Comma splices – My breaths were heavy and labored, my legs felt like jelly, another building exploded in artillery fire. There's no causal relation between the clause ending at ‘jelly’ and the one starting at ‘another’. Therefore, that's not a comma you need here, but a full stop.

I dimly registered a chunk of pavement fly towards my leg, bone breaking on impact. Very unlikely. Comma splice again.

Many repetitions of words. Try to vary your lexical choices, otherwise reading feels a bit bland.

Oh, the nightmare trick.

And no, if your leg gives out at the first step, it won't hold at the next one. So that's highly improbable too.

And the end, well, is rather dull.

Not really impressed by this one.

After reading the story in full, I have to say I'm not terribly sympathetic to your protagonist, Writer. If you're running away from a wife and multiple children, you don't get to be bitter about someone else coming along to pick up your slack (as the line "all things I have left behind to another person who stepped into my shoes without even waiting for them to cool" seems to imply).

I get that the dude is wracked with guilt over killing a parent - possibly both parents - of a kid, and is constantly haunted by the crying child's voice. But by walking away from his own family, he's compounding the error by depriving his own children of their father. At best, he's horrifically misguided; at worst, he had one foot out the door already. The vagueness of the descriptions of his past leaves the veracity of these scenarios up to the reader.

I guess I'm not feeling terribly charitable towards your narrator, which may not be entirely fair. Bear in mind, this is my only real hangup with the story, and it may not even be a hangup at all - if your goal was to create a not-terribly-endearing protagonist, then bloody well done. ^^

All that said, this is well-written. I like the subtle foreshadowing at the end of the first paragraph, that was a nice touch. I certainly had an excellent idea of how cold and miserable your protagonist was throughout. As I said in my comment for Ringer, I like it when vague descriptions guide your focus in a story - as >>FrontSevens points out, the driver doesn't matter, nor does the car. All that matters is the cold, and the wet, and the rain, and the reasons for running.

A note about perspective:

The woman reached into the pocket of her old faux-fur parka and pulled out classic square-framed glasses. She put them on and squinted up at Zarya’s massive form and equally massive looking gun that pulsed with something like contained particle. She gasped at the armor and weapons, wondering what sort of situation she’d been awakened into. From the looks of the rest of station’s main room, she guessed the cryo unit was barely running on emergency power.

This paragraph is told mostly from Mei's perspective, when the rest of the piece is told entirely from Zarya's point of view. Since this is decidedly Zarya's story, you'd do well to switch around Mei's actions so that they are viewed from Zarya's perspective. We don't really gain anything from our brief jaunt inside Mei's head, since we already knew the power was failing and we already knew Zarya was armored and hauling around a cannon from previous descriptions in the story. It also helps readers from getting confused when a story sticks with a single perspective, particularly in flash fiction.

That said, I certainly don't mind seeing crossover fics like this, and as an avid fan of Overwatch I wouldn't mind seeing more down the line.

Minific rounds are always a little frustrating for feedback. It's very easy for the weight of what you write to approach the actual length of the story, and there are just so many things to discuss. So this round's feedback from me is gonna be paragraph-brief, sorry.

Now, I see my cardiologist three times a year, and I read the nutritional facts on the sides of instant mashed potatoes.

This is a fantastic line. Very J. Alfred Prufrock.

Like >>MonarchDodora I really get the sense that this story is structured to work on a metaphorical level. Unfortunately, instead of working in addition to the literal level, it feels like this only works as a metaphor. I mean, we the audience are never given any reason to associate God with the box other than the narrator's assertion. A cardboard box that does nothing other than occasionally interject snark really doesn't feel like the traditional conception of "God" — except perhaps insofar as we take it as a metaphor for the narrator's approach to religiosity, something that's nominally there (in church on the weekends) and in practice unimportant, and if that's the case then the box isn't God at all but a reflection of the narrator's self and values. That gave the whole thing sort of an absurd feeling for me and kept me from really connecting with whatever metaphor was intended.

I feel about this kind of like I felt about my own Writeoff entry last round, the one which kept writing about Spike from different points of view: there's a solid story underneath it but the particular approach you're using feels like it's getting in the way. I like a lot of the prose. Probably will end up middle-slate.

Tier: Almost There

Nitpick-ish: "the sobbing wasteland of Tenochtitlan" seems like a misstep as you're setting your story's scene. I'm not sure how the specifically Aztec reference connects, given that none of your other characters seem to draw names or archetypes from that mythology. Especially when you have a (demon?) named Jeremia and name-drop Las Vegas.

I like this in general. Nice details, like lampshading not naming the victim by having the narrator bet that memory. This works in enough context to make sense, if not necessarily to be satisfying, and that's a word-limit problem. Also hampered that way: the ending is abrupt and feels inelegant. But it does hang together as a complete story in the space, and the core idea is cool.

Tier: Strong

I second everything >>MonarchDodora said.

That final section needs a lot more than 150 words. This probably is a short-story-contest length idea. The 600 words of the first section were enjoyable, and seem comfortably paced, and give the narrator enough breathing room to inject some strong personality. This has a lot of potential once it's expanded, but as the text stands it doesn't quite capitalize on that.

What dragged this down against, say, Ringer (for which I had most of the same needs-more-space assessment) was the extreme compression of the second scene, but also a lot of small stuff. Nitpick: The almost-prompt-drop broke me out of my reading, though that might not be a problem outside the contest context. Another nitpick: "Dead of old age" after being stabbed through the chest? Another: "begging, pleading, hoping it would" unnecessarily redundant. Slightly less nitpicky: I've never heard "midnight twelve" as a phrase for timekeeping before, which is disorienting right at the start when you need to hook readers, and it kind of reads as a name to me except that the second scene labels the Hour as simply "Midnight", and it doesn't work as a name in the first sentence since you're using it as a time descriptor.

Tier: Almost There

This fic made me smile, and I fully agree with the base premise - LEGOs can be used as caltrops, don't let anybody tell you different. The only real criticism I have is that one of the best lines in your description:

My soul passed from the house that I worked so hard to build and moved to somewhere far away and out of reach.

is spent towards the beginning of the story. The story would flow a bit better if you built towards that line, crafting a narrative of escalating agony until he is trapped on an existential plane of pain and suffering. As it's written, though, this is still a neat little scene, and a relatable one at that. Well done, Writer.

Goddamn, if the actual intention of this story was to be about bioaccumulation, which is the vibe I got, then it'll be getting a top grade from me. It may be an unintentional message, but it's what I pulled out on first reading, so I'll admit my nerd-interest kinda colours my review. Still, aside from that, I like the descriptive prose in this piece, in part because it doesn't outstay its welcome, and there were enough clues for me to feel confident I'd figured out the setting in the end. Yes, I like this story very much.

Since I've finished my slate, I think I'll just try to work through the rest of the stories, starting with the ones with the fewest reviews.

---

I agree with >>axis_of_rotation about the dialogue. My impression was that you had just chosen to sacrifice realism and subtlety for length. And since this is a minific, I don't really blame you for that, but it does hurt the story a bit.

I thought it got a bit tell-y towards the end, especially when you tell us that the dad is short-tempered and has a drinking problem, since you pretty much showed that to us in the first scene.

I have mixed feelings about that final line though. On the plus side, I am glad to see that the tinkering away he was doing on the project earlier came up again and wasn't just a way to keep him inside earlier. On the other hand, it seems like a bit of a cop out ending. I think that if you could extend this story to include a scene where he goes back and visits his dad, it might improve the story. Of course, there are probably a lot of other ways to improve the story once you're not constrained by the wordcount.

Good style; nicely evocative. I'll echo >>The_Letter_J in the fairy tale feel. Pacing was good, and I liked the character voicing. As for what they say, however, I'm joining >>Trick_Question in camp 'romance was too fast.'

Not only did Albatross drop the l-bomb very quickly, but having Swan verbally reciprocate it and then go find someone else seems inconsistent. Are they playing by different social conventions? If so, we are given no indication of this. Had Albatross merely nurtured his own feelings and exchanged less direct signs of affection, then the crossed signals would have been understandable.

As is, the story was prettily written, and I liked how it explained how Albatross no longer flies over land, but the interpersonal logic didn't quite work for me.

Nitpick: "Most kids were star football players or track runners" … the point of stars is that they're not most kids. ;-p

I'm gonna join the upvote chorus on >>axis_of_rotation's post analyzing the melodrama of the central conversation, though for me it was a little less about the melodrama and more that the progression of the conversation rang false to me. This is near the beginning:

His eyes flashed for a second. “Oh, I know. Who knows how someone stupid enough to join the military would have a genius son?”

I finally turned up to face him. “What do you want, dad?” I could see in his eyes that he was drunk.

The solemn expression didn’t change. “You know, there’s a festival down by the lake on Sunday. It’d be fun.” He trailed off.

So right off the bat the father is jumping straight into the deep end of self-loathing, passive aggression, and confrontation. That's the verbal equivalent of throwing a punch. Then the son asks him what he wants, and suddenly they're not in a fight any more — dad asks him to go attend a festival as a father-son bonding moment. This is a bizarre de-escalation, especially considering that dad's drunk.

That melodrama/conversational fault is my main complaint here, though. The story doesn't feel crammed into the wordcount of the competition, which is no small thing, and it's got a solid arc. I do think it might help, if you expand this, to show us the dad in a better moment, to establish why the narrator regrets the encounter so much — since we only see the dad in full scenery-chewing mode, that regret never feels justified.

Tier: Almost There

Oh yes, I forgot to write a review for this one. I'll be brief.

The “I'm a nerd/I say fuck to my parents/When one of them die I regret it” kind of plotline seems a bit hackneyed to me, as well as the opposition military = dimwit and wino vs. scientist = genius. All that is too cliché.

But for me the biggest roadblock here is in the construction. That sentence I'm not ashamed to admit I cried at the funeral. should've been the last one of your story. Instead, you rewind all the way to the beginning and start over with something that looks like the same story but phrased differently. I thought: “oh, the author thought the story was too short and padded extra material to make it more acceptable.” Either integrate this tail into the main story, or ditch it.

This story is really good.

