I was happy to get a fantasy story to read, and then you had to go and ruin it like this.

Actually, jokes aside, I really liked this story. The transition between the last two scenes was a bit confusing because you were basically switching genres and I assumed you were just combining them. But it all made sense by the time I got to the end.

I liked this story enough that I don't really have much to say about it. Perhaps the best thing I can say about it is that for me, it stands out from all the other war stories in the competition.

Well, it's the last minute, so time to review things!

So, skipping over everyone elses reviews... I thought this was pretty decent. I kinda liked the way our protagonist has bee revived in the future.. As some sort of post-singularity digital avatar, instead of as the flesh and blood human being he expected to be. I also like the fact that it's not just the poor 21st century fish out of water trying to cope with all the changes... But the 'intelligences' of the future trying to figure out how to handle these centuries-old throw backs, and integrate them into modern society. It's a clever idea, making out protagonist the first 'test case' when it comes to reviving the cryogenically frozen from an earlier era... And in having the post singularity society's population be less than perfect... Clearly they don't remember / understand the past as perfectly as they would like to think...

All in all, not bad and well written. :)

Had a tough week. Been too tired to do much besides rewatching Battlestar Galactica in my spare time. But I'm going to try my best to knock out reviews for my slate in the next few hours. Wish me luck.

*skips over other reviews*

Hmmmmm... Clever twist there at the end... I find the break between father and son to be a bit... meh. I mean, one single argument and an "I hate you!" and it's all over? Sure, we're given the impression that things have been brewing for quite some time... But that seems rather. .extreme. And unlikely. Maybe if it had been a big row, with a kick down, drag out fight and some proper insults and cursing... But as it stands, I can't see that little tiff being enough to earn two months of silence and then permanent estrangement.

The end was a bit of a stretch. But I thought it was a clever inversion and use f the prompt... All this time he's been working on a time machine... "Time may not heal all wounds, but now we're going to see if time travel does." Clever and unexected. I liked it. :)

The writing itself does read very easily, and the story itself feels really conformable nestled inside the minific word limit. Still, I'm not really sure how to feel about this one. It seems to set itself up to read like a fantasy allegory, but I can't really seem to get a grasp on what kind of message it's trying to tell.

The closest I can come up with is that happiness fixes what time cannot, but this leaves a few things unanswered. What's the significance of trading happiness for time? What does it mean to gather time from mountains, skies, or clouds? Why can't the girl smile for herself, and why does she need a cure for sadness? It definitely doesn't seem like she's sad, herself.

In the end, what's holding me back from really enjoying this is the conceptual ambiguity. If I'm not mistaken in that this is supposed read like a fable, you should really make sure that all of the story's details (especially the really concrete ones) have a clear meaning associated with them.

Hmmmm...

Interesting setup and setting... We don't get any explanation, but you still manage to paint a picture of some sort of post apocalyptic or at least post-disaster future. But the language, sentence structure, and word choices are just a bit.. off in places. For instance...

"It'll keep their head down."

"That's just stalling tactics." She's panicking now, "Just keep their heads down."

"Yeah well you can't shoot for shit, and I'm bleeding bad."

I'm not sure who's supposed to be saying "Just keep their heads down" there... As a matter of fact, to me it reads a bit like a sentence fragment that got missed in an editing pass. And quite a few of the sentences and descriptions feel... truncated. I know it's a minific contest, and you're trying to cram as much meaning into as few words as possible, But in spots if feels like you cute a little too deep.

The final (almost) prompt drop and line also feel a bit superfluous... The whole "Time bombs, lots of dead" thing doesn't really work for me. Maybe if she said "properly used time bombs" or some such... But saying "time bombs kill shittons of people" like it's a truism like that... Okay, that's just me being super nitpicky. ;>

So, final verdict... Not bad, but might need an editing pass or two (believe me, I am NOT one to talk on that point o.o) and perhaps a few words dropped from the end to beef up the earlier portions.

Oh, and a bonus point because I loved the title. ;>

*skipping other reviews*

I am more or less at a loss as to what to make of this. At first I thought we were working on Schrodinger's Cat rules, with god maybe, or maybe not being in the box. The that our poor protagonist has gone around the bend, due to too many bad things (wounds) to his psyche during his life. wounds which never quite heal. But he seems to have made it through his life at least marginally successfully.... Mostly I just find this odd...

*reading other reviews*

Hmmmm... Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna have to stick with my pre-other-reviews comments. I can buy the whole 'metaphor for God' thing (though hey, at least his god is useful as a doorstop and book stand and whatnot!) but this still just leaves me scratching my head. Sorry!

I can't help but think that this is poetry masquerading as prose. There's a lot of imagery and a lot of big, sweeping ideas and emotions without much in the way of plot. I realize that this is the point of the piece, but I'm not sure it really worked for me.

Without characters to feel emotionally attached to, this ends up feeling more like a thought experiment than an actual story. To bring things back to my comparison of this piece to poetry, I'd say that this piece didn't really make use of the strengths of prose, which is to convey concrete concepts and situations. It's very poetic in its scale and reach, but it doesn't have the advantages of poetry (rhyme, meter, density of meaning) that tend to convey a lot of the emotional impact.

I'm not saying that it's impossible write something beautiful and subtly meaningful with prose. But it is certainly difficult. Everyone seems to be mentioning CiG's Lost Cities, and I think there is something to learn from there. A lot of what makes Lost Cities compelling is how real it feels--CiG takes full advantage of the strengths of prose to craft richly detailed scenarios and settings. He walks us through building and monuments and delves into backstories and histories. Much of it feels poetic in meaning, but above all it stays concrete with vivid, specific descriptions.

To improve this piece, I would suggest really fleshing it out, far beyond minific constraints. Instead of describing life and civilizations in broad, vague strokes, give us something to sink our teeth into and think about. Try to avoid being overly conceptual; make it feel real.

*skipping other reviews*

I don't know. The opening combat scenes just felt kind of.. Meh to me. Too much tell and not enough show perhaps? We're told about the emotions our protagonist is feeling, but we don't really see them. I'm afraid I can't be more specific than that... It just didn't quite resonate with me.

At the end, I expected him to be missing a leg, and making do with a prosthetic. Instead it seems that his injured leg will eventually recover. His survivor guilt on the other hand... He's not complaining that his friend's died... He's complaining that he lived. Which makes the second to last line make a little sense. If he'd "Been faster" he'd just have died with his cohorts. Wishing that they'd been a bit faster.. Or a bit slower would have made a bit more sense...

Overall, I think this one is pretty good. I think I would have preferred if it had stayed subtle instead of spelling things out for us, but maybe that's me. I think the bit about the ring was rather good, and it told me basically everything I needed to know.

The dialogue doesn't feel realistic to me, but then again, one of the things I said in the chat while writing my story was that "I've realized I have no idea how real people talk," so I could be completely wrong.

*skips other reviews*

Well, this was strange.

A fascinating concept, mind you. I really like the way you describe the game.. Or rather, completely fail to describe the game, but still make it work. But I'm not sure exactly where and what this is supposed to be... The afterlife, clearly. But it this heaven? Or hell? Or just limbo? And if you're playing for memories... You lose yourself if you lose all your memories, and cease to be.. But doesn't that mean that if you win memories you become them, to some extent, and thus are changing and destroying yourself in the process?

Very strange. I'm not quite sure what to make of this one, but I still liked it. :)

I'm going to have to parrot everyone else in that I'm really not sure what's going on. I mean, what kind of event would make the one speaker break down while still requiring perfunctory applause after the director's speech?

I know that focusing on the ambiguity of the piece might seem unfair with regards to what the piece did do well, but honestly, this is a pretty big problem, IMHO. When someone reads a minific, they expect to have a good idea of what kind of story they're reading pretty early on. When you have so few words to tell a story with, you really can't afford to have readers confused for much of the story, let alone all of it. It's really easy to feel unconnected to the story when you know it's going to end soon and you're not even sure what it's about.

