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>>No_Raisin
>>Anon Y Mous
>>Gander
>>Monokeras
>>Bachiavellian
>>Flashgen
The God Killer: A Retrospective:
What do you mean I won?
What?
So this story is mostly a goof based primarily on the works of philosopher Freidrich Nietzsche, who is famously quoted as saying "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him," along with numerous other variations of the same idea. The premise is basically that this takes the form of a literal, wacky, and anticlimatic fight, rather than what Nietzsche really meant. Nietzche in particular was very critical of Christianity's take on morality, so it seemed only fitting for my characters to fight the Christian pantheon. Other things, not really related to this idea, were thrown in simply because I found it amusing.
Without diving into Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Will to Power, and Beyond Good and Evil too much, to massively summarize, it can be said that Nietzche believed three basic ideas:
1. Mankind should dispense with God (as God isn't real anyways) and create its own moral compass.
2. Nietzsche approves of "Master Morality", basically traits associated strong-willed men, self-determination, and the will to power.
3. The Ubermensch, or Overman, should be the guiding force in defining that new morality.
So my idea of a funny is to make the "Overman" in this scenario a literal replacement for an actual God who is basically a slack-jawed idiot who has no real grander plan and whose only real talent is being able to hit things really hard.
As I suggested in chat, the name "Richard" is a real indirect reference to "Richard Dawkins" and has no real meaning to the events of the story other than to namedrop a famous atheist (who fights "God" I suppose) without being too direct about it. "Nietzche" was the namedrop that I had hoped to raise eyebrows. Which it didn't.
The girl with big tits has no other meaning and references no specific person for no other reason than I thought it would be funny. I'm actually lying about this; it's a holdover from the original idea which was planned to be more a spoof of JRPGs rather than Nietzsche, but I left it in anyways because I thought it was funny. This can also be seen in the "color palette" line.
Generally, when I write comedies, I try to make a joke onion. A joke with layers. A joke like Shrek. Shrek is basically the blueprint to succeed at life anyways, so it's fitting that I crib some of its material.
Thanks for reviewing everyone!
>>Anon Y Mous
>>Gander
>>Monokeras
>>Bachiavellian
>>Flashgen
The God Killer: A Retrospective:
What do you mean I won?
What?
So this story is mostly a goof based primarily on the works of philosopher Freidrich Nietzsche, who is famously quoted as saying "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him," along with numerous other variations of the same idea. The premise is basically that this takes the form of a literal, wacky, and anticlimatic fight, rather than what Nietzsche really meant. Nietzche in particular was very critical of Christianity's take on morality, so it seemed only fitting for my characters to fight the Christian pantheon. Other things, not really related to this idea, were thrown in simply because I found it amusing.
Without diving into Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Will to Power, and Beyond Good and Evil too much, to massively summarize, it can be said that Nietzche believed three basic ideas:
1. Mankind should dispense with God (as God isn't real anyways) and create its own moral compass.
2. Nietzsche approves of "Master Morality", basically traits associated strong-willed men, self-determination, and the will to power.
3. The Ubermensch, or Overman, should be the guiding force in defining that new morality.
So my idea of a funny is to make the "Overman" in this scenario a literal replacement for an actual God who is basically a slack-jawed idiot who has no real grander plan and whose only real talent is being able to hit things really hard.
As I suggested in chat, the name "Richard" is a real indirect reference to "Richard Dawkins" and has no real meaning to the events of the story other than to namedrop a famous atheist (who fights "God" I suppose) without being too direct about it. "Nietzche" was the namedrop that I had hoped to raise eyebrows. Which it didn't.
The girl with big tits has no other meaning and references no specific person for no other reason than I thought it would be funny. I'm actually lying about this; it's a holdover from the original idea which was planned to be more a spoof of JRPGs rather than Nietzsche, but I left it in anyways because I thought it was funny. This can also be seen in the "color palette" line.
Generally, when I write comedies, I try to make a joke onion. A joke with layers. A joke like Shrek. Shrek is basically the blueprint to succeed at life anyways, so it's fitting that I crib some of its material.
Thanks for reviewing everyone!
For the record, I like this entry. I think the concept is clever. That being said, I think there are a lot of ways to potentially improve it to give it a bit more character. The primary issue I have with this story is that the story itself is a little too one-note with the overall conceit. When you get to the end, and the fact that the reviewer in is fact the brother of the author that is featured in the book, there is a bit of a gratifying experience where all the information previously mentioned clicks together. The problem is getting there.
There is a limited number of ways and times that you the author can have your character express "I think this story is bad." Eventually, the information becomes redundant to the reader, and the reader will either skim over your story or feel that the story is not much more than its gimmick. Your strong word economy doesn't contrast well with the stylistic longwindedness. The overuse of adjectives in particular end up hurting the overall perception of the entry and give the impression that the same information being conveyed with pretty much every line, even if in some instances the actual substantive information is new or gives new insights into the reviewer. Consequently, I would have liked to have seen more variation in the tone and emotion of the reviewer.
A review is much like an argument. A good reviewer will argue his perspective, provide reasons, and come to an overall conclusion. This eschews that concept a bit too much to my liking. Accepting the fiction of that the review is an actual review of an actual story is critical to the suspension of disbelief in this story. The reviewer states what he thinks, but he very rarely expresses why he thinks it. Seeing why a character arrives to a particular conclusion can tell you a lot about the character in question. Unfortunately, what is presented is mostly the reviewer stating his opinion without providing sufficient justification or context to understand what the reviewer is talking about. An example I can immediately cite is the sentence referring to the ". . . bacchanalian revelry, and the narcissistic action, are gone into great detail . . ." If I am to accept the reality of this being a review meant to be read by other people, I would not understand what this passage meant in reference to the book. There's an oblique reference to a "life with depravity," but in the context of this non-existent book, I have no idea what this practically means. The hypothetical audience for this fictional review would not be very well informed as to the book's general contents or why it is bad based on this review.
There are obvious details that indicate that this author is not American. The choice of single quotations instead of double quotations, along with commas instead of periods for numbering (along with the absence of the dollar sign on the advert), and the use of "NY best-seller" instead of "New York Times" or "NYT" gives off a veneer of illegitimacy of a Brit or Monokeras-kin masquerading in a culture they're not quite familiar with.
This is perhaps best exemplified by the reviewer's own tone. The reviewer himself is allegedly from Littleton, Alabama, and had a rural upbringing on a farm, but none of the cadence, vocabulary, or tone of his speech convey this. The best I can perhaps give the author in this instance is where the review remarks that it "sells like the Bible" but aside from that, I picture the narrator to be more similar to Ignatius J. Reilly than a southern farmhand turned small-time reviewer. There was ample opportunity when the reviewer refers to things such as "life with depravity" and "bacchanalian revelry" for the author to name some specifics to provide further characterization or potential jokes (e.g. the reviewer's idea of what "depravity" is could be extremely conservative, such as the dreaded "cohabitation" or working on the Sabbath). Although the lines about "depravity" are somewhat suspect coming from this reviewer, considering the he chose to open his review with a discussion of semen. Shit would not likely fly in small town Alabama. But at the very least, working this angle would give the character more to say about the content of the book and reveal more of his character, rather than just have him say it's bad without providing much of a reason other than he's sour grapes about his brother.
Some of the sentence construction I also find to be awkward. Generally, this is due to two factors: the smoothness with which ideas transition and the overly-wordy style. Sentences such as:
None of these quoted sentences are necessarily deadly in their own right, but after a while, it becomes a bit difficult to find one's footing in these constant parentheticals, sidebars, and use of separate clauses with contrasting ideas. It becomes a bit exhausting when every sentence offset with some sort of injected commentary, "but" clause, or overloaded with adverbs/adjectives. I don't believe you needed to lay it on so thick.
Anyways, it's 1:38AM, and I'm tired. This was good execution of a novel idea, I just think it needs to be tightened up a bit.
There is a limited number of ways and times that you the author can have your character express "I think this story is bad." Eventually, the information becomes redundant to the reader, and the reader will either skim over your story or feel that the story is not much more than its gimmick. Your strong word economy doesn't contrast well with the stylistic longwindedness. The overuse of adjectives in particular end up hurting the overall perception of the entry and give the impression that the same information being conveyed with pretty much every line, even if in some instances the actual substantive information is new or gives new insights into the reviewer. Consequently, I would have liked to have seen more variation in the tone and emotion of the reviewer.
A review is much like an argument. A good reviewer will argue his perspective, provide reasons, and come to an overall conclusion. This eschews that concept a bit too much to my liking. Accepting the fiction of that the review is an actual review of an actual story is critical to the suspension of disbelief in this story. The reviewer states what he thinks, but he very rarely expresses why he thinks it. Seeing why a character arrives to a particular conclusion can tell you a lot about the character in question. Unfortunately, what is presented is mostly the reviewer stating his opinion without providing sufficient justification or context to understand what the reviewer is talking about. An example I can immediately cite is the sentence referring to the ". . . bacchanalian revelry, and the narcissistic action, are gone into great detail . . ." If I am to accept the reality of this being a review meant to be read by other people, I would not understand what this passage meant in reference to the book. There's an oblique reference to a "life with depravity," but in the context of this non-existent book, I have no idea what this practically means. The hypothetical audience for this fictional review would not be very well informed as to the book's general contents or why it is bad based on this review.
There are obvious details that indicate that this author is not American. The choice of single quotations instead of double quotations, along with commas instead of periods for numbering (along with the absence of the dollar sign on the advert), and the use of "NY best-seller" instead of "New York Times" or "NYT" gives off a veneer of illegitimacy of a Brit or Monokeras-kin masquerading in a culture they're not quite familiar with.
This is perhaps best exemplified by the reviewer's own tone. The reviewer himself is allegedly from Littleton, Alabama, and had a rural upbringing on a farm, but none of the cadence, vocabulary, or tone of his speech convey this. The best I can perhaps give the author in this instance is where the review remarks that it "sells like the Bible" but aside from that, I picture the narrator to be more similar to Ignatius J. Reilly than a southern farmhand turned small-time reviewer. There was ample opportunity when the reviewer refers to things such as "life with depravity" and "bacchanalian revelry" for the author to name some specifics to provide further characterization or potential jokes (e.g. the reviewer's idea of what "depravity" is could be extremely conservative, such as the dreaded "cohabitation" or working on the Sabbath). Although the lines about "depravity" are somewhat suspect coming from this reviewer, considering the he chose to open his review with a discussion of semen. Shit would not likely fly in small town Alabama. But at the very least, working this angle would give the character more to say about the content of the book and reveal more of his character, rather than just have him say it's bad without providing much of a reason other than he's sour grapes about his brother.
Some of the sentence construction I also find to be awkward. Generally, this is due to two factors: the smoothness with which ideas transition and the overly-wordy style. Sentences such as:
By the end of it, I am sad to find that the words, despite wounding my humanity deeply, also failed to manage this task.
In the anticlimactic ending the boy, now a grown man, returns, like the prodigal son, and is welcomed to the farm which, by then, his brother has had to sell.
The actually quite controversial story has been lauded for its faux-subversion of tropes, features of unconventional unmagical elements in a real-world setting, and its uncanny ability to sell like the Bible.
The story itself doesn’t bother taking its message seriously, yet its humor falls horribly flat.
None of these quoted sentences are necessarily deadly in their own right, but after a while, it becomes a bit difficult to find one's footing in these constant parentheticals, sidebars, and use of separate clauses with contrasting ideas. It becomes a bit exhausting when every sentence offset with some sort of injected commentary, "but" clause, or overloaded with adverbs/adjectives. I don't believe you needed to lay it on so thick.
Anyways, it's 1:38AM, and I'm tired. This was good execution of a novel idea, I just think it needs to be tightened up a bit.
In terms of composition, this story is a little rough around the edges. The author doesn't seem to know how to properly punctuate dialogue, the paragraphing isn't discrete between characters (and sometimes breaks for seemingly no reason at all), the punctuation is often formatted wrong or missing, and the overall cadence of the story mostly follows this format:
Not exactly the most interesting thing to read. Not to say that the entry itself is boring, but the formatting and prose don't really elevate the material. What little narration exists in the context of the story seems to be leaning heavily on the fourth wall, and if that's the intention, to have the narration be sort of a pseudo-character, you'd probably want to bring that out more in full, and cut back on some of the dialogue. The last thing you'd want is for the reader to be uncertain as to whether you are intentionally breaking the fourth wall with your narration.
