1. You sign up, you start off with 777 words. On the house. If that's all you think you'll need, great; you're good to go.
   
2. You can wager "Double or nothing!" to increase your word count to 1,554 words, but you will be slapped with a tricky flash rule of some kind. If you fail to incorporate this flash rule, your story will be disqualified even if it is good. Even if you wrote the best story of the week.
   
3. Alternatively, you might be the sort to say "I lay my life on the line" to increase your word count. You won't have to face down a flash rule, but you will need to toxx.
   
4. You can also just request a flash rule just in general, if you want. If you're feeling frisky. You'll likely get something less punitive, more inspirational - you know, like a character or a complication.
   
5. Sign-ups close on Friday, January 26th at the stroke of midnight, PST. That said, I'm a pretty busy guy, so if I detect a landslide in progress I'mma gonna close up shop early.
   
6. Submissions are due by Sunday, January 28th - again, at the stroke of midnight.
   
7. The usual cavalcade of banned items are still banned. If you write fanfic, erotica, or thinly-veiled political treatises, I will hate you forever.

• Bad Seafood
  
• Saddest Rhino
  
• Chairchucker

• Fleta Mcgurn
  
• Deltasquid
  
• Exmond
  
• Thranguy
  
• Flesnolk
  
• Crain
  
• A New Study Bible!
  
• BabyRyoga
  
• Crabrock
  
• Antivehicular
  
• CascadeBeta
  
• Djeser
  
• GenJoe
  
• Curlingiron
  
• Hawklad
  
• Unfunny Poster
  
• Sandnavyguy
  
• HisMajestyBOB
  
• Maigius
  
• Dr. Kloctopussy
  
• Fuschia Tude
  
• Apophenium
  
• DreamingofRoses
  
• Ninjalicious
  
• Yoruichi

Bad Seafood fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Jan 27, 2018

Somebody fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Jan 29, 2018

Bad Seafood fucked around with this message at 07:17 on Jan 28, 2018

• Opening line: okay. Gives me a conflicted portrait of the narrator, in a believable way. It’s the next line that does the conceptual heavy lifting with regard to the premise.
  
• Little bit of “As you know” going on here.
  
• PRESENT TENSE AAAA I knew I forgot to ban something.
  
• Weed and refuse (poo poo), of course; goons will be goons.
  
• Yes you can’t make up this stuff where everything’s easy for me and we gloss over the fun details I swear.
  
• Why does a fully automated ship need a galley?
  
• Drugs, poo poo, sex slavery, unhealthy eating habits; this story has it all.
  
• Your crime isn’t fun, your setting doesn’t pop, and I’m not smiling.
  
• Your protagonist largely succeeds because everyone else around him is incompetent, which is seldom satisfying to read.
  
• RANKING: Low

• Opening line: functional, but workmanlike. Least I know you’re taking your flash rule seriously. In a vacuum though, this does tell us something pretty important about two of our characters.
  
• ...And our narrator, whose very detached from the proceedings. Worrisome start.
  
• ...Ah, one of those superior to their surroundings types. Prospects grim.
  
• Sex exploitation and defensive vomiting, we are just cruising along.
  
• Thanks for throwing in some last minute detail on that casino after spending the whole story in a dingy office with an unwashed man; a casino that’s both noisy AND loud? It’s like I’m really there.
  
• A thing happened, the end. I hate this kind of thing.
  
• Your crime isn’t fun, your setting doesn’t pop, and I’m not smiling.
  
• Your protagonist is unengaging and uninteresting. Greg is the only person in this story with any real personality and he’s a overbearing gremlin, the type of which are a dime a dozen.
  
• Your flash rule gets only the bare minimum amount of lip service but you don’t do anything interesting with it.
  
• RANKING: Low

• Opening line: pretty okay! Delivers an immediate premise that catches my attention and suggests the character of the speaker, a Miss Oakfield. An older woman, I’m assuming.
  
• The following bit gives some nice follow-up, though the dialogue is a bit stale. We’ve got a pair, our protagonist, and they’re in over their head, whatever it is they’re up to. The first aside was really more than enough to clue us in though; the rest are frivolous.
  
• Loyalty, loyalty.
  
• Gaudy, in a good way. I know where we are at least (take note, previous submitters).
  
• Hmm okay so it’s a mystery in the center of her mind. Not sure what this means for the legitimacy of the mystery since this is likely all an allegory, but we’ll see where this goes.
  
• KNOX’S THIRD, DIE THE DEATH, GREAT EQUALIZER IS THE DEATH
  
• Gross crown bro.
  
• “And then there was lights.”
  
• The dialogue in general is not very strong in this piece.
  
• To the Moon AF
  
• Your crime was confusing, your setting popped, and I’m not smiling, but I’m not frowning either.
  
• Your protagonist, Elizabeth, gets the most love here (literally and figuratively). The thieves are fleeting specters, and inserting their backstory in this way does more to hurt than help.
  
• You kinda write around your flash rule by making everything a metaphor, but whatevs.
  
• RANKING: Low

• Opening line: functional. Lays out the board, sets the mood, puts some description in there.
  
• A little telly, but there’s some good character work here. I know who everyone is and what they’re after, and how they mean to get it.
  
• Who’s Marcel?
  
• Had to google “Cosh.” Could’ve just said club.
  
• Also I gotta be honest I keep reading Beatrica’s name as Beatrice. It’s a bit of a distracting change.
  
• Ha ha okay that was a fun little romp. A mite confusing at points, but I got the jist.
  
