Whelp, if sparkling vampires can make for a bestseller, why not?

This certainly amused me. I can't imagine going to such ridiculous lengths over writer's block. Then again, I've never really had writer's block. I liked it on the whole, but its low scope and predictable manner keep it from getting the high marks. I'd offer more serious criticisms, but it seems everyone's beaten me to anything that matters.

This left me with mixed feelings. I didn't care for the repetitious rhythm going on with it, which struck me as more distracting than driving. Maybe if it had been something slightly different every time. When it started, I was curious. About halfway through, it felt grinding, and I wanted nothing more than to see where you were going with this.

In the end, I feel the story took far too long to get to its point. The details about the failure and the migration were clear, but I couldn't grasp the point for the narrator him/herself, and so I spent the first half to 2/3 of the story more confused than anything. Kudos for trying to make something big out of the prompt. Conceptually, not bad at all. I just don't care for the delivery.

I think I need to read this again, in a different mood to enjoy and appreciate it.
>>Chris
I guess you never had a dream hold on for dear life after you woke up? Even if this may be on the extream?

Others have already commented on the issues this story has. I can't really add much more, so I will instead throw out what I think you tried to achieve with the self-aware narration you used. I may be completely wrong, obviously, but I think it's worth a tentative discussion.

The narration you used and the remarks about the things the character didn't know made me think that we are seeing this from the perspective of the essence of the characters, for which both the "ballerina" and the "normal girl" are incomplete manifestations. This is an interesting PoV, but if it is the case it would be probably better to hint at it more explicitly.

I'm a bit on the fence about the use of the portal gun as a narrative device. If we are seeing different aspects of a real person and this is some kind of metaphorical representation of it then it could make sense as a psychological manifestation of the need to bridge the various parts of the personality, even more so if the whole person is a gamer. On the other hand, if this is a straight representation of physically different versions living in different universes, then the addition seems a bit random.

I have still appreciated the story and it had been pleasant food for thought. Thank you for it.

>>Ritsuko

I have! I confess that I'm not sure what that has to do with my comments, though.

>>Not_A_Hat

Will this be recorded for those of us who'll be at work when it airs? I'd like to hear it, even if only after the fact.

>>Chris
The podcasts usually go up on my YouTube channel, though I've been thinking of making a Radio Writeoff one. I'll pop a link into the thread when it's up for everyone.

It may take me a little while to get around to editing, but it'll be up before the end of the round.

>>Chris For certain!

Although we won't record the 'hanging out after' time. Plusalso the editor (Quill) is often busy. But, he's never failed to get one posted, and he does a very good job of cutting out the really pointless asides. Which are probably more common than they should be. :P

>>Chris
From what I read, the character is waking up. Yet he is still in the dream, at least to a degree.

>>QuillScratch
>>Not_A_Hat

Awesome! I'll look forward to hearing that after the fact, then.

(now, make sure you guys talk about my fic :B)



>>Ritsuko

If you're talking about my criticism of the opening's language, then perhaps I wasn't clear what bothered me. It was plain that the character was waking up from a dream. What I wasn't clear on for (in my mind) an excessive length of time was whether the character was a human dreaming he was a dragon, a dragon trapped in a human's body dreaming about his former life, or (as turned out to be the case) actually a straight-up dragon. The structure of the dream and his waking up I take no issue with; just the mixed use of "hands" and "claws."

>>Chris
I guess you were not.
The mixing up you mentioned is bothersome, I'd admit.
I should read thurer before giving the story the grade it deserves.
Just that your comment begged for a different explanation to the opening scene.

Before I begin, I want to talk about the opening, specifically this bit:

Sixty year old Highland Park Single Malt Scotch

Author, I assume you are not particularly familiar with single-malt scotch, so let me explain my issue with this. First, I'm not aware that Highland Park even makes a 60 year single malt. The oldest standard ("standard" in the sense of commercially available, that is) drink I know of that they've made is their 50 year. Secondly, even if our "old pensioner" was drinking the 50, I'd still be pulled out of the story pretty darn quick by it; not only was that an extremely limited run, but IIRC it sells for about the price of a car. Actually, I went ahead and looked it up just now, and it's a bit less than that... but you're still going to be dropping $16,000-20,000 per bottle.

The moral here is: if you don't know your product, do a quick google search. And if I might make a suggestion? A Glenfiddich 18 year single malt might fit your story better; it's a brand your readers might recognize even if they don't "know scotch," it's widely available (our pensioner could almost certainly get it at his local upscale liquor store), and it's expensive in an absolute sense without being insanely priced (a shade under $100, where I shop, which puts it out of my price range. Just as well, Glenfiddich isn't one I terribly like to begin with).

Now, let's take a look at the rest of the fic :B

...Okay, having now read the whole thing, I have to say that it was obvious where you were going early on, but I nevertheless kept hoping I was wrong. And a lot of the reason I was hoping that was because of that first phone call with Bobby.

The reason I hated that whole bit is because Arranging for your own son to find your dead body after you commit suicide is such an incredibly selfish, manipulative thing to do. There are a thousand ways he could have set up for his body to be found, if he were absolutely committed to killing himself (incidentally: is it because he's afraid he's developing Alzheimer's too, or is it out of simple yearning for his dead wife? As >>horizon says, the textual evidence is inconsistent), by a family friend, lawyer, the condo owner... whatever, but instead he takes the option seemingly chosen for the purpose of causing maximum guilt to his family. And I do mean maximum: that phone call is just twisting the "you should have known something was wrong, Bobby," knife. And then he does that same thing with all of his remaining kids. I mean, that's some next-level mind burdens he's going out of his way to lay down as he exits stage right.

And that all would be fine... if the story were willing to commit to showing him in an appropriate light (I could by "selfish, bitter man bent on making sure his family feels bad," or alternately "wishy-washy coward who's alternating between commitment to the deed and attempts to self-sabotage"). But instead, you paint this man with such a halo that the story might as well end with an angelic chorus singing him off, which might work if the story was about him trying to minimize, rather than maximize, the anguish which his death would cause. But as-is, the tone of the story feels far removed from the main character's actions.

Beyond that--and granted, that's a big "beyond that" to be throwing around--this is fine as an end-of-life bittersweet fic. It's not trite or offensive, but I think it's also fair to say that it doesn't bring anything beyond its premise to the table. A stronger dedication to exploring the motivation of our pensioner, and an accompanying narrative recognition of him as a flawed human being, rather than a loving-and-loved paragon who's too good for this sinful earth, could go a long way toward strengthening this.

Georg’s Brief Comments on his story slate in Staring Into the Abyss because I’m slow, but doing much better than the last one. (Ok, admittedly anything is better than my last set of reviews, which was nothing.) Here goes.

READ - The Northernlit Forge — A+ — Smooth hook, and smooth storytelling. Drags you right in. I’m really not able to point out any flaws, but I enjoyed the heck out of it and will see it in the medal category, no doubt.

>>Not_A_Hat Answer to your question: There's a river of lava beneath their feet, and he's taking her swimming with him.

READ - Chasing the Dragon — A+ — Nothing really to complain about, a wonderful romp through the world of AA (or perhaps CA for Dragons) and the stress that an addict has to go through in order just to make it through the day, made only worse by just what he is. Top tier.

Read - Miskatonic Electronics — A+ — Nice hook, moving right into the story. Shades of Turtledove’s Toxic Spell Dump in a way. Heck, a top quality garbage disposal is under two hundred bucks and a ten-thumbed monkey can install it (or me, with three trips to the hardware store). Neatly woven through the story and a wonderful ending hook too. You got me. Finalist.

Read - Endings — A — Nice hook, a little chunky and not very flowing at the beginning. Progressing nicely into a slice of life… Oh. Yeah. (reads through to end) Impressions: This is a progressive or whatever an English major would call it. I did the same thing with a Trixie and a Diamond Tiara story, so I’m aware of just how hard it is to keep focused on the end (sorry) without going into weird plot twists or hooks, just one long slow slide into an inevitable conclusion. I don’t get to say this often, but Horizon is wrong twice. Flipping the story on its head or putting the reveal at the beginning turns this into a different animal. The POV character is written tightly, the sequencing of events is smooth, and the depiction of Alzheimer's is spot on, because victims can have dramatic ‘chunks’ vanish out of their memories or behavior quirks in really weird ways, telegraphed right to the very beginning of the story and the hook. Overall, extremely good marks, with a bonus for taking on a subject that is so uncomfortable for many readers.

>>Chris One of the advantages of old age is going into the liquor cabinet that you haven't touched in forty years and getting out something that you opened with your old Army buds back when they were all alive. My dad was like that. Not to say it's any good after sitting around in a bottle all those years, but...

>>horizon As above, you're wrong. You are trying to read a different story than what is on the page. I tend to do that too. No biggie.

Inevitability — A- — Nice start even if it’s not very hooky. And… time loop again. They seem to be popular, in a Doctor Strange kind of way. I’m surprised the guardian does not take the obvious response and simply cripple the man and bind him up for a few weeks/months/years. The large chunk of cut-and-paste makes it too tempting to skip forward, and that chunks the action up enough to break any suspension of disbelief. Still, it’s well written and could be polished down to a tighter story. Not bad at all.

Sisyphus — B — Opening hook is very telly and not very hookey. Bad start. Extra comma. Extra colon. Use of ‘that’ instead of ‘who’ when referring to a… um… person? It smooths out later, but drags a little. Ok, a lot. Then picks up. Satisfying conclusion. Not bad at all. Needs several passes to trim down to size and to pad up certain descriptions, plus some smoothing between some chunky sections, but it’s got a good beat and I can dance to it.

Seje Khai and the Cursed Roll — B — Ah, a Fantasy Role-Playing story. (or so it seems) Oh, gods. 4E or 5E. Ick! Bonus points for being well-written, dings for going for FRP breaking the fourth wall, and how did you get a hold of my dice? I swear those are mine. I have to tell the story sometime of how I once used the words, “Don’t worry, I have a good default.”

The Vase in the Woods — B- — Nice use of time loops, but it’s just bloody difficult to engage a reader with a repetitive time loop. That leads to a bad problem with being jumpy due to the way it was written, exacerbated by the way each loop is mostly a POV change and ending with an inconclusive question mark. Most of the problems here are structural and won’t just ‘polish out’ with a little work. It’s just bloody difficult to engage a reader with a repetitive time loop. Wait a minute.

Hell is Other People — B- — Not a really memorable hook. It’s an incident-free trip, not the inverse, sigh. A fair slice of life story, but nothing really of note.

Special Mention - There’s a Hole in My Chest — Odd but I really liked it. For those of you who are angsting about if the hole is real or metaphorical, the answer is Yes, of course. It’s that kind of odd story. My vote for most controversial.

>>georg

Flipping the story on its head or putting the reveal at the beginning turns this into a different animal.

I'm genuinely not certain whether I agree my version is different, because it's not entirely clear to me (especially given the phone conversations) what the author intended to be the core of the tragedy here:
1) that Henry is so afraid of his fate that he's doing cowardly things (see >>Chris's spoilertext for an explanation that's clearer than mine was), or
2) that Henry is fundamentally heroic, and struck down by a cruel, unfair disease

If it's #1, then my suggestions change structure, but not theme, and I submit would be wonderfully clarifying. If it's #2, then my suggestions do counterproductively turn the story on its head, but the story still does have issues to address with its mixed messages about the progression of the disease and Henry's premeditation in the calls.

So, author, I should clarify: the purpose of my review was to note that I didn't feel the story as written worked for me, and to offer a suggestion for how to edit the story with the least amount of textual scrapping and rewriting-from-scratch into a story that I felt would work. In that sense, Georg is right: I am talking about a story that is not what you wrote on the page, and my suggestion will only help if you wish to push the story in the direction I envision. Everyone's advice, even mine, should be taken with that grain of salt. (Especially mine, because I tend to be pretty bold with my revision suggestions.)

And if I'm wrong, wouldn't be the first time. ¯\_ツ_/¯

>>horizon Yes, I understand you once thought you were wrong before, but you were mistaken. :)

It's a thematic difference, much like the difference between a traditional Agatha Christie murder mystery and a Columbo. AC stories have the mystery unwind one bit at a time until the culprit is identified, where Columbo stories identify the murderer in the first page and the rest of the story is watching the worm wriggle and twist in the wind as he struggles to escape the trap. They both have a corpse, but the process of getting to the arrest is completely different.

This is a Christie.

Prose here just did not work for me, and I found myself wishing that sentences and paragraphs would just end. Just far, far, far, far too many words for a lot of things for me. While the deeper and more elaborate detailing was used to great effect sometimes (dragging the bowl across the tabletop, for example), for the most part it just left me wanting to skim. I get the idea of it being a character exploration and their deep reaction to things, but I just didn't engage well with it.

