|
ty for the crits soltair and yoru!
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 16:16 |
|
|
# ? May 27, 2024 02:00 |
|
simbyotic the amazing victor steele amusement park crit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vWkcthwfbwgpYbomEfEt19qWE9la-zlG-ZLUSHv_bs8/edit?usp=sharing
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 16:43 |
|
Solitair posted:JUDGE CRITS FOR WEEK 272
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 16:45 |
|
Can I ask for some specific advice? Neither of my crits picked up on the alternating tenses in my story, which I thought were a good way to present two temporally and thematically distant sequences simultaneously without their getting in each other's way. That structure was the one thing about it that I was actually happy with. Is there a better way to do this that people won't have such a hard time understanding? I think that it should be possible to pull this off, and it came as a surprise that I apparently didn't.
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 16:54 |
|
Open offer: Crit my story from this week and I'll crit any story that you've written for TD.
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 17:05 |
|
flerp posted:simbyotic the amazing victor steele amusement park crit Thanks, everyone's mentioning the ending so I guess I didn't do as good a job at telegraphing it as I thought I had. Goal for this week: not lose!
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 17:38 |
|
Simbyotic posted:Thanks, everyone's mentioning the ending so I guess I didn't do as good a job at telegraphing it as I thought I had. ok i normally dont do a follow-up to a crit but i really have to say this as much as i hate clogging up the thread even more the problem with the ending is not that it wasnt telegraphed. it is that the ending is not interesting. it doesn't provide a conclusion, or a meaningful end. it just says "welp, all of this didn't matter, nobody gained anything, and john was beat mercilessly." we gain nothing from the ending, so even if it was telegraphed, even if the first line in the story told us exactly how the story would end, the ending would still suck because it is a poo poo ending. the ending should provide some conclusion, some evidence that the character changed (or tried to change) and that the story told was important to somebody. your ending did nothing. all it did was say "nothing happened, go home now" and THATS why the ending was bad. not because i wasnt expecting it. but not losing is a good goal and i belief in u
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 17:42 |
|
In with a
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 18:50 |
|
Hey assign some cards so I can get going.
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 19:17 |
|
In
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 19:19 |
|
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 19:43 |
|
Sham bam bamina! posted:Can I ask for some specific advice? Neither of my crits picked up on the alternating tenses in my story, which I thought were a good way to present two temporally and thematically distant sequences simultaneously without their getting in each other's way. That structure was the one thing about it that I was actually happy with. Is there a better way to do this that people won't have such a hard time understanding? I think that it should be possible to pull this off, and it came as a surprise that I apparently didn't. I got it, and thought your story was fine, but my co judges hated it. it would probably have worked better if you'd done the past paras in italics or used some other method to point them out. i'll do you a crit.
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 19:48 |
|
QuoProQuid posted:Open offer: Crit my story from this week and I'll crit any story that you've written for TD. Crit for "All the Vice President's Men" by QuoProQuid When I read a story about any kind of human being, certain cliches, familiar habits and moral leanings become readily apparent the more I read about that fictional person. "All the Presidents Men' isn't about a fictional person but could very well be. Its source material is the time Walt Disney took Richard Nixon then-Vice President to Dwight Eisenhower, on a ride on a new monorail in his esteemed theme park. The story starts out with Richard Nixon out with his family in Disneyland. He ruminates on bad press and a President who Nixon views as a critical "Old man", like a father disapproving of a second act son. This right here is where the admirable qualities of fiction as a tool to digest events comes into play. I very rarely read stories about "real" people and "real" events. My issue is a constant feeling of the Author siding with a historic view on the person/event. I don't want to hear the Authors moral arguments, religious leanings, scholarly evidence, and or painstaking examinations. It's one of the issues that makes me biased towards Non-fiction, when I read I'm immediately looking for Fiction because I prefer fiction. Fiction to me is remarkable as it scours the mind of characters as well as showing off events around and between them. The mind of historical personas during