Looking back at winners of previous minific events, virtually none of them have any sort of ambiguity about their premises. They often let you know exactly what's going on within the first 30 or 40 words. There's really no overstating the importance get your readers invested as soon as possible. Be quick and punchy, even at the risk of overstating things.

*skips other reviews*

Hmmm.. Not much to say about this one. It's not bad, and it's technically competent... But I'm afraid that the character just doesn't speak to me. It's like.. A list of tropes being debunked in the shape of a story. You don't get the girl, your parents don't magically fall back into love, you're not going to be a superstar... And the other team isn't a bunch of mindless jerks, but other human beings with their own hopes and dreams. (I particularly liked that part, I'll admit... The recognition that her opponent isn't that different from her... And probably isn't a bad person, per se.) Aside from that however, it just sorta... failed to fire up my imagination. Not a particularly useful review, I know, but I that's the best I can do I'm afraid. Sorry!

I really like the idea here, but this one really feels like it's pushing up against the word limit. There are a lot of rapid-fire paragraphs that rush to convey all of the necessary information without a lot of time for specific details or descriptions that would really help readers get invested.

Regarding the plot, I think the dream sequence feels weak. You have Thomas doing a complete 180 with only 200 or so words of explanation. I can't help but think this story needs a couple of thousand more words to really reach its potential. As it is right not, it only barely conveys its message. It's a good message, with an interesting concept, but you really need more space to make it truly work.

*skips over other reviews*

Wow... somebody is certainly getting their money's worth out of their thesaurus! O.o

Regardless, interesting and excellent use of language to set the scene... And a clever way to frame a story... Focus on the animals, and their habitat... And at the fringes, we see how that habitat contains human artifacts... all of which are crumbling and faded. Clearly there are no longer any humans here.. And time and nature are slowly conquering humanities creations...

When I shocked the Cyrillic text into google translate, I got "Entrance _____?" I half expected it to say something along the lines of Chernobyl, actually... Regardless, a well written and framed story. Even if someone needs to revoke your thesaurus privileges. ;>

A lot of what I'm going to say is going to be very similar to what I've said here: >>Bachiavellian.

Things just feel a bit too vague to really leave an emotional impact. By not having any real characters or giving any concrete description of the tree, the creatures, or the setting in general, you make the story read like an allegory. In that, it doesn't quite hit the mark, because allegories need to have clear relationships between all of the details and the concept for which the story is trying to be a metaphor.

Things feel really wishy-washy, like, for instance, how you describe the tree as vibrant and ever-growing, but then the story says that it's dying. And this really doesn't seem to have any sort of real meaning or impact to the story. Even after the creatures' branch breaks, the tree still grows. The "source" still shines. In fact, the whole point of the ending seems to be about how the tree and its residents are impassive towards the creatures' deaths. This seems to contract the whole "tree is dying" idea.

In the end, the general vagueness of the piece is what brought it down for me.

*skips other reviews*

This is... What? I just don't know... It start off strange and disjointed, and stays that way... What kind of keys does he have, that they're sharp enough to almost cut him? Where does he live? What's the relevance of a landline phone as opposed to, well, anything else? What are his reasons for keeping it? How is any of that relevant to anything else that's going on?

He waits seven years, then decides to call his father out of the blue? And he's been saving up to take his GED for all that time? With another three years to go? Is this some sort of dystopian future where, somehow, everyone lives for extended periods of time, but a basic high school education is ridiculously expensive?

And then the conversation.. It's been seven years, but hey, no big deal. Sorry dad, I'm busy at work. Maybe we can meet up again next time. Maybe it'll only be four or five years this time! Just... whaaaat? O.o

*skips other reviews)

Okay, seriously? Dominoes? I know that they've supposedly improved their pizza in the last few years, but really... I think I'd rather have cheese covered cardboard! Blech!

All snark aside.. Well, okay, most snark aside.. This story isn't bad. Well written, decent characters, a reasonable set of circumstances... But it suffers from the fact that it's all leading up to a single joke. It's a pretty decent joke... But it's not good enough to really make this story great. A fact which I suspect that the author was well aware of when they wrote it.

In short, you got a laugh out of me... Which I suspect was all that was really intended with this piece. A single good laugh isn't all that much compared to some of the other entries, which is why this is only going to make it to the middle of my slate... But you may take comfort in the fat that you earned that laugh. :)

... Yeah, sorry guys, I'm really not feeling up to it, tonight. I tend to find minifics harder to review than short stories, and I got fatigued a lot faster than I thought I would. I'll see if I can get one or two more before I turn in, but I can't make any promises right now. >.<

*skips other reviews*

Okay... I'm totally scratching my head on this one. Time travel stories usually leave my scratching my head (and/or groaning in pain) but this one seems to have skipped over all the effort of 'trying to make sense' that most time travel stories fall prey to, and jumped straight to confusing the hell out of me.

Perhaps some of the other reviews will possess some insight...

*reads other reviews*

Nope. Still puzzled. I'll agree that it's a very creative interpretation of the prompt. And that some of the turns of phrase are nice and interesting.. But also headache and confusion inducing. O.o

Final Determinaton: Take two aspirin and call me yesterday morning.

*skips other reviews*

Interesting. Very interesting. I like the concept... It's a form of immortality, isn't it? To have your stories, you life and times and memories.. carried on generation after generation.

But.. It would be nice to know a bit more about our mysterious protagonist. At first I thought it was just a relative.. A grandchild or niece or nephew, send to keep the old woman company. But clearly it's not that... So why is he/she there? Why this old woman? Why is he/she uncertain if they'll ever get to rest?

Mysterious. But fascinating and well written. I liked it. :)

*skips other reviews*

Well, this was... A thing. O.o

I've never seen Life and death described in quite this way... Especially as a dysfunctional romantic couple.

Oh, and don't worry about dying, because that will all stop sometime soon. It's just a silly phase.

Well, you definitely get points for originality! I do wonder who our narrator is though. They're clearly somewhat biased and unreliable... But they definitely have some personality!

In short, weird ad quirky, but interesting.

(Besides, everyone knows that death is male! It's only far that if a woman brings you into the world, a man should take you out... Mandated gender balance in hiring practices and whatnot!) ;>

*skips other reviews*

Okay, now THAT was interesting and clever. And why do I feal as if, in another universe (or competition) the little girl would instead be a pink pony with balloons for a cutey mark? ;>

This was cute and cheerful and uplifting, with an amusing little twist at the end. Not really sure what else to say about it, but it definitely gets two thumbs up. :)

Oooh.. .Dark. But realistic and true.

I had a family friend who was in homicide in NY for a while. Find a corpse that's been sitting in the bathtub for two weeks before anybody noticed? Shrug and make a joke and go about your business. You either learn to cope and laugh at it, or you go crazy.

Anyway, I thought it was a pretty good story. Though you lose a fraction of a point for starting the story with a vivid description of someone throwing up.. .Sorry, but that's not really not much of a hook for me! ;>

*skips over other reviews*

Hmmmmm. Not quite sure what to make of this.. the idea of each hour of the day being a living, magical being in interesting... And the negative consequences of trying to catch one are more than reasonable...

But the very end is puzzling... If you die trying to catch an hour, you end up in some bizarre afterlife... serving as a soldier in it's army? Fighting what exactly? And if someone else manages to capture an hour.. How does that lead to freeing all of them?

The beginning was strange, but interesting. The end was mostly strange and puzzlling I'm afraid.

Less than 12 hours to go and only 2 more fics have just 3 reviews:

36. Stasis
46. Protracted Plight

If you've got a few minutes and you're in the reviewing mood, give 'em a read. Though of course I may not speak for them, I'd imagine their authors would appreciate it :>

Writer, I think you did an excellent job of obeying both the letter and the spirit of the prompt - time being sufficient to heal the land, but not nearly enough to heal his leg, or his mind.

This is one of the best stories I've read this round for creating a very definite sense of immersion, from painting the gritty hellscape of trench warfare to the contrasting peaceful park scene. In both scenes I have a clear idea of what is going on around the narrator, and the prose highlights details that really help to flesh things out. I particularly liked the dull stare of the shambling young officer and the gentle green curves of the landscape in the present day - those sections really stood out to me as positive examples of good writing.

