Winter 2013 Short Story Contest!

[Jenrak]

I'm against it as well, if only because we've already had an extension, and it wouldn't be very fair to those who have already punched out a story for this deadline.

[Anollasia]

I'm sorry I don't think I can write a story...I just can't...

[Nazi Flower Power]

Entries are closed. I'll try to post judgements sooner rather than later.

[Forsher]

Seven entries so far, eh?
At least I'm now a lot less likely to come in last than I was four entries ago. Hooray for statistics!

The lack of confidence in this thread is really something. I hope you people are just being too hard on yourselves and I won't have to read a bunch of schlock.

1 more day before entries are closed. If anyone else wants to enter, you better get crackin'!

You'll either love mine (my typical assessment) or loathe it (apparently the judges, but they really didn't seem to "get" the Roland one on a cultural level, which was unfortunate).

Crap. I would have signed up, but the chances of me getting something decent written up before the deadline is slim.

Same here as well. Pity there wasn't a longer deadline .

I think it was because we allowed the thread to fall behind the first page. It's been around for a while. Don't worry, I'm sure there will be an autumn edition (except, maybe not, things have been erratic as NFP said). Wait, this is the winter version... make that spring (damn backwards Northern hemisphere).

What I am saying is: even though the deadline's over keep working and compete in the next one using an already written story (just don't submit anywhere else or you'll violate the rules). It's what I'd do.

And damn, I've noticed three basic grammatical and spelling errors... I reminded myself why I liked this one though.

[Nazi Flower Power]

I think it was because we allowed the thread to fall behind the first page. It's been around for a while. Don't worry, I'm sure there will be an autumn edition (except, maybe not, things have been erratic as NFP said). Wait, this is the winter version... make that spring (damn backwards Northern hemisphere).

Who are you calling backwards? The North is awesome!

Anyway, since I am done with yours and you are here, I will go ahead and post this...

StellarGate - Familiar Souls, Unfamiliar Territory

Characters: 8/25

They need a lot more personality to pull off this type of story. Since there is not much action, good character development is absolutely essential, and it’s just not here. The characters need some flaws or quirks to give them depth. Kara and Francis are too idealized. There isn’t enough warmth in their dialog when they are together, particularly the conversation when she visits his ship for the first time. There is some improvement in this toward the end of the story.

There is also too much infodumping in the dialog. The conversation where Kara and her crew are admiring the new ships feels forced, and I don’t think people would really talk like that in that situation.

The telepathy adds nothing to the story and really doesn’t need to be there.

Plot: 20/25

It’s not a bad plot. I do have one beef with it, though. If Kara is human and Francis is not, then why are they dating? I know sex is not always about reproduction, but wouldn’t pheromones be different from one race to the next? Wouldn’t physiological difference be a problem?

Setting: 2/15

In a different story, this setting might be fine. In this story, it is hurting you. You need to spend less time on irrelevant background. The Reconzi don’t belong there. You gave too much irrelevant information about the navies and Cresian culture, and I didn’t find the Cresians especially appealing or interesting.

Creativity: 10/15

It doesn’t stand out as brilliantly original, but it wasn’t an obvious knock-off of anything either.

Style: 6/15

Pacing is the biggest reason you lost points here. I could understand what you were saying; it just didn’t flow that well.

Grammar and Spelling: 3/5

Run on sentences are not your friends; let me introduce you to semicolons. There are a few other miscellaneous errors, and this sentence is pretty much a train wreck:

The Terran Navy had accepted as a sort of friendly gesture, it would of taken a few weeks, but the Terran Navy had the ships, it would of taken time.

Overall Score: 49/100




Forsher - Very Definitely Evil

Characters: 17/25

They’re amusingly warped. George is especially good. I don’t have as strong of a feel for the others’ personalities.

Plot: 3/25

Sorry, but it’s really hard to tell what is going on, and there’s not much of a story arc.

Setting: 7/15

I don’t really have a good feel for where George is based, but the stuff about other worlds works.

Creativity: 14/15

Very definitely unique.

Style: 7/15

I love the feeling you put into it and the sense of humor, but you jump around too much from one thing to another and it comes out very disjointed. You need to slow down and explain things a little more.

Grammar and Spelling: 3/5

There are some problems. This was especially ungrammatical and confusing:

"How do you know they actually went there?" Sarah Wells, apprentice extraordinaire. Short or tall, depended on the company, but really 1.65 so kind of average and ready to take on the world. Or, at least, those parts that were relevant to Evil Wizarding.

Overall Score: 51/100

[Forsher]

Forsher - Very Definitely Evil

For a moment I was horrified, then I remembered that I'd called it that.

Characters: 17/25

They’re amusingly warped. George is especially good. I don’t have as strong of a feel for the others’ personalities.

Plot: 3/25

Sorry, but it’s really hard to tell what is going on, and there’s not much of a story arc.

Setting: 7/15

I don’t really have a good feel for where George is based, but the stuff about other worlds works.

Creativity: 14/15

Very definitely unique.

Style: 7/15

I love the feeling you put into it and the sense of humor, but you jump around too much from one thing to another and it comes out very disjointed. You need to slow down and explain things a little more.

