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I'm glad the writing portion doesn't start until next week. I'm swamped with class work the next few days and in National Pony Writing Month, so getting a little time and guidance via the drawings is a welcome situation.
A rare case where I actually like all of the prompts suggested. Yes, even "(I Freaked It)".
In Soviet Nirvana, Buddha fantasizes you!
Well, anyway... You made a square document, dialed up a red, and hit fill. Your rank on my slate will be commensurate with the effort you took to create this. Thanks for contributing!
Well, anyway... You made a square document, dialed up a red, and hit fill. Your rank on my slate will be commensurate with the effort you took to create this. Thanks for contributing!
I expected a low-effort piece or two for this round, but I didn't think there would be the visual equivalent of the aristocrats joke without the punchline. I have to say right now that this is one of the most vulgar and pointlessly grotesque works of art that I've seen in at least the past year. Not since The Emoji Movie has there been a work of art so dedicated to nihilism, and much like with that movie I find myself physically repulsed to the point of either crying or puking my guts out. I don't understand the point of taking a scandalous photo (long thought to be lost) from the '80s of current American President Donald Trump in a wig and high heels, on his knees and in the process of giving a truck driver (who looks a lot like my uncle) a blowjob while simultaneously shoving his pinky finger into the truck driver's puckered anus. Not only did you have the lack of integrity to use a photo that you yourself had taken, but you decided in your no-doubt inebriated state of mind to put a red filter over the picture to give it the vague air of artistic value. Well that's not gonna work with me, Sir, and I think you ought to apologize to anyone who has the severe misfortune of gazing upon this disgusting piece of non-art.
Also, fuck Tom Brady.
Also, fuck Tom Brady.
Abstract, but this quickly gave me a few ideas. I like the asymmetry of it. Might be my favorite of the bunch. Yeah, I can't come up with a joke right now.
Drawing naked people, as it turns out, is very hard. It's almost like there's a whole subset of art dedicated to capturing the nude human form in painting or sculpture or what have you. This is an admirable effort, although it does get kind of shaky in the bottom half. Got an idea or two from this one. I like it.
I doubt you somehow found the world's blackest and least reflective material to take this photo in front of, so I'm assuming you did some very clean photo editing work to put this one together. It looks really good, and the piece as a whole is composed nicely. I do admit though, I had to glance back at the title before I understood what it meant.
Thanks for submitting!
Thanks for submitting!
Okay, the first time I saw this joke back in the previous R-rated round, I chuckled. This time, I'm amused. I think I'll probably get tired of it by the third time I see it. But for now, it earned an eyeroll out of me, so I guess it did its job.
Thanks for entering!
Thanks for entering!
The linework here is straight-up gorgeous. Really love the amount of detail, and the overall design of the facial features being a mix of distinctly human and distinctly in-human. I'm a little confused about the overall composition (Why the tilt? Is this some kind of tombstone?), but that doesn't detract from how much I enjoyed the art itself.
Thank you for arting!
Thank you for arting!
I really like the feeling of this one, and how it evokes feelings of all manner of gunshots and violence with simple, repeated shapes. It's very well-composed, with the reader's attention inevitably drawn to the center—the exact point where the action took place. Really nicely done, overall.
Thank you for submitting!
Thank you for submitting!
Our one and only actually R-rated entry! *Streamers*
This one really does look good at a glance (especially from the thumbnail), but I think some of the details have trouble coalescing when you take a closer look. Like Raisin mentions, there's a bit of some uncanny valley proportions going on, with her hand looking a little small and her legs looking oddly spaced. But I still like the idea of this one, and I do think that the colors feel nice together.
Thanks for submitting!
This one really does look good at a glance (especially from the thumbnail), but I think some of the details have trouble coalescing when you take a closer look. Like Raisin mentions, there's a bit of some uncanny valley proportions going on, with her hand looking a little small and her legs looking oddly spaced. But I still like the idea of this one, and I do think that the colors feel nice together.
Thanks for submitting!
Oh god, I absolutely suck at trying to judge/assess abstract art. Watch me try, though.
