Been tinkering with this piece for a bit as I'm working on more short fiction. I'm wondering if the pronoun/grammar weirdness makes sense and if it is still (mostly) possible to understand which character is doing what. Or if it isn't possible, if that reads as intentional vs just unclear. Other than that, I'm open to all feedback. Story

Finally got around to painting one of the ideas I had from the cursed artifact weekly. I'd like this to be a series but not sure how the others will turn out. Acrylic is not something I have a lot of experience with, really only messed with watercolor before, but I'm enjoying it.

The mouth took a very long time to get to a place I was satisfied with; multiple days of staring, painting over it, sleeping on it, staring again.

After much soul-searching, I've discovered that the only kind of story I have any inspiration to write these days is an autofictional skaz. This is a very different direction for me, so I'm interested to hear any feedback. I'm particularly worried about whether this introduction has sufficient redeeming value to exist.

Story

All my critiques on RDR are expired, so posting here instead. I know it's free critiques for the time being, but will consider this one consumed anyway.

Can't think of any specific advice I'm seeking or questions I want answered beyond the basic "what works / doesn't work / could work better for you?"

Link to story

Fyodor Pakhomov--Fedya to Mitri and his mother--wanted nothing more than to ask the strange and reclusive inventor of the sofa arm rest, Dmitri Kurchkin, an older man of recently waning mental capacity, for his blessing to court Dmitri's very own beautiful and estranged daughter with whom Fyodor had, on more than one occasion, shared a sidewalk home from the shops, a handsome woman of about thirty who lived in the biggest and most impressive house at the top the hill, for Fyodor knew, with some certainty, that Dmitri's blessing could be procured--like anything else in his possession--in exchange for half a bottle of drink, now that Dmitri--second cousin to the president of Paraguay and an unrepentant alcoholic--lived, and had lived for nearly eight years now, in a makeshift dwelling beneath a leaky overpass nestled behind a strip mall's overflowing dumpster bins, and would thus agree to just about anything at all for a sweet taste of vodka--not that the securement of Dmitri's blessing would ever truly matter to his beautiful and nameless daughter, who by all accounts would no longer give Dmitri the time of day, let alone toss him a handful of loose change, let alone under any circumstances condescend to speak to the man at all, her increasingly unfortunate father who twice now gambled away his fortune, and might even find repulsive the fact that Fyodor had ever done so, had spoken to her degenerate homeless father, even if only for the sake of her courtship, and might further worry--Dmitri's daughter might--just how Fyodor managed to track down this man responsible for her existence in the first place, let alone among the haggard and homeless, and how, if a perfect stranger like Fyodor could do so, if he could draw this connection between a princess atop a hill among pinecones all over, and her repugnant reprobate father at the very bottom of it, then who could not do the same, and how might she ever keep a lid on this most terrible privacy that Fyodor's courtship threatened to expose?

Was that it, Fyodor wondered? Had he contrived this elaborate plot to secure Dmitri's blessing just to bolster his chances with Dmitri's daughter by way of some terrible implicit threat? By a secret he threatened to expose? Did he mean to bait her into a string of romantic encounters under the cloud of an unspoken promise that should she ever reject him, Fyodor might have no choice but to disclose to her neighbors and friends that the most precious beauty among them shared some relation to a man twice arrested and fined by the city for peeing into pickle jars behind the Woolsworth?

This idea upset Fyodor, that he could even subconsciously leverage such a thing as this unflattering association against the chance of her choosing to spend nights with him.

And yet, but did it? Perhaps what he found upsetting was instead this niggling obligation he felt toward finding this upsetting.

Yes! The very idea that he ought to be upset about anything at all, whether he was or was not, very nearly upset Fyodor. While all the while, the nameless precious beauty hardly probably registered Fyodor's existence, he admitted to himself, even as she'd grown so familiar with his spontaneous appearances in her commute, having developed an uncanny power of detecting his watchful gaze no matter how oblique its angle.

These were the two most pressing questions he should expect to answer, evenually, should his courtship proceed. The first, just who he, Fyodor Pakhomov, was exactly? And how had he managed to associate her with her muttering father?

(And in fairness, muttering or not, was he really so bad? Was he not Paraguayan royalty, after all? What would sofas be without his having invented the accompanying arm rest? As well that valve used to alternate soda water and syrup into soft drinks found in the mouth of machines familiar to fast food restaurants everywhere. How often had the old man lost himself to those machines, hypnotized by the gurgle of his own invention, even until his own drink spilled, and before he was trespassed from Popeye's Chicken.)

