Sitting Here posted:

in m'laddy

flerp posted:

im in to get my 9th dm

Killer-of-Lawyers posted:

Alright, let's have a code to abide by. In.

Grizzled Patriarch posted:

Alright this is pretty much one of the things I'm worst at so I'm In.

Thranguy posted:

In

Tyrannosaurus posted:

In.

Rathlord posted:

In

hotsoupdinner posted:

In.

newtestleper posted:

in

SlipUp posted:

in

Boaz-Jachim posted:

Rise, Sir Jachin

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

Anime is bad. In.

skwidmonster posted:

In with a for science paper week. Just couldn't make that poor ostrich gently caress a dude.

Pokeylope posted:

In for the very first time.

Paladinus posted:

Can't pass on a prompt like that. In.

Julias posted:

I'm In.

However, since a knight's chivalry demands that he honors his promises, I will also submit my entry for Week 188 before I submit my entry for this week.

Lazy Beggar posted:

In, bitte.

J.A.B.C. posted:

IN, let's see how far I can keep my mediocre streak going.

Carl Killer Miller posted:

In!

Benny Profane posted:

In.

Froglight posted:

In.

Jocoserious posted:

In.

Mercedes posted:

I'm so gonna regret this. In.

Kaishai posted:

Crits for Week CXCII: The Voices Talking Somewhere in the House

In R.E.M. Week, the Thunderdome hive mind decided it loved the previous round's prompt too much to let it go. Six stories out of seventeen leaned hard on dialogue and came up wanting in other areas. The one-conversation-story thing was an exercise, guys! Not a long-term pattern to follow! The other recurring theme was Weird Stuff Happening, which wouldn't have been so bad if the Weird Stuff had been less random, better grounded, more interesting, or ideally all three.


ExtraNoise, "If That's What It Takes"
Song: "I Took Your Name"

Kai's Song Notes: The words are almost lost in metallic reverberations. Focus is required to make out more than a suggestion of sense. The chorus leads me to wonder whether this is intentional; the song and I are both to blame for my confusion. Identity theft is the theme, but what's interesting is that although the singer says he'll be an albatross--a burden--other lines suggest he's accomplished things the person he's singing to couldn't do for himself.

The connection: Specific lines from it appear in the entry; thankfully, the quoted phrases are short and only stick out in one instance ("Is there some confusion?"). I didn't imagine the song to be about marriage, but the interpretation works well. The best part is that the protagonist does accomplish something Alex had found impossible. This is also the worst part.

The outsider: Neither the narrator nor Alex fits the bill. The idea may be that the narrator was an outsider in her marriage, but that's a thin branch on which to stand.

To your credit, the unusual second-person style mostly works when it doesn't snag on early giveaways that look like technical errors ("You were not the same man I met in college twenty years ago"--I'm inclined to say I should be I'd in that sentence besides, given how precise this lady is in her speech). The voice is fairly good, though not convincing as something spoken rather than written. The connection to the song is almost too clear, but you handle the direct use of lyrics well enough. Then the ending comes along and slaughters it.

One can guess as early as the sixth paragraph that Alex is dead. It lends the piece some suspense: how did he die? What will happen next? But interest wanes as the retelling of past events goes on and on, events centered on writing to boot; that sort of thing often has a self-referential tang, and so it has here. Then, wham, it turns out the narrator has murdered Alex to... further his career? Plot twist! If she's serious about that motivation, it's stupid, and if she isn't, to have her claim it is a poor move. I strongly suspect she's making a morbid joke, but the tone shift--especially coming right at the end--is like a whoopee cushion in a hearse, neither funny nor appropriate.

I wonder how much Alex was right about her. The more often I read this, the less sympathetic and the more toxic she gets, and the more I lean toward a different answer to her question.

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DurianGray, "Pre-dawn"
Song: "Disturbance at the Heron House"

Kai's Song Notes: I don't know whether this song is about the army at all, but that's what I get from the mentions of liberty, honor, grunts, and cogs. I imagine young, green soldiers and older vets assembling after Reveille, with war as the chaos they follow. Valid interpretation? Loony? Probably loony. Summons, crowds, zoos, chaos, loss of interest, and retreat all register as themes either way.

The connection: Crowds, chaos, and retreat, check! The riots capture the song's mood.

The outsider: Sam, who's left his home world to work on one of its moons during a time of political tension. His accent ensures he stands out. The trouble is that he does very little to become an insider; he does very little, period. His initiation to life on the moon, survival of a riot, involves no action on his part. He doesn't even hide himself. Someone else pushes him down.