Very well done indeed, Writer. I hope to see this in the finals.

It started out strong, with good descriptions and an intriguing opening. After that, though, it reads somewhat repetitive, which is particularly painful when you have this limited word count.

As others have pointed out, the standout issue is how much is left unresolved / unexplained, particularly what happened to the machine. (I'm presuming it's some sort of healing device)

This premise could make an interesting story, if it were fleshed out, but right now it feels like part of an introduction.

While I'll chime in and say it's a bit too unclear what precisely happened in the ending for my tastes (aside from "something bad"), I'd like to take a moment to talk about your monologue in the third section.

There are two points I'd like to make here. First, the language you use in the few dialogue tags is a bit too informal for the rest of the piece. "Nada" and "nope" fly in the face of the sterile, clinical, almost militaristic styling of both the setting and the prose. Second, there is absolutely no reason to separate every sentence your protagonist says into its own separate line. With no tags after "nope", you create the impression that he's trading lines with somebody, when that's clearly not the case. Even if you did tag every line with its own snippet of characterization, it still doesn't make sense to spread it out so thinly over so many lines.

I think you missed an opportunity to more fully explore the protagonist as a character within that monologue. If you revisit this piece, I would suggest condensing those lines into paragraph form, and sprinkle more hints as to who the protagonist is and what his relationship is to John.

After exiting this story, I am left with the feeling that this is a piece that's less about the pernicious and thorny realities of real life, and is instead meant to be read more as some sort of parable. What the lesson is supposed to be, though, I could not say. Time doesn't heal all wounds? Time has the possibility to heal all wounds, but life will intervene and render it all for naught? Something else? This uncertainty of purpose heavily blunts whatever impact the finale was supposed to impart.

The nameless protagonist came across as lacking much in the way of either agency or personality. The only real deviation from his robotic vigil over Mr. Rothwell is the one-sided conversation that takes place about 3/4's of the way through. While it provides the story with the closest thing it has to an emotional core, it was not enough to sway me into much appreciating the protagonist's plight. There needed to be something else there. Something more overtly emotional, more revealing about the relationship that exists between the protagonist and Rothwell (and, possibly, the rest of Rothwell's absent family).

Adding, for the fourth time, that the text of the prompt really ought to be excised from the piece. While the sentiment can be there (and is not particularly out-of-place), it needs to be in a more subtle form than what is currently here.

I will say that I quite enjoyed the opening description of the room in which Mr. Rothwell is maintained. Very tidy work there. It made envisioning this place easy to do, as well as doing a good job in juxtaposing its cold and technological nature with the attempts made by the protagonist to forge some tenuous, warm connection with his loved one.

Thank you, author, for writing this.

Gah, I'm just out of time this round, in between the con and helping a friend's cousin temporarily move into my place for a week while he's waiting for the lease to start on his new apartment. >.< How did I get down to just five hours left in prelims and I've barely started my slate?

As to this story ... Lightning impressions. The style here is an interesting choice, as in, it actually interested me. The lack of footnotes is interesting in more of a faint-praise sense; it's daring and I think I like it but what's left without them seems a little short on context, especially given that this isn't even close to the word limit. Mostly, though, the actual story seems a bit thin for me. I don't really get a sense of what's at stake that Emily, or Emilies, are involved in this tome of unspeakable evil, and the choice to take the dry, clinical research tone pretty aggressively removes the emotional impact of it. I applaud the experiment, but experiments don't always pan out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ NW

The circular nature of this story works very well, with the roar of the past echoing and influencing the present, Both across the landscape, and within the central character's mind.

There were two bits that struck me as needing some minor retooling. The first is at the end of the second paragraph, "his dull eyes a paired twin to the empty stares of his trench-mates." The phrase "a paired twin" seems a twist too clunky here; it could easily be replaced with "his dull eyes mirroring the empty stares of his trench-mates," achieving the same effect in a smoother manner. Secondly, a comma splice would have been useful in the sentence, "Gentle inclines belied trenches and hill-sized slight depressions mortar-fire." I had to re-read the end of that sentence a couple of times before I knew what was being said there. Having it as "Gentle inclines belied trenches, and hill-sized slight depressions mortar-fire," would make it much clearer (and I would also suggest dropping the word "slight" there, as well).

Minor grammatical points aside, I found this to be an extremely solid meditation on the proximity between war and peace, as told from the perspective of a man who can no longer march along when the band plays Waltzing Matilda.

Thank you, author, for writing this.

I'm relatively favorably inclined to this one. I like the core concept, and it's got about as much story as you're going to be able to cram into a minific, which just gets back to my eternal complaint about 750 words being too constrictive a limit, especially for original fiction. I do like the twist on the prompt, which rescues this from the prompt drop that would otherwise be a no-no for me. That said, this could use a little more concrete grounding. "I regret the people I murdered in life" doesn't pluck at the heartstrings the way "I regret John Doe's pre-election accident that secured my rise to power" does. A death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. That's the reason the citations of the circles of Hell up front are powerful: concrete detail. Do that throughout. Low Strong, or high Almost There

>>The_Letter_J
Huey Long? Though I'm not sure the parallels are exact.

Eloquently written, and does a good job building a somber tone, but the reveal of the reason is a bit weak and it's too late by then for me to really feel for the narrator.

Oh man, the misplaced y'all and the tuberculosis and the lampshading of how that destroys the simulation is just delicious here. My big frustration is that the core logic is incoherent. "You're struggling with real intelligences," Zae says to justify him being in a simulation, which undercuts the ending "Let’s go and meet some real people," because the wording you're using implies they've tried that and it didn't work. Of course, "If we are to have any hope of reviving twentieth century humans then we must know how to have you integrate into the intelligent community" suggests that they're stumbling through this basically blindly, which is really strange for a future civilization without a lot more lampshading; even if there's been some huge calamity that wiped out all the records of the prior era, any civilization with the level of technology to restore cryogenically frozen people isn't going to be that ignorant of psychology.

Stories may be fiction, but they can have a real impact.

Regardless, author, I've got to give you bonus points for this, and on the whole here this engaged me. Possibly just genre bias. S

...I wasn't originally planning on doing readings again for finals. However, I'd like to test recording on my computer (I _think_ I've figured it out) and at least one person seemed interested in it last Sunday.

So, if you want to hear more stories read, and/or join in with discussion or reading, upvote this comment. If it gets, I dunno, a half-dozen or more upvotes, I'll try and read a few more stories on Sunday, eight-ish my time. About 24 EDIT: Sorry, I said 24, but I'm tired. >.< I meant 36 hours after finals begins. About 8 in the evening for me, on Sunday. About midnight GMT?

I'm still trying to gauge people's reactions to this thing, so let me know.

Nice hook for the opening sentence! Not sure how a wound from only a week ago is a "scar." Likewise, how would time "heal" grey hair? Wouldn't time just make more hairs turn grey?

Overall, doesn't really hold together for me, but I do appreciate the twist at the end, as the girl just wants a smile for her own sadness.

The lack of quote marks around dialog is confusing to me, as is the pronoun "he" that is never expanded to an actual person or description. Overall, the whole piece feels very experimental in form, while giving me no real sense of story or other development/progress.

Very nicely set mood and feeling, with a magic realism in Las Vegas that reminded me a lot of Last Call by Tim Powers. I was about to question how the narrator remembered the memories she'd just lost, but the bit at the end, about a note to herself was a brilliant way to explain that, and really tied things together nicely. Overall, a very strong story to me, though lacking a bit of polish here and there, with perhaps a few too many allegories.

A very poetic scene, but I feel there was no real story to be found. The attempt at the prompt felt blunt and forced as well, telling us exactly what some city represents far too directly.

