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I am glad that you enjoyed it!

Re: A cupcake made of leaves? by ArclundArclund, 19 Mar 2024 04:05

Hands to the sky cryin', "Why, oh why?"
'Cause I need to watch things die
From a distance
Vicariously, I live while the whole world dies




Thanks to Rosie, Stygian Blue, and Zipzipskins for reviewing this piece. Here we go.
by Din-BidorDin-Bidor, 19 Mar 2024 03:10

No surprise to anyone, but this wonderous pairing has produced an amazing work of absolutely standard-setting art. Well done you two, kudos all around. +1, big thumbs.
—Oli


Fires rage just below the surface of the ice.

by NotAnOligarchNotAnOligarch, 19 Mar 2024 02:17

Someday you’ll break cadence. Someday you’ll stand straight. God, how you’ll stand straight.

Instantaneous and visceral. Like it's all really happening, and all at once.

by Dr BierreDr Bierre, 19 Mar 2024 01:46

Gatoni you got on me for chonky paragraphs but look who has the last laugh now (jk)

A winding piece with emotion baked into every line. Concise but dense (which is how concise pieces should be, but aren't always), it felt like memory itself - where over longer time scales, events however they're experienced in whatever order meld together, leaving only moments, important and random, refracted endlessly. Both your writing styles melded seamlessly here in the best way - I could not tell who wrote what, and given the nature of the piece, that's perfect. Loved it.

-Gavin

by Gawain777Gawain777, 19 Mar 2024 01:35

I love how this plays with the way the rich treat environmentalism, the desire to preserve but the inability to resist from injecting yourself into the narrative. Very cool stranger design!

by Snapdragon133Snapdragon133, 18 Mar 2024 20:23

Very interesting! I like the characterization of the Magpies a lot, from their desires overtaking an objective sense of value to their residence in a place not seemingly their own. The way the Serpents Hand operatives work is also fun to read

by Snapdragon133Snapdragon133, 18 Mar 2024 20:20

Hmmmm your comment says upvoted but my inbox is empty hmmmm /lh

Seriously tho, you were an amazing help and my writing here is inspired by you. I'm so proud to have been a part of this piece, this contest, and moreover to have it happen a year after my first piece.

Points at Stygian Blue THIS is your doing!!! You inspiration!!!

Re: A Sundae by MaddGasserGatonMaddGasserGaton, 18 Mar 2024 19:47

I'm on the line between upvoting and downvoting, but I ultimately decided to upvote here. I like the language a lot, which is what eventually won me over. However, I do feel like this story might end up being deleted anyhow because of the presentation - this reads like a poem to me and I think you should treat it as such by giving it a more proper form - and its length - what do you want to say about the scene you've provided here? I suspect you have more that you could say, beautifully even

by Snapdragon133Snapdragon133, 18 Mar 2024 19:17

The thing that gets me about this story is that the third section could have been posted on its own, so it fascinates me that you decided to pair it with other stories, presenting us with multiple facets of fishing. It can be meditative, terrifying, even comedic. It really displays this love you have with the craft. Once again some fantastic world-building coming out of the world of Root and Loam, just the line about how they use every part of the fish is so expansive

She breathed in deeply, one last time, and started growing the crystals again.

Yes!

The line on that harpoon, all tangledy up in the kelp and tugged around by the current, it’ll go taught, and then those up on the boat they’ll know, right away, that something’s been snared, and they’ll start yanking and yanking on all the other lines, and every other mouse will come rushing back to the surface, they’ll take a big gulp of air, find your line, and swim after you like their lives depend on it.

Love it

“Rodents,” said Orpek, “Were not made for fishing.”

