@wolfgang59 said
I voted by PM in the first round as I didn't want to influence anyone.
I believe I was the second person to vote.

So some comments from me, beginning with the least rated:

cynthia is my own contribution. I thought it would be nice to have a infinite circle with no escape. The other idea I thought to be worthwhile was to have the least liked person as a judge. All in all not convincing. I hope I didn't have too many Germanisms in that one (after all someone assigned it correctly in the author guess thread)

LUCKY ME!

This one was all in all okay. For me the problem is that there are about three different stories into one. Sorry for that...

Next least rated with 1 point was just called Escape and written by me. First thing I had ever written other than work letters etc so a big step into the unknown. Happy to be told why it didn't work if people want to leave feedback. I have thick skin!

Escape
in this story the rolling stories works good for me. And probably many people can relate to waking a few times during the night. The ending was a bit of a surprise, but not that surprising...and I only thought it would end, since there was not enough rom for another waking...
I had the stroy in the second round in my notes.

Mr. Wilson's board meeting

A funny idea well executed. One problem I had was that it needed the explanation at the end, that took some of the fun out of it.
There woudl have been room enough to try to make it self-expalanatory. Mr. F. for example would disintegrate after escaping...
The perspective could also have been the intestines, after all it is them who suffer?

Rose coloured glasses
splendid idea to have the metaphorical glasses be a real world article. In my opinion however the revelation came to early to be a surprising end and too late to exploit the whole potential of the idea. And some questions were left open. For example: would the glasses work for another person also?

Victoria's wedding

When I started to read this one I thought that I might have put the winning entry first, but then came a lot of hints in which the story could develop. I think it suffers from the rule-enfrced brevity. I would like to read the whole novel about Victoria and Rob and Terrance and the role Michael was playing though it all.

soul searching

my second contribution, who actually got one first rank vote, thank you.
Two ideas again: one Penguin, since it was dicussed at length in the thread 😉 I don't know if I managed to make Mrs. Dubois sufficiently penguin-like...
And escaping the therapist is the second. A good therapist should be happy at the outcome ... I hope.

Beyond the Horizon

I am still a bit concerned that it was put last by my oversight... in fact I had planned to put Cynthia last, since I knew it was the lesser of my entries....however.
A wonderful encouraging story for all the teachers out there I think. BUt for me it slightly missed the mark, the escape topic did not feel as antural ending for me... Maybe the phrasing of the last two sentences was not flowing well enough down my non-native-speaker's soul?

@petewxyz said
Next least rated with 1 point was just called Escape and written by me. First thing I had ever written other than work letters etc so a big step into the unknown. Happy to be told why it didn't work if people want to leave feedback. I have thick skin!

Lockdown

Thank you for that story Ghost, it was really moving. It made my seocnd list, but didn't get into the points for me. One thing that (maybe unjusty) stung was the spelling of Jerimiah...it is jeremia also in Russian...Then I think it would have been an improvement to have the old artist dwelling in his reminiscence even though it would have taken out the surprise of Nurse Susan...but that is only me.

Billy Southridge

A story I couldn't relate to very much, sorry to say, first it read like on of the "you can do it against all adversity" stories and then it was the abrupt ending....
Maybe I felt that Billy had only eyer for hilself. What was it with his mother who had to work as a check-out 2gal", what is the relationsship to his friend Danny? Danny did encourage him but was left to a footnote...Here again I think a novel could have been made from the story.

Maybe time for a clarification. I am writing about what I felt and thought reading. I will normally not comment on the use of English language, since I am not a native speaker. I liked to read the stories and enjoy the contest each and every year.

And of course my offer to discuss stories with people in private stays.

In which Reginald goes for a walk.

I had this one as my second choice. I liked the idea and I found Reginald to be characterised with great respect, even though the man is slightly strange.
The development of the figure during the story is amazing and his reversal on Muppet's destiny is as sympathetic as it is beleivable. Superb story (in my opinion (I hated to see it on rank five just one vote beyond the fourth which made the cut due to the one vote difference rule)

The littly piggy

In another thread someone wrote it was kafkaesk, and that is a good characteristaion. A very strange proposition well developed. I liked the funny undertone, even in the description of its fromer proprietor. It came in third for me, and made the big finale to win, congratulations again.

A reason to live

For me one of the candidates which could at least meake a novella, but even a novel. The ideas are all there and I for one would have a load of quetions. For such a short piece it was necessary to make a very (for me) rushed conversation to introduce us to the problem.
That the landlord forst wouldn't even ame here and in the third part did so without any ado is a slight logic error that kept it from making my first three list...and as you can see it weren't idle words when I wrote it was difficult to prepare the list. It is now the co-winner and I hope there will be an expanded version. Congratulations Indonesia Phil.

Dogma

A cool idea, however I read a similar story by Stanislw lem some years ago (I will look for it, but that is very difficult). While the story is well executed and certainly follows a completely different path it feels still rough around the edges.
For me it is also unclear how the concept of sky could evolve in such a peculiar setting.

Release

I put this as my first choice and kept it in round two.
Admittedly it is a story of despair. But it captured me directly and led me to come to the conclusion of Natan. The missing respect by Mike, the utter failure to find things worthwhile, the necessity even to lie to make the better off feeling better...well done.
Also the vengeance aspect. To make someone behaving irresponsible to have to live with that, even though I am strictyl aginst it, the story pulled me in a modd to accept that as part of some higher justice.

Well done Paul

@ponderable said
Release

I put this as my first choice and kept it in round two.
Admittedly it is a story of despair. But it captured me directly and led me to come to the conclusion of Natan. The missing respect by Mike, the utter failure to find things worthwhile, the necessity even to lie to make the better off feeling better...well done.
Also the vengeance aspect. To make someone ...[text shortened]... t it, the story pulled me in a modd to accept that as part of some higher justice.

Well done Paul

@the-pickled-walrus said
If first place is well above second place then she/he should get the victory.

No votes for the escaping fart?
It was the only funny story.

Congratulations to all authors - it was great fun. I regret that I did not write anything. I'm consumed by the final year of my degree, but maybe next year!

In my mind, when trying to rank the stories, it is like a competition between two parts of my brain: one that favours objectively better writing in the literal sense of the word, and one that responds to feelings of empathy. My ranking of the stories could wildly change depending on how I'm feeling that day.

I think it's a natural consequence of having a theme; people inevitably have different takes on a word and this leads in effect to different competitions within the rankers' brains. In that way, I think that having no theme is better because then the stories are already so different that people can more easily rationalize ranking them as a whole picture rather than a combination of writing quality and relatability.

I'm not sure if I'm making sense.