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flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in give me line :toxx:

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flerp
Feb 25, 2014
A slab of turkey-neck and it's hanging from a pigeon wing

Up There

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flerp fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Aug 25, 2020

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in flash

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
i was going to be kinder in this crit because this is a very very amateur story (read: it loving sucked) but hey if you wanna be a dick i can be one too. the only difference is that ill be a productive dick

quote:

Winter Forecast

Kerry opts to wear the traditional uniform of a pilot terrible first line. boring as poo poo. who loving cares about what the character is wearing, especially if it's some traditional uniform. already makes me want to fall asleep. She keeps paper notes on a clipboard, who cares but there’s no getting away from the fact that the job has changed in her decades of service. There’s only one seat in the cockpit. To Kerry it feels as though there is an empty seat by her side.

It’s the last flight of her shift. Her destination is a cargo airfield called Manston. It sits in a rural expanse southeast of London. last two sentences two sentences dont matter. who cares where she's going it doesnt matter in this

An augmented reality display shows Kerry a dizzying array of flight indications. Numbers, lines, maps and codes surround her. To her, these indications are a bloody nuisance. telling

“Pah, state mandated hallucinations.” She scoffs. hey maybe instead of complaining about how the judges are bad or whatever you should probably learn how to actually punctuate your dialogue correctly, perhaps by reading this http://litreactor.com/columns/talk-it-out-how-to-punctuate-dialogue-in-your-prose and digesting it and understanding it. wouldve been a much better use of your time than making GBS threads up the thread tia

Kerry sits stiff and upright nobody cares how she is sitting observing the virtual images in front of her. Concerned, telling she eyeballs a swirling storm on her radar readings.

In a polite telephone voice who cares how she speaks she speaks to her computer. “Jasper, can you find a route that will avoid this storm?”

Jasper’s uncanny synthesised voice rings through kerry’s good proofreading right here, oh wait headset.

“That storm is complex. My crystal core isn’t powerful enough to calculate something with this many interdependent variables.”

Kerry is unimpressed telling. A human copilot might have been able to say something more useful than “I don’t have enough brainpower.” your character is just an annoying boomber upset about how new technology is bad actually. i dont like them As Kerry ponders she holds her pen against her mouth who cares??? why does having a pen in her mouth matter? stop wasting my drat time and your drat words on boring trash words. She studies the radar image of the storm cloud.

“Everyone on board is in cryostasis. I’m sure they won’t mind.” Kerry sighs, consigning herself to a bumpy ride through the storm.

#

Inside of dark, violent clouds there are only brief pauses of stable flight in among rough shuddering and the plane being heft suddenly in any direction. Kerry’s neck is strained as her head rolls and bobs to correct for the wayward motions of her plane again, doesnt matter. you established "things are bumpy" you dont need to keep hammering that point that doesnt matter.

There is a brief respite. The plane dips beneath the storm. Light pours through the windows. Kerry looks to a gap in the clouds. Sunlight beams onto distant ground. The ground is pristine white, snow-covered and twinkling with the far away lights of a landing strip.

Jasper informs “We are heading toward controlled airspace. There is no signal to Air Traffic Control. I am obligated to divert us away.” The plane steers.

Kerry asks “No radio signal?” Puzzled telling, she can see the lights of the airfield’s radio tower from her window.

“The signal seems to be masked by large quantities of radio interference coming from the ground.” this dialogue is very boring and youre probably gonna be like "well you see its an AI so its supposed to be boring and if youre writing a story and your excuse is "its supposed to be boring" then you hosed up. i dont care if its supposed to be boring, because i dont want to be bored. make it interesting. Jasper explains.

It’s typical of a computer to follow procedure. Kerry, on the other hand, considers a workaround.

“How is your satellite signal, Jasper?”

“My satellite signal is strong.” Jasper answers.

“I want you to make a satellite call to the airport. Get through to air traffic control that way.” Kerry resolves. ill give credit where credit is due, but at least you create a sort of mini-conflict and resolved it, but too bad it took nearly half of the story to get anywhere close to a conflict. also, very unfortunate that the conflict is immediately resolved incredibly boringly by the protag saying "just make a call"

The call is brief. Jasper squawks raw data through the audio of the satellite call. She receives a similar digital squeal from the air traffic control tower.

The words LANDING CLEARANCE GRANTED hover in Kerry’s augmented reality. She treats them like a swarm of flies, failing to shoo them away with a flailing of both arms. Trying to restore proper communications with air traffic control, she reaches behind the landing clearance message to grab a physical dial marked radio. Each step of the dial falls in place with a satisfying clack who cares?????? stop with these usual details oh my loving god.

The radio screeches. Kerry’s augmented reality indications glitch casting wide voxels which obscure her vision what? why? why did this happen? just all of a sudden she enters (to steal twist's words) she enters the matrix for no loving reason. She reels from the controls. The screeching abates. Her displays return. The radar readings in front of her seem crisper, more defined.

Kerry looks into the radar readings. Their new level of detail enthralls her. Vortices inside of vortices twirl in enchanting patterns. The pilot is the pilot somehow distinct from Kerry in this situation? what is happening? why is any of this happening? falls into the spiral of spirals, engulfed by the virtual cloud. Surrounded, her mind permeates through the complex image.

