Immediately, I like the choice to have the story in a Times New Roman font. Since so many pieces here use the default font, this one comes off as the "serious" choice.
The idea of this short story is nice. It's a basic "kid meets a monster" tale, but in the beginning, it honestly intrigued me.
However, while I have no complaints about the story's length, my major issue is that everything is directly given to us. The "show, don't tell" rule doesn't exist here.
For example:
When she woke up, she saw a kind of monster but he didn't look terrifying so she didn't scare. She asked him: What happened, where am I? And he said: "Relax, you fell down in my home."
That not only has a formatting issue that I'll elaborate on later, but it leaves little room for the imagination. It's like play directions if they told us every little move the characters made.
My take on this same moment:
Upon seeing the creature before her, Emily frantically rubbed her eyes. It still stared her down, its chest expanding like a balloon before deflating. Now that she confirmed she was still in reality, the girl observed her surroundings.
"What happened? Where even am I?"
The voice was deep and slow. "You fell. And this is my home."
It didn't need to be said that Emily wasn't scared here. A reader could infer it because of her tame reactions.
Furthermore, the story's format could've been easier to read. Perhaps switching to a double-spaced mode would have helped, or you could've had a line gap between each paragraph.
The bigger issue is how different characters have lines within the same paragraph. This leads to confusion, especially since some dialogue lacks quotation marks to begin with. You can compare the two examples above to understand what I'm talking about with this formatting discussion.
The story ultimately left me disappointed. Your concept is fine enough, and I think the overall story beats are fine for a short tale. There just needed to be more showing and less directly telling. That would've made for a more engaging narrative. I give this a 2 out of 5.
Also, you have uploaded the same exact story three times. You should delete two of them, as they lack any noticeable differences. Or perhaps you can convert one of them into a superior revision. I feel you could achieve that if you studied a bit more on cutting out dry, direct explanations. Hopefully, you will be a superior writer from now.
Not much I can say about a short Haiku poem. I liked the descriptive imagery within the short syllable count. It gives a good little visual story. On the one hand, some might imagine it as a beautiful ice crystal being melted of sorts. But I viewed it in a more literal sense, as in frozen fingers crawling up a window then melting because of heat.
My favourite line is "silvery fingers", mainly because it sounds so [intentionally] chilling. I've never heard silvery used in this context before, but I like it. It makes perfect sense as blue/grey/silver are the common ice colours you'd think of.
There's not much to say. I enjoyed this short read, and it effectively got the point across of the cultural differences between a more liberal NYC and conservative southern city. That twist got me as well. At first I was like, "Would they call a girl a faggot in school?" But now it makes sense. Along with the teacher's intense staring at her.
You did a good job making Samantha sympathetic as well, mainly because she at least attempted to enter the school with a positive attitude.
As someone who occasionally gets nervous about getting older, I appreciate this positive message. It is important to focus on the present rather than fearing getting old and dying because that will only weigh you down in the end.
I like the little imagery of the birthday candles towards the end of this poem. But my favourite set of stanzas has to be: Old isn't the number
of flames on some cake.
It's all that you can do
while you are awake.
This is almost trippy and horrifying, being stuck in an endless loop of not being able to remember something. Yet all the while, being reminded that you did something to trigger the forgetfulness, that you want to try to remember, but can't because that event causes you to forget it. Just typing that messed with my brain. I like this short read.
Overall, I like this story. While it's short, the descriptive language and constant escalation keep me engaged throughout. While minor, I appreciate the little beginning where you show the process of getting into the theatre. It just makes it easier to insert myself into the protagonist's eyes and picture the scene.
I don't mind the story cutting off before any extensive foot worship happens, as it leaves the rest up to the imagination. And you saved yourself the trouble of potentially writing an underwhelming follow-up to that nice build-up.
The biggest negative is the formatting, as too many paragraphs are globbed together. If you're not going to but gaps between paragraphs, that's fine; but they need to be indented at the very least. And if indenting is too tedious, then a gap between all of them would be better.
My last complaint would be that the word cheesy is used a bit too much. When you use the same unique adjective so often in a story, it begins to lose impact. One or two instances of it could've been cut.
Not yet full of content, but it's impressive how creative even the character selection is. This is the first interactive in which I see colours being used for choices, and they match their respective characters. I'll be interested in contributing some chapters to this, and I hope others follow suit.
I also like that there's not only a choice to select the reader's gender, but a choice to decide whether we are the victims or tickling attackers. It'll add a good amount of potential paths early on.
Nice little read here. For whatever reason, when reading this, a bunch of warm colours enter my mind. The only thing off is how ample is used twice. Since it's a less common word, it ends up sticking out. But that's a minor thing.
In contrast to the first KH interactive, the starting options for the main pairing, Xion and Roxas, are limited. Or even Naminé and Roxas. It'd be better if the latter especially had more scenarios to begin with.
This is a great tribute to the brave individuals who fought on United Airlines Flight 93. In addition to Flight 77 and the Pentagon, I feel this is one of the elements of September 11 that is overshadowed by the World Trade Centre attacks. While this poem thankfully covers all the damage of that day, it's always nice to see a special mention to the United 93 passengers.
Whenever I hear "Let's Roll", I can't help but think about Beamer as well. 20 years after the devasting day, but these heroes are not forgotten.
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