The beginning of this story was actually really strong. The idea of a rich family keeping a strange tradition at the behest of a long-dead ancestor was interesting, and I think the story kept it fairly well afloat. I also liked how the son grew to appreciate his mother and deceased father more out of how they changed from the bitterness the grandfather left behind. And despite what a few others on this page are saying, I thought the dead lawyer jokes were funny. (Having worked in the legal field briefly, I can confirm that lawyers will often tell dark jokes about other lawyers. Just don't try to tell them one to their faces. Another old saying: "Everybody hates lawyers until they need one.")

That being said, I have to fall in with the rest of the crowd in saying that the ending is rather unsatisfying. It has such good build-up with how much of a bastard Ezekiel is, but then it just kind of throws in a loophole that kind of ruins the melancholic feeling of the piece. The tragedy is that Ezekiel made a lot of enemies and tried to keep his bitterness alive through is ancestors, yet the piece just sort of shrugs and goes "nah, we just forgot about it, yo". It feels like a cop out instead of trying to wonder if maybe this bitterness wasn't entirely misplaced. After all, Christin's father was just killed by some criminals; who's to say they weren't some of Ezekiel's old enemies? How much more grey would this story have become if Ezekiel may have had a point?

And given my aforementioned dabbling in the legal field, I have to say that the set-up for this story makes no sense. If going to this gravesite was a requirement specified by a legal trust, there's no way in Hell that the trust wouldn't send an attorney to make sure the action is taken. And no, the mother wouldn't count, as she has a clear conflict of interest in favor of her son; any trust this well funded and long established would've sent an objective attorney or at least witness to confirm that the actions were done as specified by the trust. I know this is real nitpicky, but I can't help but notice how this entire situation is just a set-up for a huge legal snafu.

An interesting character piece that stumbles in its ending and situation.

I actually really enjoyed this story. The whole concept of a farmer just going about his day and encountering various creatures is interesting enough, and it's written with such a clarity that I felt really involved with the story. The imagery was also beautiful; there was never a point where I had trouble visualizing this farm or any other places the farmer encounters during his day. Finally, there was an underlying feeling that he and his way of life were slowly dying, but he wasn't really fighting against it as it was just a natural occurrence, like the winter. That's what I took the ending as with the snow: him realizing that his eventual decline was just another happening in nature and that there was no shame in gently fading away like the other seasons of the year.

However, there were some things that did bother me. The most obvious was some of the strong language used to describe the modernistic things encroaching his farm. For instance:

More likely, they would be sold to a land developer, either to build a slew of cookie-cutter, ugly “chalets” or a new ski lift for fucking dickheads teens coming from the capital city.

The sudden escalation to "fucking dickheads" just felt a bit too awkward. Here is a man that comes off as relatively calm, yet this anger comes out of nowhere and in such extreme language. I'm not saying elders don't curse, but the sudden intensity just feels out of place and very out of character for a guy who seemed rather down-to-earth with his speaking. Also, it didn't make sense for this to occur when the narrator had been a relatively neutral third-person perspective for the rest of the story.

I also got somewhat annoyed by how much time was spent slamming all of the modern things around him. Admittedly, I can see why it was needed with his conversation with the driver, given how that's the topic of their discussion. However, there were scenes where it spent so much time dwelling on it (i.e. the milking cows scene and the walk in the forest scene) that it felt more like a hit piece against modern life than a story about this man's life in a backwoods farm. It's so frustrating to see a very well-done story like this spend too much time soap-boxing instead of letting this natural story play out. The story doesn't need a moral or an aesop about modern life destroying the little man; let it breathe as is.

Despite these issues, this was one of my favorites for this round so far. It was one of the few that seemed more focused on a situation and a character than a plot, and I thought it executed it for the most part well. There's no real destination or journey, just an experience. Some might say that it's dull and feels rather pointless because of this, but I think that it works as a demonstration of observation of setting and character. Fix it up a bit, and I think it would be a good piece of fiction.

I liked the introduction, but the examples in the second paragraph may go on for a bit too much. It didn't bother me personally, but for some readers some of those examples may hit a little too close to home and distract from the story.

An unlikely bond between two enemies because of video games rang true to me, I could definitely see these guys being friends despite the aggressiveness and differences between them.

"Uncomfortable sense of escalation" is a pretty good description of how I was feeling there, yeah.

I had similar issues keeping track of the perspective. I caught some of the clues that the story was being told from Sol's perspective (steam messages, tax accessor), but I didn't put it together to get to that conclusion and in the moment just made things a bit confusing.

I don't think I'm the target audience for this one; there's nobody here I want to root for, nobody I'm interested in seeing win or lose.
The main characters are too similar in voice, name, and depth. That's especially bad with how many POV shifts there are. It'd be more interesting to see each of their stories play out separately and then crash together at that perfectly inopportune moment.
The secondary characters need some personality too, Sarah is little more than a name and a sudden sneeze, and Evie doesn't fare much better. The scenery could use the same treatment.

"It was obvious she wanted it from the way she dressed. It was money the cheap bastard should've put in payroll to begin with."
These last two examples don't fit: neither one has an opposite presented. The first one also falls somewhere between completely tasteless and flagrantly offensive. It isn't needed; drop it.

Otherwise I thought this was brilliantly written. The characters are solidly unlikable in that special way that still makes them compelling to read about, especially their special brand of caustic friendship.

One final gripe: your pseudo-POV jump at the end threw me. I went back through the scene breaks to see if I had missed something, if you'd actually been jumping back and forth and that I'd just misread. After another reread I can see why you did it, and I can't deny how good a twist it creates. I think you could do some work to make the shift less jarring, like a stronger scene break or some meta narrator line to clue the reader in.

The strongest point of this story for me was the atmosphere. Part and parcel of that were the vivid descriptions and a consistent tone.

There were a few oddities, but mechanically it was generally clean, and there were some very good turns of phrase. An early one that stood out to me was: "There is a faint pop from far away, followed by the staccato chatter of an AK-47. Distance mellows the sharp sound, rounding the edges into a softer beat"

I’m not in a position to judge the authenticity, but to me it felt authentic, or at least well-researched.

Character voicing was strong. There were some provocative statements, but that may be intentional to show Sholtez's state of mind. It helps feed a growing sense of alarm as the story progresses and you realize just how unhinged the narrator is.

One point of confusion; earlier on their position is described as a glorified foxhole, but then when their commander comes, he has to climb up to get to them. I ended up having to google HESCO, and it sort of made sense, but it could've been clearer.

The pacing worked for me. Overtly it feels slow and meandering, which in other stories could be boring, but this one is crafted well enough that I was kept entertained. Beneath the languid digressions, though, events moved forwards, the tension building until the climax almost sneaks up on you and the reader is caught as flat-footed as DeeDee. There's a sense of confusion and alarm at the sudden turn in events, and the powerlessness to change them.

The resolution does have shades of deus ex. If there was intended to be a literal deus involved, there was no indication of it, but even without it, it works well enough as-is; another indication of the capriciousness of the universe.

Overall, a very well crafted story. A little wandering at times, but then so is the Mississippi, and slow and meandering things can still be powerful.

So there's an interesting split here: >>Ferd Threstle and >>Chinchillax both complain about the lack of conflict, and >>Windfox and >>libertydude defend or appreciate the lengthy, extended look at the protagonist's routine. (By the way, by my count it's almost 2400 words before the first conflict hook: when he starts talking with Peter about his neighbors' abandonment of farming, and he gets the ever-smaller check for the milk.) So I think it's far from a hard and fast rule that a story has to have conflict; clearly this is finding an appreciative audience. But I'm going to come down on the side of those arguing that the lack of conflict is hurting the story, and I'm going to try to explain why.

The one iron law of writing is, to quote Vonnegut: "Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted." Conflict, plot, characterization, even spelling and grammar: these things are all ultimately secondary to whether you have entertained your audience. The thing is, all of those elements are big tools in the fiction toolbox because they strongly help with that goal, and if you're going to discard them it helps to make sure you're hooking readers in other ways.

For me, a lot of that comes down to novelty. This is why, all other things being equal, I prefer to curl up with some good sci-fi or fantasy. (And it's a lot of what I appreciate about My Little Pony.) If a story is laying out a cool setting, exploring that can engage me. If a story is realistic fiction but telling me about a place outside of my experience, exploring that can engage me. But it's not a genre thing, it's still a novelty thing.

Some examples. (Looking just at the settings and not my overall opinions of the story.) All of these are sci-fi or sci-fi-ish: Competing against Immortals' discussion of AI overtaking human employment was familiar ground to me and so a little lackluster; The Job's setting was not clear enough to draw me in; Guard and Assist's robot junkyard was kind of in a sweet spot. And some modern-day pieces: Marjah grounded its story so much in a particular sense of place that I felt like I was getting a full travelogue out of it; The Collision of Seasons' two dudes playing video games is kind of a walking cliche; and You Can't Take It With You has some weird-cool family legacy stuff going on when it's not just a kid and his mom in a car. Here, even though it's set on a dairy farm, the entire first scene is a guy waking up and eating breakfast, which is entirely unexceptional, and it's not even until he heads outside that I start seeing descriptions of things I don't personally do every day.