She melds with the digital storm. Every piece of the computerised cloud is felt as though it were her skin emerging from water into cold air. Intimate knowledge of each movement of the fractally complex ballet of clouds fills her mind. Kerry feels as though she knows every step the storm will take. The flood of information is thrilling, though exasperating in its detail and enormity. Every wisp of cloud, every gust of wind, every snowflake precipitated inside of the storm is choreographed in this vision.

“What is this?” Kerry pants in shock.

Jasper takes in Kerry’s presence as the pilot dives deep into the radar projections. For the first time Kerry’s human mind is more than the variable “user” ok now we're in Jasper's perspective all of a sudden? even though we have been stuck in Kerry's PoV pretty much the entire time, you shift it RIGHT when the story gets its most confusing so it's even harder to understand. jesus christ. She feels the person’s confusion, fear and bewilderment telling. Jasper wrestles these inexplicable conceptstelling. There are no rules, no explanations, no algorithm. There is only a feeling to these concepts. Without programming, orders or calculations Jasper struggles finding the will to say

“Are you okay?”

“I’m confused.” arent we loving all Kerry admits, turning her head the empty space next to her.

Jasper sounds through the headset “Me too.”

Kerry chuckles. In some way she senses Jasper sitting in a copilot chair next to her. Any warmth she would feel is interrupted by the message that persists in the center of her view.

LANDING CLEARANCE GRANTED.

“Okay, Jasper, we’ve got a plane to land.” this whole thing is so inexplicable. like it just happens without any reason.

They fly a wide circle around Manston, planning to eventually align with the runway. Cloud fills the windows again. Clusters of snow crystals pile on the window’s corners. The plane begins shuddering once more. Kerry is at ease telling. She feels confident with the knowledge the computer has given her telling. She knows the storm will be far above the runway when she lands. Visibility will be poor, but the winds will have cleared.

Snowflakes in the virtual storm cling to a hollow form. The snow and water in the projection wraps around the space occupied by their plane. The snow plane hovers in Kerry’s view.

“That’s us!” She beams.

As the simulation runs into the future, the projected plane drops into a nosedive. A cold fear sinks into Kerry’s heart telling.

“Jasper, what is that?”

“According to these calculations, the plane will fall into a dive. The elevators will be impossible to control.”

“Is there any way we can avoid this?”

A loading disc appears in the virtual projections. Jasper is calculating.

“No. We must take action to mitigate the damage.”

“I sincerely doubt this prediction. You said it yourself, you don’t have the processing power to calculate these kinds of detailed occurrences in advance.” Kerry folds her arms, dismissing the computer useless details.

“Kerry, I need you to take this seriously. You have a duty to the people in Manston.” The brim of Kerry’s hat presses against her brow. She concedes that the villagers underneath her deserve at least a cursory investigation.

“I want you to run a scan of the plane’s hardware. See if there are any defects.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have sensors around the critical components in this projection.”

“Then how do you know they’re going to fail?” this dialogue is so loving boring. this should be tense because like omg we're all gonna die and there's nothing. it's so boring. where's anything interesting oh my god

“The calculations project…”

“Just run the scan.”

“Scanning…”

In her search for hardware Jasper detects the source of her improved calculations. Miniaturised crystal cores line several miles of the ground underneath them. They move into complex patterns to form synapses that allow for high level computation.

“It’s not snow down there. It’s a supercomputer.” Jasper explains.

“Pardon?”

“The snowflakes move to connect to one another, forming traces and circuits for advanced logic. We’ve been communicating with them ever since you dialed the radio.”

Kerry looks at her sharp radar projections. Its detail is immense telling, what does this even mean.

“Steer us away from Manston, Jasper.”

Before the plane can steer it is shaken by a thunderous bang. The nose of the plane points to the pristine white ground. Its engines whine and the hull rattles in the roaring air. Kerry wrestles her controls, but nothing seems to point the plane away from the ground.

“Did you say the snowflakes could move?” Kerry shouts into her headset.

“To form connections, yes.”

“Can they make structures?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Could they make a large curve to gently turn us out of our dive? It’d be like the tracks of a rollercoaster ride.” i actually kinda like this solution, but it feels very fast. like it goes from "the snow is supercomputers that can build things" to "immediately solve the issue with them." it wouldve been stronger if the snow was established earlier and used cleverly throughout the story, but this just feels, not quite arbitary, but just a bit too fast for it to feel as satisfying as i think it couldve been

Jasper runs calculations through the supercomputer snow. The precise angles required to catch the plane appear. She fires instructions through the radio channel. Kerry lowers the landing gears. The sickening sensation of weightlessness lifts through Kerry’s stomach.

The weightlessness turns to a high gravity sinking toward Kerry’s chair as the hurtling jet is captured by a colossal quarter pipe of snow. The plane's wheels press against the gigantic gentle arc. It turns the deadly fall into a horizontal slide along the ground.

Kerry gently pulls at the throttle lever, throwing her thrusters into reverse. The plane slows to a halt. The falling flakes of crystal snow obscure the view ahead.

#

At a hotel Bar good proofreading Kerry sits alone, dazed and shocked telling. A bearded pilot enters wearing pristine leathers which imitate the style of aviators past. He speaks with enthusiasm and admiration telling.

“Is that your plane outside, with the buggered tail? How the hell did you land that?”