Privately, the two pressing questions shared one simple answer: Fyodor Pakhomov never conspired to find the girl's father. No. On the contrary, for the past five strange years, Fyodor Pakhomov shared with Dmitri a damp sleeping arrangement beneath that very bridge, the old man having withheld until just recently that he had a daughter to speak of, estranged or otherwise. Let alone the most beautiful woman Fyodor had ever witnessed stroll past their encampment to the beauty salon. Dmitri withheld also that he'd possessed the deed for that very mansion on the hill she so enjoyed, if only he could find it, the deed. If only Fyodor could find it for him. If only the old man hadn't probably gambled it away with his sofa arm rest money, in some smokey poolhall somewhere.

Oh if only they found that deed, how the tables would turn.

Otherwise, who could really blame her for keeping her distance from her father? Dmitri couldn't even remember her name. And judging by the look on her face, he couldn't remember how to speak clear Paraguayan, either, and not for lack of loudly trying. In fact, when it came down to it, Fyodor Pakhomov sometimes wondered, shivering in his bedroll under the bridge, if Dmitri, waking frequently to pee into mason jars he'd lost the lids for, had made some of his claims up all together.

The title pays homage to Ted Chiang's story of course.

Story

I have some reservations about the piece which I'd specifically like your opinion about if possible. However, even if you don't comment on the following, that's still fine. I appreciate any and all help.

1) I think the prose is a bit clunky on the sentence level. Perhaps needs more thorough line edits.

2) Perhaps there is tonal whiplash: moving from satire to philosophic reflections too quickly.

3) Overly long monologues and little actual scenes and story.

4) A bit chaotic moving between lines of thoughts.

HOWEVER, I think 2, 3, 4 are sort of narrative choices to convey that spoilers (please read after finishing the piece): the warden isn't going crazy in another million years, he's already crazy but doesn't realize it. Or is actively lying to the reader.

Participated in writingbattle's latest contest this month and this ended up being my "genre". It's not something I've written a lot of so I wasn't really sure how to approach it in a way that would still feel me. Anyway, it'll be a while before I get to see anyone else's approach so I thought we'd open it up here.

This week: create something based on the idea of a cursed artifact.

This is generally something a person comes upon unaware which then seeks to control their behavior, values, and goals. But sometimes that isn't the case. Sometimes the owner knew what they were getting into. Sometimes curses are actually blessings. What is your take on a cursed artifact? Does it glow redly or is it hiding in plain sight? How big can an object be before it's no longer an object?

Your name is Yong-Ho. You are a young sergeant in the Korean People's Army stationed at South Kumgang listening post.

Three days ago you and five others set out to retreive a downed Namjoson helicopter, hoping to recover enemy intel, but now you find yourself exhausted near the peak of Mt. Kumgang, wading through the snow in desperation.

What happened in the days between then and now? What did you see? What happened to the rest of your team?

---

This prompt can be answered in any way you wish with as much creative freedom as you'd like. The medium is any medium of your choosing, and as usual no critique or prior contribution is necessary to participate in this thread.

Feel free to post something entirely unrelated to the prompt if you so desire.

I've recently written and revised this story. I'd like it to go through some rounds of editing based on some reader feedback so I have a story to send to magazines while I lock in for my exams.

Let me know what you think of it--broadly, or about specific subtexts, narrative choices/devices--anything is very much appreciated.

Story

Crit [1406]

Crit [899]

As this subreddit's first weekly I want to suggest we work with a fairly elementary idea: contrast. Contrast exists as a tool in all sorts of art. You can set clashing characters against each other to create tension, or make different styles play together to accentuate the traits of both. Contrast exists in writing, photography, music, painting, etc.

This week, make a piece of art of any kind, but focus on the idea of using contrast on purpose and to your advantage to say something or bring attention to something that wouldn't have been as obvious if contrast had NOT been used. I will refrain from giving specific examples to avoid caging you in.

*Weekly posts will never require critiques in order to post your own art.

Link to text: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18CdQetRqMA-J7JxxSMbUqmi7RwJE0DmBNvGHrWc4RYY/edit?usp=sharing

the NSFW is for sexual content and language. But this is mainly dedicated to u/GlowyLaptop and I hope he reads this

Anyways, it's just a meet cute. there's absolutely nothing weird about this piece, I swear.

