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Message from the Underground · Original Short Story ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 2000–8000
Show rules for this event
#1 · 6
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The blank page is stained with precision, not by the regiments of letters that call deep thoughts from their abstractions, but with curves that lead the eye to compare what it sees to what it knows: the character of the line calling forth a cloud, a flower, a blade, the look on her face after you said no, the rustling leaves in the treetops after the storm, the wedge of sports car as it misses the curve, the trail left by the crawling baby, the pain of one who almost had it, felt it brushing past the fingers.

Let the scrawlers say what shall be written here.
#2 · 2
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Looks like a pretty good prompt. Can't wait to see what our illustrators can do with it!
#3 · 4
· · >>GroaningGreyAgony
Maybe I could write something for this? The prompt tastes yummy.
#4 · 1
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>>Monokeras
Welcome back! Please do.
#5 ·
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And, to round out our quadrology of stories with flawed endings, we have one where the ending didn't actually happen. That is a pretty big flaw and probably the first thing to be fixed. :p

More seriously though, much like I feel Earthworm probably wanted to dip below the minimum word count, this story probably exceeds the max. And probably by no small amount either. Even accounting for the unwritten portion, there is the bigger problem in that, as it stands, it's way too easy to immediately guess the culprit on nothing more than conservation of characters. It isn't the protagonist, it isn't the trans mermaid woobie, it isn't the "abrasive but really just cares for His People" guy... and that only leaves one other character, who has no other obvious purpose in the narrative and drips offputting racism at every opportunity.

While I say it doesn't need cuts, it also sort of does need cuts, because there's so much extraneous stuff going on here. Building a fantasy world, then crashing that fantasy world with a bunch of earth humans, and also some of those earth humans are monstergirls, and also some of them are in the wrong gender body, let's throw both fantasy racial issues and earth racial issues and trans issues and class issues and fantasy economy issues and also make the crime scene an aquatic D&D adventure for good measure. Why the heck not! (see above for the answer of why not)

Seriously, there is a lot going on in the story and while it is interesting and you manage to get a lot of information out there with real efficiency, it borders on overwhelming. This would probably be be better as an individual episode in a larger story or something, where you don't have to slam all this information down at once.

And to reiterate, this really does need another viable suspect. Even if it's not a true mystery story and more a police procedural, that still requires there be a little more give and take with potential suspects.

And honestly I'm really tired right now and can't focus on giving this a line by line. Check out the Discord if you didn't, because they had some good thoughts. If you're still interested, let me know and I'll put the time in this week.