This one has an interesting contrast between the flowing, gentle nature of most of the piece and the sharpness of the point in the center.To me, it evokes the idea of like something being drawn together like a pulled blanket, or maybe spreading out like a spray of liquid. It's very striking.
Thank you for entering!
This one has an interesting contrast between the flowing, gentle nature of most of the piece and the sharpness of the point in the center.To me, it evokes the idea of like something being drawn together like a pulled blanket, or maybe spreading out like a spray of liquid. It's very striking.
Thank you for entering!
I think I see where you were going with this, Artist, and I wish you'd gotten all the way there. As it stands, It looks to me as if you're rendering a plaque with a demon's head mounted on it. The line work is detailed and gives a feeling of dimension, a good basis on which to build your rendering and shading.
(Unless you meant this to be a glass demon head or something. If so, you still need to do more to sell the viewer on the idea.)
Anyway, despite its incompleteness, this is still an upper tier effort. Thanks for creating it, Artist!
(Unless you meant this to be a glass demon head or something. If so, you still need to do more to sell the viewer on the idea.)
Anyway, despite its incompleteness, this is still an upper tier effort. Thanks for creating it, Artist!
Someone's cherry got busted hard. Forceful and evocative. There will be a challenge involved for any writers who choose to take a non-obvious interpretation of it.
An enchanting exploration of negative space.
Good job getting away with this one.
<snrk>
Good job getting away with this one.
<snrk>
Good on you, Artist, for attempting a human figure. The toning and the torso are decent; the right arm is way too small. Also, you can achieve more realistic dimensional bulges on human forms by not drawing a full line of separation. Partial lines where the buttocks meet the legs would look more natural.
Points for concept. I encourage you to practice human proportions; this knowledge is what you need to make a piece like this 'something more.'
Points for concept. I encourage you to practice human proportions; this knowledge is what you need to make a piece like this 'something more.'
>>No_Raisin
>>Bachiavellian
>>GroaningGreyAgony
Thanks for gold!
Legit the only reason this was crooked is because I didn’t want to make the devil any smaller.
Also, I kind of liked just the line art as it was, but I can wholeheartedly see how you want more meat to the picture. ;3
>>Bachiavellian
>>GroaningGreyAgony
Thanks for gold!
Legit the only reason this was crooked is because I didn’t want to make the devil any smaller.
Also, I kind of liked just the line art as it was, but I can wholeheartedly see how you want more meat to the picture. ;3
>>No_Raisin
>>Bachiavellian
>>GroaningGreyAgony
When I first started this piece, I was just messing around with the brush and had a great idea.
I put a lot more time into this picture than you might think because I fucked up the red dots and their angles so many times. I’m still not completely happy with it, but I’m not going back and fixing it again any time soon lol.
>>Bachiavellian
>>GroaningGreyAgony
When I first started this piece, I was just messing around with the brush and had a great idea.
I put a lot more time into this picture than you might think because I fucked up the red dots and their angles so many times. I’m still not completely happy with it, but I’m not going back and fixing it again any time soon lol.
Retro: The Butt, the Whole Butt, and Nothing But the Butt
Okay, so this one's got a little bit of a funny story. Originally, I had planned on having her wear a pair of rolled-down overalls, to reinforce that gritty mechanic vibe. But I ended up only having about a night and a half worth of drawing time, so after I kinda sketched her silhouette, I kinda realized I didn't have the time to design and draw the toolbelt and overalls I had in mind. And I just said "screw it, she'll be naked."
For the linework, I basically stared at every drawing and photograph of people's backs that I could find via Google images. Interestingly, I sketched her head and her torso separately, with several options for her head position. I ended up choosing this one, mostly because I didn't need to show her eyes.
For the colors, I tried something new and played around with Krita's blending/blurring tools. Did the skin tones, grease smears, hair, and blue glow like that. Decently satisfied with how they came out, for a first try.
