|
Hit me with some sweet tunes for I'm in yo Give me something Japanese for I'm posting from Nippon right now!!
|
#
¿
Nov 26, 2019 12:35
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 16:59 |
|
|
Catching Up 1493/1500 words Chat Messages with: [Steph-O] <Steph-O 09:17 PM> Hey man, I’m sorry that I’ve been silent for so long. I had some stuff come up in real life and wasn’t feeling the game much anymore. That’s no excuse for ghosting you for weeks, but…anyway, I wanted to say that I always had a great time playing with you, but I’ll have to take a break. Maybe I’ll pick the game back up in a few months, and you’ll be the first to know! Sorry if that sounds gay, but we did kind of become friends, no? Think we can just keep shooting the poo poo without the game running? Do you have time <Steph-O 09:18 PM> gently caress i still had that typed up saved for over two years haha <CrshngMartel 09:43 PM> omg Seriously, it’s you? <Steph-O 09:45 PM> yeah uh hi same old me see above i guess still feel sorry about that especially the whole not sending part <CrshngMartel 09:47 PM> It’s fine I guess Was a bit peeved about it for a while but it was just a game acquaintance after all <CrshngMartel 09:50 PM> So How you’ve been and why write now? <Steph-O 09:51 PM> i did sort out the real life poo poo at least i thought catches up to you maybe <CrshngMartel 09:52 PM> You’re not making much sense… <Steph-O 09:53 PM> guess so still getting used to opening up more maybe ur good practice <CrshngMartel 09:54 PM> No offense, but wouldn’t someone you know and who knows you be better for that? <Steph-O 09:55 PM> opposite really ur perfect <Steph-O 09:58 PM> how u been then? <CrshngMartel 10:07 PM> Sorry, was getting ready for bed. I’ve been doing fine, thanks! Finished college despite the problems I had told you about, got a decent job now and – can you believe it – a girlfriend! <Steph-O 10:10 PM> oh thats nice jealous not of the job i got a job <Steph-O 10:13 PM> seriously though can you chill with the bed thing a bit <CrshngMartel 10:14 PM> I’m no longer playing games all night, man. Gotta see my gf’s family tomorrow and really don’t want to be tired for that. Can we not talk after the holidays? <Steph-O 10:15 PM> yeah about that <CrshngMartel 10:20 PM> You got ten minutes. <Steph-O 10:28 PM> sorry i was dozing off a little hope its not too late <Steph-O 10:30 PM> yeah so i wont keep you too long im lying in a ditch somewhere in oregon and bleeding <CrshngMartel 10:31 PM> That’s [message deleted] not very funny? <Steph-O 10:32 PM> actually hurts a lot yeah oh sorry misread yeah its not a joke <CrshngMartel 10:33 PM> Seriously? You had an accident or sth? <Steph-O 10:34 PM> wild boar now kinda stuck in a wreck sucks <CrshngMartel 10:35 PM> why write me??? Dude call 911! <Steph-O 10:36 PM> dont wanna <CrshngMartel 10:37 PM> The hell Where are you? I’ll do it! <Steph-O 10:41 PM> oregon dont bother just wanted someone to talk <CrshngMartel 10:42 PM> Dude you could die! <Steph-O 10:43 PM> hm probably make some people happy <CrshngMartel 10:44 PM> You’re in shock or sth okay listen! You need to calm down, stop chatting and CONTACT SOMEONE who can HELP you!! <Steph-O 10:45 PM> i dont need to do anything not anymore thats whats so great about this <CrshngMartel 10:47 PM> Seriously man, I don’t know what’s up with you and I don’t want to presume But we had some great times together You NEED to get help <Steph-O 10:50 PM> naw thats just the way its gotta be never wanted to see my family anyway after all that poo poo so that boar? destiny <CrshngMartel 10:51 PM> You can just NOT see them anyway But stay alive regardless To spite them or sth? <Steph-O 10:52 PM> i know a thing thatll spite them more best thing is i just gotta do nothing <CrshngMartel 10:53 PM> Dude you oof that’s not how I wanted to spend my evening <Steph-O 10:54 PM> so sorry i can log off and let you sleep <CrshngMartel 10:55 PM> Don’t u dare So again, where the HELL ARE YOU??? <Steph-O 10:56 PM> oregon <CrshngMartel 10:57 PM> jfc <Steph-O 10:58 PM> didn’t you tell me not to give personal details to strangers on the internet i was so young when we met you taught me to be cautious <Steph-O 11:01 PM> real life did the rest <Steph-O 11:07 PM> hey ru here? still bleeding ya know <CrshngMartel 11:08 PM> mhm hold on try stanning it staunching <Steph-O 11:09 PM> haha autocorrect <Steph-O 11:10 PM> wait werent u on pc before <CrshngMartel 11:11 PM> why would it m <Steph-O 11:11 PM> are you scrolling back on pc and chatting on phone <CrshngMartel 11:12 PM> no im <Steph-O 11:13 PM> ur looking for the old messages! <CrshngMartel 11:14 PM> no <Steph-O 11:15 PM> loving stop it were old friends talking dont loving DOXX me!!! <CrshngMartel 11:16 PM> I’m trying to save your LIFE here! <CrshngMartel 11:20 PM> hey <CrshngMartel 11:22 PM> HEY <CrshngMartel 11:23 PM> Talk to me! <Steph-O 11:27 PM> sorry i was brushing my teeth gently caress u man i was reaching out just for a chat <CrshngMartel 11:28 PM> Jesus okay Then let’s chat. Why do you think it’s best for you to just die? <Steph-O 11:31 PM> nobody cares <CrshngMartel 11:32 PM> I care. <Steph-O 11:34 PM> enough to be tired for your drat gfs family whoop but thats funny no the only one who cares some guy i dont even know the name <CrshngMartel 11:35 PM> It’s Marten <Steph-O 11:36 PM> lol <CrshngMartel 11:37 PM> Yeah, So how’re you doing? <Steph-O 11:40 PM> hungry maybe i can grab some boar pieces from here but my leg is closer <CrshngMartel 11:42 PM> Yeah don’t do that But if you do, tell me how it tastes <Steph-O 11:43 PM> haha <CrshngMartel 11:46 PM> haha <Steph-O 11:47 PM> on your phone again? <CrshngMartel 11:48 PM> not typing if you mean that <Steph-O 11:49 PM> calling ? <CrshngMartel 11:51 PM> I found the info I needed Stephen <Steph-O 11:51 PM> Stephanie actually what info <CrshngMartel 11:52 PM> what i ned to safe u sorry typing one handed <Steph-O 11:53 PM> You can’t loving save <Steph-O 11:56 PM> y do u care <CrshngMartel 11:58 PM> You’re a friend. <Steph-O 00:02 AM> how still <CrshngMartel 00:04 AM> Some relationships don’t ever end, man. <CrshngMartel 00:06 AM> Every time I look at the stupid action figure I bought when I was a lifer for this poo poo I get this urge to reinstall And that’s because of the good times I had. With people like you. <Steph-O 00:07 AM> gently caress <CrshngMartel 00:11 AM> Are you OKAY? <Steph-O 00:12 AM> no and almost out of juice electric and red <CrshngMartel 00:16 AM> Okay read very carefully please. <CrshngMartel 00:17 AM> You told me your parent’s town, so now there’s a police alert for all highways leading from Oregon to that corner of Idaho. Radio alert is out, they’re searching <CrshngMartel 00:19 AM> But PLEASE work with me here. They’ll find you. <Steph-O 00:19 AM> no they wont <CrshngMartel 00:20 AM> High chance they will. And you’ll be still alive because I know you, you don’t give up even if you say you want to. Remember when we almost wiped to ol’ Thundershitter? <Steph-O 00:21 AM> haha the lightning oval office <CrshngMartel 00:21 AM> But you kept the raid going when everyone was throwing their keyboards. And you cursing along but still hitting the heals. So listen the gently caress up. <CrshngMartel 00:22 AM> They will find you and you will survive. But by that time that leg will be beyond saving, and your family will visit a sad cripple, and if you’re super unlucky you’ll have brain damage from blood loss or whatever <CrshngMartel 00:24 AM> Or you use that last bit of phone juice to call 911 and tell them the last road sign you passed. <Steph-O 00:26 AM> ugh <CrshngMartel 00:30 AM> did you do it <CrshngMartel 00:35 AM> DID YOU loving CALL <CrshngMartel 00:36 AM> Stephanie please <CrshngMartel 00:41 AM> I can see you typing just send move your fingers! Then call! <CrshngMartel 00:45 AM> STEPHANIE <Steph-O 00:57 AM> im gon <Steph-O 00:58 AM> sry sleepy <Steph-O 01:00 AM> did call tho <CrshngMartel 01:01 AM> oh thank God <Steph-O 01:03 AM> brain damage scary gently caress the leg its knobby thanks marten <CrshngMartel 01:04 AM> Just stay with me. Don’t doze off again. <Steph-O 01:05 AM> got sth to keep me busy scrolling back dont write <Steph-O 01:09 AM> hm turns out i never told you where exactly my parents lived <CrshngMartel 01:10 AM> But you did say you wanted out of Idaho. <Steph-O 01:12 AM> you cheeky gently caress i remember when we beat the thundercunt you cheated too <Steph-O 01:13 AM> Exploit. Legit until they patched it. <Steph-O 01:14 AM> haha man we really gotta catch up.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2019 23:45
|
|
|
Angry words about week 382 Alright so I got an HM for this week and was elated and thought "awesome, that means I beat all these other people!!!" and saw it wasn't that many entries, so I decided to read through them all and give some crits and also jerk myself off because I overcame so many other worthy opponents and you know what? I'm super mad now because there's SO MANY BAD WORDS in this week, like seriously, makes sense that I won with a dialogue-only entry despite being utter garbage at dialogue (as professionally noted by the head judge man himself) so here's me making GBS threads all over you in an extremely objective manner, don't you dare thank me for the crits Mrenda - Internet Dating Fifteen Years After Having Been Raped Now that's a title. It does an incredible amount of work, it's so blunt and sets the tone immediately and it's possibly the best sentence written this week despite not actually being IN a story. Good job. But that's a conclusion I came to after having read the rest of your story. If you had written badly, the title would have sucked, it's funny how these things worked. And I was prepared to go "lol this is set up to be garbage" after the first few paragraphs, admittedly, because it took me quite a bit to get into the style you're using, how disjointed the sentences are, how much of a mood painting you're establishing instead of telling a more traditional story. It overall works, don't get me wrong, but it's a bit of a hard sell. It doesn't help that this story's Bad Words (I'm gonna single those out for everyone don't worry) are right at the start. "It’s not libidinal; it reminds me every time I log in. It soothes me a little. More than a little: this deep blue, this light yellow. It’s bold text with lighter, delicate words beneath. The site is a whole world to me; safe I guess. Its blue and yellow is calm. It’s my world. It’s me and my face. Like it’s normal to list your loves. ‘Loves’ is such a strong word. Such a strong sentiment. What do I love? Can I love?" This crosses the line from stream-of-consciousness writing to utter nonsense. I have no idea how "libidinal" (fundamentally awkward word on its own) features into what it MIGHT refer to (the words "You're Beautiful" right