The thing is, so much of this story is about that scene-setting and that sense of place that ... well, I'm not sure what else there is to provide engagement until you start bringing the conflict in later on. Another way of framing that is the difference between effective writing and good writing: you certainly effectively characterize the farmer's unchanging daily routine, but writing well about boring things doesn't fix the core problem of them being boring.

I'd suggest perhaps taking your late conflict -- over the growing poverty as the milk money dries up -- and seeding that throughout your story more deliberately. Peter eats a slice of bread for breakfast, and feeds Seamus bread. What if he pauses to think about the more filling foods he wishes he was having, or we hear Seamus whine for some meat that Peter can't afford? Peter gets up in the morning. What if he's cold in spots because the blanket's thin and lumpy and all he can do is try to patch it up by hand until he saves up enough for a new one? A struggle against poverty really feeds into your themes here, and introduces conflict immediately from the start.

The scenes of milking are probably the strongest and most engaging of your pure-scene-setting moments, and probably stand on their own (although if he sets aside some milk for himself and Seamus, that might feed back into the breakfast scene I suggested earlier).

Anyway, hope that helps.

Tier: Almost There

Enjoy your gold. It's overdue.

Tier: Top Contender

Edit: Watch those acronyms, though, and descriptions of things more generally. As >>Ratlab notes, nobody in your audience is going to know (for example) what a HESCO is without Google or context; while you call it a "HESCO barrier" on first reference, the fact that it's got enough shade to stand in gave me a very different mental image from what I saw when I googled it. Maybe "huddling in the low, sparse shade of a HESCO barrier" or something?

A little wordy occasionally, and a few grammar hiccups, but relatively minor stuff.

This wasn't description heavy, but some stood out; the Monster's initial introduction was particularly well done, I thought.

I enjoyed the first scene, but its ending didn't quite work for me. If I was chatting with some girl in the middle of winter, and then she jumps into a frozen pond and doesn't come back up, I'd flip out, no matter what monster business or ancillary strangeness there was.

I'd expect the next scene to be exploring the repercussions of the first scene; either dealing with the fallout of the authorities, or coming to grips with the existence of the supernatural. Instead she just walks by the pond again, and the emotional turmoil is downplayed to an offhand mention of hallucination. Did she find out about the legend at this point, and that's why she's going by? Are monsters normal here? I'd really like to get more of a sense of her thoughts and reactions.

I enjoyed the dialog between the two on their second meeting and later. Dialog and characterization were one of the strong points of the piece. I Chuckled at the dogs bit.

I also quite enjoyed the 'trying different things out to figure out the supernatural' montage. As well, it was super engrossing one you get into the meat of what's going on and the backstory.

One niggle: she fills the bathtub to 'close to overflowing' and then dumps a bunch of ice cubes into it? It seems like they'd displace the water and make more than a little bit of a mess.

Google is even more powerful than I realized. She's awfully coy about just what it is she googled, though. I'd actually like to know more about this. Akin to this is that there's very little worldbuilding, so I have no idea of how normal or abnormal this is.

Overall an enjoyable piece. I enjoyed the characters and their chemistry, and the action was effective. My biggest complaint was not enough of a glimpse into Audrey's head, which made it difficult to understand her actions. Similar to that was not understanding enough about the world. Despite these, the story's strengths handily exceeded its flaws, and I'm glad I read it.

Ohhhh, OK, I get the twist after reading the comments. I thought they were the 200 Kelvin club, like some kind of uber-hardcore Polar Bear dudes.

I dunno. I feel like this had a lot of near-misses with effective world building. There are bits and hints all over the place about what's going on, but IMO the teases of a more traditional post-apocalyptic scenario ultimately work against the potential impact that the protag's feelings of loss and pining (perhaps even for fjords) could have if we just knew what was going on from the beginning. There's a fine line between withholding details to hook the audience and pull them along for a mystery, and just keeping them confused and guessing in the dark. IMO this was aiming for the former but ended up being much more the latter.

The story's real strength was in the kids' reactions and in the teacher's sense of wonder for watching the kids' reactions, plus the teacher's wistfulness. IMO not much of that goes away if we know WTFIGO from the start. If anything, it would make the worker guys' reactions at the end seem a lot less jarring, and would make the teacher's feeling of "worth it" come across more strongly.

I liked the sense of heaviness that this conveyed. The conversation between Old Dude and Farmer Dudes felt pitch-perfect, up to and including the "lesson" that he didn't need to know. As much as the ending disrupts the rest of the narrative flow, I felt it was a useful explanation of why everything was going the way it did.

With that said, I don't understand the whole animals-turning-white thing. I also don't know why the farmers are doing so much better if Winter Is Coming... wouldn't everyone be pretty equally screwed if there weren't robust stocks of produce hidden somewhere to get them through the 100-generation-long winter?

So while there are some aspects of the story and world that don't make sense upon further reflection, I really liked the mood it established. I also thought Old Dude was a pretty solid character. I do wish he had more of a payoff for his arc at the end, though. And seriously, his reaction to the snow was so extreme that I wondered if there was going to be some kind of swerve about nuclear winter or related shenanigans.

There was a line here that represented the point where the story lost me:

It was only when AI started to be able to perform the psychological reassurance process just as well as a human could, that doctors started to lose their jobs.”

Here's the thing: That was dialogue, not narration. The latter could be swallow-able, but as the former, it becomes a bit too "As you know, Bob." This is then hammered home with more and more Bob-isms throughout. Sadly, that blunts the overall point and scenario, which made earnest efforts to assert their interesting-ness, but which were left to drown in a sea of Bob.

With that said, I am absolutely not bottom-slating this. There's enough good in here to see what the story was probably trying to be. I think some drastic cutting of the central conversation would let that shine through.

Well whaddaya know, I'm not even in this Writeoff and I did a slate.

Not that I miss you guys or anything.

B-baka.

>>CoffeeMinion
Then you ought to reward yourself by doing some mash-ups, too!


Competing Against The Saxophonist - Turns out that Artificial Intelligences do better than humans at dating, too.

Prologue to Cold - When the old hunter touches his first snowflake and starts to scream in blind panic, the history teacher realizes that inviting him along on the class' Christmas field trip was a bad idea.

Guard the Least - This unit is prepared to use its missiles to defend the megafauna who calls himself the Ersatzwolf. He just wants to be a good dog.

Hiemjah - Chairman Barr just wanted Officer Oakwood to locate the mobsters who attacked the library. Turned out that there was someone on the force even more psychotic than Chairman Barr. (Too bad casters use energy bolts, not bullets.)

On the day before the Old World - The black dragon that runs the dairy farm keeps getting annoyed by his skeleton wife's desire to sell the place and leave, but finally gives in when she helps him discover The True Meaning Of Christmas.

Winter Weather PLZ NO FLAMES - During a winter camping trip, a man discovers that his girlfriend Sara and his parents are secretly gothic furry fans. They show him their Shadow fanfics. That's when he runs away screaming.

The Flame, The Fox, The Saxophonist, And The Collision Of Seasons - The good news is that Ruiha has recruited a bunch of guys to bring the adventuring party's size back up to five! The bad news is that two of them kill each other two minutes in, the other one spends all his time trying to hit on Ruiha, and Yseult still ends up having to do all the work.

>>horizon
This was actually a very good explanation of why you think it doesn't work, and I'm glad you said it. It made me think more about why I personally liked it, and I think I figured it out.

For me, I'm willing to dabble in more realistic, everyday subjects. While I, like you, do prefer to read fantasy and sci-fi, I enjoy more realistic and familiar situations...if they can be relayed to me in interesting ways. In this piece, the way in which the farmer eats breakfast and how he goes about his day is more interesting to me than the conflict itself. The lackadaisical pace of the events really invokes the few experiences I've had on farms, where taking care of the land is done with both reverence and quiet urgency. In fact, I feel like the conflict should've just been this: him taking care of the farm and dealing with old age. The rants against modernity are actually one of the things I dislike about the story, and I wish they were toned down. The conflict is already here, and it works better when it's not beaten over the reader's head as obviously.

Of course, this may just be a difference in taste, but I still maintain that this story is one of the better ones of this ilk. But it was still intriguing to see how your approach differs from mine and how that can affect one's perception of a work.

A solid and evocative take on the prompt.

And absolutely not for me. I find the main character utterly insufferable, and since this is almost entirely a character piece, it just isn't going to work for me unfortunately.

The biggest problem I have technically is that the narrative is very clipped. There's a lot of "He X. He Y. He Z." when such things could be handled a little more elegantly with more varied sentence structure. It might by a stylistic choice, but if it is, I don't think it does the narration any favors.

Also, yeah, cow scene was weird. Doubly so with the hoofed origins of this community. >_>

Very nice ending though. Strongest bit of the whole thing.

>>horizon
Yes sir, ma'am sir!

Belly of Everybody's Fool: Can Sahdow's goffik pet dog Make Zootopia Great Again through the power of randomly biting people? Will XXXbloodyrists666XXX ever get the mods to ban preps who keep comparing her editing skillz to hitting a story with a sack of drowning cats? IS THIS MAHSUP LONG ENOUGH YET ROGUER?! IS IT?

Prologue to the Winter Job, Chapter 47: Slippery Jimmy diGriz totally wants to steal the Dragon Cloak of Winnebago for his good (and fashionable) buddy Roy, but he ends up in the yurt of some old dude who lights a candle made of wacky tabbacky, and he ends up hallucinating about hot yaoi hedgehogs going at it...

