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Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
I'm gonna do these in chunks throughout tonight and tomorrow.

magnificent7 posted:

based on Sitting Here's "Don't Bite The Eye That Feeds", 746 words.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3527428&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=50#post414263489
Flash Rule Edition: Story must take place in the Old West or some kind of samurai dynasty thing.

Feed The Eye That Bites 844 words

I'll try to be as objective as possible given that I wrote the original. What I was trying to do, regardless of whether I succeeded, was give the impression that the narrator inadvertently played a small part in an otherwise huge and terrifying conflict (is it aliens? Extradimensional creatures? Some new technology?). By the time he quells his curiosity, it's too late and he is already a part of something he will never understand.

Your take was interesting to me, especially given the flash rule. My issue is that you kept almost all the elements of the story in tact in one way or another EXCEPT the creeping sense that there is a larger conflict at play. This reads like the opening to a horror flick, where they kill the guy nobody cares about just to show you EVIL is happening. Pretty much as soon as the sherrif was like "You don't want to know", I knew our protag going to die with all the poise of a B-movie throw away character.

Of all things, this actually reminds me of Desperation by Stephen King. Or rather, the end of it, once the mystery was gone and the horror had been over-explained. I was hoping for the movie Cowboys & Aliens with a psychological horror twist, not "unwitting guy goes to his doom because death cults (or whatever)." I would have liked to see Mr. Baker slowly losing it in a small western town, or at least more of the "eye".

Don't wanna harp on stuff Beef already covered but this line:

quote:

His tall frame was dressed in clothes far too formal for the heat; sweat soaking into every crease of his shirt, vest, and hat.

was problematic in the same way much of the piece was problematic. Passive, awakward wording, an unnecessary semicolon and, arguably, a completely unnecessary present particible (soaking). Why not "He was tall, dressed in clothes too formal for the heat. Sweat stains soaked his vest and shirt."? Though that's just pure rephrasing; you spent way too much time describing the heat and various sweat levels of the characters. Now, it would have been interesting if the sheriff's clothing had been relevant to the story. Maybe everyone in town is dressed formally, maybe they don't seem to notice/care about the heat. Anything to build a subtle, creepy atmosphere rather than the sheriff dragging the protagonist and the reader through the flimsy NOPE DEFINITELY NOTHING WRONG shtick.

So did this improve the original? I'm biased, but I don't think so.
Writing: 5/10


systran posted:

It was all a (Teenage)Dream by Chairchucker, ultralosing with 1,179 words too many: http://goo.gl/Qz9aw

Has become The Opera House - 783 Words

Oh, Systran. Chairchucker's ultralosing entry only seems like an easy rewrite. The thing about Chairchucker is that he writes really great losing entries. I've likened them to stories your 7 year old niece or nephew might tell you amidst fits of childlike giggles. Are they always well-crafted? No. But they have a charm all of their own, and that's the reason we all love Chairchucker so much.

So here you come, with a mood that's already drastically different right off the bat. I wasn't a huge fan of the first couple lines, honestly. Using letters instead of names aside, this:

quote:

V. must not have suspected that her husband had deceived her, for she awoke on her twenty-seventh birthday and entered a building which she would never exit.

needs some work as an opener. I don't like "must not have suspected" (reads weirdly like you, as the narrator, are making conjecture) , and saying she awoke and entered a building implies to me that those two actions happened in direct succession. Which I'm assuming they didn't, since most people do at least a few things between waking up and going to, for example, an opera house.

And back to the first initials instead of names...I can see what you did, sort of, in that you're trying to Harken back to the original characters, and the whole KPÖ thing. But either use the original names, call her something like "Vee", or use entirely different names. When I first looked at your piece, I thought you had a bunch of roman numeral fives at the start of your paragraphs.

Otherwise....I don't have much to complain about with this one. It's not perfect, but it wasn't the worst this week by a long shot.

Did you improve the original? Debatable, given my point about Chairchucker earlier. More or less.

