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EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
I am obviously in.

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EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
I have outlined chapter one.

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
I think MMM should sign up, we need someone terrible to vote day 1 so the rest of us can give our stories a chance.

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
... who is it?

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
I am writing about a woman in the near future who is listless and anxious but soon finds her life gets flipped turned upside down and I'd like to take a minute just sit right back and hear a tale a tale of a fateful trip that started with the big bang (hey!).

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
I have not yet started writing. I wish this had started sooner when the Motivation Angel was on my shoulder instead of the Procrastination and Self-Loathing Devil.

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
terrible ##vote derp

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
there is like a 4% chance I'll produce anything by friday so imo you all should vote me out first.

I dunno what's going on with me but it's something stupid I am sure.

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
most of chapter 1 is finished but it is hot and boring garbage so

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
It was only 7:23 and she had already finished the bottle. Erzsa stared at it, first in confusion, since she very much wanted more wine and genuinely thought there was more, but then with the kind of melancholy that accompanies the realization that you’ve drunk more than you expected. She sat back on her couch and swirled what little she had left in her Yellow Foxes Vineyard wineglass, enjoying how the wine made strange geometric shapes and obscure reflections in her hands. She shook her glass a little too forcefully and accidentally spilled a dollop on her pants.

She yelled, quickly downed the remaining gulp, and ran to the kitchen to soak out the stain, trying hastily to remember what it was you’re supposed to do for these things – soap and cold water? Lemon juice? A Tide patch? She figured a patch would work and then after opening the appropriate drawer remembered she was out. She could order new ones. They wouldn’t get there for like an hour. Where was her phone? On her couch. She cursed again and ran back into the living room, pulled her phone out from under a small pile of blankets and pillows, and was about to open Google when she saw the page was already on “Wine Stain Removals: How to get your clothes clean again in four easy steps!”. She didn’t think she had the IAI turned on at home, but that was a concern for Future Erzsa. Right now she needed a classic remedy for her classic problem: club soda and a paper towel.

Who has club soda anymore?

=-=-=

Erzsa got the wine in the first place because she was having a rough day at work and needed to relax. She is a newspaper editor, which in another time and place would carry a great deal of prestige, but with automated reporting being what it is these days her main job is correcting the nonsense that computers spit out. For Pressing Publishing it’s ultimately cheaper to have robots scanning the internet and pay for a half dozen editors fixing their plentiful mistakes than a dedicated human news team that can get things right the first time. The job is intentionally demanding, since, for Pressing Publishing, it’s also cheaper to grind English masters to dust and replace them every so often than to groom them for non-existent careers. Erzsa had been with PP for two years now and she was starting to break under the pressure, right on schedule.

She eventually found an unopened bottle of club soda in the back of her liquor cabinet, an echo from when Amy lived there. She took off her pants and draping them on the kitchen counter slowly poured club soda onto the stain. She patted it down with a paper towel and in a few minutes it was like there wasn’t a stain at all anymore. She put her pants back on and immediately regretted it, as the formerly-stained-now-just-wet-with-soda spot on her lap was unpleasantly cold. She took them off again and went to her bedroom to change into her lounge clothes.

Today hadn’t been particularly worse than any other day. She got up in the morning like normal, washed and dressed like normal, skipped breakfast like normal. It was raining, and her umbrella was just a little too small to prevent the bottom of her pants from getting wet as she walked to her bus stop. The bus was crowded as it always is, but she managed to snag a window seat next to a middle-aged man who looked forward so intently and so fiercely that at first Erzsa thought he didn’t have eyelids. He was soon turning his intense attention towards her though, looking at her up and down from the corner of his eye as men occasionally do. Erzsa tried to use her involuntary squirming to escape as far into her coat as possible.

Erzsa came back to the living room in baggy sweatpants and a flannel nightshirt. She recycled the empty bottle and went to her liquor cabinet, wanting to just have something to sip quietly as she took stock of her life and her choices. She settled on brandy and Cointreau and made a rough sidecar in her Yellow Foxes glass, returning to her couch.

