Needs more Tim Allen.

This was kinda ridiculous, and it almost worked for me? However, some paragraph breaks would be nice, and your inspiration shows a bit too strongly... which leaves this looking a little lackluster in comparison.

So, not going to lie, last place I lived in I woke up to the sound of someone knocking on my door two or three times, but on checking, there was no-one there.

I mean, it was probably something in the water system or whatever that I misheard when half-asleep.

Right?

:P

Anyways, this is pretty funny, and it's also well executed. A touch of dread, offset by relieved laughter; I liked it overall. I do wish there was more than one joke to it, or that it did the serious a bit more seriously (although I'm not sure how that would work, TBH...) but it's nice as is. A bit light, perhaps, but nice.

Hyperbolic much?

Honestly, I was waiting for this to subvert the idea, but it insisted on playing it straight the whole way. More variety in the jokes, instead of simply repeating the same thing over again, would definitely help.

...and surely I'm not the only one who thought 'I'm taking off my pants' might follow? I mean, I'm not sure how writing that would be a good idea, but surely it sprang to mind for someone else?

I laughed through it in entirety. Thanks.

I'm not sure how to think about these sorts of stories. It's not that I don't like them; it's that I don't understand the subject enough to know what to think about it. Precognition isn't something that interests me, but I will give the story credit that it gave me a new point of view on the matter. I think the point of view works, at least for me; although we don't get into the harrowing torture of precognition, we do get a musing about those that die several times. I thank you for that, even if I personally didn't get the full weight of what was going on.

Heh. Nice. Was quite well done. The idea of a mind controlling device is cool, however it's like the contrievance burns out neurones or something to get permanent results. That'd be a very dangerous tool to use, even the restricted version. As, that's what you say at the end, there's no way back.

But, yeah, definitely a nice idea and a solid execution.

I agree with Hat, though I resent you're desperately trying to tout Apple gizmos here. And to feel more realistic, you could've had your Samsung stove explode.

Other than that, I think you could've pushed further and make it a war 'tween Apple and Samsung appliances. Like an Apple fridge and a Samsung stove, router being on Samsung side because well, Apple ceased making routers so long ago, so it'd prolly be a D-Link one, Taiwanese.

But yeah, this is sharp. A nice little idea, a great execution.

Good to see so many comedies around this time.

>>Not_A_Hat
(re: "you")

If it were just "as you might expect" I'm sure I would have read it as a badly placed interjection rather than a perspective hint, but it was immediately followed up with "the flat, dead voice chills us to the bone", so whatever is going on with the narrative voice, it doesn't appear to be in third person.

(Also, rereading, I just noticed: the last paragraph shifts from present tense to past tense. So I'm beginning to think that this may have been edited once, or more than once, to change the voice and/or tense, and the changes were imperfectly applied?)

I thought at first it was targeting some sort of neutron star or something. Then a planet of sorts. Well, turns out it was a joke.

Or not.

It’s not bad, but it’s somewhat less comptent than the two other comedies I've read so far.

>>horizon

Yeah, I usually figure that sort of thing to be editing. This story has several inconsistencies under scrutiny. That tense change seems to happen in the beginning of the last sentence of the second-to-last paragraph to me, going from 'it's' to 'made' somewhere in the middle of the line. Same thing with the one strange inscription seemingly mentioned as 'on the floor' by Peter and 'on the wall' at the end. There's that 'us'; and I can sorta see the whole thing as being told like we're standing in crowd around Peter, with both me and the narrator (and maybe you!) all just hovering in the darkness. But there are problems with that, too; the 'everyone feels the same' bit, for instance, suggests to me the narrator might be omniscient, because you can't really say something like that from a properly limited viewpoint? And at the end, although it doesn't directly say Peter's alone, it seems to suggest it to me.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This sort of thing kinda boils down to how much the author has convinced me to trust them. The narrative voice here is strong enough I've got more buy-in than average, but the inconsistencies don't have enough of a pattern for me to try drawing conclusions from them as-is. So I'll stick with 'you' being metaphorical, since 'as you might expect' is a common enough phrase, and just put the rest of the quirkiness under 'editing'.

Jumping off-slate to review the two stories that still only have one review. (We're only 30 hours in! That's one nice thing about smaller rounds — everyone gets more feedback!)

Roger ignores him too. "Still, you have to figure Black Lives Matter was all over that, or some such thing. I can't imagine they'd be around if they hadn't gotten some good press."

It took me a while to parse this, because grammatically the "they" refers back to Black Lives Matter rather than the (implied) app developers. The transition here to discussing why the app is still around is also awkward. You probably need another paragraph before that one to clarify that they've shifted to talking about why it hadn't gotten shut down.

… okay, I probably should have seen that twist coming. Points for that. But I do have a complaint: that makes your opening line nonsensical —

"Shit, Eric," Trent says, "ain't no time to be fiddling with your phone."

Given your setup, shouldn't Eric fiddling with his phone be the whole point? Since he's apparently the lookout for the theft.

I disagree with Hat, I think, about the character limit — there's pretty clear positioning in the early going to have Trent be the hard-ass and Roger and Eric be bantering and goofing off. But he's right in that the voices don't feel quite distinct enough, which I think is mostly a consequence of Eric's voice wandering so much. He goes from swearing to something resembling formal English to modern meme and slang-spewing in his few lines. Giving him a more distinct voice, and solidifying the other two's voices, would help this a lot — you don't have a lot of room for characterization in your 517 words [1] and so distinguishing them by voicing is probably all you're really going to be able to do unless you expand this.

I do like that this seems to be touching on some deeper questions about unexpected effects of technology. That conversation in the center would be great if expanded out into a fuller debate (and I wish you'd used more of your remaining space to do that). But I think your heart is in the right place here; it just needs more discipline with the premise of the robbery and the transition to the discussion of the app's consequences.

Tier: Needs Work

[1] And checking this in the gallery just made me realize that at 517 words this is the round's shortest story. How did we get away without any in the 400-500 range? O.O

I swear this is Cold's.

It's an elegantly crafted, chiselled portrait that could've fitted well itself inside a short-story collection book of the 20s. Besides, it packs much information into such a little payload, this is surprising. Really, i was amazed it wasn't longer than the limit.

It feels longer.

I thought everything possible had been written about time and the thread of time and the weavers of destiny, but this entry simply proves that with a bit of poetry, an allegory can always been rewoven around a new spindle.

Nice distaff work.

And with this, every story's got two reviews!

"Well, Puff. You’re my new pet, because the doctor says I’m so fucked up in the head that at this point, my only hope is making friends with robots."

My heart twinged at this line. Nicely done.

eat boxes of soylent bars

Ah, Alice is one of those programmers.

I agree with !Hat, this was definitely executing well on its premise but felt like it stumbled in the ending. My takeaway was that Alice snapped due to the really bad day at work, and was basically so far gone that not even the familiar could help her out of it, though that really makes me wonder: if this is such a common phenomenon that the familiar has a prominent warning about it, it sort of defies belief that she wouldn't be aware of the possibility, and evaluate its actions in that context. It doesn't necessarily ring false that she would reject the medical advice and embrace her insanity — and I think that's what you were going for; and I think you're almost there — but I think what this needs for its full impact is for her to directly confront that possibility and decide to embrace the insanity on-screen, rather than leave that implied. Because the tragedy of her retreating even further is the point of this piece, the climax, and an offscreen climax leaves this really muted.

That said, this is an effective character piece and a good arc for the short space. Even flawed, it's one of the stronger stories I've read so far — it stays exactly focused on what it wants to do, it's just missing its biggest beat. Fix that and this'll be great.

Tier: Strong

Yeah, it's brimming with nice ideas, but none of them seems to be worked out to its fullest. As such, it's basically a catalogue of asinine situations ponctuated by unspeakable grunts and improbable creatures. It's not bad per se, but it lacks depth.

Like

You flick through a catalogue of cozy furniture. It's nice, you get an aspect of it, but it's not like actually plumping in an armchair.

“I came here for wisdom and all you’re doing is babbling about nonsense!”

I can definitely understand Joshua rejecting what he's hearing, but this isn't the way to do it — he's already acknowledged that her answers are correct and relevant (by accepting her diagnosis of his depression, and by noting she's pre-answered one of his later questions). You need a lot more lampshading if he's going to pull a 180-degree turn so violently — something like reacting badly to her previous answer, accusing her of lying about that one thing, and then when she doesn't back down, have him escalate to rejecting everything. Alternatively, he could accuse her of getting bogged down in minutiae when he came here for Big Cosmic Answers, but you'd have to be really careful about that because he's the one setting the topic.

Also strongly agreed with !Hat that this needs to be a knowledge spirit rather than a wisdom spirit — you can pretty much just search-and-replace "knowledge" for "wisdom" and this pops. Making her a knowledge spirit (and the up-front warning) adds a neat extra layer of irony to the ending, too.