I also got a little lost and what level of anthro we're at here, which is a bit disorienting.

The double word tic was not something that particularly resonated well with me.

That said, the core idea is great and it grapples with its character's primary conflict quite well. At the same time, I feel it just sort of loses itself and meanders far too much to be really and really compelling to me.

This, unfortunately, does not work for me at all. While the idea is interesting, the story really lacks any clear emotional through lines. There's no real meat to sink your teeth into. You get melancholy early on, but you have no idea why until like, 3000 words in, at which point the story has spun off in a really bizarre direction. Moreover, without anything to really engage with, the assault of names from two separate storylines just gets overwhelming.

Moreover, you keep changing the shape of the story with a story format, which makes it extra hard to track what's going on at any given moment.

All told, you tell two different stories, but both of them lack clear (or even existant, really) narrative arcs, which gives me as the reader very little reason to want to invest in them. I think you'd be better served by picking one of these stories and just telling -that- story.

That said, the actual prose is pretty decent, and the ideas and emotions at work are intriguing, but the package they're wrapped in needs to be cleaned up.

This was fun. Needs a bit of a clean up (feels like you didn't really find your voice until a couple scenes in), but I really don't have much in the way of complaints here. You could probably safely cut a little bit of the suicide/death wishing in the middle (maybe the doctor scene) as I think it doesn't add much and detracts from the rather breakneck pacing you've got going otherwise.

End line feels a bit flat to me? I'm undecided. I think you should maybe end on the Rock Pitt stuff. You've got the build up for that punchline. While I get what you're trying to do with the last little bit, I don't think you actually have the infrastructure setup to support that joke.

But yeah. Fun. Not much else to say here.

>>horizon
I will write something more substantial today or tomorrow, but I also think you are wrong.

The signs are all there, and the whole point is that this is a very early stage of the disease. He knows what waits for him (see the analysis he keeps on the table) and decides that he has no intention of letting it progress at all.

I also think that he is neither wilfully cruel or a coward, but that requires a bit more explanation.

Not for me, ultimately, is how I think I feel here.

It's a decent little vingette and many of the emotions are in the right place, but it just doesn't really do anything for me and once the ending clicked into my head during the first phone call, there's a bit of disengagement because, yeah, there becomes an issue with not really resenting and stopping caring about the main character.

Making this a story rather than a vignette might help some, honestly. The fact that the course is set from sentence one with no real conflict is a bit of an issue. Make it a bit more of a fight, give us something to latch onto, give us some impression that he really realizes what a dick thing he's doing and that maybe this isn't the right path!

I agree with Andrew. Funny, and reminds me of that movie.

There’s an instance of the dreaded could care less instead of couldn’t care less. Shame on you!

Otherwise, reads fluidly. I mean, that’s a simple, straightforward, amusing (but not overly funny) story. Not much else at stake.

Remove the last two sections and this story improves significantly. Maybe find some way to keep the last few paragraphs in.

I have to admit I was confused throughout the story as to whether this was taking place in a world of realistic technology for 1984, or something fantastic. My unfamiliarity with Soviet aircraft was part of the problem, but so was this:

“We’ll approach and overfly at 75 klicks altitude, see if we can see anything. If not, we’ll descend and return for another pass.”

In American usage, a klick is a kilometer. There are no airplanes, and certainly no 80s-era Soviet bombers, that can fly at nearly 250,000 feet. That's almost satellite range.

Normally I would write this off as a simple mistake and I wouldn't even consider penalizing the story for it (Writeoff entries, because of their tight deadline, often have editing errors). But I can't do that here because I honestly don't know if it's a mistake. In a world where UFOs apparently fly around northern Siberia, maybe they also have airplanes that can fly that high? I just don't know, which means I can't even tell what sort of world this story is set in.

Does anyone else know?

Sorry, author, this one didn't land well with me. The dialogue between Benton and Murray, especially, was just too fake.

“And slept with the volcano virgin and the female nuclear scientist who talked him through the defusing process,” said Murray. “He’s not only done everything, he’s done everybody in the process. You’ve been in creative holes before, but you pulled yourself out of them. Hey, remember that research trip we took to India for The Curse of the Thuggee Cults? You came up with lots of inspiration there.” Murray paused, setting the whiskey down on a cork pad. “Between the dysentery, the malaria, and the septic infection,” he admitted.

Humans don't do that. We don't neatly summarize the story to date for the audience. We certainly don't close our spoken paragraphs with snappy remarks that neatly contrast with everything that we said before.

The "As you know, Bob" method of exposition has been out of style for a long time, and I don't think it's coming back anytime soon.

The rest of the dialogue in the story suffers the same problem. It's just too fake for me to do anything but be annoyed by.

The mid-story plot about the author's various attempts to kill himself didn't seem too coherent to me. I was willing, just barely, to hope that maybe Benton (who already said he wanted to kill off Rock) was duplicating his experiences in India, trying to 'act out' how Benton might kill himself in order to write it more authentically. But evidence of that never came out in the text, and I'm forced to conclude I was just reading my own hopes into the story. Benton apparently just wants to kill himself to get the insurance payout.

>>Cold in Gardez I'd wager dimes to dollars the author missed a decimal, and it's supposed to be 7.5 klicks.

The author gave the altitude of the plane as seven kilometers near the beginning of the fic.

“Speed is approximately five hundred kilometers per hour, altitude is seven kilometers. Komyeta 1, status?”

And, they got basically everything about this plane correct, including things like the radar and the missile load-out; there's no way they didn't know the flight ceiling. If this is magical realism on the Soviet side, the planes not only fly super high, they climb like crazy. Which the author only reveals through a single number in a single line in the whole work. Given the skill levels shown basically everywhere else in this story, I find that doubtful.

But, I have another argument to back this idea up. One of the things this story does so well you might not even notice is careful usage of numerals vs. words for numbers. Alphanumeric designations (basically names) and dates are given in numerals, but most all of the other numbers are given as words. This one, though, is conspicuously different. Not a designation, less than three digits, and spoken. So why's it a numeral? Well, perhaps the author went to put in a decimal, decided it would be too awkward to spell out, and used numerals. ...but forgot the decimal. :P

>>georg Unless I misunderstand what you're saying, I didn't read this as Christie. I was pretty dang sure about where this was going and why after about the first third/half of the story.

The 'fall asleep too early' and various bits made it clear he was planning something, so when I got to the end of the phone call with Bobby, when he's deliberately vague about the paperwork/moving, I was pretty clear on what he was going for. As to motivation, Martha's Alzheimer's is explicitly mentioned, and that plus the opening line about the whiskey in the cereal cupboard made it fairly clear. At the very latest, I was entirely certain by the time he spent twenty minutes looking for his phone book to call long-lost friends, and that's just about in the middle. (What I'm really curious about is what a 'bread drawer' is.)

After that, I was basically just watching this unfold, hoping for a twist and wondering how the themes would play out. I'm with >>Chris here, except I'm pretty certain the MC did this out of fear of Alzheimer's, given the medical exam papers and the bit about Hell vs. the Alzheimer's ward; he seems pretty clear about where he'll end up if he sticks around.

If the author intended either the suicide or the disease to be a surprise, I think the reveal needs a bit more care. Perhaps dialing back the clear and obvious memory-loss would help. Tucking it into the back of a paragraph or something, so it's not the hook for the story and also the opening after the hard scene break might make it less attention grabbing, and not mentioning Alzheimer's by name in the first section with Martha would, perhaps, make the connection tenuous enough I wouldn't have made the association until later.

Or maybe the author does want this to read like a Columbo, I dunno.

>>georg Why would you link me to that siiiiiiiteeee? (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Alright, I apparently did miss the river of lava. As I said, it was probably something obvious. :P I'm still not sold on stabbing the floor actually being enough to take down the big bad, but that's probably because the callback didn't feel weighty enough to me.

The idea was good, but maybe a little clunky, and in need of an edit. I liked the read a fair amount, and thought some of the descriptions and words used were quite interesting. The paragraphs began to read more smoothly around the second act, from what I could tell. I don't have an awful lot to say other than that, except that I agree that Zolfran's decision could have been reached in a better way. I liked the epilogue though, that was an entertaining way to end things.

There's a good story there, slightly marred by small issues maybe, but definitely there. The author doesn't need to worry about the structure of the story, that seems to be well executed, but maybe work on including more descriptions, and making it easier to differentiate between characters.

Thanks for the read!

AAIQU

>>Chris
>>horizon
Now that I have time I can write something a bit more articulated. My own reaction to this story has been heavily colored by a personal experience. Everything I say may derive from a bit of a warped perception of the issue.

My gramps suffered from Alzheimer. We lived far away, so I saw him at longer intervals, which means that my young, impressionable self saw him going from being gramps to becoming not-gramps. Each time there was visibly less of him. This had a pretty deep impact on me and on my relationship with the idea that one day I may suffer the same thing. The thought is terrifying.

As I read the story I kind of knew where it went shortly before he made the first call. And I understood why he did everything he did. I may not approve of some of it, but I understand.

He has seen his wife and what happened to her, and each day he suffered from the knowledge he couldn't do anything about it. It has been devastating. My grandma had an unshakeable faith, she had survived WW2, the winter of hunger that followed, her home being stolen from her when she had to flee from Hungary. And yet, after my grampa's disease she was shaken and different.

So when he saw the disease coming for him too (he knows it will, the medical examination points to that) he decided that we will go away on his instead of risking that the disease may take that too from him. I would probably do the same.

As for the calls to his family, I don't think he is a coward nor does he want them to suffer. He is misguided. I'm convinced that the experience with his wife has been so painful for him that he sincerely believes that his relatives will read his letter and understand. That won't be the case, but it makes, IMHO, the tragedy more poignant. A good and loving man causes suffering not through malice, but because pain has made him blind to certain things.

And this is, I think, the core of the story. Not a twist, not some new insight, but a tragedy unfolding as we read.

This is one of those rare stories where I have to completely divorce my voting and my assessment, so I need to explain my voting before I get into my review.

There is a 291-word section which is, as near as I can tell, exactly copy-and-pasted into the story four more times after its initial appearance. That's 1,164 words out of the story's 2,394 which took no thought and just a few keypresses to create. Without them, the story would have been 1230 words long.

As such, I am putting this at the bottom of my slate. I feel that it meets the letter, but not the spirit, of the wordcount part of the contest rules.

This post is NOT a request for the story to be disqualified. I am NOT asking other readers to change their vote. Most importantly, I am not condemning the author for entering this However, despite this entry's quality, I personally do not feel it would be fair for me to rate any other stories below an entry without 2000 original, unique words.

I'm writing this purely to explain my decision, since the fact it was bottom-slated will be visible from the results page.

As for my review. First, from a literary standpoint, I think the repetition was also a mistake. Kurt Vonnegut's first rule of writing is to "Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted". Forcing readers through an identical extended scene five times in a row is a waste of time. Coming in blindly to the story, we don't know whether there are any small but significant changes in the repeated text, which forces us to re-read and re-parse a scene that we've already read, only to discover that the exact same thing happened.

Abbreviate your repetitions. Skip forward to the end of the repeated section. Have things go slightly different as a case of deja vu creeps in. Do something different! Even if you are trying to get across the sense of being stuck in a time loop, there should be narrative forward motion, or else you lose the reader. So fix that.

... I might maybe have strong opinions on this, as the author of Hard Reset 2 and its time-loop madness. I would immodestly point to Chapter 4 as an example of a way to run through dozens of loops without getting the narrative mired down. The 2014 movie Edge of Tomorrow is also good about that.

to be fair, you're doing something here that most time-loop stories don't do: reacting to the changes from the perspective of someone who's not the looper. That's interesting, and very, very hard! (I speak from direct experience. Again: HR2, Opinions.) The dilemma is how to reconcile the fact that the reader has information that the protagonist doesn't -- since there can be no memories of the loop. This takes a good stab at it: Beylke's deductions feel plausible, and the audience views of the previous loops (modulo the repetition) work well to build up that sense of implausibility which gives her pause.

I don't have strong opinions on the motive reveal. It feels kind of orthogonal to your time-loop story. You might want to consider exploring how the looper got that way, if only because you could tie it in to his motives and thus both strengthen them and make the story feel a little more coherent.

Thematically, though, I think the loop approach and the way that you frame it is an excellent approach to the prompt. (Again, modulo the repeats; just assume that I'm reviewing the 1200-word story which doesn't include them.) The theme and title merge well. Although the worldbuilding dangles loose ends all over the place, it felt like everything that was needed for your theme was there, so this is pretty well self-contained.