Work today wasn’t unusually terrible either, aside from how it’s generally pretty terrible, you know, just as a baseline. There was a fashion photoshoot in Tashkent that the roborters thought was a mass shooting, and Erzsa spent most of her morning reading poorly-translated webpages in Uzbek making sure nobody actually died before rejecting the article. She eventually found a bot that wrote a fluff piece about a local woman who turned 110 yesterday, and Erzsa went with that for the front page. In the afternoon the Jaydens down the hall kept asking her for help with really simple tasks like how to reject a batch submission and how to alter the grammar filters to fit their personal style – Jayden J. hates split infinitives while Jayden P. thinks language is fluid and supports it whenever possible. Erzsa couldn’t care less and regrets picking them as her interns, let alone putting them in the same office. She thought it would be funny, and it was for a few weeks at least, but now she just sighs heavily whenever she hears their four-legged stomps towards her door.

When the day ended she took the bus back home to her apartment, stopping at the Trader Joe’s on the ground floor to grab a bottle of six-buck Chuck. The elevator vaguely smelled of urine, as it normally does. Sixteen floors and a few turns down the hall and she was home: a dark one-bedroom apartment filled with IKEA furniture and her ex-boyfriends’ artwork. She took off her shoes and her bra and immediately opened the bottle of wine, plopping on her couch in silence.

Today wasn’t unusual. It was actually fairly ordinary, no more exceptional than the day before or almost assuredly the day after. It was just another day. If the day ends like the rest do, then this day will be soon forgotten like the hundreds and thousands of days before it. But Erzsa wasn’t sure this day would end like the rest, and the more she drank the more worried she was right.

Erzsa regarded her living room and its varied mementos of times and people long gone from her life. The inordinately expensive diplomas for which she worked so hard on the wall in inordinately elegant frames. The family portrait with her sisters and parents from a few years before Dad died. A collage of colors and light from George, a brass sculpture of a tree trunk transforming into a flock of birds from Josh, a small, rough portrait of Erzsa drawn with pastels and framed near the door. Erzsa liked that one the most, not because she was vain (though she was, a little, who doesn’t admire themselves in a mirror from time to time), but because it reminded her of its artist. Anthony was so deep and so brooding and felt emotions so powerfully and being with him was like being alive, so very very alive all the time, like a cold breeze blowing through her, shivers from fingers to toes. There was no way it could have lasted the winter, and it ended right when she said it would, but Erzsa still thinks Tony was something special. An experience, a story, a memory to remind herself of what being alive feels like. Felt like.

As her night progressed from wine to sidecar and from sidecar to press Erzsa felt her usual emotional cycles coming into full force. For all her pride and vanity there she was, drunk and alone in an empty apartment with a tedious and thankless job far from her family and friends. Lulled into the empty promises of power and prestige she took her job expecting it to be her big break, the culmination of her lifetime of reading and editing. Oh Past Erzsa, what a fool you were! The world has passed your profession by in an instagram and twitter feed, your life’s work will amount to maintaining machines until soon you, too, become automated and tossed aside into history’s dustbin. That’s how the story goes, doesn’t it? Ecce Femina, see the Modern Woman, how she spends her time chasing a brass ring and leaning in and grinding her stones all for nothing. Erzsa is just another hopeless case like so many others, a statistic, an anecdote, and ultimately a memory to be forgotten.

She rolled her eyes at how dramatic she was being. But still, this definitely wasn’t what she had hoped for herself. Who would want this life? It is a wretched one. She could quit her job, but then do what? Go back to school? A waste of money she doesn’t have. Crawl back home and live with Anya? Life may have broken her but she still has her pride. The thought of her pride pricked her, its thorny vine slowly wrapping itself around her throat. What does she have of which to be proud? Some paper on a wall, a lovely apartment in a city of hipsters and addicts, a family she spurns and friends she’s abandoned? She’s witty, but where has being clever gotten her? Here. Being clever is all she has. The only thing she’s ever had, really, the only thing that’s been with her all her life, which can never leave her, and has been her respite through every storm. How she loathes her cleverness.

And then it happened, the moment she had worried would happen and she had been protecting herself from happening for as long as she could remember. It only took a moment, but in that moment everything was as bright and clear as the summer sun. It was obvious. It’s been there the whole time. Why had she feared it so?

