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dmboogie
Oct 4, 2013

ENVY

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Paladinus
Jan 11, 2014

heyHEYYYY!!!
The Eighth Deadly Sin
(some words)

'This can wait', Paladinus thought, 'after all, I have those other things that I also want to do. Some might even say they are more important.'

With that he fell asleep like a loving baby and never submitted his story.

He was dead now. Burning in hell for his sin of not submitting a story. Also, for an assortment of other, real sins, but mostly for the one about not submitting a story.

'God, if only I could right my one wrong, I would definitely write a lovely story some time and enter with a toxx!'

'You'd better do that, lol.'

A beam of light shone through Lucifer's domain passing important historical figures, zig-zagging all over the place, as if looking for someone in particular. Finally, like in a popular TV show Star Trek, Paladinus was 'beamed up' back to his miserable life on Earth.

'I've learned my lesson, God. I am a better person now,' he said.

Jonked
Feb 15, 2005

dmboogie posted:

Grudge matches ain't fun if your grudge is aimed in the wrong direction. :v:
No, no, that's fair. I'm like one of those mafioso who accidentally dropped a beer on a made man. Gotta take the baseball bat knee sometimes.

Name the time and place, T-Rex

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Jonked posted:

No, no, that's fair. I'm like one of those mafioso who accidentally dropped a beer on a made man. Gotta take the baseball bat knee sometimes.

Name the time and place, T-Rex

Jonked right in the T Rex Brawl

Prompt: someone drops something they shouldn't, can they make it right? No beer, mafia.

600 words, 17 august, 2359pst

Tyrannosaurus
Apr 12, 2006
:toxx:

Jonked
Feb 15, 2005
:toxx:

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
:siren: IT'S MY PARTY YOU'RE GOING TO CRY IF I WANT YOU TO :siren:

This was an interesting week to judge. Lots of different stuff, most of it interesting if not altogether good.

First of all, I want to get something out of the way. I am so goddamn tired of Donald loving Trump making appearances in stories. It is almost always the hallmark of hackneyed satire, and I know you can all do better. In the spirit of political circus, I am making an example of two stories this week.

Entenzahn and Surreptitiousmuffin, I am DISQUALIFYING YOU from this week for bringing this D&D gimmick-level posting into Thunderdome. If I am the boss judge and Trump is so much as mentioned in a story I have to consider for Thunderdome, I'm going to DQ it. So, nuts to you, cheeky bastards. You're both funny people, but good lord be funny about something else at least when i'm judging, tia.

There was only one story we all agreed was unpleasant enough to warrant a negative mention. Not only was the prose rough and poorly edited, the whole story got pasted in twice. The lack of any sort of rudimentary proofreading made us wonder if this was a completely sincere attempt. Zerbra23, if you were really trying your best, I hope you come back and spend a little more time proofreading.

On to happier things. Boaz-Jachim, you earn another honorable mention for your continuing adventures of a pious werewolf. It's funny because one of the judges didn't know this was a sequel, and still really enjoyed the characterization anyway. I hope you expand the stories of brother Thomas into something longer.

Kaishai, you get an honorable mention. The judges were all fond of the audacity of your librarian and the warmth of your prose.

Chili, your fablish tone and commitment to your flashrule earns you an honorable mention.

I am pleased to pass the crown to first-time winner, Jitzu_the_Monk. Your story had so many cool elements to it, which I'll get to in my critposts. I'm a sucker for stories where luminescent flesh membranes do spiritual battle in limbo for the papacy, what can I say?

The popehat is yours, brother Jitzu!

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
PALE SPECTRES aka Spectres of Autism

You've earned yourself some fans in Thunderdome with your poetic prose and way-out concepts. Your stories are distinct, but I worry that you rely overmuch on that distinction. Therefor, I am issuing a :siren: flash geis :siren:

On this day, let it be known to all judges that PALE SPECTRES must write three(3) works of realism before he is allowed to delve back into the luminescent quantum dream matrix of his native aesthetic. I will be watching to ensure this is enforced.

by decree of the blood throne it is so.

edit: obviously this excludes the 2 brawls he's presently in, this geis applies to regular TD stories only unless otherwise stated by a brawl judge.

Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Aug 9, 2016

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
SH u suk

flerp
Feb 25, 2014

Sitting Here posted:

PALE SPECTRES aka Spectres of Autism

You've earned yourself some fans in Thunderdome with your poetic prose and way-out concepts. Your stories are distinct, but I worry that you rely overmuch on that distinction. Therefor, I am issuing a :siren: flash geis :siren:

On this day, let it be known to all judges that PALE SPECTRES must write three(3) works of realism before he is allowed to delve back into the luminescent quantum dream matrix of his native aesthetic. I will be watching to ensure this is enforced.

by decree of the blood throne it is so.

edit: obviously this excludes the 2 brawls he's presently in, this geis applies to regular TD stories only unless otherwise stated by a brawl judge.

:O

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
:siren: MEGABRAWL FINAL ROUND: REVENGE OF THE PROMPT :siren:

For this final round, we're doing something very special; we're bringing back TD's most infamous prompt. That's right you fuckers, we're doing MAGICAL REALISM. "Oh no Muffin I don't understand what that means" boohoo you hack, you're the best of the best so you gotta have this poo poo down. This is some literary-rear end serious poignant poo poo. What is it?

In simplest terms, magical realism exists in a world where metaphors are literal. If somebody falls in love, they literally fall through the surface of the earth, careening down and down until they pop out the other side at their true love's feet. If somebody has a dark heart, their heart is a literal pulsing ball of darkness. Got it? Cool.

But you're not TD kiddies, so it's more than that: you're each gonna get a painting, and the painting has to inspire your story.

THRANGUY, you have The Colossus, by Goya


SPECTRES, you have Les raboteurs de parquet, by Caillebotte


Word Count: 4000 words.
Deadline: August 31st

Both the word count and the deadline are moderately flexible - the pieces come in when they come in and they're as long as they need to be, but if I get 12,000 next March I am failing your rear end so hard.

Entenzahn
Nov 15, 2012

erm... quack-ward

Armack
Jan 27, 2006


Week #210 – Crit Ketchup Week

Guys, guys, you left the throne unsupervised. So I decided to smear ketchup all over it. Now I’m low on ketchup. BRING ME MORE.

This week is a rarity in that the signup instructions are more complex than the submission instructions. Concurrent with your signup post, you must render 10% of the crits that you owe (ROUND ALL DECIMALS UP). I have every confidence in the accuracy of the archive’s missing crits tally. But if it happens to be wrong, just post ten percent of what you actually owe. If you owe no crits, then you must instead crit one story that has never been critted. *If and only if you are new to TD this week, you are exempt from critting as part of your signup; you need only to post “in”.*

*Important*: The crits have to be a sincere attempt at critting. Half-assed comments won’t do. I want real ketchup NOT WATERED DOWN BARGAIN BASEMENT TOMATO SWILL.

Update: Technically you do not really owe crits for 'redemption' stories, but such crits might still show up as missing. So if you feel like subtracting those stories from your overall missing crit count, then you may.

To reiterate, if you owe 22 crits, you will be posting three crits along with your signup post. If you owe zero crits, just crit anything that’s never been critted (if you’re in the process of critting a piece like this and someone sneaks it in a few hours before you, I won’t count that against you). If you’re new to TD, don’t crit anything, just write “in”. This will all be done before Friday's deadline. Then before the Sunday deadline, you will post an original story or vignette of yours that meets the criteria below. May the best goon win.

Signup deadline: 11:59:00 PM EST on Friday, August 12th

Submission rules

Wordcount: Anywhere between 500-1000 words. Yes, vignettes are allowed. Yes, there is a word MINIMUM.

Genre/content: Anything goes, except there is to be NO Trump, erotica, poetry, or fanfic. No Googledocs submissions either.

