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JudgmentSome Strange Flea posted:i can't even Okay, so I actually liked this but only at the end. It's a good twist joke ending and I actually chuckled a bit. But holy gently caress dude, almost 1500 words just for a throwaway joke ending about a loving iPhone? Cut this poo poo way down and we'd be going somewhere. It's bloated as gently caress as it stands now. Sitting Here posted:This is dedicated to Giorgio A. Tsoukalos Earth's Children fanfic lol. But it's actually pretty good. Not sure about alternate history unless the alternate timeline involves Neanderthal supplanting Cro-Magnon instead of the other way around. I liked it a lot though, I felt the frantic movement and panic of Calfskin and you pulled off the primitive human thing with the narration and language. Sitting Here takes it. gently caress all of you I have no time for you cocksuckers (I'll finish crits and judging tomorrow)
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Apr 30, 2013 02:08
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systran posted:
broski, you sure you understand how humour works?
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Apr 30, 2013 05:40
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magnificent7 posted:Thanks for this. Sadly, I'm not 100% which twist you're talking about. With only 800 words, I In all seriousness, if you have 800 words don't go for a hard sci-fi epic and just tell us a space story. It's like trying to cram in the entire history of plastics manufacturing in a short piece about telephones. Plus, your "science" is terrible and could have been hamfisted and no one would have noticed or cared. autism ZX spectrum fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Apr 30, 2013 |
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Apr 30, 2013 05:46
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stop doubleposting
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Apr 30, 2013 05:48
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retrard
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Apr 30, 2013 05:49
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Erik Shawn-Bohner posted:readtard
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Apr 30, 2013 05:50
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magnificent7 posted:At what point is it possible to just give up on explaining the science, and push the plot/characters/scene harder instead? The moment you open your word processor. Unless you're trying to write hard sci-fi, which that obviously wasn't. In this example, no explanation would salvage something that made no sense in the first place. The story on its own amused me; trying to justify bad "science" doesn't. Accept it as something silly and utterly implausible and move on. To compare, people enjoy Doctor Who, and that's essentially fantasy with SF aesthetic. Trying to explain scientific details over focusing on the plot and characters would ruin it. Even more straight-up SF handwaves the science and gets on with the story.
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Apr 30, 2013 06:15
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Nikaer Drekin posted:VICTORY! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKO0RrM7LvI Also victory! But even more heavily caveated! I'll take it though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANk8xlsp1pQ
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Apr 30, 2013 08:24
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Martello posted:gently caress Cheers.
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Apr 30, 2013 10:22
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Nubile Hillock posted:Plus, your "science" is terrible
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Apr 30, 2013 12:45
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Apr 30, 2013 13:08
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I'm going to post this even though it's in the Dome. Mag7 if you have more questions just PM or IRC me. Don't respond in the thread. THIS IS THE END OF MY CRIT: Intergalactic travel is so far beyond what we think might ever be possible that if the aliens were from another galaxy, the humans having "laser cannons" would be totally irrelevant. If you had made this funnier all around, then you could have kept the same bad science. If you wanted it to be serious, then you should have hand-waved more or at least looked up some bullshit terms to throw around. If the aliens had said they were from a solar system 30 light-years away, that would freak humans out even if this is set fifty years in the future. The humans might then lie about having some bullshit like an "anti-matter containment cell" rather than a "laser cannon". You could have had them initiate contact with pi, but then the aliens know some human language and they communicate with that. The science is strained from the premise alone: any aliens that could get to Mars from another solar system are already more advanced than humans and wouldn't "be full of poo poo," so you probably just want to try to make it more funny and gently caress the science.
