Thunderdome 2017teen: Prose and Cons

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sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Judgment for the last week of 2016

So this was a bad week with more terrible words than a preschoolers poop smeared coloring book. When I said resolution that should have had an implicit I WILL WRITE BETTER attached to it. Also when you have an image to use as a flash rule don't always leap to that being a literal scene in your story.

However there were two stories that were head and shoulders above the others, though, so step forward Sparksbloom and Krunge for their stories Earthquake Season and Bugging Out!

Unfortunately they were only head and shoulders above in badness so they can take a dm and a loss, in that order.

Managing to actually avoid the residual curse radiation of 2016 was Thranguy with Lantern Fish, he can grab the sole HM.

The winner managed to tell a solid story about actual people which made the judges smile and feel a feeling, a tiny seedling of hope curling through the blasted concrete of 2016.

Step forward QuoProQuid, who won the week with Roll for Initiative.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2017 05:06

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2025 14:00

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

QuoProQuid posted:

Thunderdome CCXXXI Results

Hello, all. I want to thank everyone for a much better week than I could have anticipated. While none of the stories really wowed the judges, we felt that most of the stories ranged from good to satisfactory. There were few entries that were deeply disliked and none of you were outright offensive.

However, I do want to give a few general comments for everyone to reflect upon for this week. First, several of the stories really overshot it on the "Kidspeak" both in prose and dialogue. I recognize that this is partly my fault for demanding that kids not sound like they are short adults, but some people really overused childish sentence structure and ended up being difficult to read. Second, several entries were not stories so much as kids reacting to wacky and amusing situations. I'm fine with vignettes and was amused by some of the scenes, but a few stories ended up feeling insubstantial or underrealized. A more direct conflict would have really helped some people this week.

Now, with that out of the way, let�s announce the results. A Dishonourable Mention goes to Krunge's Unruined, for being the worst offender in terms of Kidspeak. The Loss goes to Jay W. Frink's Agua Mala, Agua Pura, which was almost incomprehensible to the judges and also went over the word limit. Best luck next time!

I also have several positive mentions to pass out. Despite some issues with the ending, the first Honorable Mention goes to sparksbloom's The Understudy for nailing a kid's voice without being overpowering. A second Honorable Mention goes to flerp's It's Not Much to Listen for capturing a difficult topic in terms that a kid would understand. The Winner for this week is Sitting Here and her story Dumb Baby Stuff. All of the judges really appreciated your entry about two kids overcoming serious family drama through the power of imagination.

You have the Blood Throne, SH.

hey that's awesome prompt

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 00:48

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

anime was right posted:

*is ejected directly into the toilet dimension*

That was a good story

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 01:30

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Interorompt: the stupidest dog 75 words

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 01:31

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Entenzahn posted:

THUNDERCRITS 233: A DISSENTING OPINION

I’ll admit that I’m kind of an odd duck. I’ve always held the belief that people come to Thunderdome to learn how to write something that will get them published, not to write the “least worst thunderdome entry.” So when I look at a week about epistolaries and frame stories and half the entries have no drat stories in them, and the other half sounds like you actually wrote a lovely first person story and then crammed it inbetween a “Dear Fuckface,” and “Kind regards”, and then my cojudges pat each other on the back about how good this week was because nobody outright shat themselves, I don’t know but sometimes I really wish you could slap people through the internet.

Right, so here’s what I expected:
“I remember back when we ran out of coconuts at the office, but I had to make some pina coladas for my rear end in a top hat boss. The stores were all empty, so I stole a plane and flew to the Bahamas. Turns out they had no coconuts either, because there was a hurricane there at the time. Well anyway, they finally pulled me out of the rubble after I drank my own urine and gnawed on a dead rat for three days. When I came back I told my boss that there were no goddamn coconuts, and he was like, okay, whiskey sour will be fine. What I’m saying is: it’s important to stand your ground sometimes. Bosses are human too. I hope you have a great first day at work, and greetings from supermax prison.”

What you wrote:
“Hi! I’m sorry for the bad thing that happened. Remember when we were kids? When were always trying to out-swing each other on the swingsets? Boy those sure were the days, huh. Okay my buddy is telling me to stop writing. “Let’s go to the bar and have some beers,” he said, sliding into his jacket as he spoke. Yeah that’s right I have friends now. Ha ha! Bye.

P.S. I still love you”

I guess the most telling thing about this week is that I ended up skimming through most of the entries on first read and I still didn’t miss much, because nobody ever had a goal or a relatable cause, it was all just boring exposition and childhood memories and descriptions of how green the grass is. Oh but the words were ever so mildly pretty, lol yeah uh huh sure buddy

Peanut Milk – Fleta Mcgurn
“I saw you on the peanut milk yesterday.” That’s the first sentence I get to read. That. “I saw you on the peanut milk.” What the gently caress does that even mean. How do you see someone on a liquid. Was there just a sea of milk and they walked across it like some kind of milky jesus, like wtf like what. what is this. This is the first impression your story makes. The language of a five-year old: “I saw you on the peanut milk.” Nice.

The other judges had this in their high bracket. I don’t know how that happened, maybe they were the ones who were high *high fives self*. You were my loss candidate. You tried a lot and nothing worked. I guess I’ll start by comparing your letter to a soggy PBJ sandwich, and the peanut butter half is the one where you write a first person story of a guy having lunch at the office, and the jelly half is where you transition into actual epistolary form so your protagonist can write creepy poo poo to his high-school crush about how they totally made eye contact that one time, and not only that, but her eyes were beautiful, oh how he remembers, how he longs for that moment~~~

The flashback story kinda blows. It’s a bunch of loosely related vignettes, which of course can make up a story, but what I’m saying is it’s boring, there’s no arc to it, no nothing. Your protagonist isn’t doing anything much and nothing much happens other than they meet in the hallway and then they “hang out and talk [scene missing]” and zzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZzzzzzz oh excuse me I escaped into the blissful void of dreamless sleep for a second. It doesn’t even feel important, because key events, like when he discovers that she’s just not that into him, take up relatively little space compared to what I guess is supposed to be the secret star of the story, the boss and his funny locker room quips.