This is a story that, while cute and interesting, doesn't seem to gel. The overall concept doesn't quite work for me, as the robotic-ness of things never really seems to click in an effective way. The janitor-bot feels too human (seriously, why program that level of emotion into it?), while the guard-bot, ironically, loses his emotional punch because he's programmed to be nice. I think something about the shape of the story needs to change to make it work super well, but I'm not quite sure what.

Still, I think this is an excellent core to continue working on. I was worried the robotic tone would drag, but it actually works quite well. Good job on that!

You know, I realize I just said this in the previous review, but this is another story that doesn't quite feel like it gels, all told. The elements established at the beginning don't really carry through to the end. Essentially the end feels largely disconnected from the rest of the conflict in the story. There is no real moment of realization for Christin, or even the hint thereof.

I think this piece would benefit from reexamining exactly what the story it wants to tell is. There's a lot going on here, but much of it pulls in different directions and doesn't really feed back into the core narrative.

I am abstaining on this story. Apologies to the author.

One thing worth noting is that you will probably want to clean up your actual story structure a little bit. The arc is a bit unsatisfying because we open on Sam's exploits (and Sam's PoV), but we end on Alan's triumph and his PoV. Basically, the story you promise at the start is not the story you finish with.

Nooo five minutes to go and my recap is not done. I'm 1,500 words into it and it’s far to be finished. :( :(

Aww, this should have made it to finals. I top-slated it.

Dang.

On the day before

This text was written in the middle of a chaotic weekend, where I had to fix my SME’s mail server, the former one having failed the Thursday before. I was under a lot of stress – you know how the life of people, both professional and personal, now depends upon the quick and reliable delivery of those messages – but things unexpectedly brightened up and I was able to restore most of the functionalities, with improvements, Sunday night (with further tweaking until yesterday). Also I had a lecture Monday morning so lacked real time to edit the piece, explaining for example the “desert” instead of “deserted” – Horizon I remember you castigating Cali for that rounds ago.

When I “took my quill” to begin writing this, I suddenly realised it was a subject I had been wanting to tackle for a long while, but it had remained in the background of my mind, waiting for the right time to come out.

Mostly, this is a digest, in a slightly modified form, of what the life of the farmers during the late 70s in the small valley of the northern French Alps were I partly grew up looked like (of course I had to delete all the names, otherwise it would have been so easy to spot me as the author). They were still abiding by ancestral traditions, and not much had changed since centuries (think that in the Basque country, at the Spain-France border, agricultural practice in the early 20th century, as evidenced by ethnologists, could still be traced back to Neolithic: few things had changed in more than six millennia). Of course, they had access to electricity and cars, but that had not profoundly altered the way they lived, which was regulated by the seasons and the daily tasks they had to perform

The more “lucky” parts of the Alpine range, especially the higher villages, had already experienced what has been dubbed as “Le plan neige” (Snow plan), starting in the ‘50s: touristic resorts and ski-lifts were built at an accelerated pace, defiling the landscape (think about a couple of high-rise, bare concrete buildings with associated parking lots and malls where a meadow cleft by a brook had been lying for ages) and transforming the life of the former farmers into … something else: some became ski teachers, some went to work for the ski-lift operators, some became snowcat drivers, some opened shops or restaurants, etc. In a couple of decades, their life took a dramatic turn no one had expected. That sweeping tidal wave could not be dammed off even by the highest peaks, and the smaller valleys were touched too, though to a lesser degree: tourism kicked in, but developed at a much more moderate pace. Farmers managed to adapt, tending to their animals in the early morning and late evening, and spending the rest of the day at the ski-lifts. In a way, they killed two birds with one stone, ditching their old winter occupations (that had been outdated by modernity anyway) to morph into daytime employees and earn a regular income – at least during the ski season.

One of the farmers I was very close to (she considered me as one of their nephews of sorts) worked at the end/top station of a ski-lift , watching the people as they stood up from the moving chairs, ready the press the red bouton that would stop the merry-go-round if anything went wrong. We would spend days inside the cabin, small-taking about anything and slandering some “clients” (the most garish ones) while their continuous flow poured on and on. At noon, we would eat cheese and smoked ham she and her husband had made themselves.

(The lumber stove that is described in the story serves as a stove, but also warms the water that’s fed into the various heaters scattered through the house. This is of course modern equipment: in the very old times, heating was provided by the animal themselves. There was no wall between the cowshed and the bedroom, as evidenced by the fact that both bear the same name in dialect “beust”, where you can recognise the “be-” root as in beef. Also, directly behind the stove was a small cabinet where the exhaust pipe would open; that's where they put ham and sausages to be smoked – called “starfu”. They had plenty of spruce logs at their disposal, as in exchange for light summer chores, the municipality would allow each farmer to fell a quantity of timber more than sufficient to provide with heating all the winter through.)

But although they derived all those incomes from the tourists, they profoundly despised them. They saw them as ruthless intruders, brazen and uncouth braggarts trampling on their traditions. Motto was “Give us your money and fuck off”. Which, like all sweeping statements, were both true and false. True, some people were really arrogant, considering the locals as primitive hicks barely able to speak French (most people were still speaking in dialect back then) and sell them their ski-lift passes. But some others were really nice, and moved by a genuine desire to discover aspects of the farmers’ lives that were, so to speak, hidden under the snow blanket.

However, the majority was just indifferent, simply coming to breathe unspoiled air and have fun sliding down the pistes.

But, overall, the transition was too quick, too brutal, resulting in a sort of mini-clash of civilisation. The shockwave also fractured the families, with the elders sticking to the old ways, and the younger eager to embrace the modern life they would catch a glimpse of through the habits and stuff the tourists carried with them (TV also was a strong catalyst). That led some farmers to sell their estate to the land developers in order to fuel the studies of their children, something I only skimmed in the story.

But no, Horizon, they weren't poor anymore. They could sell a small piece of their estate any time and live on a hoard for the rest of their lives. If they ate bread, that’s because they'd always done so. They lived humbly and skimpily. They had no real needs. Pork products they made themselves, rearing a hog during spring/summer and slaughtering it when autumn came. Veggies they grew in their garden, and in Fall they gathered mushrooms, chestnuts and other edible sweets nature offered liberally. Cheese, butter and cream they made themselves too. Eggs they had galore. All they needed was bread, and noodles (wheat), wine, fresh fruit during winter. With fruit from their trees (plum, mainly, but also apple, pear…) they made brandy. Their dogs ate noodles and leftovers.

Modernity had smashed their way of life, but made them rich – if they wanted.

Of course, that way of life was inherited from a time were their ancestors were really destitute.

That brings me to another tangent, the history of the word “cretin”. When the Reformation hit the world, it cast a profound split between those who embraced the new dogma (often voluntarily) and those whose rejected it (often because they simply weren't aware of it, or they were submissive to their curate’s words). In the French Alps, the Reformation was welcomed in the (rich and intellectual) city of Geneva, while the neighbouring mountains remained staunch to the old faith. The actual border between France and Switzerland around Geneva, which isn't backed by any distinctive trait in the landscape (no mountain ridge, no major river) is a testament to this period.

Now Geneva sits on the Rhone river, which flows all the way down to the Mediterranean. Boats could sail upstream and bring in produce from the south of France, amongst which marine salt that was lacking in the mountains (as far I as know, there isn't any salt mine in the Northern Alps). So Genevans were rich and lucky enough to get the salt the poor peasants in the mountains didn't have access to.

What of it? With marine salt comes iodine, that substance indispensable to the thyroid gland. No salt, no iodine, atrophied thyroid. And the thyroid controls brain development, so lack of iodine means you become a moron (among others symptoms). So moronism was frequent amid the peasants, but spared the denizens of the more privileged city of Geneva.

Now Genevans came to refer to the peasants as “Cretins”, that word meaning just “Christians” in dialect, as opposed to themselves, the Protestants. So those Cretins were associated with moronism, and when the word passed from dialect into regular French it acquired that specialised meaning, and kept it when it was in turn borrowed into English.

So no, there was no conflict to be developed around the notion that the guy was poor, which he wasn't. He was simply living the way he'd always lived, but with diminishing incomes.

That brings me to the second quake, the advent of modern regulations, mainly imposed by the European administration (which became a scapegoat for many other woes). When I was young, small farmers still milked cows manually, and the dairy cooperative had a small laboratory to assess the number of bacteria (especially E. Coli) found in the milk: “less contaminated” milk was paid higher as there was less processing involved. In turn, that milk was used for the fabrication of the local cheese called “Reblochon” (made with boiled milk, so the process would pasteurise away all the bacteria anyway). But then European rules kicked in, mainly driven by northern Anglo-Saxon countries, with an emphasis on cleanness. Manual milking was phased out as dirty, and the new rules imposed the use of milking machines and a strict control of dung elimination and cowshed cleaning.

That was, so to speak, the final blow to small farmers. With herds hardly over a dozen beasts, they didn't have the financial resources to face these new requirements and invest into new machines (and the banks wouldn’t lend them the money anyway); on the other hand, the bigger farmers did it, and some of the smaller ones sold their animals to them, leading to a “concentration” process. Now, I’m not certain those European rules were needed or relevant, but there’s a modern phobia of dirtiness the authorities could not ignore. I have no opinion on the matter. I just merely note that those people who weren’t afraid of grime and crud were and still are bit by ticks all around the year, and they never develop any Lyme symptom (and are seldom ill anyway).

