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  • Locked thread
anime was right
Jun 27, 2008

death is certain
keep yr cool
bye

anime was right fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Oct 27, 2015

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GlyphGryph
Jun 23, 2013

Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.
I guess I'll give it a go. In.

God Over Djinn
Jan 17, 2005

onwards and upwards
in

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









In

E: ^ metal

sebmojo fucked around with this message at 08:53 on Sep 2, 2015

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
Crits for week 160

Somehow I got these done even though I haven't finished sin week? My week 159 crits will be up in the next couple days.

Genre week was interesting. The nature of the prompt created a lot of variety. Sooome of you stuck really closely to some really well known genre tropes. But sometimes rewriting a classic story structure is good practice, like copying a painting. Overall, I had a fun and good time reading this week, which I can't always say here in TD. Some of these crits are super short. If that's the case, I either thought the story was pretty great (which will be obvious), or I had difficulty coming up with anything to say about it. That is a critique in its own way, since there are some stories that are simply so blah they don't actually stay in my brain to long enough for me to have critical thoughts about them!



Cingulate

Took too long to get to the point. Too much time spent on the disaster, not enough on the human element. The ending didn’t really make sense to me. I get they need to go somewhere no humans have lived or died, but the dialog itself didn’t mean much. I feel like YOU knew what was going on, but didn’t manage to get it all onto the page. You spent the first part of the story like, “hey reader, hey, guess what, there’s something WEIRD happening.” But I’d rather you just straight up tell me your premise (dead people are falling from the sky in countries where they lived/died), then have your characters react to it in an interesting way.

HopperUK

You hit your genre really well. Everything felt a bit stock, but what can you do? Your protag came through really strong, at least. I liked her. Tight plotting, too.

Chairchucker

While this wasn’t perfect, I was smiling the whole time I read it, so good job. I like the laid back yet effective and proactive narrator. I wish there was more stuff to place this story in a solid setting--not a specific time and place, exactly, but the environment/setting wasn’t very distinct. Even just a sentence here and there about what the trees or buildings looked like, maybe? Anyway, I think you did a pretty good sendup of your assigned genres.

JABC

I get that there is some stuff that just sort of comes with cop stories. Dialog like, “the victim appears to have died from a fatal death incident” and “get me the info of all the murderers in the precinct!!” (paraphrasing) are just sort of part of it. But I felt like you had too many characters saying too many plot things. Like, I was hoping Miriam and the ghost would work together, since your opening made it seem like Billy was gonna be the main character. But then I realized it was like a Law and Order opening, where the character we meet is only there to discover the crime. It was kind of a long, convoluted road to finding out the “victim” took out a magical hit on himself.

Nikaer Drekkin

Welcome back to TD! This was tight and fun, and I think you hit the alternate history part pretty well. It was a little unclear to me why anyone would still be using bows and arrows, but that’s what Native Americans are somewhat famous for, so. Matoska is fairly likeable, although the action and setting (your version of history) came through stronger than your characterization.

Halbey

All the interesting stuff is smooshed at the end. This starts off as a weird bonding story about a stereotype of a dad and his nerdy kid, then it turns into an arcade shooter, only the monsters show up so late you don’t have time to do anything interesting with them.

Epoch.

The accent is more of a barrier than a help here. Okay so we’ve got this earthy old farmer with a real tale to spin. Someone’s been messing with her product, and also her husband is probably dead? And then she goes to confront a witch, who she kills with a meat tenderizer? I found it really hard to pay attention to this because I was having to do a little extra work to parse what she was saying. Also, it’s kind of weird to do the one-sided conversation gimmick, but then describe the character doing things in third person. Why not describe who she’s talking to, give them some lines?

WLOTM

I thought this was really well done. It was a close contender for the win. My one critique was, I wasn’t entirely sure why the protagonist went from being this overwhelmed victim to knowing exactly what to do. Chillock and T-Rex reckoned that, in your world, having your life stolen by a man-eating selfie mimic is just a risk of owning phone. In that case, the protag plays kinda dumb for no reason? It didn’t really hurt my enjoyment of reading the story, especially the first time around. It’s rare to see something genuinely creepy in TD so good job. Trex was scared out of his little dinosaur wits, I heard.

Jon Joe

This had a fun, jaunty quality to it. I kinda wanted to read more about Jax’s misadventures after I finished. Kiinda would’ve liked to find out what happened to Karl, or why this Sandy chick is worth so much trouble. I thought the “scifi” element was so low key it was almost unnoticeable, but in a good way? Like you picked two things--modern prohibition and drones--to establish the setting. I thought that was a pretty good call.

Thranguy

This is kind of an interesting twist on the trope of like, “a wizard discovering their powers for the first time,” only with weird biotech. I like it. The concept is really interesting, even if the plot doesn’t feel totally resolved by the end, and the last image is really pretty. I’d have liked to spend more time with the crow man!

