Eternal Return / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page Eternal Return.

AKAM80 17 Mar 2025 00:21

Thus enters into the scene my entry for Serpentine Sorting System 2025: Tracks Across the Sand. Went on longer than I thought it would when I was drafting it out, but maybe I just need to stop expecting brevity from myself.

A big thank you goes out to my critters, may their reigns last ten thousand years: UncannyClown and Din-Bidor. (And rumetzen post-mortem.)

The first person to name the JoJo reference in the piece gets absolutely nothing except a creeping sense of dread up their spine.

+ Some fun facts about this piece...

- This piece's major musical inspiration
- Sél is loosely based on a Winchester 1887, but the version without the stock.
- Got to read some papers on shotgun slug forensics for this.

---

Goodbye, Zion.

Last edited on 14 Oct 2025 03:46 by AKAM80 Show more

AKAM80 30 May 2025 23:31

As of today (5/30/2025), this is now the rewrite of Eternal Return.

The original came about while I was finishing up college with a lot of work that had to be done and I ended up spitting out something I wasn't too happy with in retrospect. But I liked the bones of the story so I decided to rework it.

Patch Notes:

• Removed the detailed gun cleaning scene (you were right UncannyClown)
• Removed the detailed slug making scene
• Replaced with Klethckt character moment
• Rewrote the ending to be more in line with original intent, and to be less "here's how to feel"
• Worsened Hashla and Klethckt's relationship
• Tried to make the action moments more action, a bit faster, a bit rougher
• +3 crosslinks
• Bunch of other small stuff. Hashla smokes now! (and, as such, so does Rees as the story progresses)
• Somehow got longer despite truncating pointless, meandering stuff. Weird.

---

Goodbye, Zion.

Last edited on 30 May 2025 23:38 by AKAM80 Show more

UncannyClown 17 Mar 2025 04:14

everything positive that i said in crit is still true, and this new ending is much improved. a touch on the nose, perhaps, but also deeply affecting. this is a really excellent piece, and one that will probably stay with me for a while.

---

poet

rumetzen 06 May 2025 03:17

This is alright. The prose is serviceable, if a little dry. I think my biggest problem is the pacing and narrative structure. Many of the scenes (the first one to jump out at me like this was the gun disassembly one) feel like they have a very flat structure - not just in the sense that not much is happening, but in the sense that you sort of "get" what's going on fairly early and it doesn't really elaborate on or diverge from that. Ideally, a scene should be structured in such a way that it's constantly building on itself, each part adding and moving on from what came before. Here, it often feels like they don't really build to much - they take an idea and narrate/develop around it, but don't do much more than convey information in sequence. The action also feels this way often, more a description of events than a violent encounter. I found the ending far too straightforward, not just in what it did but how it went out of its way to make sure the reader understood exactly what it was trying to do and how they should feel about it.

---

read YONQ