Benton Harbor, eh? Are you too chicken to name your inspiration, Author? :)

I find this story to be an amusing and clever romp, though much of my initial merriment was due to my singing out Benton’s words in the second paragraph to the appropriate theme, a reference most readers won’t get. But after that, the comedy bubbles along at a brisk pace, though I agree with Horizon that some tightening up of the linkages is in order.

Both thumbs up!

Man, I was completely at a loss for how to productively explain my problems with this story, and then >>horizon came along and spelled them out way better than I would've. Go read his comments about overcomplicating again, and pretend I said them :P

In terms of advice, this could really be cut down to four scenes: Zarund telling stories to his children (this could be two separate scenes, if you want to keep the exposition and the crone stuff separate), Zarund talking to himself about the war, Zarund with his great-x grandkid deputy, and Zarund with the queen. All the events you're trying to set up here can be neatly fit into those four scenes, and then you're not giving your readers whiplash trying to figure out how you've intercut this or that.

I feel like this was a story that really ended up sabotaging itself, because it's the kind of story I usually like, and I wanted to like it... but in the end, I found the mythology hampered by the presentation. I look forward to seeing a streamlined version of this after the competition!

“Why is there a screaming hell-portal in our sink?”

“Because the disposal was broken, and Raspberry Pis are only twenty bucks apiece now.”

I really hate my roommate some days.

Before I even begin, I want to say that that's a 5/5 opening line in my book.

Okay, finished now, found about a dozen more wonderfully quotable lines, loved the whole thing. No recommendations, just keep doing what you're doing, author.

This is a neat idea, but I don't think you've used the diary format particularly effectively. For starters, there's the obvious question of chosen material: this diary is way too laser-focused on the details necessary for an outsider to put together the story, as opposed to reflecting what a the narrator might want to write. How little we learn about her, and how much we know about the plot-defining actions of her and her family!

Beyond that, the voicing was awfully inconsistent within a single perspective. Not all the entries are going to have the same tone or vocabulary, but part of doing that is making sure that each "voice" has a distinct voice. Here, I found big-kid words bleeding into entries where they didn't belong, and short, punchy sentences nestled among longer, more thoughtful compatriots in a manner which suggested they'd inadvertently wandered over from a different paragraph.

Keep the idea, clean up the presentation, and I think you'll have something on your hands.

I really don't have much to criticise. Any small complaint I might have had, >>horizon seems to have already covered. I feel that the prompt was utilised extremely effectively here, the narrative was interesting, immersive, and wasn't afraid to use technical detail. Also, it was imaginative, very much so, I think. I'd love to have a conversation with the guy that plans out and writes that in a weekend, very well done. I think it was quite clear that plenty of original thought went into this, it doesn't feel as if it refers to anything, and it's definitely an interesting, and arguably feasible prediction of the future.

I remember a scene from Friends where Ross is saying that by 2030 (or in 30 years time, it was one or the other) people will actually be able to upload their thoughts to a matrix of sorts and live forever as a machine; this made me think of that.

I'd say this is gonna be in the top 5 at least, very good.

AAIQU

I agree with >>Fenton for the most part. This story doesn't do anything new with its material. What's more, for a few moments it felt as though it was checking off the boxes of a list of beats a story like this should hit. At least he wasn't put in a decaying home by his neglecting children.

However, I'm a firm believer that good execution trumps everything else and, good Lord, did this work for me. Perhaps it may just be my bias talking, but Martha's story made me think back to my grandfather's last week. I don't want to depress anyone, but I just want you to know you got a tear out of me.

Passing on to actual criticisms, this is actually an interesting point in a meta sort of way. Henry laments how Alzheimer took it's toll on his wife to the point where the painful memories of her last years overcame all the good times they had together, Conversely, the story spends more time narrating the devastating effects Martha's disease had in her and how much it hurt Henry, and comparatively little in telling us about the times they were happy together.

While I suppose that works thematically, selling us on how happy this couple was would've given much more impact to the loss Henry feels and maybe we could've sympathised more with his decision at the end.

Just a thought, but this is one of my favourite stories from this round.

>>Zaid Val'Roa
I thought about that, but the problem is that they're not consistent enough to seem truly intentional. They also don't feel like mistakes a kid would make, they feel more like the author got hit by autocorrect and didn't realize. If they are meant to be intentional, having more of them would really help convey that better.

The style of writing is great, I felt like I was gliding from one sentence to the next. I couldn't explain just what it was that made me feel that way, but I felt very encapsulated in the story's world, and had no difficulty visualising most everything. That the writer has managed to keep a consistent pace, describe the sights and actions so well, and keep me anticipating the next development is a testament to their ability.

Unfortunately, the story is not for me. That isn't to say that it's a bad story at all, which it isn't. It just isn't my genre, and as such I find it a lot easier to judge based upon the merit of the actual writing, of which there is plenty. To be clear, I have no issues with the plot, and I don't see any inconsistencies or issues worthy of note.

This is enjoyable despite it not being what I would usually read, purely because the writer conveys things so well. Would be interested to see what other work they have out there.

AAIQU

Send this to a tv network, maybe they'll make a pilot (heh) out of it. This was really awesome, I mean it. Congratulations on delivering a solid and well-rounded story within the word limit.

Anyway, I'll give my share of criticism (beyond the obvious 'Make this into a full multi-chapter story I can read')

Echoing >>Fenton, I think the slow intro would work better in a longer story. However, with the constrains of the Writeoff, such an intro--while comfy--does very little to sell us on the story as a whole. We get to know a little about Diggory's family dynamics, but this is something that develops in the background to the the main plot more than being a central theme of the story.

Also, a few of the sideplots probably could have used some fleshing out. Fishel's interest in Cleio, to name one. However, I think all those briefly mentioned details and backstory regulated by an eyedrop more than plot-holes serve to make the world feel real, as if it extended beyond these words rather than being tailor made for the sake of delivering a story.

Regarding actual plot-holes, though, how come the Captain didn't notice several dozen of his watch officers suddenly pack up and leave one morning? Surely somebody loyal to him must have notified him, and even if he wasn't informed, how do you sneak over seventy people without nobody noticing?

Still, this is one of my favouirite stories this round so far, and I would love to see more of this little universe.

I tell myself that I can sneak in one more story before going to bed. Sure, I have to wake up early for work, but with how tired my body is, my will feels as though it were fighting a losing battle. Ultimately, my tired and somewhat sore body concedes and my mind rejoices at the prospect of getting to enjoy another story, and at least this one seems to be a short one.

Then, a few sections in, my body curses my brain and promises to held it responsible should I fall asleep on the bus come the morrow. My mind tries to assuage its concerns, saying that everything is under control, this isn't the first time it has had to unravel a complex story with a few layers of depth. My body just groans in a mix of disbelief, contempt, and fatigue. Not one to take such an insult laying down, my mind further raises the stakes by promising to not only offer feedback, but doing so in a style reminiscing the story itself.

My body, for its part, simply starts shutting down part by part.

With the looming threat of unconsciousness growing above it much like the parallel for negative things in a bad metaphor, my mind rushes to sort out what to mention first. It realises that the format of the story is to be commended, a series of vignettes portraying different views on the nature of nonexistence is not only creative, but was also interestingly developed. But is that the most commendable aspect of the story? Surely it could have benefitted from expanding its scope to other perspectives, much like how the whale broke the somewhat samey pattern the segments had up until that point. Like wise with the final scene.

The odd feeling of numbness is starting to spread, and my mind realises it must hurry, lest this review end up being cut short and proving the body right. With the stubborness that characterises it, my mind pushes forwards, focusing now on the efectiveness of each segment, and how it accomplishes what each sets out to do in such a succinct way, even though a few rounds of polishing and perhaps some measured expansion could make them shine and feel more in harmony with the rest.

Feeling that all that it could say has been said without being victim of the pitfalls of nitpicking, my mind is satisfied and decides to succumb to the slumber that has already overtaken the body when a sudden, chilling thought crosses it.

If my mind could so easily embrace the sleep which overtook my body, does it mean that there really is no distinction between the two other than whichever barriers put forth by itself in an attempt to rationalise that a difference must exist when truth is that both mind and body aren't two opposing forces but rather complementary parts of a whole and any separation only takes place--despite the redundancy or even because of it--within the mind?

Before this thought can be pursued any further, sleep overtakes, and both mind and body join one another in unconsciousness.

The opening suggests something character-based and at least slightly reflective. That turns out to be wholly unrepresentative of the fic itself. I actually thought to myself, a quarter of the way through, "God, this reads like someone trying to turn a D&D session into a story."

Of course, it turns out that's exactly what it is, but having better than half your story read like that still isn't good; it's dull, low-engagement stuff for the reader. A page or so might be one thing, to set up the reveal, but this drags out the worst aspects of what people think of when they think "D&D game-turned-novel" too long. As long as I'm doing spoiler text, let me take a moment to mention that the shift to IRL exposed some dialogue issues; what could previously be written off as an attempt at character voicing carried through to the present day in the form of stilted, unnatural speaking lines.

The writing, meanwhile, is full of meandering sentences, unnecessary adverbs, missing words, and the occasional idiosyncratic error. It didn't help my enjoyment that I've heard this joke/urban legend/meme (honestly, I don't even know what to call it, exactly) before, but even if it was new to me, there were plenty of presentation issues here to stop me from fully appreciating the humor of the situation.

Hmm. You lean a little heavily on the limits of copy and paste here and I'm pretty sure I skipped over at least half of the story. Putting words on the page that I don't want to read and you don't want to write is bad form.

The eternal champion who fights all comers knows ahead of time that they will eventually fail. Be it to loose stone, a grain of sand in their eye or ill-timed sneeze.

Still I think it is pretty okay.

These are some good words, as good as I have seen. While the story of the banker and the devil is far from original this rendition is solid and well crafted.

The smooth talking flesh and blood Avi in a tailored suit does however lack somewhat in comparison to more intangible terrors. So much that I wonder if you might have been better served by a yet more mundane manner of villain.

>>Chris
Chris you're back? That’s great news.

Yeah, the "beat" and "super" typos in the first sentences were a bit jarring. Though maybe the girl got so off on her birthday that she forgot how to write :¨P But generally, as the others pointed out, leaving typos in the first paragraph simply comes across to the reader as “this author writes in a slipshod way”.

Beyond that, I quite agree with the others’ complaints. I think the tone of the diary is much too objective and merry, even at times where it should be sombre and frightful. We don’t really feel the sense of urgency and/or panic the story would warrant. We don’t even get to know how the girl discovered that the monsters are shunning earthenware pots, which is, however, a key point of the story. I could add that I felt some of the last paragraphs, when the story starts to repeat itself, were on the nose. We already got the drift of it, there was no need to rub it in (I surmise this was a way to break over the 2,000 words deadline). The end is brusque, too. She works a way out (which one?) and the story ends. That’s rather anti-climatic.