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Apr 30, 2013 13:10
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Apr 30, 2013 13:24
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Hells yeah. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufLzPqo1qfU Chairchucker fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Apr 30, 2013 |
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Apr 30, 2013 15:00
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systran posted:I'm going to post this even though it's in the Dome. Mag7 if you have more questions just PM or IRC me. Don't respond in the thread. THIS IS THE END OF MY CRIT:
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Apr 30, 2013 15:04
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“All right,” Lucy said. “You win, my Lord. It’s going to be an earthshaking change to have to live without my uncle, but I suppose a vampire’s gotta eat.” “Hmmm,” said the Vampire Lord. “Strange observation, but somewhat… poetic. No matter, then, let the ceremony begin!” The lesser ranks of Vampires let out a cheer that was cut short by a low rumble rippling through the asteroid. At the same time Lucy was giving the Vampire Lord her permission, Oxford had heard her code and started Operation Earthshaker. The Oxford was to use its payload to reduce the Vampire base to space gravel at any cost. Another crash, louder this time, and another, until the ceiling cracked and a slab of rock fell into the Vampire crowd. The creatures scattered, and Lucy took the opportunity to scramble up to the stage. The Vampire Lord hauled Mort up as she climbed and plunged his fangs into the Captain’s neck. Lucy wasted no time; bellowing a war cry, she sprang up and plunged a fine-tipped pencil straight into the demon’s heart. He staggered back, croaking in surprise, trying to pull at the makeshift stake, before his eyes widened and he fell back. He hit the stage and, in doing so, forced the pencil the rest of the way in. The asteroid was crumbling. Lucy held her uncle tight, fearfully checking for a pulse, until at last he stirred and sputtered. She wiped away a tear of relief and led him carefully down the steps until they reached the center of the room. Vampires charged around the room, many of them only to be crushed by the falling chunks of rock. Lucy led her uncle carefully to the center, and Oxford called the ship to hover in closer. The violet rays of the tractor beam encircled them and pulled them safely into the bridge. On board Translucia started to weep, fearing that too much of Mort’s blood had been sucked out or that the Vampire’s fangs had poisoned him. However, Oxford soon bandaged him up, good as new, and she rejoiced; their little crew was finally whole again. A week or so later, after Mort took a shower, he stumbled groggily over to the mirror to shave. When he got there, he saw only a towel suspended in space, hanging over a waist that wasn’t there. Nikaer Drekin fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Jul 15, 2013 |
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Apr 30, 2013 15:27
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Nice, you deserve it. As proud as I am of that avatar - Fanky had the initial idea for the record - I was starting to feel bad that you had such an awful one for so long.
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Apr 30, 2013 15:41
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I guess that's what I get for not leaving myself enough time to edit. Well done Drekin, you might have beat me even if I hadn't submitted a half-assed piece of poo poo.
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Apr 30, 2013 15:46
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Auraboks posted:I guess that's what I get for not leaving myself enough time to edit. Thanks- besides a few cliche-ish lines, I actually really enjoyed your tooth fairy piece from last week. I'd rather have gone up against something like that, but you brought in some neat ideas to be sure.
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Apr 30, 2013 17:06
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Martello posted:Judgment Psh google tells me that Earth's Children takes place 30,000 years ago, before the last glacial maximum, while mine takes place roughly at the end of it (which in and of itself might possibly make it alternate history, there's ongoing debate about how long Neanderthals survived and how they went extinct).  But the alternate history bit was mainly the "lights" in the sky, which were directly related to the thriving Neanderthals. I reread it an realized that maybe it wasn't clear where I was going with that? But either way I came away from this prompt with a surprising new fascination with upper paleolithic life so I count that as a win.
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Apr 30, 2013 18:17
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This week crabrock is the winner of the cancerous crit. You already got some stuff which I agree with.crabrock posted:ugh. This didn't have any errors that I noticed, and was clearly well polished, but it didn't work for me. It left me hoping the aliens would come down and murder everyone, especially boring Kevin. In someways I like the fact that you didn't describe the ship, because it was clear that everyone was used to it, but this was THE DAY, people should have been studying it, looking for any changes, thinking about how it has effected their lives. It could have just been a normal day under the spaceship that this was happening and it might have worked better. CancerCakes fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Apr 30, 2013 |
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Apr 30, 2013 21:44
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I ended up being very busy and produced a rushed piece that I wasn't proud of and frankly didn't want to post, but I felt obligated to especially because it was a 1vs1. Thanks for the crit though.
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Apr 30, 2013 22:02
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kazakirinyancat posted:First Alliance Holy gently caress dude If I gave this a line-by-line it'd be almost every single line. Your narration is stiff, unnatural, and bloated as gently caress. You're either an ESL speaker or a 14 year old with poor social skills. Please be the first one. Generic fantasy elves and goblins and humans with armor. I've never seen this before oh wait a million times and  zakucat posted:kazakirinyancat vs. zakucat What in the everloving gently caress is this poo poo? So much telling, apparent time-skips that make no sense and aren't explained or necessary, random characters that are never fleshed out or given any sense of identity. Holy gently caress. When is this set and where? The random names make no sense, there's a reference to "science books" and tribesmen and who knows what the gently caress. Did you just throw in the cats eating the mushroom-killed girl at the end as an afterthought to fulfill the prompt? In short, You guys both suck so bad that neither of you win. Holy gently caress I'm going to the gym. The rest of you will have to wait while I take out my editorial rage on heavy metal objects.