The repetition, in short, feels by far like the major flaw and I wish I didn't have to ding the story so severely for it.

Tier: Almost There

My apologies, author. When I read your story, your punchline was robbed of its impact by factors completely out of your control. Namely, that I've read very nearly this exact story before (the main character was even a paladin). Convergent evolution is cruel. :(

Trying my best to ignore that for Writeoff evaluation ...

The good news is that your story's got a grabby hook, and you've got a sure hand with the vibrant little details. You definitely had me out the gate. I started getting a little nagging feeling at "Paladin", which blossomed out as you talked about rogues, and then when the wizard stepped in ... it was kinda disappointing seeing this descend into the vanilla tropes of a D&D game when it felt like it was standing so well on its own as a fantasy tale. (Nitpick: Gotta join the chorus of left-handed fighters noting that that gives you an advantage, though.) That's not a dealbreaker, mind -- it just means that you're kicking out the foundations of your worldbuilding and shifting the focus of the story, and suddenly you have to shift gears midway through and make us care not just about the characters but also their players. That certainly felt like a relative weakness (hard not to, when you're starting from scratch with introducing them midway through and trying to keep the pace of the story smooth). Without that, though, the big effect of turning it into just a game is to rob the in-game scene of its tension (as >>Not_A_Hat notes).

So, yeah. This one felt like it just sort of dissipated its promise as it went along ... landing that punchline could certainly have helped, but my inability to be amused by it killed the story for me. Sorry, again.

Tier: Misaimed

Well, the title's wrong, "dry" this ain't. The focus here is clearly on the colorful characters and their interactions, and those elements are delivered quite nicely. All three characters are memorable and dynamic, pop off the page, and do a great job at capturing my attention just by being themselves. Very well done on that front!

The framework around them, and the things they're talking about, though - those could use some touchups. >>Orbiting_kettle is on the nose, when I read "1927" and "barista" together it knocked me right out of my reading flow. Gotta keep that sort of thing in mind when you're writing a period piece.

Racism/antisemitism is another very touchy period element. I get that you're trying to make it clear that J. Jonah Jameson Teddy Beaumont is A Bad Person, so bad that the Devil Himself is here to give him a hookup, and period racism's a reasonable way of doing that. But making his anti-Jewish beliefs such a prominent pillar of the story has the potential to go very wrong, especially given the current US political climate. (In the interests of full disclosure: my sister in law just quit her university job out of fear for her safety, because of neo-Nazi propaganda posters appearing on campus multiple times since the election.) Even though Beaumont isn't portrayed as being in the right, I got some pretty uncomfortable vibes from how it was handled overall. For example, >>Zaid Val'Roa starts their comment with a joke which I assume, and hope, to contain an implied "from Beaumont's perspective," but it's not explicitly written out, so... hopefully you see the issue.

The characters' motivations are also not very clear to me. I'm not sure what Avi wants out of Beaumont, or why he's going to these lengths to toy with him. I'm also unsure what Beaumont's decision's going to be, since the stuff about his boy comes out of nowhere and the ending portion's wishy-washy about what he really believes and values. In fact, the final line makes me think that's intentionally unclear, but that lack of resolution doesn't make for a very satisfying end to the story.

How would I improve this? I'd tone down Beaumont's early aggression and plant some clues about his family and values earlier on, for sure. Pick an ending, whether it's yes, no, or deliberately ambiguous, and then direct the tone to that ending all throughout the piece. Maybe bring Annie back in for a closing scene. There are many possible ways to go, just work on bringing up the overall framework and aspects beyond the direct character interactions (since, again, those are quite good!) Also smooth out the technical issues, like "barista" and the early use of italics.

Overall, the joy of reading the characters brings it to above average for me. Nice job!

I'm afraid I couldn't get into this one at all. The core conceit just doesn't work. Every character felt like they were holding Idiot Balls and not reacting believably at all, even the protagonist. As soon as I saw the wife's reaction and the protagonist's nonchalance and willingness to drop the subject, I was checked out and skimming down to the end to see what the ~twist~ was going to be.

Most of the story is just a lengthy series of reiterations of the first scene. "There's a hole!" "Nah." "Ok." That continues on down to the scene with the bartender, where the twist finally drops.

In fairness, there is some potential to the concept here, enough to bring my attention back in for a bit. Bizarre stuff lurking behind the thin veneer of everyday life, only visible to certain people - not the most original of concepts, arguably an entire genre today, but there are some fun directions it can go in. Unfortunately I don't see this one go in *any* direction. We get a verification that the weirdness is there, and "you should just deny and ignore it" and that's it. It could work as an anticlimax in a more humorous take, but I didn't find any jokes or humor in the tone, and then the final section...

Well, the final section reads poorly, feels out of place, and destroys any subtlety or nuance that I might've been feeling. Since the bits of subtlety in the conversation with the bartender were the thing I liked about the story, this is... not good.

>>shinygiratinaz makes a reasonable point about a metaphorical reading, though also pointing out it was probably unintended. I agree on both counts - I don't see it in the story as written, but that's a possible way it could go in that has potential to be good.

How would I improve this? A full rework in one of three directions.
A. Go for the metaphorical reading and make that clear to the reader. Concentrate on the psychological aspects, give the hole itself some more presence in the story, and drop the comedy/horror tones that might make readers miss the metaphor and take literal readings.
B. Go for drama. Work on the characters and make their responses to the situation believable. The path of least resistance here is probably cutting everything before the bartender, starting with that and focusing on the protagonist's decisions. Could make a good mini?
C. Go for comedy. Other comments indicate people found this funny as is, so maybe that was the intention? Increase the overall absurdity a bit, chop out a lot of the description, shorten scenes, and add some clearer jokes and a strong ending punchline.
No matter the direction, take a scalpel to the scenes and cut the repetition and the final section.

Overall rather low rank for me. Better luck next time, though! (Or maybe I'm the one who just doesn't see the hole...)

When she started talking to the city, I immediately thought of Eyes Without a Face, and I admit my interest shot up. Then it got to entirely unexpected levels of weirdness and my attention was firmly rooted. In terms of concept, I loved it. I'll be voicing the words of others and say that I'd have loved to have seen this fleshed out into something bigger. There's so much that could be done with this idea, why stop now?

It needs some proofing and perhaps the delivery could be... I want to say 'streamlined', but that's not the right word. But I think, had the author moved for something longer, we could have gotten all the same information and more in a more flowing manner. But with great atmosphere and curious ideas, I must say this one lands high on my list.

As I read through this, I kept thinking of a number of other stories I've read in the past, such as The Turning of the Screw or The Last Days of Pompeii. It has a certain old-timey air to its manner that can be nostalgic at best and dull at worst. This one landed in a curious middle ground in that regard. I think in this aspect >>Chris and I are on the same page, because I don't think it really helped the story as a whole. That's not to say the writing style is bad, I just don't think it works well in this circumstance.

Interesting mix of elements here. The title gives away the gimmick - I wondered if it was going to be D&D from the start, and "Thurloth, the Lich King" was a good confirmation. I could've done without the first three paragraphs before that, though. Those made the hook weak for me, and (as other comments show) a reader who is unfamiliar with D&D or similar games is certainly going to be confused.

Well, I said interesting, but really I think the different parts of the story are at odds with one another. It's too detailed and not quite hammy enough to be full comedy, yet too hammy to hold much tension. Pick comedy or drama and go with one or the other.

I'd also liked to have seen a better balance between the in-game and out-of-game sides. When it became clear that in-game wasn't going to hold tension, I looked forward to seeing the out-of-game "real characters" interacting, but then they weren't presented with enough depth to really get into their dynamics.

The final punchline (and really the overall premise) is also one I've seen before, in this exact form, in a fairly well known story in RPG circles, enough to be linked on TVTropes. And not just in that link, there's a few more examples floating in my memory. So some points off for unoriginality, I'm afraid - it's too close and too common for me to really believe the author came up with this ending completely independently.

How would I improve this? Mainly with the good ol' editing buzzsaw. Cut the in-game scenes way, way down, eliminate all the excess baggage and focus on a small number of comedy beats. If you want drama, put the drama into the out-of-game humans and flesh that side out a bit more. The punchline... well, if you must do it, at least do it well and try to substantially differentiate your use from other instances in some way.

Overall still pretty all right, it was not unenjoyable. Thanks for writing!

Cute and a generally pleasant little read, but probably about 700 words too long. Like, for being under a vow of silence, our faux protagonist is quite internally chatty! And while I can forgive some of the announcing (particular given the format), it way overwhelms the actual action that's going on. I really am serious. Cut like, 700 words from the first scene and I think things'll improve a lot.

Similarly, while I actually like the opening line, it takes way too long to get into the actual material afterwards.

I really do like the tone (it clicked pretty quickly what this was with the title in mind), and honestly I think with some polish this'd be pretty excellent. You're speaking one of my preferred voices.

I'm in agreement with most of the other comments. The diary form is an interesting experiment, and I can see the good ideas here, but the execution doesn't work out. Just doesn't read very well. There are two intertwined reasons why that stand out to me:

1. The entries are trying to tell an external story rather than actual be diary entries belonging to a person.
2. The overall prose quality is not strong enough to carry out what the author's trying to do. I hate to put that so bluntly, but can't think of a better way that would also be honest.

Trying to tell a story in diary form requires a lot of balancing acts. You have to have a strong voice for the writing character in general, voice them specifically as they would write to their diary, change their voicing as external events happen, and of course somehow convey the external story to the reader. It's incredibly difficult to pull all those layers off. Props to the author for attempting it - going above your skill level is how you learn! - but you're not there yet, keep trying.

Just to zero in on one example, there are a lot of unintentional typos, like "beat day of my life" in the first line, or "Stevez." An effective diary story might contain intentional typos, placed such that the reader realizes they're intentional and is able to draw information about the writer from them. Advanced tricks and techniques like that can help get in all the layers of meaning that are needed when writing in an unusually limited form. But obviously, you first have to be sure you're virtually never making unintentional typos before you can even think about inserting intentional ones.

How would I improve this? Keep reading. Keep writing. Keep practicing. Don't get discouraged. Set high standards for yourself. Look at published works, or stories and authors that place highly in competitions like this, take in what they do and keep learning. Look up some rubrics like the HORSE scale I saw someone using and try applying them to yourself and others. You're already pushing yourself out of your comfort zone on form, and that's a good thing, but don't forget to practice the fundamentals most of all.

Overall, itchy. Tasty.

Pretty nice story we have here! I may be biased, of course, since the outline in some respects closely resembles my own entry from last round. Mostly in agreement with >>Orbiting_kettle in that the characters, concepts and technical side are all stellar, but the pacing sometimes suffers from infodumping, too much description, and sometimes too much of an impersonal feel. Strangely I'm not finding a lot to specifically talk about otherwise, let's see...

How would I improve this? Bring out the ol' buzzsaw of a good editing pass. Cut everything that isn't absolutely necessary, and make sure every part's tuned to get across what you want to convey in the best way you can think of. You can probably knock a good 1.5k words off of this and only improve it.

Maybe make the UFO less vague. I agree it doesn't need to be completely explained, but I'm a bit fuzzy on envisioning what's going on just before and during ~The Event~. I was also somewhat unsure about the last sections. I didn't mind their presence (though they could've been shorter, like everything else) but was distracted by wondering if I was supposed to think the light somehow caused Dubinev's brain tumor.

Overall quite strong, one of my favorites this round. Thanks for writing!

Ah... looks like I'm in the Grinch seat for this one. :( I'm afraid this didn't work for me at all. The first section was a downer, but then I saw what was going on, looked for connections, couldn't find them, looked for something of interest, couldn't find anything, and finally became outright irritated at the final section.

I'll cover that last bit first, since it's an isolated complaint. Big blocks of italics are hard on my eyes. Big blocks of flowery vagueness about alien entities are hard on my brain, especially without any warning or buildup. Both together are nigh impossible to read. My eyes slide right off it and my brain doesn't retain any of the information. Getting through that last chunk alone took several shelvings and the better part of an evening. I think I finally understand what's going on, but whyyyyyy the italics?

Ok, on to actual analysis. "Variations on a theme" is a hard sell for me in this format, because it's hard to distinguish from just writing a bunch of mini-drabbles that fit the prompt until the aggregate meets the length requirement. In order for this to work, I'm looking for at least some of the individual segments to qualify as stories themselves, with beginning/middle/end structure, characters, and conflicts, and for there to be a strong running theme that can be easily discerned in every segment. This is mediocre on the first criterion and a no for me on the second.