I agree with >>Icenrose that leaving behind his family makes this guy rather unsympathetic. So I'm not sure why you chose to include that, except maybe to emphasize just how much the accident affected him. But I don't see any reason why you wouldn't want the audience to be sympathetic to the character, so it might not have been the best choice. Personally, I would have considered making his family die in the car crash too, because that keep him a sympathetic character and give him even more reasons to be depressed.
But really, this is a minor point, and I think this story is still great how it is.

>>FrontSevens
To explain, you're right about him feeling guilty about the accident. I think the part about someone else stepping into his shoes means that he left his family and his wife remarried or otherwise replaced him with someone else. (Come to think of it, I'm not entirely sure how he would have even found out about that if he's been wandering the country ever since he left, but I suppose that's not too important.) When he talks about wanting to be carried away from his past, he means emotionally and mentally, not physically. He's trying to forget what happened and escape the guilt, which wasn't exactly easy to do when his previous driver was talking about a car crash his family had been in.

I wrote a review for this story, bungled it so it was lost. Shit.

Here is the gist: the first part is trite. It tries to be endearing by borrowing from a much used trope, the father lulling his child to sleep and talking about monsters. It's not badly done, it's just something I seem to have read zillions of times.

The second part is the best, it calls on an interesting premise, but unfortunately you squeezed it.

The last part came across to me as a way to tug on my heartstrings. The end is not called for, as nothing you already wrote depends on it. So it feels like tacked on with no reason.

Not really impressed.

Okay. Not sure what to say here. Also very unsure if I got a story here or a small passage of something. Overall I tried taking a bite out of this one and ended up asking where exactly was the filling to this creative nice looking sandwich. This felt more like a teaser than anything and really didn’t give me much to enjoy or remember. So this one is gonna be short.

POSITIVES
-Simplicity
It’s hard to make a read effective by keeping it short and sweet. It really is. Also making it too complex can kill the mood. What this story brings is a sweet subtle storyline that can draw a person in by just sheer curiosity. Who is this man and what exactly happened to him? Is he just a road bum? Why is he out in the rain? You give us a short story, but you rattle our minds with simple questions that end up having complex answers to themselves. The only injustice here is that the length of the story doesn’t seem to fit what you had going. It was all rather short fused with a tiny boom.

-Realism
The fact of the matter is, this character can portray a lot of people. Guaranteed that there are people out there who ended up just running from their troubles and moving from place to place. It’s possible and most likely have happened to someone out there. The obvious actions from the hitchhiker and the kind driver were also very much logical and realistic. Which in turn adds this genuine feel to the read of this story. Which is a style that is very hard to contrast into a proper enjoyable read. Now what could have helped this even better to make it touching, would have been character interactions and several more scenes. Probably points of the end of the night where this sad man has to find shelter and food before he ends up finishing the night only to have nightmares haunt him as he tries to find slumber. There was a lot you could play with here, that we just never got to read.

NEGATIVES
-Interaction
The length of the story could easily have been overlooked if you added one more feature to your piece. Simple interaction, such as banter and character mannerisms, could have lighten up your story. To add the pop and flavor which we’ve originally come to indulge in such sad tales. It would have highlighted this man’s sorrow even more and how awkward it was having such a person to be around with inside of a vehicle. The sympathy card was played a lot here, but didn’t have a good presentation to it. Therefore leaving us with very bland taste in the end. If something is to make a grand impact you need to have a good enough setup.

-Length
This one I cannot get over with. There was a lot of potential with this story that could have easily been written with a quarter more of content. To make it more appealing, so to speak. Maybe several more scenes would have been able to lift this story as something. The wording, idea, and plotline work fantastically but is very short lived through how fast of a read this was. I can’t say it was a read pass my school days reading passages in textbooks. I read and was done with it in minutes. You took me on a journey author and brought me only across a street. When it could have been a river. I’m gonna blame time on this one as I know sometimes people cannot just write like a madman all the time. And that life can always be a daunting concern.

So my final thoughts is, this was a good read. It is definitely something I wanna continue reading and would like more of. As of right now. I have no idea where it is headed. What the intent was or what I was suppose to feel. I didn’t get much for my time spent reading this and so in turn my review is not gonna have much. Since I didn’t have much to pick at anyways. Compelling idea and great use of your sentences, but it falls short and can feel like a sudden drop of a story with how quickly everything just seems to leave my head. So for now I’ll leave you with four traits of the story to be reviewed as finding a fifth one is difficult. Continue writing and my best advice is to just let it flow out. If you spend too much time trying to make everything perfect you’ll only hurt yourself. I guess for me, constructing the plotline and words for it are much easier than trying to edit and proofread it all.

“Next on the Discovery Channel.”

Here we have what we call a writing pony. Notice how his limbs are busy tapping away at the specially designed keyboard. Ah yes! One of nature’s unanswered riddles, busy within it’s own course of life.

The simple minded creature is so built up on his own task that he has not noticed me yet. Given time he will mature into a beautiful stallion or be taken apart by yet another beast. He may even write a book or two.

Though this particular pony isn’t what he seems. He is indeed a male. He is also gay.

Seems the savage thing has noticed my presence. By whatever means could he present as a means of defense?

The pony specimen seems to understand part of the english language and has denied my claim to his sexuallity. He has also given an excuse that he is something of an “open minded” individual. Silly pony. He would never come to understand human life.

Now it seems the homosexual pony has gotten into some sort of a frenzy. The obvious question is if this animal would find the instinct to fight or run? We shall see.

OOP! Dodged that one. He has seemed to have chosen the fight option and has thrown his computer while shouting vulgar language. It is indeed an impressive display of whimsical proportions!

My WORD! This pony is actually quite savage. It has just thrown a chair and has flipped over his desk to charge at me!

Someone get the warden! This pony has rabies!

I-AH!

GAH!-

“Get that buckin camera out of my HOUSE! I don’t know who you people are and why you think I’m some kind of animal?!” And with those final words the view goes dark and shatters as a white flat surface meets the cameraman’s equipment.

The Discovery of the White Writing Pony

-By Remedy Fortuitous Heart

POSITIVES
-Intro
You did a great job on the introduction. Which exclusively grabbed my attention almost completely and had me diving right into a whole new world! Literally telling the state of a current planet that is separate from our own. It goes further into this and calls out individual elements that make the planet. Down from the wildlife and vegetation to the life forms which would have the dominant species on the alien planet. Now my only problem is that. This story of yours. Feels just like an intro. A very good one, but only seems to offer an intro. There is no ending. No conflict. No character development. Nothing to follow and just leaves me lost on a desolate planet. I believe you could have played with this at least a bit more. Give us something follow. From the last of its kind. IE the alien life form or a small critter trying to survive. Or you could be creative and show the journey of a leaf flying through the air that witnesses several scenes. You gave me a wonderful world. But left me stranded on it with nothing to make the journey with.

-Concept
The initial part of this story that caught my eye was that it fit with the prompt of the contest heavily with one of the most basic and wisest things about life in general. That it continues to go on throughout the course of time. No matter how dire it becomes for nature itself. For as long as something lives, it;ll grow in abundance if given the chances. It fit the prompt to a grand scale that I thought was magnificent. Now problem is that you didn’t really sell it to me. You told me a textbook style of an explanation that shared this information with me. With the story feeling only like an introduction for something to come with nothing behind it, It leaves a really dry taste in your mouth. You could have added so much more to support it, but ended up ending it with a simple phrase that was basically highlighted for five minutes and then repeated bluntly back at me like I had gotten off track with something else. That’s not the case. The story is so short that the thought never leaves your head, so that ending line just kinda feels strange.

NEGATIVES
-Material
There was nothing wrong with choosing such a broad idea to work with. In fact I was surprised that there wasn’t much to read with such an idea and take on a story. If you plan on making more of this style think of this. You need to hold my hand and give me a tour of this world. Inform me about it’s demise and share with me the wonders of how life is slowly trickling back into the land. Attempt to make me touch each and every thing that either died or is surviving. When you instead show me a chart and just tell me about such a thing. I will end up uninterested. Keep that in mind as I think your writing is superb! But the issue here is I couldn’t connect with you on any level if I wanted to. Writing and reading is a type of relationship that should be considered somewhat like a visit. You need to entertain and please your guests. Maybe show them around the house and share with them your personal belongings. I wanna get to know you and your mind. Not the dictionary or thesaurus on your selves.

-Connection
The whole piece was immersive to begin with. Which would have made a good lure for the hook of the story. What we got here was almost like a piece of advice type of deal that told us a life lesson rather than a tale that could have been entertaining. The documentation type of deal here is very good indeed, but loses it’s interest quickly due to it being a “sci-fi” documentary and with it being so short. The fictional aspect of this whole world and nature play on things ends just degrading what could play better as a natural documentation entry about our world. This would have been able to add some type of connection to the piece and made it more appealing. Instead we’re left with science fictional elements that almost make me think I’m being lied to, with it being just that the contents are fictional.

Whoo-hoo! Another short story. Hm. Wonder if this prompt was a hard one to write about? Could be. My second review currently and it might become a trending thing to see such stories with a complex prompt idea. The read of this story just hit me the right way from the start, yet didn’t pack any force behind it in the end. The introduction was very entertaining and made way for a cool scene start. The idea here and lesson behind it was very well thought out and I doubt anyone would have thought of this. Making it very unique indeed. I just wished there was a story behind. Something that would have made exploring this awesome planet enjoyable. From what I got is something like a picture album in my head for this story rather than characters acting out a movie. Which is fine of course, but it came up short. With me. Again like my last review. This story gets four traits with it being of short length and not giving me much to look over.

>>Ratlab
Your post has reminded me that I explained why I think the relationship didn't move too fast in the chat, but I didn't say much about it in my review. So let me fix that now.
Basically, you hit the nail on the head, but didn't realize it.

Are they playing by different social conventions? If so, we are given no indication of this.

