All Comments on 'The Year without a Cupid'

Really good story that has the makings of an intriguing series. Would love to see Cupid grow back into the form of Eros as he helps other lovers out throughout the year.

I must say that while the story has potential, It suffers from a lack of focus. It does contain some intriguing elements, like for example Cupid with plenty of snark and humor; Cupid willing to kill himself although that doesn't happen..; he is approached with a true conundrum, where Isabella is concerned about her trainer Joe.. but the problem is the story meanders and I frankly lost interest about halfway into the second page. First of all, there was one time where one of the human bodyguards addressed Cupid and instead of Cupid trying to address that bodyguard's concern about this one woman being really beautiful and if you could help him out, Cupid went on another rant about something totally different. You have Isabella who approaches him, but doesn't get to the point, and represents the same kind of back and forth of the undefined story. You introduce Isabella as a virgin Latina, but the problem is she's incredibly superficial as a character also: when you use characters of a certain race, you have to at least make a reasonable attempt address the qualities they should possess; in Isabella's case, she should have spoken some Spanish, and probably you should have mentioned something about her mother and how close she was with her family but really aside from you mentioning she's a Latina, it's just kind of left there. It's obvious that she loves Joe, and Joe has some type of inclination for her.. but then as I was losing interest.. suddenly he wants to marry isabella? Suddenly he wants to have sex with her and get her pregnant? I'm not going to bother to go back and read the possible reason why it happened, although there was something about one of Cupid's arrows being missing.. the main thing is the story has potential, but elements are brought out partly developed, and then just kind of dropped. Another thing, is that the story is just too short- - which impedes having enough physical space to develop these characters--to at least a reasonable extent; for example, Joe should have sat down and examined exactly why he probably shouldn't have even bothered with Greta.. just aside from realizing his voice lacked enthusiasm when he was practicing asking Greta to marry him. Then, he should have gone through the pros and cons of perhaps why Isabella would be a better choice. The obvious reason that Isabella would make a better choice is that Lily obviously adores and loves her, but then you clearly have a large age gap between Joe and Isabella. I can get that Isabella has a crush on him, and perhaps Joe and Isabella could make a good go of it.. but it's obvious there's far more than just 10 to 15 years between their ages, meaning that there's only 8% of age-gap romances in the 10-year range that are successful; this means that unless you somehow clearly define and picture them thoroughly talking about all the possible issues, who's going to handle what responsibilities, how they're going to address their relationship to their friends and their family, it just isn't going to work and it's got a 92% chance of failure.

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I certainly like the idea of Cupid being done with Valentine's day. If you would have taken story in a definite direction, say that somehow Cupid insured that his wings wouldn't deploy and saved him... and he would have certainly fallen and died.. then we could have had a real tragedy and perhaps forced the gods to reconsider what they've done or what they hadn't done. The other thing that disturbs me is how incredibly selfish and just downright unsympathetic that you paint Venus, as every god to some extent has their selfish desire certainly.. but to then make this excessive scene with Cupid getting intimate with her, and then Cupid's former wife seeing this.. what does that do for your story? It's like there's tons of directions that are offered, or even a few misdirections, but there's no clear plan on going forward with executing the story in a coherent way. So given all these things that need resolutions and lack of a clear direction and focus for the story the best I can rate this is a 2. I do sincerely hope you will decide to maybe rewrite the story, and try to figure out which way you want it to go; make sure you look into finding ways to deepen your characters; make sure that when you use characters of certain race, that you make them believably genuine at least enough so, so that most people at a cursory glance will say well yes this person is obviously Latina.. you get the idea, so try something different. Maybe ask some volunteers to read your story and offer some ideas on possible directions, and experiment a little bit. If you're willing to do that, you might find that your story quality improves, because right now this story needs a lot of help, but it can be improved upon. Best of luck.

@Comentarista82: Thanks for reading. If it wasn’t for people like you, who take the time to read the stories on this website, this whole community wouldn’t exist. I generally don’t respond to readers’ comments (I’ve published various fiction and nonfiction on numerous websites, and in several books and newspapers) but in this case I feel a response is warranted. While I appreciate your feedback, I have to point out a certain irony: you haven’t published a single story on this site. You offer a whole, whole lot of opinions for not having shared a single erotic work of literature here. This being the case, your suggestions/criticisms lose some credibility.

Again, I appreciate you taking the time to read my story, and offering a lengthy comment. Comments here are few and far between. But since I can’t repay the favor by offering some suggestions to improve your work, as you’ve published no stories here, I will make some helpful observations about your methods for offering feedback to other writers, using your comments on my story as an example (I will give feedback on your feedback, if you will).

You mention in your profile that you’ve done some professional editing and evaluating, which obviously gives you some experience in that department. But your overall comments, at least in my case, are at times random, and conflate taste/personal preferences with craft/structure. You obviously missed the narrative thread – that “The Year without a Cupid” was based on “A Year without a Santa Clause.” That’s fine. Stories are works of art. Good ones have a design and develop in certain ways. Mine developed as it did not because of gaps in craft, but because of choices made in terms of length, tone, and that fact that I wanted it to be a humorous feel good “quickie,” not a basis for a longer, deeper tale.

