I see green. The whole thing filling up the dark my head like a vase and water if it were green. Is this drowning. Fog this crevice this low place we are and what river cuts through it blind like the forest at night fumbling this thicket. I think a fire. Smoke then suffocating and my eyes. I am not myself anymore. This pain. The green smoke they carry me out the roughshod walls is it the forest is it the slope the cave and what I am are lungs. Everything on in near that I am in heaves. What I am constricts in their hands and my insides smaller an ache and burns. The sky hangs low. Shattered firmament collapsing dome. How many of us there were down here did we live like rats. Did my mother and father. Where. Francine are you there still what am I can you breathe. I get smaller they lift me up. Where. Will the house survive will the fields burn mother father please make it where are you. Whose hands. Why this tunnel. This tunnel cave the valley my home smothered. Burns but no flame is this hell. This mist the flame that does not consume. That fills my rotten skull like a vase I cannot breathe. My rotten lungs where am I why do they ache. Do I drown. Stiff limbs and I am carried away on what the rough water this flood this bile takes me away my home where do I go where am I now where do they take me. Rotten earth. Who put me here. Consumed by this flood not flames this burning gas this mist this acid trough. What was I doing here. The wailing souls left behind why me. Dragged away constricting who. How do they breathe. This elephantine demon his arms around me who. Mother Francine father who. Why does it burn. Lord where did I wrong will they drag me further why consigned like this to hell. Burning cavern constricts the jagged walls muddy floor Satan spews his green smoke I a lost soul dragged away. Lord no more please. Bodies upon bodies in this pit. That we burn but are not consumed what Lord did I do. Where have I been. My mind. Who am I. How long have I lived in the dark why all this death. Who behind these masks drag me. Lord please. My eyes my lungs my mouth my mind this green. Clambers and jolts what was my body once this dragging up. This now. Lord. There. This your light. Lord is this escape. But I am blind. Suffocation without end. Am I dead why this torment have I not escaped Lord your air please Lord the air. Please not forever Lord please.

i am a soldier man.
i love war. yippee!
the yellow gas cannot touch me,
for look, grab a hold of this tubular snout,
i breathe through it sweet air -
gulp gulp,
sip sip,
tastes like meadow-times with my doris -
and rubber-sealed goggles which let me peer out
at the glistening oystermeat flats,
instead of going, ah, my eyes,
blinded, i am blind,
no,
i am IMPERVIOUS to the yellow gas.
for they think of everything, snout,
eye-goggles, my fat yellow gloves,
and ship it over in a thousand crates,
and over there, half a mile yonder,
on a pink mound,
look! binoculars, look - at the summit,
my right leg lying bonny in the sun,
and look, follow my fat yellow finger,
to that greenslime hollow due east,
you see?
just writhing with pals,
flapping yellow hands,
and jumping to and fro in their hollow.
you want to shell it?
i say fat shells by the dozen by lunchtime,
and then lunch.
yes this is the life.

Two great submissions so far.
62 hours left.

>>25154137
You should use the /lwc/ threads to advertise these, like before. Gives a good baseline of interest and activity.

OP, lurking in his gay sex dungeon, trapped down there by his obese frame, ripped a loud one. Luckily, we all had on our gas masks and made it out fine.

My usual morning stroll by the banks of burning wood and lurking metal was being cohabitated by an all-compassing, persistent and somewhat divine in its tenacity flatulence of my own doing. Thankfully I had brought my furry mask with me to preserve all that fertile odour coming straight from the beans I so excitedly and hurriedly immerged into milk just a few hours prior. To my joy, my brothers in arms also presented their own farts, each one giving a piece of its author, but at the same time returning him a part of thet simulacra of souls we were building in the formless aether. The day was sunny and the wind was being placidly helpful in our endeavours. With "beans" earlier I meant dead nigger babies. It was a sad aspect of life watching our bifolk tranwomen xisters in arms spontaneously abort when they realized they could not carry babies as they were not real women, cutting open firstly their delusions, then their metaphorical wombs and lastly their necks as they acked themselves in the basement. Our farting congregration was being held to celebrate such happening.

Four on the board.
38 hours to go.

