Tough choices this week.
Aaron: Honestly, still trying to process how I feel about this one. First off all, I dont think you were off from the topic at all, the final line is precisely what I would call asking the right questions. I had problems with the first person present tense business, as it was ascribing actions to me that I would absolutely not do even with a gun to my head and described a life I have never lived. At the same time though, I dont think that you could easily turn this into first or third person without needing to rewrite significant portions of it. I mean sure, you could do a simple pronoun swap out for most of it and keep much of it intact, but despite my dislike of being denied agency in a story that was supposedly about me, I think it would be really boring to hear someone narrate that they or someone else did these things as written. So ironically the only reason it works at all is that its 2nd person. I liked some of the details that were not explicitly spelled out to the reader (the part about living in Boston all year for one day in particular), Ive been reading a lot of efforts (not here) where people are having a tendency to explain everything. Not sure how actually feel about the ending. On the one hand, its a bit of a downer and subverts the underdog makes good story cliché, but on the other hand I dont think there was any alternative pay off. Like we needed to follow the runner to the end and see them arrive at an answer to the question. As it is, its just open ended.
Azih: I think when working with a piece this short about concepts as grandiose as first contact with galactic civilization at large, its probably better to be as minimalistic as possible in the background information, because I dont believe its possible to address adequately and still have enough words left over to tell a story when we only have 2K to work with. In this instance, I felt a little incredulous that aliens broadcasting their intent to all the worlds governments simultaneously would bring the entire world together without at least a few hold outs thinking its a plot of terrestrial governments or the aliens themselves, etc. If that background information hadnt been known and it had just been the architectural student being offered a strange job by the diplomatic mission to the aliens, I think it would have worked just as well. I was hooked waiting to find out what the crazy request that had been made of her was, but honestly I think I was disappointed that it was to build a comedy club for the aliens. That is a pretty bizarre request and all, but the way it was concealed for so long caused me to build up my expectations to the point where I dont know if its possible for it to have been something that I wouldnt have found disappointing. Anyway, have you read Embassytown by China Mieville? If you havent, you totally should, it touches on a similar theme of aliens being addicted to human behavior.
ThLunarian: Im honestly kind of surprised that in the aftermath of the alien attack that theyve gotten their shit together as much as they have. From the descriptions of DC, it sounds like it got as hammered as the Seattle area in the last story, but they have a functional government and law enforcement. I suppose it could always be like the Enclave in Fallout 3 where theyre just declaring that theyre the legitimate government with jurisdiction over the populace and everyone else is a little more incredulous on the matter, but I didnt get that impression. The cops seemed like normal cops, not the sort of totalitarian state police I would have expected in a post-apocalyptic scenario. This actually seemed like a set up to a story that I would be far more interested in reading where a former (possibly some state of undead) president returns from the dead with superpowers to challenge the incumbent in an election. Thatd be fuck awesome, actually, but I wonder how well it would work in the backdrop of an America laid to waste rather than intact society I know I mentioned the comic book thing in the feedback for the last entry, but have you honestly given any consideration to actually writing up a script or manuscript or whatever the hell the proper name of the document for the writing of a comic book is called? You may be able to team up with an artist at some point and get this in visual form.
Mike M: Eh, my format reference was different than the one in the OP (that I somehow overlooked initially), but close enough for jazz. You know, once upon a time, I would have thought this would be easy as pie for me. My first fumbling forays into legitimate writing were a few years ago, writing up comedy sketches for a group effort that never went anywhere (Ive actually gone and rewritten some of them into narratives for past entries). Writing scripts always had an appeal to me because A.) Dialogue is easier for me than descriptive scenes B.) I like to think I have a good sense of comedic timing and delivery, which is way easier to convey in a performance than a written piece. That said, I found that changing gears back to a script was kind of hard for me at first. Im in this weird place where something like the transcript entry I had a few weeks back is easy (absolutely nothing but dialogue and sound cues), and straight narrative is also easy, but a script where its dialogue with stage directions felt
weird. That said, for the first time ever I got to a point in my revision process where I got to a draft that I didnt change anything on. Not that I think its perfect, but its pretty much at the limit of my ability to improve upon.
