E - Everyone

What love could be

I have no skills, no talents, and no hobbies. He looked around the crowded nightclub and seemed to glimpse something of himself in the dancing lights.

This is where I belong, I really don’t want to be good at anything except being here right now. I want to be good at talking to you, and having a good time, and making you smile.

He looked back form the intoxicating colours of the walls to the light of her sobering aura.

My dear, I can appreciate genius but have no desire to emulate it. I have no ambitious craving for greatness, I don’t even know what greatness is- I just want acceptance for my mediocrity and flaws in this moment. I want acceptance from everyone I care for, in every moment I care to be part of, and especially from you in this one.

“I love you” is what he said.

She looked up at her mysterious partner and thought, something that in her before this moment would never understand, and understood. She gracefully lifted her hand and slid it across his cheek through his thick black hair to the back on his head, and kissed him with lips of passion.

“I love you too, so much. I’ve been waiting so long for you to say this.” He was never the talkative one, but as they kissed again, the energy that flowed between them now was released into one thought between two minds, finely in tune to rushing forces of percussion.

“Come on, let’s go.” She whispered in his ear. Nothing else mattered, not her family, not her friends, or her limiting inhibitions. Nothing now except the beat of drums to the heart of her love.

They left the club, the music flowing out with them onto the dark street, the dim headlamps of passing cars darkening the long shadows that ordinary people cast across the grey pebbled road. The sun was setting below the horizon, and two lives were racing in the other direction.

They ran, they ran into the endless night, and they kept running. Nothing was still and everything was alive. The dead had gone home to their lives of solitude, and now in this life it was possible to cease stillness and move forever.

They ran and jumped, and flew, into the ethers of the unknown. And as the last light of the sun dipped below the edge of their perception, the couple reached out towards the stars.

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Nai-Xi Review
Nai-Xi wrote a review · Sun Apr 27, 2014 8:36 am

Well I do not know how you did it but you did! You seemed to creep inside my mind and found a deja vu memory of sort. This piece is great! Especially these lines:

"My dear, I can appreciate genius but have no desire to emulate it. I have no ambitious craving for greatness, I don’t even know what greatness is- I just want acceptance for my mediocrity and flaws in this moment. I want acceptance from everyone I care for, in every moment I care to be part of, and especially from you in this one.

“I love you” is what he said."

That whole thought hit me like a freight train of epiphany. Beautifully written and well executed!

But my favorite line is this:

"They ran and jumped, and flew, into the ethers of the unknown. And as the last light of the sun dipped below the edge of their perception, the couple reached out towards the stars."

The whole "edge of perception concept" is something I loved about this piece. It sort of the mint on the pillow function. Expected but refreshing.

User avatar
Rurouni
Review
Rurouni wrote a review · Sun Mar 30, 2014 7:52 pm

Hello, Rurouni here to review!


This was a nice one shot I guess you could say.

There are a few nitpicks I can pick at however, so we'll get to that real quick.

She gracefully lifted her hand and slid it across his cheek through his thick black hair to the back on his head, and kissed him with lips of passion.


Nice sentence.. I have one little thing though. You said, "...to the back on his head..." Probably a little typo, but I'd like to point it out. It should be "...to the back of his head..." But I really do love this sentence.

He looked back form the intoxicating colours of the walls to the light of her sobering aura.


I love this sentence, one of those things we can't explain. Colours can be spelled 'colours' or 'colors' so if you get nitpicked in the future, just ignore it :)

There are some improvements that could be made, such as giving the characters names. Without names, they could be anyone. They could be fanfiction characters, or anything. If you were going for a mystery, you could give some nicknames and state they were nicknames, or code names. Or even lover names, seeing this is a Romance.

It was pretty nice though, so keep it up!


Thanks, Happy Review Day!

Always,

Rurouni

User avatar
BluesClues
Review

Hi there!

So, I really like most of this. My favorite part is definitely the opening, the way the man in the story has all these complicated thoughts about his feelings toward this woman, but all he actually says is "I love you." It reminds me of "Chasing Cars" (Snow Patrol) in that way, because there's a line in the song that says "those three words/are said too much/they're not enough," and your opening really reflects that beautifully.