What you could have done was to tell me the story of how the guy fell in love and what he did to get the girl, and what you definitely should have done was to give me a good reason for why he thought it was appropriate to tell that loving story in the first place, because seeing someone’s picture and taking that as an opportunity to finally come clean about how you were totally into them that one time and you still remember their laugh and what not, it’s weird as gently caress and now I’m picturing an unwashed nerd sitting in front of his computer, leaning into the facebook page on his screen, circular fog fading in and out on top of an inbox symbol that will never, ever change. “Why won’t she reply,” he’ll ask. Because your letter is so awkward that every new word I read splits off another instance of the multiverse where I die of fremdschämen.

“Your bottle went in the trash, and I lit a cigarette.” how did you end your letter on this, like did you just copy random words from above and rearrange them until they made a sentence i mean what the unsugared peanut-milky hell is this who writes a letter like that OH MY GOD

Consider this an honorary DM.

Subject: I love you I’m sorry – N. Senada
Donald Trump WON THE ELECTION THIS IS A HUGE TRAUMA :’(((( A NATIONAL SHAME THAT I HAVE TO PROCESS BY WRITING EPISTOLARY STORIES IN THUNDERDOME im from europe your slacktivist handwringing about the election results of the united states of america plonks off me like dried bird poo poo off a furious rhino

So I ask you this, N. Senada: have you even read the Thunderdome prompt? I will gladly share my copy with you:

The only actual story I see here is the schoolyard fight, but it only comes up towards the end and to be honest you could take it out and the letter would still make as much sense. It feels more like an afterthought to the actual main attraction, the protagonist’s melodramatic whining about Trump. But I think I’m wasting my breath on this topic because you were never going to write a full story anyway, you just really, really, really wanted to complain about the election.

Now take the mad voice you’ve imagined this critique in and imagine it even MADDER because there are very few things that I hate more than first scenes that leave me guessing about what’s going on. It’s not cute. It’s not smart. It’s confusing, and it muddles your story, and in flash fiction it’s already hard enough to stay on point. I guess what you wanted me to do was to go back after the fact and be super heartbroken that Rachel was looking forward to his email and then it was actually a breakup text, but I’ve been to a few rodeos in my time and where I come from we call that a see-through gimmick and people who do it get tarred and feathered and then we put them on a horse and slap the horse’s rear end so it rides off with them on top and they have to spend the rest of their lives in the desert, or at least until they can come back and prove that they’ve learned how to write a real straight-forward story before they try funny stuff again.

Also, for a letter that’s 90% the protagonist aggressively explaining his motivations at me you’ve done a poor job of making me understand why he’d leave his girlfriend. Like I just can’t imagine a person that’s defying their racist parents and travelling abroad to help kids in need and falling in love with one of the other workers and then a racist cheeto wins an election back in their home country and they go “welp time to gently caress off i guess all my ideals are dead and not worth fighting for *writes on a piece of toilet paper: LOVE YOU, BYE*”.

Or to say it in your own words:

Don’t call me.

Remember, I will always be your Hunter in the night Sky – Boaz-Jachim
There are some entries that kinda read like they haven’t been edited much, not because they’re bad but because the whole piece seems so dependent on its specific wording, on the flow of the language and images, that it’s almost like you have to write this kind of thing going in with the exact knowledge of what it’s supposed to look like and what you want it to say. Like starting a drawing by working out the details before you’ve sketched the scene – a different way of doing things but I find it impressive when the result is good, and maybe that’s not even what you did, but gosh darnit I like it anyway.

Now, technically, the story takes a bit long to get going. It’s almost until the end of an already short piece that you get to the point where the one spirit person gets sick and changes for the worse. And then it’s over. But I don’t know if the piece would have worked another way. And to be honest, it didn’t bore me. I think your language is just that good. It paints me a picture of, not so much a world, but of concepts: transformation, wistfulness, letting go. And it’s tight. You keep hitting me with new information and cool images and then the story is over and I wonder where the time went.

But when I say that this entry evokes many themes and concepts, that can also be a double-edged sword: because those don’t give me as much to hold on to as a fleshed out world and a straight-forward story. It’s all a bit vague, and the fact that your language is at times wafty and nebulous doesn’t help (spirits sitting on their shoulders while they’re making love?). So then I can see the characters and their interactions but there is no backdrop and I’m not sure how the world around them works. It’s like they exist in a vacuum. You had a thing to tell and everything you’ve written works towards that end and I’ll just have to deal with that.

I guess what I’m saying is, this didn’t grab me by the balls, and the short wordcount was a good choice because it allowed you to emphasize the strengths of your format. It was beautiful. It made me feel things and it didn’t read like a crazed serial killer chopped up a bunch of stories and glued together a frankenstein letter from the scraps. But maybe it could have been great. I’m just not sure how. Sorry. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To a Seaside Well – Okua
I can’t for the life of me figure out why you bothered writing this. Now don’t get me wrong, you’re supposed to write, that’s why we’re here. What I mean is, why write this thing specifically? It doesn’t feel like there was some important thought you had to get off your chest, or like there was some cool idea or image you had to bring to life, or like you just wanted to entertain me. It doesn’t feel like anything much. It feels like you had to write an entry for Thunderdome.

