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V for Vegas posted:
I'm in with THE ROARING TWENTIES ah poo poo snipe, have some cool gifs: http://technoir.nl/
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Jul 10, 2013 22:54
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Fanky Malloons posted:I was mostly kidding about the sweat thing, but if there was implied sex in there somewhere, I absolutely did not catch it. Shiiiit. The entire point of the middle third was to show them getting bored of loving each other across time, space, species, and metaphor. Only I read it back now, and I never actually said it. Thread-clogging whine over, but I'll make my next entry clear if it kills me.
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Jul 10, 2013 23:29
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The Saddest Rhino posted:Grade it before I get my daddy to write a stern complaint letter to the White House, then you will see how small your role in society as an educator in elementary school is!!!!!!!!! 
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Jul 11, 2013 03:35
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Pffft, the POTUS aint the boss of me, I live in Canada  You need to learn to proof read. Your spelling and grammar is way below the level it should be if you are, as you claim, eight years old (in ten days). Also, crossing out the majority of your assignment doesn't make it not count. If you didn't want me to read the nasty things you wrote about your family, then you shouldn't have handed them in. ALSO, you didn't even invite me to your party, so how very rude of you to use an invitation to someone else as your submission. F- and also detention 
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Jul 11, 2013 04:31
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Fanky Malloons posted:You need to learn to proof read. Your spelling and grammar is way below the level it should be if you are, as you claim, eight years old (in ten days). I'm never inviting you to any of my parties even if you dress up as an iron man!
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Jul 11, 2013 05:07
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:If I get runner-up like, twenty times in a row, can I take over one week? I got a wicked sick prompt lined up yo. Wanna see a Muffin prompt.
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Jul 11, 2013 05:16
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Fanky Malloons posted:For what it is, I enjoyed it Fanky Malloons posted:although I’m slightly confused as to whether the narrator is supposed to be a metaphorical vulture or an actual vulture. SO HOMEWORK. Jonked The purpose of your assignment was to bring out the humanity in your characters. You succeeded. A+ Bachelard rear end The purpose of your assignment was to cut down on the chaff and tell a straight story, and standard of living aside, you did it. Congratulations. You're already improving. B- Schneider Heim The purpose of your assignment was to cultivate tension with a difficult choice. Schneider Heim posted:"Not if I operate on them at the same time." Sitting Here The purpose of your assignment was to distill the heart of your story into something more manageable. You succeeded. A+ Blarg Blargety The purpose of your assignment was to breathe life into your characters and more importantly your setting. You didn't really do either. Also, not a diary entry (also, tense-switching). D+
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Jul 11, 2013 06:23
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Thanks Bad Seafood, and of course the judges (all yall) who have been slogging through my prose. Sincerely, I appreciate it. I am not in this week, for a couple reasons, but I'll be back.
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Jul 11, 2013 07:16
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Sitting Here posted:I'm pretty sure this is the second slapstick piece of brose about bros that I've judged. In fact I'm certain, I think it was Hillock who brought us the Bromicide investigator, or whatever. Your story didn't have cossack fighting pants though. Clearly you are unfamiliar with the hot, new, Hillock-founded literary genre of highbrow teleological exegesis: bromantic comedy. Anyway, I have only scraps of time for the next 2 weeks and I've developed a taste for my own blood, so I'mma toss down a Thunderbrawl challenge to a participant p: p ∈ {Fanky Malloons, Sebmojo, Sitting Here}. One stipulation: a due date no earlier than the 23rd.
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Jul 11, 2013 09:55
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In with The Great Zopper Toothpaste Treasure.
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Jul 11, 2013 15:03
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Bad Seafood posted:I'm getting mixed signals here. I was mostly just being a jerk. It was good but I felt like it was kind of unfair to grade it against the others since it was so much shorter and stylistically different. You took a gamble, sir, AND YOU LOST.
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Jul 11, 2013 15:51
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Erogenous Beef posted:Clearly you are unfamiliar with the hot, new, Hillock-founded literary genre of highbrow teleological exegesis: bromantic comedy. Come at me bro
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Jul 11, 2013 16:21
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Sitting Here posted:Come at me bro Who will be the noble judgly Spartacus, destined for crucifixion upon the prose of these two Crassi? (judge, prompt, due date, etc.)
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Jul 11, 2013 16:48
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^^^^^ Someone do this thing, it is a good thing BTW I got a few PMs and have been able to reply to every crit request, so for now just PM me if anyone else wants crits from this past week.
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Jul 11, 2013 20:41
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Erogenous Beef posted:Clearly you are unfamiliar with the hot, new, Hillock-founded literary genre of highbrow teleological exegesis: bromantic comedy. E-Beef v. Sitting Here Prompt: Kudzu is an unstoppable force of nature. Tell me a story about something (anything) growing out of control. Genre: American Gothic Theme: An overwhelming feeling of being out of place. Word count: 1500-2000 Due date: July 28th 11:59 PST.
