Feedback 1 of a few:
@BenderYour wife may have laughed at your comic book capery, but I thought this was a genuinely decent first effort, and one that battled for my final vote with Gem's. You grasped the theme of your choice quite well, whereby a letter from a villain is basically an opening into their world to explore why they do what they do, and is something explored a lot in comic books, what with the likes of Watchmen and the more recent Infinity War.
Where the story fell short for me (as did Watchmen and Infinity War I might add), is that the 'solution' comes off as more of a band aid. Your villain even admits this! So his actions never resolve the issue, but rather gives it a temporary stay until populations blow up again. Maybe his intention is to make life better for himself during that short period for his existence, but generally speaking the golden age is bestowed to the generation born after the war once the damage has been cleaned up, so he doesn't even get that!
Personally speaking, one of the fun things with a villains is working out whether they have a sympathetic reason for their schemes or are just plain psychopaths. I'm veering towards the latter for yours, but a lack of detail for why he turned to this path and what he actually did prevents any certainty, and had that been there, could have swayed my voting your way.
But yeah, excellent first entry, and I hope to read more in the future.
@Nora Excellently written as always, and I got a nostalgia pop to see Hades again--though I recall him living in a post-nuclear world... but then I've probably missed a lot of him since, and I recall it mentioning him being an immortal. Funnily enough, I also got flashbacks of Wendigo if you remember that!
The main positive I got from this was the twist, the idea that he died running from the wrong person, which I thought was clever and amusing.
This was one of the entries that fell foul to the theme for me though, where the letter felt forced in rather than an integral part of the story. I also had an issue where the narrative skipped large portions of the letters more personal ramblings, which for me would have been the most interesting parts! So had you have managed to move a lot of the initial expositional details into the letter with the quirky outbursts from the narrative, it could have been a real contender for me. That said, it got loads of votes elsewhere, so what do I know!
@bdcharles I really liked the theme of this story, the clash of culturalism vs bestialism; being civilised vs succumbing to our animalistic nature. The setting was also really well portrayed, and I got a vivid image of this bland establishment built city washed in the light of this colourful rainbow from the sex club. So that was excellent.
Where I struggled was the structure, which I suspect is where it lost out on the voting. There were a few scene breaks, but I missed them at first because due to the letter elements and quotes cutting in. So some markers could have helped here. I also had some confusion over the narrative, where the whole seemed to be a letter by the end, but the opening and parts within were clearly narrative prose that wasn't directed any specific reader such as a letter would have been. So that disoriented me quite a bit.
But while difficulties with presentation due to the topic likely let it down in the voting, don't be discouraged, because I thought the underlying ideas and imagery here were very, very good.
@Norman GrayThis was another story that fell foul of the letter being a prelude to the actual scene, but beyond that I found the idea behind a relationship with two people on opposite factions really interesting. It's an old fashioned Romeo and Juliet, only Romeo turns out to be the Red Baron, which is an awesome take on the old classic.
I do, however, feel the word limit probably hampered this a lot, since the full emotional impact of this sort of story only comes from fully developing the two sides of the conflict, the drama of the get together, and that climax event when the secret's out, and all of that emotional impact is lost when you only have enough words to focus on that final scene.
On a brainstorming side, it may have been better to have ended the story on the twist of her boyfriend being a monster she was fighting against, where you could have then focused the letter more on the conflict and what the protagonist is looking for in a lover, and left the climax open-ended when it turns out that perfect man is the very monster she's spent her life fighting towards.
On a final note, you get bonus points for that postscript addition which made me laugh really hard! Whether intentional or not, the idea of her telling her mother not to be terrified of the creature delivering the letter, when the only way her mother could have read that is
after the creature has delivered the letter... that just tickles my funny bone to no end :p.