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Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Fast judging? :eyepop:

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Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

sebmojo the ÃIƒÂIƒâ¬‚ÅIp¢â‚

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Out of all these LEGOs which is your favorite of the LEGOs?

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

crits before judgement :hehe:

Chairchucker - Gonna Catch a Big One
This story is a whole story and it works, which is good. The problem is that the actual story starts maybe three-fifths of the way through the story. Listening to kids doing generically cute kid stuff was fine for about a paragraph, but after that I was waiting for something to either get funny or interesting, and it stayed soft-focus and bland until we got to the bear. The voice got a little tiring after a bit since mostly it’s just simple sentences that run on. I would have appreciated a little more humor, or a little more imagery, or a little more emotion. As is, it’s a bit too dry, like a pack of saltines your mom stuck in your lunchbox that makes you have to go to the water fountain afterward.

Okua - Scales
The plot here is pretty much what I expected given the premise, but it’s a decent read. I was almost thinking that if it worked, this would put this story in the same canon as the one I wrote about a mermaid who tries to use a spell to turn someone into a merman. At any rate, the relationship between the two of them is good and you were able to pause at points to inject some imagery, which helped make the scenes feel a little more real. Oddly enough, I could have used a bit more broad-picture blocking, like just a mention that they had to walk through town because the beach was on the other side, or something. As is, it feels like they zap from gym to beach to home without any space in between.

Jay W. Friks - Agua Mala, Agua Pura
Okay, right off the bat this is confusing to read. I think I know what you’re doing with the shifting verb tenses in the first paragraph but “she acquiesced to his insistence of it since he would grab her containers in the middle of the night for getting nutrients” ??????
At this point, the editing work is really messy and the only interesting thing is the “baby has overly sophisticated voice” thing which I’m starting to get bored of. Yes sugary fragments falling into a bowl mmhmm.
Okay so she actually is an alien, that’s something I guess.
Now that I’m done I see where it was going but the motivations aren’t very clear until the end and the voice is kind of offputting. There’s a lot of time wasted in the beginning and things don’t really pick up until nearly the end. And then the one character who’s kind of sympathetic gets some weird ovum bubble and gets to be a mutant or something? I see where you were going with this but the vagueness, especially in the beginning, means it loses a lot.

Sparksbloom - The Understudy
I’m pretty on board for most of this story, but the ending lost me. Once the gross bottle is in play, why doesn’t she go for truth instead? (I guess the answer is she’s confused.) And then she drinks it I guess to make sure that...Marissa gets in trouble, maybe? But it wasn’t Marissa’s fault in any way so she’s not going to get the blowback from this and now Kat’s going to be too sick even to get a small part. I just don’t get the motivation for drinking it anyway.

Metrofreak - Letters
The story behind this is decent but there’s a couple odd things about the way it’s written. I kept having trouble telling which was which, and I’m not sure if that’s me or the writing. Also, it seemed strangely lonely for a royal family--nothing about servants or maids. And more than that, I couldn’t get a sense of when this was happening. At first it felt like maybe World War I era, but then it was more medieval. I guess I would have gotten the medieval thing if I’d looked closer at the Lego set, but if all the flavor of your setting is in a picture next to your story, maybe try to put some of that into the story.

A new study bible! - Resizer
A kid and someone who’s kind of his friend accidentally Cronenberg a hobo, and then Cronenberg the kid’s friend too, and then they kill both of them and go home. It’s interesting and sticks with me as an unpleasant image but there’s not much else here than something unpleasant happening. It’s interesting, sure, and cool in a speculative fiction sort of way, but it’s mostly two people suffering awful fates and then everyone goes home sad.

ArgumentatumE.C.T. - We’re Not Supposed To
Good job getting under the word count! I’m already seeing redundant stuff in your first line of dialogue. And now that I read the whole thing I’m mostly confused. I can sort of piece together from vague things that this is maybe something post-apocalyptic? And like, Uncle is the one who’s keeping these kids safe. But the story as a whole is kind of a bunch of kids who can’t decide whether they should do first aid, and then they do first aid. The stakes are vague, the setting is vague, and they talk around things without actually saying things that are meaningful to the reader.