Writing: 6/10



crabrock posted:

I rewrote Yard Work (461 words) as was assigned to me. This won the first round of a duel, and the sebmojo won the whole thing (but not with this story) so I'm not exactly sure how to classify it.

Yard Work 2: The Reworkening
548 words


Sebmojo gave us a tense, moody piece that left a lot up to implication. You took that and did a line-by-line rewrite, using more words to say the same thing. Or, arguably, less.

Seb's first paragraph is 65 words, and we touch on the senses with terse but clear imagery. The phrases are clipped, and I felt like I was noticing things a man might notice while digging a grave.

Your first paragraph is 78 words. Not a whole lot more, but you actually muddle up the imagery by comparing the ground to the paint on a dilapidated shack, since no two people are going to have the same idea of what the paint on a dilapidated shack is going to look like. So that's a weak and wordy simile. Then you tell us that the moist dirt "manages" to cling. Dirt can't "manage" to do anything. Dirt just is the way that it is.

And this is something I see a lot of, actually. Writers give agency or motivation to inanimate set pieces, and it just serves to weaken the story because now you've got objects verbing verbs instead of the character.

"Could loosely be classified as a fence" is weak too. I am positive a well-picked adjective like "broken" would have conveyed what you wanted to say about the fence just as well.

Also, you blow your load right off the bat by referring to Tracey as his "late neighbor's wife".. If you'll notice, Sebmojo didn't tell us the neighbor was dead until......actually, looking back, Seb never directly told us the guy was dead. The whole mood of the original piece relied on very, very little exposition and a whole lot of feather-light showing with one climactic flashback that shows us enough to tie the whole plot together.

Now, I probably wouln't be harping on this as much if you'd chosen to write the story from a different perspective, or picked a different moment (perhaps the fight itself, or maybe the aftermath of hiding the body?), but as you pretty much did a line-by-line rewrite, it's a lot like you bedazzled an Ansel Adams photo with sparkly internet bling.

Did you improve on the original? No

Writing: 6/10

More of these later, when I'm not at work.

Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Apr 17, 2013

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Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
Also I still need to bestow a losertar for last week. I am terrible at/hate making avs so if some kind 'domer would provide a sufficiently shameful double-losertar it would be much appreciated.

Noah
May 31, 2011

Come at me baby bitch

Martello posted:


Or I can buy you an avatar of your choice

Nah, that's what I'm talkin' bout.

Sure I'm down for another. How about a prompt from Fanky Malloons?

The Bible
May 8, 2010

I'm in.

Bad Seafood
Dec 10, 2010


If you must blink, do it now.

CancerCakes posted:

Bad seafood your crit is coming, but I just spent the last 7 hours drinking sangria and eating paella so I'll put it out tomorrow hopefully, Friday at the latest.
Honestly, you're probably better off going in drunk.

Don't feel obligated or anything though. Erogenous Beef already put me through my paces with a line by line, and Sitting Here's sure to hang me out to dry where I belong. Really, it's not even a piece that deserved even one response, let alone three.

If it's just about putting your critique into practice though, fire away. Alternatively, you could always offer to do someone else's.

Auraboks
Mar 24, 2013

...huh?
In.

Martello
Apr 29, 2012

by XyloJW

Noah posted:

Nah, that's what I'm talkin' bout.

Sure I'm down for another. How about a prompt from Fanky Malloons?

:frogon:

magnificent7
Sep 22, 2005

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Greatly appreciate the feedback. Westerns and Lovecraft are probably my two least read genres so I was absolutely going B-movie on this poo poo (unintentionally). Absolutely wish I'd have thought of the Cowboys vs. Aliens angle and used that.

kazakirinyancat
Sep 8, 2012
I've been reading through the Fiction Writing Advice thread. Learning a lot and not bothering to post since most of my questions were asked and answered already. The only piece of advice I haven't acted on is to jump into the Thunderdome.

Can I join in?