Grammar and Spelling: 3/5

There are some problems. This was especially ungrammatical and confusing:

"How do you know they actually went there?" Sarah Wells, apprentice extraordinaire. Short or tall, depended on the company, but really 1.65 so kind of average and ready to take on the world. Or, at least, those parts that were relevant to Evil Wizarding.

Overall Score: 51/100

I'm not surprised on the plot or grammar and spelling fronts (for the latter, I would've been had I not just re-read some of it). Loved the way the comments were written too.

[Unitaristic Regions]

Sorry, didn't work. I'll be very sure to join next time though. If I don't notice it four days before deadline... Again...

[Jenrak]

Hey guys, I got the first batch looked at and marked! I'll get to the next batch tomorrow! Great stuff!

---

Familiar Souls, Unfamiliar Territory, by StellarGate

Characters: They don’t feel so much as characters, and rather more like meaty plots of exposition and description. One particular line encapsulated my concern: where you just described Kara as a telepath that move objects in a very nonplussed manner. It didn’t come off as very natural – it had a ‘oh, and she’s a telepath’ vibe. It might have been better to had her move something, perhaps have Francis mention something related to the skill itself (perhaps something like ‘I wish I could do that’), and then you can introduce meatier character background and motivation through the conversation that follows.

But one of my main concerns is in the progression of these characters as they deal with normal human interaction and revelation. You never feel the weight of Kara’s words as she’s coming to the realisation that the captain is an old Middle School friend.

Likewise, when Francis is describing the attack on the pirates, he describes it with such nonchalance, rather than the triumph and vigour that he should have, as it seemed to have defined the start of his career. Their initial exchange was too short, too hollow, and too systematic. It went too cleanly from point A to point B, bereft of any considerable messy human interaction as characters would invariably need to rejig their understanding of each other in the wake of the information. I’m not sure if a hug would really suffice. - 20/25

Plot: I’m a bit leery about the plot. It’s a problem of considerably faulty execution. I admit, I wasn’t entirely sure where the plot was going in the first half, and hoping it wrapped up nicely in the second one. By mid-plot, I was already deducing that either it was going to end off in a romance, or it was going to end off in a heroic sacrifice on Francis’ part to save Kara’s life. It was just too convenient and too disparate to neatly tie back together in any seamless fashion.

The transition from friend to lovers don’t mesh very well together. Ultimately, I understand that the ending is really the establishment of a nascent stage in a blossoming romantic connection, but the issue lies in that Kara seems too eager and too quick to adopt to this man despite him being nothing other than a childhood friend. It’s very recollective of older fiction, but also has a very fanfictiony vibe, in that everything comes too swiftly, too conveniently, and too easily for all of the characters involved. It might have been better to have the ending be where Kara considers it, thinks about it, but ultimately chooses not to do so. Perhaps you might have benefited from having a trinket of some sort that she can return to him at the end, signifying the transition from Middle School friends to something larger, more adult.

You may also benefit from an ‘interrogation’ on her behalf, asking Francis what it is about her that he likes, and why he would want to date her – doing so puts a dominant role on Kara, more firmly establishing her as a more independent person in her own right, not just a woman who conveniently attempts to be independent, but too readily runs into the arms of a man she finds the slightest comfort in. Additionally, it allows Francis to glean more from his own life in an attempt to answer the question, and lets you as the writer to consider whether such a boyish fantasy would be worth pursuing any further. 20/25

Setting: There’s definitely a lot of setup about the characters. Kara’s background is revealed quite bluntly, from her physical description to the pressures of her more famous mother, to the command post she was gifted.

It’s definitely something that isn’t lacking on details, certainly, but the flow upon these details are given aren’t something that flows very naturally. For instance, we don’t need to know that she’s tall and beautiful unless tall and beautiful served a purpose to the plot or the characterization; it insinuated that Kara was pretty, and yet didn’t use that beauty in her favour, noting the strength of her character. But that description moves beyond that, and becomes partly unnecessary. - 14/15

Creativity: The transition from what seemed to be semi-hard sci fi to space romance wasn’t something I was expecting until half way through. I guess that would be bonus points for creativity. Likewise, I understand the desire to implement something interesting about Francis, even if it was something as unnecessary as him being a Cresian. There was never much distinction between him being a Cresian and him just wanting to leave, the culture felt far too anthropocentric to realistically consider him an alien being altogether, if that was your purpose, or whether it was just to implement a handy ‘I forgot you’ tool in the plot. Despite the considerable amount of description on the two main characters, none of the rest of the universe felt breathing and alive, even in consideration of the testy breathiness and aliveness of the main characters themselves. - 10/15

Style: I thought the choice to never show direct conflict very interesting. The skips in time were a bit challenging, but I’m sure that with more you could have done a lot more development in terms of their characters. Still, I didn’t have a problem moving from Point A to Point B, I just have an issue with precisely what you chose to define as Point A and Point B in the grand scheme of things. - 13/15

Grammar and Spelling: Looks good. I didn’t see any problems! A few repeated words and a missing letter or two (like versus liked to play, for instance), but nothing unbearable! - 3/5