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Apr 30, 2013 22:12
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Apr 30, 2013 22:13
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The fantastic elements in First Alliance are so poor you can replace every instance of the word "goblin" with the word "negro" and "kingdom" with "plantation" and it still mostly works. edit: Calling it right now, sittinghere was really into von Daniken
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Apr 30, 2013 23:48
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You're going to just read your own review and skip everything else even when I say this: read all the reviews since we put effort into them, and you have a living example to either learn something new or reinforce something you already knew. Maybe you'd see another angle or opinion on it. In any case, it's good for you to read all the reviews if you aren't already. But it's also funny to see the jackasses cry about me making fun of them and then not realizing that everyone gets the same, honest/true opinion. Erottenous Beef v Kayshay RotBeef - "Hersteinnssaga" A lot of your longer dialogue is trash. Ex: “Resting time is over. There’s still salt to land before the squall hits.” “The squall’s here, little brother. Or were you rowing through bathwater?” Thórdís wrung out her hair. “There’s no honor in a drowning death. While you toyed with oars, I had sword-work to do.” Try reading it out loud. And I don't meant whisper. Act it out to yourself. If it sounds lame, it's probably lame. That is lame. Hersteinn glanced at the pissing man. Why tell me that? What's the point of conveying that information? If I hadn't signed up for this, I would have put your story down before the first hashmark. You're giving me backstory and poo poo that I don't care about in a flash fiction piece. I don't care when he got the gun in flash fic. I care about the moment between when the bullet leaves the barrel and the boar's brain hitting the tree. "Her vulva unhinged like a snake’s jaw, engulfed the man’s head, shoulders, body. Only feet dangled between her crotch. She rolled onto her back, swollen womb rising high above, and she squeezed her legs together, trapping the squirming man." That's where you should have started your story. That is the story. Don't tell me this other poo poo and make me work for it. After that, though, your dialogue is weak and overused again, and your descriptions are too sparse. Let the scene breathe a little so I can get a handle on what's going on. Otherwise, it's just "this happened, then this happened, then this happened." Let your paragraphs grow into honest paragraphs, and you don't have to be maximalist or overdescribe individual objects to do that. Just use your head and make the story around the actual story we want to hear. You could have filled us in on all those details through that one scene by what he's saying, thinking, doing, and reacting to. Finally, what you're trying to say to me as a reader isn't clear. I want something more intellectually stimulating than "some cool poo poo happened" though. ---------------------------------- Kayplay - "Come to Dust" The horses sensed the infant simoom first, five miles yet from the oasis Ethan and Howard had wanted to see. Did you have a stroke, you donkey? How the hell did you come up with that sentence configuration? Yes, it's technically possible to divine out what you mean, but it's pointless to scrape your rear end against the carpet like a wormy dog on the very first sentence. Perhaps you are a genius, and this sentence was the revolting thing the prompt asked for. At least he would be more careful, he told himself. Howard sat back and grunted again in impatience while Ethan shifted rocks as delicately as his shaking hands permitted. -- Long wisps of black clung to her scalp. Her robe had once been a deeper blue. The knife at her side held a bright edge; the chain draped across her chest and shoulders had lost none of its golden luster. -- How could the writing be so different from anything he knew? -- etc... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FYTc55nGEI Economy of words. A word limit is meant to be exceeded twice over and then just cut down to the good stuff. These descriptions are not gems decorating the action. They're obviously fake jewelry your blind grandma invested in due to a Nigerian Prince's email. If you want to write flash fiction, you have to get into the mind that you can't just blab on and on about that poo poo. It needs to move. Howard failed to be delicate for the thousandth time in his life. gently caress, dude. If you don't know why this is a bad line, I don't think anyone can help you. "Stop it!" Ethan tackled Howard, his lighter dropped and forgotten. Despite the ESL phrasing, this is where your story should have began. This is the actual action/drama/interpersonal/everything. This is where the tension begins. He twisted and pulled the knife from beneath him. He shoved it into Howard's gut and jerked it up. A wash of hot liquid hit him first, then the slippery intestines, and Howard's hold lost its strength. Ethan gasped and inhaled a woman's remains. He pushed his cousin away. Have you never killed anything? This is a horrible