Martello
Apr 29, 2012

by XyloJW
You don't ask to join Thunderdome

You leap, screaming, into the bloody fray with your blade raised high.


so yeah, you can join in

kazakirinyancat
Sep 8, 2012

Martello posted:

You don't ask to join Thunderdome

You leap, screaming, into the bloody fray with your blade raised high.


so yeah, you can join in

I'm gonna end up landing on my own sword.

I'm in.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Noah posted:

Nah, that's what I'm talkin' bout.

Sure I'm down for another. How about a prompt from Fanky Malloons?

Does this mean I also have to judge? I'm down, but fair warning, I'm in the middle of writing final papers and hating life, so my base-level of screaming harpy is more elevated than usual. I'll throw down a prompt later, when I think of one.

Martello
Apr 29, 2012

by XyloJW

Fanky Malloons posted:

Does this mean I also have to judge? I'm down, but fair warning, I'm in the middle of writing final papers and hating life, so my base-level of screaming harpy is more elevated than usual. I'll throw down a prompt later, when I think of one.

:moreevil:

perfect

zakucat
Dec 8, 2012

I want you to steal it. And I'm going to watch you.
I'm also in. Blood for the blood god, etc.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Indeed.

:siren:THUNDERBRAWL: MARTELLO vs NOAH:siren:
Prompt: A character steals an item from the lost and found and suffers the consequences
Caveat: You each must write in the style of the other. That means, Noah your entry must feature a dystopian cyber-punk setting, possibly with miltary or ex-military personnel. Martello, your entry must be grounded in the real world and the minutiae of daily human life.
Words: 800-1000
Deadline: You can have until 9pm EST Saturday (April 20th), because even if you post it earlier, there's no way I'm going to read it before then.

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






So uh, does anybody else have a fiancee I can blame this current piece on? because I already used mine.

magnificent7
Sep 22, 2005

THUNDERDOME LOSER
I'm in. Reluctantly.

Westerns? Lovecraft? And now Mysteries? Next prompt is going to be operettas.

Did I miss all the way cool awesome prompts like "50-foot spiders" and "zombies"?

(edit - to be clear - the Western was a flash rule, and lovecraft was the original story but yeah I'm still wondering)

CantDecideOnAName
Jan 1, 2012

And I understand if you ask
Was this life,
was this all?

magnificent7 posted:

I'm in. Reluctantly.

Westerns? Lovecraft? And now Mysteries? Next prompt is going to be operettas.

Did I miss all the way cool awesome prompts like "50-foot spiders" and "zombies"?

(edit - to be clear - the Western was a flash rule, and lovecraft was the original story but yeah I'm still wondering)

Is there anything keeping you from putting 50ft spiders or zombies in your mystery?

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007

magnificent7 posted:

I'm in. Reluctantly.

Westerns? Lovecraft? And now Mysteries? Next prompt is going to be operettas.

Did I miss all the way cool awesome prompts like "50-foot spiders" and "zombies"?

(edit - to be clear - the Western was a flash rule, and lovecraft was the original story but yeah I'm still wondering)

You missed the one and only worthy prompt. "A man agonizes over his potatoes". Everything after that is increasingly thinned out, unrefined Thunderdome chaff.

magnificent7
Sep 22, 2005

THUNDERDOME LOSER

Sitting Here posted:

You missed the one and only worthy prompt. "A man agonizes over his potatoes". Everything after that is increasingly thinned out, unrefined Thunderdome chaff.
Sad.

Dr. Kloctopussy
Apr 22, 2003

"It's time....to DIE!"

magnificent7 posted:

I'm in. Reluctantly.

Westerns? Lovecraft? And now Mysteries? Next prompt is going to be operettas.

Did I miss all the way cool awesome prompts like "50-foot spiders" and "zombies"?

(edit - to be clear - the Western was a flash rule, and lovecraft was the original story but yeah I'm still wondering)

It's not Capital-M-Mysteries, it's just a mystery. Also you just :siren:flash-ruled:siren: yourself to write about 50-foot spiders or zombies. Congratulations.