Sam's lack of agency weakens a story that's already none too strong. The opening has grown on me since my first reading, and now I sort of like it, but the middle stretch between the first exposition block about Pallas and Medusa and the start of the riot is still largely dull. I blame the excess of political details. Why is the Duke's marriage worth mentioning? I'm not clear either on what the riot is meant to accomplish. It would make more sense if a Medusan had been assassinated; rioting because trade agreements will be delayed because someone was murdered doesn't compute. Are the people so angry that they'll take any excuse to be violent? If so, you underplay the discontent. "Palladians were starting to complain" doesn't suggest that level of rage.

Technical errors aside--your dialogue mechanics need work, and you should read up on hyphens--you wrote competent sentences and decent conversation. I could see a few revisions and more polish turning this into an okay story. Maybe a good one if Sam faced conflict and did something to overcome it.

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Maugrim, "Foreign Flower"
Song: "The Flowers of Guatemala"

Kai's Song Notes: Amanita is the name of some very toxic things. If the "flowers" are poisonous mushrooms, that's grim on a few levels. Mushrooms covering everything suggests rot, or I could read that line as bright colors (that conceal poison) covering up the truth. That verse about looking into the sun supports that, maybe. Go blind. Don't look under the bright, deadly blanket. Themes: Concealment, illusion, denial, blindness, death.

The connection: The people who attract Sophia appear accepting but are not, and there's your illusion and concealment. The most straightforward link is to the lyrics "There's something here I find hard to ignore / There's something that I've never seen before" as they describe Sophia's feeling about the signers.

The outsider: Sophia can't be part of the hearing world. She tries to integrate into the Deaf world. She's still locked out of both at the end, but she finds a moment of peace with that and has someone to hold her hand.

The trouble is that Sophia's outsider status stands on unsteady ground. Why can't she sign? Given her fascination with the language, why hasn't she learned before this? I reckon you went this route in order to set up the conflict between her outlook on the hearing world and the outlook adopted by your subset of Deaf culture, namely that she doesn't view people who aren't deaf as dumb or share their distaste for social interaction with anyone who isn't Deaf. The contrast is fine, but the situation is forced, a problem that could be resolved by rewriting Sophia as a woman who lost her hearing as an adult. Her alienation from each world would make perfect sense in those circumstances.

Jonathan's return to Sophia muddles the ending, because as far as I know he still thinks hearing people are inferior and wouldn't want anything to do with Sophia if she weren't deaf. And what about this K figure? The conclusion would be stronger, if bittersweet, if the final sentence weren't there. Alternatively, Jonathan could shift away from his group, toward her, while she was trying to shift toward him, making it feel right for them to meet in the middle.

***********

anime was right, "Ain't No Girl Like Me"
Song: "The Wrong Child"

Kai's Song Notes: The droning music doesn't match the lyrics about laughing, playing children. It's wrong. Probably on purpose. The singer is a sick child, I figure, with cancer or something that leaves him housebound, and this song hits the prompt so square on the nose that it's a total softball assignment.

The connection: The nameless protagonist (when did that become the fashion in Thunderdome and whom do I have to set on fire to make it stop?) is a child who may not think, herself, that she's "not supposed to be like this," but Zach certainly does. He and his flunkies look and laugh. My favorite link is between Nameless's struggle to know what to say to Annie and the five questions in the bridge.

The outsider: Nameless, a gay teenager surrounded by kids who beat her up, is an outsider, but you'd have a hard time convincing me she wants to become an insider with Zach & Co. Her suggestion that she sing in their band doesn't sound remotely sincere. She wants to bond with Annie, but can you be an insider with one other person?

Some clumsy mechanics, but nothing that bad until "I’d bury my face into my pillow and cried until it was damp." Then "'Where’s yours? Noise pollution is a fineable offense', I say." Oof. Why would Annie being kind to Zach make the narrator want to sing? If the idea is that sing really means scream in this instance, it would be better to use the right word.

Stories about gay kids being harassed for being gay are a Thunderdome staple, and I'm tired of the one-dimensional villains who don't show more motivation for what they do. For even a stereotypical bigot of a teenager to beat up a girl, a neighbor girl, demands more explanation than "she's gay." I'd buy it a little more readily if Nameless were a guy, but it would still be a better story if Zach weren't made out of cardboard. Bigots are humans with reasoning of their own. They feel more real and more awful when they're written that way.

That said, I like the ending very much. I like that Annie's friendship still matters to Nameless even though Annie doesn't share her other feelings. I like that it isn't perfect and sugar-sweet. Acceptance turns out to be more important, or at least as important, as romance, and that's really cool. I put this on my high tier largely for those last two sentences.

