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In, Joan of Arc
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Jan 8, 2018 12:33
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| # ? Oct 13, 2024 15:39 |
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sebmojo posted:that sounds like a villainous act, anti-v you probably want to get some satisfaction Sure, let's do it.  I DEMAND MY SATISFACTION
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Jan 8, 2018 12:49
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So be it.
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Jan 8, 2018 14:27
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In Suzanne
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Jan 8, 2018 17:23
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In with "Everybody knows"
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Jan 8, 2018 18:10
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Here are some crits for Time Travel week. Overall I was really impressed with everyone's time travel concepts. It's one of my favorite sci-fi conceits. A lot of the stories were exposition-heavy which tended to work for me. Reading a decently thought through time travel story is a lot of fun. Here are some specific crits. sandnavyguy I know I've read or seen a similar thing to what the Irish demon man offers David in this story. But I can't place it right now and it's cool. Maybe I'm imagining it. Anyways, I think it boosted the story a lot, along with the characterization of the Irish talking demon guy. David was unfortunately completely uninteresting. An archetypal, down-on-his-luck business guy willing to do whatever to make things work. The twist is a given, but executed well. The other big detractor is just how wordy the story is. A lot of the descriptions are superfluous. Story would have been 100x more interesting from the perspective of the demon guy. Yoruichi Again, I like the time travel idea used here, a witch's (accidental?) curse. Makes Liam kind of snakebit: always late when he's hurrying. However, Liam was completely uninteresting. I had little to no reason to actually root for him. Despite that, the ending is kind of nice. Subtle. I wonder if Liam recognized what happened enough to learn from it. derp I love the narrator's increasing insanity and paranoia. Stylistically it's pretty awesome, but I think there's just too much of it. By the time something had to happen for it to be a story a woman shows up who can bring the narrator out of his hell. Thanks special savior woman! The narrator absolutely does not deserve this ending, as a self-professed sexual deviant and murderer who would already be dead if he could die. The style did a lot of heavy lifting. thranguy I absolutely adore the time travel concept used here. People from the future sending their children through the past, chunks at a time, to try to find a livable existence. Cool as hell. The prose is solid, some good words. I thought there was a bit of a weird tone thing going on between the first few paragraphs and the rest. The first bit seems like some extremely dry humor, the rest is very somber and serious. I found it odd too how non-chalant Allie is about all the deaths. Maybe it was shock. Jay W. Friks I liked the more fantastical aspect to the time travel here, but the story was too disjointed for me to really get into it. Lots of Proper Nouns and Special Names that added to the confusion as I tried to puzzle out their significance. By the time I had an idea of what was going on it was kind of too late. Flerp This one's pretty cool. Very gloomy. There's lots of sadness here, but none of it really moved me. I wasn't able to really empathize with the AI. The stakes didn't seem that high. I think it's well written, but it didn't affect me as much as it could have. Antivehicular My pick for the win. I ate up all the exposition about the narrator and their job. It's all very cool and well written and well thought through. I was able to get a good sense of the narrator's character through their (few) actions and also the fun little parenthetical asides. I think why this one didn't get the win is cause not really much happens except at the very end. The ending really worked for me, would love to get an idea of what the narrator and Agnes get up to after the end. sitting here Probably the most human of the stories. It worked well for me in that regard. Characters are decently established. The thing that detracted from this story was the thin relation to time travel. It was kind of vague. I think it was like a memory as time travel kind of thing. And memories are kind of like time travel. But for Fruitypuke it's much realer than that. Good prose and the most emotional ending of all the stories.
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Jan 8, 2018 23:24
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Antivehicular posted:
Ty for the crit!
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Jan 8, 2018 23:38
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yes tyvm apop 
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Jan 8, 2018 23:41
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Thanks for the crit Apop! Yeah, I definitely like making my villains more fleshed out I guess. I tried mixing Some of the Djinn-type "Whatever you wish for in worst possible way" with demonized Irish Brownies. e: I'm also going to try a rewrite sometime using that suggestion about flipping perspective, that could be pretty cool, thanks! sandnavyguy fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Jan 8, 2018 |
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Jan 8, 2018 23:55
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Thanks for the crits, apophenium!