Docbeard

The dialog was good, the plot was a little bit lacking. I feel like it was a lead-in to a twist, which always makes me frown. Like, the whole point is, the people of this town seem normal and peaceable enough but….surprise….they’re not!!

Morning Bell

There are some vague allusions to some interesting things going on, but we never quite zoom in on them long enough to be satisfying. This feels kind of unfocused, even though all the events make a logical sense. Dropping in the “Last War” thing at the end didn’t really help me.

Worlds Best Author

The story keeps setting up mini-premises, then defeating them. Like, IS the protag psychic? Yes! Oh cool, maybe he’ll help people? Kind of! Will him and Steph stay together? No! Making it their ~last night~ was a touch melodramatic, but I thought you hit your genres pretty well.

Jonked

This was really good, I liked the characters a lot. You dropped some setting detail in favor of plot and characters, but it was a good call. I felt like there was a lot more here than the wordcount should allow for.

c7ty1

Hm. On the sentence level, this had some good bits, though I think you forgot to put a chunk of dialog in quotes. Plot-wise, this followed all the beats I expected it to. This story supports my working theory that 99% of stories that contain a Tony (especially if he has an adjective in front of his name) are going to be full of stock characters. Your orc protag did the best at making things somewhat interesting, just because of his size. I thought you nailed the psychology of an eight foot tall orc detective pretty well. But everything else was like...textbook noir stuff. Which is great practice, but not exciting reading, since I know what’s going to happen.

Broenheim

quote:

The moon burned orange and yellow, flicker like flames, and the entire town burned.

BROENHEIM THIS IS NOT A PROPER SENTENCE, YOU KNOW BETTER

Ahem. This is a lot of action without context. Why does he want the heart? Other than it’s shiny and placed conspicuously in a temple. I’m glad you didn’t waste time with worldbuilding, but I need to know a little bit more to help me care about all the action. I am not really sure what the “tests” were supposed to prove and BROENHEIM WTF THIS ENDING “IT WASN’T THAT GREAT ANYWAYS”??? WTF WAS THE POINT THEN

Meinberg

Preeeeetty good, though like a lot of stories it followed some predictable beats. I didn’t really feel like the protagonist was in any peril. The ending section was...nice? But you had to squish it so much because of words used other places, so it felt a bit brief and tacked on.

SlipUp

A dude finds a lovecraftian...something...and blows it up. I like the idea of some horrible unknowable being in a singularity, so I think you had the right idea for your prompt. A lot of the action was unclear to me, and Virgil was this bizarrely cardboard half-character who kind of just existed to make the plot work out for the protagonist.

Muffin

This was really nice. I liked the weed ghost dad. This felt like it could be straight out of one of those paramedic story threads, only with pretty writing and a nice, chill supernatural element. Stories like this are slightly weird in that like, all of the plot movement happens kind of internally, inside the character. I mean, she was always gonna help the car crash victims. Only now she’s gonna SUPER help them because their situation mimics her own. It didn’t really impact my enjoyment of the story, just a note.

Djeser

You got a hard genre combo, but I think you pulled it off really well. I like this because some of the word choices throughout the story definitely keep with the tone of a kid’s story, even as things get more and more weird and gross. I really love the idea of a little kid finding out they’re some kind of lovecraftian monster queen.

GrizzledPatriarch

This was GREAT and then toward the end it just sort of took this sharp downward turn into...okayness. I dunno, it ended on this weird, unhappy note that didn’t really fit the wondrous fairytale vibe you had throughout the rest of this piece.

Obliterati

This story got a bit better once I’d googled a Brollachan. As a US reader, it was obscure enough that I didn’t exaaactly had a clear idea as to what this creature was. The riddle match was a tiny bit underwhelming. I dunno, I think the final riddle should’ve been harder. And then he just kind of becomes the angel, which is great for him! But I feel like stuff just carried on the way it would’ve carried on had the angel not been usurped by Ishmael.

Kurona_Bright

Hmmm. There were things I liked about this. It feels like the birth of a serial killer, or something, which was a fine way to tackle your prompt combo. You tell us early on through the narration that the protag’s dad did something pretty horrible to her, rather than just showing her reaction to the text and letting the confrontation at the end speak for itself. There wasn’t thaaat much of a story here, when all is said and done, because I don’t really know what any of the fallout from the protag’s actions is going to be. But I thought the idea was kinda interesting.

Spectres of Autism

I feel like you had something really cool going here, and then you didn’t know how to end it. It wasn’t enough that the character felt lost or uncertain at the end; I wanted to SEE the consequence of not feeding the rabbit to the mind-shattering elder god, or whatever. I felt a little bit like this story was supposed to be about like, a loss of innocence or the death of a dream, or some way of trying to cope with a bad family life or something. But the end of the story didn’t resolve things in a way where I could say “message received” with any confidence.