The short of it is that the idea is somewhat fun, it’s a crazy take on the time-loop paradox, but as it stands now, it needs some additional cuddling to shine.

I won't be very original. Even if i'm only third, pretty much have been covered by others and I agree with them. The only points I'll raise will be to slightly disagree and add some PPOV.

But before we start, I need to say that it was really pleasant to read. I felt engaged with the protagonist and was curious what would happen to him once he's stepped into Shangri-la.

The story felt as a mix between a fairy tale and a sci-fi story. Even if it seemed a bit odd at the beginning, I fully dive into it.

I also felt the shadow of the Divine Comedy and the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as inspirations for the story. While it can't compare to them, you've scored pretty high, especially with the swan scene. I didn't get what it was supposed to mean but I think that add to the story than harm it. I sense there is a deep meaning hidden and I would be interested if you could give some hints (not the full explanation) once you'll be able to say who you are. I'm pretty sure the swan is somehow connected to Hypatia. The fact that Hypatia's robe is described " as white as a swan’s plumage" makes me say this.

For me, the last scene with Hypatia could have been more powerful. I don't really know how, it's just that it felt a bit short. Maybe by desrcibing her in more details? She is supposed to be the final step of the protagonist's journey and yet, I saw her like an average character.
Also, is she inspired by her?

To conclude, I loved this one. I think it was very smart with some deep meaning hidden and a feeling of 'poetry'.

I still don't know how to rate now, I'll probably read it a second time but I can at least say that it will go high.

Okay, I've been able to finish this after failing once. I must warn you, this review won't be unbiaised but I'll try nonetheless.

The rythm you tried to install by repeating over and over "You were there" fell flat for me. At the third occurence, I already wanted to stop. At the fifth, I quitted. But then I got back to it, because I didn't want to be unfair just because I didn't like the repetitions.

So I'll try to stick on what happens to the character, 'I' and 'you', and because nothing is really detailed, who they are, what happened, why they did this, I didn't care for them. The ending, which, I guess, was supposed to end the story in drama, also fell flat.

Now, I think I understand what you were trying to do by choosing to write like this. And I must admit it was a big risk, but, as I said, it annoyed me more than anything else. Moreover, there are many questions without a quotation mark. I'm sure you have deliberatly chosen which ones would have that quotation and which ones would not, but I didn't get the intention. It felt like you have chosen them randomly, maybe because I'm not a native speaker and thus, I don't have the knowledge to understand it, but with several typos spread here and there, I just can't decide.

Another thing that seems odd is the last two sentences. During the rest of the story, the pace is pretty fast, one sentence after the other, there is a sense of urgency and the last two sentences ends all this speed abruptly.

So I don't know how to rate it because I really disliked the story but I must recognize it was a really good try, and, aside from the two last sentences, the writting is pretty solid and consistent. I'll see about it once I've read the other stories.

I want to believe all animals remain the sime size as their Earth counterparts, if only because the thought of a little bird hugging a dragon is both adorably heart-warming and somewhat laugh-inducing.

You know, I can't help but see the point President Leon may have. Even the purest and most-well intentioned dragons are still dragons equipped with a flame thrower, and considering the current state of affairs and the tension some of the civilians may feel, it's not an easy decision to make.

But I digress, this was a solid story and I was engaged all the way through. I'll repeat what has been said about the intro felling a bit confusing, but otherwise good job.

So, if you strip away the framing device, we're left with a lot of exposition in second person. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's definitely different, and a story that's almost entirely exposition is going to have to really excel if it wants to make an impression.

One way you try that is through the constant repetition of "You were there," the narrator's (very) slowly evolving tribute to the hero. For me, however, the repetition got tiresome after the fifth time or so. Since you repeat it 21 times across the entire story, that's a lot of time for me (and others, perhaps) to get annoyed with it.

I have to say the part I enjoyed most was the brief period where the narrator focused on his own actions -- his betrayal of the town. I like the conceit here, that the disaster described in the first paragraphs is a disaster that has happened before and will happen again, repeating forever until the hero manages to defeat the demons (or whatever) that are attacking the town. In that sense, the repetition is appropriate; however, just because something is appropriate doesn't mean it can't be annoying as well.

The end felt like it was rambling to me. Granted, the narrator was rambling, but just because a paragraph accurately represents a character doesn't make it enjoyable to read. I'm not convinced that the ending you chose – the hero recognizes the source of the recurring evil and acts to break the cycle – is presented in a meaningful way, since we never see what causes the hero to come to his realization and break the cycle. We only see the consequences of his realization.

I’m just waiting for Dave to eliminate the gerbil expense by opening another portal to the Dimension of Li’l Cute Fuzzies, which runs off the waste heat from the stove. Just be careful not to use a cast iron pan…

Part of the value of a story like this lies in the ideas it sparks in creative readers.Take a few more of these ideas and perhaps wrap them around the skeleton of a more meaningful plot, and get this story sold, Author. Thumbs up.

First off, the Punctuation. The placing of a coma is just as important as the choice of words. Consider them with care.
In this case, I was bothered by it and was held afar and slowed down for no apparent reason.

And now you've planted the question in my mind of wether or not is it worse to make a deal with the devil or with a Jew. How could you?

For a story about just two characters talking, you did a good job of keeping the pace nice and steady. I guess that's also what made the characters feel real. For the most part.

I wish we could've spent a bit more time inside of Teddy's head, getting a better grasp of his thought process and how these rather unusual revelations affect him.

Conversely, while there is a hint of the decision he will make, there's nothing concrete and I feel that's a waste because it could mean a lot for Teddy's development as a character.

Still, great work. This was very entertaining.

I agree with Haiku up there, this could really use an extension.

As a small vignette about a day in the life of cybercops, it does quite alright, but there is so much more to be explored here. And I don't mean just the universe you've created (although, yeah, that too) but the case itself. A more in-depth view of the investigation wouls have been much more satisfying to read. Instead we get another lead and we jump to the debriefing, explaining what happened.

I feel that robs the story of an ending with more impact, but I otherwise loved the setting and the characters.

This story was very enjoyable, but I do have a couple of issues with it. Small things, mind you, but still issues.

There was no mention of what exactly Teddy would have to do for his part of the deal. While there was an implication of what he would be doing, it was never fully described. Maybe it wasn't an integral part of the story, but I still would have been interested to see. Also, was he enthralled in the end? Had he lost the will to argue? The other character seemed to think his work was done when he made to leave, so I would assume so.

Apart from that, loved it. The writing was strong, the character of the blind man terribly elegant, and the message very strong. I felt quite grounded in the era, although I might have liked to have seen more regional dialect specific to the time. The message was strong, and the ending was powerful, despite the ambiguity of it.

Overall, I'm very impressed. I'd love to see a sequel. (following the blind man in his work maybe?)

Great job! Thanks for the read.

AAIQU

Well. Show up late and all the good critique's been given already. I really liked this concept and would love to see it expanded upon, but I must agree that the manner of the delivery could use some work. There are a lot of things missing, and while I'm fine with some facts being left to the imagination, I think this one took too many liberties in that department.

Great idea, though. Reminds me of something I once wanted to try, but never got around to. I daresay yours is better.

Once the conflict between Reds and Blues has been established and once I've read about our solar system, I knew exactly how it would end, and that killed the surprise. The only surprise was the reason why the meteorite would crash instead of landing and the reason given by the story... I don't know, it seemed rushed. While Zolfran seemed to be the logical type, thinking before acting, we don't really see why he has chosen to destroy everything so I can't buy it.

I would lazily echo what Zaid Val'Roa and PaulAsaran have said. It needs some polish but it is still good.

>>Ritsuko
Thank you for adding your feedback! It's always valuable to see what sorts of things knock readers out of stories.

As a fellow reader, I'm curious why the punctuation in this story bothered you. I didn't notice anything particularly bothersome. I should note that that doesn't make either of us wrong, it just means that we're noticing (and affected by) different things.

Would you be willing to quote a couple of examples from the story of commas (or whatever) that disrupted your reading?

Interesting to see the division here on whether the repetition was a net positive for the story or not! Now I'm curious as to whether I'm just totally off the reservation, or whether it's a love-it-or-hate-it thing with a more even division. This is also a useful reminder that no one reader speaks for your audience — it's really helpful to see what everyone likes/dislikes, because the more universal a piece of feedback is, the more confident you can be about whether that thing is a problem or not.

>>Cold in Gardez

I have to say the part I enjoyed most was the brief period where the narrator focused on his own actions -- his betrayal of the town. I like the conceit here, that the disaster described in the first paragraphs is a disaster that has happened before and will happen again, repeating forever until the hero manages to defeat the demons (or whatever) that are attacking the town.

Thank you for pointing this out. I didn't say so in my review, but I felt the same — the twist of the narrator's betrayal and his madness-driven choice to summon the demons caught me by surprise, and I thought that was a cool place to take the story.

Have God grant him eternal life and tie him to a post in his backyard. Problem solved.

You know, I'm generally fine with leaving the setting unexplained as long as the story told is intriguing and interesting enough, and this story was both. However, you keep rising too many question and in the end we barely get any answer.

We know nameless guy is going to keep coming no matter how many times he's defeated, but that's not a conclusion, it's barely a hook.

Ultimately, this is a great concept that leaves me wanting more but not in a good way.

>>horizon

I feel it hedged and unclear.

The quite require sitation markings.
I like the lines crisp, easy to read.

Punctuation adds emphasis and give additional meaning and clarity of intent if applied correctly.

This was an interesting piece that has just fallen short of being at the top of my slate. The problems, which admittedly could be simply issues I have without being objectively something to correct, are minor but impact in my overall placing of the story.

Let's start with the things I liked. Nesterov and Dubinev are nice characters. They give a real down to earth feeling and show a lot of humanity the few times they slide out from being professionals at work. The setting is a clever choice and ties well together the ending and how the events of the story never made a bigger splash. The encounter with the UFO is suitably alien, and I applaud your decision to not explain it. The ending itself was touching and melancholic as life can be. Great job there.

And now on the things that I think need to be improved. A few paragraphs are weak and bring down the rest of the story. This happens mostly in the descriptions, which swivel between evocative and telling. The dialogs are consistently solid. There are also a couple of points where we have some less than graceful infodump. While this helps giving context, it's not always necessary and could probably be rewritten better. The ending, while conceptually great, feels too distant. I'm not sure if this was a conscious choice or something caused by the time constraints, but after the intimacy of the first part, I feel like I'm missing something here on the emotional level.

You may have noticed that my complaints are mostly nitpicking and could be easily fixed with another round or two of editing. That's because I really liked the story. It's not my absolute favorite, but it is solid, touching and a really pleasant read.

Thank you, author.

>>Ritsuko
Good point on that line in the opening paragraph. The sentence didn't particularly bother me on first read, but it would be easy to trim it down, and it's hard to go wrong by making your opening paragraph clearer and more punchy:

The stars only barely peeked into the room—dimmed as they were by the sheer drapes covering the windows—but Zarund felt their gaze all the same.