The bad news is that the fundamental composition of the story is really what is holding it back.That means from the ground up, the story should be cut, reworded, reorganized, and presented in a more dynamic, effective manner. The good news is that this is probably the easiest thing to fix. Really what it boils down to is effective organization, vocabulary choices, and choice of what to include and what to leave out.
Stylistically, the story has a pretty strong sense of identity, the tone is consistent, and the premise is at the very least interesting and novel. It's suitably cute, and even though I'd prefer to see the dialogue reined in a bit, it accomplishes that goal. This is arguably one of the hardest and more nebulous things to nail about story-telling, so kudos for that.
What I think >>Bachiavellian means when he says there's no payoff is that there's basically no conflict in this story. The characters basically end the story at the same place they began, and the challenges they face (aka the bad luck) are something that's already so mundane and routine to them that it doesn't prevent any meaningful obstacle for their interaction. What we are left with is two characters that already loved each other saying they love each other. Now that might get >>No_Raisin's rocks off, but for the educated, erudite, and more artsy among us like >>Bachiavellian, this will all come up feeling a bit insubstantial. Consequently, if you were to rewrite this story, I would suggest including some stakes. Or steaks.
Perhaps the stakes are that the steaks have been ruined at the restaurant due to a mistake by one of the chef's that causes one of the Misses to take off out of frustration with the bad luck thing before finally realizing she was being insensitive about the missed steaks and return to a proposal after a gut-wrenching heartfelt speech where she comes to terms with her stake in life.
But I digress. The point being is that cute for cuteness' sake can only get you so far. My recommendation would be to brush up the composition fundamentals. Really focus on how to construct your scenes to make sure that the reader is getting something interesting out of every line, and that the construction doesn't feel repetitive or disorganized. A good place to start would be to focus on how professional authors using paragraphing, how they tend to construct a paragraph around one idea, and how they transition those ideas to the next.
Cassius does a thing. "Wow, this is dialogue."
"Indeed, that is dialogue," Cassius speeched.
Cassius does another, different thing. "This is even more dialogue."
"Wow, amazing!" Cassius speeched, but using a different verb.
Not exactly the most interesting thing to read. Not to say that the entry itself is boring, but the formatting and prose don't really elevate the material. What little narration exists in the context of the story seems to be leaning heavily on the fourth wall, and if that's the intention, to have the narration be sort of a pseudo-character, you'd probably want to bring that out more in full, and cut back on some of the dialogue. The last thing you'd want is for the reader to be uncertain as to whether you are intentionally breaking the fourth wall with your narration.
The bad news is that the fundamental composition of the story is really what is holding it back.That means from the ground up, the story should be cut, reworded, reorganized, and presented in a more dynamic, effective manner. The good news is that this is probably the easiest thing to fix. Really what it boils down to is effective organization, vocabulary choices, and choice of what to include and what to leave out.
Stylistically, the story has a pretty strong sense of identity, the tone is consistent, and the premise is at the very least interesting and novel. It's suitably cute, and even though I'd prefer to see the dialogue reined in a bit, it accomplishes that goal. This is arguably one of the hardest and more nebulous things to nail about story-telling, so kudos for that.
What I think >>Bachiavellian means when he says there's no payoff is that there's basically no conflict in this story. The characters basically end the story at the same place they began, and the challenges they face (aka the bad luck) are something that's already so mundane and routine to them that it doesn't prevent any meaningful obstacle for their interaction. What we are left with is two characters that already loved each other saying they love each other. Now that might get >>No_Raisin's rocks off, but for the educated, erudite, and more artsy among us like >>Bachiavellian, this will all come up feeling a bit insubstantial. Consequently, if you were to rewrite this story, I would suggest including some stakes. Or steaks.
Perhaps the stakes are that the steaks have been ruined at the restaurant due to a mistake by one of the chef's that causes one of the Misses to take off out of frustration with the bad luck thing before finally realizing she was being insensitive about the missed steaks and return to a proposal after a gut-wrenching heartfelt speech where she comes to terms with her stake in life.
But I digress. The point being is that cute for cuteness' sake can only get you so far. My recommendation would be to brush up the composition fundamentals. Really focus on how to construct your scenes to make sure that the reader is getting something interesting out of every line, and that the construction doesn't feel repetitive or disorganized. A good place to start would be to focus on how professional authors using paragraphing, how they tend to construct a paragraph around one idea, and how they transition those ideas to the next.
Most of my comments on this entry would be redundant given that >>Bachiavellian has already covered most of the major bases that inevitably arise out of this story. I got a very "Dungeons and Dragons" vibe to this entry, which is both to this entry's detriment and benefit. Detriment in that it comes across as rather generic, but also benefit because the characters are not really what the crux of the story is about anyways. More development would be contrary to the story's interests.
I am not a fan of feghoots. Everyone knows this by now. This story is a feghoot. What did you expect I would say?
The only thing that I can really say is that I found the pseudo-incestual vibe to be a really strange inclusion for this story. I mean, I suppose it's within good taste to write a story about a priceless artifact being used as a butt-plug, but does it really have to be put through an incestual lens by having that character by the protagonist's half-sister? The essence of the feghoot is that it is a joke on the reader, but the strange incest angle distracts from that goal while injecting fetishism where it's not needed.
I consider that to be a questionable inclusion and would prefer that the author either decide to write a feghoot or their incest story, not both simultaneously.
I am not a fan of feghoots. Everyone knows this by now. This story is a feghoot. What did you expect I would say?
The only thing that I can really say is that I found the pseudo-incestual vibe to be a really strange inclusion for this story. I mean, I suppose it's within good taste to write a story about a priceless artifact being used as a butt-plug, but does it really have to be put through an incestual lens by having that character by the protagonist's half-sister? The essence of the feghoot is that it is a joke on the reader, but the strange incest angle distracts from that goal while injecting fetishism where it's not needed.
I consider that to be a questionable inclusion and would prefer that the author either decide to write a feghoot or their incest story, not both simultaneously.
>>Anon Y Mous
>>Baal Bunny
>>No_Raisin
>>Pascoite
>>No_Raisin
>>TerrusStokkr
>>WritingSpirit
After nearly eight long years of toil, I've finally earned my first gold. Wowzers! All I had to do was get rid of that pesky bird Miller Minus, and suddenly the gravy train starts a-rollin'.
In all seriousness, I didn't expect to do nearly this well. I wrote this at around 1AM on Sunday with little time to edit (see: missing end quotes), half drunk off of white claws from earlier in the day, and right after I had flown back from Columbus to DC. I remarked in the Discord:
and finally
The thing that's always hard to tell with comedy is if you're actually being funny or not. Sometimes it clicks, and sometimes it doesn't. I wrote this story solely off of the idea trying to be a pedantic dick about >>Anon Y Mous's art entry (i.e. How can I turn an explanation about what "condemned" means into a story?). Hence the name Pedagogy.
I was also writing out of my typical genre, which made it a bit more difficult to figure out what should be explained and what shouldn't. I opted to include a lot of small details to give the reader something to bite on, such as what >>Pascoite points out, and hoped that the reader would be interested enough to catch on to how it all fit together (e.g. Ogh’De’g’as’d’af has bloodshot eyes from squinting because lost reading glasses which allows Thyme to sneak changing his name without her noticing; Thyme dreams of smiling faces, thinks of elves, orc scowls, ends up with smiling orc at end, etc.)
>>Baal Bunny
Fun fact: I had this exact same idea an hour past the deadline. I woke up on Sunday morning, looked over my entry, and I was like, "Fuck, I should have had the coffee mug filled with quills instead of pens and Thyme use an erasing spell instead of just scratching his name out."
Also everyone thought this was your entry, which allowed me to go completely undetected. I got ahead of this trend by immediately accusing you of writing it, and nobody except for >>Pascoite ever questioned it.
>>No_Raisin
>>Pascoite
>>Baal Bunny
The problem here is just that I didn't adequately communicate that yes, indeed, Parsley's office is directly adjacent to Thyme's. I wasn't trying to break perspective, I just didn't do a good job of explaining what was happening, partially due to word count, partially due to my lack of oversight. The gag was supposed to be that Thyme claims to our dear Ogh’De’g’as’d’af that he can't handle her paperwork when literally all he's doing is sending her to the room over, but I just didn't notice at the time that idea wasn't clearly communicated in the text.
Also it's definitely third person limited.
>>Pascoite
I didn't have an answer when I wrote the entry (because I knew I wouldn't have enough space to explain it anyways), but what I would imagine the answer being is that Thyme is just kind of a prick that takes joy in messing with Parsley and justifies it post hoc because he thinks Parsley is uppity or something.
Anyways, thanks for the support, and I'll try to write more stories half-drunk after a flight at 1AM.
>>Baal Bunny
>>No_Raisin
>>Pascoite
>>No_Raisin
>>TerrusStokkr
>>WritingSpirit
After nearly eight long years of toil, I've finally earned my first gold. Wowzers! All I had to do was get rid of that pesky bird Miller Minus, and suddenly the gravy train starts a-rollin'.
In all seriousness, I didn't expect to do nearly this well. I wrote this at around 1AM on Sunday with little time to edit (see: missing end quotes), half drunk off of white claws from earlier in the day, and right after I had flown back from Columbus to DC. I remarked in the Discord:
I am going to enter a terrible story
wow this story I wrote is truly awful and I should be punished for entering it
and finally
No raisin is actually the author of diary of a wimpy kid
The thing that's always hard to tell with comedy is if you're actually being funny or not. Sometimes it clicks, and sometimes it doesn't. I wrote this story solely off of the idea trying to be a pedantic dick about >>Anon Y Mous's art entry (i.e. How can I turn an explanation about what "condemned" means into a story?). Hence the name Pedagogy.
I was also writing out of my typical genre, which made it a bit more difficult to figure out what should be explained and what shouldn't. I opted to include a lot of small details to give the reader something to bite on, such as what >>Pascoite points out, and hoped that the reader would be interested enough to catch on to how it all fit together (e.g. Ogh’De’g’as’d’af has bloodshot eyes from squinting because lost reading glasses which allows Thyme to sneak changing his name without her noticing; Thyme dreams of smiling faces, thinks of elves, orc scowls, ends up with smiling orc at end, etc.)
>>Baal Bunny
would've thought a bureaucrat of Thyme's weaselitude would've long ago perfected an erasure spell for removing his name from documents when he discovered that he'd screwed something up rather than just scratching the name out.
Fun fact: I had this exact same idea an hour past the deadline. I woke up on Sunday morning, looked over my entry, and I was like, "Fuck, I should have had the coffee mug filled with quills instead of pens and Thyme use an erasing spell instead of just scratching his name out."
Also everyone thought this was your entry, which allowed me to go completely undetected. I got ahead of this trend by immediately accusing you of writing it, and nobody except for >>Pascoite ever questioned it.
>>No_Raisin
>>Pascoite
>>Baal Bunny
And unless Thyme can somehow see Parsley's door, I'd prefer we stay in Thyme's POV and not get a visual of the orc
barging into Parsley's office.
I thought the narrator was supposed to be omniscient, like a narrator who is not attached to any in-story character, but there are a few times where I get the impression that we're actually getting Thyme's POV, but told in the first person.
but it definitely felt limited to me.
The problem here is just that I didn't adequately communicate that yes, indeed, Parsley's office is directly adjacent to Thyme's. I wasn't trying to break perspective, I just didn't do a good job of explaining what was happening, partially due to word count, partially due to my lack of oversight. The gag was supposed to be that Thyme claims to our dear Ogh’De’g’as’d’af that he can't handle her paperwork when literally all he's doing is sending her to the room over, but I just didn't notice at the time that idea wasn't clearly communicated in the text.
Also it's definitely third person limited.
>>Pascoite
And two, why does he pick on Parsley at the end?
I didn't have an answer when I wrote the entry (because I knew I wouldn't have enough space to explain it anyways), but what I would imagine the answer being is that Thyme is just kind of a prick that takes joy in messing with Parsley and justifies it post hoc because he thinks Parsley is uppity or something.
Anyways, thanks for the support, and I'll try to write more stories half-drunk after a flight at 1AM.
I put off reading this for a while for somewhat obvious reasons. Nobody wants to read a story that is one block paragraph. I remember joking about doing a gimmick a couple times, but I never expected to someone to seriously enter something that was only one sentence. Oh dear.
