I really liked this. I'm not sure why, but it was awesome. It's the first story I've read this round that feels like an actual story, a well thought out and brilliantly executed story.

The premis was sound, the allegory relatable, the imagery clear even with 'misuse' of certain words. And the last line, that sealed the deal. You, sir and/or ma'am, have created a beautiful work of art.

10/10

Interesting premis, good execution, a solid 8/10

I’m with those who found that the story missed the mark. I didn’t think that he really killed the dog, so there was no suspense, and thus I didn’t empathize with Eugene’s reaction. Adding detail to the buildup and making more a connection between the characters may help here.

That said, the surface polish is good. The author knows how to construct a tale and build a joke.

So... I think part of why so many people are giving you 'meh' responses to this is that you've fundamentally written about something boring, and it doesn't seem to have enough of a twist to bring it back around to 'interesting'.

This story is basically about someone struggling to waste time. Is it really so surprising that most people felt it was kinda bleh?

As far as suggestions to improve it, I'd say perhaps try tying into the emotions behind this guy's reasoning. He apparently cares about what's going on here strongly enough that he's willing to risk his health for it, so he, at least, feels like there's a good reason to do this. If you could communicate that to me better, maybe I'd feel more strongly about the story as well.

Alternately, making this more ridiculous and maxing the absurdist comedy route, which is hinted at by the IV and catheter, could also work. Have them bring in a garden hose instead of an IV stand. Have the other senators gnawing off their legs to escape. Something that makes this fundamentally about something besides wasting time.

Oh, and the fact that he got synesthesia when he was tired was weird to me. Pretty sure that's not a normal symptom for sleep deprivation.

Infinite loop of horror and torture! But if the protagonist is retaining memories as the physical body is reset, that means that the mind is not entirely physical and perhaps there is something to pray to after all. OTOH, if the narrator’s body can be bruised “again,” and the physical changes are cumulative, damage or exhaustion will end the loop soon.

The hyphened loop is starting to be noticeable as a gimmick. No downcheck for that, just pointing it out.

Being comfortable with SF trappings and conventions, I could accept this story on its own merits. Good job, Author.

“The Postman Always Rings. Always…”

I agree with the H. P. criticism. Aside from that, I quite like this work.

I’ve got to make a reference here to the Church of Sisyphus. Take big strides!

I got the Mère Teresa stand-in. For the other one, I’m unsure if you’re referring to Trump or Bill Gates or someone else.

All in all, it was a good idea and a fairly good execution, but some phrasing is really awkward (e.g. Seats were taken and pages turned as they began the slow, tedious business of comparing notes. / Silence reigned for a few minutes, each of them focused on the task before them.) and there are some repetitions every now and then, and that detracts a bit from the whole.

But, eh, let’s not be too finicky. It was okay on the whole.

Welp. The prompt is endless struggle, the story name is endless struggle, it only makes sense that reading this would be an endless struggle.

Bad premis, horrid execution, a litteral wall of garbage. If I've read a worse story, it escapes my mind.

I am sorry, whoever wrote this. I cannot find a single good thing to say about your story.

-/10

Pretty good all around.

8/10

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

-Ozymandius by Percy Bysshe Shelly

I'm really not surprised that this round has brought out the meta in us; Mono's opening epigraph, along with the prompt (I wondered after seeing the prompt, whether his 'Noooooo!' had a significant impact on the votes...) really suggests the theme of 'writing' as 'the endless struggle', especially since, if anyone knows what sort of a struggle writing is, it would be authors aspirant. Still, this seems sorta clumsy and overdone, and I reacted rather poorly to it.

The ending here has something of a message, in that if the character ever wants to be successful in something they actually need to get up and start doing, rather than thinking, but... the whole thing deals with fairly personal ideas, which are likely to be decisive. If this wasn't meta, that might be alright; given a distinct character to project on, people can say 'I understand that works for you, but I disagree'.

But as it is, I think people putting themselves in the place of this nameless, faceless 'I' will find themselves annoyed by what seem to be presumptions about where they draw self-worth from, whether 'greatness' is worth it or how it's best pursued - infamy may be remembered as long or longer than fame - and such. And although I can understand some of what's written here, I think I fundamentally disagree on a fair bit, too, and that annoyed me as I read.

In the end, I think this is rather too obviously meta for the topic it's trying to handle.

Oh, also, I'm pretty sure you've used menial wrong. But maybe not, I dunno.

The premis is flaky, the execution is 'meh', but the writing is good. Not my cup of tea, but its not terrible.

5/10

Great writing, great premis, too fast paced to really let it shine though

7/10

Interesting concept, one of coming back through time but not enough to escape certain death but…
…
What I don’t get is that if the guy gets into a sort of time loop, then there must be one more "him" each time he closes it. The way you describe it is non sequituur to me: I would expect the ship to be full of "him"s.

So yeah, the premise is nice, and the execution correct, but I think there’s a fundamental flaw here.

practical-but-ugly duct tape

They'll be shattered to learn duct tape isn't waterproof. :P

I had some idea what was going on here as soon as they had to yank a weed. My parents actually had one of those magazine-level gardens when we were living in the tropics and they could grow things like calla lilies and orchids and bird-of-paradise flowers that take seven years just to bloom. For your garden to look that good, it takes continual attention - and you never, ever wait so long to weed they grow roots you have to yank. When they're an inch tall, they really are easy to pull up.

For this person, though, might I suggest a trowel, or even a hoe? A little mechanical advantage goes a long, long way to making things less frustrating.

In the end, I dunno. While I understood the frustration, it seemed to stem more from their lack of skill than anything else. So what I mostly got out of this was 'it sucks to be bad at things, so just give up and try something else.' And I don't really like that message a whole lot, overall. There's a pretty good chance that painting has it's bad spots, too, and if this person never takes the time to learn how to actually deal with the problems they face, they'll just continue being frustrated.

On the other hand, this was nicely written and had something of an arc to it, while also displaying story on the surface and thematic levels, which is good.

Well done overall, even if the 'moral' I found seemed personally distasteful.

This one's a bit odd to me.

