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So many firsts - first thunderdome entry accomplished, now for the first thunderdome crit!kurona_bright posted:First Thunderdome entry ever. Help. okay! Overall: A good answer to the prompt, but nothing happened except Penny explaining how smart she was and Chris being a bit of a doofus. I was really hoping she was going to reveal that she had somehow gotten a fix on the exam or was sleeping with the professor or... something, anything! As Margaret Atwood says, "If you're writing a crime novel, move the body up!" The most exciting thing to happen in this story was the fact that Chris seemed to have a very odd relationship with his parents (who would take away a college student's "games"?).
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Apr 14, 2014 14:48
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| # ? Feb 10, 2025 09:43 |
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Crabrock may have bloodied my nose, but I AM STILL STANDING like a PCPed up fool with a rage boner. GOD OVER DJINN I turn my pinprick animal gaze on you, where it will remain until we have done combat on each other. Let the battle for west coast supremacy begin.
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Apr 14, 2014 16:28
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Just look at this, guys. She owes me one beer, and all of a sudden she's all like FECKLESS BABBY I WILL RIP OUT YOUR PANCREAS AND LEAVE YOU BLEEDING ON THE MEAN STREETS OF THE SUBURBS OF SEATTLE. I mean geez I guess you don't get to be Blood Queen for nothin' huh! I accept, and I request the wise & at least marginally competent, etc. sebmojo for judgin', as previously arranged.
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Apr 14, 2014 16:39
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I'm actually awake before 1 pm, which can be a good thing or a bad thing. First three people who ask get crits from me. More might be offered depending on how those go. ETA: Doing em for crabrock, Starter Wiggin, and Grandmaster.flv As suggested, you'll get them post judgement. Nethilia fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Apr 14, 2014 |
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Apr 14, 2014 18:20
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I wouldn't mind a crit if you're offering. Thanks kindly.
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Apr 14, 2014 18:52
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I've got nothing on this week so I'll do some in-depth crits if anyone wants them? First come, first served (I'll do maybe four). EDIT: I'll post them post-judgement. tenniseveryone fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Apr 14, 2014 |
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Apr 14, 2014 18:55
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please crit me because I need to learn to edit very VERY badly.
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Apr 14, 2014 19:05
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tenniseveryone posted:I've got nothing on this week so I'll do some in-depth crits if anyone wants them? First come, first served (I'll do maybe four).
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Apr 14, 2014 19:17
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You should wait until judging is complete before posting crits. That way the judges' opinions aren't swayed. That said, someone hit me wit one of those sweet crits and i will do one also.
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Apr 14, 2014 19:23
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tenniseveryone posted:I've got nothing on this week so I'll do some in-depth crits if anyone wants them? First come, first served (I'll do maybe four).
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Apr 14, 2014 20:11
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crabrock posted:You should wait until judging is complete before posting crits. fuckin this hold yer horses restrain their manes sidle up to their bridles and hold them
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Apr 14, 2014 22:04
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crabrock posted:You should wait until judging is complete before posting crits.
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Apr 14, 2014 22:23
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God Over Djinn posted:Just look at this, guys. She owes me one beer, and all of a sudden she's all like FECKLESS BABBY I WILL RIP OUT YOUR PANCREAS AND LEAVE YOU BLEEDING ON THE MEAN STREETS OF THE SUBURBS OF SEATTLE.  GETTIN HIGH ON THEIR OWN SUPPLY BRAWLWithin 24 hours, choose a sentence from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and an unlikely emotion. Within one week (22 April, High Noon PST) give me 1200 words on or around those two things.
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Apr 14, 2014 22:36
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sebmojo posted:
yes *rips out the lungs of the nearest 'domer cause I'm THAT PUMPED UP*
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Apr 14, 2014 22:46
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quote:Now they looked like somebody had just sprayed their table with poo poo-mist. I will crit whoever chooses one of my favourite lines of fiction. Either one, both, or I guess none. But you'd be missing out on a great line. (The best line)
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Apr 15, 2014 00:04
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Ladles and Jellyspoons - The Envelope Please This weeks prompt was like a morality play unfolding before our eyes. The cast list went something like this: The Evil Villian: Leekster - that's some Eye of Argon level overwriting right there, whatever the gently caress you were writing about. For you, the molten crown of the losertar. The League of Dishonourably Mentioned Henchpersons: Turtlicious Eww, it's fat and it sweats and it eats doritos. Where do you get your ideas, Mr Writer? A fat stereotype with the heart of a stereotype? Brilliant! That Old Ganon - I forget how many times I had to read this to make sense of it. It did not get more fun each time. ZorajitZorajit - your protagonist is so bad-rear end that all she has to do to prove it is babble on about what a bad-rear end she is. Now that's what I call bad-rear end. Commissar Mega - this was a big waffley lack of story. The Honourably inclined: Whalley - A comedy tale that actually made a judge laugh - no mean feat considering how much pain we were in this week. Kaishai - an interesting take and well crafted fruit fiction. Had a couple of headscratching moments that kept it from the win Crabrock - a tall tale that grew (our blackened, twisted hearts three sizes) in the telling. The Savior and Redeemer Nethilia - A story in which the wise fool didn't come out trumps, or perhaps how a foolish person became wise. Your blend of the real and the ambiguous wins your place on the ThunderThrone. Nethilia - the prompt is yours.
