Here Are The Nine Ways The Election Could End

A polished second-person literary suite: nine Election-Day-2020 points of view, each a tight character study — Biden feeling none of the hundred-million-mind 'tingling'; Trump's airtight winner-solipsism; Pence's boxed, screaming conscience counting saved fetuses; the absurd last undecided voter in Pennsylvania; Nate Silver waging war on Noise while not bothering to check who won; Putin savoring the murder-hornets misdirection; the proud ghost of Washington; a God who has 'abdicated all responsibility'; and, best of all, the coronavirus as a hopeful pioneer riding out of Ethan's newly-unmasked mouth on the word 'Welcome.' Comedy and genuine pathos in the same structure.

Quality 74 · Strong. Strong, top / Excellent-floor: a genuinely accomplished short work — nine distinct, well-inhabited voices, a real escalating structure, and the viral-perspective closer is a small masterpiece of tone. Among the very best Tumblr pieces, on the level of Scott's strong SSC fiction/humor; held just under the Excellent line by its brevity and occasional-piece nature. 74.

Claude’s paradigm shift 56 · Moderate. Notable shift: the nine-POV Election-Day-with-a-nonhuman-final-perspective construction is a fresh, memorable literary device, superbly executed. 56.

Real-world impact 1 · Negligible. A short fiction piece; discourse/creative only. RWI 1.

Humor 3/5 · Scissor Statement. Gate passed at 3 (Scissor): much of it is sharp, widely-shared comedy (Putin, the undecided voter, Nate Silver), though the God/Washington/coronavirus movements are earnest pathos rather than jokes — a mixed literary-satirical work, not wall-to-wall comedy, so 3 rather than 4.