1/13/2018

12/26/2025 7:57 PM

933

4

2 wins / 0 losses

Infrangible Warden

A Treatise on Heartly Manners

A contest entry for Bucky's year's end contest: choose your own prompt II.
Play as Lord Robert, the baron of Rivellon, at the lowest point of his life. He's cheated on by his wife, betrayed by his liege and filled to the brim with a turmoil of conflicting emotions.
How does his life end? 

Avarga

Entry for EndMaster's Prompt Contest 3. In this epic tale of courage, sacrifice, and redemption, Your journey will take you to the very edge of existence and beyond. Will you stand to lead; or will your story be cut short?

Brimstone

Allow me to share my story.

Cannibal Apocalypse

Pretty sure this isn't meant for the family-friendly category.

AvargB

unpublished

Contest Winner

unpublished

It did not win.

Darkest Hour

unpublished

The year is 2478 and the human race once again finds itself within Sol's borders. Like a phoenix from our bitter past, we have risen anew.

Like Aeneas, we had been cast out of our home. We searched the galaxy for a new home, and like him, we found it and made it our own. We struggled and were battered by the harsh conditions. But now, both ready and willing, we will eclipse the legends of old.

Now we shall fight to reclaim what is rightfully ours.

General Butt Naked

unpublished

FOR ENDMASTER'S CONTEST<, PRAISED BE THE LEGEND.

Liberia and Sierra Leone are small countries on the west coast of Africa. Like many African countries, the lands are extremely rich in natural resources and vibrant in culture.

However, in the 1980s the climate halted in corruption and mismanagement under the All People's Congress Party. With over 70% of the people barely capable of buying a single cup of rice, survival became much harder. Not trusting in the democratic process any longer, the RUF was formed to drastically revamp the economic system and redistribute the country's wealth. They fought for education, jobs, and true democracy. In the process, they pillaged the lands and cut off many limbs.

It is in these times Joshua Milton Blahyi is born, butt naked. And in these times he'll fight, butt naked. For he is:

General Butt Naked.

Neglected

unpublished

This is my neglected story.

zExpedition Aquarius

unpublished

For centuries, man has scoured the stars, desperate to find its likeness. Thus far all was for naught; empty husks and barren rocks worked hard to crush his dreams. There was just one anomaly, one beacon amid the darkness. This is its story. This is the story of man's first foray to the stars.

An entry to Mizal's Tiny 'topias Jam. Where a lot more little bite-sized stories are -and will be- shared by other authors.

And for those that don't have the extension, and thus can't click on the storygame to open it, here's a tiny backdoor left open. Feel free to make use of it, and even leave a comment if you like.

Expedition Aquarius

zLetters Unanswered

unpublished

An epistolary novel containing the desperate pleas of a sole father. How will he bring his daughter safety in a city ripe for rebellion?

An entry to Mizal's Tiny 'topias Jam. Where a lot more little bite-sized stories are -and will be- shared by other authors.

And for those that don't have the extension, and thus can't click on the storygame to open it, here's a tiny backdoor left open. Feel free to make use of it, and even leave a comment if you like.

