these things together. Instead of having a chain, you have a bunch of loose links. There's good potential here, but it needs to be a bit more... cohesive, somehow.

So I guess... I like a lot of what's here. The dialogue generally flowed well, the descriptions worked, the world was interesting, the characters were complex (even if their reactions seemed a bit skewed at times) but I ended up feeling like this really wasn't doing much of anything in the end. I won't say I was bored, but I really didn't feel like it was worth all the time I'd put into reading it. This doesn't really need more ideas or even conflict; it just needs to do a bit more with what it has, and give the whole thing some cohesion and conclusion, so the ending is satisfying. I think part of why people are focusing so much on Buck's little freak-out is because they're trying their best to make the story make sense, to find a narrative in here, and the thing that's most obvious is the easiest to grasp at and start linking things together with. Oh, the story's about transphobia! Well, maybe it is, as much as it's about anything, I guess.

Then again, maybe this is just me. I do tend to have somewhat less tolerance for 'slice-of-life' style stuff than some. If you want something really easy-paced, this is totally fine. I just didn't find much exciting or interesting going on, I guess.

Also, it's hard to focus when I'm hungry. People talk about randomness in the writeoff; I'm beginning to think that 'reader mood' is one of the more fickle aspects of the competition. :P I hope some of my rambling here was useful or entertaining to you, and I apologize if I came across as harsh. Thank you for writing!

I feel like your impersonal narration opening isn't pulling it's weight. The change from 'no characters' to 'John' feels weird to me, and I don't think it's useful. The only time I've seen this sort of thing work is in the opening of Discworld, and Pterry does that partly out of necessity (he gives a whirlwind tour of the Disc in just about the first page of every book, because they're designed to be readable out-of-order) but also because he wants to start his in-jokes, where he has the narrator shares things with the reader that the characters don't know. (This is how he gets that comfortable familiarity he uses in his narration and footnotes to stick so well.)

You... don't really need to do either of those things, I don't think. And if you do have a concrete aim you're going for with this, I missed it. Sorry about that.

Anyways, I think you'd be better off couching this firmly in John's point of view. It would cut down on the awkwardness of trying to keep concrete actors out of your paragraphs, with convolutions like 'the only option for the wearer' and stuff like that, and it would remove the necessity for the jar when transitioning from impersonal narration to close-third-person when John drops into the picture.

As for the story itself, I found myself rather enjoying it. Helel is a bit of a know-it-all, and John's a bit of an idiot, but they're fairly tolerable in the way the interact. And I liked the fact that it doesn't really take a hardline one-way-or-another stance on what happens, but John does seem to get a useful lesson out of it.

As for the religious-ish imagery... well, I'm honestly left wondering why it was in there. It's laid on fairly thick in some spots (twenty pieces of silver, work as a carpenter, really?) but I didn't feel like it added much to the story except a vague flavor. I mean, I think you could build a very strong narrative around it; something like 'vice tends to be self-defeating' or something like that, about how what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, but... just not seeing that here.

I dunno. The writing here is a bit rough in spots, but on the whole, I liked the arc here a lot, and the characters were fairly entertaining. I find some of your storytelling decisions weird, but I'd rather have weird than boring, so that's not really that much of a black mark.

Congrats on being bold enough to experiment. I'm not sure it worked here, but I enjoyed it anyways. Thanks for writing!

So... I think the part I liked best about this story is also the bit that annoys me the most.

The main character here is deeply, strongly conflicted. It shows in just about everything he does. He doesn't want to take Sam, but he does it anyways. He doesn't want to go into the valley, but he does it anyways. He doesn't believe things others say about the Valley, but he says them anyways. (I didn’t have the heart to tell her there was no “point of no return.” / “This is the half point,” I said. “This is your point of no return.”) He's gone into the Valley, but never all the way. He seems impervious to the effects it has on others. For whatever reason, he is intrinsically, deeply different than the others around him. And I liked that a lot, because it adds a lot to his character, gives a clear slant to his actions and thoughts, and all around makes things a lot more entertaining and interesting. I mean, without it, we have what... a guy and a girl walking through a gulch. It could even be built into some sort of allegorical significance! If the Valley had a clear meaning, then his rejection of it would also say something about that! If, you know, you're into that sort of thing. *cough*Fenton*cough

But... I feel like we never really get any change or growth out of him, or even a good explanation for why he feels like this and what it means to him. Was he just born different? Does he actually have some insider knowledge? Why does he keep all this hidden? Is it just for the money, or because the people he goes with have threatened his life? (Also, he totally should have made Sam leave her gun in the car.) But I just don't know; this conflict, the internal conflict that seems to produce so much of what I like about the story, is never really elaborated on, brought to light, advanced, or given a conclusion. Which I found kinda frustrating.