Submission deadline: 11:59:00 PM EST on Sunday, August 14th

Oh and no whining, bellyaching, pissing or moaning. If you owe a lot of crits, then thank you for your service to TD. Now bring me more ketchup. :burger:

Judges:

Jitzu_the_Monk
Chili
BadSeafood

Condiment Crew:

Vinny Possum
a friendly penguin
my cat is norris
Ironic Twist
newtestleper
The Cut of Your Jib
Thranguy
Lazy Beggar
flerp
Carl Killer Miller
Squidtentacle
Schneider Heim
Anomalous Amalgam
Djeser
J.A.B.C.
Tyrannosaurus
Kaishai

Armack fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Aug 13, 2016

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Inburgers

Entenzahn
Nov 15, 2012

erm... quack-ward
we managed exactly zero signups before someone hosed it up

Vinny Possum
Sep 21, 2015

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Let's do this.

In.

Chili
Jan 23, 2004

college kids ain't shit


Fun Shoe
I really hope that NO TRUMP becomes a consistent policy.

a friendly penguin
Feb 1, 2007

trolling for fish

I have yet to ascend so far up TD as to be a judge, so I don’t owe any crits. I just chose a couple uncritiqued stories at random (seriously) and wrote my thoughts. I’m not sure if either of these posters will care anyway.

Empty Glass by Impermanent

The problem with writing about the profundity of religion is that if you don’t actually say something new and interesting regarding that belief system you really should say something profound about the people doing the talking. You don’t manage either.

It is something that manic people do is they get super into things to the point of being over the top interested and there are roommates who get totally sick of the bullshit, but you tell us all of that without letting us see it. You tell us Corey’s manic, you tell us exactly what he does when he’s manic and you tell us how John felt about it. But you don’t tell us what happened at the end.

The final paragraph feels like it’s from a different story entirely. We don’t know what it means that Corey’s car is still iced over. There are too many projections that the reader can make with that fact and none of them really show us that he deserved whatever it was.

It’s an inoffensive story about young people learning about themselves and the world, but it doesn’t manage anything exciting, new, gripping or emotionally connecting. And every story in order to be good needs something special. (And it feels hypocritical of me to say this because this is something I struggle with as well.)



The Turning of the Wheel by V for Vegas

I apparently have a knack for finding the Buddhist stories and perhaps I know too much to make that a good thing. Anyway…

I like the idea of a modified Buddhism wherein people unwittingly make offerings that cause them to be reborn in bodies that result in Earth shattering conflicts and internal angst and eventually self-transformation/enlightenment within a single, harrowing lifetime. However, that is a much, much longer story than this. I think this is definitely a first chapter and not a short story.

A lot happens and a lot of it is interesting, but it doesn’t follow a complete story arch. Nor do we get enough character building in any of the characters or a setup of how they got here and what they were planning to do if all went accordingly. Some of your visuals are good and a bit much (crying blood) but generally they set a good scene. I feel like the dialogue is too wordy (or not wordy enough if you were going for a verbose villain).

Good set up, could go somewhere if you took the time to develop it a lot.


Oh yeah and guess I’m in.

my cat is norris
Mar 11, 2010

#onecallcat

I was super proud of Squidtentacle for joining in for the very first time last week. :shobon: Although you guys scare me, I'm going to show him additional support by also trying the Thunderdome for the first time ever.

In. No crits required since I'm an idiot newperson.

Armack
Jan 27, 2006

sebmojo posted:

Inburgers

Looks like you'll have to pony up 36 missing crits of yours first there, sheriff. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE TO TD.

Armack fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Aug 9, 2016

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo
i was gonna ask who just lets 20+ crits stack up

but ig mojo does

also saying i saw shs post and am down

Kaishai
Nov 3, 2010

Scoffing at modernity.

Jitzu_the_Monk posted:

If you owe no crits, then you must instead crit one story that has never been critted.

Anyone going this route should probably avoid stories from last week, since judge crits are likely forthcoming.

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






sebmojo posted:

Inburgers

missing: 359 crits. owe: 35.9 > 36 crits

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007

PALE SPECTRES posted:

i was gonna ask who just lets 20+ crits stack up

but ig mojo does



back in the day we just told everyone they were garbage and they liked it like that

thunderome millennials :rolleyes:

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






if you need a little inspiration for a story, I'd recommend taking a look at last week's flash rules. there were some pretty good ones there that could be taken a lot of different ways.

Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh
BELATED WEEK 175 SPEELS OF MAGICK CRITS

Isolated with a Beast

This is sort of…basic, in a lot of ways. Which is fine as a means of developing your skill, but you’ve written better stories than this already and it’s not going to net you a win. To me, the most interesting part of the story was the way the dragon was able to drill into his subconscious and access it, because not only is that a fairly interesting concept, it gave me a bit of character depth that was thoroughly lacking throughout the rest of the story. The mind-drilling made the dragon such a worthy antagonist that I was disappointed when he found the dragon eggs at the end and started taking care of them. It felt like a cheap and well-trod denouement and it took away from the prior oppressive tone set up earlier in the story. It seemed like you didn’t know how to end the story so you just went for the Charlotte’s Web-heartwarming ending. And it doesn’t work—primarily because it’s not that predicated on the protagonist, who remains fairly interchangeable.
This wasn’t terrible, just mediocre, and I know you can push it further than mediocre.

A MALICIOUS LETTER OF APOLOGY/THE B-SIDE OF LIFE

This was a bunch of aimless guitar noodling rather than a song, but it was funny and interesting in parts, and that saved it from a real DM. I wish I could’ve seen a less tongue-in-cheek entry for this week, because I read your Mercbrawl entry and I know you can bring the black magic when you want to.

Drowning

Okay, so. This “story” really rubbed me the wrong way, because it’s essentially about the cipher protagonist going nowhere through forces not under his or her direct control. It’s nameless, voiceless, rudderless, and in my opinion, pointless. It felt like you were trying to bank on it resonating in some esoteric and effective way with one of the judges, and congratulations, it worked, but not on me. The language is vivid, and it feels very imminent and immersive, but ultimately, what’s the point? What are you trying to get at with what you’re writing? Suicide? Okay, whose suicide? What differentiates this protagonist and makes them human in any way? Why are we paying attention to their story as opposed to anyone else’s? What do they want? Why do they want it in the first place? And why should I care?

The Apple of Benus

Sitting Here made an argument that this story was trying to do a lot more than it accomplished, and I can certainly sympathize with that hurdle, but it’s ultimately about the (un)finished project. There were a lot of stories that suffered from plot-ADD this week, and yours was, in my opinion, the worst offender of that, which was why it came within a hair’s-breadth of the loss. You tried to shove an expansive generation-spanning Colombian-magical realism story into 1400 words, and a LOT was lost in the transition, and what was left over made little sense. There were so many characters that they didn’t have enough room to change or expand, and when you’re attempting something like that, each character has to be wildly distinct and expressive within their one moment. And in this case, none of them really made a lasting impact, which meant that I found it hard to care about what happened to them. Spells are usually instantaneous, and it’s odd that in a week that sort of encouraged that, you went for something that would take decades to have its full effect—an effect that, by the end of the story, was still very blurry and hard to comprehend.

Fingers of a Loathful Sky

Sometimes all it takes is for a story to go against the grain to be thought of in a positive way, and that’s why I remember this one fondly. If I had to narrow it down to a reason why, it’d be that it went for a different, less lush type of setting and characters. It was rougher around the edges, basically, and that gave it its charm. The way the car-assembling was described was very skillful, and it was a unique interpretation of your spell. I really think that this is a story worth expanding and fleshing-out, because while it made for an interesting scene, it’s the character behind the magic that could elevate the story so much more if it were allowed to flourish. Also, the title seems a bit overwrought for the tone of the story.

Modern Telekinetic Housekeeping

This was one of those scattered weeks where none of us really agreed on a winner or a loser, but all of us saw a…definite…not just consistency, but success, in this story. You accomplished a simple plot very well, and described it very well, even if the whole thing felt a bit too much like Fantasia at its concept. It was laser-focused and it hit its target, which was more than you could say for a lot of stories this week. One thing, though: the way it ended made it seem like a fraction of a much longer story, especially with the last sentence, which took a lot away from the sense of resolution. You could either make this longer or find an alternate way for Cosma to make the reverse gravity work to his advantage. Otherwise, solid work.

