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Jan 5, 2022 07:02
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 00:37 |
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in 2 plz
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Jan 5, 2022 21:14
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 for my in, subprompt me real good, and for 5 critsthat's right, a double toxxin
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Jan 13, 2022 11:40
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Liebrary 1,352 words A year after we discovered the artifact in the basement of the library that turned five humble librarians into would-be heroes, Earth’s last defense against the legions of the damned, we realized we were on the precipice of failure. Major cities had been overrun, society was collapsing, and the chaos was beginning to spread away from metropolitan areas and into the countryside where the affected had sought refuge. We didn’t understand the strange technology that kept our humble rural library safe, but we existed in a bubble that the damned had not breached in their ransacking of civilization. From within our protected base, we’d launched missions to intercept demons and monsters, defeating many of them, but there were always more. The friendly AI that projected from the artifact was our compass: a source of information and a moral guide. He gave us missions, taught us to used the advanced weapons found nearby, and shepherded us through the mayhem. Though his answers could be cryptic and vague, he assured us he was programmed to give us only the information we needed, when we needed it. Thus we arrive at our impasse: “Yeah, but who programmed you to be a dick?” said Beth, the blue librarian. She’d only been an intern, barely able to tell the difference between Mystery Ch-Do and Literature Gr-Hu before she’d touched the artifact, instantly learned martial arts, and could now do a backflip over almost anything. “Irrelevant,” said the AI. “All you need to know is that I care about you. Now everybody come get your sustenance discs.” The artifact hummed and five small wafers slid out onto the table it was perched on. Roy, the red librarian, picked up his sustenance disc. “Why couldn’t we have moved the artifact to a grocery store or something?” He placed the disc on his tongue and gagged. “These can’t be good for us.” Roy pushed up his glasses like his Library Sciences Master’s thesis had pushed a dubious analysis of Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy. The artifact glowed. “Actually, the discs are formulated to be perfectly balanced for a growing human body. Flavor was deemed irrelevant.” “Wrong again, then,” said the lovely Whitney, the white librarian. She stood in the doorway of the break room, silhouetted by the sky, her librarian’s blade dripping with demon blood. We all stopped and looked at her and basked in her power. A full librarian, capable of quieting a whole room with a single shush and clearing a hillside of demons with her Dragon’s Whisper. “Welcome back, Whitney!” I said, maybe a little too eagerly. “Just in time for supper.” “I don’t have time for those lovely Space Neccos right now,” she said. “I’ve finished my secret quest given to me by the artifact and have returned with The Relic.” She removed the object she had strapped to her back and held it aloft. “I don’t recall…Place it on the table please, White Librarian,” said the artifact. “So that I can see what you’ve brought.” Whitney did as instructed. It was an old book, an ecru cover stained with rusty splotches. In demonic script it read THE NECROMNIBUS. It was at least a foot thick and latched with a padlock of antiquity. We gathered around the table and marveled at its splendor. Gary, the gray librarian who seldom spoke but was deadly with a foot stool, pointed at it. “That’s human skin.” Whitney scoffed. “I don’t think so, it’s just dusty.” I ran my finger along the book and brought it close to my face. I recognized the white detritus with small holes, as I was similarly afflicted. “That’s not dust, it’s dandruff.” “Oh, god dammit,” said Whitney, frantically brushing off her shoulders. “It touched me the whole ride back.” “The condition of the book’s cover is irrelevant,” said the artifact. “Please focus on–” “Man, gently caress this machine,” said Roy, and he kicked the artifact off the table before any of us could stop him. The artifact broke and a little bit of ooze came out and dribbled onto the floor. It smelled of rotten eggs. The projection of the AI’s face sputtered and went out, his last pleas for his life came out high pitched and ridiculous sounding. We all covered our noses and tried not to laugh as we retreated to the far corner of the library where the smell was less bad. Whitney mocked the begging artifact in a high pitch whine: “Nooo! The fate of the world is in your hands! Arghhhhhhhhhh!...” We all laughed. It was a pretty good impression. “I can’t believe I ate something that came out of that,” said Roy. He gagged again. My stomach turned as well. “Wait, we forgot the book.” I looked around at my librarian colleagues, all with their noses in their appropriately colored shirts. Nobody volunteered to go back for it. I sighed. They’d been calling me the Brown Librarian, and I’d learned alongside them, trained in the laser weapons and energy blades, cut down demons and beheaded monsters as one-fifth of a large patchwork automaton. But I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t a librarian. Hell, I wouldn’t even be caught dead in a library under normal circumstances, but it just happened that when the portal to the underworld opened there was also a scholastic book fair going on, and I was only there to browse the poster collection of sports cars. “I’ll go get it,” I said. “I’ve smelled worse things. I mean I’ve been bunking next to Gary for a month.” He smiled and shrugged. I left to retrieve the book, stopping to vomit several