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Week 214: THUNDERDOME ALL-STAR TRIBUTE Daeres, "Intense Heat": I'd like to know why an obsidian triangle that plays "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy," of all things, is in the Samoan rainforest. Check that, actually: I don't want to know, which is a testimony to how dumb that is. There's no reason the stone should be there, no reason it should be playing Tchaikovsky, no reason the golems should respond to it the way they do--nothing makes sense! You let your music genre strangle you. I imagine, though I can't speak for Rhino or the other judges, that if the golems had spun and leapt and danced as they worked, that would have shown adequate ballet influence. You'd still have the problem of Itinga lacking personality, and it would still seem as though she'd stepped out of some other story. My hunch says she's a character you've worked with before. The hints of a larger story around her that don't lead anywhere leave this one looking a little more ragged. You'd still need an even slightly logical source for the golems; a human mage creating them for whatever reason might be cliche (it would depend on the reason!), but that would give the story an antagonist. What if the wizard were a retired dancer himself, looking to create the perfect troupe without concern for the destruction of the trees? Would Itinga have to kill him or could a compromise be reached? The obsidian and the Tchaikovsky score are losses, but there's potential in the ballet golems if you'd like to revise the piece. ***** CaligulaKangaroo, "Jean and Milan": You know what impresses me most? Jean and Morgan escaped prison violently, Morgan's a drug dealer, and neither is the least repentant, but you get me to root for them anyway. Jean has his tragic backstory, but it doesn't whitewash what he's done. Even Tyler Milan--despite helping these fugitives in exchange for cocaine--is a bit of a good guy, contributing to an ending that's messed up and heartwarming at the same time, rather like the rest of the story. The humor's on point; the proofing and the delivery of Morgan's backstory are weaker spots that could use attention. I like this a lot, overall, and it's a delight to see the prose powers that couldn't save "BlazinTrees.exe" at work in something much stronger. ***** llamaguccii, "God's Window": I wish this were your first story of assholes being assholes and accomplishing rear end in a top hat goals without repercussions, but I've checked out your debut entry and now I know it isn't. The crustpunk piece is horror, at least. This is... what? A merry tale of the exploitation of a native populace by confidence men who are into disco? What the heck is the point? The story gleefully underlines how incompetent and eeeeeeeevil Cisco and Toni are, but to no obvious purpose. Marqi is drawn as a bloody idiot. It would border on trite if he killed Cisco and Toni for their plans to ruin his people, but it would be a lot more satisfying than C&T getting away with it, the end; and it might justify the time I've spent reading this. I can only guess your goal was to point at some douchebags, but douchebag things are done by douchebags is a message so weak that a newborn kangaroo could beat it up. ***** Fuschia tude, "Stretching Silver": I can't say much for your explicit use of the fascinating Camino de Santiago as a setting. Without the extratextual assumption that Rodrigo and Luis are hiding the body of St. James--why?--there's precious little of the Way to be seen. Only the scallop shells traditionally worn by pilgrims. Your use of the music is stronger, and that is saying something given that nizhonot is limited to an overt, offhand reference that adds nothing to the piece. I cringe at the brothers'--sorry, brazzers'--dialect. And yet. If I assume Craig Billings is out to discover lost history more than to defraud Spain of treasure, I sympathize with him; I like him; I'm interested in his quest and his adventure; I'm sorry he gets murdered. I'm especially sorry if he gets murdered over the sunken silver, which you'd think the brazzers would have taken and spent if they'd found it. Dialect aside, I enjoy this considerably more than the other DMs. I understand why the judges would hold the bungled prompts against you, however. ***** Schneider Heim, "Soul/Off": Well, it's not an anime battle. There aren't any robots. The conclusion is reasonably conclusive, and the characters have (repellant) character. I'd like to call it a solid step up from your previous entry, but a try at humor that flops this hard is almost worse to read than something boring. I can live with Funky's role among the tribe, harem and all, if those people genuinely value him--it's arguably exploitation, but enh. I'm not comfortable assuming native people can't think for themselves and must have made him chief because of naivete. On the other hand, there's the mind-raping sax music.... Joleen treating those villagers like they're the rats or children to her Pied Piper of Hamelin is gross. Full stop. That she does it to force her father to live as she thinks he should, another teaspoonful of gross atop the pile. Like llamaguccii, you have an rear end in a top hat being an rear end in a top hat without comeuppance, but unlike in llamaguccii's story, I think I'm maybe supposed to sympathize with this woman who threatens to throw a child off a cliff to get her way. She's the protagonist! Good grief, what if this isn't meant to be absurd and funny? Would that be better or worse? I don't know. I do know that it's turned out so poorly whatever the intent that you're lucky not to have netted two losses in a row. ************************* Week 215: El sueño de la razón produce el Thunderdome mycatisnorris, "Claudia and the Black Wood": Neither the happy ending nor the portrayal of Claudia's mother and the villagers as the villains of the piece are effective. Claudia hears voices in her mind. They hound her, keep her from sleep, consume her life, "[burrow] through her like maggots through meat," and show precisely zero concern for her or her happiness during her childhood. Not buying them as the good, loving figures despite their grotesque bodies. Nope. Was I not intended to? The prompt does ask that stories be unsettling, so is the discordance between Claudia's reaction to Them and what They have done purposeful? It's possible, but the use of joyful in the conclusion leaves me with doubts. The impression created is of something bungled. The plot as a whole is something of a fantasy staple and predictable as such, and I wouldn't mind more of a look at what Claudia thinks and how Claudia feels. ***** Thranguy, Twenty Questions and a Door Slammed Shut : Good show avoiding telling an interesting story. Megan's relationship with Malik, interesting. Barely explored due to the chosen format. Malik's motivation for killing Mr. Carr, interesting. Not even hinted at thanks to the chosen format. Whether Malik even did it or Megan is correct that he couldn't, interesting. No answer to that because of the chosen format. You're probably getting the idea. I don't know who Megan is, how she thinks, what she feels. I don't know who Malik is. I don't know diddly squat except that Megan's pregnant by a maybe-angel-maybe-devil (maybe-wizard-angel-vampire-demon-from-the-past-future, who knows) and that a priest would like her to admit she banged Satan so her hellchild won't melt under holy water. That isn't enough. The ambiguity isn't compelling in and of itself. The stuff of a fine story is here, but you've thrown most of it aside for the sake of another ill-advised format experiment when eviscerating story for format's sake is exactly backward! The good character voices of Lieutenant Driver and Brother Thurgen (but not Dr. Poliver) don't make up for everything that's lacking. ***** Electric Owl, "And the House is On Fire": For trying to do something and say something with the gross goony-goon stereotype seen previously in such Thunderdome stories as "LYSANDER, THE MIGHTY AXE," "The Murder of Camper Lee," and "The Story of Salt," this earns more of my respect than any of the above. I like elements of what it seems to be trying to do. Pirtz has survived a childhood of abuse with the help of an imaginary friend, possibly a secondary personality; as the story begins that friend is back in his head, grown up and sexualized. Yet if he and she have sex, it's barely worth a thought even in Pirtz's own mind. She is the person who understands him, and he needs understanding. He lives on an island composed of his bed and his chair, surrounded by an ocean of garbage he has created through his grotesquerie. He's nearly immobile. (Which invites the question of where any of his food comes from.) His life centers on a camwhore who obviously reminds him of his blue-haired dream girl. But he still needs to burn himself to feel pleasure, so deep is his self-loathing, the same self-loathing that has created the island and the sea and his obese body that barely moves. And in the end, he dies--maybe?--amidst a conflagration of his own making, happy on some level to do it. There's something to all that, a look into what abuse can do to the abused and what the abused can do to himself. It's still unpleasant reading! Not just in the sense of unsettling, either. Gross characters being gross is a challenging sell even when there's a reason for it. The last section is ambiguous, furthermore. The direct addresses to the reader--the first of which I like, the second not so much--tell me that Pirtz dropped the match by accident (okay; maybe he didn't have the momentum for active destruction and continued his passive destruction to the end) and that he then sat and roasted to death, aroused by the demise he's courted for so much of his life. Sure, I'll buy that. But then why the sentence about trying to run, tripping, and falling? Did you mix up latter and former, in which case Pirtz actively sought death but then bolted from it? I could buy that, too, though I prefer the former for not making Pirtz's death a sad joke, and I'm not sure which is more accurately implied by the mention of momentum. It's an important point. You might have lost even if this ending worked, but I think, for what it's worth, this was infinitely more worth writing than that thing with the incubus and succubus and rims. ***** llamaguccii, "Ablaze": That's a strong first line, I'll give you that, but it isn't worth spoiling the events of the story or the exposition required to connect it to the event itself. It definitely isn't worth the advent of completely pointless and illogical murder. Killing the boy I understand, stealing the mules I understand (N.B. it's spelled steeds), standing around sniffing the burning pig hair I don't understand, but barricading the doors