Another suggestion: be aware of your condescending tone. Telling writers their stories are not coherent, that their characters are poorly developed, that they’ve made the wrong plot choices, and that they should do a rewrite after seeking the help of volunteers who can point them in the right direction all at once is not productive. You have to realize this kind of “feedback” is going to sound pompous and arrogant, right? Especially if the person giving it has no published work to serve as a model, no ratings or following of any kind? You actually wrote that my story lacked quality and “needs a lot of help.” Amazing. Then you finished with the patronizing “best of luck” closing, as if your stories are the biggest thing here on this page. I know you have to see how completely arrogant and self-aggrandizing this is, right?

Again, I appreciate you reading my story, and taking the time to comment. Perhaps you could publish some of your work here to serve as a model, which might open your eyes to the process of receiving feedback on a story. It also might help make your own comments more insightful and balanced.

I normally don't return to check out further comments on any particular story, but for some reason something told me to do so in this case.. and it's interesting that I did. I'm going to refute what you said, because it warrants it.

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1) no author has to like anyone reader's comment; in fact they don't have to agree with it, nor do they have to even read it if they don't want. Furthermore, they can also either delete the comment because they feel it's warranted, or they can close comments entirely and prevent commenting if they want to do that. I've seen several authors do this, because of whatever reason they had, and I know a lot of authors site... which just basically got fed up with people leaving Anonymous comments but never put a face to a name and nor never said what they scored.

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2) you never address a single one of the issues I brought up that are legitimate shortcomings in your story. In fact, you employ the ad hominem fallacy to attack me because how dare I say anything against your clearly superior and award-winning story... when it has legitimate shortfalls, issues and problems. Then you use the next fallacy which makes a claim without again addressing any of the facts I presented to you, and that is this one: Tu Quoque Fallacy. I mean.. are you trying to totally discredit yourself and your story by not addressing facts? At this point it really doesn't matter because you're not going to accept it and that's your privilege.

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3) just by The generally-accepted length requirements on the site, the average author will say that it should be at least 3 lit pages long. Your story clearly needed that, because there's no way you can resolve him breaking up with Greta without any explanation; you also cannot resolve Joe throwing himself at Isabella and Isabella accepting everything willy-nilly simply because he's going to marry her.

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4) Isabella is a paper-thin and superficial character that simply exists; aside from her being a runner, her being Catholic, and her having a family, we know nothing about her except her feelings. This also creates another problem: the age gap. Even if you resolve Joe and Isabella by Cupid shooting them with an arrow - -which he did--it's too convenient. You of all people--since you've published where you say you have--will automatically realize that when something is too convenient that you've taken an illegal shortcut that people are going to call you on and that is completely valid. When a critic says your characters need further development and your story needs more length to account for that development, that is also valid criticism. You can't just dismiss it because you wanted to write a shorter story.

Additionally, I did take the time to reread your story, and in so doing saw that while Isabella's thought processes were thought out and explored to some degree, we have no manifestation of how Joe feels for her simply because we don't see any of his inner thoughts except in one case where both of them hug and he kissed her because he got carried away.. and felt a spark. But that's all the story has to hang its head on for their so-called romance. Also you are either intentionally unaware, blissfully unaware or don't care about the fact that Isabella's family is going to want to castrate Joe because he's fucked their daughter and their daughter hasn't even introduced him to the family - - and that is a serious cultural omission that must be included- - whether you like it or not; the truth is that in a very strict Catholic and Latino family, Isabella could be even entirely disowned for that action if they think she took it upon herself without involving the family first. The other problem is is that he would not even have a chance with Isabella unless the parents first met and approved of him. Now the story doesn't say if Isabella has any brothers or not, but if she did guess what? The brothers would grill Joe unmercifully. This is well-pictured in the 2000 film Only Fools Rush In with Salma Hayek and Matthew Perry. At least however in that film, Matthew Perry tries to learn Spanish; he tries to meet the parents; both families meet each other; he actually goes to meeting the brothers; he actually meets the grandmother who actually gives him her blessing; and although it's not a happy kind of joining.. it's a plausible one why? Because he took all the steps necessary. And just as I said before you don't address the age gap problem in this story, which is and has many studies supporting it- - most of which have happened abundantly since 2015 - - and conclusively prove that if the gap is larger than 10 years that the couple has a 92% failure rate. So the problem is even when you create a fictional story, even fiction has to be believable. So if you ignore facts and write your own story straight ahead everybody else's facts be damned.. you're going to get smeared. And judging by your scores the general readership has done exactly that, because your scores are the lowest of any in the submission category for possibly one, some, or maybe even all of these reasons.

