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Anyone wanna trade crits with me?
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Feb 21, 2017 19:06
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Solitair I could give it a try 
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Feb 21, 2017 19:55
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Deltasquid posted:good criticism and stuff ty for the high quality crit. Uranium Phoenix posted:Each of the critiques I’m going to post is structured so that it hits first impression, summarizes the story, names a distinctive feature, then goes over some strengths and weaknesses. Ideally, this shows each writer what one idiot reader (me) got out of it. I am implicitly assuming each author had something important to say. Sometimes, I might miss something other readers find obvious. Hopefully it’s all helpful; the goal is to be constructive but honest. Since it's UraniumPhoenix's week, I'm going to use the style that he uses for his crits. Here is my critique of: Aquariums by Deltasquid First impression: The title and the placement on a space station, to me, draws a clear parallel between these smug-rear end klopoh fish and these space-dwelling humans. Made clear obviously when he makes his half-hearted attempt to smash his way out into space (no fresh air out there, sorry bub). I also figured we'd learn more about what happened to the unwell waiter after the garcon is guarded with his information, which, well, we kind of do? I was thinking we'd get some more action than we do, to be honest. Summary: A temp worker gets an opportunity to work at an upscale restaurant under somewhat mysterious circumstances, sees some weirdo fish, then starts making more and more outlandish gaffes. Then he tries to break out of his figurative aquarium, is restrained, sent back to Earth, then tells us the incidents kept happening until the restaurant closed its doors. Nothing too crazy. The message is that zoos are bad? And that we should be vegetarians? I think? Between the mink-coated woman and co. talking about the eradication of the dream-eaters, the insurgent fish, and protag's escape attempt, that's what I'm getting. Distinctive feature: I liked the fishception dialogue that protag starts delivering in the second half of the story. I could have used more crazy talk, to be honest. Strengths: The story is pretty clear. There are very spots where I had any confusion about what was happening, who was speaking, etc. If that sounds like faint praise, stick around and read some TD stories, and you'll see that it's no small thing. I also think you do a good job of conveying the protag's growing confusion about what's happening to him, and of having him react normally--that is, basically trying to ignore his headache and power through, instead of coming to the obvious (to the audience) conclusion that the fish are screwing with his brain. Weaknesses: The best piece of advice I received from a TDer was to start my stories when they get interesting. You, in fact, gave me that advice on my story for this week, because apparently I don't learn. I am now giving it to you. There is a lot of exposition in the beginning of this story that doesn't really do much. It sets up the situation, sure, but that could be accomplished in a sentence. Things only get interesting when the fish start messing with him. You could start with him saying something inappropriate at a table, or him staring at the fish tank, or any number of things. I also think you choose to describe the wrong things, or decline to describe the interesting things. You give us a somewhat thorough description of the fish tank (which I get might be part of your overall theme--these fish are kept in captivity only at great, and conspicuous, effort), but give us no real description of the fish. Are they just normal looking fish? Or are they the blobfish from your prompt? Overall response: Not enough happens in this story. And not enough crazy stuff happens. There is a clear reference to old world imperialism, about the exploitation of exotic lands, but we get very little description of anything exotic. What we do get is alluded to, more than it is seen. I also think you make the wrong choice with your ending. The protag essentially does nothing. The story I want to hear is about the waiter who actually smashes the aquarium--which I only just now realized is maybe ambiguous? I guess that could refer to the fish aquarium, or to the station, since that's what the protag tried to smash? Anyway, there's a seed of an idea here. Needs more work, though. Deltasquid posted:Aquariums Welcome to Thunderdome!
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Feb 21, 2017 21:11
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also give me a flash rule
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Feb 21, 2017 21:14
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Some Crits for Week 237 - ALIENS I like aliens, and sci-fi, so here are some short impressions/crits. Twiggymouse - Bob I see the word count, read the first couple paragraphs, and my eye starts to twitch. The parenthetical aside after the first word is not a good sign of things to come. Nor is the inactivity of this alien and the lack of clear setting...are they in space? In a lab? Where is the alien? You say that its pulsating "seemed to keep it off the ground," so is it floating or not? It's all so vague and boring. Then we meet the characters and they are all flat cutouts, interchangable parts. Lots of yawning, drifting off to sleep, talking about dreams, a lecture about the nature of life, and still the alien isn't doing anything interesting. Much like the story. Finally something interesting happens with the baseball game but then you over-explain everything in the next dialogue section, which, incidentally, has too many people talking and not enough attribution. Four characters all talking at once is very tricky to handle without confusing the reader so you have to be a lot more careful, or reduce the number of speakers. Then more over-explanation, he gets his leave, sees Bob again, the end. Overall a very unsatisfying story, full of words that don't ever get anywhere particularly interesting. Deltasquid - Aquariums Writing is good and engaging. The setting is clear and interesting with some nice details. I can picture the klopoh fish, the bustle of the restaurant, and the snooty clientele. The gradual transformation of the waiter is handled well, but I think it needed more. The prompt asked us to explore something about people, which I don't think was fully explored in this story. Other than the protag verbalizing his inner thoughts and subsequently getting sick I don't see much character development here. Thranguy - Five Years