The Origins of the Modern Metro Manila

Hi, outvaders! Mage here to do the long-overdue, promised review! I'm sorry for taking so long! Since this is a short piece, this review will also be short. Well, let's get to it, shall we?

In your review request, you mentioned that I should treat this like poetry, and that it's supposed to be universal and Philippine satire. As you've probably realized, I'm not Philippine, so the message you're trying to convey doesn't truly get across to me.

I've read the other reviews and seen that the theme is something along the lines of, "the rich eat the poor" and that the King's name comes from Roman mythology. I'm usually an optimistic person, but the ending line makes me think something a little darker than usual. To me, it seems like the theme is that the means to achieving something doesn't matter. What matters is the result. By killing his son, King Saturnino was able to let his land prosper because he remained in rule. If his son had lived, he might have done the same or even better when it came to ruling, but we only know one outcome in this situation.

Keep up the great work - which you'll have trouble with - and good luck on your writing endeavors! Have a great day/night!

DAMN! what a freakin' MONSTER! but anyway this was good

DUDE, HOW IS THIS REALISTIC?! WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU DOING PUTTING THIS IN REALISTIC =O HE ATE A BABY AND TURNED INTO A FREAKING DEMON!

-cough- Okay, okay, let me calm down. Okay WHAT THE MAJOR FLYING HIPPOPOTAMUS? UHHHHH HELLO! GOOD LORD.

that didn't work. okay okay, let me try agian.
HI outvaders ^^,
Aley here to review your uh, ge- uh... homoci-no, okay, so here to review your short short o0;

Alright, so joking aside, I think you really did a great job simplifying this to its most specific. The idea that this man is going to eat the child comes to you as he does it, and not beforehand although it becomes easy to see that he's going to kill him, which, again, you do really quick. I really like that about this short story because you're not holding your punches and it gives you time to just read and then be done with it, be horrified, and move on with your life. But it's hard to move on from, like harrrd. That is what I really love about this.

How did you make it hard? You just gave us the act, you didn't get into the gory details of how he became a super-demon or whatever, or actually what exactly happened. You just, gave us what happened, and that's it. The last sentence is really haunting and horrifying which is sooo good. I really really like that.

Overall, I think you might have been a little too descriptive at the beginning. I don't think we need the first sentence of the short short. I think you can probably cut out quite a bit.

"Papa!"

For every day that passed, the old and withered King Saturnino grew more and more jealous of his child, his successor, who in contrast, grew stronger and healthier. But now, the child had already spoken its first word, and only then did the king realize the grave mistake he had made, and the threat the child posed to the throne.

And so, in the dead of the night, Saturnino snuck into the child's nursery, and with a sure slash of the blade, swiftly brought the usurper to justice. Ignoring the blood that came forth from its neck in spurts, he picked up the child's corpse and started chewing on its flesh.

...

Well, I just argued with you about this piece for a solid twenty minutes, so I might as well review it now. And when I say argue, I mean it in a playful sense--I like arguing over the meaning of the piece. But I'm telling you, I got the interpretation right the first few times. Just because I said the rich eat the poor doesn't mean I literally mean the rich eat the poor.

I liked how someone finally made a piece about one of the Black Paintings. I'm not sure how the Roman mythology actually put it, but in the Greek one Kronos devoured his children whole, so they still lived in his belly. I'm not sure how the child gets out alive in Saturn's version.

But that's not the point of this piece. The point of this piece was to, apparently, point out how the rich makes the Philippines prosper by chewing out the poor (not literally, mind you), and the symbolism using Saturn is pretty notable. I like flashfics that act like poetry, because it makes me sit there for a second going "what". It's like staring at a Picasso or a Dali. Obviously it means something , I'm just too stupid to know what that something actually means.

If I had to make any complaints, it's probably the fact that it's very universal but refers to something specifically. Like, I don't live in the Phillipines so I can't comment on that, but I do live in Indonesia, and I can tell you now that at the very least this work applies to us too. Probably more so, with the ridiculous amount of corruption we have here. One of our leaders literally went 1984 on our asses and then decided to kill all his competitors and critics and drive Indonesia into an era of complete and utter silence. We're not even going to talk about what they did with the poor Chinese people during that time. Rich people are just inherently douchebags, and for that reason now seeing a Lamborghini in the city streets isn't that queer to us anymore--we've prospered well enough because they're douchebags. I guess what I'm saying here is that I would've liked it if this was more aimed towards all of the world, but that's a nitpick. A really, really small nitpick. Overall, this work was really well written and rife with meaning, and I absolutely loved dissecting it.

Signing out,

--EM.

To begin with! You quite clearly, from statements below, would like this to be treated like a poem, rather than as prose. This is difficult at first brush, because it is a piece of prose! However, there is enough here to read like a poem, so why not both?