The stars were barely visible through the sheer drapes covering the windows, but Zarund felt their gaze all the same.

(At first I had "the stars were dimmed by…", but all other things being equal, retaining the original sentence's passive voice dulls the tone. I played around with the even-more-active "The stars shone…" etc. — that active verb would be my choice if I were rewriting it from scratch, but it doesn't work as well with the comment about their gaze.)

This gets pretty good marks from me. Honestly, a couple of paragraphs did make me turn off a little, but that may be because I'm reading with distractions in the room. Most of it read really well. military jargon can be a little daunting if you're not completely in the know, yet this fic is descriptive enough that it isn't an issue. We're given a decent amount of information regarding the setting, and the story plays out nicely. I enjoy the abstract idea, and like that what our characters see touches them so. The ending satisfied me, in that it legitimately made me smile. Any story that induces a smile at the end (and not because it's finally over), is a success in my books.

As for further criticism, >>Orbiting_kettle summed it up nicely, but I would add/agree that the last part of the story felt somewhat impersonal, something I did not expect after becoming invested in the characters. You know when you watch a 'based on real life' film, like 'Legend' or 'Blow', and at the end it tells you about the character's death/prison sentence/institutionalisation/marriage, but because you're only being told about it, without any descriptors, or anything else to place you in the situation, you don't feel so much for the character, despite knowing you might have cried or been at least upset if you had seen them be arrested (etc.) on screen. But because it's a little written segment at the end you're like 'oh, neat.' It's kind of like that, except it didn't happen that severely, I still felt involved with the characters, and interested in what happened to them.

This was a good read, thank you for sharing it!

AAIQU

What is it with this Caricature character in the first place, couldn't make a real person do these things?
Be weary of pointless exagerations in general.
Quotation marks, use them for all sitations as Speach or dialogue. it's plain sloppy.

As funny as the story may be, but these issues are still bothering.

I liked it. Mostly. Solid concept and excellent delivery. My favorite so far... although it's only the fourth I've read, so take that with a grain of salt.

The only part that bothered me was the third section in which the background is detailed for us. On the positive side, you did it in such a way that it flowed well with the rest of the story. If someone simply must do exposition, this would be the way. But I have a negative opinion of exposition in general and am of the firm view that there is always a way to avoid it. So, no matter how good a job you did of slipping it in there and keeping it interesting, I still dock points for it.

I have mixed feelings on the narrative as a whole. There's a part of me that doesn't care for how the events were brought forth in such a simple "this is what happened" kind of way. That's not to say it wasn't emotional, but it felt to me as though the scenes were set to be so purely on what is happening, rather than any great effort on the part of the author to make them so. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; if one can produce the seriousness and emotional nature of events just by saying what happened, it's a good sign. It's just something that caught my eye, and I feel it could be interpreted negatively by some.

This is different from, say, Sisyphus, because here we are given a much better image of what Tyler is thinking as events move on. I suppose this shows that emotion can be enabled purely based on thoughts and physical actions, and I wholeheartedly approve.

All in all, a great entry. I look for it to place very highly.

Ah, deicide, a classic and something which quite obviously links to the prompt. It's a kind of story I usually like.

There's not much I can say about the technical aspect here. The writing is solid, the action sequences flow nicely and I could picture what was happening clearly, which is a big plus.

Now on to the criticism. The repetition of the first paragraphs became a bit off-putting. I understand why you did it, but I would prefer something different.

Now, let me put away my Tentatively Objective Critic hat and let me talk about a purely personal preference. For me the Killing God genre requires either a philosophical challenge or a path of personal discovery. In this case it was thematically a tangent to the story which is a nice action scene and tells us a bit about the guardian but not much else. This feels a bit like a missed occasion. Killing God is a powerful concept, and you didn't really use it. To be more effective we would need to know more about at least one of the characters, as to frame te action in a larger context.

Personal preferences aside, I liked what I saw even if I hoped for more. Thank you for having written it.

>>All_Art_Is_Quite_Useless
Killing God is a theme which, while not quite common, is pretty classical even if it started only relatively recently to appear in western works of fiction.

Just like horizon, I was about to hate this entry and I was already rolling my eyes, thinking that we were about to go meta. But no.

The comedy stroke right, I smiled many times and laughed once or two times. I could argue that some scenes seemed to come out of nowhere but the general impression the story left to me was its randomness; so it was kind of expected.

In four words, solid pace and comedy. Good job.

Sometimes, there are terrible stories that don't require a lot of advice in order to be cleaned up. And sometimes, there are very good stories that nevertheless have a lot of things that could still be improved upon. I mention this up-front because I'm finding that this is the latter sort of story, and I don't want you to get the wrong impression from my comments. This is a very good story, and the fact that I'm about to dive into a whole bunch of things I think you should do differently should in no way detract from me saying that it's very good.

Okay? Okay.

First off, I never quite figured out what "dying" constitutes for a ghost. Is Tyler "dead" in the grey cube, or is that part of his minimalist "living?" If so, what does "dying" actually look/feel like? Are there any perceptions at all? Does being dead stop him from perceiving everything, or does basically-free (data-wise) stuff like text still get processed? This can all be cleared up.

To expand upon what people above me have said. Shangri-la is an interesting place, but right now, it doesn't feel terribly coherent. The swan and Jessica are both threats that just sort of... appear, and then are summarily dealt with. The first part of fixing this is establishing more about the fundamental nature of Shangri-la. It's a fantasy land that's constantly changing, I get that (and that's all good, as far as it goes), but what--besides the whirlpool and permanent death--define what Shangri-la is like? I got the impression that it's a place where you face regular low-difficulty but high-risk challenges; both swan and Jessica had pretty straightforward "solutions," and in both cases a bunch of the obvious alternative routes were explicitly disallowed, seemingly to help point Tyler in the right direction. This makes sense to me; people come to Shangri-la to experience the thrill of being able to die, and to properly enjoy that means being put in situations where one could die. But people also don't come there just to commit suicide, so the risks should be real, but avoidable with a bit of awareness.

Anyway, if that is what you're going for, it can be much more explicit. Tyler's been here, he knows how the world works, and he doesn't need to be coy about it. If you had a different idea, then that can likewise be expanded upon.

Finally, I wonder about your choice for the ending. Tyler's been pretty clearly established as someone who would go to great lengths to avoid dying, so the suicide felt like it came from too far out of left field to me. I mean, we don't even see his identity begin to be threatened until Jessica, and that's already near the end of the story. If that's how you want him to go out, then--since it's a fundamental break from his character as established from the very start of the fic--then the story should really be about his fear of death, and the challenges to it which he encounters. Right now, that feels like a late-introduced arc to me, rather than the story's arc proper. As-written, I could much more easily see him going back to faux-Jessica; that kind of surrender to unreality rather than facing the stark reality of death would neatly parallel his original decision to upload in the first place.

It'd also be a super downer ending, much more so than your current one; rather than "just" dying, he'd be giving up. So if you want do end on your current dark-but-triumphant note (overcoming his fear of death twice, first by giving up Annwyn, then by taking the plunge), make your story, start to finish, about how Tyler, a person who definitely wouldn't go into the whirlpool by choice, became Tyler, who would rather die than give up something he holds fundamental to his identity

Yeah, I warned you I had a lot to say. But remember: this is still an excellent story. The fact that I think there are plenty of things it could do better does not take away from that at all. Nice work!

I have to admit that my first read through this story felt difficult and confusing. It started in the first sentence, with the protagonist tiptoeing through a long, empty hall — that seemed to set the scene that they were sneaking somewhere, perhaps infiltrating a building or trying to run away from home. The ballerina mask therefore threw me — and then, as the evidence mounted that the protagonist was some sort of stage performer, my confusion grew. Why is she en pointe in the hall outside her dressing room, with literally nobody around to perform for? And then, instead of answering that question, the story proceeded to give me lengthy descriptions of what the protagonist and her surroundings physically looked like. In the abstract, offering description is not a bad idea, but I was already lost and I had to wade through an awful lot of text that didn't orient me; it felt like pushing through brambles.

I had been born into the role, the one I am playing on the stage for spectators all night, every night.

Again: If she explicitly acknowledges that she's playing a role on stage, why can't she relax backstage? Or if not relax, at least walk normally? I'm sure there's a good answer to that question, but the story needs to give it explicitly. Unless you say otherwise, your readers will assume that your world works like ours does.

I should note that working that answer in doesn't have to be a big production. In fact, just a line or two of implication could go a long way — something like "My toes are burning with pain, but I can't drop the pose. Not here, not where they might be watching." Then when I ask the question "Why is she en pointe backstage instead of walking normally?" there's an answer: "She's afraid to." That actually serves double duty, because not only does it clear up confusion, it gives us a lot of information about the character and the setting. But ultimately, the key is anticipating what your readers are likely to assume, and making sure that your text acknowledges those questions.

Getting into the habit of thinking through the implications of what you write is extremely valuable here. That's a tough skill. I think the best way is to do a lot of reading — and when an element in a story you read doesn't make sense, stop and think about where you saw a disconnect and why. The more you train yourself to insist on things you read making sense, the more diligent about it you'll be when it comes time to build logical consistency into your own writing.

Speaking loosely of which:

While not knowing it, the form is that of a gun and has the same secure position in my hand. There is an aim on the forwards pointing cylinder. Had it been a gun, it should have had a magazine to contain the ammunition to fire. I found no such thing. Neither the trigger nor the magazine. Of course, I did not know how to recognize these items or the details telling me of it.

First-person perspective is tricky. First-person omniscient is … uh, basically not done. Giving us a story from a particular narrator's perspective is a signal that we are viewing the world as they know it, which means that this is breaking the rules as much as it would if you kept switching between past and present tense verbs.

I've seen first-person stories in past tense weasel around this by having the present-day narrator interrupt their own story with an interjection like "I couldn't have known it at the time, but…" The problem here is that you're in present tense and don't have that dodge. The narrator is telling us something that the narrator doesn't know.

(Full disclosure: I did exactly that in the last Original Fiction short-story round, in The Collision of Seasons. However, that was the entire point of my story — to hang the plot arc around that narrative gimmick — and I spent a lot of time building up to that reveal and back-justifying everything. A common addendum to Kurt Vonnegut's rules of writing is that any rule of writing can be broken, except for the first. I would add to that: The bigger the rule you break, the more care you have to take to make the story cohere without it.)

Anyway, get beyond those textual struggles and we've got a story of a woman given an interdimensional gift that lets her catch a glimpse of an alternate self whose life isn't quite so screwed up. There's potential in that. The imagery is certainly vivid. But I don't think that imagery alone is enough to carry this, not with the story ending where it does — she's just made a decision whose consequences we don't get to see. If there's any character growth here, it's in the narrator agreeing with Narrator-Prime that she doesn't have any control over her own life — but that feels like an empty moral, because she did literally nothing to earn it. That sort of free realization is a great line to get your story started — push the protagonist into action, where we can see the growth and consequences that follow from taking that step — but as an ending it's unsatisfying.