Other than that, though, the story was fairly interesting. The rolling reveal was neat, the Valley is wonderfully imaginative as plot device, the characters were deep enough to be interesting, the twist at the end was something I didn't see coming, it all worked fairly well. Well, this is solidly in the realm of 'quite good', but the bit I cared about most never really seemed to get its due, which makes it hard for me to push this into 'really great' territory on my slate.

Still, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thanks for writing!

Various circumstances, including a hurricane, have conspired to sap my motivation pretty hard. I'd like to offer apologies to the remaining authors, as they are at no fault, and I'll try and get the rest of these out as best I can.

My initial impression of this story was quite negative. It leads off with four impenetrably purple paragraphs of nothing happening, and doesn't pick up steam for another several after that. (Cut the intro far, far down, when you go back to revise this!) Then we reach the character introductions, and, well.

"Helel" is something you use to beat up Shin Megami Tensei endgames not a name one goes by in modern English-speaking society. Like "Adolf," or (exactly) like "Lucifer," parents don't give children that name, and anyone who would somehow have it would almost certainly change it. A quick Google and Facebook search to confirm this turns up zero Helels for me, except as Arabic surnames (never given name) and explicit Helel ben Shahar references.

So right off the bat, something smelled fishy. Then he was described as "red-faced," talked about vice, "Corinthian" leather, and then:

“I sell dreams.”

That line took it beyond reasonable doubt for me. This guy is The Devil, we're in one of those Twilight Zone episodes and he's going to offer John a deal for his soul. "Yep," I thought, "I can see where this is going. Let's cruise control through the rest of the tease until we hit the deal and reveal."

... And then the deal was rejected, the reveal never came, the story didn't go where I thought it was going, and I found myself astonished. Well played.

To pull some from >>Not_A_Hat:

As for the story itself, I found myself rather enjoying it. Helel is a bit of a know-it-all, and John's a bit of an idiot, but they're fairly tolerable in the way the interact. And I liked the fact that it doesn't really take a hardline one-way-or-another stance on what happens, but John does seem to get a useful lesson out of it.

As for the religious-ish imagery... well, I'm honestly left wondering why it was in there. It's laid on fairly thick in some spots (twenty pieces of silver, work as a carpenter, really?) but I didn't feel like it added much to the story except a vague flavor.

I am very much in line with the first paragraph there, but the complete opposite on the second. For me, the religious allusions make this story; without them, this would be a rather banal "litfic" piece, but with them in place it becomes something more. It's much more than a vague flavor, it turns the story on its head, positioning it as an inversion of a known twist and giving us metaphysical weight and room to explore.

And what's more, it does this without breaking the wall and making the direct reveal. The road between "too subtle" and "too explicit" in Writeoff is a thorny path to tread, but I think this piece makes as good an attempt as any I've seen. Strong technique, in my book.

This piece is my top pick for the round. While my initial read had a shaky start, I was impressed by the time I reached the end, and subsequent reads have only been more and more positive. It does have a fair number of flaws: John is weakly written and oblivious, his final decision feels not quite sold, and that whole intro (and some of the description elsewhere) needs the axe. But I would want to reread and look into the details of this story even if I wasn't analyzing it for competition, and that's one of the highest praises I can give. In a close round full of stories that are all quite good, yet have issues getting their hooks in me, this is the one that catches me the most. Thanks for writing, and good luck with the rest of the votes!

I missed:

The religious imagery completely, author, so all >>Ranmilia's metaphysical weight whooshed right past me without even creating a breeze. So I'd put the story firmly on the "too subtle" side of things.

Knowing who Helel is now, though, I can't help but compare this story to "The Fountain." Both stories have The Deceiver giving a largely passive main character advice that seems good on the face of it and that the character apparently takes. Poor readers such as myself then miss the point in every way that it can be missed, shrug, and move on with our lives.