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Jul 11, 2013 21:09
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Sitting Here posted:BTW I got a few PMs and have been able to reply to every crit request, so for now just PM me if anyone else wants crits from this past week. No plat here, but I'd welcome a crit.
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Jul 11, 2013 21:22
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Kaishai posted:No plat here, but I'd welcome a crit. And me! If you've still got the appetite for it.
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Jul 12, 2013 08:29
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In with Return to the Cave of Time.
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Jul 12, 2013 23:02
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Symptomless Coma posted:And me! If you've still got the appetite for it. Yep I'll get to you and Kaishai later today. Sorry for the delay, this is my first day off since not this past Monday but the one before that. I had no choice but to sleep in until 2 PM, go eat a bunch of sushi and just now a mocha and a piece of chocolate truffle cake. No choice.
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Jul 13, 2013 00:27
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Sign ups closed.
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Jul 13, 2013 08:05
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Kaishai and Symptomless Coma sorry about the delay. Kaishai At a glance I wasn't really looking forward to critiquing this, because I pretty much like it all the way. The imagery is lovely, and I had no trouble at all picturing this shipwreck filled with all sorts of bits and trinkets that caught the inscrutable fancy of an Octopus. Even though your prompt was a fantasy story and you use the word magic several times, for some reason I had trouble not imagining the woman's diving suit/"second skin" as some sort of futuristic apparatus. That could just be my reading comprehension, but it could have been a little more obvious that the woman was diving/speaking by magical means. And the role of the porcelain mask was just a little unclear; I'm not sure how existing in a mask in a shipwreck is any sort of desirable escape for the daughter, or why her mother felt the need to double-kill her. Mostly the things that I would critique are just points that make me want to know more: What sort of magic is this woman using? Why is she after her daughter? How did her daughter come to be trapped in a mask? What are he glass balls of fire and how does the octopus get them? You had a bit more wordcount to chew through so I would've liked to see a little more clarification of the other two characters' motivations. But really, it was elegantly done. And I love cephalopods of all varieties so you pretty much won my heart from the get-go. Non-vertebrate intelligence has always been a favorite wikipedia-surfing topic of mine and it's not that much of a stretch to imagine some ancient octopus collecting curiosities from the ocean floor. You did a good job of making him brainy by octopus standards; other writers might have anthropomorphized him into some human stereotype. So good on you. Write more cephalopod fiction. Grade: A Symptomless Coma I, too, suffered from not knowing wtf was going on until the very end on the first read-through. But then I liked it. I feel like the image of the big red button that shows up when the dude is threatening to end the simulated world....I dunno. It could have been a stronger metaphor, something to show that these two have, ultimately, the power to end this universe. I got it after I finished it, but at the beginning, I had no idea why there was this button on a blade of grass and some giant dude and these bugs arguing. "Qualified" isn't my favorite dialog tag ever. I think you hold your hand back too long. We get hints; the supernova that they "called up from the files," the male character wondering if they'd been inside too long and had used up too much memory with platitudes. But on the first read-through, for almost half the story it's a looot of your POV character filling us in via exposition and flashbacks, except the reader has no point of reference for why these two would be experiencing such impossible things as being black holes. On the second read, the whole idea is pretty neat. I just wish the exposition had been doled out in more bite sized chunks throughout the story. Like near the end, there's a big long paragraph of exposition, when the two characters remember first building the computer. I dunno. It bounces between being really vague, like at the beginning and in the dialog, and then just huge dense chunks of exposition as the POV remembers and converses with his cohort. All that said, there is a human story behind this...two people alone at the end of everything, even with the ability to live out near-infinite different forms and lives, are still going to get jaded to each other and the world they built for themselves. Things were meant to end. I like the solipsistic angle to this, too. What if we're all just like, the background simulation for two hyper-intelligent grasshoppers loving on a blade of grass, man. Grade: B
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Jul 14, 2013 01:23
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gently caress I gotta pull out of this one. I was going to write today but instead a bro came over and we had a buncha beers and then decided it would be awesome to grab our bikes and go explore a seasonally abandoned Spring Hill. Long story short it's evening now, I'm missing a buncha skin and my spokes are all hosed up and I never even got any of the work done that I had planned.
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Jul 14, 2013 02:27
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So you and a friend were at the top of a hill and rode bikes down it and you crashed and got hurt? At least make up a novel excuse.
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Jul 14, 2013 02:38
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Yes, but it took up a ton of time as said hill was a bit of ways away.
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Jul 14, 2013 04:12
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I gotta drop out because my hard drive shorted out while I was at work tonight and I'm working all day tomorrow, but at least I'm totally sold on finally making the switch to Google Drive 
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Jul 14, 2013 04:28
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It's coming but I'm going to be late! Having severe connectivity issues this week. I'll probably be a day or so late. Sorry. 