So take aside the fact that you didn’t write a story in a week where you were supposed to write a story and take this postcard at its very low-end stampage face value. You’d probably still get bored reading this if it was a real letter addressed to you, and considering you’d have to be a dead person who’s slowly realizing that they’re conscious enough to read letters, that’s kind of an impressive level of boring.

Go ahead, read it. Maybe you’ll yawn a little. Maybe you’ll start feeling sleepy. Maybe you’ll fall on your knees, eyes burning from the dreadful terribleness that is your story, and you will raise your arms heavenwards and cry out, “Oh Entenzahn, why oh why did I write 700 words about how it makes me sad that the sea level is rising and my neighbors are moving out.” I don’t know man, but the answer is within you. Find it, and then make sure you NEVER DO IT AGAIN.

I get that the general idea of writing to the dead has some kind of wistful and sad note to it but that’s not enough on its own. All the stuff in your letter is just exposition. And it’s not even important exposition, like how the dead person died, or what it means when the still-alive lover says “You stopped responding”, or what DARK SECRET makes makes the sea swallow their island. There is no dark secret. The dark secret is that you bothered to author a piece about how “sometimes things change.” wowwwwwww…………….

Counter proposal: a letter tells the tale of a man who tries to reach the underworld, but fails at great cost. The author reveals himself to be that man, and he writes to his dead lover, whom he promises to free one day, no matter what. Or hey, do anything else. I don’t want to box you in. On the contrary. The point is, you boxed yourself in. And it was cardboard.

Bottled Immortality – Baleful Osmium Sea
This reminds me a lot of Don Quixote in that there’s this one guy who’s kinda crazy but also awesome and then there’s his devoted servant who keeps following him around and also there’s a lot of words and nothing happens. You didn’t gently caress up the prompt so that already puts you ahead of almost everyone else, but the grand tale of an English gentleman fawning over his soon-to-transcend alchemical prodigy poet buddy is a bit hard to relate to.

What I’m missing are concrete events and images. Most short stories leave you with a picture in your mind, and when I think of yours, I think of two gentlemen sitting in club chairs and drinking brandy. On top of that, Nathaniel’s poetry is never shown and his chemical experiments are only hinted at. It’s all an act, a story that pretends to be, and technically is, because something happens, but look closely and you see the threads and the mirrors, and look for a bit longer and you realize that you’re actually just watching the setup to a magic trick that never happens. I guess you’re not showing me any of these things because you know nothing about chemistry and you don’t trust your poetry to be good, but then maybe you shouldn’t write about a character whose mastery of these fields is integral to the plot. Because then you’re just writing around your own deficiencies, and in this case that goes so far as ending the story just when it might have gotten interesting.

At least the voice is pretty solid. Many letters this week had the disadvantage of sounding bloated and wordy, and yours ran danger of falling down the same pit, and yeah it’s a bit purple, but it ties in with the setting and the words you use are actually interesting. I don’t know, I feel like this letter works. The prose was probably the main reason I kept reading and I usually prefer gritty and snappy so good job I guess.

Now use those words to tell a story.

Comfort and Security – a new study bible!
I don’t think this was good at all, and I think HMs should be good, so I don’t think this was an HM, but hey.

The main problem I have with this is that it constantly breaks my suspension of disbelief. It doesn’t sound like an authentic letter, and certainly not like a job application. It’s mostly these dumb transitions where it feels like you’re in the job application part and then suddenly you remember that you were still going to work in the lost brother and you’re already halfway through holy poo poo *slams THE BUTTON* “Speaking of past experience working security in an amusement park environment, when I was a kid...”

It seems hamfisted. Like you constructed this… THING on an operating table where you had all the various talking points laid out in front of you and you just sewed them together in a random order until you were confident that yes, everything’s there, good enough. Don’t mind the seams, it’s technically functional.

It’s a shame because this starts with some touching family moments but then the writer reveals that this is actually a job application and it just feels like, what? Where does this come from? Your original story is over at that point so I’m floating through a void until I realize what you’re trying to do and then I just don’t want to believe it. Let that roll off your tongue: there’s a guy who writes a letter directly to Will Eisner to apply for a security job at Disneyland and also explain how he lost his brother there and totally misses him and also he breaks into Disneyland regularly. It’s not impossible to make that good, but it’s hard, and it sure as poo poo takes effort and quality writing that I don’t see here. So then this guy comes off as a loving psycho, but I’m not sure if that’s on purpose, because for how dumb the premise is there are also some relatively somber parts that make me feel like you were going for a genuine, sad story, and now I’m beginning to think you had no plan for this so you just did whatever and hoped that your gimmick was so crazy it might just work. Somehow it did. But not for me.

Nigh – Hammer Bro.
I thought this was going to be the good ol’ Divorce Classic, you know, one of those safe, cheap TV dramas that put a bunch of sad poo poo before you and then demand you be sad, this is sad, why aren’t you sad, what is wrong with you monster look at this poor child (1 like = 1 prayer), but then, whoops, turns out it’s actually a mystery story about Santa Claus stealing everyone’s parents. Except it isn’t that story either. It’s the setup to that story, and then it ends.