LOVE IT

by Snapdragon133Snapdragon133, 18 Mar 2024 19:03

I thought I disliked it, when you asked me for crit, but then I read a little closer and it was delightful. It particularly picks up around the middle section and then accelerates at spine-snapping pace towards and through to the finish, where we have an achingly horizontal stretch at mach three coming straight out of freefall. Wonderful, lemon juice droplets trapped in ice cubes the shape of spearheads and faces. And excellent, for this is in iced tea. Milk tea, perhaps, for the ship is a splendorous thing and the jaws snapping off and the skin greying and withering in the depths of a place of horrors from a Sea of magic and mists of uncertainty — a fantastic thing. This work inspires, creates, is worth so much. It is so much more than it seems on first sight, and the ending has come a long way since I last saw it. Well done, and enjoy the ice cream on the side.

-Styg


What is life if not the contrast between what has been and what will become?

Bubble Tea by Stygian BlueStygian Blue, 18 Mar 2024 19:01

What a delicious amalgam! A miraculous delicatessen! A serendipitous display of violence and history and emotion all wrapped into one! Fisticuffs with blades — under cherry blooms, perhaps, and done so well in a back alley! With backstories and motivations and humour, good sharp-edged wit and humour, jokingly told in an unserious, unplayful, unboring — ah, the word is excited way, excited — jumping, bobbing, unerring, undefeated, unstoppable — and bringing about the taste of fresh lemon on banana on ice cream so cold and creamy on the hottest of days in July, sitting out on the asphalt in the sun and dappled shade of the mango tree miraculously surviving so many winters it is old enough to bear fruit, now, and does so on its own: bare little lemon-shaped things so sweet and ripened by the sun. Sweet, invigourating, not a drop spilled nor word wasted. Well done! It was my pleasure to crit. Enjoyed, both of you!

-Styg


What is life if not the contrast between what has been and what will become?

A Sundae by Stygian BlueStygian Blue, 18 Mar 2024 17:39

Combocon piece for the prompts Hex + Master! Special thanks to Vish for helping me axe some cheesy lines, Styg & Akam for helping me improve the ending significantly from what it was, and a dear friend elsewhere for reminding me of the issue of food and logistics on long voyages.

Possibly (?) also set in the same world as my other work Anagnorisis. Haven't decided yet.

by Gawain777Gawain777, 18 Mar 2024 17:38

Honestly I really liked this, as one of the first entries I ever read. +1. Not much else to say, a short sweet story about growing up.

by Stealth000Stealth000, 18 Mar 2024 17:22
by MaddGasserGatonMaddGasserGaton, 18 Mar 2024 17:18

It is a delicious bite held gently between the teeth, but no more than that. No bigger or smaller — only able to be felt between the first incisors, because it would become lost like a crumb between the molars. What a sadness that thought brings, because this crumb is divine in flavour. More, please! But one that is a full meal, or close to it. Nutrient density can only pack down so much, as poetry does, before it collapses in on itself into a mush of caloric slurry, as this threatens to be. Wonderful and tasty, but is it worth eating, small as it is, when I can barely find it on my plate? Nevertheless, it was tasty, though I did not find much beyond it. It will likely not stick in my mind, and what a shame that is, because it would have been sweet ans savoury, should it have been just a little longer, explored a single more thought, been a hair's breadth wider in the span of life. Suggestion: more! Give me the dish. This appetizer-to-an-appetizer has roiled my appetite into boiling.

-Styg


What is life if not the contrast between what has been and what will become?

Good! More. by Stygian BlueStygian Blue, 18 Mar 2024 17:10

“You can’t say you don’t want no trouble when just the other day you were hopping six lanes across the interstate—your feet squelching, lanced, pierced past the rubber soles by broken Nehi bottles and sparrow’s bones. You can't say you didn't see it all coming. You saw it in the guys by the payphone banks. The lady eyeing the arrivals board, fiddling with the release under a compact mirror. The baggage handler’s face back at Heathrow, eyes swallowed by an rain slicker. The kids hotboxing the parking structure elevator. Mashing all the buttons as the emergency stop failed to engage. Those bundles falling out from under their arm, saran wrap and duct tape splitting open. Coating the floor with stardust, spiraling down…down. After the fact they'll tell you that you’re a geezer. An poser. That you lacked the frequency. The stamina. The gall. "So what?" they say. "So what if you got away this one time?" They must have forgot you were young, too, then, still spiked, fed up with adrenaline and verbal uppercuts and the concentrated stuff from the miniature bottles of Chivas Regal and Cutty Sark that the Pan American attendant passed in a shawl from first class ten minutes before touchdown.”