That said, this is a favorite so far. The spirit is super adorbs in the same way that Neil Gaiman's Death being a perky goth chick was great, the subtlety of her correcting Joshua's assumption is a lovely story beat, and her answers feel satisfyingly oracular. I'm sold on her being a knowledge spirit, which is a pretty high bar to clear.

Tier: Top Contender

Some typos to begin with :( (half an year, ‘sawing’ instead of sowing, ‘reception’ instead of recipe? whole world instead of ‘word’, I presume) and missing words and ‘begin begin grading’. I've omitted others, but it looks a bit rushed.

Otherwise the concept is amusing. But
It
Lacks
‘Rhyme’

For what is a sonnet without rhyme?

But it's a nice try at an original alchemy combination! And yeah, poetry is better when consumed fresh. Don't let the words rust.

“I came here for wisdom and all you’re doing is babbling about nonsense!”

Hm... I'm understanding that the story is supposed to subvert some clichéd idea of "wisdom". Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time understanding what was Joshua expecting; he got clear answers, what the hell is he complaining about? The oracle's mocking his expectations in the fourth paragraph from the end, but her description is too vague to really understand what cliché is being subverted here.

It's interesting to see an oracle give straight, factual, clear answers drawn from modern psychology and sociology, rather than speaking in riddles. But it would be more rewarding to see her answers clearly contrasted with what the guy was expecting to hear.

I'll agree with the others that this is a cool premise, but not a story (though I'm not sure it absolutely needs to be a story, sometimes a clever idea is enough). If you wanted to make it into a story, you could try starting with characters. Who is the poet? What he is he writing, and who is he writing it for? What does he want and what does he fear?

I also think you really need to show us a sonnet. A lot of build up here for no reveal.

I agree with everyone else. Really fantastic imagery. My only question is--what is this character getting out of having the spider around? If we're calling this an allegory for addiction, what is addictive about the spider's presence? He's letting it ruin his life. Okay, but why?

>>CantStopWontStop

I didn't get the feeling this was about addiction; it seems to be about grief. The cold opening at the cemetery implied it for me.

I still felt bad sawing the seeds …

Sowing.

Which brings me to a larger plea, aimed not at you but at the Writeoff in general: Even if you don't have time to edit, for all stars' love re-read your first paragraph! First impressions are so massively important. If the first paragraph has errors, that primes me as a reader to brace myself for a lower-quality story — rather than suspending my disbelief and getting engaged, I put on my copy-editing armor and right from the start I'm reading critically to see how the story could best be improved. You don't want me to do this! I'll suggest improvements no matter what, because Writeoffs, but if I enjoy a story it goes way the hell higher on my slate.

It's not uncommon for me to drop into "editing mode" midway through a story regardless of how it starts, and I've certainly read stories which stumble out of the gate but pick me back up later on … but the impact of that first paragraph is massive. Back when I was giving HITEC and/or HORSE scores, H for Hook had its own full category.

*ahem* Anyway.

Still on that first paragraph: This is completely a nitpick, but "half a word" of love jarred — how does one divide a metaphysical concept like a "word" in half? You might want to double all of the numbers, or else use "syllable" (which provokes its own weird existential questions).

I went on, inadvertently cringing at the latter. Why couldn't people use proper measurements? It had taken me an year to figure out the exact quality of a "pinch" and even then it was mostly a matter of interpretation.

… On the other hand, you earn most of your points back for explicitly lampshading that later on. (I'd still avoid the "half a word" bit until after you've done that lampshading.)

And to be fair, this is one of those stories that (after the initial stumbling) I was able to settle into as it went on. The frequent typos appear to be another case of autocorrect-itis, but otherwise the prose seemed pretty clean. I enjoyed the worldbuilding, and the descriptions and digressions are entertaining enough that I don't mind that it's taking its time doing whatever it's doing.

Then … the ending. Mmm.

While this is "not really a story", I've gotta strongly disagree with previous commenters that that is in itself a problem. With only 750 words, sometimes we get scenes that just want to be scenes — sort of tone sketches or character sketches that illustrate a moment in time rather than an arc. (I do criticize stories for being incomplete when they feel like they do not work as self-contained pieces — see e.g. >>horizon — but that's a different thing from whether they are stories or scenes. If a moment in time without any plot progression makes the point that the author wants to make, and feels comfortably self-contained, I'm happy to score it favorably. And it's not just me — see e.g. The Red Forest, which is no more a complete story than this is, but which medaled several rounds back.)

What I do take issue with here is that all of this explicitly magical construction was used to write a sonnet. In a world in which it's explicitly lampshaded that non-magical writing exists, because you have teachers grading papers. Which leads me to a fundamental question: Why? What's going on here that poetry either can't be written the traditional way, or isn't as good when written the traditional way? This might just be me, but I feel like that cheapens the act of writing — turning it from the sweat and agony we all undergo, the scrambling for individual words and the bloodletting of editing, into a sort of magical "black box" where you push button and receive words. I mean, yes yes, there's the lengthy work of collecting the components … but 1) the components are words themselves, making the process weirdly self-referential; and 2) what's the benefit of doing it magically if it takes that much more effort? I mean, if it took me a year to write a single sonnet, it had better be one that the angels are going to sing about for decades, except that the spell is apparently common enough that there's a recipe for it, and the mage/author certainly doesn't think much of the product if they're not even bothering to commit it to parchment! So this stumbles hard for me as a metaphor for writing. I would have rather seen the ending reveal, well, almost literally anything else.

Rant over. As much as I hated the ending, the rest of this, I feel, delivers pretty well.

Tier: Strong

>>Cold in Gardez
Grief makes more sense, or maybe simple depression, but it's open enough that it could be a lot of things. I hit on addiction for the 'Nothing good came from associating with spiders' line, which fits something addictive like gambling/alcohol better than grief. But I was more using addiction as an example.

I'm just not getting any feel for this character as is, or what they feel about any of this, if anything. A better question might be--what's the relationship between the character and the spider? What is the character's perception of the spider? Do they choose to keep the spider, or do they just not make a choice to try and get rid of it? Do they feel any sort of attraction or sympathy towards the spider, or do they just not care? Apathy can be just as interesting as terror.

Maybe it's a better story for how open to interpretation it is now, or maybe it would be a stronger story if it had some characterization. Just something to think about.

>>CantStopWontStop

It's... true that there isn't a great deal of characterization here. My love of this story stems from its exquisite imagery and use of allegory.

I've only read a few so far, but this looks like a winner to me.

formatting

The Great

Cute concept. The metaphor works well and the overall tone is quite sweet.

The Rough

Definitely needs another pass. There are a lot of random technical issues throughout (including a few weird word misuses - kinda makes me think this was written on a phone).

The similes you use really stand out, which also draws attention to the fact that you're using them. It really takes me out of the writing. Either flood the thing with them or cut them, I think.

I'm kinda neutral on the "not a story" thing (vignettes are rad sometimes), but between that and >>horizon's criticism regarding the ending, I might suggest tuning this piece ever so slightly to have the alchemist be struggling to find the right mixture, rather than know it rote. That both creates conflict and reduces the (now that I'm thinking about) somewhat frustrating metaphorical result being so -easy- for the main character.

>>Cold in Gardez
>>CantStopWontStop

Given the title, I would guess grief myself.

The Great

Competent writing throughout. The narrative flow is smooth and escalates nicely, despite being a minific.

The Rough

Not a lot of stuff to say here. A few little errors, use of raw instead of row, repetition of the word last in a sentence, etc.

The biggest problem is that I am left feeling a little underwhelmed. I feel like the punchline should work better than it does, but something holds it back. I want to say that it is, in part, the momentary confusion about the guard corps on Mars. Based on statements, I sort of expected an uninhabited Mars with unknown aliens rejecting the earthlings or something. The fact that the metaphor at least, to me, reads like a criticism of American policies, and America is a major world power, it is weird for them to be blocked by apparently another government in that way.

The Great

Very neat idea. Has all the makings of a fine creepypasta.

The setting is intriguing, evoking greater ideas while being entirely self contained.

The Rough

Those two opening paragraphs are rough. The part the guide focuses on being in the dead middle of the sentence forced me to go back and read it a couple time to really understand what he was trying to say, especially given that our lead has no reaction to it. Which creates this kind of weird tension: I'm expecting a twist, and, from a reader standpoint, there is. However, Rachel already knows the twist, so the slightly delayed explanation just feels... weird.

His opening line also detracts heavily from the ending since it pretty blatantly implies she dies multiple times. While I'm not sure how much I like the ambiguous ending (I actually kinda prefer the raw horror angle - yeah, we end on the realization that she does die every tome), if you do want to keep it, you need to remove the start of story implication. Heck, I'd go so far as to say you should make the guard more sociable and cheerful, because that too heavily implies he experiences each and every one of those deaths in a real way. With a more positive attitude, it really adds to the potential fridge horror, I think. It reinforces the positive while making the negative even scarier, because what sort of man could act like that -after- that sort of endless horror?