Now, if you don't mind that people like me won't understand your story, then that's fine. It's a choice every author has to make--what audience am I writing this piece for?--but you can't assume that the audience who actually reads the piece will be in the audience you're aiming for...

Mike

>>Ranmilia I should clarify (because maybe it wasn't obvious) that I liked what I saw as vague flavor, for the most part. I agree with Ran's 'otherwise banal litfic' comment, and I'd probably have enjoyed the story much less without the religiosity stuff.

I just didn't feel like it was crystallizing into anything. I'd prefer seeing it's impact on the story strengthened, although I do think the explicitness in some spots could be dialed back. Like, make it more meaningful, but a touch less obvious. It does kinda feels inversion-y, yeah, but I don't think it really pulled that together for me in a way I recognized. It just seemed like a weirded-up litfic. Which is good in it's own way.

I didn't read this story but I'm certain it's Andrew's

So, storytime about this photo and the other.

At about 1AM on the day of the deadline, I went on a walk around Geneseo to take some photos. I figured that, seeing how the village of Geneseo is located in the heart of the Genesee Valley—as well as a pretty creepy place if you know where to look—I could snap some nice photos. My original goal was actually to take some photos in the nearby graveyard, but nothing from that shoot ended up coming out well.

While "It's Too Late" was taken outside an office building, this one was taken in the middle of an intersection near the graveyard. I set up my camera on a hill just off to the side, set the timer to take five pictures, each 15 seconds apart, and got to posing. Going on my photo walk, I brought a few "outfits" with me so I could play different characters... in this photo, I've got on my plaid sweatshirt while on the ground, and my black blazer while standing up. Originally, there was a third "character" in this, to the right of the stop sign, but I cut him out because I thought the pose I took looked stupid.

While frozen in that third pose, however, I'm pretty sure I scared the hell out of some dude on the street... he walked up on me when I was frozen, and immediately crossed the street so he wouldn't have to get near me.

>>Not_A_Hat
Both figures were me. I don't have friends. :(

>>Dubs_Rewatcher

I don’t have friends. :(

What are we, chopped liver? :)

>>GroaningGreyAgony

Chop Suey, actually

No megaposts for these, but I'll try and get some thoughts out.

Previous comments hit this one pretty well. Fantasy adventure, leaning heavily on lightly fluffed romance and an air of magic to carry the day, most of the strength in trying to get the audience to like the protagonist couple and their dynamic.

It's not a bad formula - a lot about this piece reminds me a lot of Blind Dating in a World Gone Mad, a couple of rounds ago. It is, however, a relatively unambitious "stock" formula. Very safe, predictable even, aiming more for solid execution of staple tropes and not trying much that particularly stands out. That's a relative (though not absolute) penalty in this round when it comes time for me to rank it, because this round's array of competitors are so strong and many of them go for very ambitious approaches.

Blind Dating took home a gold, and I certainly don't think this piece is far below Dating in absolute quality... but that was against a relatively soft field of other entries, whereas this round is the strongest overall group I've seen on the site. To sum up that unwieldy paragraph, this didn't impress me too much, but it looks less good than it is because of the competition it's being directly compared to.

Specifics have mostly already been addressed. I felt like I spent a lot of mental energy trying to figure out the (large-scale) setting and premise of what these characters were doing, and that took my focus away from the light enjoyment it was trying to produce. I think taking some time in the first page or two to explicitly lay out the multiverse and magical tourism concepts that are going on might help readers quite a bit in that regard. And the core plot puzzle in the second half, well, see everyone else. One of those things that I'm sure made sense in the author's head, but there isn't enough groundwork for the reader to follow the logic of the mystery, and the whole thing feels rather irrelevant to the protagonists themselves. They just happen to be there and stumble into it.

Cute couple though. Thanks for writing!

That callout, though.

Much like Outer Rondax, this is a stock fantasy Call to Adventure formula that sets up a pair dynamic and a couple of fluffy twists. Less fluffy here though, more on the razor's edge of something that could go to some very dark places if things were just a little bit different.

>>devas sums it up well. Good ending line, but it does have the feel of a beginning rather than a complete piece. Even though the line is a strong closer, the story doesn't feel closed, if you get what I mean? And the comment on the idea being unsustainable is spot on. I was expecting the reveal itself to be the end of the story, because, well, you can't really do much with the concept after the reveal without going full mind control/consent issue thornbush. That one line there, left ambiguous, is about as much as you can possibly milk the "giving orders to Zorion" thing without either dropping the conceit, turning Kepa into a villain, or invoking Suspension of Fetish Disbelief.