Image source(s): (1), (2, compass rose medallion)

Cassette tape, side A. 'I Like It' by Debarge. I must have caught this over the teacher's Bose speaker while trying to examine an plaster-of-paris fibula in preparation for an ill-fated university anthropology midterm, and now throughout this whole thing, I've found myself falling in love with it again and again.

This is our Combocon2024 collab entry, taking on our interpretation on the prompts 'heat' and 'hideaway'. I suppose it's kinda an running gag at this point, but it's indeed been quite an long (short) one coming up the road. I would like to first and foremost thank my coauthor MaddGasserGatonMaddGasserGaton for her roaring spirit and dedication in the process of fleshing out the midsection of the piece and all its concepts within to completion, as well as an off-site friend named Samson who served as an impromptu advisor and accountability buddy, who, in the course of an hour's work of talk by phone, encouraged me to reach out. Additional kudos go to Stygian BlueStygian Blue, Dr BierreDr Bierre, AKAM80AKAM80, and zipzipskinszipzipskins for generously taking time out of their day to give it a critique. I hope you guys enjoy.

Excellent! I love to hear. Little note: I genuinely appreciate the lack of the 'worthless prose' you mentioned — while I believe there is no sucvh true thing as worthless prose, for it all serves some function, prose to fill time and nothing more would have made me slowly draw back into the ocean, away from the shore upon which this work washed. Looting is a fair thing — I liked the change in behaviour in the room with so much food, the change in emotions. Perhaps next time, memories of other places they looted could fill the space in a meaningful way? But nevertheless, this is an excellent work. Be not discouraged by the perceived lack! I noticed it, but it was splendid. It can also be seen as a cue to look for the rest of the work, which hides under the floorboards and whispers red whispers of chalk into the airspace of room above. Enjoy! This was fulfilling. Your kitchenwork is spectacular as always.

-Styg


What is life if not the contrast between what has been and what will become?

by Stygian BlueStygian Blue, 18 Mar 2024 17:05

I did not like this one very much. The prose was plain and the plot plainer. I had hoped that this work would describe itself, at a certain point, with the prose changing to follow the form of the psychological state of the protagonist (a la Flowers for Algernon), but it did not. I had hoped that this work would show a deepening understanding of what it means to get better at writing (though that would be predictable — but if done well, it would be enjoyed), but it did not. I had hoped that this work would show humility, but it did not. It tastes like a joy for AI, at certain points, which razorblades my muscles like you wouldn't know. Where is the juice? Where is the substance? I am hungry and this work did not feed — somehow, I am hungrier afterwards than when I started.

Don't take this as immediate and wholehearted hate — I write my criticism because I am curious as to what made this work tick. All works have a heart, and this one seems to have an arrhythmia. Tell me more. I am no doctor, but context makes the shell of a body in which the organs of Work lie. I would love for you to write again. I wish to know the story.

-Styg


What is life if not the contrast between what has been and what will become?

WONDERFUL. BOMBASTIC. SPLENDOROUS.

It becomes less and less like a newspaper post over time, but I loved the Fear and Loathing breathless tone and language here — talking about religion, drugs, conversion, and immediate reversal in the span of two short paragraphs and in-world minutes is quite the feat. It all felt surreal and immediately personal, like it was written right then and more than that was written from the perspective of their own actions as they happened. Things jump like jumping beans: they can be followed (and are!) but are not expected — it is a surprise each time, every second unique, a kaleidoscope of time, and I am so very thrilled to be part of it. It is delicious. It is fondant cake. It is a cinnamon roll (my very favourite thing). And I am so very ravenous. Beautiful work!! I am pleased.

Oh, and a teleporting koala with a folding chair? The best thing ever made. What a turnaround. What a show.

-Styg


What is life if not the contrast between what has been and what will become?

by Stygian BlueStygian Blue, 18 Mar 2024 16:49
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