after Christmas Obviously a lot of ideas in here, and deftly written as usual. It made me curious if you have read Embassytown (by China Mieville), for there are some parallels here with how you treat the Shouter language with the Ariekei from that novel. But in some ways yours is almost deeper and multi-tiered, evoking a deeper sense of the importance of language to their culture. The human drama was okay, although the murder I didn't find particularly relevant. Perhaps on a re-read I might see how that ties into the larger ideas of the story. SurreptitiousMuffin - LEGION/MANY Now this is a cool little piece, colorfully written in such a sparse tone. The first person plural is very effective at conveying the collectiveness of the spores, their distributed intelligence. The menace they present to their human hosts is a satisflyingly presented, an ever-present undercurrent as they describe their conquest, their ongoing fight to persist on the backs of their human hosts. No extra words here, and it is effective. Djeser - Colorado Star A cute story with a good heart. Took me until halfway into the story to realize Sally the drunk was the narrator, looking back because of your use of third person to describe her early on. Not the wrong choice, but it did confuse me a bit. Your use of colloquial language was effective. It's not always easy to know how much or how little to use— too heavy and it intereferes with intelligibility—but you did just enough to give it charm and authenticity without it getting in the way. Solitair - Collective Soul Starting the story with two paragraph of exposition doesn't exactly grab my attention or make me care about what's happening. The construction of this story as a two-way conversation between the alien and scientists would maybe work if there more grist to work with. As it is, we have the difficult to read ALL CAPS BAD GRAMMAR alien who says something, then the scientist translates it for us, asks it another quesiton, repeat. It seems like the alien wants to help the reduce the disfunction in Arnette, the only way it knows how it to 'remove' the nodes (citizens) so it kills some folks. We don't really get to the bottom, and the ending is particularly unsatisfying as he asks for assistance in getting rid of the dysfunction but the scientist plays dumb and the story ends. My problem with the story is it's all too dispassionate and emotionless. Nothing is revealed about Jensen at all, it's just the gradual unveiling of the alien's motive for the killngs. Which in my mind isn't enough to build a story upon. Hawklad fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Feb 21, 2017 |
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Feb 21, 2017 21:49
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A more detailed crit:Chernabog posted:Two and the Same. So the idea of an alien appearing to save humanity after a nuclear war has some promise, but they way it's presented here is not very satisfying. The giant sky tentacle is not convincing, and the dialogue is too casual considering the stakes involved. Think about what makes each character interesting, and mine that for your dialogue and motivations. Nisha just sort of reacts to what's happening, decides not to assimilate and then quickly changes her mind for no apparent reason. I guess she loves Nathaniel (evidenced by the kiss) but she's so blase about the whole situation any emotional intensity is negated. You reference it again at the end (and in the title) but it's not a theme carried throughout the story, which is a shame - it would improve it greatly.
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Feb 22, 2017 00:27
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Thranguy posted:
it's me. i'm the question mark.
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Feb 22, 2017 00:56
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Thunderdome CCXXXVIII: Lie to Me
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WEEK 232 CRITS PART 2/3 Twist gets his own critpost because hoollyyyyyy gently caress. Anyway, the other crits should happen more quickly now Alouette Your sins: Making me crit this monstrosity, uuughhh, god. But so, it was actually pretty okay. For the judges it fell mainly into the category of "weird and intriguing but not 100% satisfying, maybe like 85% satisfying which is still p good imo". So, first I want to talk about the italicized parts, which are I guess the guidelines/rules for playing a spirit. I think they start out too poetic. You should start with the practical advice, and then go into the flowery stuff about speaking with arms and legs and whatnot. It might be better to open with the bit that talks about what clothes to wear, for example. By including the standard operating procedures for fake ghosts, you kind of gave yourself an easy way to dump in some exposition that would've been awkward otherwise, and I appreciate that. But the actual narrative is also very flowery and flowy, like the ephemeral memory of a tendril of a lost lover's hair. It would feel more balanced if the italicized bits contrasted with the rest of the prose (in the beginning, at least). I like the scene in the bar, when they're discussing the legend of Alouette. It's the first time I feel any warmth and texture in your protagonist. Although in general, there is a hollowness to a lot of the conversations in this story. Some of the banter feels more like a meet cute from a romance novel or something. There's a lot of words spent on teasing and misunderstanding but it feels kind of forced because I don't get a sense of the characters' relationships outside of each scene. I'm mainly thinking of Ray as I type this. She was easy to peg as the saboteur early on because everything between her and the narrator feels so forced. And then, just in case it wasn't obvious enough, you do the whole "keep your enemies close" exchange and ugh. Speaking of Ray, I didn't find her fate very satisfying. She basically gets violently punished for being the thinly veiled antagonist. It's not even clear why she'd want to sabotage Tammera, tbh. Like, they're all just people doing their jobs. The competitiveness between the girls comes across a bit like cattiness for cattiness's sake. I can't figure out what anyone, especially Ray, has to gain by being bitchy and malicious. There are a couple moments that felt dramatic but I didn't think the story "earned" them. The ones that stick out most are in the same section, when Tammera is realizing that Ray betrayed her (and then wound up in the ICU). quote:I cry without making any sound, because I’ve gotten so drat good at my job, me and the twenty parallel versions of me reflected in the mirrored walls of the elevator, all bent over and crying silently, we’re all just