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sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Sham bam bamina! posted:

I'm impressed.

BUT... the Asimov character is named Susan Calvin. Susan Calman is someone else.

dm th judge

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Obliterati
Nov 13, 2012

Pain is inevitable.
Suffering is optional.
Thunderdome is forever.
:siren:Judgment Week CCLXXI:siren:

This week I asked you to collapse the laws of physics and human behaviour. Some of you merely collapsed the fabric of storytelling. Some of you broke the Universe over your knee and proceeded to rewrite reality in its blood. This was a week of few middles, and for that if nothing else I am grateful.

Our loser stared too deeply into the Heart of Creation, and was consumed by its fires. God rest Sham bam bamina!, whose grip on reality faded even as nothing else changed.

Then there were the 'Domers whose response to the fundamental change of the world as they knew it was to lose their minds to madness and no proofreading. DMs go to Derp, whose story told us, no matter how bad it was, they had no choice but to write it; Maigus, who went to Mars insisting the air was breathable no matter what we told them; Kaiju15, whose Higgs Boson panic read like the Daily Mail on cheap acid; BabyRyoga, whose story got so tired of waiting to happen that it crashed the delightful cruise everyone was having; and HaveBlue, who ought to know better than to go out with girls who tie their relationship to orbital mechanics.

Above them, furiously remodelling physics ahead of the advancing chaos, come our HMs. spectres of autism probably thinks they weren't writing SF, but whenever your reality collapses and individuals try to change the rules, the SF writers are there, making dirty jokes about biohacks; curlingiron gave us that rare thing, a humorous story that wore its humour without shame; completing the triad of mad scientists we have Thranguy, who reminded us all that, even with DIY nuclear missiles on tap, humans are still humans.

The winner, however, tore right into the dark heart of all good SF: you can rewrite reality; you can model it perfectly; you can know precisely what force to apply along which vector, and yet humanity defies the laws. Step forward, Sebmojo. Welcome to the Blood Throne: don't mind the black holes, I'm fairly sure they'll collapse by Friday...

Obliterati
Nov 13, 2012

Pain is inevitable.
Suffering is optional.
Thunderdome is forever.
A reminder that my crits for you all are here.

Also, PROOOOOOOMPT

Exmond
May 31, 2007

Writing is fun!
Here are my crits, remember that you are a better writer than me and way better than thee many failures we had this week

Derp

Good: The middle is good, where he explains whats happening. And the end is amazing. I really like that end sentence, it wraps things together. The ending ramps things up and nails it down. I might use this as an example on how to end a story.

The Bad: The start is not good and is very boring. It is literally somebody explaining what's happening and while that can be done in other stories it drags out in this one. Because this story is somebody explaining what's happening and it is only in the middle/end does the tone change. The problems I have with the start enhance the story in the middle and in the end.

Overall: A story that is slow to start but rewards you with a well-written tone shift and trippy ending.


Yoruichi:


Good: Great start that continues to escalate the situation. It keeps its frantic pace until the end of the story.

Bad: Action,action and more action. You up the stakes but don't have much characterization. Also you don't explain the prompt very well. It sounds more like the fire is sentient than tech has morals now.

Grammar: fat bellied bombers should have been fat-bellied bombers.

Overall: A story that starts out fast, has a great start and keeps frantically running. At the end of the story the reader is confused.


Simbyotic:

The Good: Obvious lot of effort was put into this piece. That's what saved it from a DM


Grammar: AN HELICOPTER? Those bodies where of people dead? He didn’t know whoever used to live there, and why

they left was an even bigger mystery, be he was glad he’d found it. (This looks odd because it looks like a parathentical

comma but it can't be). MAN GOES SIT!

The one in the lead. a full gut to him and a mean looking shotgun, shouts something but the man doesn’t hear it as

he tries to wrest free from beneath the leather chair the pistol he’d stashed there. Before he is able to get a grip on it,

the fat man rushes forward and hits him straight in the nose with the stock of the shotgun.

Read this sentence. He tries to wrest free from beneath the leather chair? The leather chair has him bound? A

full stop instead of a comma?