At first blush, I actually was quite engaged with the gimmick, especially as it applied to the husband and wife. There's a couple of lines early on that are quite good:
This initially was what I thought the story (and the gimmick) was about: a couple that was stuck together, unable to split apart (or into separate sentences). I thought that was clever.
But that's not what the story was about.
Damn.
So in return for disappointing my lofty expectations, you have now earned a lecture on the distinction between manslaughter and murder. Murder is defined under common law as a homicide with "malice aforethought" but the precise statutory definitions can vary by the state. Most states follow what is called the "Pennsylvania Method" or some variation thereof, which defines murder into two degrees:
1. First Degree Murder: the willful, deliberate, and premeditated murder of an individual.
2. Second Degree Murder: all other murder. Typically this refers to murder arising out of the intent to inflict serious bodily injury, "depraved heart" (i.e. extreme recklessness), or the felony-murder rule.
Manslaughter is divided into two halves. Voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. Voluntary manslaughter is the intentional killing of another person when the person meets a two pronged legal excuse: (1)they are provoked to an such an extreme that (2) a reasonable person would be likely to lose control. The classic example of this is that a man discovering his wife having sex with another man, and killing the man. Involuntary manslaughter is the unintentional killing of an individual due to criminal negligence (or recklessness).
So, in this case, it's not exactly relevant whether or not the citizen meant to kill his wife, as it's clear that by virtue of whatever he did, he acted with either the intent to inflict serious bodily injury or with flagrant disregard for human life. What is important is the circumstances surrounding the fight. From the circumstances, this seems to have been protracted engagement of physical violence, with the citizen having a history of being abusive. Given the evidence, it is likely that he himself started this encounter. Words alone are not provocation. Previous cases that I'm aware of have held that hair-pulling, hitting, and other irritating acts of physical violence have not been held to be adequate provocation to reduce the charge from murder to manslaughter (specifically in a female on male context, however).
Consequently, it is likely that the man in question could be convicted of murder.
Talking about the story proper now.
I generally enjoyed the construction of "sentences" and the vocabulary employed, but couldn't help feeling that the theme itself that the story is trying to get across is at best sort of nebulous and at worst masquerading as something more significant and insightful than it really is. I believe that the endless sentence is supposed to be a metaphor for the relentless pursuit of this thing the author terms the law or the inability of the citizen to cease moving, but the overall commentary I'm suppose to draw is not as clear.
The first issue I suppose stems from what type of law are we talking about. This is mainly a problem of establishing setting more than anything else. The initial description of the citizen and the simplicity with how the citizen escapes calls back to the simplicity of an agrarian society, but time progresses and it quickly kicks into gear to the future of autonomous robots, giving a sense of timelessness to the story. My read of this is that the citizen and overall events that take place over the course of the story are meant to be allegorical or metaphors, but I'm not exactly sure for what. The Men With Armbands and Dogs are definitely supposed to be evocative the Nazis, and the situation seems to be sort of analogous to a criticism of the unfeeling, systemic approach to law and law enforcement in sort of an homage to Kafka's The Trial. The "unchanging" nature of the law has always struck me as odd, as the law, aside from a set of bedrock rules and understandings (which are not so much part of law themselves, but just the greater social order written down), tends to fluctuate a lot. Sometimes in arbitrary ways. The other potential read is that this is somehow a commentary on religion, with themes of forgiveness, religiosity and other stuff scattered throughout the story.
So I didn't get it.
At first blush, I actually was quite engaged with the gimmick, especially as it applied to the husband and wife. There's a couple of lines early on that are quite good:
citizen and his wife lived in a state of financial and emotional poverty, with the wife abusing the man when he was sober and the citizen abusing his wife when he got drunk; the two fought with such a frequency that they never had time to have children, nor did they have time to contemplate the impossibility of their relationship, aside from the fact that they couldn't split apart;
This initially was what I thought the story (and the gimmick) was about: a couple that was stuck together, unable to split apart (or into separate sentences). I thought that was clever.
But that's not what the story was about.
Damn.
So in return for disappointing my lofty expectations, you have now earned a lecture on the distinction between manslaughter and murder. Murder is defined under common law as a homicide with "malice aforethought" but the precise statutory definitions can vary by the state. Most states follow what is called the "Pennsylvania Method" or some variation thereof, which defines murder into two degrees:
1. First Degree Murder: the willful, deliberate, and premeditated murder of an individual.
2. Second Degree Murder: all other murder. Typically this refers to murder arising out of the intent to inflict serious bodily injury, "depraved heart" (i.e. extreme recklessness), or the felony-murder rule.
Manslaughter is divided into two halves. Voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. Voluntary manslaughter is the intentional killing of another person when the person meets a two pronged legal excuse: (1)they are provoked to an such an extreme that (2) a reasonable person would be likely to lose control. The classic example of this is that a man discovering his wife having sex with another man, and killing the man. Involuntary manslaughter is the unintentional killing of an individual due to criminal negligence (or recklessness).
So, in this case, it's not exactly relevant whether or not the citizen meant to kill his wife, as it's clear that by virtue of whatever he did, he acted with either the intent to inflict serious bodily injury or with flagrant disregard for human life. What is important is the circumstances surrounding the fight. From the circumstances, this seems to have been protracted engagement of physical violence, with the citizen having a history of being abusive. Given the evidence, it is likely that he himself started this encounter. Words alone are not provocation. Previous cases that I'm aware of have held that hair-pulling, hitting, and other irritating acts of physical violence have not been held to be adequate provocation to reduce the charge from murder to manslaughter (specifically in a female on male context, however).
Consequently, it is likely that the man in question could be convicted of murder.
Talking about the story proper now.
I generally enjoyed the construction of "sentences" and the vocabulary employed, but couldn't help feeling that the theme itself that the story is trying to get across is at best sort of nebulous and at worst masquerading as something more significant and insightful than it really is. I believe that the endless sentence is supposed to be a metaphor for the relentless pursuit of this thing the author terms the law or the inability of the citizen to cease moving, but the overall commentary I'm suppose to draw is not as clear.
The first issue I suppose stems from what type of law are we talking about. This is mainly a problem of establishing setting more than anything else. The initial description of the citizen and the simplicity with how the citizen escapes calls back to the simplicity of an agrarian society, but time progresses and it quickly kicks into gear to the future of autonomous robots, giving a sense of timelessness to the story. My read of this is that the citizen and overall events that take place over the course of the story are meant to be allegorical or metaphors, but I'm not exactly sure for what. The Men With Armbands and Dogs are definitely supposed to be evocative the Nazis, and the situation seems to be sort of analogous to a criticism of the unfeeling, systemic approach to law and law enforcement in sort of an homage to Kafka's The Trial. The "unchanging" nature of the law has always struck me as odd, as the law, aside from a set of bedrock rules and understandings (which are not so much part of law themselves, but just the greater social order written down), tends to fluctuate a lot. Sometimes in arbitrary ways. The other potential read is that this is somehow a commentary on religion, with themes of forgiveness, religiosity and other stuff scattered throughout the story.
So I didn't get it.
So I'm sitting here in my office today, and for whatever reason, I've decided to write an entire post on sex in fiction. What a terrible life I've lived that has driven me to this decision.
Anyways.
There's something I wanted to point out about this story that in particular is a sticking point in the narrative and generally a sticking point in most writeoff stories in general. That being, the topic of sex and sexuality and how it's presented in a narrative. In a number of other entries along the long, long history of the writeoff, we often have had the discussion of how sexual content influences the reader's perception of the narrative as a whole and how the inclusion of sex often calls into question the author's intent.
Let's be frank, Author. Guiding the reader's investment in the seriousness and themes of the story over the hurdle of fucking a lizard person is a difficult feat. The concept on its face will seem ridiculous to most people at best, and pandering to fetishism at worst. The beneficiary of being involved in the write-off is that the majority of the audience already has a predisposition to fuck cartoon horses, so this detail may be overlooked by most of the crowd, but not me.
Not Cassius.
It's not exactly that I have an objection to the scene itself in the story; in fact, I would say that it is a pretty meaningful inclusion. However, I do have a bit of an objection to how it is written and the ramifications that it has on the perception of the story as a whole, as well as the scene's inclusion in the meta-narrative. The descriptions are evocative of a romance novella, but the tone and meaning of the scene are ultimately in opposition to that end. The rosy depictions of lizard-foreplay are in direct contrast to the protagonist's actual thoughts and feelings, as well as how the scene is supposed to be perceived as a whole. The sex scene, as I read it, is supposed to express our protagonist's feeling of isolation and futility of her attempts to adjust to the world around her. The scene immediately following this one, our protagonist decides she will commit suicide, after all.
But none of that is really felt in the description. Some of the character's internal monologue gives off this sensibility, but how the "action" is depicted itself doesn't belie the same sort of sentiment. If anything, it comes across as conspicuous scalie fetish bait. This is compounded by the not-so-subtle details at the beginning of Katie carving naked female scalie statutes and deciding they need bigger asses. Don't think I didn't catch that.
What I'm trying to get at is that the ultimate fetishization of the scalies, even if unintentional (which I have a VERY hard time believing), undermines the tone of the story itself, and detracts rather than adds to the overall end product. It's strange how, for lack of a better word, horny this story is, not because it's improper for our protagonist to be horny in this situation, but because of how the narrative chooses to describe this more as something that's supposed to be titillating as opposed the byproduct of desperation and loneliness or integrating a greater theme into the narrative. It comes across as "cheesecake", more than a meaningful narrative inclusion. It's a hard tonality to strike, and I'm not accusing you of intentionally writing this story explicitly for the purposes of brainwashing the writeoff with your shameful shameful scalie fetish (although I do consider this a possibility), but more criticizing the overall tone as being uneven and the presentation as being too exploitative for the narrative the story is trying to tell.
Other than that, pretty good entry.
Anyways.
There's something I wanted to point out about this story that in particular is a sticking point in the narrative and generally a sticking point in most writeoff stories in general. That being, the topic of sex and sexuality and how it's presented in a narrative. In a number of other entries along the long, long history of the writeoff, we often have had the discussion of how sexual content influences the reader's perception of the narrative as a whole and how the inclusion of sex often calls into question the author's intent.
Let's be frank, Author. Guiding the reader's investment in the seriousness and themes of the story over the hurdle of fucking a lizard person is a difficult feat. The concept on its face will seem ridiculous to most people at best, and pandering to fetishism at worst. The beneficiary of being involved in the write-off is that the majority of the audience already has a predisposition to fuck cartoon horses, so this detail may be overlooked by most of the crowd, but not me.
Not Cassius.
It's not exactly that I have an objection to the scene itself in the story; in fact, I would say that it is a pretty meaningful inclusion. However, I do have a bit of an objection to how it is written and the ramifications that it has on the perception of the story as a whole, as well as the scene's inclusion in the meta-narrative. The descriptions are evocative of a romance novella, but the tone and meaning of the scene are ultimately in opposition to that end. The rosy depictions of lizard-foreplay are in direct contrast to the protagonist's actual thoughts and feelings, as well as how the scene is supposed to be perceived as a whole. The sex scene, as I read it, is supposed to express our protagonist's feeling of isolation and futility of her attempts to adjust to the world around her. The scene immediately following this one, our protagonist decides she will commit suicide, after all.
But none of that is really felt in the description. Some of the character's internal monologue gives off this sensibility, but how the "action" is depicted itself doesn't belie the same sort of sentiment. If anything, it comes across as conspicuous scalie fetish bait. This is compounded by the not-so-subtle details at the beginning of Katie carving naked female scalie statutes and deciding they need bigger asses. Don't think I didn't catch that.
What I'm trying to get at is that the ultimate fetishization of the scalies, even if unintentional (which I have a VERY hard time believing), undermines the tone of the story itself, and detracts rather than adds to the overall end product. It's strange how, for lack of a better word, horny this story is, not because it's improper for our protagonist to be horny in this situation, but because of how the narrative chooses to describe this more as something that's supposed to be titillating as opposed the byproduct of desperation and loneliness or integrating a greater theme into the narrative. It comes across as "cheesecake", more than a meaningful narrative inclusion. It's a hard tonality to strike, and I'm not accusing you of intentionally writing this story explicitly for the purposes of brainwashing the writeoff with your shameful shameful scalie fetish (although I do consider this a possibility), but more criticizing the overall tone as being uneven and the presentation as being too exploitative for the narrative the story is trying to tell.