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Jan 9, 2018 00:03
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sandnavyguy posted:Thanks for the crit Apop! yeah same
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Jan 9, 2018 01:09
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In with "Nevermind"
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Jan 9, 2018 02:56
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Yellow Crits Part 3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SMxoM_zc88ehoe1Jc1sKJlBLpDqTwJ3r/view?usp=sharing Includes Solitair's "Crowning the New King", Fuschia_tudes "Dim Procession", Blue Squares' "A Crack begins to form." Part 4 coming soon. Previous parts: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eEQJSPQStODHaZ8jTVpnvDI9aVZ7srFy/view?usp=sharing for Part 2 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kFRROZ9IgLHX1aGLiUK8qnBv8Xt4T8yu/view?usp=sharing for Part 1
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Jan 9, 2018 05:08
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In Can I have Sisters of Mercy?
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Jan 9, 2018 07:36
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Crits. Because I’m an insane person, I always four or five prompts sitting off in the wings. This was… maybe my least favorite of the crop but it felt too terrifically apropos to pass it by. New year and all. I'm glad I didn't pass it up. To be frank, I toyed around with the wording of this prompt a great deal. I thought about listing pitfalls and traps I wanted everyone to avoid but I’m glad I didn’t. I didn’t need to. You all wrote interesting stories that avoided the stereotypical problems one might expect from the genre without the need for me specifically directing you to do so. Even the new blood did alright. Also, amazingly, only two stories were even particularly similar (a deal with the not-devil that ultimately ends with being devoured). Simplicity in a prompt is something I may or may not consider going forward. Anyway, thank you for the stories. Here are my crits. As always, if you feel the need to respond to them here in this thread, don't. Sandnavyguy I have a handful of issues with this. First, you wrote a lot of unnecessary words. I’ll be interested to see (assuming you come back) how you deal with a smaller, more reasonable flash fiction word count. With this story, a significant portion of what you have written has very little to actually do with your story. It’s just set dressing. It’s just waxing poetic about alleyways and clothing and blah blah blah. Lets look at a couple of sentences, shall we? “A cat darted out from behind the repulsive alley dumpster and into the dark yet busy street in the distance ahead as the man kicked an empty tuna can. As it rebounded with an audible snap against the graffitied wall, the drunk but well-dressed businessman paid no attention to the scuttling and scurrying in the shadowed edges of the passage.” What is important here? By which I mean, what is important here to your story? We learn in 60 words that a man, some random man, is drunk. He is in a dirty alley. There is a nearby busy street. There is also a cat and an empty tuna can. This is your opener. We don’t know, though, who this man is or why he is drunk or why any of this is important. Much of which either isn’t important (the cat, the tuna can, the dumpster, the traffic) or could be better couched somewhere else in your story (he is a well-dressed business man, he is in a seedy location -- both implied/brought up with working at a firm). Also, read those sentences out loud. Do they read easily? Do they not feel jumbled in your mouth? On top of that, your story doesn’t actually get interesting until we hit 672 words. That’s right around when we learn that the randomly irish guy can read thoughts. That’s nearly a third of your story! Until that point, it’s all bullshit about some drunk businessman. Now I’m sure you’ll initially argue that it’s very important to set up the tragic story of the drunk businessman because no no no just stop. It’s not. There are plenty of stories about drunk businessmen who lose everything. You could get that across in one sentence. When crafting a story, you need to figure out what makes your story unique, interesting, and specifically different from the ten-thousand other ones like it. And, in this case, that component is mysteriously irish man and his deal. It’s not good enough to simply be able to string together pretty words. Your words, all of your words, need to be focused towards a singular point -- that of telling a very specific story. Set dressing is only important if it adds something important. Did the or the tuna can or even the description of him falling add something important? No. This story is about a deal that lets you reset time. Make your story about that. Make it about that dilemma. And let me, your reader, know what I’m getting into way way earlier. Don’t make me read a third of your