Overall: Take a deep breath Simbyotic. There are a ton of grammar errors and ton of fixes that could of been fixed with some editing. Those would of helped but the biggest problem with your story is it tries to explain itself too much, and then doesn't explain itself at all in the tensest situation of the story. The starting paragraph of the story is okay, passable. The next 15 paragraphs or so are boring, explain things badly to the reader, and lose the readers interest. Then when we get to the tense gambling situation I have no clue what's going on, why a game has to be playd, why bones give you power and why I care about your protagonist. The one redeeming thing about this story is the start. You have some good prose, it's a very different tone from the other stories I have read so far.



Tyrannosaurus

The Good: Well written, no grammar mistakes. A neat little character reveal!

The Bad: No conflict whatsoever and you missed the prompt by a mile? I don't see how the prompt comes into play save for a little one-liner where she says she will bring everything closer to them (Ohh The universe expanding rate is negative).


Overall: Well written post-credit scenes for The film Mother!



Spectres of Autism


The Good: Good prose and descriptions. Good start and I like how we start to doubt the protagonist's state of mind.
The Bad: Some stylistic changes are a bit weird. The ending paragraph is weird, why do we focus on Mother Dora, is this all mother Dora's illusion?
Grammar: They talk most about life and love, but sometimes he hears them condemn or praise Irshushin, and the tower that stretches to the sky, orbed by paths like a woman is orbed by admirers.
This is a bit hard to parse. A better editor than I can tell you how to fix this; I think it could have used a semicolon to prase the list.


Thran Guy:

The Good: The day in the life of a detective frames your prompt very well and you make great use of it. We see how it affects the world, the character and other things. You handle multiple characters well.

The Bad: The ending fizzles. I'm a detective I solve crimes except I don't. Pacing is also odd, we learn about the box but.. it gets weird. You explain the box and then explain why people get sick but that's midway in the story and It.. seemed awkwardly placed.


Overall: An intriguing murder mystery and peek at a unique world that fizzles due to the waste from THE BOX. But maybe that's the point.


Sparksbloom

The Good: You have an interesting idea and explain it without doing an info dump. Vending machine man and Christine seem like independent, if one note, characters. Like they have a life of their own.
The Bad: Start is meh, you explain a riot is going to happen then take 5 paragraphs or so to get there. The story just ends in the middle of a tense scene.

Your prompt was the Dunning-Kruger Effect and.. unless your commentary is all academics are incompetent then I think you missed your prompt. Your story reads more like people who are at the top of their field suddenly lose knowledge and confidence. If your story was meant to say all academic people are without competence than I missed it.

Overall: Start in the middle and read down and it is a great story.




Flerp

The good: Great start and immediate sympathetic protagonist. Good general idea for a story.
The Bad: The character goes from "MY WIFE IS DEAD" to meandering in 1 paragraph. You made your protag sympathetic but failed to follow up. You describe events in the lives of two featureless characters that I don't know anything about and it's "We ate food on a rooftop". Also the protagonist kind of accepted his fate but I needed to be convinced more.

OVERALL: The story is akin to a drunk man who grabs you at a bar, screams "MY WIFE IS DEAD" , then goes meandering up a tower and dies.

Grammar:
I could hear everyone of my breaths




Sham bam bamina!

The Good: The start and the fact that its short
The Bad: You start with "SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN" *waves hands around* and then immediately say "it's not so bad". In paragraph 2. You jump from scene to scene that the reader has no clue whats happening. It's a confusing mess and I had to lookup what Millers law was to figure out what you were doing


Kaiju15

The Good: Interesting start that draw in the reader, story is of good length for the idea.
The Bad: Grammar; You needed to proofread this. It doesn't get in the way but since you keep doing the same error. Characters are overall bland


Overall: It's a story, didn't really affect me overall and its a bit cliche (man destroys universe with science). The angel being a dick is interesting and the way he talks about the horsemen is great.

Grammar:
nondescript instead of non-descript
two-day instead of two day. He had day stubble eh?
the fire and pain were gone, instead of was gone (Was is singular, were is plural)
white-hot instead of white hot. I mean hot fury exists but not white fury


HawkLad


The Good: I like your transitions! I haven't seen something like that before and they are great.

The Bad: Style. I get that the protag has alzheimers but the lack of captization and grammar (its vs it's) makes it hard to read. That might be the point but... If you are going to make it hard to read at least draw me in. The sudden reveal that alzheimers is gone from the world is delivered with about as much emotional impact as this judgement (read: not a lot).