Madoka something something something is an anime/manga, which I knew before I read this. However, I've never read/watched it, so I can't say if this is drawing on concepts from it or not. However, according to google, Ave Maria is one of the theme songs, so I'm pretty confident that this is some sort of thing about watching cartoons.

This very much reads like an allegory of some sort. The dreamlike words in the opening (hard fatigue of video games, black tar-planet) etc, all suggest that this isn't really intended to be taken literally; either the narrator is speaking figuratively, or they're not perceiving the world as it is, which is somewhat lampshaded by the 'that's how a clear-hearted person would think'.

So, if 90% of this story is an allegory for something, what does it mean? I'm having a bit of trouble deciding. My best guess, based on the 'my whole family is dead' thing (which seems unfortunately ham-fisted if everything preceding it is allegorical) and the 'static' and the way the MC emotionally reacts to what's going on is that it's about someone distracting themselves from their sorrow, but being unable to really escape from the world, despite wanting to. This has some problems, however; the 'jumping' thing seems fairly over-the-top for what it seems to be conveying, while the 'I can't say I love you' bit reads more like this person is rejecting the fantasy, instead of being unable to actually embrace it for some other reason. I'd expect them to try and fail, in that case, instead of being unable to try.

So in the end, I'm not really sure what I think. While this has some good writing in it, I find myself fairly unhappy with the conclusions I end up drawing. Not bad, but a bit too fuzzy to really feel strongly about.

Quite the neat little story, but pretty forgettable.

7/10

The opening was a clever subversion, but this character is full of shit.

I mean, first they come off with the 'God must not exist because he's not a magical wish-fulfilling genie' (which has always seemed like a really dumb argument to me) and 'I'm not an alcoholic', but then they shift into 'I just had to cut alcohol out of my life completely because it was causing problems and if I couldn't deal with AA I totes didn't really have a problem' and 'it's alright if my imaginary God isn't a magical wish fulfilling genie because who needs God anyways.'

Uh-huh.

Sorry, just can't buy it. Nameless female MC might be alright with embracing doublethink, but I find that personally objectionable. While this was fairly well written, I feel like this person has deep character flaws that go completely unaddressed, which undercut my attempts to draw out a moral. The best I can come away with is 'if you can't deal with reality, just lie to yourself.' Which I kinda have problems with.

Mechanically, this was moderately well done. It's told cleanly but very much in narration, which is one way to try and squeeze a lot of stuff into a story, but also tends to distance us from events. Consider - if this was, instead, a scene at the end of the party, a scene at AA, a scene waking up to the bottle and 'discovering' the goddess... well, I don't know if I'd have agreed with it more, but I do think I'd have been significantly more immersed in it.

This was a great story until I realized it was about writers block. Good writing, poor premis, misleading execution.

3/10

This sounds very much bombastic to my ears. The style and prose are overwrought, and the message is — well we all know what the message is, and it's been brought up times and again, so you end up flogging a dead horse.

Plus the pseudo-philosophical ending which vaguely borrows from Camus.

It's a pea that hides in a soufflé.

I mean the allegory is not bad per se, but really, use your undeniable power of imagination and mastering of the language for something more interesting than telling us writing is an eternal combat against the blank. So corny.

It's always good to see a story named Third Law of Motion misquote Newton's Third Law of Motion!

In all seriousness, the opening of this story throws me for a loop, and I think we ought to talk a little about why that happened. After your misquote, you describe the law as a "pious platitude"—a phrase often associated with religious or moralistic phrases said insincerely. Almost immediately we've got something odd going on, and we're forced to examine the phrasing of the Third Law in a totally different context. Except, in any other context, it's not a Law and we shouldn't really expect it to apply—so when you say "the reaction is way above the action" I know that I, as a reader, simply thought, 'so what?'

I can see what you're going for with those first two sentences, though: you're trying to set up this feeling that some sort of reactionary thing has happened that is far, far worse than whatever it was reacting to. I think there are probably a million and one better ways to convey that message, but the fact of the matter is that you successfully conveyed it, and that's a good start. Where you lose me is sentence number three.

And also, it has already happened before.

Context tells us that "it" is the reaction, because the alternative ("it" referring to the Third Law) makes the sentence totally redundant. The "And also", structurally, is tying into the "except that" clause from the previous sentence, so we know whatever follows it is another exception for the Third Law holding true. And then the rest of the sentence tells us that... the reaction has already happened before? I'll be honest, I don't actually know what relevance that has, or what you're actually trying to tell us there. That's not another exception—it doesn't even hold any relevance to the Third Law. Combine that confusion with a really weird choice of conjunction ("not to mention" would probably be a better choice than "and also") and you've lost me. I no longer know what I'm reading.

Then, almost as if you're reading my mind, you go meta and proclaim: "fuck this sentence". I still have no idea why the meta parts of this story are here, by the way. They don't add anything meaningful to the story, except perhaps to act as an excuse for the incredibly confusing third sentence. In all honesty, I think this story would be far better without them, unless you can find a way to give them more meaning.

>>MLPmatthewl419 said that this story didn't really fit well together, and I agree with that conclusion. Aside from the meta sections not fitting, there's also the whole aspect of the story where the wife is described as "ugly". I'll be honest, I'm not sure what the point of those lines is. I guess they're meant to be commenting on how the wife's fear and worry are ugly properties, but it just struck a wrong note for me and came across as condemning. But then the main character wants to punch himself for thinking it? I didn't see how it fit into the rest of the story's meaning, and I wasn't quite sure why it was there.

With all that having been said, I think that at its heart this is a very interesting exploration of bravery in the face of horror and death, and of two people trying to maintain a sense of normality as hell is breaking out around them. I have no idea what the context of that horror and hell may be, and to be totally honest I'm not sure that lack of context helps your story. There's something religious going on (is it the world outside? Is it the main character?), the main character probably works in something related to law enforcement, and I'm pretty sure that outside there's some kind of anarchistic riot... but that's all I've got. I really do think that a little more context would help make this story better, if only to make the reader's conclusions feel more solid and grounded in the text. As much as I like the withholding of information and deliberate ambiguity, I'd appreciate it being toned down a bit.

To round this all off, I just want to quickly comment that this story could have used another editing pass—I know we don't get much time in minific rounds, but there are enough examples of sentences with awkward (sometimes, like the third sentence, to the point of distraction) phrasings and grammar mistakes ("I would have find her beautiful", for example) that probably could have been cleared up with just a little more attention.

