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ATTN STUDENTS: Everyone loves extra credit. For you overachievers, I am offering the opportunity to scrounge up a few more words, courtesy of the school lost and found. For 50 extra words, I will assign you a junior high school stereotype. For 100 extra words, I will assign you some junior high drama. You can accept both and get 150 words if you're some sort of tryhard or something I guess. Most of these will be student stereotypes/drama, but you can still write about faculty members. My flashrule just needs to play a key part in your story.
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Jan 26, 2016 23:48
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Bleusman posted:I'll take some drama, SH. So like what if you let a friend borrow a textbook, and the next day you find it vandalized and left in a toilet????
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Jan 27, 2016 01:28
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spectres of autism posted:im doing movie club. im a try hard Stereotype: Punk Drama: So like what if your friend was trying to convince you they could see ghosts????
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Jan 27, 2016 02:02
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kurona_bright posted:Thanks for the crit, Wher! Ok so like, what if your friends won't stop playing cruel jokes on the school's most awkward teacher???????
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Jan 27, 2016 02:25
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Titus82 posted:I'm in like Flynn. Stereotype: The artsy kid Drama: Um I guess someone keeps leaving weird notes in your locker?
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Jan 27, 2016 02:43
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Boaz-Jachim posted:in, and hit me with both Stereotype: member of the student government Drama: Ummmmmmmmmm so I guess your best friend said some really lovely stuff behind your back.
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Jan 27, 2016 11:10
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 have some more TD audio First up, we recapped week 175: Speels of Magic. This was a difficult week to judge, because the judges had wildly different opinions about the submissions. Can time and distance possibly begin to heal the wounds suffered while judging? Find out in this very special* recap. We had some slight technical difficulties at the end, but eeehhhhhhhhh who cares. The Recap The archive link if you want to follow along. *Note: recap not very, or special Actually, the really special recap I have for you is week 176: Florida Man and/or Woman. You all know what you did. And I'm still mad about it. Florida week was interesting in that it didn't receive and dishonorable mentions but...that's mainly because the judges were reluctant to issue a billion DMs right before Christmas. The judges, unlike you heartless bastards who wrote for week 176, have consciences. So we took a different approach to Florida week for the recap: we decided to do some dramatic readings of the more memorable stories from that week, along with commentary. The recap The archive link And finally, here is the audio from the livecrits from week 180! The Livecrits I realize audio-only is kind of a mess, but it's something to tide you over while the judges catch up with written crits. I'm thinking about making livecrits a more semi-regular thing (with whoever wants to participate, within reason) that's detached from judging, based on feedback I've received from talking with goons. I think that might make everyone happy?? We're still probably going to do them this week, because honestly it's a fun way to judge. Mainly, I don't want people to think anyone has any intent to replace any aspect of judging with the whole "live" shtick. It's just something we like doing! So I hope at least some of you get something helpful from it. Thank you to Kaishai, Curlingiron, Djeser, and Ironic Twist, as well as all the people who listen to these. Like, it's kind of ridiculous, but really fun, and if nothing else we learn a lot while picking apart your stories. So seriously, thanks. The other recaps: Kaishai posted:Thunderdome Recaps
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Jan 27, 2016 21:58
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Ceighk posted:gently caress it, in, and hit me with some drama So like uh, the weird kid thinks you're really cute. Thranguy posted:I'll take both a stereotype and some drama. Stereotype: Drama nerd Drama: I regret to inform you that, unless you improve your GPA, you won't be allowed to participate in any extracurricular activities. docbeard posted:Also, I'm in. Hit me with some drama and a stereotype. Stereotype: The snitch Drama: Gross, someone peed in your bag of chips!!! (IRL drama courtesy of another goon, who can take credit if they want)
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Jan 27, 2016 22:05
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*puts hand on bro's head 2 keep him at arm's length* *watches bro punch the air with his babby kitten fists* *waits for bro to tucker out* 
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Jan 27, 2016 22:10
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Jan 27, 2016 22:56
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the only crits in this thread are a bunch of hypo-crits
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Jan 27, 2016 23:26
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Pantothenate posted:Just to reiterate (since that was at the bottom of the page, and like right next to the critiques post from last week), I'm asking for a clique and drama, because thinking is hard and this is the closest I'll get to you writing this bastard for me. Stereotype: WORST PERSON EVER aka one of the inexplicably popular kids. Drama: An embarrassing selfie
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Jan 28, 2016 08:10
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You're going to the principal's office mr.
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Jan 29, 2016 01:24
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Jan 29, 2016 21:32
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We're going to be doing some live reading of your guys' stories starting roughly very shortly! See IRC for details. Also, please submit more stories.
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Feb 1, 2016 03:08
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Ironic Twist posted:In addition: same
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Feb 2, 2016 06:03
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Catching up on my crits. I'm going to be putting them out in small batches all weekend! Here are the first 7 crits from week 180. Titus82 Okay, so your first sentence in a mess. It’s too wordy and it TELLS us way too much about the character. Coming out and making a direct comment about his “social IQ” is redundant, because his deficient social IQ is the whole point of the story. The story ends on a hopeful note; Kelly seems willing to give him another chance. I think he needs like...more of a quality that makes us cheer for him. Like, as it is, he reads like way too many guys I’ve known who just never get past their preoccupation with the feminine mystique and spend their 20s/30s in a state of prolonged emotional adolescence. So by the end I’m like, OH MY GOD KELLY YOU DON’T NEED HIM. He’s not exactly unlikeable. I just don’t feel like Kelly’s friendliness toward james in the last scene is good thing for either of them. And if it’s meant to be bad, then it’s not an effective ending. Because it leaves both characters in the uncomfortable situation they started in, with no emotional catharsis. James tries to convince himself he’s changed. I’m not convinced. All that said, there were a couple cute things here. I feel like the overall intention of the story was...ok? Just not executed as well as it could be. Bleusman So, the beginning of this story set Eli up as...suspicious. And the weird shenanigans on the TV, where he looks all enraptured by snuff footage, seem to sort of support that idea. But...nothing really comes of that. Eli is kind of creepy. So? The voice is good, but the actual story is something out of internet creepypasta. You don’t need to explain the supernatural, necessarily, but given how Eli was set up, it was frustrating that the story ultimately revealed very little about him. You even subverted anything ominous about him by giving him a fear of rats. Which could be cute...it’s just the only really concrete revelation we have about his character. Once they start trying to escape, they just become Two People Trying To Escape From A Creepy Building. Their problem solving comes down to walking around searching for cell signal. Which Eli gets. If the answer was on the internet the whole time, why didn’t he learn the trick about the rats while he was researching the place? That seems like a detail other explorers would mention. The writing here isn’t bad, but ultimately, the story feels like it’s all setup and no real resolution. I’m not even sure what the scene on the TV featuring Eli and the narrator indicates, other than...I guess they aren’t going to murder each other? Pantothenate I liked the way you connected your prompt (Bowie’s Savior Machine) with an homage to Asimov. The judges weren’t sure about it at first, but it quickly became clear that this wasn’t fanfiction or anything. It was a nice example of a story where the struggle was primarily internal, and I thought you did that pretty well, largely owing to your character’s voice and the contrast between the things he thought and the things he said. I thought the kid’s dialog was waaay too on-the-nose, was the main issue with this. Like the whole “sometimes I pretend too much and then I get angry” thing didn’t feel very authentic. I think you could’ve written the same conversation, only a bit subtler. Otherwise, I thought this was a really good first entry, and I had a nice time discussing the story with the judges when we were