>>Anon Y Mous
Yes, butt. :P
>>No_Raisin
Yeah, I should pay more attention to proportions next time. Interestingly, I looked up a LOT of proportion references for her facial features (and my pencil-on-paper sketches have reference lines for her eyes/nose/ears/etc), but I guess I didn't need to pay as much attention to her legs. My mistake. :P
>>GroaningGreyAgony
Yeah, now looking at it, this is pretty obvious. Hindsight is 20/20. (Pun completely intended)
Thanks for your feedback on what does and doesn't work. It's surprisingly easy to miss really obvious things when you've spent a lot of time focused on minutia.
Thanks for the silver!
I have to say, I'm having a lot of fun learning how to art. Thanks for being a place where I can barf these things out at ya'll. :P
Okay, so this one's got a little bit of a funny story. Originally, I had planned on having her wear a pair of rolled-down overalls, to reinforce that gritty mechanic vibe. But I ended up only having about a night and a half worth of drawing time, so after I kinda sketched her silhouette, I kinda realized I didn't have the time to design and draw the toolbelt and overalls I had in mind. And I just said "screw it, she'll be naked."
For the linework, I basically stared at every drawing and photograph of people's backs that I could find via Google images. Interestingly, I sketched her head and her torso separately, with several options for her head position. I ended up choosing this one, mostly because I didn't need to show her eyes.
For the colors, I tried something new and played around with Krita's blending/blurring tools. Did the skin tones, grease smears, hair, and blue glow like that. Decently satisfied with how they came out, for a first try.
>>Anon Y Mous
Yes, butt. :P
>>No_Raisin
Yeah, I should pay more attention to proportions next time. Interestingly, I looked up a LOT of proportion references for her facial features (and my pencil-on-paper sketches have reference lines for her eyes/nose/ears/etc), but I guess I didn't need to pay as much attention to her legs. My mistake. :P
>>GroaningGreyAgony
Partial lines where the buttocks meet the legs would look more natural.
Yeah, now looking at it, this is pretty obvious. Hindsight is 20/20. (Pun completely intended)
Thanks for your feedback on what does and doesn't work. It's surprisingly easy to miss really obvious things when you've spent a lot of time focused on minutia.
Thanks for the silver!
I have to say, I'm having a lot of fun learning how to art. Thanks for being a place where I can barf these things out at ya'll. :P
There's Always One
Thanks for the bronze!
There's a saying, "In most relationships, there's one that loves and one that lets themself be loved." This pic hints at such power dynamics. Thanks to my partner for giving me a hand.
The background is a black mat that was provided with my book scanner. I darkened it more in editing.
Thanks for the bronze!
There's a saying, "In most relationships, there's one that loves and one that lets themself be loved." This pic hints at such power dynamics. Thanks to my partner for giving me a hand.
The background is a black mat that was provided with my book scanner. I darkened it more in editing.
I like the idea here:
But the format of a newspaper article doesn't quite work for me. I mean, all the reporter has to do to remember the girl's name is scroll up a couple paragraphs. Maybe intersperse sections of the article with scenes from the reporter's POV: getting the assignment, out talking to the people involved, trying to write the article. That way, you can have the fading effect take place during the writing process and end with the reporter staring at a blank screen or something as the whole incident fades away into nothingness.
Mike
But the format of a newspaper article doesn't quite work for me. I mean, all the reporter has to do to remember the girl's name is scroll up a couple paragraphs. Maybe intersperse sections of the article with scenes from the reporter's POV: getting the assignment, out talking to the people involved, trying to write the article. That way, you can have the fading effect take place during the writing process and end with the reporter staring at a blank screen or something as the whole incident fades away into nothingness.
Mike
I find myself:
With lots of questions, author. They're mostly about the setting, though, so I'd suggest having the whole story take place inside Chersal's ship rather than in a cave as it does now. I need to see what this alien society is like; otherwise, the ending with its promise of disrupting that society doesn't really have much of an impact. This would also give Chersal a chance to get out and move around the ship while things are gestating so we can get a better idea of what she looks like.