so drat good at our job. Honestly, this little freakout doesn't feel non sequitur, exactly, but I feel like...it's trying to drag me along emotional currents that the story didn't fully develop. This is the reaction of someone who is at the end of their rope. I get that Tammera is in a lovely situation, but at no point in the story do I get a tangible sense her job is taking its toll on her. In fact, the narration feels pretty aloof. I don't get an especially strong sense of what's in her head. Like, the so drat good at our job bit is what sticks out the most. Okay, so, she's a professional ghost, which means her job entails being silent. I would think that someone who was this much at their wit's end with the ghost shtick, someone who is really feeling the strain of their work persona, would show that more in their interpersonal relationships. But the story doesn't really give me that. There's not even a whole lot of internal monologue to work with. So this feels like a super abrupt escalation of emotions. Another line that didn't jive well was this one: quote:“I’ll be right back, I promise,” I say, because my promises mean nothing. IDK, I just think if you're going to say something like "because my promises mean nothing" you should uuuuuh show your character breaking some promises? or at least struggling to keep promise. So this bit sticks out as kind of melodramatic. Now for the ending. The very first paragraph kind of soured me on Tammera a bit. Like, here's this woman who's obviously crazy or homeless or something, and Tammera's like "notice me sempai, I'm sad about my ghost job". It's fine if you mean for her to seem self centered and preoccupied with her own melodrama, but it doesn't really read that way. So it's awkward. Theeeennn you back load the story with a bunch of childhood trauma, and while it certainly explains some things, it feels like you created this character whose personality you have to retroactively justify with a sad story. More stuff the story didn't quite earn: quote:Hands, countless hands poking through my blurry vision, slicing through the air, grasping at snowflakes, rubbing themselves together to stay warm. Hands turning my pale heart over and over like a digital watch. Hands reaching for me, grasping my hand in theirs, then tearing it off at the wrist, jagged scraps of skin left behind. Tearing off my arms, my legs, clawing out chunks of my torso as they work their way up my neck to my head. I feel fistfuls of hair get yanked out, ears ripped off like ripe vine fruit, eyes clawed out through bright sockets and tongue clawed out through a smiling mouth because I suddenly know, right then, that no one will ever get my heart, because I plucked it out from my chest myself, and I laid it in a gold box and hid it away where no one would ever find it, and even I don’t need it anymore. I know what a human heart looks like. It’s not special. I can feel you desperately trying to create some kind of parity or connection between Tammera and her Alouette alter ego. The heart thing feels especially forced, since we've only seen Tammera be a fairly decent human being. Nila gets completely dropped, leaving me confused as to what her role in the story was. Like, the interactions were good (except where they drank like 3 glasses of wine in the span of what seemed like 5 minutes), but when I try to pin down her role in the narrative, I come up with nothing. The final scene is, IMO, a total misfire. It just doesn't resonate at all. First of all, you already used up the whole "guy wakes up and interrupts the fake haunting" routine. Like, I was already suspending disbelief that people wouldn't simply stay up late to try and see the ghosts for themselves. And then two people do that exact thing, more or less, so I'm like, oh, I guess it does happen after all. I have no connection to the old man, there is nothing super profound about the final image that the story leaves us with. It's is part of an overall disjointedness in this piece IMO. You're juggling Tammera's relationship with her job, Tammera's relationship with the other girls, Tammera's relationship with Nila, Tammera's relationship with the hotel as a set/environment, and Tammera's relationship with her past. These plot elements all kind of bump against each other, but don't weave together. Some of the subtler moments, like the old woman with the soap, don't read as especially significant, even though I can tell the character is feeling profound things. So, by now you're probably like WTF why did this HM. Well, I like the concept of the hotel and the services it provides, even if I think they need to be developed better. I like the ambition; this has the shape of something compelling and haunting. you just need to connect the different bits of plot better. There needs to be a stronger through line--something Tammera/her Alouette persona wants, maybe? I didn't get a strong sense of her desires. She basically just wants to not be hosed with, but she goes out of her way to engage Nila for unclear reasons. The prose is gorgeous in some places and overwrought in others. I maintain that the italicized "how to be a fake ghost" bits need to be a little more sober and plainly worded. That would balance out the more ornate narrative prose. In spite of all the above, this wasn't a chore to read at all, which is always a risk with longer short stories. I hope you continue to develop this piece, because it's worth it IMO.
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Feb 22, 2017 01:14
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Sitting Here posted:WEEK 232 CRITS PART 2/3 sincere thank you for the putting-up-with-me-being-an-rear end crit, SH 
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Feb 22, 2017 01:20
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Many thanks for the crits.
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Feb 22, 2017 01:26
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Thanks hawkland, great crit.
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Feb 22, 2017 01:30
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also thanks to Thranguy for the earlier crit, as well 
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Feb 22, 2017 01:44
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Congrats on the twofer, Thranguy. Please allow me to remind you, however, that this is supposed to be a thread about bad words, not good ones.
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Feb 22, 2017 02:15
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BeefSupreme posted:also give me a flash rule your narrator cannot be unreliable because of drugs, mental illness, or knowingly lying to the audience. (this is a good rule for all entries to follow. yes it's hard.)
