All Comments on 'Duty'

stupid. really stupid

Bat-shit-crazy is the term that comes to mind.

This is different!

5

If this submission is an attempt at humor, it fails miserably. This poorly conceived story is an insult to the Ukrainian people and all who have suffered from Russia's illegal aggression. Those who have traveled to Ukraine to volunteer their services in support of those suffering from Putin's cruelty are heroic defenders of freedom and democracy. The author's agenda here appears nothing short of vile. The LW community will remember this offense. Slava Ukraini!

Typical American image of the war in Ukraine. This war has been going on for 8 years. It all started with a coup financed by the US, which resulted in dozens of deaths, the legal president was overthrown and a pro-American regime was appointed, then there was a massacre in Odessa and an uprising on Donbas, the beginning of the civil war is 2014.

Hopeless, infantile, short and striving for some depth - 1*

So why didnt the wife care when the US engineered an overthrow of the Ukrainian government and quietly funded the new regimes bombing of the Donbas region precipitating Putins invasion bolstered by a legitimate defense of the ethnic russians on that area?

How is this a loving wife story. All you are relating is a current event story that doesn't explain what is really going on. Don't waste our time with this.

WHAAAT? Like Ana said, that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard! I seldomly ask an author for more, but I’m askin’. I gotta hear ‘the rest of the story’. This premise is too juicy. Too tantalizing. Please elaborate. Craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Thanks!

I must be getting senile, because this story seems entirely pointless.

Hopefully his dingbat wife caught a Kalashnikov bullet for abandoning her daughter for next to no reason

Too unfinished. Not a 750 word story.

What? She has no lover, past or present, over there? Just goes crazy patriotic for another country?

It felt longer than 750 words, so the author managed to pack a lot into a very short story. It was certainly an interesting and original premise.

Silly.

Nicely done! Not erotic, just details about the unraveling of a marriage. Hope whoever she is, that she learns to like borscht. Five stars ⭐️ for this one.

Too short. 750 only works when the story is complete, this isn't.

I’m actually weirdly impressed. I did not wake up today expecting to find a thinly veiled history lesson on my erotic story site. Bravo.

Interesting but without much foundation or end.

Great story idea. I think you put a 3000 word story into a 750 word bag. In my opinion, you could expand

this story and tell a much richer tale in the future.

Not sure what that was all about...

I guess the wife didn't know that the Ukrainian forces killed about 14, 000 Ethnic Russians and wounded about 50, 000 others before Russia said enough of this shit and decided to kick ass.

I like 750 word stories when it's a 750 word topic. This topic was too big. The wife reads as crazy in a very shallow manner and I think it does not work that way. Sorry. It was an interesting idea, but it needed more exploration.

This needs more. Perhaps from the wife and an explanation as to why she left?

interesting

An interesting twist on a "Loving Wife" who wants to escape her "husband and child" responsibilities. The reference to Ukraine is perfect for setting up the contrast to the other expatriate "warriors" motivation--while being too lacking in depth to serve as an analysis of that conflict. Also loved the reference back to Doctor Zhivago, if only for the remembered image of Julie Christie in her beautiful prime.

Well done for the length of the story.

Another useless 750 wordy thing.

Trying to squeeze too much story into 750 words. They should be snapshots that can sit entirely on their own. A conversation or something like that that can in itself fill in the needed details. This was too wide ranging and never filled in any details. Not of why she left to go to Ukraine, how her family reacted, how their daughter reacted, was there any further development with the sisters.

Odd one, this. The MC comes off as a pussy. Good for the wife. She's obviously got the stones in the family.

Looks finished to me.

Nicely done.

Original -- I like original. 5*

This is very erudite, drawing from cinema, literature and international relations, intersecting within a family. But there’s not much of a plot. The inciting element was passive with the wife abandoning her family without any notification. And the resolution was passive with the husband and child adapting to their new normal and receiving signed divorce documents.

So so. Too much in too few words

3*

Now that’s a whole new thing for LW, with the wife allegedly taking off to fight Russians in Ukraine. My wife, the Air Nationals Guard Colonel, did deploy to Afghanistan with her medical unit. That was actual duty, and she did come back. A Jersey Italian wife going off to fight Putin is pretty outrageous by any measure. Good because it was something novel in the LW angle.

I get that the author was trying to convey that happy people don't walk out of a marriage, but the wrapper story was not well formed.

Different. I wondered if perhaps she was cheating on her husband and the baby wasn't his. Feeling guilty she needed an excuse to run away and decided to fight in someone else's war, with little chance of surviving.

