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Hey CYStians!

The Gazette Free-For-All continues with one last round! Got two more stories for you all to read and review. Post your votes here to the thread now before the deadline this Saturday 11:59 EST!

As always, a hearty thank you to all the members of the CYS Monthly Gazette and specifically the winners from the last round, RKrallonor and Anthraxus. Congratulations guys!

Expect an announcement for the winner of the Free-Foe-All in another short Bonus Issue later this month, and of course you'll still be treated to another issue by our regular schedule. Hope you all enjoy.

The pictures here are clickable! If you want the slideshow of this article, here's a link.

It feels odd that in Story A, the main character is afraid of Scotty beaming him up when the aliens come, despite supposedly being an avid UFO enthusiast and telling us that he wants to be abducted at the beginning of the story. Meanwhile, Story B has some good foreshadowing in the beginning, and also gives us a good reason for why they are in the middle of the forest that is rumored to have not one, but two types of dangerous killers lurking within it, instead of just having them mindlessly wandering in because of the usual "THaT DEfiNiTelY WON't haPpen tO us! We'rE toO smARt For thAT!". As such, I'm going to vote for Story B.

FYI: The link for the slideshow goes to the last issue.

Thank you for pointing out the error. All fixed now.

That is entirely human. Falling in love with the idea of something and then when face to face with the reality of it, sudden fear and instinct pulling you back.

Also I enjoy the delicious irony of the pro-alien people becoming sex slaves or whatever for the aliens. It's fitting for being so annoying.

Consequently, while I think maybe Story B might have better writing techniques (starting in action, good description, etc), I feel like story A is more of a complete circle, and I like circles. So I'm gonna vote A, if it's still allowed.

Well seeing as I did so the round before, I'll first up start by writing what I'll be looking out for. See this as that sad sequel trying and failing to capture the original's magic.

Alright. What the fuck. What is that prompt, dude. I guess the last one was too specific for you folks, so you figured you can't get off-prompt when the prompt itself is as wide as your mom was back when she still called herself pretty. Might need the next one to be a story about a woman and/or a man, though, just to be safe and not steer too far off-course with your own interpretation.

Anyway with the prompt being about as creative as a sad sack of Cricket's thrown away potatoes, I'll mainly be judging whether I'd prefer reading these stories over watching cat videos. Because that's what I am looking for when reading about a holiday. A lads' holiday, family holiday or even a solo backpacker's holiday in Thailand (but definitely not for those reasons guys, it's all spiritual!), all of them sport those feelgood warm vibes with good company, a fun getaway from the 9-5 drab. Well, unless you're one of those tragic people who sit at McDonalds all by their lonesome on Christmas, but I'm going to ignore those just as they're ignored in real life.

Yeah nothing much to add to that. Pretty simple and generous prompt, I sure hope nobody fucked this up.

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Story A:

Yeah, you fucked this up. You're the type of guy who puts Die Hard on for Christmas, loudly yelling at all the crying 5 year old nieces that YES IT IS A CHRISTMAS MOVIE WHY ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED. Give those kids Home Alone, man. They deserve it. Hell, even Frozen is better than this, so you can dump those kids and have an actual conversation with their mom the next room over.

It's even worse. I read on and it's not even the 4th of July, but the 2nd. It's not even an actual holiday but just a random modern attention whoring thing for 'awareness'. Yes I am aware y'all a bunch of fags, I did not need an extra day for that. Did you know 16th September was rock collecting day? Yeah me neither. That's how stupid this all is. Except rock collectors. Those are genuine, man. More genuine than this will ever be.

There were no good warm vibes Christmas vibes, or happy summer holiday vibes that I was looking for. The start of the story took too long traveling. Who likes a travel day, let alone reading about a travel day? Why did you bother making a solid 25% of your story a travel day? Moreover, when the good vibes were about to start you had to ruin the moment with a bunch of UFOs. It was all a bit meh.

But the story did have a first person protagonist, and I am always a fan of that one.

Also I'm just making this score to keep track.

Prompt 1/5
Entertainment 2/5
Enter's whim 3/5
Total 6/15

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Story B.