Alternative: If you post a decent sub-500 word story (it doesn't have to be a mystery) about 50-foot spiders before the sign-up deadline, I will expunge this flash rule.

Because, God, like we need more loving amateur-hour stories about zombies in the world. :barf:

Dr. Kloctopussy fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Apr 17, 2013

magnificent7
Sep 22, 2005

THUNDERDOME LOSER

Dr. Kloctopussy posted:

It's not Capital-M-Mysteries, it's just a mystery. Also you just :siren:flash-ruled:siren: yourself to write about 50-foot spiders or zombies. Congratulations.

Alternative: If you post a decent sub-500 word story (it doesn't have to be a mystery) about 50-foot spiders before the sign-up deadline, I will expunge this flash rule.

Because, God, like we need more loving amateur-hour stories about zombies in the world. :barf:
Wait, so, what's the difference between Mysteries and just a mystery? One has clues and a detective and suspects and a body, and the other just poses questions that make you go "hmm?"

(and people keep re-doing zombie stories because nobody's gotten it right yet).

CantDecideOnAName
Jan 1, 2012

And I understand if you ask
Was this life,
was this all?

magnificent7 posted:

Wait, so, what's the difference between Mysteries and just a mystery? One has clues and a detective and suspects and a body, and the other just poses questions that make you go "hmm?"

(and people keep re-doing zombie stories because nobody's gotten it right yet).

A mystery can be as simple as "who stole my lunch out of the fridge?" You're thinking of specifically murder mysteries, which, surprise, are not the only kind of mystery out there.

Bad Seafood
Dec 10, 2010


If you must blink, do it now.

magnificent7 posted:

(and people keep re-doing zombie stories because nobody's gotten it right yet).
People keep doing zombie stories because it's a cheap means of producing basic human drama.

angel opportunity
Sep 7, 2004

Total Eclipse of the Heart
I recommend everyone title their submission: The Mystery of the VERB-ing NOUN

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






systran posted:

I recommend everyone title their submission: The Mystery of the VERB-ing NOUN

Isn't it going to be confusing telling all the stories apart if they all have the same name :confused:

magnificent7
Sep 22, 2005

THUNDERDOME LOSER

crabrock posted:

Isn't it going to be confusing telling all the stories apart if they all have the same name :confused:

Crits:
The Mystery of the Verbing Noun: this sucked horribly what were you thinking.

Next up, The Mystery of the Verbing Noun. Now THIS is what I'm talking about. Excellent work.

Martello
Apr 29, 2012

by XyloJW
shut the gently caress up and write everyone

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






Martello posted:

shut the gently caress up and write everyone

no you. I already wrote mine I'm just taking a break from masturbating whilst I read it again for the twelfth time.

edit: changed while to whilst

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
Couple more of these, even more coming when I don't have Stuff To Do.

twinkle cave posted:

And here's my re-write of Martello's story. Based on the original full length version not the watered down linked above ^^^:
Thunderdome Week XXXVI

chips beer babies shirts blood
twinkleized - 1400 words

So right off the bat, both stories introduce a lot of characters who aren't doing much of importance. In your case, for the reasons Beef already pointed out, it gets hard to parse who's doing what because of different people doing/saying things in the same paragraph. I kind of get where you're going, with the college antics. Kaitlyn ruminates a couple of times on the fact that they're older and some things aren't ok anymore.

But it all kind of gets lost in the prose. Like here:

quote:

"Don't mind her, she's all stoic and poo poo," Toby said, "Party forth." As if on cue, the light shifted, and Seth gunned the gas. Courtney, deliberate, sat a few beats before pulling forward.

It took me a second to realize that she meant Courtney, because the Courtney hadn't done much except sit with her hands on the wheel. Stuff like that.

Also basic editing stuff like

quote:

I don't want that ugly bitches baby.

should be ugly bitch's baby, man. But I feel like most of those things you would catch with a cursory edit. This story reads like a first draft, especially in how much it finds its stride and builds the tension toward the end.