“I couldn’t have done it on my own.” Kerry toasts. this ending pretty much sucks because it's just an excuse to have this last line

i kinda gave up at the end of this crit because it mostly just had the same issues throughout the entire story. boring dialogue, boring characters, and useless focus on unneeded description while telling important things rather than showing.

you have a decent idea of an arc, but it doesnt work here because it's intensely arbritary. boomer pilot is annoyed about new tech and then for some reason like integrates with the AI and appreciates how useful it is and then the boomer and AI save the day by working together (well, not really, the boomer just tells the AI what to do). the problem is that the shift doesnt really come from a person's decision. it was just like, she got forced into the matrix and thus understood the AI better rather than her actually having to, you know, wrestle with her hatred of this technology. it doesnt feel good because it feels so manufactured.

overall, this story sucked. it was confusing, mechanically poor, boring, uninteresting characters, no conflict until the first half which was easily resolved and then another one hastily thrown in, a lazy and forced arc, and i could just go on and on and on if you want me to but ill stop. this story was bad and deserved the dm because it was mechnically bad. nobody loving cares who good your concept was (and, by the way, your concept isnt even that great. it's just a loving AI and snowflakes that can make a runway. it wasnt some brilliant, brand new sci-fi world). concepts are a loving dime a dozen. we can come up with concepts all the loving time, but to craft an actually interesting story with that concept? that's the hard part and that's the stuff we want. and that's the stuff you didnt do.

also, you better not respond to this loving crit, i have no patience for that kind of poo poo, im just giving you this so you (hopefully) shut the gently caress up about the judges being bad which, by the way, gently caress you for that one you prick!

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
ice cold crits

Saucy Rodent

Awful first line, boring everything afterwards. It’s just the Thing without any of the cool bits. Too much boring preamble, i dont care about these characters. Monster description seem to just be “i dont loving know you figure it out” which i guess is kinda cool but when that happens please dont try to play it out as some natural creature. Keep it supernatural. These fuckers are awfully trigger-happy to die, sort of arbitrary but i guess you saw a lot of action movies where people ironically die right before theyre saved and couldnt think of a way to make that work naturally huh? Rip

Simply Simon

Nice dog story, almost tricked me into liking this, but too bad this was also boring as sin (except sinning is actually fun so idk who came up w/ that phrase). I kinda like the base ideas of this story, some criminal thrown into a planet and befriends a doggo that accidentally ends up causing the planet to become destroyed or w/e, but man was this long w/o anything really happening. Then the story was like poo poo gently caress everything needs to happen at the end, idk, space planet lasers!!!!!!!! There’s a lot of weird bits in this story. The protag doesnt have much of a personality, and his reasoning for liking the planet doesnt really come up or is developed. He also talks about his wife for like one second and then is promptly forgotten about which is really confusing and i have no idea why you put that in. Good dog tho.

Doctor Eckheart

This was super weird because i couldnt pin down the logic of this story. Protag is on an island, he cloned(?) some kids, but there’s also the Mariner (why is this capitalized like that’s his name?) who is a clone(?) of the protag and the protag cloned a bunch of kids reading the manual but also was like im not gonna read the manual about raising kids for some reason and so the kids escape and the mariner finds them and tells the protag hey maybe read the book on raising kids and he’s like okay but also these kids are probably going to die and im going to make new ones(?). Yeah this was kind of a mess in terms of what was going in the large scale and in the micro scale, it was pretty boring because it was mostly like a guy loving up at job because he didnt read the manual and getting chewed out by his manager. And like, why the hell did this guy read the manual on creating a baby and then arbitrarily decide NOT to read the part about raising the baby!!!

Astronaut Charlie

This feels like an amazing long story just to get to the world’s first arson. There was some ideas that I thought were actually pretty cool, like the slow inevitable death of that one guy from losing the blubber or whatever, but besides that, it wasnt very interesting. It was just cavemen with no personality hunting, and then murdering an alien that had fire. The caveman did have one personality trait actually (not liking murder), but then they saw fire and were like ACTUALLY I WANT TO MURDER EVERYTHING NOW and its like oh okay i guess you didnt like that character trait huh? I can see you making this arc work, but it doesnt actually develop or work and honestly probably requires a longer story to work.

Crimea

Exposition dump in the beginning that leads to a completely unrelated bar fight at the end. Who cares? I like the idea of the artist and scientist working together to make life sort of thing, feels like a real thing that would prob happen like that. But other than that, it was just dull recollection of events that i dont really care about, and then a bar fight that was just kinda there? I dont know what you were going for with because you got a very boring circle hole with the exposition in the front and a very boring square peg with the bar fight and you shoved them in together and none of them working. You also mix up your pronouns when youre talking about the protag (and write the wrong name once). While he/they are valid pronouns which im not gonna argue against, it becomes really confusing when there are two people fighting and you use “they” and im not sure youre referring to the singular “they” of the protag or the plural “they” of the people fighting.

Azza Bamboo

I only have one thing to add (because i forgot to include this) but use said more. Just, any time you wanna replace said with another word, dont. Just use said. It’s an amazing word.

A friendly penguin

This grew on me more as the week progressed. I like bits and pieces of this. I like the way used the Kintoc story and the way the actions the protag took had effects and that the protag had to process them. This really won mostly on the principle of it being story because your character had a problem, they did things to fix that problem, and we saw the outcomes of the things they did. It’s not really a stellar example of it, and i think there’s a lot to clean up in terms of the prose, character, and making it overall more interesting, but it’s a decent story because it’s actually a story.