isn't so much incomprehensible as idiotic. What's in it for them to murder some more children, and while I'm asking questions, who the hell brings their infant into a barn fire? It's another tale of assholes doing rear end in a top hat things with no comeuppance, and this time the rear end in a top hat things don't even have sound motivation. I'm not unsettled. I'm rolling my eyes at the random, aimless eeeeeevil. You could try telling this story through the eyes of the family if you wanted a horror piece; that would at least increase the pathos. Or the father or mother could survive, kill the raiders, and be left with nothing for utter tragedy. ************************* Week 216: Historical Redemption (or: Sin, Lizzie) Boaz-Jachim, "Seeking gold, he wakes the dragon": Taking the Lovecraft route in a Massachusetts setting is clever enough. The style you've chosen builds boredom more than tension. There's no clear reason for the stone to create only one copy of each grain of gold at the outset, considering there are surely more possible paths for each grain than two, but to grow in power (how?) later; questioning these things is picking nits, but your protagonist's slow, scientific approach kind of asks for it. Most critically, what am I meant to get out of this story? I know the prompt, so I can surmise that the concept is that someday the stone the protagonist buries creates a multiplicity of Lizzie Bordens who both murder her father and stepmother and are innocent. Without that, I'd be left with "A man experiments on a magic rock, maybe has sex with his client, buries the rock, and walks away." (Why the sex implication? Why does he rave like a madman? Why are these possibilities? Do they say something about him or about the rock? Probably the rock, to exonerate Lizzie, but there's nothing to tell me within the text itself.) Even with it, it's a rather long and boring set-up for "A magic rock did it" as the answer. You maybe got caught up in being clever and forgot few stories stand on that feature alone. ***** llamaguccii, "The Munster Monster": The police-report formatting isn't successful on the whole--too dry, too distracting when 1995 abruptly becomes 1905--but from the December 10, 1989 entry to the July 30, 1992 entry, I see some virtue in it. The details in the reports sketch the shape of what's not in the reports in a grim and suitably intriguing way. That approach doesn't make for good reading at length. It erases personality from everyone involved; it doesn't allow for anything but terse sentences, matter-of-fact stuff; and the last entry would not ever be in any sort of report. You betray your own concept. Your answer to the Lizzie Borden mystery is less satisfying than Boaz-Jachim's: "This cardboard character I made up did it." The motivation he had for killing the Bordens doesn't seem important, either, when the other reports suggest he probably would have killed them anyway for fitting his pattern. ***** SurreptitiousMuffin, "Lizzy Borden loved her father (some doors even the devil won’t open)": Spelling Lizzie's name that way is a good example of one of my beefs with this. It reads enough like a take on the real Bordens that the places you haven't done your research jar me. I can't find evidence the Bordens were German, Lizzie's sister isn't mentioned in the piece, what I've read and seen on TV leaves me doubtful Lizzie would think of Abby as her mother--small points that add up and build an impression of sloppiness. Mind that not everybody cares as much about accuracy in historicals. The other matter is how predictable this is, though it's still clever. Hasse tür, ja ja is a good enough twist to maybe justify the German thing, but how the story will unfold otherwise is obvious the instant Andrew sells his soul. You deserve this win; it's not your most striking work. ***** SkaAndScreenplays, "Terrible Purpose: 1199 Words": Here's another story set to confuse if you don't read it with the prompt already in mind. Will that business about the jingle make sense in that case? Probably not! The "good deed" is too vague in any event. Was killing the Bordens somehow part of his penitence for being Jack the Ripper? (What a question.) The Borden murders took place only four years later. I guess if he met Justice and went off on his perpetual penance tour right away, maybe, only that leaves what the Bordens did to rate axe murder unanswered, and "Jack the Ripper did it!" is at once the most creative and the dumbest of the various explanations on offer. You spend more time on lackluster banter between Charles and Justice than on his killing spree. "They made two more stops and killed two more people." Look at that, SkaAndScreenplays. Is that fascinating? Or is that a writer racing to beat the word count and making somebody's immortal punishment sound like a mundane grocery run? Your proofing is ghastly and your final line unfortunate, introducing a will-he-won't-he ambiguity that can't be interesting because Charles isn't interesting. It all points to a time-management crisis on top of ideas that maybe weren't planned out too well from the outset. ************************* Week 217: SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS, ATTACK! llamaguccii, "Generations of Squander": Not the first time you've jumped to something from late in your story to provide a strong opening line, and not the first time that's failed you. You've given away the end in the beginning. You've also missed the spirit of the prompt some, I think: a boy is the shining star around which the climax and situation revolves. Hell, the very stilted conversation Agatha and Heidi have is, in truth, about a boy, though they don't know it at the time--I wouldn't say it passes the Bechdel, though that's more a problem with the Bechdel than with the story. I can tell you're trying for horror, but some of your lines shade toward purple: "the initial explosion from the dog food manufacturing plant that belched heinous clouds of black terror" is both lilac and unintentionally (probably) funny. The phrase "the governor had emitted a volatile substance" is so clinical it fails to convey what the witnesses, much less the governor, felt when that happened. Rodrigo stands stock still with a melting arm for too long. It doesn't read to me like this is happening to a person. Hitting the right notes with horror is difficult, so keep practicing. I end up not liking this story, but it shows some range and ambition on your part, so I'm not sorry you tried it. ***** Teeny Zucchini, "Blood Of The Moon": The first section is traditional mil-SF fare, but it's not bad! I'm a sucker for starship captains commanding loyal crews. The interactions between the good guys, right down to Norris and the crewmen rescuing Thessalia and Maura so that the loyalty matters, are fun and engagingly drawn. I could wish Yamamoto weren't such an idiot. Bringing prisoners of war on board without expecting trouble, when Aegis apparently has a reputation? Thessalia's plan goes off too easily--if everyone on the Leviathan is so unprepared to fight, how did they win the battle in the first place? It's a hole, and a large one. I'm not crazy about Maura and Yamamoto having a History either, a cliche that does lend Yamamoto some personality, but the personality is cliche also. I want to like the story a bit more than I ultimately do. However, the overall balance falls on the positive side. ***** Maigius, "An Ordinary Day": Oh, boy. I understand. I do. (I think.) You aren't trying to make your story a pointless waste of time with the last line, you're implying that Valkyrie life is so full of battle and dragons and testing awesome weapons that for them the extraordinary is ordinary. Alas! Your portrayal of those things is as thrilling as sawdust, and the extraordinary becomes ordinary in all the wrong ways. Detailed spear QA? I don't care! Tell me more about weretigers and less about how far the spear point pierces! Explain why there are weredeer in Valhalla! Stop treating all of this like it's the game of a very bored child! "The friendly fire did not matter anyway. Everyone would be revived at sunset." You would have killed the story here if it had ever come to life. Underlining that nothing going on matters is generally lethal. ***** The Cut of Your Jib, "Why Chrome is Home": You've hit metal. You've hit the Bechdel. The story has two settings, Shallow Mode and Heartfelt Emotion Mode, each of which I like better apart than together. Shallow Mode includes zooming out of a converted missile tube to slice up zombie men from the back of a motorcycle--dumb, illogical, but a lot of fun if you're into that; for my money it also includes remembering the time you met that hot chick and wanted to put your finger in her butt crack. What the hell is that. It could be more effective at convincing me this relationship is based on love, I tell you what. Roz's death scene (flashback aside) twists the dial hard toward Heartfelt Emotion Mode, and it's effective, but it doesn't feel that connected to the zombie-killing hijinks; too, the bond between them is more told--insisted on--by Ruby than shown. Something is missing there. The final stretch and its attempt to combine the two modes has a forced ring. Everything is written well, though. Your good piece will be an awesome one if you can better meld its different aspects. ************************* Week 218: Duel Nature Beige, "Screen test": Aiyaiyai, I can't get behind the notion this is the worst of the week, but I'm at a loss for why anyone would endure the casting couch for your male lead's sake. His behavior is too ridiculous to be tragic, though I think tragedy is what you were going for. My take is that he holds himself in contempt after his failures in his chosen field. He doesn't understand what his much more successful love still sees in him. To keep her, then, he behaves the way he did when they first met, not seeming to understand that she loves him and not just one long-soured aspect of him. Yet he knows not even that deep down that this aspect is scarcely worth loving, so his downward spiral continues--and meanwhile she wants to see him have his dream so much that his self-sabotage breaks her heart, but at the same time she'll help him along on the destructive path because she sees no other way to help him. They each give up the wrong thing for each other: "The Gift of the Magi," retold. Is that the gist? Assuming it is, it could be a strong story in the right hands. Those hands would have to cut away the moments when he's an absolute, unbelievable clown and make the final message a tad more graceful than a sledgehammer. Maybe yours are the hands. You won't know unless you try. ***** Daeres, "First Contact": At least elder gods from the depths of space aren't stuck in a sitcom this time. Just alien