Fumblemouse

I feel like this is one big one long nudge/wink. Like, yeah, she’s a vampire because of the bracelet but teehee she has no idea. Come OOOOOOOOoooonnn Fumble. It’s really frustrating when I’m reading something that’s good on the writing level, and I’m waiting for it to go somewhere really fun, and then it just doesn’t.

kaiju15

Okay so like, these two cops are old timey epic myth dudes. You riff on that a looot but they don’t do anything too mythy, other than be like “aaarrgh yes glorious manly police stuff.” I feel like the dialog at the very end was sooooo cliche, it was almost like a parody of the death scene. You definitely hit all the buddy cop tropes, but you hit them too hard, and didn’t do anything too unique with them.

Ovaltine

I had to read this a couple times to make sure I got what was going on. I think you could’ve eliminated at least one charactive scene, maybe Huojin? Almost certainly the host’s scene. IDK. I can’t even guess at what the prize actually was, or what Addie might’ve answered at the end. Splitting the narrative up the way you did was kind of dizzying. I’m not sure why Addie needed to be a robot, seems like a lot of trouble to go through when it’s possible to just hack into other people. There were things here I wanted to like, but they were too scattered across the many perspectives, and the ending didn’t really wrap things up in a satisfying way.

Entenzahn

I feel like I was pelted with a barrage of characters. Just one after the other. Would’ve been nice if you’d established that some of the people on this ship/bar knew each other? Or at least explained how they knew each other, maybe? As it was, it was kind of hard to stay focused because there were all these people and I was trying to keep track of who was who.

Killer-of-Lawyers

I feel like you used your serial comic-style gimmick to get out of writing/resolving a real story. This was cute and all, but when I hit the bold text at the end I actually physically frowned like WTF no.

Thyrork

How does manage to be so chatty for a story about some all-consuming hell being and its homicidal cult? After the dead dude, most the story is just riffing on how one of these cops is totally an angel. Then Ira/Wendy/whatever assumes her final form and...the story ends, presumably right before she KOs all the cultists with her ice thing.

Bompacho

PANDERER. I goddamn love cheese. I liked this story okay. I could totally picture all these veterans of cheese rolling in their ridiculous getup. I liked how the protag and antagonist expressed their rivalry mainly through costumes. I had this weird feeling like, obviously one of the other competitors, who the protagonist dismisses early on, is gonna get the cheese. Obviously the two guys are gonna be so caught up in their rivalry that they’ll miss out on the true goal. It was good, but kind of obvious. It’s a common theme this week. Everyone hit their genres pretty well, but then didn’t go too far beyond the tropes. You did get a pretty tough combo, though.

Skwidmonster

Zombie Denzel Washington is a lie detector…? Okay. Fine. That’s kind of funny. But then he starts eating Dunlap. Like, out of nowhere. I got kind of tired of the “joke” of Denzel Washington as a polygraph zombie. And then the zombie literally just eats the end of the story, and it’s over, and I’m left going “ha ha ha???”

Sebmojo

Aaaah yes, here we go. In other hands, this could’ve been two talking heads in a box followed by some empty action and a twilight zone ending. But you did something absurd and elegant. I think both Pius and Calvino had dialog that sounded true to their real-life counterparts, but also unique to your story. I like that they’re not dumb or incompetent, and you didn’t waste any time having them ponder or speculate about their situation. The two Lenny Kravtizes actually did add some intrigue because wtf why are a bunch of Kravitz clones guarding purgatory???? The ending was a bit “whelp,” but cool. I could see them hitting the rails, and then the camera pulls back, revealing to the viewer that it’s game over man, game over as it pans around to show all the billions and billions of cells. Calvino's last, agonized word, "Babel" was a nice way to lead into that revelation. Overall this is p cool gj

SadisTech

Man, I would’ve looooved to read more about ideas that can be directly transmitted between people through fluid and pills. THAT would’ve been a real cool story. I was sad you introduced that idea so late, and did so little with it. Okay, they slipped their mom this substance that will probably make her want to get that youth treatment, or whatever. THE END. It makes the daughter seem kinda mean and bad.

SadisTech
Jun 26, 2013

Clem.
In. :toxx: to submit on loving time and not bang out some hack poo poo at the last goddamn second for once.

HopperUK
Apr 29, 2007

Why would an ambulance be leaving the hospital?
Cheers, Sitting Here!

Obliterati
Nov 13, 2012

Pain is inevitable.
Suffering is optional.
Thunderdome is forever.

HopperUK posted:

Cheers, Sitting Here!

Agreed.

Also, in.

kurona_bright
Mar 21, 2013
Thanks for the crit, Sitting Here!

(also in)

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






DrK & Sitting Here: It's go time.

in.

Ol Sweepy
Nov 28, 2005

Safety First

Tyrannosaurus posted:

:siren: WEEK CLX JUDGEMENT :siren:

Jonked, Bompacho, WeLandedOnTheMoon!, Grizzled Patriarch, SurreptitiousMuffin, and sebmojo all wrote really good stuff. Seriously. You should go check those stories out and take notes. What's particularly fun about them is that they are all so wildly different. Honorable mentions all around.