times along the way. When I finally reached it and picked it up, I noticed the lock had been picked open, and only whomever had done it had only thought they’d relatched it. But it was a trick lock, it’s tumblers were set to only appear set so that the book’s owner could always tell if somebody had gotten in, an old pirate’s trick. I jiggled the lock and the book opened to the last page that had been studied, and I almost did a spit take with my own vomit when I saw that the page detailed how to open a portal to the underworld. Underneath was the counter spell, the key to shutting it all down and instantly cutting off the demons and monsters from their source of power. They’d be easy to mop up after that. I ran back to the group with the book, dodging my piles of barf. I burst into the room and slammed the book down on the table. “Guys! The book! It tells us how to shut down the portal!” “Wait,” said Whitney, her beautiful face suddenly blemished with hate. “How did you open it? Only I…” She clasped her hands over her mouth. Roy didn’t know much, especially not about literature, but he knew when he’d seen somebody blurt out something they shouldn’t have. He grabbed Whitney’s arms and held them behind her back. “The book was already open…” I said. “Right to the page about portals.” Beth stepped forward and opened the front cover. She pulled out the library card in the front of the book and gasped. “It says this book was last checked out by…” but she didn’t have to finish. We all looked at the Librarian. “You fools!” she barked. “They were going to shut down the library due to budget cuts! This is what they deserve!” “No, the only one here who is going to get what they deserve is you, Whitney,” said Gary, with his trademark laconic wit. “Lock her in the lost and found.” Closing the portal was trivial. Mopping up the rest of the demons and monsters proved a little harder, but not much. When everything was said and done, the mayor decided to reallocate money to keep the library open. They turned to me. “You know we need a new librarian…” I smiled and nodded my head. “I’d be honored.” I took the NECROMNIBUS back and scanned it. “Oh, and I’ll waive the late charges.” THE END
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Jan 17, 2022 09:00
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i loving hate old people and i dread becoming one in. give me the worst old person so i can just really lay into them
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Jan 19, 2022 11:26
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crabrock posted:
organburner - Royce at the end of the world: Any time you use the word “some” in a story is almost always bad. “yet he had somehow gotten this post” is boring. It sounds like a placeholder note to yourself. Flesh this kind of stuff out with something meaningful. [on retrospect the chalice was the reason. this kind of coy 'the author knows but the reader doesn't so he just doesn't say' is a real punch in the butt. don't do it. give a red herring instead as the source of his power.] The chalice enters the story so suddenly, you should spend a bit more time talking about it being there before it’s knocked over. It seems way too powerful. Also the character gained all his powers by accident, he didn’t work for them or even want them, so in the end it’s all kind of pointless? He just kinda makes everything go to way and then he goes back to his room. You need some thematic bookends on something like that so that there feels like there’s a reason that you wrote this story, and a reason for us to keep reading it. My Shark Waifuu - Goblin-mother: I picked this one because it’s short. But probably too short. It’s all just kind of straight forward and the witch seems too powerful. There’s no fun in reading a fight that is so one sided, so you need to come up with SOME reason that the character’s plan might not work. Sure i don’t know what she’s going to do, but never did i feel she was weak or vulnerable or likely to fail, thus, there was no real tension, so the resolution feels empty and hollow. Albatrossy_Rodent - The Sea Turtle and the Octopus: Spends too much time on details that don’t really matter to the story and takes a while to get to the main thing. Humor feels out of place for what is essentially an after-school special? The actual writing is pretty decent tho the descriptions of the action are nice and there’s some good showing. Hiding the reason the story exists (when both of the characters know) always feels cheap to me and after reading it i’m like “ugh.” Idle Amalgam - Super Crypto Bros.: This whole story is just punching down. Why are you making fun of people with intellectual disabilities? These kinds of stories are the reason “no political screeds” is often a rule. It’s just you basically screaming “HEY LOOK AT MY PERSONAL OPINION!” i don’t believe you ever truly empathized with this character and actually wanted to tell a story based on their experiences, you just wanted to laugh at them. yeah ok ok yeah - “Deep Rich”, Excursion 385: Oh hi welcome. Too much world building exposition in this that would have been better to just show me, cause none of it really warranted the words. It’s just your standard AI robot doing the Wall-E thing. This robot is searching for life just cause it wants to (ALSO PROGRAMMING!) so that makes for a pretty boring motivation. A character needs to have a good motivation to make a compelling story. You need to give this robot, who you said is capable of human level though, a REASON for wanting to go out and find life. To persist through all the failures. Why do any of us continue to try and try and try when we keep failing and success is fleeting and unsatisfactory? That’s the kind of stuff you should explore with a piece like this. Still not sure what the cryptic messages were, i’m guessing the cat had some sort of brain scanner? I missed it, was that the 3d printer in reverse? Anyway, welcome hi.
