7/30/2024

6/26/2025 2:32 PM

787

1

1509 wins / 1484 losses

Marauder

Gay and Depressed in Prison

3rd place entry in Corgi's Gaybellion Contest

In this game, you play a very familiar character from the previous Gay and Depressed stories, who is now in jail. You used to be a side character in other people's stories, but now the spotlight is finally yours in this Gay and Depressed spin-off!

If you're interested in some more Gay and Depressed story games, check out the original by queenlatifah04, Gay Old Time by Darius_Conwright, Gay and DepressedER!!! by fresh_out_of_the_oven, and Gay and Depressed: The snow bunny society by Benholman44. All of the "gay and depressed" stories are stand-alone stories, so each one can be read separately, but I highly recommend you check these stories out!

Down by the river

unpublished

There's an old man called the Mississippi
That's the old man that I'd like to be!
What does he care if the world's got troubles?
What does he care if the land ain't free?

Ol' man river,
That old man river
He must know something
But don't say nothing
He just keeps rolling
He keeps rolling along"

-Oscar Hammerstein, "Old Man River"

In this story game, you play Samantha, a 25-year old engineer who's recently been through a rough breakup. Out of the blue, your grandfather asks you to accompany him on a river-boat journey where you two will traverse across a national treasure, our very own Mississippi River. Explore the natural beauty of this great waterway as you embark on a journey of self-discovery and finding love. Will you successfully find both on this wonderful river-boat adventure? Only one way to find out!

Falsely Accused:The Telenorian Kingdom's Worst Prison

unpublished

Submitted for Sherbet's Summer's End Synergy Contest.

In this game, you play as a thief. The princess has been kidnapped and everyone suspected that the big fat evil dragon kidnapped her. Naturally, since you and your crew are the dragon's known associates, you are put in the jail. But here's the thing, you're innocent. From the moment you're in jail, it's been one nightmare after another. Far from administering the justice, the Telenorian Prison is nothing but exploitative and conniving. Will you be able to survive and point the finger back on those that did you wrong, or will you succumb to the darkness in jail without getting the chance to vindicate yourself. Warning: This game can be emotionally disturbing and contains dark themes with many parallels to real life. Proceed at your own risk.

Glad you picked split! With the points from the split, both our teams will benefit :)

Your productivity is admirable! Thanks for the wonderful story! I am reading this right now, and I can say that if you had published this in time for the Summer Synergy Contest, you would have placed even higher! Great story so far!

lol, I love this! I didn't know I could turn invisible till now, but I will cherish this magic ability! Hope this is commended! I really love this prisoner's dilemma set up Will had. I can go ahead and say that I already chose to split, and will choose that for the rest of the weekend, but the cool part of this challenge is that you can't believe anything I say since for all you know, I could be saying I chose split, just to get you to choose split, so I would choose steal. I did some reading and apparently, from the game theory side of things, steal is the best approach, which kind of sucks because then the challenge will be for nothing. I feel like the only people who gain if we both choose to steal are the Review Bored, and Cat's Team, since Cat did a ton of reviews. So if we can both choose split we'll gain, so it all depends on whether you're willing to trust the word of an internet stranger, because for all you know I could be trying to get you to choose steal. After all, we're at 17, so maybe I'm trying to boost my team. And since you guys are at 35, you might also have a huge incentive to steal if you believe I'm choosing to split. This is so confusing! All I can really say is that I chose to split, but I guess you'll never fully know till Monday :)

I already made my choice. I'm locked in. I hope Shadow makes the right choice as well. But what do you guys think we should do?

Thanks shadow! I really appreciate your kindness in reading my review despite it being late. Congrats on also submitting reviews for the stories, I’ll read yours right away! Also, since we were the fastest to submit 2 reviews, I think we won the challenge

