Little Death is my favorite. I like the scenes.
Three Short Scenes About Death / Discussion
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Always a pleasure reading your beautiful imagery, Dmatix.
And if the whole world is crashing down… fall through space out of mind with me.
I loved the second scene, probably because its closer to realism and easier to get absorbed in.
That being said, each scene is done wonderfully, and any possible points where you could have depicted something tastelessly, you don't and make it poignant and meaningful and powerful. The imagery here is good, and most of the characters I can get invested in and follow, or buy. Plus, it helps that it involves a mythos related to one of my favorite SCPs on the site (1440), which definitely helps to swallow this in that regard! I can dig this.
What I really like about the second scene, the one with the Great Death, is that it's fairly obvious that the warrior is fighting in the Middle East, but it's not made clear whether he's an Islamic insurgent or a member of a Coalition force. You chose to leave it ambiguous while still managing to make the character both admirable and relatable, which helped to accent the attitude the Brothers have adopted towards humanity.
If this wasn't your intention and I'm just reading way too much into it, I apologize, and I like the tale regardless.
Spotted some errors:
the footsteps of the approaching stranger fell upon the quiet village streets as poison leeches into an unguarded well
Tense disagreement with "leeches", and it should be "leaches".
The Prince has never before seen him thus.
Same thing, unless it's deliberate.
Edit: i just finished Pratchett's Mort, and this has got some of that vibe, I love it.
i just finished Pratchett's Mort, and this has got some of that vibe, I love it.
Yessssssss Death being puzzled by canapes and dancing and fishing is the best hahahaha
I'm rather more fond of "sad drunk existential crisis Death" myself, but those were nice too.
Though that should indeed be "leaches", I don't think there's actually a tense disagreement. If I'm reading that sentence right, it's actually a simile — how did Death enter the town? As poison enters a well. That said, it's not immediately clear that that is a simile rather than just describing an event happening at the same time as Death enters the village, so perhaps that should be reworded.
I thought that (about the simile) in the forum, but couldn't work out how one thing (the footsteps) could fall in the same way that another thing (the poison) leaches.
Which suggests it's not a spelling mistake, poison is an adjective, not a noun, and the footsteps fall on the streets like "poison leeches" fall into a well. I quite like the idea of someone poisoning a well by throwing leeches in.
That was my take as well - that the sound of his footsteps was comparable to the sound of poisonous leeches falling into the town well. Good imagery.
+1 on the story overall, particularly the motivations of each Death. Never what you might have expected, but each logical in its own milieu.
A quick google search shows that "leech" is the correct spelling for the horrible blood worms. "Leach" is a verb referring to draining liquid from a particulate substrate.
I make the same mistake pretty much all the time. I looked it up just to be sure.
I liked the part with the youngest brother. But what cemented the story for me were the last two words.
That last story really got my think meats roiling. How it started, why it continues, how it's going to end. Take this +1.
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page revision: 1, last edited: 02 Apr 2021 15:16
