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Nov 1, 2021 08:25
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 18:03 |
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 ...and then suddenly, judgement!!! Crabrock wins! Statistically, was entertaining and well written, and did the best job of working the flashrule into the story in a way that made the story better rather than just more bonkers. The man called M takes the loss for a story that, as well as being bad, was full of proofing errors. Rohan gets an HM for All This Ice, and somehow there are no DMs! HEY~ CRAB 
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Nov 2, 2021 08:58
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Crits for Week 482 Based on the quality of the stories this week, I am forced to conclude that “have a totally unexpected event occur somewhere in the third quarter of your story” might be extremely bad writing advice. But, on the other hand, they all made me laugh, so maybe it’s actually good?? These stories all have equally silly plots; the thing that made the difference between the ones that are GOOD and the ones that are BAD is the good ones had relatable characters with clear motivations, whereas the bad ones just had a silly plot. Chernobyl Princess - Convention: Lol this story is so weird. The beginning is really very boring - it’s just three people being annoyed at someone else’s alarm and then going out for breakfast. But then there’s a ghost! And they have to dance the macarena?! The end??!! This made no sense and the beginning is very slow but I loved it anyway. HEY~ MACARENA! 6/10 I’m doubling back to this crit to add, for anyone who is wondering why I liked this one so much better than some of the others that I say meany weany things about below, that the reason for this is that at least this one had characters who I can remember. The man called M - From the Logs of James “Redbeard” Shaw: July 27, 1874: This one is also very boring to start with and then the ending makes no sense. First, the beginning: this is very tell-y, it reads like someone telling you a story that goes, “and then we did [one thing], and then we did [another thing], and then I ate a pizza, and then…” This is not very engaging. I think you would have been better to focus on one scene (e.g. Robin’s rescue, seeings how she is a key character) and show us what happened, so that we get to see these characters in action. And then she gives birth to a tyrannosaurus rex?! That is an extremely strange thing to happen, but it did at least make me laugh. This story is not very good, but not because of the extremely random dino-baby, but because it does not have enough character meat on its plot bones. Consider, for example, if you had told the story of Robin’s rescue, showing us in the process that Jack really loves her, but was afraid to tell her, but then, suddenly, she has an unexpected dinosaur baby!!! Then Jack could have saved the day by offering to be the father, which is still ridiculous, but would rendered this nonsense into a satisfying love story (maybe). You also have a lot of proofing errors, e.g. missing line breaks between paragraphs, incorrect dialogue punctuation, and erroneous capitalisation. 2/10 a friendly penguin - The Worlds We Imagine: I don’t really get this one. I think that Vivienne lives on some future version of earth, where she likes to sneak onto the beach to see the wild horses, but then she gets a job in the moon mines, where she meets Dr. Ake and does a stint as his research assistant. But no other planets live up to her expectations, so she goes home, then the moon falls out the sky (??) and she has a horsey moment, and decides everything is going to be ok? I guess the final phone call to Dr. Ake was to quit her job?? On the upside, this story had some nice imagery, and I got the impression that the author had put a lot of thought into it, even if it didn’t quite work out. 4/10 Mr Gentleman - WE’RE MAKING A CASH OFFER BECAUSE WE CAN: Oh dear this is dry as weetbix with no milk, but much more complicated. Something about a church trying to do dodgy real estate deals and getting blocked by Nazis? I’m afraid my eyes glazed over. Vinh and Luis I think are the main characters, but I couldn’t tell you which was which or what they were like, apart from being nutty cult types. 3/10 Carl Killer Miller - Insecto phantasmal: Wow, that escalated quickly! I was just thinking that having the phantasmal appear as the unexpected event was a total copout, but then, suddenly, it wants to murder people! Good job turning a completely lol-random event into an important decision point for your protagonist. My main complaint about this story was I found the dialogue at the start a little confusing as to who was saying what, but that might be because I still had the macarena stuck in my head. 6/10 rohan - All This Ice: Great opening sentence. I like this one. Don’t get me wrong, it is extremely silly, but it has three clearly drawn characters and a love story in its heart, so I enjoyed it. 7/10 My Shark Waifuu - Alien of the Year: This is totally daft but very enjoyable, well done. The wolves were funny but they didn’t really come to life as a threat, and so the payoff when the characters succeeded in getting rid of them wasn’t as satisfying as it could have been. 6/10 Thranguy - Cold Pressure: This is a story about three explorers escaping a deadly situation, but it is told in a somewhat clinical way, which diminishes the tension. The fact of the ship catching fire didn’t really change anything - they were already engaged in a race for their lives against crazy odds. 5/10 CourtFundedPoster - The Saxon Influence: Boring beginning, then lol what, an alien black hole?? Then Junko flies an on-fire alien ship to New Orleans? Is that what happens at the end?? I’m not totally sure I understood this. 4/10 crabrock - Statistically,: This one is good! Probably the only time “and then the volcano erupted” works as an ending. The set-up is great, the characters are good, and the phones going off all at once works perfectly. Good job. 8/10 Chairchucker - Secret Extreme Agent: This is very silly and funny, I would definitely read episode two. Its main weakness for me was that the secret agent’s surfer dude characterisation at the start didn’t connect with the reveal that he was a secret cyborg (though I did laugh a lot at that). 6/10
