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yeah ok ok yeah posted:I whiffed this one. Lost the paper I was writing on before I could transcribe it and didn't have the heart to try to recall it. I accept my loss. To clarify, you don't lose (or have your avatar changed) for failing. You should write again, though! 
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Feb 28, 2022 23:25
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Yeah, this sounds about my speed. In, with a 
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May 10, 2022 01:51
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https://thunderdome.cc/?story=10545&title=Hearth+and+Homecoming
curlingiron fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Jan 2, 2023 |
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May 16, 2022 05:10
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sephiRoth IRA posted:In derp posted:I WILL FIGHT YOU derpiroth brawl We'll keep it short and sweet, just like your word count. Your theme is mystery. 500 words, due June 14th. Toxx up, and let me know if you need a date change.
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May 31, 2022 17:23
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 derpiroth brawl resultsOn the one hand we have a slightly clunky but serviceable story about three kids finding a dead body and maybe some cash, and on the other we some very nicely put-together words that's mostly a meditation on violence against women with a semi-nihilist semi-ending. In the end I was more into tween hijinks than musings on domestic violence, so sephiroth IRA wins. With that out of the way, CRITS: sephiroth IRA: Like I mentioned before, there are a couple of places that were a little awkward to read, I think mainly due to misplaced paragraph breaks. Your exposition is pretty straightforward, but it feels like it all gets dumped at once. I personally feel like weaving it in a little bit with the action of your characters actually getting to the car itself might help make it flow better, and won't bring your action to a screeching halt. I liked the characterization you had (the constant swearing by Jimmy, being older by 6 months, the rolling eyes when someone wasn't looking), but Bill is a blank slate and does absolutely nothing of note, other than opening a bag. For such a short word count, it might be better to just focus on Eddie and Jimmy (and maybe change the names? They're generic almost to the point of parody) and flesh them both out a smidgen more. I like the ambiguous ending, but I would also maybe like to see what finding (or not finding) the money would mean to your characters in particular. Sure, every kid wants to find hidden treasure, but to make this really punch they need better reasons than "cause it'd be loving cool." derp: Your writing here is definitely prettier than sephiroth's, and when I started the story I thought it was going to be an easy victory for you. Unfortunately, your actual plotline completely turned me off, so here we are. You know, we were just having a conversation about trigger warnings in Discord, and I almost feel like this needs one. I can't say I really enjoyed reading about a cop ruminating about men murdering women (and rape! can't forget the rape!!), but I fell like it would be forgivable if it was actually in service of anything. As it is, this person is just real down about things and then... walks into the Columbia, I guess. You have some kind of mysterious stuff happening with the river, but there's not enough there to be actually satisfying in any way, and I'm just left feeling like there were no real answer to any of my questions, just a statement about the futility of existence, I guess? Which honestly feels cheap at this point in time. Please at least make me feel something for your character before you have them give up on life.
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Jun 3, 2022 22:02
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Belated Crits for Week 512 Sitting in a Tree Synopsis: Two women crash landed on an outpost planet, and one of them died, her soul becoming part of the biomass of the planet. This gives her the ability to manipulate the native plants, although her power seems to be centralized to a particular tree. When the other woman expresses a desire to go home, tree lady destroys their ship entirely. I liked this! I feel like Holly was maybe a little one-dimensional, but I assume that’s due to word count and trying to make her out to be the clear “villain” of the story. I still would have liked to see her show a little more nuanced emotion beyond petulance, though. Not much else to say here; solid little scifi snippet. Our Lady of Truth Synopsis: New recruit to the monastery of the god of truth refuses to falsify evidence in a murder, is then … forcibly inducted into said order? I’m not sure. I think maybe they were planning to frame HIM for the murder, but given that they all had owl tattoos I wasn’t sure. First off, you can cut your entire opening; you can easily weave all of this information into the narrative itself, and it will keep your reader from having to slog through an infodump right off the bat. Second, as you’ve probably guessed from the synopsis, your ending needs to be a lot clearer. I also guess I don’t really understand the in-story logic of telling your nameless MC all of this information; they could have just killed him and tattooed the suspect themselves (and blamed MC’s death on him). It seems like if this was a pattern that was repeated often, the acolytes of the temple would come to have a particular reputation for murder (plus there’s no way that they could all hide the fact that they have owl tattoos from the general public). Plus, if they engineered this test themselves, why did they pick MC? You even say in the story that he’s only been in the order for two weeks; why would they provide him in particular with this chance to prove himself? Did he do something to warrant this chance? Maybe you could use your extra words from cutting your opening to maybe tell us something more about