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Jan 20, 2022 07:35
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oh yeah i forgot to post these lol Crits for Week #487 My Shark Waifuu - Rosewood: Ripping out your own heart is pretty metal, i would have liked a bit more description of that. This plot is cool. “suddenly rejected the oxygen within them, craving carbon dioxide instead.” there’d be both in there since that’s how the CO2 gets out. What does “summon” mean? She can grow them or they will come to her? Why figs? I’m not sure if there is some symbolic thing, but if so maybe help me out a bit. If not, you should do something symbolic and then help me lol. What exactly is the motivation for banging Ash? “Rose, we need to talk,” is such a boring pointless sentence. You could say literally ANYTHING here as his opening remark and instead it’s this snoozer. This is where you can really do some characterization and what not, in these “free” sentences. Also, don’t mix his dialog with her actions (stinging nettle springing up at her feet). ““I’ve never seen anything like it,” Sorrel said, wide-eyed.” well that seems like an under-reaction (and again, is a wet fart of a sentence. We already know he’s freaking out, say SOMETHING interesting! “But Rose had an idea of what had happened.” show don’t tell. Not sure this line is even needed. You spend so much time at the camp and whatnot that now all this other stuff seems rushed. This story starts off strong but ultimately grows too large for itself. You could have literally skipped her going back to the camp and impressing/loving people and just said something like “she’d tried to return to the camp to stop them from hurting the forest but found she couldn’t, and she fled.” Dunno why the king of the forest and the corpse flower / pod plant thingy couldn’t just be the same character? Why the goose chase in a short story? Just combine them. Omni-seed is a dorky name. Make it sound more poetic or whatever. Even just THE SEED or something would have been better. Trees are bad at naming things i guess. You need to cut this up and figure out WHAT you want to spend your time focusing on. Either her relationship with her old compatriots (that ends with her accidentally murdering them or whatever) or her interactions with the plant king. Both of these don’t fit into one flash fiction story imo. derp - That night I called you: Lol it turned into butt orb. “then those other lips between our legs” they’re called labia. If you’re gonna write something weird and sexy, just own it. “There was only the orb.” yeah that’s how every story should be. So she gets summoned by the boob orb but it was all a dream i guess? That sucks! I get that this story is some like, metaphor for her realizing she’s in love with this sapphire chick, and she can’t stop thinking about her and what not, but without knowing more about why the gently caress this orb summoned her and made her see all these weird things and the time dilation and why she was in bed naked and couldn’t remember… this story is just a little flat without those answers. Right now it just feels like there’s some sort of mysterious lesbian orb going around converting women… the GOP’s greatest fears. I’m not sold on this weird format either. The time jumps, the narrative, i don’t feel like it adds anything and makes it harder to follow what’s going on. You said during flerp’s week that you hate rules and whatnot so maybe that’s all it is. I think rules should be broken for reasons. I don’t get the reason you told it in this format. a friendly penguin - Personal Contact: “and staff polishing”  “ “It’s a PopSocket. I can do all my pondering one-handed.” lol “ Eugene tried to sand down a rough spot on the stone parapet with his thumbnail.” this is a good show that others could take note of and emulate. Lol this story is a good allegory IMO. but drat thunderdome is HORNY this week. I got into a fight with SH about this story’s allegorical nature. SH feels like there needs to be more disconnect. I feel like you didn’t straight up say they were gonna bone down, so it’s still there for me, but you could definitely abstract away a lot of that stuff and have a much more powerful story. I already talked to you in discord about a way you could avoid being so explicit but i already forgot what i said so uh, hope you remember. Captain_Indigo - The God in the Trees in the Orb in the House on the Hill: “You don’t have friends. And your family don’t talk to you.” I feel attacked. Lol so i like this story a lot. I wish you’d done something a little more at the end with the god trapped in the orb. It feels necessary and funny to mention him, but ultimately pointless. It’d be better if you could figure out some reason you had to tell me. Work that into the ending somehow. Anyway, this is cute and funny and a bit “grumpy old men: the wizard years.” Early win candidate and overall super enjoyable. I would definitely read more in this corny rear end world. Albatrossy_Rodent - Orb of Chaos 2: Revenge of Zorax: The first paragraph is pretty confusing. I’m not 100% sure how old these kids are other than “older than 7th grade.” which, sweet, me too! Language gets a little too purpley and describey for its own good a few times, you’re tripping over imagery when don’t need to be. I didn’t really take in much of the first paragraph scene setting cause it didn’t fuckin matter. The story could have been in the summer or spring or any other time, it could have been in a forest or a swamp or anywhere outside. So all the time spent describing the weather and whatnot in detail is a poor way to set up your story. You can sprinkle that stuff in later for effect, but starting off with it was meh. After you get going tho and i know this is a bunch of horny teens playing Brigsby Bear, it is much better. I like the self-realizations that Evan has and how this chaos orb is corrupting his thoughts. Or is it? There’s that nice ambiguity of how much of this is Evan lashing out, and how much of it is THE CHAOS ORB. i like that. It could be made better by establishing in the beginning that evan is super level headed and would never do this stuff. You have him agreeing to switch roles which is close, but more of a pushover than an even-keeled rational move. Anyway i liked this, but it wasn’t enough to elevate it past the better stories this week. Uranium Phoenix - A Time of Storms: Lol did you miss the part about this being a fun week? drat. good writing tho. I fuckin HATE songs in fiction. I always skip over them. I read through yours because i have to since i’m judge and i don’t really get why they’re there and don’t care. My wife is cooking and it smells really good, but you don’t get any credit for that, sorry. Overall I like this kind of tale. It’s beautifully written, and it doesn’t really have a moral or lesson or even a for-sure ending. Did he fail because he gave up? Or would he have always failed even if he’d try? Such is the fickleness of time travel. Shouldn’t have done it. Anyway, i dig it EVEN THOUGH IT WASN’T VERY FUN. The problem with this story is that ultimately I can’t remember really any of the details, even a week later. I remember there was a wizard walking around, and he could do one time travel, and then did, but i remember there was something to do with a tower and birds and can’t remember why. That means your details didn’t do enough to strengthen and