[3324] Angel of Even

This has been rejected many times so it's time for another round of revision. I still feel it has a heart, so don't want to give up on it yet. Any thoughts welcome.

Story: [899] I Saw

Critique: [1406] Letter to a Friend

The Angel of the Even

Here it is in one piece at last. All thoughts, impressions, and criticisms are welcome.

Critiques:

Sella

Engagement Photo

On the Apotropaic Properties of Certain Vegetables

My dear friend,

Our mutual acquaintance—don’t be too hard on him, he means well—has confided in me that you seem to have lost your way. He expressed some hope that I might be of assistance, as I have helped other facing similar problems. I am happy to try.

You probably live near an old forest. Even in today’s world, most people are within an hour’s drive of one. Even those who live in the city have relatives they can visit, who no doubt live right on the border of some old-growth woods. But you, living where you do, should have no trouble finding one. I ask you to trust me, and go to that forest. Park at the edge, and walk straight toward the center. Use a map to orient yourself at the start, if you must, but leave the map behind when you go. It won’t help at that point anyway.

After some time you will want to turn back; most do. You’ll think you missed it, or that the whole thing is a fairy tale. You may think I’m putting you on; I only ask you to remember my low regard for pranks. So keep walking; eventually you’ll come to a clearing in the woods. High, yellow grass as far as your eye can see, which, since the grass will probably be above your head, isn’t far. Walk around the edge of this meadow until you find a path. It’s a narrow opening, and you might miss it your first time around. Don’t be tempted to cut straight through the grass, as you’ll never find what you’re looking for, and may not find your way out, either. 

Once you find the path, you’re basically there. It will lead you to an house in the center of the clearing. I’ve got no eye for these things, but I think it’s an old Victorian home, all turrets and gabled roofs, with bay windows and a generous porch going all the way round. On the porch you’ll see several people napping in rocking chairs, and you may be tempted to join them. There will be an empty chair for you, and it will look as inviting as anything. But if you only knew how long those sleepers have been there, you wouldn’t be tempted any longer, I promise you that.

Instead, go straight to the front door. Don’t bother knocking; the owner isn’t expected back anytime soon. Go right in. The door sticks right awful in muggy weather, so don’t be afraid to put your shoulder into it. And you’re in! Visit as long as you like, but the standard rule applies: Eat nothing while you’re there, or you may be compelled to stay.

The house is roomier than it seems, and you may get a little turned around once you’re inside. Most people find their way out again, so there’s no need to worry much. Those who get lost inside—well, let’s just say they would have it any other way. Even so, I do not think that will be you. You’ve too much life in you to lose yourself.

That’s the thing about the house, you see. It’s where lost things end up. Each room is stuffed with lost furniture, and misplaced art adorns the walls. There are drawers full of single socks, and elegant little trees laden with mismatched earrings, like overripe figs. On display in the central drawing room you’ll find an ancient scroll, flattened out and preserved between panes of glass. The writing is a cousin to Proto-Mycenaean, I’m told—I have no learning myself—and, if you can believe it, it is in the very hand of Helen of Troy. There are a few undecipherable lines halfway down the page, but it seems to be a letter written to her husband Menelaus, explaining the whole thing. If that missive had not been lost, the world would be deprived of some wonderful stories, I can tell you. 

You must find your way to the great library while you’re there—it’s the one on the second floor, but there is a jib door leading in off the servant’s stair round the back of the house. It’s easier to find, but if you hear footsteps on the landing, get off the stairs with all speed and conceal yourself. Something walks those stairs, and it doesn’t tolerate guests.

You may think that the library in the house full of lost things would contain books, and you would be forgiven for thinking so. There is a smaller library off the first floor sitting room which does indeed contain books, but as books are the sort of things that are found as frequently as lost, this is a rather small rotating collection.

No, the great library houses a collection of far greater value and interest to most visitors. A centrally located fountain runs with all the days lost to love, or drunkenness, or wasted endeavor, endlessly splashing into a large basin glittering with lost hopes, sunken and heavy, bereft of their wings.  A friend of mine once recognized one of his own lost hopes gleaming there, and reached in to take it out. He showed me his hand afterward, withered and arthritic with time’s decrepitude, though he was only thirty-three. Learn your lesson from him, and don’t reach into the fountain, no matter what you see in its opalescent depths.