EDIT: Actually, having thought on it a little, I think you DO want to more or less outright say it is a timeloop. I was going to comment on the visions/pov thing, but really, that also more or less says that they have, indeed, lived through all these timelines, because the narrative contains the failed timeline, but moves forward on the next attempt. So yeah, have her die on the last line.

The Great

Competent writing and a neat idea.

The Rough

Just not feeling this one, unfortunately. I think the minific format hurts it, as it makes the turn from LOYAL GUARD to EH WHATEVS too easy. There is a good story in here, but I feel it's a short rather than a mini.

I feel this kind of falls outside the standards of review as, assuming the top words are true, this is pure autobiography?

As such, I have no particular commentary to offer.

Heh. This feels like, you know, that pony character, miss Harshwinny.

The idea is fun, if only to demonstrate how stupid the application of certain rules can be.

But apart from that, the execution is a bit lacking. Choosing to relate events through letters or press articles is fine, but not very lively. It is hard to get involved in that sort of story, because we lack something to root for or something to crunch on.

I liked the Fairy-tale like structure. The almost undefined temporal and geographical collocation added to the charm, as did the repetition and the lack of names. The story itself is a little moral tale, a thing which we see quite rarely nowadays. From this point of view, it was quite successful in emulating that style, and it got it a few points in my completely arbitrary and unscientific write-off entry judging metric.

Now on to the criticism. I think the story lacked a bit of punch. If I had to make a suggestion then I would have exchanged the martian guards at the end with another wall or a similar impersonal obstacle. I also kind of miss a third repetition of the wall construction, which would, IMHO, have been another recall to the fairy tale structure.

Regarding the politics of the piece, while it clearly refers to the current American situation, I have to pop a bubble and say that similar rhetoric is used almost everywhere through the world. We have a couple of examples here, on the other side of the ocean, too.

There a few technical hiccups here and there, but I was able to overlook them, which means they weren't dhow-stopping for me.

I'm in the "Doesn't need to be a story" camp, so the lack of development didn't detract much from it.

I generally got the impression that the Narrator's Art wasn't common knowledge. The MC speaks from his master and from old recipes, details which hint to a more classical esoteric education than what we got today, which makes me suspect that not many know about aside from Jenny and other practitioners.

I agree with my esteemed colleagues (don't tell them we are colleagues, I don't think they know and we shall better let them live in blessed ignorance) that the result of all the work was kind of a let-down. I'm not sure if it is me who didn't understand it fully and all the exercise is simply a metaphorical description for the act of writing (as in the words gathered from others are simply experiences born from interaction which find their way in the work of the Narrator) or if they should be taken almost literally, in which case it would be better probably to expand on why all the word chemistry was done to obtain what seems to be a normal sonnet.

Anyway, nicely written and it made me think about it for a while, which is a quite positive trait.

Another fairy-tale, nice. Now that I think about it, the minific format seems ideal for this kind of story, so I shouldn't really be surprised.

This one pulled off quite nicely the style and the themes of their inspiration material. It was nicely written and almost perfect in length. Kudos.

>>Not_A_Hat
I didn't really see the ending as "Technology is bad", but then I have a history of missing that kind of innuendos. It happened that I nodded smiling along somebody ranting about the evils of the modern world for a couple of minutes before I caught on that he was complaining about it and not simply stating awesome stuff.

What we have here is not that progress is bad, but that everything changes and there isn't anything you can do to keep things the same forever. The fact that people were not looking anymore at the sun rising was simply a thing the Sultan could never have imagined when the Djinn granted the boon, but that happened anyway because, as the Djinn warned, nothing is eternal. You have to learn to love what comes.

The religious references are, in my opinion, a must to emulate the style of this kind of fairy-tale, and they added a lot to give flavor and color to the story itself.

This was quite a powerful story for how it resonates with the reader. Or at least, it did so with me. Family obligations can weigh heavily upon us, being it in the form of some duty we feel we have or in doing some sacrifice for those we love. Even if we will come to regret it and are aware of it.

You had a powerful theme here and used the limited space well to connect to the reader.

We don't see much of our narrator, what comes through of his personality comes from the details he notices and how he voices them, which in my opinion requires quite some skill.

Not much more to say except that this will rate quite highly on my slate.

Ironic that — given recent news — it's not a Samsung device which ends up setting something on fire.

Nitpicks: I get that we're dealing with a sci-fi future of smart appliances with built-in AIs, but I can't envision any possible reason to give a freaking stove Dolby 5.1 surround-sound. Also, with multiple Samsung devices in the house, giving the name "Samsung" to the stove just seems like it's asking for trouble; it really needs a pet name. And the story title doesn't seem relevant unless Stovey was previously in charge of the house.

That aside, I have no suggestions that rise above the level of those nitpicks. This is the good kind of ridiculous, the characters and voicing are just fun, and I've got an early contender for first place on my slate. Well done, author.

Tier: Top Contender

Alternate title: Her for Furries

(I kid, I kid)

I think you did well characterizing Alice in the few words you had, although there isn't much here to differentiate her from the loads of other abrasive/depressed female protagonists we see a lot in fiction nowadays. Alice, along with the concept of the familiars, reminded me of the book Zoo City—however, that might just be because I just finished reading it. :V
We're this to be expanded, I'd like to see more of how Alice interacts with the rest of the world—scenes, rather than just quick summaries. What makes her unique?

The mention of the soylent bars felt cheap to me. Like, "this is a sci-fi fic set in the future—of course we gotta have people eating soylent." It feels forced in what's otherwise a rather genuine piece.

Like others, the ending didn't work for me (and I apologize if the point I'm about to make has been made by Horizon—I can't read spoiler text on my phone without doing work). When you introduced the "Familiar should not be speaking concept," it became immediately obvious that the fox was gonna start talking. Then we get to the end, and the big climactic reveal is that the fox has started talking and...? Nothing. So the ending doesn't have any weight, because we already knew everything that was coming. The piece ends without answering what Puff talking means for Alice's future, which is the important part.

Final Verdict: I miss my cats

>>Orbiting_kettle I'm not claiming the ending is saying technology is bad, actually. The tone of that line in particular annoys me because it feels like a cheap jab, but it's just one line; I won't put too much weight on it. The word-limits do make it difficult to enumerate nuanced views, and it's not really core to the ending.

I'll try and clarify what really does bug me, but let me preface it by saying I don't really know a whole lot about Islam in particular. I am not Islamic. I'm mostly basing this on my impressions. However, this line in particular really threw me off:

“None can say. Our perspective is each flawed, each limited. We each only have our little time on this earth, oh sultan. Only Allah is eternal.”

To me, it seems like when the sultan asks 'how can I love what's coming?' the djinn replies 'You can't, so give up and die, because that's all anyone can do'.

So he does.

And I don't like that. Not only does it seem like bad philosophy, (I doubt even nihilists urge people to commit suicide,) it seems like awful religion. I really doubt a Muslim Sultan would buy that so easily, or that a supposedly Muslim Djinn would preach that. It's just incredibly jarring to me, clashing with general ideas I hold about both philosophy and religion, and whatever (admittedly meager) impressions I have about Islam. It'd be something like writing a fic about Carl Sagan and having him supposedly resolve the conflict with a prayer and "praise Allah" out of the blue. This is supposed to be a crux sentence, and it feels like it betrays everyone in the vicinity. Characterization matters, and I just can't make this fit at all.

So, I agree with you; the religious stuff is used to give this a great fairy-tale tone. However, the ending - and that line in particular - clashes so hard for me it shatters entirely. That's why I suggested a more generic fantasy; I could accept a nihilist genie giving that line to a postmodern king and having him accept it (which suddenly sounds like an interesting story) but I don't feel like that's what we were presented with.

Anyways, I may be reading it completely wrong and perhaps I'not in the intended audience... or maybe I'm entirely wrong in my impressions of Islam and they'd be totally behind that message. I hope this clarifies my views, and is useful or at least interesting to the author.

>>Not_A_Hat
Huh, I read that mostly as "We can't predict the future, nor can we live in the past. We have to live in the moment and appreciate what comes to us."

This is kind of an universal lesson that you can find almost everywhere. Lorenzo De Medici composed mid XV Century

" Quant'è bella giovinezza,
Che si fugge tuttavia!
Chi vuol esser lieto, sia:
di doman non v'è certezza"

Which translates as
"How beautiful is youth
even if it still flees.
Those who want should be happy:
there's no certainty for tomorrow."

This has mostly nothing to do with religion, if not for the formula that says that only Allah is eternal and immutable. It is also a classic way in which Djinn's talk in some Arabic fairytales.

There's also a fatalistic interpretation there, but only, as far as I can tell, as fatalistic as the laws of thermodynamic.

Basically I have to agree with what all the other have said. Good core concept, but heavy, dumpy prose at the beginning. Also, I wonder if you didn't borrow the concept from an old monster that existed in AD&D, the hound of ill omen.

That being said, once you're bitten, I suppose… you're so in bad luck you can't help but being bitten again, and so on…

The guy's really on his last leg.