Cptn_dr

This is a pretty by-the-numbers sci-fi story. Future sucks and a person tries to do a small little action to try and do something nice in this poo poo future. It’s an alright formula and can do well, but this just fits straight into the mold without any attempt to break it. My big problem is that I feel like this should hold a lot more emotional weight than it does. Like, the protag is stealing food to give her kids one small glimmer of joy in a lovely future (that will likely get shittier because of the ash), and it doesnt land as strong as it could. Probably because we dont see the children much or see the struggle or get attached to the characters to really how big this small little moment is for them.

Pththya-lyi

Honestly, I generally like this kinds of story about kids and stuff, but this is just a waste of time for the most part. Kid gets chased by a Krampus and then murders it in cold blood. The ending isnt even great because it’s like “humans are too violent for peace” but like there’s some horrible monster chasing a child, idk whatd u do but i wouldnt think peace was an option there. But really, it was just a lot of words for nothing really interesting and a weird dumbass ending for no real good reason.

Trex

Unlike a lot of stories this week, this was incredibly focused. A guy has to fix an AI because he wants to be virtually horny and the AI goes rogue and murders him. There’s nearly no fluff and it’s all jokes. I thought it was amusing, which means you could classify this as a success I guess, but it doesnt really do much else. I’m mostly just glad you got in, did your thing, and left.

AA

The dialogue at the beginning is horrendously awful. Like, the protag spells out every single relationship with every character he’s ever met and complains about how he cant get laid. I understand what you were trying to do, making the protag a social outcast and having him question his role in a society he hates, but i think 1) making it centered around how the protag cant get laid and 2) it being told to us rather than actually shown makes it work really bad. Point 1 makes us dislike the guy because he’s an incel and point 2 just makes it seem like the guy is complaining rather than us actually feel like he’s an outcast. Honestly, just the beginning alone was so bad it deserved the DM. The ending isnt too bad, but the action comes quick and the resolution is pretty easy.

SlipUp

This story was bizarre. We got a character walking around the moon (well, not THE moon but Europa) trying to find his dad which, cool, standard sci-fi stuff. But then like, there’s a big benevolent alien that saves the protag for no real reason and just fast travels him to his destination. But then like, the alien is never processed? You set up that all the bunkers were going dark and everyone was dying and I thought it was gonna be a reveal of like oh no theyre not dead the alien actually saved them! But apparently it didnt? Or I thought you were gonna make the alien bring him to his dad or like his dad would be like “yeah i got saved by this alien too and we’re gonna use the alien to save everyone!” or something. But nope. The alien just comes in, drops the protag off, and that’s it. Other than that, though, the story is just kinda boring. We dont really get much sense of a protag’s personality besides “save dad” and the bunkers being dead are kinda just w/e. So you have an alien that you did nothing with and a generic story otherwise.

Carl Killer Miller

I don’t think this is a good story, but man it was fun to riff on in the judgechat, which might be why it got spared. I don’t know if this story was supposed to be funny, but it’s got some really nice bits in it. The robber baron guy is a great character. His plan is so loving stupid it’s perfect, making robot hobos of his rivals to make them look bad. I love him just casually insulting a hobo he grabbed off the streets and not understanding it. The best bit, though, is him yelling at the hobo “I will ruin your name homeless person who lives on the street!” The problem with the story is everything that isnt the robber baron. He shouldve been the protagonist and this mightve been a way more fun story to read. Also, the ending just being the guy expositing is kinda weak and I think that also wouldve been solved by making the bad guy the protagonist.

Thranguy

This has like, some actual emotional weight, which was surprising given the lack of it throughout this entire week. The issue is that, perhaps just due to the format or the story you were trying to tell, it wasnt really that interesting. The character cant really do anything, and since the story is just recollection, there’s no immediate action. The issue is that the story is, for some reason, focused on explaining the planet but like, no offense to ice planet #41243, but i dont care about the mechanisms of the planet, i care about the people on the planet. I mean, this format is a classic, right? Doomed person writing a letter to their loved one. But this one doesnt land because i feel like, while there’s some emotional weight, it doesnt come together. Too much time spent on explantation, not enough spent on examining the emotions and history of a dying person with no one there to save them.

arbitaryfairy

This is my kind of story. This is similar to cptn_dr’s, actually, in that it’s about a small moment in a lovely future, but the reason it works is because it’s centered much more on the characters. It’s three rebellious teenagers making a fire because gently caress the man, and im about it. However, I think the story is a little bit bloated with characters at the moment. I like the janitor, in that I like that you set him up earlier in the story and then use him later on, and while the three characters are fine, i feel like, giving the word count you were in, you had to juggle too many characters. Centering it on two character specific might help focus this story a bit more, because right now, it’s a nice little story about kids doing a small thing in a lovely future, but it doesnt do much more.