***********

flerp, "The Beat That's In Every Blast"
Song: "World Leader Pretend"

Kai's Song Notes: A man works to change himself. His walls could be social, emotional, or mental, but it doesn't matter which. The important thing is that he wants to be different, and the themes of the song are that desire and the difficulty of the task.

The connection: It doesn't look likely that the nameless protagonist raised the mental, emotional, and social walls that separate him from other people himself, but there they are. He lets his machines talk to him in even the least appropriate moment.

The outsider: Nameless comes across as downright alien. Everything is song and rhythm for him, including bombs falling and people's pleas to God and a child's admission of guilt. He spends the story trying to understand people as though he weren't one of them; he doesn't seem interested in being one of them, so that part of the prompt isn't fulfilled, but trying to comprehend insiders comes close.

I would cut "That's" from the title to make it clunk less. I would replace "rift" with "riff" to make the last sentence of the fourth paragraph less nonsensical.

The main character starts weird and stays weird in a manner that's more off-putting than interesting, so I have to consider why I react poorly to him. That he sees the world differently than I do shouldn't be a crime. That his reaction to chaos and grief is to try and find a rhythm underneath it--that's it. He's distant, detached, and low on compassion during his tedious quest for the beat of life. The kid with the hand turkey tries valiantly to save the show by being human and comparatively eloquent, but he can't: the alien in the headphones weighs it down until the end.

That ending tries for depth, and there's something to the idea that sobs are the rhythm of human existence, but the main character continues to be an albatross around the story's neck and weakens the notion's poignancy with his narrative voice. You could increase his empathy if you revised this piece for use elsewhere, pull his obsession with rhythm back a notch, and still make your point. The kid's story as an outsider in his family might also be worth telling if you want to play with the different kinds of noise we make.

***********

Carl Killer Miller, "Ash Knowledge"
Song: "King of Birds"

Kai's Song Notes: The singer wants to make his own mark, do his own work, without leaning on the efforts of his forebears. At the same time, he encourages an old man to keep moving--to stay alive, maybe, depending on what's implied by "so still"--and teach. Themes: independence, frustration, dependence, ancestry, lessons, sky vs. ground.

The connection: An elderly man tells his grandson a story intended to teach him something, though it sounds more confusing than instructive. His allegory involves birds. Sky vs. ground is a large part of it. This is one thing the entry does right; good show.

The outsider: Jerry's no outsider despite the odd reference to bringing him "into the fold," and Pappa/Murphy is, if anything, an insider drifting out.

My reading: Gerald Murphy tells his grandson, Jerry, a story about the Dresden bombing, hidden in an allegory about birds to make it appropriate for a small child. On the day of the bombing the elder Gerald realized that rather than destroying factories, he and his men were killing the civilians that kept the town going. He followed his orders that day but lost his certainty of the righteousness of the Allies' actions. His moral for Jerry is that life can be destroyed by uncontrolled fire--probably meaning hate or anger.

Boiled down like that it sounds all right, but the execution is bungled so badly that I had this as my loss choice. On the nuts-and-bolts level, the sentence mechanics aren't great. The sentence "The boy showed a preternatural compassion and the captain wouldn't be around forever" should have a comma after compassion, since what follows is an independent clause. Pap/Pappa's nickname isn't consistent. You misspell choked. At one point you don't capitalize the first word of a dialogue sentence; elsewhere you put a comma outside a closing quotation mark. Multiple people speak in the first paragraph of the third section. Frieda becomes "the Frieda" in Section Seven.

More aggravating is the device of Pap's allegory. The story skims over it and counts on Jerry's questions to draw an outline. This feels like a way for you to avoid having to come up with an allegory that makes sense, because the bits we see do not. There are two bird kingdoms. They fight. Then one bird kingdom attacks a place where the birds of the other kingdom learn to fly. They see baby birds on the ground and... eat them? Is that what Pap went with? I understand Jerry's confusion. The line about an uncontrolled blaze doesn't go with birds at all.

Worse yet, arguably, is all the back-and-forth between 1945 and the present. The present-day scenes interrupt the Dresden scenes; there's at least one too many, probably two. Imagine the story if you cut Section Three and Section Five. You might want to work the point that "someone telling you to do something isn't always a good reason to do it" in somewhere else, but the rest is chaff. If you lost those sections' details about Pap's bird story, you might get away with the allegory schtick. Vagueness would be an improvement in this case.