compliment your story, and while pretty to read at the time, were not well used. Also no birds got trapped in the orb  rohan - A Gift From Orbitron: This dude forgets his gf’s bday, flies to a tourist a attraction, gets high, then fucks up the meme wizard and gives it to his gf for her birthday. Uh. i’m not sure what to do with this story. Technically it’s competent and hits its beats, but it’s difficult to judge a literal story about a literal meme. The story doesn’t really stand on its own, and that’s a huge detriment to me. I think that no matter your source inspiration, it should stand on its own well enough that somebody reading it in a collection of short stories would get it and like it. Without knowing about the ponder meme, what legs does this story have to stand on? Gorka - Kill it with fire: So this story has a lot of problems which some of the other judges already brought up. It is not good. But the reason it didn’t DM is that we never considered it for the loss. The two losing stories were so loving awful and didn’t even try that it elevated this story by contrast. So that’s a good lesson to at least try when you’re writing because by virtue of caring about what you’re doing you’re going to appear leaps and bounds better than people who are just phoning it in. You went for a kind of silly/funny/gross out story here, but you didn’t really lean in to any of those three elements enough to make them shine. You kind of start off with this weird mystery that there’s disappearances and what not. Then it’s like “haha he’s a messy klutz.” um ok. Then you get into this weird kind of sociopolitical stuff about not paying, stealing, etc. Then boring details about cleaning. This line is awful: “Then his gaze spots something” if you need me to tell you why in detail hit me up. Then they spend a bunch of time talking about the creature thing which is honestly not that bad it just kinda progresses to “well whatever i’m gonna light this thing on fire.” so he leaves to do so and then SHOCK his fire doesn’t work because… reasons…. That the other character forgot to mention until just now. Anyway, then the things eat him because he stole the ring or something. From my summary you should kind of see “oh wow I was all over the loving place” wrt theme / focus. If you’re going to write a story about mysterious disappearances, then everything kinda needs to focus on that. Don’t put weird morals about stealing in there. Likewise with everything else. Just focus on one overall theme for a flash piece and write to that. You can hint at a larger world, but don’t really get too into the weeds. Focus on what idea you’re trying to convey (stealing is wrong and deserves murder?). Chernobyl Princess - The Honorable Guild Of Barber Surgeons: This is a perfectly serviceable story that ultimately feels like it belongs in a larger world. The story itself is pretty tame and straightforward, and it never really delves too deep into ideas or ramifications. Just orc kill bad guys, orc get hurt. There is magic and what not which is all good and cool, but this just plays out like an action scene in a larger work to showcase her cool fighting skills. At the end of it i’m just like “um, ok?” since the conflict of the story is essentially “can she make her bones stop hurting” the long drawn out fight scene doesn’t do much to advance that. At the end the person’s like “ok you can take the orb i guess” but that’s not your character having agency or anything, it’s just random luck. Would have been better if she was like “I’ll defend your store if you give me the orb for free” or something, cause at least that’s the character’s decision, but overall a pretty banal ending to a story that sets up such an interesting (albeit standard) world. flerp - Nowhere Else: Other judges (esp SH) like this a lot more than i did. I have a lot of daddy issues so just “my dad left” is a bit pedestrian for me. In the end the orb calls to the kid and the kid listens and is like guess i’ll hit it with a hammer cause i feel things. Your ability to write a story where people feel things but are also not sure what they are feeling is top notch. You create the sense of confusion and hesitation and “well, gently caress it i guess” really well. But that does rob your character of a bit of agency, just feeling compelled to break up the orb and take it places isn’t super satisfying. Yes you try to relate it to how he feels about his dad and what not, but the connection to me is tenuous. I think for that to really land you’d have to have some scenes with interactions with the boy and his father and the orb. There’d need to be more of that link than this word count allows for it to be super satisfying in a way that i believe is inside of you, but not currently on the page. Anyway overall i let them HM it cause i was feeling charitable, but it was a bit of a miss for me. Carl Killer Miller - The Lesson: You are a good writer and can blast out some scene-chewing dialog and setups really well. However, at the end of the day this story just sort of fizzles out all weird and I’m not sure wtf the lesson is? This story could do with less back and forth in the middle and a tiny bit more grounding to really help anchor the reader to the truths of this world, this orb, and the conundrum. I feel like maybe his car was going to explode or something since the orb was able to control the car? But i’m not sure. Was there any plans for the orb to reach out to the son later? What is this orb’s goal? That’s stuff i was like “um, i don’t know wtf is going on anymore” that happened all at the end. shame. ChickenOfTomorrow - Dear Diary: So i hate a diary format especially because it’s all just stuff that’s relevant to the current story. There’s not much else (and can’t be in flash fiction) that provides better characterization of all the relevant characters (mom, dad, bullies, etc.) there is some ok stuff, but it proceeds along a little too “by the numbers” and predictable. When she first used the sickness orb to make herself sick, i thought “oh, gently caress yeah, this is subverting my expectations!” because i expected her to use it to make her enemy sick. That turn to “actually using it to make myself sick” was awesome. But then you swerved back to “oh nm just using it on girl made her so sick she has rear end cancer now and her butthole fell out” (i assume) which was a big zzzz for me and SH. welt was about it but i was like “nope.” don’t just tell a story that you can think of the full straight forward plot the second you sit down at the keyboard. Subvert expectations. Swerve weirdly. Do something shocking (but rational given your setup) and your stories will improve by ONE BILLION PERCENT (actual math not shown). QuoProQuid - Children and the Corn: I love corn. I love corn world. I love all the silly stupid corn references and weird corn tidbits. I love that there is only corn, and the rest of the world that is not corn DOESN’T EXIST because there is only corn. It feels like a weird loving twilight zone where some 1950s ad came to life and took over reality. That i’m all down for. The actual plot was pretty ho hum. Some boys are like “we can totally take down the corn” and then they gather supplies and the little corn holder thingies are its downfall and then the boys sneak off to their abonened bunker. The plot felt trivial and banal compared to the world setting. You need to come up with some