The good news is that picking up where you left off could turn this into a compelling Act 1 for a longer story about what happens after their touch. If the Writeoff just didn't give you enough time to continue, it's worth polishing this up and continuing onward.

Tier: Needs Work

Huh... Kinda feel in the minority for liking this as much as I did.

It may have something to do with me reading it in my phone during my breaks at work, but the repetition didn't bother me at all. Seeing it on a computer screen, though... Yeah, I can see how that can be tiring. Maybe have two or three paragraphs between reassertions of the "You were there" mantra instead of only one, that may help.

Still, I really liked the story, both characters felt engaging, and their dynamic pulled me in from the start. Some of the fluff could definitely be trimmed down, but as it stands right now, I think it's pretty good. For a moment I thought the "I" character was actually the darkness itself, seems I wasn't that far off the mark.

The ending could also use some polishing. I enjoyed how it slowly descended into a frenetic madness as "I" starts to die alongside "You", but it also leaves too many plot points hanging. I don't mind leaving some things unexplained, but we didn't get much in terms of closure about anything other than the relationship between the two characters.

I stand by what I say. I think the story is pretty good. A bit of work could make it great.

That was sure a nice story, hobbled however by a beginning with is very slow and sometimes borders on the long-winded. There are a lot of pointless descriptions and sometimes clunkiness and redundancies (e.g. “A brass ceiling graced his vision, the rivets and beams plainly clear even in the near-total dark.” ; “His chest expanded with his deep breaths and his pulse steadied. […] With his heartbeat back to normal, he […])

But then the story picks up momentum and becomes pretty slick. I think you could have cut on the descriptions at the beginning and extended those of the exterior deck, and paint the Fortune as a sort of floating Barad-Dûr, battlement of steel upon battlement of steel.

This somehow sounds like a crossover from Snowpiercer and Moby Dick. It bears a terrible and ruthless secret, but that secret is never revealed nor exploited, and that’s a shame.

Ô combien de marins, combien de capitaines
Qui sont partis joyeux pour des courses lointaines,
Dans ce morne horizon se sont évanouis !
Combien ont disparu, dure et triste fortune !
Dans une mer sans fond, par une nuit sans lune,
Sous l'aveugle océan à jamais enfouis !

Victor Hugo, Oceano Nox

Anyway, good job. A few typos here and there, but really nothing significant.

Cargo de nuit

>>Zaid Val'Roa

The captain may be aware, but might also have decided to let them go, rather than keep them aboard and see their cause gain ground, so to speak. It's gangrene: you ampute the limb before it extends and causes death.

Hmmm, there is a lot of thing to say about this one but let's start by if I liked it or not.

I did, it was really enjoyable and as AAIQU said, the writting is very consistent (aside from a few typos). I also felt encapsulated by the story so good job.

Now, there's a few things that raise questions.
First the title. I thought it was somehow connected to My Little Pony in a way at first and because it's supposed to be Original Story, I was surprised by it but the story proved to have zero connection with the show. The question still remains, why did you choose this title?

Second, the portal. As I quickly understood that it would not be about ponies, I thought it would be about Portal the game. And the color of the portal reinforced this idea. However, aside from the color, I didn't find anything else related to the game. And here goes the same question, why this color? If there is a meaning behind this particular choice, I didn't get it.

Three, the beginning. The narrator, if I got it right, is an actor. You start describing how she feels towards her job. And that's it, there's only a beginning, I think you could have dig deeper, searching for a deeper meaning of being an actor. It's probably from where I come, being a literature student and having studied plays for 2 years. it may be enough for the 'casual' but it wasn't for me.

Four, the little girl. I understand that she is the past reflection of the narrator and she is supposed to symbolise her regrets towards the life she didn't have. But what is the ending supposed to tell us? That you should make up with your inner child and make peace with your past? Or does she have a chance to go back and start again? From what I could gather, the Abyss she's starring at his her regrets. But what do you have to say about this? This is a topic that hit home but on the other hand, you didn't give much.

So to summarize, it was very good but it raised too many questions to shine brighter.

For just a bit over two thousand words, this is rather amazing.

Variations on a theme, I want to call it. I find it interesting that of the five vignettes that feature humans, four explicitly involve death, and three of those describe some form of self-destruction. The astronomer stands somewhat aside, though the theme of space and stars is present, and I can't help but feel that the desire to be a part of some great undertaking (or, in the extreme, having something immortal named after you) is part of an attempt to escape death itself.

I love the imagery of the Diver's scene. That piece, by itself, would make a wonderful bit of flash fiction.

I'm not so enthralled by the Philosopher's scene, which feels mediocre following the Diver. As for the Void, I'm of two minds. I like the fact that it thematically ties together all of the star and space references in the previous vignettes, but I'm not quite certain what the point of it is, beyond that. It matches the prompt well, yes, and the language (particularly the last paragraph) appeals greatly to me, but I'm not quite sure I buy the personification of the cosmos as fitting with the rest of the story.

Those are quibbles, though. Top of my slate, so far.

I'm just gonna agree with what Horizon said. The narration is too self aware -- that is, it describes things that the narrator, this unknown girl, couldn't possibly know herself. The slip the 'gun' is the most obvious, but there are other points where she seems preternaturally aware of just how unusual her life is. How? If she's lived in some kind of forced seclusion, what would lead her to think her life is anything but ordinary?

The Nietzsche is strong in this one. Not only that last line, but the 'philosopher' piece seemed a bit on-the-nose. Also, 'data are' hurts my soul. Thank you, English Language.

...honestly, I'd suggest adding some sort of quantifier to that. 'a steady supply of data is' or something. I know you're technically using it correctly, but the incorrect use is so much more common that what you've done is likely to yank people out of the story. Whether they notice it because it looks right or looks wrong, they'll notice it because it looks odd.

Each piece of this is nicely done, but I didn't feel like the Void wrapped them together enough thematically. I mean, I appreciated each piece, but I'm not sure they actually gain anything by being in proximity like this; in my opinion, not only could you scramble the order completely and not lose much, I think you could actually yank any one piece out and you wouldn't lose much. I feel like you could be doing more to tie these together somehow, if not in every segment, then at least in the last segment.

Still, very strong writing, and each piece is individually effective, even if the impact is rather dissolute when taken as a whole.

I'll disagree with Haze about the character introductions. While it wasn't the most brilliant idea, it was enough to not interrupt the flow of the narration.

In general, I find the story pleasant but average. There is nothing new, there isn't some sort of moral and the characters are... okay I guess. So it's neither bad or good, just... average. Pleasant to read but forgetable.

And by the way, the first paragraph on the left-handed is wrong on so many levels. Being a left-handed is an advantage when it comes to fight or sports of opposition, because every move players or fighters have learned so deep that it became reflexes are designed against right-handed people. So the left-handeds non only know these moves and how to counter them but also their opponents don't know how to counter their.

>>Fenton I've not yet read this story, but I must agree that being left handed can have its benefits. When I was younger, I boxed and did judo, and oftentimes people I sparred or competed with wouldn't know how to compensate for my opposite stance, nor my left hand being the dominant one. It wouldn't always make a difference, but sometimes I would take an orthodox boxing stance at the start of a fight, just so I could throw an absolute killer jab with my strong hand (which my opponent would assume was my weak one) then switch to southpaw later on. It was good for confusing and demoralising people, but sometimes you'd just get lamped before you got to put your little plan into action.

On a side note, I can't use scissors to save my life, left handedness can be detrimental in a game of pool, where many shots just aren't natural for you, and you'll find it hard to win arm wrestles. Also, I started playing guitar hero when I was younger, and could never play on expert, cause I played it right handed, and my right hand just couldn't strum fast enough.

I also roll my cigarettes the opposite way to most people I know. I've heard that enough time playing the piano will help to even out a persons dexterity, so if you wish to be more versatile, that's an option I guess.

Sorry for the tangent.

Edit: I've now read this story, and I'm not too mad on it. Like Fenton said, about average. The concept was pretty new to me though, just wasn't huge on the story telling, some of the words were unnecessary, a lot of the dialogue looked unnecessary even in a D&D style fantasy setting, let alone in real life. Besides, I just wasn't too hot on the whole boss fight thing.

“You’re one to talk, Sarah. Excuse me if my memory is faulty, but weren’t you the first of the party to die by the Lich King’s hand?” I just can't imagine anyone actually saying this, but maybe that's just my opinion. There was nothing there to make me dislike the story, even if it dragged on in places and the descriptions of the supporting RPG characters really did nothing to aid the story, none of it was in any way terrible. The author seems to have a good vocabulary, and likely has potential to create good stories, I wouldn't be surprised if they have done so before, in fact.

A reasonably decent read, although I doubt I could have got through a few thousand more words of this, in all honesty.

AAIQU

Well this... this is kinda amazing.

I mean, it's a great comedy, although I did notice a few odd words here and there. 'Debated' seemed off, and few other lines might have worked better in a different tense. But the hook is excellent, the pacing is strong, and it just keeps the jokes and reveals rolling. It even has character conflict and resolution worked in, about something that's totally relatable - even if it's also totally ridiculous. Very nice! Perhaps the way the MC accepts the black magic as something 'normal-ish' could be a bit... smoother? The 'gravewax' piece is probably the clearest example of that; it solidifies how the MC sees this 'technology', but before that it's not entirely clear exactly how 'weird' he considers this. Like, his emotions are clear, but I think it's a bit uncertain why he's feeling outraged? I'm not sure what would help with this, though.

Anyways, maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like I might have helped inspire this? At the end of the last podcast, when we were all hanging out in 'talk', I mentioned a story idea that's pretty similar: that current technology is actually based on black magic. I never wrote it, and now I probably won't bother trying, because I'm pretty sure this is better than I could do.

I'm not sure how much of my enjoyment of this story was based on the thought I might have inspired it, but I don't really care. It was great! Thanks for writing this, especially if it was from an idea I randomly threw out. :)

This story starts strong, and stays strong. Something I don’t talk about enough is how much I enjoy pretty words for the sake of pretty words, and there have been plenty of stories over the time I’ve been participating in the writeoff that have won me over purely on that basis. This is one of those stories.

That having been said, this story isn’t without its faults, and I wanted to quickly touch on a couple of things that didn’t quite work for me. Firstly, despite how pretty the prose was throughout, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that all the narrative voices on display were a little samey. Heck, even when you switch into third person for Diver, the narrative voice and style doesn’t seem to change significantly. And this isn’t a huge issue—your writing style is flexible enough that I could still easily get a sense of character from this without you needing to change things up significantly—but I do think that with stories like this variety is incredibly important.