before), and the second part of the sentence ("it" reminds me, what's it again?), and what comes after. Also, the colors, the text; it's probably meant to tell me how the dating site looks like, but you jump from words to color to text back to color, and I'm just here imagining an actual dating site that looks blue and yellow like presentation slides made clearly by psychopaths who think that black on white is just too casual and I'm out of it. Fortunately, your story then finds its voice and focus and I can start enjoying it. The horny messages might be cliché, but it's something that objectively happens, a lot, and that grounds it again in a reality I get (as an observer, I'm male after all), and I can begin to feel what your protagonist feels. What I'm saying is the old adage of "delete the first few paragraphs". One small thing that took me out again (sadly, because I was in it now, her musings about making the profile are way stronger than the way too on the nose "I want to feel loved" parts at the start) was the "Ro" - it didn't read as a name to me and confused me for way too long. I think just a simple "Ronan. Ro." would help AND convey that she's started to give this one dude a nickname. It's at this point where the lack of chronology in the storytelling becomes a strength rather than a source of confusion. Especially when it becomes grounded in a moment again, that gives it a sense of tension and urgency. It's good stuff. I hesitate to call the story overall "realistic" because it's really not my place to judge that. But it reads believable, and the text and style work really well together with the few things that are actually happening to paint a picture of the protagonist and her fears and urges, and that's all encapsulated in the title, again. High bar set at the start that obviously nobody managed to clear. sephiRoth IRA - Tribal Council We start a trend here which I'm extremely guilty of myself, and that is terrible invented usernames. I don't know why it always makes me cringe to see another [StoryRelatedName][number], but it does, and it's weird innit? Maybe it's because it's honestly a bit of an outdated cliché that people on the internet are called xXx_S3x_Goku_69, I feel like that was very early day internet (and I realize I'm talking to someone named after loving Sephiroth, yes). Nowadays, popular internet people are called stuff like "The [X] Guy" or "Andy", and even tons of goons are either "Pigballs With Cream" or "Arwenithia". I don't know, it irks me, and because you're the first to do it you get to read this weird screed. Sorry_not_sorry_1989 So anyway your actual story - its main problem is that it wears its premise on its sleeve and then just spools that down rather bloodlessly. It's like reading a QCS thread, and that weird dichotomy between "extremely realistic" and "but in real life" rather leads to making the real life (and therefore exciting, because there are real people not accounts!!!) parts more dull instead of making the realistic (for an online forum) parts more dramatic. This is, of course, due to Bad Words. "The youth screamed again, keening over the wind, but it would not stop the swing of the club. The stone cracked against his skull, showering him in blood and sending him into the depths of unconsciousness. The users pushed his insensate body over the side of the cliff and it crashed to the rocks below." A scream is not a keen. Of course it cannot stop the club, it could maybe make the wielder hesitate, but that's not what you say. Cracked "against" his skill devalues the impact. The rock doesn't shower him in blood, his own blood does. It reads like the rock is showered. "Depths of unconsciousness" is both a cliché and a spoiler, it already tells us he'll survive. What the hell kind of word is "insensate". And it ends with a weird tangent about having to choose a new username, like what does that want to convey? I don't get it and I don't like it. Word better. Simply Simon - Catching Up In the name of fairness, I looked for my own Bad Words. Here: "<Steph-O 10:58 PM> didn’t you tell me not to give personal details to strangers on the internet i was so young when we met you taught me to be cautious <Steph-O 11:01 PM> real life did the rest" This is clichéd and unsubtle and makes me want to die for having written it. It's typical for me to struggle with a paragraph, just squeeze something out to keep the writing going, and I really really need to get into the habit to mark these difficult paragraphs and go back later and fix them to not be garbage. Maybe that can serve as a reminder for other people to do the same. It's extremely rare that I struggle with something and immediately find a good solution to the struggle. Carl Killer Miller - As We Soar Into the Burning Eye As other people said, it's impossible to keep track of who any of these people are. Just from remembering my first pass, you have Eva the child, Monica the concerned woman, Howard who survives for the longest due to inaction, and other people who get killed off along the way. Also I just summed up their entire characters. I read in an early crit when I was just starting out that it's always a gamble to have more than even two characters in a TD story, because it's extremely hard to get a hold of even one agonist's personality within a few hundred words, let alone three. You show a clear example for how this is most of the time extremely true. As for the story itself, you waste a lot of time with people just chatting, and here's a big secret: small talk tells you nothing about someone, that's what it's explicitly meant for. You can talk to Andy from Accounting (that's the Andy from your story btw, it's probably the same guy) for literal years about his opinion re: the weather, the local sports team, and what he's gonna have for lunch, and not actually KNOW Andy. This is what's happening at the start. Oh right I forgot that Monica likes to drink that's a substitute for a personality right? The creepy messages are so hilariously over the top that I cannot take them seriously at all, and neither do the characters so ya know why would I (your Bad Words are all of them). It's utter gibberish that's meant to sound ominous and foreboding but just looks like a bot got fed some apocalyptic ramblings by random cult scripts. The only thing that kinda works is that Eva's mom is connected to the cult itself, but as the cult itself, its goal and everything else in the story doesn't make a lick of sense it really doesn't help. If I were to suggest conscructive critique, I'd say keep the idea of a flight doomed willingly by most of its own passengers, but ramp up slower, use less people, and think of a more grounded reason than "weird apocalyptic cult" for what's going on. sparksbloom - The Very Best of the Pineapplettes This is another typical example of a godawful first paragraph, it's rambly, full of exposition, and spoils something that could really be introduced later as a bit of a twist. Also, who the gently caress even in their most "cheese"-starved state of derangement (I'm 95% sure that Kraft Singles are vegan due to not being cheese btw) would eat the plastic wrapping? Instantly out of the story, sorry. Your story overall suffers from plot threads that are ephemeral at best, just float by with little reason to be there. What's up with the roommate who's just slightly annoyed by the protag? What is the purpose of Jean, is she the personification of the fanbase or the One Good Fan, or the one who's TOO invested (despite all of them being)? Why pineapples even? The entire Kraft singles video (WHY HAS IT BEEN RECORDED?) is utterly baffling to me, I don't even get if the protag did in fact upload it or not or is just wildly paranoid and delusional that their followers barely cracking the 1k mark would somehow find out. These are your specific Bad Words that exemplify my issues with your story. "My phone started ringing and it was my mom and I put it on silent, because my mom can be extremely dramatic on the phone. As I thought about how to respond to Jean it hit me that she had seen the video. The Kraft Singles video. I know I shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t have taken it, but I absolutely had to (I think I needed the protein and I wanted to remind myself that I had the protein) and now Jean and probably the rest of the world wide web had seen it. And horrors of horrors my new video was now getting new comments." I don't get the purpose of the mom, the protag is jumping to conclusions that might seem paranoid but maybe not, because his decision-making and conclusion-drawing is so detached from reality that I honestly thought until the re-read that he actually did upload the Kraft singles video by accident because they were vitamin-starved or whatever. Someone in the thread finally mentioned that this is all due to the protag not taking their meds (which is part of the Bad Words quoted) and I'm sorry if this is super obvious to someone with mental health issues (again, not my place to judge) but the entire thing just left me with a huge ??? in a way that Mrenda's story, despite also being about an experience I can't even begin to imagine, didn't. Anomalous Amalgam - Becoming Close axe the first paragraph jeez (it has been noted but it's really weirdly specific and useless) This story was extremely forgettable to me (I had to re-read it just to remember what it was even about), because I feel like it's going nowhere and its emotional core is not hitting me at all. This is all due to your Bad Words: "A: Well, he’s my mom’s baby brother. My mom got married and my dad moved us for business reasons but kept us in Europe. My mom’s brother left home early on, never looked back. Only sent my mom and I care packages from time to time. J: Sounds like an alright enough guy. What’s the hang up? A: Dude was weird. In the weird uncle kind of way. J: poo poo man, I’m sorry. That’s really hosed." The first message is very long and detailed and clunky, and it makes me think about who's whose brother for way too long, so the "twist" hit me out of nowhere. I don't know how Julia sees a "hang up" in what August says, for me "lives on another continent but does keep contact through mail" is enough reason to not visit someone often. I would also have instantly accepted "weird uncle" as a euphemism for ANYTHING but what Julia jumps to - he's got questionable hygiene, he collects model trains at hoarder level, he is secretly gay and his sister resents him, whatever - but Julia zeroes in on "oh poo poo that means he molested you as a kid" and is somehow correct? For me, this kill the story, because it deals with August's unwillingness to see the uncle despite him being a good excuse to come to the states and maybe possibly cheat on his wife with Julia. There's a lot of tension