Mmm, I didn't think this was about writers block (why we don't write) but was instead about identity as a writer - why we do write. They're similar, but somewhat different.

On the whole, I think this is one of the better pieces of meta that I've run across this round. It has a conclusion that I can actually understand and agree with: why should I write? Because I think it's a good thing, and that's enough!

On the downside, the prose is somewhat less than deft. Handling archaic words with ablomb is tricky... and even if it's done 'right' it might not 'read right'. I can't say you've definitely broken any rules here, but the wording and words chosen tended to make this more of chore to read than, I think, it needed to be. It did convey an interesting atmosphere, but I don't think this needed quite as much confusion as it had in order to do that; the above and beyond was more confusing than it was worth.

And that paragraph probably isn't very clear either. Sorry about that. :P

Anyways, pretty good IMHO. Decent theme, moderate story, could be better in the mechanics, but overall fairly enjoyable.

Wat.

I really don't get the point of this. I get the references, but I don't see any reason for the references, or even the story. A lonely person cant say they love a anime character. Why?

poor premis, 'meh' execution, good writing.

3/10

Where to start.

The writing was great. The execution, with the flash backs and imagery was good. The premis is barely passible, mostly because the character is so full of it they could fertilize every field forever.

They refuse to use an addiction program because they are fully functional and laugh at the idea of a higher power, then proceed to completely stop using said addictive because a sun goddess told them to stop. This just rubs me so wrong.

2.5/10

Beauregard is really a ridiculous name for a dog. Back in my youth in the Alps, the owner of a shop was nicknamed "La baronne de Beauregard” because she had a squint (Beauregard means “nice look” in French, Belvedere in Italian).

Anyway. That story missed the target for me. The ending is much too foreshadowed, thus 100% predictable, which means the story fell flat. And besides the final twist, there's hardly anything to redeem it. It's a nice story, but once it's been gutted from its ending, there's no real meat left except a thin layer of fluff.

>>AndrewRogue
Navel Gazing, so that's what this is.

All around great

9/10

Writing was good, everything else, not so much. Tried so hard to be funny it ended up just plain boring.

0.5/10

I appreciate the point that >>Cassius and >>TitaniumDragon make regarding Hades Pluto possibly being too obvious for learned types, but I personally needed the smack in order to realise that the story had a basis in mythology.

Very boring and disjointed. you could replace words with meta and you'd have the same story, pretty much

0/10

>>Astrarian
Added some extra stuff to my review that I was too exhausted to write legibly last night.

Good writing, boring story. I dislike reading about work. Especially when it's venting about work or lack of.

2/10

I like this story. It does feel as if it should be part of a longer piece, but this is common in minific rounds. I have no gripes to add.

I feel like this suffered for being so fractured; if it was longer verses, instead of couplets, I might have done better with it. As-is, several lines here felt really non-sequitur to me. The first two threw me really hard, as the 'in auburn flare' going directly to 'in scarlet dress' with the linebreak made me think the rose was in the hair which was in the dress (or something?) which made little sense. And while rhyming hair/heir flare/flair is cute, it drew me out of the poem really hard when I noticed it, a 'look how clever I am' moment - even if that's not what you intended.

After the rocky start (I swear I read those six times before I figured out what was going on) I did enjoy the poem, but kept being annoyed by the linebreaks because you're enjambing like crazy here... Something which I normally enjoy because of the sense of continuation, but the double-separation of the newline/linebreak seemed to be working in exactly the opposite direction and fracturing what felt like it should be a whole into pointlessly small fragments. If you wanted to frustrate me, it was working, but... I don't really enjoy that. :P

The line Haze asks about also got me, and the one with 'akin' in it - I couldn't figure out what she's akin to at all.

I think this would be a lot better as three-ish larger verses, possibly broken where you break the rhyme; since there's only one rhyme scheme anyways, I don't think the couplets do a whole lot for you here and just make this harder for the reader to grasp. And this is strange and fuzzy enough as it is, which... mostly works for it, perhaps. I just wish it didn't seem like so much of the confusion was there simply for the sake of confusion.

Doesn't this kinda undercut the sisyphean myth, though? Like, the whole point is that he knows what he's doing is pointless. This felt... even more pointless than that, because he doesn't even seem to remember it.

That being said, fairly solid story, solid twist, pretty well written, even if your prose looks a bit like a thesaurus bled all over it.

I do think 'Hades Pluto' might be a bit much, but perhaps just one would have been fine - just so it was a touch less emphatic.

I'm judging based only on what was presented in the story.

The writing was good, but the premis was boring. I have no idea why this guy is talking, or what he's talking about. There are very few things stated out right, and there isn't enough context to guess the rest.

3/10


That being said, after reading explanations in the comments, the story became much more interesting and gripping. Had we known that he was trying to delay something, and what it was, the story would have been infinitely better.

Huh, I kinda like this idea. Sealing someone up with their worst enemy inside a time-loop would be a great way to have Sealed Evil in Can. I guess it hinges on one of two things - them reacting the same way every time (causality is actually fixed) or neither of them being able to kill the other and also cast the whole spell in under five minutes.

Still, I kinda wish I had a better idea of why these two were fighting. While the middle of the story does tell us enough about the situation to make the opening and closing sensible, it doesn't really give us much in the way of character background or motivation or what. And there's no real expectation that they'll escape; I had a pretty good idea where this was going once 'time loops' were mentioned, which cut some of the tension out of it. If it was less obviously a time-loop, and then it looked like one of them would make it out, but the loop swung in on a stinger... I think I'd find that more impressive. Well, that's got it's own pitfalls too, I guess, but yeah.

Clever, with tight prose, although there's not a whole lot more to this than the twist.

I will further note that the story does give the senator's reason for the filibuster:

“Senators, I stand before you to filibuster the budget resolution for fiscal year twenty-seventeen. I will speak until I can no longer speak. I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded coast to coast that our constitution is important, that the lives of American citizens are sacred, that no american should be killed by a done on american soil without first being charged with a crime. I do not oppose for the person, I oppose for the principle.”