The other point I wanted to mention was the structure. Though this might be a collection of vignettes connected by theme at heart, as I reader I still expected there to be some kind of structural element that brings them all together at the end, something that breaks the barrier between vignettes that had held this entire time. Perhaps I’m wrong, and perhaps such a thing would directly contradict some nuance I have missed here, but I really do think that bringing everything back together at the end would have tied this all up a little better. That said, the structure still very much works, and I think it can hold its own regardless.

I admit I find myself a little confused by the inclusion of the Astronomer. Perhaps, again, I’ve missed a nuance of the theme that’s connecting all of these vignettes together, but it seems odd that she moves on where no other characters do/can—perhaps even more so because she is the second entry in this story, which sets up this expectation that all of these vignettes are going to be as different from each other as the first two are.

Let me be clear, author: these are nitpicks. This story was delightful to read, and managed to be both pretty and engaging at once, despite its (relatively minor) issues. I really did enjoy reading this one.

HHHHHOOOORRRRRSSSEEE

Tier: Strong

I want to take a moment to talk about this story’s hook. I’m not sure how anyone else felt about this, but I was pretty much sold on this one by the word Odin. It wonderfully introduces the idea that something strange is going on with authorship in this world, whilst at the same time being such an unexpected change of the formula that one can’t help being curious.

Likewise, this story had phenomenal world-building, and it builds a wonderfully unique world. There’s a lot that could be done with this world, and this story served as a pretty wonderful introduction that really does leave me itching to read more. Honestly, author, if you expanded this universe into a series of shorts (or even something longer), I would gladly devour it.

However, I did feel that this entry was let down by a number of incredibly clunky phrasings and strange word-orders (“I sooner or later should have it fixed” is a particularly awkward example) that I found to be particularly jarring. It might just be me, but that kind of phrasing stands out and dampens the impact of a piece—it’s not too difficult to tidy up, but there were enough instances of things like this to hurt my enjoyment of the story. (While we’re on the subject of technical issues, you may want to make sure you focus on comma splices when you’re editing, because I spotted quite a number of those.)

There’s an awful lot of promise in this piece. I adore the ideas, here, and I think that a bit of tidying up and editing will make this into something quite remarkable. I really did enjoy this one, and I hope I get a chance to see it (and anything else you care to do with this universe) when it’s had a little polish.

HHHHHOOOOOOORRSSSEEE

Tier: Almost There

Unlike some other reviewers, I did not enjoy the style of writing here. For me, many phrases felt unnecessarily clunky and obtuse, and some turns of phrase went so far as to feel entirely unnatural. And while I can understand how this might further reinforce the sense the narrator has that she is, in fact, unnatural, I’m afraid it simply didn’t work for me.

What did work well for me was the pacing. This story had a wonderfully slow, deliberate progression to it, which comes with a sense of moving towards the inevitable that, for me, really helped to maintain engagement. And while I’m not sure that the conclusion felt as if it were worthy of the build-up (all in all, the ending was a little bit of an anticlimax), I appreciated this story’s ability to keep me invested, especially given the issues >>horizon has noted with the story’s opening.

(While I’m on that, horizon made some pretty fantastic points in that post. I second every single one of them. Thanks for taking the time to write all that out!)

I wanted to take a moment, though, to talk about scene breaks. You’ve used a number of hard scene breaks in this story, author, and I’m not entirely certain why any of them are here. A hard scene break should signal to the readers a large break in either location, time, theme, perspective, or a combination of those factors. While I’m sure there are other reasons to use a hard scene break, those are by far the most common, and the reason for that is simple: a hard scene break completely interrupts the flow of a narrative. (In a way, it’s like the high-level equivalent of a full stop. In a paragraph, a full stop briefly stops the flow of the sentence, and gives the reader a buffer between complete ideas; in a story, a hard scene break offers the same kind of pause and, likewise, should be between complete and independent scenes.)

In this piece, the hard scene breaks don’t really seem to separate complete scenes, with the exception of the second (which makes sense as a temporal shift). To me, this means that they could be removed and no real meaning would be lost. And this begs the question: why are they there? Scene breaks have the unfortunate property of standing out quite a lot in a story, and if they’re unnecessary then they’ll stick out like a sore thumb. (It’s also worth noting that the writeoff has a style guide for scene breaks, which is the use of the bbcode horizontal line. The style guide exists to help preserve anonymity, and I would thoroughly recommend following it where possible.)

Still, this piece explored some very interesting ideas, and though some of them didn’t get explored as much as I like, I have to give it some credit for introducing them in an interesting way. I was particularly impressed by the way the main character’s potentially synthetic past was hinted at and introduced, and I would have liked to see this built upon and further explained. And though I may not have found the ending particularly satisfactory, I have to agree with horizon’s conclusion that this could be expanded into something rather wonderful.

HHHOOOOOOORRSSSSSEEE

Tier: Needs Work

(Edited to correct a bbcode link to the style guide. Sorry I missed that!)

Hmm. This is some odd neo-noir all right. (Maybe. I'm not even sure exactly what that means, but I'm going to pretend I do. :P )

Anyways, the opening felt a bit... jerky? Like, we kept getting these kinda-blunt statements, in what seemed like an attempt to build the mood, but they sorta seemed to be pointing in different directions or introducing too much new information, which made it a little difficult to follow.

I felt like the 'talking heads' section veered a bit on the info-dumpy side. The background you build through that exposition is pretty interesting, but it doesn't feel very organic to me. I'm not entirely sure what would help with that, but it felt rather dry to me.

The ending does tie things together and give resolutions, which is nice. It doesn't really hit very hard, but the conflicts introduced here aren't extremely strong either, so that's understandable.

On the whole, I think this mostly gets by on worldbuilding and atmosphere. That's alright, but I wish the actual plot was a bit stronger, the conflict (either with Rubberduck or the City or the mystery) a bit more aggressive.

It could use a whip-round with a proofreader. There weren't any really consistent mistakes, but several small ones stood out to me. The city was 'they' at one point, a capital letter in the middle of a sentence, all small stuff.

But, as much as I've said here about things that felt a bit off to me, there's definitely some interesting ideas on display here. Not only that, but this is a whole story arc, and I appreciate that.

Pretty good on the whole, even if the details could use some work.

Oh, I meant to ask; is 'rubberduck' a reference to that 'trying to get the feel' thing, or is it just random? Because the only place I've heard that used as a descriptor is for antennas; the basic, low-gain antennas that most wifi routers ship with are sometimes called 'rubber ducks' because they don't really give much advantage to the radio.

Man all the good critique has been given. Guess it wasn't anyone's fault I got this so late in my slate. >:T

Oh, well. Nothing that can be done about that.

I also loved this story, and I'd love to see a version expanded beyond the constrains ofthe wordcount.

However, there is one thing that stood out to me, and that is how from the moment Tyler leaves Charles's office until he arrives to Shangri-la, the story becomes an infodump. What you're telling us is interesting, don't get me wrong. I love the universe you've crafted here, but there's little plot progression in that chunk and it almost feels as though there's a plot section and a world-building section. Had those two been better integrated, this probably would have made it to the top of my slate.

As it is, you'll have to settle for the top percentage.

Hmm. This has a pretty good arc to it, although the pacing seems a bit stretched out to me.

The opening felt pretty rough to me. I wasn't sure what to make of that first line of italics. In hindsight it's clearly a thought, but at first glance it looked like he was actually talking to Annie, which made me wonder why it wasn't in quotes instead. And I spent a while wondering 'who is Will Forger, and why is having to sing as him such a punishment?'

The MC seems rather over-the-top in the opening, sort of overly caricatured? I mean, it got me to hate him, so it kinda worked, but it seemed to come on rather strong.

I think this takes a bit too long to get to the true identity of the visitor. Having some uncertainty and suspense there works pretty well, but it seemed a little dragged out to me.

I don't understand why he held out as long as he did. Or why asking about the accent convinced him in the end. He claims he doesn't care for morals or ethics, so what's he uncertain about? If he trusts this guy as much as he seems to (with, I'll note, no more proof than a story about his past and a look at his eyes) then what did I miss that kept him from just jumping at the chance? Like, his love for money is clear enough, and he also apparently loves his son, but what got him from one to the other?

In the end, the transformation of the character from disliked to sympathetic did come across to me, and I thought that was pretty neat, even if I feel like I'm missing something with how it was communicated.

Pretty decent overall, even if I probably missed some bits of it.

...what?

I mean, alright, I guess he wins in the end (for given values of 'win') but why on earth would stabbing the floor accomplish that? I'm probably missing something obvious, but I don't get it.

Also, this Queen is a real brat. She's all 'woe is meeeee' but then turns around and says 'suck it up' to her right-hand man. Like seriously, is she actually a psychopath, or is she incapable of seeing how selfish she's being? 'It's really sad that all my family is dead, but I don't mind ordering you to kill your own because reasons.' This guy is obviously doing the world a favor, even disregarding how everything changed when the fire nation Northlit Forge attacked.

I dunno. I kinda wanted to like this one; it's got a legendary fantasy feel to it that I enjoy, and the focus on relationships seemed promising. But... I didn't really get any conflict I could engage with until about 2/3rds of the way in, and that made it rather a slog to get through. It doesn't help that for most of this, we're reading a story about a story about a story, and that was, I think, more distance than useful. It not only made it more confusing than necessary, I think, it also made the stakes just about as light as possible.

At the very least, consider removing one step for the first few scenes; have him actually telling the story to his children, instead of telling us the story of telling his children. I felt like the framing didn't do much good there, and it would also let you cut those awkward italics everywhere.

This one was confusing and hard to engage with, but it was also cleanly written for the most part, had some interesting character work (mostly on the MC) and had a flavor that I really wanted to enjoy. The ending and the experimental viewpoint didn't work for me, but the rest of it was pretty good.

(First, take this comment as a compliment)

This is one of the reasons that I both love and hate the writeoffs. I carefully craft my creation, with all the macaroni glued on just right and the tempra paints shaded just perfectly, scotch tape it to a nice big piece of cardboard and scrawl my name on the bottom before stepping back and admiring the beauty of it.

Then I bring it to the art gallery and place it among the Van Gohs and Rembrandts.

The only thing I can pick on is to agree with Horizon. The intro has to do two different things at once: inform and entice. All the parts are there, but a little reshuffling to bring the hook up to the top of the delicious bait would catch more readers' attentions.

This one is sooooo close to being pitch-perfect for me, but for whatever reason the ending doesn't quite crystallize. The comedy aspect was great, and got some good laughs out of me, but I wish it was a little clearer on the more serious aspects of what's going on.

I'm also not really sure about you lampshading so hard in the opening.

I guess, as much as you mocked it, I feel like you need to be clearer about what the hole actually does mean, because although you've showed many, many things it doesn't, that wasn't enough for me to figure it out. Maybe I'm missing something important, but yeah.