• Good use of the flash rule, though it’s a little less clever without foreshadowing - unless I need to reread the piece again
  
• Who’s Marcel!?!?
  
• Ending is mostly satisfying but feels a little rushed. It’s obviously supposed to be a conclusion and not a continuation, but it raises certain questions about the back-half of the job.
• Additionally, Beatrica selling off the tower for scrap kinda dampens the feel-good nature of the crime since it makes her a bit more self-serving.
  
• Your crime was mostly feel-good (take that Japan, but poor France), your setting popped, and I’m smiling.
  
• Beatrice and Seamus were a fun pair, and basically the protagonists. Some confusing blocking, a too-quick ending, and a few nitpicks keep this from being a cleaner sweep.
  
• RANKING: Mid-High

• Opening line: pretty good. We’ve already got a personality for our narrator, a relationship, and a tone.
  
• If you’re gonna “Tell, don’t show,” this is the right way to do it. I feel like the narrator is telling me a story, like I’m at his place and we’re chatting and he’s going on about that one time the way real people sometimes do.
  
• I like that your protagonist has a life outside of crime, but also that his family’s in on it. The small town, small business husband-and-wife dynamic adds a mildly hilarious yet wholesome air to the whole affair.
  
• On that note, having your protagonist turn down the job to prioritize his employees and customers is was a great way to signal he’s a criminal, sure, but not a scumbag.
  
• Good use of the flash rule, respect.
  
• Solid ending. The whole thing’s a little low-stakes, but deliberately so, and it works. Likewise, the setting doesn’t exactly “Pop,” but it wafts into view and lingers, which for this story is just as good.
  
• Your crime was feel-good, your setting popped (in spirit), and I’m smiling.
  
• I would read more of this guy’s low-key adventurers, or a sequel where he meets the Swan for real. For that matter, you do a good job characterizing the Swan, who only ever actually appears in the margins.
  
• RANKING: High

• Opening line: functional, but a bit generic. It tells us something about the speaker though, so that’s cool.
  
• Fields of what now?
  
• Alright, I’ve got a good sense for your protagonist. The yellow suit’s a nice touch. I understand why he speaks the way he does, though at the same time - as a reader - it’s a bit irksome.
  
• Your knock-off Ministry of Information has a very Seussian vibe to it; not that I’m complaining.
  
• Spending a lot of time on the particulars of this bulb-car I don’t really care about.
  
• Some lip-service toward the guards being armed. Hope it’s relevant.
  
• A single long hair!
  
• “Archaic writing implement.” It’s okay for your character to talk like this, but having the narrator talk like this is a bit weird. Just say it’s a pen or a quill or whatever it is.
  
• Laslo’s a bit...dramatic.
  
• I guess everyone in this story’s a bit dramatic. And metatextual. Hmm.
  
• Laslo’s risking a fair bit more than the story seems to want us to think he is.
  
• Getting a lot of info just now that would’ve been nicer earlier in the story as build-up. The mystery doesn’t serve you well here. The whole heist comes off as high-stakes, but faceless. Why was this a secret in the first place? Who benefits from keeping it secret?
  
• Your crime was whatever, your setting popped, and I’m not sure how to feel.
  
• The hardest part of your protagonist’s job was already taken care of off-screen, which makes the whole caper feel very low-risk, low-effort. Even the token resistance of his enemies feel empty and lacking.
  
• You scratch at the flash rule without really grasping it. Your protagonist comes off less like a pacifist and more like someone who just prefers to manipulate people, and the bad guys are armed to the pinky. He does announce his crime, but to no real effect.
  
• RANKING: Low

• Opening line: getting right into the action, okay.
  
• Prose, thy name is purple-ish.
  
• “The rogue spun a high kick into the officer’s right hand,” yeah, but who’s who?
  
• Bad guy doesn’t waste any time establishing he’s the bad guy, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
  
• The two characters introducing themselves “Off-screen,” as it were, is super telly and doesn’t gel well with how this story’s going so far.
  
• And then you keep doing it. Ain’t a great look, man.
  
• Dude check out where they clipped me.
  
• Is he an admiral or a captain? I know the guy in charge of the ship is always the captain, but still…
  
• Ah, the old “Hero has a secret solution to the problem he never shared with anyone, least of all the viewers” trick.
  
• Your crime was feel-good insofar as the goal was noble and the victim deserved it, the setting didn’t really pop, and I’m not smiling.
  
• Your protagonist’s kind of a generic plucky rogue with nothing especially interesting about him, much like the generic ship he finds himself on that you don’t bother to describe much cause it’s pretty much like any ship you can imagine.
  
• The flash rule’s here so I guess you’ve got that going for you at least.
  
• RANKING: Low

• Opening line: ha ha, okay, I like this. I have no idea what’s going on yet, but the mere concept is intriguing by itself.
  Patently charming beginning.
  
• The overall direction of this story is a little vague, but I know who our protagonists are, what they’re looking for (in broad terms), and why they want it, so that’s good.
  
• Like the rest of the story, the Heap is both vague yet distinct. This might be a problem.
  
• I like the twist where the narrator, one would assume the de facto expert, has an area of weakness his companion has to compensate for. Characterizes both of them and makes the team more meaningful.
  
• Feels like it took awhile to get our narrator’s name.
  
• You hinted at the narrator not having legs earlier (“She still had her legs”), and confirm it here, but somehow I wish you’d been a bit more forthright about it.
  