Overall: A risky take inside the mind of alzheimers that... fails to deliver.



Magius:

The Good: Don't take this the wrong way but the ending is nice in a cliche way. Like "The adventure continues" and the protagonists are out of danger but optimistic. Made me smile.

The Bad: That being said.. Proofread. Several grammar errors. Also learn dialogue tags, we don't need a "X said" after every piece of dialogue. Fortunately your dialogue is spaced out with events so it doesn't poke out like an ugly nail. Also, learn pacing, I read the most boring accident scene.

Overall: A monotone story full of grammar errors.

Grammar:
THROUGH less pretty?
if we we left?
hissing noise once once I?
No comma after had been dented and.
In front of camper, shoudl be in front of the caper
20th-century instead of 20th century


Third Emperor:

The Good: Good Prose and descriptions. The story flips between happy songs and a dirge it feels like. It's done subtle and I like it.

The Bad: The conflict doesn't exist. From what I can tell the archive is a meaningless thing, it repeats indefinitely (or it's about to die) until things show up and THINGS HAPPEN. But.. I have no idea what happened or the significance.

Overall: A story that elicits emotions: feel happy, feel the tension, feel sad. Once it's over though you realize it didn't have a story to tell.

Grammar:
Why no double quotes why do you hate them
time-lapse not timelapse
Why are Rainclouds captialized


SebMojo


The Good: Your character is relatable and focuses on just him and pulls it off. It has an arc as well! Your prose is great too!

The bad: Your start is literally the character telling me who I am and that he remembers do drat much. It's a boring start. The character comes off a bit depressed and drab to read, which only gives strenght in how you pulled off the single character narrative.


Grammar:
probabably isn't a word. Proofread!


Overall: A story that is weighty and weighs down on the reader. Bit too tough for me to make sense of but it's definety good!



CurlingIron

The Good: Humor is well done and made me chuckle a few times. The start is really good, giving a lot of characterization in a few sentences.
The bad: The johhnson's dialogue interrupts the flow and seems bland? You don't explain the prompt and it takes a bit to realize the ship literally needs sex to stay afloat. Also the premise is a bit voyeuristic.


Overall: A hillarious romp into CurlingIron's voyeuristic fetish that I quite enjoyed!


Fumblemouse

The Good: Start draws me in, even though there isn't a conflict. You have good character descriptions that make me continue to read.

The Bad: You need a conflict. You fail to make me care about the character. Also you need to proofread, bunch of errors.

The meh: Your twist, I don't care about either character.


Overall: A delightful read at the start, with impressive character descriptions and good dialogue! Fails in the middle as it continues to clambour on and ends the story with a frantic twist to raise tension.

Grammar:

leather-bound, not leather bound.
at my hand's behest, not hands behest. WHOSE BEHEST DOES IT BELONG TO MOTHER FUCKER
malodies is not a word
use - to do spelling. J-U-L, looks better than j..u..l..
resplendent instead of resplendant
YOU STILL HAVE HELP ME?




Baby Ryoga:

The Good: I... It's a story? There are words.
The Bad: Alice is a jerk and I dislike her, You take so long to get the conflict Im bored, Bad grammar (Look up however) that repeats itself, Your start is boring. You want to make the scenery a thing but its boring to read. The dialogue is bad.

Overall: A dislikeable protagonist please long boring start make this a tedious read

Grammar:
The word "However" is tough to use, however, I think you used it wrong and needed to add a comma after it.
drawn in by IT'S, should be drawn in by its
begun instead of began. Tense issue I think
campfire instead of camp fire


Have Blue

The Good: A few good sentences and descriptions. I like the catchphrase
The bad: Your start is slow and plodding

Overall: I liked this story, it was simple and had one objective. I felt it did a better emotional punch then the alzheimers story/


Sitting Here:

The good: Neat way you get around explaining things, the body horror was well written, Jayden/Squid man is well written (Specially for a kid).
The bad: The ending. ALL OF A SUDDEN IM MADE OF STARS! Huh? Kind of comes out of left field how she suddenly gets there.