School For Aberrant Magical Girls, Also Insufferably British

Had a decent amount in common with the story that won, but was buried under a lot of campy dialogue and had a protagonist that was passive and saved from her own dumb mistake by dustmite-ex-machina. It did feel like you were trying to have charm and camp do a lot of the work that character and plot was supposed to do, and it crushed the story much like the protag was almost crushed under pennies.
And there’s no real resolution, the main character hasn’t really learned much or changed much and you get the sense she’s going to keep fooling around with magic no matter what anyone says. This wasn’t her scared-straight moment, which it should’ve been. Would that have saved the story? Probably not, but at least it would have made it slightly more worthwhile.

Moistman

As with Thranguy’s story, this went against a lot of the familiar patterns people went with this week, and that helped the story…somewhat. I felt like the character was sympathetic and interesting, the plot was effective if a bit standard, and the ending was pleasant. The word “pleasant” sticks out to me, though—I get the feeling while reading this that no one was ever in any real danger, just from the overall tone of the story. It’s joke-y and nice, but if that’s the case, then the drama doesn’t really hit hard, and the story isn’t funny enough on its own to be interesting enough to compensate for that. I wanted to HM this at first, but the judges disagreed with me, and I kinda see where they were coming from when I read this again. Also, the child was a dumb addition to the story that just ramped up the pleasant-ness. Solid effort, nonetheless. It’s odd that you got this shade of a story from a spell that involved a horse’s head on a pike.

Persistence

You see, the thing about gimmicks is that they need to work with and enhance the story, not be a wet albatross around the story’s neck. I get what you were going for here, but that doesn’t matter if it doesn’t really work, or wasn’t that good to begin with. This was a plot on the level of an insurance commercial, and it had characters that were on that level as well. And the ending is the largest non-resolution you could possibly have. HERE’S A TIP, not just to you but to TD as a whole: If the ending to your story is basically “None of the preceding words mattered, because the protagonist gave up being a protagonist”, maybe think about why someone would want to read your story, and then change it or scrap it entirely. I mean, come on.

Unrequited Love

Even after we sort of came together as a judging team and collaborated with our opinions, I have no problem saying that this was far-and-away my pick for the Win this week. There was just something more human and accessible about the story that I didn’t find in a lot of the others, but another judge didn’t feel the same way, and I guess that’s how dialogue hits different people in different ways. And to be fair, the banter becomes a double-edged sword after a certain point, where it crowds out the story rather than enhancing it. Maybe I was just really on the lookout for a likeable character this week.

Cold Turkey

At the time, this was the story me and Sitting Here argued the most over—I strongly disliked it and I thought the aim of the story was muddled and that the ending was really anti-climactic. Reading it over again this time, I think I understand it a bit better, and it knows what it’s doing, but there’s still this feeling that everything’s too smooth, too easy, and too irrevocable. The mysteries seemed way more interesting than this dilemma of racing past the things in your life that you want to savor, and the ending of the story, while not as anti-climactic as I originally thought, still loses a lot because I really don’t have much of a sense of either character’s personality. And the “there are two kinds of ghosts” line was unnecessarily straightforward. Competent story that could have used a little more attention paid to execution.

Heroes

Ha. I see what you did there, with the gyro pun. That’s the clearest thing in this story.
Look, the fault in this story is not necessarily the concept—a noir story that involves a magic speakeasy with bootlegging wizards is a strong start, if nothing else. But it falls apart in the execution. Actually, “falls apart” seems like too weak of a term to use, more like “actively rends its own flesh”. What was the deal with the time skip in the middle of the story? Why not just have the bust happen when it’s supposed to happen? It feels like one of those scenes that would work a lot better on a movie screen than a page, and thinking about it now, maybe that was your downfall—it’s too cinematic for its own good. You wanted to imply a lot of things through scene dressing and dialogue and you left a lot of the narration and inner thoughts very vague, but when you’re writing a story, sometimes you need to use those tools to your advantage. All of the judges were befuddled by this story, but even though it lost, I’d say it’s worth digging through for something you can salvage, if it really calls to you.