>>25154720
>You should use the /lwc/ threads to advertise these, like before. Gives a good baseline of interest and activity.
A request halfway through the last /lwc/ thread brought these back—this is the first one since October.
I did throw up a countdown at the end, but that’s hardly advertizing.
The dovetailing will improve (and the /lwc/ threads from before weren’t really mine to promote in).
Thanks for the input.

>>25156696
>(and the /lwc/ threads from before weren’t really mine to promote in)
That weird ban or whatever you want to call it was stupid.

Maybe this would get more engagement if it was the randomly generated wikicommons image one. Or if it's gonna be just one image for all, might need a pic with a figure in it; the truck stop one and the anime girl seemed to get a lot more submissions.

>>25159716
I think in this case it's more about it not being announced very widely/clearly in advance. /wibac/ only came up at the tail end of the last /lwc/, has no schedule, and was dead for a while before this. If the /lwc/ thread had been kept alive there may have been more eyes on it (for OP: holding onto feedback for the next month is also silly).

I'd rather see it simplified to the OP providing critique to any half-decent posts, and do that live rather than after some deadline so there's more activity and a clearer incentive conveyed to passing anons. A final popular vote seems unlikely to get any attention from passing anons either. OP picks a favourite after X days but doesn't spare critique for then. The length limit is already a more interesting restriction than the amount of time to write it, and I doubt any anon is spending a whole weekend to perfect a reply to something like this anyway.

Pictor olim fueram; nunc modo spectator sum.
>Once I had been a painter; now I am merely an observer.

Unamquamque aestatem, stipatores me trans hanc alienam patriam trahunt, et famula meam sedem per omne aedificium artium ingenuarum quod aomperire possumus volutat.
>During each summer, the bodyguards haul me across this strange country, and the girl rolls my chair about every building of the fine arts which we can find.

Etsi glans dextrum meum oculum delegit, reliquus est nimius ad planas res mirandas—cum sinerem, placet mihi quodcumque proximum statuae tangere, causa compensationis.
>Although the bullet picked off my right eye, the remaining one is more than enough to admire flat things—after getting permission, it pleases me to touch whatever’s nearest of a statue, for sake of compensation.

Illi mihi fantur illam glandem (quam—nescio quomodo—egomet contenderam) meam mentem magis meo corpore vulneravisse.
>They tell me that that bullet (which—somehow—I myself had shot) injured my mind more than my body.

“Quam pulchrum…” susurravi, coram pictura faciei pulviosae irem infringentis. “Pelle me propius, cara.”
>“How pretty…” I murmured, before a painting of a rainy face refracting a rainbow. “Push me closer, dear.”

Per lacrimas: “Scholas Abstractionisque Expressionis semper osus es!”
>Through tears: “You always hated the Schools of Abstraction and Expression!”

“Te obsecro,” famulae dico. “Bellum virum quem quondam scivisti cepit—”
>“Forgive me,” I say to the girl. “The war took the man you formerly knew—”

Subiter movebar ad novam partem tablini, locum plenum artium Americanarum Septentrionalium de Primo Mundano Bello.
>Suddenly I was being moved to a new part of the picture gallery, a place full of North American artworks about the First World War.

“Alterum bellum nobis eumdem virum dedit.”
>“Another war gave us that same man.”

Admodo alebrose, famula me contra rectangulam visionem flavorumque caesiorum salebrose posit
>Quite roughly, the girl put me across from a rectangular vista of blonds and blues.

Post aliquos punctos temporis, rem coegi: “Milites… Milites in venenato vapore…”
>After several moments of time, I gathered the thing together: “Soldiers… Soldiers in poison gas…”

Sed famula afuit; solus relictus sum.
>But the girl was not there; I was left alone.

Videns illam picturam, meum collumque mei oculi (cum vacuo) dolere inceperunt.
>Looking at that picure, my throat and my eyes (including the empty one) began to hurt.

>Volui personam mihi esse—(mihi /fuisse/?)
I wished that I had a mask—(that I /had/ had a mask?)

Nec famula nec stipatores redierunt—fortasse optimo.
>Neither the girl nor the bodyguards returned—perhaps for the best.

Inés, curator, me invenit dum tablinum claudebat
>Inés, the curator, discovered me as she was closing the picture gallery.

