TDZ -- I think it might have worked better if it had been a charmed necklace, as that's less flippant** and we're more likely to accept jewellery as magical. And instead of his head on a pike, which tripped me up as it's very much a traitor's death, if perhaps the hangman got the drop wrong and the lover's head was torn off that would have been more fitting and just as gruesome.
springs -- I think I understood it. The narrator and Dex have both been dumped by this woman and they're out for revenge. I had a number of problems with the piece, though.
Firstly, I didn't see the cyberpunk element in it at all. You call them mutants, but you don't show anything of their mutation, which could simply have been genetic, after all, which to me isn't cyberish enough (though that might be my own very narrow understanding of it). There's certainly no atmosphere of dystopia, or drugginess that I associate with the genre.
The theme of change was a bit weak, too, for me -- presumably you mean as mutants they are changed, but from what to what? And although you speak of changing her mind, I don't see that happening if she dumped them as they were "fake" as they're not getting any less mutant, surely? And how are they proving real "love" in finding and killing her? It just didn't make sense as I saw it (though I appreciate I may have got the wrong end of the stick).
Also, nothing actually happens -- they're just looking at at computer, but there's no action or dialogue that moves the story on. They've been searching a year, but there's no sense of time lost, or what they've done in that time, and lo! there they have her, but there's no reason why they've got her today, as opposed to yesterday -- no new de-cryption device, no new arrivals to scan, no new stoolies they've burned for information.
And for me in the 75 worders, every word has to count, but you've told us things which I can't see as relevant eg Dex stretching and "long legs crossed at the ankle" -- that's fine for a novel but what's it doing here? I realise you may be trying to show something of his mutation, but there's nothing to suggest abnormality.
The voice itself is fine, if that was worrying you. As part of a larger piece in which things happened it would have fitted really well. It's just everything else is missing to my mind. Sorry.
** I was interested to see both Parson and Teresa use "flip" which I'm assuming means the same as flippant -- this was a word my mother used but I'd not heard anywhere else. I've always assumed it was some Kentish aberration, but as a young woman she had a very good friend who was American, so perhaps that's where she got it from!
springs -- I think I understood it. The narrator and Dex have both been dumped by this woman and they're out for revenge. I had a number of problems with the piece, though.
Firstly, I didn't see the cyberpunk element in it at all. You call them mutants, but you don't show anything of their mutation, which could simply have been genetic, after all, which to me isn't cyberish enough (though that might be my own very narrow understanding of it). There's certainly no atmosphere of dystopia, or drugginess that I associate with the genre.
The theme of change was a bit weak, too, for me -- presumably you mean as mutants they are changed, but from what to what? And although you speak of changing her mind, I don't see that happening if she dumped them as they were "fake" as they're not getting any less mutant, surely? And how are they proving real "love" in finding and killing her? It just didn't make sense as I saw it (though I appreciate I may have got the wrong end of the stick).
Also, nothing actually happens -- they're just looking at at computer, but there's no action or dialogue that moves the story on. They've been searching a year, but there's no sense of time lost, or what they've done in that time, and lo! there they have her, but there's no reason why they've got her today, as opposed to yesterday -- no new de-cryption device, no new arrivals to scan, no new stoolies they've burned for information.
And for me in the 75 worders, every word has to count, but you've told us things which I can't see as relevant eg Dex stretching and "long legs crossed at the ankle" -- that's fine for a novel but what's it doing here? I realise you may be trying to show something of his mutation, but there's nothing to suggest abnormality.
The voice itself is fine, if that was worrying you. As part of a larger piece in which things happened it would have fitted really well. It's just everything else is missing to my mind. Sorry.
** I was interested to see both Parson and Teresa use "flip" which I'm assuming means the same as flippant -- this was a word my mother used but I'd not heard anywhere else. I've always assumed it was some Kentish aberration, but as a young woman she had a very good friend who was American, so perhaps that's where she got it from!
