A comprehensive quiz + bonus fan faction about the the underrated cult classic show "Kelly Unicornstrider and Friends" (1982-1985). Questions range from really easy to really difficult.

I think putting this on "publish" makes it so only we can see this. It's just for us, sweetie. I made it to celebrate our anniversary and remember some special intimate moments together over the years in an interesting way as a present for you.

I hope you love it, Natalie, as much as I love you!

(Of course if there's any admin looking at this, or if I messed up, don't read this, because it's got private things in it.)

This is my required report to the full faculty in accordance with the rules noted in the Faculty Handbook (version 15.1, as of October 2017)

"Personally I can only read 16 words in one go before words stop working," wrote Mizal.

This game has sixteen words per path.  Not counting "The End."  So you can play quickly.

When reviewing, please use precisely sixteen words.   That should be plenty for your suggestions and observations.

Note this challenge connected with this game:  Write the Last Page!

Hey, @DerekMetaltron, nice to see you.  I hope you enjoy the stories.  There's many different types of diverse games here, and lots of great opportunities to explore different characters and experiment with all sorts of protagonists.

This will likely not be of interest to anyone who isn’t deeply interested in sentence structure and the rhythm of prose, but here’s a thing I wanted to say about sentence style, using these stories as examples:

“Pre drop nerves always sucked. Today was no different for Private Bell of the U.E.S.C. “Heh, at least today I'm not dropping alone.” Running a hand through his short, blonde hair Bell took a deep breath. Nervously he brought up his in-pod display to see how long before it would be to go time. Seeing that there was less than twenty-five seconds left Bell grimaced.”

When I read this passage, the first thing I noticed was that the sentence rhythm was quite similar for every sentence.  The author uses some participles to try cumulative structure (“Running a hand…”; “Seeing that there was…”) but because the author didn’t comma after those clauses, the sentences all feel really staccato.

Compare:

 

Running a hand through his short, blonde hair Bell took a deep breath.

Running a hand through his short, blonde hair, Bell took a deep breath.

Seeing that there was less than twenty-five seconds left Bell grimaced.

Seeing that there was less than twenty-five seconds left, Bell grimaced.

Putting that comma in, the rhythm of the sentences shifts to the end of the sentence, putting a more interesting stress on “Bell” and “breath” and “left” and “grimaced”; without the comma, the sentence sounds flat.  This effect is exacerbated by the first three sentences, which are pretty simple sentences, rhythm-wise; the first sentence has an implied subject (“nerves sucked [for the U.E.S.C. soldiers]; the second sentence has “was” as the verb, and “today” as the subject, keeping the protagonist character to the end of the sentence.

These are tiny little effects, but they add up to create a less interesting stylistic effect.

Compare:

Cold steam hisses through your pod as you awake from your deep slumber. Your whole body feels numb, dead, needing to be revived. With your eyelids heavy, you can only make out strange silhouettes beyond the fogged glass—red lights. There’s a moment you can’t breathe. Two. Your lungs don’t work. Two needles shoot up your spine. The sharp penetration, cold liquid forcing itself up your back. The soft embrace of deep slumber.

So here, you have all different sentence rhythms and structures.  Sentence one hits us with two interesting ideas right away—the cold steam and the awakening, followed by a periodic sentence for sentence two (that numb, dead, needing to be revived is interesting and different from the pattern of the first sentence, and notice how that list hits us with two one-word adjectives (numb, dead) and then mixes it up with the present participial phrase “needing to be revived.”—that’s really mixing things up.)  The third sentence makes a cumulative move (“with your eyelids heavy,”) and has the comma there for the brief pause, and uses the em dash for a longer pause.

This longer sentence is followed by a much shorter sentence (“There’s a moment you can’t breathe”) followed by a single word:  “Two.”

Then in a really good move, we get what looks like fragments but what is actually a sort-of disassembled cumulative sentence:  “Two needles shoot up your spine. The sharp penetration, cold liquid forcing itself up your back. The soft embrace of deep slumber.”  The first of those clauses is a complete sentence—that’s the independent clause.  The rest are incomplete sentences, serving as the dependent clauses.  (Actually, I would probably prefer “penetrating sharply” rather than “the sharp penetration”—but I think it works well as it is.

Students always ask me if authors actually think about these things when they write or if I’m just having a grammar wank.  (They don’t say it in those words.)  The truth is this:  writers feel this stuff in their bones even if it doesn’t ascend to their conscious decision-making process.  You look at a paragraph and you feel the rhythm in there, and then later people can come and point to stuff and say why it’s cool.  But that’s completely secondary. 

How do you get good at this sort of thing?  You read a lot, and you read everything.  Read aloud.  Listen to recorded books that have a good narrator.  All of the explicit grammar instruction probably isn’t going to help.  It’s pretty much just go out there and devour page after page of all different styles, even ones you find challenging.

Story 2.

I vote for the enticingly titled "Story #2" without any comment whatsoever.

I pick "The Chosen Child."  I thought the writing was much more sophisticated, and I really liked how it worked to evoke a particular atmosphere and tone, leaning more on those things than plot.

I'll go for 2 here, even though I was reaching for my red pen the entire time.  I guess I was doing that for story 1, too. 

I don't know.  I thought there were a few interesting bits of prose in there, and it had a pretty decent hook; the plot itself was decent as well, as opposed to story 1, which sort of ended squib-like.

Definitely Story 1.  The mechanics of writing were much more polished than Story 2, and the pacing and narration were smoother.  I felt much more authorial control in Story 1.  Story 2 clearly had some interesting stuff going on, but I thought it had too much set up, making it too bottom-heavy, whereas Story 1 had interesting writerly stuff going on in the prose right away.

Just popping in to say hi and introduce myself, but also state the reason for the probably-surprising migration.

I wasn't super surprised.  Welcome, and enjoy the games here.

Now I kind of want it to be in a valley of pineapples, though.

As far as I am concerned, they were essays on As You Like It.  They looked more like them than the ones I received this week.