Very, very web serial or light novel ish. See Tales of MU's Two for a very similar character; I would be entirely unsurprised if that was an explicit inspiration here.

That callout, though. Daaaaaaaaaaaamn, son. Uh, no comment on my actual guess for author, but it does indirectly put the piece to a bit of the same "safe fantasy wheelhouse" I talked about with Outer Rondax, other than the PG-fication of the mind control. Still, strength of prose and execution of concepts that could've very easily swerved into nighmarish territory put this at a respectable showing for me. Thanks for writing!

Some nice concept work here, as everyone else has been saying! Unfortunately, the execution didn't do well for me. Horizon has some good specific advice you should definitely keep in mind, but for my taste I'm more in agreement with >>Not_A_Hat that the piece would be best off with a large session on the chopping block, rather than trying to make small revisions work.

Drop the diary angle, drop the overload of fantasy names, cut everything before Day 4 or 5 except for the homunculi, work the homunculi uncanny valley stuff in a little later and focus the story more tightly around the relevant action. Instead of giving us ten names of people and places that don't mean anything to us, give a smaller number and then explain them. Who was Heramesa the Brickkicker? In what manner would they advise an adventuring party to proceed?

Conserve your detail. A red herring or two, or flavor bits here and there, those are fine, but for the most part try to keep things relevant and well explained. Make sure all your concepts are linked to one another thematically, and not only will the story be easier to follow and more effective for the readers, I think you'll find it makes the writing process easier, too, as new connections suggest themselves!

Really great learning piece here. You have some great concepts here, and are clearly aiming high. Keep working on your execution and you'll go far. Thanks for writing!

>>Baal Bunny
I'm mostly with these comments (and the others). This piece is very ambitious, which I respect, but it's a rough ride. I'm not sure I can claim to fully understand what's going on, and my attempts to figure out things beyond the text, like "how does this guy even have this job, socially and financially?" haven't gone too well.

There is one interesting angle I can think of, though. It's a long shot, but... is this stealth Calvin and Hobbes fanfiction? We have:
- Tracer Bullet-style noir
- Spaceman Spiff's trademark rocky alien valley
- "Sam," the lady who doesn't quite get the whole transformative fantasy shindig
- General thematics of mental transformation, with an ending similar to the punchline panel of many C&H strips revealing some normal person shouting at Calvin as he reinterprets them
- Very Calvin-style dialogue, citing seemingly random, oddly specific statistics and metaphors

I dunno. Just a thought.

I'll be interested to see what the author has to say about this one. Thanks for writing!

I was unsure of John at first. He seemed a bit too ungrateful and rude for surely having been plucked from the mouth of death by desert sun. But then his tale unfolded, and I see that he's really just bruised from having his ego so thoroughly smashed. He's quick to open up when given the space to do so, and I think that makes up for his occasional disrespect.

I was sure Helel would be some sort of magic desert man, or Death. Even after finishing and him not doing anything overtly supernatural, I'm still not convinced he isn't. There's a very "Odd Thomas" vibe about the man, where sometimes a person's gift is just being in the right place at the right time to lend a hand, and maybe some folksy wisdom.

The opening crawl very accurately describes what it's like to be stuck in the desert. As a native Arizonan, I appreciate the attention to detail. The successful beginning sets up the rest to be believable, and to make John's sporadic disrespect to his savior all the more sharp.

>>AndrewRogue
Perfect example of why I read and comment before browsing the other comments. Great catch on the names and reference. I wouldn't have picked that out at all, though I did think the name felt distinctly old. It really feeds into my overall sensation of the story, and makes Helel's actions all the more puzzling.

Edit: Totally spaced the mid-drive game of cards. Everything makes more sense now.

This is going to make the sex very, very awkward. To say nothing of Zorion learning how to be a woman. Though, artificial construct, so I guess that's probably less of an issue in terms of bodily management.

Snark aside, there's a great setup to a longer piece in here. Jumping between gender pronouns for Zorion is a nice touch as well. It's a great dial to turn depending on how Zorion or Homunculus he/she/it(?) is being at the time. Like others have mentioned, there's either zany antics or fridge body horror aplenty, but it's a bit too early to make that call just yet.