doing our live crit. Amused Frog So, first thing. You could cut everything up to the section that begins, “Do you know why you’re here, Grey?” Everything before that is unnecessary. Remember: as bad as this sounds, having horrible things happen to your protagonist isn’t enough to make the reader care about them. This guy barely knows who he is. Which makes him seem more like a camera there to record all of these horrible things. You could’ve cut the first few sections and applied those words to better characterization of Grey. Like, I know that his captors want. They want to test an experimental procedure on someone who’s allegedly a convicted felon. This has a slight whiff of like...the MKUltra experiments, which is cool and all, but you didn’t DO anything with it. Grey has no motivation of his own, he merely tries to comply. Which, that’s realistic, but not terribly engaging, ya dig? God Over Djinn Unfortunately, I can’t give this a full crit since it’s no longer available for viewing. BUT. It was a really effective, moving piece, in which a character portrait felt like a journey. I called this Oscar bait after my first reading, and what I mean by that is: it was subtle, cinematic, and emotionally satisfying. The theme of mazes was elegantly done. For someone losing their mind and their agency, even simple things can seem labyrinthine. Good job! CaligulaKangaroo It’s funny, for how much info you give about the setting, I don’t ever feel like I have a good mental image of the environment your characters are in. The elaborate descriptions of the various numbered routes and passages didn’t add much, because I didn’t have that immediate, tactile information about the scenery. So it reads as kind of a confusing, generic dystopia. The narrator has some history with the Minotaurs, but I’m not going to lie to you, my eyes bounce off all the details in this piece. I get why protag is on the run. I can fathom why the brainwashed fascist robocops or whatever wanna wipe out the black market. But these are one-size-fits-all details that kind of just mimic things that happen in other dystopian action stories. I wanted a more personalized motivation for the narrator. His previous connection with the minotaurs isn’t really enough. Things get more interesting when the lady in the scarlett dress shows up. It’s like this pop of color and character that I wish had been present the whole time. Side note, it was confusing when you referred to her as a Valkyrie. Putting an actual in-world concept (minotaurs) in the same paragraph as a description like that is confusing. That said, I feel like you could’ve almost started the story with the entrance of the woman in the dress. Like, you could’ve done a lot more with her. Right now she’s sort of half-developed; for example, she alludes to a change of sex/gender, but it’s right at the end so it’s not like that detail is super pertinent, except to explain how she escaped detention, I guess. At the end of the day, this is one of those stories where like, I understand what happened, but I don’t know what it’s about. WeLandedOnTheMoon! So, I didn’t know what mifepristone was. I mean, I know what abortifacients are, I just didn’t know that was the name of the substance. I think it was Djeser who ultimately googled it while we were livecritting and explained to me that you could get it illicitly online. Right-oh, I don’t mind learning things while I read, if it plays into the story. And I mean, it wouldn’t have been very effective to be like “Camille waited for her ABORTION PILL to arrive.” I guess with stories like this, I like to be really clear in saying that I have no problem whatsoever with the subject matter you chose. I even addressed a similar idea--What if a person didn’t want to be born?--in one of my own stories. I don’t like the assumption that every soul wants to be born, I guess. Where this failed was mainly the blocking and description. The whole sequence where she’s driving/walking through the smoke lost me. And not only that, some poor word choices (Clunker????) actually made me laugh, which a story like this shouldn’t do. The noncorporeal baby comes across as a dick, which, I get that they REALLY don’t want to be born. But why is this pre-born spirit powerful enough to do the whole smoke and mirrors thing? And why exactly does Camille change her mind right at the end? The story really does make the case against having a baby, and I wasn’t convinced by her sudden resolve at the end. Fear of god, I guess.
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Feb 6, 2016 21:26
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Week 180 (Maze Week) crits, part two! Pham_Nuwen There were a lot of amnesiacs this week. It’s difficult to make a character who knows nothing about themselves compelling. It’s even harder when they’re in an environment that’s basically totally unfamiliar. I don’t know the rules of your afterlife. Well, until Sarah helpfully explains them. She’s got a little bit of a “video game tutorial guide” vibe going on. And then, when your narrator DOES finally remember stuff, the details feel kind of banal and not super revealing. Like, you’re the writer, you can make your character any kind of person you want them to be, even if THEY don’t know what sort of person they are. If that makes sense. Mark isn’t a total blank slate; by the end of the story, he’s having his own thoughts about the afterlife, and ultimately makes a painful decision. Sarah, though...Okay, so. I feel like in movies/TV/books, when someone says “I’d like to think we’ve become friends,” there’s usually some subtext, some complication. When Sarah says it, it comes across as cardboard. Because she shouldn’t have to say it. It should be apparent. Finally, I didn’t get much of a sense of how your maze looked. Most of the story was people explaining things to each other or deducing the nature of the maze through conversation. This got dangerously close to being a couple of heads talking in white space. I did enjoy: quote:
That’s a nice metaphor that I’ll probably remember for a while. Thranguy Since I’m doing these critiques a couple weeks after the fact, I want to note that this was one of the stories I remembered most vividly. I like what it’s trying to do. I don’t like everything about the execution. I’m really fascinated by how amateur and established authors are handling near-future fiction. I thought the overall scenario was a neat angle on the whole labyrinth thing. Stuff like “pre-centennials” didn’t land as well, because it felt too much like a forced analog for millennials. Another thing. I feel like you were kind of hitting me over the head with how literate these two characters are. There’s a way to do what you were trying to do, but it’s gotta be more subtle, IMO. I dunno, though. I’m not the person to tell you how to do it better. It just felt very stilted. I’m torn on the details like, you know, the two conservative moms, and everything mentioned in conjunction with them. On the one hand, it’s not like...a totally unbelievable thing. I could see a world where things are as you described. I think if you were writing a longer story, and could show those details instead of telling us via the narration, it could feel more natural. Like the pre-centennial thing, it feels like you were trying really hard to think about what the current world might be like in i dunno, a hundred years. I think part of the problem is, it’s too neatly analogous to current stuff, considering that this story seems to take place several decades in the future. The ending is where it broke down for me, though. The Skull Knights feel very non sequitur, even thought you did describe the mural in the beginning. It’s sort of a neat scene, but it almost feels like a bit of a deus ex machina-type thing. What really kills it is the very last paragraph. Jasmine is so self centered, given that her friend/new boyfriend seems to be in a pretty hosed up situation, and he just lost his only means of temporary escape. Overall, interesting story that was clumsily done in some parts, and the ending was a real letdown. Killer-of-Lawyers I like this story. I’ll cut to the chase: the ending was weak, and stank of wordcount issues. I feel like you could’ve cut the narrative riffing elsewhere and used the words for a stronger ending. When the judges were reading the stories, we talked about how we didn’t like the ending because it totally subverted the change the narrator went through throughout the story. I think it’s a liiittle bit more subtle than that, in retrospect. Now it seems more like you were going for something like...she is resurrected from bureaucratic purgatory and dropped immediately back into, i dunno, some sort of military duty. Meaning, ultimately, she’s being shuffled back and forth between two restrictive systems and could potentially be stuck doing so forever. If that’s what you were going for, I think a couple hundred more words could round out the story a lot better. I liked this, though. The voice was neat and the setting (or at least, what we know of it) is cool. Do more with this. HellishWhiskers This story left me feeling like, “Okay???” after I finished reading. I dunno. None of the individual elements of the story ever resolve into anything meaningful. Like, ok, you have the rich and slightly sinister Fields family. Like, seriously: quote:”...If this soirée goes well then we would be quite happy to offer you a more... permanent position in our household.” and quote:"I was looking for something a little more... unorthodox for this particular get-together and let's just say that our mutual friend told me that you are precisely what I am looking for, Mark." This sets the Fields family up as like...I dunno, cannibals or something? Or, like, I’m thinking this chef is about to get a peek into some Eyes Wide Shut scenario, maybe. But then it sort of wanders aimlessly off on this tangent about the abused kid. Man, critiquing makes me write some callous-sounding stuff. Like, I get it, the kid probably really needs a trustworthy adult in his life, but it was such a 180 from what I thought the story was going to be about. And not in a good