This week's winner is Thranguy. Welcome back to the throne. You deserve it.

I'm done judging now! Yay!

I'm going to hold on to this tightly and never let go.

Thanks for Crits SH!

epoch.
Jul 24, 2007

When people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.
Thanks for the crit, sh. You got my plot completely wrong but that's my fault :(

Emmideer
Oct 20, 2011

Lovely night, no?
Grimey Drawer
Thanks for the crit Sitting Here. Okay done.

Emmideer fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Sep 2, 2015

docbeard
Jul 19, 2011

Thanks for the critique, Sitting Here. And furthermore NOTHING BECAUSE THIS ISN'T THE THREAD FOR THAT YOU BUNCH OF WRITERS AT LEAST AS MEDIOCRE AS ME

Emmideer
Oct 20, 2011

Lovely night, no?
Grimey Drawer

docbeard posted:

Thanks for the critique, Sitting Here. And furthermore NOTHING BECAUSE THIS ISN'T THE THREAD FOR THAT YOU BUNCH OF WRITERS AT LEAST AS MEDIOCRE AS ME

Oh, sorry, I didn't realize.

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
Sebmojo just posted the next Long Walk thread. Basically, you pledge to write at LEAST 4000 words for the month, under pain of :toxx:

If you're having trouble getting your rear end in gear and like having people to suffer along with, consider signing up this month.

Morning Bell
Feb 23, 2006

Illegal Hen
In and thank you for the crits, Sitting Here.

newtestleper
Oct 30, 2003
epoch and jon joe you are disgusting pieces of slime and I hope you don't live to respond to another td crit

Ovaltine
Mar 23, 2012
Thanks for the crit, SH!

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
oh yeah, in

Cingulate
Oct 23, 2012

by Fluffdaddy
I hate all of you. In

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
Alright shitbags, here's the initial round of crits before I start doing some line-by-lines.

Cingulate: absolutely awful. You manage to use up all your words with confusing actions and completely fail to develop any characters. You try to give us some explanations for the dead bodies raining down but it’s all stupid. Too many commas, too much punctuation. Your entire first paragraph is about a character who has nothing to do with anything and he has THREE names. Why would you waste words like that?

Scridiot: Not bad. The action is well paced and there’s enough to keep the reader interested. We get a decent picture of the hive but a few more details about the universe would make a huge difference. Not great, either, and it's thoroughly middle of the pack because it's hampered by all this missing information and an idea that's not novel enough to be interesting in and of itself.

HopperUK: It’s like, too many commas, and a plot that’s, on rails. We’re sent plummeting towards the conclusions without time to eve raise our own suspicions. Instead of a whodunit, you drop us into some ideation about stained glass by a nun who sounds like she came out of that movie where Whoopie Goldberg got sent back to Ye Olden Times and was having none of it.

Chairchucker: Cars, ballet, matrix fights…I don’t know why this works but it does. Is “leant” actually a word? Microsoft seems to think so. That being said, the whole story riffs on the same joke and doesn't manage to keep the adrenaline rush of the first paragraph. It gets a tad tedious and dare I say boring later on.

J.A.B.C- ghost of regret: Well written, but I'm really not sure what's actually going on by the end of it.

Nikaer Drekin: you’re not doing yourself any favors by starting off with tea time then launching right into a huge, boring monologue. But no worries since you launch into a totally climactic ending scene of “native man jumps up a building”. Massive pacing issues, action sequences that were sort of boring. The entire wall climbing part felt video-gamey and not at all edge of my seat. You could have used the intro to show us the main character freeclimbing canyons or some poo poo, y'know?

Halbey- the hunt of poor bb codes: You introduce a lot of characters fairly late in the game. Hard to follow, not enough foreshadowing. If you had more expertly introduced your elements or focused on what was really not a bad father/son tale then you would have had my vote for HM. The images stuck with me, I really like the creepy as gently caress universe you’ve got but why would you drop it on us like that?

Epoch: a matron’s murderly monologue

WLOTM: This was a strong contender for winner and quite a good read. This might need revisiting in more words to elaborate the selfie's existence.

Jon joe: A tight read but not enough rising action to be a serious contender.

Thranguy Before you rest on your laurels please note we found that your protagonist's lack of agency in the second half of the story was a little bit of a let down.

Docbeard: NOT BAD

Morning bell: I don’t like this gimmick, I don’t like your mystery fog mechanic and I don’t like this story

World’s best author: GREAT STORY I SURE LIKED THE PART WITH THE MIND READER AND THE MEXICAN FOOD

Jonked: decent buddy cop space western, good enough to get my vote for HM. Anderson appears at many points in the story but nothing really tells us anything important about him. A lot of dialogue wasted on other stuff, also a love interest so paper thin you can cut yourself on it.