there and it would be a good thing to explore if I wasn't still baffled by how a conversation between two internet aquaintances can go from "I don't see my uncle often because he's weird" to "I'm so sorry he molested you" within a blink of an eye. Thranguy - Or Have I Found My Place oh hey, UsernameNumber strikes again. You can tell again how much you as well struggled with finding good internet names because Halcyon's number switches from 205 to 215 in the middle of your story. Anyway, it's a very bare-bones goon meet story that does not begin hopeful but ends in tragedy but the other way around, which is fine but leaves me a bit cold. I feel like there's too little conflict in the story to develop any kind of tension, making it even more bizarre when you introduce it: "Not all of us could, of course. One thing we knew about Hal was that they hated planes. Well, 'knew' is too strong a word. But they never once posted a picture of an airplane, maybe even 'shopped them out of skies according to MythicTree77, our resident imaging guru. Lots of trains, a few cars and boats and busses, but never a plane. And they probably read those discussions, could have dropped a picture of a 737 to prove us all wrong. We decided it would be wrong to fly there. If one of us couldn't get there on land, they'd go on someone else's phone." In these Bad Words of yours, you think you need to establish a reason why some people can't show up to the funeral of a stranger - even if you accept that literally everybody wants to, there's no reason to explain that some can't without introducing the plane phobia. Plane rides are expensive! Some people can't take vacations! But it goes even further: it's completely bizarre to me that people would deduce from "no pictures of airplanes" that this one guy just utterly loathes them. You justify it with some internet detective work they did which at the same time seems flimsy from the premise and leaves me wanting - I could have imagined a paragraph of two about the community pooling their obsessive resources to basically doxx Halcyon posthumously, making them work to even find the funeral, but the address is just given to them freely. Instead the community effort is spent to explain why some of them can't come due to needing a plane but not deciding to take one. It's so weird. Because you don't take a single opportunity to establish tension, conflict or tragedy, I'm left to wonder what you even wanted to tell with that story. Something Else - Never Log On The final story has the final opening paragraph that needs to just go, it reads weird, it tells us nothing except for one incredibly unsubtle final sentence. No! Bad words! But not the Bad Words I want to focus on. "There’s no straight line that can be drawn from these obscenities and the product of my loins without breaking all known laws of physics." These are your Bad Words. Good Lord is that a terrible sentence. It's my personal favorite bad sentence of the week. Line, loins, physics. Remarkable. This is a central problem of your story: exploring how a parent realizes that their son is falling in with a bad crowd online, pointing out (as the author) in a subtle way that this is due to their own bad parenting, but keeping that realization (for the protag) just dangling out of reach, that's good stuff. I really liked your small details hinting at this, like calling the kid "my little prince", showing how spoiled they must be, but you fail to stick the landing of this great premise because the words are too clunky too often. You seem to mostly struggle with writing a protag that does not understand the online world, because you of course do understand it. This is similar to (bad) fish out of water stories, where clueless protagonists try to find wide-eyed explanations for things that are hilariously mundane to the viewer. This is extremely hard to get right, and you don't, I'm sorry. The boomer parent becomes a cliché out of a political cartoon. A little conservative and prude, a little too into guns themselves, a little doting, and out of touch of course - it doesn't add up to a coherent character. Another example for that is the Dirger-Prime username, which is "a reference I have to count on Plato not to understand" - you want to establish that the protag thinks in old references, thinks the son will not get them because Kids These Days, and is somehow too dumb to just choose ANYTHING ELSE that does not require obfuscation because it is not a reference to anything. It also doesn't help that *I* don't get the reference. And yes, the ending is completely out of nowhere and a bizarre conclusion unless you accept the protag as a boomer cliché who obviously thinks guns are a coherent answer to any problem. Overall, it's weird that internet natives like us struggle so much with writing stories about the internet, but it does make sense if you think about it - many of these stories are things that can and do actually happen all the time, which we know about, or have read about, or even have experienced, so it's tough to write something that is also a good story and not just a retelling of That One Time We Had A IRL Meetup And Two Of Us hosed. - Goons have always kind of hated the wider internet and transitioned quantum leap like from "first to be extremely online and thinking about the meta effects of the internet in a pioneer way" to "completely left behind by the grander internet trends because we don't get it and don't want to". Anyway I hated almost all of these stories, write better next time, maybe about cities, that should allow you to tell stories about foreign and exciting experiences because you all never leave the basement!!!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 7, 2019 13:56
|
|
|
I just had THE winning idea (guaranteed!), so in I am.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2019 11:00
|
|
|
A Quiet Cry in a City of Screams 1496/1500 words The city paints a picture of sound. Like a background of rolling hills, the ebb and flow of growling traffic. Car horns like irregular trees. A merry river of giggles, children in an alley. A masterpiece, a serene landscape, made special by the little details: a splendid bird in the foreground, the crinkle of cash notes. There, a cave, sinister presence; a domestic argument, overheard through shuttered window. And amongst it all, a little bunny hopping quietly along. The critter returns from a grocery run, twenty minutes every day submerged in a cacophony of life and struggle and success and happiness and the opposites. Like the prey animal, he used to be terrified of the dark forest of the noise, predators hidden in every murmur, shout and scream. But as a bunny who survives the winter becomes a veteran, he has learned. How to see the layers in the painting, the dark bass line underneath the vibrant melody and the bold strokes of percussion. Sort the sources by loudness, nearness, urgency, make sense of the chaos. Chip away at the noise wall and rearrange it, pebble by pebble, into a pleasing mosaic. And so, slowly but surely, arrive at the current state: a deep appreciation for the symphony that the city composes every day anew. Twenty minutes are enough, however. He arrives in his den, a basement furnished with only the necessities: mattress minifridge microwave desk chair computer internet soundproofed walls speakers. He gently pours a stale cup of water; the fizzing of drinks, he found out early, disturb his concentration. Soon, a simple meal consumed, he immerses himself in total silence. And then begins to work. From his speakers, fresh music flows. Already, more pieces exist than anyone could ever hope to listen to; he never has to repeat a song, and never does. The entire discography of an obscure Mongolian band is on the menu today, served up by custom algorithm. Among modern beats, he finds a melody sung by an igil, its two strings caressed by a horsehair bow. But there is tension in this particular one, a compelling dissonance. He pauses, rewinds, focuses his hearing. The other tracks fade in the background, only the igil is allowed to speak; he allows himself to empathize with its internal struggle, and it spills its secrets: one string made from a sheep’s, the other from a goat’s sinews. Pleased, he stops the playlist to build on his discovery. Cuts away at the track with pruning shears of editing software, isolates the igil’s song; polishes it to shine without compression. He rifles through his library of samples, chooses just the right ones to work with the igil like a well-contrasted palette. A new track for his Soundcloud, to please his by now ample followers who he’ll never meet, never have to listen to, a perfect life. His work done, he blankets himself in darkness and silence and sleeps. ♪♪♪ Yesterday’s success elates the bunny. He even dares, for a moment, to stop on his foraging run and soak in the city’s noise, the neverending composition this modern world pens. A bike’s bell loudly chimes, but he still understands two lovers’ whispers; construction is done nearby, but crane engines can’t drown out a coin dropping three storefronts further. He practices and hones his talent daily; soon, he’s sure, the world melody will start making perfect sense to him. Already, he almost feels like he can predict… A harsh sound interrupts his self-satisfaction. Like fork on china, it makes his bones ring with displeasure. It’s oh so faint, but clear like a crystal’s chime to him. A child, a toddler, trapped, imprisoned, desperately crying out for help it knows won’t come! He drops to his knees. The ground kisses his ear as he rubs it along fresh concrete to find the exact location: there! Where the sidewalk got repaved recently. Someone must have used this opportunity to seal away a victim, of kidnapping or worse. He jumps up, seething. His own basement exile is willing, and he is happy having found a way to cope with the drone of life. But sometimes, he still longs for the freedom these tone-deaf normal people can enjoy. To deny this to someone else is like having a teenage boy, voice mid-crack, sing Verdi’s sparkling arias. He bounds towards the store as usual, but returns no food. Instead, a worker’s instrument: a sledgehammer. Immediately, he begins to crack the concrete, each blow ringing with the righteousness of a sonata’s final gong. But very soon, between the strikes, he hears the world becoming dissonant. Within the constant hum of city noise, discordant strings and mistimed triangle chimes. They coalesce into words intruding on his concentration: “…madman…” “…get away…” “…drugs…”, and he hears the counter-melody mounting ever louder, coming closer, a crescendo leading to catastrophe. Just before the climax descends on him, he bolts, towards his safe basement den. Weeps for the child, abandoned unsaved, crying loudly for its