Still, this was crisp, elegant and economical, and it feels like it would be just about perfect... if only I could put my finger on exactly what you're getting at with those last two lines. 'Making the best of a bad situation' doesn't really apply, because it's obviously not that bad. 'We ignore weird stuff every day' kinda works, but is super vague. 'Everyone's broken if you look closely enough' is better, but then I'm not sure what to make of them just ignoring it in the end. Plusalso, there's nothing actually wrong with them; it just looks that way to common sense.

Very well done, but didn't quite connect in the end.

This feels like a 'here's a neat idea' story that doesn't do enough besides the neat idea.

And it really is a neat idea. The loop-de-loop you pull here is definitely interesting, and when I realized what was going on, I thought it was very clever. I'm curious, is this supposed to be based on the Pandora myth at all? I read somewhere that the original one had a jar instead of a box.

I do think the return-loop started a bit fast. The entry with 'weaponizing vases' did make sense pretty quick, but an entry explaining how exactly monster-her broke another vase again or something would be nice.

I'm not sure about the story/diary thing... it kinda works, but it also feels somewhat contrived. I'm not sure what would have worked better, though.

In the end this was clever and interesting, but not super deep. Points for weirdness and originality, but it would also be cool to see something deeper than 'here's a clever idea.'

These whatevers need to figure out how to start names with some other letter than 'Z'. Or make their names more dissimilar some other way, maybe.

I utterly failed to engage with this. Sorry, author, but although your paragraph/scene construction/sci-fi aspects are sound enough, your characters really turned me off here.

I had a really hard time caring about much of anything that was going on. I had trouble telling the characters apart, with their nearly similar names, and it didn't help that they all seemed like flimsy strawmen. Evil Religion A, Evil Religion B, Incompetent Scientist C. None of them seemed to have a brain license.

The end was cute, but I kinda saw it coming.

The transmitter thing was a neat concept, though.

Meh. I mean, it wasn't my grandfather.

Why I don't care, I think, is because this story doesn't seem like it can decide if it wants to be sweet or bitter, and it's not committing enough to either to hit bittersweet. Someone with Alzheimers who feels their time is up dying peacefully in their sleep isn't tragic. Someone killing themselves out of cowardice, unable to face their friends and family and tell them goodby properly, isn't sweet.

Suffice to say, I feel like this needs to commit harder in one direction or both. Want to make it sweeter? Commit more at the end and show him re-uniting with his wife, describe how his death is a good thing for his family in some way. Want to make it more bitter? Make him significantly younger, have him rejecting offered hope of some sort, show the reaction of his son when he shows up the next day.

Or, you know, something like that. As-is, this is just too wishy-woshy for me to really care about much. You get top points for construction and conservation of attention, but this story is just entirely too safe for me to really feel it was worth my time.

>>QuillScratch >>QuillScratch >>QuillScratch

Ooh, Quill's dusting off the HORSE system and bringing it out of cold storage!

I'm pretty sure we've got authors who weren't around the last time anyone used it in reviews, so I want to make sure to link the explanation page: The HORSE Feedback System. As a bonus, that also has a little more detail on the meaning of the "Tiers" that I use myself.

So she did kill the lich in the end? Was Lyonel far enough away he could drag their corpses back to a priest for a rez?

I appreciate that this actually went back and forth between the RPG and IRL. I'm not sure that the ending really makes the whole shebang 'worth it', but I appreciate that it didn't just smash-cut and close.

You've got some strange wording and pronoun confusion here.

as the impact of Thurloth, the Lich King’s warhammer

made me think the hammer was named Thurloth.

keep the undead monarch distracted for long enough to gather my bearings

made me think the lich was gathering the bearings.

Stuff like that.

Otherwise, it's fairly solid; you get a good amount of characterization in here, and some world-building (even if it's pretty generic DnD type stuff.)

The problem is that mostly all of that characterization is kinda tossed out at the IRL reveal, and the ending isn't really given proper impact to Jessica. How does she feel about her character being dead? Does she regret all that roleplay now that she might need to roll a new one? Is her gaming group mad at her? Stuff like that.

The structure here is solid. Like, you're hitting all the beats of a good plot. The thing is, I want more from a plot than a skeleton of actions; I want emotions and meaning tied in there as well, and that's kinda undercut here because most all of the plot happens in the RPG, before the IRL reveal, which mostly robs it of meaning.

Hopefully that makes sense. /shrug.

Pretty good in some ways, but didn't really follow through in the end.

Oh, and on the left-handed thing; my dad's left-handed, so I know what you mean. Mice, scissors, vending machines, mugs, it's amazing how right-handed our stuff is.

This is currently at the top of my slate.

The opening is great, even if it made me fear I was in for a ride like "Let Me Tell You About the Hole in My Face". I loved that story too, but I sometimes fear the dread.

I was pleasantly surprised as I saw something overly positive here. It was fun, it was almost surreal and it was very well written. I feel like the various doctors should have their license retired and get a couple of slaps on their fingers, but that's nitpicking.

As for my interpretation of the story, I think the hole is effectively related to some form of light depression or stress, but the nature of the character means he sees it as a hole in his chest. He has problems expressing it to the rest of the world, at least until he finds a kindred spirit with whom he can talk and who understands him. And this leads to healing.

I'm sorry I couldn't say much more, but I really don't have any suggestions on how to improve this. Thank you for submitting it.

Time for a review.

First let's be honest, that story hit me and it hit me hard. The subtlety of the dialog between Kori and Regan was brilliant. The description of Regan trying to fight his greed at the end was amazing. It's hard to say everything that came through my mind while I was reading it but, god I loved it.

For the nitpicking part, I'll just echo the others. The beginning wasn't that engaging. I didn't really care about what was happening before the shower scene. From that point I was getting more and more engaged. And the ending was satisfying as hell. Regan will still have hard times with the withdrawal but he's not alone and he will keep on fighting it. That's hope in the face. Damn.

So... what was that bit about the bottles in the corner of the pantry? And why was he so afraid of speaking to the one person?

I kinda feel like this stops right before it gets really interesting. Maybe a bit more wrap-up would help with that, maybe not. Other than that, this was pretty good, although I felt like all the somewhat-odd names were a little... over the top, maybe? I'm not sure the one chick pulled her weight as a character, tbh. She's just kinda... there.

Good work, but leaves me feeling a bit unsatisfied, I guess.

I'm torn. I'm torn between seeing the repetition as a lazy way to add more words and seeing it at meaningful tool to emphasize the idea of the story. But because the rest is pretty good, I'll give it the benefice of the doubt.

Aside from that, I won't add many things to what has already been said. The writing felt very vivid but the story left too many questions unanswered. The main question I have is: Does the man go back in time and keep his memory? Or, because he is the incarnation of the void, does his being make the guard forget she has already seen him before?

I appreciated this story, but there was na anachronism at the beginning that irked me. Specifically, asking for coffee-to-go from a barista in 1927. It's a small detail, but it threw me and I had problems placing the time of the story for a couple of paragraphs. I thought the MC was reviewing some historical data before I could get a grip on it.

The story took a while to get some steam, and the presentation of the MC, while pretty clear, could probably be handled in a more graceful way. I feel that generally trimming here and there would improve the flow of the story. At least untile the good Avi enters the scene.

The long, uninterrupted talks were quite pleasant. The almost rambling matched my perception of the character well (and maybe it was a lie) and I became interested in how it would evolve. Maybe a bit more development regarding the struggle of Beaumont would be nice as, currently, the ending is a bit less interesting than it could be.

So, to summarize, nice story, Avi was spot on but the rest needs to be trimmed down a bit. Thank you for having written it.

Dialogue require Sitation marks, and Italic is not for regular speach.

Hmmm, if I was able to speak in French, I think I could go write a two pages essay on the meaning of the fic. But let's try to keep it understandable for everyone on not write more than necessary.

I think those who have take the fic only as a comdey have missed something. I must admit it's not very clear but it's definitely there. So why this story is not a comedy? Because the hole doesn't exist. Look at the last sentences. The narrator still feels it nonetheless so he tries to understand it but nobody can give him an answer. He's lost, he's alone with his hole in his chest. No one understand him and he can't understand the others.

The only one that will give some kind of an answer is the bartender. And the answer is "Keep faking you don't have a hole in your chest. Keep telling that to the others and maybe one day you'll start to believe it." But guess what? It will never happen. He won't be able to believe it because he has a FUCKING HOLE IN HIS CHEST. That's not something you can deny nor hide to yourself. The answer the bartender gives him is clearly not the right answer but it's the only one he has. So he will stick to that answer as long as possible, until everything falls apart.

That was clever and the writting was neat. Hat off.

Nice title. :P

I didn't catch on to him actually literally being a dragon until Kori showed up, at which point it was obvious that there was a real thread of fantasy in here, and not just some sort of strange (possibly drug-induced) hallucinations. I'd suggest a different, clearly external element of fantasy sooner (something about Draconia?) so it's more obvious something's AU sooner.

'misshapen patina' caught me out; patina is a pattern or color (specifically a surface thing caused by aging) so giving it a shape was weird to me.

The porcelain bathtub seemed really anachronistic to me for some reason. And most of those 'porcelain tubs' are actually enameled steel, which... doesn't actually make the bit about the porcelain embracing him wrong, but yeah.

I was surprised that Kori wasn't actually a social worker. For some reason I expected taking care of Regan to be his actual job, so when he had to leave for work I was like 'what'?

I'm really curious as to why hoarding is such a bad thing. Resisting it is obviously painful, but I'd like some indication of how surrendering would hurt him, and why Regan's so desperate to avoid that. I mean, he's apparently all right with paying for stuff, but he won't accept change? I dunno, it just felt a bit off to me.

Other than these nitpicks, this was quite good. There's a great depth of emotion here, and the whole thing coheres very strongly around the central themes. Excellent work all around; thanks for writing and sharing.

Blergh, second-person.

Sorry, Author, I just can't get behind this easily. While I support experimenting in the Writeoff, second-person is always going to be an extraordinarily hard sell for me.

The 'you you you' stuff was interesting structurally, at least. You did seem to be breaking the narrative into distinct parts with that, which was interesting. It was also neat to see it evolve, from 'you were there' to 'here' to 'I' and all that.

This story also does an admirable job of portraying someone who's obviously insane. That was pretty well done.

On the downside, a lot of what's going on here is really, really vague. We just get bare, broad strokes on a lot of what's going on here, and that makes it especially difficult for me to get a good handle on what's happening, alongside all the second-person stuff. Some concrete details would, I think, enhance this a lot.

On the upside, sticking to broad strokes does give this an excellent sense of scale. This is, obviously, a long time happening, and it's neat that you packed all that in.

I dunno. In the end, I like a fair amount of what this is trying to do, but I also feel like it's held back significantly by some of the design choices. It's pretty good work, but despite that, I really had trouble getting into it.

This was super awkward, so excellent job there.