Really appreciate how on-point to the prompt this is, too.

I really liked how this started, and the middle kept me going, but then we just veered off into Transcendence territory, a little bit. The final thought to slowly elevate humanity goes in line with the title, but I don't feel like we had nearly enough build up to that conclusion.

On a high note, the bouncing dialogue structure kept me engaged. I wondered who we'd talk to next, where, in what form, and what their personal history would look like. Great way to keep a myriad of opinions and ideas floating around without feeling like the cast is bloated.

I've gone shopping with very fashion savvy women, so I can relate to the tribulation that is Buck's life right now. Not too much to add to the above, except to note that I found myself visibly smiling at how you ended the story. That was a really cute way for her to say "yes."

I shamefully admit that I skimmed the opening few paragraphs of river names and journey preparation. But, like slogging through your veggies to get to the main course, I was rewarded shortly thereafter. You took the premise of uncanny valley and cubed it to divinity, and I can't say I've really heard of that being done before, so bravo for execution and novelty. Spread out the jungle fever descriptions and there's one helluva piece here.

I really don't have any other complaints, though I fully admit to being over tired. When in doubt, listen to Horizon. Unless you are Horizon, in which case listen to Hat.

Holy.... Goaaaaaalllll!!!!! (darnit, can't link in a YouTube video of a soccer game goal)

More in a bit when I stop dancing around the room.

Thanks, folks!

And congrats to the other medalists. We may have been few this round, but we had some pretty good stuff!

As for me, like I keep saying, I view the Writeoff as a chance to crank out a first draft, trying to get the characters down as I walk them through the bare bones of a story. After the contest, I deepen the story elements based on how I've developed the characters, spackle the whole thing together, and call it finished. My "Glass Spider" story from the last original short round, for instance, ended up about twice as long as the version I entered here, and I sold its First-Use, Non-Exclusive Electronic rights to the webzine Aurora Wolf: it's scheduled to appear there Sept. 1st, actually. So I expect "Outer Rondax" to go through the same process over the next month or so, fleshing out the overall world and hopefully making the goings-on both clearer and less generic. :)

Thanks again for the comments!
Mike

>>horizon, >>Not_A_Hat, >>Fenton, >>AndrewRogue, >>georg, >>Ranmilia, >>Rao

Thirsting to know what God knows,
Judah Loew arranged permutations
of letters and complex variations
and finally pronounced the Name: the Key,

the Door, the Echo, the Guest and the Palace,
over a doll which with clumsy hands
he carved, to teach it the secrets
of the Letters, of Time and of Space.

–Borges, The Golem

Most controversial! Whee!

This story was a Frankenstein effort indeed. I had no ideas or inspiration until the very last day, and I then decided I could complete a Dunsanian travelogue, if nothing else. I plotted out a beginning and imbued it with names (I don’t use a random name generator, BTW; these all come from a glossolalia module I have in my head), and developed an ending tinged with Lovecraftian horror; all I had to do was fill in the middle.

And then I got that lovely idea to extend the Uncanny Valley to the divine sensibilities, and I knew that had to be the core of the piece. I didn’t have time for a full rewrite, so I strove to make the first idea carry the second. The resultant awkwardness has been noted by several critics. I really wish I’d had that idea on the first day!

>>horizon

For “Zueligas” to translate to “blue cutlass” it must be a compound word,

The character for a concept-linker in Ur-Aigurean much resembles an Isterinian semiglottal accent, with the result that Sueli-juass “Blue keenblade” was imported with a harsher ‘g’ sound, sans hyphen.

The city of shadows exists because the gods are deconstructing things in their uncanny valley, yes?

That’s an interesting interpretation, but I wasn’t thinking along those lines. In my original story, I had the idea that there would be an abandoned city, now inhabited by violent savages. This developed into the idea that those who truly learn the valley’s secret realize that they can never return to civilization, and therefore join the populace of the city, trying to turn explorers back or assimilate them (by striking them down, turning them into shadow beings like themselves). This is one of the parts I need to rethink in revision.

…and you have the homonculus disintegrating on closer approach — that second of which is really problematic, because the human (whose presence causes more offense) doesn’t break down.

When the homonculus dissolves, Martes is afraid it means that Kasteren is dead. I didn’t mean to imply that proximity to the valley would end the homonculi, but I wanted Martes to be truly alone for the climax.

