The Weekly Review - Edition 31
FEATURING
A What is New Section giving the latest info on the Forums
A blank space where the article would’ve went if someone had actually written it. Ah screw it, I'll just write an article now.
A Review of The Multiverse Chalkboard, reviewed by Steve24833
The Short Story by Mizal called The Only Peace Possible (Please note that none of it's in italics, because fuck your system, mizal, the tags frustrate me)
CYStian Review of Will11
A Special Section on the Four Orders
Credits!
What’s New?
- In Newbie Central, people question what the Orders mean, because now everyone's confused about them.
- In the Lounge, people debate politics like screaming children.
- In News and Updates, 3J continues to work on endless updates, and people fail to provide for the contest.
- In the Parlour Room, a lone tumbleweed passes through the forum.
- In the Creative Corner, Steve writes another Council story, and nothing else of interest happens, because it was not done by Steve.
- In the Writing Workshop, negative continues to be a failure.
- In the Reading Corner, nothing happens, because this is a writing site, not a reading one.
- In the Advanced Editor Forum, people do coding that I don't understand.
- In the Feature Wishing Well, people ask a belabored 3J for more and more.
-In Bugs and Problems section, people find bugs with the speed and aggression of formicophiles.
Article: Write for the Review
Are you a lazy scumbag who has yet to write anything despite being on a writing site and calling yourself a writer? I have a solution for you! The Weekly Review is now accepting articles, short stories, reviews and special sections from you, the people! We always have been, but I assume you didn't know that, because no one can be as lazy as you guys are being. By the way, there is now a prize! For whoever writes the most for the Weekly Review will receive Will11's trophy? Really! No, I'm lying to you. You won't. You won't receive anything, because it takes more than that to get things in this world. Still, though, you'll probably get shit on less by me in these reviews.
Or maybe more. Who knows?
Anyway, write for the Weekly Review!
Featured Review: The Multiverse Calkboard by donteatpoop
The Multiverse Chalkboard is a game by donteatpoop, created as part of the 2016 School-Based Contest, scoring itself third place and the favorite character bonus for it’s character Dr Verruckt, as well as a strong 6/8 and a featured spot in the School-Based Section.
The game follows a student as his teacher, Dr Verrukt, introduces them to a way to travel across the multiverse through chalk symbols. The initial premise and story is certainly interesting and does draw you in making you curious to see the various universes you can travel through. The characters do definitely seem like they have potential and their relationships can be expanded on, but ultimately we actually get to see very little of both the setting and the characters.
I think, as mirrored by the game’s comments, the game’s issue is length. While it’s certainly a very interesting setting that makes you want to see more, but we never really get to. The infinite multiverse we’re eager to see ultimately ends up as two other universes we get to see in brief sequences. There Perhaps its due to the contest’s deadline, but it ultimately ends up being far too short. I’d be very eager to read a sequel or an expanded version of the game.
Featured Short Story – The Only Peace Possible, by Mizal
Carl gathered with the rest of the passengers and crew in the mess hall of The Olive Branch. He’d taken longer than usual suiting up this morning, conscious that after eight years of faster than light travel and mind numbing routine on humanity’s first interstellar colony ship, today would be the big day. Even if not quite what anyone had expected.
Two days ago the colonists had been jubilant. They’d come within range of a relay station as they’d dropped out of fast travel near the edge of the system. They’d all crowded around the viewports to see their destination planet, a blue dot now visible to the naked eye as the computers downloaded letters and news from home for the first time since they’d left. Carl’s background was military, and most of the others here were either like him, or scientists and engineers. The colonization effort was one sponsored by every remaining major nation in the world, a symbol of peace, hope, and new beginnings for the war ravaged Earth. Their job was meant to be one of setting up shelter, agriculture, and infrastructure to greet the next colony ship, due to arrive in two years, followed by countless more. Humanity had learned from its suffering and costly mistakes and been granted a chance to try again, as the advertisements and propaganda all liked to repeat.