>>Orbiting_kettle I dunno... I can't reconcile

You should have learned to love that which will be, instead of that which is

with any interpretation of 'live in the moment'. In fact, it reads to me as kinda exactly the opposite, what with the whole 'instead of what is' bit?

Besides which, whatever he decides apparently kills him. How many people are going to accept 'just be happy with what you have' if it means literally dying?

Hey you borrowed my idea from the thread welcome message. Thanks for that! ;)

Otherwise, well the text succeeds in establishing a sort of creepy context suitable for that sort of story, although somewhat cliched: shabby shovel, keening wind, gaunt trees. It just lacked the hoot of an owl.

I wish the typewriter would've acted on it's own, rather than being operated by a ghost. Or I wish the ghost killed the narrator and kept writing on the typewriter. As it is currently written, i think the end fells pretty flat.

Someone in the discord chat mentioned that they were writing on a phone. Maybe it was the same author, and that would explain the numerous misspellings. Distracting, but not a huge detraction from the story as far as I’m concerned.

I rated this story slightly above average. It had an interesting tone and setting that stood out in the crowd, but it also had some unfortunate choices that left me feeling… icky. From my reading, the whole story was about a chance-meeting with a possible new romantic partner. I guess that most writers here come from fimfiction background and are used to gay horse stories. However I found that bringing such an aggressive pickup strategy to a realistic setting felt intrusive and unwanted.

As a thought experiment, can we imagine everything written exactly as-is, but with the opponent being a guy that fancies himself suave? Suddenly the tone shifts, and the whole “I think I like you” lean in eye-sparkle thing is a whole lot more invasive, especially in a convention setting. My thoughts are, if this would not be OK for a guy to do, it should not be OK for a girl either. A preference to same-sex shipping should probably not override basic necessities of establishing a likable character rapport.

Kind of related, I felt that the “women in videogames” line used to introduce the fact that the protagonist was a girl came too late – an earlier indication as to the protagonist’s gender would have been appreciated, given that it’s important to the story. The line itself also felt a bit clunky in execution, almost as if its only purpose was to convey that single fact and nothing else. In that case, ditching it altogether and giving a clear indication earlier in the story (preferably first paragraph) would’ve been better.

It feels like I am going really hard on this story. It was just one of the few that really stuck in my mind, and as a result I might’ve ended up overthinking it. Overall, again, a slightly above average story with cool use of title drop, but just not one I could personally find much enjoyment in.

>>Not_A_Hat
Well, he didn't die because he decided to die. He died because the condition of the third boon came through. He would live until his people watched the sun rise and set, which didn't happen anymore. So he died exactly as predicted. And he died in the moment in which he realized that he should have loved what will be, that is what life brings us instead of what is, that is the things that are passing. The Djinn told him before he granted the first boon that he would realize this too late.

>>Orbiting_kettle If that's the case, some signal that he's not dying because of his decision might be good. As it is, it's a bit too close to that important change of heart and also not connected to any other signal. Maybe if it just say 'the sun came up and no-one looked' I'd have gotten more of a sense of that.

However, even if I can accept that interpretation to some extent, I still don't find it very satisfying. For the first and third dilemma, it perhaps works. Personal life and culture? Alright, culture is fleeting, and although there's no reason to not extend your life if you can, I don't think there's any reason to particularly fear death.

The middle one, however? His people are being killed. If the author wants to convince me that the correct response to my friends/family/countrymen being killed is just shrug and say 'change happens', they're going to have to be more convincing than this.

>>Dubs_Rewatcher
Were you aware that Soylent is an actual product? (Named, possibly unironically, after the sci-fi staple.) I feel pretty confident in asserting on the author's behalf that its mention wasn't intended as "hey this is generic sci-fi future" but as a verisimilitude name-drop, as Soylent is primarily big among hardcore tech crowds.

This one's in sort of a weird space in between feeling self-contained and incomplete, and in between feeling like a scene and a story. And I'm kinda struggling with whether or not this works as-is.

There's almost kinda a character arc, in which Rhett has to confront his relationship with fiction because of what he had to do at the storage unit, but as a character arc it feels left wanting because … well, the fiction author decides that fiction is important, I'm really not seeing how the events confronted him with any tough decisions or spurred any growth. And there's almost kinda a structure around this that makes it more than a moment in time — the whole "I never went back" bit — but this is being told in retrospective, not real time, so as is, this is a single scene which is the narrator's reminiscences about that day and its effects.

I think, ultimately, what makes this fall short for me is the aforementioned emptiness of the revelation — Rhett's conclusion being something that would have seemed perfectly natural for him to think even if he hadn't ever gone to the storage unit at all. If the events there had changed him in any measurable way, this would feel adequately story-ish, but I'm sort of left wondering what the point was. The scene-as-scene was interesting enough to read, but this feels like it needs a larger point that you didn't quite make. I doubt it'll be a simple fix to add meaning to this, but the good news is that that feels like all that's missing.

Tier: Almost There

I liked how this story progressed, showing the results of each boon in unexpected ways. and it did a pretty good job of emulating the fairytale atmosphere.

>>Not_A_Hat

But if you're going to use a name with as much narrative weight as 'Allah', I'd like that to play into the story somehow.

references to Allah and Heaven are common in the Arabian Nights tales, at least the ones I'm familiar with. they're not intended to make them religious fables, but more like to illustrate the culture the characters live in. they're primarily folktales, and some religious types still disapprove of the "magical" elements.
(putting it another way, it's like having a cross in a vampire story)

anyway, I don't have a problem with the logic or the moral in this story, but it still didn't affect me much in the end. I was interested in the story, but I didn't feel sympathetic on whether the sultan lived or died, I suppose. no moment of regret, or trying to break the chains of fate.... no tragedy. it just feels like a cold impersonal lecture for the moral, which I suspect is too grand and ambitious for a minific's reach.

I don't think it's bad or flawed at all, because it's very well-grounded. but perhaps, missing the magic that makes fairytales fly.

now that I think about it, doesn't the Sultan dying also signify the end for his kingdom + people? are all these modern people with their VR glasses and phones about to die in an apocalypse?

loved the first half. descriptive and creepy and tense. whew. and subtle enough for me to put some puzzle pieces together.

the second half's explanations killed that mood, haha. oh well. but I felt really disappointed at the new theory explained, which didn't even match up with what I'd experienced.

this may be one of those annoying subjective reviews, where I want to read a certain story -vs- the author intended a different story all along. please forgive me if you dislike this kinda thing.

the POV switch was distracting, but I'd actually prefer to keep it in Rachel's head. these death visions are happening in the text, sorta like she can only sense them subconsciously, but not fully comprehend them (like a deja vu moment). and instead of going into worrying about the theory behind it all, it goes on with.... something resulting out of it. I dunno what. after all, it's not like she can do anything about the precognition part itself. (or can she?)

so in short, I guess I enjoyed this more as a horror story than as a scifi story. (and it's actually very rare for me to like horror)

It's nice, but like the others have said, I think it could've been stronger. Maybe insisting more on the "magic-like" atmosphere during the night, or smashing a harder blow at waking time. As such, it's nice and slick, but maybe too slick to hit the nail home. It needs something harsher, something more violent to be 100% effective.

I must (alack) stand on Horizon's side here. There's a nice setting, the decor is adequately set, the construction is good, but the ultimate message of the story - i.e. destroying books is like shaving out the world's memory, and that's bad - is somewhat underwhelming. Not because I feel this is untrue, but maybe because it's a bit clichéd. Many people have trodden that path before, beginning by Bradbury's famous Fahrenheit 451. And while I know it's impossible to distil all the richness of a full-novel into so short a space, I still feel you could've gone for something different, maybe more original or punchy. Yet, I'm a bit at a loss to tell you what or how. It'd need more pondering on my part.

It's a nice parable, and it draws heavily on the Arabian Nights as its background of course.

However, I experience a sort of dissonance or clash reading it.

Until the last scene with the Islamic republics and modern stuff, this sounds fey, unearthly. We feel we are in a fairy tale, and we don't care much for inconsistencies (e.g. How and why the commoners – or even the sultan’s sons – do not react seeing how long the sultan's lifespan is?). But by suddenly throwing us into the harsh reality at the end of the piece, you sweep away all that atmosphere, and here I felt lost, because the blatant contrast between the two set-ups left me dazed.

This is obviously a tale, yet you wanted to add some reality aspects to it, and the two do not conflate well together. It's a fairy tale no more, and yet it can't be a real story. So, what is it?

I choose to assume the top paragraph is part of the story itself, and not an author's note

now I just need to figure out why the narrator decided this rambling "conversation" was worth transcribing verbatim

I actually chuckled once at how rapidly the narrator leaps from subject to subject, but in general, there isn't really much to this "story".

He continued. “There's no good having a relationship that's built up on only your desires. Why do you think we’re dating? Sure, you may look cute, but I don’t know what you’re thinking."

"Your dream mate could even plot to kill you to get freedom from the wish’s effect!” He teased.

This really threw me at first. You've got the same speaker's lines split across two paragraphs, in the middle of a longer dialogue in which the two of them alternate. Definitely want to fix the formatting here.