Letters Unanswered

Damn what's this? A proper prompt from a gazette battle? Damn, did the paper outsource this to a third worlder or something (I bet RK knows a guy), but in any case, it's a clear upgrade. Keep it up! Now the same schtick I wrote for the previous edition applies. I know it's past the voting deadline, but deadlines be damned. There's a rant to write! Alright onto the prompt itself, it reads like an opening sentence, immediately setting the mood and scene. There's the dutiful clerk writing tirelessly, probably best to keep them as nondescript and boring as possible, because there's also the big news(!). Now I'll be mainly be judging on how entertaining and big the biggest headline is, how creatively they got their hands on this headline and how much in a rush the paper will be to print it. After all, in this business, if you ain't first, you're last. ------- Story A: Now this is good stuff. Archibald is exactly the name you'd expect of a gray guy crazy enough to want to run a newspaper. The opening is boring, but you see, it's about a guy named Archibald. It is SUPPOSED to be boring. And then comes the genius part, some paragraphs later it is shown that this Archibald, the nondescript guy, so perfectly typecast as a stereotypical gazetteer, is actually the janitor! That kind of genius is almost frightening. ... And then you have to ruin it by making him a superhero, but I guess those types of fantasies are also commonly found in gazetteers. All jokes aside though, with a prompt this specific it did fail. No reporter rushed in. There was not much of a buildup at all. Some other news agency televising it is about the lamest way to get your headlines to publish. Worst of all, there was no rush, but a rush to end the story. Because for a superhero story, it mostly felt super unfinished. The writing was actually GOOD and engaging, so no comments there. Which is sad because now I have no way to pad my rant wordcount, but a good thing because I actually got engaged with the story itself. That made the pageflip all the more disappointing. A quick meeting, a dumb 'I quit' joke way out of established character, and then it's done. Prompt 1/5 Writing 4/5 Enter's Whim -2 Total 3/10 ---- Story B: Now remember how I posted about an entire rant worth of opening advice on the previous edition, concluding that a dialogue is about the worst way to open a story? Yeah there should've been an asterisk added, that if only you do it with a dick joke, it does work out. Just got to have balls. It also helps you use pre-established characters. There's no barrier of entry, at least for your intended public. I need no character introduction to know who RK and Will is, though I always seem to overlook Milton. That immediate connection allows you to do away with needing a hook or finding another reason for the reader to care and thus engage with your piece. But that's also where this piece kinda falls apart. With apparently the entirety Gazette crew and CYS admins needing to be included and characterized with their proper one-liners, it becomes more of a self-wank (the worst kind of fan fiction in other words) than a story, quickly outstaying its welcome. Will's adventure and need to publish, bringing cystian culture to the outside world, seems to be introduced as the story here, the rest is just unneccesary fluff eating up wordcount, especially in a short-story. But it doesn't go there. Like sure, I don't have anything to rant about the writing specifically, and that's bad because then I barely have anything to rant about, but the plot meanders. Every new paragraph needs another cystian to say something that fails to go anywhere. Then you have Sent making his rival newspaper out of nowhere and I can safely conclude there is no plot at all and kinda skimmed the conclusion. Prompt 3/5 Writing 4/5 Enter's Whim: -3 Total 4/10 ---- Story C: That is a very good opening paragraph. It has all the ingredients in it that I like and the twist is impressive and very promising. Ususally the first person narration has that problem, especially in interactive fiction, where it feels really weird and iffy to have the narrator die (in for example a bad end), because then who'd narrate that death? This sidesteps that entirely. I do not like the follow-up, however. The tense is weird. It's still in the past but 'moments later' is such a weird descriptor in this scenario. It is also a weak ass bridge to the mayhem that happens after, causing this entire opening to go from clear winner material to having the pacing of a trainwreck shot in reverse. 'I understood her well enough: The Gods are angered'. Yeah, I know they'd be technically still angry throughout the narration, but coupled with that moments later I get the feeling you'd been better off just bringing the entire thing into the present tense with a better bridge. And reading further, the narration sarcastically making a marvel tier joke towards the audience when recounting his death irks me gravely. But then it got better. I think the fake-out death was quite well done and I enjoyed the greater narrative theme despite it not adhering to the letter of the prompt. I'd expected to have to rant about it being pedantic, but it rather struck as genuine to me, a smart meta story about the world of journalism. The fact I enjoyed it makes ranting about it hard, so let's end it here. Prompt: 3/5 Writing: 3/5 Enter's Whim: 2 Total 8/10 Story C won, well done.

Everything for that comm!