Thanks for the comments, criticism, and praise!

>>Baal Bunny
>>georg
>>horizon
>>Ranmilia
>>Baal Bunny
>>Not_A_Hat
>>AndrewRogue
>>Baal Bunny

Wow!

This is the first thing I've written in a long time, and I really enjoyed getting it out there. This writeoff meant a lot to me. So I'd like to reach out to everyone who supported my story and say...

...I'm very disappointed in you. There were way better stories in this writeoff. ^_^

Also, thank you very much for the feedback. While The Fountain was deeply flawed, your comments helped me understand how, I and I think it might end up being the basis for a more substantive story.

>>horizon

On prose quality alone, this is making a strong bid for the top spot that several stories this round have already staked a claim on. This is a master class in conservation of detail, with a telly-but-vivid style that puts me in mind of golden-age sci-fi. I mean, look at this:

Man, I'm starting to think you just really like the understated style! 81 Days etc.

That said, I think it won't quite succeed in its assault on Rondax's golden redoubt. For all my problems with Rondax's plot swerve, it at least seems fully self-contained, following its own rules throughout; here, I felt there was a little more incoherence in your core premise.

The story really reaches in its effort to both have and eat that cake.

the theme suffers from TD's incoherent motivations.

I agree that this was the biggest problem by far, and ultimately what made it unsatisfying. While the langauge constructions are fun, I really just need to put more thought into actual character motivation and direction.

Congratulations to our medalists! For only the third time ever, an author now has a full set of Original Fiction medals (Baal Bunny's gold/silver/bronze). Georg scored his first Original Fiction medal with style, and GaPJaxie's on the OF medal scoreboard for the first time as well!

Congratulations, also, to all entrants in general! As has been noted (e.g. >>Ranmilia), this round's entries were consistently strong. Original Fiction rounds are Writeoffs in hard mode, and every entry this round got some big things right.

Ladies and gentlemen of the academy, I would like to dedicate this award to all of the little ponies who helped me get here.

Oh, wait. Not an Academy Award. Darn Maybe later.

Thank you all for putting Death Valley at the top of the slate and giving me my first gold medal. (sniff) My original complaints about my story were all correct. The beginning needs a re-write to tie it more together and make it a little less fuzzy, although I like the way it wanders because it brings the concept of heat stroke to mind.

The characterization was ‘heavy’ because the ‘Show, don’t Tell’ philosophy on thought pieces like this tend to leave the reader just about as lost as John here, and seeing all kinds of mirages in the cracks. For example, look at the names:

Helel ben Shaḥar : translated as Lucifer in the Vulgate and preserved in the early English translations of the Bible) son of the dawn. His smoking habit is taken from my first college roommate, who used to light a new cig right after smoking the last one to the filter.

John van der Sloot : Notice that the first hit you get on Google with this name is Joran van der Sloot, the notorious Dutch murderer. His attitude and college major are taken from my first college roommate, who did not want to go outside and didn’t know which end of a hammer went where, but he was determined to get his architecture degree between cutthroat poker games. (Compare this with my brother, who barely graduated high school, but has been building excellent bridges and roads all across Kansas for the last forty years. He’s tall, tan, and can break you in half with one hand.)

The intent of the story is to leave the reader ‘fuzzy’ about the reality of the surroundings, if perhaps John died in the desert and the devil arrived to collect his soul, or if Helel is the Dutchman, forever doomed to travel the world as punishment for his sins, or maybe they are just two people thrown into the same environment. I like to think of Helel as Judas, personally.

Fenton - I have no problem with people who do intellectual work. After all, that’s my computer job. I’ve just seen far too many college students who turn their nose up at doing anything that involves sweat. Had a summer job once with a bunch of variegated kids. Farm kids were out there with the shovels, working their butts off while all the city kids stood around the water cooler, complaining about the heat. Guess where I was. :)

Baal Bunny - Taking your advice at the beginning. What I *wanted* to do was near the end where John is trying to describe Helel to the clerk and realized that he could not remember any of those details, not eye color or hair, zip. Add a little Twilight Zone to the story. Got to the end and decided I didn’t need to go that far.