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Feb 22, 2017 02:15
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Critiques for Weeks XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XIX, XXI, and CCXXXVII: Are You Receiving Me Clear? There's Others Out Here! A few more old stories get their overdue due, then it's back to current events with crits for the most recent negative mentions. Week 11: Betrayal, by Zdzislaw Beksiñski Bad Seafood, "Rainmaker": The beauty in this is hidden under a crust of difficulty. It shouldn't take so much thought to parse it. The first line, good as it is, connects poorly at best to the rest; My love, it says, and I imagine an adult and a romance. But later the narrator reads as a child, lifted and carried by the Rainmaker. Your words paint the marksman as a mythic figure, one arrived from the dust to save the town, but then he's nothing. And as for "sewn to breed hope"--! Go back to this story now that your skill has increased. Untangle the pronouns, make the things that should flow flow, and leave the things that should be strange strange. It's potentially amazing. ***** Chairchucker, "Car": Thank God for you, Chairchucker, and for the groansome punchline you submitted in this grimdust week, even though it doesn't hold up to thought at all. I couldn't begin to guess why Cameron and the farmers have tied Justin up and stuffed a rag in his mouth other than to fiddle with my expectations, but more than that, how did the farmers miss the car he was driving? Did it appear amidst them one day, wearing a tag on the bumper that said Hi! I'm Justin's!? I'd laugh harder if the setup weren't so flimsy, but oh, well. I'm glad if a little surprised you didn't get smacked for this: it's not as fun as the asexual dwarf PI. ***** sebmojo, "White Stone Rise": Take my incredulity that your mechanics were ever this bad as a compliment. Two people talk in the fourth paragraph, and the punctuation is a sufficiently shameful hash that I hope this story looms over your head at night and whispers "Commaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas" to you until a single tear of oil and salt mars the plated plane of your face. You don't prod much at the questions of what the stone is, what it wants, or how it transforms into a cathedral. I don't mind the mystery in the first two--that's the sort of story this is, though leaving everything vague keeps the piece ephemeral. I wonder about the last. Did Slattery cut it? Maybe he should be a mason instead of a farmer, so the stone "speaking" to him first would have a sort of logic and invite questions re: how aware of the village the stone was even before it broke through. ******************** Week 12: Hateful Protagonist sebmojo, "Serial": Would all this cutting and hiding make more sense if I knew something about the spider in the accompanying image, I wonder. You shouldn't make me wonder that. The prompt asked for a villain the judges could hate, and for my money yours doesn't qualify: too inhuman. Too eldritch. I can't hate a spider monster the way I could a person who massaged the murderous spreadsheet and hid the bits (ha, whether you intended that to be a pun or not). The comparison to a spider is perhaps overdone when the story says again, in the last paragraph, LIKE A SPIDER, as though I might have missed it the first time. You and spiders, huh? ******************** Week 13: Real Natural Horror Kleptobot, "The Wrong Warzone": I thought at first it was a symptom of my overexposure to Thunderdome stories and unfair to you that I figured the opening for some sort of fake-out, but would you look at that, Kevin is indeed a nutbar murdering innocent laser-tag janitors. Lindsay's reaction of shaking her head and walking away from the corpse is remarkably blase, I must say. This PTSD story surely isn't supposed to be satirical. But the CAPSLOCK OF RAGE, the "evil shooter," and other over-the-top choices disembowel the horror you're going for, so I come away feeling like I've just watched one of Monty Python's less successful sketches. ******************** Week 14: You Shouldn't Be Here toanoradian, "Untitled": You delightful weirdo. Outside TD, this would make no sense. Inside TD, it makes some sense as a tiny meta story about itself. It shines as a sassy response to the word-count restriction, especially since it high-fives the prompt on its way out into the depths of spaceless space. I find I like fiction about punctuation, which says sad things about me, I'm sure, but it makes this particular ficlet a lot of fun. I still don't know what Voliun was thinking when he tried to rewrite it, though. ******************** Week 15: Sharp Vision Sooths Strong Reaction Noah, "Revolution": Why in the names of the holies does Thunderdome have so many stories about secret lizardmen? Is this even the first one? Lord. On my first read I felt out of the loop, so I looked up Toby Nugent. Ted Nugent's son? (Who wouldn't be called Toby, Jr., would he, since Toby isn't Ted's name?) So I'm looking at political satire, I guess. Getting so specific doesn't work in the story's favor: you're writing about a man comforting his "good" lizardman wife in the wake of an assassination that's bound to increase anti-lizardman sentiment, etc. etc., and what you're driving at comes across without you dropping a name to add an extra jab at the Nugents if the reader happens to know who they are. Despite that, this is the best secret lizardman story I've read for Thunderdome by virtue of its combined absurdity and pathos. ******************** Week 16: Oh the weave we web sebmojo, "Strangers when we meet": What's impressive is how much of your world and its mechanics I'm able to pick up with so little infodumping and such oblique context clues. I don't know what precisely Victoria did or why doubling the time stream was so bad, but I know she's been in exile and now is on the run from an assault on her reality by parties as capable of manipulating it as she is. Up to a point, that's all I need. But then the doubles meet, exposit--vaguely--and vanish, and while it isn't quite a To be continued ending, why did I care about any of that again? You cut too many corners in trying to fit so much story into a tight limit. ******************** Week 19: How Deep Is My Fuckin' Love Benagain, "Dharma": Your dudes are a shade histrionic, and I'm at a loss for why right before a bachelor party is a particularly bad time for a break up, but otherwise? Fun. The narrative voice is good. If I'm not buying the protagonist and Jack as True Love Everlasting, I do buy them as a couple of goofballs sweet on each other. That said, I'm confused about the protagonist's team. First he's grouped with a bunch of stoners who are already out of the game, then he's with Brad and his posse. Huh? Draw a clearer connection between the potheads and the rest of the guys if you ever come back to this. ******************** Week 21: Welcome to My Sensorium Bad Seafood, "Lighthouse": A couple of weeks' worth of luck at least must have gone into keeping this muddled opening to a story that never happens out of the DM pool. I appreciate the narrator's voice in the first couple of paragraphs; I appreciate the effort to get into the perspective of a blind man with synaesthesia, but the result is confusing, only sometimes in an artistic way. More critically, there's nothing else here! A blind man arrives at his father's house for a birthday party. That's all. I'm curious about the lives of these characters, which doesn't make me any happier that this scrap is all I get. ******************** Week 237: A Way for the Cosmos To Know Itself llamaguccii, "The Long-Winded Shortness of Breath": Whir is singular and should have a singular verb. Why would a being that doesn't hear sounds claim its voice squeaks and crackles? What does a plant without eyes know about sight? Your "alien" perspective--how are these things extraterrestrial?