Man has survived Christmas and finally managed to find a big screen to handle canvas (it really reads worse for short stories like these than just copy pasting them onto the site). I heard there were short stories and thus I must critique, nevermind that apparently the votes have already been called. Some might say it is quite the ego to state your vote is the only one that matters, and give it long past any consequence, but newsflash (!), I got one of those and so this rant will be made. As an aside I am debating waiting until past 12 to post it, but meh, I am kinda the site's Grinch anyway so the Christmas Spirit will just have to make do. I just finished reading the prompt itself. It should be about a bank heist, prison escape or similar situation in whatever kinda setting you want. Now this I do not like. It is too broad, much like many of the previous gazetteer prompts. It is said through restrictions creativity shines and inspiration strikes, yet this does not restrict at all. What do you mean 'or similar situation', what do you mean 'in whatever kinda setting' make up your damn mind and stick to it. Critique on the prompter aside, I must have something to off on, and so I interpret the similar situation as requiring thought as to what binds a bank heist to a prison escape. Both require meticulous planning as the individual or individuals use crafty solutions to overcome the big system. Then there is the flash, the moment the plan has been prepared and is set in motion. There I want to see action, edge of your seat type off shit. Then either it succeeds or everybody dies, so there must be stakes involved as well. Those three, meticolous planning, thrilling action, and high stakes. You miss one, you fail. You miss two you, shame on you. You miss all three pieces, then I sincerely question your mental faculties as to what the fuck you are even doing on here. ------------------------ Story A: I'm going to start with the opening line. It's as dry as the Arizona dessert, man. 'The brothers were X, Y, Z.' You're telling me a lot of abstract information, yet it does not pull you in to the story. I'm missing the context to care. Reading on, I realize the writing isn't bad per sé, the order of information is just wrong. So your first step in a proper opening of a story should be either introducing the context or introducing a scene that makes the reader care on it's own. Now I realize this is a nice and broad, theoretical advice not saying anything, really. So let's work that out to this case specifically. I think it would be much more natural, if you want to stick with the all-knowing narrator's voice, to start with describing the time and setting first. So work from broader claims inwards to your specific characterrs. In this case I would rearange your first paragraph as so, minimally rewording within brackets to make the stitching fit. 2. The war had stirred up the entire country, even as far as Picacho Pass in Arizona. 4. A man had to make a living, and none of them had the patience for farming. 3. Destitute and wth no immediate relatives to mooch off of,(there were four) brothers (who) decided to strike out from Iowa and test their fortune out in the American Wild West. 1. (These were) the Brothers Caldwell, a fearsome foursome of muscle, decently-distributed brains, four wicked weapons of warfare and required lack of moral discernment. Now you got a nice backstory, flowing naturally from broad strokes to delicate details that now have a framework to settle in the mind's eye. As an aside, it now also flows like a folk tale, which is a damn fine accomplishment which I'd laud for good writing. This also flows more naturally in your follow up paragraphs, detailing every individual brother's character. I do enjoy the details that went into this, makes the whole more authentic. I don't like the 'implying a large amount of cash in the Vault'. Feels pendantic. Of course, a wagon arriving at a national bank got cash. What's next, you're gonna imply guns shoot bullets or imply jumping in the water gets you wet? There's no implication here, just fact. There's also some SPAG, tense specific issues but I'm no nerd and don't want to point every misplaced d out when I can instead focus on broader, more interesting things like narrative flow. Now I thought the planning phase was overly short and the bridge between background information and the action was shabbier than those Chinese plankbridges you see online. I do not know what Colorado being a new frontier implied, but perhaps you could steer the background info to just how prior plans prove(d) futile and what Colorado being a new frontier implies for our brothers. That aside the action was well written and comical. And I was ready to give this one a proper review. But then this whole thing turned Avo and we're dealing with Indians, dwarves and deus ex aliens. Man if you don't respect your own short story, how do you expect others to? There's this lost art of telling a proper story start to finish in a well thought out structure taking the readers along for the ride. Not everything needs its twists and turns, nevermind this dopamine highway of the impossible degrading your whole piece. Enter's whim -10 Yeah not bothering with the rest. ----------------------------------------- Story B. Now this piece opens up with the other option, instead of opening with the context in a strong narration, this one opens up with the small scene that stands upon its own. I do not need a background context to empathize with a dude taking a drag thinking about future gains, allowing me to care. It immediately characterizes our protagonist and this allow for room introducing worldly details naturally (synthetic implying scifi, a wife, some shit apparently be going down). This I like. I also quite like the scene shifts and how you wrote them. The pace is fast after our first quiet introduction and I can't but compliment on the structure of this piece. Or at least, the scene shift from Grant to Jesse, then to Trev. I am missing the same seemlessly flowing link between Trev and Ramsey and onwards. Damn, that's the first actual critique I got. When you introduce a creative and good idea like that, letting it go because (I think) it got too hard makes for a bad showing. Can't even come up with a snarky joke. I'm just miffed. This is also where I think 'yeah, I get it. Everybody thinks this job was easy and is not having a good time'. It's like this piece had a whole banger of a Daft Punk soundtrack going beneath that writing that just got paused at what should be the most banging part, you have a damn ex military merc shooting the shit man. That's no time to start pondering. But I like to think I'm giving out feedback as much as I'm ranting. So I think Ramsey's should have started with a firing barrel close up of his laser pistol and his part should just have been proper action to stay on that high energy pace, imo. Would have kept the idea and energy going. Yeah there's no link between Ramsey's part and Grant's part either. Sadly I must conclude the author has thrown in the towel, so for inspiration's sake, I will give this one last suggestion: an explosion so loud it transforms all sound into a high tone, into a high tone radio static. All in all it was quite the good story. The action was proper. The preparation was implied sufficiently and the stakes felt high. I do like this is part of a larger narrative, a little highlight in a game of bigger players. When my biggest critique is a lack of follow-through on a creative idea and some slight pacing issues in the middle before picking up steam again, you know this one's gonna be hard to beat. Prompt 5/5 Writing 3/5 Enter's Whim +2 Total: 10 ------------------------------- Story C: I think I'll keep my rant mainy on the topics of openings this time. You see, you had the contextual narrator in story A. The smallscale relatable scene in story B and now you have... dialogue. Now I am often a fan of dialogue. Good dialogue can elevate any scene and be just about the easiest hack to elevate bad writing into an acceptable scene, but for the opening itself? Yeah not a fan. Compare the first sentences of each piece (and I'm gonna use my own revised version for A because my ego doesn't allow otherwise). A. The war had stirred up the entire country, even as far as Picacho Pass in Arizona. B. Grant took a drag from his synthetic cig. C. "How's it going, Hildie?" I asked. Now B's approach does feel more modern, while A's narration is found more in the very old fashioned books old fashioned people tell you to read. Despite that though, each has a strong tone, setting up the story. Introducing it. C, on the other hand, feels like an introduction to that annoying friend that keeps texting you. If B is modern, C is zoomerism at its peak. There's no weight behind it at all, and that problem isn't helped by the casual conversation that follows. It's missing the hook. And I must admit the quirky DnD crew banter isn't winning me over, either. Alright I had to reread the first page just to get a feel of why I was so thrown off. It's not fair to shit on something without explaining why. O think it's because that banter's the only noteworthy thing that's introduced. Like yeah, we apparently got the whole fantasy archetype shebang present, but they all speak, think and act like the exact same stereotypical DnD player, making their individual races completely empty descriptors, with no thought given to each race's culture. It's literally idle banter for banter's sake. Yeah we get the Incubus is horny. Thanks, let's move on. We got a quick dry description of us being a mage and wearing handcuffs, but there is no stakes, no weight, no sense of foreboding nevermind sense of urgency. I got no idea whether we're in a dark and grimy dungeon, or a cozy room arrest. It's just more and more idle banter. Writing specific it's a lot of "....." he said/snapped/responded over and over again. The more you write inbetween lines of dialogue, the more you can skip the 'said' verb or its synonyms. A dialogue followed by a description of or an action performed by the speaker attributes the words to the character as much as the formulaic narration you're using. As another rule of thumb, the more you write inbetween the lines of dialogue, the more depth and weight the actually spoken words have. Yeah that's about most of this piece. These problems persist throughout and I didn't get into it because of them. Prompt: 3/5 Writing: 2/5 Enter's Whim -2 Total 3/10 Yeah, B stood head and shoulders above the rest and was actually a proper good story. Congrats for whoever wrote it.