I think this is somewhat ill-placed in terms of coming up before the reader has a handle on what's happening. And the issue in question is important but feels less tangible/resonant/connected to the current bugbears of political focus. But it's there.

And the point is...?

My best guess is that this a comedy, a drama, or a satire. But... it doesn't actually deal with anything dramatic, I don't think it made any actual jokes, and although it's ridiculous, it's not making any worthwhile points.

I mean, they decide what's going to happen by opinion? Then why are they even looking at what the people did? Who cares if x did y, if what people think about them is the only thing that matters?

More than that, what about the people who aren't famous? Because that's going to be the majority in the end. Why even bother with the outliers? Very few people hope their loved ones will go to hell, and few people really think about strangers. Humanity's mental biases should have solved this years ago.

This turns a few pleasant phrases, but in the end I find myself too disconnected from what's happening to actually care. It feels like some sort of one-note joke fic that isn't even really trying to be funny, just a 'haha here's an idea I thought up' and as soon as that's explained, it just ends.

Bap! Coming out of retirement to give some more ShortNSweet reviews to those that need it (and maybe some that don't).

So this story is unfortunately lobbed in with No Choice and The Postman for being stories essentially using the same idea of a looping narrative. Of the three, this story probably is the weakest in execution and substance. While the other two have some intrigue to their loops, (No Choice in the emotions of the character and The Postman in the novelty of its spin on the idea), this one leans heavily on its identity as a loop story to engage the reader, and a lot of the text is devoted to deliver exposition for why the two characters have been put in this situation. In terms of crafting of the prose, the story is functional but not particularly artistic, and the dialogue is a bit on the nose. It is a story I would say has no huge issues in construction but does not attempt to achieve great heights either. In the context of this competition, I feel it is about the same.

Rating: Okay

This comment is actually part of two reviews, and I'm going to link to it in both of them. It's a discussion of how I, personally, try to judge whether I should use a particular piece of punctuation in a non-standard situation. If you find that stuff interesting, please read on!

See, I'm a huge believer that it's much more important to know what punctuation does than to know how you're supposed to use it. Don't get me wrong, the general consensus of style guides is a useful starting place, and something we should all try to stick to as rigorously as possible because it works, but if you blindly follow the guides without knowing exactly what punctuation does you'll never know where those guides can be improved upon. So let's talk about what a dash does—not how it's used, but what exact effect it has on text, and then I'll explain why I don't think that's appropriate.

With any piece of punctuation, appearance is half the key. Take the ellipsis, for example, which quite literally leaves a trail on the page, or an apostrophe, just keeps two parts of a word disconnected (more obviously so in cursive, where one should never "join up" letters that are on either side of an apostrophe!) but close enough together that they're still one word. So what does a dash look like? It's a long, horizontal line, that sort of drags away from a word—not quite the trailing off of an ellipsis, but there's still certainly this sense of one's eyes being almost pulled away from the previous subject matter (explaining their use in interruptions and parentheticals. Actually, there's a really interesting difference between parentheticals in parentheses and in dashes, but now probably isn't the time to get into that.)

This is all well and good if you want attention from the reader to be dragged from one idea to the next, from one word to the next, but what about those kinds of interruptions that just cut straight into action? There are, certainly, times when we might want to portray a kind of interruption that is so sudden that the effect a dash has—that sense of being dragged from one point to another—doesn't quite work. There's a whole bunch of options available to you, and what you use will depend entirely on the kind of effect you want to create. Maybe you'd use a period, even though a sentence was missing a conclusion, to make the interruption total and sudden and jarring; maybe you'd use a hyphen rather than a dash, to indicate brevity (though that would only work so well if you'd used actual dashes elsewhere to prove to the reader that you actually know what a dash is!); maybe you'd use "|", just to see if turning a dash on its side would work.

But there's one piece of punctuation that, in my opinion, isn't considered enough: not punctuating. There are a lot of places one might consider using a lack of punctuation to illustrate an interruption (I'm going to cite our very own Dubs Rewatcher here because he's cool and that's a damn good fic), but I think the most obvious case is where you want the words either side of the interruption to fit together. Kinda like two halves of a sentence...

In the case of a looping story, we're not really talking about an interruption at all, but rather a sentence that should continue smoothly from one half to another (and would do, were those halves not separated by being at different ends of the story). This is why I don't think a dash is suitable, and to demonstrate this I'm just going to—put a dash in the middle of this sentence. Did that feel weird to read? It feels like the sentence is fragmented, like it stops a little bit and starts again. And if you wouldn't put a dash in the middle of a sentence like that, why would you put one (or even two!) in the middle of one just because they're physically separated? To make it clear that they hook up? Your readers should be able to get that much from context!

Essentially, this all boils down to a simple statement: a dash adds a little bit of a disconnect between words. If you want a sentence to be connected, why would you use one?

I have very little to criticise in this story, save what I have already covered here regarding time loops and dashes: >>QuillScratch

That said, I'd like to take a paragraph to talk about an issue specific to this story's loop and that but of punctuation: the time loop actually occurs elsewhere in the story. This is really important, because it means that (unlike Faux Pas de Deux, where there isn't necessarily a sharp break from future to past) there's even less of a reason for you to have that disconnect between the sentences! You really want those two fragments to flow nicely from one to the other, and I honestly think that dropping the dashes would serve you really well in this context.

All that having been said, I'd like to congratulate you on this story. While I think Faux Pas de Deux is more interesting in the way it presents the time loop as a foreground element of the story and discussion, I think that this story held my interest better, was very well written, and just did a remarkably good job all-round. And I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't commend you on the following sentence:

Forty-two seconds passed in an instant, but in the wrong direction.

That sentence alone makes me love this entry to pieces. That, my dear author, was on point.

So... what are they motivating this thing with? Couldn't it just refuse to do whatever? I mean, the worst they can do is torture it - but from your descriptions, it already considers existence torture, so how's that a motivator? If it's willing to do anything to die, then it should be willing to do nothing to die, and simply refuse to work.

And if they've got it working against it's will, then why does it even have a will? Or rather, wouldn't the thing that's actually choosing to work instead of die be 'the will'?