I lent my arm

Threw me a bit; normally, 'giving someone your arm' is, like, letting them lean on you or something so you can escort them, and that... really doesn't seem to be in character here. Not to mention if you give someone your arm, it's hard for them to go first; you're kinda linked?

Anyways, I'm no longer someone who's very awkward with social interaction. However, I remember being that way at one point, so I do empathize with this somewhat. It got a laugh or two out of me, and I think you did a good job of conveying that atmosphere. It's not super deep, but it is very well done for what it is.

Nice work!

I feel like there should be a more elegant way to do that repetition. I can't see any benefits to how it's currently done. Personally, I'd probably have made the first one much shorter and only completely repeated it once, and then just overlapped the ends of the rest... or something like that, maybe?

While this is a decent character piece, at least from the guardian's side, it feels too padded with repetition and the fight scenes aren't doing enough to carry their weight, in my mind. Although the idea on display here is neat, a lot more could be done if those words were reclaimed - even if that's just to speed up the pacing and make it hit harder.

...I need healing!

Alright, sorry, no, I don't actually main Genji.

Anyways, this is pretty solid. I have no idea what happened at the doctor's office, though. Or why he needed to review his life-insurance policy.

That opening is a risky, risky move; the contrast between the overdone first paragraph and the punchy second one works, but you're sacrificing your very first impression on the reader for it. I'd suggest shortening the first one as much as you feel comfortable while keeping the contrast. One sentence or two, maybe, not the four you currently have.

Anyways, I laughed. Comedy is as comedy does, and this is more than a one-note jokefic, which I do appreciate. It's nothing deep, but for what it is, it's quite good!

>>horizon
Thanks for linking the explanation! I saw the HORSE scale being used a few times before and was a bit confused by what it meant. It seems like a great system now that I actually understand it.

I really don't think this is a metaphor or a comedy. The setup to all the jokes are people asking what the metaphor or joke is and the punchline every time is that there isn't one.

You're playing out the story in the critique. Which is in a way hilarious and also infuriating.

I really, really liked this one... after I got about a fourth of the way into it.

This line:

ascending like a gunmetal angel

was especially great, in context.

I also appreciated that it didn't just drop things after they returned; it carried it through to a further conclusion, which I didn't expect. YMMV on that, perhaps, but it worked for me.

My biggest problems with this are, firstly, the occasionally info-dumpy nature of the text. This... can be difficult to write around, especially when you're describing about something as dry as weapon specs, but yeah. Some parts were a bit of a slog.

And secondly, the fact that this takes way, waaaay to long to get to any sort of conflict or hook going. That opening line is the right idea; you're putting the UFO spotting in, but just making a radar contact doesn't have any mystery or excitement. Make it clear that they're seeing something weird, so that people will be curious and interested in reading further.

However, despite those things, I thought this story was very enjoyable. These characters had a strong feeling of humanity, and this has the sort of sense-of-wonder that I really like in sci-fi and fantasy short stories.

This is held back in a few ways, but on the whole it's excellent work.

When this started, I was immediately put off. If there are any subjects that annoy me, it's that which started this story.

Then the next scene came along, and I'm like "huhwha?" Suddenly, I'm interested once more.

The overall effect is strong, and I thought it delightfully creative on the whole. Every scene held my interest simply for the sake of trying to figure out where your were going with this. For being so unexpected and yet still bringing it all together so nicely, I approve.

I note people seem to be confused on the Astronomer. I, however, think it's not quite so off. In fact, I think the Astronomer faces the same conclusion as all the others, but in a way that was subtle and unrecognized even by the victim. It's wistful, it's painful, but it went away. For now. As they say, there's more than one way to skin a cat.

Anyway, great story. Not my favorite so far, and I can see some of the issues that have been raised by others (particularly what >>QuillScratch said about the prose), but definitely a solid piece worthy of attention.

The processing power needed to recreate the impression of those aromatic molecules interacting with imaginary cells in my imaginary nose to send a signal along imaginary nerves to an imaginary brain is boggling.

This struck me as kinda ridiculous. Smell shouldn't be harder than any other sensation, and it should be much less than vision. Well, perhaps actually simulating the parts of the brain the process scent would take significant amount of power, but... that doesn't seem to be what you're saying here?

Also, I feel like he needs to have some sort of exit strategy before going in. Can he just log out? The lake scene doesn't seem to indicate that, and it doesn't seem to fit with Shangri-la's design philosophy. Shouldn't he care about that?

Anyways, putting those things aside, up until he enters Shangri-la, this was quite well done. After he enters, however... the scene with the ghoul and Jessica don't seem to do much of anything for the story. Plusalso, why doesn't he simply wander around and stay here? He doesn't seem to care much about how he gets his time, as long as he can stay alive. What makes him stick to his plan? Especially if this server is just as high-def (or higher) then Anwynn.

And the ending... hmm. I'm not sure what you were really getting at with having him kill himself. I mean, he could just hang out with Hypatia and chill in Shangri-la, right? What drives his suicide, flipping him from desperately trying to survive to pointless self-destruction a moment later? That feels like a crunch scene, but it's just whiffing by me.

I dunno. I think this will do fairly well by me for the first section, but the second half leaves me with too many unanswered questions and strange disconnects for me to really feel that it finished solidly.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and why can't the government guys get at Hypatia in meatspace? Surely her servers are plugged in somewhere, administrated by someone? And if she has root access to a physically secure location, why isn't she air-gapped or firewalled properly?

While I love this story for the hilarity, I also love it for the deeper concept. Personally I think that the point of the ending isn't as much about learning to cope or normalcy in a ridiculous situation as it is about the nature of the problem and how that effects how people see the narrator and the narrator sees himself. The narrator wants his problem to be understood, but neither he nor anybody else he goes to understands it. They instead view the situation through the lens of things they do understand, and treat it like those things instead of like what it actually is. He finally meets someone else who also has an issue that nobody understands. Both of them decide that the truth is not as important as their happiness, and they sacrifice the truth of their conditions so that they can fit in to the laws of the world. They choose denial but that choice itself isn't the most important part, it's the reason why they choose denial.

It reminds me of some experiences with depression, in a way. Sometimes, even the person experiencing it doesn't know why or what to do. Instead of reaching the core of the issue only the surface issues get addressed, often because the person doesn't know what the core really is and how to explain it. Eventually it becomes easier to just pretend the surface issues are the core issue, partially because it's easier to "treat" that way and partially because trying to fix the core issue can alienate them from others. Besides, it isn't hurting them at the moment, so that means it's fine to ignore, right?

This is probably my own biases tinting how I perceived the ending, but it fits remarkably well. In any case, however it was intended, thank you to the author for giving me a good laugh and something to think about. :twilightsmile:

I haven't even read the commentary for this, but I'm willing to bet most of them zeroed in on that repetition being overdone, so I won't go near it beyond that.

The only real question I have is: what the heck is this guy? The devil? Or maybe some being beyond comprehension and emotion, playing with those of this world out of idle curiosity?

Anyhow, I like the story in a general sense, but the obvious flaw in repetition just kills it. Add to that a noticeable number of typos/grammatical errors and I'm looking elsewhere. With a little work, this could be something really worthwhile.

I don't feel like I can add much to what's already been said here. There's a lot of weirdness in this story, which... could be good?

Some word choices seemed either strange or maybe wrong; possibly auto-correct errors like 'sever' where it seems like 'severe' would fit better, or 'glistering', which is just an odd word no matter what you do with it, or 'is' instead of 'am', or sentences missing words. A good proofreader ought to be able to help with this sort of thing; I know the time limits on the Writeoff can be murder.

I wondered for a bit if this was actually a Portal crossover of some sort, but it doesn't seem to actually have much in common with the game except possibly the portal gun (but even that doesn't seem right; the portals are orange and blue, not blue and dark red.) In the end, it's a story, and it's definitely intriguing, but it doesn't seem to offer much in the way of explanation for all the weirdness it raises, and that's a bit problematic for me. Perhaps I'm simply not in your audience.

Alright, time to pick my half-finished slate back up …

Very nicely done! This was a surprisingly compelling read given how little actually happens. The stakes of Regan's struggle feel large despite the small scale of the storytelling and the repetitiveness of the core problem.

Even though it didn't personally trip me up, I agree with previous commenters that the anatomy could use touching up. I'm pretty sure the reason it didn't bother me was that I interpreted the second paragraph:

—and my eyes crack open as my claws catch on the mattress springs.

… as the narrator's sense impression of the physical world outside the dream (rather than the lines blurring), and once I assumed Regan had claws, I was able to assume "hand" was a generic descriptor in a non-human context. However, I wouldn't rely on other readers drawing that distinction, because as a longtime furry I'm conditioned that way. The mythological reframing of addiction is great though, and I love the flight scene.

Am I the only one who's getting vibes that Regan and Kori are a little more than housemates? ("My very best friend." – Bon Bon) They seem oddly comfortable with physical touch, and Kori's putting forward a hell of a lot of effort as a "visa sponsor" for a recovering addict. I'm honestly trying to figure out whether I like the story better with or without headcanoning that, because it does inject an odd element of unreliable narration into Regan's voice. Actually, come to think of it, it seems like there are a couple of odd inconsistencies that back up Regan as unreliable narrator — primarily Regan's description of the anti-Draconian slogan as "blood libel" when in the first scene we watch him basically go feral, about to rip his laundry hamper apart. Author, if that wasn't intentional, you probably want to walk back the early relapse a bit.

The one structural issue that bugged me is that, despite how central Kori is throughout the story, he completely vanishes for the last scene. It feels odd for Regan to solve the problem on his own. Satisfying, yes, and thematically appropriate, but it feels like it turns Kori into an unfired Chekhov's Gun. (Or maybe I just want to see his reaction to his very. best. friend's breakthrough.) You had plenty of wordcount left to slip in another scene or two, author; after the competition you might consider expanding this a bit to bookend it properly. Though if you do, I think Regan's final realization and success is exactly where you want your story to end, so you'd have to juggle the narrative elements a bit.

There's an empty booth for me to sit in. I've got coffee coming.

I think you mean the "kaf" that cost Regan 4.95 dollars "sterling" in United States of America "Pangaean Sapient Union" money. :P

Still, nitpicks aside, overall I have to echo other readers' praise — against competition like this and Agent of a Foreign Power, no wonder I keep writing at the top of my game and getting bronze.

Tier: Top Contender

I'm just gonna ==spoiler warning== this entire post, because otherwise I might have to redact it all. :P

And if doing this did send him down to the other place, well, at least it would be a private Hell.

Well, that got dark.

>>Not_A_Hat makes a good point that this story feels a little like it's trying to split the difference between two moods and in the process doesn't go far enough to hit either. While !Hat sees lack of commitment, though, I think what I see is missed opportunities.

This is best exemplified by the phone calls with Catherine and Bobby. They're so unrelentingly normal.