Brothers and Sisters

For me, this story was sort of predicated on whether or not we were supposed to sympathize with the sister. The prose was polished, the story was whimsical and pleasant, the plot was solid, but the characters seemed fairly lacking, and the strongest one was the one I was most conflicted about. Aileen’s basically guilting her brother into staying with them even though she’s really done nothing nice for him the entire story. I get that it was supposed to be this emotional epiphany where her love for him was revealed, but, I don’t know—it didn’t feel like that sort of emotional depth had been earned at all. It’s more a story about Aileen than her brother, maybe she should have been the main character. Also, this was for all intents and purposes a merman story, but it was probably the least fun and least sparkly one I’ve ever read, which has gotta hurt you in your soul, but I have to be honest.

Marginalia

A vignette, but a crispy crunchy toffee-coated sensually described one. The language in this entry is near impeccable, which makes the actual plot behind it seem like a letdown, what little there is of it. It’s a one-sided revenge story, and a limp one at that. I read a similar story to this in the past and it ended with the main character being imprisoned, smuggling a spoon in with him, and laboriously scraping his new face off. Why couldn’t that have happened here? Why did your main character have to just passively accept his new face? Why couldn’t there have been some forward motion to fuel all the nice descriptive details you started out with?

A Flight Home

Oh, kurona. You know, when I had judgemode still on, I read this story and said to SH, “This is like a more polished kurona story”. So you can take solace in the fact that you are improving, but also take note of the fact that there are some habits that you still need to shake. Lack of character depth, excessive worldbuilding, lack of a resolution, gimmicky plot devices, and most importantly, give yourself more time to edit. But you are getting better. Have you written a lot of non-sci-fi or fantasy stories? It might be a good thing to pay attention to, just to practice working with settings and details that’d be familiar to casual readers.

Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh
oh, uh, in, I guess

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Entenzahn posted:

we managed exactly zero signups before someone hosed it up

Fu, pederast.

Here's my crit of every story you've ever written: :itwaspoo:

Entenzahn
Nov 15, 2012

erm... quack-ward
better than your usual crits because at least someone's put effort into that gif

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






sebmojo posted:

Fu, pederast.

Here's my crit of every story you've ever written: :itwaspoo:


Entenzahn posted:

better than your usual crits because at least someone's put effort into that gif

I'll judge this brawl rematch.

Entenzahn
Nov 15, 2012

erm... quack-ward
:toxx:

Nethilia
Oct 17, 2012

Hullabalooza '96
Easily Depressed
Teenagers Edition


First of all: :siren:THIS IS NOT AN ENTRY I HAVE poo poo TO DO (IN THEORY) AND AM NOT ENTERING THIS WEEK:siren:
so if you put me in Jitzu I'll find a balcony on a high building and push you off it

That being said, wow, I have a fuckton of crits I haven't done. My number is ugly and I wish to unugly it. But they're old and maybe no one gives a gently caress anymore. Well who cares I still give a gently caress. My crit count is here. Pitiful. Look at all that red. Let's fix this poo poo. I want at least 80% of my crits done. A B in Texas is respectable.

I OWE CRITS FROM:
Week #122 - Bar-back
Week #130 - Twice Told Tales of Magic and Sparkles
Week #137 - A Picture is Worth rand( ) % 1500 words

Wow these are all over a year passed - yeah, gently caress you they're old I know heaux did I ask for your goddamn opinion on the age of my poo poo

IF YOU STILL WANT A CRIT: Open your drat mouth and say something to let me know. Tell me in chat, babble in thread, or you can even PM me if you're a cool kid and can do that. I'll make cool notes to myself to see who to crit. You have til the close of this week's submissions to let me know if you want my poo poo or not.

IF YOU DON'T WANT A CRIT: Say nothing, like you probably normally do. You may have already faffed the gently caress off the thread anyways, or you think that after a year there's not possibly anything I could say to make you give a gently caress. Fine, don't curr. I'll probably dash off a quick "what sucked what rocked" 3-4 sentences if it'll kick my drat crit count up a piss closer to 80%.