I don’t know how this always happens to people, like do you not read through your own entry and go “Hm actually the second half has nothing to do with the first half and nothing gets resolved.” I mean this isn’t complicated and you’ve domed before, I feel like you really should know better. Or maybe you realized your story was going to turn out boring and then panicked and crammed the Santa poo poo in at the last minute and just hoped to God I wouldn’t notice but you were WRONG I ALWAYS NOTICE I LITERALLY HAVE A BUILT-IN SENSOR FOR INCOMPLETE STORIES THAT TRIGGERS THE PART OF MY BRAIN THAT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MY DEEPLY SEATED DISGUST OF THE HUMAN RACE and that part of my brain right now is getting triggered so hard it floods my entire brain with impulses and I’m literally twitching and making GBS threads myself all over the place from how much I hate this

Then Santa’s letter is such a hosed-up caleidoscope of sentences on top of that. What does it mean everyone left behind is a friend of his? Why does he first say “your parents stepped out and something happened” like he doesn’t know or doesn’t want to tell her then immediately turns around and clarifies that “I’m using them to help me prepare Christmas”? Why does he mention some weird old man that’s going far away, like where is the dude going, and who is he, and why is Santa all like “You can follow that creepy old guy… OR NOT whatever dude” and why is he bringing up the loving dog at the end, like is this supposed to make his choppy ransom note sound heartwarming all of a sudden like how does none of this sound wrong to you dear god what kind of christmas do they celebrate where you live WHO HURT YOU

Lean That Way Forever – Thranguy
I just went back and tried to carefully read through the story another time just so I could finally understand what you’re blathering on about but there’s so much crap exploding in my face and half of it is just You-Know-What instead of an actual thing with a name and I completely lose the thread again so here’s my advice to your future endeavours: have somebody do something, like, anything, not just because Things Happening is good for a story, it also helps me understand what’s going on, what kind of aliens/robots/post-humans I’m dealing with, oh and also maybe not come up with some vague interdimensional race of transient god beings that live on the moon and then cutely dance around everything they want or do until they shrug at the audience and the curtain drops.

Deadline Imminent-Please Open Immediately – Jay W. Friks
There’s been a lot of stories this week that weren’t necessarily offensive, but just objectively bad in almost every single measurable way, like really the worst you can get without being bad enough to become a Thunderdome classic. This was one of those stories. The prose, the plot, the character, all awful in their own way, but at the same time also so dull that it’s hard to remember anything about them except for the fact that you spent the entire story scrolling down, moaning, scrolling back up and forcing yourself through the next paragraph.

I guess the biggest problem I had with this is that the letter reads like it was written by a fourteen-year-old Russian who learned English by watching the villains’ speeches in James Bond movies. It’s wordy, it’s weighty, it’s awkward, your guy rambles and introduces and prefaces and he just keeps going, on and on, until James Bond realized that this was how he was supposed to die: not with a quick shot to the neck, but talked to death, slowly, painfully, and in English that, quite frankly, left a lot to desire.

Here’s an example of a sentence that made me want to kill myself: “I have left this packet taped to your front door, though the envelope says otherwise you have not been given a final notice on your electric bill.” <= this should actually be two different sentences, and then they both shouldn’t exist because the first is kinda self-explanatory and the second is irrelevant and they’re both eyesores.

Looping back around to the other horrible parts, I guess I just really hated the story. It’s supposed to be about how the writer ran over this guy’s kid, but then the story doesn’t actually seem to deal with that so much as that it explains the writer’s backstory at me. The “redeeming apology” is mostly about the guy who wrote it, to a point where the part where he kills the daughter seems more like a twist to his autobiography, which makes for kind of a lame apology if you think about it. It also means that I spend a big chunk of your story in plot relevance limbo, that haunted place where I am not sure what the actual story is and how any of the stuff he keeps babbling about ties into it.

I guess you could try to weasel your way out of this one by saying that the protagonist is supposed to sound like an autistic /r/redpill manchild and then I could say “he he well write what you know eh? eh???” but tbh this is like the third letter I’ve read this week that does this and it’s just getting annoying. Please read a book.

99 Songs Of Revolution – SkaAndScreenplays
Here’s my crit for you: you’ll never get good if you don’t make a habit out of starting to write at least two days before the deadline. Even if you think your idea sucks. Put it down and then take it from there.

You might still end up with garbage but at least you’ll spend actual time writing.

To Open On The Day You Graduate Highschool – Tyrannosaurus
In a week full of letters that didn’t sound like letters and non-stories that just served to expose the weirdness of spergy asswipes in my face this was a breath of fresh air. Because for all the fawning about how good the voices were this week, I think this was one of very few letters that nailed it, and also Warren is a cool guy who makes me feel good.

Why didn’t this do better? Maybe because it depended a bit too much on the voice. What I mean is, there’s still not much of a story here. It’s a cute letter, and the guy who writes it comes off as likeable. But most of that is window-dressing. The only thing that actually happens is that he finds the girl. And I get it. It warms your heart a bit. But this is one reason I could imagine why a measurably worse entry HM’d and yours didn’t: what you wrote just wasn’t interesting.

Conflict is important. It gives me something to hold on to. It makes the story dynamic and memorable and it gives me a reason to care. Warren is a very nice guy, but there’s nothing to root for him over. This may sound pretty basic to you but the more I think about it the more I realize that many of your stories I’ve read seem a bit mellow in that regard, like sometimes there are people who want things but you rarely write stuff where two forces are actively working against each other to a point that goes past limply slapping at each others’ wrists. Imagine Game of Thrones but instead of killing each other they’re all having dinner. You’re only going half the way. Now of course I’m not an expert on your bibliography but there you are.

