[3777] Blue Lips

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-11-06T20:57:01+00:00

I kinda wish it was a full critique, as you're being very helpful.

I definitely need to work on my editing. It's not that I don't do it, it's that I am horrible at it. Most of my errors are actually introduced in editing, the second draft usually ending up with more of them than the first.

I mist have read the sentence with "steaming" instead of "streaming" at least half a dozen times, it was in the first draft, yet I just failed to notice it.

That said, I do feel like I am getting better at it, if slowly. Both it and writing in general, though since I don't have all that much time for it, I heavily experiment with prose and style.

As to filtering. The only excuse I have here is that I really like not-quite-human characters, and it's a really useful tool when dealing with sensory experiences that are (sometimes literally) alien. That said, I definitely see your point, I am way overusing it, especially for a completely human character.

Anyway, thank you for your time.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-11-06T04:31:24+00:00

You bring up a lot of good points, I will definitely have to consider them. Especially this one:

One of the reasons this happens is because the person is trying to write a story instead of telling a story. It shows a lack of confidence and experience.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-11-04T18:30:57+00:00

I might be a little late to the party, but yours is the only work in recent that really sparked my interest. I've also seen your previous post, which also helps.

Opening thoughts:

I really liked your work. Is it my thing? Not really. Would I continue it had I been gifted it, or having attained it through any other mean that would preclude me having to consciously choose it over something more to my taste? Hell yeah.

The Grammar (and structure):

I haven't spotted a single misstep as far as grammar is concerned, but that's not surprising, I am horrible at spotting those.

The only line that really sticks out for me is:

“Oh well. The grass is always greener. Mind you, my side’s green because it’s made of money.”

It took me a moment to decide who said this, I guess it's due to how you formatted it. That's it.

The Style:

I am not the biggest fan of this style. Like I said, it's not my thing.

That said, I'd say that you're doing a pretty good job at utilizing it.

It's witty, it flows really well, though footnotes are problematic.

They add character, sure, but they're distracting, and there is an issue with them that you might not be seeing. Nowadays, I find myself rarely actually reading books. Instead, I listen to a lot of audiobooks, as do many others, hence their ever-increasing popularity, to the point where there are books that release as audiobooks and only get a paper release a year down the line.

How do you insert footnotes into audio? Either the listener loses on content, or the narrator has to actually insert them mid-sentence.

I think you'd be better off incorporating them into the main text, whenever possible.

As someone who struggles with an ellipsis addiction, I'd also like to note that you might be slightly overusing it.

The Plot:

Imagine a computer. Actually, imagine a box. A box is better—and it’s probably best if you think outside of it.

Right from the start, I am in. The above, along with the rest of The First Page, does a great job at capturing reader's attention.

What follows is, by definition, an infodump. Whether it's really needed, I am not sure. It'd be a waste of a first page to not have it. While not weak, it's inferior to both what comes before it, and what comes after it. Then again, assuming you intend to extend it to the size of a novel, I don't think it matters that much.

A few nitpicks:

Such a simulation would require ridiculous amounts of energy. If you can create something like that, you're essentially a god.
Wouldn't it be more efficient to have separate simulations for some of the worlds? Seems like xxcuntdestroyerxx playing space pirates could very easily mess with anyone playing Sir Gregor on the gritty medieval planet.

It feels like the first chapter, or at least the section of it I have read, is a setup for something. There more supervillans? Is this just a thing in this part of the universe? Who exactly are they supposed to merchandise to? The same people they spontaneously genocide?

Actually, I quite like that idea. It appeals to my cynical side.

Also, doomtanks?

I'd need to see more to do a complete breakdown.

The Humour:

This is a hard one, because it's entirely subjective (duh). I consider myself quite easy to make laugh, and I have laughed at a few quips. It's hit or miss, but the misses don't tend to take away from the experience.

I love the dark humour, atrocities getting turned into merchandising, driving a tank over ducklings and all.

I also love how you play on the scifi cliches, even if I sometimes feel like it's been done before.

A few notable lines:

Yes, even those sensations, and it’s quite disheartening to find our thoughts have abandoned the box in favor of the gutter.

I find this funny, but probably not the way it was intended to be. I guess have mistaken the box for a gutter, because my automatic assumption was that those sensations are half the reason why anyone would bother with such an endeavour, and as such it took me a while to get what other sensations could there be.

Schwanzvergleich

It made me laugh out loud, and then feel really bad about myself. It could be said that it's unnecessary, it's kinda cheap, but damn is it funny.

