I really loved this piece. The juxtaposition of the negative things that can be associated with summer to the importance of relishing the moment (a theme that's familiar and poignant in the summer months) worked really well. Personally, I felt a connection to the idea that making memories has to be the priority over all the other considerations that come up at this time of year. It reminds me of my own life when, come summer, my wife and kids are all out of school and I still have to work. It can be easy to get lost in the work and treat the summer like any other time of year, but as this poem points out, it's important to make time for the other stuff.

For the the couplet "as the skies cast / shadows over July" felt a little out of place in the positivity of the second half of the poem. I might be reading a little too much into it, but the poem seemed to start darker and more depressed, and then move into a more positive note, so ending on what felt like another down note gave me a bit of a "whiplash" feeling. I really like the imagery, but wonder if maybe it should come earlier in the poem, near the top where the other emotions and descriptions match a little better?

Overall, this was a really great poem. I thought you did a good job with it!

I really enjoyed this well-organized "get to know you" item and reading through it. I was surprised that you and I are just about the same age... maybe that's because you seem so young and vibrant in your posts?

I had totally forgotten about the time you spent working at the slaughterhouse! Wasn't that during the last Game of Thrones, or thereabout? Man, I remember all those crazy blog posts that you wrote, detailing the ins and outs of a business that I honestly never wanted nor expected to learn the ins and outs of!

I'm definitely with you on the loving food and having a sweet tooth, though. I'm currently trying to lose the thirty extra pounds those interests in my life have cost me , and Italian food (especially pasta and pizza) are up there for me too. I love Chinese food, and I'm with you on the veggies. I have reluctantly come to accept that they are necessarily evils.

Traveling is one of my passions too and I can also heartily recommend Portland (except for me it's the Oregon one, not the Maine one). San Francisco has lost a lot of its luster over the past several years as it struggles to recover from the pandemic. Chicago and Denver are on my short list of domestic cities to visit!

Karate was a sport I was involved with when I was younger too! I've always loved tennis but never played seriously, and folk dancing is definitely not something that I can say I've ever attempted.

Um, I understand the preferring to buy books thing but... you hate libraries? I definitely understand the difficulty returning the books; I'm very fortunate that the public libraries around me don't actually charge late fees (unless it's an in-demand newer book). They'll just automatically extend the loan until you return it. I've had a book for like three months that I'm slowly making my way through...

I can't find fault with any of your movie and actor choices; all excellent!

Huskies are on my short list of favorite dog breeds as well. I'm also partial to Australian Shepherds and, although I'd never want one for myself, I can't help but smile whenever I see a pug, a French bulldog, or a Pomeranian. Also, koalas are adorable!

I don't really have any suggestions for improvement. In a piece like this where it's nonfiction and someone is sharing about their life, I think it'd be pretty condescending to have "suggestions" about things that they could or should change (except the library thing... we gotta work on that... ). I think it was great getting to know you a little better. There was some stuff that I already knew, but a lot of stuff that I didn't!

Overall, this was a fun item to read. Even though the bio blocks in our portfolios have a ton of options to fill out, those kinds of things can always feel a little formulaic. I love the fact that you elaborated on a lot of areas here, and really took the time to detail your likes, dislikes, and opinions. Readers will definitely walk away feeling like they've gotten to know you better. Thanks for sharing!

I love the worldbuilding in this piece. The idea of a door-to-door salesman that isn't offput by vampires, a vampire married to a weretiger... everything was really creative and entertaining. Even the show being called "Bloody Moonlight" lent to a feeling that this was a fully realized world that the characters are living in, which is really difficult to do in such a short piece of writing. Really nice work!

Due to the brevity of the piece, some of the things felt a little glossed over, such as the fact that Joseph just randomly ordered something from a door-to-door salesman without exchanging any form of payment. And the fact that the salesman seemed a little unengaged from his task when door-to-door sales is famously about trying to connect with a potential customer and getting them on the hook to buy something.

The ending of the story also felt a little abrupt. Joseph just goes back to what he's doing after ordering something from a door-to-door salesman, which made the whole thing feel a little more like a vignette rather than a story with a beginning, middle, and end.

Overall, I think there's a ton of potential with the world you've created, and the characters. I feel like there's a little room for improvement in terms of the execution and fleshing things out a bit, but you have a strong foundation here. Nice work!

I really enjoyed the imagery in this piece. You did a great job of creating lines that felt really vibrant and active, and it made the read flow really well. I particularly liked the internal rhyme and meter of the first four lines; they really set the cadence and style for the piece.