Other than that, pretty good entry.
As always, I'm willing to take the bait of a story that seems to be directed towards me. I can't help but feel someone took my commentary about law school as somewhat informative of how they decided write the characters in this entry. That being said, that might not be the case as the story here seems to be more European.
Since the location is fictional, it's hard to tell for certain, but the fact that the law school in question appears to be a four-year LLB program rather than the American three year JD system, and the usage of the phrase "short beer" which is British gives some scant indication that the setting may not be American. But then again, the vocabulary usage seems to be primarily of an American cadence and "short beer" is also a phrase that is used regionally in New England, so this just might be an oversight of an American who doesn't know how law school works. Indeed, there's a Miller sign, an American domestic which I tend think doubles as a shout-out to Miller Minus, which to me grounds the setting in America.
So, operating under the assumption that the author is in fact an American, I will tell you this: Law schools don't use designations like freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior. Almost universally, we refer to each other by our year: "1L, 2L, and 3L." I don't know any other designation anywhere else.
One of the details that isn't apparently clear is how many people from the law school are at the bar. You describe it as "rest of Mulvane Law School's graduating class." The most natural read of this sentence is that the entire graduating class is at the other side of the bar, which would be impossible unless this is a tiny, tiny school, so tiny it probably couldn't even be accredited; which would make the fact that Dave doesn't know the "disheveled Brunette" fairly improbable (it's also improbable that he'd not know everyone in his graduating class by the third year unless his law school was unusually large, but whatever). But let's be generous and assume that's not what you meant. You most likely meant that the rest of the portion of the graduating class that showed up to the bar was over there.
There's a lot of small details that still are a little off. Like a group of graduating students ordering shots of Johnnie Walker. Rounds of whiskey shots aren't necessarily unheard of, but I've never seen people downing shots of Red Label or ask for Johnnie Walker by name for a round of shots. If it's a shot of whiskey, it's usually going to be something that goes down easy, like fireball. Or something cheap or with a recognizable name like, Jack Daniels, Jim Bean or Jameson. In the event someone wants something celebratory, it'll usually be a Maker's Mark.
Similarly, it's strange to hear about someone "chugging" a tequila shot. I get the impression either this draft was a tad rushed or you haven't been to a bar in a while.
Couple of other small nitpicks: the story as written seems to imply that Dave is the only student in his graduating class that's receiving latin honors. By virtue of how law school classes are graded, this would be pretty much impossible. Again, being generous to the author, it's probably meant that he's the only one present at the bar that's graduating with honors, but that's not what the most natural reading suggests. Additionally, it's strange that he says you'll see his name "next to Morgan and Morgan" within the next five years. There's two possible reads of this phrase, each one sort of confusing. Either he's implying that he's been hired at Morgan & Morgan, and expects to become a partnering attorney, and such a good partnering attorney that he gets his name on the firm name, so he's essentially saying: "In five years, it'll be Morgan, Morgan, & Nance." This is confusing because presumably if he's such a badass, he's going to be going into BigLaw where he'll make the big bucks, but there's not really a chance that at such a huge firm that he'll literally change the name of the firm, especially because BigLaw firms have pretty set in stone names even though they have a large number of partnering attorneys (e.g. Jones Day, Kirkland & Elis, Lathan & Watkins, etc.) The other possible read is that he plans to start his own firm and be on the level of this supposed BigLaw firm... which, yeah good luck with that. Not gonna happen. Furthermore, when referring to the title of a firm, the word "and" is almost universally an ampersand, not written out. You can get a little leeway because this in dialogue, but it's still a minor detail that stands out.
So after 800 or so words of me complaining about minor details, it's time to get in the story itself. There's sort of a strange dynamic between the Nate and Dave, as Nate seems to not even want to be there, even though, as he explains, he came by specifically to send off the "seniors." Consequently, his utter apprehension of having to interact with a senior seems out of place, unless David is indeed THAT smelly.
Side Note: no self respecting lawyer would have a handlebar mustache
So, what is this story about? By my estimation, it's about a dead guy. More specifically, it's about Dave dealing with the death of his friend Tom. It's pretty apparent by the way Dave speaks that he's not just merely speaking about someone who is not present, but rather someone who is more likely than not dead. The way that Dave opens up with a seeming non-sequitur about lawyers being unhappy drug addicts and immediately segues into talking about Tom makes it clear from the context that Tom may not be around anymore. If this is not the implication you were going for, then you fucked up.
That's pretty cool, but I don't think you really cinch the emotional core here. The depth of despair and how it relates to Dave's character requires a lot of inferences in order to justify his behavior and attitudes, and ideally there'd be more in the narrative to inform why he feels certain ways. There'd also need to be a couple lines perhaps about Tom's particular importance or connection to Dave that makes him different from the other people Dave treats so dismissively, and perhaps some detail that adds a bit more import to him being around for Dave's graduation party. Details that would tie the narrative together and make it more apparent as to how all these disparate details intermingle together.
The alternative possibility is that the conversation about Tom is supposed to be read literally, and Dave is just really upset that he didn't come, perhaps due to a falling out between the two, which culminates in him advising Nate to trust nobody. Like Dave, Tom also put on a front, and Dave's feelings are hurt. This is a weaker reading, both because it makes the references to Tom seem very oddly phrased and also doesn't really address why Dave is so cagey around everyone else in the class.
Even with these two potential reads in mind, it's still a bit mystifying why Dave advises Nate to go solo. Even discerning what he really means is a bit of a challenge. Why can't you trust people? Certainly Dave isn't worth trusting, considering his duplicitous nature of putting on a face. Dave's character isn't really informed enough to make a definitive conclusion of why he's such a loner and a cunt, and the narrative doesn't really give him any reason to be so bitter about his classmates outside the fact that he's did better than them in school, which to me isn't much a compelling reason. His arrogance may be a trait that's properly informed, but his contempt for those that he feels are beneath him needs more explanation.
I suppose the irony that Dave advises Nate to go solo, which prompts Nate to finally leave, is sort of interesting, but it's hard to see the through line that ties all these ideas together. This may be a case where the subtext of the story and the story proper don't really align together to create a coherent vision. The best you can say is that Dave's grief over the death of his friend has soured his graduation day, and he's acting like a dick because of that. He is hurting and doesn't want to rely on others, thus he bitterly advises Nate to go solo. Sort of a hard sell, given the sheer amount of inferences required to arrive at that conclusion.
I do otherwise like the dynamic of Nate and Dave, wherein Dave is essentially monologuing to a completely disinterested Nate. Although I think of the wordcount is squandered by giving Nate too much of nothing to do. What I mean by that is that Nate is often given actions that indicate he's not paying attention, which is fine, but you do it for almost every line of dialogue that Nate has, which is just unnecessary to inform the reader of that point. Additionally, you don't need to be so rigid about using speech tags for every line of dialogue when it's a conversation between two characters.
I think there's a rich emotional tapestry here that's not quite fleshed out enough to give the full sense of the scope and character of what's going on. I can say I liked this story, but there's definitely a lot of palpable shortcomings, a lot of niggling details I had to ignore, and a lot of inferences I had to make in order to make it a cohesive experience.
Since the location is fictional, it's hard to tell for certain, but the fact that the law school in question appears to be a four-year LLB program rather than the American three year JD system, and the usage of the phrase "short beer" which is British gives some scant indication that the setting may not be American. But then again, the vocabulary usage seems to be primarily of an American cadence and "short beer" is also a phrase that is used regionally in New England, so this just might be an oversight of an American who doesn't know how law school works. Indeed, there's a Miller sign, an American domestic which I tend think doubles as a shout-out to Miller Minus, which to me grounds the setting in America.
So, operating under the assumption that the author is in fact an American, I will tell you this: Law schools don't use designations like freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior. Almost universally, we refer to each other by our year: "1L, 2L, and 3L." I don't know any other designation anywhere else.
One of the details that isn't apparently clear is how many people from the law school are at the bar. You describe it as "rest of Mulvane Law School's graduating class." The most natural read of this sentence is that the entire graduating class is at the other side of the bar, which would be impossible unless this is a tiny, tiny school, so tiny it probably couldn't even be accredited; which would make the fact that Dave doesn't know the "disheveled Brunette" fairly improbable (it's also improbable that he'd not know everyone in his graduating class by the third year unless his law school was unusually large, but whatever). But let's be generous and assume that's not what you meant. You most likely meant that the rest of the portion of the graduating class that showed up to the bar was over there.
There's a lot of small details that still are a little off. Like a group of graduating students ordering shots of Johnnie Walker. Rounds of whiskey shots aren't necessarily unheard of, but I've never seen people downing shots of Red Label or ask for Johnnie Walker by name for a round of shots. If it's a shot of whiskey, it's usually going to be something that goes down easy, like fireball. Or something cheap or with a recognizable name like, Jack Daniels, Jim Bean or Jameson. In the event someone wants something celebratory, it'll usually be a Maker's Mark.
Similarly, it's strange to hear about someone "chugging" a tequila shot. I get the impression either this draft was a tad rushed or you haven't been to a bar in a while.
Couple of other small nitpicks: the story as written seems to imply that Dave is the only student in his graduating class that's receiving latin honors. By virtue of how law school classes are graded, this would be pretty much impossible. Again, being generous to the author, it's probably meant that he's the only one present at the bar that's graduating with honors, but that's not what the most natural reading suggests. Additionally, it's strange that he says you'll see his name "next to Morgan and Morgan" within the next five years. There's two possible reads of this phrase, each one sort of confusing. Either he's implying that he's been hired at Morgan & Morgan, and expects to become a partnering attorney, and such a good partnering attorney that he gets his name on the firm name, so he's essentially saying: "In five years, it'll be Morgan, Morgan, & Nance." This is confusing because presumably if he's such a badass, he's going to be going into BigLaw where he'll make the big bucks, but there's not really a chance that at such a huge firm that he'll literally change the name of the firm, especially because BigLaw firms have pretty set in stone names even though they have a large number of partnering attorneys (e.g. Jones Day, Kirkland & Elis, Lathan & Watkins, etc.) The other possible read is that he plans to start his own firm and be on the level of this supposed BigLaw firm... which, yeah good luck with that. Not gonna happen. Furthermore, when referring to the title of a firm, the word "and" is almost universally an ampersand, not written out. You can get a little leeway because this in dialogue, but it's still a minor detail that stands out.
So after 800 or so words of me complaining about minor details, it's time to get in the story itself. There's sort of a strange dynamic between the Nate and Dave, as Nate seems to not even want to be there, even though, as he explains, he came by specifically to send off the "seniors." Consequently, his utter apprehension of having to interact with a senior seems out of place, unless David is indeed THAT smelly.
Side Note: no self respecting lawyer would have a handlebar mustache
So, what is this story about? By my estimation, it's about a dead guy. More specifically, it's about Dave dealing with the death of his friend Tom. It's pretty apparent by the way Dave speaks that he's not just merely speaking about someone who is not present, but rather someone who is more likely than not dead. The way that Dave opens up with a seeming non-sequitur about lawyers being unhappy drug addicts and immediately segues into talking about Tom makes it clear from the context that Tom may not be around anymore. If this is not the implication you were going for, then you fucked up.
That's pretty cool, but I don't think you really cinch the emotional core here. The depth of despair and how it relates to Dave's character requires a lot of inferences in order to justify his behavior and attitudes, and ideally there'd be more in the narrative to inform why he feels certain ways. There'd also need to be a couple lines perhaps about Tom's particular importance or connection to Dave that makes him different from the other people Dave treats so dismissively, and perhaps some detail that adds a bit more import to him being around for Dave's graduation party. Details that would tie the narrative together and make it more apparent as to how all these disparate details intermingle together.
The alternative possibility is that the conversation about Tom is supposed to be read literally, and Dave is just really upset that he didn't come, perhaps due to a falling out between the two, which culminates in him advising Nate to trust nobody. Like Dave, Tom also put on a front, and Dave's feelings are hurt. This is a weaker reading, both because it makes the references to Tom seem very oddly phrased and also doesn't really address why Dave is so cagey around everyone else in the class.