Overall Score: 80/100

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Very Definitely Evil, by Forsher

Characters: George is smarmy, not witty, but he works. Sarah is a bit of a mirror as a character, used and tossed aside at moments convenient to the story for the sake of reflecting and deflecting anything George says, while at the same time she sets up another smartassed comment for him. While they’re amusing in their own right, it’s like reading a character that talks to himself in the mirror: the nuances between them are too subtle for a story so short, and because there are no consequences for the differences in what sort of preferences that might arise, it seems more as if

George has conjured up Sarah himself as verbal masturbation instead of any word-wrung talk-sex. Sarah is ultimately baseball pitching machine and George is the only one batting; it would have better had the baseball pitching machine gained sapience and sentience so that some sort of conversation could arise, regardless of what kind of hamfistedness might occur. Hell, have her play the straight man, if that needs to be the case – she asks far too many questions cheekily falls into far too many of his ramblings for any considerable character of her own to emerge. 17/25

Plot: I think it’s an interesting take on villains, and there’s a definite sense of cheekiness throughout the whole plot. However, the seeming simplicity of it gets obfuscated through the inherently jarring and frenetic delivery of exposition, description, and meta-commentary; people are introduced and media are referenced, their uses limited and one-shot to barely move the fragile semblance of a plot.

The conversations, though they serve the character well, prove far too meandering to act as a strong device for the continuation of a plot. There’s just too much jargon on the screen that filtration is required, and sometimes I wonder whether a plot really exists, or whether it’s just a manifestation of idle musings tossed together with popular culture references to create some sort of postmodernist salad. Interesting, but ultimately far too weighed down by its style to be broadly digestible. - 20/25

Setting: Since most of it occurs through a conversation, there’s very little considerable in the sense of an immediate, physical environment. However, through the musings of both characters, we find an eclectic mix of magic and technology, of Stern-esque mundanity within a fantastic and vivid multi-world. It gives off a very snarky, Ugly Americans feeling throughout the entire plot, with so many real world and fictional devices souped together to create a colorful environment that eagerly gives the reader frequent opportunities to smile at the collapse of the high fantasy imaginative for low fantasy comedy. The plot eschews so many tropes about time travel, demons, supervillain plots, and everything in between while making amusing jabs at the Hero’s Journey, big brother, and iPhones alike. - 15/15

Creativity: I thought it was pretty creative. However, it is very unpolished in terms of how it delivers its creativity. Ultimately, the degree upon which a writer should and could be reworking convention and function should come at the consideration of what sort of goal he or she is attempting to reach. Very Definitely Evil is unabashed in its trope bashing, but it seems to shy away from having a notable endgame; it’s willing to get lost in the moment, let the reader and the characters try and live it up a little, but it traps them in a perpetual vortex of shallow meta-commentary. It’s a great idea that’s been done many times before, and it’s a very fun piece of writing, but it needs a bit of polishing. - 15/15

Style: The messy style in this story worked well. It’s all over the place, very stream of consciousness, and given the musings of the characters involved, it does have its place. However, the downside of the style is that it feels very temporary and tangential, adding unnecessary information for the sake of quirkiness and never letting moments of prosaic silence to emerge that allows the reader to breath. It has the feeling of experimentation, and doesn’t stand as a short of its own, but rather as a part of a larger story, endlessly sidetracked through its own perceived witticisms. It might be better to have toned down the tidbits of information and allow the characters themselves to do the talking, not the narrator. - 12/15

Grammar and Spelling: Didn’t see anything crazy! - 5/5

Overall Score: 84/100

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George and the Dragon, by Respubliko de Libereco

Characters: It’s very difficult to engage with the characters on an arc-based analysis. George and Sir Steven are far too void of considerable quirks and details about them that define them as unique characters. Rather, they’re less like human beings and more like tropes, inhabiting a world that stands static around them as they banter between each other. Sir Steven himself isn’t someone that feels like a person, but rather a debriefing mission, and only very rarely does he exhibit his own sense of self by attacking George’s selfishness.

George is a bit too convenient as a character, but some of the problem doesn’t fall to the writer; George fulfills a standard protagonist position, and his development is evidently set up for a later iteration where more information on him is revealed. He doesn’t go through an arc of his own, and instead he decides to remain in the jail, with the story just ending there. It might have been good to show George and Sir Steven a bit more, perhaps having Sir Steven refuse to leave until George changes his mind. The days would allow better characters to emerge through their back and forth, which would more resonantly describe your use of the analogy of war. 18/25

Plot: There doesn’t seem to be one; the central conflict that exists is at first George and Sir Steven, but if we go into the motivation between this conflict, the major antagonist is the Royal Society and the dragons. Williams is very much retracting from the position of a character that eventually thrusts himself (back) into greatness, but the arc of the conflict that emerges through the conversation is never convincingly or considerably ended. Ultimately, Sir Steven is left without a viable avenue, and the story comes off as incredibly incomplete.