• Also around here’s where the vagueness starts to run a bit dry with the old man. Before it felt like you were trying to leave more to the imagination, but here it feels more like a bare minimalist school play.
  
• Confusing dialogue attribution.
  
• Wait, they’re leaving? What did they find that was worth a healer’s services?
  
• And the problem solves itself; meh.
  
• Your “Crime” was feel-good, your setting popped, but I’m not smiling.
  
• Your protagonists are charming and there’s something appealing about the bizarre world they inhabit, but it doesn’t amount to much in this story. You sacrificed a lot of potential flavor, I think, trying to facilitate the story’s completion within the allotted word count, when you could’ve start started a little bit closer to the ending (maybe right when they arrive at the Heap) and added a few more personal touches.
  
• Flash rule is there and functional, but not much else to say about it.
  
• RANKING: Mid

• Opening line: short and snappy. Functional, but actually better than that implies.
  
• Alright, we’ve got our key players introduced in quick succession, and probably the most well-defined setting thus far this week in terms of sheer “Pop.” I’m down.
  
• “She took a few steps...her target.” This sentence is wonky and feels clipped.
  
• I’m not sure exactly what’s going on, but that’s okay. I mean, I know it’s a wedding ceremony of some kind, but there’s clearly more going on. To put it in movie terms, this is the scene following the bit where someone has a plan they don’t elaborate on, and now we the audience get to see how that plan unfolds. It’s a good feeling.
  
• Functional bit of backstory here. There might have been a better way to drop it in, but this is fine.
  
• “Looked at her a bittersweet smile.”
  
• I accept that magic is part and parcel of this universe, but the phrase “Counter-spell” still seems video gamey.
  
• We anime now.
  
• ...Well that was easy.
  
• Jack kinda feels superfluous here. He basically exists to open a lock and dress Carmen’s wound at the end. Carmen and Wendy are both fuller characters.
  
• Alright, all’s well that ends well.
  
• Your crime was pretty feel-good (if, ultimately, a bit to easy), your setting popped, and I’m smiling.
  
• Excellent job reading into your flash rule, by the by. This is more-or-less exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for.
  
• RANKING: High

• Opening line: wordy, but sets a tone and half a scene.
  
• Might just be the time of day on my end (late), but am I reading this right? Preparing for three years in this country for a thing they didn’t know would happen in this country until this year?
  
• Your three protagonists feel kinda...bland?
  
• Confusing dialogue attribution, and the dialogue ain’t great either.
  
• Lots of telling.
  
• Fighting as a distraction’s a nice touch, but it feels a bit limp.
  
• Ah, fighting, language, I see where this is going. Dad tricks will save the day.
  
• Yep (though “Snakes only” is a hilarious aside).
  
• It’s weird to have a narrator who’s a character in the story, then jump to another character with an omniscient narrator backing them up.
  
• And they get the thing...for whatever reason they needed or wanted.
  
• Your crime was a crime, your setting feels forgotten, and I’m not smiling.
  
• I like your use the flash rule, Bertrand’s impressive skills falling by the wayside as his more modest abilities save the day, but beyond that this piece is just plain kinda dull. I don’t really care about anyone or why anything is happening.
  
• RANKING: Low-Mid

• Opening line: functional. Puts us in the action.
  
• Chaavi, Chhavi
  
• Gonna need to know more about this Diamond Plague before I can evaluate how much of a problem it is. Similarly, you kinda just casually mention your protagonist catching it off-world, which is a heck of a detail to just throw out there into the cold open.
  
• Your protagonist gets lucky, then unlucky, then the story ends.
  
• I get she’s got some kind of crystalline growth, but shouldn’t that be obvious to other folks? Less of a tell, more of a condition. Not sure why she folded, unless she showed her cards.
  
• No real crime (feel-good or otherwise), setting doesn’t pop (really this could be anyone’s space casino), and I’m not smiling.
  
• Competently written, for the most part, but feels like only part of a story, and Chhavi’s not really interesting enough for me to care what happens next.
  
• RANKING: Low-Mid

• Opening line: some respectable set-dressing.
  
• Okay I like these losers, though I’ve only met half of them. Narrator’s pretty matter-of-fact, but with a knowing tone that fits. Hopefully we get to meet the other guys soon.
  
• Consider your setting well and truly “Popping.”
  
• The paragraph where you describe Leonard’s many treasures could probably have used another scan before submitting.
  
• Nice introduction for the inspector.
  
• Okay, I really like this setup where his long-time rival is here, but not for him, but she’s still a problem, but he’s also seeing her as a person (perhaps for the first time), and then she hits the button. It’s all very good.
  
• You do a lot with a little, regarding your protagonist’s accomplices. They’re bit parts, but they play them fittingly.
  
• I kinda don’t like how the plan basically goes off without a hitch once the button gets pressed. Yeah, the inspector offers some token resistance, but it’s quickly swept by. This is a strong piece that largely deflates with how easy the ending is.
  
• Your crime was feel-good, your setting popped, and I’m nodding appreciative after almost smiling a few times.
  
• Everything’s groovy up until the lights go out. I could see another version of this story with a modified last act winning handily; but this iteration? I’ll need to think about it.
  
• RANKING: High

• Opening: killer, though I’ve never liked the use of # in prose.
  
• Your protagonist’s casual exasperation sets a good tone and voice for the piece, but it’s also a tone that feels very familiar coming from you. I know what to expect, I think, and that’s both good and bad.
  