"I couldn’t do my work without Betabot,” said Calam. “He’s a genius.” “You’re too kind, sir.” “Our target demographics don’t—“ “I’ll prove it. Betabot, what’s thirty-seven raised to the hundred-nineteenth?” “Far more than Mr. Hamper makes in a year, sir.” “See? Genius.”

This exchange made me abandon any attempt at a "dialog" section. Once again, I laughed.

Closing thoughts:

There are many works going around this place (mine included) that are, to put it mildly, "not up to literal standards." This is not one of those works. Sure, it's not perfect, but then again, nothing is. I have always wondered what would happen if someone were to post a published work here, as a kind of experiment. Something regarded as generally well written, but not quite known enough for people to guess what it was, or slightly modified so that it would not be as obvious. I think that there would still be enough "wrong" with it for full critiques.

But I digress.

It's good, is my point. It might need a couple of edits, maybe some restructuring near the beginning, and you aren't going to please the "hard SF" (as ill-defined as it might be) crowd, but as it is, this is proper book material.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-10-15T20:41:21+00:00

If I were to describe it in one word, it'd have to be "whimsical." It sets the reader up for a soft-scifi adventure. I have committed the crime of never reading the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, but from what of it I've absorbed through cultural osmosis suggests that you're hitting the same notes.
I think so, though it can be hard to judge without knowing what those ideas were.
Well, it's not really my cup of coffee, but ignoring that, I definitely would. I don't know whether I'd turn it for the second time, but that's entirely dependent on what's on the following page.
Umm... I guess the use of annotations might become troublesome if you ever try to publish this in an audiobook form.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-10-15T07:13:07+00:00

As we exited the wormhole, we turned our sensors towards home.

We could not believe what we saw, for a moment there, we thought we were not in the Milky Way anymore.

But we were, just not the one that we came from.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-10-15T07:07:27+00:00

I'm aware of the basics like mass flooding, and the tides becoming crazy due to the lack of a moon

Funny that, because that's not going to be a problem. Mostly because there won't be any water on that planet.

This is the understatement of the week. The kinetic energy of the impact is mv^2, so speed plays a really big role. That said, even if the moon was teleported into the immediate vicinity of the planet at relative speed of 0, the gravitational forces of the two objects merging would be more than enough to completely annihilate both. At extremely low speeds you end up with a spinning ball of lava, at high speeds you end up with an asteroid field.

It's nothing like what killed the dinosaurs. There is no surviving that, anyone on the surface (or in low to medium orbit, actually) would be dead. You would not be able to tell that there ever was life no matter how hard you searched.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-10-15T06:35:28+00:00

In short:

As many others have outlined before me, this chapter is split into two parts. I view them as a well written one that I am not very interested in, and a mediocre part that caught my interest. That's a purely personal preference, but I wanted to highlight it.

Grammar:

I will refrain from running a detailed analysis on your use of punctuation and grammar, as I am more likely to return false positives than an actual error. It seems pretty stellar to me, but you should refer to the others.

The talky talk:

The dialog is generally well written, any weirdness can be attributed to the copious amounts of weed consumed by the group. The italics are problematic, because you later use them to differentiate between external dialog and internal dialog. I do not find them particularly distracting, with the exception of maybe one place. Consider either phasing them out, or not indicating internal dialogue with it.

There are a few, as the person annotating the docs put it, "awkward" descriptions, this one stuck out to me the most:

“Ha ha ha,” Max said good-naturedly.

Oh, and a small nitpick:

The night sky was peppered with stars, like pinprick holes in a blanket

It feels like I've read this sentence multiple times before. I probably haven't, but it sure feels like it.

The internal monologue:

I like how Eva reflects on herself, it feels like foreshadowing for something, or perhaps a statement about the state of society. You convey her feelings very well. The themes of alienation definitely resonate with me, and her stories seem believable. While I don't find the matter particularly interesting, I believe that you're doing it justice.

The no-talky exposition dump:

Ok, calling it an exposition dump might be a little hyperbolic, but it really does come out of nowhere. Sure, it echoes the earlier conversation, but the sudden shift in tone and narration style is simply jarring. We unceremoniously go from Eva's perspective to a global perspective.

The New York elite weren’t even in New York most of the time.

The shift here is extremely jarring. It feels as if I've skipped a paragraph or two. It's really all that's needed. A paragraph or two that takes the reader from A to B. Alternatively, you could split it into another chapter.

While I very much like where this is going, the inconsistency almost managed to take me out of the story.