C7TY1: a one note joke that doesn’t play up on any of its strengths and succumbs to the many weaknesses in the story. lovely, unresolved plot. Absolutely no imagination and the fantasy elements were hamfisted and out of place, barely having anything to do with the story. Thank your lucky stars someone wrote a worse piece than you did because I wanted this to lose.

Broenheim: I noticed some kind of twist ending but I could barely be hosed to take note of the humour because the action sequences were such poo poo and the story didn’t have a leg to stand on. Most boring chase scene ever? I think so.
Meinberg: A writer posts and a turd floats. An ending is tacked on, words are arranged to woo the reader. A judge reads a story and weeps.

SlipUp: Pretty sure this violates the no Fanfic rule. Either way I liked Event Horizon better as a movie when Duke Guncock wasn’t starring in it and fighting monsters in a video game level.

Muffin: dece, but a tad light on supernatural maybe? 420 smoke ghosts everyday

Djeser: This would be an HM but the ending just fell the gently caress apart
Grizzled Patriarch: you almost had something here. Almost. No discernable moral makes this fall short of a fairy tale and decidedly not “punk”.

Obliterati: I don’t understand a loving word of this

Kurona_bright: what in the making GBS threads gently caress happened here, son?

Spectres of autism: you call this spooky? Forest nymph rehash of cthulu is supposed to make me feel uneasiness or fear? The fuckin’ leaf lady didn’t even make the kid kill a thing. What a crock. You were close though, the first part did make me feel slightly uncomfortable, but gently caress did you let us all down.

Fumblemouse: Hits the prompt but gently caress man, nothing really happens. Yeah the great thirst we get it.

Kaiju15: hits the prompt but it’s overly simplistic and doesn’t make up for it in entertainment

Ovaltine: Something happened here but I’ll be damned if I actually know what it is

Entenzahn: Why would you craft a tale only to introduce a whole bunch of characters in the last act? This is the mystery of the thunderdome. What starts off as a lone wolf out for revenge ends with the heroes seemingly outnumbering the villains.

Killer of Lawyers: pitiful

Thyrork: This was the most boring thing I’ve read all week. Nothing HAPPENS. I was almost going to let your self referential mention of “lol I’m so weird” slide at the beginning but you don’t have the chops to pull off this kind of humour WHEN NOTHING HAPPENS. Nothing funny, scary, strange…NOTHING. How do you write so many words that DON’T MEAN ANYTHING. You too should thank the heavens someone wrote something we liked less than this pile.

Bompacho: Well written, wasn't visceral enough to stick with me. Might have been a winner in another week.

Skwidmonster: This was pretty bad

Sebmojo: political figures do not an intrigue make

Ol Sweepy
Nov 28, 2005

Safety First
Thanks Hillock.

I'm IN

Halbey
Dec 9, 2009

Nubile Hillock posted:

Alright shitbags, here's the initial round of crits before I start doing some line-by-lines.

Halbey- the hunt of poor bb codes: You introduce a lot of characters fairly late in the game. Hard to follow, not enough foreshadowing. If you had more expertly introduced your elements or focused on what was really not a bad father/son tale then you would have had my vote for HM. The images stuck with me, I really like the creepy as gently caress universe you’ve got but why would you drop it on us like that?


Thank you for the feedback; it is helpful! Something I struggle with is wordcount. The story was originally about 2K words more and I edited it down pretty quickly. I probably cut the wrong things.

Thyrork
Apr 21, 2010

"COME PLAY MECHS M'LANCER."

Or at least use Retrograde Mini's to make cool mechs and fantasy stuff.

:awesomelon:
Slippery Tilde
Sloth crits. There's a meta joke in here somewhere about how long it took me to do this, but I think the bigger joke is that only the slothful have done it.

Broenheim’s “Sleep, a Song, then Sleep Again.”

What I liked: Left me feeling… puzzled, In a good way. It’s like a story for children with an odd twist for the important message of “not hurting people just because.”

What I disliked: The whiplash with caterpillar and monkey, almost feels like two stories, yet still works as a “story with a moral message.”

Closing: A sloth learns that being kind is better than being mean. Heartwarming.

Schneider Heim’s “Saved by the Bear.”

What I liked: A simple, cute story, and it's certainly not a stretch to relate with a struggling artist and their strong desire to stay home, even if it is unhealthy!

What I disliked: That ending is really unsatisfying.

Closing: Needs more love by creating a better conclusion. An open ending is one thing but this almost feels like we’re reading her diary.

We Landed On the Moon!’s “Would You Please Step into the Box”

What I liked: Enjoyable setup, great payoff. Alexi’s good, the right kind of unlikeable character that makes him a character. The transforming tree sloth? That bopped on the nose.

What I disliked: I lost the train of reading in a few spots, Tasha leaving the table and Vince stepping into the box, fleshing that out more might have helped.

Closing: Everything great about this story is in that final part.