story before letting slip what’s actually important/interesting here. Don’t waste words. Lastly, you have some weird internal inconsistencies. Holes. Why did the mysteriously irish man take out David’s wallet and then give it back to him? Why does he care if David should be more specific? Why was he irish? Why include dates if you only use them twice and they’re not important to help your reader keep track of the timeline? How did Gary remember the last words of the deal if “You will retain no memory of this transaction?” For the record, don’t respond to crits in thread. These are all questions for you to personally ponder. Welcome to Thunderdome. Yoruichi I really liked this. Your last line is very sweet and it pulls the piece together in a nice way. I think you should have waited another day to submit though. It just seems a little unpolished. Maybe sleeping on it and looking again with fresh eyes could have been helpful. I think you should have started with: “My name’s Liam,” he said, extending his hand. She raised her eyebrows in surprise, two sharp arches over dark eyes. “Didn’t they warn you not to talk to me?” she said. “I’m a witch.” Your catalyst for conflict needs to be tweaked just a hair. Like, “You think that time flows at your own pace, well it doesn’t, and it won’t wait for me, or for you” is a really nice line. But we don’t really work our way to it. Liam didn’t know that he was coming home late because Yvette only just discovered that her grandmother is ill. I’m also not a huge fan of random circumstance creating conflict. Or, rather, random circumstance being the major/only source of conflict. It’s much better when it’s a conscious choice by the character. So maybe she tells him that she really needs to leave but won’t say why. And she does this is a couple times and he keeps telling her no no no wait wait wait because he’s working to pay off the ring. She chooses. He chooses. Etc etc. Better than him getting a little prematurely tipsy in celebration and that random night just happens to be a night where Yvette has to loving leave right loving now arrghhhh I love that you play around with the prompt. It’s never super clear if Yvette is actually magical or actually has the powers to affect time. The implication is more greater conceptually, contextually, vis-à-vis their relationship. I just love that. Well done. Derp loving. Rad. Opening. Love a good pencil to the brain. Well done use of the date/time markers. It’s a bit risky to spend so more time describing the monotony of 82 seconds but it totally works here. I never get bored with it. I’m always invested. It just keeps feeling fresh. Which is neat. The only time you come off the tracks a bit is at the end with the woman. What she is, how she’s different, and how she changes your protagonist’s situation is unclear. Also, I don’t think you knew how to end this story so you just kinda… did. Overall, very good though. Thranguy Sharp, crisp writing. Good voice. Quick dialogue. Interesting concept. Overall very, very good. Problems: Mr. Carr’s crimes feels a bit of a red herring. Martin “concealing a smirk” undercuts both his outrage at “you pathetic liar” and the protagonists reasoning for hooking up specifically with him. It is unclear when exactly she got to “[know] him that well, [know] how he felt about us locals.” In my opinion, you shouldn’t have capitalized Killing Fields -- I think it makes too specific of a reference. Alternatively, maybe bring it up earlier as something they lament not being to fix this jump for lack of power I don’t know. It’s a cool line it just sticks in my craw for some reason. Also, the ending is super abrupt and a little disappointing given how fun the rest of your story was. Killing your protagonist feels like a disservice and is one of the more uninteresting choices you could have made. Jay W. Friks As I said in my judgment post, what doomed you here was incomprehensibility. We struggled, I struggled, with several major facets of your story. Foremost being that the setting is extremely unclear. I have no idea where or when it is supposed to take place. At first, it felt very pseudo-Lord of the Rings and then a Gatling gun shows up and I just have no idea what's going on. Naming conventions felt haphazard (Lord of Veng, Master Thane, Elizabeth, Shade, Emilio) and that furthered my confusion. Is there a difference between Wolf and wolf? Are they the same as the Shade? There was clearly something interesting going on and I think you had a very vivid picture in your mind while you wrote this. But it didn't make it from your brain to mine. Flerp Things I liked about this: it's in second person, it's about a robot, it follows the prompt, it clips along and I didn't get bored, I just generally kinda think the concept is cool. I'll go into greater detail regarding the things I didn't like. Going second person with a non-human entity is an interesting, bold choice (and one that I'll probably steal to be quite honest). The more I think about it the more I like