(I know all stories are getting a comment for the contest, but I'll comment another one. I just really wanted to comment this one now. After I saw it, I couldn't pass it up.)
Your intelligence seeps through in your writing. You and I have very different ways of writing here and you use the larger words that I try to avoid, but they work. You don't use them for the sake of using them, you use them because they are the right words to use.
It was positively Papal, a blinding cacophony of something I didn't quite believe in. When I read this, I was like 'no, she's not talking about Papal like the Pope' and then I read the rest of the line and was happy to discover that I actually knew something. (You're so smart. I had to Google words in the comment you left me.) And the phrase 'blinding cacophony' just rolls off the tongue--brain?--so well. It's fun to say.
I love the positive thinking/hippie bullshit thing. It's so cynical and harsh and the layout gives this story a harsh feeling, like course sand. This is set in the future, I can tell (the line about California). And so I get the image of things being reverted to deserts and abandoned skyscrapers and just trying to get by, like an end-of-the-world sort of thing.
I'm trying to figure out what 'woofs' means. I like that you don't tell us and I know it's slang. I get a feeling from it, that it's one group of people, but I'm trying to figure out the characteristics of that group of people and why they're called such. I like that you don't tell us because it would destroy the tone. Woofs are werewolves. You introduced it so well without telling us and just incorporating it into the story instead of treating the reader like a moron. Wonderful. And then vampires? Is he a vampire? Not sure.
(I'm reading narrator as Ryan. Not sure if I'm supposed to, but there's a Brendon so the narrator is Ryan to me.)
I love how you tied in the 'last safe place' thing. It's so much more morbid in yours. Not a safe place, but a safer place. Safe for them, safer than where else they could be. It's an interesting twist. Others who haven't read my story won't make the connection, but I do and I appreciate it, how it's still there but completely different, how you've made it your own. (This is the first I've read of the rewrites.)
This reminds me of V for Vendetta a bit, people using religion to destroy that which they think is marring their perfect world. And the way he (narrator, Ryan, whatever) talks about the cage fights and stuff, you sort of see the point at first. But then you think that if everyone hates them and they're in hiding, what choice do they have? And why would we expect 'them' to be inherently good or inherently evil when humans aren't?
It's just sort of something that makes you think. Because it's not an unreasonable stretch of the imagination to think that a hundred years from now (or less) we'll be killing people for our own prejudiced reason through religion. Hell, we're doing that now. And that makes it more scary. We can relate.
Your intelligence seeps through in your writing. You and I have very different ways of writing here and you use the larger words that I try to avoid, but they work. You don't use them for the sake of using them, you use them because they are the right words to use.
It was positively Papal, a blinding cacophony of something I didn't quite believe in.
When I read this, I was like 'no, she's not talking about Papal like the Pope' and then I read the rest of the line and was happy to discover that I actually knew something. (You're so smart. I had to Google words in the comment you left me.) And the phrase 'blinding cacophony' just rolls off the tongue--brain?--so well. It's fun to say.
I love the positive thinking/hippie bullshit thing. It's so cynical and harsh and the layout gives this story a harsh feeling, like course sand. This is set in the future, I can tell (the line about California). And so I get the image of things being reverted to deserts and abandoned skyscrapers and just trying to get by, like an end-of-the-world sort of thing.
I'm trying to figure out what 'woofs' means. I like that you don't tell us and I know it's slang. I get a feeling from it, that it's one group of people, but I'm trying to figure out the characteristics of that group of people and why they're called such. I like that you don't tell us because it would destroy the tone. Woofs are werewolves. You introduced it so well without telling us and just incorporating it into the story instead of treating the reader like a moron. Wonderful. And then vampires? Is he a vampire? Not sure.
(I'm reading narrator as Ryan. Not sure if I'm supposed to, but there's a Brendon so the narrator is Ryan to me.)
I love how you tied in the 'last safe place' thing. It's so much more morbid in yours. Not a safe place, but a safer place. Safe for them, safer than where else they could be. It's an interesting twist. Others who haven't read my story won't make the connection, but I do and I appreciate it, how it's still there but completely different, how you've made it your own. (This is the first I've read of the rewrites.)
This reminds me of V for Vendetta a bit, people using religion to destroy that which they think is marring their perfect world. And the way he (narrator, Ryan, whatever) talks about the cage fights and stuff, you sort of see the point at first. But then you think that if everyone hates them and they're in hiding, what choice do they have? And why would we expect 'them' to be inherently good or inherently evil when humans aren't?
It's just sort of something that makes you think. Because it's not an unreasonable stretch of the imagination to think that a hundred years from now (or less) we'll be killing people for our own prejudiced reason through religion. Hell, we're doing that now. And that makes it more scary. We can relate.