But reality had one more barb for them, this ship of awakened dreamers. The news from home had been devastating. There would be no more ships full of eager colonists. Thirteen months after their departure, war had broken out again. And the reports kept piling up. Year after year. The war was still going. Many here had lost loved ones, but the captain had been hit the hardest. Both his son and his daughter had had a place on the next colony ship with their families, but had been recalled to military duty two scant weeks before it was scheduled to launch. The launch itself never happened, and the ship had been stripped for parts and scrap metal in the years to come. Both his children were now dead, and shortly thereafter his wife and grandchildren had been killed in the bombing of a refugee shelter.
The mood in here was subdued now. Passengers clustered here and there, speaking in furtive whispers and glancing around uneasily. Everyone seemed grim and on edge. Carl gave a tall Hispanic woman he’d had dinner with last night the barest nod in passing, but otherwise avoided eye contact with anyone he knew. Everything depended on being strong and carrying on, no matter what.
Captain Kutan had changed overnight from an animated and inspiring leader to a broken husk. Carl had spoken to him in his office, and the difference was astounding. His age showed like never before, and he muttered only brief replies while shuffling papers around on his desk--printouts of letters from his family before the war, and a child’s drawing of shooting stars over the jungle of what Carl supposed was meant to be the landing site of the new planet.
The ship had approached Second Chance, their new planet, in the early hours while most were asleep. They would enter orbit soon, and the landing procedure would then proceed. The captain was supposed to give a speech first. Obviously it would not be the one he’d originally planned. Carl wondered if the old man would be able to go through it at all, now that everything had changed. He wondered if Kutan would break down weeping, or otherwise embarrass himself, right here at the end.
A hush fell over those assembled when the captain entered and shuffled in silence toward the podium. He regarded them all with dark, suffering eyes, and after a long moment began to speak, voice so low at first that even with the amplifiers, Carl had to strain to hear.
“My friends. You all know the situation as well as I do. You have all lost loved ones, as I have. You have had your dreams for a future of peace for all humanity shattered, as I have. We came here with such bright hopes, to plant our seeds, till the fields, build homes for…for our families to live in for generations.” The captain paused to take a long, shuddering breath before he continued. “To build a safe haven and then throw open our arms to welcome the weary, the desperate, those who have seen and done too much these long, mad decades. Those who needed a clean break from the past to let the balm of peace settle into their souls, and move them forward to the future we all longed for.
Well. We all know the score there. It just wasn’t to be. The powers of Earth are a nest of...of vipers, of scorpions. They look above them and see joy and freedom, and they fall to stinging everyone around them to make sure that none can reach it. Not even themselves. But we can’t give up. We can’t give in. There are twenty-five thousand of us on this ship. So few compared to the millions that should have been blessed with the sight of our new home. But it’s up to us to carry the candle now, to go forward and keep the light of everything good about the human race shining, no matter how feeble it might now seem. Earth...Earth and everyone we left behind is separated from us now, by a gulf greater than that between the stars themselves. One day the war will end, and it may be that those left will again try to bridge the distance in peace, and on that day, I pray to Almighty God they’ll find a shining city here, with children of this new world who have known no war, ready to join hands and welcome their lost brothers and sisters.”
There were tears in the captain’s eyes now. Carl watched one roll down his cheek and drip into his beard. “But above all, I pray that wherever we go, whoever we become, whatever our differences, those of us here on this ship have seen enough of violence, have seen enough of its price. Please, please, can we finally put all our senseless hatreds aside? Let us not carry that disease onto this pristine new world. Leave it on Earth with the ashes of the burned out cities. Maybe we don’t deserve a second chance, but we’ve been given one anyway. Can we please, please not destroy it? For the sake of everyone we’ve lost, and all of those to come.”
A long pause as the captain struggled to compose himself, smiling weakly.