It might be best to have added a second part of the story, perhaps allowing George to consider the consequences of his own actions and his refusal for the call of adventure. An inwards journey of his own behaviour might rectify his selfishness, and the sudden transition upon realising how he was vindicated by the existence of dragons is too quick and transitory a feeling for any character to adopt and have any sense of gravity to the plot. It feels more like a segment from a book, or perhaps even the beginning of the book, as the focal point of this story is very much Sir Steven. 18/25

Setting: I thought it was good. There’s really nothing in the story that stood out as crazy, but as I mentioned in the Style section, the writing is very conservative. At the same time, the setting conveys that same conservatism by falling back upon very well-known and familiar imagery. In this case, the sort of Rhodesian, Empire Britain image that is conjured up is very visible from the get-go, even if there is nothing exceptional about the description of the places themselves. 15/15

Creativity: This is a very difficult thing to mark down, since on the surface, there’s nothing really ‘creative’ about the nature of the story; it’s a standard Campbellian setup, where the hero denies his initial call to action before coming to gripes with his own societal obligations and demons and then undertaking the steps needed to move from the mundane to the special. George William’s backdrop and response, likewise, is pigeonholed into two outcomes, neither of which are in the author’s favour: he takes up the call to action, further idealizing him as a hero and less as human, or he rejects the call to action, grounding him as a human with vindictive selfishness, but increases the length of the situational conflict of the story. I can’t really fault the author for choosing the latter, as either choice are very Faustian in nature; ultimately, the fault is in the logical sequence of the situation.

The only thing that would have allowed better creativity would be something entirely dismantling of any sense of realism of the story (for instance, if George himself was a dragon), but that would require a complete rework of the nature of the plot itself (why is a dragon a private in the military when dragons are just found to exist and are attacking London?). Regardless, when referring to writing, it might be best to consider this less as innovative or exceptionally out of sequence writing, and more as the imaginative might of the writer himself. For the most part, I will give credit to Lebereco to have Sir Steven as a lone, solitary figure, perhaps willing to undertake this arduous journey himself while he watches the city of his homeland burn. Again, the decision to have a man seek a solution while he himself must turn a blind eye to suffering for the sake of a greater good is not entirely novel in its own right, but paired up with George, it is nevertheless creating the potential for a refreshing setup.

It might have greatly strengthened the creativity of the plot, for instance, had George asked Sir Steven why he was doing this, why he was here alone, and why Sir Steven did not come with a full might of military units at his heels to scare George into submission. It has the setup and potential for a clash of selfishness, where either character inhabits different sides of the same coin, and how no matter how unselfish Sir Steven claims himself to be, he still teeters on the spectrum of his self-perceived greatness. - 12/15

Style: It’s a very conservative telling of a conservative story; the simplistic, metaphor-deprived direct description of a conflict between two characters in an Ozymandian scenario. We’re given an idea of the pride before the fall, how George was ousted by those and that he trusted, only to find himself at the bottom of a bottle, and there’s little experimentation beyond that. However, despite the incredibly careful nature of the story, it works very well for the type of story that it seeks to convey.

It’s not an experimental style, and it’s certainly not one that would be defined a bold or brazen or bashful or anything of the sort: it’s simplistic and unassuming, and that’s perfectly fine for something that revolves around a man’s journey from being zero to hero, even if he rejects the initial chance for zero because of backgrounds that are fleshed out in the conversation. 15/15

Grammar and Spelling: I didn’t see anything crazy! 5/5

Overall Score: 83/100

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Untitled Work, by Occupied Deutschland

Characters: I thought it was very good. The characters felt very human, grasping at small tidbits of jovial excitement and amusement wherever they can in the face of extraordinary circumstances. Particularly telling of what I liked was the musing regarding the minor inconveniences in great things – Columbus had them, Gagarin had them, Yeager had them; the characters had them too.

Unclear, and smartly so, was the lack of connection between the two in any sense other than that dominated by the plot. At first that was a bit puzzling to me, and thought to myself why there would be nothing about the characters themselves outside of the scenario at hand. However, as I thought about it more, it did reveal a sublime brilliance within the characterization of the story: it was a parallel of the task itself, where the mightiness of the problem and the solution was so great and final that it domineered over the small talk that occurred between the characters. Davis and Marie had their little talks, but it always fell back to the central problem at hand, as if a stark and dark reminder of the stakes at hand. There isn’t a discussion about family or dreams or goals or aspirations or romance to any considerable degree because at the end of the day, what matters is fixing the problem itself, or else the problem will make all of that small talk null; it simply infused the problem with a larger, grander immediacy, and through the lack of details it impressed character stress in a way that was both believable and impressionable. - 25/25

Plot: The premise is simple, and the micro-narrative that is the plot is very nicely done. Though the weaving of the details from the conversation, Deutschland definitely hit it out of the park, I think, with the clean sequence that occurred. Kill the Alien Queen with a giant rigged device, no frills, nothing. The plot is the internalized conflict that occurs from the characters having to deal with the stress of failure and death in their own ways, manifest by an external threat from the alien queen itself. It doesn’t have a huge leap from Point A to Point B, but the transition is so finely crafted and smoothly done that I can hardly fault it for that. - 25/25