Erzsa stood up clumsily, nearly tripping on the coffee table. She gently placed the Yellow Foxes glass on the kitchen counter and staggered to her bathroom in brutish, mechanical motions. She opened a bottom drawer, pulled out a small orange bottle, and closed the drawer. She opened the bottle and poured the whole thing into her cupped palm, shrugging as a half dozen of the white pills slipped onto the floor. She shoved as many into her mouth as she could and, with water from the tap, swallowed them down in choking gulps.

She went back to her couch and sat down, closing her eyes. She started to drool, and a dollop landed on her pants, just above the knee.

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
:effort:

also this isn't a cry for help please do not interpret it as such thank you and goodnight!

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
I will now read and rate all of your works out of five stars and vote for the lowest scoring person, if there is a tie I will vote for the person who posted latest. I will use the following objective scale:

- Everyone starts with 3 stars as a baseline. I will not count negative scores, so if at some point your score dips to <0 I will stop counting and freeze your score at 0.

- If the author is EccoRaven, you gain +5 stars.

- If your story is told from the perspective of a female character, +3 stars
--- ...Told from a male perspective but has a named female character who isn't a plot device, +1 star.
--- ...Has no female characters, -3 stars

- If your story has characters with stupid name(s), -2 stars

- If your story has really obvious typos and grammatical errors, -1 star for each obvious error. I will not be reading your stories that closely so the errors will have to be pretty egregious don't worry.

- If I actually found your story genuinely interesting and compelling, +2 stars

- If your story is a boring yawn snoozefest, -1 star.

- If your story has a lot of "filling," that is it feels like you were just shoving words down to make space, -1 star. Your story can still be compelling even if you have a lot of fluff so this isn't mutually exclusive with that above part.

- If your story had a twist or development I wasn't expecting, +2 stars. It can still be boring so this isn't mutually exclusive with that other above part.


Okay I think that's good! grading begins now.

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
FIRST UP:

DERP

- 3 stars baseline
- Not ecco, +0
- Female perspective, +3
- Reasonable names +0
- No obvious typos, +0
- Genuinely interesting and compelling, +2
- Not boring, +0
- No filling, +0
- No twist or unexpected development, +0

Total:
+8, or, 5/5. Good work! I am eager to see how the mirrors play out with the time dilation being what it is wherever Lin is going.


=============

Next, LUTR I guess? Multiple parts yawn. Secret new rule: -1 for prologues/prologue-esque posts. Will apply this when I get to her main script.

============

Chic oh no you too? say it ain't so.

============

Ok Meinberg here we go:

- 3 stars baseline
- Not ecco, +0
- Has a named female character who is not a plot device, +1 (she seems reeeeeeally close to a plot device though, I hope she's developed more than just a [stern?] unseen voice).
- Evgenia Thistleton is okay but Ozart? -1. Also not that it matters but "Frances" is typically the female form of "Francis."
- "Her voice remained perfectly"? Perfectly what? -1. Pet peeve but technically it should be "Frances's." "Frances'" means the multiple France own something. -0 since I am kind. "Singing" -> "Singeing" -1.
- I didn't really find it that interesting, sorry. +0
- It wasn't boring either. Just, War Sci-Fi isn't really my jam. +0.
- No filling, +0
- Told pretty straightforwardly. +0

1/5. Not a high score but you can turn it around in round 2 maybe? Let's see how the rest do.

======

HALBERT Incandenza

- 3 baseline
- +0 not ecco, alas
- No female characters, -3
- Normal names, +0
- I liked the mysterious film part, I hope that becomes the focus of the story rather than Two Stoners: The Short Story. +2
- Not boring, +0.
- No filler, +0
- No twists (yet?), +0

2/5.

========

Jonathan Joeseph

- 3
- still not ecco!! +0
- Female character with a name. +1 (this was -1 until I got to the end)
- I know it's fantasy but Adreilla? Eveningsmarch? Ugh. -1.
- No typos I can see. +0
- Ehhhh it was, eh. +0.
- Kinda boring. -1. The twist at the end, that she isn't a helpless waif, was nice but not enough to make me retroactively interested in her deal.
- No filling. +0
- Twist, +2

4/5, good score, you survive to round 2.

