Don't expect this to be a weekly thing, because what's the point when doomsday is just around the corner?
FEATURING
The New Shit
An Interview with the monster Mayana
A Review of insanebutvain’s Dispiteous
“Short” Story: Prom Night
Special Section: Ethics and Responsibility in Writing
Credits
The New Shit
Newbie Central: Some new people joined. Ogre called one of them a ho and scared her off. Another great example of our weeding process in action here at CYS.
The Lounge: In the boardgames thread I brought up the new Fallout boardgame that’s being made, though it looks like we might get to play it in real life. Glad I was collecting bottle caps.
And hopefully Sentinel’s gotten over his pangs of guilt of ripping people off because he’s going to be needing those bartering skills soon.
News & Updates: Berka’s contest is still ongoing. To nobody’s surprise Negative acted like a fucktard and got himself banned and SHAMED ahead of time.
The Parlor Room: Someone made another amusing comment on one of my stories.
Berka also asked if he should give his readers an option to commit suicide. I say he should just kill them himself if he’s that annoyed with them.
Creative Corner: Seto returned from his coma to post another writing prompt. Results are mixed so far.
Writing Workshop: People are doing a lot of bragging and bitching about their contest story. None of them are doing any actual writing though.
Reading Corner: Some people spoke about the book Ready Player One, then the thread got derailed as is normal for this place.
Advanced Editor Forum: A bunch of boring talk about coding/scripting shit as usual.
Feature Wishing Well: Some boring request that won’t come to pass for a very long time, if ever.
Bugs & Problems: Some complaint about maturity. Not sure what that’s all about. If you came here expecting maturity you haven’t been paying attention.
Interview: Mayana AKA “Medusa”
When she’s not lurking in the shadows draining the souls of the unwary, she’s wasting her time on here. At last hear the monster explain why in her own words.
1. Who is your daddy and what does he do?
Why are you asking about my dad instead of my mom? He's an excellent person and I'm very lucky to have him. He works as a baker and is also a very good cook. And he's straight, try elsewhere. :)
2. Why did you join and stick around when so many of your fellow monsters have sought prey elsewhere?
Most of my kind hides in a small corner of the internet, where it's safe. But we need more territory, we need to add more people to our numbers, we need to kill the light! Or maybe I just like to read and find the forums amusing.
3. Besides me of course, what are your favorite aspects and members of the site and why?
Everyone in the Villain Lair, because while they all have flaws (some more than others), I get along with them well enough and they're fun to be around. All the good writers on here that put actual effort in their stories, because that's what this site is for. And of course all the helpful people that offer useful feedback and scare children away.
4. Besides that degenerate Steve of course, what is your least favorite thing about this place and why?
People that know their story is bad, but publish it anyway. People that torture English language and make my screen reader cry. Fake blindies, because I need AzBaz to feel guilty.
5. Why the hell haven’t you written a proper CYOA yet?
Because I'm pathetic. I have no good ideas, no motivation, I'm just one of many that will never do anything important. I actually did have some plans, but they never got anywhere, I'll try to be better. Why the hell did you interview me instead of someone interesting?
6. Despite your excuses, do you have any advice for other writers?
Stories are in some ways like alcohol. Not all drinks get better with time, but it's still worth it to spend a few more months on yours, just in case it's one of the ones that do. Post a thread in the Writing Workshop, ask someone to proofread before you publish, don't give up. Do as I say, not as I do. :)
7. Any final thoughts before I release you back into the wild?
Take care, humans!
And there you have it folks, in her own words. I’m sure you’ll all be sleeping better with her loose again.
Review: Dispiteous by insanebutvain
Yeah so this story has edgelord written all over it what with all the warnings and such on the first page. More surprising is it was written during one of resident cuckoo owl Morgan’s challenges proving that even the mentally ill can have great ideas once in awhile.
Anyway the story is basically insane’s excuse to work out her own daddy issues via story writing obviously. I mean she basically states this on the front page. She’s got the dad in the story as an abusive, raping, murderer. Even the portrayal of the mother isn’t much better since she kills the protagonist as well.
Throw in some pedophilia and necrophilia and it’s pretty clear ol’ insane has a classic Electra Complex. I mean I got a B.S. in psychology so I know these things!
But this isn’t an examination on why insane’s a big whore looking for the random “love” from strangers that she never got from daddy, this is about the story she wrote.
Anyway, the story is good for what it is. She kept it short and stories like this usually work better when they’re short.
My only complaint is that insane showed a lot of promise with this story and her other one and she just became a lazy hoe and didn’t do any more writing afterwards.
But anyway, I liked it a lot.
(It’s no Love SICK, of course)
Short Story: Prom Night
Actually this is part of a much larger (and older) work, but this is one of the best parts. In fact, it’s too fucking long to post here so I’m just going to post a link to it in my Short Story thread where I'll put it instead.
http://chooseyourstory.com/forums/creative-corner/message/21334
Special Section: Ethics and Responsibility in Writing
“We have a responsibility. That responsibility is not to include moral transgressions for shock value and not to set up simplistic situations where the correct choice is to transgress those morals, whether that is set up by the situation itself (the ticking time-bomb) or by post-hoc justification (if you choose the Bad Thing, the character gets in trouble/punished).”
“It’s about media, any form of media, manipulating people. Given that it is a multi-billion dollar industry, it is suspect when people claim that only people with mental derangements or are badly educated are vulnerable. Every single person is vulnerable to manipulation. Every single system can be subverted, and your mind is no exception.”
Yeah, you can already guess where these gems came from. And a link to a fucking Cracked article about RAPE is always a sign of a well supported argument!
Jesus fucking Christ…
Well hell, if everyone can be manipulated and nobody is safe then we might as well just censor everything because hey someone might go out and do something terrible!
Seriously, like Mizal said, a lot of the people on that site would be still supporting the 1950s comic code with this mindset.
Look kids, it’s very simple.
If you really just have to write torture porn interactive fiction (or something similar) for whatever reason, nobody is stopping you. There are places for you to do exactly that.
But contrary to popular belief, you’re not fueling “rape cuture” with your story that you’ve posted on some corner of the internet and you’re not some terrible person that’s making the world a worse place. (Sorry to disappoint you)
You’re not even a terrible person if you’re reading it. In fact I’d rather you be wasting your time in your basement writing/reading torture porn, because you ARE a terrible person if you actually go out and do it obviously.
You also aren’t responsible if someone reads your story and then goes out and does something crazy. This is an idea that needs to seriously die.
You have no moral or ethical responsibilities except ones that you’ve made up. You want to restrict yourself for whatever reason that’s fine. That’s an individual author’s choice.
When you start trying to preach to others about “duty” and “responsibility” that’s just trying to convert people to think the way you do like some zealot and honestly that’s worse than the lone guy that’s writing torture porn IF and you’re just being a moralizing douchebag with his head up his ass. And THAT is making the world a worse place.
I would rather see the extreme bad along with the good rather than this boring cookie cutter notion that everyone has to follow arbitrary rules of conduct because some nutcase might do something bad. All it does is stifle creativity and restrict authors (or artists in general) who fall into this group think mentality that they have to write a certain way.
As a writer, the only main thing you have responsibility to do is spell all the fucking words correctly and adhere to shit like plot structure and development.
Now go forth children of CYS, follow your writing vision and fuck anyone who tells you not to.
(But remember, you still have to write about super heroes for Berka’s contest and write your warrior cat porn elsewhere)
Credits
EndMaster
(And Mayana for the interview)
Have a happy apocalypse!