Setting: The setting is void, bare, and empty, much like space itself. I didn’t have any problems with it, and the lack of hard details gave way to characters, which were more important in this scenario than the twinkling of stars in the sky or the look of the alien queen. The bomb’s description didn’t matter here; what mattered was that they couldn’t fail, they shouldn’t fail, and they didn’t want to fail. - 12/15

Creativity: It brings together a very nice and bare feel, unrepentant in tis jargon, laced with passion and love of its craft. While the large, overarching plot isn’t very creative in its own right, the deliver of its magnitude and sense of immediacy of the situation is so very well done that the lack of innovative elements to well-worn is easily looked over. The discussion of great people at the beginning was a natural and deserved place to establish their scenario, and the pace at which conversations moved were fraught with such small tidbits that it gave them breath. Overall, the story definitely is a convincing example that last moments do matter, inhabiting a collection of feelings and experiences from everything leading up to that - 10/15

Style: I was stuck on the ending line for the longest time, only to realise it wasn’t part of the story. For much of my time I was perusing through the story again, thinking ‘what does the shift in narrator mean?’, only to realise it was outside of the spoiler tag.

On a more serious note, it was a very good piece of beige prose. It’s quick, moves from place to place really quickly, and is very unabashedly bare in its description of what’s going on. Our imaginations are filled in by the lack of words, giving even more gravity (pun not intended) to the words on the screen. I definitely liked it, as well as the conversation style that you chose to go with, since it not only grounded the story in a realistic and personal fashion, but also allowed us to extract tidbits of human behaviour from the characters. - 15/15

Grammar and Spelling: I didn’t see anything crazy! - 5/5

Overall Score: 92/100

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Untitled Work, by Pope Joan

Characters: There’s not much of a motivation for either of them. They seem pretty intent on fulfilling their specific roles. - 10/25

Plot: It’s pretty bare. - 10/25

Setting: ??? - 5/15

Creativity: I liked the little twist at the end. I can understand the intent to establish a folklorish dimension to the story, but there’s a lot of stuff that’s not wholly necessary. There’s no dialogue that usually comes in a lot of folklore, especially Amerindian folklore, so it’s not as indicative of how the literature sounds. It comes off as really campy. -7/15

Style: I’m a bit confused at why you focused on telling us that the sword dismembered many stags and elk. That might make it less effective dust to right, wouldn’t it? There’s a lot of weird things that are being focused – for instance, the vampire lord attacked him with his poisoned fingernails, but the next paragraph emphasizes on the hero dodging the teeth. This would need a bit of clarification, but it’s a really rushed story! - 5/15

Grammar and Spelling: Some weird paragraph and capitalisation issues - 3/5

Overall Score: 40/100

[Ammar]

Also, 6000 word limit? Just confirming that that's what you meant and not a typo, as when I think short story, I think closer to 4000.

CM's old limit was 7500. I bumped it down to 6000. People rarely hit anywhere close to that number.

I'll actually try this time.

Also, if I want to write a story about an OC which is in a certain universe (the Carsverse to be exact, I regret nothing) is it fine as long as it doesn't involve any of the regular characters like McQueen and Dusty?

Sure.

But did't you say no fanfics? That sounds like a fanfic.

[Jenrak]

CM's old limit was 7500. I bumped it down to 6000. People rarely hit anywhere close to that number.



Sure.

But did't you say no fanfics? That sounds like a fanfic.

I'm using CM's old rules. Besides, the contest is over now anyways.

[Shaggai]

Damn. Missed the deadline. Again. I'll just have to wait for the next one.

[Respubliko de Libereco]

If Kara Steve is human male and Francis is not also male, then why are they dating? I know sex is not always about reproduction, but wouldn’t pheromones be different from one race sex to the next? Wouldn’t physiological difference be a problem?

(changes mine, obviously)

Just noticed that your statement can sort of be used as an argument against homosexual relationships. Perhaps you should rethink it.
EDIT: In retrospect, perhaps criticizing you before you've marked my story isn't a great idea, but what's done is done.

[The New World Oceania]

If Kara Steve is human male and Francis is not also male, then why are they dating? I know sex is not always about reproduction, but wouldn’t pheromones be different from one race sex to the next? Wouldn’t physiological difference be a problem?

(changes mine, obviously)

Just noticed that your statement can sort of be used as an argument against homosexual relationships. Perhaps you should rethink it.
EDIT: In retrospect, perhaps criticizing you before you've marked my story isn't a great idea, but what's done is done.

Let the writing make a point, not the criticism of the criticism of the writing.

[Nazi Flower Power]

If Kara Steve is human male and Francis is not also male, then why are they dating? I know sex is not always about reproduction, but wouldn’t pheromones be different from one race sex to the next? Wouldn’t physiological difference be a problem?

(changes mine, obviously)

Just noticed that your statement can sort of be used as an argument against homosexual relationships. Perhaps you should rethink it.

No, I thought about it and homosexuality is not comparable at all. There is a reason I included the part that says, "I know sex is not always about reproduction."

If you think it's an argument against bestiality, then OK.

EDIT: In retrospect, perhaps criticizing you before you've marked my story isn't a great idea, but what's done is done.