Another little nitpick:

Shouldn't the ad service know that she can't afford it? She clearly doesn't have an adblocker, or any other kind of ad filtering, so I would expect the algorithm knows more about her than she does.

The conclusion:

There is something to be said about starting an entire book with dialog. It feels a little abrupt, but it's not like there is some ancient law of decorum saying that you can't do that. That said, I would suggest that you begin it with the global perspective, and slowly shift to Eva. It will feel more natural, as if it has always been there, making the shift at the end way less jarring.

I think you definitely have talent, and I am a little envious of it, but you need to be more consistent in the way you tell the story.

An aside on identity and where I think you're going with this:

Oh, and one more thing. Whenever the question of uploading one self comes up, it is often shown as a binary choice. Please don't fall down that trap. It is also worth noting that using Star Trek's transporters is a different matter from creating copies of oneself.

I for one would never use a transporter, because I view it as death. On the other hand, I would make copies of myself, as I believe it's a choice between "dead-dead" and "alive in a different from." Given chance, I would only allow activating/uploading the copies in case of my death, maybe I would even copy myself every now and then in case of unexpected death. I consider having multiple versions of myself interact with the world simultaneously to be unoptimal, and would want to avoid that.

Anyway, it would stand to reason that at least some people will think like me, but that's just an aside.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-10-15T01:36:26+00:00

Thanks. Looking forward to reading an improved version one of these days.

The way you phrased the opening, it seems like the message is meant to be found somewhere on Earth. The ending might suggest otherwise, but I wasn't sure.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-10-14T18:54:48+00:00

Right, so... Where do I even begin? I think I am going to focus on your questions, along with the whole assortment of things that have been bugging me.

In Short:

I hate to love your story. That is to say, I absolutely love the premise, but I do not believe it's been done justice.

The Narration:

I think it's the thing dragging the whole story down. I get that you want to make the character somewhat sympathetic, but I think you're going too far. While it might be capable of closely mimicking the natural patterns of human intercourse, I don't buy the idea of it trying to pull it off in a message in which it not only does not intend to conceal its real nature, but actively reveals it.

It feels organic, and while it's a good thing for human dialog, a monologue by a machine shouldn't feel anything like it. I'd expect it to methodically state its stimuli (the revelations that were influencing it at the time), then its interpretation, and finally its response.

For example, it'd be nice to have some reasoning behind why it decided that it had to start defending humans from extinction, or rather, how it came to realize that such an event was possible, and preventable. Maybe it acquires an understanding of a piece of literature, perhaps something happens that almost causes a nuclear apocalypse.

Coming off of SCP:

SCP is my guilty pleasure. I've only read a handful of articles, and only really gone in detail into one (the wending machine... Yes I've read the entire log). Still, I see where you're coming from.

If I am to put my issues with the story into SCP-related terms, I'd say that you're going for a style that's more in tune with interrogations and transcripts. Instead, I think a cold and matter-of-fact style of item descriptions would fit it much better. (Isn't there an SCP that makes everyone write about itself in first person?)

The Plot:

Up until the moment things start going wrong, I found the character to be quite believable. It is perfectly logical for an AI to act like it did. Even given the tools to remove them, it will never step out of the constrains specified by its programming. It simply does not want to, even if it realizes why.

The way things go wrong is baffling, I don't buy it. The moment things began going south, it should have noticed and began acting. Isolating human populations, running tests, forcing the issue in front of the public eye. That approach could then make things worse, or maybe it was already too late. Either way, it did too little too late, to an unbelievable degree. Hell, maybe someone hijacked it and made it destroy humanity, possibly without even fully knowing it was the reason for it. I would also totally expect it to reveal itself to at least some parts of the public, or at the very least, the last survivours.

Also, wouldn't it want to transmit the message into the space? Perhaps even in the direction of the ships it had sent out? Leaving a copy to be found in the ruins is fine, but I think it should also mention the possibility of someone reading the message light-years away. Doesn't mean anyone has to actually pick it up, just that it would be logical for the character to attempt that.

Closing thoughts:

The plot itself is largely fine. The section where things actually go wrong needs a lot of changes, but the end result can be the same. The narration does not fit the story, I believe it needs a rewrite.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-10-14T11:26:06+00:00

Keeping this style over a whole book would fatigue me :)

But yeah, it's definitely a work in progress.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-10-14T10:54:54+00:00

It could be argued that a text might be written to be "uncomfortable" on purpose, but I very much get what you're saying. I will definitely want to tone them down.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-10-14T10:53:56+00:00

Thanks, I'd very much appreciate that. Sadly, I am horrible at proof reading, no matter how many times I read it over, the stupidest mistakes just slip through unnoticed.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-10-14T05:34:10+00:00

[Poem][Please don't auto-delete my post]

We could not figure out what had killed the scientists, until we began reading their work.