The whole "ninja" sequence I sort of had trouble with. Your words do a fine job describing the sequence of events, I'm just having difficulty imagining this happening in a small, packed trailer. It was satisfying though, and a sufficient turn around from her stoicism earlier on to make me like her as a character. Everything after that point I like, and this was one of the few rewrites that seemed to capture the original while giving it an original feel. The sequence of events goes from lighthearted/juvenile to serious to climactic and back to sort of a grim, bittersweet sense of "normal."

Like I said though, it reads like a first draft. I've seen your crits, I know you know what's up. So I have to assume you only took a cursory glance at this before posting.

Did it improve on the original? In terms of prose, Martello was cleaner. But on a couple rereads, there is something more raw about this one that I like. So I'm going to say maybe.
Writing: 7/10



Dr. Kloctopussy posted:

To assuage my inassuagable shame for failing to follow through after calling "in" on a total of 4 (four!) occasions, I inertia ruled myself that I cannot call "in" without posting my actual entry for my next 4 entries. (This means I need to submit before the sign up deadline.) So here, making everything worse, is my rewrite of Bad Seafood's The Lion and the Jackal.

Slave and Slaver, Weave and Waver
544 Words

This one grew on me. Unlike my cojudges, I didn't mind the teeth thing because I took the last line of the story to mean that he was going to take them and "fetch a pretty penny" before the younger man was gone.

I really don't have much to critique that hasn't been said. The source material was rough but had some good ideas; I really enjoyed how you mythologized the struggle between the young man and the slavers. You really got to the essence of the original to pull a good piece out of it.

Was it an improvement? Yes
Writing: 8.75/10



CancerCakes posted:

Saviour X didn't give a word count so I won't either. This is definitely shorter than the original and the Max for that week however. Originial Story Martello Crit which is probably more entertaining than the original

Skin on Skin

You took an action sequence with no context and made it into a story. Good on you for that. It suffers from being rough in some areas, and I feel like the characters' motivations still aren't strong enough to warrant a murder in space. I mean I guess the guy could be totally crazy, but nothing in the beginning of the story really suggests that. Sleezy, maybe. Not insane enough to murder two people and laugh about it.

The first thing I didn't like was the exposition on the relationship:

quote:

"Yeah, Trev, I got it." I sigh and push past him away from the command module, trying to stay as far away from him as possible in the cramped space. Us being the only Americans at a Russian flight centre and his plying me with alcohol had made it 'Us being,' 'his plying,' and an ambiguous 'it' make this an awkward sentence to parse seem like a good idea at the time. But it hadn’t been fun, and keeping it from the councillors had been stressful - they don’t like people who are romantically involved on skeleton crews. SOunds more rapey than romantic It can cause problems with jealous crew members, apparently. As I float past the cell bio module on my way to the suit room, Gurpreet pokes his head through the hatch

I think Gurpeet's appearance should be its own paragraph, too. Also, for giggles, I bolded a missing comma in that last sentence. Watch out for things like that throughout your writing.

Things chug along ok outside the ship. I like the nod to the opening of the original story with the view of earth, but then how is it possible to write about a space station above earth and NOT include a poetic description of the sun doing blah blah blah over wherever. Yours was better, though.

Then we get to Trev's dialog. Ugh. It reads like placeholder dialog. Almost nothing is conveyed except BAAAAHHHH I'm gonna kill you fuuuuccckkkkkk. I mean, "break ya arms"? Is he a mobster? In a space mob?

I didn't have too hard of a time following the action. Though Gurpeet's actions don't make too much sense outside the space station. Flying toward her with no means of communication seems like a bad idea, I feel like astronauts would have some kind of "help me my radio is dead and I've just been thrown into space" gesture. Otherwise, I thought it was an ok sequence. I suspected the whole switch with Gurpeet thing, and didn't have trouble following that Trev had never left the station.