would-be savior. But he cannot bear the full force of the city’s noise directed against him. He cannot raise his weak voice against those who scream because they didn’t learn to listen. He overrides the algorithm, has his speakers fire Russian Metal. But through its screams, the baby’s cry rings clear, circles every note with haunting insistence, until he feels it bounce off his soundproof walls, resonating with itself to become deafening, and he has to flee, hammer in hand. It has gotten dark in a lonely street. The afternoon’s ruckus echoing in his mind, he smashes down the hammerhead. But the city is now quiet, and every strike is a thunderclap. Almost instantly, he feels the noise zero in on him: “…late…” “…stop…” “…police…”. Buffeted by this assault, he collapses next to the pathetically tiny hole in the sidewalk and shivers, the cry from beneath jabbing accusing daggers into his eardrums. How could he possibly break through to the child’s prison without alerting everyone around, in this noiseless quiet night? A car speeds by, a drunkard shouts, and as they make the cry fade for just a second, ease his suffering through painful but familiar noise, he realizes that the city is never truly quiet. Its voice now lowers and raises in waves, every sound amplified against the subdued background, but that’s a chance as well! With great struggle, he tries to tune out the insistent cry. Attune himself instead to the patterns of the noise. Feel how the world takes in a breath before a snore, gauge how long the pause can possibly be before the global conductor throws down his arms and allows the orchestra to play again. He feels it coming, the tension mounts to bursting, and he brings the hammer down RIGHT as a cat knocks off a metal garbage lid, a normal instrument of the city, and nobody complains. With patience trained in many sessions listening to Kinkade-esque pop music, poised for that one non-generic harmony that needs preserving, he becomes a living statue on the sidewalk until he feels the world’s urgency to make noise become unbearable. An ambulance drives by with siren blaring, and down the hammer goes. And back up until someone walks into a street sign, a bang some swears a punch to metal. With perfect timing to those, concrete cracks and nobody bats an ear. But soon dawn will also crack, and the hole is getting bigger but so slow. Again, despair cackles in his ear, and together with the ever-louder cry keeps him from timing hammer strikes correctly: the city will wake, the day’s noise will resume with people walking by, he’ll have to stop and abandon the child, possibly for good. He screams and brings the hammer down, the answering screams from the windows damned to hell by his fury. The imprisoned cry produces its shrillest pitch yet, and it’s too much, and he collapses, head futilely tucked in with covered ears but it is too loud too urgent too desperate too inhuman He freezes and truly listens. Slowly, he composes a smile as everything falls in place. He leaves the hammer and the fading cry behind, and gets from the freshly opened store white paint to give the hole the empty mark of someone taking care of it. This will buy the child the time it needs. ♪♪♪ Ten days later, the cry has turned to joyful singing, an ode to hope and freedom and life itself. He kneels down and liberates the child from its concrete cradle. A plant, so fragile yet so strong, whose unbroken will had made it scream its cruel fate to a world with barely anyone who listens. But this buried seed had found the ear of someone who lifted its heavy coffin’s lid just enough. And now, its savior has a companion in his lonely basement den, who can sing in duet to his music, with a voice so quiet yet so rich and deep and beautiful.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 15, 2019 22:32
|
|
|
Thunderdome 385: Getting a Reaction Abstract  This week there will be words that look like what I usually make in the lab (I suck at synthesis). Introduction Alright you starving poets, dirty artists and coffee shop hipster aspiring “artists”, it’s time for the humanities to take a step back into the shadows where they belong, and give the natural sciences their due. Did any of you fucks even publish something? Well, I did, while getting my PhD, so suck it liberailures. This week will be dedicated to hard facts, empirical research, meticulous studies and lab reports written without an ounce of feeling, personality or emotion. That sounds like a boring loving week? Well, why don’t you show me the soft side of hard science then? Prove to me that love can bloom in the laboratory, between beakers and in flasks! Results and Discussion You are going to write a story about Chemistry. Why this science in particular? Because it’s my field, and I can laugh at you with the full force of my academic merits if you get even a tiny detail wrong. But you’re not going to write about a reaction mechanism, are you? Think a little broader. What does chemistry mean to you? Does it just scream “poison” (aka you are very dumb)? Or does it invoke the deep emotional connection between two romantic partners (aka you think entirely in clichés)? Or is it so much more: does it make you think of transformation, of the joy of discovery, of the deep analysis of materials the world has never seen before? Surprise me with what you can make of that! In 1400 words or less. Experimental part However! I’m experienced in supervising wide-eyed helpless freshmen students, Bachelor Thesis candidates with hope still left in them, and something about that always melts my heart. If you’re struggling to find a project to really dig into, need some inspiration for the next step of your scientific career, then hit me up. As a special rule, I’ll assign a specific reaction to you. I’ll give you a name (so you can google it and despair because of too many formulas), what it does (probably using too specialized big words), and why it’s important and what it means (now we’re getting somewhere). Because this will allow you to focus more on your work, it will cost you 200 words, your story will now be limited to 1200. You don’t have to toxx for that but feel free if you think it helps your immersion. Conclusion And now write me some loving good-rear end research papers, the submission deadline for the abstract is Friday, midnight CET/UTC+1, and the submission deadline for the manuscript is Sunday, the same. I might be persuaded to only cut either off after waking up the morning after because Germany is of course way ahead of the US (in time and science). EDIT: I did extend it! Appendix If any of you write non-metric units you’re getting disqualified. Contributing authors Anomalous Amalgam  - Cannizzarro reactionThranguy - Sharpless epoxidation Sitting Here - Wittig reaction kurona_bright - Fenton reaction sebmojo - Paternò-Büchi reaction flerp - Landolt time reaction SlipUp - Ziegler-Natta polymerization magic cactus - Suzuki coupling crabrock - Noble Gas Something Else - Diels-Alder reaction Carl Killer Miller - Friedel-Crafts alkylation and acylation Hawklad - Grignard reaction Chainmail Onesie - Haber-Bosch process BabyRyoga - Claisen condensation First and corresponding authors Simply Simon - Workgroup leader Yoruichi - Visiting Professor Antivehicular - Postdoc with two Nature papers Simply Simon fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Dec 23, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Dec 16, 2019 23:32
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXE2XZ73A_U Alright it's time for the first round of lab assignments! Don't forget that you only have to use this as an inspiration. Anomalous Amalgam posted:In  Cannizzaro reaction: Two of the same compound react to become an alcohol and an acid, a classic example of a disproportionation. Alternatively, two very similar compounds become the desired products in a so-called cross reaction. Thranguy posted:In, I'll take the reaction for 200  Sharpless epoxidation: A stereoselective reaction that’s the centrepiece of many complicated syntheses requiring this kind of selectivity. Why is this important? Look up Thalidomide. Sitting Here posted:In, gimme that sweet sweet chemistry pls  Wittig reaction: Important process (read: also used industrially) to make unsaturated (double) bonds, using a special phosphorus compound as a reagent. kurona_bright posted:In with a reaction  Fenton's reagent: An iron salt and hydrogen peroxide make reactive oxygen species (radicals) that aggressively oxidize a lot of things; important (unwanted) mechanism for cells. Not yet fully understood what's exactly going on even though its discovery was a while ago. sebmojo posted:in, react me  Paternò–Büchi reaction: A strained four-membered ring (okay more like a square) is made from two two-membered unwilling participants by way of irradiation with harsh intensity light. flerp posted:in give me some reaction that i probably studied before but forgot Landolt time reaction: Makes iodine that becomes blue in contact with starch. Concentration dependent formation leads to controlled release, an excellent demonstration experiment: the chemical clock (that's in fact the linked article and video). SlipUp posted:In. I'm gonna put the action in reaction  Ziegler-Natta polymerization: Using a titanium or zirconium catalyst, this makes polyethylene and -propylene, an extremely important process in industry. The polymers are elongated by the catalyst gluing more parts to the end and moving along, like a tiny machine. magic cactus posted:IN and asking for a reaction  Suzuki coupling: Using the rare metal palladium and another element (Boron), this catalytic cycle crafts carbon bonds, allowing for complex synthesis that would otherwise be very difficult. One of an entire family of these Pd-based reactions, all named for their inventors (Heck, Sonogashira, Stille...) using a different secondary element each time. Something Else posted:i'm in and i would like a reaction please thank you  Diels-Alder reaction: A four-carbon and a two-carbon unsaturated compound join together into a six-carbon ring, perfectly symmetrical and stable. Can also be used for a number of different ring sizes and not even rings but this one is the most evocative example! Carl Killer Miller posted:In, with a reaction.  Friedel-Crafts alkylation and acylation: These reactions can functionalize aromatic rings, allowing rich and varied chemistry to evolve from a strong standard backbone. Hawklad posted:In. Gimme a reaction.  Grignard reaction: One of the most important reactions for organic synthesis. Knits carbon bonds using metals that cause one of the carbons to “umpol”, a German word that means it changes charge, allowing two normally equally charged (and therefore repulsive) carbons to react with each other. Chainmail Onesie posted:In. Gimme some C12H22O11  Haber-Bosch process: Hydrogen and nitrogen produce ammonia which will become fertilizer in the world’s most important chemical process, using about 1% of the total global energy production per year. The activation of the normally very unreactive nitrogen proceeds on the surface of a catalyst that has been optimized extremely well (considering how much this is used) over the decades this has been going on. It has a fascinating history both for industry as well as for the entire human development (because it gave us ubiquitous access to fertilizer). I show a picture of Haber because looking up his personal history, in World War I and regarding his wife, might also be rewarding/depressing.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2019 09:41