Whatever they've always wanted to draw but been putting off for some reason

Apparently I'm the five thousandth something most avid Sting listener, so that's neat.

I agree that this one was definitely showed a lot of improvement and I did like it way more than RKs (damn guy managed to miss when writing about rats!) If I were to give actual feedback on what to improve instead of purely ranting it'd be about these three points: 1. Formatting. Both the single spacing between paragraphs, the dialogue punctuation article I showed from Gower, lessen the use of onomatopoeia (written out sounds like the drip drip) and more consistently sized paragraphs. 2. Unless you're writing about superman, the main character is as much influenced by your world as she is capable of influencing it in turn. That's where the Mary Sue mention came from: she was too perfect to be interesting 3. Especially in a short story like this, keep the plot centered. Instead of all those extra layers you'd added, keep it to the prison itself. Flesh out its details and inhabitants. Start with the riot and end it with the riot. Now you have a story about a riot which fits the 2k word count. My gripe with RKs story was that it wasn't really about anything but rats moving down (so too little!), and my gripe with yours was that it was about a girl starting a riot who is also X involving X and C before X and then did X while meeting the author itself (so too much!). There are too many ideas bouncing around for any single of them to come to actual fruition. So with proper formatting, characterization and centered theme you'd be ahead of many and I'd be left mostly nitpicking like I'd been with Cavus.

