#1 is me...well, i tried to be fair and give cinematic prose a good go. i know that in my fic i fall back on the mess-of-details style because it's easy and sort of all-purpose. it just gets so unmoored and unfocused. middle-prose.

i really like #4 for both of them (maybe the best) but i agree you can't make a story out of single-sentence sucker punches. i also wrote #4 after writing the other versions, so it's the most refined/distilled, i think.

someone at some point said about homestuck that its strength is never saying "this is sad." horrible things just happened and kept happening to children and the reader is left to stare in shock at how BAD things are. there's a lot of bullshit in the hellpit of that stupid comic, but it did that blunt shit so well. i think 17776 let the sorrow and horror float closer to explicitly stated, but the first part where ten is so so so lonely and can't talk or do anything is beautifully and sparsely sketched.

oh my god 17776 totally has an "i love you" that is more powerful than any other option! an example! wow! (i know you didn't like it as much as me but, you know, different strokes.)