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Jul 14, 2013 05:30
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Well, since everybody is doing it - I don't have broken arms or connectivity issues, but I have taken on a monumental task. Pretty sure there's no way I can finish by tonight. I'll give it my best shot but I also have plans tonight that will soak up a lot of time.
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Jul 14, 2013 16:22
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Looks like we're sorting out the roosters from the feather dusters this week. 8 hours left.
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Jul 14, 2013 23:27
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CYOA Title: You are a Shark. Born Swimming Isaak grins, unable to suppress his happiness. He did it. He graduated from Yale top of his class. The honors didn't really mean anything; he knows this. It's more arbitrary than anything – but he knows his poo poo. Isaak never lost a mock court battle, his presence mesmerizing and his summations crushing the opposition every time. His ability to sniff out weaknesses came so naturally for him. He's ruthless, thorough and convincing. By his last year, Isaak was known on campus as the “Shark”. Most of the other students have jobs lined up in with large firms or huge corporations. Not Isaak, he has plans to go out on his own and make a name for himself. He sets his beer down on the table and smirks at the man sitting across from him. He's the reason Isaak was able to afford school while having the extra free time to study and surpass his classmates. “I was able to talk to my dad the other day, in case you were wondering.” The man leans back in the booth. “Oh?” Isaak raises both his eyebrows in genuine surprise. “Yea, I let him know how reliable you were. Punctual and all that.” “Jameson, that's great and all, but I'm trying to sell my skills as a lawyer.” He furrows his eyebrows. Jameson holds up his hand indicating that Isaak should let him finish. “When you work for my family, reliability is a very important no matter what your role is.” He points a finger at Isaak punctuating the pause. “I'm extending you the offer to be the Family Attorney. The old man wants to retire soon, so we told him we'll allow it if he mentors you first. It's yours for the taking, but you gotta know my dad's the jealous type. You can only work for us.” Isaak frowns slightly and looks down at his drink. “Cheer up Sharky, you know drat well money won't be an issue from here on out. All that poo poo you made 'helping' me out? Just a squirt a piss.” Jameson chuckles as he sips his beer. Smacking his lips together he quickly adds, “You can always try your luck as some hotshot celebrity lawyer out in California like you once told me you wanted to years ago; but honestly, we're the safer choice.” Agree to work for the Mafia. Follow Isaak's dream to become an entertainment lawyer in California. Mercedes fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Jul 15, 2013 |
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Jul 15, 2013 02:17
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The Great Zopper Toothpaste Treasure It's November in your last year of junior high, and every day drags for you. You dream of a job more lucrative than your paper route, excursions more thrilling than your practice drives to the grocery store, and maybe even teachers less profoundly boring than those you now endure. Suffice to say, you long for a change of pace. You get it one afternoon when your sister Grace calls you over to the family computer. Expecting to be shown a new article about the Illuminati, the antics of a weirdo in a fursuit, or both, you're surprised to find the home site of Zopper Toothpaste up on the screen. "Kiddo, you're starting to worry me," you tell her. "Stop being dumb and watch this," Grace says. She clicks on the mustachioed face of Mr. Zopper in the center of the page, and it speaks. "Hello, children! Adults! All fans of dental hygiene!" Mr. Zopper says. "You've all been good to me over the years, as I hope my toothpaste has been to you. I'd like to show my appreciation with a worldwide treasure hunt that will reward one of you with riches beyond your imagining! Right now new tubes of Zopper Toothpaste are being shipped to stores, and clues wait inside the packaging. Put them together, solve my puzzle, and win the Zopper Toothpaste Treasure!" The old man beams, and the video ends. "How did you find out about this?" you ask Grace. She says, "I check the site every week to see if they're bringing the Orange Burst flavor back. So the video can't have been up for more than a few days. You know what that means?" You sure do. Assuming no one else in the world obsessively visits a toothpaste site--possibly not the safest bet--you and Grace might be two of the first people to know about this hunt. You're surely two of the first in your town! You might get the jump on everyone else if you hurry! Turn to Page 3.