way. If the story is about Mark’s relationship with this kid, you should’ve started with the kid. You could have worked the Fields and their thin facade of normalcy in throughout the text, instead of loading the beginning with a bunch of expository smalltalk. Entenzahn Ok, full disclosure, you know me and that I love whimsical dreamy stuff. And surreal gardens rife with eclectic, almost archetypical characters is my jam. Also, THANK YOU SO MUCH for not giving Simte amnesia. He has a little sister to look after. So, for example, when he sees the little girl at the pond, it makes sense for his character to momentarily abandon his search for the Timid Man and answers to dive in after her, only to discover ~all is not as it seems~. This was nicely done, because by the time we get to the Timid Man’s explanation of the maze, I actually WANT to know about the setting. That’s how you do exposition, you goony fucks. Where things get a little less clear is pretty much right when Simte sees his past, when he inducted his sister into the cult of G’mohr. I’m not really sure what “happened”, as such. He wakes up back in the maze, and I feel like his fate has something to do with: quote:The other Simte led Alya in a circle around him, and she dragged her own hand through the water next to her, creating an additional, outer circle that rippled through the inner one, representing the many infinites of G’mohr. Like, somehow his interference in the ritual resulted in him being transported to the garden, because G’mohr. I’m not entirely sure. Which, for me, meant that his choice to walk through the exit felt...ambiguous. I’m actually excited to hear the other judge’s thoughts on this one. Overall, though, it was a really good read. Broenheim So, I can usually spot your work a mile off, because you have this really interesting mannerism in your writing. I don’t know how to describe it except to call it kind of circular. Your stories always whirl around and around the point they’re trying to make. Characters are always looking up and down and at each other and away from each other, and their conversations tend to kind of talk “around” whatever subject is at hand. I’m not saying any of this is a bad thing. I think it’s part of your voice. But I think it needs to be applied more...sparingly? Or something. I’m not sure. You try to “show” a lot with your characters’ actions, and how you block them in each scene. Sometimes I think you are shy about over-explaining your characters’ thoughts and motivations. Like, in this story, I felt a bit detached from the narrator, even though we’re in his head. The crux of the story is basically, will he step up and be a dad? And there’s this nice portrait of an imperfect but not-quite-hopeless family. I’m also not too clear on the various locations in this story. It seems to drift across time, but there isn’t a lot of imagery to ground me in each scene. Watch out for odd descriptions like this: quote:Lines of red spread across her eyes and she bit her lip. I know what you mean, but gosh that is a weird way to phrase it. I think you’re saying her eyes turned sort of bloodshot (the red lines are veins?) but it just reads real awkwardly. Docbeard You successfully wrote a sitcom episode as flash fiction! It’s a good and a bad thing. It’s a good thing because that’s really hard to do, and you handled two related plot threads really well, which is difficult in limited space. Your dialog was good and there were some genuinely humorous moments and lines. The whole “they’re going through her cellphone!” conflict is...just on the edge of plausible, but it still works. It gives Paul a motivation that’s slightly more nuanced than just “get the girl.” I mean, his goal is still to “get the girl,” but he’s got a reason that goes beyond the basic fact that she’s out dancing with other dudes. Sophie’s attempt at clubbing is amusing, and the situation she finds herself in is entertainingly believable. This was an easy HM, but would’ve been a hard sell for the win when compared to more “serious” stories like Djinn and Entenzahn’s. Still, it was a fun read with good characters. Sebmojo hello sebmojo here is my crit of your story. Long story short, I feel like the words were way more pleasing than the plot itself. All the descriptions are cool, the way the guy thinks is cool, the whole “mind fortress” thing was cool. But the actual plot is sort of like….”Is this man crazy? Probably not, it turns out.” Since you’ve kindly burned the importance of character agency into my mind over the years, I’ll say: Being on the run and getting caught isn’t the most satisfying demonstration of agency. There are a lot of cool words and ideas in this piece, which made the ending feel like kind of a letdown. Like, the labyrinth as a mental defense. That’s probably one of the more original ideas in maze week, and you could’ve developed it into something a lot more satisfying. Ceighk Okay, time to be a callous dick again. I don’t care about Craig, don’t care that he misses his ex, who never even shows up in the actual story. I don’t care that he is wandering unhappily through this music festival. Technically, there’s all kinds of conflict here: Craig is sad, Craig wants to go have a lie down, Craig’s cell phone is almost dead. He can’t find his way back to his tent. If your friend was recounting this story to you, you’d nod along and be vaguely interested (hopefully, cause they’re your friend), but you wouldn’t think “wow, this should be in a book!!” But really, you could’ve probably escaped notice, because the writing isn’t god-awful or anything. It’s just, your final paragraph is not good: quote:Josh opened his beer with a hiss. “Yeah, for a bit.” He sat next to Craig on the picnic blanket and they talked, really talked for once, about their friendship, their dreams, their insecurities. When the conversation turned toward Stella, Craig cried on Josh’s shoulder and didn’t feel like a pussy. I’m not invested enough in these characters to care if they “really talked” for once. So this comes across as really forced and saccharine and made the story stick out in a bad way. Bad Seafood Okay, so right off, you’ve got a hell of a first line: quote:
Baller. But, okay, hmmm. I’m going to sort of structure this crit around what I think I know about the story. First off, we have the three characters. Kerklund has a hole in his neck and seems kind of...rough but stoic, and braver than the other two, in his own way. Caspar has a hole where his left Eye should be and seems to be kind of like, meeker than the other two? More desperate? Then there is Enrico, who the other two seem to begrudgingly look to as a leader, though he’s very condescending and pretty mysterious. Enrico has a hole in his heart, and Kerklund questions his humanity. They are missing their memories, but luckily they are not boring, blank slate amnesiacs like some of the other pieces this week. The characters are sort of archetypal, and they wear it well. I’m guessing they’re in some sort of purgatory or afterlife, and in denial. I am really fond of how you captured the mood of the song I gave you. It was kind of a lonely, subterranean-sounding song, and I thought you captured that really well. The “arc” of this story, such as it is, seems to be the dissolution of a fragile alliance between three sinners, maybe. It’s a little hard for me to speculate. I’m not entirely sure what the holes represent, but I get the sense that these three are possibly in a true hell. Trapped, with no recollection of why they deserved it. Julias This was...cartoonish. I use that word a lot in my crits. It’s just very slapstic and ridiculous but also weirdly macabre and gory. There’s not a lot of what I’d call realism here. Did you ever watch the cartoon Ed, Edd, and Eddie as a kid? It made me think of that show, but not in a super good way. The whole gimmick of Carl/Karl/CJ didn’t add anything, tbh. Well, maybe it added to my confusion while reading. But it certainly added nothing GOOD. So okay, these guys are trying to win the “right” to court a girl, so they decide to duke it out in the middle of a corn maze. Fine, whatever. BUT THEN A GUY GOUGES OUT ANOTHER GUY’S EYES WITH LITERAL CORN. This is fine if you’re the animator for, I dunno, Ren and Stimpy, but not when you want a reader to take your story super seriously. And then, as this guy (I don’t remember/don’t care which C/Karl it is) is having his eyes drilled out with CORN, he languishes in some inner monolog about how he’s gonna die a virgin. Even if this story was trying to be funny or cute, it didn’t work, since it was all so slapstick. Most humor is humorous because it points out something true in a funny way. If you come back, and I hope you do, please try and focus on creating a realistic conflict, between two characters at most, that doesn’t rely on dumb cartoon physics. Crabrock I know you hated this story, but I’m finding it really hard to crit because I liked it a lot! I hate giving crits like this. If I’d been in more of a genre-fic mood, this might’ve won, but Djinn’s realism happened to scratch my judgely itch this week. Sorry. I keep writing out nitpicks for this piece, but it feels disingenuous, since I really just plain enjoyed reading it. A LOT happens in a small space, which means your word economy is excellent. If I had one complaint, I guess it would be that I think you could flesh this out more. But I doubt you will, cause you’re a butt. You are just amazingly good at writing endearing assholes, misunderstood monsters, and jerks with hearts of gold. Chairchucker Ugh will just just please like, write a really fun and hilarious and whimsical book, already. This is short, it’s mostly dialog, and any/all conflict is resolved pretty instantly. And yet, I STILL enjoyed it almost as much as some of the longer, serious pieces this week. Your stories always read like comedy sketches, but they have a sincerity to them that keeps it from feeling too tongue in cheek or ironic. There is, unfortunately, not a whole lot here to dissect, and almost all the plot movement, such as it is, happens via dialog. But what the heck, I like it a lot. Darn you Chucker, darn yooooou.
