Can I give feedback before Mike brings out one of his terrible challenges? The race is on.
Crunched- I really loved the line "Not when I began." It's dark, revealing, gave me a few chills. There were a lot of strong moments like that line throughout, another stand out in my mind was when she tossed the bird to see if it would fly. The moment I started to frown was actually after the "began" line. The conversation turned typical and expected for me, and i felt her grasp of her true nature in this tale was too quick and casual.
Azih- The AI was a bit wordy for me, but I appreciate that. In actuality, it did sound like a robot to me. I think the big problem for me was that the story happened at the wrong moment. I would have loved to see those first periods as she talked to herself like a crazy person, the only other interaction a robot. Or for their conversation to have continued and us actually seeing the AI degradation into malfunction. I did love that second to last paragraph, and really wished I could have actually 'seen' it.
DangerByrnes- They're pretty chummy for a guy Teller refers to as Mr. Cross. Also, why is Teller(a scientist conducting an experiment) wearing a suit? Not saying he can't just don't know why? The Dialogue in the middle got a little muddled, don't know why? There were a lot of little things I liked in this, mainly the ending. I really liked the symbolism of throwing the prothetic arm in the dream and waking up with it outside. Though, I don't know what the purpose of the experiments are. Is it to make a better arm?
Karen- Neat, I'd like to read more of Micheal and Victor, but I really didn't see enough of them for me to really care about them drifting. Though, a trip to Pompei does sound cool.
Mike M: In my mind, you won the secondary here. Honestly, you could have gotten rid of your dialogue tags here and I think I would still be able to follow the flow of conversation, that's how distinctive their voices were. The only thing that didn't particularly grab me was that end. Not sure what, just something about it. I think it's because it zooms out so much when I started to care about the close view of the characters.
Sethista: I appreciate the idea at play here, but I really don't care about her life story. We're in space! Tell me were you were when worm hole technology was invented! Especially killing for me since there was some neat ideas like a space gold rush. I would rather hear about that then her kissing boys.
Ward: Well this got weird pretty quickly and only got weirder. Felt like an X-files spoof in a good way. The banter was a fun for me, but I felt it went on a little much in the beginning.
Tangent: On one hand, the sons reaction to bubbles was a little extreme, on the other, teenagers are dumb and get embarrassed over anything. This is the kind of magic I love where it does something kind of abstract, like give ideas. Also, while the son is dumb, I do like his character and can appreciate the desire to become a dental surgeon as opposed to the family business.
Frexifox- Huh this was neat and tied all thematically together in a fun way. It was a good twist, and you did a bunch of neat little touches to keep it consistent. Though the beginning felt slow as you kind of circled around the same information in dialgoue over and over.
Cyan- So little aside, the story I submitted wasn't the story I was telling you to think "positive" The first one was basically this only with more whimsical lake spirits and more drowning.
Ashes- starts off great and interesting, but as Marcus climbs down it loses steam pretty quickly. You abandon the great dynamic of their interaction via phone calls, waiting for the other to mess up, in favor of a ridiculous plot. I wouldn't mind it so much, but Tim seemed way too calm and calculating(in espionage) to just be a judge, and Marcus seemed to put way too much work into this to just be 'some guy'
Mu Cephei- No idea what was going on with the Everything? Which didn't really matter to me, because I was way more interested in the family that dragged their kids into a life long scientific research. What dicks. Also, what kind of family lets an outburst like that slide and goes back to diner like nothing?