real weird poo poo here to justify all this weird poo poo. Idle Amalgam - Till Death Do Us Part: I just really struggled to care about anybody in this story. Girl gets used and dude goes back to his fiance, she decides to murder everybody. Not a story i’m interested in reading, sorry. I don’t think there’s necessarily anything you can do to change that because it’s just not something i care about. I don’t watch lifetime movies for a reason, i’m just not interested in this kind of drama. I’m sure out there somebody would dig this story, but I am not that person. There are a lot of successful writers out there that i would never read or enjoy. Nothing about this story made me want to scream at you, but tbh my heart wasn’t into reading it. sparksbloom - Tuesday Night: Ok i’m lolling at the pro-tier “hell yeah we stole that poo poo and i’m not even gonna tell you how.” which was a nice subversion of my dread “oh no i don’t want to read a loving burglarly scene. I started to get a bit into the story when it was about the power that it imbued on the stander, and the other person getting a bit jealous, but then it just kinda fizzles out like a wet fart. I get the feeling you were not 100% about this story and just submitted something and wouldn’t try to defend this. You know what you did. Chairchucker - Maybe Third and a Half?: Touched on this a bit in discord, but this story contains way too much Things Actual Racists Say for unnecessary reasons. It makes me feel uncomfortable, and not in a way that’s challenging some of my biases or anything, just in a way of “oh no i hope we don’t have to have a talk with CC.” because we know you and who you are and your actual beliefs it’s easy to chalk this one up to a misfire. You tried. If this was an anonymous entry we would have been concerned, which is how we ultimately decided to judge this story. On it’s own merits, it’s awful lol. Touching on such sensitive matters with such a blase attitude is really what kills it. You’re not making fun of the nazi, you’re giving them a platform to say exactly what they want to say. The fact that they get kilt in the end isn’t enough to justify it. I wouldn’t read a story called “here’s a direct transcript of a ben shapiro speech but don’t worry cause at the end his blimp crashes lol.” i believe you’ll do better next time  The man called M - Wizards, they're just like you!: Why do you keep doing this? My hypothesis is you’re scared to put your heart and soul into a story and still be told it’s bad. So you write these purposely bad stories so that you can remain defiant and defensive. Stop it. Write something you care about. Expose yourself. Be vulnerable. Work some poo poo out you’ve been thinking about. Be scared and nervous. When you push that post button, worry that you’ll feel loving gutted if somebody tells you it’s a pile of horseshit. Don’t post something you KNOW is horseshit and then say “well yah cause i didn’t try!” TRY, or just go away. Beezus - Help: I couldn’t remember what this story was about until i skimmed it again (that’s bad). That usually means you don’t have a real strong story that resonates with me. Skimming it again i still don’t really remember the first part about her friend and i still don’t really know why it’s there or remember what the outcome was. It gets better once she gets to the “i want to buy an orb but i’m loving poor and can’t afford something nice so i get a god drat stinky cheese orb and it’s weird but whatever i’m gonna try to do magic anyway and ugh it is not cooperating.” then you get the orb talking and it swerves hard into “monkeycheese” territory with just being loving weird out of the blue and not really in line with the rest of the story. Not gonna lie tho this part made me lol: GIVE HER A PRESENT. ‘Like… like what?’ MEAT. GIVE HER MEAT. ‘She’s a vegetarian.’ MY CONDOLENCES. But i was like “um ok…” the story isn’t really a comedy but then you throw in this delightful weird bit and i was like “ugh why couldn’t the story just be about a fuckin unhelpful bro orb that gives bad suggestions cause it’s a lovely walmart brand orb and i hate feeling like there are stories i don’t get to read because you decided to go on about Farron’s boring life. curlingiron - The Blue and the Deep: I think a math teacher wrote this one. This story is pretty awesome and is a good example of using your prompt but the story stands on its own. At no point did i need to know that it’s a magic 8 ball toy to understand that there are orbs with blue goo that RIP YOUR loving CONSCIOUNESS OUT OF YOUR BODY AND TAKE YOU TO THE LAND OF AUNTS. So yeah i was totes into this story the whole way through, but the very ending is a bit dues ex machina, the dude melts into nothing to go find the answers or whatever and it’s a bit underwhelming to just have that be the final answer without exploring other things first. Otherwise super strong story and was my #2 of the week. Thranguy - Things I Learned During My Apprenticeship: Thank you for your submission to horny orb mag. We regret to inform you that while horny, your story is more of a weird story outline and lacks that certain narrative that makes reading fun. It’s a lot of work to read a list of things and understand how they all have to work together, but not really getting why the organization system matters. Otherwise we enjoyed the hint at the story and think it’s kinda funny, but we do not like it in its current form. We suggest fixing this and resubmitting it. Yours truly, the horny orb editors Antivehicular - The Eater of Filth: This is well written and manages to really keep my attention the whole time. I’m like hell yeah this fossil orb eatin poisons and filth and leaving the food pristine. I got “pushing daisies” vibes (remove all the death and rot to have exquisite food) but there are also chemical processes that matter, like oxidation and moisture, which this orb doesn’t necessarily do anything about? Having her be a cook that is working on ancient grains made sense in the story, but didn’t really elicit strong feelings from me. I think maybe picking one or the other would have been better. Mashing them together made it a bit of a reach (i had to remember she wasn’t just a cook, but trying to like, pass a class or something). Then the ending is a little too neat and packaged that she’s gonna pass her class or open her restaurant or whatever. Everything just hummed along and that was that. I think i’d need to see the ancient orb actually get sick from something it ate to feel like there was some consequence to their arrangement. Right now it’s “well duh why WOULDN’T all this stuff happen? It’s a win win win win win for everybody!” which is a nice thought, but ultimately a little stale to read (see what i did there!) Yoruichi - Overall, Deon’s day turned out pretty good: This story is just a “hold onto your seats, cause shits gonna get wacky.” stuff just kinda flows without any real rhyme or reason, just “this thing happened which lead to this thing.” there doesn’t seem to be a lot of coherence or planning. I don’t know why this kid insists on using the spider orb. Anyway a bunch of stuff happens and then the end is basically just charlotte’s web. This piece seemed to lack any sort of real direction, but you’re a good enough writer that that didn’t really make it bad just kind of “so what?” Taletel - Get your head out of your orb: You just kinda jump straight into world