The other thing is that I’m missing a reason for this fictional letter to exist. Like these are supposed to have some kind of relevance to the fictional person they are addressed to, at the point of reading. Let me dig out the prompt one more time:

Warren himself literally admits that you could read that letter any time in any place and it makes no difference because it’s such a generic feel-good message. I guess that’s why you added the boring chat-log at the end, to anchor it in the present, but then I feel like this is one of the few instances where it would have been better to leave the ending ambiguous, because it really shouldn’t matter if she’d read the letter. The letter should work on its own. Instead, why not write a bit more about his war experience and tailor the letter towards a message based on that experience. Something where I feel like, okay you can give her that letter and it will have an actual effect on her.

I feel like the segway into the snowy woods scene is a huge missed opportunity here. Warren mentions walking up to a potential IED and it feels like he would actually want to describe what it felt like at that point, and that could be a strong moment for us to gain some kind of greater insight, but nope, turns out he just needed something to attach his scene switch to. I dunno, it feels like you’re frantically ticking off a list of talking points instead of trying to tell me something.

I still think that this deserved to HM because the other thing that HM’d is goddamn terrible and at least you made me feel good. But on the other hand I haggled some DMs out of the other judges and you haven’t necessarily made it hard for me to throw you under the bus for that.

Discovery – Kaishai
So I guess my first criticism is that this is a bit confusing, or at least the start is, but then that means it might as well be the whole thing. And it’s the little things, like calling it “the funeral” instead of just “her funeral”. This is something I’ve seen a few times this week where people want to avoid a situation where characters tell backstory at each other that they already know, and I agree, it’s lazy exposition, but withholding this information from me is the only thing that’s even worse. And the other thing is that you’ve got a magical rock man living in your backyard but you start your story with something completely else, so until that guy comes up I don’t know what you’re actually writing about, and even now I’m not sure.

What I mean is that I’m not sure why I’m reading any of this. The rock guy is definitely memorable, but you’re not really doing much with him, he’s just like a regular friend of Angela’s nobody had known about, and they had their secret spot, except the guy is made of rock and so is the spot. It’s like Caroline and Rock Man just keep meeting and going “oh by the way Angela’s still dead, yup” and then that’s it, except it’s a bit weird. Not just the situation in general but how she doesn’t seem at all fazed by the idea of a rock monster chilling in her loving BACKYARD.

Basically I got to the point where the rock guy knocked on the door again (this needed to be a separate scene for some reason) and I started wondering how you were going to use the last third to finish your story, or, more importantly, start it. But you didn’t. You were never going to, were you?

I get the feeling that you were trying to do something here but either you got turned around while you wrote your story or the point of your story is hidden deeper than a rock monster’s creepy underground cavern altar. I guess you can make a case for how you caught a feeling of the abstract concept of how we only ever see one side of a person, but next time I think you should write a story instead.

LATECOMERS imagine every crit ends with SUBMIT ON TIME

Flying with the Turkeys – Hawklad
I think my main criticism is that his early onset of paranoia comes a bit out of nowhere and doesn’t fit his attitude at all and then I immediately expect that “okay this guy is going to become super crazy over the next few scenes and that’s it” and well whaddayaknow

My Old Friend Needs A Hand – widespread
Full disclosure I only breezed through this but what’s there is for the most part so infuriatingly vague and random and not at all sounding like a letter that I’m okay with the loss, especially after my co-judges started sucking each other off about how great this week was to a point where I feared nobody would lose and instead everyone would receive a participation badge as new avatar. Please don’t end stories with your protagonist shooting themselves, it’s so trite I can’t even think of a metaphor for how trite it is and that’s basically the only reason I’m judging ever so that’s pretty hosed up.

Protect the Future – BeefSupreme
This is not an epistolary, and the letter itself is filled with jerkoff scifi jargon when you should actually use those words to paint me a picture of the atrocities committed – you know, the poo poo that actually matters. The frame story is just “guy reads letter” until it turns out that he’s working for the recruitment bureau? I think? I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter because that’s where the story cuts out. Lol.

Time Just Got Away from Me – The Cut of Your Jib
dude you were like a day late gently caress off im not reading this I’VE DONE MY TIME I’M NOT GOING BACK

More than 75 words, not about a dog, you're not even trying Entenzahn.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 03:00

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

In like the motherfucking hurricane imma rock ur face with :toxx:

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 08:32

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Aw poo poo we all just got Djesowned

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 08:52

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Mercedes posted:

I'm in. I'm so loving in.

Aww yisssss

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 11:26

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

to do crits for the last two weeks i judged by subs close this week.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 21:39

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Entenzahn posted:

rhino finish your loving noir crits or BRAWL ME YOU SON OF A BITCH I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL HUNT YOU TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH FOR THESE CRITS AND THEN I WILL END YOU TOO

The Saddest Rhino posted:

what if............... i don't!

Entenzahn posted:

you're asking me as if I could give you any advice about never writing crits or stories in thunderdome

wow that is actually a p sweet burn.

ok so sounds like a brawl awesome, gimme like 500 words on the magisterial RISE OF THE CHAOS WIZARDS by GLORYHAMMER :siren:

may not contain chaos, or wizards :siren:

due in oh idk high noon nz time on 13 Jan 2016

e: you can also pick the also magisterial TONY'S THE SLAP if you want. No tonys, slapping, obv.

sebmojo fucked around with this message at 11:22 on Jan 11, 2017

# ¿ Jan 11, 2017 11:20

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Entrhino chaos wizzard brawl judgment :siren:

these both plough a similar kind of operatic mythic furrow and do it reasonably well which makes me happy - I read rhino's and loved his magical adventures of monkey stylings then took about four increasingly perplexed runs at Ent's gnarled farrago of wordspittle and thought Rhino had it at a walk.

