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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.

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.