it. It gives you the ability to juxtapose an alien sentience with your reader's own human experiences and let your reader really feel just how foreign/familiar this other being truly is. How other it is. You missed the mark, though. It would have been cool to let the reader, the human, bear the emotional burden of Genesis's bloody calculus. You shouldn't force it. But you forced it. I would have liked a little more matter-of-factness. A little bit more robot in the robot. Why did you choose to kill your main character off? I'm not typically a huge fan of swinging in a death at the end of a story. And, truth be told, I was expecting a little deus ex machina. You'd certainly foreshadowed it. Sending people back in time. Ending right before the sun explodes. The explicit desire to be a hero. I thought you were setting me up for an ending where mankind made it safe, fixed things this go round, and when Genesis regains "consciousness" it does so in the face of a better world. But maybe you just wanted to avoid loving with loops and paradoxes. Antivehicular Conceptually speaking, this was probably my favorite of the week. Someone complained that it was a little exposition heavy-- which it was-- but that didn't bother me. It stayed interesting. And you wrote it in such a way that the exposition felt (was) vital and meaningful and important to both the story and the plot. I think you needed more words, though. Like, maybe 600-1000 more words. You just didn't have the space to fill out Agnes's character. And you ran out of time so your ending was squished and overly simplified. "Idiots think a closed timeline means room for fuckups, but just because nobody ever finds your body doesn't mean you get out of this alive." That's such a great line. Sitting Here One judge thought this was maybe worth dq-ing since it played a little fast and loose with the prompt but I thought it was fine. I like a little flexibility as long as it's well done and using memory as a time travel device is a cool enough concept for me to roll with it. One judge called this "the most human on the stories this week" which is probably true. I found this to be emotionally resonant but... a little thin. Like, you're dealing with some rather deep, rather intense concepts but maybe not to the degree or depth you really needed to in order for this to fully hit. Good concept. Good characters. Could use a little more knowledge of the setting.
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Jan 9, 2018 17:36
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tyvm for your thoughts tyran!
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Jan 9, 2018 20:47
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Thank you for crits
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Jan 9, 2018 20:58
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Thanks for the crit!
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Jan 9, 2018 21:05
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Yellow Crits Part 4 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X-gSpzECSTRj9Kxiz6cpCtA9Pgw3uVY-/view?usp=sharing Finishing up my belated crits with "Beyond The Black Curtain" by MockingQuantum, "Sanatorium" by Jan, "marvel at the forest" by Tyrannosaurus, "All Shook Up" by Chairchucker, and "Passion Hides in Painted Smiles" by Benny Profane. For Part 3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SMxoM_zc88ehoe1Jc1sKJlBLpDqTwJ3r/view?usp=sharing For Part 2 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eEQJSPQStODHaZ8jTVpnvDI9aVZ7srFy/view?usp=sharing For Part 1 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kFRROZ9IgLHX1aGLiUK8qnBv8Xt4T8yu/view?usp=sharing My crits for Week 279 will be here soon.
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Jan 10, 2018 00:23
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Tyrannosaurus posted:Crits. Thanks for the crits and for the fun week!
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Jan 10, 2018 01:05
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Jay W. Friks posted:Yellow Crits Part 4 Thanks for the crits! (yes I lurk wanna fight about it)
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Jan 10, 2018 01:47
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 Thunderdome Recap!  In this episode, Sitting Here, Djeser, and I look for coherent structure in Week 278: Get Your (Self-Improving) Freak On and turn to WikiHow for wisdom in Week 279: How to Write a Story. We come away with rather more questions than answers. For instance: how much Raid would you need to free your mind from fear? What gets you sent to prison for fifty-one months? Who illustrates Internet guides to touching girls? And where oh where can we apply for assistant realtor jobs that pay $83K a year? Our reading of Electric Owl's "1058 words; Coherent Structure" doesn't shed much light on these issues, but you may enjoy it anyway. The words corporate homosexuality arising just as fast as they were squashed out. Episodes past can be found here!