any event is the part that is always assumed i.e fictionalized. Nixon during his time sweltering under Press flashes and trying to act like he isn't miserable is an assumed mindset, it is fictionalized and the story his thoughts speak of makes me want to read on. No matter what I'm hearing about Nixon, I usually imagine the talking head version of him from Futurama. He's a caricature more than a real figure as long as I've lived. There have been other examinations of his thought process and his reactions to his failings as a leader in cinema and on stage. Nixon in "All the Vice Presidents Men" ruminates in a way that suggests he's done this exact same interior dredging a hundred times since entering the federal office. He thinks of people "not liking him" the press "not liking him" and the same with Eisenhower. "Maybe it'd be better If I never---Maybe I could run---Maybe I could spend my entire life pretending---" These lines that exhibit a hopeful/doubtful/self-hating/desperate Nixon made me see him as a person. Something that is important to any Nixon tale is that, that he becomes a person instead of a caricature. Lines like the former and, "I try to shift the muscles of my face into something smile-like, but a camera flashes too early, catching nothing but jowls and teeth." Pat leans in to peck me on the cheek, but it’s a Potemkin gesture. I brush her away." And most of all "If I died right now, would anyone care?" From that last line, Nixon compares his public decay to his brothers losing bouts with disease. The thing that makes these lines worthwhile is that Nixon thinks about how him getting sick would make him more likable, as he connects to the pity he see's in his brothers decay working for him. It's a childish, desperate thing to think. Awful even that he dismisses the deaths that have just been introduced to the reader in favor of finding a gloomy salvation in disease. That makes him more Nixon but no less Human. The parts of the story that makes me see Nixon being human is what I love about this tale. I love tales that have flawed, unscrupulous people as the focal point of the narrative. It is easiest to find a relation to someone even as vilified as Nixon if you can look into your their head, and fiction gives us that. You use that power of fiction in a most positive way in my opinion. However, sometimes the story slips from this mental autopsy and instead pushes something historic a little too far forward. Like your watching a documentary and you're really into it and then the filmmaker pushes the same termite ridden log the Meerkats are eating out of in front of you as if to say, "Look! This is the SAME log!" "Or it’d get to Kennedy, the Ivy League brat who would use his daddy’s money to get the Democratic nomination", "Had never forgiven me for the whole Checkers fiasco." These lines are the log and the termites. I can type these into a search bar and find out about Kennedy, his college years, Checkers the dog and maybe it's just me, but I don't like that. I like this story when the recognized events are few, Disney was enough for me to make the scene in my head, the rest feels like too much, like pushing the fact that THIS is a thing that happened further into my face. If you're going to do this, find something that isn't so well known or something that is still assumed by history. Hell, make up a bribe that happened, or a time Nixon spilled grape juice on Eisenhower's medals, something that I still relevant to the time period and people involved but not so obvious to be the same lynchpins in every portrayal of Nixon being used again. Also, the tone of the story is split between verbose and grumpily bland. Nixon thinking of everyone and everything "not liking him" is ordinary and fits his gloomy musings, it juxtaposes nicely with "I can already sense their feel-good stories about the Tomorrowland monorail metastasizing into a larger story about my humiliation." I can see Nixon being both these things. He is educated and he is also depressingly plain, that works for this Nixon and for me. "Someone in the crowd gives me a pity cheer. Pat leans in to peck me on the cheek, but it’s a Potemkin gesture. I brush her away." This line is my favorite. The action involved which speaks volumes about the relationship being shown to the Press, and the use of "Potemkin gesture" which is an eccentric phrase that I can see someone from the early days of America having this bouncing around within their psyche. Sometimes, however, you lose this juxtaposition, "That’d get the tears flowing. The press always love a good sob story. They’d send photographers to take pictures of me, defiant in the face of calamity. A man who understands what it means to suffer. Maybe pair it with a picture of little Arthur, a picture of innocence. Weak and resigned. Or maybe that’s too maudlin. Better to use Harold, all watery eyes and sallow skin." I like words a lot, I like rarely used words but Nixon was fitting into a pattern, he split the difference between words and words in his mental musings, the previous paragraph dumps a lot of purple on me. "Defiant, Calamity, Resigned, MAUDLIN, sallow." This barrage made me lose sight of Nixon and only see the author throwing down stacks of syllabic desserts. This portions too sweet in comparison to the rest. All in all, I liked this, it was a short little excursion into a mindset of a notorious Republican, and you made it your own for the most part which was the most important thing to me. Jay W. Friks fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Oct 24, 2017 |