Nah, I'm not going to go on some kind of weird vendetta.

[Respubliko de Libereco]

(changes mine, obviously)

Just noticed that your statement can sort of be used as an argument against homosexual relationships. Perhaps you should rethink it.

No, I thought about it and homosexuality is not comparable at all. There is a reason I included the part that says, "I know sex is not always about reproduction."

If you think it's an argument against bestiality, then OK.

What I meant is that, presumably, there are differences between male and female pheromones as well (though obviously not as big as the difference between species), and saying "they don't have compatible pheromones, and therefore can't be in love" makes about as much sense in either case*.

Love is about more than just pheromones or sex, and I think it's perfectly reasonable for two physically different but mentally similar beings to fall in love (especially in fiction, where anything is possible). Of course, as a poet and a bit of a romantic, I am a tad biased.

*Unless, of course, the different human sexes don't actually have different pheromones, in which case your statement can't really be used as an argument against homosexuality, but my opinion of its veracity still stands.

EDIT: In retrospect, perhaps criticizing you before you've marked my story isn't a great idea, but what's done is done.

Nah, I'm not going to go on some kind of weird vendetta.

I didn't actually think you would.

[Nazi Flower Power]

No, I thought about it and homosexuality is not comparable at all. There is a reason I included the part that says, "I know sex is not always about reproduction."

If you think it's an argument against bestiality, then OK.

What I meant is that, presumably, there are differences between male and female pheromones as well (though obviously not as big as the difference between species), and saying "they don't have compatible pheromones, and therefore can't be in love" makes about as much sense in either case*.

Love is about more than just pheromones or sex, and I think it's perfectly reasonable for two physically different but mentally similar beings to fall in love (especially in fiction, where anything is possible). Of course, as a poet and a bit of a romantic, I am a tad biased.

*Unless, of course, the different human sexes don't actually have different pheromones, in which case your statement can't really be used as an argument against homosexuality, but my opinion of its veracity still stands.

If we're talking about dating, that implies a sexual relationship. Especially with such emotionally flat characters.

I might not have complained (or even thought about it) if the bond between the characters had been more convincing, if the interspecies aspect of the relationship was dealt with in some manner, or if the story had been more clearly intended as fantasy. It really is stupid and unrealistic the amount of sci-fi that has people boffing aliens. This story seemed like it wanted us to just ignore biology and see them as a normal couple, not a bizarre case of love beating the odds.

[Respubliko de Libereco]

What I meant is that, presumably, there are differences between male and female pheromones as well (though obviously not as big as the difference between species), and saying "they don't have compatible pheromones, and therefore can't be in love" makes about as much sense in either case*.

Love is about more than just pheromones or sex, and I think it's perfectly reasonable for two physically different but mentally similar beings to fall in love (especially in fiction, where anything is possible). Of course, as a poet and a bit of a romantic, I am a tad biased.

*Unless, of course, the different human sexes don't actually have different pheromones, in which case your statement can't really be used as an argument against homosexuality, but my opinion of its veracity still stands.

If we're talking about dating, that implies a sexual relationship. Especially with such emotionally flat characters.

I might not have complained (or even thought about it) if the bond between the characters had been more convincing, if the interspecies aspect of the relationship was dealt with in some manner, or if the story had been more clearly intended as fantasy. It really is stupid and unrealistic the amount of sci-fi that has people boffing aliens. This story seemed like it wanted us to just ignore biology and see them as a normal couple, not a bizarre case of love beating the odds.

Like you said, there doesn't need to be a possibility of reproduction/biological compatibility for a sexual relationship. While inter-species romance is certainly more bizarre, I don't think it's as unrealistic as you seem to think it is. If people couldn't be attracted to non-humans, rule 34 wouldn't be a thing.

Plus, dating doesn't need to imply a sexual relationship, especially in a society so far in the future, and regardless of how well written the characters are, it should be safe to assume that they have capacity for emotion beyond that shown by the author.

Honestly, I think a more topic of discussion might be "do aliens even have sex for pleasure?", but we're getting really off topic as-is, so I'm just going to stop talking now.

[Nazi Flower Power]

Honestly, I think a more topic of discussion might be "do aliens even have sex for pleasure?", but we're getting really off topic as-is, so I'm just going to stop talking now.

How about "Do aliens have sex in the first place?"

Of course having humanoid aliens in the first place is not a great move for realism.

Anyway...

Respubliko de Libereco -- George and the Dragon

Characters: 15/25

There is some good character development, but expanding on it would help. George Williams is nuts and he’s an asshole, but some people really are vindictive like that.

Sir Steven is less believable. I find it hard to believe he’d give up that easily on dealing with the dragon even if he can’t convince Williams to help. I think almost anybody in that position would do one of the following:

-keep arguing longer
-hang around for a while and go back to the cell later to try arguing with Williams again
-explain the situation to someone else and ask them to try arguing with Williams
-start thinking about what else they might be able to do about the dragon -- e.g. look for notes that Williams might have left behind in Britain.

Plot: 22/25

It holds together pretty well and it is nice that you didn’t try to jam in too much. The set-up is good; the ending would work better if there was more build up to it.