Andrew - I think I originally found the name by googling ‘Morning Star’

Not_A_Hat - First part I plan on making a little less vague and more in John’s POV, because you’re perfectly correct. I think I went a little heavier into ‘Show and Tell’ because of some of my previous stories that were misinterpreted (or at least interpreted in a way that I never expected), and that frustrates me something fierce. I’d never be an artist. “No, that apple I have in the foreground has a bite taken out of it! It symbolizes Original Sin, which is why the two naked people in the back are running away.” Sigh. :)

Ranmilla - Yep, going to de-purple some of that intro prose. Oddly enough, people will name their kids things no normal person would think normal. (no examples please) but apparently (and thankfully) nobody wants to name their kid after the devil. It does make it so that if I ever were to have this published (fat chance), I don’t have to worry about copyrights on the name. Or if I do, it will be very bad. :)

I also like the Subverted Tropes. Someday I hope to have a story where the Frogolice are arresting the scorpion and reading him his rights before tossing him in the slammer. At the same time, Frogamedics are pulling the injured frog out of the river and applying antivenom, trying to keep him from croaking.

Rao - Shows that John may be an idot, but he’s not a fool. :)

>>Fenton
>>Baal Bunny
>>AndrewRogue
>>Not_A_Hat
>>Ranmilia
>>Rao

Pretty sure I owe a thing on this one. Just been hella lazy on it.

So this fic. This fic. This fic was an unmitigated disaster, really. A version of the idea came to me on day one in the morning as I was getting ready for work, which I think had a more sci-fi bent and involved maid robots or something? Eventually I realized that homunculi made things a lot easier. That said, I had the base idea there more or less the whole time: servant non-human creation that were made out of people (criminals or something).

The problem was, through Sunday, that was all I had.

Generally speaking, I launch into writing with an idea and a loose idea of how I want the story to go, and I just write until I get there. Unfortunately, this story wasn't getting there. The direction I was headed down was a bit more of an action adventure story involving prisoner tracking to make combat dolls or some such nonsense, but I realized the resolution I was headed towards was basically going to be the call to adventure sort: our heroes discover the conspiracy, survive their encounter, set off, and maybe adventure awaits after.

Just... wasn't gelling.

So I turn to a dear friend and go "Yo, my story sucks, what can I do?" and got some good advice in that, tonally, I was all over the place, with the story sitting in an awkward spot between kinda goofy comedy and straight up body horror. Which I had to agree with. So, given what I was up for, I opted to lean heavily into the comedy which... still left me without an arc, even after cleaning up the earlier parts and deleting some unnecessary junk. At which point I was tired, cranky, and realized that I could just the story on a huge, anti-climactic dark punchline.

Checking in if that seemed to work, I was met with some approval, so I said "Let's go!" and did it. Of course, because I'm me, apparently I lead up to the final punchline in such a way that it didn't land as darkly as it could (which I saw on a reread), but hey.

Also this was clearly partly inspired by Ella Enchanted.

>>Baal Bunny Yeah, I probably could have afforded to start a step or two back. Not much further, but enough to give a bit more of an impression regarding Kepa's life.

>>Not_A_Hat Well, you're correct re: time, but it also just looks like the darker punchline whiffed here (which I can see since it -is- a weird one-liner to work as a solution).

>>georg Thank you kindly.

>>devas Yeah, I kinda have a habit of writing open ended conclusions, which is something I should be more wary of.

>>Cassius Man. Called shot there.

>>Ranmilia *catstare*

>>Rao Yeah. That element was a decided hold on from when I was planning this to be a bit longer and more serious, but I did like it. Plus it creates a better faux lead-in to an abrupt hard stop.

>>AndrewRogue Oh, you're too hard on yourself. There's all kinds of seeds of a wacky sitcom type story here with drama and gender bending and plot twists. I mean, look. You have a main character as a student/late teen/loser who managed to screw up a *canned* spell. Angst, inexperience, etc... Then you have an experienced (and failed) male thief who has been stuck in a *female* body, a *hot* female body, and geas-ed into doing whatever the inexperienced goof commands. Undoubtedly, the screw-up is something the company would be more than happy to 'fix' if they find it, even if that fix involves flushing Zorian down the toilet and providing a fresh, free kit and a few gold coins, so the last thing he/she wants to do is make a stink. The 'master' most likely does not want the screw-up to become public either, because he is A) A slave-owner of a sapient being, B) managed to screw up the unscrewable C) the press would treat him as the ping-pong ball of the day and smack him around, and D) how do you do the normal things like attract a mate and get a job with that 'thing' in the house?