What is the overarching theme supposed to be? Death? Questionable in Void, not present at all in Astronomer. Yearning? Lover yearns, Astronomer yearns. Climber has a sudden burst of desire. I could buy yearning maybe but it's a stretch. Diver does not yearn, "the angle of her head suggests she was striving at the end to see something" is the only hint in that direction I see, and it's immediately undermined by the emphasis on how she was no longer capable of rational thought. Philosopher sort of yearns, though it seems more of a natural lifestyle to them than a distinct want or longing. The Void does not yearn for anything more than not to be torn apart. The Void conjectures (or "feels" somehow) that the sparks inside it maybe are doing this because they maybe want some sort of something, which might be called yearning if you stretch it super far.

On my first several passes I would've said theme wasn't there at all. Analyzing it line by line now, I can kind of sort of see a case for a theme of yearning, but it's anything but clear and easy for me to discern. I can't find much in the way of conflict anywhere except The Void's section, and I can't find a narrative arc in any save perhaps The Climber.

On an overall "liked it" level... I didn't. My affection was never captured, and only The Climber and The Diver briefly aroused my interest.

How would I improve this? ... Well, I'm unabashedly a narrative person, so I wouldn't write variations on a theme to begin with, I'd pick the most interesting one of these and expand it into a single strong story. But that's probably not too helpful.

How would I improve this while retaining the variations form as an experiment? See above. Pick a theme and emphasize it clearly in every segment, make absolutely sure the reader can see exactly how they all tie together. Keywords repeated in each segment might be a useful device. I'd feel a lot better about the shaky theme interps if I could see the actual word "yearn" present everywhere. Specific connections between the segments might help too, maybe The Diver or The Climber was The Lover's other half, or maybe The Astronomer could have an explicit connection to The Void. ... Or maybe not, since The Void is so radically divorced from the rest I'd probably prefer to cut it entirely.

In addition to that, I would expand the segments such that at least a majority of them could stand by themselves. The Climber might be fine on its own, but the rest need some motion and conflict. "Show, don't tell" is key here. Show The Astronomer's past, don't tell it. Show The Philosopher, maybe even from the perspective.of somebody else. Maybe don't start with The Lover, I'm not sure quite what to do with him but I'm not generally fond of "suicide because sad" scenes anyway.

All that said, certainly a bold experiment. Thank you for writing! Sorry to come off so critically, I usually wouldn't, but wanted to provide my view in full here since it's seemingly so different from all the other comments thus far.

Ah, Drakengard fanfiction, eh. Nah, not really, but not that far off. Seems like we have quite a few experiments in form this round. Now, me, I don't hate second person. It would be more accurate to say I love second person; bring on yonder quests and VNs and our patron saint David Foster Wallace! But I'm not sure the use of second person actually adds much here that couldn't be accomplished in first or third. So, hm.

Even after some rereads, I'm confused as to how this story logistically works. Just who *is* this narrator, and how are they also present for all these events in the knight's life? The best psycho yandere stalker ever? Or are we not a human at all, and dealing with some sort of magical plague rat or something? Strange.

As everyone else is saying, I never got hooked into this and spent most of my time confused and skimming the piles of words. The repetition was okay to a point, but there's only so much I can take as a reader before I want something easier to read. >>Cold in Gardez expresses my sentiments well, in that the reveal and confrontation were the parts I could sink my teeth into among the seas.

How would I improve this? Increase clarity and cut it down. Consider using some names and giving specific details instead of a nearly historical overview. Figure out the core ideas you want to present, take out the editing axe and cut everything that doesn't directly accomplish them. Try and look at it from the perspective of a reader who might be coming in lukewarm, try your best to grab their interest and hold it.

Overall, not great but not bad, I got a nice mood from it when I could cut through the verbosity and am at least somewhat interested in knowing the answers to the questions of what happened. Thanks for writing!

We're swinging into the weekend! Is it time for mashups? It's time for mashups. :D

I think I'm going to kick off our title-based frivolity this round with the mashup variant that I occasionally dust off ...

---

Writeoff-By-Ones: The Abyss Stares Back edition

The rule for "Writeoff-By-Ones" is simple — add, subtract, or alter a single letter of a writeoff title, and humorously describe the new story! (Word spacing and punctuation may be altered at will.) For example:

Concrete Casks - They're just trying to investigate a murder scene. City is getting blind, stinking drunk. This is going to take a while.

The Vase in the Words - After breaking the jar holding the demons, the little girl makes the prudent decision to keep all the broken pieces in her diary. Two days later, she reassembles it and ends the invasion.

Sis' Typhus - The captain manages to quell both the Blue and Red religious rebellions. However, when the stress causes his siblings to die to bacterial fevers, he decides "to heck with this colony ship!" and plows it into the Earth at interstellar speeds.

For Tuna - After sailing to land, Diggory and the others embark on their next thrilling adventure: trading fish with the natives.

My Little Mortal - Princess Celestia looks through a mysterious spatial rift into an empty room. It's not until later that she realizes that that was the alternate-universe her who never became an alicorn.

Wow. In terms of prose, flow, and expression, this is fantastic. It's the sort of writing I'd expect to see in a professionally published novel. Very, very nice. Great sentences, great paragraphs, great pacing. Echoing all the rest of the praise on those aspects. Alas, there are some weak spots, and they're in the spots that matter the most to me: narrative and characters.

Most of the story, pleasant to read though it may be, winds up as irrelevant padding to the story. The real meat can be cut down to one subsection, starting when Diggory is called to the captain's cabin and ending when he gets up on the block to speak at the meeting. Everything important before then is redelivered in the captain's questioning, and as soon as Diggory makes his choice to speak, we all know what he's going to say and how it's going to play out afterwards.

The conflict itself is also simple. Captain says "Land no!" and Diggory thinks "Land yes!" Neither of them have all that much in the way of reasons. Diggory wants to explore the unknown, but even he doesn't know why, he just does. The captain's given even less of a motive, and while it's amusing that the characters themselves lampshade his irrational stance, that doesn't make it easier for me as a reader to swallow. The writing makes me want to love it, but the cores of the characters and plot feel hollow, contrived.

And then there's Waifu McFanservice Gemma, who plays no role in the plot and exists only to give Diggory someone to talk to and flirt with him. Her stated flaw of talking too much perfectly balances Diggory's tendency to talk too little. She's described in considerable sexual detail: small breasts, thick thighs, all the guys love her, but she only has eyes for The Digg and is perfectly willing to go along with all of his suggestions and lie to the Captain for him and follow him to land. How astonishingly perfect for him! ... Yeah. Uh, opinions on this type of character are going to vary. For me, I wish that she had a bit more relevance and agency, maybe did something on her own that wasn't perfectly in line with what's convenient for the protagonist or displayed a different side of herself.

How would I improve this? Maybe cut down some of the early and late scenes. Bring out more of the characters and their motivations. I think the core conflict over the land needs something more to it, be that an ancient war, alien invasion, religious beliefs, just something more than fear of a few rumors (how did those tales even get back to Fortune, anyway?) Maybe consider merging the Captain and Fishel into one character to help develop the antagonistic side. And on the protagonist side, some better sense of who Diggory is other than a generic malcontent chasing the unknown would help.

All this is definitely in-depth nitpicking, though. The prose is still wonderful, and it's one of the most memorable entries of the round overall. Thanks for writing!

>>horizon
>>QuillScratch
I'm going to be a bit lazy here and just back these two posts. Very hard to read, but there are some good concepts here! I love the whole idea of Doll Girl from Mirror World finding a way across to her fleshy counterpart and engaging in mutual angst, existential despair, and *cough* well that last section's a thing that exists. It's the classical Doppleganger plot, and yet far too rare to see in writing!

The execution needs work, though. Keep on trucking, read horizon and Quill's advice and work on your technical skills, author. You've got the cool ideas and interest hook, now you need to work on bringing it to a higher technical level that people can easily read.

Good story. Very solid, tight writing, strong characterization, so many funny lines. Easily one of the strongest in the round, for me. The whole modern magic shtick's fairly common these days, but it works well here thanks to the perfect balance of humor and the mundane. I think we see quite a few attempts to hit these notes in most rounds, yet few hit the formula as well as this.

How would I improve this? Well, the one major flaw I can level at it is that not much really happens, it's just a conversation with a fair bit of infodumping involved. Could use a bit more in the way of dynamic events. Fixing the disposal is a good start, but I think I'd like to see it break in the beginning, or actually take a look at the shower. Maybe something like that.

Well done!

So this is some cyberpunk/Gibson/Inception mashup. Yeah, I guess it's all right, I can believe the setting.

The whole first half with Charles sells itself well, with the exception of just one year in a reasonably hi-fi server seeming a bit of a low price for risking one's immortal existence on a sketchy mission into an obviously trapped hellhole. I guess Tyler's more desperate than he lets on? From the standpoint of the outside world, getting ghosts to run virtual suicide missions for just a year of uptime as pay has to be pretty cheap... How humans are faring in economics these days, anyway?

Ah, but the second half, once Tyler arrives in Shangri-La - that's where things get rough and feel rushed. The whole section feels a bit rough and low detail compared to what came before. Once again I find myself in alignment with >>horizon : I don't understand the lake scene whatsoever. It's entertaining in the moment, but what even was going on there? There's over a thousand words left, so length wasn't an issue. I get the feeling the author ran out of time.

And finally, well. To put it directly (and agree with several other posts,) I just don't buy the ending. It's too abrupt from both a reading perspective and a character development perspective, and given the rest of the story up to that point, it doesn't seem like it's the choice Tyler would make.

How would I improve this? Expand the latter half, for sure. Bring the execution there up to the level of the Charles encounter. And then work on the ending. If you're tied to the downer end, it needs a much more prominent sale and foreshadowing throughout the piece. If you're not, well, the current ending reads more like a fake recording that Hypatia sends back to Charles (obviously Tyler's been bugged so Charles can figure out what Hypatia was doing in there, but she's a super hacker and now has a friend to hang with!)

Overall, eh, it's all right.

(Yeah no, it's more than all right, it's my top pick for the round despite the flaws and rocky second half. Amazing stuff!)

Odd title choice. I'm not really sure what this has to do with the myth of Sisyphus, as Zolfran's struggle isn't very repetitive or doomed to futility.

They were listening to a White male, so no doubt he had arrived in the middle of a science period.

That is an amazing quote, though. Sick STEM burns. I like the Blue vs Red divide a bit less, though. "The Blue and Red political/religious factions are equally stupid and both turn to terrorism" is, uh, a statement that MIGHT have some other possible readings at this particular point of history.

Moving on to the actual story, it's competently bouncy most of the time. Section I is super boring and full of infodumps, but later on things get moving. Unfortunately, I couldn't ever fully get into it, because there are a number of critical flaws and plot holes that I can't not think about. My suspension of disbelief is strained too far to buy much anything, so surface enjoyment's about all I could get from it. Let's go through the issues:

1. The existence of a universal matter-from-nothing constructor that can make whatever you want it to. This device is not only unnecessary to the plot that follows, it's actively detrimental, because it poses a perpetual question of "why is ANY of this happening when anyone could just walk up to a thingmaker and have it produce whatever you want?" Why not print a new engine and fuel after the old ones blow up? Why not print your own ships, stations and even planets and stars? Why does the thingmaker even exist when it's never referenced again? Well, it is, in fact, never referenced again, so this one's fairly easy to shelve.

2. Why are the red and blue societies living together, instead of separately? "Something something wars, peace treaty requires it" is not a very believable explanation. It doesn't work. The story itself illustrates that it doesn't work, and it's unbelievable that it would have worked for as long as it's said to when the factions hate each other as much as they do.

3. Just what were they expecting to find? Any planet or planetoid with significant iron in its soil is going to appear red. Any planet with water under an earthlike atmosphere is going to have the oceans look blue. Jupiter has a great red spot and most of the gas giants appear blue. Stars themselves are red or blue depending on their size and temperature. This never came up in basic astronomy?

4. How do the sabotages succeed? Why is security so lax when the scientists have seen this issue coming for a while? Wouldn't locking down mission critical equipment to White access only be the first thing anyone does? If the factions are able and motivated to pull off false flag terrorist attacks, why have they never done it before? Why does Zolfran have enough political pull to keep the peace until now, but no more? Kind of getting back into #2 there, but still.

There's a writing principle that, loosely paraphrased, says a writer is allowed one free pass. One "no explanations given or necessary, it just is" conceit to kickstart their story. But only one - introduce another and you're in trouble. You can have a universal constructor that runs on magic, but then you have to think through its implications, and everything else has to have a rational explanation. So it is here. I could give any of these individual items a pass by themselves, but when they're all together, the story isn't believable.