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Apr 15, 2014 01:43
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Proooompt!!! Wtf is taking so long
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Apr 15, 2014 02:23
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 Thunderdome LXXXIX: We Don’t Need No Water, Let The drat Roof Burn I won this poo poo? How the entire gently caress? This kind of situation calls for a party. So that’s what your story is going to be about. Write me a story about a party. Birthday, wedding reception, wake, college shenanigans, house party, house party two, pajama-jammy-jam, “praise God I didn’t shoot my foot off while hunting,” whatever. As long as there’s a gathering of people showing up at one location celebrating or doing something. Plus, there must be the following in every story: Fire. Water. Grass. Interpret that poo poo as thou wilt. Word Count: 1200 to make me rue my entire college career. No fanfic, no erotica, and for extra “don’t do that poo poo” poo poo, don’t write about drugs. (Liquor being the only exception). Or do, but have your word count cut in half. You got until 11:59 p.m. PST Friday—that’s “Good” Friday—to inform me I’m gonna be reading your crazy word splatters, and until 11:59 p.m. Sunday – that’s the end of Zombie Jesus Day—to throw said word splatter on the wall for me to stare cock-eyed at and wish I’d never majored in English. Party Hosts: Nethilia Some Guy TT sebmojo Party Goers: Djeser crabrock leekster Hocus Pocus Turtlicious QuoProQuid WeLandedOnTheMoon! Starter Wiggin curlingiron kurona_bright Noah Chairchucker Erogenous Beef Jonked Sir Azrael Kalyco tenniseveryone The News at 5 Bushido Brown Drunk Nerds Grandmaster.flv Cache Cab Jeep nickmeister Whalley Thalamas Gau  PootieTang Mercedes Entenzahn (Flash Rule: Your party is a birthday party for a child under the age of five. The story is from their viewpoint.)GlassLotus itsgotmetoo Fumblemouse Grizzled Patriarch Maultaschen Kaishai Walamor Phobia Nethilia fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Apr 21, 2014 |
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Apr 15, 2014 02:33
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 also in
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Apr 15, 2014 02:35
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in. you'll be amazed at the lack of pants at this party. (it's a no-pants party)
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Apr 15, 2014 02:44
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I'm in. Even the losers party sometimes.
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Apr 15, 2014 02:48
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A party? Never heard of it. IN
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Apr 15, 2014 02:52
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In.
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Apr 15, 2014 02:53
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I'm ready to accomplish something this week!
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Apr 15, 2014 02:56
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Wubba Lubba Dub Dub (That mean's I'm in)
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Apr 15, 2014 03:02
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I'm putting my left foot (and my poo poo skills) IN.
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Apr 15, 2014 03:08
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Party don't start 'till I walk in.