the MC and why he was chosen for this. While He Was Sleeping Synopsis: An angel comes down to try and stop climate change and humans turn her into a power source for a factory. Okay I had to redo this one because my first reaction was a little over the top. This feels like a very clunky morality play, and there’s not really much being said here that feels interesting, let alone new. Also this angel is the most infuriatingly stupid being of all time. How is it possible for an immortal creature that’s been watching humanity for thousands of years to be this impossibly naive? Did none of the other angels think to do anything about this? It seems like it would make a lot more sense for the angels and the humans to just destroy each other entirely, but I guess that doesn’t fit the climate change Red Flags Synopsis: A woman watches her friend … date a lovely guy? So you know how usually the TD advice is “cut your opening”? I would say that you should do this, but that your “opening” is something like the first 3/4ths of your story. You’ve tried to pack in a lot of information into a small space, and instead all you have is a second-hand summary of stuff. And to me, other than trying to isolate her, this dude doesn’t seem actually abusive, just lovely. Idk, maybe that’s just because I’ve actually dated both lovely and abusive dudes, but I didn’t get that sense here. I don’t want to be like The Abusive Relationship Gatekeeper, it just didn’t really hit home for me. I think you could fix a lot of that by cutting out most of the information about Kim (or the character entirely), and focusing more on Corey and Jack. I’d like to see more of Corey’s feelings and justifications, especially in your climactic scene. The Formicarium Synopsis: Dude builds a giant mirror array to help avert climate change, incidentally uses it to kill childhood bully in darkly ironic manner. I like this one a lot. You did a good job here of actually making me like your villain, which is… not something I’ve really seen at all this week so far. You’ve got a typo pretty early on in your story (“He considering…” in paragraph one) , but that’s really my only complaint. I guess maybe you could make the argument that Marcus wasn’t really your story’s villain, but I think his actions are far more villainous than the people he’s taking his revenge on, so I think you’re good. Dream Come True Synopsis: Nameless/Faceless Evil Scientist (I think?) manipulates a local political candidate into saying a bunch of racial slurs at a press conference because he saw Shrek and a cartoon hot dog. I get that it’s supposed to be a dream, but your setup just comes off as the pop culture conception of a dream, if that makes sense. Just a lot of random “wacky” images all juxtaposed in weird ways. Also you’ve got Featureless MC Syndrome to the max here, which doesn’t help. I don’t really understand your MC’s motivation beyond wanting to prove their idea works and getting more clients. Okay, maybe I do understand their motivations, but I don’t really CARE about them, which is I think more important to the story than baseline recognition of stated objectives. No One Can Stop Me Synopsis: Two former friends duke it out over the fate of the world. Bad guy wants to be defeated/proven wrong, but isn’t, the end. Yeah, this is pretty good. Kinda generic fantasy RPG, but pretty good. Maybe it’s just my mood of late, but I get where Set/Eric is coming from here, and I also want him to be proven wrong, even though I don’t expect him to be. Idk, I guess maybe I would try to flesh out your world a little more, since it seems like you’ve got this high fantasy setting in your conflict, but a very modern reality conflict behind Set’s actions. It would be nice to see some kind of explanation for the juxtaposition here, and it would help understand the setup a little more. 8th and Main: a Jake Malone story. Synopsis: A private eye goes to ask the subject of his investigations about himself directly, meets some poor woman who tells him her long sad story with perfect trust and no reservations, then flings herself from the roof of the house and dies instantly. Private Eye leaves, the end. I don’t even know where to start with this. Your opening has nothing to do with the rest of your story (btw, your interpretation of the song is explicitly the opposite of the actual meaning), and adds nothing to anything. Every action that any character takes in this is borderline nonsensical. The ending is just pointless, and somehow makes everything else feel even more meaningless than it did already. This would require a line-by-line to really get to the heart of the matter, but I honestly don’t know if that would help you. Please go find some books and read them. It doesn’t matter if they’re short stories or novels, but find some professionally published prose and read it until you start getting a better feel of how stories are put together. I genuinely believe that is the biggest thing that you can do to improve. Ninkyo Dantai Synopsis: Some Yakuza boss gets sent to a Bhuddist temple instead of jail, continues to be a Yakuza crime boss undeterred. Local monk gets understandably upset, decides to quit the priesthood and leaves with a Yakuza underling who has decided they are friends. This didn’t ring super true to the Japanese setting to me, but that may just be my personal take. Yakubro quoting Rent didn’t really help (and yes, I know that Japanese people have seen Rent, but it felt a little bit like inserting American cultural touchstones into a situation and assuming they’re universal). Also, despite his anger, I don’t get a lot of your MC’s character out of this piece. I would have liked to see more of what made him choose to become a monk, and what it meant to him to give it up again. Welcome to the Eternal Empire Synopsis: A man living in a border town between two kingdoms experiences life under a new government. His family flourishes under the new system, but then the old government comes back and things are bad again. He stabs a dude and the guy dies because raw chicken. I think you mean “pressed into service” instead