>>Not_A_Hat

Unless the idea is that there's an unexpected side-effect to wishing for nothing? I mean, that's a wish too, right? Though if that's what was going on, I'd hope to see what that side-effect would be.

This.

Another story in the not-entirely-complete bin, cf. >>horizon, and for the same reasons -- the revelation feels pretty empty. If we saw the unintended consequences of wishing for nothing, that would close the loop. That's certainly not the only way to add depth to this story, but it would require the least editing, since that seems to be where you're already ending up. Or you could add some resolution to the tension between Reed and Isabella over the wish: does that disagreement show that there are philosophical differences between them that are endangering the relationship? Or is Isabella deciding to give up her wishes specifically for him? (Which is a troubling moral, honestly, but at least would push this story to resolve in a direction rather than sort of peter out.)

The other thing I had problems with here is Isabella's characterization -- there's one bit that I found really telling that seemed like it was unintentional:

“Isabella, I’m not saying that you would. I’m saying that I’m using this time to get to know you.”

Hmph. I knew he didn't think of me as some psychopath, but doesn't he have at least a little bit of trust in me? I am his girlfriend, after all.

So they're in the "getting to know you" stage -- in other words, presumably early dating -- and Isabella is insulted by the fact that he doesn't trust her yet? And she considers herself his girlfriend already? If I was in Reed's shoes I'd find that a pretty big red flag.

Well, duh, it would be for infinite money. Though, I knew Reed would scold me if I had thought that aloud. We had just gotten off the subject. I pondered until the thought came to me.

“I would be the president of the world!” I shout.

Isabella also, well, doesn't seem to be characterized as the smartest apple in the barrel.

So basically the central romance is falling flat for me because Isabella is throwing up all sorts of red flags for me. In a story in which she's the narrator and you want me to sympathize with her, this makes the story a rather hard sell for me. Sorry, author.

... I keep going back to !Hat's "Is she literally twelve?", actually ... I think that's a good way of framing it. Isabella comes across as remarkably immature to me. This might make better YA fiction than general-audience fiction, but equally, it might just be better to polish her up a bit with editing and give a little more depth to her viewpoint on wishes. Compared to her, Reed comes off pretty thoughtful (not just in his wish musings, but also in his later apology and his picking up on her feelings) -- there's nothing saying you have to make both of your characters equally mature, but bringing her up to that level would certainly engage my interest a lot more.

Ultimately, author, there may just be a reader mismatch here, since you're kinda writing the tale of a down-to-earth dude and his Manic Dream Pixie Girl and that's something I find it hard to enjoy. If that's your vision, more power to you, but from here that decision looks like it's dragging the story down.

Tier: Needs Work

This falls into what I call the 'bar story' type of narrator. Essentially, it's written as though the narrator is relating his story, verbatim, to the author. This is just a transcript of that.

On the one hand, this lends a certain verisimilitude to the writing. The narrator immediately comes off as having his own voice. On the other hand, it removes the reader from the action – we're not with the main character when he's hearing weird noises, or discovering creepy writing on the shower wall. We're just hearing him tell us about it.

For minifics this can be an advantage -- there's no wasted space with description or scenery; we just get the narrator relating the important action. It's a disadvantage if you like scenery or description, though.

The ending detracts, I feel. It's a rather weak close.

I mentally renamed each of these characters Talking Head 1, 2 and 3. That's really all they are.

Police scanners have existed for decades. Apps that stream them from the internet have existed for at least a few years. (I'm not holding this against the story, just pointing it out).

This story mostly consists of exposition-by-dialogue. Aside from that, nothing happens, except some rumination about the impact of technology, which I think a few other stories this round managed to do while including actual events.

On the other hand, I like the kernel of the idea here -- universal access to 911 calls permitting vigilante violence. I can see the potential there, but only as the background for an actual story. Right now this is basically a long form version of the prompt "In the future, 911 calls will be streamed on the internet for anyone to listen to."

>>Haze
It's not that I thought the religious elements couldn't be in there, it's that I didn't like how they were used. For example, your cross in the vampire story; without any prior rationalization, having a cross in a vampire story means it should do things like repel vampires, right? That use addresses the narratives surrounding it. If you use it contrary to that, you need to spend time re-contextualizing it, precisely because of those narratives.

Well, it seems my reaction is in the minority though, which is probably a good thing. Perhaps I simply need to count myself out of the intended audience.

I like some elements of subversion here, basically the genie being female and sorta grunge/punk based, and she giving those upfront, straightforward answers.

There is also a nice analysis (if a bit superficial) of the harshness of our modern world.

But that leads me to what I can't like: your genie is a go-getter. A yuppie. A capitalism-monger. An America shill. She's totally biased.

Finding such sort of genie in the remotest Tibetan temple is total absurdity. Asinine. I can't buy it. Maybe because I'm not rich enough, but I can't. You won't sell me on that, no matter how hard you try. :P

And what? Linux? Linux is for noobs. True genies™ use BSD.

Wow. Reading that on an iPhone was like trying to gulp some sort of big chunk of bread or gobbet of meat.

I don't have much to add to what has already been said, as often when one reads after many already did. I feel the voice of the narrator (the grandpa) was good, but beyond that it is… sort of ramble yes. A collection of anecdotes cobbled together and linked by a wispy thread. It could be part of a longer story, but here, well, it's difficult to say it leaves any impression at all.

It's what rambles are: a shambolic pile up of words.

But I'm grateful you gave Cold the opportunity to crave the most rambling review up to date! :P

When I was nine, it was Christmas day when Bobby Legett fell off the roof and broke his leg.

There is no way this is real

I can't believe American police still use analog radio transmissions every decent ham radio operator can spoof on. I did that when I was young, even listening to the first generation mobile phones that were operating in the 400 MHz band.

Until one day I stumbled upon such a squalid conversation I decided to give up.

But anyway.

This is not a real story. Nothing really happens to the guys. No arc. It feels the whole point of the text is simply to show us what such an app could do/not-do or induce/not-induce. The guy simply describes what the app does.

In short, it feels contrived.

However, I do agree that a discussion of the underlying concept would be undoubtedly fascinating.

I really like the concept, but didn't work as a story for me. the main character doesn't get to make any interesting decisions. maybe he'll get to make a choice when the lady is offering a new job, but it cuts off right there. I think that's the problem with the ending! it's not necessarily wrong to end on a cliffhanger, but there's no tension -- we don't know the stakes, or what his options are. (as a silly example, think of the JoJo "To Be Continued" meme)

a lot of bad stuff happens to him unavoidably (which is the whole point) but I don't get a sense for how he responds to it. even when he gets a few sentences to explain the events of the burglary, it's only a barrage of stuff happening to him. even a few details of how he tried to salvage the situation, though unsuccessfully, could've gone a long way to making it feel like a complete story.

>>Not_A_Hat
I'm not entirely sure if I get this. can you help me with an example?

I really don't mean for this to be an endless argument on this one thing, and I'm not trying to force you to change your mind. I genuinely want to understand what you mean, because I suspect this might be a case of insider vs outsider perspective. something that seems normal to us is coming across as very out of place to you, but this could be a blind spot out of familiarity.

(and who knows, this might be useful feedback for the author too)

>>Haze
When it comes right down to it, I guess what I'm saying is that this djinn strikes me as out-of-character, because the way I read its dialogue clashes with my preconceived notions about Allah. (Which, again, I don't claim to be an expert on.) That broke the setting for me. As you said, maybe as an outsider to these sorts of stories I simply don't grok it. But...

Consider the djinn's characterization. He says 'I'll tell you this three times, you'll learn it too late, only Allah is eternal.' He's claiming to be wise, he's positioned as teacher, and 'Allah is eternal' seems pretty respectful. So unless something in the larger setting subverts this, my reading of the djinn's character is 'a wise teacher who respects Allah'.

Now, skip to the end. The story is told, the lesson is learned.

The lesson I originally got from this story was something like: "Just give up and die, because that's all anyone can do." I based this on what the djinni and sultan said in that last exchange; see my first exchange with Kettle (>>Not_A_Hat) for a little of my reasoning there.

Can you see why I might have a problem with that? It doesn't strike me as lining up with anything a wise teacher who respects Allah might say, and although my impressions of that might be wrong, I... don't really think they are. Is that something that djinni might teach in the Arabian Nights? I mean, really?

Now, Kettle suggested a somewhat kinder interpretation:

"We can't predict the future, nor can we live in the past. We have to live in the moment and appreciate what comes to us."

If I'd read this in initially, I might have reacted to the story somewhat less strongly. Even so, this sort of platitude - while nice - is something I reject as ultimately unsatisfying philosophically, at least without a more nuanced meaning. Again, see my response to Kettle. (>>Not_A_Hat)

Either way, neither of the lessons I've extracted here fit my image of how the djinn is characterized, mostly because he's 'wise' and respects 'Allah'. If he was set up as a wise teacher who respected Nietzsche, I'd have been less bothered; (probably either reading could fit that.) If he'd been set up as a foolish teacher who respected Allah I'd have been less bothered (although that has its own problems.) If he'd given a more satisfying answer I'd have ranked this story rather higher.