I would suggest losing the entire frame and setting the whole story in Gerald Murphy's viewpoint during the war, except the thump of his dogtags on his old chest is a startlingly perfect finish. It echoes the thumps during the bombing, and more than that, it tells me that either he's still a soldier for all his soul-searching, he wears them to remind himself of what he did, or both.

***********

docbeard, "Men Over Mission"
Song: "E-Bow the Letter"

Kai's Song Notes: If I'm anywhere close to right, this song is one celebrity talking to another. An experienced star warning a new one? Maybe. He's jaded about the drugs, a little frightened by the fans, familiar with that fear and probably plenty more. Stars, sorrow, fear, adrenaline, marks of success, and aversion all put in appearances.

The connection: Fear, adrenaline, and sorrow are present, and I can see Jason as an experienced star/gang member talking to newbie Mike if I squint, but the link isn't terribly strong.

The outsider: Mike isn't yet a member of Cassie's crew. Whatever he's done to get that money in his backseat is his initiation trial.

Are you sure you didn't mean to submit this in the previous week? I was fine with it on my first read until Jason started coughing out exposition and I realized I was trapped in a bog of chatter. It has the classic problems of an 85%-dialogue story: the exposition isn't smooth. Not much other than talking happens. The situation is ill defined; I haven't a clue what Cassie and her crew do, what Reyes wants, why Jason is dying, or how a couple of vets ended up working for a gang. I like Jason and I regret his solution to Mike's problem, but since I don't have a firm grasp on that problem--or on Mike, for that matter; he's all but blank--his death doesn't cut very deep.

***********

hotsoupdinner, "Miracle"
Song: "New Test Leper"

Kai's Song Notes: I read this as a performer reflecting on the judgmental nature of an audience. To his critics, he's deformed and contemptible. The cameras don't respect him. The other celebrities he encounters have become jaded and scarred. I'm not inclined to call him a leper for that, but the song does paint a sort of picture of being shunned and outcast, making this another easy draw.

The connection: Ezra's radiation poisoning parallels leprosy. The guardians of the Walled City judge him to be unsafe and unworthy.

The outcast: Nehemiah and his companions are determined to keep Ezra outside of their home--for good reason, but he doesn't see it that way.

The worldbuilding errs on the side of too vague. That the specifics regarding how the world turned to nuclear slag are missing doesn't hurt the story; all one needs to know is that it's a wasteland now, but I wonder how Ezra survived on his farm as long as he did if things are this bad everywhere. If they aren't, I wonder why he walked toward the battlefield rather than away, Walled City or no. I don't get any sense of the time scale. Has he been walking for years? Has he been mutated into immortality?

Knowing that would be vastly helpful in appreciating the last few paragraphs, because I can't imagine a man half dead of radiation sickness managing to kill three healthy men in protective suits without a struggle. Or at all. Even if Ezra is immortal and strong beyond the strength of humankind, it's lame that Nehemiah stands around slack-jawed until it's his turn to die. The shift into Nehemiah's viewpoint is a mistake. My first time through, I had to read that paragraph and the next over again to work out what had happened.

The weak, unbelievable handwaving of physical and biological reality in the climax kicks the legs out from under the ending and so the whole thing. More's the pity: "Swirls of blood marble his sputum" is an evocative phrase, and the prose is generally competent at worst. The was in "If there ever was a such thing as a miracle, Ezra has never seen it" should probably be has been, though.

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Entenzahn, "The Free Radical"
Song: "Electrolite"

Kai's Song Notes: The lyrics have the distaste for the world that I'm coming to expect from R.E.M., but something--the piano music? The guitar strumming?--makes this a more mellow, nearly cheerful song than most of the ones I've heard today, despite that. It ends up sounding like this guy sees the time he lives in as plastic and fake, but he can't bring himself to mind too much.

The connection: Other than electricity, I don't see one. Dominic eclipses the Captain in his moment of sacrifice, I guess?

The outsider: Dominic runs around on the fringes of a superhero group so they can keep an eye on him. He finds a way to become a hero before the story is done.

Dominic's powers vs. LECTRO's could stand to be more clear. My impression at first is that the computer is oddly pointless, displaying readings I assume relate to electromagnetic fields when those are something Dominic senses internally, but then he shapes its charge into a protective bubble. Is it a portable power supply? It should be presented as such from the start, if so. If Dominic can't sense fields until he looks at some computer graphics, that's strange and calls for some explanation.

The story tries, I think, to deliver the magical amount of worldbuilding that is Just Enough to let us understand the setting without being drowned in exposition. A noble goal, but it doesn't work out. The characterization is too weak; the Captain, the Guardians, and the NWO are blank white mannequins, and there's not that much to Dominic beyond his power set. Without engaging characters, I look for setting details to care about and come up short.