of “impressed to serve,” which is not a real turn of phrase. Wow, there are a lot of weird, awkward turns of phrase here. “As had become the dedicated time”? Could definitely use an editing pass or two more. Um, okay? Man, your ending is… something. Actually no, it’s not, it’s just there. Like you knew you had to end it somehow, and just kinda picked something at random. I actually think the setting was cool and I’d be interested to see an actual story set in it. Unfortunately this was less a story and more a vague family timeline. The Caesar of Port Galveston Synopsis: A guy goes to find out information about his mother (?), meets a local bigwig and does some security contract work for him in exchange for information (??), and then uh maybe almost dies (???). Oh also all of these are emails, even though most of it is written like standard book prose rather than something someone would actually write to another person. You pushed this pretty far past the “intriguing mystery” line, and deep into the red of “completely opaque.” None of the judges could figure out what was really going on here, and although you laid out some interesting informational breadcrumbs, all they led to was an empty alley and the uncomfortable feeling that I’d missed out on something. Masques Off Synopsis: I… think some guy dies from hijinx, and then his rear end in a top hat friends are talking poo poo about him in front of his wife? And then they leave to go do more dumb poo poo? I don’t know. Okay, I feel dumb, but I have no idea what’s happening here. Sorry. You clearly had a conceit of what you wanted to do stylistically, but I think that it’s obfuscated your actual point beyond recognition, and I don’t feel like taking the time to decipher it. It’s sometimes a good idea to sit down and consider if your neat gimmick idea will actually enhance the story for your reader, or if you’re going to cut your story off at the knees. Chalk this one up to experience and move on, I suppose. Justice is Eyeless Synopsis: Well, uh… This guy has a family curse where when dudes get old they… die? Or become a sacrificial animal? That has to fight their own father, or take their father’s place as the new sacrificial animal? Or something??? Oh boy, we have a trilogy of what the gently caress. I know I just said this, but I have absolutely no idea what just happened. Sorry, friend. I think there is something to the (I think) cyclical nature of this curse, with son killing father (or vice versa?) in the afterlife that could be pretty cool, but boy it needs to be a lot more explicit in what's actually happening than this is in order to work.
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Jun 10, 2022 03:01
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Yo, Jib, brawl me!
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Jun 15, 2022 19:12
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Jibingiron Curse of the Reasonable Brawl Entry Why Does She Do That? 599 words My sister’s always been ‘difficult,’ as my mother likes to put it. Sara’s always been the kind of person who would try to punish everyone around her if she wasn’t allowed to have her way; I’ve had enough birthdays ruined in my lifetime to be able to attest to that. My family were total enablers, I guess because it was easier to just let Sara have her way. It didn’t matter if it was my mother’s wedding dress that she decided to cut up for an “art project,” or my grandfather’s antique pocket watch she sold to buy concert tickets, it was always just you know how she is. Hell, she made my husband cry at our wedding and there were no repercussions, since in the end I wasn’t willing to cut off my whole family. I couldn’t even be that upset when my husband left me a year later; that’s just how Sara was. To say I was surprised when she reached out to me to make amends would be an understatement. I’m so sorry I haven’t been a good sister to you, she said, eyes full of tears. I’ve met someone who makes me want to be a better person, and I want you by my side on the happiest day of my life. And alright, I’m probably a sucker, but I wanted to believe it. I’ve always been envious of friends who were close to their siblings, and I let myself hope that maybe she’d really changed this time. Of course, it was a ruse. Turns out that ‘someone’ was an ancient evil artifact from a realm beyond the edges of our understanding, and the ‘happiest day of her life’ was when she completed the ritual to allow it to fully manifest in our dimension. I really ought to have known from the remote location and complete lack of any bridal party duties - as if she’d miss a chance to be a diva! - but hindsight, I suppose. Now, did my parents do anything to try and stop this dark ritual from reaching its fulmination? No, of course not. They just turned their strained smiles towards me from their places trapped in the crystals powering the dimension-render as Sara explained how I was to be the blood sacrifice, their eyes pleading me to just play along, it’s not worth it. And I mean, what was I supposed to do? My parents were happy enough to sacrifice me - literally! - for my sister, my personal life was nonexistent, and all that was waiting for me at home was a collection of dying houseplants and a job I despised. So I figured, whatever, it’s not worth it to rock the boat on this one and resigned myself to making yet another sacrifice for my younger sister. At least this one was guaranteed to be the last. Honestly, when the golden sword appeared before me, and the voice told me that I was the only one who could save my world, I was reluctant. Seriously, the fate of the world is great and all, but this godly voice or whatever had clearly never seen Sara in full tantrum mode. But then I thought, you know what? Maybe my therapist was right, maybe I do deserve to be a little selfish once in a while. So I took the golden sword and went to fight my own sister to the death. Anyway, none of my relatives are speaking to me now, and say it’s my fault that Sara’s soul is trapped in the rift beyond the worlds. Reddit, am I the rear end in a top hat?