|
|
|
Yoruichi posted:I will judge this week Antivehicular posted:I'm low on writing time this week, but I'll happily judge.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2019 10:27
|
|
|
crabrock posted:chemistry is the most boring science. in. quote:sure here's my most recent, plz crit quote:However, new neurons have been reported in many other brain areas, such as The "recent controvery" section is excellent and I feel like it has given me an understanding of the state of the debate despite this not being my field at all. I also empathically agree that a consistent methodology is key for any fundamental research like this, as I face the same issue in my area of expertise: I am a photochemist, and we cannot even agree on which kind of light source to use. It's a big difference if you use a 1000 W Xenon white light lamp, or a single green LED to irradiate a sample. Discounting the fact that I'm sure many labs do not cool their samples, making the idea of a purely light-activated reaction laughable. "Neurogenesis as a therapeutic endpoint" - I take issue with calling the therapeutic goal just neurogenesis, as to my understanding that is a process that occurs naturally. What you are researching is the possibility of induced neurogenesis, in order to cure neuropathic diseases. Hence, I suggest naming it that way (or something akin to "induced") to avoid confusion. "Neurogenesis is heavily regulated by astrocytes" - this is not a very compelling "headline", mostly due to the fact that it's a full sentence and not a bullet point. As you're giving an overview especially into recent insights proving this point, it should be formulated more neutrally, e.g. as "Astrocytes as key Neurogenesis regulators". Other than that, I take no issue with this section. As an aside, I find it interesting that your field considers it necessary to state how you found the articles cited. In all Chemistry reviews I've read so far, it's just assumed that the author(s) are experts on the field and obviously know and have read every paper they cite, and that those are the relevant ones, full stop. You order the dedifferenciation part of the astrocyte section a little weirdly to my layman eye: it seems like the epigenetic changes are a more specialized occurance that are important to mention, but are not close to as well understood, researched and fundamental as the much longer part about transcription factors that follows. I feel like you could switch the order to go from more general to more specialized, but I know that I'm probably just wrong about what is actually more "basic" knowledge here. You do not establish "miRNA" to be the abbreviation for MicroRNA, and while it's rather obvious, it should still be standard practice to state the abbreviation once in the text. It's exascerbated in this case as an actual problem, because the same paragraph talks about mRNA which is different. As you only save three letters, consider not abbreviating MicroRNA at all. Generally, as you're talking about pathways, I feel like an illustration of these paths could massively help the reader to guide them along the various possibilities for the cells' fate you describe. The table on the other hand seems comprehensive, is well made and surely a great reference for future researchers on this topic. As a final ordering critique, I feel like ending with "therapeutic options" would be better than ending with "dedifferentiation risks" - the latter are inherent to the process, while the former give an outlook to what might come from this research. It's in my opinion best to look into the future at the end of an review, and end on a positive note to make your "story" flow better. And generally, I'm happy to have read about the fabled Sonic Hedgehog protein in a scientific journal now. Your turn.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2019 11:15
|
|
|
BabyRyoga posted:I will write, and spare 200 words for a reaction  Claisen condensation: Two esters (common aroma compounds) conjoin to become a new product in this very basic, old reaction.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2019 23:31
|
|
|
Signups closed*, I await your lab protocols in 48 hours. *if you were on the fence and got shocked by this being early for overseas, I might be convinced to let you in if you sign up quickly while I sleep.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 21, 2019 00:26
|
|
|
Better hurry on up if you want to still submit your lab protocols! Just two hours left! ...is what I would say if it wasn't Christmas soon. Deadline is, in fact, extended until I wake up tomorrow so the Americans don't cry. If you've done your time management well and stressed to finish your story within two hours, great! You get aaaall this time to edit it and make it good. If you hosed up and didn't write yet, great! You can actually get this done. Either way, submit. Your weapon against the cruel and uncaring supervisor with the unfair decided-on-a-whim rules is to make him do more work. And read and critique your terrible offerings!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 22, 2019 22:16
|
|
|
Good morning! Hope the deadline extension was helpful, because now it's time to prostrate to to reviewers' whims. Submissions closed.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 23, 2019 08:02
|
|
|
Chemistrydome 385: Grade announcement First of all, I want to congratulate any of you who actually are able to attend this ceremony. This means you, unlike half the people you met in your first semester, were able to graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry. These numbers match up with my own class (56% success rate) back then, so it’s expected but nevertheless always disappointing. What’s also disappointing, however, is that I can really give none of you the highest praise, a full recommendation for an elite scholarship, without adding a “but”. If you were getting your PhD, that’s at most a Summa Cum Laude, but not a Maxima. This is mostly due to the fact that most of you were slacking at the finish line. I know, classes pile up and lab work still needs to be finished, protocols need to be corrected and resubmitted and corrected again, and suddenly you have five tests in ten days and barely studied. You did pass them, but it shows in your final grades how much you ran out of steam. What I’m saying is that you all sucked at ending your stories, and the winner is one where I thought it was at least unexpected in an interesting surprise way, and not a “wow that came out of nowhere and was unearned” way. There wasn’t even consensus amongst the evaluation committee regarding that but, well, I’m the one giving this speech. But let’s start at the bottom. Anomalous Amalgam, I’m sorry to tell you that you’ll probably end up in...ugh...industry. With a story that completely lacked focus, theme and sensible motivation, you lose this week. From the rest of the mediocre results of your efforts, one other entry made all committee members agree that it just kind of blew, and that is Something Else’s. It is the dishonorable mention among our “at least we got our degree” graduates. Quit after your Master’s and lead a private lab somewhere, I don’t care. Escaping from the swamp, but pretty much just in comparison, are Sitting Here and Chainmail Onesie, who get honorable mentions. The former for just being able to write really well (you know it by now), but a failure to stick the landing prevents you from reaching the throne. You can write proposals for me as a PhD candidate. The latter impressed us with a world that seemed extremely interesting but just kind of refused to be fully built, and I grant you the second HM despite the story not actually being very good for making us all frustrated and wanting more. You’re going to have a great idea once, blab about it and have someone else publish a fantastic paper in a high-ranking journal with it. If you hustle, you’ll be on the author list at least. Oh wait, I’m getting a note here… Onesie and Hawklad had the audacity of using imperial units in their story and should therefore be instantly disqualified, nay, executed? Eeeh it’s Christmas soon, we’ll let it slide for now and remember this when it comes to evaluating grant proposals. Don’t ever ask me for a letter of recommendation either. Anyway, this week’s winner is Carl Killer Miller, not because you wrote a flawless story, but because it’s probably the most consistent of this week’s lot. In other words, you delivered an extremely solid thesis with all the pieces in place, it’s not going to set the scientific community aflame, but everyone will be happy to have you as a workmanlike synthetist cooking new compounds 24/7. If you keep up putting a little extra twist on your work, you might even develop a new method and make your supervisor proud! Take your title and start educating the next generation of Chemistrydomers! For the rest of you: hope you enjoyed this foray into the hard sciences, I’ll post detailed judgecrits including a science perspective for each of you soon. Merry Christmas, happy holidays and have a wonderful transition into a new year!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 23, 2019 20:25
|
|
|