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Jul 15, 2013 04:24
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Scourge of the Space Vampire The Oxford streaked through space, traveling at sublight, no place to go. Its crew had earned repose from missions and was making the most of it while it lasted. First Mate Translucia sat hunched over in one of the hyper-ergonomic bridge chairs, purple hair let down and dangling over her shoulder, locked in a fierce chess match with the ship’s computer. She moved her knight to put him in check, when a bleating alarm sounded from down the hall. “Miss Lucy, I hate to cut in like this,” the computer said, “but your uncle’s vital signs have somehow dropped off entirely. In fact, his suit isn’t even showing up on my tracking grid.” Translucia smirked. “Sure it isn’t, Chicken. I thought you were above trying to break my concentration with cheap tricks, Ox.” “No, I really mean this, Miss Lucy! We’d better check on him.” Without waiting for Lucy to object, he closed the chess program and transferred his consciousness into the mobile module. A silver-plated robot toucan popped free from the control panel and flitted around Lucy’s head as she stood up. “Come on!” he yelped from the bird’s beak. Lucy’s uncle Morton, captain of the Oxford, lay minutes ago in his bunk taking a brief sublight doze. Now they found an empty space where he’d slept, in a room with no windows and a single door that had not been opened in an hour. “Geez, Ox, what do you think could have happened?” Lucy asked. “He couldn’t have spontaneously combusted, right? God, that’d be awful.” “I doubt it, Lucy. There wasn’t any heat spike, and if a human of your uncle’s size exploded I calculate that a generous amount would have been generated.” Lucy rapped him with her knuckles, knocking him off-balance. His wings fluttered rapidly to keep the steel body level. “Joking! I’m just joking, Miss Lucy. No, I’d say the most likely option is that he was teleported out somewhere.” “Which is supposed to be impossible, right?” “Right, but you never know what those slicer scoundrels are going to cook up. We need to run a scan to check our defenses, see if we’ve been breached.” The main control panel chirped a trilling alarm. Lucy and Ox turned back to the cockpit to investigate. “It’s a call,” Lucy said. “Whoever took Uncle Mort wants to talk to us.” She pressed a button on the terminal and one of the smaller viewports flashed to life. On the screen was a pale man dressed in a snug black robe. Lucy could only see his upper body, but his proportions seemed subtly wrong—definitely not human. He sat before her wispy and semi-transparent, but his eyes crackled with power. One look at them made it impossible to deny the man’s energy and presence. He said, “I assume I am speaking to First Mate Translucia of the Oxford?” His voice was low, like the moans of a dying sun. Lucy clenched her teeth, stared back into the man’s black-hole gaze. “You are. I’d like to know what you’ve done with my uncle, please.” “So bold,” the man said, “for one so young. Child, I represent the Order Vampyrus. We are spirits bound into cursed flesh, marred by the fires of the sun and forced to feed ourselves on the life force of mortals…” “Hold up a second,” Lucy said. “Vampyrus? As in vampires, the whole fangs, no-reflection deal?” “That’s a rough approximation at best, Child. Essentially true, but it does not even strike close to our true nature. If you were to study our kind as a group…” “Excuse me,” Lucy said. “Sorry, one more. You hate garlic, sunlight, the whole shebang. Or am I misinformed?” She saw the creature grate his teeth. “No,” he said stiffly. “Not misinformed, but obsessed with simplistic, hurtful stereotypes? Yes, I’d say you’re that. Getting on my nerves? Oh, that too, absolutely that. My dear Miss Translucia, I think I have come to the end of my rope with you. I was going to permit you to share some last words with your uncle, but I think I’ll skip straight to the part where me and my fellows bite his neck open and feed on his life force. Ta-ta.” He cut off the transmission. “Well,” said Oxford after a moment, “he was pretty rude, wasn’t he? I traced his call, though—the Vampires are based on an old mining asteroid not too far from here. What’s the plan, Lucy? We’re going after Mort, aren’t we?” Lucy turned back to him. “Oh yes. We’re going to get him back, the only question is how.” How should Lucy and Ox go about saving Mort? Two good options would be to either launch a DIRECT ASSAULT or try a more STEALTHY APPROACH.