How would I improve this? Cut most of it, honestly. All of section I can go, for sure. For II and III... the story as it stands goes in too many different directions. It's a serious political drama, but also a social farce, but also a character piece, but also a space disaster adventure, light in tone, dark in tone, serious ending, joke ending... You can't do all that at the same time and have it come out as anything coherent. Pick one major concept, maybe one sub-concept, and just do those. A complete overhaul is probably necessary to get this onto a level above "turn your brain off and live in the moment for each individual paragraph."

So basically what >>Not_A_Hat said, except I used a lot more words. Don't be like me.

All that having been said, I don't hate this or anything. It's about as good as you can get for a "turn your brain off" story, and I can easily imagine how it came to be. Thank you for writing!

Hm. Interesting piece here. It's clunky, and the protagonist is thoroughly unlikable, but both of those are clearly intentional. I called the twist end pretty quickly, but I don't think it's so obvious that most readers would do the same. So I think the author accomplished what they set out to do, with about 90%+ accuracy. So, props in that regard, and because of that I don't have a lot in the way of specific critiques or suggestions for improvement. But were the goals actually good things to aim for...?

To me, I'm afraid the answer is more no than yes. An intentionally painful story is still painful, and cringe humor... well, I don't want to say it's completely bad, but you at least have to give the audience someone to root for. In the original treatment for FRIENDS, Joey was a sincerely mean-spirited bully. That show would've been awful! Playing him as awkward but well-meaning turned the character around and made it a hit. Or WataMote, if you're more on the anime side - it only works because we can sympathize with Tomoko and root for her. I can't root for this protagonist, and I can't root for Francis either since he's not developed. So the humor falls flat.

Thank you for writing, though! An interesting and probably educational experiment, indeed.

>>AndrewRogue
>>horizon
These posts are about where I'm at with this one. It's extremely confusing, and even now I can't follow the specifics. Nor do I particularly want to, because it didn't hook me. Nor do I see much that could be done to improve it without a total overhaul.

Despite this, it's somehow ending up around the middle of the pack for me, because it is at least stylish in its failings. It didn't make me care about its setting, but I can see enough that would be nice if I did. It rips off Tsukihime, but Tsukihime's awesome so I'm cool with that. So... twas an experiment, shame it didn't work out, that's about all I got, thanks for writing!

Yeah, I can dig this, pretty strong emotive content. The core issue is handled well and fairly sensitively (with one exception, below) and does a good job of making me sympathetic to and interested in Regan. Some issues, though.

The thin veneer between this world and our own is sometimes a little too thin. Making it so similar, and even slipping on the terms sometimes (coffee) ensures the reader will be taking this allegorically. That's not good in combination with the presentation of the hoard instinct as something that actually is inherent to being a dragon. We're meant to be saddened by the racism Regan faces, but then the racism kind of gets justified. Dragons really do want your coins, and always will, and while killing for copper might be a racist distortion, there really is a nation full of dragons fixing to invade not-Zootopia for their shinies. The implications are very unfortunate.

The characters are a little flat on close examination. They don't seem flat at first glance, because the prose and dialogue are strong enough to carry the story, but when you stop and think about it, there's not much there.

Kori is the absolute perfect friend: eternally patient, completely selfless, rational, talks like a professional therapist (and better than most, even,) always knows exactly the right thing to say, puts Regan up, skips work for them, gets them a visa, doesn't mind property destruction... even if they are in a relationship, that's a lot. As someone who's struggled with similar mental health issues myself, it doesn't ring very true. Nobody that good at caregiving actually exists, and if they did recovery wouldn't be nearly as hard as it is. (Or maybe I'm just that unlucky? :( Also, did we ever get a gender for Regan?)

Conversely, holy carpfish, Food Stand Jack is the most tremendously over the top bigot I can recall in a piece this serious. In another entry this round, there's Mr. Beaumont, a 1920s business who is so racist that he's literally handpicked by Satan Himself, who appears to him in the form of a Jewish man to taunt him with just how bigoted he is. But I think Mr. Beaumont would at least have the self-respect to cook the nuts if you paid him the 20 bucks.

So. How would I improve this? I'm not sure what to do about the racism, that's a tough one and kind of endemic to doing anthros with "instincts" of any sort. I'd definitely work on the characters a bit more, though. Tone down the Jack, humanize Kori, and show another facet or two of Regan. The wording everywhere could probably be pared down, it didn't bother me because the writing was light enough to skim non-important paragraphs, but definitely something to work on in the future.

Overall, the emotional evocation is there, but it also feels a bit unearned by going for such a sensitive subject. Props for not trainwrecking with it though, and by and large it meets what it wants to accomplish. Good stuff, thanks for writing!

Y'know, I like this an awful lot for a piece where I dislike the concept and most of the individual scenes? >>AndrewRogue and Horizon (I won't give that poor soul yet another reply notification) have most of what I want to say covered. Rock Pitt scenes are great, comedy overall's quite good, the prose flows and the piece doesn't overstay its welcome.

It could still stay less. The middle section with the suicide insurance fraud comes out of nowhere and probably doesn't need to exist? I'm not sure what to put in to replace it, but surely there's something funnier than semi-serious suicide attempts.

But the rest is good. Overall fairly strong, thanks for writing!

I love love love the atmosphere in this, it hits future noir quite well. Solid concept and execution overall, and it manages to avoid too much infodumping (although there's still some). Great characterization, I'd absolutely read more of Barrows' adventures.

I wish there was more in this one to read, in fact! The resolution feels rushed. The cops just figure out one clue and find one thing, and then suddenly the case is done and we're in debriefing. Could've drawn the trail out a little more, it feels like a second portion here is missing, or cut due to time constraints.

I also can't decide whether the story pays too much attention to the setting, or too little. There's an awful lot of information, and most of it is tangential at best. That's to be expected to some extent in a detective story, though. There should be some red herrings and a sea to pick clues out of! But the points that end up most crucial to the case, the whats and hows of physical IP existence and reproduction, are also the very points I remain most confused about.

How would I improve this? Extend it to a second scene where our heroes try to track down the new IP, and work with care on information delivery. General polish and proofing. S'about it really.

Overall very good. Thank you, more like this please!

Ah geez. This one I've been afraid of. Very controversial, I see.

On my first read, I felt totally apathetic to it. Some mild distaste at Yet Another Suicide Story, but mostly >>Not_A_Hat's assessment.

On later reads, and perusing the comments, I find myself turned more to the >>Chris side. Guy's an asshole. The suicide itself - sure. I don't like it, I don't like reading it (I think suicide endings are cheap and extremely overdone, and this particular one is more painful than most since there's nothing here to cut the rawness with,) but at the most basic level I can understand his decision and sympathize somewhat.

But calling your own son to pick up your surprise suicide corpse isn't just misguided and tragic, that's heinous no matter how you slice it. It'd take more than a little Alzheimer's to make anyone think that could possibly be a not-horrible thing to do. Literally anything else would be better. You wouldn't call your kid and send them to discover someone else's body, why your own?

So. Storywise. I already mentioned it, but I think this is a strictly formulaic entry in a tired and emotionally painful genre. I found nothing positively striking or particularly interesting or well done about it, except that the technical prose is acceptable. I did not enjoy it whatsoever, and in fact unenjoyed it. I will be ranking it quite low. I have no suggestions for improvement other than completely changing the essential tone and/or content of the piece.

I am deliberately starting all these sentences with "I" in order to emphasize that this is my personal view, and that I intend no disrespect or offense towards the author of the piece. I think the author had an idea that many others do, and wrote it without fully considering the implications of their choice of intersection of tone and content, and that's fine. I think they did somewhat consider their choice of content, and expected some reactions like this. I hope to see them return in future rounds and write content that is *waves hands* not this. Thank you for participating, though.

How ironic that this was inevitably dead last on my random review list. I knew what I was going to say about it when I first read it a couple days back, but didn't post then because I was curious to see just how long it would go without anyone else saying it. Seems like the answer is pretty long! But it's finally time, errybody outta the pool.

This scene is a reskinned retelling of the climax (well, one of the possible climaxes) of a popular video game from the last couple of years. For those who are curious, it's the final battle in the "Genocide" or "Bad Time" ending path of Undertale, along with some material from scenes before and after the fight.

I say reskin because it does change some surface elements, like the specific setting, characters and some dialogue, and shuffles just enough around that I wouldn't consider it plagiarism .. barely. The essential concept of the scene, along with the tone, emotional beats, storyboard and general character concepts - in other words, the good parts - are all straight from the game. Many specific details from the game also remain, some shuffled or slightly changed, but still very recognizable and in sufficient quantity to allow me no reasonable doubt that this could be a case of convergent evolution.

To cover a few of them:
- Remorseless timelooping attacker confronts highly skilled defender, dies many times but eventually overwhelms/will overwhelm defender by persistence and learning defender's responses
- Setting backdrop is distinctly religious, though not specifying any particular deity or faith
- Prefight description focusing on attacker's eyes and the "look" therein, repeated on every loop
- Defender decisively wins first loop with a preemptive, unexpected and very powerful blast of white-colored magical energy
- After the magical fire is dodged, defender unleashes fast and overwhelming melee attacks from multiple angles
- Attacker wields a plain dagger and attacks with single dramatic slashes
- Defender evades dagger slashes via teleportation, which also surprises the attacker on its first use
- Defender grows discouraged upon realizing what's going on, engaging in midfight banter and acknowledging that attacker will inevitably win
- Attacker outlasts defender's teleportation and lands a single dramatic slash that draws an emphasized line of red blood
- Attacker's victory will result in the total destruction and unmaking of the world
- Special descriptive emphasis on attacker smiling in the conclusion

Specific dialogue lines and concepts:
"What are you?"
"Honestly, I've lost count"
"Whatever it was you were looking for, I hope you found it."
"I've seen everything this world has to offer. So, now I want to know what happens when I kill God and unmake it."
"Nothing. Everything will cease to be"
"She was dead. It was only a matter of tries. And once she finally fell, that would be the end. There would be nothing left."
All the above are very close to lines from the game. They're rearranged in time and speaker (the attacker in the game is silent, and some are from material in other scenes rather than just this battle) but not in meaning.

Also of note is that the story here does not add anything of substance to the content and concepts in the game. The only notable new material is the Tower of God, and the implication that there is a God to reach and kill inside it, but sadly the story doesn't really go anywhere with this idea. Other than the stakes of failure (which are the same as in the game, God or no God) it doesn't matter what B-lady is guarding. We don't see her actual failure in this version, but it's implied, so... (note to author: would've been stronger without the last loop, actually. It's enough to keep it implied after slashing her cheek!)

Anyway, that all's just something to be aware of. Zero points for originality. Moving on!

I'm not a fan of the repeated blocks of text. As everyone else has mentioned, either the reader skips over them (in which case they're lazy padding that fudges the word count while adding nothing to the story) or reads them in detail every single time looking for possible differences (only to find that there are none and they've wasted their time doing so!) There are better ways to do this. Truncate them, or do include meaningful differences, or use openings that are different for the reader but not for the guardian.

... Yeah, I can't move on very much beyond that. Rest of the technical side's okay by me. More than okay, really, it's easy to read and easy to follow what's going on, and that's no small feat when writing fast and furious fantasy battles. Having the battle itself outlined for you doesn't help much there, so full marks to the author on that count. All the other content issues people are mentioning, like the lack of motive or identity for the attacker... well, those do come back to having taken these concepts in isolation from a more complete work.

What else can I say. Don't feel too ashamed by this, author. I think the creative process is all about recombination anyway, if you trace it back far enough everyone's ripping off something, and every other round here is My Little Pony fanfiction anyway so what's the problem with a bit of fanfic for something else? (Unless you were really just trying to sneak the concept past for a good rank without ever acknowledging your source, that's rather poor form, but I don't think that's what happened.)

A reskin like this is not necessarily a deal breaker for me, not as long as you do something with it or add something of your own. The deal breaker here is that this doesn't do anything new. It needs to go beyond a reskin to fantasy and a half-formed concept. I think that's probably where you wanted to add things, the Tower aspect makes me think of a certain Stephen King series, there's obvious potential there. But it didn't quite get there (out of time, maybe?) so for those reasons I can't rank it very highly. Thank you for participating, though. Please do not have a bad time!

.. also seriously no one else spotted this yet? Y'all gotta stop reading books and watching pone and play some mind rotting children's electronic entertainment, yo!

>>horizon I don't think I'm clever enough for this, but I'll try a few mashups...

Writeoff Mashups, Stairing into the Abyss Edition

---

There's a Miskatonic in My Electronics
"I'm not imagining things! There's definitely a screaming metaportal in our sink!"

Hell is Drier than Other People's Gin
"So... if I let you use my influence, my son will never have to deal with awkward silences as a teenager?!"

The Northernlit Fortune
"Gemma, there's a volcano, what do we do?"