Post multos annos, iterum pingo.
>After many years, I am painting again.

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George looked to the sky wishing he could fly.

Trapped in a trench, he breathed dirt and rotting flesh. His comrades paced within their own perches in the cramped cage, on high alert for the next charge. The next defense. The last whistle of a shell.

Sweltering heat assaulted them, layers of insulation adding to their discomfort.

George shivered.

"Look, he's nervous," Nigel jeered.

Nigel currently held the record for longest exposure, having won the dubious award of needing to be carried out and resuscitated by the medics. He would sing about this feat surrounded by the bluebirds on base to the envy of the other men.

Ladies loved a man with scarred lungs.

George said nothing, breathing deep against pre-game jitters.

"Lay off," James said from his corner, already looking ill at the prospect of another mission being dropped on them.

"Or what?"

"Easy blokes," cut in Edmond, nibbling at an apple slice. "We've got to focus on the Huns not squabbling with each other."

James collapsed.

"Gas! Gas! Gas!"

They took up the call and around them the humans scrambled for their masks.

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~My Best 3~

1st >>25152992
Overwhelming. As one line of text, it hangs over the thread like a toxic gas cloud—though speaking it aloud is what really knocks you out. There’s a lot of repetition, but, as a soliloquy, those samey spots are great for an actor to reshuffle their affect. I would love to hear other people read this. If I could criticize, I’d say use the present participle “rotting” instead of the perfect participle “rotten,” as the former seems more immediate—“My rotten lungs” vs. “My rotting lungs.”

2nd >>25153301
I’m PERVIOUS to your humor, Anon. “Tubular snout” is a real humdinger. But wouldn’t someone that uses the word “bonny” also be using the metric system?—why “half a mile yonder?”
It’s a tall order to invert this scenario into smiles, but you nailed it.

3rd >>25154837
You’re a modern Dante.
Alighieri may have liveblogged a whole book of poetry from visiting Hell with Virgil, but (from each individual demon-denizen’s perspective) this is what most got:
>Two guys walk by
>The older one spouts one or two uncharitable lines about you
>They leave and you ever see them again
I’ll take my scrap of scorn in stride, stranger—thanks for visiting.

4th >>25155417
Yeah, it’s like you began throttling the clay as soon as you started spinning it. A little subtlety goes a long way, especially if you’re trying to craft something edgy.

N/A >>25160920
Sorry I couldn’t give you a placement since yours came in late, but I really enjoyed this—it would have been super tough deciding between “1st” or “Tied for 1st”. You do take great care over your placement and combination of words, almost like each complete thought is a nicely pruned garden stroll. Bit confused why you have these birdfolk use “loved a man” / “the other men”—I’m not saying you should go the MLP:FiM “everybirdy” route, but male birds are called “cocks,” right? Own the territory you’re in, especially when there are actual human characters involved too. Ever read “Penguin Island” by Anatole France? I have the same problem with it—there’s this neat race of penguin-humans, but the author drops the “penguin-” part a third of the way through. Quite a digression, but just saying those huMANy terms take me out of your avian atmosphere somewhat.
Wicked creative /wibac/, friend.

~Readers’ Choice~

In lieu of a Strawpoll, let’s stay in-site and just go by the number of (You)’s.
This way, even late submissions can earn points, and the thread gets bumped as long as there’s interest.

~Next /lwc/~

>[countdown to /lwc/ Apr 2026]
https://countingdownto.com/?c=6967212

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>>25161012
>Bit confused why you have these birdfolk use “loved a man” / “the other men”
It was for the purpose of playing with the reveal, same with playing around with bluebirds and the actual nurse organization. Cocks would have been better, true. I have not read Penguin Island, but I can throw it on my backlog. I do not mind being stricken from placement, I had fun and at last got to contribute.