Yes, they are, and yes, we are.
They are playing by the social conventions of fairy tales (which may or may not have any correlation with the social conventions of the times when they were written; I really have no idea either way), and the fact that this story is written like a fairy tale should be enough to clue us into that. And in fairy tales, love at first sight is so common as to practically be the norm, and it's certainly perfectly normal for characters to profess their love almost immediately and to call each other things like "my love" before they even know their names. What looks like a declaration of love to us is often just standard flirting by fairy tale standards.
And while I can't think of any examples off the top of my head, I am fairly sure that the whole "We were in love, but then we were apart for so long and I fell in love with and married someone else" thing is something that has happened in fairy tales before. And even if it isn't, it really feels like it could be to me.

This story was briefly talked about in the chat, and changelin|mposter said that he thought the typo in the title was intentional, I think just on the basis of the rest of the story not having any glaring errors. But if it was intentional, I can't figure out why.

And the rest of the story seems similarly incomprehensible to me. It appears to be about someone stuck in their own personal Hell, with plenty of spider metaphors thrown in for good measure. But that's about all I got out of it.

Also, that comma splice in the first line was really distracting.

>>Icenrose
>>RogerDodger
I'd like to dialogue a little on this, because I'm very confused. (None of this is anti-Bae, either: I like this story except for the lack of context and would like to see stories like this allowed, as I explain below.)

When "General" rounds changed to "Original", the only difference was that we were no longer going to allow fanfics as part of the rules of the competition. We had already been doing what Roger is describing back when the rounds were called "General". In "General" rounds, fanfics were graded by the participants in a similar manner to how we had been ranking crossover fics (Horizon gave a good description of this process which I agreed with). Horizon won a competition in one of the "General" rounds with a pony fic. Nopony had a problem with it.

Then we made a big to-do about changing the rules.

I could have sworn I asked Roger if this meant that an intentional rules violation of posting fanfic in an "Original" round would remove your fic from the competition. Given the drugs I take, it's very likely I misremember. But if it's actually okay for us to submit fanfics to "Original" rounds, even though it's a direct violation of the stated rules, then nothing has actually changed. We're still doing "General" rounds rather than "Original", except breaking one of the rules won't get your stories ejected from the competition.

This matters to me because I actually prefer "General", but I'm not going to submit something that is a willful violation of the rules because those get deleted from the website (which I've also bitched on).

So which way is it? Are we still doing "General" and just 'pretending' it's against the rules to submit fanfics, or...?

Man, there's a lot of time travel going on with this prompt.

Nice title.

The best part of this is the narrator's voice, but it stands out all the more when he/she doesn't talk conversationally, which I particularly felt was the case with the final line. I prefer the penultimate line as the ending, tbh. Or something like: come on, press the button. Why wouldn't you?

I was also a little confused as to whether the 'you' was aimed at me as the reader, or at 'me' as a somewhat established character in this guy's life, which is what the stuff about them being friends etc at the end suggests. I'd like it to be more clear which one 'you' was. The clarity would make the story stronger, in my opinion, because I'd know whether I was intended to interact with it as a simple reader, or as an involved party.

Pretty good!

I feel like I might be missing something here. >>Astrarian says the narrator is a soul/life collector, but I got the impression that they were just collecting stories, especially since she's still alive at the end. In any case, I feel like I'm just missing something here.

The other problem with this story for me is that both the narrator and the old woman seem to be trying to feel the role of "mysterious old person who imparts wisdom and knowledge," and it doesn't quite work for me.

Overall, it seems like a good story that just doesn't click with me.

>>Trick_Question
From what Roger has said before, I think that his intention to discourage new participants from submitting fanfics without realizing that doing so is "playing on hard mode." When the contest is explicitly for original fiction, anyone who submits a fanfic should realize that a lot of people are probably going to penalize them for it.

Personally, I would rather have the "Original" rounds actually restricted to original fiction. But if people are going to be allowed to submit fanfics in them, I agree that they should return to being "General" rounds.

And since I've left a comment here now, I might as well actually review the story too.

All I know about Overwatch is that it had a beta last week and what's in this story. So I'm not entirely sure what's going on here. Something about a war and possibly a robot apocalypse? Or maybe the robots are just malfunctioning murderously.

It's not a bad standalone scene, but I think it would have done better in this competition if you had just filed off the serial numbers and disconnected it from Overwatch entirely. It is, for the most part, understandable without any knowledge of Overwatch, but the last few lines are the biggest exception. I suspect that they would have more meaning if I knew more about Overwatch, but without that knowledge, they're pretty empty to me.

It's an interesting premise, the lame prince trying to become a warrior. It was easy to follow, and the dream imagery was well detailed.

I had a little trouble understanding his plight; 'lame' is pretty generic. Obviously he had a badly broken arm once, but that could still leave him varying degrees of functionality. Is it bent, do the fingers work, does it hurt, or can he just strap a shield to it and fight left-handed?

The ending takes it in a positive direction, but I'll agree that it doesn't feel as 'earned' as it could be to be truly satisfying. It would help if we had the room to see more of his life, so we could come to learn of his character organically and see how he came to his resolution.

>>Trick_Question
To echo what >>The_Letter_J said, stories that are fanfiction are not explicitly banned and are not disqualified if they are submitted to the competition. The name was changed solely to encourage writers to submit original material, as fanfiction tends to have rookies fall into the trap of undercharacterization and poor worldbuilding, relying too heavily on familiarity with the source material, which could result in unfamiliar readers being left in the lurch and penalizing the stories accordingly. That's the rationale as I remember it, anyways.

So, to more directly answer your question, Trixie, no, nothing has functionally changed from the General fic rounds of old.

A decent story, but it has a few too many flaws for me.

The first one is that I think you delay telling us what game is being played for too long. Once you started going into the first hypothetical outcome without telling us, I figured that that would be the big reveal at the end, and it would turn out that they're playing Candyland or something. But then you do give away that they're playing basketball, and I suddenly had no idea what the point of the story was. It wasn't hard to figure out what the point actually was after that, but it was still an unneeded distraction.

The next problem is with the "win to secure my future" part. She acts like the only way that basketball can help her in the future is if she eventually joins the WNBA. But immediately before that she mentions that she could get a scholarship for playing basketball, and immediately afterwards she talks about her schooling being important. Well, why not win the game to get a scholarship to pay your way through school? She does say she should focus on her education, but it feels to me like she mostly ignores this point.
Furthermore, by the time the state championship game is happening, she should probably have already made a decision on this point. Colleges would be sending out acceptance letters at around this time, and I would expect her to have taken "will I play basketball for this school" into consideration back when she was applying, unless she had already decided that she wasn't going to. But I never played sports in high school, so I could be making some incorrect assumptions here.

Then there's the "win for my team" part. This one is lot shorter than her other thoughts, which isn't a problem in and of itself. The problem is that she never dismisses this idea like she does the others. So it seems like that's the reason she's settled on, which is perfectly fine. But then, at the very end, she gives a new reason that she has apparently decided on. So I suppose the problem is really that this thought breaks the format of the others for no clear reason.

Finally, I have to echo what >>billymorph said about this seeming like the prelude to the decisive moment instead of the moment itself. The parts at the beginning about standing near the opposing captain made me think that this was probably taking place before the opening tip, but the thoughts and emotions the narrator has don't seem to match that. I would expect these sorts of thoughts while she was preparing to take a game-winning foul shot or something. Not because she wouldn't be thinking about her motivations before the game began, but because the opening tip is, at most, a tiny bit of intensity followed by thirty minutes of mostly relatively low-intensity action. It's building up an emotional high, but that's not going to be carried through the rest of the game and will quickly calm down.
It's a bit like telling a story about a little girl who's really excited to finally go to Disneyland, but at the end you reveal that the story is taking place as the family packs up their car for a twelve hour drive. It's not a perfect analogy, but it's the first thing that came to my mind. (And actually, that could be an amusing story, but it's not the sort of thing you're going for here.)

I don't dislike this story as much as I'm probably making it seem. I don't think it's bad, just a bit flawed. And as someone who usually doesn't care much about sports, the fact that you got me to write this much about a sports story is a bit impressive.

First of all, I am amused that this story is basically the inverse of "Fertile Fields."

I think that this story is pretty good, though not spectacular. I have no major complaints about it, but I didn't find it particularly gripping either. I do think that you did a good job with the prose.

My one minor complaint is that you really could have been more subtle. We can all see the parallels between the land and the narrator's leg. You don't need to point that sort of thing out to us. On the other hand, it probably is more realistic for him to include that sort of thing in his thoughts, so it's not a huge deal.

Another silly story is silly. Possibly sillier.

Clever and unusual take on a story. Dialog only is an unusual choice, but it worked here. The characters and subject were amusing, though some of the language used was a little distracting. (wunna comes to mind).

My favorite line: "Hmmph! Well, this reality of yours sounds like an awful place, and I'll have nothing to do with it!"

I'm not really sure I buy Gwen's change of mind there at the end, but whatever. The story made me chuckle.

I agree with the others that the big metaphor section could use some more subtlety, but I think that it generally works. It definitely reminds me of a style of writing that I've seen before, but I can't remember where. Possibly C.S. Lewis, but I might be way off.

What really kills this story for me is the last paragraph. It really adds nothing and seems to mostly be there for the prompt drop. The penultimate paragraph isn't as bad, but it doesn't actually tell us anything that we don't already know, so it might have helped to get rid of it too.

I think I'd call this story fairly mediocre. Not bad, but not great either.

This is a fun story, and I think the fun comes from the sort of noncynical innocence of it all. Whimsy might be another word for it, or silly. Point is, I enjoyed it. Good message too.

Like >>The_Letter_J , I'm not sure how time could heal grey hairs--perhaps as you get older, you care less about the grey hairs you have?

I'm not sure what the significance of having time come from the sky is. The only reason I can think of is that it's a quirky detail that adds just that much more whimsy to it (specifically in ["You get the best ones from the sky," the girl explained. "Some get them from clouds or mountains, but not me!"]). Logically it doesn't make much sense, but I guess that might be the point.

Otherwise, great fic, I enjoyed it. :>

I think I like the idea behind this story, but I can't help but not know what exactly is happening.

I don't think it's hard, per se, to be able to piece together the story-puzzle pieces here. It's just that I felt like this was information overload. Nearly every paragraph of dialogue after the tuberculosis thing feels like it has backstory or plot significance, and for me, I think it's too much information to take in all at once.