“All right. I’m done here. Thank you all for listening to an old man ramble. We’ll be making planetfall soon, and so right now I’d like Chang from our security team to go over procedures for a safe lan--”
Carl felt the subtle shift in the ship’s movement, the change in the sound of the engines that signified they’d entered orbit. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. Reaching into his bag he pulled out a makeshift laser rifle and sent several rapid shots into a group of security personnel. “Everyone on the ground!”
Pandemonium broke loose, but his people were already in position to block the doors. Six more produced their weapons, jury-rigged overnight from energy cells and steel piping by a pair of scientists working for their cause, while the woman he’d spent half the night convincing leapt forward and stabbed the Security Chief in the neck. “We’re taking over the ship! No one else will be hurt if you all cooperate!”
An orange beam singed Carl’s ear, and he leapt to one side, returning fire. A few of the surviving security personnel mixed with several passengers had taken positions around Chang and were firing rather indiscriminately at anyone else with a weapon, the rest of the crew included. Wait. Where had all these colonists gotten guns? Proper ones, too. Chang pointed at him and barked orders in Chinese, and Carl threw himself behind a counter to escape the barrage that followed.
“Stop firing! You don’t understand! I got a message from the relay! Back home they’ve improved the FTL engines, they just don’t have the resources to build a new ship! I have the designs! We use this planet’s resources to upgrade ours and make as many guns as we can, we can be back at Earth in three months and win the war!”
A surprising number of passengers had weapons out now, most makeshift like his own, but just as deadly. He had to scramble out from behind the counter to maintain cover, taking cover behind an upended table on the other side of the room and cursing as a bolt struck his leg, burning a tiny hole clean through his calf. Two of his allies were already down.
“Damn it! Everyone drop your weapons! We need this ship! We’ll take our planet back. For freedom and democracy!” Carl shouted, blowing smoking holes in the torsos of two of Chang’s aides. From somewhere came a popping sound, then the ship was rocked by an explosion. Then another, and another. From the confused looks the security group was exchanging, this hadn’t been part of their plan. Over the intercom came a wild yell. “This ship is now the property of the New Dawn Liberation Front! You folks in the mess hall, and those of you stabbing it out in the crew quarters, drop your weapons and surrender, or else we’ll--”
A buzzing sound and a short scream and then silence.
A moment later, another voice, speaking in Russian, followed by a cold chuckle. With a hiss, yellow smoke began to pour from the vents. From where he crouched, clutching his leg, Carl saw a line of men in gas masks running down the hall. A few others in the room with him seemed to have been conveniently carrying masks of their own. This whole situation had gone to hell.
Carl fired at the group in the hallway, then broke into a fit of coughing. Whatever was in the smoke burned his eyes and his lungs. All around him people were collapsing.
Pulling his shirt up over his mouth and nose, he called to one of his people nearby, gesturing with his gun. “We need to shut the vents off! Get to the captain, have him disable the--” His gaze traveled to the podium as he spoke, and he trailed off in mid sentence. Captain Kutan was nowhere in sight.
Well, hell. Forcing himself to his feet with a groan and shielding his eyes, Carl gunned Chang and two others down and staggered for the doors. There were gas masks in the emergency kits in the halls, he’d just have to grab one and then—
The intercom clicked on again. There were a few deep, rasping coughs, and then the captain’s voice. He sounded calm, almost serene. “To those of you, like me, who had so many hopes, who still believed in humanity, I’m deeply sorry. But we’ve brought our disease with us. As captain, I take full responsibility. But I also must keep it from spreading any further.”
Carl sucked in a startled breath, then regretted it instantly and stumbled to his knees, retching. But he had to get up and get his people out of here. Kutan had sounded like he meant to--
A searing blue light ended the thought for him, and removed the need to ever have another as the energy from the exploding warp core ripped through the ship.