The Meh: The start is plodding and does cheap thrills to raise tension. A scream here, a yell here. You don't go to a zombie movie to watch them slowly unfurl how the apocalypse happens.

derp
Jan 21, 2010

when i get up all i want to do is go to bed again

Lipstick Apathy
ty for the crit exmond!

magnificent7
Sep 22, 2005

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Look dammit I can't fail to write another flash fiction piece if you haven't given me the prompt.

flerp
Feb 25, 2014

Jan
Feb 27, 2008

The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.
I failed so hard at writing bad words that I didn't finish writing them. :smugdog:

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Week CCLXXII: Lost in the funhouse



hello thunderdome, it’s been a while and the wheel of fortune has been spinning. swings, roundabouts. ups and downs.

so let’s go with that, shall we?

:siren: give me a story, set in an amusement park, where first something bad happens, then something good. or vice versa. :siren:

people have been getting a bit verbose though, so word limit is 750 words.

if you :toxx: you may also have another 500 words, be sure to use them well.

:toxx: if you failed last time you entered too, then the extra words will be a nice bonus isn’t that nice yes.

ask for a flash rule if you must, but be warned they’ll be the sort of flash rules an rear end in a top hat would give you.

enter by friday 2359 EST, submit by sunday 2359 EST

Judges:

sebmojojo
yoruichi
solitair

Ticket holders
Obliterati
Exmond TWO ANIME TROPES
Kaijiu15
Sham bam bamina :toxx:
Mag7 :toxx: YOUR PARK IS HAUNTED BY THE GHOSTS OF BAD DECISIONS
Thranguy MUST BE A COMEDY
Simbyotic SCARY CLOWN PROTAG
Thirdemperor THREE BASTARDS AND ONLY ONE FIST
Apophenium
Steeltoedsneakers MUST HAVE THREE DISTINCT BREEDS OF HORSE
Quoproquid :toxx: NOBODY SPEAK, NOBODY GET CHOKED
Pippin
Fuubi :toxx: AERIAL AMUSEMENT PARK
Hawklad PSYCHIC CAROUSEL
Charichuckr LEGO LAWNMOWER GUY
MockingQuantum
Devorum :toxx:
Chili :toxx:
Sparksbloom :toxx:
Derp NO CHARACTERS UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER
SerCypher
Flesnolk :toxx: BEARDED LADY
Fumblemouse :SMUGWINSTON:
Irtonic Twist
Schneider Heim
Tryannosaurs
Hawklad :toxx:




sebmojo fucked around with this message at 12:39 on Oct 22, 2017

Obliterati
Nov 13, 2012

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

Exmond
May 31, 2007

Writing is fun!
Going for a 6th DM or Lose!

Im in

Yoruichi
Sep 21, 2017


Horse Facts

True and Interesting Facts about Horse


I’ll help judge if that is acceptable

Kaiju15
Jul 25, 2013

in

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat
In!

Solitair
Feb 18, 2014

TODAY'S GONNA BE A GOOD MOTHERFUCKIN' DAY!!!
I volunteer my services as judge.

magnificent7
Sep 22, 2005

THUNDERDOME LOSER
In.

But. Just to be clear. Don't MOST STORIES include where something bad happens and then something good, or vice versa?

:toxx: me baby. Toxx me all night long.

Because life is short and I write poo poo.

magnificent7 fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Oct 17, 2017

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.
In

Simbyotic
Aug 24, 2010

THUNDERDOME LOSER
In

ThirdEmperor
Aug 7, 2013

BEHOLD MY GLORY

AND THEN

BRAWL ME
In. Flash rule.

apophenium
Apr 14, 2009
In!

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









magnificent7 posted:

In.

But. Just to be clear. Don't MOST STORIES include where something bad happens and then something good, or vice versa?

:toxx: me baby. Toxx me all night long.

Because life is short and I write poo poo.

what was that you want a flash rule ah well if I must :siren: your amusement park is haunted by the ghosts of bad decisions:siren:

magnificent7
Sep 22, 2005

THUNDERDOME LOSER

sebmojo posted:

what was that you want a flash rule ah well if I must :siren: your amusement park is haunted by the ghosts of bad decisions:siren:
I look forward to hearing some poor sap reading what will surely be my greatest tale yet.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









:siren: PROMPT CHANGE:siren:

every story must be set in an amusement park, not just the toxxers.

steeltoedsneakers
Jul 26, 2016





In.