(We're half a week in and reviews have slowed to almost nothing; I'm going to stop marking spoilers. If that matters to you, skip my reviews until later or go finish your slate!)

I don't really have anything to criticize about the writing here. The prose is clean and the voicing is consistent (though I'd argue that the swearing distracts from the text, given that aside from two fucks and one shit, the language is clean and mild). But the story itself just feels kinda ... underwhelming?

I mean, the core of the haunting here is misplaced car keys and weird noises ... poltergeists have certainly freaked people out to the level of panic described at the end of the story before, but based on the narrator's own description he was basically blowing it off until the shower scene, and that makes it really hard for me to invest any fear or dread on his behalf. (This is compounded by the fact that our culture's primary reference point for "supernatural guests that have to be invited in" is vampires, and when you're expecting someone's throat to get immediately ripped out in a bloody mess, a mere haunting is weak.) And the shower scene itself, as noted by others, is about the least frightening supernatural encounter ever. Hell, in his position I'd start writing back. A neutral-to-friendly greeting from an honest-to-goodness otherworldly entity -- how cool is that?

So, yeah, the story's trying to sell me on a creepypasta that doesn't strike me as creepy at all. I think that's eminently fixable in editing -- show us the narrator's fear earlier and harder, and make the actual contacts with the spirit much more ominous. "Hello" in particular really needs to be more climactic. If you don't want to resort to cliches (writing in blood or whatevs) and can't think of any creepier messages to write, then maybe one way to up the chill factor would be to turn around and see the message, and then notice a drop of water bead up from the bottom of one of the letters dripping down the inside of the glass -- meaning it was written within the last few seconds from inside the shower. (Cue slamming the shower door open and scrambling out wet and naked.)

Tier: Almost There

Hmmm… Well, I wasn’t especially sold on the story. It’s not about the numerous typos and sometimes odd constructions, but I think the text proceeds from the same premise as There’s an app for that in that it is not a real story but a way to tell us (flog) about a game. Agreed, there’s more characterisation in this minific than in said other one, but really — except for some considerations about the game industry – my personal take away is: “there’s a game that’s called XXX whose rules are YYY and a basic strategy to play it would be ZZZ”.

Also a tinge of pony in the background, granted. All that leads me to believe 90% that the author is … :P

So yeah, entertaining, but otherwise a bit shallow to me.

>>JudgeDeadd

I'm pretty sure the narrator is a woman, judging from this fragment:

"Why did you enter gamedev?" She asked all of a sudden. "Isn't it a male dominated field?"

But that could also be interpreted as: “I get you’re a womaniser, so what do you do in an industry male dominated?”

On the whole, this is well put together, and it's going to be up near the top of my slate. I especially appreciate the Virginia Tech line -- a powerful instance of a narrative digression making a meta-statement about the text: that the that the character's attention is focusing away from the conversation for a moment because something so emotionally large has just been brought up that they don't want to confront what's being said. It's a subtle and powerful technique that I've used myself once or twice but rarely see in the wild.

One thing to fix, author, is that you really need to rein in your descriptions. You're overdescribing things to the point that the words you're using are badly colliding. Take a look at your early paragraphs about the father:

Dad sat in a booth. He was tall and a bit overweight, but not to the point it made him unseemly. He had a haggard and tired face, worn from years of use in the Florida sun. But it was not an ugly face; even now, at 64 years of age, it still radiated a certain warmness. He nodded toward me, and I made my way toward him.

“Hey, Steve,” he said in his gruff voice.

“Hi, Dad,” I returned.

“Ordered their Premiere pizza,” Dad piped.

I'd question the appropriateness of "unseemly" (meaning, improper or inappropriate), and "warmness" should be "warmth", but here are bigger problems:

- He's haggard (=exhausted) and also tired; you repeat yourself.
- "But it was not an ugly face" implies that the earlier description would otherwise have implied ugliness. However, all we've learned at that point is that his face is worn and exhausted, neither of which especially strike me as implying ugliness.
- "Gruff"s most common meaning is "abrupt or taciturn", which is a bizarre contrast to describing his face as radiating warmth. Technically, gruff in the specific context of a voice also can mean "rough and low-pitched", but in the context you've just set up, you're better off using a synonym.
- Gruff (in the voice sense) also directly contradicts "piped", which means to say something in a high, shrill voice.

The reason these things stand out to me is that you could have avoided half of the problems simply by cutting out half of your descriptions, which suggests that these paragraphs were throwing in details as thickly as possible without thinking of the bigger picture.

But along with that (presumably deadline-induced) problem you've got a great base here. Clean it up and it'll shine.

Tier: Strong

>>Monokeras

But that could also be interpreted as: “I get you’re a womaniser, so what do you do in an industry male dominated?”

The story supports that interpretation, but if true it paints Sunny (see >>horizon) in an even worse light than if Sunny was female. Asking why a female is joining a male-dominated field is a socially innocuous question about why they put up with the extra difficulty of a field where they're a minority (and get judged based on their gender for everything they do, and get treated differently because of their gender, and get endlessly hit on by desperate gamer guys who don't see many women around). The alternative interpretation implies that Sunny's reputation as a womanizer precedes him, in which case he's done some hugely asshole-ish things to have that reputation spread even to total strangers, and also adds a huge squick factor to why she -- knowing his reputation -- would still romantically pursue him.

In short, I really hope that line was meant to imply Sunny was a female.

I need to start with another "rein in your descriptions!" like I did in >>horizon:

Rose has always been such a contained sleeper. Flat on her stomach, face cradled in her forearms and toes stretched towards the mess of blankets we've kicked onto the floor—she's a literal line of flesh and curves, drawn across my mattress by some merciful deity.

- Where is the "rustle of cotton on cotton" coming from if they've kicked the blankets and sheets to the floor? (The sheets had to go with the blankets or he wouldn't be able to see her body.)

- "a literal line of ... curves" >:\

- I am trying and failing to picture Rose's actual pose, "Flat on her stomach, face cradled in her forearms", without ending up with an image like someone in an airline seat bracing for a crash landing.

So, another story with strong narrative techniques and high prose grabbiness that needs an edit pass at the individual-word/description level. And while this has striking imagery and concepts and a strong arc, I agree with above comments that it isn't quite connecting all its dots to bring that arc together, and that it probably just needs a little expansion to finish teasing that out. There's a few too many pieces that don't quite come together for me to "Strong" this, but it's gonna be just a notch below Brother's Keeper in my voting.

Tier: Almost There

>>horizon
Yeah, I quickly scanned the story again to see if there was any hint of wooing on Sunny’s side but found none, so you’re correct. The girl would’ve to detain pre-existing knowledge about the narrator.

Author, it's not your fault -- not really -- that a scientific nitpick knocked me out of this story on sentence two, but the Bohr model of the atom -- with discrete spherical electrons whirling around the nucleus like planets around the Sun -- became outdated as early as 1927 with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. I mean, yes, you're just taking a whimsical scenario to make a comic point, and it shouldn't bother me -- there's really nothing any wronger about talking Bohr-model atoms than there is about talking insects or anthropomorphic deities -- but it just felt weird seeing outdated science as the first element of a cold open. That, I think, is totally on me.

I'm not sure I can say how funny I would have found this if I hadn't been knocked out of engagement before I could even properly start reading, so take this with a grain of salt, but my reaction to the comedy here was for the most part "Eh." I think the best joke of the lot was the off-screen fate of the locust. I had to go look up "ironising" so that pun sorta fell flat.

I wish that the three sections here had shared more than just a thematic connection. (If there IS more than just a thematic connection, someone please correct me, because I missed it.) The structure of the piece -- and the Rule of Three -- suggest some sort of buildup to a punchline or subversion or recontextualization that never happens, and that false sense of connection leaves the piece as a whole a little stranded for me.

So, mostly: Eh. I'm not sure whether to middle-slate this or take an abstention. I think that I've got enough other reservations about the piece that I feel comfortable voting. I can see things it does right and things it stumbles on and the overall effect feels sort of half-baked in a way that I'm not sure I can provide much useful feedback on.

(Also, I really wish I knew the rules of the dice game in the last section so that I had any significance to the two players' rolls. I get the joke, and the reason behind the mid-sentence stop, but that requires support from so much reading between the lines that the mental processing distracted me from the humor.)

Tier: Almost There?

I agree about the inconsistencies in tense and POV.

And then, well, what gives? I'm lost by the end. If the others have been captured, then why not the scholar? If they simply padded away while he was engrossed in his translation, then the end is underwhelming, and the arc non-existent.

So, I don't know which way to pick at the fork, but both ways are unsatisfactory.

It's interesting because it shows that, well, sometimes nothing will deter one to claim their right to vengeance, no matter what. There's a sense of implacability here.