Sometimes those regulations go a bit overkill. The “reblochon”, that cheese made up from local milk, is now protected under an “AOC”. Typically, that means that the name is copyrighted and reserved to a cheese that meets a number of stringent standards spelled out on a charter. Amid these criteria is, of course, the place of making, but also the race of the cows that produce the milk used, as well as the size, depth and weight of the final product.

Until a few years ago, it was possible to find “declassified” cheeses, meaning one criterium, often weight or size, was outside the tolerances. Those cheeses were denied the name reblochon and sold as anonymous produce, and you could get two for the price of a single branded reblochon (by the way, if you want to know the story of that name, ask me). They were scrumptious, often better than the genuine ones; most restaurants used them to make tartiflette, a (apocryphal) dish made up of sliced potatoes topped with reblochon and baked in oven (the cheese would melt so the aspect of the original product did not matter much anyway).

Now, since a couple of years ago, new regulations have entered in force and it is forbidden to sell those culled out cheeses. I suppose the restaurants still get them by unofficial, undercurrent means, but for those who don't know personally any producer, it’s dead as a doornail.

So times change, and not always for the best.

As you can have figured out now, everything I wrote in the story I witnessed in my youth. The forest road and the hunters’ shack exist, but there's never been any accident as far as I know.

The objective here was to write a pure slice of life without conflict. No need to shake everything down to the roots, its absence was deliberate.

It was a documentary fiction. You can't expect a documentary to be constructed like a regular fiction, be it written or filmed.

I was aware the WriteOff would be a bad choice to "publish" such as "story", given the profile of mainly young, urban and American readers. This speaks of things so remote to the modern American universe that most readers had no reason to care for or root for the guy. I was expecting the text to resonate slightly better among the more "rural" people (Hat), which it some how did.

I knew the slight perspective change from man to dog back to man at the beginning would jar some, but I had no better means to slur over the toilet scene: should I have instead gone in every detail?

The antipathy against the tourists was real. And as far as I know this has been stirred up again recently when teens from the city suburbs have had access to winter holidays, bringing their own rowdy deportment to the pistes (rap music and so on). That’s what is reflected in the story.

Now on to the last scene. I was always told how magical it was to go to bed in a landscape painted in green, yellow and ochre, wake up the next morning and discover all had been washed away during the night, the colours now hidden under a white, immaculate blanket, shining and twinkling under the rays of the sunrise. As if during the course of a few hours the universe had been cleansed and reborn under a different guise.

Magic of nature they were attuned to.

Now snow just means the ski-lifts can open earlier.

O tempora, o mores.

I wasn’t expecting anything, least of it making to the finals, so no worries. On the contrary, I’m flattered most of you appreciated the prose and the way that non-story was written. Most of all, the Writeoff are an opportunity to practice my English and my style, and I hope I didn’t fail you in that.

Good luck to the finalists, happy Christmas to all! See you for the next round,

maybe!

2400 words in four hours. Can I submit this? :P

>>Monokeras

I totally missed that you were skipping a bathroom scene by changing the viewpoint. Still, I think you could probably use a bit of narration to skim over it - 'he visited the loo' or something - or maybe put in a bit more. I remember being slightly curious if this house had a flush toilet or not. But either way, I don't think it's worth the confusion of switching viewpoints, especially so early in the story; it's like, is this a story about a man, or a story about a dog?

Thanks for the write-up; I found your influences here very interesting to read about. I've lived in more rural areas, but I've also lived in a country that's facing 'modernization' (although with much less aplomb in many ways :P ) and my grandfather was a small-time dairy farmer, so... I really do understand a fair bit of what's going on here personally, even if it's not personally happening to me.

>>Not_A_Hat

Hat you’re a peach ;)
Happy you could relate to the story, but I was certain you would have anyway! :P

Whelp, that was a thing. Obviously this isn't a complete story. It's more of a key chapter for a novella I'm planning out (and for that reason I'll be unpublishing this version). This was all of the story that could manage in the time allotted. All the same, I should've put a couple more sentences in to make the nature of the world clearer. Sorry about that!

There's no relation to SSR here. Rat just happened to be Roy's monicker for his lowly apprentice. It rolls off the tongue faster than Maggot, my first choice.

As for the utility of the candles, there really wasn't supposed to be any beyond ceremony. The two women and their skills are being sold like circus jugglers, a form of exotic entertainment not typically seen in the 'modern' world.

Dangit; all that, and we'll never even know who wrote this grand monstrosity.

I was entertained. Whoever you are, Anon, you accomplished that much.

S&S, take heart that your writing didn't fall entirely on hearts of stone: this was in second place in my voting. It hit the same sweet spot for me that movies like Fargo or Shaun of the Dead did, or a good rollicking session of the role-playing game Fiasco: these are horrible people in over their heads, and there's a comic satisfaction to watching them dig their own graves.

Maybe the humor's too subtle for general tastes? I don't know about anyone else, but this (for example) just landed in my sweet spot:

He gave an expansive gesture. “You know what I mean?”

“Uh huh,” said the woman. “No.”

“Right, exactly! And it's two halves, see. Male and female, each incomplete without the other. But they interpenetrate.” At this final point two gestured occurred to him: making a circle with the thumb and forefinger of one hand so it could put his index finger through it, which seemed too forward, versus simply interlacing his fingers, which didn't seem forward enough. In the end, lacking time to think, he tried to do both as the same time and ended up with a gesture that didn't look like much of anything.

And, I mean, despite everyone's complaints I think this is smooth characterization: Sam is too wrapped up in himself to listen to conversational partners and he's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. It's engaging, sets tone smartly, and is all but a giant clue bat that we're not supposed to be rooting for the protagonist.

Given that I'm in the minority here, I guess something along the lines of >>horizon might help from a different angle? There were a number of complaints about not being able to root for the main characters; maybe the trick here is to make the characters more likeable (or root-for-able) while preserving their basic jerkishness. But I'm very much not the person to lead that discussion, since I can't really think about much I'd change here -- if you're going with the Shaun of the Dead model, you don't want to make the characters more likeable, you just want to pile on them while following straight-faced plot beats. Which you did.

So, yeah. Really sorry to see this wash out.

Tier: Top Contender

So I woke up dis mrning 2 find tht my stry was NOT IN DA FINALS?!?!!? I dont get it. My story was so much bettr than the ohter 1 i red!!! I said I wasnt goin to repson d if i wasn t in teb final but now i am so mad i am gona have 2!!!

FUK U RODGER!

*cough*

I'm sorry, I'm not quite sure what came over me there. Or where I acquired that suspiciously photoshopped cutie mark...

Anyway, yes. >>CoffeeMinion, you need worry no more: I did this one. I submitted anonymously for two reasons: firstly, I didn't ever want this to show up on the list of stories I've entered in the past (which, given some of the stories I've entered in the past, says quite a lot about this one); and secondly, I was worried that this entry might upset people more than it entertained them. I know people in the past have been a tad upset at in-joke entries and other such silliness, and I was a bit worried about upsetting people too much.

I think it should be pretty obvious where I got the inspiration for this story from—horizon's takes on My Immortal are always excellent—and I kinda had so much fun writing that one other comment before the round that this ended up being all I could think of to enter. Out of desperation, I ran with it!

Here's a few fun facts people might have missed (because I actually did goddamn research for this monstrosity...)

1) XXXbloodyrists666XXX is the penname that Tara Gilesbie used to post the original My Immortal, and I figured I had to sneak some small reference to her in there somewhere.
2) Everybody's Fool is just another Evanescence song I picked at random. Literally the only song by them I actually know is that meme one, so forgive me if it's less appropriate to the subject matter.
3) The place I cut off at the end of the 2,000 words was deliberately planned from the start! The next word, incidentally, is "motherf*cker", in reference to a similar line from Enoby in My Immortal. I actually had to go back and add more words elsewhere (iirc, I added some more detail about Tails being a prep in one of the Author's Notes) to get back to the exact 2,000 word count when I switched from gdocs to the writeoff site.
4) Pretty much the entire plot line of this story is cobbled together from plots of the first few chapters of My Immortal, because in all honesty the important story here was the Author's Notes. However, unlike the comments horizon and I posted earlier, this was all original writing! Somehow, I think, that made it more fun.
5) >>georg: I didn't have to drink at all when writing this, but that's probably because I'm teetotal and I was having too much fun to let standards get in my way.

Thank you to everyone who commented on this story! I'm... kinda feeling a bit guilty that it attracted so many comments so early on. I was hoping this story would be buried under a far greater number of sensible entries, so I was a little shocked by the small number this round. Still, all your comments brought huge grins to my face throughout the week, and I may have doubled over with laughter at a few of them! You all helped turn this from being "some stupid thing I wrote in a few hours" to a genuinely fun time that I will probably never forget, so thank you all so much for that <3

>>QuillScratch

horizon's takes on My Immortal are always excellent

I love how you have to specify that in the plural.