Dominic's sacrifice gives the piece a little emotional payoff. You keep that sequence interesting enough that I can ignore how obvious it also is. Like in docbeard's entry, though, the bare-bones characters rob a lot of power from the moment.

***********

Grizzled Patriarch, "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?"
Song: "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?"

Kai's Song Notes: Expectations and understanding. Irony as a restraint. I'd think this were a song about a man figuring out that there was sincere value in things he'd dismissed as false or uncool, or if not value, then a depth he hadn't previously realized; maybe it is, but the final "don't gently caress with me" makes me wonder whether he's figured out anything at all.

The connection: Radio and frequencies play key roles in this entry. Phil's dismissal of the idea that his son could hear his dead wife in the bands between stations turns into, not acceptance, but hope. He can't believe but can't not believe. It's arguably the week's strongest use of a song.

The outcast: This is more shaky. Kevin is established as a social outcast in an early throwaway reference that doesn't preface any attempt by him to be anything else. Phil tries to bridge the gap between him and his son, but I'm still not convinced getting close to one person is the same as becoming an insider.

More present tense. There's been a lot of that this week. The first paragraph is a doozy; the son needs a name earlier to forestall that mess of pronouns. Pronouns continue to be an issue as the third paragraph reads like Kevin had meant to throw the radio out, years ago. Such fuzziness from you surprises me.

Phil feels too much. This may be an intentional motif, but it sticks out. He feels heaviness, he feels a mounting presence, he feels something in his chest, he feels like he's standing on a whale, his home feels alien to him, a feeling saps away everything, a feeling comes over him. Is this story nothing more than feelings? (Sorry.) Surely more variety is possible. The repetition is too much like lazy writing, even if that probably isn't the problem.

I wasn't keen on an HM for this at the time, but I've warmed to it since. The relationship between Phil and Kevin, Kevin's adolescent obsession, the grief that father and son share, and Phil's hope that the impossible is possible balance the stumble on half the prompt and the unusually clumsy--but still more graceful than 90% of the rest--prose. Find some alternatives to feels and you'll cooking with petrol.

***********

Thranguy, "Titanomachy"
Song: "Saturn Return"

Kai's Song Notes: I'm not sure, but I think I like the way the vaguely unpleasant prelude to this song breaks into some of the sweeter singing I've heard from R.E.M. so far. The lyrics meld tones similarly. On the one hand, the singer breaks away from his work shift to gaze up at Saturn, and the song emphasizes that the planet is on its own, calling for no one and needing no one. That seems hopeful. The singer could take off and go his own way similarly, except that ladder in the wrist suggests another sort of departure. "Easy to poke yourself, easy as pie / Easy to take off, harder to fly" took on dark connotations once I started seeing this as a suicide song.

The connection: Evidently I'm not alone in that. The mood, the roof, and the ladder are all present and accounted for.

The outcast: You don't emphasize that people shun Peter for being a murderer's son; you don't have to. That's very well done. Turning "attempts to become an insider" into "attempts to get into a prison" borders on getting cute. I would almost rather that part had been left out, particularly since your otherwise strong entry is done in by the exposition-laden ending.

That first paragraph does its job of catching my attention. Minor mechanical flaws afterward distract me more than I would like. Missing punctuation, mispunctuated dialogue, lowercase pronouns, run-on sentences, "dyeing" confused with "dying," and enough dashes to skewer an entire plate of cocktail weenies? You know better. I know you do.

I appreciate what this is attempting, but it could use less dialogue--you appear to be trapped back in Dialogue Week with docbeard--and more separation between the dialogue and the exposition. Even when the two aren't one and the same, they're lodged in the same paragraphs in awkward ways, with the tenth paragraph serving as an example. The exposition within dialogue actually reads better, for the most part. The line "I didn't give a drat about what happened to her- no, I was glad she died" rings false (it's that "no" that does it), but otherwise I can believe two teens would talk like this.

The last-minute revelation of Peter's plan reminds me of ExtraNoise's entry. The lump of motivation clogs the conclusion, and I wish it were better threaded through the story. Especially since I guessed Peter would either kill her or commit suicide alongside her early on. With that no mystery (and I hope it isn't intended to be one), there isn't much reason to spring his reasons for doing so on us in the eleventh hour. The whole judging team disliked the final three paragraphs to a degree that cost you an HM, so if you decide to revise this one, I suggest you start there.