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Jun 24, 2022 04:15
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⬛️GANG BRAWL THREE⬛️ DO YOU YEARN 176 words ARE YOU TIRED OF EVERYTHING? OF THIS PITIFUL EXISTENCE? HAS LIFE LOST ALL MEANING? DID IT EVER HAVE ANY TO BEGIN WITH? ARE YOU CAUGHT LONGING TO RETURN TO A TIME OF FREEDOM FROM WORRY? FROM RESPONSIBILITY? DO YOU WISH THAT THINGS WERE SIMPLER? THAT THE CHAOS OF EVERYDAY LIFE WOULD LET YOU REST, OR SIMPLY CATCH YOUR BREATH? HAVE YOU NOTICED THE SHADOW IN THE CORNER OF YOUR EYE? THE ONE THAT SEEMS SO SOLID, LIKE AN OBJECT TO ITSELF, BUT WHEN YOU TURN TO LOOK THERE’S NOTHING THERE? DO YOU WISH THAT YOU COULD FINALLY JUST TURN AND REALLY LOOK AT IT, WITHOUT WONDERING IF YOU WERE GOING MAD? DO YOU KNOW THAT THIS SHADOW IS REAL, THAT YOU CAN SEE IT, BUT ONLY IF YOU ARE TRULY READY? ARE YOU READY TO CAST OFF YOUR HUMAN FORM, TO LIVE THE LIFE OF SIMPLICITY AND PEACE THAT YOU’VE BEEN DREAMING OF, SO FIERCELY AND SO STRONGLY THAT IT HAS CALLED US ACROSS THE DIMENSIONS TO YOU? ARE YOU READY TO STARE INTO THE MONOLITH?
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Jul 27, 2022 09:00
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In for vanilla, please fill my blanks with some really weird stuff.  Oh yeah, and I’d like a spin, next time that happens. curlingiron fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Aug 6, 2022 |
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Aug 6, 2022 04:55
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sebmojo posted:A [three hundred angry gophers] agonizes over [Jeff Probst] Survival of the Fittest 726 words We gophers first became aware of the human’s survival ark during Queen Yarrow’s reign, Season of the Blackcurrant. We heard about it from the voles, who in all likelihood did not mean to share the information, but who we were able to pressure into divulging the truth. We would later learn that this was during the fourth iteration of the selection process, and that there were several other animals who had already begun to make attempts to gain access. It made sense, of course; the humans clearly knew that the planet’s time was limited, at least at the current rate of progress. It was only logical that they would prepare for the end times. The selection process that they had chosen to implement, however, seemed entirely devoid of any logic or order, like a pup digging tunnels at random and expecting them to last. We were able to piece together more information about the process through both observation of human broadcasts, and research using repurposed human tools. Our earliest attempts to achieve candidacy were laughably straightforward. We naively assumed that the humans would want some semblance of biodiversity in their ark, and put forth a few dozen prime candidates that we felt adequately represented the species. Surely the humans would find at least one breeding pair acceptable for admittance. Unsurprisingly, it turned out the humans were not interested in true preservation – hardly surprising, in retrospect – and that only other humans were ever admitted to the final selection process. Like several other species by then, we had attempted to gain entry to the organization’s headquarters, but the roaming nature of the selection process was problematic. Further difficulties with access to transportation made it impossible to infiltrate the proceedings without subterfuge. Then the question became, how could we infiltrate a human-only space. Early attempts at disguising individuals as humans were resounding failure, due to most humans being embarrassingly tall. Fortunately, it was discovered that several gophers working together could form the same rough outline of a human. These efforts, however, ultimately failed to bear fruit due to the difficulty in coordinating such a large number of individuals, especially with the weight being borne by those gophers near the bottom. Comparable human mobility was, alas, never achieved. This failure led to a low period in our attempts. There was some brief excitement during the reign of King Alder IX, Season of the Strawberry, when evidence was presented that humans could be controlled by pulling on different parts of their scalp fur, but we were unable to reproduce this phenomenon – perhaps it only works for rats? Research into the phenomenon was tabled, however, when our scientists discovered that a human corpse of sufficient freshness could, with a team of gophers working together at key points in the body, be manipulated into an approximation of human motion. Countless hours of research and practice went into this venture; teams were trained and optimized, research going into not only balance and motion, but also facial expression and even speech, the latter achieved after a breakthrough in the study of human vocal cords and tongue contortion. There were issues with corporeal preservation, but recent advancements have allowed us to maintain bodily integrity for up to two Seasons, weather permitting. Many of you have heard all of this information before; some of you may have heard only parts of it, and some of you may be hearing it all for the first time. The important thing is that you are the latest class to be selected for our most momentous advancement yet. After years of intelligence-gathering and the careful placement of spies, we have successfully located one of the most important figures in the human survival ark operation. We believe that by tailing – and eventually capturing – him, we will finally achieve our goal of not only infiltrating the selection process, but eventually making it through to the end, thus ensuring our survival as a species for whatever comes next. Throughout the next several months you will train, practice, and eventually succeed in this mission, for failure is not an option; we have no idea how many more of these selections will be held before the launch of the human survival ark, but we do know that time is surely running out. Assembled fellow gophers, I give you: Jeff Probst, our key to the Survivor Project.