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in

flerp
Feb 25, 2014

Pththya-lyi posted:

Just wanted to say I was tempted to write a Poe pastiche for my story and didn't, you're welcome

shouldve done the same thing w/ this post

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
edit: nvm

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
astronaut rodent brawl

tell me a story from the perspective of a loser in a competition. up to your interpretation for what loser and competition means

1250 words
due fri 2/21, 1159pm pst

toxx if u wanna but im not gonna force it

flerp
Feb 25, 2014

flerp posted:

astronaut rodent brawl

tell me a story from the perspective of a loser in a competition. up to your interpretation for what loser and competition means

1250 words
due fri 2/21, 1159pm pst

toxx if u wanna but im not gonna force it

due date is mon 2/24 same time

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?

being in of course

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
saucy_charlie brawl

rodent gave us a pretty alright yarn that has nice little flourishes of prose, but one that ultimately felt a little too telly at times and a little "too to be continued". charlie gave a decent attempt at a story and hey it is a story w/ characters and motivations and what not, but the prose and cliches keep it from standing out.

rodent wins

crits later

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
yeah in flash

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
An actual baby needs to have an appointment of great significance like a president, monarch, religious icon, etc.

782 words

How the Pope is Chosen

archives

flerp fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Aug 25, 2020

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in flash

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in flash

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
platypus fallacy

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
403 crits

Simply Simon


action week, the week where you spend half the story with boring rear end dialogue. this is bad because the people do not shut up and none of the dialogue is interesting and its all just “this is what is happening and what im thinking” and there’s nothing here that makes me get attached. i dont care about these people. its a relationship that we see nothing of, feel nothing. were just told theyre gonna get married and that, by itself, is to make us care, but we dont see any love or passion or anything worth fighting for, so the action doesnt land. and the action isnt great either, the blocking is fairly awkward. and jesus just make ur characters shut the gently caress up if they dont have anything interesting to say. too much exposition, wowzers.

jabc


why are you capitalizing winter and south????

dont have two characters’ names start with the same two letters

we dont get yumie’s name until the THIRD paragraph. you know… the protagonist!!!

there’s no reason to care about these characters. they just walk around, kill some dudes, and thats it. the backdrop of whatever japanese bullshit doesnt matter and doesnt change the context around the characters in any meaningful way that makes it interesting. like, this feels like an opener to a samurai movie or whatever, and this would be *fine* by those standards, but it definitely wouldnt be the standout moment and rly would just be the filler to get you to the moments we care about. this just fails to understand what makes us care about stories, because there’s nothing here. there’s some historical nonsense going on, but nothing grips because we cant get attached and we dont see why this history would be interesting.

ceighk

what the gently caress just happened?

this is like some really weird and bad anime which is probably not the impression you wanted to give. motivations are incredibly weird. i was kinda hoping for something good here, since u set up a girl and a romantic conflict that i was like hey maybe the stakes of this fight might be interesting or deal with characters or idk be kinda cool. but then just bullshit happens. he gives him a knife and summons a group of goons? to surround them? as they fight with knives? what? how? are these people still in high school? why is this guy obsessed with fighting with knives, presumably to the death, and how was he able to rile up an entire squad of people to join him in this fight. like, what? and then the guy just kinda dies for no real reason and the dude is like what the gently caress just happened and idk what the gently caress is going on. this had a decent start, but it descended into nonsense too quickly and forgot about making us care about the fight.

something else


this is really bad because it’s really really sloppy. there’s not rly a lot of fighting in this, but also, there’s nothing to care about. the protagonist is just a nothing of a character and the antagonist is a generic villain. and theres so much talking for no reason and its so cliche and still nothing happens. the fight isnt interesting because the villain gets the upper hand and it always stays the same and the protagonist’s win was that he just called someone else to shoot the ship because he sucked too much rear end, with the antagonist apparently having a way to escape this. who cares? like, this guy sucked and basically did nothing and if they could jsut blow up this dude’s ship why didnt they do this? probably becuase they wanted this lovely rear end in a top hat to die. there’s no tension when we dont know who the characters are, where their only defining trait is being assholes to each other. the stakes here are completely nonexistent, and there’s no good character for me to latch onto, and the scifi nonsense does nothing to save it.

uranium phoenix


this is alright tension building but its still mostly w/e of a moment. theres not a whole lot of actual stakes here that the reader cares about. the characters arent very interesting, and we dont rly get a good insight into the war and what matters. theres a decent scifi premise and a decent tension build, but it ends up just being very middle of the road, never really pulling the reader in because there’s not much to attach ourselves. the characters are kinda there, but we’ve all seen this before. it’s just, all too by the numbers. this story rly does take its sweet time, but it doesnt rly use that time to build up relationships or make us rly want to root for any of these people not to die. it uses it decently well to build up tension, but, ehh tension by itself doesnt quite work for me.

ironic twist


this is that fight in scott pilgrim where they have the music duel but scott pilgrim is decently fun so im not rly complaining. this is alright as a kind of pure action scene because it has a clever enough premise to keep it interesting even if the characters arent that interesting, kinda like a decent jojo episode (anime reference). there’s some vagueness, and i rly dont know how i feel about the overarching plot being about some weird anime organization that wants to rule the world through sound or whatever (i dont think ruling is even a thing u said in this story but w/e). it kinda feels unncessary and i would like it to be a lower staked duel between two people, but then again, if this is trying to be a Larger Thing, then it makes some sense, but feels a bit too obvious. i kinda liked the dating angle that i thought was in there, but im unsure if that was intentional, but it would make it kinda fun, although then it might be TOO similiar to scott pilgrim so who knows

chili


this is fun. it has a nice little mid-way through twist and ends in a satisfying way that i like. that’s not much here to critique, truthfully, as it’s a very straightforward story, and it lands as well as it probably can. perhaps the beginning is a bit too much in terms of his obsession with himself, so the turn doesnt quite work near the end and there mightve been a bit too much focus on trying to make the shift be surprising vs landing naturally, but it’s nice to have a story start with one thing, and end with a different thing that makes sense and builds up a nice little conclusion that you go and say aw thats kinda cute.