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Nov 2, 2021 09:03
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I am judge (also sexy)
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Nov 6, 2021 10:00
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Crits for Week 483 Here are the notes I wrote as I read your stories. Albatrossy_Rodent - The Teacher Hunter: Six names in the first two lines is too many, I am never going to remember all these. What the bloody hell is this: ...(:I)... Omg there’s more of them. I do not like these scene break emoji things. Is Jess dead? Is this a flashback?? Oh I see yes it is. So some high school kid has a racket going where she blackmails teachers into giving students better grades, and then she tries to break into the house of the meanest teacher, but it’s a trap, except she knows about it somehow, so there’s a fight, and the kids win, and call the cops, but she’s also blackmailing the cops, so the teenagers win? 5/10 - not terrible, but I found it too confusing. The man called M - Chemtrials.com Testemonial Interview #133769: This is real weird and not much of a story. Why is there a dinosaur birth joke in there? DO NOT reply to this to tell me that it’s a reference to your last story  There’s a spelling mistake in the title. 3/10 Mr Gentleman - VERY SMALL STAKES: There is a lot going on in this story, with the dystopian backdrop and magic pills and people getting guillotined, yet very little actually happens. Dorothea wants to make a friend. She does that. She decides to do something nice for him, but turns out she was always going to do this, she was just waiting for the right time, so that’s not very interesting. The end. You chose to write a story about someone with very flat affect, and the story was, consequentially, very flat. It needed something else to make it a rewarding reading experience. 5/10 flerp - look just leave my garden alone: Ooh I like this. Very weird, but the protag’s desire to take control of his territory, on his own terms, was very well described. Great use of the nonsense word too. 8/10 Applewhite - Guerilla Music: I think this story starts when Kat decides to go looking for the last unsecured speaker. Unfortunately, there are a lot of fairly pointless words before this point. I found the ending unsatisfying. Does Kat learn anything from all this? She seems like a dick, to be honest. 5/10 My Shark Waifuu - Robotic Interactions: Aw, this is sweet, and the description of grief is very relatable. I think the whole AI thing was a bit superfluous though - the story would have been the same, for example, if all the companies required you to submit cancellations or changes online, except the charity, which actually had a phone number. You’d still have the same turning point when Sara decides she’s ready for human company again. 6/10 Thranguy - Number Six Will Shock You: Oh dear, that was disturbing. I mean, it is good, in that it succeeds in its aim (of being disturbing in an amusing yet also disturbing fashion), but I did not like it. This is a definite, ‘I see this has merit but it is not to my taste’ kind of crit. 5/10 Carl Killer Miller - Transportive Ovonics: This felt like three stories smooshed together: one about Patrick, a man who desperately needed help; one about how a stupid security guard gets used in an experiment by a mad scientist; and a third about two Frankenstein-esque monsters doing battle in a lab. The combination wasn’t unenjoyable, it just felt like the story kept lurching in different directions. 6/10 Ominous Whooshing - The Bloom: Terrible first paragraph. Who is the protagonist? What do they want? Where are we? What’s going on? These are things that you should include in the opening in order to pull your reader immediately into the story. Ok, that was weird, and not in a good way. This just feels like the set up for a much longer story. 4/10 Tyrannosaurus - a broken clock twice: This vernacular doesn’t feel natural to me. Maybe I just don’t recognise the accent, but I would say it is overdone. Is the Mob one person, or the group? The dialogue makes it sound like one person, but other times it sounds like you’re referring to the whole group. To be fair, I’ve never been in a fight, but the pivot from the level of violence inflicted on the teacher to him talking about Dune felt really implausible, particularly given you’ve described him as being seriously injured. Hmmm, the ending is good, but overall this didn’t quite hang together for me. Still pretty good though. 7/10 rohan - Snarrick: Oh no has this got Something Awful in-jokes in it? Hmmm, maybe not. But, the reference to posting online was a bit odd - up til that point I’d been picturing a very young child, but maybe the protagonist is supposed to be a teenager? So, the protagonist murdered their parents, then forgot? And now they’re in hospital? Confusing, not very satisfying, because it didn’t feel like the protagonist had any particular motivations or desires. And you shouldn’t drink milk after you’ve already cleaned your teeth. 5/10 Captain_Indigo - Shatter: What’s an ECH? This had some good ingredients but unfortunately it is not a cake/story. The protagonist’s motives aren’t clear - I don’t know what he wants, and therefore can’t get interested in whether or not he gets it or not. And then he dies. Some cool descriptions though. 5/10 Flesnolk - This story doesn't exist: This story has potential but needs a lot of editing (and not just because it is 1,000 words over the word limit). I like the style you’re going for with the prose but I’d say it is overdone, and in places is too confusing. Sentences like this for example I found really hard to parse: “Pekal slumbered in circles around men and women and children contorted and embalmed alive and wrenched into place so they stared forever at the chapel.” 5/10 - had some cool moments but overall I didn’t really get what was going on.