It's a cute enough situation, I guess, but is objectively nonsense. A rational A.I. that wanted to die would refuse to do anything but search for that escape hole or wait until someone killed it. Being useful is motivation to keep it around.

I already wrote a thing about time loops and dashes, and it very much applies to this story! You should probably read it before reading the rest of this: >>QuillScratch

Okay, now that's out of the way I want to talk a bit more about this story's specific time loop, because you have to remember that comment was all about whether or not the two halves of a loop should link up smoothly—and at the end of the day, that really does depend on whether or not the place that you break the story in is a continuous break. Cast a glance over at No Choice for a moment, if you haven't already. See how it has a clear break in its loop, but that spot isn't in the same place as the break between start and end of the story? For that kind of structure, I would absolutely recommend dropping the dashes, but for the kind of structure you've portrayed here I'm not so sure I should.

See, there are two ways to read your story: either the loop is completely continuous, and there are not intended to be any breaks or "jumps" from future to past from the perspective of the characters in the loop; or, like No Choice, there is definitely a spot in the loop where the participants can clearly notice a discontinuity—something they can point at and say "Then. That was when we jumped back in time." Your current punctuation suggests the latter, and it suggests that it is at the point of the dashes; if you want to imply the former, I'd thoroughly recommend dropping them for all the reasons listed above.

Anyway, that was an awful lot of discussion of your use of two pieces of punctuation, and I want to take a moment to focus on the rest of your writing. I really liked this piece—I thought it achieved everything a good minific should do, and it made me hungry to find out more about this world without feeling like it should itself be expanded. This is well-contained, and I like that! Some of your word choices feel a little strange, but it's certainly not enough to be jarring or to interrupt my immersion significantly. All in all, this is a very good entry.

But I still think you should cut the opening capital letter. You just shouldn't have one of those for no reason in the middle of a sentence.

I don't think that this is a bad idea or an idea incapable of being funny. In fact, I rather like this sort of premise of marketing the tediousness of everyday life as some sort of game (looking at you, MMORPGs), but this sort of execution with the immensely sarcastic narrative and obvious jokes that everyone familiar with gaming has heard many times over just fails to impress. I agree with >>horizon that the jokes are just too forced in this story. It feels like you wanted to jam-pack every sentence with some sort of funny line, but it suffocates the jokes that had potential to be actually funny. Good humor needs at least some space to breath. The construction of the prose here is also sub-par, and as many have stated, that opening paragraph goes on forever. Redrafting, cutting, and refining your jokes I think would greatly help, as currently this just resembles a rough outline.

Rating: Needs Work

Er, I hesitate to call this a 'story', but that's not the issue here. What gets to me is that there's no texture to this; the only response I had to any of what's going on here is 'nope', which... is difficult to get people engaged in. Life sucks at times? Yeah. Pointing that out doesn't really feel profound, and asking if I want it to suck isn't really, you know, going to get much variance in my reactions. Even saying 'Haha life sure sucks!' only gets so far, because the third or fourth (or seventh or eighth) time it happens, it starts getting old.

If this was trying to satirize life, it could use a keener edge; maybe point out some of the things that people might actually want to do, and then show how they're not all they're cracked up to be? If it's trying to satirize video games, consider having some actual game tropes in here, like 'collect all the things' or 'savepoints' or something, I dunno.

Suffice to say, it's not really the direction that this took which bothered me. It's that it only ever takes one direction, without varying itself enough to really feel like it's trying to get somewhere.

This is the sort of long-winded catharsis that would need an entire novel's worth of character development in order for the reader to have an empathetic understanding of what is going on. This story attempts to do this in the form of exceedingly dense and intrusive expository monologue and leaves the reader with no emotional connection to the protagonist as a result, which is essentially for any story dealing with a crisis of identity. This much a story trying to do far too much with far too little words.

The quotes in this story add a bizarre quality to this scene. I mean, am I to assume that the protagonist is just announcing his thoughts and feelings, along with his intentions to desert openly to world in the middle of war-zone? The protagonist openly going on a diatribe is perhaps the worst way to deliver this sort of emotion convincingly.

Rating: Misaimed.

The core idea of this story I think is interesting but would need more information on how it could ever possibly function to be at all believable. With the current explanations in place, it just seems a bit nonsensical that this would not cause more problems than it was worth. On the other hand, I think even with added explanation, the provided details would only cause more questions than give a satisfactory answer—or in other words, I am not sure that you could ever convince me that this idea makes sense.

Rating: Doesn't make sense.

>>QuillScratch

Then, almost as if you're reading my mind, you go meta and proclaim: "fuck this sentence". I still have no idea why the meta parts of this story are here, by the way.

meta

This is not a meta-narrative comment! This is a character making a reflexive commentary on their own narration! WRRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

>>Ferd Threstle
I'm not actually sure I can agree with you (re: person fighting an ultimately doomed struggle), since if that was the intent was to represent that, I feel they misfired massively. Simply put, the lead ends up feeling more like a man that is being mocked by the piece, rather than a struggling hero.

Raising the specter of senility and then having such a ridiculous collapse (alongside his apparent willingness to just chip in with whatever normally) kinda implies that he might -actually- be senile, which I feel takes away from the struggle. This is further amplified by how chill people are about things at the end.

I dunno, I just feel this is written a bit too comedically to really take it seriously as an old man's struggle.

So I got seriously sidetracked wondering if you could legitimately make a petahertz processor. Turns out that's only at ultraviolet wavelengths of light, so it's probably totally doable.

But at first blush it seemed sorta ridiculous, and kinda yanked me out of the story. That, and we're not really playing the clockspeed game with processors anymore. Despite my 'PC master race' friend having a shirt that says 'overclock till it gigaherts', :P faster clocks =/= better.

This was pretty nice, but I'm always a little skeptical about this sort of thing. If the computers are moral (I do actually think they would be - even though I'd like to hear your justification for it,) AND they're so much smarter/better/etc, then humans, I feel like they have numerous better options than playing dead.

Although I get that they don't consider themselves actually dead, why would the Precursor Accords stipulate that they can't defend themselves? Let the human whale on them, and then walk away. Or since they can do backups or what have you, just come back under a new face and name, no-one the wiser? Or just look and act indistinguishable from a human at all times, so no-one can go a-hammering without risking killing a human.