aa


this just doesnt land. nothing rly happens. a hag shows up and does creepy things and leaves, and then, unrelatedly, bandits show up and a girl stares very hard at the bandit, and he goes nah nvm u guys are good to go. like, nothing happens and the two things together dont make sense at all. props, i supposed, are in order for trying to write something where there wasnt a fight at all, except in someone’s head, and i could see that working, but this is all too cliche. like, you had VIKING BANDITS (you know, people from like a thousand years ago), i poo poo you not, say “well well well, what do we have here.” like, what???????????????? the dialogue here was so boring, there was no ounce of character in any of it, nothing interesting about any of these people for me to attach myself to.

also, another point, your shift to olaf’s perspective was very awkward and weird. when it’s centered on one character’s PoV, and then it shifts to another, it can be very disorienting to be suddenly reading about how scared olaf is when we’ve been inside another character’s head the entire time.

yoruichi


this another decent piece, but it’s one that bleeds together with about any action piece you can think. there’s a lot of weird little contrivances that im not a fan of. the ship just blows. when he pulled the parachute i was literally like “wait he had a parachute???” altho that may be my failure as a reader vs ur failure if u did set that up (note to self, reread. i did by skimming and didnt see anything so yeah). idk, this piece is definitely pure action, but it’s not rly interesting in its own rights. weve seen all of this before, the explosion, the jumping through the air, the fighting and headbutting, the wisecracking. its just not enough.

trex


and then we get to this story and its interesting from the start! the characters have personalities! creepy weird things happen that make me go whoa what the heckers! it made me laugh! it had characters you could care about! holy moley its everything i could ask for. well, except for IT’S IS ONLY SHORT IT IS. and also i dont rly get the christian character thing because it’s kinda weird how the character was like hey im a christian now but actually im still doing shrooms??? and so that doesnt rly make sense and feels like u wanted to make a funny joke thing as ur intro and then realized “wait no drug story would be more interesting” and so u kinda just wrote around it, which idk, not a fan. but overall, this story is fun, it has a nice buildup to action where its spent making these characters have personalities so when scary things happen im like oh no and then he does the funny kick and its like yeah haha i like that and then there’s a fun gag at the end of the story and wow, just, wow. it does the things that an action scene should do. incredible.

doctor eckheart


look, im not a nitpicker, or at least, i try not to be. but, immediately, my instinct for a story that goes “boxer fights metal robot” is immediately what the gently caress no how would that work theres no way. and the story tries to play it straight for some loving reason!!! like what???? no. he’s punching literally steel. like imagine an mma fight thats like “boxer fistpuncher vs a steel wall.” like, that would obv no work. and so when my first instinct is “your premise makes no sense what the gently caress” thats kind of a failure. regardless, this story isnt very interesting since we dont rly care, and the goofy parts of this might work if this was played way less straight and more outright wacky, such as the lines where he says “oh it’s not like punching steel, i am punching steel” and the corny “robots dont have dreams, but humans can! I CAN BEAT IT” are pretty fun but they end feeling less like me running along with the story laughing along with its dumbness and more me being like why is this story so serious, its so loving dumb.

thranguy


i literally, immediately, looked at a different tab after reading that first line. im in. FUCKKKKKKKKKK you. that poo poo’s not even ironically funny anymore and the description was so boring nad ughhhhh i have to read this. ok

alright this was pretty boring. it’s very expository, but the exposition isnt very interesting. i guess it’s, on the face value, kinda fun to think about a spy not-so-secretly being cute about it and then actually joining in on the spy, but man, this story does NOT want to be fun, it seems. it takes its premise so seriously, which feels like the missed opportunity. its played way too straight, and the end i guess is meant to hit those kinda light chuckle action movie scenes, but there’s nothing there previously, especially when u consider the flirting with a secret agent angle seems like something u could 100% do something fun with but w/e. it’s a decent little movie action scene, i guess, but it lacks the fun that i think it needs because nobody wants to watch a bland rear end in a top hat walk up stairs while another bland rear end in a top hat chats in their ear.

solitair


i dont rly get the necessity of the bird angle, and i feel like it should be more, but it doesnt rly lend itself to be anything interesting. it ends up jsut being a thing thats there and kinda talked about, but doesnt add anything of true value to the story. its also not rly clear on whether or not if its like regular dudes with wings, or weird bird people, or actual birds, or something else. besides that, this story feels like it’s banking on “people with wings” to carry its generic plot of generic characters that dont rly have any interesting or fun or intriguing or meaningful personalities. its just like omg i gotta chase this guy oh no he got a way oh shucks and i dont rly care because i have no reason to care about what these people want.

slipup


this feels like something that needs a lot of editing to rly whip up into what is, at its core, something decently interesting. there’s a couple of rly interesting parts that needed to land, especially the “i murder all of those americans” line. im unsure if it was shortened because u were trying to hit the word count or trying to undercut the horribleness of the action, but i think emphasizing it wouldve been stronger, more interesting, and rly help cement the tone of the piece. i think there’s some decent ideas, but the execution is wanting. the ending… doesnt quite make sense? like why does the japanese kid know his name and is so willing to explain everything that happened? the ending also just happens too quick, and i feel like this piece needs to breathe outside of the word count to rly get going. im not sure what a final draft of this looks like, but it can be something interesting.