Setting: 15/15

You set the scene, but don’t let it get in the way.

Creativity: 12/15

I know it’s based on St. George, but you did enough to make it your own.

Style: 14/15

It’s quite readable.

Grammar and Spelling: 5/5

Overall Score: 83/100

[Respubliko de Libereco]

Overall Score: 83/100

Overall Score: 83/100

Well, fancy that!

So, when's the other judge going to show up?

[Jenrak]

Once Valinon gets off his lazy ass. I have him tagged in Legion, but if there's nothing by next week, I'll get a backup judge.

[Jenrak]

Blood on the Desert, by Jamessonia

Characters: I can’t really say what it is about Karl, but he’s far too formal for someone detailing a story that should have had far more gravity with him than he lets on. He says right at the beginning that he was “drawn to this pen by some force that [he] cannot describe,” and unfortunately, that same force eludes me as well. I can understand why he would be compelled had there been something frightening, fascinating, or terrifying about the scenario, but the whole setup seems so stock that it comes off as very kitschy and derivative.

Thomas, likewise, doesn’t seem to have a considerably different character from Karl. So little is given about them, and perhaps that’s because it’s from Karl’s point of view, but they arrive at the same conclusions, do the same things, and agree on the same matters; they’re one dry and droll personality split into two people. It would have been nice had Thomas come with different backgrounds, different ideas, or a different response to the whole fight. It might have been good had Thomas come to like the blood and the violence that ensued, reveled or bathed in the onslaught with unabated passion and vigor, or perhaps Karl was the monster and Thomas was the pacifist. Perhaps this could have been the letter Karl was sending to Thomas’ family, in penance for his murder of Thomas in a furious rage or perhaps in self defence as Thomas lost himself?

There’s just no need for him, only to pad out the events, and what somber moments of meditation that emerged at the end were punctured by the stark reality of grimness of their situation as it should have been. The two of them seemed more powerless pawns of an overarching, domineering, systemic narrative that could – if I was really stretching this analysis – wanted to believe it was a metaphor for the dictatorship of governments of old (but that’s a bit of a stretch). The story, unfortunately, from the beginning of the tale, sets me up to ask the question “Why should I care about Karl?” and never really gives an answer. It’s underlying flaw is that it’s content with his facelessness, pretending like his ordinary terror is extraordinary. - 17/25

Plot: Blood on the Desert is all setup, but the delivery is lacking, if it at all exists. The gruesome battle that occupies much of the story is very detailed, going into many of the arduous hardships that occur to these soldiers, especially in wars long ago, and it’s eagerness to adopt a gritty realism in its prose is very nice. However, it’s far too preoccupied with providing a small snapshot of the events, and tends to be too concerned with describing them instead of providing some meaning to it.

Perhaps the greater theme of the story is to simply accentuate a very simple one: war is gruesome and shitty and it sucks and all that Saving-Private-Ryan / Hemingway / Sherman-esque vibe, but the zeitgeist is well worn and what little bitterness isn’t sufficiently tempered by what little romanticism that remains. For something as terrible as a fight, as frenetic and violent as it may be, it needs to have its quiet moments, its eye of the hurricane to make all of its parts that much more visceral and exciting. This story lacks that in good fashion – the beginning starts great, but it quickly dies out to the violence that ensues, perhaps with meaning, but that meaning seems lost. - 20/25

Setting: I thought the attempt to craft a semi-colonial, pre-World War 2 war was very interesting. It did its best, I’ll give it that, and I can’t really say whether anything was historically accurate or not – that’s up to people more qualified than I to judge (Archregimancy get dafuq in here). So does it evoke a feeling of an old world, freshly torn apart by romanticism? It kind does.

I can’t say whether Nazi Flower Power had the same experience, but it did felt, to what my limited understanding the times, some semblance of the rugged colonial world, of dying empires, of world wars, ensconced into a battle that underlined the fruitlessness of their suffering. They hunted, they smoked like chimneys, they swore, and all their exclamations ended with exclamation marks! It felt very much like a period back then, but it was so easily digestible and the suspension was so believable for me that even though I had issues with the characters and the plot, its vivid backdrop was vivid enough for me to continue reading. - 15/15

Creativity: I’m a bit torn on this aspect. On one hand, I didn’t like the senseless and superfluous battle, which led nowhere and was simply a description of terror over string of paragraphs. On the other hand, it was nevertheless creative: it didn’t really need to have a meaning, in the sense that the battle didn’t really need to have a meaning itself. War is a messy collection of men killing other men, a multidimensional and multilayered cross-section of conflict continually exemplifying a very Hobbesian anarchy through microcosms of atrocities.