Even with these two potential reads in mind, it's still a bit mystifying why Dave advises Nate to go solo. Even discerning what he really means is a bit of a challenge. Why can't you trust people? Certainly Dave isn't worth trusting, considering his duplicitous nature of putting on a face. Dave's character isn't really informed enough to make a definitive conclusion of why he's such a loner and a cunt, and the narrative doesn't really give him any reason to be so bitter about his classmates outside the fact that he's did better than them in school, which to me isn't much a compelling reason. His arrogance may be a trait that's properly informed, but his contempt for those that he feels are beneath him needs more explanation.
I suppose the irony that Dave advises Nate to go solo, which prompts Nate to finally leave, is sort of interesting, but it's hard to see the through line that ties all these ideas together. This may be a case where the subtext of the story and the story proper don't really align together to create a coherent vision. The best you can say is that Dave's grief over the death of his friend has soured his graduation day, and he's acting like a dick because of that. He is hurting and doesn't want to rely on others, thus he bitterly advises Nate to go solo. Sort of a hard sell, given the sheer amount of inferences required to arrive at that conclusion.
I do otherwise like the dynamic of Nate and Dave, wherein Dave is essentially monologuing to a completely disinterested Nate. Although I think of the wordcount is squandered by giving Nate too much of nothing to do. What I mean by that is that Nate is often given actions that indicate he's not paying attention, which is fine, but you do it for almost every line of dialogue that Nate has, which is just unnecessary to inform the reader of that point. Additionally, you don't need to be so rigid about using speech tags for every line of dialogue when it's a conversation between two characters.
I think there's a rich emotional tapestry here that's not quite fleshed out enough to give the full sense of the scope and character of what's going on. I can say I liked this story, but there's definitely a lot of palpable shortcomings, a lot of niggling details I had to ignore, and a lot of inferences I had to make in order to make it a cohesive experience.
So it's 3:46AM, I'm starting this review, and it'll probably be at least 4:30AM by the time I finish, so I'll likely be very incoherent by the end of this, but bear with me.
I could simply repost my "preemptive" review I gave AndrewRogue in the Discord, and it would pretty much perfectly apply to this story, but I'll go for a different approach this time around. I'll try and spew out some pretentious platitude or something that will make my opinion seem more important or wise than it actually is.
"What's gained in polish is lost in personality."
This is a good sister story to Necromance because they basically suffer from the exact opposite problems, aside from a similarity in that their opening needs a bit of a rework (I'll get to that in a second). Whereas Necromance radiated personality and humor, but was rushed, unpolished, and inconsistent, this story is an accomplishment in technical consistency and competence, but somewhat sterile, long-winded, and understated.
But first, the opening. Much like >>Baal Bunny, I was confused as to a lot of the finer details of the characters, what was going on in the scene, and what sort of creature Jago was. Part of this is in the unnecessary in media res style, of which I am not a fan. Part of this is opening on dialogue, which I am also generally not a fan (although I do make exceptions). But what it really boils down to is that the reader is not given enough information to ascertain what the hell is going on in the scene itself, and with fantasy gobblegook getting all in my eyes, it makes discerning what is being implied all the more Herculean a task. Like, I enjoy subtlety and all, but at the start of the story in a completely unfamiliar fantasy setting, it is a good idea to give me some grounding so I can catch my bearings, and I don't have to reread the opening three times to figure out what exactly is going on.
I spent a long time trying to figure out what Jago was. AndrewRogue told me he was a fox dragon, which I believe because he wrote this story but outside of the general description of a "beast" and some physical descriptions, it's not really directly stated until way, way later into the story. But on a re-read, I did manage to snag the fact that Merryn's comment that she "didn't speak dragon-fox" in the first scene was actually meant to inform me that Jago was a dragon fox. I should boop you on the nose with a newspaper like a real fox for that ploy.
So back to the comparison with Necromance. Whereas Necromancer hyper-accelerated the pacing towards the conclusion, this story really slowed down. As >>Baal Bunny points out, the action set pieces really, really dampen the progression of the story itself. I also agree with his assessment that the sort of description you're trying to pull probably isn't well-suited for the medium and likely has to be highly truncated in order to function.
Despite the fact there are a number of limbs being lost, I equate the tone of this piece to be cute and inoffensive. Something you'd give to your child to read. This is not so much to disparage the piece as a whole, but merely to state that it doesn't claim to have a deeper or emotional gravitas beyond what is presented onscreen itself. With that in mind, I think that the story could afford to be a degree more bombastic and for lack of a better word "fantastical", which I mean in the sense that the story itself could stand to step away from being so thoroughly grounded.
I don't mean this in the sense that it should be a comedy, but more to the effect that it could perhaps diverge a bit from the more clinical version of reality that it presents and be more fantastical. I understand that this is a story written by an adult with a child about an adult coping with the difficulties of occupation childrearing, and this begets some grounding that is reflective of reality, but it does not need to be framed so squarely in the mundanities of real life. If the story is meant to be cute and for all audiences, embrace the fantastical elements of the setting. If the story is supposed to be a more grounded story about an adult dealing with adult problems, inject some more mature themes and pathos. Being turned into a dragon fox presents a lot of difficulties for a handsome Grandmaster. When you lose an arm, you lose an arm, and it fucking hurts and there's blood everywhere. Currently you're lodged in the middle point between the two.
All in all, a pretty solid piece. As I've always said, you pretty much have the chops to get you where you need to go. Where you really need to improve is to make yourself stand out in terms of the personality of your writing. Right now, you're sort of relying on the cleanliness of your draft and presentation to make yourself stand out from the other entries, which is a good move. It's like being dressed in a suit and tie at a jeanshirt convention. Certainly gets attention and everyone knows you're the sharpest dresser there, but it leaves one wanting more.
Okay it's 4:30AM, I'm cutting this review and metaphor off. Have a good one.
I could simply repost my "preemptive" review I gave AndrewRogue in the Discord, and it would pretty much perfectly apply to this story, but I'll go for a different approach this time around. I'll try and spew out some pretentious platitude or something that will make my opinion seem more important or wise than it actually is.
"What's gained in polish is lost in personality."
This is a good sister story to Necromance because they basically suffer from the exact opposite problems, aside from a similarity in that their opening needs a bit of a rework (I'll get to that in a second). Whereas Necromance radiated personality and humor, but was rushed, unpolished, and inconsistent, this story is an accomplishment in technical consistency and competence, but somewhat sterile, long-winded, and understated.
But first, the opening. Much like >>Baal Bunny, I was confused as to a lot of the finer details of the characters, what was going on in the scene, and what sort of creature Jago was. Part of this is in the unnecessary in media res style, of which I am not a fan. Part of this is opening on dialogue, which I am also generally not a fan (although I do make exceptions). But what it really boils down to is that the reader is not given enough information to ascertain what the hell is going on in the scene itself, and with fantasy gobblegook getting all in my eyes, it makes discerning what is being implied all the more Herculean a task. Like, I enjoy subtlety and all, but at the start of the story in a completely unfamiliar fantasy setting, it is a good idea to give me some grounding so I can catch my bearings, and I don't have to reread the opening three times to figure out what exactly is going on.
I spent a long time trying to figure out what Jago was. AndrewRogue told me he was a fox dragon, which I believe because he wrote this story but outside of the general description of a "beast" and some physical descriptions, it's not really directly stated until way, way later into the story. But on a re-read, I did manage to snag the fact that Merryn's comment that she "didn't speak dragon-fox" in the first scene was actually meant to inform me that Jago was a dragon fox. I should boop you on the nose with a newspaper like a real fox for that ploy.
So back to the comparison with Necromance. Whereas Necromancer hyper-accelerated the pacing towards the conclusion, this story really slowed down. As >>Baal Bunny points out, the action set pieces really, really dampen the progression of the story itself. I also agree with his assessment that the sort of description you're trying to pull probably isn't well-suited for the medium and likely has to be highly truncated in order to function.
Despite the fact there are a number of limbs being lost, I equate the tone of this piece to be cute and inoffensive. Something you'd give to your child to read. This is not so much to disparage the piece as a whole, but merely to state that it doesn't claim to have a deeper or emotional gravitas beyond what is presented onscreen itself. With that in mind, I think that the story could afford to be a degree more bombastic and for lack of a better word "fantastical", which I mean in the sense that the story itself could stand to step away from being so thoroughly grounded.
I don't mean this in the sense that it should be a comedy, but more to the effect that it could perhaps diverge a bit from the more clinical version of reality that it presents and be more fantastical. I understand that this is a story written by an adult with a child about an adult coping with the difficulties of occupation childrearing, and this begets some grounding that is reflective of reality, but it does not need to be framed so squarely in the mundanities of real life. If the story is meant to be cute and for all audiences, embrace the fantastical elements of the setting. If the story is supposed to be a more grounded story about an adult dealing with adult problems, inject some more mature themes and pathos. Being turned into a dragon fox presents a lot of difficulties for a handsome Grandmaster. When you lose an arm, you lose an arm, and it fucking hurts and there's blood everywhere. Currently you're lodged in the middle point between the two.
All in all, a pretty solid piece. As I've always said, you pretty much have the chops to get you where you need to go. Where you really need to improve is to make yourself stand out in terms of the personality of your writing. Right now, you're sort of relying on the cleanliness of your draft and presentation to make yourself stand out from the other entries, which is a good move. It's like being dressed in a suit and tie at a jeanshirt convention. Certainly gets attention and everyone knows you're the sharpest dresser there, but it leaves one wanting more.
Okay it's 4:30AM, I'm cutting this review and metaphor off. Have a good one.
It is very late in the night, and I should be doing work. Nonetheless, I feel obligated to give a review of this story, considering its author a person who is DEFINITELY not Miller Minus has decided to call me out directly. But more on that later.
There are many things to like about this story and in almost equal measures, things to be disappointed about. I would describe this piece as uneven; achieving great highs but also rather disappointing lows. The highs stem from good comedic chops, clever and sometimes outright guffaw worthy one-liners, as well as the affectionate parody tone that carries (most) of the piece. The lows on the other hand are a direct result of the number one issue for pretty much all write-off pieces that aren't entered by filthy, filthy cheaters: a lack of polish. Lack of polish in construction, delivery, pacing, and just sometimes, just poor organization of the prose.
This first and perhaps most serious misstep on the path to glory for this entry is its opener. I often decide which story I will read based on the first line of each entry. I will be honest about my initial reaction to the first couple lines, as this was the first entry I actually viewed. I opened the entry, saw those lines, thought, "Oh Christ on a cracker, some "story-within-a-story" overly complicated meta entry, great." I promptly closed this entry and went to go read Bartown, USA instead. I ended up wading back to this entry eventually, but it was with much reluctance.
Obviously, this is not the first impression you are trying to go for. My suggestion is to make the tongue-in-cheek tone apparent from the very beginning and start off strong, because you're not trying to be mistaken for a pensive, godawful, pretentious (insert negative adjective here) meta entry. You're trying to be Monty-Python or Blazing Saddles. Go watch those films again.
Sometimes the humor hits, and sometimes it doesn't. The most prominent example I can think of a joke very obviously not landing is the set-up in the first scene about the plunger and the deadly weapon, combined with the very obvious payoff that the necromancer had the plunger. I'm not even going to spoiler that because that's how obvious it was. I've discussed in the chat jokes that are that predictable need a third unexpected element to land.
I do feel that Aldor gets progressively less "flaming" as the story goes along. I enjoyed the initial characterization of Aldor being a fruity necromancer, and it humorous, but that seems to get dropped by the wayside as the story progresses. Additionally, if you're doing a subtle reference, DO IT ONLY ONCE. The Coco reference is a good example of a reference paired with an actual joke, but the double FMA reference where the joke is the reference is just pandering.
Structurally, some of the presentation is just off. There are paragraphs where the perspective shifts mid-paragraph, which is a big no-no. Sometimes it's a bit difficult to even figure out what the joke was. The pacing and organization of the prose seems to deteriorate as the story progresses. For example, pretty much every paragraph of the last scene is two lines or less. Also as is standard for this author, who I may remind the audience, is NOT MILLER MINUS, he abuses italics much like addict abuses crack.
So, now it is later. Later has happened. We must therefore, talk about the scene. What scene could I be referring to?
For reference, I did actually get out of my seat while reading this and paced around my apartment, amusedly muttering "that son of bitch." BUT YOU DONE FUCKED UP.
YOU SEE YOU LITTLE BITCH, YOU COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THE PAYOFF TO THIS JOKE.
And that's terrible.