--keeps returning to human reference points, and this enhances the vibe of small bitterness it gives off, I think, because this thing is defining its existence entirely in relation to something it hates. The prose reads well to a point, but but it loses luster after it descends into a rant. ***** Jay W. Friks, "Loud until silent by Jay W.Friks": You know better than this title and this format. Your mechanics are also rougher than usual, to put it mildly: the first sentence is missing a hyphen, the second tells me a cloud of vaporized wood and metal ran to a cellar, the fifth uses the wrong preposition (to in place of in), the sixth is in the wrong tense (it ought to be in the past perfect, since the story opens with the trench already there), the seventh has an unattractive comma splice, the eighth has a capitalized word that shouldn't be, etc. So many errors get between a reader and a story. A lot of work lies ahead of you if you proofed this before posting and saw no problems, but my suspicion is that you didn't, which is better for you in the long term but aggravating for me in the short. The story as I understand it is that a man in Aleppo is visited by a parallel-universe alien, which abducts him, reads his mind (with his consent), and sets him down in another world that's closer to his version of paradise. The moral appears to be that bombs are bad. It's not that I disagree, but there are quiet ways of committing atrocities too, so I'm not sold on "go live where people aren't so noisy" as a good answer here; even if I were, the alien abduction is a significant distraction from the horrors-of-war theme. I'm interested in Aleppo as a setting and in Omar's perspective, but neither is used to full potential. ***** BeefSupreme, "More Human Than Human": I regard your shameless handwaving of critical issues of space travel, physics, and life in general through narrowed eyes, sir. At the same time--what the hell! Resource management isn't the fun part of any space sim. Alas that the glossing over of problems doesn't stop there: everything seems convenient and effortless for these refugees. I'm missing any sense of tension regarding what might happen. The blue sun frays my suspension of disbelief almost as much as the infinite food supply, and there's less excuse for it. Not all SF has to be hard, realistic SF, but this goes so far the other way that it's like a story made up off the cuff by a bored and talented child. When the danger does come, it's as ill defined as everything else. What is the Marshall clone? Why does it stab Liz? Why is the response to leave entirely without investigating the mystery, given that a planet is enormous and would offer other places to settle? Although I enjoy the character interactions before the team makes its landing, the ending is terrible--almost more so for how little Liz is hurt--and I'm not sure what the alien contact is meant to be telling me about humanity. ***** newtestleper, "Landings": The concept of salvaging space debris to survive, I like, and I like much of the description of Delia's interaction with the whatever-it-is, but concept and description are all that you have. What's the story, that something alien was out in the Kuiper Belt at one point? What does it say about people, that they'll keep their eyes on the prize even in the face of wonders? Touché, but that point still wants more of a story to illustrate it. You stop when you've only just started and kill your entry in the doing. Kaishai fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 22, 2017 03:07
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Chernabog posted:Thanks hawkland, great crit. Okua posted:Solitair I could give it a try Okua, "The Grand Escape from Humanity" First of all, it looks like you pressed enter mid-sentence here: Okua posted:My attic room was built of dark wood, the roof slanted so that little sunlight came through a small window. On the floor, empty cages contained only empty nests and useless notes. Gone were the animals I had studied. All I had In the second scene, the one where the narrator has the alien jellyfish cutting on his ship, there are two places where you leave two blank lines between paragraphs instead of one, and I'm unclear if this is meant to indicate the passage of time in the same place. I don't know how long it's been since the guy started sailing with it, and that whole scene has a 'reel missing from the movie' effect. That said, the finale works pretty well. The imagery you chose to depict the alien growing to apocalyptic size at the end did actually make me go "oh poo poo." Unfortunately, the build-up is kind of bare bones, telling me the minimum of what I needed to know to get to this point. It needs more fleshing out, but at least I get the gist of your story's intended progression. Solitair fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 22, 2017 07:03
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I'm just writing my impressions as I go. Solitair posted:Collective Soul Here, it's unclear to me whether Jensen is the director or not. And I would think this specimen being an actual alien lifeform(!) alone is enough to justify wanting to learn about it, no matter who it has killed, but maybe this is a world where aliens are common knowledge? quote:X: FIND COYOTE DEER ARNETTE TEXAS. SEVERAL PEOPLE SPARSE DISTANT. MYSELF CLOSE COLLECTED. MYSELF SYNCHRONICITY ELECTROMAGNETISM. OTHERS PLANET SYNCHRONICITY SOUND VISION. CURIOSITY. AREA 51 OBSERVE MYSELF PRESENT. MYSELF OBSERVE ARNETTE TEXAS PAST. I can just make out the gist of what's being said, but it took me a while to figure out what it is they have in common. It also doesn't seem like you're doing much with the concept of Jensen and the alien being alike in their purpose, both being observers. quote:The citizens of Arnette, Texas had conversation with each other, often about topics other than their careers. There were wealthy neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods, as was the case with every other town Jensen had ever been to. Both were ubiquitous signs of the human condition, with most humans considering the former to be a perk of being alive and the latter to be regrettable problem that could be curbed but never truly eliminated. Why are you telling me what humans think about conversations and poverty?. I know, I am a human. It made me think that maybe Jensen was going to turn out to be an alien, too. quote:The mold in the tank, with its microscopic cells working in perfect sync, had formed a sac of ganglions with an uncanny resemblance to an animal's nervous system Without that last part, you'd be showing that the alien is inhuman instead of telling it. quote:Area 51: CAN YOU SEE ME RIGHT NOW? More observer/bering observed stuff. I thought this was going to be a theme, but it's just thrown aside. There could be a power struggle going on with the scientists wanting information the alien is withholding (on purpose or otherwise), and in that context this reveal could have carried more weight. Being observed without your knowledge is an unsettling thing! quote:Area 51: WHY DID YOU KILL CHESTER MURRAY? That question would have way more impact if you didn't follow it up with a bunch of exposition. I'd leave Chester's details to the reader's imagination - perhaps with just a hint about his cause of death - or put the exposition earlier in the story. And why is Jensen asking about him when there were nine people dead? quote:If that distressed, but alive town knew that its citizens had been killed by something sapient, they would want more substantial answers than that, as did the director. Jensen would have to try a different tack. "That distressed, but alive town" sounds