And that's the deal, now go do whatever the poo poo you were doing.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT








Sebenzahn Brawl

i got a friend visiting with his kid and so i won't judge this until he leaves Thursday night. Write me a HEARTWARMING story about a father and son. No death, no camping.

1350 words
due August 18, 23:59 EST. No mercy.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









I'll do my crits by submission deadline, :toxx:. Quote this if you want me to crit your stories first.

Also don't apologise for doing crits, if people don't like what you say about their story they should have written a better story.

Kaishai
Nov 3, 2010

Scoffing at modernity.

sebmojo posted:

I'll do my crits by submission deadline, :toxx:. Quote this if you want me to crit your stories first.

Hello!

Tyrannosaurus
Apr 12, 2006

sebmojo posted:

I'll do my crits by submission deadline, :toxx:. Quote this if you want me to crit your stories first.

Also don't apologise for doing crits, if people don't like what you say about their story they should have written a better story.

Grizzled Patriarch
Mar 27, 2014

These dentures won't stop me from tearing out jugulars in Thunderdome.



sebmojo posted:

I'll do my crits by submission deadline, :toxx:. Quote this if you want me to crit your stories first.

Also don't apologise for doing crits, if people don't like what you say about their story they should have written a better story.

Hell yeah I want some angry seb crits.

Carl Killer Miller
Apr 28, 2007

This is the way that it all falls.
This is how I feel,
This is what I need:


Last week's crits, part one:

Judge Words

The rules I'm going by are SH's:

-Deviation from your prompt should be proportional to how good your story is.

-When it gets boring, I'll stop reading.

I'll read every story through and try and judge somewhat based on that.

-------------

Schneider Heim-Prisoners of Speed

Some of your dialogue reads like overdubs a foreign movie, which isn't necessarily a bad thing if you're consistent, but here you're not. You focused almost entirely on the rival part when the cheesemonger in your prompt is what I wanted to read about. I don't get it. They're a racing club that also likes cheese? Who doesn't like cheese?

All of the racer, none of the speed.

5/10

******

-A metal heart with pleasure fills/and dances with the daffodils

I thought the relationship between Anna and Huey was ok, but I didn't understand what made her turn around and flip Huey's voice back on. Was it because he was more annoying with the preprogrammed voice? And the idea of having A.I. in a vehicle is so bad it's almost criminal. I didn't feel any consequence in this story, either. Anna wanting to deprogram Huey was so casual that it took away your ending's impact.

For what it's worth, a couple of your jokes landed softly and the intro segment had a few genuinely charming moments.

7/10

*****

Benefit Concert

I was genuinely intrigued by the idea of a resort compound housing a rock band, but your story didn't stay there. I kept hoping you'd go back to that plot point instead of hearing Chad wax poetic about beauty. Not covering it also gives your ending a lot less impact. I don't really know why the guards want to stop him from playing, or keep him inside, or if it's all just your protagonist being drunk. I thought it had the potential to be a lot more interesting. I couldn't find myself enjoying Chad at all. He sounded like a dab lounge comedian.

Needs a hard proofreading run and I never, ever catch that poo poo.

5/10

*****

War is Hell

Well, I'm glad I stuck with this one. For a larger-than-life protagonist the story got dull enough to make me want to stop a few times. It looks like you were really excited to write about this protagonist but he was really, really long-winded. it got tiring to read after a while and I found myself skipping over his dialogue. Pyramids this, imps that. That said, the ending was the oldest gag ever but you got me in the right mood.

It's probably unconscious, but you use the word 'literally' too much. There are also a few spelling mistakes and lots of punctuation mistakes.

5/10

*****

The Curse of Want

I stopped reading this just after the break. You had a really golden premise, one of the more straightforward prompts in the whole pool. There's so much unnecessary worldbuilding in the first section. You give the premise of the story at the end of the first paragraph then take absolutely forever getting to it.

it's really unfortuante that the first section was so dull because the second has a few interesting ideas as well as some confusing but interesting imagery.