Mike
With lots of questions, author. They're mostly about the setting, though, so I'd suggest having the whole story take place inside Chersal's ship rather than in a cave as it does now. I need to see what this alien society is like; otherwise, the ending with its promise of disrupting that society doesn't really have much of an impact. This would also give Chersal a chance to get out and move around the ship while things are gestating so we can get a better idea of what she looks like.
Mike
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTvrF_YRw4U
I really like the tone of this world, where demonic encounters are a thing that procedural law enforcement folks look into. The little bit about all the supernatural items the group has gathered was also a fun little aside.
I think I'm having just a little trouble with two things here; your prose and your tone.
Starting with the former, there's definitely nothing inherently offensive about the text itself, but I do need to note that the whole thing feels a little exhausting to read. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that dialogue easily makes up the vast majority of your wordcount. When you have this much speech, it's easy for the reading experience to slip into talking heads territory, and it can start going right over the reader's head. So I think my suggestion would be to give your framing device a little love, and use it more frequently to break up the longer stretches of dialogue.
As for the tone, this was honestly kind of confusing to me to read. Three major elements here seem to have conflicting tones, which makes it kind of hard for me to give this peice sense of identity. The first is the event that happened, the second is how the event is described, and the third is the punchline.
The event itself is, well, pretty darn ridiculous, when you sit and think about a demon consuming someone ass-first via the tongue, and then inheriting his glorious mustache. The first bit of conflict comes from the fact that despite how ridiculous this is, Ms. Trammel seems to try to describe it in a horrific/grotesque way. So immediately, our sense of amusement is kind of squashed, since we're being told that we're supposed to be disgusted by what happened. This retroactively kind of hurts the more amusing bits earlier in the story, with the crazy artifacts and the general irreverent tone. But then, the punchline tells us that everything was ridiculous, after all. It's a bit of a whiplash to have to go back and forth between treating the events comedically and treating them seriously.
So overall, although I definitely like parts of this story, I'm having trouble coalescing them together into a coherent whole, and the dialogue-heavy nature of the piece itself makes it hard for me to get emotionally invested.This has some really neat ideas (and I love the explanation for the mustache from the art), but I think it needs to define itself a little better before it can fully pay off.
Thanks for submitting!
I really like the tone of this world, where demonic encounters are a thing that procedural law enforcement folks look into. The little bit about all the supernatural items the group has gathered was also a fun little aside.
I think I'm having just a little trouble with two things here; your prose and your tone.
Starting with the former, there's definitely nothing inherently offensive about the text itself, but I do need to note that the whole thing feels a little exhausting to read. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that dialogue easily makes up the vast majority of your wordcount. When you have this much speech, it's easy for the reading experience to slip into talking heads territory, and it can start going right over the reader's head. So I think my suggestion would be to give your framing device a little love, and use it more frequently to break up the longer stretches of dialogue.
As for the tone, this was honestly kind of confusing to me to read. Three major elements here seem to have conflicting tones, which makes it kind of hard for me to give this peice sense of identity. The first is the event that happened, the second is how the event is described, and the third is the punchline.
The event itself is, well, pretty darn ridiculous, when you sit and think about a demon consuming someone ass-first via the tongue, and then inheriting his glorious mustache. The first bit of conflict comes from the fact that despite how ridiculous this is, Ms. Trammel seems to try to describe it in a horrific/grotesque way. So immediately, our sense of amusement is kind of squashed, since we're being told that we're supposed to be disgusted by what happened. This retroactively kind of hurts the more amusing bits earlier in the story, with the crazy artifacts and the general irreverent tone. But then, the punchline tells us that everything was ridiculous, after all. It's a bit of a whiplash to have to go back and forth between treating the events comedically and treating them seriously.
So overall, although I definitely like parts of this story, I'm having trouble coalescing them together into a coherent whole, and the dialogue-heavy nature of the piece itself makes it hard for me to get emotionally invested.This has some really neat ideas (and I love the explanation for the mustache from the art), but I think it needs to define itself a little better before it can fully pay off.
Thanks for submitting!