Judgecrits for TD385 As I said, the yield didn't wow me at all this week, sad to say. Therefore, this will be pretty grumpy, sorry! I judged these in a random order, so I hope I avoided "as with many other stories this week," style sentences that force you to read all the other crits you don't care about. Generally, I was dissatisfied with a lot of the endings, but also many of the stories didn't end up deviating at all from what I felt was a very well trodden formula. So I did end up judging entries higher just for trying something. I did choose to not include my "HM or DM or loss" musings because they don't matter much, and I don't want to be overly mean because they were very spur-of-the-moment "yeah this is LOW and this is BAD and this is JUST MEDIOCRE". That's why the "Overall" summaries are so anemic, but I wrote enough in the main part I'm sure. Do read the Scientific accuracy sections, we're here to learn something after all. If it's not writing then at least it's science. Something Else - The Roommate Solution I used to read the r/relationships mock thread on SA a lot, and the first half of this story reads like many reddit stories posted by desperate women about their frustrations with terrible boyfriends and husbands who are lazy pieces of poo poo, don’t contribute anything to the housework and usually don’t wash themselves. What I’m saying is that you might have laid it on a little bit too thick there, because despite James apparently trying just a tiny bit (something about doing small chores to avoid the big ones, but at least he’s doing them, and he’s a good cook) he’s still a loser and I hate him. This makes his later redemption and transformation into what is apparently a decent partner more unbelievable for me, because that rarely ever happens. A bigger issue with making this work is that I don’t quite get a sense of your characters. James gets the biggest spotlight as the viewpoint one, but aside from “useless and proud of it” there’s little there, and Diane is a cardboard cut-out of “long-suffering wife of a loser idiot”. There’s glimpses there of what made them attracted to each other in the first place - Diane’s apparent love for their shared house with all the doodads, for example, and she probably loves his cooking (but that one positive trait of his comes way too late in the story) - but you’d need to flesh this out, to make the “what about Breakfast for Tiffany” parts of the story tell me that there is actual hope for these two based on what brought them together. Similarly, the Alders remain A Perfect Couple without anything but that, and that’s a major failing. You hint at things that make them work, and the strongest part of your story is the part where you describe them sharing something that would hold them together even if they had to move “into a cardboard box”, but it stays too ephemeral to make them believable as characters for me. As you only have ciphers, the ending feels unearned, James learns from the platonic ideal of a relationship that he Has To Change, but apparently Diane also Has To Change because that’s what you write (but don’t show), and it’s honestly a little insulting because there’s nothing in the story so far hinting at her doing anything wrong except for staying with her piece of poo poo husband. Overall: Four non-characters in a story that doesn’t make me believe in it for one second. Scientific accuracy: This is probably (dunno haven’t read the last three yet) closest “chemistry means people fitting together like reaction partners” translation of my prompt, so there’s not much actual chemistry in there. The Diels-Alder reaction (cute that you took the name but not quite) is, in fact, about connecting two disparate reagents that end up forming a beautifully stable product, so you did take it a little bit further and I commend you for that. You still gotta heat up that reaction mixture to make it work, though (or apply lots of pressure or other external biases), and I doubt “an overheard conversation” would provide enough starting energy. So back to my critique of the story: this seems like a bad synthesis. Chainmail Onesie - Tessellating Chiral Bonds This is sadly a bit clumsy to read, because with a bit more levity, it could be quite good. I’m referring to word constructs like “Ensign-Instrumentationist” and “Far-Arcologies”, but also sentences like “The central refectory is quiet, a low hour in Arcology scheduling.” which take a bit to parse (at least for me), and break up the atmosphere of melancholy that you do manage to invoke more often than not. I think this piece would profit from a higher word limit, allowing you to set up more things and give them room to breathe. This seems like it wants to be a slow burn of a story and almost manages, but then you stumble too quickly through some scenes that would benefit from a slower buildup - for example the flashback to the punished sinners that dared gently caress. In fact, the entire world you’re building of a purity cult that has definite proof of virginity built into their very bodies is fascinating - if a bit of a heavy subject, should you choose to tackle that more in-depth - and pairs extremely well with their stated mission of fertilizing other worlds, while staying “unfertilized” (if you excuse the very crude analogy) themselves. It is therefore also a bit sad that it ends as it starts, with a little awkward scene between two people who do not, pardon the pun, appear to share any chemistry - and culminating in wish-fulfilment, drat the consequences, for the protagonist who simply wants to gently caress, and who can blame her. Because you weren’t given enough space to set up your complex and interesting world more, I don’t quite know HOW big of a transgression this is, how high their fall will be, and what this moment of intimacy ultimately means for them. But you made me curious, so good job! Overall: It’s interesting at the very least, for all its flaws. Scientific accuracy: This story features no chirality whatsoever, so I’m not sure why your title mentions is. In fact, there are no “chiral bonds”, only chiral centers (the concept is about two molecules that have the same atoms in them bound the same general way, but are mirrors of each other - thus cannot be rotated to align no matter what you do). A chiral center is e.g. a carbon atom with four different bonds, if you switch two of them you cannot rotate the resulting tetrahedron to achieve the un-switched form. Anyway, ammonia isn’t chiral, it has a lone pair and three times the same atom (hydrogen) on the nitrogen. Also, how would it “clot”? Maybe if they were in space before and it’s frozen...I did say you make fertilizer from ammonia, but you’re not actually pouring that on the fields, there’s steps in between. Look up ammonium nitrate if you want to know more! Also, you used “inches” in your story so sorry, disqualified. Sitting Here - Staggered Conformation This is a pleasant read, and I enjoyed it up until the end. You do have a way with words (as you well know), and are especially good at believable dialogue. I get a strong sense of character from your protagonists, with Mitch being believably flustered and feeling guilty over too many things, and Alex being more abrasive and abrupt than you might think from their first introduction. It’s good because you don’t fall into clichés of the colored-hair hippie art person. I also found it well done how Mitch’s guilt is all in his head, considering that breaking up with his wife amenably was probably the fairest course of action and he couldn’t really influence the train accident happening as it did, there’s a nice parallel there. Both sources of guilt and in the end neatly resolved at the same time, so you have a tidy package, right? Well, not quite. It’s a bit too neat and convenient, and I don’t really buy it. In fact, it’s taking the easy way out in many aspects: you set up a contrivance (Alex being affected by Mitch professionally), and use that to allow Mitch to absolve himself of guilt re: his ex-wife, but the point of the story, at least to me, is that Mitch has NOTHING to feel guilty of. I’d rather have seen him accept that sometimes, poo poo just happens and you’ll hurt people but you’re going to have to live with it. You can’t undo that hurt with nice gestures. And the rescue vehicles won’t come and get you out of the purgatory of your own making. So you lose heavily on messaging. A similar too-neat-to-be-true moment is when Mitch just spills to this perfect stranger that he recently had a life-changing coming out event. I mean, I get it, he seems at least a little attracted to the queer-coded (and later confirmed) person across from him, and he’s full of adrenaline, but it’s still again a little too convenient. The story’s still written quite well and as I said I enjoyed it, but I encourage you to work on messaging and stronger themes. Overall: Yeah, this is just fine especially considering the competition Scientific accuracy: No science in the story itself, but I accept that the Wittig reaction is a bit of a hard sell. I’m wondering about your title, though, where did you get that from? Staggered conformation describes how a polymer looks (alternating two geometric shapes in its chain), and Wittig is not a polymerization reaction. You probably interpreted the unusual phosphorus reagent as the “queer” molecule, which makes sense to me, but again not with the title. So points docked for that. Thranguy - Rhymes With Spiral This is a somewhat typical story about a teenage witch dabbling in powers she shouldn’t. It’s not automatically bad to go back to tried-and-true concepts, if it’s told well, and you mostly manage. I do have some issues with the story, however. Firstly, I’m not sure about granny’s Chekov’s warnings at the start. While they might add tension in a will-she-won’t-she way, it ends up just spoiling major parts of the plot. You don’t need someone to spell out that cloning someone through the mirror dimension is probably a Bad Idea, and the “Billy, no not WILLY” thing is laughable, sorry. This issue is exacerbated by some clumsy setups, like when you divulge in two half-sentences that Alyss has been talking about mirrors apparently for a bit until the others urge her to do the spell, and that she ALSO has mentioned that she was warned to not do it but goes ahead anyway. Her coming up with and then deciding to do the mirror thing despite it being a very obviously idiotic idea should be a major turning point in the story, not something introduced after she has already made up her mind. Another thing I take issue with is the language used. The characters act like teenagers and you probably want them to be, like them talking about driving without a license and shoplifting and so on, so I’m thinking 15-17 years old. But you’re also saying something like “high on sugary drinks” and “putting a stick through his heart” which just sounds super childish, and takes me out of the mood you’re setting up. Those are not the only clumsy sentences: “I was beyond listening to reason’s voice” is so terribly clumsy, and the less said about “silent as a reflection”, the better. You also have two small spelling errors, so this could have used the extra time I gave you to edit, though I appreciate you keeping to the original deadline. This might have also led you to delete the abysmal last sentence, like what the hell is that supposed to add, am I expected to be happy that the nerdy guy got the girl he was crushing on and “at least she wasn’t alone after losing the mirror rear end in a top hat”? Come on. Overall: Could have been much better. Ends up being mediocre. But I feel like slamming it because of the idiotic end. Scientific