• There’s a fair bit of background information here, but again, you ease into it by virtue of the delivery. Now that everything’s on the table though, we need to get to the action.
  
• Hmm, well, that makes things simpler.
  
• Everything seems way too easy, unless you’ve got one heck of a curveball on deck.
  
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqZMlSZzUu8
  
• Yeah, so, no real curveball except for something that made an already easy job even easier. Yawn. The tone kinda bottoms out here as well. Once you get past the initial concept of an interdimensional switcheroo, there’s not a whole lot of meat to this story, or to anyone (or anything) in any of the universes featured.
  
• Your crime was decidedly neutral, your setting was...an ambiguous palace and some guy’s office, I guess? If you haven’t guessed, I’m not really smiling.
  
• Competent prose, but your story’s pretty hollow. I’ll admit I gave you a real humdinger of a flash rule, which you more or less did justice, but the story and characters still aren’t that interesting or captivating.
  
• RANKING: Low-Mid

• Opening line: action-packed, not bad.
  
• “I thought I had heard a shatter I traded paint,” what?
  
• I wouldn’t be sure, what?
  
• Your first few paragraphs feel a bit...faceless? You have a narrator who’s doing things, feeling things, and has a reason for being there (being a gin-runner), but it comes off as kinda distant.
• You focus on the particulars of the car chase itself but I don’t feel invested since I don’t know enough about the people - even though you are trying to tell us something about the people.
  
• See, now we’ve got dialogue, now we’re getting to know these people.
  
• I can kinda believe these guy’s friendship, even as adversaries, but something feels like it’s missing. I can’t put my finger on it.
  
• More blow-by-blow car shenanigans. My eyes are kinda sliding down the page, honestly. Prose isn’t a great medium for trying to convey an extended range of motion. If you’re gonna have fight scenes or chase scenes, you wanna keep ‘em short and snappy. The particulars of the characters are always going to be more interesting than the particulars of the action they’re performing.
  
• Assuming this is America, Prohibition ended in 1933. We had TVs then, but not in the same form we’d have TVs later when they exploded in popularity after WWII. Radios would’ve been more common then. It wouldn’t have been impossible for a restaurant to have a TV, but it’s odd enough that I stopped reading your story to double-check whether or not they would. Obviously if this isn’t America, you can disregard all this, but it’s one of those little details that’s gonna make a lot of people stop and go “Wait, did we have TVs then?” On a rewrite it’d be better to go with a radio…
  
• ...except then you’re kinda sorta doing that thing where the radio/TV/news ticker immediately starts harping on about whatever it is the protagonists are talking about, thinking about, looking into it, and it feels a bit convenient. Might’ve just been better to have the narrator say “I heard-
  
• More driving, ho-hum
  
• It was a setup...a practice setup! Yeah, that kinda sucks the wind out of a lot of this story.
  
• No crime was committed, if I understand this correctly, the setting is a modestly defined restaurant and a bunch of big city streets, and I’m not smiling.
  
• Feels like you were trying to be a bit clever here, in the name of incorporating your flash rule, but the cleverness backfires in this case. Your car chase reads like a lot of stage direction.
  Your human interactions are a little better, but mostly passable. Give this one another shot, chief.
  
• RANKING: Low-Mid

• Opening line: Hoke Remington is a badass name and the juxtaposition of this dude doing cool stuff while some kid is whining at him is quietly hilarious.
  
• “Puh-lease, Uncle Hoke,” ugh, I can hear it.
  
• I don’t usually mind when the narrator speaks to the reader but I kinda mind it here.
  
• You’ve done a good enough job showing me this guy isn’t good with kids that calling attention to it (twice) feels weirdly distracting.
  
• Ha ha okay this might be my favorite “Treasure” this week.
  
• It’s, uh, Winnie the Pooh, friendo.
  
• Okay the woman holding the turkey got a solid, audible chuckle out of me.
  
• Cherube.
  
• Wait so he was in it for the money, then he wasn’t? Also, dude concinved those kids to give him what he wanted way too easily. Lots of criminals this week just getting their way, though here it’s at least balanced by everything he had to endure up to this point.
  
• The revival thing’s an interesting John Carpenter-esque last-minute twist, but it raises a few questions about Hoke’s motivations that don’t go down easy.
  
• Also he left the kids behind holding the bag, 0/10 babysitting.
  
• Your crime was feel-good, your setting was iconic enough, but that ending dampened my smile a bit.
  
• I like stories where there’s one character who’s essentially the only sane man surrounded by a bunch of ridiculousness, and you delivered on that front. I just wish you’d hit a home run instead of a three-baser with the ending.
  
• RANKING: Mid-High

• Opening line: Bulwer-Lytton presents…
  
• For real though, you communicate a fair bit here, including a certain tongue-in-cheek pulp sensibility, so it mostly works.
  
• That’s the second fist-sized ruby of the week.
  
• Yeah, definitely playing up the pulp here, though I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
  
• ...Okay, yes, that would be a shoe. The hunter has become the hunted.
  
• Honestly the best thing about Lightning Jack is how unfazed he is by this whole turn of events.
  
• Not a bad scrape, though I’m left feeling a little unsatisfied. That’s it? It’s not a story where a thing happens, the end, but it’s not far from one either. If you’d toxxed and spun this story a little longer, I could see it hanging with the big boys.
  
• Your crime was feel-good, your setting popped, and I kinda get it.
  
• What I will say say is I can tell you had a lot of fun writing this, and I wish a few more authors this week had your enthusiasm. Unfortunately, the story itself is just okay.
  