QuoProQuid
Jan 12, 2012

Tr*ckin' and F*ckin' all the way to tha
T O P

:toxx: because that's apparently the only way i can finish stories

flash me up, mojo

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









ThirdEmperor posted:

In. Flash rule.

:siren:three bastards and only one fist:siren:

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









QuoProQuid posted:

:toxx: because that's apparently the only way i can finish stories

flash me up, mojo

:siren: this video:siren:

Pippin
May 25, 2016
This funfair is unfair! *laugh track*

Oh and also in and stuff.

Fuubi
Jan 18, 2015

THUNDERDOME LOSER

QuoProQuid posted:

:toxx: because that's apparently the only way i can finish stories

flash me up, mojo

What s/he said. In. :toxx: flash.

Hawklad
May 3, 2003


Who wants to live
forever?


DIVE!

College Slice
In, flash me!

Armack
Jan 27, 2006
Week 271 Crits – Part 1

This week was mostly bad. Far from the worst I’ve judged though (Voidmart II, I’m looking in your direction), and there were a few gems.

1. Dealing with Certainty – Derp

- Stories this week were best when they spent time defining their prompt or explaining the science behind it. You would have done better I think simply getting right to it, showing us characters dealing with the implications of Heisenberg Uncertainty popping out of existence.

- The narrative-as-article style of your story puts too much distance between the reader and your protag. It’s like he’s self-consciously detached from his own story, and this detachment robs the piece of emotional weight.

- Days one through three detail theoretical changes on a macro-scale that Certainty is bringing about, but there is woefully little about how this impacts the protagonist’s own life. Even when something arises that should drastically impact him, like realizing conclusively that he has no agency, he presents it in rhetorical questions to the reader (don’t you feel this way too now?) and then alludes to its personal impact on him in cool, matter-of-fact statements. I realize that this detachment may itself be the product of Certainty, but that manner of narration is not in service to your story. This still reads like a science article about what Heisenberg Uncertainty is and how things would be different without it. Instead, it would have been stronger if the story zeroed in on the private life of the protag and how he is dealing with the changes on the micro-scale.

-It’s just too nonfiction-ish. When a story quotes the intellectual quips of Christopher Hitchens, that’s probably a sign that it’s losing its narrative and falling into cerebral info-dump territory.

-It’s cool that Certainty has brought people the zen (albeit also the turmoil) that accompanies realizing there is no free will and indeed no self. But again, you aren’t showing us that per se, you’re telling us that in the form of an article.

-I read this piece wondering how characters in this world were now interacting with each other differently. But we don’t get characters here, we get science journalism narrated in first person.

- Now that I think about it, even in a world where complete information is theoretically possible, that wouldn’t mean that every person possesses all of that information. In other words, people shouldn’t be able always to predict the sequence of their inevitable behaviors since some of those behaviors ought to be mediated by environmental conditions about which they do not happen to possess complete prior knowledge (even though that knowledge is obtainable in theory).


2. Fire City – Yoruichi

- I don’t think you’re using the word “cloying” correctly.

- “I am slammed bodily against the floor…” Slammed bodily? As opposed to what, slammed mentally?

- “man’s earliest and most essential invention.” I feel like man didn’t invent fire so much as he found it.

- Writing a story about technology choosing sides is a cool way to fulfill the prompt. Good job with that concept. The one problem though is that if I hadn’t seen the prompt, I wouldn’t have understood the meaning of the bombs, guns, and fire behaving independently. You have a cool concept that is evident in your prompt, but not exactly spelled out in your story.

- I would have liked more character focus here.


3. Untitled – Simbyotic

- Please title your stories.

- Please name your protag.

- Here we have a protag with goals and agency. Good job with that.

- Good treatment of the prompt. You explore changes in the world through the lived experience of your protag. Other stories this week infodumped encyclopedic volumes detailing their prompt and all the abstract theoretical implications of its absence. You clearly recognized that it’s best to use characters’ struggles as vehicles to explore things conceptual. Good job.

- There is an appropriate level of conflict. That’s a plus.