Congratulations, Author, on making me google more words than I've needed to in a long time. Thankfully, I was pretty sure on most and just confirming their meaning, but "wisent" was new to me. The other thing I had to look up with "five-legged cicadia" as I was pretty sure there was no such thing, save by mutation. As that appears to be true, my immediate thought was some sort of radiation or bio-hazard gone wrong. The second the sign was in Russian, I knew we were at Chernobyl, and the theme clicked together perfectly. So, well done! Just take it easy with the thesaurus in the future. :-)

Interesting premise, but it got a little too meta for me, about the importance of stories and the like. We're all writers here, so we know that. Having a character directly tell us that feels cheap... unearned. In the end, I feel there's not much of a story here. The cryogenics and setting feels like nothing more than window-dressing on a philosophical point the author is making.

I wanted to like this... I really did. The title, and the humor at the start are all the sort of thing I like in irreverent stories. The problem for me was that it just didn't hold together as a story. It felt like a lot of references and non-sequiturs lined up with a vague theme connecting them. I do think this could be reworked into something a bit longer and really shine, but it just doesn't work for me in its current state.

Interesting, if a little slow. I would've liked to see some sort of reveal of the narrator at the end though. I assume this is a "reaper" character of some kind, but it's left too vague for my liking. As such, that final line seems like a direct stab to the reader, who really DOES want to know.

Another story with some very poetic language in it, though some sentences were so long the grammar became confused, needing more commas to properly break things up into clauses. Overall, the "flashback to war" trope is done decently here, though the physical setting and happenings don't really weave together with the philosophical musings. It would be nice to see them reinforce each other.

There are some technical things that slowed me down here. In the opening scene, the action is hard to rack. We're shown Geoffery moving in for the kill, then a "Sir Willis" says to stand and fight. We hear him before he's been introduced, as left wondering if Geoffery is also called "Sir Willis" or some such. A similar thing happens with Lord Tammen, who isn't introduced, but is just there knocking on the door. Is this the other name of Sir Willis? Nope, another new character.

As to the story itself, the message it's trying to convey is a good one, that you have to stand up for yourself, as there aren't always others to fight for you. But the delivery of that message fails for me. Most of it's simply told flat out in the last segment, explaining the dream and the moral of the story. So much of the rest of the dream was unimportant to that, and probably should've been cut to make room for a more natural evolution of the main point.

I was really hooked at the start, as the setting was realistic and the problem, teenage pregnancy in a 60s-era Mexico city could have some real weight to it. Then... devil baby? What? Sorry, you lost me. Then a toddler is hit by a truck and I have no idea what this story was even supposed to be about, much less how it fits the prompt.

Most of the first part of the story has nothing to do with the second part, the phone call. None of the setting, the keys, the lunchbox, etc. relate in any way to the conversation that happens. As for that part, I'm not sure what the story is. Son calls dad after far too long, but then nothing happens. Not sure what the takeaway is meant to be.

First thing that struck me is there are just too many names thrown out there. It's impossible at first glance to know if these are important to the story, or things we don't really need to know. It turns out it's the latter, but by the time I knew that, I'd already spent a lot of mental effort trying to sort it all out. I did like the Banksian "Unfortunate Conflict Of Evidence" as a name though, so props for that.

As to the story: Time travel is fun, but really only makes since if there's at least a linear timeline relative to the perspective of the story. That is, someone we follow that at least has a sense of time. In this case, it's scattered everywhere, with talk of "I read it yesterday in tomorrow's report", which is a fun line, but absolutely worthless to letting the reader know what actually occurred. Overall, it felt just a lot like a prose version of "One bright day."

One bright day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back they faced each other,
drew their swords and shot each other.
A deaf policeman heard the noise
and ran to save the two dead boys.
If you don't believe this lie is true,
ask the blind man, he saw it, too.

The dream bit was very repetitive. That may have been intentional, as dreams themselves sometimes do that. However, it made for kind of dull reading, as nothing new was happening. "Boom, run, my leg hurts, boom, run, my leg hurts." Overall, I fear this story doesn't do anything unique, and simply sets up the basic premise of survivor's remorse, which we've seen in a hundred different stories, tv shows, and movies.

This was pretty funny to start with, but the examples carry on too long and lose some of that humor. I get that it builds to an image of the sales-guy's own problematic life, but... it needs to stay funny/sarcastic for that to work for me. We all know waiting doesn't actually work, so without the humor, there's nothing but a kind of "duh" flavored sadness, which isn't really entertaining to read.

The click of the opening door was like a car bomb going off, each approaching footfall a sledgehammer. Comma splice here. Besides, the sentence conjures up a cognitive dissonance, since you expect the footsteps to happen before the door opening, not after.

As soon as they closed, it all flooded over her like baptismal water over a newborn That's a weird metaphor.

Well there's not much here, overall. As bizarre at it may seem for a minific, the whole scene feels overstretched to me. Long-winded. You could've shortened this a thousand times and showed us what happened next… or before, instead.

As it is now, it doesn't really stand on its own legs. It's an introduction, at most, to something greater.

(I'm listening to Kanto Symphony whilst writing this, so of course just as I start on this one the theme from Lavender Town starts playing. Just my luck.)

On the list of things I like to see in stories, extended metaphor is pretty high up on the list. So when I see a story that is almost entirely extended metaphor, I really, really want to like it. And for the most part, I did like this entry, even if it all felt a little blunt in its delivery. And since others have really already discussed why it feels so blunt, I think I'll leave that analysis to them.

Instead, I want to dive in and think about the relation between story and metaphor, and why what this entry does with that is really cool.

In most stories, when there's some sort of extended metaphorical meaning going on, it usually happens on top of the story that is being told—that is, one can read the story and understand everything that is happening in the world of the characters and have it all make sense without necessarily understanding the greater significance of some of the actions/objects/miscellaneous other symbol-esque things, but on closer inspection the metaphors and symbols come together to provide an additional or expanded meaning to the piece. It's a difficult technique to put into writing precisely because it is so widely used that we really see this sort of thing when reading without thinking too much about it... but if we're to understand this story, which does the precise opposite, then we really need to get our heads around what this layer of meaning achieves.

Symbols and metaphors can allow the author to reinforce key moments and changes within the story: when the conch breaks in Lord of the Flies, for example, the reader immediately knows that it is the end of order and democracy on the island, because the conch represented those aspects of society. They take actions that on their own can be quite mundane in the world of the story, like how a random sea-shell getting crushed by a boulder is really rather unimportant next to the child who just died, and give them an increased significance that gives the meaning and structure of the story additional clarity. Of course, they can be used for other things, but I think this is the way in which In My Head makes the most sense.

In My Head doesn't use metaphor to reinforce a story—it is metaphor, and it leaves the reader to fill in the gaps and figure out the story the metaphors come from. It's not a difficult exercise, because a lot of it is given to us on a silver platter (especially in the last section, which I think overall weakens the impact of the piece. Actually, I'd argue that making the exercise of figuring out the story harder would do a lot to improve this piece, though I do like it just as it is.) Still, this way of doing things reinforces one very, very simple idea: that the actions to which the metaphors correlate may seem quite mundane and unimportant in the real world.

And that, I think, is key to understanding what this story is really about. The message isn't so simple as "if you keep putting things off, or denying things, then it can be too late to fix problems". It's about how easy it is to miss things, to deny signs that someone is hurting, to put off going to help because you think there will always be an opportunity later, and at it's heart it's about how, like the hidden significance of metaphors in an ordinary story, you might not even notice that you're doing it.

Now I might be reading a lot into a decision by the author, here. I'll be honest: I often do. But I think that, if this piece is going to be edited in future, this reading is very much worth bearing in mind, because there's a lot about this story that doesn't quite work with it. To begin with, there is one metaphor whose name doesn't quite work: Darkness. The problem here is that, while all the other metaphors are named after things relevant to the story being told, Darkness is itself a rather metaphorical thing. Let me put it this way: "Doubt" might not be a tangible thing, but one can still easily observe its effects and attribute them to doubt with some certainty, but in this context "Darkness" is itself a symbol for everything that is cruel or unfair or "wrong" in the world—a name like "Depression" might, perhaps, be more suitable and in-line with your other conventions, but I worry that that might be giving even more away straight from the start. Still, worth thinking about.