hiveminds. Meaning the entire sentient consciousness of entire species, I gather. An entire species spends years, for some reason, trying to reach humanity for first contact (and I know it's humanity from the word go; there would be no reason to tell the story otherwise), only to get so pissy at the other entire species that finds its cutesy-poo antics somewhat wearing that it wipes out that other species and itself in a temper tantrum. I consider that for two seconds and kind of want to die. Probably it's intended to be humorous instead of exasperating and pointless and banal, like that Jocoserious story, and it flops for similar reasons--though I didn't dislike either of Jocoserious's Cthulhu Dads as much as I do the Aemete. The saga of Rod Bollocks wasn't as funny as it wanted to be either, but it had something this piece lacks and desperately needs: a bit of heart. ************************* Week 219: coz wer goffik Hammer Bro., "The Graveyard King": It's every bit as legitimate and fair to mock left-wing concepts and causes as it is to mock right-wing politics, though I question your talent for gauging your audience--your odds of hitting a trio of judges sympathetic to something like this are not great! Since this is the sort of heavy-handed, on-the-nose piece that amuses the choir but is more likely to alienate and irritate readers outside of it, that's a relevant concern. This isn't the least subtle. Or particularly clever. Ham-fisted satire and smug mockery lack charm no matter the source or the target; I say this as someone with no particular fondness for Tumblr or safe spaces. There's also zero Gothic horror in sight, for a cemetery does not a Gothic story make. The wonder is that you didn't lose. However. Although I can't see a way to make this fit the prompt without a complete rewrite, I believe you could make it a more convincing fable if that were a thing you wanted to do. Strip the direct references to safe spaces and Black Lives Matter and focus on the conflict between Nezz, who works hard, and the gremlins, who don't but want to live off those who do; pull a goofy, graveyard-set "Little Red Hen" or "Ant and the Grasshopper," and you'll have a chance to make the point that I think is at the heart of this story without pissing off everyone who will currently sympathize with your antagonists. If message isn't your goal, then more subtlety in your satire would probably still make it funnier. If you're not wed either to satire or a moral, you could just tell a story about Nezz running businesses, because he's fairly cool when he's away from the gremlins. ***** widespread, "The Thirst of the Land": "After a brief handshake, the two men shook hands." Where's that image of the unimpressed elder gentleman when I need it? Can't say I'm much more enthusiastic about the vagueness surrounding your concept. The main character barters his soul to become... a tour guide? A museum docent? But also to provide energy for the city? This process will consume the person that he is, yet it's something he can in theory do again. Is his soul replaced with another? What does the elder ocean god have to do with energy? Would that part make more sense if I knew more about the Carlsbad region? I'd like to find out where he ends up working; that could answer some of my questions. In short, your ideas are too nebulous and don't cohere into a solid shape, and I'm too busy doubting you know how any of this works either to feel the chills. There's promise in it, though--maybe if you simplify matters so that he's either going to become a docent or a gallon drum of fuel and then tailor the rest of the story around your choice (focusing on the elder ocean god's contract with the city in the latter case, his future state as a tourism zombie in the former) you'll have something good. It could be worth a try! ***** Electric Owl, "Toronto Gothic": Your entry has a faint Gothic flavor, and there's power in the betrayal of a maimed man who wishes to be saved by the priest he trusted to lead him into righteousness. The execution isn't totally pants. I'm fond of the sentence The feeling of walking around with a morbid story where your arm should be. Father Archibald's initial behavior on meeting Nub may be, and I hope it is, a subtle clue that something isn't right about him: he makes Nub dependent on him instantly by suggesting that no, really, you have to use the right hand. No allowance can be made for the maimed. (I'm not up on my theology, but I think Christ might understand.) On the down side--and unfortunately the down side is rather larger than the up--the character of Stephen is a distraction, and his eventual death is stupid and weightless. A pentagram? Am I supposed to believe the corrupt priest got Nub to carve a pentagram in a man for some reason after Nub fled from his murder of his brother? Or did he carve it himself? Why? You could, maybe with a little tweaking and maybe even without, end with Nub lost in the snow and have a satisfying conclusion: he thought himself found who now is lost. That would also let you drop the phone number that currently has too many digits to exist. ***** BeefSupreme, "Member's Only": A small corner of my mind wonders whether you'd have lost without that aggravating apostrophe. I don't know that your story's that bad. The opening's clumsy, sure, and Nathan carries the Idiot Ball for a bit by being unreasonably pushy in just the right way to get himself cursed, and Steve is fairly blase about refusing the creepy old man himself, and Nathan's run of bad luck reads like an ominous report on the consequences of breaking a chain letter, and nothing that happens to him is bad enough to turn this into horror or Kurt into more than a smug, manipulative rear end in a top hat--okay, it's bad. Missing the genre and instead telling a fairly rote evil fairy/witch story (as Kurt might as well be one) are the glaring faults. Saying that, I ask myself whether the notion that well-connected douchebags are the Danville equivalent of evil fairies is what you were driving at the whole time, an idea I like, in theory. Bullies being bullies and winning isn't much fun to read, though, even aside from the work's other problems. ************************* Week 220: Enter the Voidmart Chairchucker, "Yeah, the Girls": Normally I dig the lightness of your work, but your story of standees is featherweight without being fun or funny. It reads like you're treading water. The first two scene breaks are pointless--you could pull the tildes, maybe move the last line of the first scene up to the preceding paragraph, and the story would flow just fine. The mannequin tower lacks purpose too, and that's a darned shame. I wish Margaret carried Lara Croft up the mannequin tower with the creeper in pursuit, and then she would make a Croft-like jump to a ceiling rafter or some such and the PUA would be buried alive in plastic women whose dressed state would ensure that he wouldn't enjoy it. You know what I mean? Margaret currently doesn't do much beyond getting her argument with the pervy dude resolved by Lucy Lawless. The whole situation isn't quite absurd enough. And the creeper is unsubtle and one-note, something of a disappointment. I've never hated anything of yours that I've read, and I don't hate this, but it's solidly meh. ***** Beige, "Retail Therapy": Confused and confusing from the get-go, which I blame in part on the tense errors (presumably) that make it look as though Alexandra is greeted at the door after she's received the friendBOT--what strange capitalization--sales pitch. I'll be darned if I can tell whether Alexandra or Harmony is meant to be the protagonist. The opening says Alexandra; the conclusion says Harmony; the stuff in the middle says you tried to tell two stories at once and ended up with nothing satisfying. Does Alexandra have split personalities? Did she murder someone? What does her witchiness have to do with anything at all? While there's limited use in revising a Voidmart story, if you were to attempt it as an exercise you could try focusing on Harmony and the audit and moving Alexandra firmly into supporting-character status. ***** contagonist, "Aisle Null": You are a recipient of that rare Thunderdome miracle by which stories that would rightfully lose many weeks are spared: somebody else screwed up but good. Your entry is in many ways more of a mess than llamaguccii's, but it's complete. It doesn't rush its ending. The end is even okay, more or less, because it implies that all the craziness we just saw is just another day for a Voidmart janitor. What's not okay: two pointless periphery characters who do nothing but ask about dicks (boring, time-wasting), another pointless periphery character whose role is to talk like a Western stereotype (ditto), mispunctuated dialogue (  ), the random naked purple hermaphrodite (why naked, except to further the cause of regular reports on the state of Jim's boner?), the regular reports on the state of Jim's boner, the she-he pronoun (I'm not personally offended by it, but it's tedious reading), the beetle that stands around waiting to be vanquished, and how little reason I have to care about any of the above. Ninety percent of Jim's characterization is based on what's in his pants. Giving you benefit of the doubt means assuming you're trying to write comedy, but the road to quantum boner hell is paved with good intentions.***** Guiness13, "All Paths Lead to the End": Transmission/diary format is a reasonably natural choice for this story, and there are places where it works. Day Six through Day Thirteen, excepting Day Eleven since that long passage doesn't read as much like someone talking into a machine, are effective. Day Twelve is my favorite part of the whole thing. I also like the mysterious postcard, which does more to tie the story to your flash rule than anything else. (Whether it does enough is another question. I say yes, but I understand why someone would say no.) However, the prose is--maybe unavoidably--dry. Ralph isn't complete cardboard, but the events don't show off much of his personality. The whole situation is stock horror to a degree, a problem I've had with your work before and will again. The end all but skips over the monster before sending Ralph running. I'm reminded, unfavorably, of the first Lovecraft story I read and how disappointed I was when it did the same thing. The final stretch doesn't work as a transmission, either. What's he doing talking at length when he's racing for his life and can't catch his breath? The conclusion is the fly in the soup for me, though the generic flavor is a negative factor too. ***** ThirdEmperor, "Distractions": An excellent beginning trails off into the too-standard Voidmart tour. As with BeefSupreme's piece, I like your Voidmart, but I'd like a stronger story better, and your attempt to avoid infodumping by gradually, indirectly unveiling Ken's situation and goal semi-backfires. It's confusing and eats words. (That said, I like the idea. Maybe you only need more practice with this approach.) When Ken knocks the shelves down, the coherence of the story goes down with them. Why is Ken a trendsetter because of certain generic objects, and why is the manager suddenly attracted to him? Possibly those objects are distracting Ken from his insecurities--that would be clever!