- While mostly alright, the prose gets wonky at times. There are some proofreading errors, a few awkward phrasings, and a few unnecessary words.

- It’s not clear to me how this superstition suddenly developed that bones of The Stretched conferred power/good luck.

- “No one’ll buy those bones if you don’t.” This doesn’t make much sense to me. Either the bones really confer good fortune or they don’t. If they confer good fortune, why wouldn’t these guys want to use them rather than sell them? If they don’t confer good fortune, but the men just want to sell them to people who think that they do, then why bother playing The Game? Eventually Ganzo arrives at this conclusion, but it’s pretty evident The Game is just a plot device to showcase a number distribution under the new system.


4. are you listening now – Tyrannosaurus

- This is really cool. I like that you cover *how* your scientific law changed. You also did well discussing the implications of the change in relation to the characters in your story (God, Earth, humans).

- It’s an interesting thought imagining the Earth as a jilted lover. It also strikes true imagining humans as wildfire, and God as a deadbeat dad. I like how you highlighted that even our love of Earth has often itself been limited to our sense of it being a gift given to us by God.

-For the short amount of text you used, you excelled at characterization, and even gave us enough of a sense of plot to make for a satisfying story. Good job.


5. Uriah – spectres of autism

- The prose is beautiful, good job.

- It’s not clear to me why Ely refuses the blade.

- It occurred to me early on that if Mother Drora didn’t sprout a locust, she too must already have been cursed somehow. The ending seems to support this interpretation.

- Interesting that Irshushin and Ely seem to have the same condition, given their vastly different stations in life. I suppose “head problems” might motivate someone to do something like reach for godliness by building a tower.

- Congrats on composing a better version of The Tower of Babel than that Yahweh fellow. You’ve got atmosphere, a couple interesting characters, a protag with a goal and agency, and a solid plot.

- You mention outright via dialogue that “Math has collapsed” but the relationship between Pythagorean theorem and dimensions opening doesn’t seem to be where you hewed to the prompt. I’d argue that you fulfilled the prompt in the sense that geometry having been altered is what allows the Tower of Babel to be as tall as it is, and maybe what allows the blade to appear at the peak.

- This story is oozing with style. Congrats.


6. Like Kings and Queens – Thranguy

- Good opening paragraph for setting the tone and hooking the reader.

- The story is engaging, holds the reader’s interest.

- It’s weird that the nature of the waste just hits the protag at the end out of nowhere. Seems like it should have been obvious that something designed to produce no waste would only produce the kind of waste it wasn’t designed to process at all. And for it to just dawn on him out of nowhere at the end just seems too plot-convenient.

- I notice we never get a definitive answer to the initial mystery. We just get a theorized answer to the secondary mystery of why the feud stopped but that answer is nukes-ex-machina.

- Great use of the prompt, I’ll give you that. Yeah, my impression is overall positive.


7. Mob Epistemology – sparksbloom

- Hmm, I can imagine a sociology conference going this way, even without the sudden change of any scientific law.

- Nat feels too much like a camera observing the breakdown of academia and society rather than like an active or otherwise fully fleshed out character. Then again, you had a tough prompt in the sense that it makes for obstacles when it comes to writing agentic characters.

- I think this story would have succeeded better if it’s pacing were quicker and if it utilized more efficient structure and prose. I feel like this 2000 word story could have been a tighter and more lively 1200 word story.


8. The Heart is an Ancient Organ – flerp

- Good opening line.

- There is an unreal, dreamlike quality to this story that serves it well. The protag doesn’t wonder what’s happened to everyone, he apparently concludes (and he happens to be right) that the whole world’s worth of hearts stopped except his. Other than with respect to his wife, he’s unbothered by this. He just accepts that this is his opportunity to look over the quiet city.

- I’ve got an issue with my interpretation of the underlying meaning of the piece. So we’re shown that the protag has a weak heart, both literally in that he uses a pacemaker and metaphorically in that he has a low tolerance for stress. This weak heart is evident also his in attachment to his nostalgia. Yet, it’s the protag’s agency in the face of stress that gets him killed, his goal unfulfilled. So what is the message here, don’t pursue goals, they’re too hard? What should he have done instead of climbing those stairs?

- This piece got me feeling emotions, I’ll give you that. It conveys nostalgia and sentimentality well.