Story A detailed Review: The plot follows the journey of a prehistoric dinosaur from when it's at its peak to its eventual capture, and life in the lab. The writing is incredibly atmospheric. Reading this story, it takes one back to prehistoric times. The writer(who it's pretty obvious it's MHD, based on style and the fact that Mizal basically revealed it in her post), does a great job of making her main character shine and feel vibrant and alive. I love the ongoing internal monologue and the way we get to see the dinosaur's thoughts. I like the way we see the dinosaur as master of their dominion. There's a certain sense of pride and royalty that characterizes the dinosaur's moves. I also like the way the story foreshadows the evolution into bird form through the feathers and wings. There's a subtle hint thrown in that MHD isn't talking about the T-rex. I really loved the unrestrained ferocity and triumphant might that characterizes the first few paragraphs, this sets up nicely for the eventual fall and new status quo that MHD later establishes. The characterization is done really well here. For a dinosaur, the main character is remarkably introspective, and we find out so much about this character. I love how the dinosaur showed complex character traits like mercy and arrogance, regret and worry for the future. The second section of the story was bleak and heartbreaking. MHD really made me feel something for the dinosaur, which I must admit, was not expecting when I tuned in to check out this story. The reason why is because out of all the prompts, I always figured that the Dino prompt offered the least room for introspection/heavy emotions, and was always intended to be more of a fun prompt, or an action-packed genre piece like Jurassic World(not saying that Jurassic World isn't emotional, but this piece certainly was different). I was surprised by the existential crisis the Dino experiences, wondering about how long it can go on like this with the earth shaking, all the other animals disappearing, and the world ending, but it really worked. It lends the work a sort of poignant tone that nicely offsets the more grand feeling in act I. Finally, the last section. Even though the triumphant tone from Act I is present here, it's easy to tell that something's different. From the references to pointed beak, walls, and kernels, we now realize that this is a bird, descendant of the previous flying dinosaurs. I really like this idea of a first person POV personifying an entire lineage of dinosaurs. It lends the work a sense of scale and scope, and overall, it just really works. And I think that MHD did a great job of making the evolution of dinosaurs into birds feel really emotional and poignant, which is really novel, because I always just viewed it as a scientific fact, a sort of cold and hard objective truth. But this work allowed me to see from the dinosaur's perspective, which was novel. Overall: This was a well written short story. It does a great job following the 3 act structure, has excellent characterization, and is a very thought provoking piece. I really enjoyed it! Story B Detailed Review: Story B was a different animal altogether. While Story A was a reflective piece that looked directly from the perspective of the dinosaur itself, making observations about the dinosaur's place in the world and their fall, only to then rise again in the form of birds, Story B is a story told through the eyes of humans looking to exploit and use dinosaurs. I am a fan of both MHD's and Sherb's writings, so this was a tough decision, but ultimately it came down to how both stories made me feel and how well did they stick to the prompt, and Story A did that better for me, it was a bit more memorable, but B was a fantastic story in its own right! In contrast to Story A, which employed monologue and the inner thoughts of the first person personification of the dinosaur and the bird, this story relies a lot more on dialogue and a 2nd person limited POV. I feel like the 2nd person limited POV is much more conducive to story games, and obviously more familiar, since we've seen this used time and time again. The story does a great job of setting up the characters of Daniel and Professor Callaghan. I love the shift in how Daniel sees Callaghan, from being in awe of intelligence and his strange personality, to feeling a sense of fear and dread, as well as hatred because Callaghan put him in this position. I also thought the integration of hologram technology and artificial intelligence into the dinosaur prompt was a cool choice on Sherb's part; based on what I've seen in the previous thunder dome, Sherb excels at making really cool plots from these prompts. He's able to take disparate elements and weave them together to produce a really interesting work. From the audience's perspective, I love how Callaghan slowly morphs from a brilliant but deranged old man scientist, into someone much more sinister. I feel like there were clues strewn in the beginning, here and there, but Daniel hand-waves them away. I think Sherb has perfected the slow-build up from his years working in horror. Nothing about Callaghan's descent into full madness feels contrived or fake; it feels really natural and gradual. This is particularly remarkable for a story this short, and shows the level of control Sherb has on pacing and rhythm. Daniel slowly starts to doubt Callaghan, while pitying him at the same time, which I thought was a really good choice by Sherb, because it serves to make Callaghan's character more complex. I love the ending where Callaghan resets Daniel - there's a certain level of sorrow and mourning, that Callaghan regrets having to do this to Daniel, but at the same time, not enough to approach any level of real human empathy. What's so great about Callaghan's character is that he genuinely doesn't think he's done anything wrong, and that just makes his character so fascinating. There's a certain level of sociopathy mixed with surface level emotions/empathy, but nowhere close to the real thing. And Daniel, despite being a program, is far more human than Callaghan can ever be. Which begs the question: who is more human, sociopathic Callaghan or computer program Daniel? I like Sherb's prose, compared to MHD's, it's not as contemplative and reflective, but it's natural and dialogue-driven, letting us gradually be immersed into the world.

Hi Larbatron, First off, welcome to the site! That’s a good point. We actually have more interviews with site members in the CYS gazette, and past Cys newspapers if you’re interested. There’s also will’s weekly review and “ye old times”, where site members Endmaster and Will11 did several interviews. Go to news and updates to check them out! Happy reading!

If BerkaZerka and PerforatedPenguin joined you, we'd see all the penguins on the site teaming up together!

Can't hang on to the anchor forever lim. At some point, y'all got to get into the boat. But I'm not worried, we've got 2 months, and I'm sure you and yummy are cooking up some fantastic reviews. After all, what will grill night be without the food!

I do think your review made some really good substantive points that helped me writing, so I appreciate your efforts shadow. You were correct that some of the stylistic choices were intentional, and some others were just because I'm a novice writer, I had a cooler idea than I knew to write, and I was so focused on putting funny sound bites, that I probably should have let things flow. The SPAG mistakes were all me, lol. I actually wanted to make each thing their own storyline, so you gradually become a drug lord, or you start studying, make friends in prison, learn more about the world that the story is situated in. But then again, the story is meant as a parody, for this popular CYS series called Gay and Depressed. Basically, writers write a sort of spoof or intentionally comedic piece of writing centered around being gay and depressed, it's kind of become a CYStian inside joke. I did have some more serious pieces written that I took down for revision, so currently the main thing I have to show is a giant gay joke. At least for now...