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Jul 15, 2013 05:41
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Return to the Cave of Time You have lived your life, and now it is coming to an end. The world you found yourself in when you left the Cave of Time has become your home, for better or for worse, and you have learned to embrace it in all its strangeness. It wasn’t easy; the customs, the people, the plumbing all took some getting used to, but you managed. You faced each challenge as it came, sometimes relishing the adventure, sometimes barely surviving it. Still, it’s not like you had a choice. The cave vanished when you came through, replaced by a smooth rock wall. There is no going home. But once you became accustomed to the weirder aspects of your new environs, once the shock of the new had become the comfort of the familiar, you found your thoughts travelling to other places and other times. You wondered about the choices you made. Were they the right ones? Could things have been different, better even? Was this the best of all possible worlds or just another place for things to be? You resolved to return to the Cave of Time, to somehow find it again and traverse its many and multiplying tunnels... but at each opportunity another event arose in your adopted world that needed to be dealt with, some danger to be faced or problem to be solved, and you put the idea aside until more circumstances were more favourable. As the years passed, such occasions grew scarcer and the stakes grew smaller and more personal. You didn’t travel so much, you developed friendships, acquired belongings. You settled down and chose to traverse a single passage - the quieter life of middle age. And now, now you see yourself in the mirror, skin wrinkled like a lizard, hair grey and unkempt. Your bones hurt when you move and your days of peril and adventure are fogged with distance. You’ve made and lost friends, homes, money, but you’ve never lost the memory of emerging from the Cave of Time - a whole new world to explore. Filled with bittersweet memories of days gone by, do you: Set out to find the Cave of Time once more before you die, cursing your frail and aged body Be grateful for the life you’ve led and have another cup of tea and a biscuit Fumblemouse fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Jul 15, 2013 |
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Jul 15, 2013 07:27
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YOU ARE A MONSTER Your eyes clear and you see red. The floor is soft, the rubber embraces your forehead and nose, smelling faintly of sweat and plasticiser. Your arms are crossed in front of your stomach and pulled taught by straps passing around your back - your weight has cut off the circulation so they are utterly numb. Your tongue feels too big for your dry mouth,and as you struggle to suck some saliva into your mouth and call for help a speaker crackles into life. “Ah, welcome back to the land of the living! We’ll be right in to let you out of that straight jacket. Don’t wriggle too much, you might rip your stitches,” the speaker lets out a crackly sigh, “again.” You panic, and violently shake from side to side, rocking like an overgrown cockroach. The last thing you remember is mashing a noseful of coke at the club, and now it seems you have been abducted, your organs stolen, and committed to an asylum! A door hisses and clicks open and unseen hands flip you over. Four orange environment suits peer down at you with their dark plastic face masks while you wriggle about on the floor like an epileptic caterpillar. “Why am I here? Who are you? Where am I? What’s happening?” They ignore your questions as they haul you to your feet, not roughly, but with practiced efficiency, and steady your wavering body. “I’m going to take the jacket off you. Don’t worry, we don’t doubt your sanity, but we had to find a way to prevent you tearing your stitching. Again.” The speaker walks behind you and loosens the straight jacket, immediately a hot stream of pain rushes down your arms as fresh blood enters stagnant arteries and veins, making your hands tingle with sharp points of pain. You wince and gasp as feeling returns. “You kept scratching at your chest every time you began to come out of sedation. We had to keep putting you under, so you may feel some disorientation and confusion.” The jacket is unbuckled and pulled off, but when you try and use your arms they flop about like limp fish. Their constriction may have caused permanent damage, and it is clear it will take some time for you to regain some fine motor control. The suit continues in conversational tone. “You see, it’s almost as if your subconscious knew we put a baboon heart inside you, and was desperate to get it out.” DECISION TIME YOU DUMB COKE HEAD. THIS IS YOUR OWN FAULT. YOU DESERVE THIS. (1) Kill the evil scientist. Take on the minions. Beat some sense out of whoever is still alive. (2) Hear the doctor out. He seems like a reasonable guy, and there is probably a perfectly rational explanation for him putting a baboon heart inside you. CancerCakes fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Jul 15, 2013 |
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Jul 15, 2013 08:11
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Time's up. If you submitted a story, turn to page 53 If you failed to submit a story (i.e most of you), turn to page 72
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Jul 15, 2013 08:12
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Crits! I am going to keep editing this post until all four or five are done. I am very busy writing about Dragons so I was a half-rear end judge this week. I am simulating a kid who has no attention span and hates reading and would rather play Bubsy on the SNES. CYOA is almost like a videogame though, so I did ONE run-through from your story. I am going to rate you and give feedback based on how likely I would be to start from the beginning and try out another path. Kids are not going to try another path if the first one was poo poo. They are going to grab another book with a loving guy in cool armor on the cover because maybe that one isn't boring as poo poo like the one they just read. ~~~~~~~~~~~~Mercedes~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It's the master of second person and the aspiring CYOA author, let's see what he/she... O... it's a third-person, Choose Isaak's (own?) Adventure. Entitled: You (Isaak?) Are a Shark. Maybe it should be called "Isaak Is A Shark". What did I do? I became a lawyer for the mob and I (thirty years later) forced that dude to tell me what he knows. It was kind of cool that so much time elapsed, but would this dipshit Jameson really have not been arrested or killed already over the course of thirty years? You have several instances of not using commas: “Did I not make myself clear Detective?” Who is "clear Detective" and why is he making himself a clear Detective? Or did you mean, "Did I not make myself clear, Detective?" The premise and the choices from the first fork are nice. I did find myself deliberating quite a bit since the choices were very different and I did feel myself to be in Isaak's shoes. Since Isaak graduated from the famous school named, "Yale top of his class," I decided to go with a Mafia family that appreciates the prestige of Yale Top Of His Class. Once advising the Mafia the choices became less interesting. Do I figure out what dipshit did or do I trust him? Obviously I want to figure out what he did. He killed a broad and made her swim with the fishes? Unique. How does it end? Everything's going to be okay... O, thank God. I'm so relieved. "There are way too many adverbs in this piece, by the way," systran says perturbedly. Would a kid with ADD go back for another run? Only if there were no paperclips to bend around until they break. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Kaishai~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Second person. Finally. What did I do? I can remember what I did without going back and looking. Good sign. I went to Siberia and then I went to investigate the flickering light. I have a feeling the other forks may have been more interesting than the one I took. What a pity. I liked that I died at the end of this one. When I read CYOA as a kid, I loved endings where I got turned into something weird, displaced in time, or killed in a unique way. My dying here was a bit banal though. Getting knocked out by an anonymous person and then freezing to death was not the most interesting thing that could have happened here. It did kind of read as an obvious, "You made a wrong choice, idiot, try again!" more than it read as a half-rear end ending. The start of this was nice and reminded me very much of CYOA made for kids. Zooper is the perfect word. You had to work fairly hard to contrive ways for kids (kids can't do anything cool IRL) to travel around and do stuff without parental supervision. You made some plausible reasons up that didn't quite trick someone as smart as me, but they could probably trick stupid kids that read CYOA books. I thought pretty hard at the first fork: I went with Russia mostly because that's what I thought. Did I think that because you wrote it as me thinking that? Maybe, but you sort of convinced me so I went with it. The second choice seemed less important on the surface, but after seeing the consequence I guess it was important since I died. Maybe if I had waited I would have seen who the other person was? That made me want to go back and see who it was, but I didn't because I decided ahead of time to only do one run-through! I liked the humor put into this. My favorite line was, "Assuming no one else in the world obsessively visits a toothpaste site--possibly not the safest bet--you and Grace might be two of the first people to know about this hunt." Would a kid with ADD go back for another run? After he pulled the dried Elmer's Glue off of all his fingernails, he would definitely go back for another run. ~~~~~~~~~Nikaer Drekin~~~~~~~~~~ Space Vampires, YEAH! Third person though Even though I'm not big on third person for CYOA, you at least have a lively protagonist. Green hair 2 Xtreme.What did I do? I directly assaulted the base, then I blew up the whole asteroid. The first choice between being stealth and direct assault was fun. This is the third crit I've done and all three have had good and dynamic first forks. I felt satisfied with my first choice after seeing all the cool battle scene poo poo happening. The writing was serviceable and the humor mostly worked. The part right before the choice of whether to use a small weapon or blow up the asteroid was a tad flat. I chose to blow up the asteroid because it was a big and destructive decision. The "twist" ending came from a mile away, but it was still executed pretty well and I think a kid would say, "WOAH!!!" I was slightly disappointed that the ship saved the protagonist. It might have been cool for everyone to blow up and die with the uncle floating through space, immortal, but stuck. Poor guy. Would a kid with ADD go back for another run? I wonder if I can get turned into a vampire? ~~~~~~~~~~Fumblemouse~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mercedes and you were the only ones that had "grown-up" CYOA stories. I really enjoyed this one. I know this style and subject matter hit my weak spots, which perhaps clouded my judgement of how objectively good this was. What did I do? I re-entered the cave and then followed the man deeper down. The ending was brilliant. I didn't see it coming and it made perfect sense. After every fork I wondered what would have happened had I made a different choice. If I had stayed and had a biscuit, would I have slowly realized I was living in a fantasy world? Would I have woken up in reality and actually been able to live my life with the knowledge I gained? Was the choice I made the only way to be trapped in the time cave and create a new fantasy world for someone else? I am actually interested enough that I might go back and find these answers FOR FUN and not out of judging duty. Would a kid with ADD go back for another run? Probably not, but kids also like pogs. I will go back for another run. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~CancerCakes~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I might have taken some bad forks, because another judge liked this a lot more than I did. You are only as good as your weakest fork-forged link, and this fork was forged like a kid pushing the pointy ends of his salad fork and his entrée fork together and then holding them both up by the handle of just the salad fork. "an endogenous retrovirus situation will occur". Holy poo poo. Good thing you didn't just say, "Your body will reject the foreign tissue" or something banal and BORINGGGG like that. I'm glad you used a lot of mumble jumbo words that probably don't apply to this situation at all, but I'm not going to read that Wikipedia article as long as you did(n't). "...and now it seems you have been abducted, your organs stolen, and committed to an asylum!" You could have just kept at this wonderful telling: "And then IT SEEMS a bunch of boring poo poo happened and you stayed where you are. The End." What did I do? I trusted the doctors all the way through. Maybe it is my fault for being totally passive and never making a break for it, but I was trying to "win" and not taking risks. It's your job to make all the forks not boring. I felt punished for making the choices I did here, but rather than being punished with a cool or crazy thing happening, nothing happened. The humor and tone of this was all over the place. The humor never quite worked for me and the weird colloquial profanity thrown in there felt out of place at best. You mentioned "tearing your stitching" a bunch, but since you already told and didn't show me that IT SEEMS ALL YOUR ORGANS WERE HARVESTED, it's pointless to mention and belabor so much. A baboon heart isn't that exciting and maybe it did something cool in the other forks? I'm not going to bother checking. Would a kid try another path? Hey, look, there are naked people in this National Geographic. angel opportunity fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Jul 15, 2013 |
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Jul 15, 2013 16:25
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systran posted:
gently caress my life. 