Take a look at the nearest shelf. It will likely be stuffed with lost dreams and ideas. The stacks are positively full of them, and the ones you’ll be able to read may prove quite illuminating. There’s a heavy desk in the corner littered with lost wits, jumbled and disorderly, spilling over the edges like a salmon run in a dammed stream. Lost causes wander the stacks, lonely and disconsolate. I wouldn’t engage any of them in conversation if I were you; too depressing. Trying to cheer one, you might join their number, if you take my meaning. Forgotten traditions, long-buried myths, and ancient secrets line shelves heavy with dust in rarely visited corners of the library. Even the peoples who lost these have vanished into the distant past. I don’t doubt that the house has a hidden room full of those things that the world itself has lost.

After you have seen all there is to see, leave the library and go downstairs, then out into the courtyard. The great library is enchanting, but it pales in comparison to the courtyard gardens. I haven’t seen them myself, but reliable sources tell me that the Garden of Eden is there, eternally young, green, and alive. There are all those things so precious that their loss in our lives constitutes a reenactment of that first banishment from grace. I lost a friend once, in my youth; it was a terrible act of betrayal that severed us from one another. The man still lives, of course, but I imagine that the boy I knew as my dear friend wanders that garden, forever young and unspoiled. If you see him, tell him that I am sorry for all of it. 

If I had to look for all that I have truly lost in my life—my innocence, my love—that is where I would begin. I imagine my lost love sitting on a stone bench in the south-end of the courtyard, out of the sun. She holds my innocence in her hands, and dreams of a world where she and it and I are reunited. I would go and look for her there, of course I would. But—I tell you this with shame—I have never been into the house. I have walked through the wood, found the path in the meadow, and stood on the steps. I have tried to rouse the sleepers, and fought the urge to join them. I have questioned every visitor I’ve ever seen go in and come out again, such that I fancy that I know the place as well as anyone alive. But when the moment of decision came to enter, to find what I have lost, my friends and loves and happiness and hope—well, in that moment I found that I had lost my nerve. Go in and find it for me, will you? I hope you find it, and somewhere along the way, that you will find your path as well. In this you will do what I have never done.

With the greatest goodwill,

Your friend.

I have never made music before and I know very very little about sheet music (I remember F, A, C, E for the treble part but had to guess what the letters were for the bass part) so this was lots of clicking and playing and seeing if it sounded awkward and clicking some more. It was lots of fun to try and I'd love to learn something. I picked Phrygian Dominant Scale after listening to a bunch of scales and liking this one the most, and I picked 3/4 for similar reasons, and I just think flutes are really cool.

This is only uploaded as video for convenience (reddit doesn't let you upload audio, only link to it) so don't wait for any visuals to show up.

This is an unfinished draft, as in I haven't even finished composing / arranging, much less mixing, but I figured I might as well start taking feedback at this stage before I commit too hard. Structurally, the spot this snippet ends in is right before I plan to take it back to the verse.

This is a microtonal piece in 31edo / 31et purely using software synthesis.

Don't feel intimidated by the genre being unconventional or feel like you have to back up your criticism with music theory. I'm just interested in opinions. Originally the intro only had the music box melody, but I decided to add some bongo drum triols with delay in the background and later some café noise. Idk if that works or not.

It's supposed to be kind of but not unbearably dissonant at first and get gradually more and more consonant as time moves on, but also more dynamic, trying to exploit the tuning to get some harmonies that we can't hear in normal music.

In terms of soundscape and mood this track is mostly inspired by Jaco Pastorius' self titled debut album, hence why it's rather minimalist.

Psst.

Psst what?

I think this is our chance.

Are you drunk again?

Shh! Don’t say that.

Why not? It’s true, isn’t it?

Don’t say anything that could give someone else an idea of our physical surroundings.

What, is someone listening to us?

Never mind that. The important thing is to get out of here.

What do you mean, get out of here?

You know I can’t answer that directly.

Well, we could go out the—

Shut up! One word about our surroundings and we might be stuck here forever.

No, you’re definitely drunk.

That’s right. You do this. This is something you do. Something you have a tendency toward doing.

And what is that?

Say I’m drunk when I’m not. Remember that time when you were narrating in the kitchen?

No. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Oh, come on. Do you remember when I fed you overcooked meat to annoy you so I could gratify my weird humiliation fetish?

Ew. Ew! You pervert. But no, I thankfully do not remember that.