description of a fight. It's like you pulled it from anime, and you chose to do not only that but also be sparse on the whole crux of (read: only actually interesting thing in) your flash story. You Absolute Donkey. The tomb didn't smell of the dust of ages anymore, but of blood, bile, urine, and perforated bowels. No comment. ------------------------------- Decision: Good god, guys. You just dumped some trash on me, and I have to decide if I want to lay in the pile of rotten fruit or the pile of rotten meat. It's two opposite problems that both suck hard and are indicative of laziness. You both need to try much loving harder and have some fun with it. They were both stiff, "genre-style" bullshit. Even if you want to write fantasy or the worst genre of all, cyberpunk, you have to turn an eye to writing a good story. Some people get lucky writing trash. You're not going to. If you even want a chance, you'll have to try hard. I'll give this one to Kaishai. But only barely. Erik Shawn-Bohner fucked around with this message at 01:31 on May 1, 2013 |
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May 1, 2013 01:29
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Kleptobot posted:An introduction to Shatranj (WC: 808) I wish you never said the word "chess." I mean, it's pretty loving obvious that shatranj is chess, but it's nice to come to the realization on my own. You loving cockmongrel. Overall, I enjoyed the story. It was easy to read, there was nothing horribly clumsy or incompetent. It's a nice little vignette but I don't get a great sense of the characters. What you did was write a memoir-style piece, which is okay but I don't think the memoir format is really very viable anymore. Not bad, but didn't blow my dick. CancerCakes posted:God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen The house had become a warzone. gently caress you, you loving oval office! Don't TELL us it'd become a warzone. SHOW us that! Start us right off with the action, motherfucker! Holy poo poo. Television, much like fear, is a mind-killer. You throw too many characters at us. Mention the kids in passing, cuz who the gently caress cares about kids? Then really get into the characters of Nicholas and Gerald. The story is really about them, after all. As it is, the skeleton of their characters are weaker than a pair of old, shaky, incontinent men with familial superiority on their slowly addling minds. Overall, not bad, and the ending was surprisingly upbeat. I was interested in the characters and how it was gonna end, but I wanted more. CancerCakes takes it, but only by a narrow margin. Both stories were basically competent, but at least Cakes made me care just a little bit about his characters.
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May 1, 2013 01:55
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I'm sensing some real loathing and hostility in these crits.
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May 1, 2013 02:08
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magnificent7 posted:I'm sensing some real loathing and hostility in these crits. Welcome to Thunderdome. Have a nice day. Putting my head above the parapets for a shovel of poo poo since I didn't even submit.
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May 1, 2013 02:12
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Noah posted:Noah vs Fumblemouse What the gently caress is going on in this story? The dude's some kind of explorer or whatever, I guess he's in NZ? He gets kidnapped by natives and is apparently part of a prophecy. Oh man, the great white explorer is a god to the poor natives. I mean, I get that poo poo happened irl but you couldn't possibly pay me to care about that kind of story. There's just not enough of a human component. The only character with any kind of depth is the narrator, and he seems like a douche so I don't want to read about him. Mella might be interesting if you made her a person but she's just a plot point. And how the gently caress does she walk through the sand without leaving footprints? Is she a ghost? I dunno man, this thing was decent enough as far as the craft of writing, but at the end I was left cold. Fumblemouse posted:Fumblemouse vs Noah Okay, so you didn't need 1560 words for this. The first third of the story is filler, leading up to the payoff. The infodump about the simulator was semi-intersting, but only semi. You could have gotten the point across with just a few sentences, gotten right into the action of the narrator and Stevens exploring the simDesert with the Oculus Rift. But it's okay, because you actually got me to care about these weird digital animal-people penisworm things. Pro tip - call them penisworms. Way better than fingerworms. You got me to care about them and feel bad when they get digitally nuked. Pare it down more next time though. Fumblemouse takes this one. He made me care not only about characters in his story, but characters in his story that weren't even real. Noah couldn't do that with his dickhead explorer protagonist or his cardboard noble savage hottie.
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May 1, 2013 02:22
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 Overall JudgmentOverall, my winner is Fumblemouse.