6/10

*****

Blessed is the wolf which the man eats, and the wolf becomes man

The problem with your story is basically right in the title. I kept reading a couple sentences, then looking up at that 1400 wordcount, then back down, then up again. I couldn't get through this story. But for you, I did.

There's too much worldbuilding and character building. In 615 words, a werewolf almost eats a rabbit. It doesn't advance the story or really inform me of the character, either. I had no sense of payoff at the end. There's so much extraneous detail about the world and the weather that this piece that should be about a character leaves me with a character I barely know at all.

4/10

*****

Willow's End

You did some very good things with this story. When I heard about ghosts needing to use a dog or cat to get tangible items I was thinking 'here we fuckin go again' with a derail in a story about a birthday. You beat my expectations. It definitely wasn't perfect, but it seems like everyone had a problem with restraint this week and you did one of the better jobs.

I didn't like some of the vernacular you used for the story. The slang you chose doesn't add up and that had a surprisingly big impact on how much I could relate to Samuel. Bart was one-dimensional and I didn't enjoy the gimmick of him being so full of rage as to forget how to speak. Had some serious character problems, but the setting was used inventively.

7/10

*****

Entenzahn- Famous

I can't tell you how happy I was to see someone pull a short story with the 'no wordcount' rule.

I didn't like this story. All of your jokes fell flat. It's partially because making fun of Donald Trump is so overdone, but it's also your writing. "ten years from now it's all gonna be halal" is a very lazy and bad joke.

The hinge of the story being a bee in love with the queen seems like a vehicle for wanting to write a story about Donald Trump. I don't think this would have worked six months ago, either, when your source material wasn't so burned out. My mom makes fun of Donald Trump. Thing is, I still laughed at a Donald Trump joke yesterday.

Still, I applaud you for writing a loving comedy story in the thunderdome. After story after story of scifi and medieval settings and zzzzzz you went for a risky genre. It has to land just right and I respect that.

ABSOLUTE LOSER/ABSOLUTE LOSER

*****

Thranguy- Missing it for the World

This was a very hard story to judge. On the one hand, your wordcount is begging for an 'I got bored' judgment but on the other you have a talent for dialogue that keeps things moving.

I like the idea of vignettes but you introduce way too many ideas too fast. I'm thinking of Theban Astrolabes and General Vasel and talking dogs and interdiction fleets.

You gave us a story of a length that I have trouble comparing to other entries this week, so I'll have to compare it to what it reminded me of: YA fiction.

Good fantastical elements, ok character development, huge build-up, iffy climax, saccharine ending. Checks all the boxes. Average in a below average genre.

5/10

*****

flerp- Thoughts in the Forest

I got bored. I don't remember the exact moment, but this is the 'bad' magical realism. One action a paragraph with lots and lots of padding. It's pretty but it doesn't make for good reading. I picked up and put down this story ten times trying to get through it. I desperately wanted something to happen.

Prose is good, but you have such a mismatch here. You have an action-driven story but spend the bulk of your words on description. I'm not saying that prosaic stories need to be actionless, the good ones pick and choose. Apart from two-word line breaks, you pack in as much detail as you can, everywhere.

This concept is good. With more restraint your writing would really shine. You have some standout prose and if you let it land like little punches in your story it could really be effective.

5/10

*****

Screaming Idiot- We swim into the future.

You made some pretty fun characters here. Rachneim is pretty fun overall. Ishi is an archetype but you used it well and I appreciated you not explicitly spelling out how he gets shot in the head eight times and blood and gore goes everywhere and the rebel sports a smug grin.

The story's pacing was good right through the end, which made absolutely no sense at all. In these crits I've harped on overdoing it on worldbuilding but I think your ending and the details you supplied before it don't match well.

If this story had some more clarity I would have enjoyed it a lot more.

Also

'Cleanse this continent of your taint'

7/10

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Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh

Nethilia posted:


IF YOU STILL WANT A CRIT: Open your drat mouth and say something to let me know. Tell me in chat, babble in thread, or you can even PM me if you're a cool kid and can do that. I'll make cool notes to myself to see who to crit. You have til the close of this week's submissions to let me know if you want my poo poo or not.


Yes, hi, I would like crits

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