Alright. I settled in, paused the cat that meowed like a chirping bird and am met with the following opening sentence: "The blood wouldn't stop flowing". Now I am doing my due diligence and will continue reading, as any self-respecting reviewer would, but you fucked up, man. You fucked up.

If the previous contestant put Die Hard on, you just yanked the remote out of his hand and switched the channel to the sequel of Terrifier. Do you think the five year olds are liking that more? Well, don't bother answering, you are promptly kicked out of my house and never invited for a family dinner ever again.

Well I was about to say you brought it back again, remarking it was weird you started a feelgood story with that atrocious first sentence, but in the end it actually turned out to be a slasher, alongside a plot even more retarded than most within that genre.

Now this one is a rough one to judge. If I'm going by what I was looking for this is a solid -5/5. Still, there were some genuine warm moments before you fucked up royally again, and they were together as a family away from their day to day jobs. And while the slasher part was unnecessary, I can't deny it was way more interesting than an alien lover running away from his aliens. Also, while not being a first person protagonist, you did include the harder hitting sentences. I was particularly fond of the following one.

'The man's viscera streamed from the wound, his intestines spiraling outwards like a spool of thread, undone.' The undone does it.

Prompt -2/5
Entertainment 4/5
Enter's whim 4/5
Total 6/15

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So I'm retroactively making Story A's prompt a 0/5 because goddamn UFO day is retarded and not a holiday. Congrats Story B. You got my vote.

Also, story A: your story once again ended just as it was getting interesting. I'd really suggest reading your first draft again to see where it fails to hold even your interest, and cutting that out in favor for the actual good shit.

Well I haven't read either of these yet but this certainly sets some expectations.

LOL I heard you guys had trouble following the prompt last time, but if that is what you were given this time it must’ve been really bad.

Anyway, about Story A:

If I need to google whether the holiday used is actually a thing I don’t think it’s a good one to use as a way to make up for not following the prompt previously. Still I appreciate the creativity and at least it’s more unique than, I don’t know, Christmas (wink wink). Unfortunately not that much happens for most of the story with almost half of it being travel, and sightseeing. This is even more of a problem when a significant part of what was established about our protagonist, which is the only thing that makes that half not pointless, is contradicted in the second half. Now it’s not entirely unbelievable that someone’s beliefs might lose out to basic survival instincts once the thing they believe in actually comes true, but there was no explanation for the protagonist’s resistance to abduction contradicting his wishes to be abducted at the beginning. Maybe having them witness aliens actively attacking as a catalyst to change his mind could have smoothed out the transition. I liked the “I don’t like this holiday anymore.” line as a way to end it, but ending it just as it was getting interesting kind of cancels that out. An unfortunate byproduct of wasting paragraphs for travel and anal probing jokes.

Alternatively one could fix most issues by changing the protagonist from a UFO enthusiast travelling from afar to a “non-believer” local. That way we can skip the journey and establish the place in fewer words, leaving more space for the actual event. Also that way would remove the contradiction in characterization and make the twist a bit more impactful from the main character’s point of view.

Meanwhile Story B:

Congrats on taking the path of least resistance in terms of the prompt, and then continuing down that path with a never before seen story of an axe-wielding serial killer attacking random strangers in the woods. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s a reason this is such a well established trope. It works as a decent framework for easy thrills, and you get bonus points for our victims actually having a reason to be out in the woods, but you make them being there make so much sense that it in turn makes the killer look like an absolute moron between openly attacking three people at once, two of which are young and fit to defend themselves, and doing so in broad daylight. Aside from that it’s a solid story, and starting it at the end as a teaser before going back in time works well in building suspense for this kind of thing. My only real gripe would be that one single line of dialogue that almost gave me whiplash, but I can tell that you were bouncing from the word count limit, which is probably why that’s a thing.


Overall I did like both stories in a sense that it wasn’t a waste of 10 minutes to read them, but Story B had fewer issues that impacted enjoyment so that’s where my vote goes. A gets bonus points for the idea, but sadly fell a bit short in its execution.

Hey! I recognize this prompt from the prompt contest. Nice to see it getting put to use!

