04-30-2012, 04:06 PM
Welcome to the forums Indie! 
It's a nice piece that can be made even better with an edit. As was pointed out, there are some things that you don't need to over-explain as if it were prose. It gets ranty at parts... in my experience sometimes its just good to let the details leave their own impact.
What I found odd about the piece was he narrator... 'til the end, I was never quite able to figure out who it was supposed to be, and few implications were given. An older sibling, maybe? (present during family trips, seems to resent parents on behalf of Ben). Almost like the identity and the desires of this persona isn't too important against the force of nature that is Ben; and the extreme passiveness of the narrator made me wonder for a long while if you were trying to imply that Ben had ADHD or some kind of developmental disorder that means he needs a patient caretaker. By the end your conclusion was completely different though so I'm left not being sure if that's what you were going for at all
It's a nice piece that can be made even better with an edit. As was pointed out, there are some things that you don't need to over-explain as if it were prose. It gets ranty at parts... in my experience sometimes its just good to let the details leave their own impact.
What I found odd about the piece was he narrator... 'til the end, I was never quite able to figure out who it was supposed to be, and few implications were given. An older sibling, maybe? (present during family trips, seems to resent parents on behalf of Ben). Almost like the identity and the desires of this persona isn't too important against the force of nature that is Ben; and the extreme passiveness of the narrator made me wonder for a long while if you were trying to imply that Ben had ADHD or some kind of developmental disorder that means he needs a patient caretaker. By the end your conclusion was completely different though so I'm left not being sure if that's what you were going for at all
PS. If you can, try your hand at giving some of the others a bit of feedback. If you already have, thanks, can you do some more?