The best part is that, even before my quick riff in this thread, you were still correct to do so. My pony magnum opus isn't the only one! About five years back I watched Immortals in a movie theater and it was so bad I had to mock it to blow off steam. You can find the carnage over at fanfiction.net under a throwaway account (it's rated M "for manly swears", though, so you can't google it — you have to know it's there).

It's a fun, silly take on the winter waifu story. While it avoids some of the worst romcom tropes, the idiot ball issue that the entire story centers around is frustrating. I really think the story would be helped a lot for the guy to think he's prepared and just, you know, eldritch abominations are still mind warping even at the best of times. You can almost play the entire story back out identically with that change, and I think it'd be better for it.

(Also, I realize it's comedy, but man, this guy seems literally insane for never bringing up his wife's oddness.)

Unfortunately this story just didn't do it for me. That said, it's hard to pinpoint exactly why. Ultimately, I suppose it amounts to the fact that the three primary elements (conflict, character, world) don't really feel like they actively support each other, with each fighting for space (or, in the case of conflict, not really having much presence at all).

I think the story might benefit a bit from refocusing and really emphasizing what story it wants to tell: is this just a piece about the world, about Bob dealing with his role in the world, about the kids experiencing joy and wonder, etc?

This is strongly written, perhaps my favorite in terms of the story it tells, but the POV jumps are just distracting as all hell. I get that that's a deliberate choice on the author's part, but... hell, I don't even know who the narrator is. It took multiple readings and this is the best I can come up with:

The narrator is Sol, who is narrating a story about Jack and Sol from Jack's perspective, though at times he slips from first-person-Jack perspective to third-person-Sol perspective and finally to first-person-Sol perspective at the end, which is the first real indication that the entire story up to this point was Sol pretending to be Jack.

Did that make sense?

Not sure how I feel about the rather literal take on a fantasy RPG, as most such efforts come from extremely amateur authors who simply don't know how to plot out a story. This, obvious, is of a much higher caliber, but it's hard to shake off that association.

At least they weren't talking about mana and hitpoints. Anyway, this will be pretty high on my slate.

“I know, I know,” he growled. “Every Devonshire at the age of fourteen goes to Great-Great-Grandfather Devonshire’s grave. And if we don’t, no access to the trust fund, no scholarships for college, and the family business won’t hire me even if I had a coating of peanut butter on my back and could dance Swan Lake.” He folded his arms and resumed looking out the side window. “That doesn't mean I have to like it.”

Quite the "As you know, Bob," moment, there.

And that's how Global Warming stole Christmas, kids!

Author, please take the following with a grain of salt, because there's a pretty good chance I'm simply not in your target audience. But... There's something weird going on here, and I think it's the sort of thing that bothers me about most 'apocalypse' style stories.

For whatever reason, this story links 'Christmas' really strongly to the idea of cold and snow, and shows through the actions of the children and adults that, in a heated world, the tradition has died out outside of history books.

This is, to put it plainly, more than a little ridiculous.

It's the sort of thing that apocalypse stories tend to do, though; postulate 'x' happening, and then jump straight to 'the world is crap' - without ever bothering to fill in the bits in-between. The things that my willing suspension of disbelief tend to rely on.

I mean, I'm pretty sure Christmas and a spirit of generosity can exist in warm places. Or is Australian Christmas a lie, because they go to the beach?

And how would 'global warming apocalypse' or whatever you've got going on here destroy the Christmas spirit? Are generosity, love, and joy such flimsy things that they rely on silly furniture like snow and Santa Claus to survive?

I just can't buy it. EDIT: And you should try reading A Christmas Carol at some point. Sorry, in hindsight this looks a bit rude. I apologize. (But if you haven't read it you should, it's pretty good and influences a zillion things.)

This... really didn't work for me. I tend to be a bit of a hard sell on 'apocalypse' style stories anyways, but I had a really hard time caring about your characters on top of that. The kids mostly seemed generic, and the only 'conflict' that I could find consisted of the MC making an emotion-driven choice for...well, I'm not really sure why he did it. None of the children seemed fundamentally changed by this, not in any way that I was convinced would stick around for more than a day or three - and because of that, I really couldn't bring myself to care when the MC ran into trouble for it. Not that it really affected him anyways. He's supposedly doing an act of charity, but what's the impact on him? Take better care of a few trees, deal with a bit of nagging. Meh.

And one fairly annoying nitpick:

She stared at me seriously before someone in the back piped up, though I missed seeing who. “What's a goose?”

Ignoring the fact that it starts with a 'she' and then changes to someone else talking... if the children really don't know what a goose is, how do they know a goose is 'a thing'? It's a small assumption to make, but it drew my attention to the author and rang really hollow.

On the upside, you've slipstreamed world elements and stuff into your dialogue and descriptions fairly cleanly; I had a pretty good idea of what you were working with, I think, despite not getting any real explanations.

Hey y'all. Thanks for the reviews. And sorry I didn't get any reviews done this round. Here's hoping I can make up for it next time round.

This is my first attempt at comedy, which was a fun change given that most of what I write tends to be sombre when it manages a happy ending. It is indeed very sitcom-y, and there's a very good reason for that: It's sort of a Peep Show fanfic with the serial numbers filed off, right down to the format.

And thank you in particular, >>horizon, for the post-reveal review. The reviewing session this round (when I found time to check in) was a little bit of a slog, and yours came as a welcome confidence-booster at the end. And it's a great example of how far smart people can differ in their reactions to a story, which ought to count as one of the Writeoff's more important lessons about the craft.

I liked this one a lot, mostly because it tells a character-driven story with nuanced characters and depth of emotion. Everything going on here is believable and motivated cleanly, and I can understand their interaction and empathize with both of them, which is great. The summer/winter thematics work well for me, and are cleanly built-up for the most part.

I was also a little caught-out by the POV switch or whatever goes on here. On the one hand, it really seems like a narrator switch, but the fact that the appellations carry through kinda screws with that. So was it Sol talking from Jack's perspective the whole time? But then, how did he know Jack's motivations? I think this could have benefited from a solid structure of some sort, even if it was a 'hr' and obvious narrator switch halfway through. Or possibly switch back and forth between narrators every other scene or so? Something like that. It makes the appellations tricky, but... they're kinda narratively weird already.

Very nice work! Not quite perfect, but probably the one I've liked best so far.

A brief note:

Upon reflection, I realize that some of my reviews this time have been pretty harsh or negative, and as an author, I realize this kind of feedback is sometimes difficult to deal with. I want to pair my criticisms with the other half of the picture: Every story I read this round I felt confident was written by a serious, competent author. This hasn't always been the case - sometimes it's clear that the writer is someone just starting out, or in a learning phase, or writing for their own fun rather than for a broader audience.

That wasn't the case here. All the stories - and perhaps most of all the stories that I came down hard on - demonstrated real promise. Often my complaints come in direct relation to that promise. There's nothing quite as disappointing as a story that's on the verge of being really strong, but fails in one or two fundamental ways, or as an author who clearly has the skills but makes character or plot decisions that go against my own sensibilities. Story problems are the nature of a competition that requires works to be written in the span of a few days. I know for a fact that every story I have written here has also possessed notable confusions, omissions, and outright flaws, each of which that people rightly noted in their reviews.

At this point, and given my impressions of the authors and the community here, I find it most valuable to give direct, undiluted feedback. Sometimes this is more helpful than other times - in particular, I don't always 'get' the story in the manner it's meant to be received. Monokeras and Blazzing's stories, for instance, both function much better in a fuller context than as a standalone writeoff story. So, I wish to sincerely express the hope that my comments have not been discouraging, and further remark on the overall high level of quality of authors that we have here. Thank you all for your stories - I would gladly read further works from any of you.

Sorry, accidentally posted a review here instead of on the story it goes with. :P

For some reason the narration here kept weirding me out. I think it was because everything was written as in first-person-present-tense, with the 'this unit' stuff, but my brain kept snapping into third-person because I kept reading 'this unit' as 'the unit' or something. I'm not really sure, but yeah. It was strange.

You might actually want to scale that back a bit. I feel like part of my confusion was if some parts were thoughts or narration? I realize the distinction is somewhat arbitrary in a piece like this, but… the uncertainty bugged me a little in places, even if it perhaps shouldn't have.

While your arc here is fairly well developed and covers the entire story, it seems a little… lumpy? The nannybot, for instance, gets a callback when they leave, but despite drawing extra attention, it doesn't seem to do much for the plot. The bit where they're wandering seems to use too many words without saying enough; I'm not really sure what you were getting at with that.

The bit where the cleaner runs out of the shop; I had no idea what was going on there, because I didn't realize they had already gone in and someone was trying to fix him or what. I thought they had just seen a shop and he scrammed.

The 'feels personally valued' bit is good, but I'd have liked some hint of this being a problem for the guardbot earlier. Maybe when he's still in the junkyard? Or when they escape the crane? I dunno, but as it is, it seemed to be a little too impromptu.

Overall, this was a pretty cute character piece, and had some clever lines in it. It develops a whole story arc across the entire narrative, which is great. Good work overall, if a bit un-even with managing the reader's attention.

>>Ferd Threstle
For me and my story, your comments were spot on. I was aware of some of my entry's limitations from the start, and you highlighted some others to boot. Honest, constructive feedback is important. Sometimes it's hard to hear, but improving as a writer requires getting used to hearing it and developing a knack for giving it. I thank you for your feedback!

