The Weekly Review - Edition 32
FEATURING
A What is New Section giving the latest info on the Forums
An Article on What’s happening to my site?: An Article for Cystians
A Review of the Lost Expedition (2) by Will11, reviewed Seto
The Short Story Death Walked Into The Village
CYStian Review of MinnieKing
The Special Section where Steve makes another desperate grab for power using the newspaper as he doesn't know what else to put in that section but gibberish
Credits!
What’s New?
- In Newbie Central, no one new showed up.
- In the Lounge, somehow nothing I care about happened. They just bitched about videogames and anime for a while.
- In News and Updates, there’s another update, and the New Frontier Contest is discussed.
- In the Parlour Room, we discuss featuring a new horror game as well as Planetary Exploration Society.
- In the Forum Games section, nothing happened, because it doesn’t exist anymore! YEAH!
-In Creative Corner, another Council of Nine story is written, and I guess there’s some prompts or other stuff or whatever.
- In the Writing Workshop, people are shamed for being failures at writing and questions are asked about how long it took people to write their stories.
- In the Reading Corner, nothing ha… holy shit, people discussed novels? Oh, graphic novels. Yeah, nothing happened.
- In the Advanced Editor Forum, there was something about sidescreening in games or something I don’t care about.
- In the Feature Wishing Well, some dumbass was banned for talking shit.
-In Bugs and Problems section, 3J told himself about a bug, or something.
Featured Article – What’s happening to my site; An article for Cystians
Now, you might have noticed some changes going on with your life as of late. No, not the weird thing happening to your genitalia as you’re clearly a preteen twat, no, that’s something you should ask your parents, uncle or local clergy about. Really, ask the most likely people to molest you. No, this is about the changes happening the site! Now, I know what you’re thinking:
“Oh, Steve, I’m a twat who’s confused, but you’re as confused as I am! How are you going to help me?”
Fear not, useless twat, because I am here to help you by laying out the most recent changes without mentioning all the boring shit you don’t cared about. For instance:
-We updated all the seriously out of date shit!
-We changed ratings to show you up to two decimal places, the word count and how it ranks compared to other games!
-BerkaZerka, Will11 and the concept of having 5000 points all got their own trophies!
-There’s a community contributor trophy!
-We burned Forum Games to the ground, fuckers! Now there’s a new place for non-gay shit.
-We got rid of profile scripting.
-We fixed the articles.
-We gave the ability to be unbanned.
-We now have the ability to give three Commendations a day for storygames, forum posts or comments! ---An article is 10, a comment is 3, a post is 1 and a story is much larger!
-There’s a weird Order system to pit you against your fellow writer! Ah, who am I kidding, you’re not a real writer.
-Having your storygame featured is worth twice as much.
-We show the six newest storygames instead of five.
-Usernames of the best “Order” in the past twenty four hours get different color usernames despite the teams being carried by very few people in a society built of leaching.
-We show the top 100 storygames, not the top 20.
-You get notifications for being commended or having points taken or give to you by the Mods.
That’s pretty much everything important. If you think I’ve left anything out, please mention it in the comments! Actually, don’t. If I left it out, I probably don’t care about. Anyhow, the site’s better now, praise 3J!
Featured Review: Lost Expedition (2), by Will11, reviewed by Seto
There is no such thing as a bad Will11 game. Period. Will is a good writer and has put out a lot of quality work during his time here at CYS, and I really do mean a lot. The only problem is that, having put out so many good stories, it's going to be hard not to compare them to each other and when a storygame is forcibly finished for a competition, it just doesn't normally have the same feel and polish as a story completed on its own time.
I think that was the main problem here. That said, to be perfectly fair, all your reviewers (including me) are comparing this game to the standards that you set for yourself, Will. Comparing this game to the average new story, on the other hand, absolutely blows the latter out of the water, and the fact that we simply expect your work to be amazing when compared to them is worth noting. This is particularly true if it's intended to serve as an ending and a final farewell to these characters.
Honestly, the other reviewers covered a lot of ground on critiques, such as the romance being incredibly rushed, the story feeling linear and short, and this not quite feeling like an epic climax of an ending. I will throw in that I'm glad you made this so it can also be a stand alone adventure, too. Lastly, all criticisms aside, I really did enjoy this story very much and that's the most important thing in the end. The best crafted book or game in the world isn't any good if it bores you.
In the end, I thank you for making both series for our entertainment, I think you still did a very respectable job on this story even if it was rushed, and I definitely look forward to seeing your next game.
Featured Short Story – Death Walked Into The Village
It was early morning when the sun kissed the sand dunes that Death arrived on the village. Abraham was sitting by the well on guard duty. He waited patiently, tapping the stone of the well as he stared at the horizon, trying to keep watching while protecting himself from the suns rays. Then, one of the house’s exploded as the sky itself struck. The explosion ripped through the ground, sending flying shards of glass, chunks of stone, pieces of metal flying through the air. Abraham screamed and ducked behind the well as ash and dust filled the air. He coughed, now blind as he stumbled forward. Another explosion erupted. His ears were filled with a high-pitched whine as he clutched at his ears, wincing in pain.
Abraham managed to stand, checking his body for wounds. By the mercy of God, he wasn't bleeding, or if he was, he wasn't bleeding heavily enough to notice. When the whine died away, it was replaced with the horrible screaming and crying of the others. Children cried for their mothers, the wounded screamed in pain. He recognized one of the crying voices as his mother, and raced towards her.
"Somebody help! Please, somebody help!" she cried.