• RANKING: Mid

• Opening line: I like this line because it starts off mundane only to end with a little lemon twist. In this case we have a time-period established, but also something that clearly breaks with that period. It’s nice.
  
• I like this setup, but now I’m not sure why the carriage is unfolding like this. I had to go back to see if I missed anything, and I don’t think I did, but now I’m not sure why this is happening - why this conversation couldn’t just happen in a regular train car.
  
• Okay now I get it.
  
• That said, considering this is between WWI and WWII, this Dragon dude must have some major league clout to have the entirely of the Japanese Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere eating out of his hand. I’m not sure if I can quite believe that level of power from a single crime lord.
  
• I like this little seated action scene.
  
• A bit showy at the end for an allegedly secret operation.
  
• Also if she had a convincing fake why didn’t she just give them the fake. I’m also not sure why ‘Henry’ doesn’t ask for the gem back either. America and Japan aren’t exactly chummy at this particular time in history.
  
• Your crime was feel-good, your setting popped, and I’m smiling...but a little confused.
  
• Your characters all have a nice air of confidence about them, and it really makes this click as a kind of larger-than-life heist with the fate of nations on the line.
  
• RANKING: Mid-High

• Opening line: functional, but surprisingly robust. Gives us an immediate sense of time and place and what’s about.
  
• Very cozy so far, light and airy, snack-sized.
  
• And there’s the pitch...halfway through the story. Oh dear.
  
• Though this sort of clash usually bothers me, I like how your villain breaks the charming, light-hearted mood of the piece.
  
• “Yeah, my enzymes are going to be all over you,” kinda clashes with the rest of the piece.
  
• Another ultimately easy crime. Positive feelings abound, but I’d hoped to see Jeannine have to figure something out. The skills described in her flashrule don’t ever really come into play either, beyond giving her an excuse to meet the mark.
  
• Your crime was feel-good, your setting expressed itself humbly, but I’m not smiling.
  
• I described your story as snack-sized and, really, that’s kind of all it is. A snack between meals.
  
• RANKING: Low-Mid

• Opening line: good. Introduces the protagonist, the antagonist (presumably), sets the scene, and gives us an action to focus on.
  
• And just like that, you’ve neatly laid out the backstory, the stakes, the presence of magic (or something like it); this is a very well-compartmentalized story.
  
• Ha ha her so it’s that kind of setup. Good use of the rule.
  
• The mundane family drama does a lot to elevate this piece, and of course Robin’s useless. It’s a bit cliche, but it’s almost the better for it since everything else is so extraordinary.
  
• I like that Puck seems more upset about being replaced (by a centaur) than by the potential loss of his treasure.
  
• Pretty good ending too, sans the typo, though the escape being so easy deflates it.
  
• Your crime was feel-good, your setting, hmm, well, parts of it popped - all the fairy stuff; Puck’s place was kinda just there - and I was smiling.
  
• Your protagonist is likable, their problem is both fantastical and painfully normal (again, good use of the rule), and the whole thing is just generally well polished. Most of my problems are nitpicks, though at the same time this is well-worn ground.
  
• RANKING: High

• Opening line: a bunch of gobbledygook. What’s more, a bunch of gobbledygook in need of proofreading.
  
• [Don’t] do this. [Never] do this outside of research papers and the like.
  
• Purple, purple everywhere.
  
• Ellipses...I see…
  
• I forget who it was who said “Readers tend to look for people,” but it’s true. You could’ve skipped the first three paragraphs entirely and started with Poltrot.
  
• Some pretty low-key tyranny here.
  
• This dialogue is pretty clunky. These names are too.
  
• Armendariz is the name of my Red Mage on the Yggdrasil server.
  
• You “Use” a lot of “Unnecessary” quotation marks.
  
• For a guy who is active on the scene, Armendariz sure doesn’t feel like a character.
  
• A lot of this reads like someone trying to emulate Shakespeare based on hearsay.
  
• And it just ends in what feels like the middle of the story. I can’t say this was particularly satisfying.
  
• Your crime wasn’t feel-good (we didn’t even get to see it happen), your setting gets forgotten, and I’m not smiling.
  
• I can’t say I really have a strong impression of anyone or anything in this story. They’re just all there, doing things.
  
• RANKING: Low

• Opening line: functional. Introduces our (presumed) protagonist in the middle of actually doing something, which tells us something about her.
  
• “She landed with their father’s EMP rods drawn” is kinda tricky to parse.
  
• That’s some blunt-force setup. Borrowing heavily from the song, I see.
  
• The minute I read Haruku didn’t get picked I thought, “I bet he does something stupid,” and immediately skimmed down the page and saw I was right.
  
• “Since their parents died” is kind of a big detail to casually drop on us here.
  
• Your setting in general feels pretty sparse. I can’t really picture it.
  
• Clear action scenes, for the most part.
  
• So this feels like a bit of a bait and switch. I assumed the reason Haruki was upset earlier was because his sister got picked to do the cool thing and he didn’t, but now he’s trying to fulfill a vow to his parents? I feel like if that were his motivation he would’ve behaved differently earlier.
  
• Following his thoughts feels a bit like cheating as well, since thus far we’ve been seeing everything through his sister’s perspective.
  
• TO BE CONTINUED (I’ll be the rooooooundabout)
  
• Honestly, this thing feels more like it just ends - as opposed to actually concluding. It’s the first chapter in a longer story, the first scene of a film.
  