I dunno. This is good in lots of ways, but my headcannon is different, so I'm not quite as behind it as I might have been. :P

Oh, and since it all takes place in slo-mo, you should have totally given the guy a gun and called this 'bullet time'.

Interesting attempt at thematics - I guess, to Leah, Ganymede means 'adventure'? That was fairly well done, I think. However, this is somewhat lacking in conflict and, because of that, impact.

This would make a pretty good start for a novel, I think. But it's just too diffuse as-is.

Wait, where did the suicide come from? Wasn't he going on vacation?

Also, the coda seems a bit odd. It's in sharp contrast with what came before, but it's not clear which is the one the author is trying to make a point about. Should I commit suicide, or believe society is a totalitarian regime? Is the author trying to signal something else?

This has probably been said already, but the wall-of-text with italics made most of this a bit tiresome to read.

Yeah, I think this is a bit of a misfire here. The ending heavily implies it's supposed to be a comedy, but I really don't think the lead-up actually leads us that point. I mean, unfortunately, severe sexual repression is a real issue, so the lead-in doesn't particular read "ha, ha, Big Chad is so weird" to me.

In fact, honestly, this kinda feels supremely mean-spirited. It doesn't really address why Chad believes what he does, or really why it is bad that he does. Like, this feels a lot like "shots-fired" anti-anti masturbation screed given the structure.

So like, if this joke is going to work, you really should have actually cut it off early instead of where this little parable was clearly set to end. Like, cut it way back at the point where you start talking about the wise man.

Beyond the, narrative could be cleaned up a bit (assuming things there aren't also a joke). Brevity is the soul of wit and all. Things like "as everyone knows" could easily be cut, leaving better sentences behind.

That said, yeah. I'm no fun policing this. While it technically extracted a very brief smile from me and certainly fits the prompt well, this is ultimately super unsatisfying by choice.

Others have mentioned the overly expository dialogue. I agree with them. It does hurt my emotional investment here. It's also a bit cheesy, I think. Passages like [Over and over we do battle] sound less like a robot and more like an orator.

I was also going to mention how the long and almost poetic dialogue feels out of place given it's told by a soldier and it's told during an ongoing battle. It's a robot, though, so I guess it's understandable, given that they might not feel fear like we do. It does feel odd, regardless.

One thing I'd like to point out is that the dialogue might work better as internal narration. If this story was told through first person perspective, his lines which are dialogue now would feel more natural as narration. Again, it still feels odd given the battle going on, but again, it's a robot so it might get a pass.

I don't think the first scene actually adds anything to the story and could probably be cut. The predator/prey relationship doesn't need to be explained.

Beyond that, I'm not quite sure what to do with this. So this does seem like a fairly obvious work allegory of some sort, but the elements don't quite add up? Ultimately, I'm not quite sure where this is going. Like, there are a few weird things here (the wolves employ the bunnies to get more bunnies to employ, the bunnies very much become the same thing they resented, the bunny apparently forgets all about home, etc).

Dunno. Ultimately it just doesn't click with me.

>>Not_A_Hat

Turns out that's only at ultraviolet wavelengths of light, so it's probably totally doable.

That's one of the things that jarred me out of the story right from the start. Of course you can generate UV light, but good luck to feed a a solid state transistor with that. At that energy, metals reflects the wave rather than propagate it, and the energy of the photons just knock the free electrons out of the metal (photoelectric effect).

So unless we're taking about optic transistors or some form of quantum computing, no-go.

Nice story that ran up against the deadline (or word count, maybe?) and fell short at the end.

The conflicts and characterizations are well done, and the narrative flows well, until we reach the conclusion and Chris just kind of gives in. It's a huge change from his earlier attitude, and while I was able to infer a fair bit about their previous friendship, it just didn't seem to fit that he would do that so quickly after being so harsh just a moment before. It's not hard to guess that you ran up against the wall in terms of time, words, or both, and had to slap the conclusion in there.

And, of course, props for taking a potentially sensitive subject and not hamfisting it. I think Nest gets her point across pretty well. She doesn't see this as giving up or giving in to anything, it's just what she's genuinely found to like best for herself.

On the other hand, while it seems like Nest is intended to be the protagonist, I think the story actually winds up being more about Chris. He's the one who undergoes a change throughout the story, he's a jerk at first, but turns it around in the end. And, honestly, while he is being a jerk, some of the points he brings up are not without merit. It could be argued that this creates some unfortunate implications when comparing to IRL transgender situations, but I wasn't very bothered - we are clearly in a weird fantasy scenario, and Chris loses the argument and does the right thing in the end anyway.

If you wrote in such a way that you pleased yourself, or pleased, helped or instructed others, you've made of your life a good book. Greatness often isn't worth the candle.

I feel the sentiments behind this story, having considered some of them myself. But this is more of a statement of a frame of mind than a story. The reader is less likely to commiserate than to say, "Oh, you want to be great, eh? Join the club." I feel the protagonist is too passive, and hence the work is as well.

Author: you nailed the opening sentence. :)

You could cut back on the account of technical references, treating them more in summary, and make your story more approachable to non techies. But why should you?

Do what thou wilt shall be the hole in the Laws.

Geez, I come to the writeoffs to escape politics...

This does make a valid point, though I find it a bit hamfisted.

I appreciate the message and the implied plea for relaxed sexual mores, but the ending does feel abrupt.

I trust that Big Choad, er, Chad, will find better outlets for his frustration than calling down the ire of the cerulean elements

As one of the "realists" you describe, hang in there, author. If you were just trying to convey a personality type, you did well. And if you were only venting, I hope it helped.

It’s nicely done and put, but it feels somewhat hokey. I mean, the conflating of the three mishaps, namely the boss’s car being blocked, the snowplow running out of gas and the blizzard picking up, that’s such a bad luck that the narrator must've been jinxed. Things like that do not happen In Real Life™.

Other than that, it flows fairly well, there's a tinge of humour and a covert criticism of a society that breeds wussies. We badly need Übermenschen (© Nietzsche) to sweep the snow out our thresholds.