The narrative of “Sloth” didn’t really feel apparent however, if anything, this is a pleasant mix of Pride (trying to command the devil), Envy (“I hosed up, yet now you’re offering all the power I deserve and only for my soul?!”) and a little Sloth (Too lazy to learn REAL magic) on the side. Feel free to poke me on IRC if I’m on target.

Epoch’s “Aspiration”

What I liked: Uuughhhht. Heartbreak caused obsession does terrible things, and this is a terrible story about obsession and what someone will do to get it back.

I love it.

What I disliked: I am by no means good at this kind of thing, but i have some thoughts regarding Marc pulling Gallipot’s dialogue from memory.

Itatic is a godsend for this kind of thing. Although it is used here:
“Pomp enhances and promotes hypnopompia, Mr. Pembleton. First page.
You can also write such a sentence like this:
Pomp enhances and promotes hypnopompia, Mr. Pembleton. First page.

It has the effect of still sounding like different dialogue, while the words that matter are striking in their own way.

Closing: The slothfulness being part of the setup was something I tried too. I like this usage of it here.

Killer Of Lawyers’s “Paper Jam”

What I liked: Sound! Its a story, full of sound! Both its absence and otherwise. The dialogue is very silly in a “these people have worked together for years, they can talk trash like this and it doesn’t phase them anymore” way, makes me feel that they really have been at this for four seasons.

Richard’s doodles, actions and narrative help break up the talking heads, although i feel a little of that remains. Also gently caress him for being the kind of person who would blame their silly episode on “You just dont get it man.”, great usage of that bit of psychology on the other members of the team too. Thats character right there.

What I disliked: Tits on a dinosaur! You’ve been reading the xcom 2 thread too much Kol. In seriousness, I can't really say what I disliked, because the parts I disliked is part of the audacity.

Closing: You know what you did, making this referential, making this meta story about metaness meta. I cant dock you for it so I'm going to commend your audacity instead. Of course, this could have gone so wrong so fast. So bravo, Icarus, you flew close to the sun without your wings melting.


Halbey posted:

Thank you for the feedback; it is helpful! Something I struggle with is wordcount. The story was originally about 2K words more and I edited it down pretty quickly. I probably cut the wrong things.

Just a thank you around here. if you want to prattle, do it on IRC.

Speaking of: Thanks SH and Nubile.

And sign up for Long Walk you fucks. That means all of you.
<3

Thyrork fucked around with this message at 13:54 on Sep 2, 2015

epoch.
Jul 24, 2007

When people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.

newtestleper posted:

epoch and jon joe you are disgusting pieces of slime and I hope you don't live to respond to another td crit

I sincerely apologize for having committed the sin of responding to a critique. I only wanted to admit my own failure at clearly conveying the plot.

As penance, I am offering three line-by-line critiques. First come, first served.

epoch.
Jul 24, 2007

When people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.
And thank you Thyrork for the sloth crit.

anime was right
Jun 27, 2008

death is certain
keep yr cool
bye

anime was right fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Oct 27, 2015

skwidmonster
Mar 31, 2015

THUNDERDOME LOSER

epoch. posted:

As penance, I am offering three line-by-line critiques. First come, first served.

This is was pretty lovely. A line-by of my story for Sin Week (Night Swimming, Wrath) would probably make up for it though.

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


Thank you for the litany of crits. I still have half of Pokeweek to do, and they will come soon. I've been back to work and it's been hard to find the time to do much.

epoch.
Jul 24, 2007

When people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.

skwidmonster posted:

This is was pretty lovely. A line-by of my story for Sin Week (Night Swimming, Wrath) would probably make up for it though.

Your wish is my command.

'Night Swimming' by skwidmonster posted:

I’m big. I’ve always been big. Most people who have what I have, they’re sickly and short and their bones are brittle. But I’m the rare exception, because I definitely have it and I’m definitely the complete opposite.

And I say rare in the sense that they tell me I’m the only case in existence.

And in history.
This was a good opening and it wrapped me in pretty well. The rhythm of the voice was natural. However, after finishing the story, I thought back to the opening, wondering what importance it had. I guess it's because the father isn't physically capable of lifting the man. It's clear enough, I guess, but I think you could have driven this point home while simultaneously adding some conflict by making the boy resist his father's demands, and his father telling him that he couldn't do it alone. That sort of thing.

Gee Willikers, right?This particular line doesn't fit the overall tone.

It was rough on my dad, growing up. He carries the gene for what’s called Lekman’s Syndrome. He has these spindly fingers and arms and a compressed spine. I was taller than him at age nine and I could out-lift him at around five. He was never a big man, but he hid his smallness.

“C’mon, Brick,” he said one night, eying me sideways, “let’s drive for a while. Hop in the bed.”