"Stab iiiiiiiiiiit!"

---

Well, I guess I did have an off-by-one...

Chase-ing the Dragon
"Welcome to Chase bank, how can we help you today?"

"Debit card. Now."

>>horizon
>>Not_A_Hat

I’m in.

Concrete Endings
Seeking a more glorious exit than intellectual dissolution, an octogenarian takes up urban BASE jumping.

Hell is When We Yearn
Help, I’m stuck in an elevator with the All-Encompassing Void of Nonexistence, with No Exit!

There’s a Hole in my Roll
A game character, in a moment of existential body horror, reinvents the bialy bagel.

Tarda Electronics
I keep trying to play this game about an eternal hero, but the extradimensional battery glitched my phone and made it loop.

The Vase in the Dragon
“Spike! That was a priceless gift from the Hindi Ambassador!”
(N.B.: This is about another dragon named Spike who also happens to eat precious gems. Hayfic is still treyf.)


Uh, oops. I missed that this was an alter one letter round. Give me a bit…

One Letter Chore!

Skywar
UFOs have come with weapons of peace, but that won’t stop us from fighting back!

Casing the Dragon
A Homeland Security agent shadows a foreign visitor, seeking evidence of wrongdoing. Overanalysis of each transaction swells the dossier…

Hell is Mother People
The humanoids said they came here to protect and serve us. But now we can’t even go to the bathroom without their intervention! And don’t get me started on the chicken soup!

>>horizon
Ok, I'll give it a shot.
There's a Mole in my Chest - You know how annoying it is to have one of these pests in your yard? This is worse. Particularly when people don't believe you.

For a Tune - Apprenticed to a fishing trawler instead of a music college, Diggory attempts to make a life for himself despite feeling as if he's going to break into a Gilbert and Sullivan showtune at any minute.

When We Earn - A dreamer considers all the ways he could have made enough money to escape his drab existence, except for the fact he only dreams about the actions instead of doing them.

End Wings - A man afflicted by a terrible disease passes on, and is joined by his wife in heaven.

My Little Port AI - The artificial intelligence in charge of running Port Arthur has an existential crisis where it thinks it can see itself in a mirror. Maybe they shouldn't have cribbed so much game code while writing it?

The Greatest Challenge of Ali - Muhammad Ali finds himself at a loss to develop a strategy to fight his latest heavyweight title bout. With bankruptcy and ruin in his future, and all of his attempts at salvaging the situation failed, he finds new inspiration when his sister drops off their newborn for him to babysit.

Agents of a Foreign Tower - In a future where cell phone towers have become sapient, a human who has transformed himself into a long-distance call finds his ultimate receiver.

Concrete Tasks - A pothole filler in the city discovers a murder. A little extra concrete in the hole keeps any unneeded questions away.

Chasing the Dagon - An ancient Mesopotamian Assyro-Babylonian deity moves into town, only to have terrible urges whenever he sees a prospective worshiper.

>>horizon
Somehow I'm still awake.

Hill is Other People - "So, ah." Hank fidgeted, not looking the elevator's other inhabitant in the eyes. "Y'ever use any cool propane accessories?"

When We Earn - VENTURE CAPITALIST

Miskatonic Electronica

There's a Mole in My Chest - My wife's sure it's nothing, but the doctor wanted to do a biopsy anyway, just in case.

Tardy Furor - You weren't there. You were ten minutes late.

The Greatest Challenge of Ali - This summer, Rock Pitt will float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.

Agent of a Foreign Tower - To Beylke, he was the perfect picture of a syncretist.

For Tuna - To Beylke, he was the perfect picture of a fisherman.

Sissyphus - To Beylke, he was the perfect picture of a sub.

Edit: wow, beaten on three! Guess they were pretty obvious (and I composed too slowly)

There is nothing I can say here that hasn't already been said by someone else. All I can note is that it worked a bit better for me, if only because...

Well, it was my grandfather. So you'll all excuse me if something like this hits a bit closer to home for me than it would for most. But that doesn't negate the issues, and I am more or less in agreement with everything everyone else said.

I'm really starting to regret reading these piecemeal instead of all in one quick go over two days or so. Maybe then I'd be able to ad something useful.

This wasn't bad, and had some interesting concepts, but my biggest issue was the ending. It was a real no sell for me.

You've set up this character, Zolfran, who is the latest scientist cast dud in charge of a generation ship. We see him interacting with the rest of the passengers. We see him smiling as he watches the children in their classrooms. And then, at the end we see him, in a fit of nihilistic pique, intentionally kill the entire population of his little world-ship. Red, Blue, and White, men, women, and children. He goes from struggling to hold everything together to just saying.. "Screw it, everyone here deserves to die?" That's... A bit of a jump.

Not only that, but he has enough clout / followers / etc to enact said plan. Meaning that not only does he go full on homicidal / suicidal, but important portions of his crew agree with him and decide "What the hell, let's put this bitch down hard!" Wow. Talk abut doing a terrible job screening your engineers for mental stability...

Now, I can totally see and understand him wasting the red and blue religious leaders. And if he'd followed that up by trying to end violence, but find himself unable to do so... And things get progressively worse and worse... Until at the end he's either the commander of a dead world ship, or simply unable to prevent the impact, despite his best efforts... Or even deciding that he's just not up to the job, and have him commit suicide after killing the other leaders in the hope/assumption that his successor will be better able to handle the situation... I could have bought any of those as viable options. There would have been a lot more pathos there too, with Zolfran's best efforts to stave off disaster failing on after another, or even making the situation worse...

Very nice and a pretty clear top of my slate.

That said, I feel like there are a couple of major issues with the stories that threatened an otherwise hella rad story.

1. Pacing. Pacing was... weird. There's a lot of time getting us informed about the conflict and the setting, but everything after that point is rather breakneck. The end, in particular, just sorta slams home (particularly the return of Jessica) without any real fanfare, and it is to the story's detriment.

2. The heart of the conflict is... weird? Maybe I'm just being dumb, but honestly, is Annwyn actually that much better than Shangri-La? I mean, I get that the place is dangerous, but the implication still seems to be that there are reasons people would want to hang out there.

Yeah, I really don't have anything I can add to this that hasn't already been covered, particularly by >>Ranmilia. Hell, I even missed some of those overlaps. So, I suppose the only thing left to say is...

geeettttttt dunked on!!!

There is a sub-genre, or perhaps a writing style, of military fiction which verges on gear porn: lovingly detailed descriptions of hardware and technical specs. I recognize that that is a thing. It has an audience. I, personally, have never been particularly been a fan.

(Note: My intent is not to say "gear porn" judgmentally; I am a fan of good worldbuilding porn, and I recognize that that can be just as much of a niche.)

If that's what you're going for here, this is quite admirably done. As >>Not_A_Hat notes, you're quite clearly showing your work. Even more impressive is that this ends up with such a plausible feel despite apparently being made up out of whole cloth (at any rate, googling the main characters' names didn't turn up anything for me, and a quick search suggests no unclassified UFO reports matching the date and location).

On that level, the story fires on all cylinders. Good job! But that's not all it's trying to do, which is where this started slipping down my slate.

It boils down to >>Cold in Gardez's suggestion "Remove the last two sections and this story improves significantly," but I'm not sure there's been a clear explanation of why, so I want to take a stab at it. The thing is, the majority of the story is an abstract, objective recounting of what happened during the UFO encounter ... and then, in the last two sections, it reverses on a dime and suddenly tries to unpack how the encounter affected the pilots. The big problem with that is ... this doesn't feel like a story about the pilots. (I hesitate to call them "the protagonists," because there's a tiny snarky part of me which insists that the Tupolev is.)

We get little dribbles of characterization for them throughout the piece, but the first time that the story really stops and examines them with the same level of analysis that it treats Voyska-PVO capabilities is the paragraph beginning "In the two years they had known each other, Nesterov considered Dubinev to be as close as a brother." That's 1200 words into a 4700-word story. And then after that brief digression, we're back to the abstract plane maneuvering. Even the climactic encounter with the pink light feels like it's described much more in physical terms than in what it does to the pilots, and the aftermath of it shows them, basically, trying to gloss over it and get back to their jobs. It's pretty telling that their first reaction is to discuss the logistics of how they're going to call it in, rather than having a conversation about the light that allegedly fundamentally altered their lives.

That means that everything after the time skip, frankly, feels like a different story. If this is about the psychology and decisions of the pilots, then it has to give that theme much more support in the early going. CiG's suggestion to kill the last two sections would strengthen this because it would focus your storytelling time on the parts which you accomplish well; it's hardly the only way to improve this — and in fact I think I would prefer the hypothetical story that was about the pilots all the way through — but his suggested fix would certainly be the quickest.

Which is all pretty much to say, *weak flailing of arms and noises of general agreement with above commenters*

Tier: Strong

>>Ranmilia
Huh. Even as a fan of Undertale I didn't make that connection.

You make quite a plausible case, I'll grant you that. I'll be curious to hear from the author whether that was a specific influence, or whether this was a curious case of convergent evolution (similar to Seje Khai: c.f. >>horizon). But for me, the reason that it didn't ping as Undertaley to me despite all of the similarities was pretty simple ... personality-wise, Beylke just flat-out isn't Sans. Very much more so an Undyne.

(Relevant to our interests. also >>RogerDodger plz allow embedded images ;_;)

The fight just doesn't have the same resonance if it's not a last stand from someone who long ago realized the futility of it all and stepped up anyway because it's just that important. This refocuses on the moment of realization, and in so doing, feels like a quite different story.

I decided to come back and take a second look at this one, for a couple of reasons. First, and most importantly, I felt pretty harsh toward this story, and I wanted to make sure that my review conveyed my opinion, and not just my mood. And second, because there was a particular bit of critique that I felt I might have talked myself into agreeing with.

As far as the latter, that would be >>horizon's uncertainty about whether the man himself had alzheimer's. In my reading, I assumed he did, but when I was reading through the comments, he pointed out a couple of things that made me second-guess myself. After a second reading, I do indeed think that this was clear enough, and that maybe I shouldn't be reading other people's comments before I post my own if I'm going to be this easily swayed :P I do think there are a few passages that could still be gussied up to sell the idea (in particular, if he started by dialing Bobby's old number and getting a stranger, that would've been a good chance to show the progression without coming out too strong, imo)), but I think you got the idea through clearly enough.

As for the former... well, I still feel the same way about the story as I did before, but I want to clarify something about my concerns, because I think I presented them poorly. I don't necessarily think that Henry is acting out of malice and/or fear. I do, however, think that his actions are malicious and/or cowardly. This is an important distinction, because it still leaves you with plenty of room to present Henry as a person who is neither bent on guilt-tripping nor desperately hoping for an excuse not to follow through on the plan he's settled on. Henry could easily be making bad decisions for the right reasons.

However, the narrative then needs to give us more of a sense of these costs. At the moment, your narrative voice, while neutral in theory, gives great attention to the most positive aspects of Henry's character and history, and treats his opinions as narrative fact; this results in the "too good for this sinful earth" tone I was put off by in my first reading. If it's the direction you want to go, I think you absolutely could write a story that's a bittersweet tale from Henry's PoV, but has an undertone of misguided tragedy interweaving his decisions as regards his family.

Of course, guilt-tripper and waffler are still options, too. But keeping Henry a character defined by non-negative motivations is something that can also be done in a way that I'd find satisfying, and I didn't really allow for that in my first comment.

And to expand slightly on my penultimate sentence from before: I've got dementia on both sides of my family, though not alzheimer's specifically. Through that lense, I felt that this didn't add any emotion that the concept of loss to dementia doesn't inherently bring to the table. It's a tragic, insidious condition to watch take someone from you, and your story didn't abuse that tragedy for cheap feels, which is a big, big thing right... but at the same time, I didn't feel like this did anything with that tragedy, besides present it in an acceptable manner. In other words, I found this exactly as moving as I find the tragedy of dementia, but no more so.

I hope that that, coupled with my initial comments, paints a more useful picture than the first wall o' text alone did, author.


Oh, and while I'm here...

>>georg

One of the advantages of old age is going into the liquor cabinet that you haven't touched in forty years and getting out something that you opened with your old Army buds back when they were all alive. My dad was like that. Not to say it's any good after sitting around in a bottle all those years, but...

Another thing non-whiskey people might get wrong about it: whiskey doesn't age in the bottle. Well, I mean, technically it's still getting older, but it's not like wine: it doesn't mature, develop, and eventually go sour in the bottle. That process happens while its casked, and once it's bottled, it pretty much stays the same. In other words, if you buy a Lagavulin 10 year and sit on it for a decade, it doesn't become a Lagavulin 20 year; it's still just a Lagavulin 10 year and will taste about the same as if you'd drunk it right away, except the bottle is probably pretty dusty by now.