***********

spectres of autism, "Arc"
Song: "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite"

Kai's Song Notes: I wonder who the singer is singing to. My best guess is that he's broken up with his girlfriend or wife and has left their home for--a cheap hotel? A friend's place? A park bench? Somewhere that only a pay phone can reach. So who's going to wake that woman up? Could be a friend of hers; could be a sister. I want to know the singer's relationship to this person. The connections between these three people are the most interesting thing.

The connection: A falling star. A creature on its back. Sleep and dreams. Only sleep of those is a significant part of the song, and sleep matters only briefly in the story. The serpents in the dark could be a callback to sidewinders?

The outcast: One of the main characters is crushed under the weight of love. The other is explicitly one with its mother and father. If the "outsider becoming an insider" is the whatever-it-is of the second section falling to a planet, that... hrm. It misses the spirit of the prompt, but it's almost clever enough I don't mind. Almost.

Interpretation time. A furred alien is born in its world's winter. It knows what armies and spears and shrouds are, so my impression is of a humanoid. It's obsessed with the falling star it saw at the moment of its birth. Over an indistinct amount of time, it thinks about the idea that has come to it in a dream that the falling star is alive. It wants to find whatever fell, for some reason. That whatever is another kind of alien, its earliest memory of fire on a spaceship or space station or somewhere else with metal walls. Although it's an infant, its reflected eyes pierce it with self-knowledge. It's pushed out... an airlock? Into open space? I swear that's what the words are saying. Maybe it's in an escape capsule. It falls, presumably, to the planet, and that's where the first protagonist finds it. The first protagonist hugs it, and it steals his/her body heat and turns the heat into fireworks. It's death; it's birth; it's the end.



None of this makes sense, not how the furry alien knows the falling star is alive, not how it can find whatever fell after a lifetime, not what happens when it touches the thing, nothing. Nothing seems to happen for a reason. I'm convinced you're trying to say something, but the message is garbled past sure comprehension. The made-up words are obnoxious (and in two cases misspelled!); the alien perspectives are so busy being alien that they don't convey much. The entry reads like a dream, with all of the weaknesses that implies.

***********

Sitting Here, "Messiah en Route"
Song: "Shaking Through"

Kai's Song Notes: The tune is cheerful, as the R.E.M. songs I've heard go. And that's about all I get. Maybe this has something to do with Japan, and maybe the "three" are the Axis powers, but I doubt it. All that makes much sense is the first line: "Could it be that one small voice doesn't count in the room?" It's a good thing that's decent story fodder.

The connection: The nameless protagonist--I can't decide whether to complain about this one. A name would humanize him, but would that go against the point? Anyway, he's the one small voice. The question of whether he'll count in the room is up for debate.

The outcast: While no one on the bus shuns or recoils from him, I figure Nameless Jesus doesn't fit in too well with his fellow men.

On the bright side, I immediately get a feeling of R.E.M. from this entry. On the dark side, I'm verging on sick of R.E.M. at this point.

Thoughtful work, if light, and a fun vignette, if an insubstantial one. You do a great job with the magical thinking. Nameless Jesus believes so wholeheartedly in his role in life that I half believe it too; you help me to wonder with the car miracle that may be real or may be his kooky imagination. He's sympathetic and understandable for all the toys that may or may not be in his attic. To make a man who thinks he's the Savior relatable is a heartwarming trick.

The major downside is that little changes or is resolved, and you might as well finish with To be continued! It's a more charming scrap of story than most and less flawed than all the rest, but it's about as satisfying as a single Hostess Donette.

***********

Tyrannosaurus, "The Cicada, Grief"
Song: "Country Feedback"

Kai's Song Notes: Another musical break-up. The maddening loop and ill-fitting clothes are evocative of a struggling relationship. Not sure about the bone--could it be a wishbone? I think of a garage sale when I read the line "the lovers have been tagged" (thank you for all these R.E.M. lyrics, Internet), and the psychics, plastics, etc. take on a rural/suburban flavor that might or might not be intentional. At the core, it's about a man who needs to get away and blames his lady for their failure to make it through.

The connection: The country twang of the song colors the setting of the story. Dale needs for Cooper to be his brother. It's possible the "bone in your hand" inspired the undeath and/or that the wedding ring is Cooper's or Cindy's.

The outcast: I have to wonder again whether just one other person can make you an outcast or an insider, because I think Cooper is meant to be the outsider, trying to reclaim his bond with his brother. Or whatever the thing is that looks like Cooper is trying to become Cooper. Either way it's a little sketchy, but it passes.