• Yoshimi and her brother very much feel like Young Adult Literature protagonists, with all the good and bad that implies. They’re active characters, which is nice, and you attempt to give them a complicated dynamic, which is good, but the execution is a little bland.
  
• RANKING: Low-Mid

• Opening line: goes on a bit longer than it should.
  
• “Her eyes spotted a glinting of blazing sun reflecting like earthbound starlight, a hard point of reflection in a diffuse sea of brown,” AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
  
• Seriously, it wasn’t until the next line I realized she saw something shiny on the ground.
  
• A description, laden with commas, that just kept going, without knowing when to stop, which you, dear reader, will keep reading, looking for a period, but you will find none
  
• A lot of your sentences are hard to parse my dude.
  
• Commas after dialogue, my dude.
  
• The right place certainly...what? Or do you mean it was the right place, certainly?
  
• This dude talks like a quest-giver in an RPG.
  
• Saying your protagonist “Went on her way” suggests she left the store already, except she hasn’t because the dude is still talking to her.
  
• Also, where’d she get the book (Vortex GPS Coordinates Inside)? Did she always have it? Did she pick it up? Is she buying it? Shoplifting? She just has it, and this dude can read its presumed subtitle with his eagle eyes which is weird.
  
• Your protagonist seems really not interested in the only thing she’s shown any interest in this whole story.
  
• Cold, Cold Heart
  
• Vortex of Mystical Power Grade VII is my favorite JRPG.
  
• So I’m guessing this is supposed to be one of those things where the protagonist doesn’t really believe in this thing except maybe they do, just a little, and are willing to go to great lengths to check for peace of mind, but it doesn’t really work here since there’s no build-up, no history, no misspent youth listening to your grandfather’s stories.
  
• That skull is totally gonna be haunted.
  
• Nothing happened, then some time passed, and nothing happened.
  
• This bit where she screams in frustration, then screams for real, is the first ACTUAL bit of characterization you’ve bothered to give this character. Up until this point she was just an actor doing things because the plot said so. Granted, she’s still that, but now she has definition.
  
• Also how is ZUUUUUUUU supposed to be distinctly Sumerian? It could just be a sound effect.
  
• Scared out of her mind by improbable events, eventually, she slept.
  
• What is this, the Twilight Zone?
  
• Your faceless protagonist goes to inconvenient lengths to do things for no discernable reason in order to set up a reveal that ultimately comes to nothing.
  
• RANKING: Low

• Opening line: vague and unhelpful, like a tech support rep.
  
• Starting your story off with several lines of (essentially) unattributed dialogue is always a risky prospect. It can work, but doesn’t here; not with everything so ambiguous.
  
• You try for something of an elegant description of the shadow creature here, but it’s a bit half-hearted.
  
• Your protagonist’s kind of a dick, which may be the point. We’ll see.
  
• Creepy manifesto in the middle of your story.
  
• It’s it it’s, though that last one should be its.
  
• Where is any of this even happening? There’s the sun, which your protagonist is looking at for some reason, but everything else might as well be taking place in some infinite expanse of nothingness.
  
• This bit where your protagonist unmakes the shadow reads like every TV show where two people with psychic powers stand and grimace at each other while their invisible powers wreck havoc around town.
  
• UNLEASH THE POWER OF THE SUN
  
• Your dedication to vague symbolism is killing me. I’d have quit reading this by now if I were a casual reader.
  
• I becomes it.
  
• No wait, we’re someone else now? I have no idea what’s going on.
  
• This story of smacks of you trying to communicate some manner of philosophical think-point, but it’s so sparse and confusing I feel like I could read it every day for a year and still never understand it.
  
• RANKING: Low

• Opening line: strong.
  
• “Raw chicken” works, but kinda detracts from the somber nature of the scene. The “Gashed-open” bit fits better, and also suggests something about our protagonist.
  
• You do a lot with a little here. It’s restrained, yet revelatory.
  
• The opening bit of this flashback took me a second read to get.
  
• Two deserts started dating, what?
  
• There’s a lot of character here, which is good, but it also feels disconnected from the rest of the story, which is bad.
  
• All the jumping around here feels like an attempt to replicate a rush of memories and emotions, but I’m not sure how well it works.
  
• The longest, most windingest sentence.
  
• I feel like I understand the desert thing from earlier now.
  
• Despite how disjointed this all feels, I do think I’m getting a clear picture of your protagonist’s relationship with her dead husband.
  
• So there’s a lot to unpack for this one. Your protagonist’s arc, coming to terms with the loss of her husband, is poignant and effecting, and you do their relationship a service by making it complicated rather than picturesque.
  
• However, I feel like the disjointed, semi-stream of consciousness narrative hinders more than it helps. I get what you were going for, and a lot of the issues I had with its structure resolved by the ending, but it leaves a bit of an odd aftertaste in my mouth. I know that’s rich coming from me, the guy who regularly writes stories with time skips without telling anyone, but still.
  
• RANKING: Mid-high

• Opening line: simple, but attention-grabbing. Someone needs something. Always a good start.
  
• Little awkward on the follow-up, though. Double focus on the eyes, telling, etc.
  
• “But it was where I belonged” is a genuinely good line. It communicates a lot about our protagonist immediately. This man is already the most fully-fleshed out character of yours I’ve come across.
  
• You get a bit too vague for your own good here. I can make out the general shape of what these folks are about, but I need more concrete details.
  
