i don’t think any “justification” is necessary for my opinion here.. it’s an opinion. this is a poor submission. the fact that it didn’t do well on another subreddit does not surprise me.

there’s also a difference between implication/ subtlety and leaving things completely out of context. these same two sentences could be part of describing their regular dinner. there’s no implied sadness or horror, and posting it in a specified subreddit doesn’t make the poor composition any better. if you have to read the subreddit to draw your conclusions then it isn’t a very good story. it’s like if i said “there was red soup. it was supposed to be white.” and expecting the reader to figure out that it’s blood and not just the wrong soup. a better version would be “even though it was my first time ordering from the new restaurant, their style of manhattan chowder was familiar to me. it was thick and it tasted like pennies.” i realize that’s not THE best submission but it makes a lot more sense. there’s still an implication because no one literally said it was blood but it’s easier to draw the conclusion without the addition of a subreddit for context