Americans don't even know where Ukraine is. Better write about how the CIA funded al-Qaeda in 1988

+1 to the previous comment

No point, just a sad start to a story.

Another author who thinks a short story is defined buy the number of words; you reach 750, story over. This story is reminiscent of the doctor bitch who abandoned her husband and kids to go to Africa and save the children and get some strange cock in the bargain. Glad to see this husband is not that weak or indecisive as the poltroon in that story; I think another George Anderson cuck and whore tale? Anyway, it is inferred that the wife in this story abandoned her husband and children to save the Ukraine. Sounds like another good idea for a story. I hope someone writes it. Thanks for the outline, and the effort.

Ripped straight from the headlines - or right wing wet dreams in any case. It actually begs for a second chapter

This is not a 750 word story, just an unfinished one.

Da fock was that?! Where’s the rest, yo lazy chump?!

Captcha

What the hell was this? I can't get this wasted time back😭

Nice little Casablanca reference.

LOL, Short and Sweet

The funny things about politics is that every side tells THEIR truth. I happen to have read that "russian" groups were doing precisely the same to Ukranian families in Ukranian soil before the invasion and then Ukranians retaliated. I don't fully believe either side. Do you remember Crimea?

No story no sense no sex

Will she come back as a hardened neo-Nazi, tattooed with symbols of the black sun and the wolfhook, the symbol of Azov ?

This is a guy that had sense and divorce her stupid ass

Should have filed under abandonment and gotten all the assets!

Interesting.

And fun to read.

4 out of 5 from me.

Wife willing to go to war to leave her husband.

Anonymous before huedog. Russian troll much ??

Dumb bitch of a wife

A good beginning for an extended version. Well done

Strange story.

What's with the defenses of the Russian invasion? They must be Trumpies because we know that Trump kisses Putin's ass.

3/5 average

1. 750w require strong narrative discipline to squeeze compelling storyline into a few short paragraphs. This one feels like 3k crudely cut to make it 750

2. Conflict selection could be better. No conflict specifics is material to the story (anything with 'wife suddenly woke up and found xxx important and urgent enough to abandon husband and child' would work) but Russian invasion selection took a lot of focus from the story to reader's feelings about the conflict itself

1. Not sure why this had such low rating. The wife wasn't cheating as far as I can see, nor was cruel, and didn't leave the family impoverished (explicitly mentioned that she used her pension money to pay, which implies NOT their savings). More importantly, the husband got to keep his child AND found a replacement better wife. So, this gets 4.5 from me, deduction of half a star for somewhat stilted language.

/

2. No idea who David lean was (had to google him), and adding him to the first sentence seemed rather useless. This may be just an artefact of my knowing very well who Pasternak was, and maybe some English speakers would know the director's name better than the author's? Not sure.

Quick Fun Read tho it is kind of heartbreaking. I have heard of people doing this kind of joining to go to war, I am sure some folks do it. But it isn't like your wife is cheating to do that. It is heartbreaking just the same when she would leave you. thanks 5 stars. Buster2U

@Buster2U - the moral/ethical problem is far less problematic than cheating would be, but it still IS a moral/ethical problem. She unilaterally made the decision to abandon her family - specifically her husband (violating her wedding vows, BTW, even if not cheating); and especially her baby. So now the baby grows up in a much poorer conditions (as most single parent households are), both materially AND care-wise, since Dad has to both work AND take care of the kid as a single parent, at least for now (PLUS, kid will have emotional trauma later when they learn their egg donor abandoned them). And obviously has an absolutely devastating impact on the husband, between emotional impact of abandonment by someone who vowed to stay by their side till death, AND practical impact of both being a single earner with a kid AND a single parent as a caretaker. Add in emotional impact of realizing she didn't really love him that much from subsequent behavior.

Good, short, thought-provoking, the author makes some good decisions, gets some insight, and moves forward.

Well done.

It wasn't a horrible story, but I found myself asking what's the point. As a reader, I don't care because I'm not invested at all.

Story had potential but it wasn’t really developed,

Waiting for a story where will be mentioned invasions of Usa into Yemen and other countries

Not much of a story

Strange.

Good outline, no resolution. 3

I like the short ones, and this is good, but it begs for more. Just my opinion of course, but I would like to hear more explanation of "why". And then you could delve into the story from her POV... then what happens with Ana... although that's clearly implied here... and maybe the wife's return... was she faithful or not while she was away...

I wish FTDS was still writing :)

I liked it, but it was terribly incomplete.