[quote=@mdk]
Stars aligned and I got a chance to knock these out much earlier than I expected. REVIEWS FOR ALL! 

[hider=pawn takes king]

Love the style – you did a great job of complimenting the dark theme with tone and sentence structure. Imagery was, for the most part, spot-on (although there were spots here and there that I didn’t like – more on that later) – the grander scheme, the ethereal chess game of bones and death – I mean come on, that’s awesome. Descriptions of the moves left a [i]little[/i] to be desired in terms of, like, a reader understanding what’s going on in the game – but the chess moves were never really the point, and not knowing precisely where every rook and bishop has landed on the board doesn’t take anything away from the story. The ‘rudimentary backbone of chess’ is actually a really clever thematic…. Uh…. [i]thing[/i], but you sorta glossed over it and didn’t play up the extra skeleton imagery, so it almost seems like a coincidence. That’s fine – when you’re writing well, the coincidental stuff tends to work out in your favor without you even really thinking about it. You were, and it did.  Consider sticking to the skeleton image – instead of the bishop sneaking around to ‘strike at the heart of the formation,’ maybe the bishop strikes at its spine instead? Dunno. Stuff like that though – the point is you created a good image that fits in with the other story elements, and you could do a little more with it I guess but the point is that it was good.

Couple negative points jumped out. I can’t tell if they jumped out because of how much I liked the rest, or because of how jump-out-ish they were – just gonna list them off and let you be the judge. First, verb tense throughout feels a bit off. “A white tube being thrusted” hit me right away, and there’s some more awkward tense choices. Participles? Present participle I think? ANYWAY IT’S WEIRD, and weird is cool when it’s helping but I don’t think it’s helping. You also slip back and forth between past and present, which, again, cool if it’s happening for a reason but it just looks like a slip from here. Broadly speaking, the verb tense is a weak point – don’t think so much about how to FIX it, rather, think about [i]what you want to do with it.[/i] I think that’s the level you’re at. A good level.

Next – this is a game of chess between death and a (victim?). That’s a fantastically interesting scenario. Maybe – only maybe – you should let that cat out of the bag earlier in the story. I get the sense that you knew all along this was a battle against literally Death, and maybe sorta overlooked the part where you bring the readers up to speed. COULD BE, you were holding the cards close to the chest deliberately, but the trouble with that is, when it’s finally spelled out, there isn’t a whole lot of payoff for the reader. I wasn’t held in suspense, wondering who was playing or for what – okay, maybe a little bit wondering those things, but not….. you see what I mean right? I’m gonna overstate it just to make the point, don’t hate me, but it’s almost like someone telling a joke and getting close to the punchline and then mentioning “oh by the way the horse is blue, that’s important, it’s a blue horse.” The timing of the revelation gives it the effect you want. In this case, I don’t see any reason why the revelation shouldn’t come right up in front. Could be wrong about that….. think on it.

I promised to mention weird imagery because on THAT account, it definitely only jumped out because of how strong the rest was. Okay. In a supernatural cosmic “danse macabre” with Death on a smoke-covered bone chessboard with dozens of human souls hanging in the balance, [i]cheesy fries are kind of weird.[/i] Right? That’s…. does that sound out of place to anybody else? And again, [i]weird, out-of-place stuff is fine[/i] if you’re doing something with it. I didn’t get that sense here. The accountant’s death sequence felt like a glaring break from your style in the rest of the story, and it didn’t, like…. If they sat and remarked about how random and merciless death could come for anyone (you did a LITTLE, and repeated it with the ‘accident’ overtones with the ex’s death, but didn’t really follow through all the way)….. well. I guess what I’m trying to say is, if [i]cheesy fries[/i] are going to enter into a story like this, you wanna make damn sure you justify it completely! [b]Cheesy fries.[/b] Okay, I’ve harped on that en….. [b]CHEESY FRIES![/b] Enough! Enough. I’m done.