I'm not quite sure:
I understand what's happening here. The guy's fallen in love with the once-a-week prostitute he's hired? Except before he tells her he loves her, he tells her he doesn't want to be more than friends? There's a mention of his wife, too, but even though they're at the guy's house, I don't get any sense of what's happened to her--is she dead or did she leave?--or how long ago it happened. As for Roseanne, she asks if he will stay with her, he says "Always," then she gets up and leaves till next week.
To say that emotions are irrational is one thing, but, well, the old saying holds that fiction is different from non-fiction because fiction has to make sense. Does Roseanne just want the narrator's continued business and doesn't care about anything else? Does the guy want more from her but knows she won't give it so he just keeps paying for whatever he can get?
That's what I've put together from what's here at any rate, but everything's so tamped down, I'm not entirely sure. It was a lot of work for me get even that much, and frankly, the payoff's not wowing me. Probably if I knew more about this guy, I'd care more, but right now, it's all just kind of a frustrating tangle.
Mike
I understand what's happening here. The guy's fallen in love with the once-a-week prostitute he's hired? Except before he tells her he loves her, he tells her he doesn't want to be more than friends? There's a mention of his wife, too, but even though they're at the guy's house, I don't get any sense of what's happened to her--is she dead or did she leave?--or how long ago it happened. As for Roseanne, she asks if he will stay with her, he says "Always," then she gets up and leaves till next week.
To say that emotions are irrational is one thing, but, well, the old saying holds that fiction is different from non-fiction because fiction has to make sense. Does Roseanne just want the narrator's continued business and doesn't care about anything else? Does the guy want more from her but knows she won't give it so he just keeps paying for whatever he can get?
That's what I've put together from what's here at any rate, but everything's so tamped down, I'm not entirely sure. It was a lot of work for me get even that much, and frankly, the payoff's not wowing me. Probably if I knew more about this guy, I'd care more, but right now, it's all just kind of a frustrating tangle.
Mike
The prose of this one reads nicely and brought me from start to finish in one sitting very easily. That;s honestly a deceptively difficult thing to pull off (especially for someone with my abbreviated attention span), so kudos to you!
Overall, I'm gonna have to say that this one didn't quite come together for me, for a number of reasons. These reasons, granted, do sound a little nit-picky, but I do think that they build up together and make it hard for me to feel immersed.
Firstly, I think the whole organic incompatibility thing wasn't quite handled as well as it could have been. You mention the problem, spotlight it for a good stretch of dialogue, and then handwave it away. It really feels like a hanging point, and I almost think it would have been better to ignore the problem of incompatible chemistries altogether. By bringing it up, you invite the point to be scrutinized more closely, and while I might be a little more sensitive to this sort of thing than the average reader (being a bio major), the fact is that there is no life on earth gathers enough energy in order to that operate on the atomic level. And alien life that does so would almost certainly not have a convoluted parasitic/parasitoid life cycle in order to (at cost to itself) find sources organic molecules, break them down to atoms (using energy), and rebuild them into different complex molecules (with even more energy). It'd make a lot more sense to simply find simplier sources of basic elements if that is all they needed to survive.
I'm also having a little bit of trouble with the handwaving that you did to make them speak the same language. This is an element that, to me, particularly feels a bit shoehorned in just to make the plot work. This question is probably harder to leave unaddressed, so personally I think I would have had them both speak some kind of common galactic language. Because having an existing linguistic infrastructure in place (no matter how basic) feels more organic than an alien learning English from scratch just to mock/banter her food for about five minutes before it dies.
Finally, I think I also encountered some difficulty with the general tone/feeling of the story. You chose to tell it from an alien's perspective, but her viewpoint feels remarkably human. She thinks about children, religion, irony, humor, inheritance, and the future in ways pretty much identical with people. This leads to some weird interplay between concepts, which includes a dampening of the very important disgusting/grotesque elements. It also makes it hard to pin down who exactly we're supposed to be primarily empathetic with. Based on the message of the story, it's almost saying as though it's telling us to be empathetic to no one, because the bugs are parasitic monsters who get what's coming to them, and humanity is a bunch of psychopaths who get what's coming to them. In my own personal writing philosophy, I believe that there needs to be at least one character that the reader emphasizes with.