On the other hand, we only get glimpses of the background story, and that leaves fundamental questions unanswered, especially why exactly Theodore's parents have been killed. What happened? And how nobles could use henchmen to dispatch the parents of what seems to be a valiant soldier.

Without any further elements casting some light on this, the story feels incomplete. There's a piece missing in the puzzle, and the resulting void clearly stymies the comprehension. In other words, we're presented with the consequence, but we do not get to really know the cause.

I kind of feel that the connection between the vignettes is a bit too tenuous to keep the story together. I don't see much of a common thread aside from foolishness being present at every level, and while this is something I can get behind, it isn't enough.

A bit of polishing and a tighter thematic unity will do wonders for it, there is something good here that only needs a bit of extra work.

The second scene, in particular, was the best one, almost perfectly self-contained.

Heh, not much I can say here. I know the larger issue only indirectly and am still musing about some of the details. Still, this specifically was amusing and I can always appreciate poking fun at ridiculous exaggerations, the originating side of the political spectrum being of secondary importance.

I have to agree with most of the comments made by Cold in Gardez and Not_A_Hat on this one. I kept waiting for the subversion but it never happened.

I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to find it funny, either. The first half did make it seem like this could be a comedy, although the 'jokes' weren't hitting hard for me, but the second half's references to Mama made me think the story was making light of abuse without enough strength in the descriptions to create proper black humour, which made me uncomfortable.

It doesn’t even matter if they have the belt! The pen is mightier than the sword, but the belt is mightier than all; it is best not to take any chances with it.

This makes little sense. It's a threat like any other if they don't have a belt. If the point is that the protagonist is too afraid to treat it as something "that is said merely to scare one into obedience", then I think Mama's presence should be foreshadowed earlier - for instance by removing the "(or sometimes king)" and by gradually referring to the 'they' holding the belt as a 'she'. Or something.

Oh, how does it strike. I’m sorry, Mama, I won’t do it again, I swear!

I still feel the sting.

Heaven preserve me.

This would be a much stronger ending than the actual closing paragraph as far as I'm concerned. It's wonderfully concise and active compared to what comes before and what follows. The story in general would have been stronger if it were shorter and snappier - more like the bite of the belt it fears so much.

I really needed an explanation of Jack's 'condition' to get me to sympathise with Steve rather than think of him as a total ****. It's a very emotive story, but since the condition isn't explained, this definitely hits too close to home for me to vote fairly, so I'll be abstaining on this one.

Nitpick: the word "Lord" gets somewhat overloaded here given that you have a priest (of an apparently monotheistic, Christian-like religion) talking about a noble's men.

Honestly, I braced for the worst coming into this with a misspelled title. Relieved to report that that was not the case. The prose felt pretty clean, and Ted's dialogue was sharp. As others have noted, the major sin here is that this felt awfully generic. Part of that is running down the standard fantasy trope checklist (lone hero out for vengeance, dead parents, evil lord, peaceful priest, etc) without any notable subversions or unusual elements, but what others have pointed out about the priest's almost-strawman ineffectiveness is a major element too.

The core arc of your story is basically "guy outlines good reasons for revenge; priest says he shouldn't with vague moral platitudes and/or warnings of a price guy has already decided to pay; guy does it anyway". If Ted had been faced with an actual cost to his decision, one that would have represented a sacrifice to him -- such as, maybe his sister's still alive, and if he goes out for revenge the lord's men will kill her too -- then that choice provides compelling stakes and a climax. Alternatively, if Tilly's failure to convince Ted causes a crisis of faith, and we get to watch his internal struggle over why his moral platitudes were useless in the face of Ted's justified anger, then we could shift to a climax about Tilly's character arc. But right now we don't see either of those things and so there's nothing at stake here.

Tier: Almost There

Going to have to echo horizon here, though I think I would rate this one a bit more highly than he.

Misspelled title aside, this story falls into that dreaded "well-written, but..." category we all hate to use when reviewing. The prose was smooth, dialogue fine but abit corny, descriptions nicely evocative. But as horizon mentioned, this story doesn't try anything new. All of these characters are straight from Central Casting, there's no attempt at subversion, and it feels like I've read this book before -- several times.

Stepping back, I get the impression this was written by a talented writer who just didn't get the idea he wanted, so he (or she) just went with straight quality prose and is hoping for the best.

I strongly dislike this story's conclusions, which is a very different thing from disliking this story.

Self-induced anhedonia ... well, is trading one problem for another. If you're not following Inquisitor M over on FIMFiction, he's recently posted a series of blogs detailing his ketamine treatments which are doing basically the exact opposite of this story, treating brain-chemical blockages preventing him from feeling pleasure. That blog of his is fascinating and a little scary, talking about experiencing the world for the first time as a person able to be happy. Living life without the ability to feel pleasure is crippling. And even in lesser cases, where it's ""just"" clinical depression ("oh, it's no big deal, we'll 'just' have to amputate both legs!"), I know so many close friends who are more or less fighting for their lives against depression as a daily battle. Calling that a solution for anything rubs me really hard the wrong way. And yet ... the argument of this story is that there may exist cases for which that's a preferable state. Addiction, in particular. I don't think that's true, but this is making me think about that pretty hard, and I have to give the story credit for that.

I also think the implications of jailbreaking an Editor are a lot bigger than what we see here. If it can influence pleasure levels, all you have to do is increase rather than decrease them and you've suddenly got yourself a perfect tool for wireheading. I think this story would be really well served by addressing that, and I think that's a much bigger story than what we see here ... but I can't ding it for not doing so, because that's not its point, and its point is quite effective enough.

Actual criticisms about the story:

I didn’t feel any different, at first. But that was expected – a blind person thought being blind was normal. There was no gaping hole in my psyche.

I simply don't buy this. If you're blind from birth, sure. But if you're struck blind later in life you remember exactly what sight was like.

The most dangerous part of using an Editor was shaving the small patch of hair where your spine met your skull. People had died doing that.

Wait wait what? A death by shaving? What is this, the 1850s?

Tier: Top Contender

Andrea Martin is also wasting thousands of dollars per month trying to heat a house so full of holes that wind is blowing papers off the desk.

What's there to say about this story? It's a Shaggy Dog. Congratulations, you derailed into a joke that was just about the single most obvious and least funny place you could have taken the setup. The premise and prose of your actual buildup were trending into Strong territory, honestly, especially with great little touches like the ghost using slashes because it wasn't pressing the Shift key. This could easily have carried something much, much weightier. As it is this just gets a roll of the eyes and an "Eh." It'll probably land mid-slate somewhere on that potential, but I don't think there's a way to make me appreciate what you were trying to do.

Tier: Misaimed

C'mon folks, this story has received a grand total of six sentences of feedback from two reviewers. Let's show it some love.

So looking past the formatting, what do we have here? A whimsical little tale of gourdicide and unintended consequences. Also, what appears to be a stealth Peanuts crossover: we've got young Charlie (presumably surnamed Brown) talking about the Great Pumpkin, and he grows up to marry the little red-haired girl. Though the references are a bit off, because in the original comic it was Linus who believed that the Great Pumpkin would bring presents to children.

I'm not really sure the story holds up under its own weight, though. There's never any explanation given for the Great Pumpkin or his role in this world, but the way that everyone just rolls with what the card says implies that the Great Pumpkin's toy-delivering powers are common knowledge, which is at odds with Gary's earlier incomprehension. (Honestly, the whole toy-delivering angle comes up so suddenly and so briefly, without leaning hard on the crossover this just feels too random to work.) Also, is the Great Pumpkin mobile or not? Some fraction of the story's humor (and the premise of Gary killing him) relies on the answer being no, but the story opens with footsteps on the roof, which means the answer is yes.

“Charlie, he’s gone, I can’t magically bring him back.”

Gary's a "self-proclaimed man of reason", which makes this line all the stranger, especially with what I noted above about the ambiguity of whether people in this setting accept the GP as an actually existing being or not. He's rolling with magic pretty hard for a rationalist.

It's not that this story doesn't have its moments, author. The structure here is solid; you're lining up the beats of a silly comedy surprisingly well, and that timing is no small skill. The narrator's casual aside about killing squash was worth a grin. The jump cut to the ending worked as intended. But it feels like this falls apart in the details, like all the things I cited above. You can get a lot of mileage out of taking an absurd premise seriously and running it out to its logical conclusions, but that requires internal self-consistency, and a little more care with exposition so that you're sharing with the audience all of the context they need. Thanks for entering, and I hope that gives you some starting points for an edit pass and/or some things to think about for your next submission. ^.^

Tier: Needs Work

Alright, y'all, now that I've done a slate plus a couple, I need to stop Writeoffing and prepare for the convention I'm attending tomorrow. So I'm not gonna get to any more reviews before prelims end.