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Jul 15, 2013 17:13
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Mercedes I feel bad for not mentioning in my crit from last week that CYOAs are one of the few times where 2nd person is the convention. That said, I kinda like that it was in the 3rd person. That is to say, the POV didn't really detract from the piece in and of itself. Where you did struggle was tense, punctuation and clarity (in places). Tense: quote:As Isaak walks through the police station, he feels the angry eyes of countless police officers burning holes into the back of his head. It made him feel powerful. He effectively made the police's job twice as hard if they ever had any hope of charges sticking. You switch tenses here. The first sentence is in present tense, the rest of the paragraph is in past tense. It needs to be either "It makes him feel powerful" or if you still wanted to stay in the past tense for some reason, you could say "It had made him feel powerful" but you would need to do some rewriting to tell us how and why he feels powerful. Also, reread that last sentence. Isaac makes the police's life hard IF they have any hope of the charges sticking. If the police have any hope of making the charges stick, Isaac makes their job twice as hard. Or did he do something in the past that is currently still making their job twice as hard? Reread your piece and look for more sentences like that. Also words like effectively, eventually, or really anything ending in -ly should have to fight gladiator style to be a part of any given sentence. And commas. I see Systran has you covered there, but the piece is rife with missing comments. As for clarity: quote:Isaak slams the palm of his hand on the table and decrescendos from a shout to an angry whisper in one word. “You listen to me Jameson...." I'm not sure how someone decrescendos in one word, or with which word Isaac accomplished this feat, but I can't imagine a sudden one-word change in volume as anything but comically over dramatic. Also, stop telling the reader when someone is smiling or making a face to hide their true emotions. It's ok, we can usually figure it out by what they're saying! Next time, try to let your dialog speak for itself a little more, and try to use few or no adverbs ending in -ly. Content-wise, I wish the entertainment lawyer bit had been on par with the length/detail in the mafia bit. I do like that there is a distinct difference in Isaac's characters between the different paths, however. Kaishai Oh it's you again, making me look all dumb by writing good stories that are hard to critique. This was fun. I want to whisper sweet nothings into your ear about this CYOA. I did find it a little less than credible that these two siblings would have or acquire the means to go to Russia/China, but that's CYOAs for ya. The uncle made sense, the random school trip to China a little less so. I also felt like the Siberia path was a little more fleshed out, but Grace didn't come along that time so in one sequence she ends up being a bit player. But given the format and the well-worn tradition of putting kids in situations they have no business in that CYOAs celebrate, it's all good. My grudging choice for victor....just remember that 'Mojo only has ONE nemesis in his life. Needed more cephalopods though. Nikaer Drekin Someone really needs to do a tally and figure out how many times SPACE VAMPIRES has appeared in TD. I thought there was something a little over-the-top and cartoonish about this; I went back and forth between enjoying it, and getting a little tired of Lucy needing to quippily quip a quip every 8 seconds. That said, it wasn't fatally annoying, just noticeable. Also, going back to the first para, why does every future space chair require more description than any chairs in any other genre? Like I feel like any time a story starts in space on a spaceship, we first have to go through the roster of present chairs and their respective futuristic accoutrements. Also how is a steel toucan robot fluttering around? Why do sci-fi stories involving robots always have to include the protag or someone disrespecting them and shoving them around in a pointlessly slapstick fashion? Why are people always so cavalier toward the AI responsible for safely conveying them around a vacuum? Also also also: His voice was low, like the moans of a dying sun. I have never heard a dying sun moan so this isn't the best simile. Watch out for things that sound nice but don't really do any real work in terms of painting the picture. The first major issue I had plot-wise was the vampire calling Lucy in the first place. Why bother letting her talk to her uncle if there's nothing to gain? They could've just munched on the guy and not said anything to Lucy, which means she'd end up harmlessly drifting along speculating about spontanious combustion with a robot toucan instead of assaulting their base and shining light at them. In fact everything the vampires do is kind of flimsy and confusing, like would the vampire lord REALLY want to let her go just due to her tenacity? And risk her bringing all kinds of space flashlight wrath back to vampire space island? I mean it's a CYOA but ugh I've found myself excusing some shoddy storytelling in every piece for that reason so SHAPE UP you jerks. The full-on assault endings (secret weapon v kill it with fire from orbit) were OK, I liked the "destroy everything" ending, though you gloss over just how they survive the asteroid being destroyed and how a tractor beam managed to safely pull them through fuckin' SPACE and onto the