From what I gather, Tony is a cryogenically frozen guy who's the key to understanding how twentieth-century folk integrate into the society of "intelligents"? I don't quite understand it.

Now, it seems that other people were able to understand what was going on, but for me personally, I think it was a matter of too much information and not enough time (words) for that information to really sink in and mean something to me. In my mind, it felt less like a meaningful interaction between two people and more like a (condensed) intro to the universe (although it did feel somewhat meaningful).

>>Icenrose
Well, I still won't ever risk it based on what I currently know. The threat of a story I've worked on being destroyed—if I didn't maintain a backup offline, which I don't feel like doing with Original rounds—is sufficient for me to fall in line.

There's a lot to like with this story. The writing is clear and easy to follow, and it has an interesting premise that isn't too formulaic. It also does a good job of weaving in information on the setting in an unobtrusive manner, but unfortunately, that takes a lot of words as well.

My overall impression echoes >>Not_A_Hat, that the conflict is relatively mild, and the stakes are low. The protagonist is likable enough, but isn't able to develop much.

It kept my interest throughout, but though it works alright as-is, I think it'd serve better as the intro to a larger story.

Heh. For some reason I keep wanting to start reading the title as an oriental dish 'Sum fud' or the like. Ah well.

Good action, it wasn't too hard to follow. The narrative voice had some interesting character to it, as well. Speaking of characters, both managed to have some definition in rather few words. We don't get much of a sense of the larger picture, but the story doesn't really suffer for it.

I don't know why there were three uzis, though; I'm not sure what that gained over just having three clips. In hindsight, I wonder why her clairvoyance didn't show her what the 'underslung something' was. I guess there might be limits, but we never learn them.

I concur on the strong ending. An engaging vignette overall, it got the job done for me.

All I can do here is echo >>axis_of_rotation's comment. The author did well with the mood, but it seems like we're missing a few important clues that we need to figure out what's going on here.

It does look to me like the mine is shutting down, but the party and such seem to suggest that this is a cause for celebration, and I can't figure out a way to put it all together. Like >>Ratlab said, this might take place in the USSR, so maybe communism is involved somehow? I really have no idea.

He was one of the deadliest creatures of the modern era, at least when he could be bothered to wake up.

I can relate.

I don't really mind the lecturing here, but I think it would be better if you could turn it into more of a story. But that's minifics for you. I agree with >>Leo about the ending being the weakest part. You need something to happen there or some sort of conclusion. Perhaps this problem is a side effect of the story being more of a lecture. You certainly don't want to end a story with a character saying "So in conclusion..."

Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention, you misspelled William/Willian's name half of the time. That actually threw me off for a bit.

I could make seconds into centuries and centuries into seconds

But you can't make a several thousand word story into a 750 word minific.

Well, not quite. I think you actually did a pretty good job of cutting a much larger story down to the bare minimum. But of course I would rather have read the longer version.

And why did you name the guy "Carmel"? Is this secretly a ponyfic, or do people around here just like to give their characters weird names for some reason?

Anyway, this story is great and I love it.

This story took a while to get going, but I ended up enjoying it quite a bit.

The ending is a bit weak, but I thought it was sufficient. I was a bit confused about one detail though. I'm pretty sure you're implying that Betsy finally got to gut the narrator, which stopped him from knocking out George. But you said that they walked down stairs into an underground lab, so Betsy shouldn't have been able to get to him.

My only other advice is that I think the beginning needs more of the weird humor that shows up once George starts describing his invention.

Okay. Let’s be upfront again: I found this rather meh.

The problem is that you decided to tackle a tired premise, namely people being revived well after their normal lifetime. I'm not sure I haven't seen a single WriteOff Original Fic round without this trope being called upon. Last one had two stories about this, if memory serves. Heck, they even made a comedy about it called “Hibernatus” in 1969, the year of my birth. So, okay, fine, but if you do, then you also have to bring in some sort of spicy novelty, something original to grasp the attention of the reader and make him think “Oh, this is a new take, great!”. Otherwise, it's simply going to be one verse tacked on the same old song. And, unfortunately, that how that story came across to me.

I mean, it's competently written and whatnot, but, as the others already said, the stakes are low, there is no real conflict, and it comes across as dull. There is no twist, we don't have enough elements to care about the characters. Besides, you could've dived a little more into worldbuilding by showing us how that future world looked like in your imagination, but you preferred to hem the guy in a replica of the 20th century. In other words, when I reached the end, I thought “Oh, it's just that?”

Sorry.

I quite liked this story. The theme is dear to me (which means that I may be slightly less objective than I'd like to be, but I will try to keep that in mind) and I thought it was well written. I suspect that the first Gerald to be a typo (considering it becam Gerard later on), and I extend the benefit of doubt to Labell (without an e).

Regarding the type of wine, it is rare that in a region they would cultivate only ever a single kind of grape, but that detail is unimportant for the flow of the story.

Considering that depending on the part of the front the combat devolved into grind and (almost) boredom I can kinda understand the calm and almost fatalistic tone of the conversation. Remember that aside from the inhuman slaughter we also had the Christmas Truce (one of my favorite episodes in the history of humanity).

I admit that it became a bit too unsubtle at the end, but it's something that can easily be corrected, and maybe intermingled with a few details about Gerard.

Lastly, I really don't think that the soldiers can be faulted for thinking the land would never recover, I would probably think the same thing. It took decades of hard work and, as previously said, we are still finding traces a century after what people thought would be the last war ever.

At the end I think this is a really good story that needs just a bit of polishing to be great.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I'm not sure of what's going on here >.>

Agreed with >>Leo on the cinematic POV changing to limited.

As far as I can tell, John T. Rothwell was recovering or something (or dead), and then either he was stolen or he escaped. But other than that, I don't know what to make of it. I don't feel bad for the guy monitoring the machine because he doesn't have all that much of a character as I see it. The only character he really has comes from the conversation he has with John, which is sort of general anyway.

It's not really clear to me what the machine's doing, either. It's got some good visual description, but I don't really know what it does, other than tracking progress of... something. And it doesn't make sense to me how or why John escaped, or John was taken? If he was only at thirty-five-ish percent, I wouldn't imagine he could escape by himself... Then again, I don't know what John escaping means, in the context of the story, other than "something was terribly wrong" and the khakis man felt like a piece of himself was missing.

-1/8 point for nearly straight-up dropping the prompt.

Overall, I don't know what was going on, so I have no strong feelings one way or the other on this one. This story sort of just happened, for me, and not much more.

You're gonna stand there with you teeth in your mouth Missing r here.
The dialogue is funny, though sometimes a bit hard to follow because we can easily get lost between the two hens in the absence of an occasional tag. Yet tags would've made the whole piece much heavier. That’s where script style comes to the fore.

Otherwise, it's silly enough, in a playful way. The dialogue is snappy. Nice recreational piece, but it would really come to its own if used for a video.

And, oh, do chicken have feet?

>>Monokeras
I haven't read this story, but I noticed Mono's question:

And, oh, do chicken have feet?

Yes. There are not many animals for which we don't say "foot", to be honest, even if it's something else as well (like a paw). But for birds, "talons" mostly describes the nails. Unless we want to be weird like MLP is about Spike not having hands (which he does), that is.

This one was a bit bizzare. It was charming and I mostly enjoyed it, but it didn't feel complete.

I mean, it had a start and an end, but I think I agree with >>horizon on the pacing. The first 600 words are comfortably paced. The end feels rushed, and like I'm not given enough time to digest what's happening. It might not be an issue of length, just disproportionality--if you'd made the first part 450 and the second part 300, maybe it would've been paced better. Could be better longer, though. I dunno.

Do I understand how this time-world works? Not really. Am I interested? Yes. The voice of the narrator was engaging enough and the language was interesting enough (though with a few grammar errors and some melodramatic-ish exaggerations; [Only two feet away... might as well be a thousand.], for example). I cared about the main character and could follow what was going on, up until the end.

It's a very good story, but it feels like it really needed some more words to be fully fleshed out. I feel like I don't really understand why or how most of this happened. But it was still an enjoyable read, so I think you did good.

I think I get what you're going for here, but it seems like there's just too much extra padding and details, so the whole thing ends up murky. You probably could have cut a few chunks out and focused more on what was really important, and it would have improved the story.

The part that gets me the most is the reveal at the end. It doesn't seem to really connect with the rest of the story. I mean, obviously it's related, but it doesn't change anything about the rest of the story, and when I reread it, I don't see anything differently because of it. So it seems like there wasn't really much of a point to it.

Hmm... I don't think I'll be able to join the chorus on this one.

Agreed with >>Not_A_Hat on the commas.

I'm a fan of the silly and the ridiculous, but I feel like the dialogue jumps around just a bit too much for me to be able to follow. Sure, George is realistically a genius who's sort of following strange lines of logic, so it's probably realistic for him to talk a bit sporadically. I do appreciate the straight man, too, whatever the narrator's name is, for being a good relatable & sane character that shares some of the thoughts the reader might have about George.

I think the issue might be that 1) I'm not inclined to technobabble, really, and 2) I feel like I'm not given enough time (words) to digest what's happening. Perhaps that's the point, and the reader is supposed to not be able to follow George, and understand why the narrator would knock him out. But it's still hard for me personally to follow and I'm left a bit bewildered by the end (for instance, I don't get what's the significance of the tangent about the books).

I mean, the humour was good, the banter was enjoyable, I like the narrative being adequately descriptive and infused with the narrator's personality... But I couldn't quite enjoy it fully.

Another war story. There seem to be quite a few of those this round.

This story is just pretty standard, doing the whole "time heals physical but not emotional wounds" thing. It's functional, but not anything special or particularly interesting.

I do think that the first scene was pretty good, but the second needs some work. I think it seemed to be maintaining the pace of the first scene, when it really should have slowed down instead.

if only I had been faster.

So that you could have died with them?

Okay, that was pretty amusing. Heather's sudden attitude shift seems a bit too sudden, and makes me wonder why she never ordered pizza herself. But I suppose that ignoring a bit of logic for the sake of comedy is okay.