# ? Oct 24, 2017 19:57 |
|
In
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 20:08 |
|
Strength + Knight of Cups (Rider Waite Smith) QuoProQuid posted:sure. i guess. Ace of Swords (Mary-El) Sham bam bamina! posted:In. I hated my last story as I was writing it and need a palate cleanser. 8 of Cups + The Star (Rider Waite Smith) Fuubi posted:Yeah, in. Queen of Disks (Thoth) Thranguy posted:You know I'm in. King of Disks (Mary-El) sebmojo posted:yeah gently caress it, in Eight of Disks (Wildwood)
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 20:10 |
|
critSimbyotic posted:The Amazing Victor Steele Amusement Park ok well whoops u sure did screw the pooch (that means have sex with a dog, and is a very bad saying imo). your whole story built up to a conflict, and then just...ended. Normally a story has a few phases. You introduce some sort of conflict, which means there is something your char needs/wants and is unable to get. then the char does some poo poo and gets that thing (or doesn't, but nobody likes those stories because we love happy endings). Here your character wants to ride that ride, and then he doesn't get to. the end. he doesn't even try? what a boring dude. furthermore, you didn't really set up anything about his parents beforehand. like, if you'd led with he was walking down the road with a black eye, i'd know his parents were pieces of poo poo, that's why he ran away. but how does that really mesh with him needing them to get what he wants? what story were you trying to tell here? because what I got from it was "your life sucks, don't try to get any joy out of it because you won't get it, and everything just ends up back the same as it started." pretty bleak. Overall: pick a tense and stick with it. Your story jumps all around. rookie mistake. Past perfect: "He’d been" "he’d had" past: "didn’t bother" present: "People were walking", "can’t quite choose" perspective: pick a POV and stick with it. are you telling the story through the eyes of LJ? This is called "third limited" and it's often the most effective. ESPECIALLY in stories where your character doesn't have all the details and we discover them with him. third with an omniscent narrator is interesting when you want the reader to have more information than the characters. Here you should have stuck with third limited, as having all the information up front ruins the story. only tell us things that LJ knows, sees, experiences.first person is when you tell the story AS the character, and is harder to pull off, but can be super fun if the character themselves is an interesting person. 2nd person, or saying "you" all the time, should be avoided almost always. try not to stick the reader into your story.
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 20:36 |
|
Exmond posted:6th dm/loss in a row and I have to ask. What does it take to not get a dm? Bearing in mind that I am very new to this, my advice based on my one week of judging would be to focus on execution. Don’t worry about having a great idea or using crazy metaphors, just try and write something simple and mistake free.
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 20:41 |
|
Maybe I shouldn't but gently caress it I'm IN.
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 20:44 |
|
Yoruichi posted:... using crazy metaphors
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 20:45 |
|
magnificent7 posted:I get it I get it you did not like my story like a tapir hates a mailbox. I have already forgotten what your story was about and I don’t know what a tapir is, soz
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 20:49 |
|
Sitting Here posted:hmmmm.....in The Devil (Ostara Tarot) Okua posted:Hand me a card, I'm in. The High Priest (Tarot of the Silicon Dawn) Obliterati posted:Fucksake also in Six of Swords (Rider Waite Smith) Deltasquid posted:In, please. The Tower (Thoth) Three of Stones (Wildwood) Antivehicular posted:Never done Thunderdome before, but there's a first time for everything. In. Nine of Wands (Mary-El) Temperance (Ostara Tarot) 4 of Swords (Tarot of the Silicon Dawn) magnificent7 posted:IN for the doing. Ten of Swords (Rider Waite Smith) SerCypher posted:in! Knight of Wands (Mary-El) Seven of Pentacles + The Moon (Rider Waite Smith)
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 21:08 |
|
Jay W. Friks posted:In with a Justice + Eight of Swords (Wild Unknown) Page of Pentacles (Tarot of the Silicon Dawn) Nine of Swords + Page of Pentacles (Wild Unknown) The Sun (Slow Holler) CantDecideOnAName posted:Maybe I shouldn't but gently caress it I'm IN. Six of Vessels (Wildwood)
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 21:32 |
|
in,
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 22:12 |
|
*dragged IN kicking and screaming* Try me, I've got more decks than the Blood Queen has wins.