I also felt that the dialogue, sparse as it was, was unnecessarily formal—in times of desperation, people are unlikely to use such constructions as "give me but one more chance" (you can happily omit the "but" in there.) But I think the phrasing "bring Opportunity back to me" is probably better, as your original phrasing is itself asking for an opportunity to reach Opportunity, which is not just a convoluted way of doing things but also reduces the effectiveness of Opportunity as a metaphor.

All in all, I thought there was some really interesting stuff here that I'd love to see explored more carefully, and I was really impressed with some of the decisions you made with the direction to take this. I think that it might take some effort to tidy this one up (it's the kind of piece that requires delicate care to get right!) but I have no doubts that you can do it, author.

---
My apologies for any typos or particularly mangled phrasings on this one. I'm a little late for a meeting, and I'd rather post this unedited than potentially not post it at all!

Voilà.

I was supposed to review this story before the deadline, but:

1. I haven't the time to read it and write something meaningful;

2. I hope this one will make it to the finals so I can review it seriously AFTER the deadline.

And Quill, let me blow you a raspberry. I am the last one to post before the deadline, how dare you? :P

I'll just jump in here because so many people have been asking the same questions. Here are my theories.
"How does time heal grey hair? Won't that just cause more?" There's a difference between adding time and giving time. Consider the scar. Simpy adding more time might make it fade, but it wouldn't disappear completely. However, if the scar is a week old, and he is given a week's time, then his hand would return to the state it was in a week ago: scar-free. The same principle would apply to the grey hair. (This does raise questions about potentially having eternal youth, but maybe there's a reason the girl is so young yet so precocious.)
"Why does the girl need smiles?" I think she's collecting them, in the same way she's collecting time. That way she can share them with people who need healing that time alone can't provide.

>>FrontSevens
>>The_Letter_J
>>Orbiting_kettle
>>georg

There's little to explain here. So just a big thanks to everyone who commented, thanks to O.K. and Georg for liking it, and see you in two weeks! :P

Congratulations to the finalists! :D

~ ~ ~

A Decent Joke

So. Here’s a post-mortem.

This was a pretentious little experiment done on a short amount of time (because the contest times changed from noon my time to 6:00am, I guess? So I was in a bit of a panic).

This is supposed to be my super hilarious satire on feghoots. I don’t like feghoots. From a reader’s perspective, they’re clever and fun, but from my perspective (as a writer), they’re not all that clever. Once you come up with a decent pun-chline, it’s not all that hard to come up with the story that comes before it. So the structure you saw was the idea—it starts out innocently enough, then come a barrage of contrived feghoots, then a semi-meta commentary on feghoots, and then kind of a depressing ending.

In my head, the last part was comedic. I thought it would be pretty ridiculous (i.e. funny) for Jackie’s dying wish to be that her husband tell better jokes. But I guess that could’ve used some work >.>

The story’s message is summed up in this exchange here:

“Was it really all that clever, Rhett? Was it so smart?”

Rhett shrugged. “Did you laugh?”

Personally, I don’t think feghoots are all that funny, but hey, if they make people laugh, then who am I to knock ‘em.

>>Ratlab
>>The_Letter_J
I came up with two possible endings for this story. It originally had a happier ending, what I called “the Disney ending”, but at the last minute, I opted for the darker ending, since I thought it’d be funny for Jackie’s dying wish to be that her husband tell better jokes. Apparently I botched the execution of that one >.> I guess I could’ve made it more overdramatic to make it funnier. Probably could’ve played to the absurdity a little bit more. Ah well. Next time. ^^

>>Trick_Question
See above for my reasoning for the ending.

It’s somewhat hard to “Think about how Police Squad actually works” when I’ve never seen Police Squad >.> I might give it a watch later, sure, but I just thought that was presumptive.

I’m not sure if I agree with you on the switch from serious to silly. I think what I’m learning in writing comedy is that people sometimes need jokes to serve as sort of “comedy cues”—indicators that what they’re reading is silly and not meant to be taken too seriously. The problem is, with how short the story had to be, the feghoots might come as less of a surprise if the first part wasn’t serious. Perhaps some light comedy would’ve been a good indicator, but it might’ve undermined the seriousness of a wound like Jackie’s… Hmm. I’ll have to think about this one.

You make a good point on the unrealistic-ness of Jackie’s wound. Her lack of anguish at such a deep gash is my fault. To be able to keep that, I could’ve made a joke out of that, probably, looking back on it, or made the wound less severe. The sudden oncoming of her death is also my fault. After switching to the darker ending, I forgot to change the rest.

>>MonarchDodora

this feels like a quick experiment by a capable author to a tight deadline

Yeah, that’s it in a nutshell. :P The experiment and the tight deadline parts, I mean.

>>axis_of_rotation
>>Ratlab
>>georg
>>The_Letter_J
>>Bachiavellian

Hey! Thanks to all for your positive reviews, at least on the descriptions. The fic was inspired by the 80’s economic crisis in the UK that saw many mines shut down under Thatcher's iron fist, a gloomy period which is partly portrayed by the film Billy Eliott and Sting’s song We work the black seam together. The title itself is borrowed from the eponymous Genesis's song, which tackles another subject, namely the fate of the workers who laid down the first UK railways. A great song if you care to listen to it.

So yes, the mine is shutting down, and the direction has organised a small shindig when the last shift finishes. I used “comrades” because many miners were communists, and that's probably the word they'd use to refer to their coworkers.

It wasn't easy to slip into the skin of a miner about to be laid off, neither was it to write a fic without a word being spoken. I am glad I succeeded in recreating the atmosphere and that you found the descriptions great.

But I'm still a long way from joining the finals. See you in two weeks and good luck + kudos to all the finalists! Well done folks! :P

The story was good (if a little on the telly side, but that was due to the format you went with), but I had a hard time believing four things.

First, a doctor wouldn't have turned you down for antibiotics, particularly not for the impression you were seeking pain medicine. Doctors are used to saying "no" to pain meds and still treating their clients, especially if you said you'd bled out your ear.

Second, the security officers headbutting you seems unrealistic unless you became remarkably physical with them.

Third, the headbutt-effect is very creative, but I know too much about medicine, so I couldn't buy it. I could, however, believe that the narrator might think that.

Fourth and largest of all, having a gash on your face wouldn't do anything to your brain, except psychologically. Your brain is (conceptually speaking) further away from your face than your face is from your toes. It lies behind multiple physical and systemic barriers that make it really hard to get to.

I guess the moral of this critique is this: if your readers have worked in neurology, they're probably going to be assholes just like me. :trollestia: I'll try not to let any of that affect my scoring, however.

>>Trick_Question
Well, an infection devolved in a gangrene (like the one we had here) can become something horrible enough that fever and toxins can cause neurological damage. It has to be something truly nasty, but I kinda thought that was the case here. Maybe that's only me filling in relatively unimportant details (and maybe I'm wrong, I'm not (a fact that should be praised by everyone who could pass by my greasy little fingers) a doctor).

I was uncertain how graduating with a 3.4 in a scientific field was akin to "standing at the gates of Hell". Cum Laude is nice, but it isn't a tremendous thing that affects your prospects when you can list your GPA in your resume for a starting position.

If your final project was in Quantum Mechanics, then you either majored or minored in physics, which means you should have had no difficulty finding a high-paying job. Those two things really confused me. You should have made it more severe, like missing graduating entirely from debt.

In my next apartment I lost him for nearly three years, until I was fired from my job at the mall. He was easy to find after that.

This is the part that made me certain I was reading allegory. Splendid.

EDIT: I can't help but think of that song by The Lonely Island, which I suppose is incredibly sacrilegious. Pity me.

I can't make this story any better.

I have... questions.

How on earth does a cow give one the stink-eye? I cannot possibly imagine that.

How did Betsy manage to get out of her stall and silently climb down a flight of stairs that were not described as being nearly wide enough to handle a cow, and how did she know that George was threatened in the first place? This could be fixed by Appeal to Cowness, but you didn't do that in the story.

http://media.oglaf.com/comic/sweetmeats.jpg

YOU MUST SEEK TIME CUBE

A Retrospective

I have to admit, I find it particularly amusing that almost every single review described this piece as experimental, when it was really anything but. I mean, I quite literally sat down three hours before the deadline and thought to myself "You know, I never did really like The Road, I wonder whether I'd appreciate it more if I tried out a similar voice?"