So the problem with this scene is twofold:
1. It's really hard to tell what happened between Borta and Gerbert based on the narrative description alone. This is because it's hard to tell what the joke is. Is Gerbert a Medusa? Has he always looked this way or is just how has hair has been done? Should I be laughing because Gerbert is failing to impress Borta so badly that he makes Borta faint?
2. You completely cut off this scene by immediately and unexpectedly switching back to the perspective character with not even a soft break.
3. You fuck up by intentionally sandbagging the overall joke in this scene with the explanation of dramatic irony, but fail to follow up on it, and ironically make the the ghost's description about there being a guard with a crush on another guard the only memorable detail about that scene and the characters in it.
4. You fuck up dramatic irony. I don't know how you did this after receiving such a thorough and amazing explanation, but here you are. The fact that Borta hates the fuck out of Gerbert is dramatic irony, but it has nothing to do with the overall scene, story or joke. Gerbert knows that Gerbert likes Borta, and the unexpected effect of his terrible looks is not. For this alone, you should be summarily executed.
A lot of this reads like a metaphor of being a writeoff entrant, but nonetheless.
I don't think a lot of the other readers caught what the ghost man was getting at the beginning about the ending. But I did. Basically the reveal is:
At the end, Aldor is espousing a life lesson about how you shouldn't revive the dead, and how he did do the right thing by putting the first man he revived back to sleep. Unbeknownst to him, (DRAMATIC IRONY ALERT), the narrator is actually the ghost of the man he brought back, and he's implied to be a bit pissed about it, which negates the lesson Aldor is trying to impart and is why he talks about potentially haunting Aldor midway through the story.
Anyways, this was a good, if rushed and very imperfect, entry that got me to laugh. And that's why we're all here, right? To laugh. Mostly at No_Raisin. Sometimes at Monokeras. Good job.
There are many things to like about this story and in almost equal measures, things to be disappointed about. I would describe this piece as uneven; achieving great highs but also rather disappointing lows. The highs stem from good comedic chops, clever and sometimes outright guffaw worthy one-liners, as well as the affectionate parody tone that carries (most) of the piece. The lows on the other hand are a direct result of the number one issue for pretty much all write-off pieces that aren't entered by filthy, filthy cheaters: a lack of polish. Lack of polish in construction, delivery, pacing, and just sometimes, just poor organization of the prose.
This first and perhaps most serious misstep on the path to glory for this entry is its opener. I often decide which story I will read based on the first line of each entry. I will be honest about my initial reaction to the first couple lines, as this was the first entry I actually viewed. I opened the entry, saw those lines, thought, "Oh Christ on a cracker, some "story-within-a-story" overly complicated meta entry, great." I promptly closed this entry and went to go read Bartown, USA instead. I ended up wading back to this entry eventually, but it was with much reluctance.
Obviously, this is not the first impression you are trying to go for. My suggestion is to make the tongue-in-cheek tone apparent from the very beginning and start off strong, because you're not trying to be mistaken for a pensive, godawful, pretentious (insert negative adjective here) meta entry. You're trying to be Monty-Python or Blazing Saddles. Go watch those films again.
Sometimes the humor hits, and sometimes it doesn't. The most prominent example I can think of a joke very obviously not landing is the set-up in the first scene about the plunger and the deadly weapon, combined with the very obvious payoff that the necromancer had the plunger. I'm not even going to spoiler that because that's how obvious it was. I've discussed in the chat jokes that are that predictable need a third unexpected element to land.
I do feel that Aldor gets progressively less "flaming" as the story goes along. I enjoyed the initial characterization of Aldor being a fruity necromancer, and it humorous, but that seems to get dropped by the wayside as the story progresses. Additionally, if you're doing a subtle reference, DO IT ONLY ONCE. The Coco reference is a good example of a reference paired with an actual joke, but the double FMA reference where the joke is the reference is just pandering.
Structurally, some of the presentation is just off. There are paragraphs where the perspective shifts mid-paragraph, which is a big no-no. Sometimes it's a bit difficult to even figure out what the joke was. The pacing and organization of the prose seems to deteriorate as the story progresses. For example, pretty much every paragraph of the last scene is two lines or less. Also as is standard for this author, who I may remind the audience, is NOT MILLER MINUS, he abuses italics much like addict abuses crack.
So, now it is later. Later has happened. We must therefore, talk about the scene. What scene could I be referring to?
Borta was, at the time of our heroes’ arrival, guarding the interior janitor’s room. Gerbert, meanwhile, has the hots for Borta. This is irrelevant, but I want to try out a writing tool my friend showed me. He called it ‘dramatic ironing’ I believe, which is where I give you information to which the characters aren’t privy. This friend, unlike me, a soul without a body, is a body without a soul. A soulless husk, if you will. And I’m planning on proving to him that his favorite writing tool sucks.
For reference, I did actually get out of my seat while reading this and paced around my apartment, amusedly muttering "that son of bitch." BUT YOU DONE FUCKED UP.
YOU SEE YOU LITTLE BITCH, YOU COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THE PAYOFF TO THIS JOKE.
And that's terrible.
So the problem with this scene is twofold:
1. It's really hard to tell what happened between Borta and Gerbert based on the narrative description alone. This is because it's hard to tell what the joke is. Is Gerbert a Medusa? Has he always looked this way or is just how has hair has been done? Should I be laughing because Gerbert is failing to impress Borta so badly that he makes Borta faint?
2. You completely cut off this scene by immediately and unexpectedly switching back to the perspective character with not even a soft break.
3. You fuck up by intentionally sandbagging the overall joke in this scene with the explanation of dramatic irony, but fail to follow up on it, and ironically make the the ghost's description about there being a guard with a crush on another guard the only memorable detail about that scene and the characters in it.
4. You fuck up dramatic irony. I don't know how you did this after receiving such a thorough and amazing explanation, but here you are. The fact that Borta hates the fuck out of Gerbert is dramatic irony, but it has nothing to do with the overall scene, story or joke. Gerbert knows that Gerbert likes Borta, and the unexpected effect of his terrible looks is not. For this alone, you should be summarily executed.
If this is how you treat amateurs, then I pity your children.
A lot of this reads like a metaphor of being a writeoff entrant, but nonetheless.
I don't think a lot of the other readers caught what the ghost man was getting at the beginning about the ending. But I did. Basically the reveal is:
At the end, Aldor is espousing a life lesson about how you shouldn't revive the dead, and how he did do the right thing by putting the first man he revived back to sleep. Unbeknownst to him, (DRAMATIC IRONY ALERT), the narrator is actually the ghost of the man he brought back, and he's implied to be a bit pissed about it, which negates the lesson Aldor is trying to impart and is why he talks about potentially haunting Aldor midway through the story.
Anyways, this was a good, if rushed and very imperfect, entry that got me to laugh. And that's why we're all here, right? To laugh. Mostly at No_Raisin. Sometimes at Monokeras. Good job.
So, I just barely managed to squeak in this story right before submissions closed, and as a result, the final product was exactly as concrete as I had hoped it to be. Not. You know that feeling you get when you have an idea that feels like a surefire winner, but you don't exactly know what you're going to do with it or how it's going to play out, and you're just hoping you execute it right? That was essentially the feeling I had with this entry.
The initial product was intended to be more philosophical about what makes a person's identity (although according to >>AndrewRogue, the question has an easy answer), but as I was writing it, I decided that I wouldn't be able to fit a lot of the more visceral questions into the final product itself, and reformatted it to be more in the line of a sitcom-ish style about a hapless mad-scientist-esque guy besieged by two nagging wives (who actually have a very good reason to be upset with him). I wouldn't characterize this as a "straight" comedy, and I think a piece with more room to breathe would end up looking more like an absurd drama with comedic moments. Perhaps I was trying to do too much at once here.
There's a certain subtext, however, that I endeavored to preserve, and an undercurrent of black comedy that is intentionally put into the product itself and which several readers identified (namely, >>AndrewRogue, >>horizon, >>Pascoite, and probably >>Miller Minus) wherein the protagonist is an absolute sack of shit and basically a creepy sociopath who is strongly implied to be doing this so he can have more Deborahs to add to his sampling platter. The humor (for me) is derived from the main character suffering as a result of his actions. If there is any character designed to be sympathetic, it is Clone Deborah, and absolutely not the protagonist. What's odd to me is that you all FIGURED THIS OUT yet acted as if it was something I was doing unintentionally. If I had more time and a little more space, I may have made this dynamic for transparently visible in the narrative, but again, I was under a bit of a time crunch and couldn't fine tune it more to get that tone just right. Nonetheless, I do bristle a bit when being labelled with the big P (for "Problematic" by >>AndrewRogue).
While I don't really highlight this line that specifically by anything in the narrative, this is meant to be analogous to the same sort of logic that cheaters use to justify their cheating to their spouse. It's really a hideous thing to say, and I'm happy that almost all of you at least picked up on it, even if the story perhaps didn't enough to indicate why he was saying it. The protagonist is a manipulative, bad person.
I hear some grumblings about the portrayal of the women as sort of stereo-typically basing their existence around a man, again by that cad >>AndrewRogue. I'm aware that that what I'm about to say requires a little leap from the reader to understand what I was going for, but I think there's sufficient enough implication: being literally "created" by someone drastically alters the power dynamic between people, especially when it's in an effort to "replace" someone else. I mean, it would be pretty fucked up if your dad said that he made you specifically for the purpose of replacing your dead brother, and it would definitely affect how you perceived the world around you as well as your priorities.
Both Deborah's deal with this differently, but subtle ways: Homuculus Deborah puts on a boastful and showy display of superiority and tries to earn the protagonist's favoritism through denigrating Clone Deborah, and Clone Deborah tries to get reassurance that she's acting sufficiently "Deborah" from the protagonist.
>>No_Raisin
There is too much to individually respond to, but it is amusing that you pretty much consistently draw the right inference from what I was going for, yet nonetheless say, "It's never said in the narrative!"
Although,
This is actually directly explained.
Also it's very shameful and embarrassing that you enjoyed Freddy Got Fingered, and you should probably keep such scandalous details to yourself in the future.
>>Monokeras
Mono.
Anyways, thank you all for reading. Special thanks to Miller for being a fan, and (seemingly) appreciating a lot of the finer points I was trying to make within the story itself. I didn't expect this story to be anyone's favorite, so it was a nice surprise to see that I actually not one but two top slates this round.
Now if only I could find that voodoo doll...
The initial product was intended to be more philosophical about what makes a person's identity (although according to >>AndrewRogue, the question has an easy answer), but as I was writing it, I decided that I wouldn't be able to fit a lot of the more visceral questions into the final product itself, and reformatted it to be more in the line of a sitcom-ish style about a hapless mad-scientist-esque guy besieged by two nagging wives (who actually have a very good reason to be upset with him). I wouldn't characterize this as a "straight" comedy, and I think a piece with more room to breathe would end up looking more like an absurd drama with comedic moments. Perhaps I was trying to do too much at once here.
There's a certain subtext, however, that I endeavored to preserve, and an undercurrent of black comedy that is intentionally put into the product itself and which several readers identified (namely, >>AndrewRogue, >>horizon, >>Pascoite, and probably >>Miller Minus) wherein the protagonist is an absolute sack of shit and basically a creepy sociopath who is strongly implied to be doing this so he can have more Deborahs to add to his sampling platter. The humor (for me) is derived from the main character suffering as a result of his actions. If there is any character designed to be sympathetic, it is Clone Deborah, and absolutely not the protagonist. What's odd to me is that you all FIGURED THIS OUT yet acted as if it was something I was doing unintentionally. If I had more time and a little more space, I may have made this dynamic for transparently visible in the narrative, but again, I was under a bit of a time crunch and couldn't fine tune it more to get that tone just right. Nonetheless, I do bristle a bit when being labelled with the big P (for "Problematic" by >>AndrewRogue).
“Deborah, I’ve told you this before. When you love something, you naturally want more of it. It’s not because you’re any less Deborah than the other Deborah.”
While I don't really highlight this line that specifically by anything in the narrative, this is meant to be analogous to the same sort of logic that cheaters use to justify their cheating to their spouse. It's really a hideous thing to say, and I'm happy that almost all of you at least picked up on it, even if the story perhaps didn't enough to indicate why he was saying it. The protagonist is a manipulative, bad person.