This feels like the most... drafty story that's crossed my slate? Like all the big pieces are there. Arced plot. Decent characters. Interactions. Emotional and physical stakes. Little bit of world building (for all that it is pretty straight DnD-style fantasy). Etc. All the blocks are lined up! Just... you know. They are a bunch of individual blocks all lined up, not a single, cohesive whole.

(Forget it. I'm basically saying it AGAIN. The whole thing just isn't quite gelling.)

The narrative voicing here is a real problem. It's an interesting idea, but the opening doesn't actually correctly prepare the reader for what's going on, making some of the later shifts really confusing.

Before I continue, let me get this out of the way. This is very well written. Super solid. Very good voice, very smooth, etc.

Now, that said, I have a couple problems buying the actual materials. First of all, the obvious one being the risk of using unlikable characters. I don't like them. :p Beyond that, however, the nature of their relationship is... confusing to me, at best. Like, these seem to be two people who actually really hate each other. Like I get no sense of them complementing each other. It's honestly a miracle these guys didn't try to kill each other earlier, and I have trouble believing the two of them -actually- managing to have some sort of long term association.

The voice is another... interesting thing here. It is very good. But I'm not quite convinced it belongs to the narrator, if that makes sense. The voice Sol uses as a narrator doesn't quite link up to the character of Sol as portrayed in the story. Admittedly, he could be lying about himself or viewing himself through the altered perspective, but the little snippets we get don't quite feel like they add up to the narrator.

On the whole, I thought this was actually pretty good. Mina and Audrey were pretty interesting protagonists, and the development of their relationship felt very natural. I also liked how it was a more relaxed romance (at least up until the climax), where how the characters interacted was more important than the thrills the romance would cause.

If there'd be anything to adjust, it'd be cutting down on some of the descriptions. Don't get me wrong, for the most part, they're excellent and really help place the scene. However, there were a few instances (i.e. the part where Audrey puts on winter clothes) where the description went on a little too long. There's nothing wrong with building your environment, but make sure it doesn't sag too much.

A decent romance with interesting interactions.

This was pretty good. I haven't played that many RPGs before, but this felt like it had enough charisma and character to it that I didn't really need to know a lot about them. The characters were fairly well-done, if somewhat typical for the fantasy genre. I also liked how it reveled in its simplicity; the adventure happens, then it's off to the next one. It really emulates that feel of fantasy adventure, and I really enjoyed it for that.

The one complaint I have for this is that maybe the story could've used a bit more environmental details. The battle that takes place in the house wasn't easy to imagine, simply because there wasn't a whole lot of details given about it. Same goes for the weird dimension they find themselves in at one point; there wasn't much to really visualize it all that well. I get the story wanted to keep a brisk pace and spare too many details (again, something RPGs often do), but a slightly clearer picture needs to be painted of these settings if the immersion is to totally work.

A good fantasy adventure that stumbles only in environments.

So, again, let me preface by saying this was pretty well written. It's a little... "literature" toned for me, but that's not really a mark against it. Just a personal thing. Characterization is good (though Audrey kinda dives crazy hard into love - like, distressingly hard. Like, I'm not sure I want to root for this romance because this feels destructive.)

That said... this story is pretty more or less what I think of when I think of lesbian monstergirl romance. There's nothing wrong with executing well on familiar tropes, of course, but this really does adhere very, very closely to them. Nerdy main, punky monster. Love at first sight. Getting called out on lesbianism. Brief scare about another lover. All consuming love. Suicidal gesture. It all works out. These are all things I think of when I think of this story type. Again, nothing wrong with that all told. I loves me some familiar tropes and I often get a bit snobby about pulling twists just to twist.

That said, the biggest flaw in this story is the end feels... unearned. We don't actually see Audrey do anything, so her solving the mysteries is kinda out of nowhere. This is further compounded by the fact that I'm... not actually sure -what- she did. I might be missing something obvious, but that end feels really out of nowhere. Like, it in fact seems to go against established knowledge (things that enter the pond stay in the pond).

This was a cute story. I always enjoy tales where humans try to deal with precious abominations of nature (and their parents), and I think this piece utilized the idea in a fairly entertaining way. I also liked how Sara was quick to apologize for the whole shenanigans, keeping this story from turning into a "you humans are just stupid" tale. The father's twisted "politics" were also pretty entertaining as well.

The biggest issue with this story is consistency. There's definitely proof that the guy knows that Sara is not human, yet the ending of the story seems to imply that he actually did think she was human. But why would he look at her building an occult circle and joking about her being a vampire? This is not something normal humans do, and the fact that he knows about her immunity to cold just puzzles the mind further.

Also, while I give Sara credit for owning up that she should have told Boy Toy (that's what I'm calling him, sue me) about her parents, it doesn't change the fact that he's 100% justified for his reaction. Even if he didn't think she was human, why would she suddenly spring on him her parents without explaining what they are and how they look? This was a disaster just waiting to happen. You could try to argue that she was just naive or unsure of "human ways", but I don't really buy that based on her interactions. She comes off as very understanding of human norms, so her actions that set this off just seem out-of-character.

A cute story that just needs more consistency with its characters.

I think what I appreciate the most about this story is its commitment to its specific voice. The security bot always refers to itself in the third person, and the story makes sure to keep any acknowledgements to that perspective. I also enjoyed how there wasn't really any real 'danger' in this story; it was more just a quiet journey with little robots. Aside from a few explosions, the story was relatively subdued, and that was certainly interesting to see. The characters, while a bit prototypical, did have a good camaraderie and I was at least interested to see where they ended up.

The issue with this story is that the premise, while creative, has a few too many logical holes. For instance, why are some of the robots still activated? If they're supposed to be decommissioned, why weren't they broken down for spare parts, or at the very least turned off? The security bot has functional weapons, for heaven's sake; it's highly unlikely that any future society would just dump that in a scrap yard without any further action. Also, how did neither the security bot or rhoomba bot not figure out that trying to clean a scrap yard is an impossible task? Given how much they're able to discern by themselves, couldn't they just have figured that out by themselves? I know this is picky, but if you're going to do a story with beings who function by logic, there has to be some pretty strong logic in place to justify the rest of the story.

A committed story, but one that needs a bit more patching in terms of plot.

My apologies for not posting any more reviews. Kids wracked with ear infections, extraordinarily busy work week, blah blah. If anyone else wants my input on their work, feel free to send me a PM. There's some great stuff in this writeoff!

Figures that the one story I didn't read and vote on in the finals would be the one that won. Oh well.

On a more serious note, there were quite a few good stories this round. Even though not all of them were my usual cup of tea, they were at least definitely entertaining to read and fairly well put together. If this is the amount of talent in here, I'm going to have a tough time writing anything close to making the finals.

And while I'm here, I'll just admit now that I was the one who suggested the prompt title, "That Winter Feeling". Wasn't sure if it was a rule that you couldn't say if you made the prompt, so I was waiting until the write-off was over. It was just something I thought of with the approaching season-end festivities and the gradual chill that's been creeping up. I didn't think it'd even be accepted, as I thought it was a bit too broad. But apparently a lot of you voted for it, so here we are. And I'm glad you did; these were actually some very creative stories.

Good job everyone, and I look forward for the next round of MLP short stories.

(Edit: Don't mind those deleted posts. The website goofed for a second and I accidentally submitted this post more than once.)

Happy Solstice, everyone! The sun has turned, the light has risen, and for those of us in the nothern hemisphere, the days will start to lengthen as we claw our way back out of the arschkalt of winter.

More importantly, congratulations to Ferd for their first Writeoff medal, and to CiG for his first OF gold! :D Apparently, not even the jinx of me predicting a win could keep this one from its well-deserved top spot.

I honestly wasn't expecting to be within spitting distance of the top this round, but I'm not going to turn down another shiny object for my hoard.

Good bits first. Most of what the reviewers had issue with are things I realized were problems when I submitted (more on this later). But what I was really worried about was whether the romance between Sara and the narrator was enjoyable. I don't have much experience writing romantic comedy and I wasn't confident at all that would go over well, so it's great to see that it worked for the reviewers. I thought I'd be able to fix the other problems after submission, but that was the one thing I was really worried about.

Speaking of those other problems. I think the winter coat thing is representative of a lot of them. I was not expecting that to come up in the reviews at all, and when it did I'd thought it was a reaction to the idea of putting on a coat under bedsheets. Then I re-read the relevant passage and realized that I'd never actually stated that the narrator was doing that.

Not stating or being vague about necessary facts comes up several times in the story, and in much more important places like why characters are doing the things they do. I left a lot on the cutting room floor writing this. I think it's a net positive since there was a lot of chaff there, but I definitely ended up removing some parts that needed to be there. When I revisit this I definitely need to make more clear the Narrator's view on the supernatural and how that relates to Sara (for the record, I was going for "There's obviously something weird going on with Sara. But she doesn't want to talk about it, no one would believe me if I told them, and even if I tried she'd probably bail. So even though I'm curious I'll wait for her to feel comfortable enough to talk to me about it").

The missing context issue is even more confusing since I did a poor job of disguising that characters acted certain ways solely because I wanted certain things to happen. Sara realizes that Narrator is going to freak out and does nothing to prepare them. Narrator is accepting and calm about their girlfriend being a monster girl, then completely freaks out when the story calls for it, then goes right back to calm. I didn't think about it in Idiot Ball / Lampshading terms as I was writing it, but that description is spot on. Reviewers called me on all of this, and they were right to.