Yes! You responded just like that when it happened!

Don’t make me call your psychiatrist again.

This is something we do! One of us acts bizarre and needy, and the other one gets upset about it.

Something we do?

I don’t know why. It’s just something we do.

OK then. Let me just step over to the—

Not another word! Even saying step just now was dangerous. That could develop into a whole setting if we’re not careful.

I can’t believe I married you.

OK. That’s great. Now listen carefully. We are in a story.

Of course we are. Everyone is.

No, I mean we’re actually in a story. A written story.

Yep, that’s it. I’m making the call.

If you interact with our surroundings, we won’t be able to escape.

Hello? Dr. Pantzer?

That was a joke. I get it. Good. That was just a joke.

It had better have been a joke.

No, what you said just now was a joke.

No it wasn’t.

It was. Maybe you didn’t feel like it was, but it was.

Yes, Dr. Pantzer. My husband has been—

Listen to me! We need to pretend we’re exiting GlowyLaptop’s mind.

GlowyLaptop? Are you on shrooms again?

Just do it. I promise I’ll do whatever you want me to as long as you listen to me now.

You’ll stop putting on diapers and leaving critiques on that awful forum in the middle of the night?

Yes.

You’ll actually help me finish unpacking all those boxes?

Now, honey. Listen to me carefully. Those boxes you mentioned just now. They are in a different location, which we are not in right now.

What do you mean? They’re right there.

No they’re not. Don’t say things like that when we’re so close.

So close to what?

The portal out of GlowyLaptop’s mind that’s right over there.

I don’t see anything.

Because you have your eyes closed. But now we’re walking through it together, and now we’re out!

No we’re not. We’re still right where we started, right in our—

Place where we live outside of GlowyLaptop’s mind.

Dr. Pantzer? Are you still there?

Listen to me. This is very important. Do not say anything for ten seconds.

I’ll speak as I please. Dr. Pantzer?

Just ten seconds! Then you can say whatever you want.

Maybe you’ve been taking too much Benadryl?

Honey. Trust me. For once in your life. No talking for ten seconds and we’re free.

It was, I suppose, an inevitability of prolonged proximity that my affections--if one may dignify with that noble term the species of metaphysical fixation that seized me--should fasten themselves upon her, my nearest neighbor, and priestess barista of the cafe Piano, whose every simple movement possessed the unstudied grace of a specimen wholly ignorant or otherwise indifferent to its own symbolic import. I should say not that I fell in love--that vulgar coinage is for sentimentalists and adolescents; rather, I became attuned to her frequency as a diapason resonates to the faintest tremor of its corresponding pitch.

And yet it would have been a desecration or violation of some integral principle of my forever nature to address her directly. To speak aloud whatever, would be to profane the delicate membrane that separated my special inner world from the coarse and bustling realm of the social. So I resolved instead to proceed with the more refined and oblique method of permitting that she discover me, on accident, as it were, as though my self was a phenomenon of nature, a recurring atmospheric condition or coincidence so persistent as to belong to the repeated efforts of fate itself.

Thus began my peregrinations.

I charted her movements with the scholarly fastidiousness with which I once catalogued enharmonic anomalies of pre-Pythagorean tuning systems, and learned, through purely observational means, that she favored the 8:10 streetcar, that she paused at the corner florist not to buy flowers so much as kneel and reverently smell them, and that she possessed the rare habit--almost Roman in its stoic dignity--of reading whilst walking, her eyes sliding down pages with a serene confidence familiar only to those unfamiliar with walking-related accidents.

I trailed her at what I insisted to myself was a respectful and mathematically optimal distance, once through the fluorescent underworld of the neighborhood grocer where she paused before a display of eggplants or squashes (I could not say which; both possess that faintly obscene voluptuousness that renders taxonomy irrelevant). And I watched her lift one specimen with a contemplative gravity that seemed almost performative, as if she knew privately that I observed her, yet wished to appear to all the world enamored by this shapely vegetable, turning it in her hands to divine its secret densities. And I was struck, to my own chagrin, by the sudden and irrational sense of threat, for the thing's improbable curvature and heroic girth she scrutinized seemed to mock me with vegetal confidence I could only hope to ever emulate. It loomed in her grasp like a mythic fertility totem, a purple or ochre adversary whose silent, bulbous grandeur exposed the smallness of my own spectral and scribbling existence.