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Feb 8, 2016 05:21
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Tyrannosaurus posted:i'm using ten words from winning week 100, btw I can confirm this is legit, judges
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Feb 8, 2016 09:01
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Week 182 crits! From Domegrassi week Bleusman This was funny. Which is good for you because otherwise it would've been one long, bad dick joke. I thought the 2nd person POV worked because it fits the conversational tone, which is pretty credibly middle school-ish. I liked the implausible, absurd aspects of the story, like the dick drawing analyst. Honestly, this was probably close to an HM for me, because the humor landed and there was an actual story, ridiculous as it was. I echo my esteemed cojudges when I say, "lol". Bluewher I didn't think it was very believable that the students would be completely oblivious to a teacher's death, and talk about her absence loudly and conspicuously in front of her husband. I thought "badass Mr. Trejo was an awkward nickname. Doesn't exactly roll of the tongue, does it? You can name your characters anything, so there's really no reason to make it such a cumbersome mouthful. Then the magical mentally handicapped man comes along and turns Mr. Trejo's life around with basically one conversation. The way the deaths were "revealed" and elaborated on was really clumsy. The dialog was too on-the-nose, people saying exactly what they need to say to make the plot happen. WeLandedOnTheMoon! This was pretty good, and almost made it onto my HM list, but you ultimately didn't do enough with Mr. Kellogg. There's no tension surrounding him, because we know he's basically a benign, helpful vent-dwelling man. So you needed to have him show up earlier, and expand upon his myth, basically. And you would've had the words to do that if you'd cut Andrea's POV in the beginning. It felt incongruous anyway. I liked the idea of Mr. Kellogg, but Hector definitely needed to engage him in a more interesting way. Thranguy Okay, so this seems to have suffered a bit from the collaborative element of this week. It kind of sets up the idea of Violet the ghost, but the format combined with the plot just...I don't know. It's kind of a long road to a little house, plus a ghost. I don't care enough to piece it all together because the central concept isn't that interesting. There are all these names and I guess implied relationships within the school and I just am not that invested in any of it. Maybe if this had been a more straightforward story with 3 more "traditional" POVs reflecting on the same event (plus ghost). IDK. Broenflerp The conversation between the principle and Elizabeth at the end was the best part. The basic premise of the story, that rooms disappeared when kids got too smart, didn't work very well. I didn't see the connection between smart kids and disappearing rooms. It didn't even feel like a metaphor for anything, tbh. Cathy was basically cardboard. The principle being a wacky, skateboarding cooldude was over the top, though as I mentioned, the ending is good, and the talk with Elizabeth made me like his character. Pantothenate quote:Jonas had sidled up so subtly that Richie hadn't realized he were there. It's bad to start your story with a grammatical error. At first I thought it was part of the narrative voice, but I'm pretty sure it was in fact an error. But, ok. The characterization was wobbly. I thought Jonas was meant to be a skeezy drug dealer type, and was surprised when I checked the flashrule and saw that this story was supposed to be about a popular kid. Most of the story is dialog, talking about interesting things that we never see happen. In the end, both characters are kind of dicks. There was kind of a neat moment in there, when they were reflecting on Grobthor the ogre, but since both characters end up being dicks, it doesn't end up feeling like a particularly important moment. The only change the characters undergo is becoming slightly more bitter toward each other. Tyrannosaurus Another story in my "almost HMed" category. There was something about this, like it had a twinkle in its eye the whole time. The grossness of blowing into a cyclops's severed neck hole was a fun contrast to the basic sweetness of the story. I wasn't 100% sure about the mechanic of the curse. I thought Mikey and the narrator were really likable and believable as two friends who are experiencing romantic tension, which is hard to do. It's hard for me to put my finger on why this didn't HM, actually. I think I'd have to get super nitpicky. docbeard Full disclosure: I don't know how grading curves work, but I'm taking it on my co-judge's authority that it wouldn't work the way you described it in this story. I dunno! Sarah is ok as a protagonist, but Spencer is kind of insufferable as the sidekick. Granted, I gave you kind of a ridiculous flashrule. And like, if Mr. Ashley's motivations had been less absurd, this probably wouldn't have lost. Moments that I think were supposed to be tongue in cheek came across as plain cheesy: quote:“…I’ve found that things only remain harmonious if no one, teacher or student, steps too far outside their assigned role. Outliers get noticed, and getting noticed isn’t necessarily good. I’m sure you’d agree.” And the whole story felt weird. Normally, you have this jaunty tone and a good handle on characterization. I've seen you juggle a lot of characters pretty handily in other stories. I think you were honestly just off your game on this one, and went for an absurd idea that just didn't work. God Over Djinn I can't give this a fair critique because I've only read it once, unfortunately, and now it's no longer available for viewing. I liked the ideas it dealt with, but not how they were laid out, going on what I remember. But like I said, there's no point in trying to write up a crit for something I've only read once. Titus82 Sooo...your protagonist starts getting letters that are ostensibly from her mom's ghost. One of the letters calls the protag by a special secret nickname, basically confirming the whole ghost thing. So naturally, she goes to ask Domegrassi's omnipresent ghost girl about it, and then pointlessly loses her temper on poor Violet...because? I guess she's mad about being The Girl With The Dead Mom. It's always frustrating when like, it's obvious I'm reading a ghost story, but the protagonist flails around the page going "surely these obviously ghostly happenings cannot be actual ghosts!" And then the ending is basically, "No seriously, it's ghosts." Don't do that!!! The detail about her mom having synesthesia was weird and non sequitur. It gets mentioned twice, and is otherwise a pointless detail. Also, maybe this is just me, but a character who just want to be special or artsy or whatever isn't that compelling. So the second to last paragraph, when she's really baring her soul to her dad, didn't land for me because it hit too close to home  Grizzled Patriarch This is a pretty vignette. You write pretty words. I dunno, it is exactly what it wants to be, which is a mysterious little portrait of a moment in time. I am begging you though, pls write a sprawling, ill-conceived epic with a limp ending for me sometime. I just really want to write a different critique. I want to see you take more risks, dammit, cause you are an ace writer but we can't help you get any ace-er if you are consistently writing these lovely little Faberge egg pieces. Seriously, I will challenge you to a brawl over this, if I have to. FIGHT ME. Spectres of Autism Oh, hullo again violet. There was something authentic about this. Like, things that normally would annoy me didn't because they fit the whole middle school thing. Like: quote:Catrice is a rebel. She makes people think hard about who they are and who they want to be. But Mr. Hardwick might be onto her at any second. I remember myself and my friends being inordinately preoccupied with what was "conformist" or not. Like, you're just coming out and saying this stuff, which could go over bad, but because I relate to it, I feel like it's good. The blood on the paper airplane thing was a little hot topic macabre, but it still kind of fits. There were a lot of characters, and this was another story that was kind of relying on the collaborative element of the week, which meant I didn't get as much out of it as I could. Collab weeks are hard; you have to work pretty closely with other people to come up with shared elements that make good stand-alone stories. That said, I thought this bit was cool: quote:I’m not punk enough for this, she thinks. Never punk enough... never punk enough. I dunno. This wasn't your strongest piece, but it feels mostly like a consequence of collaborating. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Bad Seafood It was nice of you and Spectres to post around the same time, since your stories kiiind of rely on each other. I think the reason yours HMed is because your characters' motivations seemed like their own. I really relate to the idea of like...losing something you really care about, that connected you to people you really like. The characters' urge to make one last thing together, no matter how lovely, resonated with me. This was really dialog heavy, and with as many as 5 people "on screen" at once, you had to do a lot of sparse blocking. Especially when they were actually filming the movie. Still, there was a decent character arc: first, they're fighting to keep the thing they love, but things go all wrong. Instead of giving up, they decide to make something to kind of honor and commemorate their club. It was sweet. Boaz-Jachim This was just a tight and refreshing break from the adolescent awkwardness of the rest of the week. Granted, a fascist student government is a little bit outside of the typical middle school experience, but there were some pretty middle school-ish things about this piece. Like, the punishment for treasonous speech is a horrible haircut and hideous makeup, forcefully applied. This is basically 1984, but middle school, and for me it just really worked. I like that your protagonist starts with doubts, but seems to actually gain resolve as the story goes on. It was a nice inversion of what I expected. Good job! This was a pretty easy, unanimous pick for the win. Phobia This is okay. Except, it's definitely high school! Middle schoolers don't drive. But fine, I'm ultimately here to look at the story itself. It's somewhere between well-observed and sympathetic and kind of cliché. I want to like the two main characters. I wanted to like their dynamic. The ending seemed like a believable awkward situation a transgendered person might find themselves in. Other people are pretty blithely oblivious/insensitive about gender issues, so it rang true. Which is maybe why the kiss weirded me out? Like, I'm happy the protagonist got a kiss, and isn't mistreated by Madelyn anymore. But I feel like the turnaround from mutual disdain to kissing wasn't super organic. If the prompt was to write about high school girls, I'd say you had the voice down pretty well. Sadly, it wasn't. But I really like the sensitivity to this piece, even if I'm not sure how I feel about the ending.