awkward to me. If it is distressed, it is by definition alive - even though alive is an odd adjective for a town. You also refer back to the town with "they", so maybe it should have been about those distressed citizens. (and there's a spelling mistake). quote:The only link connecting the victims, aside from them living in or near the Arnette city limits, was the strained relationship they had on the people they lived with. Chester Murray was an alcoholic who made his wife and children miserable. Patricia Gallagher was the landlord who imposed draconian rules on tenants who put up with it because they thought they had no better options. Lorelei Weston had recently come out of the closet, only to find that her devout Christian parents and siblings weren't having any of her sexual identity. If the mold couldn't tell the difference between those situations, perhaps its senses weren't that fine-tuned, after all. Again with the exposition/telling that slows the conversation down. Instead of puzzling out what happened from what the alien says and/or clues/foreshadowing from earlier in the story, I'm just getting the answers served, and that's boring. quote:Area 51: EVERY NODE YOU DEACTIVATED ONLY MADE THE SITUATION WORSE. THE NODES YOU THOUGHT YOU WOULD HELP ONLY GOT MORE MISERABLE. YOU HURT ARNETTE, AND IT MIGHT BE A LONG TIME BEFORE THOSE NODES GET BETTER. I like this. Up until now, the all-caps speech has been very technical language. Now the mood changes. Jensen describes what has happened on the most basic emotional level - "You hurt Arnette" - and here the use of the town's name like they're talking about a person works. Jensen gets to show emotions! Empathy and humanity. quote:Assistance with what? Jensen wasn't sure if the mold could even articulate the answer if she asked. For a moment she sat in her chair and buried her fingers in her hair. Then she got up, printed the conversation log, and left the room to present her findings: another incremental breakthrough, with much more stumbling around yet to come. Aaand its over without nothing really getting... resolved? Since it was mentioned at the beginning that they've had this speciment for a long while, I didn't really know whether anything new came to light in this conversation. What are the stakes of the story? And does Jensen have a personal stake in this? Because it seems like a failure to communicate doesn't lead to any consequences. The story is centered around dialogue, but you keep putting it on hold to deliver exposition. All in all some trouble with telling instead of showing, with some ideas/themes that could perhaps be pushed a little further.
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Feb 22, 2017 08:07
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Kaishai posted:BeefSupreme, a bored and talented child. best compliment I've ever received ty kai
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Feb 22, 2017 08:29
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I'm just gonna keep going with impressions/crits llamaguccii - The Long-Winded Shortness of Breath The perspective is brave. How do you write about organisms that don't speak, breathe, hear, or see? So right off the bat I appreciate the difficulty. After reading it once I looked up the critter you got and upon re-reading it the descriptions made more sense. Much of the prose and imagery is good, particularly towards the end. My only beef is the underlying sense of bitterness that underlies it. For such noble beasts they seem unduly worried about us humans, about how we percieve and treat them. Truly zen creatures wouldn't waste time worrying about 'lesser' beings such as us, and certainly wouldn't write a 372 word litany about how we mistreat and don't understand them. But I did like this overall, a good effort. Metrofreak - Expansion Cute, but not much happens here. Needs proofreading, there's several glaring errors. I was waiting for a deeper conversation between the two cellmates, something that might provide some insight into either of them, but nothing ever develops. So it ends up being sort of bland and forgettable. Jay W. Friks - Loud until silent A lot of run-on sentences, grammar problems, and comma splices throughout. Formatting only emphasizes the lack of variation in your writing. Slow down, let the prose breathe a bit. The whole piece seems rushed and disjointed. I'm guessing that you're pretty new to writing fiction, which is fine, but go read and analyze how authors that you like develop a scene, develop characters, write dialogue. Then write another story and read it out loud to yourself. Does anything sound awkward? Forced? Re-write it. You have a habit of repeating words, sometimes twice in the same sentence. Watch for that and try to vary the words and sentence structure to make your writing more vibrant and interesting. flerp - sound I have to admit I laughed when Jim grabbed the beard from the toaster. Proofread! I liked the characters, the scenario was fine, the aliens at first I thought were made of pure sound but that never really became clear. Perhaps that was intentional. I'm struggling to see how the protag suddenly had the epiphany that the aliens were hurt by the sounds. Which made me wonder if it was all in his head after all, so if that was supposed to be ambiguous it worked. The reveal that the protag had murdered someone seemed wedged in there awkwardly, didn't really advance the character or the plot as far as I could see, so I didn't understand that choice. But it was a fun read so I'm not gonna beef too hard about that. Okua - The Grand Escape from Humanity Another entry I enjoyed reading. The pacing was good, the imagery vivid and the motivations of the protagonist clear. I had a few quibbles with your use of passive voice such as here: quote:A woman's shrill scream was left to sound and resound outside with no reaction from any of us. but overall the prose was strong. Storywise, I don't understand why he took the aquarium down to the ocean, for surely he must have known he would lose the jellyfish-god. to the sea...if he was so dependent on the vials of blood then why risk losing it? It would seem a more natural motivation to horde it rather than risk setting it free. But overall really enjoyed the story. Dr Klocktopussy - Shells I have to admit a groaned to myself a bit at the beginning when it became clear this was going to be a "relationship story" rather than a cool alien mystery...I wanted to know why did they leave? Who were they? But then as the story unfolded I realized why you made the choice you did — it made for a more human, more interesting story. Of all the stories this week I think you nailed the prompt most completely. James is so utterly affected by the aliens and by extension Heather as well, as she evolves in her reactions to his rejection. It is well written, emotional, pleading, and well deserving of the HM it received. Despite my original skepticism this became one of my favorite stories of the week. Killer-of-Lawyers - Eternity Hey another strong entry! Not sure why this didn't HM because it's a risky move, telling the story entirely from the world-alien's point of view. A few previous stories have tried this with mixed results—but you pull it off extremely well. The alien voice is convincing, his perspective strong and engaging. Prose is rhythmic and strong. Your descriptions of the alien-human contact are clear and then the poignant ending hits the right spot. Hawklad fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Feb 22, 2017 |
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Feb 22, 2017 15:38
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BeefSupreme posted:Welcome to Thunderdome! Good crit, good man. Thank you. Hawklad posted:Some Crits for Week 237 - ALIENS You, too. Also, in for this week.