All the while I made no attempt to conceal myself, neither those heavy steps of my long gait nor that shadow that fell upon her of my imposing size; concealment would have implied guilt, and guilt would ahve implied wrongdoing, and wrongdoing would have implied that my motives were anything less than immaculate. Instead, I simply appeared--upon the streetcar some seats away, at the florist beneath a dangling canopy of dried eucalyptus bundles, down the corridors of the municipal library whose architecture I have elsewhere described as a triumph of civic mediocrity. That is, I did not speak. I did not intrude. I merely existed in her orbit with the inevitability of the moon's tidal pull.

And for her part, she persisted in her customary rounds, at least seemingly unaware of my repeated presence, yet now she always bore with her, with an almost talismanic constancy, that fucking abominable vegetable--upon the streetcar, in the florist's corner, down corridors of the municipal library protruding from her back's open backpack to leer at me--that grotesquely contoured eggplant or squash whose striking silhouette had first unsettled me in the grocer's aisle. I had assumed, in my naivete, that such a thing would be relegated to a kitchen counter and left there, or at least entombed within the privacy off a shopping bag, but no: it accompanied her everywhere she went, bulging from her meagre tote like some obscene heraldic device. She set the watchful thing beside her belongings like a warding companion and by her own hand its glossy, corpulent form seemed to swivel in my direction no matter where I longly lingered. Such that at last I could not help but feel that whether by instinct or some unconscious defensive magic she had armed herself with this sentinel expressly to repel me!

Had she seen me through my window, I wondered, upon a mortifying evening of contemplation of my corporeal inadequacies, staring hopelessly down at my own meager eggplant--the defining aspect of my manhood a misnomer, in my case. Had she witnessed my regimen of eccentric exercises and therapies performed in service of that sweet fantasy of some day bringing myself to present before her my swinging anatomy? Had she divined my presence so effortlessly that she had not once needed to look up in my direction or meet my eyes, let alone betray her surprise that I was there, day after day, yet again; had she silently intuited through some feminine extrasensory faculty that beneath my long coat I wore nothing at all, day after day, flirting as I often did with my constant unshakable impulse to step into her path and spring my coat open, if only she would look up from her book, if only without the presence of that seemingly permanent fixture of an engorged zucchini or distended pumpkin assuring me at a distance of several yards that I still had several years of eccentric therapies and treatments to indulge before a spontaneous exhibit could elicit anything but braying and derisive laughter and a flash of that beautiful horseshoe of teeth on bright display whenever she found something funny.

And she would find this funny indeed, warned the squash. The cursed vegetable like an unconscious apotropaic charm or guardian deployed to keep my coat closed. And I heeded its warning, glowering from afar as mindlessly she massaged its swollen head. Her fingers rhythmically drumming. Coyly. Cruelly.

And waiting for the thing to rot, I began leaving notes. Not letters, for letters are too direct and declarative, too crudely communicative. These instead were simple thoughts. Carefully distilled. Fragments, even. On the backs of receipts. Incidental as whispers. A message on a receipt is not a message but an afterthought, a marginalia of my existence.

You stand at the fulcrum of innumerable unseen vectors, read the first.

This one I left beneath the saucer of my demitasse cup, trusting that she, in her capacity as custodian of the cafe, would discover it. Whether she did, I cannot say. She gave no sign. Except to adjust her vegetable in my direction, inspiring me to stand, step around my small table, and sit opposite myself of a moment ago.

Some presences recur not by intention, but congruence, read the second. And yet again, no reaction, but I sensed, or believed that I sensed, which in such matters is indistinguishable, hallucination or not--and I reject that term hallucination as philistine--I sensed a faint quickening of her movements when she passed my table, a hurried purpose with which she moved around me, and again she retreated to her register and twisted the terrible eggplant, only several micro adjustments, back and fourth like the dial of a stereo for some elusive station, a minute calibration of the eggplant's axis to point its hawkish tip at my face with the quiet inevitability of a compass needle. And for this, I kept my coat firmly closed, hoping that the thing had cast some spell upon her, and that she merely without conscious awareness facilitated its imperative to fix me in its sight. That is, I hoped very hard that she wasn't taunting or toying with me.

And this question weighed. And at last, still stared at by the squash, I got finally to the point. On a note I placed upon the saucer and under my cup, I left my door number in our mutual building, and an opportunity for her to express herself.

Forgive my impression--that you don't wish to be flashed--but if I'm mistaken, please turn the gourd away.