Sometimes there isn’t a meaning. Sometimes there’s no bride that’s standing on a Cliffside, watching the ship that carry her lover sink slowly beneath the horizon. Sometimes there’s no wife and newborn son living their lives in emotional oppression, wondering whether there’s going to be a day where a man knocks on their door, tired and sad, and it isn’t the soldier that left. I don’t know if Jamessonia meant for this to be the case, and I can’t really figure whether he wanted to accentuate a sort of nihilistic undertone to the whole concept of war and fighting, but if that’s the case then I should applaud the lack of meaning. It’s a bit recursive and pretentious of me to assume such, I admit, but I’d like to hope that his lack of meaning is meaning in itself. - 15/15

Style: The paragraphs need editing. It was easily the most difficult part of the reading for me, because I couldn’t neatly compartmentalize what was going on. I depend upon paragraphs to figure out what’s going on, so please consider some editing at the very least.

Karl’s prose and syntax seemed far too formal for a soldier. Unless the narrator explained Karl as being someone else afterwards, like a schoolteacher or a writer by profession, there doesn’t need to be such formality in his tone. He’s not a man trying to pen the next best classic – he’s just a soldier, reiterating the events of a day that gripped him with such inescapable energy that he felt compelled to write. It wasn’t a soldier’s handwriting. It wasn’t dirty, messy, nor covered in curse words; everyone was too formal, too jovial, too staged. It lacked the grime and grit he supposedly experienced and had, and it lacked any frenetic energy that came about from the battle. - 8/15

Grammar and Spelling: There’s some mixed words and whatnot, nothing super duper crazy, but it would be great that you did at least edit beforehand, even though you admitted you didn’t. Nothing game breaking, though! - 4/5

Overall Score: 79/100

---

November 3rd, by The New World Oceania

Characters: There doesn’t really seem to be one – they seem symmetrical, so understanding their particular quirks from an analysis of difference isn’t going to help. Likewise, so little had been explained about them that I could scarcely figure out their motivations why they did what they did. There’s a capitalisation of ‘Them’, but without explaining the meaning behind the pronoun it becomes an empty stylistic choice that serves to obfuscate than explain. 10/25

Plot: It’s needlessly dense, so I’m not sure what the plot is. 12/25

Setting: It’s pretty bare, and there are some issues I have with the liberal use of confounding imagery. Some sentences, for example, says “the floor rises of nothingness,” and “laced in branches from Monet’s winter and extending not thread but void from her head, are really only effective once you’ve established a central mood for them. I don’t really sense any of that, and while I can have a general picture of Claude Monet’s winter, I don’t know why you’d be accentuating the branches of the trees, or even the meaning behind them without function upon which to elucidate me. 8/15

Creativity: It’s really, really pretentious. 15/15

Style: It’s a bit dense, so I’m not entirely sure what’s going on. 10/15

Grammar and Spelling: Admittedly, I’m not sure what’s a spelling error and what isn’t, so I’m finding it hard to find faults since I don’t know if it’s meant to be odd or it was a genuine mistake. 4/5

Overall Score: 59/100

[The New World Oceania]

Creativity: It’s really, really pretentious. 15/15

*Pretentious comment about how you just don't understand my stylistic choices.*

*Edited in distasteful comment on literary writing versus commercial "art."*

~~*Obnoxious signature that's really not necessary online*

[Respubliko de Libereco]

I thought the attempt to craft a semi-colonial, pre-World War 2 war was very interesting. It did its best, I’ll give it that, and I can’t really say whether anything was historically accurate or not – that’s up to people more qualified than I to judge

Am I completely wrong in thinking that it was just set during WWI? I know there were no trenches mentioned, but not every WWI battle involved trench warfare, and I'm pretty sure that the Maxim gun was still in use by then.*

*From Wikipedia: "The German Army's Maschinengewehr 08 [was] more or less [a] direct cop[y] of the Maxim." Assuming that the dialogue in the story is German "translated" into English, it would make sense for the imaginary translator to have translated "Maschinengewehr 08" as "Maxim".

[Seljuq Kyiv]

I thought the attempt to craft a semi-colonial, pre-World War 2 war was very interesting. It did its best, I’ll give it that, and I can’t really say whether anything was historically accurate or not – that’s up to people more qualified than I to judge

Am I completely wrong in thinking that it was just set during WWI? I know there were no trenches mentioned, but not every WWI battle involved trench warfare, and I'm pretty sure that the Maxim gun was still in use by then.*

*From Wikipedia: "The German Army's Maschinengewehr 08 [was] more or less [a] direct cop[y] of the Maxim." Assuming that the dialogue in the story is German "translated" into English, it would make sense for the imaginary translator to have translated "Maschinengewehr 08" as "Maxim".

It might have just been the 1900s, ya know

[Jamessonia]

I thought the attempt to craft a semi-colonial, pre-World War 2 war was very interesting. It did its best, I’ll give it that, and I can’t really say whether anything was historically accurate or not – that’s up to people more qualified than I to judge

Am I completely wrong in thinking that it was just set during WWI? I know there were no trenches mentioned, but not every WWI battle involved trench warfare, and I'm pretty sure that the Maxim gun was still in use by then.*

*From Wikipedia: "The German Army's Maschinengewehr 08 [was] more or less [a] direct cop[y] of the Maxim." Assuming that the dialogue in the story is German "translated" into English, it would make sense for the imaginary translator to have translated "Maschinengewehr 08" as "Maxim".

Yes, it was set during WWI. Just look up the Battle of Tanga.