I was about fourteen at the time. When I wasn’t able to fit in the Jeep anymore, my dad sold it and bought this little pickup and had a buddy work on the suspension. I found an abandoned car seat in an alley one day and he strapped it down to the bed. It was actually comfortable. I always imagined I was being drawn by horses in my own private carriage or something.
Okay, this is a little confusing. He's too big of a teenager to fit into a Jeep? He's that large? Jeeps aren't tiny. Also I can't quite suss out how you strap down a car bucket seat to a pickup bed. Consider bolts, instead.

There were four bags of concrete sitting around my seat.

“What’s this for?”

My dad lit a cigarette, the flame reflecting off the bill of his cap and making his face glow red. Nice image. Sort of ... 'hellishly ominous', hopefully that was the intent.

“Just a little project.”

I climbed over the dusty paper bags. I had to cross my legs to sit because one stack was right against my seat.

It didn’t take long for me to figure the route. We were making for Charlie Hosselman’s. That worried me. As did the way the truck drifted to the left and jerked softly back to the lane every few minutes.

“Where we headed, Dad?” I called through the open window. He turned on the radio. Tom Petty drowned me out. Break Down. He nodded his head along and mumbled the chorus on a monotone.Reminds me of riding shotgun in my own dad's pickup listening to classic rock. Thanks for that. :)

Charlie Hossleman ran a Chrysler dealership over in Peoria. All I really knew about him then was that he’d gone to high school with my dad and then married my aunt. Apparently he’d known my mom, too. Not that I’d ever ask about my mom.

Anyway, Mr. Hossleman had a— I guess you’d call it an estate— down south of town, overlooking the river. It was modest enough, probably, but enormous and luxuriant by our standards. He even had a pond and a little waterfall running into it.

I caught a glimpse of silver out of the corner of my eye and turned just in time to see my dad’s head tilt back down. We were on the dirt roads now, and dust kept stinging my nostrils. We moseyed up to a lone stop sign and my dad killed the engine.

He adjusted the rearview to look at me through the open window.

He took a shaky breath and stared out the window to his left for a minute. Then he swiveled strange word choice, here his red eyes back to the mirror.

“When that rat sonofabitch stuck it to my sister twenty years ago, I swore to sweet baby Jesus himself that I would end him if she ended up hurting. And I told him that. He knew it. Then she got— and he took her to that clinic—“ He looked down.
This was just a bit too expository for my liking. Lead the reader on a bit more instead of showing all your cards like this.

“Point is, he deserves a good whipping. Yeah, we get it, you already said that. And I can’t give it too him. And I couldn’t ask you to give it to him. So this is about the next worst thing and it doesn’t come close.” I could see his hand on the wheel in the dashboard light, his too-thin fingers hanging from the wheel by the tips.This isn't a bad image but it's also totally pointless. Could do without it.

“Your aunt is hurting, Ricky. You’re too young for me to tell you how, but he’s been hurting her bad the past couple of years. And we can’t hurt him back, but we can make him suffer.”Again, you sort of already said all this, y'know?

He started up the car again, and we didn’t talk any more even as he pulled up to the gate.


* * * *

He stumbled back after an hour and a half of me waiting in the truck. The bottle of scotch he had taken with him was missing.

“Showtime, Brick.”

“What are we doing?”

He scoffed and shook his head, like I was the drunk one.

“Grab the concrete and let’s move. I got the stick.”

I pulled a couple of bags of concrete onto my shoulders and followed him up the red stone walkway.

It was Quikset, and the pond was only about half full. I guess my dad had turned off the hose on his way inside. Swimming in a sort of frantic way were three gorgeous koi fish, one calico, one orange, and one black. They still had plenty water, but they could sense something was different.

My dad took the knife on his pocket tool and slit open the top of the first bag.

“Wait, dad, the fish are— What are you doing?'

“Get the stick.”

I stood looking at him for a second.

“Brick, Goddammit.” You actually aren't supposed to capitalize the G, here.

I got the stick and started stirring.

He emptied all four bags into the koi pond. Every so often the surface would break and I’d see the gasping maw of one of the desperately beautiful fish Really good line. I’d look over at the defunct waterfall and pretend I couldn’t feel their bodies banging on the stick.Also a good detail

After about the second bag they stopped coming up.

When Dad was happy with the consistency, I followed him inside and up into Mr. Hassleman’s bedroom. Hassleman was a flabby man, wide shoulders like a linebacker, his thin hair sticking up from his widow’s peak. He was still in his clothes. His chest rose with each long, nasally walrus breath.

My dad motioned for me to pick him up. I stared and shook my head, not quite understanding or believing. He motioned again, and I did it.

He led me impatiently down the stairs and to the edge of the pond.

“Dad, I—“

“Put that pigfucker in.”

“I can’t kill anyone, Dad—“

“From the waist down. We’ll leave one hand free so he can call someone once the roofies wear off.”

Dad set a phone down, maybe a foot out of his reach.

“Roofies like the date-rape drug?”

His eyebrows shot up, then he laughed. “poo poo, you sure are growing up.”
This was a pretty good way of developing character between the two of em.