Sham bam bamina!
Nov 6, 2012

ƨtupid cat
gently caress it, flash.

steeltoedsneakers
Jul 26, 2016





Sham bam bamina! posted:

gently caress it, flash.

Actually, me too pls mojo.

derp
Jan 21, 2010

when i get up all i want to do is go to bed again

Lipstick Apathy
ty jitzu!

Uranium Phoenix
Jun 20, 2007

Boom.

A Crit

ThirdEmperor posted:

Prompt: Drake Equation
Closed Equation
~ 741 words
First impression: A bit confusing. I had trouble following exactly what was happening with the ships and why they were doing what they were doing. This might have been because of a lack of sleep though. The story sort of bounced off me the first time.
Plot: An ancient archival satellite from Earth, programmed to leave orbit but basically just stuck there in a loop, broadcasts random data. It's hard to tell exactly when this is happening, it's implied the Sun in it's white dwarf phase reaaaally far in the future. A high tech ship picks it up, then fucks around with it as a toy. It gets interrupted by a bigger ship that stores it aboard, then goes through the various radio bubbles of dead civilizations. They pass a bunch of other dead ships, AI remnants either delusional and self-doubting, or post-suicidal debris fields. The big galley tosses the Earth archive back in orbit around another star to maintain its blissful, gleeful ignorance.
Prose: As usual, you go for flowery description, and it gets a bit in the way of clarity. I did like the strong visuals I got from the expanding signal bubbles, layered, which made me see them as something that doesn't see using the visible spectrum of light might, and the lurking colossal ships lingering in the dark.
Characters: The probe is happy, the dandelion network is bored, and the giant galley is protective and sentimental. These are one-dimensional characters, which seems intentional.
Theme: As usual, the fact that there is something here to analyze is a plus. This kind of story is usually my jam, but somehow, it's not connecting with me. One might infer that the universe's gradual heat-death may be a concern of these old relics. You mention a solution, and the goals of these relics as if they were monolithic. Life, it seemed, was everywhere, but perhaps not anymore? In the end, I think the thoughts of these old ships are too abstract, and too much hinges on the reader making several connecting inferences in order to find meaning in the story. It requires a lot of work from the reader, but we're not really given enough to know it's worth it to go that deep. The story does convey a sense of loneliness, depression, and purposelessness, and it seems joy must only be a product of ignorance or, in the singular hopeful part here, nurturing companionship. In the end, though, I think there's more to do in this world to explore why this Earth probe is so unique in its joy, why the galaxy/universe has turned out this way, and perhaps more interaction of the ships, as symbols if nothing else.
Changes: Clean up the intro so we start off in a clearer setting. I don't like having the probe planning (and will be able) to do ten circuits and leave, then immediately stay for hundreds of more cycles; that's an unnecessary contradiction. The goliath ship graveyard moping about that the galley passes needs more personality, purpose, and character. Finally, I have to agree with the other critiques that the story lacks any real conflict; things happen, and nothing threatens to impede them. You have emotions and visuals, but they need an arc to carry them. After that, it depends on where your vision for this story takes it.

Uranium Phoenix fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Oct 17, 2017

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









enjoying the flash rule giving, I think I'll spread the net a little wider

Exmond posted:

Going for a 6th DM or Lose!

Im in

:siren:your story must contain at least two clear anime tropes:siren:

Fuubi posted:

What s/he said. In. :toxx: flash.

:siren:your amusement park is aerial:siren:

Hawklad posted:

In, flash me!

:siren: psychic carousel:siren:


:siren: your story must contain at least three distinct breeds of horse:siren:

Simbyotic
Aug 24, 2010

THUNDERDOME LOSER

sebmojo posted:

:siren: PROMPT CHANGE:siren:

every story must be set in an amusement park, not just the toxxers.

Oh man, I just wrote my draft without seeing this. It was also the greatest story in Thunderdome history and now you'll never get to read it...

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Simbyotic posted:

Oh man, I just wrote my draft without seeing this. It was also the greatest story in Thunderdome history and now you'll never get to read it...

I already read it in my heart :gerty:

Chairchucker
Nov 14, 2006

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022




In, flash.

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sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk










:siren:lego lawnmower guy:siren:

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