accuracy: Bringing in chirality is a smart move, and I’m pretty sure that you did it correctly. Most sugars are chiral, and only one form is natural, which plays into only that enantiomer being digestible by enzymes. So L-Glucose, for example, the mirror image of the “normal” D-Glucose (see also: Dextrose), is not harmful but indigestible, which would in fact probably cause stomach pains and definitely malnutrition (you can’t gain energy from it). I can’t go much further into that (e.g. suggest non-chiral alternatives, though I suspect there won’t be much because starch is also broken down into sugars, proteins are made from amino acids which are ALSO chiral, and there isn’t much else left. Water isn’t chiral at least lol, boy won’t die of thirst) because I’m not a food scientist, but it’s fine. Anomalous Amalgam - Ethically Sourced Future Food Let me start by saying that I didn’t really understand the point of this story. It starts on a wrong note because you establish the visitors as part of the “community”, which makes me think of concerned citizens, and the PR tour makes sense for that, but then they suddenly bust out hardcore knowledge about industry rivals and profit margins and they’re “officials”, and it instead makes me think about investors. What is it? And all potential conflicts - either people who don’t want a lovely plant to blow up in their neighborhood, OR finance guys who don’t want to waste their money on a failing company - are not followed up on, because in the end nothing happens. I guess we are led to assume that the visitor will start making GBS threads his guts soon as well and Enrico fails with his idiotic idea? Generally, I don’t get a grasp of our protagonist - he is afraid of the visitors because he knows the plant only produces crap, which sounds reasonable the way you establish it, but it morphs into him having some delusions of being a great inventor of food slurry, and because you start out with him having reasonable concerns, it remains ambiguous to me if he actually did invent something great-but-unappealing or if it’s just total crap and he’s in way over his head. Similarly, Bhatt goes from annoying colleague to the straight man and manages to not establish any character in-between. Therefore, ultimately, I’m left with a mess of a story that changes focus about three times and ends extremely dissatisfactory. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is clunky, and some of the sentences are just bad. Just from internal arrangement: “Then something happened, as the beaker reached 100 ml of contents, Enrico closed the valves…” “Well, I can guarantee it’s not FDA approved, but it is edible.” It should be “As the beaker reached and Enrico closed, SUDDENLY something happened”, and “It’s not FDA approved...but it’s edible!”, otherwise you break your flow hard. These seem like amateur mistakes, bewildering considering your experience, sorry. Random asides I couldn’t fit into a crit flow: I hate it when people are introduced with their first names, then someone else refers to them by last, and I have to puzzle the pieces together. Just start with “Enrico Sabaut slumped…”. And the bus reversing over a still living corpse imagery is terrible argh Overall: Sadly, this is a well-deserved loss. Just too many critical issues. Scientific accuracy: I’m gonna have to deduct a bunch of points here as well (let me stress here thought that this is for fun, does not affect your rating at all). Your lab setup reeks of something you saw in a movie, and you throw words together without thinking what they mean. A beaker is an open container, something can drip into it and you can heat it up, but it cannot be part of a setup that converges somewhere. The same is true for a “titration tube” (a burette?), a titration is an analytical method you have to supervise really closely, it cannot be automated. In a similar vein, you throw together compound names that really do not mean what you might want to evoke. Polyols are not polymers, it just means they contain more than one alcohol group - that means that they have nothing to do with plastic (regular polymers), and in fact making plastic edible would be a momentous discovery. Protein-based would also mean that it contains amino acids, funnily enough those can be polymeric (in fact, proteins are folded-up irregular biological polymers) but are an entirely different class of compounds from polyols and plastics. One could imagine a reaction combining all of these disparate elements - e.g. converting long-chain plastic waste into fatty acids (which are also long-chain compounds), esterificating those with a polyol like glycol to form a pseudo-fat [but then it’s not fat-free as Enrico claims] and have that be edible and maybe sweet if some aroma compounds (also esters, or sugars, which ARE polyols) are formed on the side. But yeah this is all science fiction. Random aside: lab goggles don’t have a strap. You want to be able to get them off in a right drat hurry if you need to e.g. wash acid out of your eyes, and yes it can always happen that something splashes through somehow. These are not skin-tight, you have to be able to wear them for hours on end. Hawklad - Above the Grid The story you tell is sadly nothing special. I wouldn’t exactly call it cliché, but it comes dangerously close. You draw deeply from a well of familiar topics - wide-scale oppression using manufactured drugs, like a fluoride conspiracy theory but real, man, real, and someone is brave enough to stand up to the system and blow it (literally) wide open. A dash of self-sacrifice, some romance to add stakes, and you have a steak, starch, veggie meal. It’s filling but not enough to remember even the day after. Your liberal usage of tropes comes to a head in the end, when you introduce the titular grid in the fourth-to-last paragraph, and we now learn that it’s literally a two-layered society/city, like, dunno, Final Fantasy 7, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and probably a lot of literary works as well but I choose videogames because I’m nerdy like that and want to shame you. Overall: Just mediocre. What can I say. Scientific accuracy: The noun is “Umpolung”. The verb would be “umpolen” but I don’t expect German conjugation of a loan word - the noun should be correct, though. I admit that I had to look up what a Liebig condenser and Claisen connector are, we tend to not name those things properly in the lab, haha. But it’s believable enough as a setup. However, a volatile stepping stone compound in a reaction is called an “intermediate”, not intermediary. Also, you don’t screw a stopper, you stopper a stopper. In story-related nitpicking, it’s a bit weird that you add a gas to the pill that does not do anything for the plot, considering that only the pill synthesis is what is used by the protagonist as the bomb, and it seems like overkill. You evoke cyanide with the smell of almonds (bitter, not sour, if you want to be super correct), then the pills would be a bit more threatening, but not really useful for years of mind-numbing… All moot though because you’re disqualified for using “inches”, come on man. Carl Killer Miller - The Dizzy Wizard Family Fixer This is a bit depressing. Nothing particularly wrong with it, especially if you were going for that, so congrats on evoking A Mood. I think you’re doing a good job here with contrasting Randy’s hopes for a quick fix for his problems at the start and the harsh reality of his horrible sister and dad reacting to his honest attempts. Despite the Dizzy Wizard offering outside advice, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t something tepid like “just sacrifice a mouse and it’s going to be fine, oooh you made a demon eat your family!! Be careful what you wish for little Randy!!!”. Instead, it’s advice column level suggestions, which we all know are useless, and well, they are. But what this did was allow Randy to develop ideas of his own, make up his own gifts, and therefore inform us about his character naturally. That’s a great thing. Furthermore, you surprised me again with the ending that DID invoke something way more sinister, but left it open. In a week with a lot of by-the-numbers plots, subverting my expectations twice should be applauded. It’s not all perfect: like is often the case, the beginning would need the biggest work, because it’s not clear at all to me that Randy is sitting at the kitchen table decoding...a newspaper comic...that’s the same brand as his cereal? It sadly hurts an actually pretty good tale that I have to re-read the start a bunch to get what’s going on. It seems like you have a very clear idea of a boy sitting there using a “decoder ring”, which might be based on your actual childhood memories (condolences if more of the story is, hope you’re doing fine), or on some common trope, but it just leaves me scratching my head. Part of that is that I’m thinking of a decoder ring as a thing where you turn some wheels and it shows you A = X or something similar, nothing involving a plastic pane to look through, so that also made me a bit ???. These are minor things that you could easily touch up though, so good job. Overall: Well-written tale of a terrible childhood that still allows the poor protagonist hope and agency. Scientific accuracy: I don’t see much of the Friedel-Crafts functionalizations in the story, but I admit that this is one of the less...evocative reactions I chose. Let’s instead talk about the decoder technology. You might think of 3D glasses, where either a color or polarization filter blocks one part of an offset image for each eye, giving you the effect; however, both of those images are there when you put the glasses down, so that’s not how you would make words appear out of nowhere. Ignoring the issue of erasing the normally visible script, this could still work however: many molecules absorb UV light and not visible light, so they’re colorless to humans, or transparent if put on a surface. But they can emit light when irradiated that can be at a higher wavelength, up to the visible region (UV light has a low wavelength). Of course, if you’re shining a ceiling light on the hidden script and it starts glowing, that won’t do much. I therefore propose that the hidden script is a UV absorber AND emitter, and the decoder pane contains a dye that absorbs the emitted wavelength, emitting light in turn but now it’s visible. To make this a little more realistic (because you lose a lot of energy in every step), the ring holding the pane could have a UV lamp integrated to irradiate the original compound and make it emit more strongly - as there is very little UV component in ceiling lights. And there we go, your magic makes sense (not the magic package delivery but hey I don’t know how the post office works, but I am a dye chemist).