I also love the ending--maybe not quite as much as I love the opening--but I still love it. You've got some really lovely imagery in there, particularly the image of the people's shadows lengthening on the road, and the whole way the couple is just running together, just really hopeful and happy and alive because of their mutual love for each other. And it's really hard to do a story about that, I think, because even though we love to live happy moments, they can often be really boring to read or write about without a bunch of pain in between to make them mean more.

However, I think you did a good job writing a happy moment because you really captured what it is to be happy in that moment, if that makes sense.

For the opening, the only suggestion I have is that I think his thinking "I have no hobbies" takes it a little too far. Like, what does this guy do in his spare time if he has literally no skills, talents, or hobbies? It's normal for people to think they're worthless, untalented, and not at all special, but...come on, he knows what his hobbies are. He has to have interests. We don't need to know what they are, but he should probably think "I have no skills, no talents, no worth" or something like that rather than "no hobbies," because that particular little bit of phrasing kind of made me go, "So...he's the world's most generic person?" Except not even, because even a really generic character has SOMETHING, even if that something doesn't stand out at all.

The middle part, though. This would be starting after "'I love you' is what he said" and ending with them leaving the club.

I think this part is weaker than the beginning and end, which is a problem because the middle is supposed to be the meat of a story. You slip a bit into cliche here, with her saying "I love you too. I've been waiting so long blah blah blah."

Also, "kissed him with lips of passion" is really bizarre phrasing. You could just say "kissed him passionately" or "deeply" or "hard" or even just "kissed him" and leave off any sort of qualifier.

Also, I feel like you were trying to be deep with this bit, but the way it's worded makes it confusing--

She looked up at her mysterious partner and thought, something that in her before this moment would never understand, and understood.


It's the "and thought, something that in her before this moment would never understand" that makes it tricky. Just try rewording it slightly, because as it stands right now I'm not sure what you mean.

Another note on that line--you say "her mysterious partner," which makes it seem actually like she just met this guy at the club and they've been dancing and they're young and they're probably intoxicated, and now all this stuff influencing their moment together makes him say "I love you" even though actually they don't even really know each other. But THEN she says the part about "waiting so long for you to say this," which makes it seem like they've been dating for a while...because is she really so intoxicated that she feels like she's been waiting forever for her mysterious stranger of a dance partner to say "I love you"?

(I mean, maybe. I've never been intoxicated, so what do I know?)

I also think you could do without the "he was never the talkative one," because a) we can see that, since he has all these thoughts which he sums up in three words and b) that line makes it sound like he's about to talk a lot, i.e. "he was never the talkative one, BUT," but instead they just kiss some more, and he actually doesn't speak again for the rest of the story.

Also (sorry for all the alsos), I think--like, when you say that nothing mattered, not her "limiting inhibitions"--like I said, I mean, they're at a club. And it sounds kind of to me--this is a very beautiful little moment, but it does sound like maybe they're some level of intoxicated. (Sorry if they're actually sober, that's just how I'm reading this.) So it seems like--even if they're not intoxicated by alcohol, they could just be intoxicated by the atmosphere, the music, the presence of other people, standing so close together, dancing, and so on--which means that her "limiting inhibitions" have probably been done away anyway. So like of course, THOSE wouldn't matter to her right now, do you see what I'm saying?

I do however like this line:

the energy that flowed between them now was released into one thought between two minds, finely in tune to rushing forces of percussion.


Definitely one of the stronger lines in the middle part. And also this line:

Nothing now except the beat of drums to the heart of her love.


Now, this is so short that I think revising that middle section will be a piece of cake for you. I know you can write really well, because as I said, your opening and closing are just beautifully done. So fix up that middle bit, and I think you've got a brilliant little moment.

Blue

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carbonCore
Review

Interesting. A couple (?) discovers drugs, gets horny, inexplicably turns into a pair of energy beings, and flies off into the vast expanses of space and time. This is what I got out of this piece. I'm not sure whether that's what it intended to get across, but its gleeful reliance on imagery takes it far away from anything I can ground in reality.