In fact, just about every aspect of this is inspired by the only Cormac McCarthy book I've ever read, because for some reason my reaction to the prompt was to write about an apocalypse scenario. I mean, even the last sentence is heavily inspired by the final section of The Road, where McCarthy switches from a very focused, personal, yet somewhat bland voice to one filled with hope and vision of nature as it once was.

I wanted to take a different approach to McCarthy, though—while The Road is very much about a character who is struggling on without any real hope of success, One Day I Shall See a Bird is (I'd argue) fundamentally about hope. Neither character has at all given up on the idea of one day being able to leave their shelter, and the bulk of the story is about the conflict between their different approaches to that hope. At the moment, this story is nothing more but our narrator beginning (but not succeeding) to learn the value of patience, and I'd wanted to have the opportunity to explore some progression for the other character (I really wanted to toy with his struggle to keep his emotions in-check—I've tried to write him as someone who maintains a mask of calmness, but bottling up frustration is obviously not a great plan) but ran out of space to do it, so that's something for me to include if I lengthen this.

The one part of this that I'd really change now, looking back, is the ending. Like The Road, I wanted to end on a tonal shift, but while The Road looks back at the Earth as it was before its apocalypse and describes natural beauty in a way that comes across more as hopeful than regretful, I wanted One Day I Shall See a Bird to end on a shift to a lack of hope (and particularly in this draft to suggest that the narrator's implied upcoming struggle to learn to be patient and yo wait was for naught), but I think that despite everything I did to avoid it I accidentally hinted too much at an Autumnal feel, which of course carries with it the idea of cycles of death and rebirth and, therefore, hope. Oops?

So, long story short: I'm hoping to revamp this one (maybe after finals >.>) and am probably more pleased with this than many of my previous writeoff entries, even if the reaction to it has mostly been "meh".

Thanks to everyone who reviewed—this round has been hella fun so far, and I'm looking forward to the finals. And also finals. I have those soon. I will try to be around to write words with you people anyway, because writing words is fun. And finals? Finals are not.

---

Shoutouts to things that made me smile:

>>Ratlab's description of "painted in pastels" is actually fantastic, and probably also applies well to The Road. I did mention I never really liked that book, didn't I?

Also >>Not_A_Hat found the line I had the most fun writing! Hooray!

---

>>Xepher Just wanted to respond quickly to your point about pronouns: one of the reasons I was thinking about doing something like this was that I'd recently read an article about how Cormac McCarthy (and others) deliberately avoid naming characters. One given reason was not wanting to give the reader more information than necessary, and forcing them to work with context clues (see also: lack of dialogue punctuation), which sounded like fun but I'm still really feeling out the implications of that for the story. The main reason I went without names is that I was clearly going for a very minimal style, and I didn't think that giving the characters names would add to the story—in fact, I think it would break down a bit of the wall between reader and character that I was trying to construct. On reflection, I think this would work better had I not used first person present, but I wanted to go with that to keep the sense of time and chronology just as abstracted and vague as the rest of the setting and details. Besides, since the characters were really meant to represent ideas, I think giving them names would have made that connection harder to make.

I didn't care for the ending bit. The story is much stronger without it, because you never develop the second-person character in any way at all. I suspect it was meant to personalize the story, but it didn't work.

Thank you people for your feedback.

This was actually the first idea that I had when I read the prompt. I might have watched too much Dr. Who episode. Time is wounded, but most of its wounds heal by itself. It combined with another thing that I've had in mind for a long time: I don't remember having read in science fiction description of combat among truly advanced foes. If we have land battles, it's WWII with mechs, if we have space battles it's ships of the line or war in the pacific carriers, in space, if we have hand to hand combat, it's James Bond action scenes with futuristic gadgets. Then what about unimaginable technology? Creating black holes, rewriting time, bending the fabric of space?

The small problem with it, was that it was unimaginable.


I agree that the story was quite confusing. Friends that I asked for a pre-reading session, because I was afraid that too many details were left in my mind, gave me more or less the same opinion: they needed to read it two times.
Some people asked why I chose not to use all the words to add more details.
I actually left out a few paragraphs that described fighting, some in ancient battlefields, some in deep space, because I thought that it would have been better to leave all details undetermined: what weapons are used, what level of destruction they cause, how do they travel through space and time.
I agree they I could have devoted that same space to some character building. Probably by the end I was too single-mindedly dedicated to write towards a specific goal.

While it's true that lots of details that could have helped to add context and understand what's going on are lacking, there is nothing weird with the timeline of the story itself: every scene takes place after the previous one, from the point of view of the protagonist. Tdibits like "they have been there since tomorrow" or "I read it in next year's report" are just flavour meant to indicate that characters casually timetravel and don't think of time as a one-directional arrow.
Specifically, they meant that they could not have scouted the location in the past, because the enemy was never there before, and that they routinely write reports and send them back in time to know what will happen in the future and plan accordingly.
I took this idea from Bones of the Earth by Michael Swanwick, but I think it's actually immaterial to comprehension.

Your comments make me think that I would be hard-pressed to extend this idea to long story or novel lengths, because I'd have to describe how they do fight, and how their organization works. On one side, I haven't really thought of it. On the other, I'm not sure I want to, because I'd come with something that might quickly be obsolete.

Thank you for your feedback.

I am not completely sure what would be the deviations from the formatting guide. I've read them and tried to follow them, but it was my first time. Could you be more specific?

I agree that it is quite rough, thanks for signaling some actual errors. I cranked it out in 45 minutes because the friend that read Sgt. Ripper told me that it was very similar in style to another thing that I gave him to read. So I thought: "can I do something completely different?" and dusted one of the ideas that I had discarded.

Your intuition was correct: the protagonist is immortal, fell in love with someone in the late XIX century, he chose to form a family, she was hired as a nurse when he was old and senile, and then she starts stalking his grandson, his daughter's son. Then he dies in WWI.

Initially the protagonist was male and somehow inspired in Peter Pan's story, then i flipped both the sexes and the perspective (from the stalked to the stalker)

>>Peldrigal
I think that my comment about the formatting guide was referring to the breaks between paragraphs, or rather, the lack of them in several cases. Like I said, it's not a huge deal, and the biggest reason to worry about it is to maintain anonymity. For example, I notice that you did the same thing in Sgt. Ripper, though I think I was too distracted by the story to notice it. But if I had noticed it, I probably would have guessed that both were written by the same author. Since this was your first time here, I wouldn't have known it was you specifically, but if you do the same thing next time, it will be a dead giveaway to anyone who notices.

I could see the end coming from the beginning, which isn't necessarily bad, but might indicate you're being too obvious or relying too much on an old Stand By Me sort of trope.

I think you left, "She said that Leigh didn’t say anything afterwards. I didn’t ask her again." a little too ambiguous. It makes it sound like he's a vegetable ten years later, although that's still an odd way to say it, and that doesn't match the more direct implications (he died) at the ending. You need something to help bridge the gap between those two disparate interpretations if they're intended to fit together.

It isn't clear to me why his family left him if he was not guilty. The story makes me wonder how his family could be that non-supportive toward him, and if not, that he could walk away from his main social support mechanism. For that reason, I wasn't able to believe the payoff.

The last two paras are unnecessary.

I don't think it's what I'd call a coat if it isn't waterproof. It might be a jacket or hoodie.

I have little to offer here. I think the last line would be much more powerful without the word "these".

>>horizon
I think you misunderstood that line. It was clear to me that this was a support group for him that his therapist Zae created specifically because he was having a hard time interacting with real people. After these events, presumably his therapist is going to have sessions that include both the protagonist and real people together, whereas previously the therapy must have been one-on-one.

Of course, I might be wrong. If you didn't pick up on it, it might not be clear enough—or I might be completely misreading it.

I don't have any advice for this. The narrator's ambiguity might have rankled me if the story were different, but in this case it didn't bother me because the last line kind of summed it up: it doesn't matter.