I hear some grumblings about the portrayal of the women as sort of stereo-typically basing their existence around a man, again by that cad >>AndrewRogue. I'm aware that that what I'm about to say requires a little leap from the reader to understand what I was going for, but I think there's sufficient enough implication: being literally "created" by someone drastically alters the power dynamic between people, especially when it's in an effort to "replace" someone else. I mean, it would be pretty fucked up if your dad said that he made you specifically for the purpose of replacing your dead brother, and it would definitely affect how you perceived the world around you as well as your priorities.
Both Deborah's deal with this differently, but subtle ways: Homuculus Deborah puts on a boastful and showy display of superiority and tries to earn the protagonist's favoritism through denigrating Clone Deborah, and Clone Deborah tries to get reassurance that she's acting sufficiently "Deborah" from the protagonist.
>>No_Raisin
There is too much to individually respond to, but it is amusing that you pretty much consistently draw the right inference from what I was going for, yet nonetheless say, "It's never said in the narrative!"
Although,
We don't even know why the protagonist did this, who, I might add, is a three-ton bag of shit.
This is actually directly explained.
Also it's very shameful and embarrassing that you enjoyed Freddy Got Fingered, and you should probably keep such scandalous details to yourself in the future.
>>Monokeras
Mono.
Anyways, thank you all for reading. Special thanks to Miller for being a fan, and (seemingly) appreciating a lot of the finer points I was trying to make within the story itself. I didn't expect this story to be anyone's favorite, so it was a nice surprise to see that I actually not one but two top slates this round.
Now if only I could find that voodoo doll...
>>No_Raisin
Obviously you haven't played many fighters. But this guy is a vampire.
First of all, who the hell names themselves Slayer?
Obviously you haven't played many fighters. But this guy is a vampire.
>>Monokeras
Were the whales armed, Monokeras would be more accepting of this entry.
Kill defenceless animals to make money?
Were the whales armed, Monokeras would be more accepting of this entry.
I don't have much to say about this entry if I'm being honest. That's not a bad thing by any means, just that there's really not much advice I can give you.
In terms of scene construction, this is probably the most solid of the entries that could be labelled as "comedy" in this competition. Might be a bit too much word-space with main character Ronah yelling at her assistant in gobblygook, but I get that's sort of necessary for the flavor to come across. Although I do think Rohna's attitude can be a little off-putting, and I'm not sure if that joke would be better or worse if Rohan is actually the "guild kid" who shows up completely mis-geared for the encounter and is told off by a more experiencedGoblin Dragon Slayer.
But anyways, outside that change to Rhnoa's character, I don't have much to say. It's a story that whose punchline I explicitly expected right from the title, and while the last line is a nice quip, it still sort of feels a little too on the rails and dependent on that one joke hitting. As with >>No_Raisin, I'm inclined to adopt the perspective that a big joke is best supplemented with smatterings of smaller jokes within it or elements that can ratchet up the absurdity. One thing that may have been a good idea was to give Ewan some firepower to banter back with Rnhoa that plays up those MMORPG/anime/fantasy tropes you clearly like so much.
Gag I just came up with when Ewan asks about armor:
"What's the difference?" Ewan asks. "They're just the same chain-mail bikini!"
"The other one is blue!" Rhano yelled.
I think what stops this story from being a dud to me is just the enthusiasm the writer brings to the subject. The author clearly is a fan of this sort of stuff, and isn't trying to inflate the story as something more significant than it is. It's an honest piece, which means I respect it.
In terms of scene construction, this is probably the most solid of the entries that could be labelled as "comedy" in this competition. Might be a bit too much word-space with main character Ronah yelling at her assistant in gobblygook, but I get that's sort of necessary for the flavor to come across. Although I do think Rohna's attitude can be a little off-putting, and I'm not sure if that joke would be better or worse if Rohan is actually the "guild kid" who shows up completely mis-geared for the encounter and is told off by a more experienced
But anyways, outside that change to Rhnoa's character, I don't have much to say. It's a story that whose punchline I explicitly expected right from the title, and while the last line is a nice quip, it still sort of feels a little too on the rails and dependent on that one joke hitting. As with >>No_Raisin, I'm inclined to adopt the perspective that a big joke is best supplemented with smatterings of smaller jokes within it or elements that can ratchet up the absurdity. One thing that may have been a good idea was to give Ewan some firepower to banter back with Rnhoa that plays up those MMORPG/anime/fantasy tropes you clearly like so much.
Gag I just came up with when Ewan asks about armor:
"What's the difference?" Ewan asks. "They're just the same chain-mail bikini!"
"The other one is blue!" Rhano yelled.
I think what stops this story from being a dud to me is just the enthusiasm the writer brings to the subject. The author clearly is a fan of this sort of stuff, and isn't trying to inflate the story as something more significant than it is. It's an honest piece, which means I respect it.
>>Monokeras
YOU SHOULD HAVE SAID IT'S A GOOD LIFE FROM THE TWILIGHT ZONE YOU FUCKING HACK
You could have got inspired by this episode of Star Trek TOS.
YOU SHOULD HAVE SAID IT'S A GOOD LIFE FROM THE TWILIGHT ZONE YOU FUCKING HACK
>>horizon
Going to quickly answer horizon's questions to the best of my ability.
The story is a metaphor for sociopathy. >>No_Raisin correctly had an intuitive sense about the relative unimportance of Charlie's supernatural ability; the point is that Charlie has a "condition" that his parents feel they are fearful of, but helpless to do anything about and refuse to address. The point of the supernatural ability is merely to create a literal manifestation of these issues inherent to raising a child suffering from sociopathy that can be illustrated to the reader. The real issue is predicated on the father's constant willingness to ignore his son's conduct and refusal to rein him in. Hence the title, "Son the Father" as Charlie is essentially his own parent.
Charlie is not the main character. He is the character around which the plot focuses, but the main character is actually his father.
The thing that you're supposed to draw from those scenes is the consequences of Charlie's father's constant willful ignorance and refusal to rein in his son. You're seeing how Charlie develops and moves from merely ripping the legs off of spiders, to mutilating small animals, to finally the implication that he's killing people. Every time Charlie's father has the opportunity to intervene, he chooses not to.
This confused me a bit too. I understood it at first as a "born under a bad omen" sort of statement, but I actually think it's meant to be read a bit deeper than that, in that Charlie's birth signals the death of others. Might be a bit too deep of a read, though.
So, this story is at the top of my slate. There are some clunky turns of phrase and this could have used probably another drafting process to make sure every line hit, but the prose is by and large punchy, effective, and respects the reader's intelligence by not spelling out every detail or becoming overindulgent in its own artistry. Which means it will get sixth place, and I'll be the only person who actually likes it. Tough break, author.
What is left to implication may leave some of the finer details a bit fuzzy, and I think there is a need for clarification in regards to what is meant when Daniel describes Charlie as a good boy. I conflate this to mean that he doesn't act out in a manner that is public or do things to earn the reprimand of others, but the phrase itself is too vague to understand what Daniel means contextually. I could also easily understand it to be an expression of denial (Charlie wouldn't do that, he's a good boy), or sort of a voice of approval (he goes out and does things, he's a good boy), and this evidently confused >>horizon.
The big theme that ties everything together is willful ignorance, which is a bit muddled by the recurrent phrase of "failing to understand things" which can be parsed to mean something significantly different. Daniel doesn't suspect Charlie because he deliberately goes out of his way to avoid knowing things that would lead him to suspect Charlie. It's not for failure of understanding (although it is a useful implication that the Petersons are below average intelligence), like the first paragraph seems to imply, and I tend to think that the phrase was crafted before the author really had a solidified idea of how the proceeding scenes would be constructed.
This is where my suspension of disbelief remains intact while >>horizon's falters: because Daniel has gone through such lengths to avoid learning any of Charlie's actual activities (whether his powers can affect humans, what he does in his spare time, or really anything meaningful about Charlie), it's apparent that Daniel doesn't poke his nose in things or question anything related to Charlie, and unless it's right in front of his own eyes, he's not going to acknowledge it. The story in the paper is so obvious to us, the reader, but Daniel has only a few instances over the course of 17 years; he's gone through lengths to ignore anything that happened to crop up and rationalize to himself that Charlie is a good boy. So it's no surprise that a suspicious killing in a nearby neighborhood (i.e. not his neighborhood) doesn't turn his sights to Charlie.
But anyways, I liked this, which is a death sentence for any story. Sorry.
Going to quickly answer horizon's questions to the best of my ability.
I mean, what's the point here?
The story is a metaphor for sociopathy. >>No_Raisin correctly had an intuitive sense about the relative unimportance of Charlie's supernatural ability; the point is that Charlie has a "condition" that his parents feel they are fearful of, but helpless to do anything about and refuse to address. The point of the supernatural ability is merely to create a literal manifestation of these issues inherent to raising a child suffering from sociopathy that can be illustrated to the reader. The real issue is predicated on the father's constant willingness to ignore his son's conduct and refusal to rein him in. Hence the title, "Son the Father" as Charlie is essentially his own parent.
The main character is a serial killer?
Charlie is not the main character. He is the character around which the plot focuses, but the main character is actually his father.
Why are we reading about it, though? What point is this making?
The thing that you're supposed to draw from those scenes is the consequences of Charlie's father's constant willful ignorance and refusal to rein in his son. You're seeing how Charlie develops and moves from merely ripping the legs off of spiders, to mutilating small animals, to finally the implication that he's killing people. Every time Charlie's father has the opportunity to intervene, he chooses not to.
I think this does at least nod in that direction with the first scene's foreshadowing about the atomic bomb
This confused me a bit too. I understood it at first as a "born under a bad omen" sort of statement, but I actually think it's meant to be read a bit deeper than that, in that Charlie's birth signals the death of others. Might be a bit too deep of a read, though.
So, this story is at the top of my slate. There are some clunky turns of phrase and this could have used probably another drafting process to make sure every line hit, but the prose is by and large punchy, effective, and respects the reader's intelligence by not spelling out every detail or becoming overindulgent in its own artistry. Which means it will get sixth place, and I'll be the only person who actually likes it. Tough break, author.
What is left to implication may leave some of the finer details a bit fuzzy, and I think there is a need for clarification in regards to what is meant when Daniel describes Charlie as a good boy. I conflate this to mean that he doesn't act out in a manner that is public or do things to earn the reprimand of others, but the phrase itself is too vague to understand what Daniel means contextually. I could also easily understand it to be an expression of denial (Charlie wouldn't do that, he's a good boy), or sort of a voice of approval (he goes out and does things, he's a good boy), and this evidently confused >>horizon.
The big theme that ties everything together is willful ignorance, which is a bit muddled by the recurrent phrase of "failing to understand things" which can be parsed to mean something significantly different. Daniel doesn't suspect Charlie because he deliberately goes out of his way to avoid knowing things that would lead him to suspect Charlie. It's not for failure of understanding (although it is a useful implication that the Petersons are below average intelligence), like the first paragraph seems to imply, and I tend to think that the phrase was crafted before the author really had a solidified idea of how the proceeding scenes would be constructed.
This is where my suspension of disbelief remains intact while >>horizon's falters: because Daniel has gone through such lengths to avoid learning any of Charlie's actual activities (whether his powers can affect humans, what he does in his spare time, or really anything meaningful about Charlie), it's apparent that Daniel doesn't poke his nose in things or question anything related to Charlie, and unless it's right in front of his own eyes, he's not going to acknowledge it. The story in the paper is so obvious to us, the reader, but Daniel has only a few instances over the course of 17 years; he's gone through lengths to ignore anything that happened to crop up and rationalize to himself that Charlie is a good boy. So it's no surprise that a suspicious killing in a nearby neighborhood (i.e. not his neighborhood) doesn't turn his sights to Charlie.
But anyways, I liked this, which is a death sentence for any story. Sorry.
I'm going to split with >>horizon on this story, and subsequently, Son the Father, so apologies, Author(s), but you're going to have two people telling you pretty much completely opposite things.
The phrase that comes to mind when I think of this entry, and to a lesser extent, In the Melted Eye of the Beholder (which I have many of the same problems with that story as I do this one) is "emotionally overwrought." This piece suffers more than In the Melted Eye of the Beholder because of the in media res style that requires backtracking multiple times to establish the significance of the situation, and the emotional weight the actions have for the characters. But even more than that, I believe that the story itself can't sustain the emotional weight that it seeks to impart to the reader.