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Aug 8, 2022 05:31
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Throwing out a terrible omega prompt 2 (biography) entry so we can hit 100. The weirdest thing is that this wasn't even the first time something like this happened around me 634 words This is a story about my ex Alex (not his real name), who was perfectly nice but was a near-perfect stereotype of a Guy in a Band in Portland. This being the case, of course, he was living in an ancient, dilapidated former farmhouse on a highway next to a dive bar, usually with 4-6 roommates at any given time. Given that all five-to-seven of them were also People in Bands in Portland, house maintenance was not always at the forefront of anyone’s priorities, which combined with the “ancient and dilapidated” part of their living accommodations, sometimes meant that things broke and then didn’t get fixed for a long time. One of these things that broke and then didn’t get fixed was an upstairs window that was loose in its casing, and one day decided to slam shut of its own accord, shattering two of the glass panes therein. Since it was summer and the house didn’t have air conditioning anyway, everyone was content to leave the window broken until the weather necessitated they fix it. This brings us to the night of The Incident. Alex and his housemates had thrown a house party (with requisite basement show/jam session), which was uneventful enough as these things went, and had mostly wound down for the night. Sometime around 2 or 3 AM, I remember Alex getting up, presumably to go to the bathroom, and then a short time later waking up to an incredibly loud noise from upstairs. I stumbled out of bed (which was behind a curtain in the room the staircase happened to go through; there were not actually 5-7 bedrooms in the house, so they had to improvise a lot) to see Alex walking down the stairs, a trail of blood smeared along the wall where he was holding himself up. “It’s okay,” he said, staring at me wildly. “The blood is from my hand, it’s not from my penis.” The next 30 minutes were mostly chaos, with roommates flooding out from all their assorted rooms (or room-like spaces) to clean up and make sure that Alex was okay. No one was really clear on what had happened, which was not helped in the least by Alex himself, who was still clearly drunk and also wouldn’t shut up about his penis. “You guys don’t understand! In 9 universes out of 10 right now, I don’t have a dick!” Everyone eventually went back to sleep and woke up the next day, where all was revealed: instead of going downstairs to the bathroom, Alex had drunkenly decided to go upstairs and pee out a window – specifically the window already loose in its casing. When the inevitable fall happened, Alex managed to get his hand into the gap in time, which saved him from the worst possible outcome, but didn’t prevent his hand from being lacerated by the rest of the glass as it shattered, thus the trail of blood. Now, that isn’t to say his member was spared entirely; we took a trip to an urgent care the next day after he passed some blood, and he got checked out. There was some spectacular bruising, but no long term damage. He was told “not to agitate the area” for a few weeks, and — more importantly — was okayed to play his gig later that evening (the conversation with the doctor, I was informed went roughly: “So, I’m in a band-“ “Of course you are.”). Anyway, Alex and I broke up some months after that for totally unrelated reasons. There’s no real moral to the story, but I guess it could be “fix poo poo if it’s broken,” or maybe “don’t piss out a third story window facing a highway unless you’re really sure it’s not going to slam shut on your genitals.” Yeah, actually, let’s go with that.
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Aug 8, 2022 09:35
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Kuiperdolin posted:What day is the deadline? Deadline is Sunday 8/21, 11:59 PM PST. 
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Aug 20, 2022 20:45
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Knock knock
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Aug 23, 2022 05:39
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Writer’s block
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Aug 23, 2022 05:41
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… …poo poo. 