A lot of these issues came down to the time crunch, which I was completely unprepared for. That being said this beats my usual process of having an idea, mulling it over for months, maybe getting down a thousand or so words before getting stuck on a piece of awkward dialogue or description and never touching it again. Unneeded scenes that I would have tried to make work were much easier to cut, and the clock really helps in getting something ready despite lingering issues.

Thanks to all of the reviewers for the helpful feedback, and specific thanks to horizon for posting about the writeoff on fimfiction. I've been meaning to give this a try once a free weekend lined up with an event and I wouldn't have known about it otherwise.

Some stray thoughts:

I went with the title Winter Weather Advisory because I didn't want to spoil that this is a meet the parents story (though maybe I should?) or abominations aspect, so I wanted something that would bring to mind weather reports about snowy weather. I've lived my whole life in Southern California though, so I have no idea if that title actually works. I have very little attachment to it if someone has a better suggestion.

Ferd Threstle called out the summoning ritual scene being a bit of a let down after the buildup. I'd like to say I didn't realize that but I literally described it as disappointing in the text. That should have been a red flag that I should be doing something there and I completely missed it. Another thing to work on.

Most of the scene ideas I abandoned were for the better, but I really would have liked to work in a "If you hurt my daughter- *cocks shotgun*- I'm not afraid of going back to jail" sort of scene. I think there's space for it.

So close, but so far. Warning, rambling written over several hours ahead.

Before we go anywhere else, let's address the elephant in the room that nearly everyone commented on: the very easy RPG association.

For better and for worse, that was an active, intentional, and purposeful choice. I like writing fantasy that draws on my favorite types of fantasy: lighthearted adventure stories (think Piers Anthony, David Eddings, and even, to a degree, Terry Pratchett), jRPGs, D&D, anime, and, even to a degree, pulp fantasy (Fritz Lieber and the like). So, ultimately, mashed all together, things more approaching Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser as an anime adaptation (which I guess would be the two of them as busty, buxom babes?).

That said, that isn't particularly an excuse and about partway through this I realized I was executing poorly on the setting. See, I've been kicking this one around for a while and been wanting to do a few shorts in it. Ultimately, the idea is more or less treating a goofy, tropey fantasy world (somewhat) seriously and let it be a playground for characters. Take inane concepts like adventurer guilds and worlds with free roaming dragons and treat it with respect. Use the setting to do shorts with potential shared world/shared characters that allow for growth across multiple stories and stuff to happen while still ultimately being kinda episodic pieces (again, like Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser or the individual character series in Discworld or such).

The problem is I flow a little too seriously and predictably into the middle of the story. Right about the point I wrote Ruiha's crack about the clock I realized I'd gone a little too far down the general fantasy adventure route. Unfortunately, it was a little late to do anything about it, so I just pushed forward. Hell, the whole "class" call-out was sort of a beat off the idea that all adventurers would probably have classes assigned on their license from the guild to allow easier hooking up and quick ability assessments. Just, you know. Failed to actually do it.

Time was kind of a major problem this go round. I had an idea on Friday (I had the character of Yseult kinda figured - I wanted to do a knight type that defied expectations, I like kemonomimi and use it a lot, and I've had foxes on the brain, so fox-girl paladin just made sense and felt "unique" enough - and I was gonna have her on a job to do a kind deed as a Solstice gift for someone) but it wasn't quite gelling. I'm not quite sure how I ended up starting with Ruiha and shifting into a more srs ghost adventure, outside of just wanting it to be a small character piece in the middle of an adventure. All told, I think if I had stuck a bit closer to my original idea, the story would have been better for it (and I will probably try to push it back that way on revision). And yeah, the ending was purely a "It's 2:30am and I have to wake up for work tomorrow, fuck it" choice.

One of my readers, post submission, called me out on overplaying the racism and I tend to agree. I had more intended Yseult to be someone who gets more of the casual racism thing focused around "lel fox girl paladin, that's silly!" but ended up making it a bit more serious. Not to say there isn't room for that in a story, but more that I think I underplayed it here. I also think I ended up writing her a bit softer than I meant to. She was intended to be someone who was kinda surly, but professional, a Kin worn down by expectations based on both her race and "class" who just doesn't want to deal with people's BS anymore.

Ruiha... is pretty much what she seems. I probably need to give her a stronger voice if I want to use her more. Can we tell she was a last second add based on this really short paragraph?

Otherwise... first scene is a writing myself into the scene story and, for all that I like it, should be cut in favor of jumping right into Ruiha and Yseult. Scene 3 is also a waste (if you really look at it, scene 3 and 4 are repeats structurally and should be merged) and I'd intended to throw the extra details it did have into scene 4, and replace scene 3 with a bit more character not-bonding on the rail ride out to the freehold deal. Also, ironically, this ended up being more a character piece for Ruiha as she undergoes the bigger change, IMO.

Anyhow! Thank you everyone who read (and double thanks to those who commented). As far as direct responses go...

>>Chinchillax
Yeah, I need to evaluate term use. I go back and forth on it. There is value in being straightforward, particularly if I'm evoking the tropes on purpose, but, at the same time, it helps to branch just a little to add flavor (e.g. doing kemonomimi instead of elves and dwarves and the like).

>>Ferd Threstle
Agreed. I really wanted to do something more with the job, but it unfortunately ended up being very much a means to an end. Adding a little more to it either through the people hiring or the nature of the spirit (or even something a bit sillier... multiple spirits all bound by honor to, indeed, call out the rigidity of honor - since it could also play into Yseult's own stuff).

>>Not_A_Hat
Flavor issue is more or less commented on above, but yeah. I went too generic rather than "generic." :p In fact, I comment on a lot of your stuff in that mess up there and more or less agree on all fronts.

Minus the Paladin thing. It's a double edged sword if you assume the really obnoxious sort of LAWFUL GOOD is more common, as opposed to the more mellow sorts. You can also assume Adventurers, being contract employees more or less, try to push the bounds of good and right, and of course the whole moral quandry of looting tombs and corpses and well... might as well find someone who is a bit less of a stick in the mud. :p

(Also, Yseult is snippy and unfun to work with, which also doesn't help her rep.)

>>BlazzingInferno
I really wish I'd had time to replace scene 3 because you are right. It also would've been helpful on the world front to have a little more raw character interaction time. Also would've been good to right a real ending instead of the copy paste job and go "well, this is kinda cute and I hope people think its more cute than lazy."

>>Ratlab
I will say that the small dangles are intentional. As stated, there is kind of some hope for trying to do some multiple shorts with some various character sets, so providing a reasonable guess at people's backgrounds while leaving more room (and desire) to explore it while still completing a satisfactory story was definitely the goal.

>>georg
Seriously, I apparently really needed to get that Scene 3 replaced. >_>

>>Monokeras
Nammuch to say here, though I object to the classification of it beginning in an inn. It clearly began in a business establishment that features a cafeteria and dorms for convenience. TOTALLY DIFFERENT THING. ^_~ <3

>>horizon
Pft. Left some scratches. I just wrote a few extra numbers in marker after the original serial. :p

Right. I didn't address this. Yes, you are 100% correct. I realized the Lord Poulin error at some point and just failed to correct it. That was stupid and I don't know why it didn't occur to me before the first time I had to use them next each other and go "Oh bugger me." You're also correct on the Sault/Yseult thing and I did not notice that. Disadvantage of trying to do regional naming consistency using behindthename, you get similar sounds if you're not paying attention. >_>

I... was going to say I thought I implied or outright stated Yseult's adopted, but looking over it, I'm incredibly opaque about it.

And yeah, 100% right re: getting more on Ruiha.

>>Cold in Gardez
Thank you, I think. >_> Jokes aside, the association is indeed rough, but in my heart of hearts I do want to write some of that, associations be damned.

>>libertydude
That second paragraph there is actually a really good trick to identifying me in future writeoff rounds. I'm actually abysmal at describing much of anything, for all that I'm trying to clean it up a bit.

>>libertydude

As far as I know there's no rule against saying you wrote the prompt. It used to be revealed automatically, though it seems that changed. Still, I can see little reason why that knowledge would pose a problem.

>>AndrewRogue If you haven't read it yet, you might get a kick out of Sevens, which sounds like it's in a very similar vein to the sort of thing you're going for here, and it's one of the better LitRPG's that I've read. (More Final Fantasy than DnD, but still.) Also, if you haven't stumbled across it, there's a general fiction site called Royal Road Legends which started as a fansite for a LitRPG, and tends to feature a lot of similar stories. It's less developed than FimFiction, but if you're interested in picking up an audience, that might be a place to start.

If you do write more, let me know; I tend to enjoy this genre, and I'm not really a particularly picky reader (despite being perhaps overly critical of stories in the Writeoff.)

You Can’t Take It With You is mine, but I have to credit the inspiration for a number of stories where an external device (in this case the bronze slab) triggers an inner “Oh!” moment without having any special magical or technical abilities in and of itself. One of these inspirations is from Titanium Dragon’s excellent (and writeoff) story May Those Who Step Through This Door Know What It Means To Rule.