So I spent a longer time complaining than I meant to. That always means I liked it. Always. I think you did this story near-complete justice with style and pacing and tone. A [i]teensie[/i] bit sloppy in terms of….. well I hate the word ‘grammar’ in this context, but just syntax and structure in general, not quite firing on ALL cylinders, but you’re certainly firing on most of them. It’s a bit more plot-heavy than character-heavy – nevertheless your crafty lovestruck human still comes across as sort of twistedly-romantic and dark, and I think you really nailed him. All in all, I mean, I feel [i]really[/i] good about you. This story is good stuff, in a way that totally means you’re a good writer.[/hider]

[hider= Response to Mdk]
Ah yes, thank you for the insights. I always enjoy feedback on the writing.

In all honest it was for a bit of an experimental writing. Stylistically I've always enshewed perfect attention to tenses. Making it grammatically painful I suppose, but my usage of loose tenses is my attempt to blur a bit of what is happening when. Something I should probably work on but I enjoy giving a soft sense of letting the reader decide exactly when and where something occurs in which sequence. Sort of like painting a Monet, as up close it looks very blurry. I'll try to be stricter, but I figured that in this "limbo café" time had no meaning.

Yes, death's reveal was completely thrown under the bridge. Because it was supposed to be. I aimed to start off the story with ambiguity as to who the reader is supposed to be following and eventually Death narrates towards the end there as it becomes more personal. I attempted to have the reader literally step into death's shoes, taking his arrogance and pride as the tale progressively concentrates on "I" rather than "you" as the narration changes between some paragraphs. An experimental procedure I tried. Hopefully it worked, but I tried to embody the convolutions of plot it the structure of the tale itself. Hence why so late a revelation, yet the reader should already see it coming a mile away since it's been done before.

Also yes, CHEESY FRIES. Somewhat of a glaring break from style for a reason. I sought to do an abrupt left-field for the reader to stop and back for a moment to consider if it is indeed the same story or not. Very choppy, less flowing. Abrupt even, as I tried to just "inject" something into the story as if it did not belong there. If this was your response I think I did pretty well for myself. And again the story was not focused on these vignettes. Although I had originally planned for more exchanges, I decided two deaths would give enough of a glimpse into the nature of the game. Plus I'm not the writers of final destination, hence I cannot adequately describe 7 deaths and do the screen play for each in twelve days :C Defacto, in full disclosure, I wrote this in about 70 minutes give or take, over the course of 7 days. 10 minutes of writing per day before I got distracted and/or guilted with other rp writing I needed to do.

Although thank you for the review it has certainly been most helpful. I'll probably try to set aside 3 days for proofing to check for syntax errors. I'll run it through a parser and see if I get any errors. :)
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[quote=@PlatinumSkink]
[hider=Pawn Take King]Hah. The good ol' chess-game with death, with a twist. You sure managed to raise quite the impressive atmosphere. There's quite an amount of minor typos that were slightly distracting, but I'm going to ignore those. It was somewhat obvious what was going on, considering the description that went into said queen and such. It kind of made Death appear to be an idiot rather than make the other individual seem like a genius. But still. I applaud the atmosphere.

I do wonder a little bit about the ”in turn for their good will” part of the challenge parameters, but eh! Nicely done. I like this one. Haha.[/hider]
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[hider= Response to P.Skink]
Ah yes, thank you. I promised Terminal something out of Seventh Seal. And yes, the idea was that Death's Hubris made him overlook a trap which he had used himself early in the game. The Pawn being taken by Death's bishop early was a reminder that the bishop could skewer you from an angle, coming in when you least expected it. Which was how the checkmate was won. Death focused too much on the queen, that is to make the man suffer in "classical chess" in having to sacrifice his friends lives to save his own. Supposed at least until the man outwits death twice. I wished to leave the ending ambiguous, enough. Hopefully the reader either took it that the man is reunited in the end with his "queen" in death, or that he had successfully outwitted death (although the death was also to serve as a memento mori, how the man was saved from choking on his food, but suffered heart attack immediately after).
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