The title makes me think right away of That Dragon, Cancer. It feels derivative, but that could be a coincidence.

Like a corpse at the bottom of a lake, this falls apart. The opening is strong with a great Southern Gothic flavor. I'm instantly hooked by the mysteries of why Cooper came back and how he got in the water. I never get an answer to those questions. Instead you try to introduce doubt as to whether Cooper is Cooper, while I still want to know other things--and I say try for a reason. The text pushes that doubt hard, but I don't see why Dale doesn't accept that Cooper's memory might be vague after he's been dead two years. His zombie brother comes out of the lake and Dale immediately offers him a beer, but his zombie brother can't remember his wedding day and that's what makes Dale look at him askance? Weird. The story tries to ride the uncertainty about who Cooper is all the way to the end without convincing me I should care. How'd he get in the lake, dangit?

My final impression is that Weird Stuff Happens without whys or wherefores. That does not a story make.

***********

Ironic Twist, "Sightless Eyes"
Song: "Texarkana"

Kai's Song Notes: I've been through Texarkana twice. I remember the water tower joining the outlines of both states, mostly, and the Texas shapes on the overpasses before the border that became Arkansas shapes after. What this music or these lyrics have to do with that city, I do not know. They have more to do with a lifelong quest for something unknown. Some honest-to-God appreciation of life and an implication of trust make this the warmest song yet.

The connection: The song's first stanza sums up Mariani, doesn't it? The stars falling from the sky may be connected to your framing myth as well, I'm not sure, but you're fine either way.

The outsider: Mariani is on the outs with criminals. The effort to become an insider isn't there, as he tries to survive their anger more than to regain their good graces. The Sky attempts to cuddle up to Earth in the frame, but at that point the Sky isn't an outsider yet.

Twist. Listen. I've run out of fresh ways to tell you to cut out the damnable frames. Or at least reconsider them five times before you run with one, in hope of avoiding disasters like this. Whatever tone you're going in the Sky and Earth saga slips and lands on "trying too hard." Eyes don't have wombs! That metaphor is terrible! The second half of the frame interrupts a scene that's far more compelling. This frustrates me all the more this time because I had you on my high list for the strength of the central story, but the other judges shot down the idea of an HM right quick for good reason: as one of them said, this lives and dies by its structure. A pity, since Mariani's instant of death is one of the best conclusions I've seen in a while.

I believe I get what you're aiming to do. The rain is Sky grieving for what Rosales will do to Mariani on one level. On another I think Sky may be a stand-in for Ailin, and Earth is Mariani, and the frame is meant to fill in details about their relationship. Maybe a more folksy voice in the frame would make it less incongrous (and less irritating) than the trying-for-poetic one you use. Maybe then it would work, though I'd rather see the frame chopped altogether and Mariani, Rosales, and Ailin allowed to carry the story on their own. They're up to it; I get enough idea of how Ailin and Mariani were together without the allegorical help.

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crabrock, "but not me in"
Song: "Sitting Still"

Kai's Song Notes: I'm shrugging in bemusement again. "Don't waste your time sitting still" is clear enough, and "I can hear you" implies connection, maybe sympathy, but the rest? Who knows. Individual lines have potential, but any overall theme has run right through my mental fingers.

The connection: Akona is deaf to mundane sounds, but she can hear Drumphy, unfortunately. She achieves a big kill. I want to throw a fit after reading this.

The outsider: Insecure, lonely Akona kills and skins a girl to wear her as a suit. It would be a good twist on the prompt if the tone worked as was probably intended.

Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate wackydumbrandom invisible friends with stupid names and stupider tics since I began to live.

You're trapped back in Dialogue Week too. Maybe our efforts left psychic scars, and the only way you can purge yourself is by retching Drumphy out and forcing us to suffer through line after line after line of his inane existence. How I detest this character! He ruins the entire story both by being around at all and by yammering through an ending that should shock and horrify. It doesn't. Because that effing elephant is there! Is he meant to be connected to the Dreamtime somehow? You know what, I don't care. He's so grating that nothing he could bring to the story would balance out how much he sucks.

Okay, but I should be fair to him and to you. He serves a purpose as the devil on Akona's shoulder, a manifestation of her insecurities, and Akona's sanity suffers from having nothing but him to which to listen. The idea's maybe to make Akona sympathetic and all the more creepy given what her inner voice looks like. But Drumphy is a persistent, over-loud circus clown who never ever lets up on the horn. Not scary. Not creepy. Did you read Muffin's recent entry with the random flatulent ghost? Drumphy's sort of like that.