Some of the later lines in the poem didn't quite follow the same pace, cadence, and structure as the earlier four. For example, in the first four lines, the rhyming ones are lines two and four... but in the next four lines, the rhyming lines are one and three. In the next four lines, there are no rhymes at all, but the first line of the next four lines rhymes with the second line. It can be difficult to start an item with a rigid structure and then move to an unstructured ending because the reader expects the form to follow throughout. I'd recommend conforming the whole poem to the same structure, removing the structure entirely, or starting with the less structured part and move into the more structured part at the end, so that whatever format you choose feels deliberate rather than like a lack of focus or intention.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this item. The first four lines were so powerful, and I think there's a lot of potential in this piece. Nice job!

Great opening line. I really like the way that it's active and shocking, and immediately pulls the reader into the story.

I also particularly liked the narrative detail, explaining things like "it was the kind of joke that you have to pretend is funny because it's not." Those sort of narrative asides really worked well to convey the tone and detail of the piece.

The actual events of the story as they unfold are a bit confusing. Even rereading it a few times, I'm still not entirely sure what happened. It seems like a guy who looked like Max wasn't amused by the fake holdup and beat him senseless, but the cops were there so quickly, it almost seemed like he (inadvertently) tried to pull that prank on someone he didn't realize was a cop?

Also, the extent of his injuries (hospitalization, jaw wired shut, etc.) seem too excessive for all of his friends and family to be laughing about. It would be one thing if it was a stupid prank that caused an inconvenience, but this was a stupid prank that actually caused traumatic physical injury; it doesn't seem like the kind of thing people would be surrounding his hospital bed and laughing over.

Overall, I really enjoyed the story and think there's a tone of potential here. The style of writing and the general premise are a great combo and, with a little work on the execution, this could be a fantastic flash fiction story. You're off to a great start!

As I finish up the doors with a "review two of every case color" challenge, I might as well get right to it and review the Keeper of the Realm and the hub that spawned this entire crazy experience, right?

This is an incredible activity. It's most impressive to me for its scope, as it tries to tackle activities across multiple forums with many moving parts. Ravens with point modifiers, different kinds of writing and reviewing required for different tasks... Door tasks, Citadel tasks... it's a staggering undertaking, and you do an excellent job keeping the train on the tracks (as much as humanly possible, at least ).

While the participation isn't quite what it was in previous years, the fact remains that this isn't just an activity, it's a site-wide event that people look forward to and put their lives on hold to compete in. There really is nothing else like it on the site.

My main criticism of the activity is that there's a lot of redundancy (e.g. do reviews for Doors, and Westeros, and Endless Night, and King's Landing) to the point where it all feels a little muddled and like we're all just rushing to do as much as possible as fast as possible. That kind of dynamic would lend itself well to an activity that runs, oh, say, two weeks , but the idea of maximizing output volume definitely starts to wear thin during a month-long activity where we're essentially doing the same thing across multiple forums.

There's other criticism I have is that the points don't always make sense. And while gamesmanship and strategy is certainly part of the activity, it's also apparent when some elements of the game aren't working as a result... for example, King's Landing as a forum is essentially dead because Battles don't accrue points, and the Pirate's Cove treasures are all a ton of work when an equal amount of work elsewhere results in more points. I say this knowing that it would be in immense amount of work, but calibrating the point values more carefully across the various forums would help ensure there's participation everywhere, rather than people camping out at a few forums that offer the best return on investment.

Suggestions aside, this is still a wonderful activity and one that I get excited about every time it comes around again (even knowing how difficult it was the last time! ). You've managed to create something truly special here on Writing.com and I think a lot of us are really grateful for it!

It's been a long time since I've ventured into the world of interactives, but thanks to Game of Thrones I'm reminded of how fun they can be... you know, when they're not filled with stories of growing, shrinking, unbirthing, and vore.

I think an airport is a perfect setting for an interactive, because there are so many different options for where you can go and what you can do. It's really exciting to see an interactive used in such a creative way (location-based) that then opens up for other possibilities. And I think that's born out by the fact that there are nearly 250 chapters to this thing!

The only suggestion I have... which is largely a moot point because the interactive story is clearly popular as-is... would be to next time consider creating more options to start with, so there are even more branching possibilities. For example, your first chapter starts with four possibilities of where to go, but you could exponentially increase the possibilities of an interactive by starting more generic and drilling down from there. For example, if the first installment were "where in the airport are you going" and the options were Arrivals, Departures, Security, Parking Garage... and then in the Departures branch you asked where they're going and offering "domestic, international - Europe & Asia, international - Africa & Australia, international - The Americas" ... then you'd have, again, exponentially more options to provide for subsequent participants in the interactive.

Overall, this was a delightful interactive, and a reminder of how enjoyable they can be, given the right subject matter.