I was convinced this was a fart from line one, and I'm not sure your version is any better. I'm not sure what it says about me, but a silliness payoff needs something more than irony for me to chuckle. It was expertly written, though.

The opening lines of dialogue (first para) seem unrealistic to me. It's too cumbersome to say that much before you know somepony is actually listening to you. I also find the time span to be a little unrealistic. Maybe a week of solitude would be believable.

I definitely didn't predict the ending. I'm not sure what I think of it, but it's clever. I don't mean the humor, I mean the concept that reframes the story.

I sensed sexual tension between Amy and Heather, as well as sexual tension between Heather and Dom. Those might just be me, though.

Also, there's no way Dominos would mention Netflix in its advertising, unless they were doing a promotional.

Also also, since the timing was perfect, the title is totally wrong.

I think you went a little too far selling the connection between the man and his prospective employer, because I didn't quite buy the ending. Not from somepony with a Marine in the family, and especially not for a job working remotely rather than on-site.

EDIT: In retrospect I can guess that the guy wouldn't hire him because the people he talks to would be put off which actually makes perfect sense. But then if he's had this string of failures and everypony he works with treats him crappy because of his disability, then why would he be so gung-ho on a job like this that has the same problem as his interviews?

Christopher Walker is the tiniest jot away from becoming Christopher Walken, which threw me. Especially since that was in the middle of the story, which is where Christopher Walken would show up, and this is a character, so he'd play it.

It's horn-rimmed, it's spelled cubicle, and it should be "its cold touch".

Congrats to our finalists! And sorry, again, guys for the general lack of reviews on my part. I don't plan on making it a habit. Anyways, get some thoughts on my own entry below!

Retrospective: The Neighbor's Son

Well, can't say that I'm not disappointed, but I kinda figured that I wouldn't make the cut, with the direction the reviews were taking. And I totally agree with all of them. Definitely an oversight on my part not to let the reader in on the nature of the piece earlier on. And definitely a bad move to ruin the mystery with an overly flagrant ending.

To address the other big question (which was how the heck this related to the prompt), my brain kinda went to weird places for this one. Originally I had this idea of an old man who still had a supernatural wound he received from childhood, and it kinda evolved from there. I've always used prompts more like idea springboards rather than thematic guidelines, but I guess I could have made things a bit more overt.

This entry actually continues the trend of me using minific rounds to experiment with my style a little. Some of you might remember my last MLP minific entry, Cold Case, in which the gimmick was that the entire narration was Pinkie Pie talking out loud to herself. Likewise, I really wanted The Neighbor's Son to have this spoken feeling to it, so I played around with grammatical repetition and embedded clauses. >>Monokeras points out a couple of places where it doesn't quite do the job, so I definitely have a lot to learn.

Well, thank you all for your feedback, and for another fun Writeoff! I'll see you guys for the next one.

>>Hagdal Hohensalza
>>The_Letter_J
>>Icenrose
>>Baal Bunny

Ok, now that the prelims are over, I can finally chime in on these reviews and advice!

I can easily see the consensus here is a lack of backstory into the Overwatch lore hamstringed this from the start. I knew that was going to be an issue going in, and I did three drafts that tried to work that into the story, but I shot past the word limit hardcore each time. So I filed it down to JUST dialogue and actions, and then started on a fourth rebuild to add in some of those details back in and keep it under cap. It didn't work...or didn't work well enough.

The tie to the prompt was that time did not heal all wounds. Mei (from the Overwatch lore) is supposed to be a member of the original Overwatch organization that formed to combat the robot uprising. Things were just getting calmed down when she went into emergency cryo. All these years later, the new Overwatch(which is the current events of the game) has finally sent someone in to check the old station and finds her alive, but from Mei's perspective, things are right back where they left off even after 25 years.

That obviously did not make it through very strongly.

Well, that's okay. Now I know where to focus my efforts on bringing that out and make it clearer, so someone new to Overwatch can enjoy it without having to dig into the lore.

Thanks for the solid advice.

Hay, now. I didn't accuse you of running a meth lab.

This underscores the difficulty of this sort of second-person writing style: it's intrusive. You're forcing me to take on the role of a character I don't know, but you're not generic enough about it that it can feel like 'me'. And one of the two problems I had here is that you expect me to push a button that will, according to your calculations, cause me to cease to exist... while at the same time saying I'd better miss you, which is impossible.

The second and larger problem is this: why the hay would you reveal your plan to somepony who could stop you, just to have them push a button for you which you could obviously do on your own? It really sounds like I'm being brought here because you need me to push the button, because this is a very short amount of information you're giving me with no actual reminiscing about our past. This doesn't read like somepony actually telling another pony about a secret this large, nor like somepony saying goodbye (even given his attitude).

In most stories, at least some of the words will appear outside of quotation marks. Now, you can try to skip them, but while that makes the writing easier, it's a much, much higher degree of difficulty to do well and still pull it off. Regrettably, this is true for most gimmicks that make writing easier—if they weren't so hard to use properly, they'd be much more common in literature.

The narrative in script form was telly and even a little author-tractish in the middle (but that lightened up at the end, which was good). In this case, I actually believe the story would be improved even by just adding "said A" and "said B" after every line, even as repetitive as that is. I read this in my head as rapid-fire vaudeville, which isn't likely what you'd intended. I also ended up inadvertently skimming it rather than reading in places because of the lack of non-quoted markers.

Unrelated: who stands there with teeth in their mouth?

I feel this story would be much better as a third-person fic. The "I"-ness makes the second-half seem telly even though it doesn't need to be.

I have a hard time believing an old man could be struggling to stand up for a half-hour in a public place and nopony tries to assist him, since this is Western.

The first part seemed like it would frighten the child. It might need massaging.

I kept waiting for the girl to say: "Daddy, I know you lied to me about monsters and magic, so what does that say about Mommy?"

Wow.

This is another great fic in a row. I don't have any advice. I'm not sure how to write tension like this because my stories rarely have battle scenes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqfSqUuo7Ms

This seems like Reboot fanfiction, but it definitely doesn't need knowledge of the series to work so I think it's fine as a standalone either way.

I'd like to have seen a little more insight into the characters' experiences in a slice-of-life manner, but that's asking a lot for a minific.

This was similar to Sunny Side Up, which I ranked reasonably high in the prelims despite it being a bit unbelievable. This one I can believe, but I still think you overdo the emotion in the last line. I'd want to rewrite how she gets that message across so it ends slightly less forced-telly-maudlin-ish.

EDIT: "Billiam" didn't throw me like the other reviewers. I don't think I've known a Billiam, but it sounds like a fair variant of William to me.

I'll admit, I skimmed most of this. The joke is rather cute, but it becomes tired very quickly, like an SNL sketch. It didn't need to be this long.

Xepher's comment >>Xepher is right in line with my read.

This is the same story as the fox story, but done in a less telly manner. I didn't buy that it was Chernobyl because I can't remember a Ferris wheel being there, and it didn't really matter for the story to work. I think you're being too subtle, is what I'm saying. I would add a touch more clue.

This isn't written by CiG. Not sure how ponies are arriving at that conclusion. I mean, it's probably one of his alts, which are nearly all of us, but still.

Okay! I'm stepping out of the author-guessing this time, for Reasons. But I've reviewed all the finalists and my top four are:

Mystery Medic Story
Food Court Action Story
Meet God, the Box
Indie Game Thing

Good luck, all, and thank every one of you for a wonderful read, as always. :twilightsmile:

Heeeeeeeeyyyyy...
Sorry to those who replied to a comment/review of mine in the last four days or so. I hate not answering replies. I love talking with you guys. But my time has sort of gotten vacuumed up (by the cosmic dyson in the sky). Reviews have slipped away from me too. I'll try to do some for the finals (because my opinion totally matters, right guys? ...guys?) How you people seem to spit those things out I'll never know. I can easily spend an hour writing just one! D:

Since Anonymity is gone, and the author of many stories have been revealed, I figured it would be safe to reply.

