A review by heelturn2
Floornight by nostalgebraist

adventurous challenging emotional funny mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

3.75

to preface the rating: you know how sometimes a 7/10 video game is like, the most interesting, strange, imaginative game you’ve played in years?? this is like… deadly premonition or something, not in the sense that these 2 pieces of fiction have anything in common stylistically/thematically/etc but that both are very much *the thing that they are* and that thing is very fun and compelling and also executed imperfectly/a little messily, in a way that doesn’t actually detract much at all. this is an unpolished story but that’s ok. It’s so bonkers overall anyways that you can hardly fault it. 

I liked the characters a lot & found myself thinking about them; I felt very immersed in the world (

or at least the first world we’re introduced to, that’s functioning more or less the same way as ours

) and wanted to sit and think about the implications of the rules and science it established. I also kind of had no idea what was going on at points but it’s kind of one of those things where you have to trust that either the explanation will work itself out down the line OR it won’t/there is no explanation and you have to be down to just come along for the ride. to be clear: I think this story is largely the former. but I was often just like : ok!! sure!! I have no idea why

this kid who was kind of being set up as the Shinji to this story’s NERV is just dead now

or

what “shift radix” means, in a literal sense

and like, some of those things don’t matter (like not every sci fi term needs to be fully defined imo) and some things that aren’t fully explained have very interesting implications??

like wait, in writing this I’m now wondering why Kyle had such a powerful pneuma & was it branch shifting shenanigans??? Or have I missed something else?

either way it’s straight up fun to think about & be confounded by so I don’t mind. 

I would love to see this again one day with a gentle handed but substantial edit and author’s notes. like overall the writing is quite strong but you see sections where it breaks down a bit and loses fidelity on details it’s previously shown you & I think and editor/beta would help with consistency on that front. 

anyways I love that this ends like

eva but with a gay orgy where everyone melts at the end