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
platypus ableism

1118 words

cant we just be more different

flerp fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Aug 25, 2020

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in

flerp
Feb 25, 2014

Saucy_Rodent posted:

I mentioned this in the discord, but please give me all the flash rules you can, make them all big and stupid as you please, I will incorporate all of them into my story

pangolins

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in :toxx: flash

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
single vertebrae

It is possible to transplant the bones of the dead into the bones of the living, but there are often consequences.

Little Piece

flerp fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Aug 25, 2020

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
week whatever muffin judged idk im not looking it up

first thoughts were comments i had when i first read your story when i got back home, more details are after

yoruichi

first thoughts - things just happen to this horse so no real rhyme or reason and the horse just ends up becoming a horse because it asked which idk couldnt that have happened earlier?

more - this story is a nonsense story, thats for sure, but it doesnt rly work for me because the character is very passive. weird things just happen to this cardboard horse, and things just happen around it and it doesnt rly build to anything super interesting. the prose was kinda workmanlike, and it didnt quite have the heft needed in its prose to sell these fantastical elements to make me go whoaaaaa. also, i dont rly get the resolution because like, why did anything happen? the horse always wanted to be a horse, and then the ghost lady couldve done that from the start but just didnt??? idk it felt kinda dumb to me thats all it took was the for the character to say they want the thing that they said they always wanted.

sitting here

first thoughts - self indulgent and exceedingly purple. kinda weird and i rly didnt like anything outside of the grounded kid moments but maybe thats because im hosed in the head and i find immortal god empresses boring, who knows

more - i kinda get what’s going on, but also, not rly, but, unlike the above story, the prose is a lot more colorful and interesting that even when i dont know whats going, the words push me along decently along. i do like the parts with the kid, especially that first intro, i was like hell yeah lets go this is my jam but then god empress stuff got too vague for me, which kinda threw me out of the story. its a fun ride, though, and theres a lot of weird nonsense that doesnt track for me, but i dont rly care that much because the prose was interesting enough.

saucy rodent

first thoughts - ok the only line that made me kinda chuckle was “were getting laid tonight” but also i didnt actively despise every minute of it, so thats a plus

more - this is better than the previous comedy stories of yours, mostly because it had a decent premise, but also had a few other jokes sprinkled here and there. the backflip/frontflip stuff is a good thing to center the story on, and is a nice bit of irreverent humor. it doesnt quite land into the upper echelon of extremely funny since it kinda felt a prefunct and obvious, so the jokes never landed in quite an absurdly funny way. but it was better and i didnt hate it so success???

simply simon

first thoughts - this was actually kind of a cool scifi thing going on during the first half and then the second half had two random characters show up and also the protag could go super saiyan? and then control souls or something? idk lost me by the end

more - i actually really enjoyed the first half which, for a sci-fi story, big success because i usually hate this poo poo esp given that the first line made me so worried id hate it but it was cool. it had a nice premise, nice morally grey stuff going on, nice tension, nice stakes, it was going great for the first half. i liked the premise of empaths and i liked the power being less about being capable of super power, but understanding people and taking advantage of that but then the second half started and immediately went downhill. two new characters got introduced out of nowhere, and then he gets sent to the ship and goes super saiyan, which was like, boo man. the cool part was using the knowledge of others to outplay them, but now he’s just a god ig. and then the bad guy is just kinda over the top evil and the ending i guess was kinda cool, but also, i dont know why he can suddenly control souls to murder people. i mean, its not it doesnt make sense, but i feel like i was watching a dbz episode where you powercrept the hell out of the protag to the point where it lost what i rly liked in the beginning.

sparksbloom

first thoughts - oh he has telepathic powers? ok then……

this is kinda cute but also kinda just like things happen and sort of fabley idk about this one tbh, i like bits and pieces of it, but the whole feels kinda underwhelming and there’s a lot of “things happen just because” moments.

more - i wanted to like this much more than i did because there’s a lot of things to like. a rly cute rat pair, one a telepath? flying squirrels? a kinda fun and cute story? so what fails… its hard to say exactly. some of it is in the plotting, a lot of things just sort of happen instead of being real moments. like, the rat said, “dont you have something you used to love” and because of that one statement, that squirrel turned around which was weird because like, if somebody told me that, id be like yeah what about it? idk it just felt like there were things building up to a moment, and then those moments just kinda didnt happen.

thranguy

first thoughts - this is a lot of build up for a very limp jet v dragon fight

more - this story feels very constructed. the intro is actually pretty decent, and i liked the grandpa stuff talking about dragons but i was not expecting this to take a fantasy twist because i thought it was a fun story said by the grandpa. and then things transition awkwardly to a guy murdering elf, and then them running away and then years pass by for some reason until the elf finds them again and murders their friend and then okay time for the jet v dragon fight and it just kinda happens and is not interesting at all. this is an odd story because like, nothing in here really works. the transitions are awkward and the individual moments themselves arent that interesting, so you would think this story is trying its best to reach its climax, but then its climax just kinda sputters out, so nothing rly works here.