Benny Profane - The Treehouse Heist
The fact that the fiction of the fight gets maintained for the entire thing is what makes me go from hating this story to actually liking it. A lot of the times when people try to write something like this, they’ll drop the fiction at some point and then it makes everything that happened seem pointless. But maintaining it (even though we can see that it’s a fiction) means that it never gets undermined, so the whole thing still feels meaningful. I don’t know if this is going to win but it’s the least bad story I’ve read so far.

The Saddest Rhino - The Terrible Truth of (Personal) Space
This is weird and just funny enough to be amusing. I can tell it’s not supposed to be serious so it’s not a huge deal if the characters are kind of flat. I’m not sure I exactly follow the backstory of pocket universes created through stress and destroyed via creation, but whatever. You had fun with this, I had fun with reading it.

Katdicks - Big duck, little duck
On the whole this was pretty good and easy to read, though the creepy backstage guy felt like it was leading up to something that never actually paid off. And the very ending part was a little sappy--not super saccharine, but I might tweak that a little bit so that the story doesn’t end with ‘brave little sister’. Like that’d be a point to stick in ‘even when she started kicking Lilly’s back” or something, just to provide a bit of contrast and make the mood more light-hearted than sentimental. Or maybe that’s just me.

Thranguy - The Percussionists
A story about a friend valiantly pissing his pants to save his buddy from embarrassment. That aside, this was fairly amusing, though it did trip me up in the beginning--where you said that Adam’ didn’t find a word of dissent, it sounded like he was saying that to Mr. Dole, and that the music teacher was therefore in on the plan to sneak in and fire a cannon. The voice is breezy and enjoyable to read, though the plot, such as it is, is pretty light and the one conflict is that his friend pisses himself and it’d be super embarrassing if he was the only one who pissed himself.

Kaishai - Keys to the Kingdom
In the genre of Kids Playing Pretend this is another pretty good one, though it’s a different tack than Benny’s. Here, the fact that it’s pretend isn’t important because it’s about the characters and the way they play against each other. It’s pretty good, and I like that Leslie’s meanness expresses itself in ways that don’t make a lot of sense, because she’s just Kid Angry and that means you do stuff like single someone out in tag.

Flerp - It’s Not Much to Listen
I rate this story Legos out of Legos.
For reals though this is probably the most emotionally strong out of the stories so far and I like the dynamic between the two of them and the way he slowly opens up, but even in opening up he’s holding back and the protagonist feels like he needs to keep him talking. I like it, it works for me. Legos.

Noah - Without a Clue
After reading this and looking back at the title, I feel like this might be an extended reference to Clueless, which is a movie I know vaguely of but haven’t seen. That said, it was the transition between the impending suicide and the flashback to class that tripped me up--though that might be an artifact of the archival process, so blame Kaishai. The overwrought tone was amusing but it did kind of drag on for a while after it had made its point and I was ready for it to move on.

Sebmojo - The Lost Gold of Old Man Finkelstein
Fairly amusing but kind of light. I enjoyed the slapstick but this could have melted into the rest of a week of kids having vaguely charming adventures. I appreciated the punchline at the end and there were some good bits throughout but this week in general was a bit of a childhood mush that makes me smell the scent of budget hand soap and cheeto dust. (These are the memories of my childhood.)

Krunge - Unruined
The idea behind this was pretty cool, and I can see (or at least, I can assume, since the image link doesn’t work for me) how you got here from your Lego set, but the voice was so bland that I started losing focus and thinking about other things in the middle of reading it. This was a general problem this week, but just because you’re writing about kids doesn’t mean you have to write like a kid would. The plot is even decent if you ask me, it’s just written in such a simplistic style that in my mind everything is low-res and Minecrafty.

Sitting Here - Dumb Baby Stuff
This was pretty good, and it was another case of taking the Kids Make Believe stuff and applying it in a different way, like Kaishai and Benny’s stories. The one problem I felt here was that they kind of came off as a bit older than they were meant to, but might just have been me. We ended up talking about the ending in judgechat and I said that I think the ending is good because it avoids being too saccharine and having their actions fix everything, or even focusing on like “and then we were friends even though our parents both divorced”. The fact that they’re explicitly hiding from scary adult stuff by doing this and they’re going to have to face it sooner or later made it feel a lot less patronizing than it could have.