--but the manager's smile makes no sense, and an ending in which all Ken's problems are solved by someone else would be something of a letdown even were it completely logical. ************************* Week 221: The Escape of the Bad Words. a friendly penguin, "Passenger Pigeon": Some guy gazes into his navel in traffic and gets himself and someone else killed. Instead of sympathizing with his frustrations with the rat race, I want to punch him. Pay attention to your life, man! Is that supposed to be the moral? I would like this more if I thought that were so, but I suspect I'm supposed to sigh over the waste of this self-centered git's existence. The "migratory pattern" metaphor might have gone somewhere; I wish there were more comparing of life to birds and less comparing of life to a highway. The latter is such a tired idea that I feel weary before the second paragraph closes. ***** anime was right, "From Loaf to Crumbs": You didn't have to make your first paragraph such a significant barrier to understanding, and I get why the judges hit you for that, but if--if--I understand your story, it's a lovely thing at heart. My guess is that it tracks the deterioration of Richard's life and mind: he starts out with a wife(?), but she dies or leaves him. His son(?) kills himself, after which Richard sits by the lake alone. He visits the hospital(?) every day and comes to the bench afterward to keep feeding the ducks, and that routine is his one constant in a world that's falling away. Even when his mind breaks, the ducks are there. When he dies, the ducks wait for him in a heaven made up of the only peace he's ever found (so far as we know). I like all of this a lot, and I wish you'd done little things like clarifying who Johanna and Pat were to Richard so that your trail of breadcrumbs would have been easier to follow. ***** Fleta Mcgurn, "Kotjebi": Good! I thought for a moment that the protagonist would turn out to be a bird in a lovely twist, and I probably like this a little bit more than I would otherwise for subverting my dread. It's still excellent work. The metaphor you employ is strikingly visual: I can see these kids fluttering, swooping, scattering. The detail of the protagonist taking her "sister's" belongings and leaving her corpse is a powerful tool for telling us how desperate the straits are. There's nothing you need to change, nothing negative for me to say. ***** widespread, "Squawk at Night.": Have you heard the Good News about punctuating dialogue yet? Your sentences are awkward too. The second should have said had heard; "In the woman's mind" doesn't need to be in the third. A flashback doesn't particularly suit a story this short. Eyes don't wear bags. And the whole thing ends up being pointless! I guess there's a hint of a moral about not acting too hastily, but the flashback sequence doesn't seem connected to that. ***** Crab Destroyer, "Cuckoo": I get the brood-parasitism metaphor, but what exactly is the point of this story? That some dude is a dick? You find a way within a 250-word limit to dwell too long on how blubbery the boy is and what a complete rear end the father is. It's a repetitive treatment of an idea somehow stretched too thin. Telling it from the boy's perspective might have given it some interest, at least, because the boy might have done something other than glory in being a douchebag. ***** flerp, "Twittering Machines": I don't get much of whatever newtestleper and the other judges got out of this story. Too much of it reads like weird details stapled on for weird's sake. The one striking bit is the bird falling when the viewpoint character tells it what its limitations are. That's good stuff, drawing the boy/girl/whatever as someone who would rather bring others down to earth with him/her than try to fly with them. S/he strikes me as bitter. I don't like the second go-around as much as the first; everything after "No one can fly" is kind of weak, and I wonder why so many birds would give a drat what s/he thinks anyway. I dislike the PlayStation controllers as much as NTL likes them, and I'd cut them, which on its own would dial the forced weirdness down to a more fluidly strange level. ***** Sitting Here, "Deep Sky": Beautiful. An art piece. In imagery and writing, this is the best of what I've read from this week, though the story could probably be stronger. At this word count it's hard to complain about that, but flerp and Fleta Mcgurn outdo you there. Your entry has the clearest message (there's always another perspective) but not much character depth. Despite this, I love the voice of the crow and individual lines like I spread my wings and descend toward the cold, blue rind of the world. ***** Thranguy, "Fossils": Poignant. I would rather humanity be remembered for its brightest days, and I would rather be remembered myself for my singing than my weeping, so this resonated more strongly with me than many TD pieces of four times the length. Your sentences are elegant--though did you mean dirges for cousins?--and the small story of the break-up in the larger story of life provides the human touch that makes some of the best entries of this round stand out. ***** steeltoedsneakers, "Birdsong": I agree with the message at the story's end and heart. I wish the presentation were less predictable and... yes, I'm going to call it trite. It shares problems with a friendly penguin's piece: it's an old idea with which you do nothing new, so the HM mystifies me a trifle. Your writing is nicer and you refrain from unmoving character deaths, so how you avoided a matching DM is at least no puzzle. ***** ThirdEmperor, "Flying Machines": The imagery and ideas aren't bad, but they're all you have. A woman makes mistakes in making birds. Her newest creation breaks when it tries to fly. The end. Yes, and? I like the way you've written about these birds, but it's the wrong way for a story of this length. You need fewer details and more motion. What happens needs to matter. ***** BeefSupreme, "Trickle-Down Economics": There might be some sort of message in play about rich people getting bronze statues while poor people get to clean the bird crap from them, I suppose. To which I say: Ennnnnh. This gets dumb when the bird shows up, especially when the only thing that happens is exactly what I knew would happen. It's too cartoonish to be taken seriously but not funny enough (read, at all) to make for a good light piece. ***** Dr. Kloctopussy, "Junk": Why is the main character pumping breast milk when she's pregnant? Does she miscarry or have an abortion in the end? Who was Craig? An ex? A son? I can tell there's a story here, but it's more nebulous (though written better) than anime was right's entry. I can't put the pieces together for this one--I can make guesses at everything but why she was pumping milk in the first place. That's an utter mystery, and it makes me doubt my understanding of the rest. Kaishai fucked around with this message at 08:38 on Dec 22, 2016 |
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Week 222: Deliver Us From Bad Prompting ZeBourgeoisie, "Creative Disobedience": A mild-toned story that swings into random body horror might as well be called the ZeBourgeoisie Special in these parts. I've seen you do it with your merman entry, with Butterman, with Madison, with the robo-blowjob, with the lizard sex, and again here. (Okay, maybe the lizard sex was plain horror.) It still doesn't work! A point is difficult to discern in this piece: Nathan receives karmic justice for being a douche about the vase, and that's fine as far as it goes, but what the hell is that business with John painting? It's the sort of nonsense twist that doesn't have detectable in-story logic behind it. It appears to exist for the sake of the melted lip and dissolving flesh. Those are striking visuals, but flerp wanted a story. ***** The Cut of Your Jib, "Sky's Reprise": I thought after detangling the first paragraph that your entry was overwritten but intriguing. The second paragraph put paid to that intriguing bit. Your individual lines and possibly individual paragraphs have merit (though to be honest many of them appear to me to be wedged up their own posteriors), but the paragraphs don't cohere into a worthwhile sequence. Florid imagery is thrown around to not much purpose. All I'm getting from this is that a man's mind wanders off into fantasy, memory, and purple prose while he plows a field. There's a sense of straying thoughts just barely connected that I think might be intentional, and if so, you achieve an effect, but... why? ***** Moxie, "Oh, Piolet!": Is this a misspelled title that I see before me, the error toward my eye? Come, let me edit thee. I want thee not, and yet I see thee still. Other than whatever's up with "Piolet"--Shakespeare parodying aside, I'm not sure whether that's a mistake or a choice made for reasons whereof Reason knows nothing--you know by now that the problem here is the cutesy, meta callout of sitcom logic acted out by tedious characters. It's neither surreal nor interesting. I would have passed you up for the loss, however, for what it's worth, since reading your work didn't make me want to impale my eyeballs on a number two pencil. Later title note: Oh, now I see what you did there. An egregious typo might have been preferable to that pun! ***** Maigius, "Market Fluctuations": You appear to be aiming to say something about the stock market, possibly that no one involved knows what he's doing and the whole thing is susceptible to manipulation. Then... that manipulation will have consequences? I don't know what Adam's death was meant to say, but I can't not see his horned boss as the Pointy-Haired Boss from Dilbert. So thanks for that. This idea about the stock market isn't a new one, and you don't do anything with it other than throw images at the reader until you're out of ideas. Many of them almost make sense, to your credit. The ending doesn't. That disconnected final beat underlines the randomness in the piece and overshadows the coherent elements. ***** BeefSupreme, "Finn's": A woman goes to a club to meet its owner, learns from a fish that the owner is a vampire who will eat her feet, and decides she doesn't need to see the owner after all. What's the point? Why do people tell these stories in which someone