Suppose this was not the intention of the piece. Suppose they really were a slightly inebriated couple who eloped from a night-club and had a roll in the bushes afterwards. ("Reached out towards the stars" is a euphemism for "had sex with each other", right?) Suppose all this was the case. What, then, is this piece trying to say? Screw everything, let's be in love?

I don't know the background of this relationship, I don't know how long they have been together or what knots tied their life-lines into one. Whatever the case may be, however, abandoning their family and their friends is a drastic move, one that I don't necessarily think is a good idea. They will have other romantic partners in their lives, but they will only have one family. To let go of that for a mere romantic partner is like finding a random cliff and leaping off it, hoping you will crash into something soft and find lots of money there. Hey, it can happen! Or, if you smash yourself into a wall enough times, it can so happen that you'll pass through it. Yet somehow neither case doesn't sound like a smart idea.

Was this piece intended as a tragedy, then? If it was, where are the tragic consequences? Where is the homelessness, the joblessness, the drug addictions, the prostitution, the holding your lover as you watch heroin snuff out the last flicker of life in their eyes?

Was it not a tragedy? Where is their life happily ever after? Where are their kids, their successful lives, their mutually overcome challenges?

Like walking off a cliff, this piece starts in the middle of nowhere and ends in the middle of nowhere. Would do very well with some expounding or lengthening.

Your cliff,
cC

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GreenLight24
Review

Hey there! I'm here for a review with you, representing team blue on this awesome March Review Day! :D

Disclaimer: I'm reviewing via iPhone, so please excuse any typos which I am sure to make...

*clears throat* *Morgan Freeman Voice*

First of all, this story is really pretty amazing. The way you use the setting of the night club and the imagery of the couple's surroundings as they run away together are what really make this such a cool piece. Your descriptions of the man's feelings through the descriptions of the sounds and sights he comes across were instrumental in not only developing the setting but also in developing the character's personality in such a short amount of time. Nice job there.

I also like your concept of love here. What it seems like I'm hearing you say is that love is when two people stop caring about anything that happens around them as long as try have each other. This concept was greatly helped by your use of the description of their surroundings serving as sort of a background or a supporting piece to their emotions for one another. However, the fact that you have titled this work "what love could be" and not something like "what love is" implies that you are describing a dream scenario in which the definition of love I've already mentioned is a reality. Really cool stuff there.

I can't really find much constructive criticism to give you here just because I liked this so much. So good job! :D Happy Review Day and I hope this helps you going forward. Never stop writing!!! :D

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Laure
Review
Laure wrote a review · Sun Mar 30, 2014 12:32 am

Heyo, Laure here for a review!

I'm going start the gong off with some positives. I think this story isn't aim to tell a particular story per se, because from what I read it seems to explore the feeling of love or being in love much more than an actual story. You focused a lot on the character's feelings in which you described vividly and acutely. I do perceive the sense of passion and wonder in this short story, the ending was also quite metaphorically interesting, now that's just an euphemism for saying I wasn't quite sure of what happened to them but no matter, you ended it with elegance and grace.

Nitpicks: So, this is mostly me rambling about the structure of the story not so much on grammar and spelling. So, to be perfectly blunt here. This story is half story and half stream of the consciousness piece. There weren't enough emotions to create an internal depth of the character's feelings towards each other, yet there weren't solid story line to create the depth of a plot. I know this is a short story, but even so it should all connect but in here, I sense logical gaps and you jumping from scene to scene. Like how you jumped from the male to the female, they just pop right out of nowhere so we only get a glimpse of each. Also, the emotions are be swift, so what, they were just two random strangers that has never met and just suddenly loves each other? Hmmm...something sounds fishy to you? You need to at least give some prelude to it, it would make their love palpable instead of weak.

Now, I'm sorry if I sound harsh because this is a good story but it just lacks depth. I think you actually explored the feelings pretty well here but they were just too short and jumped over the place. So, keep on working, I would like to see your improvements.

Kudos!

-Laure



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