|
|
#
¿
Dec 23, 2019 20:39
|
|
|
Sitting Merc Heredes BrawlMercedes posted:SH, my dearest friend. My confidant. Dare I say, my soul mate (sorry mojo). Make me the happiest man alive? Sitting Here posted:After you, mi amour~ Alright you two lovebirds, you seem in the mood. Write me a love story, but the protagonists never interact. Another bird has peeped me that you want to write in each other's styles, which is disgustingly sappy but okay! I can be that. You called it broadly "humor" (Merc) vs "dreamy" (sh), so I guess something like that. You'll fail if you don't make me laugh (sh) or write something I don't get (Merc). Your deadline is the 7th of January 2020, which is when I'll start working again. Give me something to do on an unplanned-labwork Monday (judge your messes). EDIT: 2412 words. Simply Simon fucked around with this message at 10:09 on Dec 25, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2019 00:00
|
|
|
Simply Simon posted:Sitting Merc Heredes Brawl
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2019 10:08
|
|
|
Also you people are awesome and I'm super happy to be writing again because of what we do here!
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2019 10:08
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:That's fair, I like it in general bc it seems to make good stories but toxxing without a flash rule should be fine too
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2019 19:49
|
|
|
ya crit more especially my stuff in this week btw
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2019 16:07
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 16:59 |
|
|
Please Let Me Help You 1496/1500 words She sunbathed in Roger’s afterglow. He’d been even more disappointing than expected, but… “So, did you have fun?” Ally affected her most sincere smile. “It was great. And you?” Roger sighed. “It felt wrong.” A twinge in her heart, another issue to fix? But his lips curled upwards. “Until it began to feel real good.” Even his lines were disappointing. Had she at least…? He sat up and held his head. “Seriously though, I needed this. Thank you so much.” Ally beamed and cuddled closer, waiting for him to go on. “You really helped me get over Beth in a hurry.” Oh, he was terrible! Talking about his ex, after he just had hosed her best friend! But her remedy had worked, Ally had been a useful little girl again. A soothing warmth radiated from deep within her, much more satisfying than anything Roger’s penis could have managed. ❤❤❤ “And then Veronica had the gall to tell me that I was a demanding entitled...I can’t repeat what she called me, and I’m just freaking out over what kind of colleague does that?” “That’s horrible mom, I’m so sorry. Have you talked to HR already?” <Beth, 7:30 PM> so the issue is basically, Lester was hitting on me but he’s so desperate <Ally, 7:32 PM> I can talk to him “No, they won’t listen! I’m sure the harpy that works there hates me, none of my complaints register! Do my feelings just not matter?” <Beth, 7:33 PM> don’t!!! that’s my business I just wanted to vent <Ally, 7:37 PM> And I just want to help! Ally was juggling a phone call with her mother, texting with Beth on Skype, and hunger pangs. She was desperate for some food, but people needed her. Everyone was struggling in this world, and she could do so much. Help her mother take it up the chain, suggest coworkers to talk to she hadn’t alienated yet (Ally tracked their names on a spreadsheet). Get Beth and Lester sorted out, which should be simple considering he was actually sleeping with Ally. It hurt a little to learn about his behavior like this, but on the other hand, they weren’t really in a relationship. Like Roger, Lester had craved some intimacy in his life, and, well, he had needed it a little more at that moment. So Ally provided. She started texting Lester with one hand on her mobile phone, keeping her mother’s complaints at arm’s length, as Beth kept typing away. Ally would figure this mess out like she always did, and as she kept working and helping, her hunger faded into a dull background ache, soon completely overshadowed by the glow of altruism spreading through her. <Beth, 8:51 PM> Ally, Lester just texted me. I asked you to keep out of this! “Allison, are you not listening to me? I said you should call my boss tomorrow and tell him I’m sick, lost my voice, can you or can you not do this?” “Sorry, mom, one second…” “Allison Crescence Wondraczek! I’m asking you for a simple favor! Will you ungrateful child not do this small thing for your mother?” “Yes, mom, I’ll help you with this, of course. I’m just really hungry, I’m sorry.” “Again! With such a thin frame, you’ll never find a man…” <Beth, 9:01 PM> okay just forget it Ally. it’s probably a misunderstanding. anyway you seem busy so ttyl. <Ally, 9:02 PM> no wait Beth I can sort this out But she was offline, and Ally’s mother was still talking about what kind of tone she should take during the phone call, and that she really owed her this gesture, and Ally’s hunger kept rising. ❤❤❤ Ally waited for Beth in front of the college classroom the next morning, where they’d share a lecture about cat anatomy soon. Finally, her friend came storming down the corridor. “Hey Beth, about yesterday…” Beth, a full head higher and considerably more solid than the tiny Ally, almost didn’t stop in time. “Jesus, Ally! Please, I’m late already. Can you get out of the way!” “I just wanted to say, if there’s anything I can do to help…” Strong hands landed on Ally’s shoulders. “Ally, I love you, but it’s early, I’m tired and will be blunt. I’m fine, everything is fine. It’s not your responsibility to manage everyone’s relationships.” “It’s really not a big deal…” Beth drew her closer until her broad features almost touched Ally’s angelic ones. “I appreciated your support when Roger broke up with me. You saved me at least a weekend’s moping and two bottles of wine. You’re the best lab partner one could wish for. That’s why I’m choosing to not believe Lester when he tries to call you a slut that sleeps with every boy playing needy and vulnerable.” Ally was happy that Beth’s grip kept her from shivering. “But you have to take a step back and allow yourself some time to take care of your own issues, okay? And also literally, to allow your friends classroom access. Shoo!” Beth barrelled by, and Ally stood there forlornly. She was of course also late for class, but on the other hand...she sprinted down the corridor, out of earshot, and called her mother’s boss, the morning’s first good deed. Its warm afterglow made her feel a little bit better. ❤❤❤ After a few long days of soul-searching and even ignoring someone’s call because she really had to pee instead, Ally had to admit to herself that maybe she was overdoing it. Helping people felt good, but she should probably tone down her methods. Because she did realize that Beth finding out about who Roger’s rebound had been would not be very helpful to anyone. <Ally, 5:24 PM> Hey Beth-bb! Everything okay with you? <Beth, 5:45 PM> uh sure. just kinda busy. coffee tomorrow? Beth was fine. That did not help Ally’s fingernails, which were getting more chewed on by the minute. To distract her digits, she logged onto a self-help forum she hadn’t visited in a while. Maybe people had taken her last few pieces of advice to heart and some success stories to report? You have been temporarily banned from the forums. Please think about the reasons given and take a moment to cool down before responding to the admin responsible. Ally felt like someone had dumped a gallon of sewage on her. But the dirt of shame and humiliation was soon dried and burned away by rising anger. She had been a valued contributor to this small society! People had always thanked her profusely for her honest suggestions to work on their problems, and every word and upvote of gratitude had made her feel so happy. Ally slammed the button to message the administrator and complain, using the full weight of her credentials. But an echo of her last phone call with mother made her hesitate from sending the indignant text. Her language, her outrage… She hit the back button and did scroll down to the reasons for her ban. And as the words kept mounting, they burned themselves into her retinas. busybody...unsolicited...manipulative...meddling...borderline sociopath… She forced herself to read more even though it tore at her very soul, the exact opposite of the warm glow she got from helping others. Accept you cannot help everyone...sometimes, you clearly do not know what you’re talking about...maybe you are the one who needs help? Ally sat frozen in front of the screen as she re-read everything and then read it again, flagellating herself with the accusations. She had been raised to always be there, always be helpful, but now this? First Beth, then this collection of perfect strangers, claiming it hurt more than it did good? Maybe she should just never try and help anyone ever again. Like her mother had always said, most people are only looking out for themselves anyway. Maybe Ally should become one of those. As if on cue, her mother called. Ally pounced on the phone, ready to vent, have the call be about her for once. But she could not get a word in. Seven minutes seventeen seconds, the display read when the monologue stopped. Cancer diagnosis. Transfer to a hospital. Her mother needed her more than ever. “Allison, please! Are you there? Can you pick me up, call the insurance company, arrange things with my doctor, and…” Ally gripped the phone so hard she felt the plastic move. “Mom, I really cannot deal with this right now. Give me just a moment to process, please.” She hung up. Disconnected the cord. Sat down in front of her laptop and clicked the call icon on Skype. It rang once, twice, three times until someone picked up. A concerned and confused greeting - they usually just texted when not meeting in person. “Hi Beth. I know this is unusual, but I really, really need your help figuring this out…”
|
|
#
¿
Dec 28, 2019 16:58
|
|