While I believe the nonlinear story-telling is undesirable for the purposes of reading comprehension, I don't think that the style choice is the story's main problem, nor is it inherently a wrong decision for the author to make. Indeed, I think with a little more sprinkling of information earlier in the story, it could actually be to the author's benefit to adapt this style. The biggest issue, however, comes from the lack of emotional context to support the heavy weight of the character interactions.
This is problem that is often inherent to the mini-fic format. In a longer form story, this would be the ending scene, a culmination of events resulting in a cathartic payoff where the protagonist sheds the last of her shackles of her previous life and finally enters into her new one. We've had the context of the journey, and we the readers can understand that our protagonist has gone through a lot to get to this moment. While the story is told in abstractions, we can understand the weight that the choice has to her.
By contrast, in this story, the real emotional weight of the decision is an informed trait told through dialogue that is presented after the decision is already made. This is a deal-breaker for me. The reader cannot understand the weight of Kristin's or Catherine's decisions or perspectives on the painting until it is already up in flames, and the reader can only be informed of its significance by the characters expositing that it's important. There is no weight to that.
Dialogue is mostly utilitarian. Functional. Lot of exposition. The points where the characters are given some room to emote are full of "stock phrases", of particular note the "if he ever comes by here..." line which I can't help but imagine being accompanied by a stereotypical wringing of the hands / balled fist shaking.
The prose is the crutch that holds this story together. Without some of the more lavish and lovingly crafted phrases, this piece would unfortunately probably crumble under its own weight. I think a more definitive focus on "fire" and "burning" imagery would be useful upon revision, and I appreciate the theme that the author tries to bring in with it. For the record, though, I'm with >>No_Raisin on the phoenix from the ash reincorporation.
I'm also going to split the difference between >>horizon and >>No_Raisin when it comes to the nudity. Yes, it is a meaningful detail in the story, and it needs to be in there, but I feel similar to Raisin's intuition that it is deliberately framed in an exploitative way. The author is trying to have his (cheese)cake and eat it too, and it is tonally distracting from the piece as a whole. The tone as a whole is sort of split between stereotypical romance and a more serious introspective navel gazing, which doesn't mesh together terribly, but also seems to be a poorly textured pastiche in some areas. I tend to assume that the author is more familiar with writing in the former style than the latter, and simply reverted back to form when trying to write certain segments.
I can't say that this evoked much from me.
The phrase that comes to mind when I think of this entry, and to a lesser extent, In the Melted Eye of the Beholder (which I have many of the same problems with that story as I do this one) is "emotionally overwrought." This piece suffers more than In the Melted Eye of the Beholder because of the in media res style that requires backtracking multiple times to establish the significance of the situation, and the emotional weight the actions have for the characters. But even more than that, I believe that the story itself can't sustain the emotional weight that it seeks to impart to the reader.
While I believe the nonlinear story-telling is undesirable for the purposes of reading comprehension, I don't think that the style choice is the story's main problem, nor is it inherently a wrong decision for the author to make. Indeed, I think with a little more sprinkling of information earlier in the story, it could actually be to the author's benefit to adapt this style. The biggest issue, however, comes from the lack of emotional context to support the heavy weight of the character interactions.
This is problem that is often inherent to the mini-fic format. In a longer form story, this would be the ending scene, a culmination of events resulting in a cathartic payoff where the protagonist sheds the last of her shackles of her previous life and finally enters into her new one. We've had the context of the journey, and we the readers can understand that our protagonist has gone through a lot to get to this moment. While the story is told in abstractions, we can understand the weight that the choice has to her.
By contrast, in this story, the real emotional weight of the decision is an informed trait told through dialogue that is presented after the decision is already made. This is a deal-breaker for me. The reader cannot understand the weight of Kristin's or Catherine's decisions or perspectives on the painting until it is already up in flames, and the reader can only be informed of its significance by the characters expositing that it's important. There is no weight to that.
Dialogue is mostly utilitarian. Functional. Lot of exposition. The points where the characters are given some room to emote are full of "stock phrases", of particular note the "if he ever comes by here..." line which I can't help but imagine being accompanied by a stereotypical wringing of the hands / balled fist shaking.
The prose is the crutch that holds this story together. Without some of the more lavish and lovingly crafted phrases, this piece would unfortunately probably crumble under its own weight. I think a more definitive focus on "fire" and "burning" imagery would be useful upon revision, and I appreciate the theme that the author tries to bring in with it. For the record, though, I'm with >>No_Raisin on the phoenix from the ash reincorporation.
I'm also going to split the difference between >>horizon and >>No_Raisin when it comes to the nudity. Yes, it is a meaningful detail in the story, and it needs to be in there, but I feel similar to Raisin's intuition that it is deliberately framed in an exploitative way. The author is trying to have his (cheese)cake and eat it too, and it is tonally distracting from the piece as a whole. The tone as a whole is sort of split between stereotypical romance and a more serious introspective navel gazing, which doesn't mesh together terribly, but also seems to be a poorly textured pastiche in some areas. I tend to assume that the author is more familiar with writing in the former style than the latter, and simply reverted back to form when trying to write certain segments.
I can't say that this evoked much from me.
>>Dubs_Rewatcher
Yes, that is the joke.
Is the joke here meant to be that a Replicant is a different creature than either a clone or a homunculus, and that homeboy is planning on making a third Deborah?
Yes, that is the joke.
The joke about Beelzebub perhaps needs a bit more context to make it clear what is going on in this situation. The whole rule about knowing names giving extra magical power strikes me as a bit strange just on its fact, and the detail itself seems to be completely extraneous to the story itself.
Basically, there's two jokes here:
1. The protagonist doesn't want to fuck a fat, ugly, and also likely crazy chick.
2. The fat, ugly chick summons him instead of Beelzebub
Now I'm not gonna moralize to you and say that rape can't be funny, but I think there's gotta be a little more substance to the joke than simply "I don't want to fuck a fatty." There's an attempt to characterize the protagonist as a pompous womanizer who pretentiously quotes Richard Lovelace so there can be some form of karmic retribution inherent in his predicament, but there's not really enough of it to make it feel that way. You're hitting the wordcount limit on this, and I think part of the issue is that simply too many words are given to establishing the premise, and not enough building on top of what is established.
Although I guess it's worth noting that this sort of premise, with the genders flipped, would not be comedic, and that does smack me a bit of a double-standard. Lonely, obese man summons a hapless (although pompous) woman from another dimension and forces himself on her? Most people wouldn't find that remotely funny. See My Beloved Husband for how this scenario plays out with the genders reversed.
As a result, the end product comes across as pretty one-note and simplistic. Not anything particularly wrong with that, but it does leave the reader wanting for more. I described this story to Monokeras as "a longwinded joke about a guy not wanting to fuck a fat woman", and I feel the story doesn't offer much more beyond that. Building from that premise and providing more of a back-and-forth between the characters outside simply what is established by the setup would give everything a lot more weigh and pace out the overall payoff better.
The thing about comedy stories is that it's risky to predicate the comedy entirely on one joke. It can be done, but it is often safer and more effective to set up one big joke that is peppered with smaller jokes so that even if one joke doesn't hit, you can immediately move on to the next one and hopefully get a laugh. But, the thing about having smaller jokes that may be even more important is that it can be used to simultaneously develop characters.
You'll have one character give a quip, which informs the reader about their character, another character respond in a humorous or otherwise funny manner, and have the initial character respond. A properly executed joke can give the reader new information about the perspective of each character relative to their situation and add color to an otherwise stock joke.
How this could potentially look in this story would be an exchange as follows:
Protagonist confidentially tries to charm the lady with a line that's worked a million times before on other admirers of his, and it's his tried and true method.
Lady responds with complete indifference and is completely dismissive of his charms, perhaps taking something he said metaphorically as literal.
Protagonist grimaces internally and admits "she's too good" or otherwise is both horrified and amazed at her uncanny ability to completely cancel out everything he throws at her.
The biggest missed opportunity here for me is that the characters in this story do not banter in the manner I've described. Mostly, they're used for giving exposition about the situation, which is not particularly interesting to read.
Also you used the phrase "As you know" in dialogue, which should generally be avoided, as it's a very clunky way to deliver exposition. It's a phrase that can take a reader right out of a piece because it's an obvious indicator that the following information is being given for the reader's benefit and is not naturally being discussed within the conversation itself.
But anyways I found this story #relatable because I also don't want to forced to fuck fat chicks.
Basically, there's two jokes here:
1. The protagonist doesn't want to fuck a fat, ugly, and also likely crazy chick.
2. The fat, ugly chick summons him instead of Beelzebub
Now I'm not gonna moralize to you and say that rape can't be funny, but I think there's gotta be a little more substance to the joke than simply "I don't want to fuck a fatty." There's an attempt to characterize the protagonist as a pompous womanizer who pretentiously quotes Richard Lovelace so there can be some form of karmic retribution inherent in his predicament, but there's not really enough of it to make it feel that way. You're hitting the wordcount limit on this, and I think part of the issue is that simply too many words are given to establishing the premise, and not enough building on top of what is established.
Although I guess it's worth noting that this sort of premise, with the genders flipped, would not be comedic, and that does smack me a bit of a double-standard. Lonely, obese man summons a hapless (although pompous) woman from another dimension and forces himself on her? Most people wouldn't find that remotely funny. See My Beloved Husband for how this scenario plays out with the genders reversed.
As a result, the end product comes across as pretty one-note and simplistic. Not anything particularly wrong with that, but it does leave the reader wanting for more. I described this story to Monokeras as "a longwinded joke about a guy not wanting to fuck a fat woman", and I feel the story doesn't offer much more beyond that. Building from that premise and providing more of a back-and-forth between the characters outside simply what is established by the setup would give everything a lot more weigh and pace out the overall payoff better.
The thing about comedy stories is that it's risky to predicate the comedy entirely on one joke. It can be done, but it is often safer and more effective to set up one big joke that is peppered with smaller jokes so that even if one joke doesn't hit, you can immediately move on to the next one and hopefully get a laugh. But, the thing about having smaller jokes that may be even more important is that it can be used to simultaneously develop characters.
You'll have one character give a quip, which informs the reader about their character, another character respond in a humorous or otherwise funny manner, and have the initial character respond. A properly executed joke can give the reader new information about the perspective of each character relative to their situation and add color to an otherwise stock joke.
How this could potentially look in this story would be an exchange as follows:
Protagonist confidentially tries to charm the lady with a line that's worked a million times before on other admirers of his, and it's his tried and true method.
Lady responds with complete indifference and is completely dismissive of his charms, perhaps taking something he said metaphorically as literal.
Protagonist grimaces internally and admits "she's too good" or otherwise is both horrified and amazed at her uncanny ability to completely cancel out everything he throws at her.
The biggest missed opportunity here for me is that the characters in this story do not banter in the manner I've described. Mostly, they're used for giving exposition about the situation, which is not particularly interesting to read.
Also you used the phrase "As you know" in dialogue, which should generally be avoided, as it's a very clunky way to deliver exposition. It's a phrase that can take a reader right out of a piece because it's an obvious indicator that the following information is being given for the reader's benefit and is not naturally being discussed within the conversation itself.
But anyways I found this story #relatable because I also don't want to forced to fuck fat chicks.
Edgy.
I could go on a more in-depth critique on this, but it would be a merely be a more long-winded exercise in explaining two basic points:
1. The "twist" or "reveal" or whatever you would like the coin the abrupt tone shift is far too obvious to the reader in the setup, and something fails to be shocking when it's expected.
2. It doesn't lean into being either a dark comedy or a horror to be squarely in either genre, and therefore doesn't really have any solid sense of tone, nor can the reader derive anything meaningful about the situation outside it simply being a series of events.
I could go on a more in-depth critique on this, but it would be a merely be a more long-winded exercise in explaining two basic points:
1. The "twist" or "reveal" or whatever you would like the coin the abrupt tone shift is far too obvious to the reader in the setup, and something fails to be shocking when it's expected.
2. It doesn't lean into being either a dark comedy or a horror to be squarely in either genre, and therefore doesn't really have any solid sense of tone, nor can the reader derive anything meaningful about the situation outside it simply being a series of events.
>>AndrewRogue
I'd like to echo this criticism and also advise that you avoid gender ambiguous names like "Mica" because it only creates more confusion as to who is who within the story.
I'd like to echo this criticism and also advise that you avoid gender ambiguous names like "Mica" because it only creates more confusion as to who is who within the story.
Paging WIP