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!

"Excellent" stories!  Well, let's see if the touting of these stories is justified. 

Others here have already (Enter) pretty much said what I would have said about the narrative, and I want to think about prose style.  So Story A has aspects of the prose style that makes me lean away from the screen slightly as I read.  There's also basic sentence structure stuff to deal with as well, like comma splices, the difference between single and double quotation marks, the use of periods and commas with quotation marks (they go inside); things that would have been caught with a reread ("he had seen it in his thier eyes"), and dropped words "the first expedition to reclaim in ten years."  But eh, that's just proofreading, I guess. 

As far as style goes, Story A has the problem of telling me how cool this guy is and not showing me him doing cool stuff.  Instead, it leans really hard into asserting the coolness in the opening by way of doing the exposition and establishing character, and for me, that tends to make me push a story away.  I want to see men twisted by magic into abominations faster.  But more than that, and this is really hard to elucidate in a comment, the dialogue has a lot of trouble sounding like people talking as opposed to people talking in a story.  There's a stilted quality about it with every single writer has to work through in their authorly career, and it shades into a natural style around the millionth word of practice.  I think that what Story A does best is some narrative propulsion at the end--it knows what story arc is wants and its drives towards it and then it ends with a little punch at the right time.  I appreciated that.

Story B has a reasonably good style at the start.  On the other hand, this author clearly hasn't read my article on how to do dialogue attributions with "'Henry, go back.' You chastise, clenching your teeth."  I also don't think using second person does this story any favors.  In the absence of interactivity, I don't like second person.  But that's me.  Moments like "your gun will not work" sound to me like something a classic adventure game would say when you try to USE GUN with FADER.  I was not a fan of this story's slow start, and particularly what Enter called the "shift in pacing" partway through.  Some transition was badly needed there.

This story has a good idea for physical detail and has a sense of how to use some interesting sentence structures, but the rhythm of a lot of the sentences fall into a pretty similar pattern.  That's the sort of thing where when I tell undergraduates that, they give me a pretend patient look, but I assure you, it's a thing.  The sentences, though, are really quite clumsy at the moments of crisis, and that's where second person really lets it down:  "you halt all movement, even that of your breaths."  As a side note.  This story too doesn't know the difference between single and double quotation marks.  I think what this story does best is offer some vivid detail at key moments--the precise weight of the dog, for example.

I started out thinking I was going to vote for B, but no, I'm going for STORY A.  But it was close, and in a different world where I had gotten more sleep or had a slightly different breakfast I might have gone the other way.

I aim to have these all read and EVALUATED by Thursday.

Within these three openings are the hallows set for them. And behold what I would do to them if their three heads were therein ... She setteth her hand toward the openings and draweth forth a pin that was fastened into the wall, and a cutting blade of steel droppeth down, of steel sharper than any razor, and closeth up the three openings. "Even thus will I cut off their heads when they shall set them into those three openings thinking to adore the hallows that are beyond."

Anyone can clearly see that that is not a guillotine, but a trap made by a particularly annoying gamemaster who is sick and tired of their game and just wants to kill the whole party.

No, it was not medieval.  It was invented in the eighteenth century.  

I'm working on Jolly Good:  Tea and Scones, the sequel to my previous game.  It's about three million words at this point, with about three chapters left to write.

Pretty much, yes.  I've been writing about 4-5 hours straight every day for the best four years or so, and I'm just about able to make out a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.  But I have a lot more words to go.  But I think about this thread a lot, and there are a TON of games that I have shamefully neglected to review.

Then, if you have learned English as a foreign language, I'll expect you to be particularly well informed about the technicalities of English and to be particularly adept at it.  Those who are native speakers, I can forgive some minor errors, but *certainly* not those who studied it.

I'll get there in time.  I have to submit final grades this week.  Then I get to read these wonderful entries.

"Hello." I say shyly.

No, don't do that.  Just...read the article.

To me, Hector's attitude about what he expects for his wife speaks mostly to the way women in this world are treasure.  It hits my ear about the same as sorrow for the destruction of the city, and is analogous to the grousing about slave-woman-loot in Book 1. 

But the most interesting thing about this book (and other books to come) is the way this ancient story already has baked into it the feeling that the best days are gone, and we're left with a reduced version of heroism--as per Glaucus.  Heracles, now that was a hero.  Bellerophon, he was mighty.  But these Greeks and Trojans today?  Eh.  What I love about that is that there's the same exact feeling in Beowulf and in the early King Arthur stories and, Icelandic sagas, and well, in Tolkien--it's just part of sweeping, epic narrative that we are living in a time of decline, and we have to do the best we can in the shadow of people who were our betters, and also, there's no going back.  It's all bad, and we have to fight the long defeat.  Is that too pessimistic for this part of the Iliad?