But then I got what ent was doing and put together the wires and admired the coiled shape they made, and went back to rhino's and ... for all its fine words and font-trickery flash and sizzle there's basically nothing there, is there? Tripitaka and his merry band of public domain chums arrive, demon goes FUK U some special fx happen and tripitaka says HEY IT'S KOOL TO STAY IN SKOOL and they live happily ever after.

So this brawl goes to Entenzahn, gj fella keep it comin

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 09:37

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Judgburps for curse week, happy to discuss further if you like, hit me up in irc

1 sparksbloomEarthquake Season
So this starts slow, meandering along in a deliberately rumpy dump kinda way which is a definitively risky play when you're looking for the approbation of notoriously testy and time-poor tdome judges, but then it does a hard left into cocaine town and then hops up onto jesus rock and then trips over its own pretensions and tumbles down WTF gulch, never to be seen or heard from again. Tolerable words, I guess?

2 Benny ProfaneMy Washer is Full of Baby Boomers
this was the story where I got the first inkling that most of these stories would basically just be an explication of their assigned image - which is fair enough, I suppose, but never feel bound by the flash rule as a rigid cage - as long as there's some kind of relationship with your words you can have it be metaphorical, inspiration, poo poo just have a character with similar eyebrows. that said, this is a good and funny little yarnlet that taken on its merits hits the modest target it's aiming for. Kind of cheap but still ok, like a comedy mug you buy someone for secret santa at work then end up taking home and using after they quit two months later and leave the mug behind.

3 flerpTo Punch a Ghost
so yeah, i guess you have a character acting to achieve a goal, e.g. punch a ghost, and you're being p deadpan by putting that right there in a title, but it's a big fat sack of nothing really isn't it. You had loads of room to have your competently sketched mum character have soemthing more to do, or to have your ghost character do anything actually interesting but you were like nup imma do bad chairchucker words then hit full stop, add the wordcount and submit. tsk.

4 EntenzahnThis is One of My Hardest Tricks You Know
goddammit ent this one is like reading one of those books with a wireframe car on the front except instead of cars it's like magic, like a magic book for mechanics if you get my drift and it doesn't make me happy at allll

5 a new study bible!Universal Donor
see this is a good tangential use of the image, i think maybe i was just being grumpy before. it's not like i even read the prompt when i judge so eh. Anyway this baffled me when i read it (though the other judges liked it) and it kind of still does but I can't deny that it's got some gnarly beef to it but wtfffff. there's blood everywhere, there's spurting, there's a couple of slightly bland characters, soemthing happens, i guess? I think of this kind of thing as a very successful failure but that's not such a bad thign.

6 Baleful Osmium SeaGoogle Earth
lol that guys totally in his undies that's hilarious like ribs cracking, spiral fractures, i'm actually serious i have to go to a hospital now my thoracic cavity is collapsing because of how funny that was. ok back, now this is a good idea and a decent image but it's not a story is it mr sea nooo it is not.

7 SkaAndScreenplaysFantastic Meats And Where To Grind Them:
dude what is it with you and punctuation and spelling. seriously. and while as usual there's some juice in the basic setup of the youtube urbexers (putting aside the obviousness of the picture/story relship) the ending kills it stone dead because who chuckles when they're about to be minced, ska, who the loving gently caress even does that.

8 ChiliYou Have No Self Worth, Take Some of Mine
I didn't like this as much as my fellow judge-penitents and i'm obliged to admit that's at least partly because I didn't pick up that the last line was a reference back to the habit joke; still, I think this is an edit away from being a fine piece of tdome wacky. the nun is a great character and there's a bit of a throughline with the protagonist's journey. maybe if you hadn't started with the nun it would have worked better? yes, i believe so. control your characters better chili they're pixels on a fuckin screen.

9 HawkladA Hard Reset
this is solidly competent wordwise, and I guess it has the requisite quantity of incident and character related goal seeking, but the fragile flower of new romance blossoming you have at the end really doesn't land because duuuuuude he just comedically dumpster murdered his wife.

10 BeefSupremeClockwork
this is like one of those silver age sci fi stories but really you should go and read a couple because they had there THE OLD GUY TURNS OUT TO BE COSMIC OR THE PROTAGONIST FROM THE FUTURE OR SOME OTHER poo poo IDK game on lockdown. this doesn't really have any impact because a man being compelled by bread then getting a mild cramp is like the very antipodes of drama.

Winner11 QuoProQuidRoll for Initiative
awww poo poo that's a good image. now this had a clumpy confusing beginning, which you should really work on fixing when you re-edit this and send it out to journals etc. it's always risky to have a bunch of names at your front end - do it if you must, but make sure you do a little clarity enhancing. like you've got john, the dm's friend, carol, mitchell, michael, clive, all in the first couple of paras and I believe i frowned a little as I read them four times before proceeding IMPT NOTE do not make your judge frown if you can avoid it. but this won, because it's p heartwarming but earns its feels and grounds it in some tidily delivered plot that retrospectively unravels the clotted front end. so gj. and drat, that picture was badass.

Honorable Mention12 ThranguyLantern-Fish
i had this down as a winner iirc and was talked out of it for reasons that my cojudges have explicated; I was charmed by its knotty metaphysical conundrum, coupled with a bunch of good words and pungent images. I think quo's had more emotional juice and it was therefore the deserving winner, but this was a tidy piece you should feel happy with.

13 katdicksPardoned
lol i really liked this and the use of the image was spot on, because technically it's unrelated but emotionally they uh rhyme as my man george L might have said. this is a sweet, silly little yarn that could have gone on the pile of misguided dome butt humour but actually has a solid emotional integrity because it takes its characters seriously, and gives the protag a pleasing scrap of victory to be salvaged from the reeking mire of defeat.