>>25160421
>If the /lwc/ thread had been kept alive there may have been more eyes on it (for OP: holding onto feedback for the next month is also silly).
I wasn’t “holding onto feedback”—I work on Saturdays and the board was getting spammed so I put out a plan B if I didn’t catch it in time.
>I'd rather see it simplified to the OP providing critique to any half-decent posts, and do that live rather than after some deadline so there's more activity and a clearer incentive conveyed to passing anons
Yeah, I’ll do this next time, but to pile one excuse on top of another, I’ve been pretty burnt out lately, sorry.
>A final popular vote seems unlikely to get any attention from passing anons either. OP picks a favourite after X days but doesn't spare critique for then. The length limit is already a more interesting restriction than the amount of time to write it, and I doubt any anon is spending a whole weekend to perfect a reply to something like this anyway.
Hopefully what I just gave about “Readers’ Choice“ makes more sense: An unorganized hereafter, or something.
I’m grateful you’re invested enough to share these thoughts.
I’ll just say that any time a thread like this garners at least one earnest piece of original literature, and at least one earnest reader to pair with it, to me, that’s more than a success—it’s a miracle—and it wouldn’t happen without hearing earnest feedback.

>>25161019
>It was for the purpose of playing with the reveal,
I picked up what you were putting down with the whole canary thing, but I as for it being a “reveal,” I feel you tipped your hand with the attached image, the “wishing he could fly” / “perches” / “cage” all being frontloaded, and the fact I’m pretty sure I’ve read your feathery fables before—
>I had fun and at last got to contribute.
—or maybe not?
>same with playing around with bluebirds and the actual nurse organization
Dang, that’s so cool!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebirds_(Australian_nurses)
Great job with the research—I mean, yeah, I had a feeling they might have used canaries in the trenches, but you made sure.

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>>25161060
You have, life obligations have prevented me from participating. Seems to be common critique I frontload in haste. Considering my favored motif, or perhaps crutch, I hope to remember next time to write as normal and pluck every allusion to minimum or use a different image
The research was fun and probably the level of clever which might elevate a story.

>>25161060
>I work on Saturdays and the board was getting spammed so I put out a plan B if I didn’t catch it in time.
Fair enough. I mistook it for being more deliberate.

I think the reader's choice format works, and I agree about even one decent reply being worth it. There was seemingly one anon who used to post "write a story about this image" threads or whatever, or I guess probably a lot of anons with a few regulars posting those kinds of threads ; for a while someone was posting these scans of models from a womens magazine, which straddles the line between bait and genuine inspiration. No rating or critique, just whoever passed by. Not sure my point, but the ephermerality of those had some appeal to me, even if mostly they were ignored. Having the OP tell you whether something was good or not, or what worked or not, is a bonus.

I'll try to post some crit later.

>>25160920
I agree the bird thing should have been more explicit, and I think you should have done something more novel with the idea. I was reading perches/cage/sing/bluebirds as exclusively metaphorical and almost entirely missed the point. It's clumsy to me. Call me dense if you want. Anyway, the reveal and the nurse thing are at best what I'd call "cute," and don't do anything for me.

Even if it's an interesting choice of perspective, I don't think you did anything particularly interesting with it. As explicitly about birds, it doesn't actually do anything unique with the perspective, since they essentially do human things and have human thoughts. As a metaphor for the human experience there's nothing either. There's nothing especially mechnically interesting about the "they're birds" gotcha, nor does that framing really say anything novel about the experience of birds or men.

Your use of language is okay*, and you found a nice framing, but I wish you did something more with it.

*You needlessly break some lines away from paragraphs. The rhyme in the first line is distracting. Beware of being overly lyrical because it can sound corny and artificial.
>Sweltering heat assaulted them, layers of insulation adding to their discomfort
is clunky and excessive to me. I think you spoil the dialogue by all the extra stuff you add after "Lay off," since it breaks the cadence ("George said nothing" feels similarly isolated/incogruent after the paragraph above it, despite having more to do with "Look, he's nervous").

>>25160765
Presenting something in a language nobody else is going to know is essentially witholding something from the audience, in fact you're witholding the "true" version of the text while providing us with a translation that is inherently different if not inferior (and also spares you from true judgement of the work, to be cynical). (I see it IRL too and it annoys me, so you're sadly facing my bottled-up frustrations.) But, you provide the translation (albeit broken up, making it a pain to read), so I can accept it as an exercise for yourself. Anyway.

I don't get it. There's an old man who's damaged by war who regains something by being able to recover his identity via a good long look at the painting in the OP? I don't understand the bodyguards (some kind of reformed villain?). I don't understand the girl's tears (I don't imagine it's as simple as her being sad this old guy has lost himself). I don't understand why schools of art matter.