I guess it's only fitting that, for this years' Game of Thrones, I review an item from an older iteration of Game of Thrones! I can't believe this was from ten years ago at this point! I only have vague recollections of my time with House Lannister, as I'm pretty sure I was a Targaryen after that, and currently count myself among the Free Folk. I guess my independent streak just keeps broadening!

I really like the fact that you have tributes to the individual players all in one place. It's really fun to read all the salient details about someone from a decade ago, although I am saddened to see how many accounts are no longer here!

Given the sheer amount of information in this static item, I think it might be beneficial use a bit of WritingML to better organize the page. I would suggest using quotes or indents to offset from the left-hand margin, or even utilizing things like dropnotes or popnotes to contain the information so that the piece feels a little better organized.

Overall, this was a wonderful walk down memory lane. It's hard to believe that so much time has passed and how long this Game of Thrones has had an impact on the site. It really is amazing. Thanks for sharing!

Taking a little stroll through some older items in people's portfolios during this Game of Thrones challenge. I reviewed "Writing.Com 101"  from The StoryMistress and I was reminiscing about that summer when a few of us were working hard on getting this P15 update out for the site. I still have such fond memories of that time, when the site was going through a major update with lots of planned changes, and we were excitedly trying to get everything ready for the unveiling. And the secret servers! Oh the secret servers where we got to beta test!

I am a little sad that the site hasn't had a major revamp like that one, although I certainly understand why... the effort that went into this one, and now there are kids and school and all the other stuff that life throws at us. I hope that one day we have a chance to work on something like P15 again; it did so much for excitement and participation around the site.

P15 is definitely one of my favorite memories from my time on the site. I think of it fondly every so often, and am reminded of all the hard work you've put into developing this site and giving us all a home online. Thanks for all that you do for Writing.com!

I can't believe I've never reviewed this item! I certainly spent enough time helping edit it over the years...

Every time I look through 101, I'm reminded of that summer that a few of us were just absolutely cranking out articles trying to get it read for the P15 site launch. Each of us writing up dozens of articles and how-tos about different areas of the site; and I still visit it often to remind myself how to do something when a new member asks a question that I haven't answered in a while.

Of all the things created on this site, 101 remains one of the most impressive. It's an incredible repository of information and really helped give this site a central place to reference all of the different things that Writing.com can do. Thanks for making this resource, and for continuing to give us all an online place to call home.

No suggestions for improvement; you've done a great job of keeping it updated through the years!

Overall, this is an excellent resource for the site, and one that I'm really proud of having been able to contribute to. Keep up the good work and everything that you do for the site! It's greatly appreciated by all of us!

I'm reviewing this old forum as part of a Game of Thrones activity to review "inactive forums."

Although I didn't often have the opportunity to enter, I really enjoyed the fact that someone was running a screenwriting contest on Writing.com. I always found it difficult, with my own screenwriting group, to maintain interest (there aren't that many screenwriters here, apparently, and the technical tools available on the site make script formats quite difficult), but I was always impressed by the way you were able to run this contest for a number of rounds despite the challenges.

The one suggestion I have for this contest, should you ever choose to bring it back again, is some of the feedback you noted that you received from others, which is that I think the prompts could have been a little stronger. It's always hard to tell what the real cause is when a contest doesn't gain traction (is it something about the contest itself, just a lack of interest on the site, etc.), but it seems that a couple of people specifically cited the prompts as being a reason why they didn't participate. I would definitely recommend rethinking the prompts if you were ever to consider reopening this contest again.

It was fun to revisit this old contest and remember a time when screenwriting was (a bit) more of a focus for some of us on Writing.com. Good work!

This was a fun story, and I loved the twist at the end. I'm a huge fan of modern twists on ancient mythology, and this was a good one. I also like how simple and straightforward the narrative was.

One thing that stood out to me was the expository mention of the hundred thousand dollars. While I think that information is useful to the narrative, it feels kind of stuck in there arbitrarily and I can't help but think there might be a better place for it.

Also, I think some additional context for why the Medusa's head was desired by Alan and Zach's employer would be helpful. It's such a unique item, I was hoping for a little more backstory to explain why they were after what they're after, and why it seemed, based on Perseus' comments at the end, that this wasn't the first time that someone had tried to steal the item. If that's the case, what's the story there?

Overall, this was a fun story and I thought you did a good job with it. But whenever a story comes in significantly under the word count of the contest it was created for (in this case, yours was 307 words in a contest with a maximum of 1500 words), I can't help but think that some of that extra space could have been utilized to round out the story a little. Other than that, though, this was a fun read. Nice work!