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Feb 22, 2017 15:55
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Great crittin' guys. Very much appreciated!
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Feb 22, 2017 18:04
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Ready to get lyINg. :p
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Feb 22, 2017 23:17
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Here's another one:The Cut of Your Jib posted:Last Flight of The Konstantin Overall it is very heavy-handed with the morality and I really don't understand the motivation of Baran at all. Why does he care so much about the bugs in the first place? He is so torn and gut-wrenched by their plight, so much so that he just straight murders some fellow humans over it, but its not clear at all why. Obviously Talcorp is the big bad guy here so maybe spend more time addressing that. The writing is very tell-y in describing his emotional responses. Use stronger dialogue and internal monologue to put the reader inside his head and maybe we might understand why he feels the way he does about Sklyx & co.
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Feb 23, 2017 03:25
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I would like a flash rule please
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Feb 23, 2017 06:50
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Crit of Solitair's Collective Soul First impression: having an alien species make literal observations is one way to answer the prompt, that's for sure. I wasn't sure where this was going at first, but I liked the alien communication quirks from the start. Jensen seems inconsequential to me, which you formalize early by having the alien call her Area 51, rather than her name. Which is part of your point, but it doesn't give me any attachment to the character. I was hoping for some physical interaction or action of some kind (but that's probably just me, I love action). There are some Solaris vibes here, which is always a good thing. Summary: A scientist sits down at a terminal, one of many scientists who have done just that, apparently, and starts to talk to an alien glowing fungus. She talks about stuff, the alien replies, she asks more questions, etc. Then she stops talking to the alien, for some reason? Not really sure. That's pretty much it for the plot. The alien views humans through it's own life patterns, such that it sees cities as singular organisms. That leads it to view dysfunctional pieces of the city as diseased cells, effectively, and it tries to act like an immune system, to remove them from the body. Turns out that human dysfunction, bad as it may be, is a part of life. And that killing people is definitely worse than living with them. Also this alien, which can distinguish other instances of its own species as separate nodes, it fundamentally misinterprets humanity. So maybe it's not so intelligent. The end line, about more stumbling, might be another thought here about how we can never actually know stuff, we're just fumbling in the dark for close approximations of the answers. Distinctive Feature: The alien dialogue stands out, for sure. The lack of tense and the unusual grammatical structure make it unique. I could very easily see this going very poorly, but you pull it off well. I'm not going to attempt to learn your grammatical structure to see if you are consistent throughout, but I buy it through the length of the story. It is foreign enough to convey a difference in communication, yet comprehensible enough that I don't have to spend much time attempting to untangle the mess. Good stuff. Strengths: As I said above, you pull off the alien speech well. Your prose is clear. You've got a interesting idea here--an alien species arrives, adapts, observes, and then even tries to be compassionate (though it fails, rather spectacularly). I like your concept for the alien species (though I wish you'd have given it a name--something the scientists call it or whatever). It's cool. I like that each instance finds it's own adaptations (and only what it needs to survive, as opposed to redundant human adaptations). The alien misunderstanding and subsequent action are interesting, that killing could be considered compassionate, from a certain (misinformed) point-of-view. Weaknesses: First, I think the information she discovers might be considered more than an incremental breakthrough. Jensen is also pretty flat, not a particularly interesting character. That's okay, since the alien is the focus here, but you give a lot of words to someone who adds little to the story, in any way. I don't think the narration pieces do much of anything for you, really. There are a few pieces of information we get from there, but we could either have done without them or gotten them in the 'dialogue'. I also think you give us too little about the people that died, and much too late. We could have been drawing conclusions much earlier, piecing together this alien observation along with the scientist, but we are effectively told it at the end. So the pacing is weird, in that sense. Also, how did this fungus get captured? Would be interesting if the fungus basically stood down, after its assessment of the success of its 'solution'. Overall Impressions: I like this story. It held my interest well for a story in which nothing much happens in the present. I like your imagination, and I like the plot details of the story. I think there are a few ways that you could polish this and make it better. I could see an interesting version of this story where we're just reading a chat transcript, or something. But you've got a solid piece, and a great first entry. Looking forward to reading more. I was going to do a line crit, but I don't necessarily have a ton specific to say, so I'm going to not do that. Welcome to the dome
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Feb 23, 2017 07:57
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Solitair posted:Collective Soul All right, I'm critting this as well, since we're bot FNG's here at the 'dome. When I first read this story, I didn't like it very much. Beefsupreme seemed to like it though, so maybe I'm just stupid (entirely possible IMO). I'm giving it a second try now. The Alien's speech impediment is still confusing to me. I think you overdid it just a bit. You could have it forego plurals or singular versions of words and not conjugate its verbs and you would achieve the same effect without making me reread the alien's sentences thrice. You probably sorta kinda knew this because Jensen seems to spell out/translate the alien's replies in her inner thoughts, which is frankly the only way I could follow what was happening. And honestly, your story pretty much hinges on the speech gimmick. Other than that we have a researcher asking questions and the alien mold answering. We find out the alien was trying to help and not malicious, but as Beefsupreme said, the murder victims are only introduced and immediately resolved halfway through or at the end. Maybe this would have worked better as a whodunnit story? Or giving all the terrible things the alien did up front? When the story ends, we have indeed learned a few things about the alien. It has some sense of ethics. It feels shame, probably. But other than that, not much happens. A strong point in your story is probably your prose and description of the alien, which I can vividly imagine. Unfortunately the whole story takes place in a single lab room. Maybe introducing another character and having Jensen discuss things or walk around would have allowed you to give her some more characterisation? Another thing I liked was your sense of pacing. I know mentioning "your story was short" as a good point sounds like a backhanded compliment but the dialogue did progress smoothly and you didn't tiptoe around the story you wanted to write. You could have easily dragged it out with a thousand more words of Jensen stumbling and fumbling around in the dark, but you didn't, so that's good. In short: You had a good idea but I'm not convinced about the execution. Speech gimmick stands out but also dragged down the story IMO. The pacing was good. You opted for a story that's nearly entirely dialogue, stilted due to in-universe requirements, and I would have liked to see your write more prose because those were the best words in this story. I can't gauge how well you write dialogue because, again, Jensen only talked to somebody with a mandatory speech impediment from both sides to communicate.