encounters a strange thing and walks away, the end? In your case I can hazily imagine that Finn's foot vampirism is a literal take on the way certain people and certain relationships can drain a person's happiness, health, or humanity; E/N would applaud Eliza's choice to sever. I might, too, if anything happened. You write well enough and employ a solid surreal image. If Eliza's confrontation with Finn didn't fall flat--but you've paced the work badly and don't have words left for your climax. You should have trimmed the restaurant description in the early stages to give yourself more room in the later. ************************* Week 223: Dear Thunderdome a new study bible!, "Comfort and Security": There's a good story in here somewhere, but you need to chip away half a pound of dross. The premise of a man seeking a job in security to protect children as a sort of penance for failing to save his brother is great. However, I don't see the benefit of making your protagonist oblivious to the obvious. He can't tell the woman with the money is a thief. He can't tell wandering into Disneyland through a hole in the fence is completely inappropriate. He possibly can't tell that Hector is with their father since he thinks of Hector as you'd think of someone whose fate is a total mystery. Did he ever tell his mother enough that she could figure out what had happened? I wonder if the idea is that he's an autist; I wonder what the heck the point of that would be. A horrible hunch sneaks up on me sometimes that you meant this to be funny. That woman-with-an-envelope scene reeks of comic misunderstanding. In that case, though, the tone is atrociously off. The stronger path for this story to take would be the serious one, so I'd advise revising it to remove the bits that paint Cory as a buffoon. ***** Boaz-Jachim, "Remember, I will always be your Hunter in the night Sky": That is a godawful title. The quirky capitalization has stuck its head up its own posterior and is admiring the view. It's so terrible that I went into your work expecting to dislike it, and it came as a relief when your hunters' tale unfolded into an elegant story of love, necessity, and pain. I would do something with your first single line: "my star" has a saccharine flavor until it's explained, and putting that reference after the star memory would improve the flow. Maybe you could swap the bow/spear line and the star line, possibly fiddling with each a bit to make it work in its new place. You should come up with another title, whatever else. ***** Jay W. Friks, "Deadline Imminent-Please Open Immediately": That would be an okay title if you'd used a dash instead of a hyphen. Two hyphens (--) often substitute for the em dash in forum posts. Your phrasing and punctuation could use some work: in the first sentence, the comma should be a period or semicolon, and there should be a comma after otherwise. "I implore to at least" is missing a word. Ditto "in not the intention." You get the idea! I'm not digging "liberally minded" as a proof of worth either, unless you're intending the protagonist to come across as more than a bit of a dick. Like if her family had been conservative, hitting her would have been less tragic? To be fair, maybe you did intend that; the protagonist is perhaps meant to come across as socially maladroit. Here's the thing. Reading this intensely awkward, self-absorbed letter has me cringing in sympathy for the father, and I just want the protagonist to stop making the daughter's death an excuse to talk about himself and his life story. The suicide is a final sour note that again makes Jessie Henderson's death all about him. It ought to be tragic, but the protagonist has come off so poorly that the tragedy is mitigated. I don't think that's intentional; I believe you've fumbled an attempt to make him flawed, tone deaf, and caught inside his own head, but still a compassionate person tortured by what he's done. In the story's current form his selfishness overwhelms his other qualities. One thing you could do would be to trim his long digression about his work and his meds. Keep in mind the person to whom he's writing. Would he imagine the father of the girl he killed would be interested in any of this? You know, now that I ask that, I wonder how this would play as a letter sent to almost anyone else. I imagine it as a letter to someone in his family, explaining what he did and what he's done as restitution, and I think a great many of its problems would vanish. So that's one option for revision; if you want to stay with the father as his recipient, consider how much he wants to burden this man with his own tragedies if he sincerely believes he's caused such suffering that his life is the only fit repayment. ***** SkaAndScreenplays, "99 Songs Of Revolution": Funny, I don't remember the prompt for this week being Write a thinly veiled comment on political events. You neglect your flash rule entirely in order to throw this down. Ignore the almost-certain election connection and it's as empty of content as a flattened paper bag; Murphy is a mouthpiece, not a character; etc., etc., I could go on, but what's the point in writing a crit longer than the entry? If you want to respond to the issues of the day in your fiction, do so by fictionalizing them. You know. Write a story. I'd roll my eyes at that too if it were as transparent or ham-fisted as this, but it might say something other than "SkaAndScreeplays sure didn't like those election results, huh?" ***** widespread, "My Old Friend Needs A Hand": Hmmm. There's a lot of conversation in this. A letter-writer using direct dialogue for dramatic effect is a concept I can get behind, but Captain Springsell remembers an incredible amount of banal speech--or else he's making it up, which puts some distance between me and this story because I'm no longer sure how much of it is real within its own universe. I'm not sure it would ever be so easy for a single man--a captain! An admiral outranks a captain! Why did the admiral accept Springsell's instructions?--to launch nukes, and I agree with the judges that his motivations for doing so are so thin that breath could permeate them. I don't come away from your story with the same displeasure that Jay W. Friks' inspired, but I understand why you lost instead: this piece doesn't show as much ambition or potential. ***** BeefSupreme, "Protect the Future": As the judges said, you've flubbed the prompt. This just isn't an epistolary story. You might have gotten away with using Charlie as a framing device (but a dull one, so I'm not saying you should have done it) if you hadn't cut back to him again and again: the letter is supposed to tell the story, and instead of making it do so, you're dumping backstory on the reader by means of Charlie's thoughts. I wish waiting to submit until you'd finished your story to your satisfaction had worked out better for you, but the cliched evil-military plot would have been a hard sell even if you hadn't fumbled the round's main challenge. ************************* Week 224: I Wanna Dome You Like An Animal Sailor Viy, "The Last Bison": An artistic piece, rich in imagery but frugal when it comes to coherent story. Do I like the mental picture of a man hunting a bison across the plains of his childhood? Quite a bit. Do I understand why the bison was his toy? Not entirely. It probably has something to do with loss and realization of loss; he's been searching for something, maybe an answer, since that night. But the bison lies down and dies, and I don't know why. The quest to feed his family in the post-apocalypse clashes with his quest to feed his soul with the Answer (if that's what it is), and I would do away with the post-apocalyptic setting and have him chase the bison because he alone is starving. That last point seems especially important since if he were hunting to sate his own need only, I wouldn't be left wondering how he's supposed to get that meat home. ***** a new study bible!, "Truffle Hog": Oy to the vey. Do I understand properly that 1.) Marcelle buys a truffle hog in order to make money to save his ballerina daughter from creditors, but 2.) Flossy has mushrooms up her nose, so 3.) Marcelle heals her by cleaning them, and 4.) instead of truffles, the pig finds his daughter's shallow grave, with a note, because that makes sense? No, it doesn't. Why the pig would sniff out a corpse instead of fungus and why the corpse would be left for the debtor's starving father (granted he was paying her debt, but they're not going to get any more money out of him now, are they?) and why there's a note around a rock and why Genevieve was wearing ballet slippers when she died and why Marcelle took off his shirt all eludes me. There's some juice in the idea of a poor farmer trying to save himself with a truffle hog only to discover the hog is infested with fungus, but you'd need to focus on that and cut the chaff to make a good story out of it. You'd also need to do something with the nose fungus. Right now it's a red herring. My guess is that you had a much more complex story in mind and got throttled by the word limit, but that makes the expository bloat in the first paragraph even worse. ***** Beige, "The Bear and the Snake": Ouch, tenses. You need the past perfect in your third sentence, which describes something that took place in the past of your past-tense piece. (So "he'd come across," etc.) The super-simple early prose with its repetition of ideas reads as though it's intended for rather small children. The snake's complete lack of motive, her unrealistic behavior (most constrictors aren't venomous, and venom isn't that fast or easy to regenerate), the lampshade you hang on both when she shrugs all the bear's questions off "somehow," and the bear's failure to give a drat about any of it read as though you don't know the point of the story you're trying to tell any more than I do. ***** llamaguccii, "Foaming for Friends": Starting out with an infodump about your main character's passive-aggressive attempts to get someone else to kill him is not a strong strategy. Continuing to exposit about what an awful spouse he was, also risky. Maybe mentioning that Ben was looking at a dog before the third paragraph would help. (Never assume the reader knows your subprompt or flash rule.) Something else that might aid you is not writing about an irredeemable rear end in a top hat who has no reason to be such an irredeemable rear end in a top hat. Is the idea that Ben's such an awful human being that the Black Shuck sees him as a brother instead of prey? There's zero satisfaction in a terrible person remaining terrible or getting worse for no clear or interesting reason. I'm not that familiar with shaggy dog stories, so I only see what's on the screen in front of me, but after the judges' comments I'm