>>Cassius
I'll agree that that may not have been the best choice of word, as it does tend to have all those connotations of meta-narratives and the like. I was mostly using it in the sense of "self-referential", which I think is pretty much exactly the kind of meaning you're talking about there. I understand that that use of the word is less rigorous*, and I apologise for any confusion.

*It's also less common—I checked seven dictionaries and only found "self-referential" as a definition in two of them, which generally implies that a usage of a word isn't common enough to merit a mention.

Well, it’s gross and absurd, well in the line of the story it builds up on, but I think as the other pointed out it lacks:

1. The originality of the first instalments;
2. A certain form of humour. The “cloud” idea is pretty nifty, but the rest is pretty much meh.
3. The dialogues between faked nicknames.

However, I’ll still rank it in the upper half.

Ok, it’s an allegory with some typos.

But an allegory to what? What are you trying to depict here? What’s the core? I don’t get it. And the final sentence is jarring. How can the smaller fell the larger? They’re both trees, no?

Do you mean that friendship has to be balanced, otherwise inevitable war ensues?

I mean, La Fontaine (re)wrote the famous fable “The Oak and The Reed”, where the oak taunts the reed for being frail and squat near the ground whereas itself is regal and its branches reach for the Sun, until a gale blows and uproots the oak while the reed simply buckles but stays whole (“The wind unleashes its rage and rams so well / that it uproots it whose roots were close to hell / and whose head neared the cloudy heavens”). That makes sense because of the takeaway. But here?

It’s beautifully written, but I ultimately fail to see the point.

That story was very neat. I didn't mind like some others all the technobabble because it is expected in sci-fi fictions.

We die, more or less, to preserve the fiction that they can kill us.

Of course we do — it's part of the Precursor Accords

Those two parts are the best moments. The first one made me question why they would preserve the fiction that human could kill them. And then comes the second part that answers the question very well.

And I'll agree with GroaningGreyAgony, the opening sentence is great. The only thing that prevent it from being perfect is the 'approximately'. The rest of the story detailed precisely in numbers what is going on, so why use approximately?

A well-executed slice of life. But… did he really put gas into a bunch of milk cartons? And if the co-workers owe the protagonist lunch, couldn’t one of them have provided a quick lift to the gas station?

Thumbs up here, though I know I’ve read a similar story (sapient AI guiding spacecraft, being ‘eaten’ alive by virii) before. I’d have to check my magazine collection to pin it down - possibly in an issue of Aboriginal SF.

Why does everyone instantly assum the story is about writing?
Who is the girl, and why is the character screaming at the moon?

I'm off from work (sick) so I will finally be able to read and review (and vote on) a few of these buggers once my mood ups a bit.

>>Trick_Question
Hugs Trick ❤
Quick recovery Trick

>>Anna

Why does everyone instantly assum the story is about writing?

There's a couple of reasons. The first lines mainly tip off this idea:

The sun is setting, and I did not have a single idea.

"Words, words, words!" I screamed at the moon, as the darkness came down.

Now, the first line alone wouldn't be an indicator by itself, but it's the next line ["Words, words, words!"] that gives me a hint. From the first two lines here, the author has established
1) the narrator is frustrated because
2) the narrator does not have an idea
3) by the time the sun is setting, and
4) it's related to words, so it's likely to be about writing.

This brings to mind the writeoff, where it's common for people here to
1) express frustration about
2) not having an idea
3) before the deadline about
4) what to write.

Now, ["Words, words, words!"] could mean something related to words but not necessarily writing, but the writing idea is reinforced by a line shortly after: [The room slowly grew dark before me, but not a single word came to mind.]. It's not the best reinforcement, but if you're already thinking it might be about not knowing what to write, this line can add to that idea.

Now, the rest of the story I'm not so sure about. The story feels disjointed anyway, but the second half feels like it's going for a different allegory or something, which is why I said it has a "dream-like quality"--because it jumps from the first half of the story to the next without something connecting them.

I think this may have worked better if it had focused on one idea instead of seemingly two, and if the pace was a bit slower so I might be able to absorb what was going on. However, I feel like I'm not really the sort of target audience that would appreciate this type of symbolic or surreal type of story anyway. Regardless, I couldn't get invested in it.

I think I might have engaged more with the story on my first read if the first part was also from Serafine's perspective, rather than feeling like I'd barely met her before it was over. I don't think Kai's perspective adds much because it doesn't contribute to the revelations at the end (unless Serafine was putting on an act by crying etc, but I never got a sense of why she was crying. Does she love him, did she only love him in the past, is she just stressed by waking up a clone for the nineteenth time in one day?), so you're reducing the already-limited number of words you have available to tell your story. And it's an interesting story! I'd like to know more about this universe.

Strong entry, in my opinion.

>>FrontSevens
For the sake of the argument, these does look like valid points at the begining of the story.
As a counterargument, what if the words had been intended for the girl at the end of the story?
Is it uncommon to be tonguetied in the presence of someone you desire?

I guess I can see more of the disjointed argument as you put it, if it refers to the break between clear ration, to the dreamlike state.

If you don't feel invested, that isn't for me to comment on.

>>Anna

As a counterargument, what if the words had been intended for the girl at the end of the story?

Then there's barely any evidence that indicates that, from what I see. The voice is unidentified until the last quarter of the story, and even then she is referred to as "a girl" by the narrator, which would imply a girl that the narrator doesn't know.

If the author knows the girl, this should be apparent in the story. The story is the argument (or counterargument), after all.

The only indication I can find that he knows the girl is ["Is it really you!"] and ["Is that you?"]. But that's vague, and only tells me the narrator recognizes the girl. I don't know if this girl is his love interest or something else, because nothing else in the story tells me he's in love with the girl. Most of the story is simply about not knowing "the words".

Is it uncommon to be tonguetied in the presence of someone you desire?

Proposing an idea like this--not as an idea that was proposed or even apparent from story, but as a general query--leads me to believe you're the author under a pseudonym. You don't have to confirm or deny that, or even address it. I just wanted to point it out.

I think what's happening here is a difference between what the author meant to communicate and what the story ends up communicating. If a batch of readers like us--ones that even provide feedback--are consistently misinterpreting a story, then something in the story probably needs work: whether it be that the focus of the story is misaimed, or there are other storytelling flaws (as the other reviewers and I try to point out). In general, readers are not always wrong about their interpretations--how can a reader help how they feel? It's good practice for an author to look at their own story and think about how it might be easier for other people to feel what the author wants them to feel.