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Aug 23, 2022 05:44
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Week 531 Crits of Marginal(ia) Quality One Night at the Grinning Goose The main problem here is that this is like… the setup for a story, and not a story itself. Nothing gets resolved, there are no actual stakes (since Gerald does not, in fact, take his precious daughter back), and the ending seems to be the start of the actual plot (do what’s-her-name and the gourmando manage to impress Gerald?). There’s some other questions I’m left with (like why the daughter ran away from home to recreate her father’s exact business model, which she was apparently dissatisfied with enough to run away from), and you have some oddly anachronistic turns of phrase here (idk why, but “daddy” really threw me off), but I don’t know, I guess it was okay other than that? I’d focus a bit more on writing a complete narrative moving forward, and then you can polish your prose a bit more. Bird Watching Goes Both Ways This is another non-story, although this is more of a “thing happen, so what” non-story than an unfulfilled setup. Carlos has his little jaunt to hell with Papo/Caim, and… gets a potion. Cool. No one has to work at anything, I have no real reason to care about this, and it mostly just seems to be an excuse to describe a couple of Bosch creatures (although if that’s what you want to do, you didn’t describe nearly enough, imo), and say “Seriously, dude?” several times (maybe work on differentiating character voice while you’re at it; everyone was very same-y). I’d try cutting the whole opening and using the space to introduce some conflict: maybe Carlos doesn’t want to get over it, maybe Papo has to pay off some debt before he can get the potion, idk just something so it’s not just a gallery walk/pep talk. No Ring This is so muddled and confusing I barely understand what’s happening. I think maybe some of the obfuscation was you attempting to be tastefully non-specific in your description of a sexual assault, but it actually just makes it somehow more uncomfortable. At the end of this story I don’t know anything about the main character except that they work in children’s entertainment, and then about halfway through that they have boobs. It feels like you focused more on being snarky about the industry and the shithead producer (manager? Showrunner? Whoever the gently caress) than you did on the actual victim of said sexual assault, which is… not great. Like, they don’t have a name, or dialogue, or really any personality whatsoever. And then it just ends with sudden extreme violence? Eesh. I’d just scrap this whole thing and reflect on the specific choices you made here and why, because they weren’t good ones. you can do anything including boys Perfect setup and execution on your opening, A+. I’m definitely a sucker for LGBTQ “gently caress you mom/dad/society,” and this was a sweet example of that, if maybe a smidge stereotypical. I feel like the second half could be a little bit stronger, but it was well-done, and your ending tied together with your opening nicely. I don’t 100% see a super strong connection to your picture, but I also don’t give a gently caress. Thank you for this brief respite, and a complete story. Beasts of the Beanstalk Aaaaand we’re back to “thing happen, so what.” Sigh. I liked your descriptions of the vine-lociraptors (I’m sorry, I have a problem), and the ending was kinda cute, although it would have been a lot more effective if you’d showed that there was a need for pest-control on the farm in the first place. The whole thing with the druid/priest felt extremely pointless, and the car seemed out of place in your setting. Really, why was any of that necessary? I’d reduce the druid to a passing mention at best, and focus on the interplay between the farmer’s needs/wants and the creatures. You have something here, it just seems like kind of an afterthought as it is. The Devil’s Romance This feels like a joke story, but it’s not very funny. Like, maybe it would work as an animated short or something, but I just don’t feel like it works as it is. There’s a running “gag” of the devil dude getting in Roderick’s way while trying to encourage him, but I genuinely don’t understand why or what it’s supposed to be in service to. You threw in the mention of Anne’s pregnancy at the end, I’m assuming as a “and that child… was With Raisins In This feels like a very, very literal interpretation of your picture, but you don’t really have any more going on than that. There are no stakes, no tension, no anything really, just some comedy that (imo) doesn’t land, and the “hahaha, we’ll call it EARTH!!!” bit at the end. It just feels really campy and dumb, and feels more like a long-winded joke than a story. Also, while I will forgive the title typo in the archives, since that doesn’t appear to have been your doing, I do NOT forgive your egregious homophone error in using “knight” for “night.” For shame, sir.
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Oct 11, 2022 07:27
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In to judge (and crit) this week. to have crits posted by January 1st.
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Dec 23, 2022 23:42
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Yoruichi posted:You are all a bunch of whiney babies, this is a made up competition on the internet with no stakes, if you find this intimidating or can't read the long-rear end how-to-participate post at the start of the thread then I don't know how you function in society. lol you and I both know I don't give "good" flash rules, but since I'm feeling nice, I'll give you a choice between these two masterpieces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7it23TtfGYk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q14WYsbFrJk (I will be very lenient on how much I actually expect you to incorporate these; a "vibe" is fine. Please do not write a Taco Bell commercial (unless you really want to I guess but no promises you won't lose))
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Dec 24, 2022 03:48
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Some random presents people can pick up if they want: --One day gravity stops working consistently, but only for specific items. --Someone is trying to communicate with you from the future, but the only way they can do it is through advertisements. --All the art in your house came alive overnight. --A wizard turned you into a worm, and it rules. --You keep accidentally giving people cursed gifts.