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 22:22 |
|
The Hanged Man (Mary-El) Nethilia posted:*dragged IN kicking and screaming* Seven of Knives (Slow Holler)
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 22:53 |
|
Im In Aiming to Fix mother loving punctuation around dialogue Not get my 7th DM in a row Write something dry and boring, but that has no grammar errors or punctuation errors
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 23:11 |
|
Yeah sure I'm in.
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 23:15 |
|
Exmond posted:Im In Nine of Wands (RWS) SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Yeah sure I'm in. Four of Cups (RWS)
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 23:24 |
|
Let's do this! I'm in!
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 23:44 |
|
In
|
# ? Oct 24, 2017 23:59 |
|
Aesclepia posted:Let's do this! I'm in! Three of Cups (Shadowscapes) Nine of Swords (Prisma Visions) Some general tips for this week: You can feel free to look up card meanings, but I'm going to be a little disappointed if your story reflects the established, Rider-Waite-Smith meaning (which is what you'll see if you look up "insert card here meaning") and not what's actually depicted in the card. For example, I gave two people the Nine of Wands -- one from the Mary-El, and one from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. If the person assigned the first card gives me a story about fatigue after a long battle, I'm going to assume you didn't trust yourself to look at the card. These are evocative images on their own, and I didn't spend two hours digging up cards from decks with distinctive art for people to ignore them completely. That said, if you don't know anything about tarot, it might be helpful to know the suits: Wands are fire, passion, the thing someone cares more about than anything else in the world; Cups or Vessels are water, emotion, the unconscious, and sometimes spirituality; Swords or Knives are air, the intellect, the mind, and communication; and Pentacles, Discs, or Coins are earth, material things, the physical world, and practicality. If your card isn't any of these, it's a Major Arcana card! These symbolize the greater things, the highest themes in life. These in particular are culturally mythologized enough that any kind of established meanings will probably be the same, no matter what deck you're looking at. If you do want to look up established meanings, this is a pretty good site, though it'll be most useful if you got a Rider-Waite-Smith card. edit: also, I'd love some co-judges!
|
# ? Oct 25, 2017 00:39 |
|
I'll co-judge.
|
# ? Oct 25, 2017 02:37 |
|
IN!
|
# ? Oct 25, 2017 04:11 |
|
Okay I'm iN too.
|
# ? Oct 25, 2017 04:57 |
|
In and
|
# ? Oct 25, 2017 05:07 |
|
BabyRyoga and Simbyotic you don't have PMs so i can't get you your archive password. email me crabrock@gmail.com so i can get those to you.
|
# ? Oct 25, 2017 05:20 |
|
In I guess
|
# ? Oct 25, 2017 06:25 |
|
8==D
|
# ? Oct 25, 2017 08:36 |
|
don't sign your posts
|
# ? Oct 25, 2017 09:12 |
|
|
# ? May 27, 2024 02:00 |
|
Flesnolk posted:I'll co-judge. Much appreciated! Maigius posted:IN! The Emperor (Fountain Tarot) Hawklad posted:Okay I'm iN too. The Moon (Rosetta Tarot) Uranium Phoenix posted:In and Queen of Swords + The Lovers (Tarot of the Silicon Dawn) Chairchucker posted:In I guess The High Priestess (The Dreaming Way) Sitting Here posted:8==D Ace of Wands
|
# ? Oct 25, 2017 16:57 |