The core behind this story is simple: Bitter old man makes it a requirement for his heirs to learn the same distrusting philosophy that made his fortune or they don’t get any of it. Unfortunately (for him), the medium on which he writes down his bile and spite is polished until all of the words eventually fade away, leaving only a mirror. So the legacy he tried to pass on to his descendents gets lost, and instead, they learn to trust in each other and themselves to make the world a better place.

Minor problem: The old maxim “Show, don’t Tell” should more properly be called “Show and Tell” unless you want people to totally miss the point. Like having the words polished off a bronze slab. So I’m adding the following before I post it in my collection:

“Where are the words?” asked Christin before the answer became obvious. He glanced back at the box of metal polish and rags before looking at the smooth bronze slab again. “Oh. His children and grandchildren followed his directions. Every generation, until eventually the words were polished away.”

---

Responses:
Not a Hat, Ferd Thistle, Windfox, Chinchillax>>Chinchillax >>Ferd Threstle >>Windfox >>Not_A_Hat

(See above)

Ratlab >>Ratlab

“...it got harder to empathize with him once you find out he has a big ‘ol trust fund waiting…”
True, but without the carrot, the rest of the story has nothing. “Your great-great grandfather left you this boot. Enjoy. Tell me if you find another one for the other foot.”

Monokeras >>Monokeras

Europe doesn’t have crazy estates with strange rules associated with inheritance? Really? (Resists urge to google up a few) Well, I suppose the English have the most odd ones, and I’ll leave it at that.

Horizon>>horizon

You have never heard lawyers jokes until you hear a bunch of lawyers in a room. They come in only second place to doctors, and some of their jokes are outright morbid.

Libertydude >>libertydude

I didn’t want a supervising lawyer. I wanted a back-and-forth conversation between Mom and Christin, because every character you introduce doubles the complexity of the story and I already had (effectively) three with Ezekiel. It can be very dangerous in a short to include facts not directly relevant to the plot, because of a reader’s inherent aversion to Red Herrings. (Author mentioned the gun, somebody must get shot in here) Still, the legal barrier here is less than it would seem, because he’s probably going to have to attest to the visit and answer a few questions, there must be at least a hundred or more descendents by now, and the *original* legal test probably included a written exam, which is a huge moot point now. It’s not a bequest, it’s a restriction he must pass before he’s eligible to join the family business. He’s going to have to *earn* the money.

AndrewRogue>>AndrewRogue

Yeah, my best ‘smoothing’ happens over a few months when I’m writing longer stories and go back to re-touch earlier chapters. I’m sure if you read my longer stuff that I’ve written more recently, you would notice it fairly easily. The *older* stuff was published as it was written, so it’s chunky as heck.

Cold in Gardez>>Cold in Gardez

The writer coughed politely and pointed at the text on the blackboard. “As you know, if the section in question were put into paragraph text, it would be mostly missed. Readers skip over sections of boilerplate, but they read dialogue. This allows me to make certain that the reader knows three critical points. Christin (1) has the option of chickening out at the cost of his future (2) doesn’t like it (3) but is going to go ahead and do it anyway, even though he’s doing a teenaged passive-aggressive thing of making everybody around him miserable. Hey, I had teens. I know what they do.”

>>georg
To a degree, that does make sense. Having more characters than needed would certainly bog the story down, and the relationship with the mother and son was pretty engaging. However, I still can't shake the feeling that the legal aspects aren't entirely up to snuff. Even going off the assumption that it'd only be a written test or something like that, there's still quite a bit of room for abuse here. Again, I probably wouldn't have brought this up if I didn't have a legal background, but it's just one of those things that bugs me when I see it. Sort of like how physics scientists can't watch space movies without pointing out what isn't entirely accurate. It's a decent story, regardless.

I'm about to un-publish The Job as I mentioned before. This is in no way some sort of sour grapes move; the feedback this round was great, and I'm glad I was able to participate. I just have loftier plans for this concept that might not jive with this version being available here.

Cold

You have no idea how strongly tempted I was to name the town 'Gardez' instead of 'Shelter', but I was afraid it would clash with the mood too much. At least I finally broke my ribbon streak, albeit with a torch instead of a bit of shiny.

Although I'd been missing participating in the writeoffs, I hadn't particularly planned to enter this round, but then the prompt dropped and this sprang to mind almost immediately. Some of you may know that I'm writing a novel based in a global warming scenario. This isn't explicitly set in that world, but it could be. So I was a little worried that using that idea would be too much of an author identity giveaway, but ultimately I gave in to my muse.

The writing process was unlike my usual style; I'm generally an outliner, but this was very much discovery written. As I played around with the core idea, I went back and forth reflexively adding and removing pieces and characters on the fly. I think it helps the piece feel a bit more organic in some sense, but there are definitely things I threw in because they felt right in the moment, that need revision, many of which were touched on in the reviews.

Hopefully the lower rankings were for such story flaws and not the content; It really bothers me how the science around global warming has become politicized. Granted, the scenario presented in the story is at the upper end of projected scenarios, but it's still not outside the realm of possibility.

Despite its flaws, I was glad to see it resonate with some readers. It was interesting to see the division between the comments, though; some felt that it was subtle, while it rubbed others the wrong way. Even when it didn't work for a reader, though, it was useful to see how and why.

I was excited to finally get a solid out of >>horizon. Now I can someday hope for Top Contender.

I had read All Summer in a Day, but not recently. On re-reading it, although the root concept hits some of the same notes, I don't have the depth of character conflict that All Summer has. Good inspiration, there. >>libertydude, you also have some good points on the proliferation of kids; I had that inkling when I was writing the piece, but I didn't have the time and energy to find a better way. Also, >>Windfox, you have an equally good point about the parallels in the end conversations.

>>Not_A_Hat, I really respect you as a writer, but we do seem to be operating on different wavelengths here.

Of course it's possible to celebrate a holiday about love and generosity in the heat. But does that holiday intrinsically have to be Christmas? I don't see why. The idea of the meaning of Christmas drifting and becoming conflated with winter/cold didn't even make me blink. I consider holidays as plastic and reflective of the cultures they're in; how many holidays have died, been born, or had their meanings change over the years?

Anyhow, I do appreciate all the thoughts and feedback. This is one I'm seriously thinking about revamping and actually doing something with.

>>Ratlab I respect you as a writer too, and... I really should be more careful with what I say in reviews. :/ I apologize if I was being unfair. Hopefully you can get something useful out of my thoughts.

>>Ratlab
As I noted, tiering is always kinda weird for the first stories I read in a round — especially with Solids and TCs, because I have to be conservative with the TC designation in case I run across stories I love later on; I don't want to lowball my Top Contender threshold and end up giving the highest rank out to half the ballot.

(I made a similar first-story mis-assessment many rounds back and ended up retroactively downgrading a story a tier. That was stupid of me, and understandably caused some hurt feelings. I've erred on the side of under-ranking since.)

But with the benefit of hindsight, I ranked Cold 3rd out of all 16 stories I judged in the round, which means I'm happy to give you the official upgrade the story deserved. ("TC" roughly means "I think this is medalist quality".) So keep up the great work! :twilightsmile:

Tier: Top Contender

Also, while I'm back here, I guess I can do my own micro-retrospective:

The Collision Of Seasons

– This originally came from me deciding that this round I was going to write an Original Fiction story with no speculative-fiction elements. I much prefer SFF genre writing, so I wanted to push my boundaries.

– This was experimental in another way. I guess my humiliating bottom-third showing with Might Make Right is still sticking in my craw. I was trying to push perspective boundaries with that story and choked pretty hard, and ever since then I've been wanting to write a story that played weird tricks with perspective and got away with it. Honestly, based on comments I'm still not certain that I did, but the fact that this medaled shows that I'm a lot closer. And while there are things to fix, I still really like the fundamental idea here, of an unreliable narrator telling the truth about the story but lying about who the narrator is.

– I wasn't feeling the prompt in the slightest. I looked up a bunch of quotes about winter on some quotation site and randomly picked two that I could hang some blood and thunder around. Then I basically hammered in the mountain analogy and the blunt, unsubtle seasons thing just to pretend this had any connection to the prompt.

– Speaking of the mountain thing, I don't remember exactly how my research for my story outline got me reading about scree slopes (aka: talus) on Wikipedia, but when I got to the link about freeze-thaw talus production and realized I had to use that as an anchor of the story's themes, you have no idea how tempted I was to title this "The Talus Principle".

Sweet stars, you have no idea.

I managed to restrain myself because, while the core twist here is about identity, it's not about identity in anything like the way the game is.

(By the way, if you have any lingering doubt about the narrator's identity, >>Cold in Gardez has it exactly right.)

Anyway, time to go refocus on the round that's actually taking place now!

>>Not_A_Hat

No worries. I'll admit that the Christmas Carol comment raised an eyebrow, but more out of a sense of confusion (firstly the likelihood of any reasonably literate person in western culture managing to avoid it, but also not seeing any similarities between the two, I'm not sure how knowing Christmas Carol would have made Cold better or worse; it just came off as a non-sequitur).

Comments are always useful. The story does seem to have touched a nerve, which is actually good, as it's supposed to be a little provocative. It seems like it's more a matter of doing a better job with the details, so that it is provocative in the right way.

>>horizon

Cool! It's nice to know that it ended up making the grade.