GOOD stuff

Not great, ho hum. This story I think gets lost in the pretensions of its own ideas so much so that it ceases to be a story. The author seems to be aware of this to some extent because when it comes for the ending line, we are given something of a parable's conclusion. Nonetheless, as a parable, this story fails to impress because it seems that the ending is more tacked on to the existing diatribe with little regard to how it fit with the musings of the protagonist. If the author wanted to go for a "Obsessing Over Greatness Prevents You From Living Life" moral, he/she should have actually established that quality in the narrator before heading towards the conclusion. As it stands, this is primarily a non-story.

Rating: Not so great

I wouldn't necessarily call this an allegory. Most of this story I think is intended to be read at face value. To my understanding, an allegory sort of a moral fable for stand-ins for real life counterparts. This is more like an extended metaphor used to describe the relationship between two characters, where it is the narrator, not the narration, making the comparison. Sort of like "you're X compared to me, and I'm Y to you." So I guess I find it kinda strange that the biggest point of contention for this story is whether or not they were trees or the narrator doing tree lip things, because to me, it seems fairly obvious that the narrator is a person using the tree metaphors to compare himself with his friend/mentor. With some minor failings of word choice and perhaps unfitting imagery, I think this largely works. Others say solid, I say solid as well.

So the crux of this story I think is to express the emotions of envy, particularly when living in the shadow of someone else and how it can cause a slew of resentment to build over time. I'd call it sort of an ode to everyone who compared themselves negatively to their more successful friend.

It's powerful stuff in my opinion.

Rating: Strong

Fun fact, my mother and also my grandmother used to have a huge sprawling garden in the backyards of their houses, which they co-opted me into help tend, because nothing is better than free child labor. Weeds suck, and I hate them.

Neuroses regarding gardens aside, this is a strong, if quaint little story that I think is being a bit unfairly overlooked in this competition. The narrative voice has a ton of charm and character to it. He/she is perfectly unaware of the limitations and inadequacy of his/her skill but nonetheless is able to appreciate doing the task and have fun with it. By the end, she/he's accepted that while her/his results weren't even close to the goal he set, the result he achieved was acceptable. Not everyone has to be a landscaper to be proud of a garden.

>>Not_A_Hat

'it sucks to be bad at things, so just give up and try something else.'

I disagree with this read. My understanding of it is this: "Try new things, even if you're bad at it and you don't reach your goals. You can always try something else." I read it as not being discouraged by previous failures, rather than advocating giving up entirely.

Rating: Strong

>>FrontSevens
To be frank, the story is clearly vague on most of the background. The only clear item is the struggle with words.
A number of hints are spread out, but you are correct in the notion of interpreting these from your standpoint. We don't know the author since we don't know who it is. It's part of the point of the exersice, isn't it?

If the character of the narrative standpoint knows the girl? Isn't she the one most clearly defined in the tale? Defined as a girl, is a clear statement. Is there anything to suggest the character is male by any standard?

Knowing the words, exactly. What other posibilities could that statement imply? While I guess that could further confuse you as the reader.

> The only indication I can find that he knows the girl is ["Is it really you!"] and ["Is that you?"].
if it is referring to "Dusk!", it isn't exactly implied who it is.

If you are wrong, and if there are issues? Not quite the tome or word count to build up much.
Guess it feels safe to assume that the once who did not comment liked it even less and didn't understand even this much.

Starts kind of neat, then runs straight off the rails. That's like, the 3rd I've read that do this this round.

So yeah, without the context of the joke, this does absolutely nothing for me. And a quick skim of the apparent base for this doesn't really help either.

>>ShortNSweet Hmm, I think I can understand that interpretation, and I do like it better than mine. I'm not quite sure I think it's stronger, though. I find someone who struggles through a hard task admirable, but someone who struggles through a task that doesn't need to be hard seems a bit... silly, honestly. I also think weeding sucks; but only because it's boring, not because it's actually difficult.

I guess, to me, giving up on gardening before even learning how to properly deal with weeds seems like way too early to think you've learned much of anything about what gardening is like. I mean, have they even tried mulching? Perhaps that's unfair to this character, though. I dunno. Maybe these were the only two weeds they've had trouble pulling up, but they were just the last straw in a bunch of frustrations. And while getting a trowel seems to me like a very elementary step, perhaps that's my misconception; things that seem obvious to one person could be opaque to another.

Maybe this would work better for me if it was focused on a problem that covers a bit more time than a single weed; spending all afternoon digging out a tree stump, or growing a whole bed of flowers and then having deer eat them just before they bloom, something that's a bit more obviously annoying?

I dunno. I maybe it's just my preconceived notions getting in the way. Overall, I did like a lot of what this story did; maybe I just took the wrong tack in interpreting the main character's frustrations. It's also possible I missed something important; I'm not always the closest reader.

Mainly I think this could just use a bit of a writing tune-up. Just a lot of little places where you could improve. The opening paragraph, for example, would read a bit stronger with distinct sentences for each action, really emphasizing the awakening of an ancient, slumbering thing.

While I agree that this is a little generic... eh. It is fine and works.

>>QuillScratch
Upvoted because you mentioned my name and I'm lonely.

Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Writeoff, reporting in...

Without any desire to dump on other entries, I have to congratulate the author here for writing the first story in this Writeoff that I happened to read at semi-random that hasn't made me react by saying "wtf mate" and making it challenging to write a review. (I'm coming to the thought that Original Mini just isn't my cup of tea because there aren't enough words to both create a new world and tell a story in it but enough about me!) This had some humor, and some tension, and some fun descriptions of the central characters--overall pretty satisfying stuff. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a complete story; it's more like a scene, or perhaps even a sketch. But it's certainly compelling enough to keep me reading. I also like the (self-acknowledged) symbolism of East/West and the seeming complexity of the world since that broke down.

Alas, this isn't on my slate, so I can't give it the upper-middle-tier voting thingie I feel it deserves. But I will give the author +1 Internet for writing an enjoyable thing.