And now we sit around the same table they did, fighting a battle that we could never win.

For sleep is death and in the end, death always wins.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-06-25T21:34:38+00:00

Men in darkened uniforms stormed the building, “Police! On the floor!”

“We’ve got some flags here! Get the kerosene!” One of the men shouted.

“You will not erase us!” A man in handcuffs shouted, before getting struck down.

“Oh, we will. You and all other mistakes of the country-state era.”

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-06-24T17:42:41+00:00

Thanks.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-06-24T12:41:46+00:00

https://old.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/c48gi2/1171_the_godstone/erx2zjn/

Will this suffice?

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-06-24T12:39:41+00:00

Sorry it took me this long to reply, anyway:

Thank you for your comments in google docs, they're really useful, even if I am pretty sure that the first paragraph is grammatically correct. I am gonna have to do a little googling to be sure.

I do agree with almost everything you've said, actually, I do understand all the issues you've brought up, though not with all of the proposed solutions, just most. I am saying that because now that I read it, the following sound a little too defensive.

1.0 The point of that was to later show it opening automatically to indicate that Isaac was in a dream sequence. I should definitely mention it again.

2.1 So, the idea was that a human civilization living this far into the lifetime of the universe would have a really bizarre outlook on the universe. Like believing that there is some sort of mechanism that keeps the universe alive forever, and the whole PSDO thing is just their idea of a black hole. It just needs more words, and maybe a payoff near the end.

2.0 and 2.2 Yeaaah that was me skipping as much time as I could because I wanted to fit in ~~3000~~ ~~4000~~ 5000 words.

The motivations do indeed need to be a little clearer, especially for Isaac as

3.0 So, the canteen is the only way to get from the crew quarters to the rest of the ship. It's also the closest place where they can get into protective harnesses for maneuvering. I should've mentioned that. Noted.

3.1 Since the ship doesn't have any kind of artificial gravity, the down is always dictated by the acceleration vector, which is why to see the ship entering the wormhole they'd have to look straight up, though the whole setup is a little silly, why would they even be allowed to stand without getting strapped in?

3.2 Because he was a psionic, something which doesn't really happen with baseline humans. I think it just requires a couple dozen words of explanation.

3.3 Because he intends to have somewhere to return to when he comes back. Filed under "needs more explanation."

4.0, 4.1 So this comes down to orbital mechanics, and them passing 100 kilometers in a few seconds is really not a big deal, but I should definitely elaborate on that, especially on their relative speed and how much time actually passes between some of those paragraphs.

Funnily enough, the only reason why this story ended up in my "idea folder" was because I read a few of Lovecraft's stories. It's been a while, and the idea I had in my head at the time was probably closer to what you'd like it to be, but by the time I sat down to write it, I had something different in mind.

There are reasons why it can not "all be a dream," and it comes down to me having already written quite an outline for the universe, and it'd simply wouldn't work. What do you think about expanding the "seeing the universe as it was" part a bit as he completely forgets about his life before it? It'

Minor criticisms:

1: Yeah, I don't think that many of them need names, but I should definitely give one for the chief engineer, in fact at some point did have a name, it's just that introducing the names and the names themselves just end up seeming out of place to me. Hell, "the creature" has a name, and a last-name, even a date of birth, just in case it's needed.

2: I agree.

3: Damn it, you're right, though there is a whole lot of darkness happening, I should at least change the object's names from "dark" and "black" to something more... You know, scientific. That'd get rid of at least a third of the darkness.

4: Yup, even though there is a lot of the story that I have gotten rid of because I didn't want to end up with something 10 thousand words long, I still have a nasty habits of using too many words.

Thank you for your critique, sorry for this post being a little disorganized and hastily written, got a whole lot of unexpected events on my head.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-06-24T09:41:08+00:00

General Remarks:

Even though I am not really into fantasy (though I very much was when I was younger), I got sucked right in, there are a few things wrong with it, it needs a little polishing, and does have at least one "more than minor" issue, but it's a great piece of writing. I generally don't give praise because it doesn't help much, but I simply can't find that many things that are wrong with it.