And based on the ending, I think the author was probably trying to make this look like a commercial, but if so, I don't think they got it quite right. It would need to be simplified and have a good chunk of the dialogue cut out for that. Of course, doing that could very easily hurt the story, so it's probably fine the way it is.

>>Trick_Question

I haven't read this story, but I noticed Mono's question:

And, oh, do chicken have feet?

Yes.

Well, I thought chickens had claws rather than feet.
In French, we have a specific word, patte, that fits about every kind of animal, and when used for humans, has a colloquial/slang connotation, somewhat like ‘mitt’. Ex: (patois)Tire tes pattes d'tes fattes → “Pull your mitts out of your pockets”

I think this one is really good. I think you made me feel for your character more than any other story in this writeoff has so far.
There were a few things in the story that did seem a little odd to me—like Chris being seemingly very overqualified—but the ending did explain everything.

Now other commenters have been questioning the realism of this story. I don't have any real experience with this sort of thing either, but it does seem pretty believable to me. Based on things I've heard and those disability forms I kept on having to fill out when I was applying for jobs, I'm pretty sure that it is illegal for Dave to deny Chris the job just because of his disability. But I'm also pretty sure that there's nothing Chris could really do about it, because I'm sure that Dave could come up with some other justification for not hiring him, if he really had to.

The first paragraph felt like it was crafted specifically for me, so I was invested and smiling right off the bat with this story. As I was reading, it started to feel more and more like an older Saturday Night Live skit/commercial - it had that tone, to the point where I started reading it in Dan Akroyd's voice. This isn't a bad thing, mind - just the impression I got off of it.

I glazed over the acronym upon seeing it, so I didn't catch the extraneous "F" until after >>FrontSevens pointed it out. The fact that an acronym is being used for such a long phrase in the first place is absurd (again, in line with SNL), and I suspect that the F is actually part of the joke (if it's not, Writer, just lie and say that it is, nobody will know ^^).

This kind of advertisement as narrative can be hard to pull off without being heavy-handed, but I think you did well here. I chuckled a few times throughout, especially at "depending on how much of a lazy hack the guy is" and the final paragraph. This comedy was a welcome change of pace from the rest of my slate so far, so thank you, Writer.

Some nice metaphors and imagery here, and it was eloquent and thoughtful. There were a few mechanical errors that others have noted, but nothing an editing pass wouldn't fix.

The larger issue I'm having is that, although eloquent, it reads as very generic, impersonal. I'm not given any concrete details about the character or the life that they've lived, so it's hard for me to relate to them, and my reaction to their current situation is muted.

There's a decent skeleton here, but I think it needs some flashbacks or concrete anecdotes for the reader to really latch on to.

I can't help but compare this one to "One August Night." They're both telling practically the same story, or at least have the same premise. But this one just works so much better for me.

I think what helps this one the most is the narrator. His attitude and voice are distinctive and well-defined, and I find him mostly interesting to listen to. The part where he goes into detail about his step-grandfather and father and how they basically ruined his life is a bit much, and the story could probably be improved by either cutting it down, or just finding a way for more of the narrator's voice to show during that part instead of having him just straight up telling us about it.

My other problem with this story is that it's not really accurate. Circles do stop themselves sometimes. He's stopping one himself, albeit in an unconventional way. Sure, it's not easy, and the circles do oftentimes continue. But not every person with a terrible childhood and abusive parents becomes a terrible and abusive parent themselves. But I suppose that's just the narrator's cynicism talking.

Still, I think it's a pretty good story.

(Not a review—just a quick point of discussion)
I think >>The_Letter_J has a very good counter to both >>Trick_Question and >>Ratlab's criticisms of bringing the relationship on too fast, and I think that is what the author intended... but I'm not convinced it worked. Funnily enough, I don't think it's because it happens too soon (though I'd have appreciated a line or two more dialogue first) but rather because I think it's introduced indirectly.

The first time it is introduced, the word "love" certainly isn't unexpected (as J points out, it's a fairy-tale style story—though I would argue more akin to Aesop than to the brothers Grimm). But it's introduced using the phrase "Not even my love for you...", which is the kind of wording that fits the theme but to the detriment of focus because it puts the focus less on the love and more on the magnitude thereof (and, more importantly, how insurmountable the coming obstacle is). For that reason, it seems like the kind of sentence you'd use after you'd already introduced the love theme. Also I'm not convinced that was even a complete sentence, which might explain why it felt so weak.

Anyway, yeah. Those are my thoughts on the matter. Overall, quite enjoyable, though for an Aesop-esque tale I'm left floundering a little at the end, trying to find a nice, neat moral to tie it all together.

And this story is very similar to "Six Candles," though not done as well.

For me, this story's only real problem is that it's entirely unbelievable. Like the other commenters have said, it seems ridiculous to think that a mother would spend probably 15 minutes preparing breakfast for her child—plus the time she spent getting ready before that, probably—without remembering that the child had died. You don't just forget that sort of thing. If preparing breakfast for her son had been part of her morning ritual for years, then I might understand if she got up to do it again without realizing, but even then I think she'd realize her mistake fairly quickly. But you explicitly say that this was the first time she had made breakfast for him, so that idea is out.

Like I said, there aren't any other major problems that I noticed, but unfortunately, that one problem is so basic and fundamental that it ruins the entire story for me.

It's a story about foxes, but not actually any specific foxes, just foxes as a whole. Or something like that.

Anyway, this story just isn't doing anything for me. I'm not sure that I'd say it's bad, but I do find it pretty boring and very forgettable.

>>The_Letter_J

If you click the phrase "Add another" at the bottom of your ballot, the machine will select another story that you can then read, review, and rank with the others you've already read, reviewed, and ranked. It's all automated these days, y'know! :)

Mike

This is yet another story that tries to condense a much larger story down to minific length. So we end up with a lot of action and a lot of things happening, but most of it seems meaningless. Still, I feel like I enjoyed it, even if I didn't fully understand it. It helps that I enjoy sci-fi and time travel stories, so a full-length version of this story would probably be right up my alley.

But what really gets me is that you had almost 200 more words to work with, but you chose not to use them for some reason.

You've got great ideas, author.

Barrett just about had enough. Life went downhill from then on, and it would continue going downhill from then. → “had” should be “had had”; besides, I don't understand the second phrase of the second sentence. Is that a repetition of the first?

He let out a small groan as he shuffled up the grated staircase. Hunched over, he fumbled for the keys in his pockets, finding his efforts fruitless. → I think we have a good example of what the other reviews pointed out as ‘clunkiness’. Why not rephrase this sentence like this: “He groaned as he shuffled up the staircase. Hunching, he fumbled for the keys in his pockets.”

This time, he found the small and sharp object, almost cutting his hand on the jagged edges. → “the small and sharp object”: this did not evoke a key to me. Did you ever cut your finger with a key?

but the underlying feeling of dread that came over him. → Can an overwhelming feeling be underlying?

Barrett could picture the man on the other line → Probably you wanted to write: “the other side of the line”

A thick scent of metal hung in the air as he made his way over to the kitchen. → What of it? I mean, you give us an information that could lead to a potential danger or unexpected situation, but no, you simply don’t act on it. Why is it there in the first place?

Several people pointed out the erratic punctuation throughout the dialogue, so I won’t rub it in.

The story is… disconnected. Why does the guy pick up the phone that night to ring up a father he hasn’t been speaking to for years? That seems a little contrived. And then you provide us with that extra info, namely the stepmother, dyslexia and so on. But you don’t do anything with it, so it has no real value. Did the guy run away? What happened? We’re left with more questions than answers, and the end of the story does not really offer any explanation or resolution.

>>Baal Bunny
I know. I'm just choosing not to use it. If I was only going to review a few more, I would, but since I'm planning to go through all of them, I'm using my own system. Doing it this way lets me give more immediate attention to the stories that have been woefully neglected, and it makes it easier for me to sneak in a fake review of my own story. ;)

I'll agree:

With the "nicely written but what that heck is happening" consensus that seems to be forming. Even reading the sections in numerical order doesn't make it come together for me--my best guess is that the trumpet player left our narrator, the teacher, then came back, then died. But that could very well just be the pattern-seeking part of my brain grasping and flailing to find something.

Mike

It's difficult to gauge this fic. We get flashes of action, but it is rushed (something you probably wished to convey) and we can hardly stabilise on given timeframe before being kicked to another one. Many characters are named, but that's what they remain: names. It's like a stroboscope in a time disco where your characters would be shaking a leg on the dance floor, blinking in and out at each flash.

Disjointed as it is, its difficult to appreciate the arc and its consistency. There is definitely some potential here, but it needs to breath to go to town.

This story starts out oddly. The first sentence has two speakers in one line, which breaks a rule as I understand it. Now this fic seems rather experimental, so it could be intentional, but if so, it's an odd choice, as this is the only occurrence. Also the 'fight' idea isn't repeated anywhere else. I would actually consider removing this first section.

I'm not familiar with the version of solitaire the guy is playing, but I'll take your word for it.

Unusual way to approach dialog, but the characterization was strong despite it. There are hints that something seriously wrong is going on, but it's a very understated apocalypse. If it were a picture, I imagine it painted in pastels.

I'll agree that there wasn't much of an arc to the story; for me it was mostly a mood piece. While it largely succeeded, it didn't leave as strong of an impression as some of the other entries.

My thoughts echo pretty much all of what >>The_Letter_J said.

A collector of stories, the way you’ve introduced it, can be an interesting premise. And it was interesting, in this case, but just kind of low key and generic. I think this story had heart, but it didn’t do much for me.

There's a lot of skill here, but it needs polish. Descriptions were generally strong, such as "cobweb hair" and "paper-dry skin." You also mentioned scent, which many overlook. But it needs an editing pass, and not just grammar; some of your word choices are undermining the strength of your sentences. For example I think your third sentence would be stronger if you cut 'Many' from the beginning.

Also, the line:

Thank you, said the old woman, without saying it.

I found this disconcerting, because the beginning is structured exactly the way it would be said, except without the quotes. Times like that you should think if there is some way you can restructure the sentence, like 'She said nothing, but her thanks was clear in her eyes as she withdrew her hand.'