building by telling me a bunch of poo poo and then transition to “somehow…” which is the most boring word a writer can ever write. Then there is some just kind of boilerplate “stuff is happening” and then this minion is like NICE rear end THO. a bit of back and forth and then the townspeople curb stomp her. You take the coward’s way out at the end to say “ha ha i don’t really have an ending to this story but that’s the point all along! Lol!” but was it? Cause a shaggy dog story is usually entertaining and compels the reader to keep reading. I only kept reading because i had to. t a s t e - The Other Side of Things: This story suffered from judge reading fatigue, in that by the time i got to it i just wanted to be done judging and this story failed to capture my interest. On a reread, it still fails to evoke a sense of urgency or wonder. It’s a slow-paced, methodical examination of some hunter’s place in her society, and everybody speaks in a very wooden matter-of-fact “i’m telling you the story” way. Part of my lack of interest comes from your decision to obscure what “to hunt” means, and so the whole first section of the story is just talking about this nondescript “hunt” and “tolling bells” that you simply can’t get away with in flash fiction unless the whole point of the story is to make the reader wonder what we’re hunting. I’ve tried rereading this story like 4 times now and I just can’t get into it (that’s why these crits are so late, lol) sebmojo - Orblems: “should that not lie within your powers” this seems like some sort of legalese he’d end every single sentence with. Could maybe shorten it to an abbreviation or find some sort of short latin phrase to signify it. Just trying to help him out here. Anyway this story is silly but it feels all over the place. I’m not 100% sure what the point is. There’s not much about loving the orb or hating the orb or anything to do with his relationship. In the end this is just another “sebmojo wrote a story 30 minutes before the deadline” story isn’t it?
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Yoruichi posted:I love dystopian fiction and I have strong opinions about what makes it good so I AM JUDGE same
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Feb 8, 2022 22:10
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Crits for Week #496 The man called M - Dreams Deferred, Dreams made: “making things worse payed those in power” no. do you ignore red/blue squiggles? “literally eat” what’s the difference between “eat” and “literally eat” in your sentence here? “but not like this.” show what’s different. “They started to attack.” just an absolute waste of words. “I wield my scythe” present tense “they try to fight back, but they were not skilled” you literally switch tenses in the same sentence dude. “To be fair,” what use does this phrase have? “Something was up.” pretty sure i’ve told you before that “some–” is the most boring word a writer can write. “why were those guys really after you?” The boy seemed scared.” don’t mix dialog from one char with stuff about another character, it’s confusing. “ I brought them” you already established he’s a boy, you can say “he.” I thought you were talking about the dead bodies. “a while” be specific and deliberate in your writing. “to be a hamburger. Impossible” if this goes where i hope it doesn’t, i’m gonna be pissed and stop reading. ““I didn’t,” the boy said. “It’s made from plants!”” yeah gently caress this i’m not reading ad copy. done. Flyerant - Earning a Salarium in the Dusty Plains of the Atlantic Ocean: “ giant cup noodle containers.” wtf TD, stop trying to sell me stuff this week. Jeeze, i get it. Capitalism is the real evil. “maybe even an unpaid internship!” this is the kind of stuff that you should really just not do. It’s cheeky and we know you’re being cheeky and it’s just meh writing. ““Did you know that Cup No—“ I took a deep breath, and the regulator let me speak my own thoughts. “Why did you poke the giant crow?” I asked John nicely.” They say a flash fiction story should probably only have one weird/new thing. This sentence has 3 alone. Focus is good. “cup of noodles.” inconsistency “chest swayed my fears.” i feel like you wanted another word here. Assuage? “Two beady, desperate eyes glared back at me” birds eyes are on the side of their head so you’d likely only see one. “I ignored the smell of rotting stars.” good line. “kicking the crow in its teeth” uh what —---- This story has got some cool imagery in it and some neat concepts, but it’s trying to do a bit too much. The main detractor for me is the tone is weirdly mismatched at times. It’s written like this tongue-in-cheeck parody, but the stakes are “our daughter’s future” / “our lives” you either need to go full throttle and make the stakes something loving ridiculous like “we’re risking our lives to send our daughter to disney world so she can meet Ariel!” or somber up the story a bit. I wanted to know a bit more about these space crows. How big were they, what was their purpose? What usually happens when they land on earth? How many have been there before? What did the old legends say about them? What is the consequence of kiling one? How does salt enter the atmosphere and not burn up? Or smash to pieces when it hits the ground? What kind of salt is it? Special space salt or just sodium chloride? A quick line description would carry a lot of weight. I didn’t really get the ending and exactly what was happening (they killed the bird and were gonna go yell “shrubbery” at some old women. How is that $$? Chairchucker - Drivers: Gonna be honest, after i read this story i scrolled up to see who wrote it and was shocked to see it was you. Mostly cause usually your stories have a flow, even in their silliness, and this has a bunch of disjointed parts. The concept and mood are all ok. It’s the execution that is flawed. So i get that there’s some guy who makes decisions about things, but i have NO IDEA who he is. How much power he has. Sometimes it seems like he alone can make a decision about these bots, and sometimes it seems like his hands are tied. This made me very confused. He has his own security detail or something? But then scientists come and try to convince him of stuff? Having your characters directly comment on how annoying somebody was, etc. is a cheap way out. He kept saying “wow that lady was annoying,” etc. but this is the most banal way to do dialog. That’s the stuff that’s better shown and talked about indirectly. It’d be better if he never actually commented on her but was clearly perturbed by her actions. What is this dude’s personal stake in the matter? He just says “nah it’s worth it.” but i dunno is he like the president of a country or a CEO that makes money? Just some random bureaucrat that doesn’t really care either way and is just taking meetings? What are his feelings about all this other than not wanting to be annoyed by anybody? Anyway the sudden shift to “oh no they’re killing me” was jarring and honestly not really needed. Seeing him get murdered by murder bots was almost a forgone conclusion when he refused to limit them despite the scientist’s pleas. Sometimes leaving the future a little uncertain is better. Albatrossy_Rodent - Becker: I liked this story a fair bit. I liked the idea that these clones were always trying to get one up on this guy, so much so that they literally sometimes themselves didn’t want