Don't tell me how a person pees someone's skin with precision and skill. I'm confident I don't want to know.

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Jonked, "Temptations"
Song: "Life and How to Live It"

Kai's Song Notes: I'm getting a house as a loose metaphor for life, the mind, or both, with those flaw-hiding walls probably social (and emotional, and mental) as well as tangible. Hiding things is definitely a theme. The impossibility of keeping things hidden seems to be one, too.

The connection: Joshua tries to hide his discomfort with the movies from Rebecca, unsuccessfully; he tries to hide his love of them from his father, and one imagines that in the long term that will prove impossible too.

The outsider: I assume that Joshua's home life creates difficulty for him in connecting to other people this age. This aspect is reasonably well done.

Hmm, there hasn't been a story bashing religion yet in this round. Surely we can't have a week without--oh, here we go, right on time. I exaggerate to make the point that this theme is tired, particularly when the religious figure--often a parent--is a crude caricature. Sadly, there isn't much here beyond the equation of religion with silly taboos and unreasonable guilt.

What happens: Joshua defies his father to go see a movie with a girl. The movie makes him cry. He joins the Cinema Club. That's it, though the final action represents a decision to hold on to something he enjoys despite his father's disapproval and move out of the guilt's shadow, so a character arc exists. Yours is one more entry heavy on the dialogue and too light on the other things that make a story.

Your strangest maneuver is leaving the title of the film Joshua sees out of the text. I don't know Scorsese's filmography off hand. Wikipedia suggests that Joshua is probably viewing The Last Temptation of Christ, given the line about blasphemy and the story's title; why not say so? What does omitting that detail accomplish?

Ultimately all the judges were bored, and that's what did you in.

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Jopoho, "A Mechanic"
Song: "Orange Crush"

Kai's Song Note: Is it the tune or my fondness for orange soda that has me liking this one? It's energetic and dryly peppy for a song about going off to war. The words don't whine or rage but still make their point, the soldier of the song serving a conscience that explicitly isn't his. Is "orange crush" a euphemism? Wiki confirms that it is. The catchy music and the bleak lyrics draw a portrait of the singer as a sardonic man, and I want to read about him.

The connection: Henry appears to be in some sort of concentration camp, which suggests war. As a prisoner, he's collared, but as a valuable commodity, he's less collared than most.

The outsider: Henry sets himself apart from the rest of the prisoners with his lie. He's apart from the other assembly-line workers as a false mechanic. I don't get the sense he wants to be on the inside socially, but he has to look like a real mechanic if he's to survive his gambit. That counts.

The pacing's off; the story rambles too long while Henry's standing in his line and then hits a wall at the finish. The Max character is mentioned too late. Nothing is resolved. Overall it reads like the first section of a much longer story that should describe how Henry either escaped from or died in that camp. The parts that aren't dialogue--Henry's conversation with the other prisoner is flat and dull--are just interesting enough that I'd keep reading, so you would likely have ended up in the middle of the pack if the DQ hadn't made it moot.

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3.141592653, "War"
Song: "Hyena"

Kai's Song Notes: The role of the hyena could be to bring fear; if the only thing to fear is fearlessness, then the town is most safe when s/he's done his/her job, and one surmises the singer fears most hurting the woman he loves. That interpretation is sketchy. The fear theme is the only thing of which I'm sure.

The connection: "Meager pay, but recognition" is all but quoted. Eric fears the fearlessness of both sides of a war, because it means one or both will have to shatter against the other for the conflict to end.

The outsider: Eric's preachy pacifism doesn't make friends of the other soldiers. I figure his enlistment is his attempt to become an insider, a slight fumble of the prompt since that takes place before the story starts.

We return to Dialogue Week one last time to see one soldier proselytize about war to another. David's half of the conversation tries to carry the weight of exposition and drops it with unsubtle clunks, while Eric rails to the reader whenever he's not railing to David--all of it Message and all of it familiar. When he talks about his daughter I get a glimpse of a more interesting, conflicted character. I wouldn't bother revising this, but the story of Eric's decision to join up and his good-bye his daughter could be worth telling.

You escaped DM contention despite your work having problems in common with Jonked's, and your relative brevity may be to credit.

Bad Seafood posted:

Your story takes place within the context of the dreaded tournament arc.

Bad Seafood posted:

curlingiron posted:

flerp posted:

Entenzahn posted:

anime was right – I Really Gotta Pee!
For what it’s worth you wrote a very solid story about a guy having to pee and you can quote me on that on your resume if that makes you feel any better.

flerp posted:

im gonna edit this post'

e: i did it