It's interesting, that, though the story is about a story, we never actually hear the story. It still works well, though. This is a hard one to rank; there's not really an arc here, just a single scene, but one that is written both powerfully and flawed.

This story is tell-y, but I guess that's the nature of it when it all takes place in a few seconds in a basketball player's head.

I wasn't really engaged. I didn't really know where this story was going until [I could win the game to bring my parents together.] when I first sensed the pattern. First of all, that line took me out of it because this player was previously talking about her crush, and then all of a sudden starts talking about her parents. And then, it was a bit boring. This is a bit of a dive into the mind of a star high school sports player thinking about her future, which, in each of the scenarios or ways she could win, it wasn't all that surprising or interesting. Yeah, okay, she can't win for her crush, she can't bring her parents together...

Which, really, this story dove into all the reasons she didn't want to win, and then ended on the only reason she wanted to win, which was simply to win. I don't know if I have a problem with this. It just feels a bit too simple, perhaps, and not character-defining enough. Then again, it explores a bit of her character when she discusses the things she can't win in...

All I mean to say is that I wasn't engaged, and I'm not sure why, so the above is a bit of speculation.

Hmm. Not sure about this one.

I like the premise. It's ridiculous enough to be funny. However, I think it was overplayed, and I think it was too dodgy.

It's fine to be overdramatic about a little thing for comedic effect. It's fine to keep the reader in suspense. But for me, it was just annoying. Halfway through, I was thinking, "Just tell me already." So much of the narrative talked about the event that the narrator did, and I felt that the narrator was so dodgy about it, that I just couldn't keep my eyes from skipping down to the end of the page for the end. It's the difference between, "Oh, so that was it all along" vs. "Great, fine, I finally know what it is now."

I don't know why I got frustrated. It might've been the vagueness in the narration, and I don't just mean about the event--just the general vagueness of "My wife", "My son", no physical descriptions, etc. It might just be the story was too long for the punchline. It didn't help that "the bomb dropped" made me wonder if an actual bomb actually dropped, and that confused me for a bit before I realized it might be metaphorical.

I like stories in this vein, but this particular story didn't do it for me.

Personally, I don't mind the research paper-academic voice thing you've got going on here. Maybe it's just because the subject matter is interesting, but it's not nearly as dry and boring as many of the actual academic papers I've read. It might also help that this is short, which is unfortunate, because it leaves me unsure if I would want to read more of this or not.

This is really more the suggestion of a story than a story itself. I don't necessarily have a problem with that either. But as I'm sure you realize, suggesting a story like this is a lot more difficult to do well than simply telling a story is, and I think you faltered a bit. I think your biggest problem is that most of what you gave is backstory and details, with just a few bits of actual story. When you tell a story through hints and suggestions like this, you want the readers to still be able to piece together a full story. All I've been able to piece together here is that this guy turned to dark magics to bring back his dead lover. And unless I'm missing some bits, that seems to be all there is to it. I admit that I do enjoy how it does basically take that story that we've all seen before and tell it from a new perspective, but I would still like there to be more meat in there.

In the end, I still enjoyed this story quite a bit, perhaps more than I can really justify, and I expect that will show in my ranking.

>>Monokeras
In English, the claws are only the nails of the foot. For birds of prey, they're called talons. But in all birds, it's called a "foot". There's no special word for it at all. Birds gots feets.

Or rare occasion one might refer to the whole foot as a claw or as talons, but it's not common. With talons it's when they're being used as graspers; with claw, I've only heard it for chickens when referring to the foot as a culinary ingredient (but even there it's usually foot instead).

The foot ends at the first sharp bend (ankle?—this one I don't know), and connects to the tarsus of the leg.

Looks like this might be another one that only I enjoy.

I do think the beginning needs some work. It's more difficult than it should be to figure out what the thoughts, narration, and dialogue are all up to. And even when I reread the first few paragraphs, they still seem a bit murky.

But once it gets going, the argument isn't too difficult to follow, for the most part, and I think you do a great job of characterizing the one friend as the type of guy who just likes to be contrary, turn your words against you, and "win" the conversation. I see a bit of myself in him, to be honest. :twilightsheepish:

But of course the best part of this story is the ending, which does a great job of adding a reason to the conversation and tying it together with what we learned about the guy's personality, as I just described.

Great job, author. I'm sorry that the rest of the people here don't appreciate this story as much as I do. ;P

I think I see what you were going for here. The narrator clearly treats the box exactly how some people treat God—only looking for him when times are tough, generally ignoring him the rest of the time, and so forth.

But while it works decently as a metaphor, it doesn't really make for much of a story. And within the story, there's no clear reason why he or we should accept that the box is God. Though I suppose that might have been an intentional part of your metaphor.

So basically, author, this makes an interesting enough treatise on what you believe about God, but a much less interesting story.

Anything I could say about this story would just be echoing >>MonarchDodora and >>PinoyPony.

I'm not entirely sure what you were aiming for with this story, but I think that you missed your mark.

The writing is very good, but the story itself seemed somewhat lacking. I second what >>Ratlab says about the perspective arc, but there's not much to the story other than that. We learn a bit about Michel from his current actions, we learn more about him by seeing his thoughts and learning about his past, and then he dies.

Perhaps the problem is that once we learn that Michel is an unrepentant Nazi, we simply stop caring about him as a character.

Lost cities style, this was nicely evocative, with good descriptions. I think the key to lost cities style narratives is to tie the pieces of description together to tell a larger story.

It seems like you partly did that here, but the story was very simple (there was an advanced civilization. It fell. There is still life around.). In other parts, the bits you tell wind up disconnected and never go anywhere. An example of this is these glowing bands of energy. They're introduced, sound cool, but then I don't see why (if) they matter. While a certain amount of that is to be expected, I would at least like them to be tied together and explained a little.

In the end, while the descriptions were pretty, I wasn't able to unearth a deeper story, so it ended up kind of empty.

This is, for the most part, a delightfully well-written piece. Sure, there's the odd problem here and there (I think that should be "precisely" in the final sentence, for instance) but on the whole the writing conveys a true fascination and wonder with the inctricacy of GPS... even if, as >>Monokeras suggests, the real-world technology may not work precisely as described. So far as the words on the screen go, author, you've won me over.

(As an aside, I think the technobabble is a wonderful touch—this is a story about precision, and your ability to describe in precise detail the mechanisms of this system is a fantastic way of representing that theme. I'm a huge fan of pairing writing style with content to reinforce a theme, and that's exactly what you've achieved here. Almost every word you use is chosen to reinforce that sense of accuracy, and I like that a lot.)

But I also think that something in your story fails you, author—there's a clash of ideas between your introduction and your ending that doesn't resolve as well as it should. Introducing a story with one idea and essentially presenting the bulk of the story as an anecdote to demonstrate that idea as false is a wonderful structure, but I don't think that's quite what you've gone for here—and in a way, I don't think it would have worked. In fact, what I find amusing is that you [i]begin[i] with a similar kind of structure: stating a quote and then immediately contradicting it is a lovely hook, though it feels like it's a little long-winded here and perhaps using up a few too many words given the nature of this contest. But starting that way reinforces the idea that it is the contradiction that is correct, and almost insists on the idea that your story is about how a precise understanding of time is to blame for the deaths of Amir's wife and daughter.

You reinforce this, too, with your final lines, but by this point the reader has already been introduced to the idea that (at least, the way I see it) should be the focus of the piece:

It wasn't the guidance that made the mistake, but the people setting the target. An ISIS stronghold looks no different than a civilian apartment building when viewed from space.

Okay, there's no way I can keep going on talking about this and phrasing it like it's a writing-thing and not an ideas-thing, so I'm just going to get right to it: as much as I fundamentally disagree with warfare as anything other than an absolute last resort, I cannot and will not accept any argument that a greater precision in strikes such as those described by the story is a bad thing. And you've stated my objection right there: people might make mistakes, true, but if people are making mistakes then it doesn't matter how accurate their weaponry is—there is almost certainly going to be a casualty of some kind. But accuracy of weaponry means that when people don't make mistakes, nobody gets hit who shouldn't be. That is... well, not necessarily a good thing, but certainly it's better than any alternatives beyond not bombing people in the first place. And since the world generally doesn't seem to agree with my pacifist tendencies, I guess that makes it the best option available.

So I guess my problem with this entire story is that it's set up to suggest that our understanding of time, and thus the accuracy of our weaponry, is what causes these tragedies, when in actual fact it's simply our misunderstanding of what is and isn't the target we're looking for. And while you treat that point really damn well in the paragraph you deal with it for, I think you spend both your final paragraph and the final sentence of your introduction drawing the reader's attention to the wrong things. I guess what frustrates me most is that even though you literally come out and state that it's the mistakes of people and not the mistakes of these machines that causes this tragedy, the entire structure of the piece seems designed to undermine that point. If you want my advice, I would honestly suggest cutting the introduction entirely, and maybe making some comparison between Amir's detonator and the button that was pressed—certainly, in some way, bring the actions of the people who ordered this strike into focus in the final paragraph, because otherwise the penultimate paragraph loses all of its power.

All in all, author, I don't think there's all that much to worry about here. You've framed the story in a less-than-ideal way, but that's really not as big a deal as all that rambling argument I made above would suggest it was. You've written this story well, and there's not much that needs to be changed to make it more satisfying. That said, I would second J's word of caution: be very careful when your story starts straying close to the direction of justifying the actions of terrorists. I don't believe J is right, and I don't believe that's what you're trying to do here (in fact, I think you portray Amir as feeling trapped and without any choice, which is actually a really interesting story in and of itself because it's very clear that he does have a choice in this matter. I'd really like to see that explored, but you're right to exclude it—it's irrelevant to this story!) but I think it's wise to be very, very careful nonetheless.

Apologies if this is a bit of a ramble, author—this was a difficult issue to get my head round, and I wanted to make sure I conveyed my problem with this story as best as I could. I don't think it turned out as well as I'd hoped.

It's once again a case of show, don't tell. I agree that by adopting the third person limited PoV and telling us what Gregory feels you spilled most of the beans, and that's a bummer.