We'll start with the deeper readings.
Thankfully, due to my more than passing allegiance with Roman mythology, the significance of the name Saturn did not fly by. Saturn, slayer of Uranus, who was prophesied to be overthrown by his own son and so devoured all his children!
You mentioned the reason Saturn was chosen instead of the more widely known Cronos is due to the setting in our private discussion. However, Googling 'Saturnino' gave me a sunglasses brand and a Mexican painter, so that might not be correct. On top of this, the suffix -ino is apparently an Italian feminine suffix, so also no.
The rising of Metro Manila, or Kalakhang Maynila, could have been reaching greater heights because it is being compared to Mt. Olympus, the pinnacle of the world, and beyond human comprehension.
I would wonder at the result of Zeus' metaphorical death for the rising of Mt. Olympus. Is this why the location changed?

And now, for the dreaded generalist overview - there being a second meaning doesn't excuse ignoring the prose itself!
This work uses a lot of long sentences. In the first two paragraphs, I'm counting an average of three commas a sentence.
Full points for spelling and grammar. I did not find a single error.
The fusion of Roman mythology and folklore from the Philippines (i.e. aswang) is an interesting choice. I can't seem to pick out a reason for that, but I assume it's one personal, or maybe better understood by a local?

Finally, having looked over the other reviews, I can say with authority that people not understanding this piece is to be expected.
The best way to get people to read this piece as one would read a poem is to have to feel like a poem. This would mean, in execution, using minimalist poetic language (the more you can make someone want to re-read a sentence to understand an beautiful image, the more effective it will be), alliteration and assonance (make the words sound pretty next to each other), and perhaps some structural changes and repetition of key phrases.
Good luck in the future!

Author's Afterword:

I can't put this afterword in the original thing, or else it'll kill the flashfic vibe. So I'll just put it here.

Dear God, is it just me or this flashfic is a joke that flies over everyone else's head, and I'm the only one who laughs and fully appreciates this?

Before you even begin to write your review, hold up and hear me out.

Read everything carefully, and find the meaning behind each word. I do not have the ability to explain everything in these tight-ass word constraints, so I have to hide these big secrets in these small details.

Ask yourself: Why did awtbeyders choose to name the king "Saturnino?" Why did awtbeyders choose Kalakhang Maynila as his setting? Is Kalakhang Maynila a real place? What does "Kalakhang Maynila" even mean? Ew this is f*cked up. Did awtbeyders bang his head as a child?

Ask yourself all that fancy stuff. But the question that I want you to consider the most is, "What is awtbeyders, the (legit) most handsome writer in all of the world, trying to say through this flash fiction?"

That's all. Proceed.

Hey, Memory for a quickie~

based on my inference, I'm guessing this is a flash fic. I'm not good at flash fics - but I do write feature stories which are kind of related in a way (?). Whatever I say here, I hope it helped.

I. Opening
It's eye-catching and affects the readers tremendously. As I read the part where the king ate his own child, I remembered the opening line and it gives more emphasis on what has happened.

II. Middle
This seems to be a pretty interesting story. I can see a hidden message in the plot, however I'm not sure if it is a hidden message, since my brain is often compared with a sloth's movement.

Within 182 words, you've managed to make the readers attached to the characters - especially that deceased child. However, if I were to write this story, I would have put more concrete details instead of abstract ones like 'stronger' or 'healthier'. Well, it is hard to go further than those adjectives with a word limit.

III. Ending
Dude. I can't even give a review on that last paragraph.

That's just. It leaves me hanging somehow (The positive kind of hanging). I'll try to come back and explain further, but now I'll just think about how to give a more helpful review.

IV. Grammar
So far, I found no mistakes whatsoever.

This was not a quickie. At all. I had trouble criticizing this, because there was nothing at all to criticize. You gave us a craft with a special meaning behind it, plus gruesome images that make everything an emotional wreck. All in 182 words.

Though I would have written this differently (refer to part II), it was quite the interesting read.

Ayo I still see your face.

AS ALWAYS, HAPPY WRITING~

I rather like how you wrote this. It's short and easy to read, plus the way you ended it was great. So kudos for the great story! I'd like to point out some things, however.

As much as I liked your story, I feel as though you need to expand on some things or perhaps spruce it up a little; There wasn't much emotion of the story. It seemed a little to the point and informative than a horror though I suppose that may just be the way I read it. Being one who loves horror oriented things, I simply don't get scared easy, though this story makes me wonder if the king was mentally ill. I'm sure that if I were the child's mother, I'd be both heartbroken and terrified.

Perhaps for added horror, you could describe the body more, and you could put down how others reacted when they found the body, unless the king ate everything.

I would also like to point out how strange some of the sentences sounded. For example; "But now, the child had already spoken its first word, and only then did the king realize the grave mistake he had made, and the threat the child posed to the throne." sounds a little strange, likely because the word 'And' appears twice to list the things that were apparent (such as, the threat to the throne and the realization).

Also - we don't know the child well enough to truly care if something happens. I know how heartless that sounds, but as much as it's horrific to read about a king killing and eating parts of his child, I simply became a little bored with that specific part where King Saturnino killed the boy. It seemed to escalate a little too quickly but I suppose I understand.

Otherwise, you did very well on this piece! Keep up the good work. May you be smiled upon.