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Finally, the comments policy and the FAQ on site do not require readers to publish on this site to be able to comment. The site owners encourage comments to be constructive; they encourage them to be helpful; they encourage them to leave a comment so the author knows whether or not somebody enjoyed the work. So since publication is not required, that totally discredits anything you have to say. So my suggestion is this either delete my comments if you don't like it, or close all comments, which you have the ability to do on your author side of the site. You can either take the advice as it's offered, you can take some part of it, you can ignore it, or you can delete it. Choose wisely.

@Comentarista82: I appreciate you returning here to have this conversation. I feel it’s well within the community guidelines to dialogue a story on the comment board, especially if it’s between the author and a registered commenter with a long track record of substantial reviews, like yourself. I do not agree that if an author has an issue with a comment left they shouldn’t respond, that they should be forced to either delete the comment, or close comments altogether. This does not create a positive give-and-take between the author and the readers. You write in your most recent comment, “You can either take the advice as it’s offered, you can take some part of it, you can ignore it, or you can delete it. Choose wisely.” Says who? Are you a site administrator? This is what I meant when I said you should watch your tone when giving comments. You’ve presented me with options, and state I must “choose wisely” as if there will be some ultimatum if I make the wrong choice. You also state in your profile that “Thankfully, there’s now a Comments Guideline policy you can find right under a comment box at the end of a story: it allows you to comment on the STORY, but NOT other commenters. Read it and inform yourself!” If you’re a site administrator you should identify yourself as such. But as an administrator you’d surely agree that an author engaging with a commenter in a cordial and proactive manner is not a violation of comment board decorum. If you’re not an administrator, I’d have to say you’re out of line here. You must understand that when you’re judging/rating/criticizing a writer’s work, the writer as every right to respond to this evaluation, so long as it’s done in a proactive and respectful manner.

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No, your comments are not infallible, nor should they be shielded from criticism, especially from the author whose work has been rated or evaluated. Ironically, your own advice applies here: if you don’t like the feedback on your comments, ignore it. A writing workshop is a two-way street. We all open ourselves to judgment and feedback – commenter and author. And since you haven’t published a single work here, you have not opened yourself to any evaluation, and yet continue to evaluate others. Incredibly, you feel as though your lengthy comments, which at times have an authoritative and condescending tone, should not be responded to, either. It doesn’t work that way, Comentarista82. You have to know this. You are not an untouchable creative writing professor, pontificating to a bunch of fledgling, pimple-faced undergraduates in a fiction workshop. You might be in real life, but not here. Some of us are seasoned writers, with numerous publishing credits to our name.

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You wrote in your post that I used the ad hominem fallacy to “attack” you. Seriously? Go back and read my original post to you. I thanked you several times for reading my story, and for providing lengthy feedback. I also acknowledged that you are an invaluable part of this community, and that your passion for reading and reviewing is noteworthy. And it is. You seem to be a voracious reader and incredibly dedicated reviewer. And your reviews are extremely thorough and mostly helpful. But I went as far as to judge and evaluate your criticisms of my story, and you immediately took issue with this. Do you see the irony here?

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I will agree some of your feedback about my story was valid. Interestingly, I workshopped the story with a trusted reader before I submitted, and got similar feedback from her: the story felt disjointed (an issue with coherence), especially when it jumped from Cupid to Isabella. She also echoed what you said about the Cupid plot being more intriguing, and that it should have been further explored. So yes, you make some accurate and helpful insights. Obviously, length would improve the character development – although I still believe you can tell a damn good story in 5K – 7K words, but the writer must be very skilled. And yes, Isabella was a bit superficial, and could have been fleshed out more. I don’t know if she needed to be the prototypical Latina stereotype as you suggested, but her character was lacking in terms of a richer, longer story (although I was going for a humorous, offbeat “quickie”). You are correct when you say no character is “free.” That’s something I remember you telling another writer in a review. It stuck with me. My story is not the lowest rated in the contest, by the way, and hasn’t gotten “smeared.” Currently it has a 4.2 rating – which is between “like it” and “love it,” and has garnered 11 hearts and 98 total ratings.

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I’d like to close by saying I respect your dedication to reading and reviewing stories on this website. You appear to be one of the most prolific readers/reviewers here, and you generally seem to be on point with your feedback, at least in my opinion. You provide an invaluable service to writers, as I’ve mentioned. With that said, I’d like to repeat my suggestion that you be more aware of any condescending tone associated with your reviews. Perhaps qualify your suggestions with the phrase “in my opinion,” so your feedback doesn’t sound patronizing, which it did in my case. And of course, there’s always the option of posting at least one story, or of entering the 2024 Valentine’s Day contest (the deadline isn’t until February 7). It would be interesting to see your work here!

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PS: we can continue this dialogue on this comment board, or in private. I’ve messaged you through this website, and you can do the same with me. Or, we can just leave it and move on. Either way, happy reading and reviewing.

Interesting and fun, but probably not your best work. Seemed to me, Cupid and Isabella didn't connect till the last sentence, which left me empty. Regarding critique by Comentarista, pay it no mind. The name alone tells you he/she gets off by leaving long winded, uesless , but biting notes that are complete horseshit!! I follow you, therefore you must be a good writer!! (Ha Ha) Believe it my friend!!