It feels full of holes in that I get the impression there are references baked into this: the first painting, the "same man," who the old man might be. Or these things are all meant to be symbolic rather than referential, but I'm drawing a blank there too. It feels like I'm being hit over the head with this stuff, so it's annoying. I can and do enjoy writing with a great deal of occlusion, but there is no catharsis or meaningful impression of a whole for me here, and instead it reads as overly obscure. You can leave things unspecified, but they have to have some poignance, and the distance between ideas/objects has to allow the reader to produce some meaningful connection of their own; anything too close but unspecified is a gap, while anything too far is uncrossable.

You make weird use of punctuation, with semicolons where you could have commas, parentheses AND an em dash, emphasis both by dashes and by slashes. I'd also say there's an awkward degree of specificity, like "Schools of Abstraction and Expression" and "North American," where the former I guess has some importance but could be rephrased to be more natural, while the latter seems irrelevant; I'm guessing this is an attempt to make the characters sound archaic. The dialogue also feels very fake and awkward*, and I'd suggest you try to use as little as possible, because not only will it spare you from the task of trying to write good dialogue, but it'll also emphasise the dialogue you do write.

I'd meant to say the same thing in the last review: ask yourself if every element of what you've written serves your greater intent behind the piece, then ask which elements are truly essential. Obviously not everything should be pared away, but all significant components should be scrutinised.

*If you blame translation for this then it's a cop-out one way or another.

>>25163464
>I don't get it. There's an old man who's damaged by war who regains something by being able to recover his identity via a good long look at the painting in the OP? I don't understand the bodyguards (some kind of reformed villain?). I don't understand the girl's tears (I don't imagine it's as simple as her being sad this old guy has lost himself). I don't understand why schools of art matter.
The further down you go with these spoilers, the more apparent it should be:
>Painter
>Important enough to have bodyguards
>Shot himself
>Aesthetic snob; hated new schools of art
>Involved in both World Wars
>Famously injured in a WWI gas attack
>Fictionally living in exile in a Spanish-speaking country—“Inéz, the curator”
>Just a little more führer down…
>Literally Hitler

>Presenting something in a language nobody else is going to know is essentially witholding something from the audience, in fact you're witholding the "true" version of the text while providing us with a translation that is inherently different if not inferior (and also spares you from true judgement of the work, to be cynical)… But, you provide the translation (albeit broken up, making it a pain to read), so I can accept it as an exercise for yourself.
Both the Latin and the English are the “true” versions—neither you nor an Ancient Roman citizen are missing out on what I want to convey,
quia id simul duabus linguis fero.
>because I’m conveying it in two languages at the same time.
Yeah, it’s an exercise on my side, and it doesn’t have to be a lesson on yours, but I love Latin so much (and am so agog at how it’s still alive on this board, of all places) that I can’t not write in it.

>The dialogue also feels very fake and awkward*, and I'd suggest you try to use as little as possible, because not only will it spare you from the task of trying to write good dialogue, but it'll also emphasise the dialogue you do write.
>*If you blame translation for this then it's a cop-out one way or another.
I’ll actually blame the time I had to write, along with the absurdity of the scenario—part of me wanted this to be rather inelegant.
My dialogue next time around will make you proud, and there’ll be a lot more of it because I like a challenge.

>ask yourself if every element of what you've written serves your greater intent behind the piece, then ask which elements are truly essential. Obviously not everything should be pared away, but all significant components should be scrutinised.
Now that you know the reveal, were any parts superfluous?
The abstract rainface-to-rainbow painting is all about a fresh start; the girl attendant is all about regressing to the past; the gas painting points to where it all went wrong (i.e. he inhaled poison, and then spent the rest of his life exhaling it).