The Cut of Your Jib - Missing a Few Pieces
This was also pretty good, and goes in the genre with Flerp’s story of Kids And Tragedy. It was a bit unfocused in the beginning, mostly because there’s a lot of people swirling around and it’s a bit harder to tell where it’s going before it shifts to being about her friend’s death. It also deals with emotions in a realistic way, and I like the feeling of these two kids playing together, both kind of wishing that it was their mutual friend they were playing with instead. I was going to ask if any kids ever actually watched David Letterman but I realized that I spent huge swaths of my childhood in the basement watching bad sitcoms because it meant I could eat as many potato chips as I wanted and my parents wouldn’t bug me.

Anyway, good story, and I’m going to go buy potato chips now.

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

in and :toxx: to submit by midnight PST tonight

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

https://thunderdome.cc/?story=5401

Djeser fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Dec 28, 2017

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Thunderdome would be easier if we all just had two hours from signup to write because we all do it last minute anyway lmao

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Judge ing?

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

In

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

https://thunderdome.cc/?story=5433

Djeser fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Dec 28, 2017

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again


lol if you don't slam submit as soon as you finish the last word :justpost: my dudes

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as fjgj

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

oshit it's your boy Los Angeles Judge Craig Mitchell!!





Craig is the best judge

judge fast, fast judge!!

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again



look at this fast judge, running through the night. a good judge.

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Put me in coach

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Sitting Here posted:

don't worry i'll be goon

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

fowl religions are just fine, all hail the EGG

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

sebmojo posted:

22 Failuresnewtestleper
22 Failuressebmojo
21 FailuresDjeser

i'm comin for u mojo

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Benagain posted:

When is this due again?

if only there was a post which had the prompt in it, that we could read to gain secrets and value

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

oh boy fuckin nerd games i've never played in :toxx:

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

https://thunderdome.cc/?story=5506

Djeser fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Dec 28, 2017

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again


oh yeah, and these are my dumb cards from the game for garbage babies

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

promtpt

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

sebmojo more like sebmodjo because he's a mod :buddy:

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

If only Uranium Phoenix was as fast and good with their prompting as Fuschia tude was with their crits.

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

flerp posted:

its not even valentines day yet ur gonna get cursed

getting cursed by kissing flerp isn't a valentine's day special, it's a year-round deal

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

In and :toxx:

Please do not write a bunch of "gosh humans are weird with their sugar spherules and radio-transmission color hypnosis" guys

guys
think about the recap crew :negative:

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Sitting Here posted:

if you lit me on fire I'd burn funny colors and issue really gross-smelling smoke.

don't you issue really gross-smelling smoke already?


oh wait that's not smoke :(

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

it's farts

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

https://thunderdome.cc/?story=5527&title=Colorado+Star

Djeser fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Dec 28, 2017

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

rome with some high tech bullshit in it is the dorkiest neckbeardiest sort of setting and the only way it could be dorkier is if you tried to slap pokemon or gundam onto it to make it even more palatable to nerds

poems are a real good way to confuse the judges into thinking that you did a good job by farting onto the keyboard, putting a bunch of lacunae and throwing in some rhymes

people who use a rustic voice are just looking for an out so they don't have to worry about choosing their words well and they can just rely on some lovely stock trope voice

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

flerp posted:

dogs suck and i never want to see one

agreed

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DON'T FJ?

YOU SEE, JUDGES?

don't be so mad, chester

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

:siren:Hey, Thunderdome.:siren:

I know you guys don't read much, but it's cool to read. Particularly, it's cool to read Jorge Luis Borges's The Form of the Sword. It's not even 2,000 words long, and it's relevant to this week. (Okay, you got me, the narrator is unreliable.) Go read it. Spoilers for the story below.

Okay, so, it ended on a twist. The narrator was lying the whole time. BUT, this worked. Why does it work? It's because the twist adds to the story. It doesn't invalidate any of it; it all still happened. More importantly, it was all still relevant, because the whole story was about Vincent Moon. The twist doesn't reveal that he was actually a dream, or a kid playing pretend. It doesn't bring in something new, all it does is switch two of the characters, and suddenly the story has a deeper meaning.

Oh, also I'm not in. Haha it's a joke. Us Thunderdomers, jokers all. Hahaha.

I'm in.

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Hawklad posted:

I smelled that loss coming a mile away! In retrospect a bad choice for the title. Thanks for the crit.

ok

prompt

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

i'm making the face in wlotms avatar at beef2 right now

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

lol who are you

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Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

In

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