========

Quidnose!

- 3
- isn't ecco??? +0
- No lady-type characters, -3.
- Dumb names! -1.
- No typos, +0
- I actually really liked the story, sort of Pratchett-esque. +2. Secret bonus point for "'Thanks. I went gluten free a year ago'" making me laugh out loud irl. +1
- Not boring! +0
- No filler! I initially suspected there would be when I eyed over it yesterday (all the dialogue -> easy padding), but the dialogue was funny so I approved. +0
- Nothing unexpected, +0.

2/5, up the number of women from 0 to at least 1! You can do it I believe in you!

==========

Loooter!

- 3 baseline remember don't forget it's important
- eccccoooo where u at bro *flexes* +0
- Alison is a great name, +3.
- No typos, +0
- yaaaawwwwwnnnnnnnn *dramatic arm stretching* +0
- I thought it was kinda boring. The band has some weird drama going on but I don't particularly feel or care for any of the characters so far. -1.
- Not gonna lie I totally skimmed over that second song. -1.
- Not much really happened at all. +0.

- -1 for the prologue-esque stage directions part. I know it's a script but I, ecco, don't really care either way. I want to read a story.


3/5

=========

CHIC

- 3 to start
- closer to ecco but still not quite, +0.
- Lady-type people! Hooray! +3
- Normal names! +0
- I liked the story! +2
- Not at all boring! The exposition parts were a little exposition-y but the meat of the story, the interrogation, was engrossing. +0
- The exposition at the beginning was okay, so no filler aside from the prologue (applied at the end). +0
- The murder would have had a bigger punch I think if we got to know the characters first a little, maybe if the "prologue" had been the first half of chapter two or something? idk. Regardless this is a +0 category so you're ok.
- -1 for the prologue.

7, or 5/5. I am very eager to see where it goes!

======

Littlest Mackenzie

- Start off with 3
- No no no no now you're less ecco than before!!! +0
- really?. please let this go somewhere unexpected. oh good it's just a dream. ehhhh harriet is kind of a plot device so far, sorry. -3.
- Normal names, really normal, refreshingly normal. +0
- I want to read chapter 2 at least. +2.
- It was also kinda boring at the same time, somehow. The narrator seems like the rough outline of a sleazier-than-he-thinks stereotype. -1.
- No filler, though I hope the dream winds up being particularly meaningful.
- Straightforward.

1/5. I hope this turns into something more than a pastiche of the detective genre, because I think it has a lot of potential, but this first chapter was felt a little cliche (even if you acknowledge it through a lampshade).

========

IT'S ECCO

- 3!!
- ECCO AT LONG LAST HOORAY +5!!!!
- A LEADING LADY WHY THAT'S ANOTHER +3!!!
- Erzsa is a stupid name, or so I thought, but then I noticed you said "back home and live with Anya?", and if I recall correctly, "Anya" is Hungarian for "Mother." Erzsa is short for Erzsebet, the Hungarian form of Elizabeth! She's Hungarian! Interesting! +0.
- No typos I can see, +0.
- I felt like a lot of her backstory wasn't as compelling as you clearly thought it was, and your prose is a little too pretentious and self-aware. +0.
- I wasn't bored though, as I read the bit I found myself feeling the loneliness in her life, the isolation from human contact through the machines, through creepers, through her empty apartment. +0.
- No filler.
- The twist felt a little sudden, I wish you had built that up a little more, but I liked it. Is the story going to focus on who she left behind? Or will she survive and deal with the consequences? I don't know. +0.

11/5!!! WOAH somehow it's stuck at 11!! wow that's impressive go you.




hey I'm done.

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
If Diqnol doesn't get m-m-m-modkilled for not participating, then [b]##vote Little Mac[/url], since his score tied with Meinberg's but he posted later (meaning he had more time to fix it or something? idk in retrospect maybe I should have done it for whoever posted earlier).

Better idea: LM and Meinberg, challenge my rating/explain away my perception of your problems, and whoever is less persuasive gets the vote.

Hooray!