>>FrontSevens
>>The_Letter_J
>>Orbiting_kettle
>>georg
>>Monokeras
>>TheCyanRecluse
>>Xepher

Thanks to all that reviewed my story, it is very well appreciated! I ask forgiveness for having you guys read such an amateur-ish fic. My writing is not decent... my apologies. Frankly, the language is so clunky that you could hear it from a mile away... It'll take a while for me to learn how to master flow- but hey, that's what you are here for!

Anyways, I what I got from the reviews were "fix up subtle detail- don't goad the reader into information overload", "create flow- make sure the language isn't clunky", "Iceberg effect- 'sad stories and their cliches'", and "grammar rules- look up the rules on dialogue".

...That's as far as I know... let me know if I'm missing anything.

Again, thank you to all who reviewed, mostly helps to get some candid reviews (without the anonymity, these reviews would be hard to come by). I'll start working on these spots.

Disconnection is a prose poem revolving around text messages sent by heartbroken lovers to those who broke their respective hearts. Each "section" is a different text message. Each number is the area code of a major U.S. city—New York City, New Orleans, Austin, Butte, Seattle, and Phoenix respectively. The title is a kinda-take on the common phrase/poetic framing device "Missed Connections," which refers to individuals who met each other incidentally, had a connection, but never followed it up and often never see each other again.

I first got the idea for this piece after seeing an article about the Last Message Received project (http://thelastmessagereceived.tumblr.com/), which documents the last text messages received by lovers, family members, friends, etc. I actually wrote it at 7 am, an hour before the deadline. I like the second, third, and fourth sections most of all.

I probably should have been clearer about the framing device. When I fix this up, I'm going to be changing the area codes to email addresses, and I'm probably gonna rewrite one or two of the sections. Do trust me when I say that this will be fixed up, though. Gonna become part of my poetry performance repertoire.

>>FrontSevens (FrontSevens)
Heh, thanks for the compliment. The (253) guy cheated on his girlfriend.
Thanks for reading!

>>Monokeras (Monokeras)
The laying/lying thing is just because I don't understand how that verb works.
I felt bad after you said in chat that this was very American-centric. You're totally right, though. Sorry about that.
The second section was meant to be a black woman.
Thanks for reading!

>>Orbiting_kettle (Orbiting Kettle)
You're a sweetie. I hope this explanation is good enough.
Thanks for reading!

>>axis_of_rotation (axis_of_rotation)
I find it interesting that you understood the sections were text messages, but didn't understand the area codes. I would have thought that the first would logically lead to the second.
Glad you liked the writing, since that's the most important thing here.
Thanks for reading!

>>The_Letter_J (The_Letter_J)

But the bigger issue is that I don't think anyone texts like this.

Probably true, but I don't quite think that matters. Using text messages (often "sexts") as a framing device for very non-text message like writing is pretty common in slam poetry. In any case, they're gonna become emails in the rewrite.
Thanks for reading!

>>Baal Bunny
Glad you liked the writing.
Thanks for reading! And I need to remember to send you the video I interviewed you for.


Thanks for voting my other fic into finals, folks!

I have to agree with >>Trick_Question on the dialogue - this also stroke me. There are nice ideas, but it's not really how people talk.

The story paints the picture of Heither's situation well in the beginning, mostly through association - at "Netflix and eating ice cream" it's pretty much clear. The conflict itself is a rather generic one, but really, the story is all about the resolution so it doesn't matter much. What I have more of a problem with is how silly that same resolution is. It breaks the serious tone, which just doesn't work for me.

I think the underlying problem is that the perspective is so weak. It's technically third person limited, but the POV is ambiguous in the beginning and only comes through at all at the end when Heither gets up, so until then the reader doesn't have much of a chance to build up a connection to her character.

I also don't think it should be her POV in the first place because, if you think about it, she is not the protagonist. That's Amy. Heather does not do anything in this story (even getting up is just a reaction to Amy). Amy starts the conversation, and she is the one making the decision that resolves the conflict. If she were the POV character I think it would be more convenient, with the added benefit that her outside view on Heather's problems might set up the reader better for the twist in the end.

Gold medal. A triumph of the human spirit.

>>Trick_Question

you need to establish Dave as a rookie cop with more foreshadowing or descriptions

I would argue that it becomes obvious from the context. A little more exposition of the character might not hurt in either case, but personally I don't have an issue with it as it is.

Also, I can understand why he insists on his, as has been criticized, naive claims - it seems to be the first accident he witnesses, and since he is obviously shocked it makes sense that he's not thinking rationally. He is characterized as thin-skinned from the beginning because of the vomiting, and especially the medics cracking jokes made his reaction believable to me.

The weak point, I agree with most of what I read in the other reviews, is the ending, which simply doesn't indicate any progression.

But I still think it's a compelling story overall. The narrative is definitely strong.

>>georg

quite a bit of passive voice

Can you point out examples for that? I'm just asking because can't seem to find any.

Reminds me of an advertisement I've seen at a gas station here. There was a picture of a crying girl in grey, something you may see in a PSA about depression, and a caption that said, "Cigarettes, tissue paper and chocolate, we have everything for your sadness." I've always been unsure if it was horribly cynical or quite funny in a black humor kind of way.

This story is funny without being cynic, and I quite appreciated it. I agree that it doesn't work as a commercial, you would have to streamline it a bit to do that, and the tag line at the end feels a bit out of place even if it does its job. You probably will have to decide how exactly you want to frame your story and then change a couple of things here and there.

>>Leo
The problem is that if you move your PoV to Amy the joke in its current form will not work anymore. You'll have to move a couple of paragraphs and change Heither's reaction. It's doable but requires some rebuilding.

...have been taken down! If you still want a copy of one, msg me.

This time, I read:

A Brown Coffer
Ringer
The Hillside Path
A Pocketful of Time
The Prison of our Minds
Circles Never Stop Themselves

And Dubs read:

Collector
When Time Doesn't Help

I also read Wounds, but with trying to figure out my recording software, I missed it. I'm sorry, Author.

These have been minimally processed, to cut out some noise and minimize volume differences. I apologize for the coughs and clacking; I forgot push-to-talk didn't mute my recording.

Very nice:

My only comment would be about Sam's line, "You spoil the boy." My take on Sam is that he does this every year because he loves his wife. To his way of thinking, there ain't no boy no more, something he'd never come right out and say, of course. But he doesn't strike me as the sort to pretend Billy's still alive, either.

To the top of the rankings with it, though.

Mike

>>horizon >>Orbiting_kettle >>Not_A_Hat

My usual writing style consists of having several ideas, discarding all but the strongest, and editing it down three times as long as initially getting it on the page.

This one I wrote in its entirety in fifteen minutes, without a single editing pass, knowing it was a terrible execution of a lacklustre idea, because I was very mentally unwell and became a being composed almost entirely of self-spite, the day I wrote my entries. It was an intentional decision at the time, because a lot of my close friends call me a perfectionist and that I don't enjoy writing for the sake of writing, so I went Ah Ha! I'll show them what happens when I do that! I'll show them all!

And forgot I was actually kind of sort of showing a lot more people than I intended with that declaration.

But you guys I super respect and now I made you go ahead and read this ill-conceived experiment, so I'll leave you with this instead, if you haven't heard me say it already.

This writeoff was, for me, the literary equivalent of waking up with a hangover and discovering you had cooked drunk the night before, baked inebriated and sauteed while sozzled. You do not know how the eggs got up on the ceiling, you do not know why you thought combining Italian food and Mexican was a good idea at the time, and then, and then, after finally surveying the mess that is the kitchen, you turn around and find immaculate dinnerware set up, and realize you had planned on entertaining.

The idea that some people actually showed up is as of yet inconceivable. That two attempts made the finals is equal measures baffling and mortifying.

>>MrNumbers
While I can't obviously do nothing for your own perception of your work, let me at least reiterate something I think is quite important. You don't waste our time, you don't have to be sorry or be mortified. The story had weak points and, as I said, wasn't really satisfying. But it was far from pointless. And if you write that in 15 minutes without editing then I'm envious.