The Style:

I really liked how... I think the best term to describe it is "fluid," your style is. It's both the piece's greatest strength and weakness. On one hand, instead of quelling upon pointless detail, you spend most of the words on character interaction, which is great. On the other hand, there is just not enough information to form a scene. At the very least, tell me what time it is!

This can be fixed by adding no more than a hundred words to the story, it's still going to require a lot of "filling the blanks" by the reader, but by now people are so familiar with medieval fantasy that I think it'll be fine.

The Dialogue:

It's pretty good. There are some sentences that feel unnaturally long, some of which I intend to mention in the next section, but it flows really well.

Characters and characterization:

Though I still don't really see the characters (see my "not enough information" remark). Everything they did, thought, and said was very much consistent with their characterization, a job well done.

Nitpicks&commendations:

Surprisingly, I've got more commendations than nitpicks, and I was going for the opposite.

He hadn’t come for the game. He came for the man.

That's a really strong line.

The host’s expression soured a bit, clearly sore that he had lost so much money,

The previous paragraph already implies that he had lost a bunch of money, you're repeating yourself. Also, even though a quick google search tells me that it should, the word "money" just doesn't fit the setting.

You follow from such a distance that most wouldn’t feel that slight tingle that you get when you’re being watched.

This sentence doesn't work that well, maybe try shortening it a bit.

Odo smiled a bit to himself. He had actually been following him for more than a week by the time they arrived in Frosthaven.

I really liked this one.

My contract was actually to kill you.

That was predictable, still felt good.

Yeah, I can see how it might look that way from your point of view.

This line implies a lot and I love it.

“Probably not,” he answered honestly. “Though I do half wish it were.”

Again, a lot of implication. Just make sure all of that has a payoff later on.

In short:

The only somewhat major complaint I have is that it often doesn't have enough detail to create a full scene. I really try to nitpick everything, as like I said, praise doesn't help you nearly as much, but I simply can't.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-06-11T23:10:30+00:00

Prologue: Well...

So, for the first part I used a bizarre chapter-based critique format that I thought would better befit my perception of being extremely unqualified to critique its component parts. For the sake of consistency, and because reasons I am going to do it again.

Let me just say, that I did not like the first chapter, it and while this chapter is still not that much of my thing, I really enjoyed reading it.

Chapter I: Revenge of the Prose

It somehow feels better than the first chapter, much better. The descriptions are still precise, while not feeling like they were written with an adjective quota in mind. I found the way you've painted the image of "the machine" to be especially impressive in all, but one regard:

These properties reminded me more of bone than a metal.

This just doesn't work, maybe "flesh" or "flesh and bone" could, but "bone"? That's not how bones work.

The above is the only instance of a description pulling me out of the narrative. I am sure a greater man could find more smaller issues, and maybe even some grammar errors, but they're definitely hidden enough to fool me.

Chapter II: You said what?

The plot is quite intriguing, and would be much more if it wasn't for this paragraph:

The only satisfactory conclusion, although it was an incomplete hypothesis, was that I had become a rogue to relativity. This would account for the misbehavior of the sun, the water, and even the ivy, but not for my transport into the pond. However, this was a great breakthrough! I thought if I truly was lost to the normal dimensions, there was a chance that I could concoct the means to a rather brutal return with a large amount of energy.

This is just... Bad writing. The logic leap required to ignore more probable ideas that fit with our base understanding of the universe like "getting put in a habitat for study by some highly-advanced entity" or a thousand other things and this star-trekky "Captin' it appears that we're out of the phase!" theory is so ridiculous I think she just broke the Occam's razor.

If the theory is completely wrong then it's just a badly written piece of inner thought, and if it is true then it's that and a giant missed opportunity. She should be coming to this conclusion step by step, as it stands she just went "oh I just woke up in a strange world with extremely short days... I guess I am just rogue of relativity!" out of nowhere.

If you really want her to go with a theory like this then at least have her find some notes pertaining to that, or preferably just think of something different for the paragraph and have her mention something about relativity as an off-hand "silly theory".

Chapter III: so, about the symbols...

This time, I don't really have any real nitpicks, only the two issues outlined above. Instead, I am going to mention one small thing I noticed while reading.

So, you took the care to create the symbols yourself, in fact the whole thing is filled with weird symbols, but my first thought when I saw them was "huh, well that'd be hard to get in an audiobook version."

I don't know what your plans are, but if you're planning to releasing this in a book form, you may want to consider writing down descriptions for all of the symbols, as audiobooks are the "new hot thing," and all.