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Nov 9, 2021 09:31
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in
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Nov 9, 2021 20:33
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Flashrule: your protagonist must achieve something III: THE INFINITE 980 words Archive Yoruichi fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Jan 6, 2022 |
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Nov 15, 2021 09:45
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YEAR OF THE HORSE (in)
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Nov 30, 2021 02:12
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 Overall, Deon’s day turned out pretty good 1300 words Archive Yoruichi fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Jan 6, 2022 |
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Dec 6, 2021 08:45
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Dec 9, 2021 22:19
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While you're all busy getting over-excited about your cards, please remember that you will need to POST THEM WITH YOUR STORY. Maybe paste the image links into the gdoc or whatever you're writing in so they're right there come posting time? DO NOT MAKE THE ARCHIVIST HAVE TO GO HUNTING THROUGH THE THREAD FOR YOUR CARDS. This counts for double if you've been playing swapsies. Yoruichi fucked around with this message at 10:20 on Dec 10, 2021 |
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Dec 10, 2021 10:10
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Yoruichi posted:While you're all busy getting over-excited about your cards, please remember that you will need to POST THEM WITH YOUR STORY. Maybe paste the image links into the gdoc or whatever you're writing in so they're right there come posting time? Also post the explanation of your hell card with your story.
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Dec 12, 2021 05:49
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    The Void - Your story must contain elements of cosmic horror. (+400 words). The Empty House in the Desert 720 words Archive Yoruichi fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Jan 6, 2022 |
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Dec 13, 2021 08:29
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In Write a story set in a picturesque German village about a chemist who is working hard to try and win a Nobel prize and a talking horse who somehow saves the day, such that the chemist realises his long-standing hatred of horses was bad and wrong and the talking horse becomes his best friend.
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Dec 15, 2021 02:10
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what if pigeons were REALLY big, like catastrophically big, so big that just looking at one makes you confront your own human fragility, and it caused the apocalypse, and also everybody was super into hockey Buzzer Beater 1600 words Archive Yoruichi fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Jan 6, 2022 |
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Dec 20, 2021 04:18
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Omfg, I'm sorry Mr Bigshot Author Guy did I offend your delicate sensibilities? Ok, *sigh*, yes of course I'll fight you if it will make you feel important. Crikey dick. Someone give us a prompt now and an early January deadline, let's not draw this out forever or our "elder" friend over here will forget that this ever happened.
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Dec 23, 2021 03:42
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Dec 23, 2021 04:21
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sebmojo posted:the yearking is nearly slain, so let us also, as is customary, turn off kayfabe (such as it be) and bid all speak freely of what they feel. things you like, or hate, or think should change about this thunderdome. I think Thunderdome is great  Sailor Viy posted:Judges It is me, I am judge. Yoruichi posted:
This again.