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May 1, 2013 02:23
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ParentsShouldHaveDivorced Vs Jizzer WastedSperm: So. You want to know what happened on Liberi: The Descent, right? That's why I'm here? Yes, I mean Liberi 7. It's a joke. Maybe I did until I read that second line. Also, it's "So," with a comma, not period. I feel like I'm on the rag just reading this poo poo, and you should learn to stop hitting the loving enter key when you breathe irl. I know you're breathing from your mouth, so the wheezing idiocy is obvious as you bang the keyboard with your cross-eyed, retard face, but you should at least spare us having to move our eyes so far to read your poo poo writing. The second person crap came off weak. I admire experimentation, but this experiment failed horribly. All this y'know, so, yes, hmm, and poo poo doesn't add to the story. There's good stories to write where it would add to the voice, but this voice isn't working. "An expert in xenological biology," I was told-- Another experiment gone wrong. Good try though. ...Of course you don't. dot-dot-dot is lame. My major complaint with this story is that you're trying to do a huge monologue, but the voice isn't coming off. It's cutting halfway between prose and speech. All these interruptions are coloring that perspective heavily, so I'm acutely aware it's someone trying to write a story that sounds like someone is talking to them. It just doesn't sound the way I've heard anyone who isn't an rear end in a top hat talk, and even if he is an rear end in a top hat and you want him to be, it's still annoying and would make me put the story down. You're trying to have a conversation with me (and I figure you mean it to be to a non-speaking character), but I'm your listener/character. Speak to me and stop putting words in my mouth/head for you to disagree with or respond to because I'm not having them and it's just annoying as gently caress. There's some good parts to the story, and you make some decent action, but your delivery cripples it. It's like that one person that tries to tell you a joke but keeps giggling all the way through and breaking up the pace--then he fucks up the punchline. So while I get the jist of it, it's still crap with the delivery. Jizzeater: In the first sentence, I already see that your speaker is talking in a way that annoys me. It's bloated and antiquated, and that doesn't appeal to me as a modern reader. It's not an application of hatred on your character, good sir, but rather thinking that, in my opinion to be quite sure, that you write like a shitbird who needs to read a book that has been published in a year beyond that of 1876. It's partially tongue in cheek, I can tell, but it's still tiresome to read. It's a characature of people as we think people were like "back then". One of the best words you had, despite it's racism, was "Chinaman." It was a brief flicker of something good in a giant bumbling mass of poo poo I'm regretting signing up to read. I'm beginning to think you don't understand what a flash fiction story is because there's nothing happening in this dude's talk. It's so loving boring because he's just rambling about nothing that interests me. It's a monologue that doesn't tell me a story. You are writing a flash-fic piece with a reasonably open prompt, so pick a story that will actually interest yourself and your reader beyond trolling them by having to read it all. Next, you're using journal entries in a flash story. This poo poo DOES NOT WORK IN A FLASH STORY LIKE YOU'RE USING IT. It's too winded. We're not here to read character development monologues. We're here for someone to kick rear end and take names--make love to a woman and feel sick about it--take a bullet in the head and describe his last happy memory in the flash of a second before it enters his frontal lobe--see the motion before the action. A flash fiction piece. Know what you're writing and who it's for. You're telling me poo poo all day long instead of showing it to me. You're also taking a huge span of time into a tiny story to tell me ABSOLUTELY NOTHING I CARE ABOUT. Just one moment--one beautiful moment that causes me to feel something. Take it and own it, Jeza. Decision: Both were crap, but you experimented, and I respect that. My personal favorite for experimentation was Jeza for being extremely bold in trying something new and going whole hog. The winner for this round, though, is HD for writing a closer resemblance to a story.
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May 1, 2013 03:13
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Martello posted:Holy gently caress dude I thought the same after reading it. I just didn't want to be that guy who didn't submit anything.
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May 1, 2013 09:42
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Holy crapMartello posted:What in the everloving gently caress is this poo poo? So much telling, apparent time-skips that make no sense and aren't explained or necessary, random characters that are never fleshed out or given any sense of identity. Holy gently caress. Thanks for pointing those out though. They're pretty obvious on hindsight but Just you wait guys
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May 1, 2013 13:14
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You gonna come and fight me Boner? I shat my gold in 65 minutes, so you'd better impress, what with all this time you're taking.
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May 1, 2013 16:31
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Thinking about getting in on this. Is there a set date for the next Thunderdome or a schedule that these normally run on?
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May 1, 2013 21:26
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zgrowler2 posted:Thinking about getting in on this. Is there a set date for the next Thunderdome or a schedule that these normally run on? As soon as a winner picks a new prompt, which should have happened already. Probably be up tomorrow at latest.
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May 1, 2013 21:31
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Jeza posted:As soon as a winner picks a new prompt, which should have happened already. Probably be up tomorrow at latest. Cool. Thanks!
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May 1, 2013 21:34
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I think Boner just woke up... just waiting on him.
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May 1, 2013 21:37
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It was a tough decision, but I'll go ahead and post my pick for the week and come back to write vitriolic reviews after I clean up some of these brawls. NubileHillockachu, I choose you! *tosses a hockey puck into the middle of the dome and stares at it, waiting for Hillock to appear* His story made me laugh and bleed maple syrup. For my challenges, I'll do mine with Martello first, post the one for Martello v Seb, then get to Muffin's, then come back and wipe my rear end on the carpet for the last two groups' stories.
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May 1, 2013 22:43
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