The idea stems of the eternal conflict between the experienced but average craftsman versus the genius – it could be transposed to art, for example. The prompt feels a bit shoehorned. It looks like you had that idea and tried to twist it to make it fit, which comes across as slightly awkward.

But otherwise it's aptly written, the story flows nicely and is well laid out.

Haven't much to say that everyone else hasn't said already, except:

Man, his friend's a penis.

The ghostly light of the waxing half-moon shines through the pine forest as the glow of daylight recedes, and the symphony of the night stirs to life. → I agree this is overly stilted and convoluted. As most of the story, by the way – it looks like something I could've written six months back.

a herd of wisent on the move, until they reach the road and their drumbeat recedes into the soft tap → Formally, the subject is ‘a herd’ here, so you can‘t really use ‘they’ in the second clause, referring to the bisons. Besides, twice ‘recedes’.

The use of ‘she’ to refer to the shadow instead of ‘it’ is perplexing.

So you've seen the Marooned official video filmed in Pripiat, didn't you? :B

Howdy everybody,

So it's 24 hours till the prelims end and I want to call attention to some under-reviewed stories. We have a pretty even spread of reviews this time around (about 75% of the entries have 4 or 5 reviews, which is great!) but there are still a few that could stand to have another review. The following entries have 3 reviews as of now:

5. Wounds
15. Pocketful of Time
17. Knight
36. Stasis
39. One Day I Shall See a Bird
46. Protracted Plight

I've already reviewed Pocketful of Time, Stasis, and Protracted Plight, so if I have time to review more today, I won't be able to review those (I mean, I could, but I've already reviewed them so it'd just be a comment of me saying the same thing I said before >.>).

Let's bring 'em all up to 4! c:

>>Trick_Question
Thanks Trick! :)

>>FrontSevens Well this one was on my slate anyway...

the roast he had had yesterday

"There's more of gravy than grave about you!"

Okay, obscure movie references aside this fic's a weird one. Actually, I almost want to call it psychedelic as the crux of the story is more or less nonsensical (and I say that as a person who's last Write-off story was about a reality warping monster trying to acquire a cake). This isn't really a bad thing, the story flows well despite this and I was never left questioning what was going on. I don't feel the story really did much to explain its ending, however, and it didn't really come to any kind of climax.

Overall, it's a great set of ideas but I don't think they came together to form a fully fledged story.

Oh, and as an aside, anyone else find the idea of time healing grey hairs weird? I would have thought it causes them, not removes them.

>>billymorph
I saw that as time viewed as a resource rather than an effect. You spend time, so if you get more of it, you're younger (or have longer to live, rather).

After seeing the rules changed with word count. I'm noticing a couple of authors just decided not to join due to length problems. I didn't see it but know I was gonna be cut just on the amount of overwhelming content that goes over the word limit. Which makes me sad.

On another note! I apologize for adding length as a negative trait on my reviews. I didn't know about the low word count limit and have adjusted accordingly for my reviews. Apologizes once more authors if I have read your story.

I noticed the grammar issues, which means, I think, that they were indeed intentional.

The narrator has a strong voice, you can infer a lot of his personality from the way he talks, from the things he notices and from how the narration jumps apparently randomly from one issue to the next one.

The ending hit hard. It wasn't unexpected, but that didn't diminish its impact in my opinion.

Great story, and perfect for the format too.

>>The_Letter_J
I think the narrator is quite open about his own condition, and the doctor's reaction stems probably directly from that.

Welcome to the playing grounds! So, what exactly is this place, you may ask? Why it’s a wonderful place, when you do make the most out of it.

Who am I? Who AM I?! Why I’m a friend, of course! A gentlemen looking to help any lost men and women on their way through this great opportunity!

Now, now! Let’s leave the questions for the end of the tour! Now picture this!

Imagine a world of ethereal fog that lights up every room and every breath. Where food nor drink is ever needed. No jobs or responsibilities to tie us down! Where every ghost, goul, and sinner can play freely. Play what exactly, you ask? Why, a special game of course!

Where the stakes are high and the good times can match it! Where one can prosper and be merry from just a simply partaking in a single round. Yes! You can have it that way too!

Though the only price to pay is, but yet a small piece of your former life. Not much is asked when a game is started. Your bad times and the good. Your first times and lasts. Your sins and deeds. All rattled about in your hand, all in the name of some good ole fun. We only ask that you be cautious. For what we like to play here is a bit of a gamble. For what do you offer to a gambling table in the afterlife besides what you brought with you to begin with?

In this place of solid purgatory we offer. “A chance.” The same as any other visitor may have. Now it all depends on you. Remain out of this game or take part?

Interesting choice.

You had best learn to win to survive. For if you were to lose your entire self being, neither the heavens nor the pits of hell can help you afterwards. If you really have no intentions of partaking in this luscious event, then just know that this place ends up consuming you just the same. There is no third option.

SO! What do you say? Shall we play a game of “Rrrreaping?”

Let me show you the basics.

The Game of Reaping
-By Remedial Fortuitous Heart

POSITIVEs
-Concept
The idea you bring to the table itself is just wonderful! We got to follow along with three questionable characters that end up portraying somewhat of a godly role. A spectral sort of struggle that involves them following the rules of a certain game that ends up eating away at their very being. Hinted at how the losers seem to suffer by losing what their bargain with. Which ends up being memories and probably more to it judging by how certain words were used. Now as good as it was. The story was short and had only one scene. It also just ends up on the drop of a dime. No reason for the conflict other than someone else to take the winner’s place in this constant cycle of soul sucking.

-Moral
The lesson behind this story is something simple. That life can be ended and that life itself we just have no control over. Things like luck and observation help us prosper and live the way we do. By learning through others mistakes and preparing for the disasters that may come our way. There’s a ton to learn and analyze here. Which makes this a must to reread and try to decipher what exactly the author’s thoughts, when they created this piece. It’s a much more mature twist of a story and ends up still being fit for a younger audience with how adventurous it was. The danger and spiritual style can be great for a younger crowd while the messages can hold the attention of a more adult mind. Again it drops on a dime and doesn’t really give us a result of what just happened or why it did. Was it for the greater good? Or did they just create another monster to steal more souls?

NEGATIVES
-Event
What is going on and why? What are they betting? And why is losing some memories resulting in a decaying death? My only thought is that this is Purgatory. The people here are merely ghosts clinging onto what they had last in their life before moving onto a higher plane or the lowest of the two domains. Since no belongings are brought into this dimension they bet to see who stays and who goes. Which raised the question of why the hell play and bet when you can just stay there? It was obvious once you written the phrase that others were avoiding Jeremeia due to how much of a game shark he was but if I had the choice I wouldn’t play at all and I would remain in purgatory. Eventually I would but the story never goes into that mental depth with its readers. It was a fun entertaining piece but just didn’t seem to have a lot of build to it.

-Ending
What exactly happened? And did she need to cheat using the apple?! Just how did this end with him winning and not getting what we just witness. The ending threw away all my thoughts about the story and gave it the twist that this is just a spectral world and that the older ghosts. Are the kings and queens of the world. Literally feeding off of weaker souls. For what purpose though? You really don’t define your story well and it just makes me confused. Just what did she get overcoming this challenger? And who in the world was he to her? His wife? His daughter? Just what made him so hurt upon sucking up those memories? How did the apple work? It’s clearly not poison. Also just what was the point of all of this? The conflict would be easy to avoid. Unless there was more ways to suck someone whole. Which is never explained. A complex world that has no explanation to it. It really is a good idea.

So. This was a story. Beautiful in how much of an idea this was. It was mystical and had this sort of a fable feel to it. I love dark stories and this one just seemed to pop out with its own unique flair and style. As of right now this is setting the bar for others for me and I can’t seem to want to stop analyzing it. I wish there was more. It’s not your fault but this I really hope you don’t drop and instead make a good full story out of this. This can go on for chapters really. It would be highly interesting and definitely keep the good work up. From this perspective I think you have a thing for horror. You captured the classy dark essence that is a fable. So I want to see you go further and turn this into a jump scary tale. Something to get my spine all tingly. So please keep this in your shelf and make something more out of it.

I noticed a few grammar mistakes here and there,as well as a couple of repetitions which weakened the narration. Nothing a good editing won't fix, but it still means that it will lose a bit of ground against the competition.

I agree with the other reviewers on the issues of the story. The idea of a character with a non-fashionable handicap that has to overcome social pressure and expectations could work quite well, and the problems he faces at the beginning are serious and realistic (taking into account what we see of the setting). His overcoming the hurdles thanks to a dream on the other hand is a very weak development. While it is possible that it was only the beginning of a long and arduous journey, the way you worded it and the limitations of the word-count leaves the reader to think that all was solved.

Regarding Tammen, it is possible that his sudden change was a way to prod Thomas into reacting, but again, with 750 words, explaining that becomes difficult and didn't really come through.

It needs work and space, but it can be the seed of something really good.

I'm pretty sure that these puns occurred to me while I was brainstorming ideas, but I couldn't think of any good good ways to use them. So congratulations on out feghooting me, author.

I think that the initial switch from seriousness to comedy is fine, and works because it makes that first pun more unexpected. But the switch back to seriousness doesn't work as well. Once you've established that your story is a comedy, readers expect it to stay that way. I was expecting the story to end on a joke that was even better than the ones that came before it, but instead you just tossed all the comedy aside for some reason.

Overall, I found this story fairly enjoyable. The story part of it certainly felt like a fairy tale, though like others have said, it seemed like it was missing some sort of moral or conclusion. And I'm not sure what the point of the bard was. If he was just telling some sort of generic story, I would assume that we were supposed to imply that the prince was inspired by him and decided to become a bard himself. But since the bard was telling the same story that the prince had told earlier, it seems like there has to be some additional meaning in there. Maybe the prince realized that mortals don't need the stars to inspire them to tell great stories, leading to him becoming a storyteller without their help as well?

This story is light, fluffy, mostly sweet, and a little sad. But most of all, it's empty. There's no real story here, just some attempts to invoke emotion. The first two sections are okay, mostly being cute and earning a small smile. But the last section seems like it's just trying to hard to make the reader sad, and the only reaction it got out of me was an eyeroll and an "of course you threw in a dead mom." But I tend not to care much for these feelmongering stories in general, so I am probably not the right audience for this.