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Feb 9, 2016 00:46
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Sitting Here posted:Week 182 crits! IRC posted:GrizzledPatriarch> thanks for the crit SH. also if you really want to brawl, I'm down who will judge
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Feb 9, 2016 00:56
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Broenheim posted:i will  You're on, old man
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Feb 9, 2016 01:13
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oh hey another (sparkly) recap Kaishai does a lot of wonderful behind the scenes work for Thunderdome and hardly asks for anything at all in return. So when she asked if we could turn the Week 177 recap into a sparkly retrospective double feature, I couldn't even dream of saying no. If you've never feasted your eyes upon the flamboyant fever dream that is the December Diamonds Collection, I urge you to do so now, because it will probably expand your horizons in ways you hadn't thought possible. Sparkly mermen have become something of a Christmas tradition around Thunderdome (if you can call something a tradition when it's happened a whopping two times), so in addition to critiquing Week 177, we journey all the way back to Week 125, where all the Christmas fun and sassy sparkles began. This is the link to the recap! Featuring Kaishai, Ironic Twist, Djeser, myself, and special guests Bad Seafood and Grizzled Patriarch! Thank you as always for listening in spite of my resolute aversion to any sort of editing/scripting. You are all beautiful and patient goons. More episodes (Thanks, Kaishai!): pre:Episode Recappers Week 156: LET'S GET hosed UP ON LOVE Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Djeser Week 157: BOW BEFORE THE BUZZSAW OF PROGRESS Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 158: LIKE NO ONE EVER WAS Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Djeser Week 159: SINNERS ORGY Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 160: Spin the wheel! Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 161: Negative Exponents Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 36: Polishing Turds -- A retrospective special! Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, Kaishai, and The Saddest Rhino Week 162: The best of the worst and the worst of the best Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, Kaishai, and The Saddest Rhino Week 163: YOUR STUPID poo poo BELONGS IN A MUSEUM Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 164: I Shouldn't Have Eaten That Souvlaki Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 165: Back to School Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 166: Comings and Goings Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 167: Black Sunshine Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 168: She Stole My Wallet and My Heart Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 169: Thunderdome o' Bedlam Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 170: Cities & Kaiju Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 171: The Honorable THUNDERDOME CLXXI Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 172: Thunderdome Startup Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 173: Pilgrim's Progress Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 174: Ladles and Jellyspoons Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 175: Speels of Magic Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 176: Florida Man and/or Woman Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai
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Feb 9, 2016 03:14
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Thranguy posted:98) Venice (The Books) I'm in, gonna call in that linecrit from Ironic Twist
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Feb 13, 2016 03:14
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The Show 1300 words Flash Rule: 98) Venice (The Books) More than ten million people watched Yacob Chen lean over his sink, look in the mirror, and stretch his mouth into an oblong ‘O’ so he could get a closer shave. His headset partially concealed his left eye behind a tinted lens, which reflected the mirror reflecting Yacob. The camera mounted over his left ear captured every bit of black hair that fell to the white porcelain. The microphones captured, with stereoscopic technology, the wet sandpaper sound of his straight razor scraping over stubble. Dan Hufflaw from Idaho said, Commissioned a custom str8 razor just like @YaChen’s, never had a closer shave! and his comment was buoyed to the top of cross-platform newsfeed aggregators by an oceanic swell of ‘likes’ and favorable replies. Within hours, it was the featured comment beneath Yacob Chen’s live video feed. But then a new faction appeared. Dan, @YaChen taught himself metalworking so he could make his own razor, but you non-brands just see something original and throw money around trying to copy it, said Gage Remo from Oregon. There was a small, fierce avalanche of agreement, and a volley of ‘dislikes’ rained down like arrows on Dan Hufflaw. If you want to have on-brands, you have to have non-brands, Dan said. Creators need emulators and spectators or there’s no point. Somewhere in Idaho, his phone buzzed off the hook as the ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ poured in. Yacob Chen finished shaving, washed his face, then moisturized with some homemade cream, which he scooped out of the stone mortar with two fingers and spread across his high, fine cheekbones like cake frosting. Sshh, his fingers whispered as they moved over his freshly shaved skin. Sshh. He was careful to not smear any on his eyepiece. And, for just a moment, his viewers hushed. This was @YaChen, after all. The simple novelty of his morning routine could at any moment unfold into spectacle. The steps in his shaving ritual were, as far as his audience was concerned, no different than plot beats in a film script. Blue-balled, Gage Remo commented when Yacob Chen finished moisturizing without incident and proceeded to get dressed. Yacob’s walk-in closet was famously austere; rather than filling the racks with clothing, he arranged his handful of outfits like visual merchandising displays, a neo-normcore rainbow of greys and beiges and blue jeans. After he was dressed, Yacob sat in his armchair and stared at his living room for twelve hours. Commenters inspected the video feed pixel by pixel. The image was divided into quadrants and @YaChen fans collaborated in poring over every last couch fiber, looking for some clue as to what Yacob was up to. At exactly nine o’clock central time, the lights in Yacob’s house went out, and there was a collective international gasp. The stream was still live, but pitch black. There were shuffling fabric noises and heavy breathing. Within thirty seconds, Yacob’s steady viewership of ten million jumped up to twelve million as casual fans caught wind of the hubbub and tuned in. At fifteen million viewers, the lights came back on. Yacob Chen was standing with his back to a full-length mirror, looking over his shoulder so the camera could capture his reflection. His stance was bowlegged and he was naked from the waist down. Neither Dan Hufflaw of Idaho nor Gage Remo of Oregon could summon the words for a comment. Somewhere in the real world, Dan’s finger was pumping the PRTSCRN button like a piston. Yacob crouched down, his backside still facing the mirror. He reached. His fingers dug around inside of his body until, with effort, he produced a small ball from his anus. It dangled there, swaying slightly. With a gesture from Yacob, the camera on his headset zoomed in on the reflection of the ball and the fleshy environs surrounding it. There were words on the ball, apparently hand-written and in Sharpie. PDX 8/20/18 * Here’s Why @YaChen’s Portland Performance Will Be the Most Important Show of This Century, proclaimed the front page of the Portland Mercury. The alternative newspaper’s website had become a sort of ad hoc outlet for Yacob Chen news and speculation. Ticketmaster’s website slowed to a crawl. Dan from Idaho was in the digital queue, his whole body quivering with tachycardic excitement. In another browser tab, he compared ticket prices from Coeur d’alene to Portland. Gage Remo in Oregon actually went to the box office at the Keller Auditorium, physically, to stand in line and get his paper ticket, which was actually just a printed copy of the E-Ticket. Yacob Chen arrived in Portland a few days before the show. Crowds gathered where he went, whether he was sampling the local food trucks or exploring the famous japanese gardens of Washington Park. Nearly one thousand people were waiting outside of the old Cinema 21 when Yacob emerged from an afternoon showing of Man on the Moon, Dan and Gage among them. Everyone had their phones, tablets and headsets out, watching Yacob watch them watch him. I liked that movie before @YaChen made it cool, Gage Remo commented on the stream as the Portland drizzle fell lightly on his phone’s screen. He saw the top of his own head in the crowd on the video feed, his face angled down at his phone. He saw, from Yacob’s perspective, Yacob hold up two open pans of gold paint. Then, like a holy man giving darśana to his followers, he swung the cans by their handles and doused everyone within fifteen feet with liquid gold. Cries of protest and confusion went up as expensive electronics were ruined. Twenty million viewers watched Yacob Chen watch his fans watch themselves get covered in paint. * @YaChen Promotional Event Turns Into Panopticon of Chaos reported the Portland Mercury the following day, hours before Yacob was set to take the stage at the Keller Auditorium. I haven’t washed the paint off my hand yet, Dan Hufflaw commented, and attached a picture of his gold-spattered hand as proof. So psyched for the show. Dan replied with an eye-rolling emoticon and said, You’d eat up any spectacle they set in front of you if it got enough enough shares in your social network. Both men were seated in the front row at the Keller Auditorium. The room was quiet except for quiet murmuring between those few who’d come with friends. White-blue screen light from nearly three thousand phones made everything look ghostly. All eyes were on Yacob’s feed. He was watching them from somewhere. The audience watched themselves through his camera, trying to suss out the angle from which Yacob was observing them. At eight o’clock, the house lights went down, the stage lights went up, and the audience fell into an excited silence, like inverted applause. Dan and Gage crained their necks, trying to see through the tiny gap in the red velvet stage curtains. The curtains opened. The stage was sparse, empty of everything except a large, hanging screen, which was bathed in empty white light from a projector. There was a long beat, like the gap between songs on a randomized playlist, where anything was possible. All eyes in the auditorium were on the stage, their devices temporarily forgotten. On the projected screen, credits began to roll: STARRING: Kaylee Buxton……………………………………….10,344 Comments Pradeep Krishnan…………………………………...10,011 Comments Dan Hufflaw………………………………………….9,804 Comments Gage Remo…………………………………………..9,804 Comments Mirna Smoot………………………………………….9,799 Comments And on, and on, and on. The house lights went up. Ushers came down the aisles to escort the disabled and elderly to the exits. The stream was over. Dan and Gage filed out of the auditorium in the gush of bewildered fans, viewers with nothing to view except their own gape-mouthed reflections against the black of a dead video feed.