>>25163889
I genuinely didn't want to say out loud that this was some alt-universe Hitler because that's so fucking stupid. You fall into the same problem as the other guy, where you've managed to pick an interesting framing (if we strip it back to an old man recovering from his past via the painting), yet you do nothing interesting with it and relegate it to a stupid gotcha moment. Let me also say that a failed Hitler who survives his suicide attempt does not survive much longer, so your premise uses up a lot of suspension of disbelief with all of these key elements---bodyguards, attendant, brought out and wheeled through fine arts buildings---don't make sense for a guy who, if he wasn't executed, would have been reviled for the rest of his life. Even if you come up with some way to tie all this together yourself, you're forcing the reader to go through the same process but with none of your prior justifications (leading to a "what? how?" rather than a natural understanding).
>superfluous
Yes. Beyond the bad dialogue, the statue bit and his abandonment at the end do little to form the idea (the best I can say about the latter is that it signals his recovery if it's meant to be read as his faithful Nazi attendant abandoning him due to his change of heart, except there's no outward change in him yet to have that make any sense). You've wasted all of the space you could use to make the core idea (recovering old man) emotionally impactful or interesting by having to litter hints that this is Hitler all over it. "It's Hitler but he recovers" is not a meaningful idea or intention, it's a trick.
>The abstract rainface-to-rainbow painting is all about a fresh start
Consider that you could spend a lot more time on something like this in trying to convey that idea. If I try to forget the stupid Hitler thing, the sculpture-touching has no importance, and neither does the former hatred of types of art, so instead you could fill out that space with a longer meditation on this painting that will reveal or imply more of its significance.
>the girl attendant is all about regressing to the past
Because she's young and a Nazi (presumably?), but that's weak. She tells the reader what's changed about this guy, but she herself doesn't do much that signifies what you're talking about here (besides the abandonment at the end, which I've already said is dubious). Placing him "quite roughly" in front of the painting does this somewhat (the struggle to revisit the past), but it's nothing that uniquely requires this girl to accomplish, and isn't enough to signify her symbolic importance. Either she does much more to reflect the past, or she's removed entirely so we can focus on the old guy's thoughts.

[cont]

>>25163889
>>25164612
>the gas painting points to where it all went wrong
Yes, obviously the gas attacks were a turning point for the old guy, and re-witnessing them gives him another turning point, but that has no in-story significance (it just happens and suddenly he's a new man). You've come up with this pithy line
>(i.e. he inhaled poison, and then spent the rest of his life exhaling it)
to justify the Hitler connection, but nowhere in the piece have you actually conveyed something like this. And even knowing it's Hitler, is the audience really supposed to read gas attacks as having been the source of Hitler as a villain? The horrors of war would have influenced him, but the gas is an incredibly weak thing to single out without further elaboration on the point you're making. You don't bother to make a metaphor out of it inside of the piece itself.

Whenever you put something in writing, its inclusion is telling the reader that it has some importance. But you need to think about how it might be important and do something to convey that. You have ideas behind these things, but you stop short of making proper use of them. And, again, you picked a stupid subject that overtakes any interesting ideas behind the piece.

>>25164612
>some alt-universe Hitler because that's so fucking stupid.
Reading that one user’s wannabe-edgy submission made me just send it. I’m not going for pathos or profundity here; just a creative interpretation.
>Let me also say that a failed Hitler who survives his suicide attempt does not survive much longer…would have been reviled for the rest of his life.
All the post-war Nazis hiding in Argentina (real and fictional) changed their names.
>the statue bit and his abandonment at the end do little to form the idea (the best I can say about the latter is that it signals his recovery if it's meant to be read as his faithful Nazi attendant abandoning him due to his change of heart, except there's no outward change in him yet to have that make any sense).
The statue bit hints that his nature has intrinsically changed—the guy who couldn’t wait to put his hands on other peoples’ lands is now asking permission to touch things.
The girl and the bodyguards leave because they are fed up waiting for him to be evil again.
>and neither does the former hatred of types of art,
Naturalism (his school) is alll about reality—how the laws of nature (e.g. the laws of causality) bend things to be how they have to be.
His reform via gun-to-the-head surgery is a miracle, one that breaks with everything that makes sense.
An all-time snob and elitist, his change in art-taste illustrates how he’s a new person now, and that he wants to embrace his new reality.
>but it's nothing that uniquely requires this girl to accomplish, and isn't enough to signify her symbolic importance.
She’s literally the next generation of Nazism and she and the bodyguards abandon him.
>Yes, obviously the gas attacks were a turning point for the old guy, and re-witnessing them gives him another turning point, but that has no in-story significance (it just happens and suddenly he's a new man).
He only starts painting again (picking up where he left off) after meeting Inéz. The realization over the gas attack is an internal one, and it’s up to the reader to decide if it means anything.
>And even knowing it's Hitler, is the audience really supposed to read gas attacks as having been the source of Hitler as a villain?
Terribly reductive, I know, but it’s a short, short story.