But can we show stories on the short end of the feedback scale some love? It was 3 days and 7 hours ago that we got every story to two reviews, and then we stalled out. There are still two stories with only two reviews:

14 Cold Comfort
30 Mind the gap!

And another large handful which have only gotten feedback from three readers:

6 An Almost-Perfect Verse in a Long Forgotten Tomb
10 The Coup
13 Digital Therapy
19 The Pumpkin Clause
23 Selections from Amaddisen’s Compendium of Cautions and Outcries
28 I'm Taking Off My Belt

Can we get everyone up to four different pieces of feedback in the next 24 hours?

Hm.

This one landed fairly high on my slate, mostly because it did a lot of basic storytelling tasks right. It builds a world through action and dialogue, starts at the interesting part, and requires a tough decision by the main characters.

But even though I ranked it highly, I'm not sure I love it. A lot of the dialogue is thinly disguised exposition, it's not really clear how these two got into this mess, and the author seems to be aiming for the most literal personification of the prompt I think I've ever seen.

I think, with a little more space to breathe, this story could work very well. As is, it'll be knocking around the upper parts of my slate, but not the top.

I’m experiencing here the same sort of dissonance I experienced with A Man Must Learn to Love: on the one side, we are in a story – the point of view is inside the head of the narrator, who has no means to leave a testimony of what he thinks, so this is definitely a story.

On the other side, you pepper this story with rules and things to remember when scuba-diving, which give a definite didactic dimension to your text. It could be part of a textbook about what to do or not to do when diving.

The problem is that once more I get the impression the story is contrived, the arc being purposefully crafted to match the lesson you’re trying to teach. It leaves me with aftertaste of artificiality.

At the end of the day, I think the lesson would’ve been stronger if you had presented it in a more dramatic way.

Consider this (true) story:

A boat is found adrift on the Mediterranean Sea. When people climb aboard, they discover a puzzling mystery: no one aboard, no corpses, nothing. Yet, on the deck, a table is dressed, dishes marred with scraps of food still lying there. It's like the people had vanished in thin air. What has happened? Were they abducted by an UFO?

The boat is towed into dry dock and examined, but nothing remarkable is found… until someone notices faint scratches on the hull painting.

So, here is what the police thinks happened: the guys had a boozy – maybe too boozy – lunch. When they were finished, someone prolly said: “The last to dive into the water is a rotten egg!” and they all jumped overboard… except that no one thought about unrolling the ladder. And when they realised they were stranded in water, they desperately tried to haul themselves back on to the deck, scratching the hull with their nails… but never succeeded. And since they were never found, it’s certain they all died.

Now there’s a very practical lesson to be learnt here (i.e. ‘mind the ladder before jumping overboard’), but presented as this, I think it’s way more efficient than stating it explicitly, because the reader is prompted to ponder on it, rather than simply swallow it down.

Change the POV. Pretend scuba divers find the corpse of a guy in a wreck, scatter indices around, and roll back in time to unveil us why this guy ended here and what mistakes he made when he was still living. I think it would be much more punchy this way.

I also disagree with the story's message, but I can tolerate that as long as it expresses that message effectively.

for me, it failed there.

Ok, as I understood it at first, it's some computer device that "hacks" the brain like its a computer to control its emotions. like a certain famous PKD story, but with the cool modern twist of users modding and jailbreaking the device. hacking one computer to hack another. but then all my understanding is shattered when it introduces the (supposed) cocaine, and now I'm thinking in terms of bio-chemistry instead. ignoring all other side effects on the organs, it's mainly cancelling out the dopamine?

and even then, that's not really addressing the problem of addiction, because it's about *missing* something (dopamine) rather than having something you can't get rid of. it's an expensive and complicated sci-fi method of going cold turkey. either way it's forcing withdrawal, and should be just as unpleasant.

then I started wondering other questions, like how this small device could be modded to do produce all these chemicals needed, since it's no longer just a "brain software" kinda thing. ehh, I know it's just me thinking too much about the science here. not necessarily from accuracy or realism, but because it seems to be about 2 contradictory ideas.

another thing, for a story that's about emotion, the narrator doesn't seem to have any. he seems so cold and indifferent that I assumed he was going to use the Editor for the exact opposite purpose. though maybe it's the result of the drug addiction? however, he neither seems high nor withdrawing, just sterile.

sorry for being so harsh. I wanted to like this.

I think I'm interpreting this similar to >>Astrarian
I don't like Steve.
but in a certain way I can see that might've been the intention of the story? or maybe not.

I'm just going in circles, second-guessing myself here.

I quite like this kind of stories, where it tries to describe a world, a feeling or a character through indirect morsels of information. It's fun to put together the original shape of which we are only seeing shadows.

While I appreciate the single entries that compose this piece, I can't help but feel that a stronger thematic thread would have improved it considerably. It could either let us know something more about the author of this entries by giving us glimpses of her opinions and her personality or try to paint a more cohesive world by letting us feel that there is some sort of connection or theme behind the situations described.

If your intention was instead to show us an absurd and chaotic universe then the word limits worked against you.

As it stands currently it feels a bit too disjointed. Still entertaining and well written in its components, but a bit lacking when confronted with the (admittedly quite solid and challenging) other entries.

At first I thought that it was some kind of snappy comedy, then a musing about how sometimes words lose impact and meaning. And then I became a bit uneasy. Then uncomfortable.

And then it deflated.

I have to agree with >>Astrarian here, it should probably have been a bit shorter and leaner to keep the emotional impact it acquired half through the piece. Compacting it a bit will make it more powerful in my opinion, and after that you'll have something with quite a punch.

[b]Georg’s first Round Micro Reviews for the new stories on my slate A Word of Warning Scores are letter grades for Plot, Technical Work, and Characterization mushed together, with an E for stories I find particularly Enjoyable. Ranked by how I like them, not necessarily how perfect they are on the score. (and posted all at once, from top to bottom so they line up on the chat.)

Enjoyed - A Man Must Learn To Love — A+ — A parable or tale done in the best tradition of Arabic storytelling. Top tier.

Enjoyed - The Path of Vengeance — A+ — Extremely good characterization of the priest, who in stories such as this is a voice of peace and submission to authority, even when said authority is unjust. Quite good work on the ranger too, who is about to remind those who pillage the beehive that they must occasionally deal with an enraged bee. I liked it. Not sure if it will hit the finals, but it should.

Open Invitation — A+ — The flow and patter of the story draws you in and along really, really well. Seriously, we have all the parts of a good story, fitted together well, and flowing smooth from beginning to end. We have a hook that makes the reader think “Why did the door open” and by the time the natural assumption is made, it flows on to the next item, and the next, and so on.


I think it’s the reincarnation of Eddie Murphy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InLfUMjyKNo

Cold Comfort — A — Good, but skeletal on descriptions (checks the size) Ah, and just barely under the limit. That’s probably why. Does the ‘Entrancing pull you into the story’ really well, and even without character descriptions, the two of them can be easily determined from their dialogue. Would be interested in seeing this fleshed out. Nice work on minimalistic worldbuilding.

The Guard — A — Another drags you right into the story and keeps it up until the end, and manages to do it all in well under the word limit. My mental questions were answered as they popped up, the characters unfolded as I expected. That would be about the only ding I’d have on it, as it really didn’t unwind in an unexpected fashion. Still, very neat.

The Massacre at Unit P12 — A — Excellent characterization, both in present and passed-on characters, which reflects an unfortunate truth. People pay money to put stuff into storage that should have gone to the trash instead, and they *continue* to pay money long after whatever value is there has gone away. There *are* exceptions, such as the research book in the story. It struck a chord with me, not only the author-me but the hopeless hoarder-me. I have to tell a story now. (Shut up, you young twerps, and listen to your elders)


I had a friend in college who had a Sociology degree, which as far as I can tell is the one degree less-worthwhile than a degree in Feminist Studies, despite the godawful amount of math that goes into it. He was a fellow bookworm, collected RPG gaming stuff, little plastic miniatures, built his own RPG systems out of bits and pieces culled from other systems until he had one that would take three days to generate a character. The rest of us gamers all played mostly 2E D&D, which we all could play and didn’t take a week to make a character, and while we were in college, we played almost every Saturday night. (Shut up, kids. I’m getting to the point.)


And one day in his 40’s, he had a stroke, went into a coma, and never came out.


The rest of us guys went to his trailer house with the assistance of his roommate, who also had a similar low-paying career, and we cleaned. Everybody went home with a car full of books, research materials, games, and etc, but we must have put a literal *ton* of books into the trash. Every one he had bought used. Every one was nearly useless in resale value. Every one of which everybody looked at and passed on down the line to the dumpster, because we too had piles of them at home, and no place to put more.


I still have a couple boxes of his books in the basement. Sometimes, I’ll read one or two of them. The problem is the memories that stick with things like that. I’ll be reading along and come to one of his bookmarks, which had scribbled notes on our ongoing D&D game from twenty years ago and I’ll have to stop.


All I have to say is when I go, I want to take it all with me.

Digital Therapy — B+ — Cute as a baby fox. A little stilted with the writing in places, (opening box with box cutter looks funny, even though thats what you do) but sweeps along to the ending. I wonder if those familiars *actually* talk if they determine the patient is so over the edge they need a real doctor.