14 ReeneTake With Food
so yeah this was an unnecessarily protracted intro to a very cool psycho freakout, with a well delivered it was just a drug dream twist ending, which felt like a waste - take those drat fine words and do something better with them next time.

Loser15 KrungeBugging Out
lol i actually liked this in a haha what the hell am I goddam pipetting into my eye-jelly kind of way, and calling a cat 'dickfuck' is the kind of ballsy high stakes play we love to see in this here place, but this is just nonsensical and while i await your next story with any amount of anticipation this one had its losertar prestamped on it when it hit the page, you know wammean?

Judgeburps for week 226

I was looking at this all puzzled because I apparently judged it but didn't recognise any of the stories, but then I remembered that Okua solojudged. I would have given Fuubi the loss, and Kaishai or Baleful Osmium Sea the win.

Loser 1 Sailor ViyThe Guest at the Feast
This lost, and without going back to the other judge crits I'm not sure exactly why - it's not what I'd call elegant but it's competently written and has a good bit of incident, and things happen. That said it's super silly, and not quite entertaining enough to make up for that, and the ending is a bit of a sad so what belch. I did like the hologram universe reference.

2 ThranguyStealing Luck, And Something More Than Luck
Hrrrmm, this feels like an idea that's groping for a story with the dad as the story shepherd come to bring the wayward word sheep home and gently caress you that's a great metaphor. the central image of the magic sideways 8 ball is ok but it's a bit like one of those kids fantasy books where the prophecy was in rhyme and basically told you what was going to happen leaving little room from drama.

3 Jitzu_the_MonkGravebook
Aww yis great opening line. and some great jaunty words and ideas, but wimps out on the ending. don't give us a character (e.g. the scammer) then have them just pop out of existence at the end. Having your large protag wander off to find a life is a stop, not an ending.

4 Fleta McgurnThe Judgment Circle
Yaaaa so this is a decent adventurey yarn with some tolerable wordwritin' but it's a little too one-note and I don't ever feel like the protagonist is scared or under threat which feels important. She had a thing she was always going to do, she did it, on to her next exciting adventure. also it's all people talking about what happened while the protagonist stands there which isn't the sort of thing i find next to the defn of dynamic in MY dictionary fleta let me tell U

5 ChairchuckerActually the Stomach is Way Bigger than the Eyes, I Mean That�s Just Basic Anatomy
nice, first para and i've got the setup, goal, history, tone. strapped in and ready for some chairchuckering - hopefully it's good chucker not slightly less good chucker. Then: oh no! why did you have your gourmet thug shoot his friends, that's unkind and nonsensical. This is actually very solid apart from that, and manages to land the ending (always tricksy in this kind of gently silly sort of tale) perfectly. yeah, just cut the two thugs (as your head robber does, in fact, do) and this is great.

Winner6 HawkladHome

I had this hella cool roger dean poster of an ice schooner on my walls when I was a kid, you know, so I'm predisposed to like this and you help that along with your swift gritty sketching of some kind of post apoc scenario. But I'm not completely sold on what you come up with - seems like this is actually the mum's story, and the mermaid sprog is sort of out of nowhere, as is teh apparently magical survival of the ice boat (plus how the hell they gonna get back?)

Honorable Mention7 Baleful Osmium SeaFirst Contact By a Species that Speaks Almost Entirely In Metaphors
Yeah, I prefer this over hawklad's - an elegant combination of good words with a nicely formal schema lets its structure lead the story of the couple to an expected but still surprising end. great language, and the image of the monster is fantastic.

8 KaishaiThe Dead of Winter
ooh, this is proper good in the gnarled fairy tale mode which you own so precisely - this story is just the right size for its words and it carries its own mythic baggage lightly - I feel like everything that happens makes perfect sense, because you lead me down the story's path so well.

9 TyrannosaurusThe Girl Who Slept With Everyone
"I thought I was an artist back then because I smoked a lot and read a little and was always late on my rent. " That's a sweet-rear end line. bunch of typos in this, which is a pity, because it's a nice character sketch. it nearly hits its mark, I guess, but for all your hippy boho protagonist tells us she loves Vinny I'm not sure that actually comes across in the story you tell us - maybe that's the point? maybe it is.

10 FuubiThe Ragged Man
oooh first para I'm bettin a cruel reckoning is going to come! and in fact yes it is, but only to the english language, upon which set of characters this terrible story is a grand traducement! when it's not ladling gobbets of purple prose, it's being hilariously hamfisted and melodramatic! i'm therefore astonished it didn't lose! and i would have argued strongly that this should have lost instead of the story that did!

sebmojo fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Jan 15, 2017

# ¿ Jan 15, 2017 11:59

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

I was like "I am gonna be helpful and do the crits" then the very first story I went to read was erotic Overwatch fanfiction

promise is a promise muffzor

# ¿ Jan 16, 2017 23:32

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Interprompt: chess, the anime (100 words)

# ¿ Jan 17, 2017 00:43

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

SkaAndScreenplays posted:

REQUESTING A STAY OF EXECUTION ON THE INEVITABLE TOXX BAN RESULTING FROM MY FAILURE TO DELIVER AN HM?
So that I can post a brief crit on everything this week and a couple of line crits.

As soon as those are in bring the hammer down and I'll see you all on Friday...

Or just ban me as soon as judging is in and I'll post when I fork over the :tenbux:

I would like to giveth the feedback before it comes down on me.