I appreciate all your criticism, but I wrote my /wibac/ pretty quickly and I’m pretty satisfied with what I was able to include, even if it was more gotchas than pathos.

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>>25161012
honored by the 2nd place, will look out for the next thread

>>25163455
That's interesting you thought I needed to be more explicit, compared to feedback of laying it on too thick. I can work with cute, and at least semi interesting. It was like you say rather plain with the concept which had shifted as I was writing from being a training exercise to actually being in the trenches as is. I assure you the rhyme was unintentional, but the line of sweltering is meant to go towards the idea of feathers. After all I've written here and elsewhere dialogue continues to be an issue, both formatting and content which is likely the reason for breaking lines where I should not. Thank you for the feedback. I think I'd have made efforts to make it more with the perspective because of their job and extended the signs of chemical warfare on the flock. Like imagine no man's land from a perspective of a cage. Here's hoping I'll be able to improve next I can participate.

>>25165135
Have you ever read James Tate? An era of his later writings had a really nice tone and cadence of dialogue, and dealt with settings you could call superficially domestic or mundane, but with (at least) a feeling of mystery and wonder. The Ghost Soldiers and Return to the city of the white donkey have it, and he has lots of readings online; see Long Term Memory here:
https://www.jamestate.net/readings
(notice that for all its superficial silliness and the people laughing that the ending is cathartic and emotive)
and this was my introduction to James Tate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPJTXOMHTk4
>I assure you the rhyme was unintentional
You should read your writing out loud to yourself.
>the line of sweltering is meant to go towards the idea of feathers
That wasn't at all apparent to me, even after having it explained. Step back a bit from your writing and ask whether a) the reader has a way to understand your intentions clearly, or b) you're willing to allow an ambiguity or different reading (and does that ambiguity aid the piece). Here insulation has no a priori connection to feathers, so on its own it accomplishes nothing for the piece.

>>25164777
The stuff with the bodyguards, attendant, sculpture-touching, Argentina is all stuff I can "get" now that you've explained it, but the connections are generally belaboured and only evident with explanation, or are so faint that they're invisible (like this naturalism+surgery thing you're saying, or the permission to touch the sculpture which does little to really emphasise his meekness or the improtance of it). None of them are used to say much because you're guarding the purpose of the writing like a secret, and they either ought to be given more depth, thrown out, or used more explicitly. E.g., the bodyguards don't add anything important that the girl can't, so simplify the piece to focus on the girl's involvement and meaning. Depth isn't measured by the density of allusions---they need to be put to good use.
>Argentina
Yes, here we are in Argentina's collection of the Group of Seven. The more detail and reality you try to add, the more you prime the reader to question its cohesion.
>it’s up to the reader to decide if it means anything
It very clearly means something, but the point of it is a metaphor you haven't actually shared with the reader in any capacity, even implicitly. All the reader has is that he has an epiphany because a painting reminded him of being gassed, and those two things on their own are way too distant for the reader to draw a meaningful idea between them.
>Reading that one user’s wannabe-edgy submission made me just send it. I’m not going for pathos or profundity here; just a creative interpretation.
>even if it was more gotchas than pathos
It's tonally sentimental, which makes the whole gotcha thing weirder.
>it’s a short, short story
1547/3000 in English.

>>25153301
I found this one a bit confusing because I think you go too far undercutting the idea with the tone, but otherwise it's a nice (clearly deliberate) juxtaposition, and I think you build up the idea well. Maybe it's just the "yippee"/"gulp gulp"/"sip sip" that goes too far for me. Slightly repetitive in terms of the subject (starting with then coming back around to the snout and goggles), which makes me think it could be tightened up by paring away and rearranging, but otherwise you vary the lines/sounds nicely. You don't fall for the trap of drawly, lolling lyricism and keep the feeling of a bold speech. The second- and third-last lines feel kind of out of place but read nicely. Nice stuff.