FlowersisBritish: Welcome to the club, hope my rambling walls of text feedback dont put you off future participation : P Reading a day in the life of someone with severe disability trying to just get by was a bit of a depressing read for me. At first it was just because I have a developmentally challenged nephew who I worry about how hes going to get on in the world, but then it took a turn for me when it was implied that Frankie used to be normal. That changes the frame of reference dramatically, because now were no longer looking in on someone who exists on the fringes of society because of his apparent mental disability, were looking at someone who we could potentially be but for a turn of bad luck with a stroke or traumatic brain injury. That sort of shit is one of my deepest irrational fears (I kind of chalk it all up under a fear of maiming), so that struck a deep nerve. At a macro level, I think the only part that didnt really work for me was him pantomiming eating with a spoon and saying Co, only to have the guy at the counter instantly figure out that he was trying to ask for something cold to eat. Seems like communicating that should have taken a lot more effort, but then again I may just be particularly dense sometimes. I also was expecting there to be some sort of payoff to the welling panic at finding a hole in his shirt, but it seemed like for as preoccupied as he was about it, he forgot it pretty quickly. On a finer grained level, this needed some polish. I still cant quite parse what He turned to whole of the white cement wall is supposed to mean, I saw some typos like new instead of knew (at least twice), and some strangely contradictory descriptions such as tossing something gingerly and describing the hair on someones shaved head.
Tangent: I immediately loved the idea of a little kid detective with a detective kit and rules governing their
detecting. The execution didnt work for me, as the emergency kit seems to have been forgotten almost as soon as it was introduced, and the rules were too front-loaded and immediately overstayed their welcome. The greater spacing between the recitation of the rules that came after the initial flurry was the right pace for them. I thought from the description of the movie that they were watching G-Force, but having never actually seen the movie, I cant be sure, because driving a convertible into space seems pretty out there even for a kids movie (but the absurdity of it combined with the deadpan delivery made me guffaw). Had a few niggling issues with this one. Putting aside whether the plural of Lego is Legos or Lego (Legos is apparently a US-only thing), it shouldnt be all caps unless its an acronym (Which Im pretty sure its not?) Also not sure how they would know what this teacher is like on the last day of school unless they had her before. That isnt outside the realm of possibility (My 4th grade teacher was my 6th grade teacher), but seems like if that were the case it should be mentioned. Also also, beeline. Also also also, I got the impression from the text that the teacher was fairly far along in her pregnancy, a miscarriage at that stage seems like it would require hospitalization (and may also technically be called a still birth). In her position, Im not so sure I would have responded so positively to the kids efforts to make things better, but thats just me. And the main character found it striking that Nobody else failed to notice that the teacher was crying, but it seemed that it should have been that everybody else failed to notice or that nobody else noticed because the way its written the whole class knew.
Cyan: I have to wonder if your gut instinct that putting this in script format wasnt going to harm it somehow, as I think the sort of concepts at play here probably work better in a descriptive narrative. I really, really, really, really like the premise of realities competing for residents in the way that that the states in the US compete amongst themselves, but its a concept so high that it needs a lot of scaffolding to not collapse upon itself and would probably need a considerably longer story than this to fully detail how the rules of such an operation would work. Residents of a given state are at least aware of the existence of other states, whereas we (and the characters in this story) are not currently aware of any other realities. Yet for someone to act as an envoy to recruit more desirable residents, people need to be aware of the other realities. This is not an insurmountable obstacle by any means (perhaps some realities are totalitarian states that withhold the knowledge of the existence of other realities, for instance), but like I said, it needs a lot of room to operate. I found Ulrik to be a curiously awful salesperson in this regard, as he seemed strangely disengaged from the conversation he helped foment, only to come in after they had been talking at length about it and say that they were discussing a tangent that he hadnt intended. If we take it at face value that everything he said was true (as the ending seemed to indicate), then what exactly was he going for? He didnt seem to be particularly interested in recruiting the two guys. His purpose seemed to be limited to raising the specter of (and later confirming) the existence of competing realities and not much else. Also found it weird that he would have the Daily Show with Craig Ferguson still on the air when he went out into a dimension that from all impressions seemed to have some sort of steampunk overtones where the existence of TV at all seems kind of a weird thought.