• I like the interplay between this privileged kid and their marginalized mentor...is what I’d like to say, but you skip over a bunch of that to get to the Hallmark card.
  
• “Full of wonder as the a star.”
  
• What’s the meta with you?
  
• And that gunman was ME, DEAR READER.
  
• There’s some good stuff around the edges on this one, but the story itself tanks once you realize how much of it is in service of a clumsy metanarrative. “It’s a story about stories!” sure, okay, but what are you actually saying here? I’m actually pretty open to metanarratives as a device, as a method of examining how we create, communicate, and consume stories, but here it reads very rough and rote. You can work hard on something and still get shot down for it. Someone could steal your ideas. Yawn.
  
• For the briefest of moments I thought this was a story about some naive urbanite getting acting lessons from hobos because “Their lives are more real, they’ve experienced things,” which is both kinda exploitive and reckless but also an actually interesting seed for a story - which you waste. Not that you specifically had to write about that, but the tiny bit of humanity you managed to weasle in there is wasted on a bumbling metaphor that’s nowhere near as poignant as the ending seems to want to be.
  
• RANKING: Low-Mid

• Opening line: atmospheric! But lose the semicolon, my dude, and everything after it.
  
• Evocative writing that nevertheless gets a little long in the tooth. You do a good job painting this claustrophobic world with its skittering inhabitants in only a few quick strokes, only to suddenly drag your brush along the page.
  
• There’s a lot of care and character here with this woman and her clocks, but where’s the story? Where’s the humanity?
  
• This whole thing reads like a powerful bit of flavor text accompanying an interesting RPG campaign setting, but I’m not sure I see much cake beneath the icing.
  
• Still, there’s some good language and imagery here. I enjoyed reading this a lot more than most of the rest of this week.
  
• RANKING: Mid-High

• Opening line: confusing, but in a way that makes me want to read on to determine what the narrator means.
  
• Do you think we’re the only ones who think? Because it’s me. I’m the only one who knows anything.
  
• The most precocious child in human history.
  
• You know, for someone lecturing the reader on empathy and being connected to the universe, your protagonist certainly seems lacking in both categories.
  
• Yeah, okay, I officially dislike this little twerp.
  
• Pretentious and precocious.
  
• Your protagonist is an inhuman computer.
  
• More Twilight Zone shenanigans? At least I can bear reading about our new lead.
  
• So it was all a disorder then? A false protagonist implanted in the real protagonist’s head? I’m not sure what this is trying to say about either of them. There’s a clear theme of empathy here, but your trees are making me miss the forest.
  
• RANKING: Low-mid

• Opening line: good.
  
• Getting some very Vonnegut-esque vibes from these early paragraphs. There’s a particularity to the setting and details, hints of an alternate future/present, and a high-end event undercut (effectively) by a dirty joke.
  
• For some reason I had to read the bit about the canoes twice to parse it.
  
• “On the barrels of his binoculars,” nice use of words.
  
• This orderly and structured event being invaded by the seemingly absurd has my full attention.
  
• What.
  
• Yep, this is very Vonnegut. And Lehrer.
  
• Ha ha ha can’t say no.
  
• Some delightful dark comedy, though it’s lacking a little something I can’t put my finger on.
  
• The whole thing is polished, like a stage piece. The characters are more actors than humans, though that’s not a complaint in this case. Really, the thin veil of artificiality over the whole thing works to heighten the sense of unreality.
  
• I think the only thing that bugs me, in retrospect, is the bit with the puppy dog eyes. With the way the rest of the narrative is set up, it feels a bit like cheating to rely on a Looney Tunes gag instead of...you know, I’m not sure. In any case, it’s not enough to detract from the story in a significant manner, just enough to give me pause.
  
• RANKING: High

• Opening line: thanks for reminding me how alone I am on Valentines day. *Cries.* Really though, it’s functional.
  
• You keep reminding yourself to put spaces after commas.
  
• “She smiles like a predator,” I like this line. It reverses the momentum built up by the proceeding dialogue, where your protagonist is presented as the instigator. Whether he is or isn’t, it’s
• fair to assume this lady’s the one holding the cards.
  
• This is the first story to employ vague language this week that didn’t annoy me. Though the typos annoy me, so rest assured I am still annoyed.
  
• Faustian bargains, a classic.
  
• I like this choice, how it’s present, how it’s justified. A penny for your revenge?
  
• It’s a little late in coming, but there’s some good character work here.
  
• The first time I read this ending, I thought it was a cop-out. The second time around, I can see it as a sort of rejection of false comforts like revenge and empty revisionism. Still, I might’ve seen it the first time around without the second-person gimmick.
  
• I actually don’t mind the second-person gimmick, but typically associate it with CYOA books and visual novels. You set me up to think I was going to make a choice, only to remind me the protagonist isn’t actually me, despite being referred to as such.
  
• RANKING: High

• Opening line: 1.
  
• I know Huitzilopochtli is an actual mythological figure and that’s how you spell his name, but man is it a humdinger of a proper noun to kick things off with.
  
• The sound of the tree splitting sound.
  
• Every time I have to stop to google one of these words is a time I might stop and never read this story again.
  
• Another you story, but somehow I get the feeling I won’t like this one as much as the last one.
  
• I’d like some more context for what’s going on, if possible. I know I probably won’t get it, but I’d like it all the same.
  
• You know, a good tip for when you want to use a foreign word to describe something that exists in a foreign culture, like here when you try to describe a traditional weapon, would be to say something like “He raised his X, his Y,” where X is the foreign word and Y is a simple English equivalent.
  