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Dec 24, 2022 04:10
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Crits for Week #542 Part 1 Crits done in judgemode -- stories may be in a different order than how they were posted. This far South, this time of year: I don’t think I “get” your title here. Like yes, Steamed Hams reference, but… why? It’s not connected to your story at all, and the reference doesn’t seem in any way related. Other than… uh, maybe beef? I don’t know. Anyway, this is a cute little story that doesn’t seem to have much to say. Not that every story has to have A Message, but this one also seems to be lacking a point. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t make me feel much other than vague amusement in the moment. You won primarily by dint of being a clean, simple tale that didn't make me confront death, insanity, or sexual assault. It's a Christmas miracle!  Skookum Shots Seasonal Special: Human Rituals in Review: So, best I can tell is that two aliens are doing a photoshoot for a magazine on human rituals, and when it all starts to go horribly wrong, they decide the solution is to take a picture of their self-immolation instead? That doesn't seem much like a story, more like a clip from an extraterrestrial Ben Stiller comedy. This was confusing, both story- and action-wise; you have some confusing bits of dialogue/action happening, and it’s hard to tell who’s saying/doing what on occasion, not to mention why. Also, and this is a common error in the 'dome, but random violence and/or death is not a satisfying ending. I think that you could possibly make this work, but I would need to know 1) who these aliens are and what do they want, 2) how this photoshoot affects them and their relationship/wants, and 3) how did they learn/change from this incident. If you can manage to answer all of these (and clean up your action and attributions), you'll have a solid little story. The Department of You: I see what you’re trying to do here, but I don’t feel like it landed. Just a bit too remote and too broad, not quite enough to connect with. I can see what you wanted the audience to feel, but I didn’t really feel it. I don’t know if this needed more specificity, or length, or both, but it needed something. Considering you left half your word count on the table, I'm a little disappointed. Jingle of Duty: Merry Warfare: Buzzwordsssss. I know I have no real frame of reference for this, but this all seems super generic. Like, I feel like I could probably have written this dialogue just from having seen some generic military-adjacent media. Which is fine, I guess? That seems like maybe what you're going for, and if you're writing a story about a military operation to kill Santa Claus, I guess you don't actually need Real Authentic Military chatter, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It doesn't really add to my enthusiasm, though. Okay, I thought I knew where this was going, and then absolutely the gently caress did not. Also: what the gently caress did I just read. This has the common problem of joke stories in TD of making absolutely no sense, even internally. Like, why would they be told they were going to kill Santa if they were just going to be pulling the sled? How do they pull the sled? Why are they naked? Do they get to go back to their lives after this? Is the forced submission part of the magic? I don't know. I know I'm over-thinking all of this, but these are the kinds of questions that you've raised here, intentionally or not. I mean, clearly you just started with the picture and worked backwards to find a way to make it happen literally, with no creative or metaphorical interpretation, which is... fine, except it just ends up reading like bad fetish porn with a gimmicky cover. Aschenputtel: Like the other judges, I thought this was cute and well-done, it just felt like it could have used a second half. I would actually be really interested in reading it if you wrote more, though, because it was sweet and well-written, and I liked Cindy's mom being a witch. The Santa Suit: You know, I didn't think that anything could make me more uncomfortable than Naked Reindeer Men, but here we are. I had a somewhat different take on this than the other judges: to me, this read like an extended riff on commercialization and advertising over the "spirit of the season," married to a long, uncomfortable joke about Christmas encroaching on Thanksgiving. And like, why did it have to be a sex thing? If you'd spun it as a business merger and leaned into the commercialization aspect that it seemed like you were going for in the beginning, it would have worked just as well if not better; it certainly would have clarified your overall message and probably would have saved you from the loss. I think it would be valuable to really pinpoint what exactly you were trying to convey with this piece, and make sure that all of the parts of this story worked in service of that. Also, I know penguin liked your prose, but I personally found your dialogue clunky (it seemed you were trying for "realism" over flow, which is always a bad tradeoff), and there are a couple of punctuation and capitalization errors that pulled me out of things (for example, I believe 'naughty-listers' should be hyphenated). Pretty minor overall, but worth mentioning. P.S. Santa did Imelda dirty here; she deserved a better present than a tailored suit that, at best, she’ll end up returning to her work in an unsuccessful attempt to get her docked pay back.