By now the ash and dust had cleared enough for Abraham to find her. Her arm was open with a long gash running across it, no doubt from shrapnel, but she paid no notice, pawing at the rubble covering his younger sister Maria. Her frail, tiny body was twisted and broken, covered with a layer of dirt, ash and blood. Abraham dropped to his knees and struggled to lift up a large chunk of stone off her, but couldn't do it. He reached his hand down through the rubble to grab her hand, trying to offer her some hope of getting out of her, but her fingers were clammy and limp. She tried to hold onto his hand, but she didn't have the energy.
Abraham pulled back, looking around for help, but the others were all busy. An armless man was pulled from the rubble, begging desperately for help, as the mangled body of what could've been a human or a dog for all Abraham knew was dragged from the rubble. It was clear from where the survivors had already decided Maria was dead. Abraham tried to stand, before collapsing back to his knees. He let out a scream, slamming his fists into the dirt. Maria let out a final few choked breaths, before her final throes of life ceased. Abraham's mother burst into wails once again, and Abraham burst into tears, incapable of doing anything else.
Abraham stared up at the sky and in his worst, most blasphemous moment wondered if God was even watching over them anymore, or whether the heathens had killed him and took his place.
***
The man who stood in front of the assembly of young men and boys had once represented death and destruction to Abraham. Now, he was the only symbol of hope Abraham had left. Although most of his companions had been killed in the destruction, he had survived to champion his cause. The night was dark, the only light being the man's torch, which illuminated both his face and the flag that hung next to him.
"The enemy is without mercy, without compassion, without anything but hate and greed. Look at what they have done to us today, brothers. We need to fight! We need to destroy them! Death to America! God is great!" he shouted, sticking the torch into the flag.
The red, white and blue soon turned to ash as the villagers watched them. Each of them knew their part. Their country was besieged by heathen invaders who cared nothing for their life, spitting death and fire like angels of Shaytan. For the sake of their brothers, their sisters, their wounded, their dying, their dead, their living, their dead, they would need to rise up. They would need to fight, and for the sake of their nation, they would need to win.
CYStian Review:
Name: MinnieKing
Member Since: 10/21/2016
Storygames: Addition, Blast from the Future, Conned, Insanity Castle, Polly wanna cracker?, The Invasion of CYOA, The River of FIre
Review: It’s surprisingly rare to find someone who has written a storygame on a writing site based around storygames. That’s because few people rise above the masses of filth and scum we call consumers due to the fact they’re little more than massive mouths to eat, asses to shit and buggy little eyes to read. To find someone with seven storygames such as MinnieKing is a delightful rarity which usually gives you hours of terrific reading.
Unfortunately, that joy is crushed when you read any of the storygames. What we have here are four stories that barely dance above the line of absolute purging as the absolute bottom of the barrel, and three stories that manage to distinguish themselves in being slightly less shit than the former four. It wouldn’t surprise me if the first four along exist to lower the bar and to make the better three look less shit in comparison.
As well as this, this individual had dedicated a considerable amount of time to the recently expunged tumor of the site known as Forum Games, which in itself is a horrid act worth persecution.
MinnieKing is a figure lacking in intelligence, charm, wit, brevity or even the goodwill to stay silent to avoid forcing us to listen to the cancerous tune of his voice.
But hey, at least he’s not as bad as some fag like Malk or an absolute nerd who publishes nothing like Axiom. Plus, he’s actually quite a good sport about things like this, so fair deuce to him.
Rating: Smeg of the Site that should be purged with Zyklon B
Special Section – Why Steve should be made the site’s only Mod
Before you flee, thinking that I’m here to bitch and complain, wait. I have no bragging to be done here. Only irrefutable, logical evidence that I should be made the site’s only Mod. Now, my opponents and enemies might claim my long history of being a dick or the strong reputation of the current mods would show this idea to be foolish. However, these men are fools whose arguments are so full of assumptions they should be dismissed outright.
To begin, we know only one fact, summarized by René Descartes, in “I think, therefore I am”. This means that since you’re thinking these thoughts, you exist. You know nothing else, as since we know our senses can be lied to and deceieved, your senses can’t be used to gather evidence, and these senses are the only way to interact with the outside world.
Now, seeing as we only know our own existence, we have only one fact and nothing else to help either side of our argument. To actually interact with the world, we need to make assumptions. However, we know the argument with the fewest assumptions is the best thanks to Occam’s Razor. We assume that ours senses our accurate for the most part in the picture of the world we paint, rather than assume that we’re plugged into machines, and assume that data is pumped into our brains, and assume that someone has placed us in here. The fewest, most simple assumptions leads to the best worldview.
So let’s look at the Anti-Steve argument. Here, they assume that I’ll act as I always have, they assume End will act as he has, that Killa will act as he has, that Berka, that 3J and that all the ancient and forgotten mods can be trusted and will act as they have. That’s an awful lot of assumptions to make, and if we’re wrong about a single mod, that mod can delete all the site’s storygames and ban many important members, crippling if not destroying the site.
Now, my argument is simple. Assume that I’ll be a good mod. One assumption, no more. The argument is straightforward and completely understandable. Through this, there’s only one person who can slip up and destroy the site rather than having many people with that power. You’re basically reducing the amount of nukes in existence. Here, we have the most logical, straightforward and understandable path.
So come on guys, make me the site’s only mod. The evidence is on my side.
Credits
Idea by Jaystarcat, Idea done better by Will11, site member review, article, short story and special section done by Steve24833, story review by Seto
Finally thank you everyone except Ford for taking the time to read this Review.