Okay, gosh, sorry for the wall of text.
You're probably thinking right now that I just listed a whole bunch of personal problems/complaints/nitpicks, and I'll be the first to agree. These kinds of things are usually things I try to gloss over, but in this particular case I think they happened to come together in a noteworthy way.
So overall, despite what it seems, I do like the kernel of the core idea here. The idea of a hijacked inheritance or that of deceptive heredity is really cool, but I do think that to make the idea work, you ended up making the lion jump through too many hoops. I would suggest somehow reframing the story to allow it to deliver the information it needs to in a more organic way. The one idea off the top of my head is maybe switching the perspective to 3rd person omnicient and having the victim rant on his own at the unthinking/uncomprehending alien. Just an idea though; I'm sure that there's many different ways to get this piece to the place where it wants to be.
Thanks for submitting!
Overall, I'm gonna have to say that this one didn't quite come together for me, for a number of reasons. These reasons, granted, do sound a little nit-picky, but I do think that they build up together and make it hard for me to feel immersed.
Firstly, I think the whole organic incompatibility thing wasn't quite handled as well as it could have been. You mention the problem, spotlight it for a good stretch of dialogue, and then handwave it away. It really feels like a hanging point, and I almost think it would have been better to ignore the problem of incompatible chemistries altogether. By bringing it up, you invite the point to be scrutinized more closely, and while I might be a little more sensitive to this sort of thing than the average reader (being a bio major), the fact is that there is no life on earth gathers enough energy in order to that operate on the atomic level. And alien life that does so would almost certainly not have a convoluted parasitic/parasitoid life cycle in order to (at cost to itself) find sources organic molecules, break them down to atoms (using energy), and rebuild them into different complex molecules (with even more energy). It'd make a lot more sense to simply find simplier sources of basic elements if that is all they needed to survive.
I'm also having a little bit of trouble with the handwaving that you did to make them speak the same language. This is an element that, to me, particularly feels a bit shoehorned in just to make the plot work. This question is probably harder to leave unaddressed, so personally I think I would have had them both speak some kind of common galactic language. Because having an existing linguistic infrastructure in place (no matter how basic) feels more organic than an alien learning English from scratch just to mock/banter her food for about five minutes before it dies.
Finally, I think I also encountered some difficulty with the general tone/feeling of the story. You chose to tell it from an alien's perspective, but her viewpoint feels remarkably human. She thinks about children, religion, irony, humor, inheritance, and the future in ways pretty much identical with people. This leads to some weird interplay between concepts, which includes a dampening of the very important disgusting/grotesque elements. It also makes it hard to pin down who exactly we're supposed to be primarily empathetic with. Based on the message of the story, it's almost saying as though it's telling us to be empathetic to no one, because the bugs are parasitic monsters who get what's coming to them, and humanity is a bunch of psychopaths who get what's coming to them. In my own personal writing philosophy, I believe that there needs to be at least one character that the reader emphasizes with.
Okay, gosh, sorry for the wall of text.
You're probably thinking right now that I just listed a whole bunch of personal problems/complaints/nitpicks, and I'll be the first to agree. These kinds of things are usually things I try to gloss over, but in this particular case I think they happened to come together in a noteworthy way.
So overall, despite what it seems, I do like the kernel of the core idea here. The idea of a hijacked inheritance or that of deceptive heredity is really cool, but I do think that to make the idea work, you ended up making the lion jump through too many hoops. I would suggest somehow reframing the story to allow it to deliver the information it needs to in a more organic way. The one idea off the top of my head is maybe switching the perspective to 3rd person omnicient and having the victim rant on his own at the unthinking/uncomprehending alien. Just an idea though; I'm sure that there's many different ways to get this piece to the place where it wants to be.
Thanks for submitting!
The little touches really sat well with me, like the all-caps title and starting the news article with the city/state. Overall, I think this is a good execution of the story's gimmick, and it really does give the piece a sense of character and purpose that conventional prose probably couldn't recreate.