I have to agree with Andrew here. The prose is lush but sometimes goes over the top. The flight passage, for example, is way too stretched for me.

And I wonder if this is not Cold’s story, given he already wrote something of the same ilk in the last MLP minific round.

I’m not really enraptured by the setup. I don't see the point of using fantasy creatures whereas you could've written an excellent story “in the real world”; that setup adds few, if anything, to the story, and for me it even detracted from it. It's too thinly veiled to be actually of value.

Otherwise it speaks of things totally alien to me, so I have no clue as to what's portrayed here is true to fact or just a wild guess. This, combined with the artificial setup, stymied my involvement: I can formally grasp the inner battle of the dragon, but can't really say I can grok it. It remains intellectual, doesn't grip my guts. The inherent racism turns out to be the most perceptible aspect, which is prolly not what you intended.

That being said, best story I've read so far, so TomS.

>>Chris

However, the narrative then needs to give us more of a sense of these costs. At the moment, your narrative voice, while neutral in theory, gives great attention to the most positive aspects of Henry's character and history, and treats his opinions as narrative fact; this results in the "too good for this sinful earth" tone I was put off by in my first reading. If it's the direction you want to go, I think you absolutely could write a story that's a bittersweet tale from Henry's PoV, but has an undertone of misguided tragedy interweaving his decisions as regards his family.

That would indeed improve the story, IMHO. Not completely sure how to do it, though. An epilogue is far too much on the nose. Maybe by expanding this, showing creeping doubt and then Henry squashing it.

There's a solid pass of edition to be done to iron out tense shifts and other numerous oddities that pave the text. For example, we get the impression the flat is fifteen storeys high, which would be pretty impressive for a single flat! :P

The story in itself is fairly linear, but the escalation (so to speak) was fun, if not slightly contrived. But nice job in conveying the reason why I absolutely shun elevators!

First, I'd like to apologise to everyone who read my story. I wished you had a better experience and I’m sorry it didn’t live up to your expectations.

As it stands, the story is literally on the fence. Either it’s bound to be a short story and, as most of you pointed out, the first section is useless and could be shuffled into other parts of the text or simply written off altogether, or it needs further development into a sort of novella, with more insight into Zolfran’s thoughts and such. I hesitated to add more descriptions and Zolfran’s inner thoughts, but I was afraid a “fleshed out” version would come as too telly. In fact, I was also conscient I had no space to develop what the red and blue religions’ tenets would be, and that left you with the impression that they were terrorists and only that.

Part of the explanation is tied to the way I have to tackle short story rounds. In fact, I have to begin to write right away, because I have little time to dedicate to writing during week-ends. This story did not buck the trend, and I finished it five minutes before the deadline, which meant zero editing and no critical view on the structure.

I’m happy no one noticed any egregious English mistakes. That’s a good point. I think it may be time for me that I concentrated more on the structure and transitions rather than on the English, which has been my main focus so far.

Ah, yes. Some genealogy. Zoran’s equation was inspired by a famous book by René Barjavel, France’s Science Fiction father and discoverer of the time-loop paradox. The book is called La Nuit des Temps, English The Ice People. It’s like a prerequisite for every (French) teen who discovers Science-Fiction.

Uniform Zo- names were inspired by Star Trek Vulcans whose names all begin by S- for males, and T- for females.

Zolfran’s final decision could be summarised thus: “How can a race which could start a war over such a trifle even be allowed to survive?” This is my general misanthropy surfacing. Fully in accord with that remark from Bertrand Russell about soul immortality: “We may regret the thought that we shall not survive, but it is a comfort to know that all the persecutors and Jew-baiters and humbugs will not continue to exist for all eternity. We may be told that they would improve in time, but I doubt it.” (in Religion and Science, 1935)

Some answers:

>>Ranmilia
"The Blue and Red political/religious factions are equally stupid and both turn to terrorism" is, uh, a statement that MIGHT have some other possible readings at this particular point of history.
That was deliberate. I always liked science-fiction that carried in its overtones a social message, and I try to do the same, even if it’s a bit on-the-nose because I’m just bad.

All that having been said, I don't hate this or anything.
You should have. It was middling at most.

>>Not_A_Hat
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.
I know Hat you hate what I write, but grousing about all the names being the same seems a bit overboard. Your analysis about A and B I share, but I didn’t intended to write an incompetent Zolfran. If I did, then the incompetent is I, not he.

>>TheCyanRecluse
Fair enough.

>>Zaid Val'Roa
>>PaulAsaran
>>Fenton
>>MLPmatthewl419
>>georg
>>All_Art_Is_Quite_Useless
I’m sorry to have failed you one way or the other. I’m going to nuke that story right away. Please just forget you read it.

I get a wonderful Laundry Files feeling from this one. I also expect a Black Chamber goon to come in with a recruitment form any moment now.

Anyway, entertaining, wonderful rhythm, snappy dialogue and a couple of extremely quotable lines.

Not much more to add. Thank you for having written this.

>>Monokeras

I’m sorry to have failed you one way or the other. I’m going to nuke that story right away. Please just forget you read it.

What? No. No no. Just no. That is not even remotely the right way to go about things.

This is – was? – your story. You should be proud of it. Yes, people pointed out bad things, but there were some great things in there too, in case you chose to ignore them. Nuking the story? Let's say you do decide to revise and improve upon it. If it were me, I'd want this old version to remain as a showing of where things started and how I've improved. You don't throw away your history like so much trash, you keep it around to remind you of what you've done wrong.

Contests aren't just for writing good stories, they're for self improvement. Is that not why we're all here? Keep your trash. You never know when it'll prove useful.

I'm going to side with Ranmilla here, but explicitly say that c) would be the correct route. As it is, it obviously tries to be that, but the execution is lacking.

The 'joke' dragged on too long, with too much repetition without developing on it -- too much reliance on the joke being that it keeps happening without advancing the problem or the character. At the same time, it was very... overtly lampshaded and meta in a way that made it hard for me to appreciate? Especially the Kafka jokes at the start. It made it very difficult to approach this as a story and not as a piece of writing. There's no immersion factor, because the story keeps hammering into you again, and again, and again that it's too self-aware.

Stories like this work a lot better when it strictly feels in-universe. The protagonist didn't react strongly enough, didn't protest enough, kind of just went with everything, which was pretty toxic to my interest - it made him feel like a puppet, and I was watching the strings. It also weakened the comedic potential; That kind of apathy doesn't work when the joke is everyone else is apathetic about a deeply improbable, unlikely thing happening to him. It removes actual conflict, which is where the humour should be coming from.

Erugh. It's an interesting idea, and I can absolutely see why this made the finals, but this story ultimately really frustrated me.

I never played D&D much. I experienced it just a little, but was too young at the time to properly appreciate it. That said, stories like this make me feel like trying it again.

The story was generally pointless and riddled with typos, but otherwise enjoyable. I liked the snarky prose quite a bit, even if it got a bit long-winded at times. I laughed, which is not common for me, and that goes a long way in this story's favor.

But still, I prefer my stories with a bit more purpose.

I personally found the introduction too abrasive, without anything to really give an interesting hook to the protagonist. I didn't get a feel for their personality even by the end beyond 'archetypal gritty noir gumshoe' which is... fine? Fine, but a missed opportunity when he's the main authorial voice through the whole thing.

The writing seriously needs a proofreader to whip through it, as well, as others have said, and I found myself just skimming or outright skipping some of the denser paragraphs. The idea behind it is genuinely interesting, the setting, but I'm honestly wondering if there wouldn't be a better scene, better characters to explore it with.

As an idea, as a concept, this is very strong. As a story, none of the interesting information you present leads to anything or impacts anything, which undermines what interest I would have in it.

Basically, you've got a really strong What and Where here, but need to do a lot more with the Who and Why to improve this.

>>Not_A_Hat

Addendum: When you're frustrated or having a problem with something, it's been said that explaining your problem to a rubber duck helps you reach the correct answer, even though the duck itself isn't actually contributing.

Example comic.

This is a fine story.

It'd be a good, or a great, story if it was three quarters the size, maybe two-thirds. About that much is totally superfluous, doesn't go anywhere, doesn't build anything... as it was, it dragged, horribly. If this were a novel it'd be more forgivable, but as a self-contained work it's effectively self-sabotage.

Characters were fine, the vocabulary was interesting... honestly, just reminded me very much of a Waterworld take on Mortal Engines, in tone and character as much as everything else.

Oh, bravo.

The opening was a lot of confusing at first, with me trying to take in the myriad of strange combinations, but once it settled into its stride this story proved to be solid. A strong depiction of withdrawal, a fascinating new world to explore and understand, great message of survival and growth. I am immensely satisfied and think I have a new favorite.

Some criticisms. I agree with some previous commenters that a few of the scenes felt... overdone? Like the flight. It's great to have a visual angle to things, but it's another thing entirely to spend so much time on a subject it becomes uninteresting. There were a couple times where I jumped to the end of a paragraph because I realized there wasn't anything 'story' to be had in it.

I also found the mention of highways and vehicles... curious. So we're in a world of animals of indeterminable anthropomorphic qualities that has reached a modern level of technology? I think seeing these things a lot closer and in more detail would have helped us grasp how things work. You've conjured up an entirely new universe, but it feels as though you've either not considered the details of how their society works or – worse – consciously decided to ignore it. The inner workings that keep this kind of all-inclusive civilization from tearing itself apart would have given this all a far greater interest.

It also would have taken away from the dominant point of addiction withdrawal, which lends credence to >>Ranmilia's notes about having this story set in an animal-based world in the first place.

But those are the only things that really bugged me, and they're more nitpicks than anything else. I expect this one to rank highly in the end.

Comedy's good, pacing's quick and snappy, I also got a huge Laundry Files feeling from it -- it's a good thing, I love Stross' work -- but it's also... hrrm.

The biggest problem is that it's a bit shallow. There's a conflict and it's resolved, so there's a story, but there isn't a thesis, or a moral, though I'm not quite sure where one would fit, honestly. Still! Having read this after Hole, I feel like this story did what Hole should have: Instead of being a weird thing and everyone in-universe underreacting, this was played straight in-universe, with characters responding appropriately. It felt like a more refined effort for that.

>>PaulAsaran
Agreeing with this. Also:

>>Monokeras

First, I'd like to apologise to everyone who read my story. I wished you had a better experience and I’m sorry it didn’t live up to your expectations.

I’m sorry to have failed you one way or the other. I’m going to nuke that story right away. Please just forget you read it.

Mono, you have not failed anyone. And nobody has expectations going into a writeoff story, so I guarantee you haven't failed to meet their expectations, either.

Writing a story that contained things that people didn't like isn't failure. It's normal.

Reading a story that isn't polished or doesn't feel fully thought-out in a writeoff does not feel like being let down. It's normal.

Having a reader read your story and interpret something in a way you weren't expecting isn't bad. It's normal.

I have read a lot of stories in my time, Mono. Some of them are very, very good. Some of them are very, very bad. Most of them are somewhere in the middle. Yet no matter how bad, boring, bland, or incompetent a story may be, I have never truly wanted to forget that a story exists*. Reading stories, even the worst stories I've ever read, has always brought something positive to my life, even if I might not have noticed it at the time.

Please, never think that you have failed your readers by writing a less-than-perfect story—especially a story written under strict time constraints, in a language that isn't your native tongue. Every time anyone enters something into the writeoffs, it is an achievement to be proud of, no matter the result. You don't have to be proud of the story itself to be proud of the fact that you wrote a thing, and it wasn't totally awful.

Lastly, Mono, I'd like you to go back and re-read every review on this. Almost every single one (ignore !Hat. He's being a grumpy-guts ❤) has something they enjoyed about this story—and several liked it very much, despite the criticism. You have not failed your readers. You've done something amazing, and I find it a shame that you think anything else.

*Okay, with the exception of some weird fetishy stuff. That doesn't really count.

Hmm. I can see why this is in the final round. It's curious, at times amusing, and seems to be trying to convey a lesson – although I'm not 100% sure of what said lesson really is.

I liked it on the whole, but it just didn't interest me in the same way some of the other stories I've read have. I just can't place my finger on what it is that kept me from getting invested in it. If I had to guess, I'd say it would be related to the strange, almost blasé reaction of the protagonist to the entire situation.

It's not a bad story, and I can see a lot of people getting a kick out of it, but it just doesn't appear to be my kind of thing.

Sorry, author, I couldn't finish this one. I think I managed to get halfway through before giving up.