to be clones and what not, they just wanted to have that relationship with this guy they thought of as their dad. Meanwhile his own son was a complete gently caress up. Wrestling with that provides a lot of emotional weight and that was the best part of the story. The part where the fuckup son literally dies is not actually needed. That makes it black and white. The struggle of this father is the real meat of the story and having him realize his own son hadn’t called him or visited in years and years is enough of a turning point on its own, you don’t need to have the cops call and say “HE DED!” it’d actually be a better story without it. Anyway the main things i wanted to know about this world was how pervasive is this problem. Are there clones of EVERYBODY out there? If not, why is this guy targeted specifically? Is he hella rich? Or is it something to do with the son’s fuckups that got all these clones. I liked that it “inceptioned” us about the wife being a clone (hints at but does not confirm) and that nothing in this world is as it seems. Could explore a little bit longer his own wondering if he himself is a clone, but not too long. Just as a way to show that he’s starting to lose it a bit from the stress. Anyway, strong story, good job. GrandmaParty - Lawyers Starve in the Future: “on and off?” should be off and on. It’s on. It doesn’t work. You turn it off. You turn it back on and it works. If you turn it on and off it’s just off. This is one of those “ha ha there was a twist!” stories that needs more foreshadowing or it just feels hollow. You need to show AIs using humans for their own pointless means, then discarding them, earlier in the story. Instead you focus on how strict this AI is for the phone bank. Spending all this time helping this lady because a cat peed in her computer is funny, but ultimately lends nothing to the actual story. It’s all wasted words. It was like you didn’t really know where the story was going, wrote it, and then didn’t have the fortitude to go back and cut out the parts that weren’t needed. You should have put them in a bag and thrown it in the river, then you’d have the space to do the end justice. And that could have been a good story. Staggy - Run: This is a very well written boring story. There’s nothing in this story that separates it from the million other “people hunt people” stories that exist in a million other mediums. I just couldn’t care about it because there are pretty much 2 options: he gets hunted, or he doesn’t. The stuff in between is not really weird enough, novel enough, or exciting enough to carry the weight of this story. SurreptitiousMuffin - Subject 501107-SYD log (extracted 17:08:23:10:08:33) partially damaged: My cojudges liked this more than i liked it cause it’s a lot of mental work to read a weirdly formatted story and i was tired and i didn’t want to do it. Also when there are repetitive elements in stories my brain cannot focus and i zone out. Thus i miss tiny little differences (if there are any) in the speeches that are on repeat. So i got that this guy is being fed this religious propaganda through his chip, and that at some point he does something, or something happens to (wasn’t clear) the chip, which affects its ability to influence him. He then runs for the hills or whatever. I don’t mind the indirectness of this, but i’m not exactly sure what happened and what the long term consequences are. The title says that they did end up finding him and taking back the chip or whatever? So in the end it doesn’t matter and this guy was just fodder for the towers or whatever? Again, i like what’s here but am v confused on some of the other things that i think you’re talented enough to have addressed, OR that i just straight up missed because my brain was working to try to work through the weird format/indirect story telling after 14 hours watching my kid and i was just tired. Pick whichever works best. CaligulaKangaroo - The Iron Duke: this story is ok (the transition to corgi steak was excellent) but i liked it better when it was just this duke eating his dog while leaving his security outside to be killed by mob. i kinda lost interest when it was about putting stuff into robot bodies. those are like two different stories (or two parts of a much longer story) and i woulda rather stayed back and explored the ramifications of his callousness and what exactly made the world this way (what were the power structures, etc) and what not. the robot stuff isn't really foreshadowed or important at all other than an ending. then the weird time jump to say "in the end, nothing mattered really i guess" is kinda like ok thanks? Nae - The Future is Warbots: I like this story and don’t mind the ending because for me the story was never about the warbots, it was about everybody else in her life NOT going after the warbots. She was just kinda like omg why is nobody doing anything, why are they just accepting this? Her plans and drive to get out there were what mattered so much more than the eventual outcome. I don’t believe she’s going to stop now that she “failed,” because i don’t believe that actually having a working warbot was ever her real goal. I think she knew they were all broken and lovely and wouldn’t work. It was more about doing something to change her life and not just accept everything as lovely. In the end, getting to spend the night on a plush chair was the reward, and it was worth it, because she’d taken action and done what everybody said was pointless. The main detractor from this story was the weird trash stuff. I was like “is somebody sorting this trash?” the world was a little confusing because at one point i was wondering if they were like, tiny people and “kleenex mountain” was just 1 kleenex, etc. i did at one point wonder if they were actually bugs. Anyway you need to dial that back a bit and probably explain WHY it’s called kleenex mountain (is that where the kleenex factory dumps its poo poo?) how does the trash get there? Is new trash added or is it just old trash? How old? How many generations has this been going on? Anyway, cool, neat, good job. flerp - Bodies: Two dudes bang in an apartment and have feelings and talk a bit. Gonna be honest, totally lost how this was a dystopia or how they were affected by it. Not much to say other than that. I read it and was like “i don’t either get this metaphor or i’m missing the dystopian elements.” feels like it’s a part to a larger piece? yeah ok ok yeah - Chemical Lake: I liked this more than my cojudges and i argued you back from a loss/dm so i’m basically your fairy godmother and you OWE ME. I hate working (my job is even ok, i just hate other people telling me i have to do things at a certain time OR I DIE), so showing this guy just doing all this paperwork and whatnot so that he could afford the insurance to pay for all the operations and radiation treatments, but never actually go out and play on the lake spoke to me. His kid seemed pretty happy tho, so that’s good. This story skirts that line of “so what?” i guess, it never really builds too far past that main point of “this guy has to work to live and can’t enjoy life.” it lacks any sort of urgency or consequence. Everything just kinda seems normal and like he’s used to it and so it’s just a description of this guy’s life. It’s pretty dystopian IMO but not very satisfying. Anyway, gently caress work, jump in the chemical lake my guy.
