Jan 16, 2025
Bang.
That was sooper-dooper neato. I'm sorry I didn't comment more along the way. Been super busy with both the contest and work. Plus, I think it's only fair to allow others a chance to geek out over the stuff you put in your stories.
But looking back, there are lots of things I wished I had gushed over. Lots of stuff from Sue's arc, naturally, but not exclusively. The extremely large paragraph asking about every anime trope in existence absolutely had me howling on the floor. I didn't even need the "anime was a mistake" punchline.
I appreciated the harder-hitting (relatively) political commentary in this story. Some of the chapters were very uncomfortable to read, but in a good way.
And the meta commentary on the prompt itself was a bold move. Your message is absolutely correct. Technology can't solve humans, the real harmonic future is what we make of it, etc. A bunch of entries this year take a similar position that a harmonic future can't be delivered by technology, but they almost all take the approach that the world seems harmonic at first, but the reality behind the scenes is much darker. And I Feel Fine isn't afraid to be up front about the darker aspects of this society, but it's not an evil dystopia like in other entries.
Honestly, this is the only entry I've read with a theme that's *about* the prompt rather than just implicitly rejecting it. I'm curious how that's going to go down with with the judges. Best of luck with the judging, by the way, and congrats on finishing!