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Apr 15, 2014 03:14
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Got your crits here folks. Probably have the rest of them done by this time tomorrow. --- Turtlicious posted:Some hambeast on E/N lives like a total goon but gives good advice. He helps some suicidal girl not commit suicide. There's nothing wrong with writing a story about goons, but if you're going to make this much of an effort to establish that the guy is living a terrible life you have to acknowledge it as something aside from background noise. The guy's a fool I guess because we know living like a goon is bad, but there's no apparent negative consequences for his actions. In theory the suicidal girl would help him reevaluate or learn something, or he could not learn something and that would be the point. But as is your story is pointless. Pandering is fine- but you have to back it up somehow. Sir Azrael posted:An army shows up at a city for reconquest, but the leaders are big babies so they ditched town and left the fool in charge. The fool does a bunch of kung fu slapstick and makes the general back off. I find it hard to believe that the general would just give up after being humiliated that badly in front of all of his troops. You need a better set-up for the ending- something that at least makes surrendering to the fool plausible, like a secondary motive indicating he didn't really care about the city in the first place but possibly the weenies who ditched. Now, that being written, your comedic style is very strong here. I can easily visualize the fool giving Theogren a run for his money, and that makes for some pretty great slapstick. I smiled at the absurdity of the situation while still recognizing the strong improbability, so to that extent you succeeded pretty well. ZorajitZorajit posted:Some corporate chick is an evil cartoonish rear end in a top hat, wants to pollute the ocean or something, hire political action committees, and she’s already done this stuff but there’s a plot somehow I don’t have any idea. Your main character is so blatantly evil the story turns into self-parody. Not funny self-parody. You sprinkle all these real life references in there to make it seem like this could be an actual person but it just doesn’t work. This person’s a crazy idiot with half-baked ideas that only work because other people do all the work and she just gesticulates wildly at the Sheik, who’s scared because plutonium or something, I really don’t know. If your whole story is going to be powered by irrelevant McGuffins…actually just don’t do that unless you’re trying to write a comedy. Don’t begrudge the point. It just calls attention to how poorly constructed the whole package is. It took me way too long to even figure out your character was a woman. CommissarMega posted:A fool talks about what it’s like being a fool. This isn’t even a story. This is just a bunch of blank blathering on about the basics of the wise fool trope. Tropes by themselves are crap. They don’t mean anything. They have to be spun together into something specific or the whole exercise of reading is completely meaningless. I hated the pointless rambling of the fool, but for awhile I at least thought this was going to turn in to some kind of twist ending about how the fool was there all along and just telling his own story in an uninteresting roundabout way. But you even managed to mess that up. If you want to do aloof comedy, there has to be a clear story we can see behind the lines. Schneider Heim posted:Two girls are learning magic at school. One is snobby and smart while the other is pretty dumb. They become friends when the dumb one does a favor for the smart one. I like your opening. I very quickly got who these characters were, what they were doing, and what the stakes were. Then I got confused by your worldbuilding. Is this a high school? A boarding school? They take nonmagical kids but don’t give them any kind of special tutoring? These questions might sound irrelevant, but when the entire dramatic impetus of your story is on the ability of these two girls to use magic, we need some sense of scale. Your story’s clichéd enough that these flaws really stick out- you need an excellent concept in order to make these technical questions irrelevant, and yours just wasn’t that inherently amazing. Tyrannosaurus posted:Some idiot convict goes on about how much he hates Horace Greene. Then we get a twist ending! Well it’s not that big a twist, given that the prompt was wise fool (although you forgot the citrus). But it’s still well done. You’ve got a clear believable voice of a guy who sounds dumb even if he’s not. The brevity of your story works well to keep the ending surprising enough, since I didn’t have time to think the plot over in that much detail. The story's mainly good for an oh snap moment, which isn't a lot, but it's at least well done. Thalamas posted:Cat is a selfish animal who decides to make the world better by making everyone else selfish too, starting with Dog. Dog thinks this is dumb, and helps the other animals they meet instead of dicking them over. Cat’s motivation doesn’t make much sense, but it doesn’t need to because this is a fable meant to establish a clear moral point. The diction is a tad advanced- when writing this kind of story you need to bear in mind that the reader is going to be a small child. And even from an adult perspective it’s all just a little long-winded- you could have kept out the part with Beaver and the flow would have worked better. Still, for what it is, this was a fairly decent effort. God Over Djinn posted:A teacher observes that a madwoman curses the king which is bad. But the king (or more specifically the government) really is terrible so the teacher feels bad about lying for the sake of the regime. So the setting is a monarchy where criticizing the king is verboten, but they have baking soda and toothpaste. Also rape is apparently a regular enough thing that schoolchildren watch it happen in the street. The cadence and word choice is weird here, because they make the story seem light-hearted even though it sounds like this is happening in Nazi Germany. Either make this an old style fable about a kingdom or a modern grimdark piece about the suppression of truth. Trying to do both at once is just confusing. Whalley posted:Some snobby programmer makes the most artistically deep video game ever but even God himself is a total fratboy who loves the game solely for its car smashing action. Luckily God is a cool guy who solves the problem in a way only a goon can appreciate. Now this is how you pander. The narrator is a pretentious video game loving twat who literally cannot be satisfied even by praise from God himself. I really like the idea of God as a well-meaning fratboy, and it’s an especially novel take on the wise fool concept, which mostly focused on the fool part this week. The ending’s especially appropriate- it solves the narrator’s problem in a way that does not advance