As for the stories themselves, they both seemed pretty solid and managed to get me interested in their respective plotlines. Story A choosing to base its plot around UFO day of all holidays, was pretty funny. It almost felt like the author wanted to subvert expectations regarding the prompt and picked the most wacky festival they could find. I did feel like it could have benefited by showing the party's interactions with the aliens or something. Then again, maybe that would've strayed away a bit too much from the prompt.

I really enjoyed the non-linear narrative choice to start with the end in Story B. You end up reading the rest of the story knowing full well that this happy nature walk isn't going to have a good ending. Sure enough, the sudden brutal appearance of the killer and the descriptions of the struggle provide an excellent payoff to that whole setup, finally bringing us back to the dying protagonist, captivated by the snow. Very cool writing. Except of course, I wouldn't read all that and tell you it's a story about Christmas lol. Maybe if the killer was actually Santa Claus but he went insane because of a curse of immortality and he started believing everyone was naughty, it would be more on theme?

Tough decision, but I guess I'll vote for Story B. It made some narrative decisions that really impressed me.

Story A because I like the annoying alien people becoming slaves to the aliens. No offense if you're an alien person. I used to live in Roswell though and I just had my fill.

That isn't to say that Story B is bad. It's in fact, IMHO better written. But I just gag when I see people deeply in love, and a serial killer doesn't interest me that much. Sometimes something resonates with you and sometimes it doesn't. Great descriptions though, excellent writing throughout.

Ok, let’s take a look.

I like the narrative tone of Story A and I also like that being abducted by a UFO is preferable to hanging out with the writer’s bullying friends :D This story comes across as very authentic as though the writer really did go to Roswell for World UFO Day but it reads less like a story than an account of an experience. Despite the theme there isn’t much tension, even when the UFOs appear and everyone gets sucked up for the anal probing. There are not a lot of sensory descriptions and the narrator’s actual abduction by the UFO is glossed over.

The opening sentence of Story B is more attention-grabbing and we have this guy in a not-great situation and have the interest of how he got there. I actually missed the transition to the flashback and had to read a second time but the non-linearity of the story is a good call. Elise sounds nice (I like the line “Max squeezed Elise once more”) and there is good foreshadowing. I love how Mrs Chavez is cool with getting her land cheap because there is a high possibility a serial killer might chop them up (that must have been a fun conversation at the estate agents) and sure enough random killer strikes. I’m not sure what is the point of throwing snow into a blind man’s face but the whole fight scene was exciting and the ending was a sad one.

On the whole I preferred Story B – the opening is more riveting and though both stories have threats develop the second one is more foreshadowed, described in more detail and has a more tragic ending with characters that are more sympathetic (especially Elise). Both were a bit cliché, though well-written, with decent characters, plot development and few SPAG errors but yeah, I would vote for B, just for the non-linearity of the story and the stronger ending description where the threat is encountered.

Been meaning to do this so let's get into it.

Story A is engaging, and I love the premise. Even though it's not a real holiday, I guess it technically counts. There's a few SPAG errors, such as missing comma after the world Janelle, and no 'd' on the name before it, (I could make a dirty joke here, but I'm not going to. See how mature of a reviewer I am?) and an extra comma after Max's girlfriend.
Overall an engaging story, though. On the traditional storygame scale I'd give it a 5/8.

Story B immediately pulls me in with the promise of gore, but fairly quickly reveals it to be a hallucination? Or a flashback? It's very unclear. At this point, I'm excited to read the rest. The pacing is alright until around halfway through, at which point there's a very rapid switch from exposition to cold hard murder. Story B author, I ask this with all respect, but is your favorite Christmas movie Die Hard? Well, the story ends with some good old suicide, so that's engaging, at least. I'd give this a 5/8 as well.

This is a hard choice, but after a long deliberation, I'll give it to Story A for the creativity.

Interesting takes on Story B. I'm pretty sure there wasn't a suicide, and I never questioned whether it was a flashback. Character "thinks back to the morning before this happened" and then the scene switches to events leading up to this happening.

I got 'the character sits in the snow waiting to die' from the last couple sentences and called it suicide. I suppose I just need to work on my comprehension for the other bit, though.