• I know you mentioned Rahui once before this but it’s weird how he’s still kind of a total non-entity in the story until just now when he appears. The way you phrased it earlier I thought he was already dead (like me).
  
• This thing sounds like a Zelda boss, by the by. You know the type, with the stone face and the hands. Dies about as easily as one too. Not sure I get the hype.
  
• 2.
  
• I think Rahui has hunting down just fine, chief.
  
• You’re referencing a lot of things off-handedly here. Done well, this sort of thing can make the world of the story feel larger than it actually is. You kinda just do it though, and it’s kinda just there.
  
• RIP Rahui.
  
• 3.
  
• Wait, so all this was so they could fight each other in the afterlife, or something?
  
• I’m not having a very good day today.
  
• Yeah, no idea what the point of any of this was. I connect with your protagonist’s desire to live on an instinctual level, but there’s nothing else here for me to grab on to.
  
• Still more competent then a lot of other stories this week, strangely.
  
• RANKING: Low-Mid

• Opening line: striking.
  
• Some solid set dressing here. I know who and what this story is about, where it’s taking place, and under what circumstances.
  
• It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
  
• “Although as time goes on and there remains no sign of lie beyond the two of them,” is pretty awkward to read.
  
• You do a good job showing us the differences in the girls’ reactions, by way of how they discard (or hold onto) their backpacks, only to ruin it a little by directly telling us what you already just implied successfully. Have a little more faith in your visual metaphors.
  
• The description of Ami as the dreamer, shedding her bag, makes it sound like she likes it in this bizarre hellscape.
  
• Although I can accept people getting used to anything, it feels a bit soon for these two to more or less settle in after a week of everyone and everything they know vanishing.
  
• Feels a little late to start dropping character descriptors.
  
• This whole story strikes me as a protracted metaphor for being cast out alone, together, by the world at large. Ami is happy she can finally be herself, Shannon misses the structure of her previous existence. In the end Ami disappears (dies, probably; suicide, possibly), and Shannon is implied to follow. It’s a mix of happy and sad since the uncertain nature of the world around them, the two bleeding into it, seems to sugget they’ll find some closure and closeness in death.
  
• RANKING: High

• Opening line: paints a solid picture. You know immediately how old our protagonists are, and you probably have pretty good idea what they’re up to.
  
• Unseasonable southerly?
  
• Getting some Stand By Me vibes here.
  
• Bit of an odd jump here, though at least we’ve settled on Simon and Dean being the story and not the fence.
  
• Dialogue seems a bit stilted here, and a bit different. Gonna guess this is supposed to be a time skip, though it’s not as clear as it could be.
  
• Ultima IV?
  
• “Sipping his beer,” does a much better job communicating the time shift.
  
• This dialogue has a very “As you know” feel to it, which I don’t care for.
  
• In the future we will have reality distorters, and our dialogue will become even more stilted.
  
• It took going to jail for the dialogue to get good again.
  
• So the focus of this story is clearly Dean and Simon’s friendship, with all its twists and turns, but beyond that it feels a little...disjointed? More like a collection of (important) anecdotes than a unified story. The two have their friendship, support one another in the hard times, then Simon passes and the world’s a little more empty. I suppose one touchstone might be each memory serving as a key “Turning” point, but hmm…
  
• RANKING: Mid

• Opening line: Functional.
  
• Your protagonist is strangely unperturbed considering how sketchy this all is.
  
• There’s a soft sense of a creeping atmosphere here, but it’s a little too threadbare to take hold.
  
• Okay I like this bit where he’s going over his own show notes.
  
• Third time you’ve mentioned the director’s voice in particular. I’m sure this will be important.
  
• Your protagonist remaining unperturbed remains preturbing. There’s certainly something to be said for a layer of unreality in a story like this, but after having that humanizing moment with his show notes I feel like he should be at least a little bit more inquisitive and less passive considering this mysterious director is possibly the devil or someone like him. Especially since his only real vested interest in this meeting is a sounding board for his little speech. Dude’s risking a lot for a little.
  
• I scoffed at my potential paycheck.
  
• Okay this part is legitimately creepy, and I can believe it’s too late for him to do anything about it...even if he should’ve known this was coming earlier.
  
• It was all just a dream?
  
• Another Twilight Zone ending, which I might’ve liked better if it were implied the protagonist sacrificed anything else other than a moment of his time.
  
• RANKING: Mid

• Opening line: good. Short, tense, and immediate.
  
• Oh boy, a plateful of jargon. Hopefully not important. (Me From the Future: it is and it isn’t, in a good way.)
  
• You do a good job communicating your protagonist’s mental load, his stress and fading, sickly demeanor.
  
• Another Dean and Simon, what.
  
• You do a much better job than many of your peers at threading in quick flashbacks and imagined conversations.
  
• This is a real, raw moment my man.
  
• And so our protagonist escapes from the confining maw of the rat race, of meaningless lists and words that need other words to define them, throws up his consumer breakfast, and finds himself renewed in the presence of a friend (or the memory of one), nature, and warm uncertainty. It’s not a bad story, nor one that suffers from the retelling, nor even from the (welcome, actually) complexity of Dean and Simon’s relationship not being entirely positive nor nostalgic. But there’s something…missing. I can’t put my finger on it exactly - and it might just be a personal thing - but there’s something not there that feels like it needs to be.
  
• In any case, a sure hand and confident prose.
  
• RANKING: High