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now

Tremendous Taste posted:

Mine is probably worse than theirs but in my defense they aren't my characters

I missed yours I am the worst.

- 3
- not ecco +0
- no ladies -3
- The Reverend is kinda a dumb but at least it's Earth-names +0
- No typos +0
- I didn't find the story particularly compelling +0
- not boring though, just, the story sorta happened somewhat listlessly. Had you had more time to expand on it then it'd probably have been more engaging +0
- The stuff with the boy feels like filler, but I'll let it pass since I am also kind. +0.
- The final line is interesting but not really an unexpected twist or something. +0.

that's a solid 0. welp.

##vote tremta

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now

Hal Incandenza posted:

Ecco you are just assuming the main character in my story is male, that seems sexist of you.

your narrator is officially genderless so far (though I wouldn't really imagine a guy talking to a female friend as "ya bastard" "buddy" etc.), but the impression I've gotten from the tone of how they speak and how they think that says "this is a masculine person."

I suppose in chapter two you have lots of room to change it if you like, but right now it reads to me "two dudes smoking pot on a movie theater roof."

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now

Meinberg posted:

First off, the names are perfectly fine. I may make the Frances to Francis change, I probably should have done a little more research into the differences between those two ahead of time. Also Orzart is good because it helps to set the world apart, while still using phonemes that are common in Earth-based names, particularly of a northern European extraction, which will have thematic relevance eventually.
eh. Ozart is still kinda dumb.

quote:

Second, I wanted to start off the story with a bang and an action heavy beat. The war is not the focus of the story, but is here to provide excitement, a look at the level of technology present in the world, and a peek into the psychology of this character. Later on, the story will develop to be far less focused on the action and more on the nature of the class structure and its inherent inequalities, as a way of making commentary on the nature of the class structure of our world, but with the aesthetic difference of a speculative fiction setting.

Starting off with a bang and action is fine but I didn't find the action particularly exciting, it felt kinda "pulpy," like it was less about the action and more about the brutality of a mech squashing dudes in a somewhat callous fashion. It also didn't really seem to peer into his psychology much, it just described what was literally happening - he pulled sticks, missiles flew, he tried to shoot them down, he got blowed up. It kinda reads like from a video game, where you're the faceless protagonist shooting dudes and blowing up stuff. Which is ok in video games but I didn't find it particularly compelling in story form.

Little Mac posted:

I am not particularly pleased with my first chapter, but it was rushed. Admittedly, the conceit of my story doesn't really begin until chapter two. Mostly it's introducing a character's motivation and the main mystery.

this is fair, it felt a lot like a "just establishing stuff" chapter, which obviously all Chapter 1s are going to to some extent, but what you have right now feels pretty barebones detective novel. I know that's somewhat intentional but I didn't find it particularly compelling, though I can tell there's a lot of potential there as long as you break from the genre a bit.

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
Now giving myself the same hard eye critique that I gave everyone else (fair is fair):

- I wish you had done more with those opening paragraphs. The "=*=*=" is clearly where you got into the groove of writing but the opening lines feel too segregated and distant from the rest of the narrative. A transition between it and the actual story might have been nice.

- Nobody likes doing exposition, and I liked a little how interweaving the story of her day blended with her evening at home, but it still feels really "exposition-y." Stuff happened, then stuff happened, then stuff happened. It all felt kinda lifeless, which might have been part of your "point," but it doesn't really work to hook a reader in.

- There has to be a better way to transition from "drunk and depressed" to "on her last limb." It currently feels a little jarring, like you had to cut out some paragraphs between it and the final lines (ed: I didn't, I just couldn't write any more). It's about her inner emotional despair, give that more depth.

- You have a lot of good ideas and images, but actually stringing them into a compelling story is the hard part. I felt her isolation and loneliness but as it's presented she's just a sad sack rather than someone with whom I can sympathize.

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now

uranus posted:

ecco you having way too many opinions is going to be really useful to everyone in this contest

I am a (thankfully not suicidal) editor irl (or am I???)