Now, I'll have to be honest and say that this sort of deal is usually not my cup of tea. I usually don't really like it when the author's voice/opinions on something bleeds through so clearly and colors the text. That's not to say that I don't agree with you, but it is kind of immersion-breaking for me, and it makes it harder for me to feel emotionally connected.
As for the message itself, it's a good one that addresses how a tragedy like this can simultaneously take over the victim's entire identity while also reducing them to a footnote. It also touches on the perceived increase of violence in schools, which is definitely a relevant topic in the current day. As I mentioned earlier, this is all mostly stuff that all sane people would agree with, which kind of begs to question to me of why this story chooses to address this topic. I can't help but think that there's not much being said here beyond the apparently obvious.
So overall, I think this story is just not going to be for me, personally. I think I'm more sensitive than most when it comes to reading about meta-ish or IRL stories, so for me a lot of this kind of washed over me since I was acutely aware that I was reading a work of fiction. I'm sure the general mileage will vary with other people whose tastes this hews closer to, though.
Thank you for writing!
Now, I'll have to be honest and say that this sort of deal is usually not my cup of tea. I usually don't really like it when the author's voice/opinions on something bleeds through so clearly and colors the text. That's not to say that I don't agree with you, but it is kind of immersion-breaking for me, and it makes it harder for me to feel emotionally connected.
As for the message itself, it's a good one that addresses how a tragedy like this can simultaneously take over the victim's entire identity while also reducing them to a footnote. It also touches on the perceived increase of violence in schools, which is definitely a relevant topic in the current day. As I mentioned earlier, this is all mostly stuff that all sane people would agree with, which kind of begs to question to me of why this story chooses to address this topic. I can't help but think that there's not much being said here beyond the apparently obvious.
So overall, I think this story is just not going to be for me, personally. I think I'm more sensitive than most when it comes to reading about meta-ish or IRL stories, so for me a lot of this kind of washed over me since I was acutely aware that I was reading a work of fiction. I'm sure the general mileage will vary with other people whose tastes this hews closer to, though.
Thank you for writing!
Very nice:
My only suggestion would be to move the first mention of the rifle a lot closer to the beginning, into the first paragraph if you can, author. Get that Chekov's gun thing going in the reader right from the start, and that'll help pull us along through the opening exposition. Nothing like the promise of violence, after all, to keep the interest sparked. :)
Mike
My only suggestion would be to move the first mention of the rifle a lot closer to the beginning, into the first paragraph if you can, author. Get that Chekov's gun thing going in the reader right from the start, and that'll help pull us along through the opening exposition. Nothing like the promise of violence, after all, to keep the interest sparked. :)
Mike
The text here strikes a nice balance between being unobtrusive and still managing to sprinkle in bits of really descriptive imagery. Overall, the reading experience was very pleasant and smooth,
To be honest, though, I think I'm having trouble understanding what the ultimate takeaway is supposed to be, here. To me, the narrator's actions don't really have clear emotional motivations behind them. The fact that he kind of goes back and forth between wanting change and wanting the status quo kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Since he was the one who initiated the interaction with something different (no sex, just talking), the fact that he apparently still expected things to stay emotionally the same seems really odd.
I'm also having difficulty trying to parse out what exactly Roseanne wants from this, outside of a paycheck. The "you know how I feel about this" seems to imply that she doesn't like it when her clients become emotionally attached. But adding the "will you stay with me" bit feels like she's backtracking. I'm just not sure why she'd ask that from him at this point.
So in the end, I think I would like a little more clarity on what exactly our two characters want to get out of this interaction. It's okay for characters to have inner conflict, but since we don't have a very clear idea of why they'd have conflicting emotions, the whole thing comes across like two people who are just very wish-washy about this matter. I personally think that you can risk being a little more telly here for the sake of properly conveying the internal and external conflicts at play.
Thanks for submitting!