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Feb 15, 2016 06:49
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spectres of autism posted:Analogues This was strange, but not horror. The only nod to horror is the phonecall and the concept that quantum beings might somehow be taking over our minds and changing us without our knowledge or consent, I think? There are these flickers of humanity in the characters, but it all feels really loose and sparse. There's very little in the way of setting description. Like, I don't want elaborate descriptions of the weather, but having a better idea of the space around your characters and how they're moving in it would give my mind more things to imagine, which would better anchor me in the plot. Having more physical, concrete description would also give you more tools to show the characters' moods, thoughts, and motivations. But really dude, I've read stories where you put these way-out ideas into a concrete setting. I know you know how to do that. I hate to speculate, but I wondered if this was really hard to write. Sometimes the idea is there, but the execution is just difficult for whatever reason.
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Feb 24, 2016 22:42
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omg goons, the best way to get away with breaking the rules is to NOT post asking if it's ok geeze
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Feb 28, 2016 03:17
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Brawl entry  Mother and Eater 2500 words Children huddled in the broken circle of Inanna’s arms, and what was left of Tel Aviv dared not raise its voice above a whisper. The armies of man had reduced each other to almost nothing under the banners of false messiahs, and now they were gathered in Megiddo, waiting for the second coming. Apocalypse, Inanna thought, was like a tea ceremony. It was the same on every world. The world-eater loved to play with its food, to send visions of false prophecy to the worlds it preyed on. Soon, its faceless throat would open, and Earth would be no more. She and the children had taken refuge in the basement beneath a shawarma shop. It smelled of lamb and cooking oils; warm, everyday smells that had no place at the end of all things. Inanna breathed deep. I'll remember this, she told herself. I will remember the smell of cooked lamb and the softness of a child’s hair and the sound of a string orchestra. One of the children nestled against her stirred, looked up, and said, “Will the fighting come again?” And Inanna said, “No, little love, the fighting is over now. When we go back up to the street, God will have created a new heaven and earth.” “I want to see it happen,” the little boy said. “You must have faith,” Inanna said. It was a tremendous effort, trying to keep her voice tender and motherly. “Only the eyes of the faithful may look upon the new land.” “It’s just war,” said a teenage girl. “War is always supposed to feel like the end of the world.” Far away, and all too close, the world-eater opened its throat latched onto the teat of the world. The children felt it too, though they did not have words to explain it like Inanna. It was the teenage girl who began to cry first. She opened her mouth and a long, aimless moaning sound fell out. The others began to whimper and call for parents they’d never see again. Inanna pulled them all as close as she could and stroked as many scared little heads as she could reach, but she did not try to stop their tears. Once the world-eater had fed, there would be no one left to mourn Earth or its people. The south side of the basement started to shift and compress, so slightly at first that it could’ve been a trick of Inanna’s eye. She knew otherwise. She said, “Come near me and close your eyes, and we’ll sleep through this. When you wake, you’ll be in god’s kingdom, and nothing will ever hurt again.” The children, even the oldest ones, did as they were told, and in a matter of moments, Inanna was all but buried under a sniffling, whimpering pile. They rested against her and each other. For the first time in her mortal life, Inanna tapped into just a droplet of her divine power, and let reassurance flow out of her body and into the children like warmed whole milk and honey. The south side of the room compressed like an accordion. All the color bled out of everything and ran toward the distortion in rivulets. In previous lifetimes, Inanna had watched whole cities disappear into the mouth of the world-eater where it chewed through the fabric of reality like a moth. Now, she only wanted to bring comfort in a time of terror. If she couldn’t save these children, she could at least counter doom with tenderness. Inanna’s last moments in her human body were suffocating and dizzying and dark; it was as though she’d been rolled up in a carpet, then thrust headfirst down a tight black well, into the black molasses of the world-eater’s guts, with the children screaming and screaming until there was nothing left to scream with. I will remember. I will remember. The goddess Inanna stirred, as if from sleep. She was fully herself again, a shapeless concentration of white light drifting in the airless, colorless void between worlds. The fruit-like bodies of universes, those as-yet untouched by the world-eater, throbbed and hummed around her. Nearby, there floated a ragged cloud of of chunks like a dismembered corpse, bits of the Earth-universe left behind in the wake of the world-eater’s feast. “Your sentimentality is a liability,” she said to herself. “The beast got away from us again.” “But I'm the mother,” she replied. “The mother of all mothers. How could I not try to bring comfort to the dying?” It had been eons since she spoke to another of her own kind, another god. She could no longer remember her home, or her reason for setting out after the world-eater. “Ask yourself: why is the mother of mothers trying to play huntress?” she said. “The pantheon has its huntress.” She struggled to recall the name of the goddess who presided over hunts and pursuits, but it wouldn’t come. “Think of how many children...across how many universes…” She summoned the memories of Earth while they were still fresh--Bread, sand, laughter, meat, clouds--But Earth was not so different than other worlds she’d watched die. She could already feel new memories blending with the old. Her ancient mind overflowed with the muddy soup of too many sorrows, and she was no closer to stopping the world-eater. She propelled herself into the void, ignoring her own cutting cynicism. She couldn’t see the world-eater, but its trail was easy enough to track. The universes it didn’t devour recoiled from it. All Inanna had to do was follow the empty space left in the world-eater’s wake. Eventually, when it found a ripe, quivering universe, it would stop, latch onto the membrane, and begin to suck. She caught up to the beast as it was curling its sinuous body around the taut flesh of a young universe. The membrane was firm and glossy, like an apple. Inanna lingered at a distance, not sure if she was ready to incarnate as a mortal. The world-eater was unassailable in the void between worlds, but she was tired of watching things die. “Go home,” she whispered to herself as she watched the world-eater prod the membrane with its gaping round orifice, looking for a place to latch on. It was like nothing so much as a newborn instinctively probing for a nipple. “You’ve seen enough. The thing cannot be stopped. So go home and forget about it.” She was a heartbeat away from taking her own advice when the world-eater did something she’d never seen it do before. It uncoiled its massive body from the membrane and thrashed its wormy length, as if it were a snake with its head caught in a trap. Inanna drifted as close as she dared. The creature’s tail described an angry arc in the void as it lashed back and forth. But the world-eater didn’t detach. Couldn't detach, it seemed. “No Inanna,” she said. “Leave it be. Go home.” "I have to know how this is possible," she said, and launched herself through the void, past world-eater’s writhing tail, through the flesh of a universe. Inanna opened her eyes and gasped. The sky could’ve been Earth’s--but no, the hue was off, it was too pale, and there were brilliant white lines that glowed like lightbulb filaments instead of a sun. She was on her back on a steep hillside covered in scree, and small rocks dug into her spine. She sat up, looked down, was surprised to find herself in a human woman’s body. The very same body she’d occupied on Earth. The view from her vantage point was a stunning panorama of greenish-yellow mountains. A warm, tangy wind that smelled of strange loam and alien minerals tousled her hair as if to say, It’s alright. Don’t worry. She looked back up at the pale blue sky, at the fiercely luminescent stripes that ran parallel to each other, stretching from one horizon to another like lines in a musical ledger. There was no reason for her to be human, and no reason for a human body to be able to survive on a world where oxygen didn’t exist. “Hello!” called a voice. Inanna spun around, her long black hair whipping about in the warm wind. A solitary figure approached her, following a path that ran along the spine of the hill she’d incarnated on. The creature had a bulbous head, like an octopus, and ten tentacle-like appendages. Six of them were modified for walking, while the other four tapered into delicate plumes of miniature tentacles like prehensile fingers. His black dinner plate eyes were on the front of its head, as was his mouth. “Hello,” he said again when he was a few feet away from Inanna. “Do you know what I am?” she asked, trying to keep the note of relief out of her voice. It was a simple pleasure, speaking to other beings. “You are from the outer world,” the creature said, his skin rippling with colors: grey-pink, yellow-blue, neon brown. Inanna read the display as though the colors were words on paper: the creature was experiencing profound excitement and uncertainty. It was one of her gifts, as the mother of all mothers, to understand all children. “Yes,” Inanna said. “Do you know what brought me here?” “Oh yes,” said the tentacled creature, his skin trembling with colors of awe. “You goaded the deceiver into our snare. We’ve heard its false