not sure that's not for the best. ************************* Week 225: Pick A Century Fleta McGurn, "Arrangements": I wouldn't buy your characters as twelfth-century nuns even without the reference to a man having a sex change and entering a convent. The speech patterns and the attitudes are all too modern. That isn't helped a whit by your choice to tell a heavy-handed "women's issues" story, which is so busy standing on its soapbox that it mostly forgets to be good. The first sentence clunks with exposition, and the rest is not much better, but Catherine's unexpected choice is a point in your favor: everything about the story up to that point had me expecting she would joyously renounce horrible men in favor of the far superior life of society with women alone, and if that doesn't sound like a flaw to you, it should. It isn't good when a reader feels beaten upside the head with a theme. It's a pleasant surprise when Catherine goes another way, but the rarr-men-who-needs-'em motif isn't any less tedious for being subverted in the end. ***** Okua, "Journey": Considering Thorkild's thought about the Christian amulet, why doesn't he offer to buy Asa from the dying man? Why doesn't the father tell Thorkild what he's done? Why is the father such a nonentity? Asa is almost as blank as he, but that's to the story's benefit. The strange something this story has despite its parenthetical flashbacks ("That format is distracting," Kaishai said, "and you flash back too often, so it's not much wonder the present-day side of things is thin") is tied to Thorild's understanding, or lack thereof, of Asa, a girl who isn't Norse and isn't free. He makes an idol out of her, sees what he wants to see, but he doesn't know her. It's fitting the reader can't, either. But her decision to suicide comes out of nowhere, and her speech doesn't successfully justify it. I end the story asking again why Thorkild can't free her and why they can't travel together to the band of green across the sea. If the reasons are historical, you don't do a good enough job of explaining them. ***** GenJoe, "Cut": Gore and beards are a lot less inherently interesting than you seem to believe. The dialect you've chosen sounds bizarre from supposed Romans. I can give the rat-catcher a pass, but the soldiers? Your rat-catcher and prisoner need names; it's stupidly difficult to tell which man you're talking about at points. I do like, somewhat, that Tiberius wants a knife not to kill anyone but to shave his beard so that he can meet Death with a clean face. The ending is such a disappointment, though. You burn seventeen hundred words on a condemned man eating rats through his last days and finally dying just as I was told he would at the outset. It sure isn't much of a story, and it's too long and full of pointless bloody bits to be a strong vignette. Side question: how did the rat man get that knife? ***** Sitting Here, "One and Another": Is Daughter meant to seem not all there? Her argument with Mother doesn't read like a discussion rehashed for seasons, but later things like her chucking a rock at the man's head for no apparent reason make me wonder whether Mother talks to her so patiently because she has to be patient. I like this overall, it's a human story and an alien story both as befits the time you chose, but I'm not sure what I think of killing off the man so that the story ends with Mother and Daughter presumably starting a new life as sex slaves for a whole tribe. Put that way, I'm fairly sure I don't like it! The man's death is abrupt and makes him feel pointless in retrospect; we've barely started to know him, and now he's dead, so why was he ever in the story? I believe this would be stronger if it were longer and had room to see the Mother, Daughter, and man forming some kind of life--maybe fighting the tribe, maybe fighting each other, but having a longer journey before it all falls down. ***** sebmojo, "Where late the sweet birds sang": But did that arse have spiders in it? Heck of an opening line there, Mr. sebmojo. Much though I enjoy Latin, I have to agree that insulae and pilae are awkward here, scatter-shot as such terms are through a story of arsefucking and naked fat men. Gladius works, though, maybe because it's a familiar word even now. (Psst: I believe the plural of neuter pilum is pila.) The business with the spear and the crowning and the elephant strikes me as implausible even for the Romans, but it's enough fun I don't much care. What's maybe most interesting about this piece, and what may hint at depth otherwise undisclosed, is the title, which I know best as that of Kate Wilhelm's book but which evidently hails from one of Shakespeare's sonnets about love and loss. It could just be a cute reference to the branches from which the emperor hung, or it could be a hint that the storyteller was fond of Maximilian and that his ribald recounting covers genuine melancholy. The final line hints at the same, but the touches are so light (if they're there at all!) that the sentiment doesn't land on first reading, and that sentence looks out of place. ***** Guiness13, "Roanoke": I don't believe blood ever oozes up from a corpse, but you'd want to check with an expert or the Internet to be sure. The critical flaw in this entry is that you leave mentioning the gift of the idol and the warning to protect it until the very end. Why? It doesn't look like you're trying to hide it exactly, since the beginning implies strongly enough that the broken idol and broken faith have something to do with the deaths, but you put off making everything clear for no obvious reason. It reads like a revelation, but it's the weakest reveal possible. I might have spared you a DM myself since you build a decent sense of unease and dread as the inexplicable deaths mount. Still, that finale is unsatisfying as anything. ************************* Week 226: Viking Wisdom Sailor Viy, "The Guest at the Feast": The ghost is too shallow in his/her wants and motivations for me to much care about them. S/he could use a personality beyond his/her longing for drugs and sex. (S/he could use a gender, too.) Lily and Wally's turn for the villainous is comically absurd, except without the comedy; I too wonder with whom the ghost would get in trouble, and I especially wonder why s/he wants out of that body almost as soon as s/he's acquired it. Drugs as the solution to all problems could not resonate less with me if it tried. That's taste, of course, and I do think taste has a lot to do with my lack of liking for your work here, as the writing itself is solid enough and the concept--up until the magic drugs, at least--a cool take on the stanza. Unfortunately, the five-thousand-eyed fractal and "hologram universe" and everything else is about as interesting as any other fictional drug trip (which is to say, it isn't), and the ending ignores the issue of Lily, Wally, and their henchmen completely. ***** Chairchucker, "Actually the Stomach is Way Bigger than the Eyes, I Mean That’s Just Basic Anatomy": Yeah, maybe the murder of the henchmen is a little too offhand even for a silly story. It doesn't ruin the fun for me, but it could be fun too if the henchmen acted as balaclava's family and bonded with the protagonist through long-suffering glances traded over schnitzel. Cowboy Randy in all his unfazed glory is the shining star. I'd read more stories about strange goings-on in his steakhouse! Other than Dad, the family verges on bland; I reckon that's okay since it keeps the spotlight where it ought to be. I'm writing this crit shortly after critiquing your Voidmart II story, so it's all the more great to see you return to form. ***** Hawklad, "Home": Does Lucien's regular exposure to radiation have something to do with his child being born with a tail? I would like the answer to be yes. That would give the "twist" of Sirena being his daughter a reason to exist--I put that word in scare quotes because it's obvious the moment Lucien remembers her from his past. The predictable direction that part of the plot took is my largest beef with this otherwise intriguing entry. Your world is fascinating. The scenes of the ship cutting across the ice ocean and flailing in the north are wonderful, and I like, too, the eldritch horror of the tentacles in the water for all that I'm not 100% sure I understand. Is Sirena a sacrifice or does her mother give her to the water that is her natural home? (I like the latter better!) If she was born for the water, how did that come about? Is there a power that shapes ends in this world, rough-hew them as the characters will? I don't mind having some questions left over. I do wish Sirena's mother were much more of a character. If you were low on words, maybe you could have cut Carlos from the picture. But on the whole the piece is so striking that I understand why it took the crown. ***** Baleful Osmium Sea, "First Contact By a Species that Speaks Almost Entirely In Metaphors": I'm not surprised this found favor with the judges for all that I don't share all their fondness for it. It's a nice art piece, though a cynical one. Few of the metaphors are new, but they combine well to sketch a dead romance, until the final line that I flat don't care for. The characters aren't really characters. There isn't a plot. An arc certainly exists, but I question whether a story does. Yet, final line aside, it's a fine example of the sort of thing it is. ************************* Week 227: It was a Dark and Stormy Night.... Fleta Mcgurn, "Malus Domestica": Yours would not, to be clear here, be a fine story if only it weren't for that pesky incest. Theo and Marina's relationship is dull otherwise; the cracks in the ceiling and the apple tree overflow with potential that goes mostly unused when Marina curls up with the ghost tree and sleeps, the end. (I thought she died, on my first read. The sleep ending is no better.) Why not spend some of the words you spend setting up the needless incest on establishing a connection between Theo, Marina, and apple trees, so that the appearance of such a tree would be significant? I've heard it suggested the tree is meant to have a Biblical resonance tied to incest as sin, but in that case, is the idea that--as the tree is flowering, not fruiting--Marina is sleeping peacefully in pre-apple innocence, and everything is okay because she's forgotten how hosed up it is to gently caress her brother? What? Let's say for the sake of argument you do want to make incest sympathetic for whatever reason. Do it by showing us more of Theo and Marina as people, with chemistry and love between them. In the case that romanticizing incest wasn't your goal, you done effed up almost as much as your protagonists. In the case that you were out to write a Gothic, as I'm inclined to believe, the bland middle and happy-seeming