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Jan 10, 2018 02:29
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crits for uranium phoenix, big scary monsters, aesclepia, beefsupreme, jay w friks, yoruichi https://docs.google.com/document/d/16AKuqhHl_XB03KIe2z99X0SE_-YOc39lmzWIuvEDp3k/edit?usp=sharing
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Jan 10, 2018 02:50
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Thanks Flerp.
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Jan 10, 2018 03:48
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gently caress it. I'm in; give me a song.
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Jan 10, 2018 05:03
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I'm in, gimme a song, Thran. Let's get some more meat in the arena, all this namby-pamby thank you talk is nice but don't forget we're here for blood
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Jan 10, 2018 05:04
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Sitting Here posted:Let's get some more meat in the arena, all this namby-pamby thank you talk is nice but don't forget we're here for blood Oooh so the Empress would like to see some blood would she? Would the Empress like to sit on her throne and watch some newbies flail horribly at each other for her amusement, hmmm? gently caress that, I will fight you. There will be blood.
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Jan 10, 2018 06:00
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Yoruichi posted:Oooh so the Empress would like to see some blood would she? Would the Empress like to sit on her throne and watch some newbies flail horribly at each other for her amusement, hmmm? you have chosen a worthy blade to die on I accept
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Jan 10, 2018 06:44
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Yoruichi posted:Oooh so the Empress would like to see some blood would she? Would the Empress like to sit on her throne and watch some newbies flail horribly at each other for her amusement, hmmm? Sitting Here posted:you have chosen a worthy blade to die on Yoruichi has recently acquired a Thunderdome-themed avatar. Sitting Here has had one for quite some time herself. For this story, I want a confrontation between the women in these two images. Interpret this as liberally as you see fit. Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Jan 10, 2018 |
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Jan 10, 2018 06:48
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Exmond, you've been gettin' real cocky in IRC. You talk like you're hot poo poo, King of the Mountain, but you're just tepid diarrhea on the sidewalk. You think you're good? Prove it. Here's my glove; I'm gonna show you your place; hold still and let me slap that dumb grin off your face. Brawl me, you hot-air-balloon excuse for a bad writer.
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Jan 10, 2018 06:53
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CantDecideOnAName posted:Exmond, you've been gettin' real cocky in IRC. You talk like you're hot poo poo, King of the Mountain, but you're just tepid diarrhea on the sidewalk. You think you're good? Prove it. Here's my glove; I'm gonna show you your place; hold still and let me slap that dumb grin off your face. Brawl me, you hot-air-balloon excuse for a bad writer. You.. you think I'm good?  Take a number and post-pone to February? I'm already involved in a brawl this week. Exmond fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Jan 10, 2018 |
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Jan 10, 2018 06:57
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Exmond posted:You.. you think I'm good? Fine, stay as the bitch you are. Time waits for no man and neither do I.
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Jan 10, 2018 07:21
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Sham bam bamina! posted:No more than 1,250 words by the end of the 20th. For the purposes of this brawl, the 21st begins at midnight Pacific. sebmojo posted:On brawling, by Sebmojo: Ummm...
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Jan 10, 2018 07:28
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I'm fine with it 
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Jan 10, 2018 07:35
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flerp posted:crits for uranium phoenix, big scary monsters, aesclepia, beefsupreme, jay w friks, yoruichi Extremely good crits, ty
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Jan 10, 2018 08:13
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Jay W. Friks posted:Yellow Crits Part 3 Thank you muchly.
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Jan 10, 2018 08:53
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Yoruichi posted:https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3845416#post479874938
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Jan 10, 2018 08:55
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Ok
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Jan 10, 2018 08:59
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Wednesday, technicallySham bam bamina! posted:gently caress it. I'm in; give me a song. Jazz Police Sitting Here posted:I'm in, gimme a song, Thran. Bird on the Wire flerp posted:in Did I Ever Love You People asking for songs will get assignments as soon as I can manage for here on out; plenty of them less. Also still looking for two more judges.
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Jan 10, 2018 09:26
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| # ? Oct 13, 2024 15:39 |
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CantDecideOnAName posted:Fine, stay as the bitch you are. Time waits for no man and neither do I. I'll fight you. . Someone do the needful.
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Jan 10, 2018 10:50
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