Henry misfiles the whiskey (and his addressbook), but he dials Bobby's number from memory. He thinks about how Alzheimer's robbed his wife of her children's and grandchildren's names, but he never once forgets their names. Neither Bobby nor Catherine are dropping hints nor staging interventions. Catherine urges him to move in with them, but that's explicitly exposited as because she's concerned about him living alone after his wife's death — not because he's losing function. The one element of those calls that even touches on your core premise is when Henry forgets Tom's birthday, but he glosses over the fumble and she lets it slide.

… you know, re-reading it now, in light of the ending the conversation with Bobby takes on an especially morbid tone. In that light I wonder if it was intentional. I do have to give it some points for how that changes with the full context, but the problem is that the conversation is otherwise so subtle and bland, I feel like it doesn't work as foreshadowing.

So let me revise my complaint: I think this plays its cards way too close to its chest. Withholding Henry's suicide for the ending twist makes the rest feel mundane and a little disconnected. Consider flipping this story entirely on its head: If we learn right up front that Henry plans to kill himself, then that first conversation with Bobby becomes super fraught as we watch him dancing around his premeditated plans. (Be careful: This has the potential to establish Henry as an asshole and cause readers to lose sympathy.) If you did this you'd also, I think, have to invert the two conversations: put Catherine's first so that the seemingly innocent slip of forgetting the birthday becomes, essentially, his trigger. Henry convincing himself that because of that slip he has nothing more to look forward to except that slow descent into hell. At that point, build your story around the tragedy of his decision — if you still want an ending twist, drop a late revelation: perhaps that he doesn't have Alzheimer's at all, that he got tested and cleared but doesn't believe the test.

Tier: Almost There

Having read (and largely enjoyed) this entire story, author, I'd like to call your attention back to your two opening paragraphs:

Diggory’s eyes popped open, his mind shifting from sleep to awareness in the span of seconds. A brass ceiling graced his vision, the rivets and beams plainly clear even in the near-total dark. He turned his head to the clock, an egg-shaped curiosity whose steady ticking stalwartly guarded the bedroom against total silence. Two minutes to Mid-Dark. He reached out to grab the thing, quietly turning off the mechanism that would ring its tiny metal bells. Turning over, he fiddled with the brass knobs until the flicking paper numbers on back read 07:30 and reset the alarm.

With careful slowness, he climbed out of the bed, his eyes set upon the sleeping form on the opposite side. Once certain his sister Cleio hadn’t been awoken, he set the clock on his pillow where it could be easily reached… and not be smashed by the inevitable force of her reaction. She wouldn’t be happy with herself if pre-work grumpiness led her to damage their father’s creation.

I've got two major problems with this.

1) It makes no sense. Diggory wakes up out of a sound sleep with the alarm clock not ringing — its "steady ticking stalwartly guarded the bedroom against total silence" — and his first reaction is to grab the alarm clock and reset it to 7:30 a.m. because he doesn't want it waking his sister.

If he was capable of waking up without the alarm clock, and afraid of it ringing, why in the hell did he set it in the first place?

(The scenes just beyond the quoted section have equal problems; consider >>Not_A_Hat's questions asked here as well.)

2) Virtually nothing in the opening-as-written sets up the rest of your story.

The alarm clock's physical appearance (along with the description of the ceiling) should be cluing us in to the setting's technology — but it's an "egg-shaped curiosity" (?) with "brass knobs" and "paper numbers" (?!?), which reads to me like a melange of inconsistent forms. Are we futuristic? Are we steampunk? Are we some sort of weird organic-tech? I have no idea. (Note also that he's concerned about her breaking it, which seems an odd concern about something made entirely of metal.) It's not even until he goes topdeck that I realize we're on a ship, at which point the clock's appearance is rendered irrelevant since there's pretty much no way you could use the clock to establish the single most critical fact of your setting. (n.b. I'm sure someone is about to jump into comments and prove me wrong.)

The opening establishes Diggory as our viewpoint character (fine), and establishes Cleio as someone very emotionally important to him and provides significant characterization for her (less fine, since she then totally vanishes until far later in the story). It further establishes their father as an inventor of note (even less fine, since he is literally never mentioned again). Your opening is very important for setting expectations, and this is dropping red herrings left and right.

Anyway.

Past those severe stumbles, this thankfully settles into its narrative, and it's significantly stronger after going topside gets us oriented. (Is there a reason you're withholding the ship-based nature of Fortune until then? Could you drop bigger hints as he walks through the corridor, maybe? The rumble of the engines? The scent of whatever fuel powers the miles-long floating city?) Gemma's a great character, which restored a great deal of my reading interest. You set up an interesting arc, of the discovery of land and the fracture this creates and the decisions it drives, and largely sell it.

I do object to the characterization of Diggory and Gemma deciding not to report land. They literally have just one job: that. I could buy not calling it in until it reaches the point where an "average" watcher would notice it, but not further. If you want to tweak that, I'd suggest possibly using momentum to your advantage: he's the forward watch, which means that the ridiculously sized floating continent known as Fortune is already moving directly at the land, and they have to crank the engines way the hell up just to avoid plowing into it, giving everyone a chance to get an eyeful.

For the most part, though, this holds together pretty well. Even the open ending feels like it closes your arc sufficiently satisfyingly, because we already have some sense of the reasons for the decisions and the sacrifices made. The next step is to tighten the story up, swinging in with a more impactful start and tying Diggory's decisions closer in to your major themes.

Tier: Strong

>>horizon

If he was capable of waking up without the alarm clock, and afraid of it ringing, why in the hell did he set it in the first place?

FWIW, I am sometimes in this situation. My natural internal clock usually wakens me before my alarm goes off. But I have the alarm set in case it doesn’t, and if my partner isn’t due to rise, I spare her the annoyance of the alarm by shutting it off. At worst, the alarm temporarily wakens her but makes sure I am not late.

>>GroaningGreyAgony
It's a little less that, and more that Diggory's literally concerned about Cleio's reaction to the clock being to destroy it. If that's an ongoing concern when he's waking up, I think any rational person would have taken alternate measures.

I suppose that particular complaint would be fixable simply by removing her outsized reaction, though. I probably could have picked "woke up before the alarm went off" out of the context if that and the crazy description hadn't distracted me.

>>horizon
Ah. I was treating the description of her smashing the clock as a humorous exaggeration of how forcibly she hits it when trying to turn it off, with the pillow being an additional measure. But she needs the clock to arise as well, later, so he has to set it for her.

Looks like I'm too late to add much. There's a good bit of editing to be done, so that the deliberate flightiness of the narrator's voice isn't obscured by unintentional redundancy and editing mistakes. Beyond that, there really needs to be some sort of stakes here; what's the significance of reaching out to touch her mirror-self? Whether there's a physical consequence or "just" an emotional one (e.g. by reaching out she metaphorically rejects her own life, and upon the closing of the portal, finds her identity irrevocably compromised in a way it wouldn't have been had she refused to recognize the alternate her and stretch out her hand to her), that should be explored in some way. As-is, I'm finding that the ending lacks punch.

an expensive bottle of whiskey Benton had gotten from a fan, coming out only when he had carefully added a good shot of distilled water to each glass.

GAAAAAH you're killing me, author! Don't ruin your good whiskey by over-watering it! Drink cheap stuff if you don't care about the taste and send your nice scotch to me.

Unlike the people above me, I was mighty confused by the middle section of this story, since it appears to me that he isn't trying to commit insurance fraud. If he was, why would he be contemplating skydiving right after discovering that it was nearly the only thing that wasn't covered by his policy? Why the bike scene, which is far less a "fraud" situation than a legit one? Best I can see, he'd decided to kill himself, and was initially hoping to keep his ex-wives from getting any cash out of the deal.

That's still got plenty of potential for dark comedy, but it needs to be much better clarified. Also, if that is what you were going for, then undercutting the seriousness might not be a bad idea; if his agent reacted to these attempts with total blase, implying that he'd tried all this before after getting writer's block. And if you were intending horizon et al's reading, then I disagree with him; you should make it clearer, or at least cut out the parts that (unless I'm missing something obvious) seem to point in a different direction.

Past that, this was an amusing entry. A rather predictable story in its general beats, but the comedy was solid, and I enjoyed the execution.

I like the idea of taking a mildly annoying situation and blowing it so ludicrously out of proportion, and you really did sell the awkwardness of it all. Good job on that!

I'm afraid that I wasn't a big fan of the writing, however. Not only is there a good spot of editing to be done here, but the narrator's voice never quite clicked with me. I feel like you were going for turn-of-the-century (Oh god, it's 2017 and I need to specify which "turn of the century" I mean now, don't I? Good gravy. Anyway, not y2k) conscientiousness, but it sounded affected rather than natural. Even if it'd been spot-on, though, I'm going to venture that I think this story would be better off told in a more modern vernacular. You want to make this encounter feel as uncomfortable as possible, after all, and using any sort of "period voicing" is going to make the character feel that little bit more distant. Everything you can do to make your reader feel like they're right there in that elevator, you should do it!

This could have used some editing, but otherwise, it's pretty good. I was not, however, able to discover the planets until I read the comments. This makes me sad.

It was made up of about ten planets

What inspired the number 10? According to the definition of a planet, there are only eight. The number 8 is not including the five dwarf planets that have been discovered.

Hm, I like it, but... what did I just read?

I really like the way you portrayed his addiction in this one, it definitely felt real. It could use some minor editing, but otherwise, this is great. Let's see if you can keep your high spot as I read the rest of these.

Wonderful idea, but not so great execution.
First off, I really don't think a diary format was the best idea for this. It makes it seem choppy, doesn't let the reader figure it out as easily, and can easily bore the reader because of the slices of life required for each entry.
It could use some editing.
And finally, take your time with this. It feels a little rushed, which takes away from the story a bit. There is nothing stopping you from making a novel of this other than your own ideas. Just work on adding some more, and it will work out.

Hm, can't say I agree with what the man is doing, but still a pretty good fic. Even if it does get to be a little repetitive.

Interesting idea... I like it.

Well, that was a rather good read, surprisingly for a 8,000 word story. That was rather positive.

Now, I get the impression that this story drags a bit on at places. The dialogue seems a bit wordy, and the way Satan beats around the bush does not even correspond in the slightest to my own head-canon. I mean, yeah, I can easily envision the devil setting up a trap like in the famous novel Angel Heart, but what's his goal? Also, I don’t really get why the devil needs the guy’s support. His power seems limited, yet at the same time he uses a trick that would get anyone do his will at the end…

The paragraph about damnation is good though. Reminds me of a story by Dino Buzzati where the narrator keeps turning down offers by the Devil to sell his soul in return for fortune and power, until the narrator grows old and finally turns to Him, but He spurns him telling that his soul has no more value to Him anymore, he can go to paradise for all He cares. (Capitalised possessives for Devil.)

All in all, it was a good read, but some elements of it left me wondering.

>>Not_A_Hat

Possibly Bad Puns!

lmftfy