ship (I mean this is an asteroid. Does it even have atmosphere?) The stealth path was only sort of stealthy. Instead of crashing their escape pod straight into the vampires' faces, they crash the pod a little ways away so they can jump out and go BOO at the vampires. Of all the endings though, I think I liked the one where Lucy stabs the vampire the best. Your endings were all distinct from each other, so good on you, and I didn't groan when I had to go back and reread the story again for the stealth path. I know I had a lot to say about this piece, but it's really not bad or anything. With these, I think the tendency is to focus more on the branching aspect of CYOAs then the story itself, so I would've looked a little hard at your characters' reasons for doing the things that they do. Fumblemouse I liked the Drink tea -> wake up path best, as I thought that the ending was the most poignant. Which is kind of a bad thing, since the choices the reader gets to make amount to "sit there" and "stop sleeping," so you're not really choosing your own adventure as much as the other story branches. But the "wake up" ending is, I believe, the good ending, and I thought it was neat. The rest of the story told through the different paths is interesting, but there isn't enough concrete action and I felt like the reader's choices didn't change much beyond the go into the cave/don't go into the cave with satan junctur. That said, I like that this one didn't go for the typical CYOA, where we're hunting for something or exploring somewhere. I appreciate the abstractness of this one, and it almost, almost could have been a pretty cool metaphor for life being all an illusion or a dream or some poo poo. Not bad, won't win this week but it won't lose either. I'll finish these after lunch today, sorry for any typos and etc, work is currently a dangerously towering pile of poo poo.
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Jul 15, 2013 21:01
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 RESULTSProbably the shortest week in TD history, only 5 entries. This certainly wasn't a straight forward prompt as it required you to write six different stories instead of one long one. The point of the prompt was to force you to think about structure and how a story can fit together. The judges have found unanimously that the writer who did this most effectively was Kaishai. Honourable mention to Fumblemouse. No loser this week. But Mercedes, put a little more work into your story next time.
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Jul 15, 2013 22:28
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Week L: Fifty Shades of Thunderdome Judges: Kaishai, Chairchucker, and Bad Seafood. Thunderdome turns fifty this week, and every round has seen the bright red blood of the fallen splashed against the arena walls. But in honor of this golden anniversary, why don't we add a bit more color? The prompt: Write a story influenced by a Crayola color of your choosing. Love story, hate story, whatever you want. Understand that I'm not looking for stories where one character happens to be wearing a Jazzberry Jam shirt: I want the color to matter. Give us a White story about winter. Give us a Green story about envy. Come up with something less cliché than either of those if you can. Announce your color when you sign up. Discontinued names are acceptable, but not duplicates: anything chosen by someone else is off limits. If you really, truly can't decide, a judge will pick a color for you. Hope you like Atomic Tangerine and Periwinkle! Note that despite the source of the week's title, I do not want to read your ideas of erotica. Sign-up deadline: Friday, July 19, 11:59 pm USA Eastern Submission deadline: Sunday, July 21, 11:59 pm USA Eastern Maximum word count: 1,200 The Color Guard: CantDecideOnAName (Granny Smith Apple): "Lightning" Noah (Mango Tango): "The Unpainted Wall" Sitting Here (Vivid Tangerine): "Longitude 124" The Swinemaster (Piggy Pink): "Oh What a Sunburned Baby" Auraboks (Gold) Squilliam Fancyson (Macaroni and Cheese): "Cheesed Memories" Whalley (Robin's Egg Blue): "Return To The Nest" Mercedes (Black): "Never to Return" Nikaer Drekin (Unmellow Yellow): "Unmellow Yellow" Anathema Device (Bittersweet Shimmer): "September" Jagermonster (Purple Mountain's Majesty): "The Purple Mountain" toanoradian (Prussian Blue) sebmojo (Periwinkle; Flash rules: Something the protagonist once desired must escape control; someone or something must have wings): "Hothouse" Nubile Hillock (Razzmatazz): "Excerpt from the Rad Chad memoire [part 3]" SurreptitiousMuffin (Antique Brass) Umbilical Lotus (Wild Blue Yonder): "Make Believe" Symptomless Coma (Brick Red; Flash rule: Story must significantly involve food): "A Love And Beef Story" Besesoth (Key Lime Pearl; Flash rule: The story must be set in North or South Korea): "Far Away" higgz (White; Flash rule: Positive color associations should be written in a low tone; negative associations should be upbeat): "The Full Spectrum of Dissonance" captain platypus (Laser Lemon; Flash rule: The protagonist must be denied something and handle the situation poorly): "The Unfortunate Incident on Catalaxes III" M. Propagandalf (Cerise): "Noyaux de cerise" Fumblemouse (Neon Carrot): "Rabbit's Delight" Kaishai fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 15, 2013 23:54
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V for Vegas posted:
I'll get it to you, like, maybe in a couple of days?
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Jul 16, 2013 00:01
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