Well, it wasn't badly written, action packed, though I freely admit that pure war scenes aren't my cup of tea. By pure war scene, I mean just the fight relation.

As usual there are a lot of characters named, and it's somewhat confusing, because we don't really know who they are nor what their links with the narrator.

The writing was good, chopped and disjointed, in keeping with the tradition for such scenes. No technical flaws. Just mid-range for me, due to my lack of interest in such vignettes.

I'm going to second >>FrontSevens on this one.

This story is quite funny on the surface, and when you read into it more to see the actual narrative, it just becomes funnier, even though that story is kind of sad.

My biggest complaint is that I feel like the story is trying a bit too hard to be funny at times (the "©™" thing is the most egregious example for me), but it's not enough of a problem for the story to wrap back around to being unfunny, or anything like that.

These sorts of things also usually add a small "normal" example towards the end before returning to the growing ridiculousness. I know that you are practically at the word limit, but adding something like

Yardwork:
Once the seasons change, it won't matter anyway. EWTBPSFI Rating: a few months.

in there somewhere, possibly after "Wife Cheating on You," might add to the humor.

And thank you for adding some more comedy to this round.

Having looked it up, Jeremia is apparently the feminine form of the name Jeremiah, which made it seem a bit odd that it was given to a male character. It reminded me, strangely enough, of Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs, where the serial murderer Buffalo Bill's actual name was Jame Gumb, and he had been so named because his mother misspelled "James" on his birth certificate. I doubt this was an intentional reference, but it nonetheless feels appropriate for the character depicted here.

The idea of transmuting your memories into poker chips to wager in a game of chance is fascinating. So, too, are the glimpses of the fallen, magickal world we see surrounding our characters. That said, the story does definitely feel cramped by the word limit. What is shown here is very good, but there needs to be more, of both the world and how these characters fit into it. Still, the antagonist's fate being determined by the rules of the game he himself is a grand master at playing was finely poetic, as is the protagonist, having lost much of what made her what she was in that same game, simply walking back out into the world to try and rebuild what she has forsaken.

On the more mechanical side of things, I will second >>Icenrose's comment about italicizing the note at the end. It took me reading it a few times to recognize it for what it was, which could have been avoided if it had been in a different format than the rest of the story. I am not certain if the line break between "the one immediately" and "after that," towards the end, was an intentional stylization or a simple error. If the former, I believe it should be dropped, unless you also plan to apply that towards the rest of the story beyond that one paragraph. If the latter, then I guess the joke is on me for mentioning it.

Thank you, author, for writing this.

I have only a passing familiarity with Overwatch. Not enough to fully understand everything mentioned here, but enough to recognize the characters that this story focuses on. (I do hope one day, when I possess the proper equipment, to be able to play this game.)

With that in mind:

This is fairly solid, though it ultimately feels more like a prologue to a longer piece than a story capable of standing on its own. There's no real tension in Zarya exploring the abandoned base, which would have been a good opportunity to shade in her character a little. Exploring a snowbound structure with the possibility of a hostile response is something most readers would balk at attempting, but, given she is a trained and seasoned soldier, this would be considered child's play for her. Some explanation of why this would be easy for her would have been good.

There is also a noticeable dearth of conflict here: Zarya drops from the insertion helicopter, makes her way through this white hell, finds Moebait EskimoMei, has a brief firefight with a repurposed droid, and then ends with them heading out to be retrieved. It's all a little too straightforward. The only real conflict comes from that aforementioned firefight, but it ends far too fast, and only serves to show that a robot that was not designed for combat, attempting to duel a special forces operator armed with a big fuggin' gun, is going to be at a fatal disadvantage.

One thing I especially liked about this story was the use of Cyrillic and Chinese characters (I confess I am not sure which specific Chinese alphabet is being used here). It did a nice job of stressing the multi-national aspect of the team without being distracting or needlessly confusing. It was not a major aspect of the narrative, perhaps, but it was a nice touch, all the same.

While I doubt that this is the first Overwatch fanfic that has been written, it certainly has to be one of the first. There is definitely a special little joy in being able to contribute something creative to a sprouting fandom. Hopefully, it can help shape the path of future fics to come.

Thank you, author, for writing this.

Given the economy of language that one has to work with in tales of this size, this story manages to be remarkably well-balanced. None of the parts here feel overwrought, and they all turn together very well to bring the reader to its rainy conclusion.

If I have a quibble here, it regards the characterization of the protagonist. The story does a fine job of filling in the necessary amount of background material to let us know why he is in the position he currently is, along with informing us of his bleak hope of what he wishes to move towards in his future. The now, though, is left somewhat undeveloped. What keeps this man going in the present moment? Or, to put it the question in much more ghoulish terms, why hasn't this man, instead of thumbing a ride from a truck, not attempted to step out in front of one? The ending of the first paragraph (which dovetails with the memory of his own trauma) also seems to indicate that he has no desire to end his life, even though he would seem to have many compelling reasons for doing so. But what are those reasons? Is it the memory of his children? Is it that he knows someone, a person he can actually trust as a friend, who is waiting for him somewhere further down the winding road he is travelling? Is it that he will be able to use the money he acquires towards the end of the story to finance his next opioid high, and bring himself a moment of narcotic tranquility? Some explanation along those lines would have been welcome. Not a full exposition, perhaps, but a few crumbs here and there to enable the reader to read between the lines would have, again, been welcome. It is not a deal-breaker, but given how well-crafted the rest of the narrative is, it seems like an oversight.

To weight in on the segment "all things I have left behind to another person who stepped into my shoes without even waiting for them to cool," which, as many have mentioned, is a bit vague, my own take on it was not that our protagonist had left his wife and children, but rather that his wife left him, and took the children with her. This happened either before or during the trial, and, after his acquittal, he was too depressed and traumatized by all that had happened that he simply did not have the stomach to try to fight to get them back. She went on to a new husband, one not guilty of manslaughter, and he went out on the road. The memory of that perceived betrayal is something that fuels much of the bitterness he feels.

One last thing (and I concede that this is more a nitpick than a legitimate criticism): I'm not sure a story such as this can be considered to fall under the aegis of time healing most wounds when the wounds in this man's head are still running as wetly as the rain falling out of the sky.

All in all, this story left me with a feeling I can best describe as delicious melancholy. This man is not an evil man, even if he did something that cannot be easily forgiven, and he labors alone with his ghosts. For all his sorrow and real guilt, I do have a slim hope that he manages to find some kind of peace someday. That, at some time in his future, the sun can break through the clouds.

Thank you, author, for writing this.

I'm gonna join the chorus on this one. Great mood piece, but not a lot happens here.

I do kind of like the experimental style. Surprisingly, even though dialogue was not punctuated, I was able to keep up with the dialogue and tell which was dialogue and which was narrative. Though it's hard to describe, that format seemed to give everything a dull sameness to it, which I think fit the mood of the piece even though I don't know how exactly to put it.

I think you did a good job characterizing and kept the narrative interesting. The beginning hooked me and the dialogue showed rather than told the differences between the two characters. However, as others have said, there's not a lot in terms of plot. It's more of a characterizing moment than it is a story with plot. Not that there's anything wrong with a characterizing mood piece, it's just that it feels like a passing glimpse of a story instead of a fuller story.

---

So that's it for the under-reviewed ones that I can do. It might be time to actually finish my slate. >.>

It was twenty years away from now
When Sgt. Ripper and his squad Bombed out
They've been Jumping in and out of time
'Cause killing Spiders isn't any crime
So to re-introduce to you
The grunts you'll know for all these years
Sgt. Ripper's Timely Jumping Squaaaa - aaa - ad!


. . . *ahem* Anyway, this is a very kinetic story. Lots of sound and fury, but it all does seem to signify something, even if, at the end of it, I am not completely sure what it all is. On the one hand, as has already been noted, the constraints of the word count (even if the full word count had been used here) prevent a full-scale exploration and explanation of the depicted setting. On the other hand, that sense of confusion also fueled my interest in racing through this piece. This was helped by the fact that one gets the sense that the author does know what everything means and where everything is going, and that the reader can trust the author to ultimately deliver on that promise. Even if that means that, when the final answer arrives, it will be coming in the form of a much more fully fleshed-out work.

I quite enjoyed this ride. A lot of energy on display here, backed by a compelling universe. My only minor quibble is concluding the story with the text of the prompt. Yes, it has been repurposed to fit the story's nomenclature, but it makes its appearance at the very end of it all a twist too on-the-nose. The suspension of disbelief isn't broken, but it does audibly creak.

Thank you, author, for writing this.

I enjoyed this one. :>

The narrator's voice is great and interesting, and the comedy is in tune. The voice was so interesting, in fact, that I was able to ignore the backstory infodump. In general, I think dropping that much information should be avoided, but oddly enough, this time around I was able to follow it and found it interesting.

I like the bits that indicate the implied conversation this narrator is having with the listener. Like, the listener is actually "saying" things in response [No, this isn't- look, are meth labs this chrome?]. The line [We'll never have met in the Royal Alexendria.] threw me off, because I didn't know what the Royal Alexandria was or what he was saying, but it took a second look through the story to realize he was talking about the listener, that he had met the listener in the Royal Alexandria. That solidifies that the listener is actually a character in the narrator's life and not just "me" the reader. It's a bit too late, I think, to reveal that. I would've appreciated an indicator earlier on that the listener is a distinct character in the narrator's life.

I like the use of paragraph breaks to help control the pacing. I think the pacing and the rhythm of it was pretty well done. So yeah, overall, I liked this one. :>

Without commenting on the rest, I do want to point out the possible importance of the title. In biology courses, "no pain without a brain" (or something similar) is often used to explain why, during live dissections, the animal's brain and spinal cords are destroyed before performing any other procedures. Although the body remains technically alive after that point, and the heart often continues to beat, the animal is incapable of feeling pain.

I don't have much to say about this. I think it's fairly believable, but there's not really a whole lot to it. Not much actually happened, and I didn't have much of an emotional response. But at the same time, I'm not sure there's much you could do to actually make it better. So on the whole, I still think it's pretty good.