*****
Lying on a simple platform of split logs high up in the trees, young Krehi scratched at his hairy side and then shifted to snuggle against his mother. He could hear the night sounds of the forest below, and the heavy breathing of his family and the rest of the tribe sleeping on similar platforms nearby. An open space in the leaves overhead revealed a patch of the clear night, and a constellation he recognized from stories the elders had told. As Krehi yawned and blinked his large golden eyes, the flaming wreckage of humanity’s Olive Branch streaked across the view of his native sky. To the child it resembled shooting stars, and he found it beautiful.
CYStian Review: Will11
Name: Will11
Member Since: 11/5/2014
Storygames: A Titanic Experience, American Outlaws: The James Gang,, Battlefield Commander: The Trojan War, Climbing Beyond the Clouds, HOW NOT TO WRITE- A Pokemon Adventure – Part 1 – Chapter I – Section A: The Beginning of the Start, Hunting the Ripper, the Magellen Series, the Donner Party, the Land of Bad Writing and the Lost Expedition. Jesus Christ, I should’ve just said “A lot”.
Review: Will11 seems to be the ultimate site member. Unlike the common swine that occupy the site, he’s actually written many, many storygames of a high calibre, with thirteen of total and five featured. That’s the kind of writing ability that can only be beaten by someone like Endmaster, who has been on the site for a decade, the old bastard.
As well as this, his stories are among my personal favorite with the great Magellen series and two separate games that serve as perhaps the most effective tool on the site to teach people not to be so shit at writing. He’s one of the best writers on a writing site. He’s a fairly active member, and is actually the man behind the Weekly Review. Yes, this thing you’re reading now. You have Will to thank for that.
Not only that, he’s actually one of the most helpful and friendly members of the site. He’s got a kind, friendly nature that is unparalled among the walls of scum that pack in this site, yours truly included. He has the Golden Rule on his profile, for Christ’s sake!
So what, has Will achieved the perfect score? No, most definitely not. Some people are fairly nice, sure, but no one’s this perfect. No one not only writes a newsletter for a site and many great storygames while staying as humble, kind and friendly. Seeing as we’ve had open racists, homophobes and just endless scum on this site, had Will11 been on par with them, he’d have been able to be open about it. But no, he hides it behind a wall of perfection. Hence, Will’s secret has to be worse. He has to be hiding something so horrifying it would drive us, US, to pure disgust. Only someone with a core of pure rot and hate would go through such efforts to build such a fascade. He keeps this fascade up in our PMs and such, so this lie really is all encompassing, only making the horror that lies underneath even more terrifying. Dear God, I don’t know what his secret is, but as soon as the Weekly Review gets a jouranlist, we’ll find out, and it will be a depravity the likes of which mankind has never seen.
Rating: Unknown threat: Take extreme precautions, because that dude is scary.
Special Section: The Four Orders
Thanks to the work of the valiant king of the site, who is 3J, and the mysterious Alexp, who is also 3J, CYStia has been blessed with out four categories:
-The Sages
-The Marauders
-The Architects
-The Wardens
Now, there are competing theories on which of these categories are the best. The sages have the majority of good members, clearly, so does that mean they’re the best? Is it because people were actually assigned orders, such as the Wardens are the honourable site members, the sages are the more intelligent, the marauders the demi-trolls and the architects some other fuckers that no one cares about? No, it’s not. Does anyone honestly think that anyone took the time to decide that “resistor” had the badass attitude and indifference to the rules to become a marauder? No, they’re random, you absolute twats. To be proud of one’s order is like being proud of one’s race. No, it’s worse. There are at least genetic components in this. This is worse. The fact that people actually give a shit about their orders is annoying. The fact that I’m forced to be in a group with slime like GundamMeister or Mayana disgusts me. I’ve been weighted down with the failures of others, and I refuse to be part of it. Instead, we should replace the orders with a better category: Ethnicity. Why?
I think that’d be funnier. Come on, kids bitching about made up orders that are made up is just nerdy. Children arguing about race? Now that’d be funny.
Credits
Idea by Jaystarcat, Idea done better by Will11, story by mizal, site member review, story review, article and special section done by Steve24833
Finally thank you everyone except Ford for taking the time to read this Review.