QuantumBro: I had some problems with this right from the outset. I havent been to a play in ages, but I dont think programs would contain scene descriptions that would include incredibly important details like the police car has no recording equipment. On the flipside, I find it absolutely incomprehensible that the LAPD of all police departments would have police cruisers without dash cams or any other recording equipment given their history. So right from the start, we have a credulity problem. Then Steven does a face plant getting out of his car, and the officer decides to arrest him without administering a field sobriety test. Ive never been pulled over for suspicion of DUI, but Im almost certain that you cant be summarily arrested without failing the test or refusing to take it. Or maybe Im completely wrong and television and movie depictions have filled my heads with naught but lies. Putting aside the legitimacy of the arrest, I dont think the officer in question acted very logically. Steven doesnt have the same last name as the governor, and he has no reason to assume that Steven is telling the truth about not having any alcohol in his system, because then Stevens actions would make literally no sense. He would be out driving around *acting* like hes drunk in the hopes that he could get pulled over, intentionally trip and face plant on the pavement, and then reveal his dastardly scheme about setting up the arresting officer? Whats the end game there? At the very least the officer should have made a few phone calls to verify the story and administer a breathalyzer test. I realize that the lack of the breathalyzer test is kind of integral to Stevens threat, but it just kind of makes the whole set up fatally flawed.
Metaphoreus: This one was kind of an odd read. With a name like Rudy Morduck, it immediately became impossible for me to divorce the pastiche from the target, which just left me scratching my head when the narrative tried to weave the story that seemed to run counter to the reality of Fox News at every turn. I think a lot of the comedic beats and pacing were swallowed whole by thoughts of, But thats not how it happened! running through my mind. Not Fox News floundering in the ratings? Only deciding to turn to appeal to conservatives after 10 years of failure? Glen Beck had a TV show that was somewhere else? Is this supposed to exist in a world where Fox News also exists? But Morduck has access to Sean Hannity, who has a show on Fox News? Its like Schrodingers News Network, where Fox News simultaneously does and does not exist in the same universe as this fictional, unnamed station. I was also a little confused by Thompsons role in all this. Hes the news anchor, but does he also have producer credit for his show as well? Thats me speaking from ignorance of how much influence the anchor wields over a news broadcast, but Im pretty sure that being responsible for the website is entirely outside of his purview, which just made an already weird conversation even weirder for me. On a technical level, I dont think its correct to refer to character names in all caps in the dialogue. The whole point of the all caps is to make it easier for an actor to spot their lines and stage actions easier, seems like doing it in the dialogue of others would defeat that purpose. Nice call out to video game message board forums though : )
Charade: My first thought while reading this was that there were too many italicized emphasis words. Try reading those aloud, it seems really strange and unnatural to be stressing words so frequently, and not all of the ones that are stressed are necessarily the part of speech that would make it sound very natural to me. This was exacerbated by the internal thoughts also using italicized words too, because by the time we got to the spoken dialogue with the stressed words, wed already been conditioned to several internal thoughts, and it made my brain skip the track a bit to recalibrate. I mostly liked the brief glimpses of world building, though Im of the opinion that the bits about ancestors, lost technology, and space travel didnt really add anything to the story and was a bit muddling. Oppressive totalitarian governments work just as well on the ground without the extraneous fluff : ) The fact that the guy was her son was a genuine twist I didnt see coming, and once the purpose of his visit became clear (well, we knew he was going to kill her for some reason, but not that reason), it did a lot to crystallize this character in my mind as a ruthless, cold-blooded, son of a bitch. Im not entirely sure how she was an obstacle if he was an orphan and she was stricken from all records, though. I think instead of talking about lost ancestors and technology, we could have used a line along the lines of how if he could find her and his parentage, than anyone could, and he would need to complete what his father started, blah blah blah. Seems like it would be a simple thing to tie a knot on.
Votes:
1.) Cyan
2.) Aaron
3.) Charade