I looked into the grey sludge, thinking about the suffocated fish.
So, here's another clarity thing. He and his father are inside the man's bedroom now, right? Then what "grey sludge" are they looking into? Into the pond below? And since this is an estate, the pond is down a couple floors, maybe across half an acre of landscaping or so, right?

“He’s so proud of those loving things,” my dad mused, reading my thoughts. “Paid thousands for them and keeps them in this temperature-controlled tank. He feeds them silk worms or some horseshit. Treats them like children. Then he goes and makes my sister get a coat hanger and get her insides all mushed up so she can’t— telling me they miscarried, and— and when I think of that healthy baby that could have been—“
Ehhh...this is also a bit too expository, like, "I can see the wires that the writer is holding up on this characters marrionette frame". Also, clarity again: Are the fish kept in the koi pond or are they kept in a temperature-controlled tank? Fish don't take well to well to being moved all the time. I guess you meant "raises them in this temperature-controlled tank"?

He stops.

He’s thinking about me. And he’s thinking about Mom. And how my enormous head and shoulders were too much for her. And how it was his decision to keep me.
Psychic distance of the narrator. How does your fourteen year old protag narrator know what his father is thinking of? This is important. Once again, I can see the wires.

“Put him in.”

I did, pretending neither of us were crying.

This was a good story and the writing was mechanically very competent. There were some nice images and turns of phrase. I'd love to talk with you about this further if any of my thoughts are unclear.

Entenzahn
Nov 15, 2012

erm... quack-ward
critburps for team greed because screw those sloth stoners

anime was right - look at this baby only taking one flash rule wow what a wuss
really takes that whole theme of greed and rubs it in like a nicely seasoned steak. it only does one thing, but it does that thing well, and the story moves, moves, moves. i balked at the part where he crashed a space station and everyone got out unharmed. that was weird.

After the War - welcome traveler, stay a while and listen. im telling a ghost story. it is spooky.
story doesn't really start until it's almost over because the intro is so huge. this can work, but the intro has to be super interesting and the payoff has to be really worth it. yours are good, but not quite there. bit vague about what the ghosts did to ed. still a decent, consistent story and a lot of nice details that make an ol' oddball come to life.

N. Senada - he wrote a story. he only used one flash rule. he wrote a story that was okay. he wrote it no so well
takes too long to get to the diamonds, wastes time on filler and jumps over the actual decision of taking the diamonds. your theme is greed, and ollie is greedy, but i only realize he is greedy at the end. i wish you would have written more of that story like you wrote the end. the end was cool. also mix up your sentences, jesus christ. vary the length, and don't start every sentence with "He...". i know you're going for a certain style here but you can still mix it up, and you should, because that is jarring to read. pov switch and omniscient narration were handled well.

Jonked - watch me lift all those rules bro *flexes his muscles, soggy skin flapping in the wind*
somewhere in the back of my head i had this voice going "wait i know this from somewhere". then i remembered the ayn rand comic you probably lifted this from and now i wonder, why? you had cool imagery of a war going and then... ayn rand. why??? i'm glad my poo poo talk made you limit yourself to 1100 words because this just kept getting progressively worse and i shiver to think what you would have done with the last 100. did not impress me. want to try again? brawl me bitch. :pcgaming:

Jonked
Feb 15, 2005

Entenzahn posted:

brawl me bitch. :pcgaming:
Meh :toxx:

Jonked
Feb 15, 2005

Entenzahn posted:

brawl me bitch. :pcgaming:
Meh :toxx:

flerp
Feb 25, 2014

Entenzahn posted:

brawl me bitch. :pcgaming:


Clever Fusing of Ent's and Jonked's Names Brawl

I want a story about dogs. Only dogs. I don't want to cry so no bad stories and no dogs dying.

1000 words due on September 15th 11:59 PM PST.

Also Ent you better :toxx: for this.

Entenzahn
Nov 15, 2012

erm... quack-ward

Broenheim posted:

Clever Fusing of Ent's and Jonked's Names Brawl

I want a story about dogs. Only dogs. I don't want to cry so no bad stories and no dogs dying.

1000 words due on September 15th 11:59 PM PST.

Also Ent you better :toxx: for this.

:toxx:

Nikaer Drekin
Oct 11, 2012

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2020
Critthanks all around, also IN.

Quick question- if an epistolary story fits the prompt, does that mean it's okay to present it as something spoken by a single storyteller, as long as it doesn't become a dialogue?

Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010


Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

Nikaer Drekin posted:

Critthanks all around, also IN.

Quick question- if an epistolary story fits the prompt, does that mean it's okay to present it as something spoken by a single storyteller, as long as it doesn't become a dialogue?

Sure. The William Tenn example did just that, in fact.

curlingiron
Dec 15, 2006

b l o o p

gently caress it, I'm in. Also flash me. :wiggle:

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Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010


Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.

curlingiron posted:

gently caress it, I'm in. Also flash me. :wiggle:

All right! You get an unreliable narrator. Nice.

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