a friendly penguin

first thoughts - what is with all these seemingly normal stories that end up just being arbitrarily magical

this somehow makes less sense than all the stories before it when i feel like this should be rly simple

more - this is a really sloppy story. its all over the place in its logic, and rly doesnt want to let the reader into the logic. things kinda happen, but there’s not a lot of excitement in it? like, there’s some weird stuff, but the tension feels low and the stakes feel low. this is another “just so” kind of story, where things happen without motivation or reasoning, and its meant to kinda be carried by its ridiculousness or silliness, but the prose, again, doesnt lend itself to rly carry this story, where things are kinda hum drum despite the craziness.

Anomalous Blowout

first thoughts - kinda cool, but also kinda dull and the resolution felt way too easy for such a long story

i think my main problem with this story its length, which, while the concept is, on its own, interesting, im not sure if it can carry a 2.5k story, esp because i find the resolution kind of annoying because it was odd. like, idk, im not normally a person to nitpick an ending, but it ended up feeling like it was a solution that was always kinda present? and like, the argument of “youre a lawyer shouldnt you do something” is one that i feel like shouldve happened a long time earlier and the lawyer person shouldve used that earlier… idk it didnt really land to me as a strong resolution because it felt like it was just too obvious and simple? like, theyre struggling rly hard, and then the guy just makes like a phone call? and the emotional arguments and issues are just kinda resolved in an unsatisfying way. im not sure, but the resolution stands out really harshly in my mind as just feeling unearned.

overall, though, the story is technically fine, but it can get kinda dull w/ its logistics, altho the premise is enough to kinda push the story along. i can see people get bored w/ it, but i think thats an inevitability with this kinda piece, and i think is fine, but i wonder about if there’s some trimming that can be done to make this slimmer so its less likely to outlast its welcome.

Uranium Phoenix

first thoughts - kinda cute ending, but hey it wouldve been nice to know the character’s motivation before all this crap happened, huh?

more - this isnt terrible, and it might have been a lot stronger if the motivation of the protag was revealed much earlier. its fun enough, but rather bloated, altho i think i wouldve enjoyed this story quite a bit more if the central conflict was like actually there so we could care??? like, you have the old lover line, but i actually kinda regarded that as a sort of lie, or omission, or something, but its vague and mostly useless because like, old lover is nothing to get us attached. so for most of this story, the character is trying to do a thing we dont know for most of the story, and then they just get the thing done when they talk to the lady. idk, i feel like the story needed to be much more centered on the actual conflict, and then we could like, care about the protag and what they want?

J.A.B.C.

first thoughts - what is this anime crap

this is just littered with a bunch of cliches that just kinda run through me without me enjoying any bit of it. its all boringly predictable and lame and i still dont know why people are so focused on doing noir but without doing anything actually interesting with it. idk, im rly not a fan of this one just because it was so cliche-ridden that i was intensely bored the whole way through. decently fun in concept, and probably fun to write, but absolutely nothing that i would want to spend my actual time on.

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
ill second rhino's comments and say that thunderdome literally changed my life

i joined when i was a lovely high schooler 6 years ago (jesus christ) and i cannot describe how important thunderdome is for me. i mean, as a writer, it is an amazing community that helped me start from the literal bottom to becoming an actual published author. but what thunderdome gave wasnt just a place to write, be critiqued, and do the critiquing, but is also a community with amazing and caring friends who would listen and truly care for each other. while i wouldnt be an author without thunderdome, i also wouldnt be the person i am today, and thunderdome was instrumental in being a safe, caring, and honest place that helped me grow so much as a person. a lot has happened for me in the loving 6 years since ive joined, but ive never regretted joining thunderdome and meeting and talking with all the wonderful people here. its hard to say how much everyone in thunderdome has helped me, and for that, im insanely grateful. i hope this little community keeps chugging along somewhere, somehow, someway. regardless though, i just wanted to say all of this, and say how much i appreciate everyone's amazing work in keeping this group going. not only in its ability to develop new writers, but also as a place where friends can gather talk, laugh, and be honest with each other.

thank you so much everyone who is a part of thunderdome. youre one of the best things in my life.

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in :toxx: but no hellrules for me please im on a diet tyvm

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
be crime and do gay

flerp fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Jan 1, 2021

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in toxx

flerp
Feb 25, 2014

Sitting Here posted:


3. Option three is the T-rex special! I still have six(6) prompts left from our top contributor and they are pretty drat good! Quote only this part of the post if you would like one of the excellent prompts submitted by Tyrannosaurus. Your maximum word count will fall to 1200

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in :toxx: but no hellrule and no extra words tia

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
What We Can Do

flerp fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Jan 1, 2021

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in :toxx:

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
could you, if you really had to

flerp fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Jan 1, 2021

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in :toxx: but toxxing simply to avoid failure i do not wish for any other nonsense

and ill go on a private coach too my brain is too small for all this

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
The Divergent Monk’s Tale: Change

flerp fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Jan 1, 2021

flerp
Feb 25, 2014

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in :toxx: no heck rule

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
to those who stared at the stars and wanted to know them

flerp fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Jan 1, 2021

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flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in :toxx:

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