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Dec 28, 2022 04:37
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Crits for Week #542 Part 2 Crits done in judgemode -- stories may be in a different order than how they were posted. Chasing Cars: You spent a lot of time on backstory and the Northern Lights interaction, and then had maybe half your wordcount left for what seemed to be your actual intended story (pharmaceutical company kidnapping people to experiment on). Also another story with violence/death as a stand-in for a satisfying ending. I think you were trying to use the beginning as a "show don't tell" illustration of the cousins' relationship, but I don't feel it worked particularly well, and you immediately undermined it by doing a whole lot of telling about the cousins' relationship. It could maybe work in a longer piece, but I think this was a time to kill your darlings and try to find space for the story you seem to want to tell. Going forward, I think that my big piece of advice would be to do a few ruthless editing passes when you have a limited wordcount like this, and to really narrow the scope of what you want to show. For me it's been helpful to think about starting at the ending when writing flash, and to try to work in context to the action so I don't have to waste words on setup before I get to the part that actually matters to me. Of course, if your intent was to tell a story about the cousins' relationship, I would probably pick a less complicated scenario to show it in, but assuming you wanted action as your center, it would be better to give that as many words as you can. yesterday's snow: Okay, first off: gently caress you for getting Ho Ho Ho It's Christmastime stuck in my head. You knew what you were doing, you bastard. I think this also suffers from a similar issue to kaom's story in that this is a scene without context. There are hints at why Tim is doing what he's doing, but nothing is explicit, and instead of making the events of the story meaningful, they just make the whole thing more sad and pathetic. I don't know. I'm not sure what's going on with Tim or how this is a product of his character, or what effect this will have on him exactly, but this all just seems to be a "dude goes crazy for no reason, makes people sing a bad goon song, lol (?). You haven't given me any reason to care about this happening, so it's just a psychotic break played for laughs (I guess?), which sucks. It made me think of the Dr. Demento classic They're Coming to Take Me Away, except without the reveal at the end (and even that song isn't very good, imo). The Gift that Will Keep on Giving: I think that this is a good example of the difference between "something happening" and a satisfying story. On the surface, yes, a story is about an exciting and dramatic event taking place, but it's also about change, and exploring both why that change happens and what it means going forward. And while your story has things happening and there is change, the problem is that it doesn't feel like it matters. Which is weird to say about a tale of parental estrangement, mental illness, and suicide! But sad things happen all the time, and we don't stop and have a moment of poignancy over every single one of them. Why is that? Because unless we have something to relate to, or some reason to care about this story in particular, bad things are just bad things. What you have here is so cut-and-dry it almost reads like a news article, and since there's no shortage of sad news articles that also happen to be real, this wasn't a very effective story. I know TD likes to push the "character wants thing -> can't have thing -> works to achieve thing" but for whatever reason that's never really clicked for me, so I'm going to recommend thinking about it more as "here's something that happened, and here's how it changes the people involved." Maybe that involves a character wanting something and achieving/not achieving it, maybe it involves something totally out of their control happening and how they react to it, but I should know who this character is going into this scene, what the scene represents to them and their life, and then what this scene means for them moving forward. Maybe it's big, maybe it's small, but I want to care about and have a pretty good idea of the outcome. So, that all having been said, why did that not happen here specifically? I think it has to do at least in part with your choice of main character: this story follows Daniel, but it seems like it's really about his daughter. She's the one who receives the gift, she's the one whose relationships are in question, she's the one who her mother is trying to connect with, and she's ultimately the one who is most impacted by the events of the story. And yet, she's off-camera (so to speak) for almost the entire story, and I don't really have any idea how she feels about any of what's happening. Daniel doesn't really seem to do much in the story expect be kind of curious and answer the door several times. Any action or emotion isn't "seen," so it's hard to relate to as a reader. Show me the emotion/action, don't just imply that it happens elsewhere! Alright sorry, this has probably gone on long enough. Hopefully this was at least a little helpful! The First Christmas After: It feels more than a little unfair to ding this for being scattered, just because, yeah, you used a ton of flash rules, and given the number of disparate elements that you were pulling together, I think it works really well, especially the gravity metaphor. That having been said, it didn't quite land for me emotionally. It was good, and the elements were there, but I guess I didn't have enough personal investment into the story. It reminded me of nothing so much as when I'm just miserable for reasons out of my control and can't do anything about. I know I'm unhappy, but expressing it seems pointless because there's not really anything anyone can do about it, including me. And that really sucks, and is a relatable feeling, but it doesn't feel like a very satisfying narrative. That's not to say that I think that this wasn't a story worth telling, just that it didn't really hit home for me. Sorry, I'm not sure how helpful that is. :/
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Dec 30, 2022 00:06
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 10:31 |
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I definitely understand that impulse, and totally feel myself doing the same thing sometimes; I often won't bother entering unless I have an idea I feel good about. But I think that only wanting to enter if you're guaranteed praise is what leads to the "hugboxing" problem that TD has always rallied against. I love being praised, but I also think that the most valuable thing to me about TD has been having outside accountability to write again, and it's gotten me to write way more words (and thereby improve more) than I ever would have without it. I don't mean to diminish anyone's feelings saying this, as I have personally shed actual tears over crits, and have had my heart broken by no-mentioning (or DMing!) on something I was really excited about. But winning isn't the point of the contest, writing is. Winning is just the dopamine bait that keeps people coming back. That being said, I don't blame anyone who doesn't feel emotionally up to taking potentially negative feedback, and if you don't want to enter because of that I think it's okay. I have had a personally devastating year, and it has been a big part of why I haven't entered. I still love the community, and I've done a lot of personal writing, but I am absolutely not in a place to put much out where other people can see it. However, that's not a problem with Thunderdome, it's just where I'm at right now.
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Dec 30, 2022 01:15
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