prophecies in our minds for centuries. Now, it is here, and its power is ours.” “I don’t know how you trapped the world-eater, but you can’t control apocalypse,” Inanna said. “It is best you see for yourself,” the creature said, flashing bright orange confidence. “Come.” His name was a complicated sequence of colors and syllables. Inanna nicknamed him Red, after the first color in his name. Red seemed tickled to receive a name from a goddess, and chattered the entire way down the hill about his brood, his enclave, and the disposition of the light-streaked sky. Inanna made sounds of polite interest as she spread her awareness out and over the curious new world. It was vast, bigger than any mortal could hope to comprehend, and flat. As if it’d been rolled out like a carpet, complete with mountains and rivers and oceans. Inanna stopped in her tracks. “This world was fabricated,” she said. “Somehow, someone…” All gods knew that universes grew from the void like wild fruit. No one had the power to create an entire world, not even the mother of all mothers. And yet this one felt as deliberate as a tapestry. “Yes,” said Red, flashing a sly, mirthful yellow-green. “So you understand why a creature such as the deceiver might be useful to us. Think of it--it consumes, but doesn’t produce waste. How much energy is stored inside such a being?” “I’m humbled by immensity of this undertaking,” Inanna said, her human heart racing. Red’s people intended to contain the world-eater, to milk its body to power their living artifice. It should’ve come as a relief, but it felt deeply wrong, as the death of children felt wrong. Red’s enclave, his home, was a scattering of large, opaque domes nestled in a narrow valley between steep hills. They hunched together in iridescent clusters like the glistening backs of turtles in a summer pond. On the outskirts of the enclave was a long, narrow structure that terminated in a much larger dome, easily ten times the size of the others. Inanna shuddered to look at it. Whatever mechanism they’d used to trap the world-eater was housed in that building. It was as certain as the feverish ache in her bones. Red carried himself tall and sure, his skin flashing goldenrod as they passed his colleagues and neighbors. Inanna watched her feet as she walked through the enclave. They reached the entrance to the narrow structure and Red ushered her inside, still flashing prideful colors and chattering about how simply, utterly thrilled he was to have her in this world, in his enclave. Inanna blinked in the relative dim of the interior. They were in a long hallway that terminated in a distant door. The walls were the same iridescent material as the exterior, and were cluttered with panels and interfaces that flickered and chimed. Some were manned by Red's colleagues, who flashed sky-blue curiosity as Inanna passed. “This is the one who chased the deceiver into containment,” Red said to his peers, loud enough that his voice traveled the length of the hallway. “I would show her the apparatus.” He stopped in front of the closed door that could only lead to the massive dome. “The deceiver is trapped within. We’ve created a world inside a world, one where it is oblivious to its true size and nature. Come, see.” Red waved one tentacle in front of the door and it swished open. The room beyond was indistinct, and the harder Inanna strained to peer inside, the harder the ache of wrongness rattled her bones. “What--” her question was cut short by a rough shove. She fell through the doorway, landed hard on her stomach. The door swished closed behind her. She got to her feet just in time to see it disappear completely. In its place was featureless grey, a whole world of seamless, featureless grey that obliterated Inanna’s perception of space and depth. “I’m sorry mama.” A little boy’s voice from behind her. Inanna turned and saw a human child on his knees, head bowed, hands balled into fists. “I was too hungry. I heard you coming and I knew you were mad but I was too hungry.” The world-eater lifted his head and looked at Inanna, and his eyes and mouth were full of a light so bright that Inanna had to shield her face. She let out a dry, ragged sob. Deep under the bloody,stained glass layers of her innumerable mortal lives was a vague, ancient guilt. A goddess’s guilt. "You were always my child," she whispered. A wave of withering exhaustion washed over her and she slumped to the featureless grey floor. Red’s people were draining them. Inanna reached for the deep well of divine power inside of herself, but there was only grey. Grey within, grey without. Inanna reached up in the air, her fingers curling, grasping at nothing and everything. The world-eater watched his mother with unblinking eyes like white hot suns. Slowly, ponderously, he crossed the space between them and lay on his side beside her. “I’ll remember you,” he whispered. “They can take and take but they’ll never empty me.” "I'll eat them, mama. And I'll remember."
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Mar 1, 2016 13:44
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ty for the crit
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Mar 5, 2016 19:22
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Are you tired of waiting for slow judging? Try all new Recaps! Hello goons. We've been on a little bit of a recap hiatus, but we're finally getting back in the swing of it. This time, Kaishai, Twist, Djeser, and myself take a look at the DMs, losers, and WTFs of weeks 178 and 179. Characters! Stories have them. What are they? How do they work? By request, we took a character-based look at this motley group of stories in hopes of find out what The recap If you'd like to follow along (recommended): Archive link for week 178: I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed Archive link for week 179: Strange Logs Thank you, as always, for listening, and thank you Kaishai for making this neat list: pre:Episode Recappers Week 156: LET'S GET hosed UP ON LOVE Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Djeser Week 157: BOW BEFORE THE BUZZSAW OF PROGRESS Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 158: LIKE NO ONE EVER WAS Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Djeser Week 159: SINNERS ORGY Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 160: Spin the wheel! Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 161: Negative Exponents Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 36: Polishing Turds -- A retrospective special! Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, Kaishai, and The Saddest Rhino Week 162: The best of the worst and the worst of the best Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, Kaishai, and The Saddest Rhino Week 163: YOUR STUPID poo poo BELONGS IN A MUSEUM Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 164: I Shouldn't Have Eaten That Souvlaki Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 165: Back to School Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 166: Comings and Goings Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 167: Black Sunshine Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 168: She Stole My Wallet and My Heart Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 169: Thunderdome o' Bedlam Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 170: Cities & Kaiju Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 171: The Honorable THUNDERDOME CLXXI Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 172: Thunderdome Startup Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 173: Pilgrim's Progress Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 174: Ladles and Jellyspoons Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 175: Speels of Magic Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 176: Florida Man and/or Woman Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 125: Thunderdome is Coming to Town -- Our sparkly past! SH, Ironic Twist, Djeser, Kaishai, Grizzled Patriarch, and Bad Seafood Week 177: Sparkly Mermen 2: Electric Merman Boogaloo SH, Ironic Twist, Djeser, Kaishai, Grizzled Patriarch, and Bad Seafood
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Mar 7, 2016 23:41
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Mar 8, 2016 06:09
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Stuck Animation 1364 words “It reminds me of the Sistine Chapel,” said Charlotte. She and Ali were on their hands and knees, deep in the brightly colored labyrinth of the Kidz Zone Magicastle play structure. Above them, the bright blue padded ceiling was spattered with a fecal mural so improbable that Ali and Charlotte could only stare in horrified appreciation. “I mean,” Ali said, “do you think the kid was okay?” “Oh, you can bet the little fucker skipped out of here feeling ten pounds lighter,” Charlotte said. She handed him a spray bottle, a fistfull of rags, and what looked like an ice scraper. “Newbies get poop duty. Good luck! I’ll be, uh, cleaning the Big Buck Hunter machine.” She scuttled awkwardly through the kid-sized space and disappeared down the red plastic throat of a slide. It’s not unfair, Ali told himself. She has to deal with this every night. Charlotte was the arcade’s one-woman night crew: part janitor, part repair technician. Ali was slotted for a promotion to daytime shift manager, which meant doing a tour on the graveyard shift. To get a better understanding of how the arcade runs, they’d told him. Ali gritted his teeth, donned his dust mask, and started to scrape. - He emerged from the Magicastle an hour later, jaded and smelling of bleach. He found Charlotte with her eye pressed to the scope of a plastic rifle, taking down two-dimensional elk on a boxy arcade machine. “This is some sort of Faustian bargain, isn’t it,” Ali said. “This is why management has such high turnover. You keep this place running in exchange for fresh meat to do your dirty work.” Big Buck Hunter was an old machine. The deer and elk jerked and stuttered across some pixelated, popup book version of Montana or Wisconsin or Vermont. They jerked and stuttered when Charlotte pulled the trigger and they died. “Yeah, it’s good to be the dark elder god of an arcade,” she said, lowering the rifle. “You know, I hate being alone with all these old games all night.” “That’s not very elder god-like,” Ali