Good Night seems specifically optimised to chill EY, was it your goal?
Oh, good heavens no! The thought that Mr. Yudkowsky would ever read the story did not even occur to me until long after it was finished.
I am a bit puzzled by one aspect of Good Night, but that may be because I don't understand the tech level that the characters are operating at.
At the level of magitek I envisioned the characters having, your solution should definitely be possible. The realistic answer is that the prompt gave us twelve hours of prep time and one hour of writing time; I did not think of your idea during the allotted time, and if I had I would have mercilessly cut it at the planning stage so that I could fit the whole story into one hour. Even disregarding the time limit, rnpu nethzrag V unq Pryrfgvn naq Gjvyvtug qvfphff jnf n fvatyr, ovt, eryngviryl fvzcyr pbaprcg; vzzbegnyf zhfg zbqvsl fb gung gurl pna rgreanyyl ybbc, be gurl zhfg tebj, be gurl zhfg qvr. Your idea is more complex, and it doesn't fit the theme. If you had handed me a beautifully written section which covered the whole issue in three paragraphs while I was writing, I would have had no choice but to murder it for the sake of the story as a whole.
Literary concerns aside, my Twilight would disagree with the notion that lbh pna pubbfr juvpu vafgnaprf bs lbh lbh fhowrpgviryl rkcrevrapr onfrq ba jurgure lbh vqragvsl jvgu gurz be abg.
No such accusation intended! In all honesty, my thought process was "Guvf fgbel erpncvghyngrf gur svany gevyrzzn (nf lbh fnl, ybbc/tebj/qvr) bs Pnryrz rfg Pbagreeraf, juvpu vf nyernql xabja gb cbffrff RL-puvyyvat cebcregvrf; lbh pbaqrafr vg irel rssrpgviryl, naq gura lbh unir Pryrfgvn rpub bar bs gur zber ubcrshy Sha Gurbel cbfgf jvgu 'Vg znl jryy or gung n zber pbagebyyrq pyvzo hc gur vagryyvtrapr gerr vf cbffvoyr'; naq gura Gjvyvtug erwrpgf vg." I just read it as very pointed, which clearly was not the intended reading.
I can't dispute your cla...
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