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Feb 23, 2017 09:22
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I've come this far, I'd might as well finish the rest of them: BeefSupreme - More Human than Human Best not to drop the 2095 date in there, it started me thinking about how improbable it is that in 80 years we'd have mastered warp drive and colonized the galaxy. What's up with Marshall swearing, and then all the attention you give to it? Jarring. If he's going to swear, fine, but pointing it out and even giving it the all caps plus bold treatment took me right out of the story. I find it hard to believe it is only upon atmospheric entry that he first imagines what it might be like when they find a planet. I mean, that's been their only goal for three years and you make it a point to mention how bored they are. I'm also going to complain about the planet, you just made it Earth but substituted the color blue for green. Reminds me of the old Star Trek TV show where they go out into the desert, slap a filter over the camera, and call it an alien planet. Not the most creative choice. The aliens left me with a bunch of unexplained questions, and not in a good way. Little nondescript brown things with alien eyes, okay. Then the clone appears out of nowhere and decides to slice open his ship-mate, gets taken out by a log, then on his way back to the ship he takes a moment to appreciate again how blue the trees are. It's just a flesh wound hurrah! Then then take off and have a good cry at their misfortune. The aliens have no real identity or motive at all. Not sure what the overall message is supposed to be, or how the alien contact changed them other than now they need to find a new planet. Just not enough going on below the surface in this story to make this story memorable. I did like the 'launch the refugees into space' idea, think it could have some potential. Although why were they refugees in the first place? Sayid sounds like a surfer dude, not exactly refugee material. Perhaps I'd care more about them if I knew why they were put in this situation. newtestleper - Landings I like the idea of desperate humans struggling for metal scraps from the 'space-forged missiles' although it is not clear why they are in such dire straits. Why is the Earth being bombarded with so many meteorites that salvaging them has become a cottage industry? Once Delia finds the alien rock/lander the reveal was a bit underwhelming. The lander is some sort of warning, I suppose, perhaps from a benevolent alien intelligence — danger is coming? Seems from the setting that it's a bit late for a warning, things already seem lovely if there's a steady stream of missiles blasting down from the sky. quote:How many millennia had it lay hidden in the Kuiper belt, and what was it doing ending its life in front of her? I know you were going for ambiguity but why ask questions your story doesn't even come close to answering? At least give the readers some information to draw their own conclusions — your story doesn't, which makes the end result frustrating.
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Feb 23, 2017 17:32
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36 hours left to get in on this week. Also, I'll give flash rules myself if specifically requested (or if the other judges don't answer a request after about a whole day or something.)
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Feb 23, 2017 20:06
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... I'm IN, and give me a flash rule asap.
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Feb 23, 2017 21:14
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Okua posted:... Uncommonly powerful acid -and/or- A building that used to be a library
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Feb 23, 2017 23:03
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Dr. Kloctopussy posted:I would like a flash rule please An irresponsible short-cut -and/or- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l475gwnuV9k
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Feb 24, 2017 06:07
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hey what the hell even is a surreptitious muffin anyway u suck
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Feb 24, 2017 07:25
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BeefSupreme posted:hey what the hell even is a surreptitious muffin anyway muffin you curdled twat get in here
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Feb 24, 2017 07:29
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BeefSupreme posted:hey what the hell even is a surreptitious muffin anyway
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Feb 24, 2017 07:29
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None of you bitches are loving anyone.
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Feb 24, 2017 07:29
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:I will gently caress you Chili posted:None of you bitches are loving anyone. i dont know what to believe anymore
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Feb 24, 2017 07:31
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BeefSupreme posted:hey what the hell even is a surreptitious muffin anyway SurreptitiousMuffin posted:I will gently caress you Chili posted:None of you bitches are loving anyone. since you boys seem so hot and bothered we'll make it official CHILIBEEFMUFFINZ BRAWL Your prompts are: inescapable gravity story must focus on a long term monogamous relationship 2000 words max due by 11:59 PM PST on 3/2/17 TOXX UP, DIPSHITS
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Feb 24, 2017 07:34
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Chili posted:None of you bitches are loving anyone. 
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Feb 24, 2017 07:35
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Sitting Here posted:since you boys seem so hot and bothered we'll make it official 
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Feb 24, 2017 07:36
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| # ? Dec 12, 2024 21:16 |
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Feb 24, 2017 07:36
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