To be honest, though, I think I'm having trouble understanding what the ultimate takeaway is supposed to be, here. To me, the narrator's actions don't really have clear emotional motivations behind them. The fact that he kind of goes back and forth between wanting change and wanting the status quo kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Since he was the one who initiated the interaction with something different (no sex, just talking), the fact that he apparently still expected things to stay emotionally the same seems really odd.
I'm also having difficulty trying to parse out what exactly Roseanne wants from this, outside of a paycheck. The "you know how I feel about this" seems to imply that she doesn't like it when her clients become emotionally attached. But adding the "will you stay with me" bit feels like she's backtracking. I'm just not sure why she'd ask that from him at this point.
So in the end, I think I would like a little more clarity on what exactly our two characters want to get out of this interaction. It's okay for characters to have inner conflict, but since we don't have a very clear idea of why they'd have conflicting emotions, the whole thing comes across like two people who are just very wish-washy about this matter. I personally think that you can risk being a little more telly here for the sake of properly conveying the internal and external conflicts at play.
Thanks for submitting!
As a feghoot:
This works quite well, but I'm greedy. I'd like it to work just as well as an actual story. Right now, it's got a loose end that makes it less than satyisfying to me, and that's that we still don't know anything about the demon head when the story finishes. I'd like for Mabbleton's unfortunate end to provide the clue that Trammel needs to solve the mystery of what the artifact actually is. Just make something up--preferably something a little silly--but that bit of closure is all I really need.
Mike
This works quite well, but I'm greedy. I'd like it to work just as well as an actual story. Right now, it's got a loose end that makes it less than satyisfying to me, and that's that we still don't know anything about the demon head when the story finishes. I'd like for Mabbleton's unfortunate end to provide the clue that Trammel needs to solve the mystery of what the artifact actually is. Just make something up--preferably something a little silly--but that bit of closure is all I really need.
Mike
Thanks, >>Bachiavellian:
And the other couple of people involved in the voting.
I had no intention of entering this round, but when I stopped by on the morning of Nov. 14 to see if anyone had entered any stories this time, I saw that the deadline was actually Nov. 15. So I looked at the pictures, got an idea, and spent the day working on and off on this story. It needs a lot more handwaving before it would be ready to submit to any sort of market, and it being kind of icky means I'm not all that inclined to give it the proper attention. But maybe--who knows?
Mike
And the other couple of people involved in the voting.
I had no intention of entering this round, but when I stopped by on the morning of Nov. 14 to see if anyone had entered any stories this time, I saw that the deadline was actually Nov. 15. So I looked at the pictures, got an idea, and spent the day working on and off on this story. It needs a lot more handwaving before it would be ready to submit to any sort of market, and it being kind of icky means I'm not all that inclined to give it the proper attention. But maybe--who knows?
Mike
Thanks for the goldilver, and congrats to GGA and Mike!
Retro: This is Just Gun Porn
Quick retro, cause I'm tired.
So I decided to try to be a little experimental and see if I could get away with writing basically nothing but action. I was overall not entirely satisfied with what I ended up with (I thought it came across as too passive and high-level), but I guess I can't argue with results.
And yes, I am eagerly waiting for the release of Cyberpunk 2077. How could you tell?
>>Baal Bunny
Thanks for leaving a comment! Yeah, I was actually wondering how long I could delay the reveal of the gun without pushing it, so it's funny that you mention it. For some reason, I was kind of afraid that having a gun show up so quickly might turn the reader off. But I guess that I shouldn't have worried about that.
Retro: This is Just Gun Porn
Quick retro, cause I'm tired.
So I decided to try to be a little experimental and see if I could get away with writing basically nothing but action. I was overall not entirely satisfied with what I ended up with (I thought it came across as too passive and high-level), but I guess I can't argue with results.
And yes, I am eagerly waiting for the release of Cyberpunk 2077. How could you tell?
>>Baal Bunny
Thanks for leaving a comment! Yeah, I was actually wondering how long I could delay the reveal of the gun without pushing it, so it's funny that you mention it. For some reason, I was kind of afraid that having a gun show up so quickly might turn the reader off. But I guess that I shouldn't have worried about that.