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Feb 8, 2022 22:57
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Thranguy posted:Hellrule for the next one please. your next story cannot use the same vowel twice in a row, e.g. you cannot write "The excited elephant," but "The bird was cute." is fine.
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Mar 1, 2022 11:45
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The Cut of Your Jib posted:hellrule please every sentence in your story must contain at least one 4-letter word
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Mar 1, 2022 19:44
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no problem is too weird, plz give me a weird problem
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Mar 8, 2022 19:15
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I can't sign up again until I've completed 2 redemptions per 1 signup, and this is ongoing until I have at least 10 redemptions done and haven't failed again.
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Mar 15, 2022 19:51
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Thanks for buying the archive for a lot of money. I'll be shutting it down so all the data can be transferred to Fumbledome soon. It's a superior system for sure. I'm glad we could come to a better agreement than me giving everybody massages. My fingers are boney and weak
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Apr 1, 2022 22:06
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ㅤㅤㅤIndent non-indent this is just a test, i'm not in
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Apr 16, 2022 08:15
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good
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Apr 16, 2022 19:55
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technically the fight was started with on paper via international mail I accept muffin's challenge
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Jun 3, 2022 01:54
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Nae posted:A fight broke out in discord and now Muffin and crabrock are itching to spill blood. I will judge their terrible bout! Each combatant will write me 600 words, and the due date is 11:59 Pacific on Wednesday, June 8th (or whenever I wake up the next morning). i hate you so much, that it makes me sick 595 words oh you hosed-up little man. youre so hosed up and youre too stupid to know it. everything you do sucks–flailing around creating chaos with your hosed up noodle arms. youre only alive because two grown-rear end people follow you around while you gently caress yourself up. and you gently caress yourself up so nasty. youre a nasty little man. we scrape you off the floor where you roll around in your own nastiness. you like it. you reach for it and spread the nastiness in between your fingers. youre smearing it everywhere, always. you try to stand but you slip in your own filth. and you cry like this isnt your own gently caress up. how is anybody ever supposed to love you, you hosed up little man. you smell like poo poo and bite all the time. i wake to deep gouges on my neck and think “at least it isn’t teeth marks.” you scream like a train trying to stop, metal on metal, impotently trying to stop before running over a man. but the man is dead now. the whole family is dead. you hosed the world up for me. now when I see the hosed up stuff I cant ignore it. instead i think “but the hosed up little man is in this hosed up world”. he’s made it worse for me: the big hosed up man. and a little hosed up man is supposed to make everything better. people said “oh sure he’s hosed up but it will be worth it.” but he's not making it better, he's making it worse. “dont worry, he will fix the hosed up stuff later,” they say, but how can the little hosed up man growing up with all the hosed up stuff fix the hosed up stuff. he’ll just think “yes this hosed up stuff is normal to a hosed up man like me” like the big hosed up man does. “oh dang look at how hosed up everything is, maybe this hosed up little man will fix it,” you’ll say one day, you stupid idiot. you absolute fool. how am i supposed to love a little hosed up nasty man that makes the world worse? when every waking moment is more hosed up than the last. when i look at the little hosed up man and his multiplicative deficiencies and a whole collection of poo poo-that-wont-happen fantasies heaped on his weak little shoulders. ah gently caress it, rub the nastiness in my eyes. bite my forearm when i dare to look away for a second. yell at me for some dumb poo poo i dont even control. dont fix anything, just give up, or fix it all and call me incompetent, whatever you want. just let me be around you when you do whatever hosed up poo poo youre gonna do next. one day you will sequester away your nastiness, and wretch at the thought of putting your mouth on me. you will go off to fix the hosed up stuff or be part of it and i’ll survive on morsels of hearsay and think “yes the little hosed up man is out there, doing all his hosed up poo poo.” and i’ll say: “i’m glad it’s happening far away from me, finally a respite from the hosed up poo poo” and it will be just the big hosed up man telling hosed up lies cause he’s so hosed up and too stupid to forget it. you dont have to fix the big hosed up man. gently caress him. everything sucks, but you, the most hosed up and nasty of guys, make it suck less.
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Jun 9, 2022 09:18
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