Anyone can call in a toxx, I won't do it until the crits are up, can't speak for anyone else.

sebmojo fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Jan 17, 2017

# ¿ Jan 17, 2017 07:52

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

This is the first week in literally years that everybody has submitted

for our hubris, we are being punished. there will be no FJ tonight

there will be no judging

we have all failed

we are all the worst this night

# ¿ Jan 18, 2017 02:46

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

we are dead and this is hell

crit prediction: Muffin this was pretty but where was no story no placement

Muffin this is art with a capital F

# ¿ Jan 18, 2017 04:19

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

steeltoedsneakers posted:

mojo
You called me numpty
In an email to work folks.
Eat dicks. A whole bag.

In my defence you are a numpty

# ¿ Jan 18, 2017 05:06

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Post your crits, ska

# ¿ Jan 18, 2017 07:42

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

katdicks posted:

I lift the razor to my wrists again;
I bleed out words that are just average.
gently caress me, gently caress me, gently caress me, gently caress you, I'm in.

Palpatine_yes_yessss.gif

# ¿ Jan 18, 2017 21:06

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

SkaAndScreenplays posted:

Your Soul My Crits:
Installment One Of Three...

post the crits ska

# ¿ Jan 19, 2017 09:53

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

SkaAndScreenplays posted:

In This Week:
Maybe I won't gently caress this one up.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2017 10:12

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Entenzahn posted:

who watches the watchmen

it's in the mail, madame defarge. Ska's too.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2017 10:49

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

GenJoe posted:

Do you want to enter? I was going to ask on IRC if there was anyone who didn't want to enter but wanted to judge. I'll do that now.

grab your judges with both hands and never let them go even if they struggle

# ¿ Jan 24, 2017 22:56

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

also genjoe is a loser who has become a winner, will the dome recognise that with an avatar?

# ¿ Jan 24, 2017 22:57

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

May contain:
615 words

Elanor was driving down the road for more wine when she got the text. 1 message, the screen said on top of the She blinked at it. �Leon,� she said.

Leon was lying in the back of the car, stretched out on the bench seat like a lanky foal. �Don�t text and drive man,� he said without opening his eyes. �Cops will take you away for that. They have a special prison.�

The lights turned green, the Dodge Journey behind her honked petulantly and Elanor picked up her phone between thumb and forefinger and skimmed it over her shoulder like a smooth stone into a river. Leon huffed out a surprised breath as it landed on his belly. �See who it�s from and if it�s Banner wanting more weed tell him he�s a lazy stoner.� She smiled at him in the rear view mirror, pleased at the way the light drifted across his face.

Leon sat up and squinted at the phone. �It�s your mom. She says your dad is worried, can you call, umm, some stuff about the clinic.� He leaned forward and slid the phone back into the pocket on her lumberjack shirt. �Have you been sick?�

Elanor shook her head. �I�m having a baby.� She swung the wheel hard right and took the ramp to the liquor store carpark with a bump, then slid her car into the handicapped slot, yanked the handbrake and clambered out of the car, grabbing her keys as an afterthought.

Leon caught up with her inside. She was running her index finger over the bottles of Pinot Grigio, tink tink tink tink. �That�s good? News? It�s news, anyway! Who�s the, uh, who�s? When?�

Elanor picked up a bottle of Mission Valley and looked at the label. �They say it doesn�t have sulphites like it�s a good thing, but why? Maybe sulphites are great. Maybe sulphites are all we need?�

Leon pushed his chin forward. �I'm real confused right now. I don't think I need sulphites for that."

Elanor looked at him and nodded. "Nope. You're right." She grabbed two bottles. "Onwards!"

Leon pulled out his card. "I was going to buy them, I mean it's my turn, and, um, you shouldn't be drinking? I mean you're driving too, so, I guess." He grasped at the bottles that Elanor thrust at him, took them to the counter, paid. Elanor was humming.

Outside it was raining, and they ran to the car. Elanor turned the key as Leon fumbled with his seatbelt. She started the engine and rested her hand on the handbrake as fat drops of water blattered on the windscreen.

"I can't do it," she said. "I haven't got enough space. There's barely enough me for me, I can't spread myself that thin."

Leon put the bottles down between his feet.

"Ok," he said.

She was tapping the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. "loving loving loving. Dicks and cunts and loving gently caress. Noone asks to have a body, do they?"

Leon rubbed his palms on his knees. "I guess not? Who was the guy?"

Elanor shrugged.

"Are you going to ... go through with it? I mean what do you want to do?"

Elanor let off the handbrake and reversed out of the park. "I want to drink this wine, then tomorrow I want to wake up, and the day after that I want to do the same. Little fucker down there can come along with me if he likes, or she, or who gives a poo poo."

Leon said "Buy the ticket, take the ride?"

Elanor mashed the pedal and slammed them both back in their seats as the car fishtailed down the road. "Shantih."

Leon thought he could hear a deeper voice behind her as she talked, like someone was talking with her.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2017 05:55

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

In b*tches

# ¿ Jan 31, 2017 20:16

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Failures who signed up but did not submit:

Obliterati
Jay W. Friks
Julias
kurona_bright
SkaAndScreenplays
Flesnolk
Djeser
Entenzahn
Killer-of-Lawyers
sparksbloom
Okua
magnificent7
QuoProQuid
Carl Killer Miller
a new study bible!
BeefSupreme

e: lol

22 Failuresnewtestleper
22 Failuressebmojo
21 FailuresDjeser
20 FailuresPhobia
19 FailuresJuniperCake
17 FailuresZeBourgeoisie
15 FailuresKiller-of-Lawyers
15 Failuresmagnificent7
15 Failuresskwidmonster
14 FailuresMercedes
13 Failureskurona_bright
12 Failuresdocbeard

sebmojo fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Jan 31, 2017

# ¿ Jan 31, 2017 21:31