ending undermine your attempt altogether. The incest is an established, mundane, everyday element of Theo and Marina's lives to the point where it doesn't have the dramatic weight of Original Sin. ***** N. Senada, "Osmond Diaz, King of Kings": You probably should have just called him Ozymandias, and you definitely shouldn't have named his bodyguard Percy. It wants to be a clever allusion to Shelley, but this piece is too straightforward, on the nose, and dull for the reference to appear clever rather than clumsy. I do see attempts to twist the Ozymandias story. The storm qualifies, but it lacks the power and poignance that the weight of ages has as the destructive force. You've allowed some of Ozymandias's people to escape his downfall, but--so what? In the poem, Time unmade Ozymandias's life and works and memory. Time will end Percy and the bandits too, so Percy's temporary reprieve is also an empty one according to the message of the source material. (As I understand it, anyway!) The final line suggests you're going for something different, a moral about bending with the wind rather than breaking before it, so now I'm thinking your error was in connecting your story to "Ozymandias" at all rather than writing something wholly your own. You might still have ended up with the crap crown, though. Osmond and Percy are both flat, and Osmond's downfall isn't compelling in part because of this. One solution could be to set everything entirely in Percy's perspective even if that means losing Osmond's death scene. Let Percy see enough of his futile fight against the wind for the reader to infer what happens. ***** Erogenous Beef, "Frozen Out": Cute, but empty. I like Papa Winter and Frosty, and I'm glad they beat the selfish, manipulative Esther--except for the thing where they don't. Papa Winter shows back up and ruins her plans more or less by existing. But only temporarily! Nothing and no one is permanently changed at the story's end. The starting status gets a few more weeks of quo, and that's it. There's an obvious political undercurrent, but it doesn't go much of anywhere. The apparent moral of the story: all victories are temporary. I could see that being worthwhile if Esther's victory and then Winter's weren't each so effortless as to leave me unengaged. ***** steeltoedsneakers, "Round White Pebbles": The first line reads confusingly like the present tense. Try Ten months before it had rained for the last time. Remember you need the past perfect to describe events in the past of a past-tense story. The problem crops up again with had set off last week--it would only be last week in a present-tense story. You want the week before. Rachel/Rachael needs a consistent name. Otherwise... well, I see how this won. Like Hawklad's ice boat, your dry river of pebbles and its call are so striking that I like the story somewhat for their sake. I'm more interested in the river, why the rain stopped, why it calls, who waits beyond, and how Steve shows up just in time to go under when everyone else has been waiting than I am in the relationship story, which is unfortunate for me since the relationship is the center and everything else is apparently only a metaphor. That's no terrible idea, my disappointment notwithstanding. I would like to see more of Steve and Rachel before the end, however. Why are their problems apparently all his fault? What part has she had in their estrangement? Were they estranged? Until the end, which forces the issue, I'm not sure. You don't convince me. It could use more work if you want that finale to have much punch, yet it's not far from being a rather good story. ***** Tyrannosaurus, "Nobody Wants to Die Here in the Strip Club": Good setting, good situation, good character in Percy if you read him as complex rather than one-dimensional--something the story discourages at the end, but more on that shortly. I'm along for the ride on this until I stall hard on Chastity turning tourist's privilege into a race thing, like white people don't live in Hawaii and like oblivious first-world black or Asian or Hispanic or whatever tourists don't exist. It's a misstep. Then the protagonist judges Percy's worth as a human being based on this particular inconsiderate idiocy. I'm less convinced Percy isn't a good person at all (people are rarely that simple) than that the protagonist adopts the viewpoint of the last person to talk to him. You've told me Percy is bad but shown me the protagonist has no opinions of his own--probably not what you mean to do, so if you revise, I'd pull the reins on that judgment a little and have him realize that Percy isn't an idol, and that Percy's being incredibly callous, both of which are true without necessarily meaning he isn't in any way good. I would personally nix the corpse and replace it with inhuman debris also, since a dead body delivers your point with the weight of an anvil. Some more finesse in the finale and removal of the shoehorned race issue (mileage will vary on that one especially, but You loving tourists would be so much more accurate) would bring out the story's respectable strengths. ***** GenJoe, "Misgivings": Did, uh, did your protagonist and her mother refill the bathtub with toilet water? Talk about a source of misgivings. It's probably meant to be tank water and fresh enough to play with boats in, but one, a week seems like too long to still have fresh tank water; and two, unless that's one heck of a jug, a jug's worth will only begin to cover the bottom of most tubs--not enough for boat games, I wouldn't think--so I had to think about what they were going to do with that toilet water for somewhat too long. I'd cut that bit, is what I'm getting at. I wonder too how Rebecca could go to school on the money from an old house in a dying neighborhood that loses power for weeks--who's ever going to buy it? The whole is a vignette and not a story. No plot exists, and no conclusion is reached. I like it anyway for the outline of the bonds between Rebecca and her mother, Rebecca and Jay, Rebecca and the house--not all of them positive, but bonds nevertheless. I'm intrigued; I want to know more of Rebecca's history. Your entry does a better job of making me feel for your character than any other I've read from this week. It's too low on events and resolution to win my whole heart, but in this round it's definitely toward the top of the barrel. Kaishai fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Jan 1, 2017 |
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Dec 21, 2016 04:18
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 Kaishai's Critmas Addendum After I tallied those crits I posted recently, I noticed something interesting.  Some calculations followed: pre:Sitting Here Total: 829 Extra: 73 Grand Total: 902 sebmojo Total: 749 Extra: 58 Grand Total: 807 Kaishai Total: 577 Extra: 320 Grand Total: 897 Sitting Here: 902 Kaishai: 897 Hmm. Hmmmmmm.  Week 70: "And what did you see, my darling young one?" Erogenous Beef, "Duke Guncock and the Nazindie Menace": In the recap for Week 227 we touch on what sort of story you do just for fun. I claim Duke Guncock is your pure-entertainment go-to for reasons this entry in his canon makes obvious. There isn't enough context present to grasp all the glory that is Duke, a lot of the action and premise and everything else come off like setup for jokes, and I can only imagine what it would be like to try and parse this cold. It's a terrible attempt to win! It stands alone too poorly to be a good serial story! But it's fun! All the puns and all the shameless, clever stupidity link hands with the action-filled pulp plot, and the result is anything but a bromide. That said, I could personally do without the ock finale until or unless it leads to a sequel. ************************* Week 133: The Gods of Thunderdome Nubile Hillock, "IdiotHellFucker69": This wouldn't be my favorite of all your works (a fact that should perhaps depress both of us) if it were truly only one joke stretched thin, although, yes, "Nubile Hillock is too much of a wanker to write a serious entry" is the overwhelming theme here. The story doesn't have much else to say! You know what, though, The blind and nameless God of winter and some other morose and morbid poo poo sat sulking in heaven or whatever the gently caress may be a superior opening even to the rear end spiders. Mocking Broenheim's god along with your own lends the thing an air of general irreverence instead of mere self-deprecating flagellation. I love the narrative voice so much I want to forgive you for screwing up the dialogue, screwing up the format, and editing your post, so you know that adoration is deep and sincere. The repetition of the lame "you moron" is the canker upon this rose, and I suppose it could stand to impugn you a little less. The final paragraph beats that horse to death and beyond. ************************* Week 221: The Escape of the Bad Words. Hammer Bro., "The Feast": Not a story, but a joke. Not your intellectual property, but someone else's. Not well done in terms of numbers. You should spell out numbers when they begin sentences, and if you spell out any number in a sentence then you need to spell them all. Aside from that, though you elbow the reader a time or two too often between they knew it was Big and the yellow-stained (but feathers don't stain cloth!) cape, this is just cute enough to get a pass as an I'm-not-even-trying bit of TD silliness. You were supposed to submit your entry to a market this week, however. So did you ignore that part of the prompt or send out a piece involving trademarked characters? With luck, the former: this is more entertaining if I don't imagine an editor receiving it. ***** sebmojo, "The Cuckoo of Kaitiki Close": Hyphenate that compound modifier in the first line, sebmojo. Tsk. Don't have any biscuits would be more appropriate than didn't. A single period is generally preferable to two. Perchance you have received the message re: proofreading I am so subtly attempting to convey? Of the two cuckoo stories yours is rather the better, but the pacing's off, slow at the start as though you have words to burn and so fast at the end that I'm mildly disgruntled for all that I understand what's happened. (Probably. George is a changeling now, yes? Or made into a cuckoo's child by all her attention, depending on how literal you've gone with the replacement.) I'd like more meat on the bones of Janey's visits with George, although that publication business may make the matter moot. ************************* Week 228: Unqualified Erogenous Beef, "A Change of Mind": A janitor right at the start catches my attention. The approach to the prompt is great: Sam's hopelessly inept and still sympathetic, neither cartoon nor cliche, and his error makes perfect sense from his perspective. That he saves