Did it improve the original? Yeah, while not being perfect, there is an actual story here and I liked the ending.
Writing:7/10


edit: Apparently I need to do a cursory edit on my post

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe

Sitting Here posted:

I suspected the whole switch with Gurpeet thing, and didn't have trouble following that Trev had never left the station.


ban Sitting Here for extreme bragging please

Erik Shawn-Bohner
Mar 21, 2010

by XyloJW

Nubile Hillock posted:

ban Sitting Here

twinkle cave
Dec 20, 2012

THUNDERBRAWL LOSER

Sitting Here posted:

Like I said though, it reads like a first draft. I've seen your crits, I know you know what's up. So I have to assume you only took a cursory glance at this before posting.

Thanks for the crit. I need all the help I can get though. I have extreme myopia when it comes my own grammar, spelling, verb tense.... Basically i can't write or edit. But I'm more than happy to tell other people they suck!

Martello
Apr 29, 2012

by XyloJW

Nikaer Drekin
Oct 11, 2012

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2020
Consider me IN. This gives me a chance to use one of my established characters, so YE BEST BE READY


VVVVV I got a different/better idea, so I'm using a new character and locale. Don't think this is because of you, I don't scare that easy :argh:

Nikaer Drekin fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Apr 18, 2013

The Saddest Rhino
Apr 29, 2009

Put it all together.
Solve the world.
One conversation at a time.



Using established characters means you need to be mentally prepared to grit your teeth as people crit the gently caress out of your baby. Also don't treat your writing as your babies please everyone. Not healthy. Words are not a proper substitute for your fervent, animalistic need to have children.

The Saddest Rhino fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Apr 18, 2013

Martello
Apr 29, 2012

by XyloJW
My fiancee has that fervent, animalistic need, so expect a childbirth-themed prompt around Week 90-95.

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






wait how did this get here

The Case of the Elusive Keymasher
(1200 words exactly)


The story you are about to read is based on true events. The names and verb tenses have been changed capriciously.

The Critiquer General stood up and waved his hands. “Whoa, whoa! Stop! Right there,” he pointed, “second line: flagrant violation of proper adverb use.”

“Well sir, we didn’t think it was relevant,” said the new guy.

“Not relevant? We’re not dealing with your average fanfic here. This writer is depraved, debauched, reprobate: a profligate with a thesaurus and a keyboard.”

The older men at the table all had different nervous twitches. Sure they had trained for this scenario, but they never thought they’d actually see this kind of horror unleashed on their community of hard-working, middle-class families who spend most of their time watching the news about the outside world and shaking their heads and lamenting about what things were coming to.

The Critiquer General fell to his knees and vomited. “My God. Who was in charge of this disaster before I was assigned? Was it you Jenkins?”

Jenkins nodded but didn’t have the courage to look the Critiquer General in the eyes.

“And you didn’t think to warn me,” his voice rose to a shout, “that this fucker ended a run-on sentence with a preposition?”

Jenkin’s voice wavered when he talked. “It… we… Sir, nobody here knows how to handle a piece like this. That’s why we called you.”

“This is making me feel uneasy.”

The Critiquer General looked around. “Who said that?” Everybody shrugged. Humphrey eyed O’Brien, but he was watching Roberts, who was noticing his suspicion but he suspected he was really who was after him from the beginning.

“God dammit! I have no idea who is whom anymore!” the Critiquer General screamed. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he shivered just like the kid in The Sixth Sense when he felt a ghost. “Bad similes, missing pronoun antecedents… sentence fragments. He’s been here the entire time.”

The Critiquer General (who is pretty fat, by the way) moved to block the only exit. “I guess we have no choice. We sit here all night until we discover the low-life who is responsible for this mockery.”

Sgt. W. Knight shifted uneasily in his seat. “I dunno, I kind of liked it,” he said. “I mean, I know it’s not great, and I know it’d never make it on its own out in the real world, but is that really a crime these days?”

“Typical,” Rodriguez shot back. “It’s because you only ever read the first page or so and then you skip to the end. You don’t know what it’s really like to be out there in the poo poo. Maybe if you paid attention to the middle once in a while, my partner would still be alive.”