said. “The sports ones are the worst,” she said. “It’s the crowds in the background, see. You’re not meant to be looking at them, ‘cause your attention is supposed to be on the game. But then you do look, and they’re these herky-jerky little pixel blobs stuck in an animation loop.” Ali fumbled for something insightful to say. “Yeah, dumb Streetfighter A.I.s don’t make great company.” “No, it’s like,” Charlotte said, then shook her head sharply. “Sorry. I get too much time to think.” Ali leaned in conspiratorially. “You know, what I’ve wanted to do since I got hired,” he said, putting on what he hoped was a mischievous grin, “Is has have a one-on-one laser tag deathmatch.” Charlotte straightened and turned to face him very slowly. “There’s something I should tell you, then,” she said. Her hands came up to rest softly on Ali’s shoulders. His mind went into a sort of tailspin, trying to reconcile the fact of her hands on him with the seriousness of her expression. She took a deep breath. “The thing is, I am going to utterly destroy you.” - Ali pressed his back against a wall, sweating under the weight of his sensor vest. The laster tag arena was 8,000 square feet of ramps, corridors, platforms and bridges shrouded in artificial fog. And she was out there, somewhere. Hunting him. He’d scoffed when she offered him a head start, but it quickly became clear that he was her prey. He never saw her. The only sounds were his breath and the occasional sad chime his sensor vest made when she sniped him from a distance. So now he was holed up in the most remote corner of the arena he could find. It was a small room whose walls were studded with a floor-to-ceiling mosaic of mirror fragments. There was only one entrance. She’d have to show herself to take a shot at him. Ali’s world shrunk to the size of the mirror-studded foxhole. He took his finger off the trigger just long enough to check the time on his cell phone; just after two in the morning. His eyelids had that heavy, clammy feeling of sleep deprivation. His hands shook from the mild adrenaline rush of being hunted by a petite janitor with a laser gun. Errant tendrils of artificial fog coiled through the air in front of his eyes, and the black lights made his head swim. He jumped at the sound of Charlotte’s voice. “Okay, I’m bored,” she called. She was just around the corner. “Ceasefire?” Ali swallowed hard and lowered his laser gun. “Deal.” She came around the corner, her gun tucked into the holster built into her sensor vest, which she stripped off and set on the floor. “How long have you been, just, lurking out there?” Ali asked. “I lost track,” Charlotte said. Ali holstered his gun and lowered himself onto the cold cement floor. “Man, right now I want to be in a busy shopping mall, or, or, in Times Square, or something. Somewhere loud and busy.” Charlotte sat down beside him. “You know what bugs me,” she said, “Is that, even right now, those stupid game sprites in those stupid machines are still stuck in their stupid little animation loops. It doesn’t matter that there’s no one watching.” “I don’t know how you deal with this place every night,” Ali said. He couldn’t stop himself from noticing the smooth sheen of sweat on her bare shoulder. “You see them?” Charlotte pointed at their fragmented reflections. “They’re us. They’re going to leave here and sleep, and eat, and come back to this place tomorrow to do all this again. And if they don’t, if they really give up, they’ll die in a ditch. And some other sprite will pick up the loop. Work. Eat. Sleep.” Her words came fast and her voice was shaky. Ali felt her ennui like gravity. He watched himself lean in and press his lips against the corner of her mouth. The small, delicate muscles in her face were tense and unyielding. She didn’t move. He recoiled. - Charlotte didn’t say anything about the kiss as they dredged the ball pit. Ali fished up errant diapers and lost socks without comment. They swept and sprayed and sanitized and restocked. The arcade machines looked on with their fidgeting, flickering faces, like restless animals in an empty zoo. Finally, Charlotte announced that it was six AM, time to turn themselves out into the cold, grey morning. “I think I get it,” Ali told her when they were outside. “Your thing about the old games, I mean. They’re claustrophobic. There’s only as much of a world as there needs to be for the game to work. It’s not like the characters have other places to go or things to explore, or…” he trailed off. Charlotte was looking at him, her head cocked slightly to one side. There was a hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth, where his lips had trespassed. “So I guess you’ll understand when I say I gotta go,” she said. She stretched her arms high over her head and looked out at the brightening morning. “You mean for good.” Soft rain fell from low clouds, but Ali could make out patches of blue-gold sky on the eastern horizon. “It’s gonna be rough around this place without you.” “Nah. There’s always someone to fill in the loop.” She looked at her feet. “I didn’t mind. Earlier, I mean.” She touched her lips lightly with one finger. “It’s a nice goodbye present.” There was a vast, brief moment where it seemed like they were both waiting for the other to suggest they have breakfast, or offer to exchange numbers, or at least lie and promise they’d see each other again. But they didn’t. A million things waxed, waned, and vanished. And then Charlotte was walking to her car without looking back, and Ali was watching her go. And the raindrops that landed in his eyelashes were like bits of shattered glass from something huge and brittle, now broken.
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Mar 14, 2016 12:17
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in m'laddy
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Mar 15, 2016 04:14
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mojo post the brawl results
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Mar 18, 2016 19:55
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hello do you need some help procrastinating? It's another recap! This time we reviewed weeks 180 and 181. As usual, we discuss the losses and DMs, and Corn! gets a well-earned encour. We also confirm conclusively that Team Ock sucks. The recap Recommended reading: Week 180: Maybe I'm a Maze Week 181: We like bloodsports and we don't care who knows! Thanks as always to Kaishai, Djeser, and Twist. Other things you can listen to (thanks Kaishai): pre:Episode Recappers Week 156: LET'S GET hosed UP ON LOVE Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Djeser Week 157: BOW BEFORE THE BUZZSAW OF PROGRESS Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 158: LIKE NO ONE EVER WAS Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Djeser Week 159: SINNERS ORGY Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 160: Spin the wheel! Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 161: Negative Exponents Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 36: Polishing Turds -- A retrospective special! Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, Kaishai, and The Saddest Rhino Week 162: The best of the worst and the worst of the best Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, Kaishai, and The Saddest Rhino Week 163: YOUR STUPID poo poo BELONGS IN A MUSEUM Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 164: I Shouldn't Have Eaten That Souvlaki Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 165: Back to School Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 166: Comings and Goings Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 167: Black Sunshine Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 168: She Stole My Wallet and My Heart Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 169: Thunderdome o' Bedlam Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 170: Cities & Kaiju Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Djeser, and Kaishai Week 171: The Honorable THUNDERDOME CLXXI Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 172: Thunderdome Startup Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 173: Pilgrim's Progress Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 174: Ladles and Jellyspoons Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Kaishai, and Djeser Week 175: Speels of Magic Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 176: Florida Man and/or Woman Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, and Kaishai Week 125: Thunderdome is Coming to Town -- Our sparkly past! SH, Ironic Twist, Kaishai, Djeser, Grizzled Patriarch, and Bad Seafood Week 177: Sparkly Mermen 2: Electric Merman Boogaloo SH, Ironic Twist, Kaishai, Djeser, Grizzled Patriarch, and Bad Seafood Week 178: I'm not mad, just disappointed Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Kaishai, and Djeser Week 179: Strange Logs Sitting Here, Ironic Twist, Kaishai, and Djeser
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Mar 19, 2016 08:51
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post the crits
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Mar 20, 2016 05:57
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Ironic Twist posted:
I was crushing upstarts before you came into this dome and i'll be crushing upstarts when you're a smear across the floor only reply to this if you're brave enough to get crushed, by me, in a brawl again
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Mar 20, 2016 23:59
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Ironic Twist posted:Upstart? You need someone to teach you what words mean. up·start noun (derogatory) a person who has risen suddenly to wealth or high position, especially one who behaves arrogantly. "the upstarts who dare to challenge the legitimacy of his rule" synonyms: parvenu, arriviste, nouveau riche, status seeker, social climber, a jumped-up ——, johnny-come-lately "these upstarts, they don't know their place"
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Mar 21, 2016 02:47
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Mar 21, 2016 03:03
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crabrock posted:i am gonna judge this brawl.
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Mar 21, 2016 04:15
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