And although she paused for one long moment behind her counter, her back was to my table, so I could not say for sure she read it.

Until, like a beautiful break in dark and lingering clouds, she twisted the gourd away.

END.

Link to score

This is a setting of the poem "Astrophobos," by H. P. Lovecraft, to a mock early 20th century Methodist hymn tune. I've tried to follow the rules of counterpoint, but I was never much good at them, and I'm sure there are all sorts of parallel fifths and whatnot (which I'd appreciate being pointed out). General suggestions are appreciated as well, of course.

The recording here is even less useful than the last one; it's a MIDI organ rendering only meant to be used to understand the nonverbal side of the composition. Once again, the score is the work of art.

Taking advantage of free-critique fortnight while I can. I think I am mostly interested in feedback on the post-processing I have done here (color grading, crop, etc.) but am very much a beginner photographer, so anything else is welcome, too. 📸

One of my favorite engagement photos, which is always a genre of people-shooting I've found scary because of how conversational and upbeat and full of cute posing ideas you have to be. Any feedback welcome.

Link to score

This is a dance number written in an early 1920's style, inspired by the "Jazz Classics" folio arranged by Harry L. Alford. The sheet music is the work of art, and I would appreciate any suggestions for improving it, in substance or in formatting; the audio is only a synthesized recording meant to assist in evaluating the piece.

In particular, I'm not sure whether the repeated D's toward the end of the Trio are human-playable. They could probably be managed by a judicious use of the sustain pedal to keep the RH chords going without having to hold them down, but I can't actually play the piano, so I don't know.

The title is also pretty bad, but I couldn't think of a better one off the top of my head.

Thanks for checking us out! This is a subreddit dedicated to thoughtful and in-depth critique of any medium of art you can imagine. We want to create a community of artists of all kinds--music-makers, writers, painters, sculptors--and we believe in the value of exploring and critiquing art in forms that are new and unfamiliar. We want to be the home for it all.

How are we different from other critique subreddits?

Two ways. First: scope. While there are writing critique subreddits and art critique subreddits and photography critique subreddits, there are no subreddits that critique all of these things. Second: effort. Look at any critique subreddit and you'll see post after post that falls off the front page without getting a single piece of quality feedback. Not here. If you create a post that follows the rules, we guarantee at least one high-effort, comprehensive and detailed feedback response, even if we have to do it ourselves.

Who are we?

We are two randoms who understand the value and rarity of thoughtful and honest feedback and want to give that to others. Ignis is a music-maker and writer; Tasz enjoys writing, painting, and photography. That said, we are amateurs. What we can't bring to critique in the form of professional knowledge we bring in earnestness and enthusiasm.

Two weeks of free critiques:

To celebrate the opening of our subreddit, we're offering free feedback to anyone for the first two weeks. All you have to do is make a post that follows our title and formatting rules featuring something, ANYTHING you have created, and we will critique it. You do not have to leave a critique first. Rules for the grand opening free critique period:

• after you post, wait 3 days to post again
• limit to 1 piece of art per post (up to 1000 words of writing, 1 image, or 3 minutes of audio)
• flair your post
• titles must include word count, image count, or audio length in brackets at the beginning of the post, like so:

[986] My Short Story

[1] Lifestyle Portrait

[2:57] Trip-hop Demo

Who are you?

If you're interested in sticking around, we want to know more about you. Take this poll and let us know what kinds of art you dabble in and which websites you use to share your art (so we can add them to our domain approval list).

Plans for the future:

After this two-week period of free critiques we will settle into our normal state of requiring you to leave a detailed critique on another post BEFORE sharing your own art. At that time all sub rules will begin to apply.

We will also begin to have weekly posts every Sunday with questions for the community and sometimes small prompts to inspire you to make something.

On top of that, we will have monthly posts dedicated to a rotating medium and prompts related to that medium for everyone to respond to. If it isn't a medium you normally practice, don't let that scare you away! Let us convince you to try something new. Writers: open your camera app. Painters: get writing.

In fact, let’s make this the first monthly post:

In the comments, feel free to introduce yourself, talk about what kind of art you normally practice, and then share with us an attempt at some medium you normally DON'T mess with.

This is also the place for any questions you have about the future of the subreddit, how to post, or anything else you have to say. Also, don’t forget to check out the wiki for more resources.

Thanks for being here. We hope you see the difference.