his character, yet at the same time is an all too appropriate statement on why weren’t not supposed to like him in the first place. Well done. tenniseveryone posted:Bryan, Lou, Scott, and Vincent all go hunting for meat to sell to eskimos. Then something bad happens. I had to read this story several times to figure out how many characters were in it, since even though you give them names they barely have any personality between them. The only particularly clear story detail is that they’re hunting some indeterminate animal (why didn’t you name it?) to sell to eskimos. By the way, you should be using Inuit. Even in context the way you use the word makes it sound like a slur but this is never addressed in the story. Still, even a negative character detail is better than the vagueness you leave us with. And for goodness sake, use some indentation breaks to denote time! The story goes on long enough that people go to sleep and wake up, but the way it’s organized makes it look like it all took place in a single breath. Nethilia posted:This outsider boy sees an outsider girl at school, tells her she’s being made fun of, then he hates her, then she goes to a new school. I didn’t hate this story, but I didn’t like it as much as the other judges did either. We get lots of detail about Laureline but relatively little about Jacob, which troubled me since the whole thing was from his point of view and the catharsis at the end is his reaction. Regardless, your prose here is capable and your narrative beats are fairly distinct, albeit well-worn. Using them with this particular prompt was a relatively original idea though, and given the quality of this week’s entries it was enough to send you to the top. nickmeister posted:A rock fruit farmer is hated by everyone, because rock fruits are bad. But everyone else’s fruit is even worse because…uh… Unless rock fruit somehow makes bananas and oranges toxic just by being in nearby proximity, I’m at a loss as to what even happened in this story. So Pit is a fool because he insists on harvesting rock fruit for no reason, whereas he is wise because..? Yeah, I really have no idea what you were even trying to do here. Unless this is some sort of elaborate rock fruit in-joke that I’ve never heard of before. In which case you should be ashamed for submitting something so oblique. The News at 5 posted:Two guys sell TV infomercial junk. One of them gets fed up and quits. Another story where I had difficulty telling the two characters apart- not because they were similar, but because they lacked particularly unique personality traits. At first I thought Bill was the snarky guy, since he paid too much for the smile…oh, I get it. Because he got surgery, not because he was metaphorically paying for it. Do you see how that’s a bit of an awkward metaphor in this situation? Additionally, while I know Timmy hates his life, I don’t know why. The guy’s just being a dick on camera and I guess I’m supposed to sympathize because I hate infomercials too? I don’t really. That’s a pretty poor assumption to make of your reader, so try to do a better job building up the expectation. Kalyco posted:A girl is in danger of flunking out of college, but there’s this fox who’s being a dick to her about all this magical stuff that I guess she’s doing as an extracurricular activity. That’s my guess for what your story’s about anyway. I wasn’t sure whether all the weird magical stuff was supposed to be real or just in Jess’s imagination. And it doesn’t actually matter anyway. So she can’t focus when some douchebag fox is making fun of her during evaluation, or she’s thinking about dumb fantasy world stuff. So what. Everybody hates that crap. What Jess needs is some kind of defining personality trait aside from “is annoyed by supernatural stuff”. Without that it's impossible to relate to anything that happens.
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Apr 15, 2014 03:35
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Thanks for the crit, Kalyco! I'll try to put up a crit of your story as thanks a bit later. In for this prompt, even though I have no idea how I'll tackle it.
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Apr 15, 2014 04:22
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Some Guy TT posted:A girl is in danger of flunking out of college, but there’s this fox who’s being a dick to her about all this magical stuff that I guess she’s doing as an extracurricular activity. this juts makes me want to read thi stoy
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Apr 15, 2014 04:32
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I could swing one this week.
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Apr 15, 2014 04:35
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i'm in again. that's right. 2 stories
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Apr 15, 2014 05:05
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gently caress it. in another time.
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Apr 15, 2014 05:05
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sebmojo posted:
Hunter S. Thompson posted:With a bit of luck, it'll ruin his life – forever thinking that just behind some narrow door in all his favorite bars, men in red Pendleton shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he'll never know. sebmojo posted:and an unlikely emotion. reverence
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Apr 15, 2014 05:18
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I will write something I guess.
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Apr 15, 2014 06:57
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I will do this. In.
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Apr 15, 2014 08:53
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Yeah Okay I'm in.
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Apr 15, 2014 09:26
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Having internalized the feedback I learned some things: Someone thinks I've got comedy down regardless of the fact that my story's greatest success was a rehash of the "banana peel pratfall" joke. Also: My characters are flat, I need to work on it. I need to get weird. Real weird. On that note: I'm in. And: My writing invokes anger. I will try not to use this power for evil.
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Apr 15, 2014 10:06
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IN! Thanks to Some Guy TT for the crit, and crabrock for the compliment!
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Apr 15, 2014 10:33
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I threw a ping pong ball towards a red solo cup and it went in. PS That Old Ganon, Grandmaster.flv, Turtlicious, crabrock - crits be coming your way soon(ish). tenniseveryone fucked around with this message at 11:39 on Apr 15, 2014 |
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Apr 15, 2014 10:53
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