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Bubbles

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I'm Bubbles.

Currently on hiatus.

registered at: Aug 13, 2020

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aaa

Oct 30, 2023

To:Noshi

Fuck yeah mate that song absolutely slaps, the longest johns ftw

The Wayfaring Stranger

Chapter:1

Oct 30, 2023

Think this would've been a lot more telling if you had skipped all the prelude in the beginning. The idea and execution are reasonably solid, but the whole monotonous preamble at the start – preamble that gets rehashed quite often in the more dynamic second half – really lumbers the writing. You could've used that space for a different kind of character development, maybe add a bit more context to the girl and her being drawn to the god of death before actually telling us that she's obsessed with him. Buffer the Thanatos a little.

Best of luck in the competition,
Bubbles.

August is for Dreams

Chapter:1

Oct 30, 2023

Plato when the man escapes the cave be like.

Not gonna lie, I think your prose is very wasteful. You spend the first half of this just rehashing the same idea of claustration, and then the latter half trying to reinvent the word 'exuberance'. The narration comes across very slow and bloated as a result and for a flash fiction piece, it really doesn't fly properly. I think it would've served you better to focus less so on this ethereal atmosphere and more on storytelling in motion, lest you just paint pretty, albeit painfully static vistas.

Best of luck in the competition,
Bubbles.

Claw Of Darkness

Chapter:1

Oct 30, 2023

Having read three quarters of this competition, it still baffles me how many people say Eros is the god of life.

Anyway, I think it would behoove you if you had less illustrative prose. A lot of your writing is merely describing scenic movements and does very little to create atmosphere. It's very easy to just read this as a script, which I'd rather not do when I'm meant to read a story.

At the same time, I'm a little curious as to what, if any, the connection to the original story is, bar the two gods. I can glean some interpretations, such that Life and Death are always a stroke of luck away, but I'd rather have more symbolism, imagery or tonality to support that idea, rather than just having to take educated pot shots.

Best of luck in the competition,
Bubbles.

A Rigged Game

Chapter:1

Oct 30, 2023

Genuinely confused what you're trying to say with this one. Feels more like some cosmogonic poem than a piece of flash fiction. Like the imagery is all fine and cool and pretty, but I can't read anything into it more than just that. Some grounding would've helped to that end, I suppose – maybe a narrative that didn't go full music of the spheres.

The Story Of The Stars

Chapter:1

Oct 30, 2023

I think you got a bit too distracted trying to sound pretty that you overlooked the narrative goal you had in mind. A lot of this reads like an excuse to craft images and metaphors and whatever syntactic sugar you have in your storage, but all of it amounts to nothing in the end. Not even sure what the message here is, you can overcome depression if you just will yourself through your struggle?

Best of luck in the competition,
Bubbles.

Lost Dream

Chapter:1

Oct 30, 2023

Tbh, I think this is pretty vacant. Like don't get me wrong, it tells an idea all right, but it's an idea that's not really unique, or said in an interesting way, or representative of a certain mentality. It's kind of like the schoolwork definition of writing a suicide note. I think you could've tried a bit harder to insert some personality into your character; would've been all right since your style is pretty easy on the eyes and coherent.

Best of luck in the competition,
Bubbles.

I seek the light

Chapter:1

Oct 30, 2023

I think the prose is kinda wooden here, to be honest. It's pretty sure, but it's pretty in the same way plastic flowers are – they don't impress much once you touch them. The imagery is fine, but there are times when the pretentious vocabulary falls perfectly flat and takes me out of the story; sometimes keeping to simplicity is better.

The plotline itself is fine, but I think you lost me by the time you started summarising. I'm of the opinion that flash fiction should move, not necessarily fast, but move nonetheless. When you just stitch together stuff like "The days in the cabin began to change me" (paraphrased) and then go on to explain what happened, what the character learnt, it throws off the pace. It also sounds too direct, and narration should have at least *some* veil.

Best of luck in the competition,
Bubbles.

Shadows Of Man

Chapter:1

Oct 30, 2023

I think you should maybe try to split this into paragraphs rather than leaving it in one big chunk. Also, I think for a lot of the story you're just explaining to me what happened. There's very little stylistic distinction in the narration, so it all sort of falls into this monotony that drones after a while. It may help you to read some similar short stories to get the hang of prose a bit better, so that you can better convey your ideas. :)

Cases of Thanatos by Niko Rans

Chapter:1

Oct 29, 2023

I can't say I fully appreciate the ending, tbh. Like, I get that the idea is that the guy is meant to break the cycle of suffering, but I can't see how he's been inspired by her suicide note to do that. If anything, if my sister told me that the catalyst for her killing herself was me leaving her alone overseas, I would be devastated. Which the guy rightfully is! He questions the point of him moving on till the very end of the story! But then why does he make the explicit claim he won't do anything bad? Why not just leave it up to the reader to glean that from his obviously distraught mental state? This would've been perfect had the two lines, "This suffering [...]" and "I won't pass it on to others [...]" not existed. They just serve to baffle any conceivable way of reading this.

You're Not Going To Read This Anyway

Chapter:1

Oct 29, 2023

I think you really shot yourself in the foot trying to jam Thanatos into all of this. You had a very nice story about a quietly histrionic girl who sounded like she made great demands of her boyfriend; boyfriend who in turn seemed to view her as a trophy. This could've gone in many interesting ways, but instead it circles back to the same thing the original fic talked about, providing barely a spin to it. Maybe you can edit this and change some bits to depart more from the original, though I won't give you any bespoke pointers to that end.

Best of luck,
Bubbles.

White Nights

Chapter:1

Oct 28, 2023

Wasn't this meant to be like. I don't know, a story not a poem?

Alone

Chapter:1

Oct 28, 2023

Man, this ending holy shit...

Near-Life Experience

Chapter:1

Oct 28, 2023

I won't lie to you, I can't fault this for accomplishing what it set out to do. It set out to be a quick, cosy story about a girl admitting that suicide is not the answer and it successfully hit that mark. I guess, all I can say is congrats.

Eros' Embrace

Chapter:1

Oct 28, 2023

You know, I think you tried way too hard to refute YOASOBI's message and you came worse in the end. The moral here is that love's salutary force can rescue those under Thanatos's influence. But while that may be true, I'd like to point out what suicidal people get told. That your family will miss you, that your friends will be sad. They're deemed selfish for caring about their own wellbeing above that of others – here, in stark contrast the girl calls herself selfish for caring about his well-being. And you know what? I think that's just saccharine and creates what is ultimately a trite narrative. The guy realises suicide is bad, woop.

I think the guy killing himself would've reified his conviction; it would've made it apparent that some people will not be saved and that we should condemn the machinations that have let them reach this point of no return – the last stop on the midnight train, as you have so beautifully put it. You would've rejected YOASOBI's message too, by painting suicide as a cruel, delusional act which doesn't eternalise, rather opposes love in any form. And should you have wanted the main character to realise it at the end, you could've shown Thanatos leaving his side at the last second – proving himself (or herself, I guess) to be nothing more than the vacant temptation the girl correctly identified them as.

Alas, that wasn't the case here.

She Doesn't Love You Back

Chapter:1

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