Rodriguez tried to lunge over the table at Knight, but Brady and O’Leary held him back. Even the men who had been sitting quietly were now up and yelling at each other.

The Critiquer General had lost control of this investigation. Everything he had worked so hard for was slipping away. The late nights cramming a few extra reads in before bed. Rereading a line twice, three, four times just to try to understand what the hell was going on. Being the one to try to educate the uncouth amateurs who threw their dystopian sci-fi novellas and crude medieval epics at his feet. It had been worth it, though, when he’d gotten the congratulatory phone call after his qualifying exams. How proud he to hang the certificate up on the wall in his small office. And for what? So he could stand here watching the whole Division of Clichés and Idioms go at each other like ‘roid-raging capybaras? He let out a sigh, lost in exposition.

The men eventually settled into idle chit chat as the night crawled. The Critiquer General still said nothing. He knew if he couldn’t outsmart the writer, he’d have to wait until the bastard slipped up. He must be panicking now. Without The Critiquer General saying and doing things (in his fat-tub-of-lard ways), the story had no way to progress. The Critiquer inspected his cuticles. Two new characters, Bob and Joe, sipped out of their coffee mugs. The Critiquer General smiled. He’s not even trying anymore. It’s only a matter of running out the word limit now. He checked his watch: only 469 more to go.

The Critiquer General inspected the room. “Wait, where did Withers go?”

Harrison frowned. “He got edited out a while ago, sir.”

“But his quip… it was perfect. And wait, weren’t we at a diner?” Reality dawned on the Critiquer General. He had bitten off more—“than he could chew!” interjected Michaels of the DCI. Everybody groaned.

The Critique General started packing his papers into his briefcase. “There’s nothing more for us to do now. We’ve lost. He wanted us in here bickering and wasting time, meanwhile nobody was monitoring the past perfect to see what sort of things he had done. Everybody go home to your families, if they still exist (they don’t).”

The Critiquer General walked out of the office, never to be seen again.

The End.

You see, this story is good because I murdered not only several members of his team, but their entire families. I made you think that this character would dramatically reveal that I was behind the insults and faux pas, but instead I made the characters utterly fail. And who is going to critique me now? Just try to tear this story apart. I dare you. Anything you say is bad I can counter was purposeful. I can do whatever I want. Watch this:
The plane crashed, killing all on board.

Do you know how good it feels to wield power this great?

We find ourselves in a dark alley.

Wait a minute, what is happening?

The Critiquer General stepped out of the shadows, his gun drawn. “You didn’t really think I’d let you just fill out the rest of your twelve hundred words with justifications for your lovely story, did you?”

In the distance sirens wailed and helicopters hovered over a fiery wreckage.

This isn’t how it is supposed to end.

The Critiquer General shrugged. “Your ideas are stale, your prose is awful. I’m here to put an end to it. I just needed you to be distracted. In a way you should be proud—I got the idea from you.”

Backspace backspace backspace. What the?

“Read only.”

I have a bad feeling about this. Maybe I should start over.

The Critiquer General laughed and began his monologue. “There’s no time; the submission deadline is too soon. You know why I brought you here. There’s only one reason for an ominous setting like this: to bring justice to those the system has failed. Soon the only evidence of our meeting will be another rotten corpse for the pile.”

Still a few words left. Quick, think of an alternate ending. Uh, flowers, a whole field of them. And—

The Critiquer General’s finger tightened around the trigger. “Flowers? What do you think this is? The Magical World of Richard Scary?” He began to squeeze. “This is Thunderdome motherfucker.”

crabrock fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Apr 18, 2013

Kleptobot
Nov 6, 2009
Can't resist the theme this time around. Let's do this, preferably before I go drinking on the weekend and forget again or turn in something half-assed.

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magnificent7
Sep 22, 2005

THUNDERDOME LOSER
I just had a spinal cortisone injection thing and I'm betting the next few days will be spent laid up on some unholy pain killers.

Prepare yourself for an amazing story.

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