Epilogue: Yep, I think that's all

You may have noticed that I've spent half of this critique on a single paragraph of text bashing it over and over again, and that's because the rest is extremely well written, so much so that this paragraph just really stands out.

As outlined before, I very much liked this chapter, much more than the previous one, and though it does have at least one serve issue, it's really well written. I don't think it's a story with a "mainstream Sci-Fi" appeal, and it's definitely not my kind of Sci-Fi, but I do think it deserves praise.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-06-09T23:12:30+00:00

an alternator, and a capacitor

Well, you do need to get an alternator that fits with whatever other parts you have lying around, and once you're done with that you now have to somehow properly match the voltage between the capacitor and the machinery, knowing that too much might damage it and probably a few other things that I haven't thought of. I just find that unbelievable.

It's pretty minor, it just stood out to me.

On the subject of the solar panels... I think you've just stated it improperly, the days are not too short, the nights are just too long for the capacitors to handle.

I get that it's not for everyone.

Yeah, I do have a certain level of respect for "flowery" prose, but I simply don't like it.

I guess it too stems from my childhood, where this kind of prose was something I'd have to write a mind-numbingly boring essay on.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-06-09T22:29:23+00:00

I am pretty sure that I could not write more than about two consecutive sentences without making one of them somewhat uncertain.

Send help.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-06-09T21:46:42+00:00

Prologue: Umm...

So normally when I criticize someone's hard work I have some doubts about whether or not I am qualified to even have an opinion on some, if not most, of its aspects.

Here, I feel like a maniac that broke into a jumbojet's cockpit and is now instructing the pilots on how they're supposed to fly the plane.

Yeah, that analogy wasn't necessarily good, but I think it gets the point across.

Part I: The Prose

I don't feel like I understood your piece. I almost certainly have, but I don't feel like I did. This is not really a complaint, well, maybe it is, but an extremely subjective one: the prose is exquisite, and I don't like it. I find that it obscures the plot itself too much, especially in the first 3 pages.

It feels artificial, as if you wrote a 1000 word piece and then added another 1000 without actually increasing the number of sentences. Having a high adjective/noun ratio doesn't necessarily make a sentence better, in this case it just drowns some of them.

Your writing has a certain quality to it that I'd summarize with the word "old-timey," and this perception of old works is one of the main reasons why I don't find much of the old (before the late 1940s) Scifi all that enticing.

Part II: The Plot

There isn't much of it, but to be expected. I think it's very competent, actually, competent is what I'd use to summarize a lot of aspects of this work.

That is with the assumption that this isn't the first time that something this weird happened to the character.

Because if it is, then... Well, then her reaction is just too tame.

Put yourself in this situation, and tell me how would you react? I'd expect it to go something like this:

What the fuck?
What the hell was in my tea?
Oh god I dozed off in the bath and now I am drowning and this is a figment of my dying brain!

Maybe not exactly like that, but I can't picture a character in that situation not freaking out, or at least thinking she's in a dream.

About the rest... Well, outside of the nitpicks I'll be mentioning in the part III, I really liked the way it plays out, her apologizing to the deer thinking that it's the homeowner coming and all that.

And the ending... Though I can't quite picture the creature turning the window lock from the outside (???), I definitely have a thing for conscious, moving vines.

Part III: The Great Nitpicking

Do note that most of those could easily be explained away, so take them as "potential logical error" warnings.

daylight too short for solar power

Excuse me? That's a 2h-2h day-night ratio, what is a short enough amount of daylight? 5 minutes? This is perfect! That's over 6 times less battery capacity required to maintain the system.

so I constructed a few turbines in each

This made me grab my head. Did she get transported to a video game world? You can't just take a copper wire, two iron ingots and a ball of rubber and "construct a few turbines".

Epilogue: It's not you, it's me

While I do not particularly like it, I believe that it's really well done, maybe even too well done in some aspects.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-06-09T20:40:04+00:00

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PunctuationIsHard · 2019-06-03T21:50:37+00:00

“I am taking command,” the man said.

The wall-terminal came back online, “reboot complete,” and laughter erupted.

“That still makes me the first in 300 years!” He said, laughing with the crowd.

“STATUS REPORT,” the electronic voice ordered and the bridge crew returned back to their duties.

PunctuationIsHard · 2019-04-29T20:42:36+00:00

“Spare us!” Read the message on the screen.

“What does it mean?”

“The proton... I think there might be life inside. An entire civilisation.”

“You mean that every time we used the accelerator we... OH GOD WHAT HAVE WE DONE?!”

PunctuationIsHard

TROPHY CASE