the day through sheer accident edges closer to the cartoon edge, which I think has more to do with how quickly it follows the unleashing of the fungus than with the means. I concur that this is a slight piece. It could use more space for its ending. There's probably no hope for that but more words, as I don't see much in the way of bloat to cut. It's one of those stories that wouldn't win a strong week because of how little there is to it, but that is fun to read, neatly done, and has no significant flaws--a godsend in a weak week and a worthy victor. ***** Thranguy, "Empty": "Provenience"? A period outside of quotations in American English? Come on, Thranguy, I'm trying to be intrigued by your angel aperitif here. The premise and prose are doing the job, but the errors are rot and maggots that need to be kept at bay with the sweet oil of proofreading. The story holds its strength through Zargas's death scene but loses some in the finale, reminding me that you haven't said why the Throne of God is unoccupied. That's the larger tale. That's the tale worth telling. This is a concept with a bit of story tied to its neck, really. I'm not satisfied with knowing how Zargas dies while the question of what's going on in Heaven remains unanswered. It's a much better concept-with-story-trimming than others you've submitted--I'm thinking specifically of Week 210--and HM-worthy work nevertheless, nicely written and making excellent use of gore. ***** GenJoe, "A Murder.": My disbelief is strained by the protagonist ushering a stranger with a gut wound into his/her home, probably because ushering is a polite, calm verb better suited to garden parties than bringing in a murder victim off the street. And in the hours the police are in the house, they never ask about a phone? Details that haven't been thought through have marred all your entries to date. This time the slightness, the irrelevance of the piece delivers the killing blow: the situation is too tense and too emotionally charged for the limp resolution you give it. The protagonist screwing up shouldn't be the climax; the climax should be a consequence of the error; the tone at the end is almost wacky, when the setup is anything but. Also, the word you want is scowl. Scour suggests the protagonist can't stop imagining the mother cleaning her kitchen floors. ***** widespread, "Silver Nitride Is A Hell Of A Thing.": I'm picking up a mismatch between tone and events in the first section, unless the professor's exaggerating the severity of the explosion. I can't quite tell. He should be more distraught, as should Jackson, if Jackson's wreaked so much damage that the lab might be unusable for the rest of the school semester. Heck, even if not, Jackson's caused visible injuries on multiple students and the first thing he says is a tepid "Sorry, professor"? Then he blames his phone? Jeeze, what a guy. I mind less that he dies than that he dies in such an altogether incredible way. Between your abrupt and goofy ending and GenJoe's, I prefer GenJoe's, because I can believe human stupidity more readily than I can buy whatever quirk of physics turns Jackson into the losertar. Kaishai fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Dec 30, 2016 |
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Dec 23, 2016 07:52
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ThirdEmperor posted:
 Flash rule: In your war, an emperor has died. This must have some impact on your characters.
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Dec 24, 2016 08:11
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flerp posted:MERRY CHRISTMAS KAISHAI HERE IS MY MOUSTACHE MERMAN STORY FROM THAT EUROVISION WEEK It's a beautiful Christmas meracle. 
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Dec 26, 2016 22:04
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 And a man in potato agony~! Are we still within the twelve days? Oh, well, here's one more holiday tribute regardless: "The Twelve Days of Thunderdome" It shares a songbook with a few more. May you continue to have a glorious and glittering holiday season!
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Dec 28, 2016 20:59
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I <3 you, too, sheriff. You are our honored executioner, steely-eyed and just. My wishes for TD as the new year approaches: Read the OP or expect no mercy. It's gotten ridiculous. Reading the whole thread becomes an undertaking as the year ages and the pages pile up, but the OP is always one post, always in the same place. What rules TD has are laid out there. If you don't read it and screw up something straightforward, you have no one to blame for the ensuant mocking .gifs but yourself. Maybe read the current and old threads too? Undertaking or no, there's a great deal of worth in all those crits. Many of the criticisms apply as well across the board as they do to a specific story. General advice is liberally sprinkled throughout, including cautions against too much dialogue, flat characters, poo poo geysers, etc. And though stories are TD's backbone, the banter and sass in the threads give it flesh. Don't cheer for effort alone. This has never been a place of participation trophies, and Blood God forbid it ever become so. Want to applaud someone's hard work even if it failed? Write a crit that points out the flaws so that work won't have been in vain. Write on, and write well. The first is more important than the second because the second is impossible without the first. Continue the glorious flow of critique! Modern TD entrants can rely on getting some crits, often at least two from the judges and sometimes even more from the peanut gallery. That's fantastic. It's semi-common now to see people offering up a few crits or a crit exchange. Particular shout-outs go to Thranguy for his work in getting more feedback for the entrants of Week 197 and to Jitzu_the_Monk for the crit-the-uncritted aspect of Crit Ketchup Week. I'd keep going, but crit has ceased to look like a word. Remember to edit any stories you may want to revise for publication out of the thread before it hits the Goldmine. The mods can't help you past that point! If you want to pull anything, now is the time! Save any crits you want from the current thread before it closes! The quote button doesn't work after a thread is locked, so if you want to put crits you've received into the Archive, into a document, whatever, then you should grab them now to preserve the formatting. Know that crabrock is the best butt. N.B.: Is, not has. It's been a fun Thunderyear! My gratitude goes to everyone who contributes blood, sweat, or tears to these gory sands, and to Humboldt Squid for dealing with the  es and losertars. Most especially I thank SH and Twist and Djeser for the time they've put into the Thunderdome recaps. May the year to come see more words, more tales, more crits, more corn, but maybe less lizard sex? Hope springs eternal.
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Dec 30, 2016 20:33
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Thunderdome 2017teen: What We Brought for Show-and-Tell Thunderdome 2017teen: Prose and Cons Thunderdome 2017teen: A Golden Competition Worth 5 Million US Words
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Dec 31, 2016 02:25
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Thunderdome 2017teen: Illiterature at Its Finest I suppose an apostrophe would be appropriate, but I shudder to behold it.
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Dec 31, 2016 06:47
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curlingiron posted:Thunderdome 2017teen: LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO READ Thunderdome 2017teen: I Have No Talent, and I Must Write
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Dec 31, 2016 07:31
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Krunge is onto something:Kaishai posted:Thunderdome 2017teen: Prose and Cons or Krunge, with a slight adjustment, posted:Thunderdome 2017teen: How I Learned to Start Writing and Love the Crits
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Jan 2, 2017 20:34
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A last crit from me in this venerable thread: ************ ************************* flerp, for France 2014: "The Mysterious Mustachioed Merman" Lyrics: Twin Twin - "Moustache" Kai's Video Notes: Can you believe this came in last place? The live performance lacked a lot of the charm and je ne sais quoi of the preview video, so I gave you the version that wasn't boring. The kooky game show in which Weird Al Yankovic seems to be a contestant gets unsettling when smoke pours from the buttons; the host laughs and laughs; I wonder which circle of Hell has a moustache hung prominently on its wall. The song's greatest evil is being so catchy that it's hard to stop listening. Themes: pastels, game shows, prizes, pressure, futility, false gaiety, wealth, materialism, desire for the unattainable, dishabille, moustaches! What unreasoning world is this in which foraging is a crime? In which mermen walk out by night or day?? In which they has is an acceptable construction??? Don't let the excessive punctuation fool you into thinking I care much about any of that. You could have proofed more thoroughly and thought harder about your merworld, sure, and you probably wanted hydrodynamic instead of aquadynamic since aerodynamic is of Greek and not Latin extraction, but we're talking about the sparkling tale of a merman (ba-dum pum, oh lord kill me) and his moustache here. It is possible to think too much about these things. I quite like Moustache's respect for the merpolice. December Diamonds needs to make a cop merman stat, if for no other reason than to round out their Village People lineup. The random interjections about how heroic police are make no more sense than anything else, and they're charming for it. The humor's probably a little overdone in spots. Who cares, though, while there are lines like Moustache considered, for a brief moment, to rename Plain Face to Rotten Eggs, but then decided this wasn’t the time to make such brash decisions? (You know considered to rename is abhorrent, though, right? Just checking.) You do miss everything about your song other than the moustache. That might have damaged your chances in the round, insofar as that's an issue given that this has zilch to do with winning and everything to do with being a glittering Christmas gift. Flawed and silly as this is, it's sincerely funny. Good work! Thank you! Merry Christmas! ************ ************************* Farewell, Thunderdome 2016teen! Thank you for being our home for a terrible, wonderful year.
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Jan 4, 2017 07:07
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