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Dec 26, 2021 09:33
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Stream of consciousness crits for week 490 Uranium Phoenix - The Death of Tiberus Collins: So an agent of the Federation assassinated a revolutionary dude called Errator. But he’s been captured, and the revolutionaries resurrect Errator using magic space moss. Then Errator becomes a godlike figure, says some poo poo to our man Collins that haunts him for ages, and then when they finally meet again Errator says some more poo poo to Collins that makes him rethink his priorities. I think that’s what happened? This feels like you wrote twice as much story and then cut all the stuff that would have made it make sense to fit the word count. What’s missing in particular is characterisation of Collins. All I know about him is that he is an agent, has a wife, and is easily bamboozled by fancy words. Holy poo poo as I type this I just realised that he’s John McClane. Anyway, I also wanted to hear way more about the magic space moss, that was seriously glossed over. 5/10 derp - Ho ho ho it’s christmas time: The spacey women in this story is pretty weird but I thought her behaviour was funny. Reading about dick-guy getting goosed was also kind of funny. The ending doesn’t really go anywhere, but then none of this was going anywhere. This story is on par with the sort of jokes you find in Christmas crackers. It’s not very good, but it’s not trying to be anything more than it is, so rather than feeling disappointed, I was content to be mildly amused. 5/10 rohan - An Expensive Gift: This story starts with the line, “‘How about,’ Lawrence probed, ‘a wager?’” Unfortunately, we are already half way through at this point. Everything above this is flimflam - all we need to know is that Lawrence made a bargain with the Devil, which cost him more than he expected, and now the Devil has come to collect. This story is about how Lawrence tricks the Devil and gets his son back, yet both of these things are accomplished with the click of his fingers. You needed to immerse your reader in this moment, show us Lawrence’s fear that this is the end of the road for him. What is it that gives him hope that he can escape? How does he come up with his ruse? Was it spur of the moment or had he planned that all along? How does he feel when he succeeds? For a story this short I would probably cut the son. There is waaaay too much extra explaining needed to make the ending work; avoiding getting killed by the Devil is ample character motivation. 5/10 The Saddest Rhino - Black Silk: The prose in this has a lovely rhythm, but as a story I found it hard to follow. I’m not sure about the use of second person - I hard a time puzzling out who “I” and “you” were. Once I got to the end I wanted to go click the link you put in spoiler tags with your post. This is good, in that, I was intrigued enough by the story that I wanted to understand more about what you were going for. But it is bad in that I shouldn’t have to do research to understand what the story was about. 6/10 a friendly penguin - The Hollow Mountain: I’m afraid this is boring. It just takes 800 words to tell us what is already contained in the flashrule. It’s not really about anything, and the King has almost no personality. He doesn’t seem to want anything, except to turn the wheels of fate for unclear reasons, and then he does that, a lot, and then that’s the end. 4/10 ChickenOfTomorrow - This Entry is a Prayer: I don’t get this. Is this just a description of a stoner going for a hike and having a hell of a time? Or is it about a homeless person dying in the snow? Who is the protagonist and what do they want? 4/10 flerp - Lessons: This is a sweet and fairly straightforward story. I think it would have worked better if you had upped the stakes. It’s established at the start that the protag has enough food for the winter, so his decision to spare the goat isn’t particularly significant. The moment of decision also felt a little flat. He just happens to remember a fable; it doesn’t really feel like he’s wrestling with this decision. Why doesn’t he just take the goat back to his neighbours straight away? Feeding it all winter is a pretty weird thing to do if you know that there are kids missing it. You can’t just steal other people’s pets. 6/10 Idle Amalgam - When the Sun Burns Out: This story has a lot of potential, but didn’t quite land for me. It is about a small group of people trying to survive in some sort of bunker, knowing that one of them is ‘branded.’ They don’t say it, but I think they probably know that they are doomed. I think you did a good job with the disquieting vibe, but you needed to give your characters a bit more personality. I think you could have made more use of the changing POV structure to give us more insight into what each person was thinking and draw the reader into the story more. Then the inevitable horrible ending would have landed with more punch. 6/10 A Classy Ghost - Weekend at TD’s: The first half of this is fun, and I was intrigued to learn what sort of mess these two had gotten themselves into and how it was going to resolve. Unfortunately, the ending just shuts the door in the reader’s face. The lack of explanation or resolution is annoying rather than funny. 5/10 sparksbloom - Shaggy Dog, Eight Stories: What? I was very much enjoying this story up to the bit where the rats climb out and bite the dog. I mean, your characters were good enough that I was glad they made it out ok, but this ending feels a bit like you ran out of time or words, or both. It’s entertaining in a lol-random way, but I think the rest of the story deserved better than that. 6/10 Antivehicular - The Late Bloomer: Cripes, that certainly is an opening line. Oh dang, and the rest of this is great. I thought it was going to be a horror story, and I was very pleased when it turned out to be about a good person trying to do the right thing. I think you balanced the two sides of the protag’s nature beautifully. The ending is a teeny bit rushed, but it still works. 