Your pacing was way too plodding, and the main character was arbitrarily awful. Like, you just kept trying to hammer in repeatedly how awful they were, which is a problem when it's time taken away from advancing the plot. There wasn't nuance to it, there was just about a thousand words of "This is an awful person who is awful and will deserve the bad things that happen to him".

Cutting most of the introduction out of this story, and large parts of the dialogue -- especially the italicized internal monlogue, on the whole, it didn't add anything for me and pulled me out of the story repeatedly -- would make this much snappier, as well as shortening the length of paragraphs.

If you take the screenwriters' philosophy that any paragraph longer than 5 lines won't be read;

“Yes, yes, I know you do not like that name, you have said.” Brandt dismissively flicked his hand as he spoke, before dropping his tone, speaking in a silkier voice, one that reminded Beaumont of how the Jew had spoken upon entering the room. “It is what your sister used to call you, is it not?” Beaumont was speechless, and slightly pale at his words. “How long ago was it? Thirty years? You were eight, she was ten, and the whole family was staying at the quaint little lodge in Louisiana. Hmm, that rolls off the tongue doesn’t it? ‘Little lodge in Lousiana’. But anyway, yes, it was her favourite moniker for you then, wasn’t it? And you two got along like a house on fire, didn’t you? I mean of course, you would argue, but going away to the lodge was always your chance to bond, was it not? But then, the accident happened. Devastation, despair... Your family, quite rightly so, never visited the lodge again!” Brandt paused for a moment, studying Beaumont, in stark contrast to the usual happenings in Beaumont’s office. Beaumont looked sombre, his eyes were trained on Brandt, and he was unflinching in his mien. “You must miss her terribly.” Brandt added, his head momentarily bowed in what one might assume was an attempt at respect.

This paragraph, from around the point I stopped reading, is eleven lines long on my page. And Gods, here in isolation, can you see how it drags? It's an insurmountable wall of text for me when there's so many of these paragraphs in a row.

On the plus side, the voicing of characters is strong, your descriptions were very effective, this had some of the stronger mental imagery in my head of the finalists.

>>PaulAsaran
>>QuillScratch
First I really appreciate you taking the time to answer me. But, I mean, I don't see any added value in keeping that schlock alive. Improving on it? What for? What purpose would that serve? Who would be interested in it, even remotely?

I mean, you don't frame your E-graded papers and affix them in your room so that each morning you can contemplate them and say "Wow, I was such a klutz at that time". You take your paper, bin it and suck up your grade. Likewise, no museum exposes low-grade art.

I don’t see any reason to be proud of what I wrote. It was barely creative, had major flaws and rattled almost anyone.

Who was that famous writer who used to throw his bad manuscripts into the fire? Hugo? Maupassant? Flaubert? Can’t remember. But I mean everything I write is disposable, throwaway, single use, like medical stuff. I’ve learnt what was wrong, let’s try to implement and move on.

Everyone comes to the WriteOff with the expectation to enjoy good stories. Not being able to deliver that is a failure to me, as I’m under the impression that I squander away others’ time and try their patience. That’s why I dearly apologise.

>>MrNumbers Huh, I hadn't heard that one before, but it makes more sense than my interpretation.

Thanks for the link!

>>Monokeras

I know Hat you hate what I write,

This isn't the first time you've said this to me, even though I've tried to tell you several times that I don't feel that way. I'm sorry you've gotten this impression so strongly. I guess, despite my best efforts, I haven't been kind or gentle enough in my reviews. The most strongly I've ever felt about your stories is mild annoyance.

But, if one person feels this way, then there are probably others who haven't said anything.

So, to start with, I'd like to apologize. Monokeras, I'm truly sorry that I've left this impression on you. I don't want you to feel like I hate your stories, and I apologize for everything I've done that's made you feel that way.

If anyone else feels I've been unkind or unfair to them or someone else in my reviews, now or in any round, please give me a chance to apologize by leaving me a note here or on Discord. I'll do my best to make my reviews more useful and less hurtful in the future.

For now, I've written up a short piece on how and why I review. If anyone's interested in my thought processes, or has suggestions on how I can make my reviews fit it better, find it here: How Not_A_Hat tries to comment on Writeoff stories.

I in light of this, I don't think I'll be commenting next round. Hopefully, with a bit of distance, I can gain some perspective on what I've done to give this impression and how to better communicate my intentions.

>>Not_A_Hat
Hat, that was a joke. Nothing personal. While it is true most of what I write doesn't really enthuse you, I mean that's perfectly fine.

Dang not only do I write bad stories, but I manage also to put wonderful people off.

So sorry. :( :( :( I mean I really feel like a prick now.

>>Monokeras Don't apologize for writing something I liked. I just liked some other stuff more. There's some interesting three-phase potential in here that could be developed, maybe some humor, etc...

Il meglio è nemico del bene
--Voltaire

>>georg
Then I can apologise for not writing something you would've liked more.

It's a beautiful day outside.

Birds are singing. Flowers are blooming...

On days like these, authors like me... should be burning in hell.

Let's get that out of the way right off the bat, because this is kind of core to everything. Ran nailed me. This is heavily (shamelessly) based on Undertale (something I am -actually- surprised more people didn't call me out on). I'll try and spoiler tag anything directly related to the game, because, seriously, if you haven't played Undertale, you really, really should. It is an absolutely tremendous game and best experienced fresh, so do yourself a favor and go play it.

So yeah. Long story short, I've wanted to do something in the shape of the San's fight for a while because I like elements of the absolute horrifying helplessness of that boss fight. This writeoff, I was feeling sick, didn't have any focus, and the idea was wedged in my brain for varying reasons, so I threw up my hands and submitted to what I knew I was going to end up being distracted by.

There's not a lot to say here really that I won't cover addressing comments, so let's just get down to it.

>>All_Art_Is_Quite_Useless
Well, I think there is a very strong argument that our antagonist probably is just a little bit insane. :p

Anyhow, on the subject of God, this is one of those interesting cases of how I assume information would be interpreted vs what my words actually imply. The functional idea is that God has a guardian because God themself is helpless. Beylke is their arm, while God is more just the one who supports creation. That said, this isn't a particular well developed setting or anything, but that was the core idea. Unfortunately, using "God" kinda implies a lot of things, and well... Expectations are expectations!

And you are actually right about the third loop. I messed up when cleaning that section up. It -can- be read correctly, but I should have fixed it.

>>Obscure
There can be value in words the reader doesn't want to read (*waves a tiny House of Leaves flag*) but this might not be the time or format.

>>Zaid Val'Roa
I kind of disagree a little here? I feel the conclusion exists, but maybe I overplayed the hand here. As of the third repetition, Beylke's defeat is assured. It's less that he'll keep coming and more that she will lose. That said, there is a pretty solid argument that that is also a very unsatisfying conclusion!

>>Orbiting_kettle
Yeah, I generally agree here that I should have done more with something. I wrestled a bit with either giving a bit more insight into Beylke or the like, but I could fit it in comfortably with the format trick I was using, so I opted to pass on it. That was a mistake, methinks.

Speaking of the repetition, I think this is a good reminder that digital and physical presentation can be a bit awkward. I actually did put a little thought into the structure of the repeated paragraph so that it would be reasonably obvious how and where you could skip a bit (hence "The man stepped forward" being the first break, a short, easy to see sentence), but scrolling probably makes this stuff a -lot- harder to see. I wonder if this would have scored less objection if the pages were opposite facing so the early paragraphs were obviously identical. Might still not, but worth consideration.

>>Fenton
To be brutally honest, it is a little from Column A, little from Column B. I wanted to mess with the repeated tract idea for impact, so it made for a good concept to take a swing at on a round where I was feeling really low energy.

And for absolute clarity, he does maintain knowledge across every loop. He just experiments with varying his actions and keeping them the same to try and find a break in her abilities.

>>Not_A_Hat
Probably the right path. Not a lot to say. Pacing is indeed wonk as fuck in this story.

>>PaulAsaran
Now the typos should be embarrassing! If I'm gonna shorten the word count effectively, I probably should make sure I get them right.

>>MLPmatthewl419
Thankies!

>>georg
Thank you kindly.

>>horizon
No harm, no foul. I expected that as a potential reaction. No real explanation needed. :p

That said, >>horizon and >>Ranmilia posted some things I'd like to respond to, but I don't actually have the time at the moment. I will try and get back to these a bit later.

Anyhow, with that out of the way, I have one thing left to say: stay determined, everyone!

And seriously go play Undertale.

I was about to write why people should stop calling stories meta. I was about to sound like a smart-ass and I thought I was a genius. I feared that I would be seen like a pretentious dick but I didn't really care because the truth was more important than sparing people's feelings. Boy, I was so wrong.

After three writeoff, I've seen enough comments calling stories meta while clearly they weren't. On top of that, There's a Hole in My Chest was discussed in the last podcast and it has earned his meta medal. While listening to our fellow podcasters, I was gritting my teeth. I wanted to argue why I thought this story couldn't be called that way. I had the chance after to talk about a bit but nothing that was said really convinced me.

So, in order to write my essay, I reread the story. And I realised I was wrong. But before we saw how and why, let's talk a bit about meta. Be aware that my perspective and my knowledge on the concept of meta comes from my studies of French literature and thus, can be biased. From what I could gather, it seems that the concept is more or less the same from an English perspective but it still needed to be addressed.

So, what's meta?
In literature, meta refers to a fiction which is aware it is a fiction.
It can be so by direct addresses to the audience, reader or spectator.

I'm gonna trick him, just wait and see. (To James) So why don't you sit on this chair and relax my friend?

It can be so by mentioning a specific fiction or by portraying a genre of fiction. It's usually a way for the author to express his feelings towards that genre or that book.

Erik was reading Pride and Prejudice and the more he read this book, the more he felt a connection between Elizabeth Bennet and himself. Her struggle, her pain, her joy, every one of her emotion, Erik was feeling like they were his own. He didn't know books could have this power, especially those he thought were boring and sappy stories.

Or it can be by having a story within a story.

"Did you go to London last week?"
"Yes, I did," replied Louis. "And I must tell you what happened to me back there. It started when I decided to go to a bar after arriving. I wanted to relax a little bit after my trip so I thought a beer could do the trick. When I walked into this small bar, I saw this beautiful girl and you know what I told her? I told her ..."

(The same work for a play within a play)

An addition by AndrewRogue

I think this definition might assist a little bit in seeing why people referred to it as meta:

1. (of a creative work) referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential.

The consequences on the audience, the speech the author wanted to convey and the speech the audience gets from it, each one of them is specific according to each reader, and thus, I won't list them. I also add that the author's intention is almost irrelevant because what really matters is how the reader reads the story.

And that lead us to There's a Hole in My Chest. I will now list every sentence that I feel is related to ‘meta,’ with commentary.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not really following your metaphor.”

What’s even the context for this?

On their own, these sentences can't really be called meta. When you have only these two sentences, you can argue if they are meta or not. But with the other sentences, there clearly are.

“Honey, is this a Kafka thing, where the point is that there is no reason for it?”

Ooh double meta. The obvious one is about Kafka. The second is the reason for it. It's both a comment about Kafka's stories AND a comment about the story in itself.

“...Is there some sort of religious allusion that I’m missing?”

Once more, on its own this sentence doesn't do much but with others, it's less questionable.

“Well, I don’t know too, and if you’re going to be this obtuse, then nobody else is going to be able to understand, either.” She snorted. “Just saying ‘look at me, I’ve got a hole in my chest, figure it out yourself, isn’t it deep?’ isn’t clever. It’s pretentious, is what it is.”

This one is pretty obvious. I don't know how I could have missed this one.

“Look, I’m done talking about this. Why don’t you and your ‘hole’”—her air-quotes were the most emphatically sarcastic I’d ever seen—”take a walk. And don’t come back until you’re ready to stop acting like you’re… like you’re a character in somebody’s college art film.”

If we follow the idea of a meta story, the walk is only the time remaining before the author will explain the meaning of the hole. Note the air-quotes on the hole.


All the sentences I quoted come from the wife in the first part. It safe to assume that the wife embodies the reader confused by the meaning of both the hole in the chest and the story.

But does that exclude any other interpretation? Because all the meta is in the first part, does it mean the rest of the story is irrelevant? I don't think so; even more, I know so. Because if the rest of the story was irrelevant, the story in itself would be useless and I refuse that. The author may have written the story to be this way but like I said, his/her intention is irrelevant in this essay.

Furthermore, the story contained itself, it is not playing with the readers and is not expecting them to continue it in the comments. The fact that many of us have different views on it is just the evidence of a good work, not a trick the story played on us.

Now that it is said, if you think I'm wrong or if you want add something to this, be my guest. I would be happy to see what meta can mean for everyone.

And please, think twice before saying meta every time (That also works for me).