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
JJ had questions and comments about my critique and I shall leave them and much of my response to him private, but I did say a thing to him that is relevant for other people so I will include it here too:

Ecco in PMs posted:

I think Fantasy/Medieval-Fiction literature sets a bit of an initial hurdle, too, because it carries with it a lot of baggage for the genre. It's assumed the reader knows there is The King and The Nobility and The Revolutionaries, and it's very easy to rely on those ideas and tropes in lieu of developing those ideas yourself (and thus giving the tired ideas your unique twist). Sci-Fi is the same way, though again in comparison with derp's story, he set the focus on developing the characters rather than reveling in the setting (see: Meinberg's for an example of what that'd be like). I am worried in the back of my mind that derp might take the "magic mirror" (essentially) and use that in lieu of the characters and story conflicts, making the story less about a mother's sacrifice for her child and more about "how cool would this technology be, what if it broke though???" which would root it firmly in the bad parts of the Sci-Fi genre.


(I really really liked your story derp!! I liked it even more than my own, and for someone as arrogant as me that is a high compliment).

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now

jon joe posted:

I'd forgotten that, what do you edit again Ecco?

Nothing and/or something idk! My life is a mysterious void, a dark mirror which carries an obscure and sometimes impossible reflection.

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now

Look Under The Rock posted:

Lol ecco I love how you wrote the longest critique of your own story

well sometimes the stories with the most potential are the ones that deserve the most criticism! I think ecco has a lot of great ideas but the execution is weak in places and I hope to see improvement for chapter 2.

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now

BottleKnight posted:

It's all in good fun, so don't make things personal

You're doing a screenplay, meaning a lot of your story is going to be missing to the reader, especially since you expect a lot of it to be improvised by the actors (you don't even have set instruments, for instance, so it's even harder to write the characters doing anything other than talking and playing songs). And since it takes place during one concert you're even more hand-strung by the setting, since you can't jump to new locations or introduce new characters.

Since all you can really present is dialogue, you need the dialogue to be engaging and interesting. Your characters so far have almost no personality or life to them - Smitty doesn't like people singing about sleeping with his sister. That's pretty much the only thing twelve hours later I can remember about your characters so far.

And a lot of it feels like filler, too. You establish it's their last concert, that their fans have missed them, and there's some underlying drama between them that isn't resolved (but maybe will be by the end of the play??), but none of it is particularly engaging so far. If this were straight prose instead of a screenplay it'd have been over in two paragraphs and the reader would be going "...is that it?"

You have a lot of constraints because of how you've set your story, and that's fine, but you need to make what you can do that much more interesting as a result, and you haven't even come close to it yet. Which is fine! It's still "Chapter 1." But as a reader I found what you had so far to be a snoozefest.

Regardless even if Diqnol weren't auto-voted out today I wouldn't even be close to voting you out, so you have lots of time to expand on it. So please don't take my comments personally!

Thanks happy sunday!

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
Also as an aside it is unfortunate that derp posted/I read his first and it was really, really good. It definitely colored how I viewed the rest of the stories (including my own). His introductory chapter had the perfect mix of character and setting, and in a few lines I instantly knew what was going on and with whom, but I also genuinely felt for Lin and felt the tension in her heart.

If derp can keep up that level of quality I will happily let him take the title of Iron Author since I really don't think my story is very good, certainly not in comparison.

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
I finished Pride and Prejudice a few days ago and started Jane Eyre a day later. I also got roped into a Moby Dick book club but I'm very behind so I'm probably not going to participate at all.

e: I've read both these books before but not since I was a Wee Child so I was curious to see if they hold up (and they do so it's great).

EccoRaven fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Nov 27, 2015

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
it is indeed very good, and reading P&P as an adult has been rewarding as well. For both books since it was so long ago and I was so young I remember only the general plot beats and not much more, so it's like reading them for the first time again sorta.

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
terrible ##vote derp

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
except love actually is good too??? I don't understand.

EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now
Erzsa died the end.

But then she got better the real end question mark.

~fin~ best story ever thank you thank you.

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EccoRaven
Aug 15, 2004

there is only one hell:
the one we live in now

Chic Trombone posted:

Yeah, this could've worked but it was just the wrong time of year for it I think, between the holidays and finals and whatnot.
Agreed, Thanksgiving really killed my motivation. Thanks anyway BK!

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