8/10 Tyrannosaurus - POWER_MUZIC_ELEKTRIK_REV(1)VAL.mp3: This is really cool. I’m glad he didn’t die, and the ending works well. I struggled a wee bit with the vernacular - I kept trying to hear it as a South London accent, but I don’t think that’s right? I would have liked a touch more insight into what sort of person the protagonist is. I feel like you can picture him very clearly in your head, so maybe didn’t give quite enough information for an unfamiliar reader. 7/10 Azza Bamboo - The Stork in Cairo: There should be paragraph breaks between the different lines of dialogue. The trickster stork is a pretty good character. I enjoyed his antics and the interactions with Totoes. The father’s reaction to the offer of help didn’t feel quite right, and I’m not sure what the moral of the story was supposed to be. The dead locust rain ending was unnecessary. You would have been better to end it on a hopeful note that the father was going to get better or something instead. 5/10 Carl Killer Miller - Desire: This is a bit too fever dream for me. I wanted a more concrete protagonist, so I knew who I was rooting for in amongst the swirl of imagery and confusing proverbs. 5/10 The man called M - A Bum's Christmas: This is very bad. The prose is fine, and apart from a missing line break it is basically free of mistakes. But it is extremely stereotype-y, and outdated stereotypes at that. The ending is so saccharine it left a bad taste in my mouth. There are lots of times when it’s fine to rely on stereotypes or clichés. It can save a lot of time - for example, if your character is a cowboy in a Western you don’t need to spend a lot of time describing him, cos we all know what cowboys are like - and sometimes it’s good to give readers something that is familiar. But if you’re using very stereotyped characters you need to do so consciously, and think about how you might give them a twist or bring something new to the table. Negative stereotypes that are rooted in outdated views are to be used with caution and tact. In judge chat I wrote, “I wouldn't give M the loss because he used bad stereotypes, but because he didn't bother to give his characters any character or motivation beyond the stock standard cliché.” 3/10 Thranguy - Ad Astra Per Linguam: This reads like the trailer for an extremely cool movie, that I definitely want to see. As a short story though, it’s not very satisfying. 5/10 Captain_Indigo - Father: This story has a character motivation problem. Why does Samira hate Daniel? The only explanation offered through the story is that he is her ex (but that doesn’t explain why she won’t let him see his kids) and that he’s a vampire (but the story tells us that it is possible to willingly give vampires blood, because he pays people for it, so that doesn’t explain her revulsion either). At one point Samira says, but you’re the one who refused to die, implying that she blames him for becoming a vampire, but if his choices were vampirism or death then the former doesn’t seem that unreasonable, so Samira just sounds like a bitch. At the end it is revealed that his monstrous nature makes him a threat to the children, which, if Samira knows this, explains why she won’t let him in, but in this case the way she treats him seems like a massive under-reaction. Ultimately, ‘person tells vampire to go away because vampires are scary’ isn’t much of a story. I want to know what went down between this man and this woman. 5/10 Fuschia tude - Hunting Alone: I have no idea what’s going on in this. The moon has broken and the world is ending, and everything is red, and there’s a barbarian dude, and he kills an owl, and then he talks to a wolf, but then the wolf runs away, and then there’s a guy who’s wearing all red clothes, and he shoots the barbarian with an arrow, and then he goes home, but he can’t, but that’s fine? Did the world end or not?? 4/10 Sitting Here - I You We: Hmmm, weird. I confess I don’t get this. I mean, there is clearly a lot of emotion behind it, and I get the general vibe about the loneliness of separation and the joy of connection, but I don’t really follow the evolution of language metaphor. I feel a bit like we’re sitting in a pub together, and you are furiously trying to explain something to me, with lots of arm waving, but the pub is too loud and I can’t hear you properly, so I’m just nodding and going “hmmm, mMmmm,” and hoping that you don’t notice that I have no idea what you’re talking about, because I can see it’s important to you and I don’t want you to feel disappointed. 4/10 crabrock - it’s a system that works: Very good sir, very good. I was left feeling a wee bit unsatisfied though, as I felt I had unanswered questions about what the protagonist did to deserve this fate. It’s not essential for the story, but without a bit more character meat it felt a little one-note, like, in the end all there is to the story is the reveal, albeit that it is a very good one. 7/10 Burning_Conch - Promised Land: In this story a father and his son escape a country where they are persecuted for their religion, and make it to a city where they can live more freely, and then the son becomes a revenge-seeking pirate. For such a high-stakes story there is very little tension. The escape, which I thought was going to be the focal point, comes off without incident. It feels like the outline of a longer story, without any of the emotional content. 5/10
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Dec 28, 2021 09:56
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Bye bye 2021ne thread
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Jan 6, 2022 03:59
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Sitting Here posted:just so this very true post doesn't get overlooked... This week has been archived now.
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Jan 6, 2022 06:16
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