I'll join as well so Ogre can too

These have literally been your only two posts so what the actual fuck have you been smoking

Well the thing with AI is that nowadays we've come to the point AI is training AI instead of human engineers. so you enter a positive feedback loop (better AI trains AI better, leading to far better AI) most people in the field expect will lead to exponential growth. There's actually an AI race going on between China's Deepseek and America's multiple AI companies and you know for damn sure they won't regulate, seeing as regulations postpone when you truly reap the benefits of entering that exponential growth phase. So the question is rather whether you want your own unregulated AI to come on top (with hopefully some influence of your own programming) or China's unregulated AI and the answer can't be neither.

I'll be actually reading these later and perhaps changing my vote. But so far A is the clear winner on formatting alone. C has that ugly double spacing and B, yeah let's not talk about story B. --- Alright I'm back and once again confronted with the fact there are THREE instead of just the TWO entries in this thunderdome edition. Now most would be gladdened to have the extra story to entertain themselves with. I'm not most people. Then again I'm also confronted by the fact one of those THREE is a kid with no-no word filters severe enough to make even a Chink blush and I can't decide whether I find I'm glad she got those filters on or not. The gweilo I am, I am simply unaccustomed to such draconian measures. But the white man is nothing if not innovative, so I just have to try to circumvent it appropriately somehow. Yeah I know, I can also be something of a riot. Alright the tone is set. Let's start with what I'll be looking for with the prompt. Now I vaguely recall someone looking up in a dictionary what the textbook definition of a riot actually was. I'd gently suggest to that guy he could've put his hands to better use polishing up his knob instead. Because we all know what we want from a story about a riot. Violence! Rage! The streets are overflowing with a mob that plunders from the neighborhood family's grocery shop and lights random working people's cars on fire because they are just that mad at the big and unapproachable thing they're rioting against. Yeah! That'll show them how ANGRY we all are! Who's them? Who cares, we are ANGRY! Now we've truly set the tone. Let's see how well you all accomplished this. The usual applies: this isn't intended as feedback, just a rant that I type as I go through the text. Contrary to some entrant's computer, I won't filter any stray thought that arises. Makes it more genuine, you know. --- Story A. Have I said how much I can appreciate good formatting? It's something I'll say again, because having to have had scrolled through this thread again to edit my post, I was once again confronted by the two entries that didn't have any. Crazy how much you appreciate something you'd always held for granted when it is suddenly taken away. Now with the compliment given, I feel free to roast the line you opened up your story with. Some hold the first line in an almost mystical regard, it's the literal opening line after all, and countless articles are written on how to achieve that perfect combination of words to pull the reader into the world you're attempting to craft. And everybody knows how first impressions form the basis of almost anything. With that in mind, I do question the author's choice to start with a mob that 'before today only existed in someone's grandfather's stories'. But that definitely won't slow Jack down! Why? Why is this relevant information? Out of all the descriptors you could've used to illustrate the sheer size of the mob, why the grandfather's story? Way to make a first impression, man. Go and suckle on a licorice stick. The anarchist's speech sounds exactly like how someone envisions an impassioned speech while splayed out on a couch. This arouses jack manure. Where is the zeal? The ardor necessary to impassion the crowd? It's probably this guy's most important moment in his life. The very act that'd make him safe and successful or doom him to death or the regime's torturers. You would think he would try at something more than the most lazy stereotypical: thank you all for being being. I know it was hard, but we made it. We will do what we set out to do. Hell, it feels more at home in a board meeting than a riot. Where is the death? The glory? The sheer passion that will put those dogs at the mercy of the people? Yeah the crowd getting too rowdy is definitely something our budding anarchist had to contend with, lol. I find these speeches are best when actually spoken out loud when you write them. If it looks good but sounds shit, ehm like dung, it's probably not as good as you think. Now credit where credit's due. After the lackluster speech the writing picked up again. I liked the little present and future line and everything flowed more naturally from there on. As an aside, the anarchist is a bit daft when he was all about keeping the kid safe, but brought both of them to the forefront of the mob as they stand ready to storm the capital. That's about the least safe place to be. But you see, after that speech we all knew he was a bit daft! So that makes it actually good writing now! I've read the ending now and you may have noticed I didn't write about the writing after the action picked up and that is a good thing. I was entertained by the ebb and flow of the assault and the descriptions used were successful in making me envision the scene. As a whole, this story had quite the good pacing. Now, without reading anyone else's review, I imagine some may find the twist at the end off-putting. Lately it seems a twist has become the standard rather than a twist. I think truly subverting expectations in today's entertainment would be to have everything play out as it goes. Personally I quite liked the cynical view: revolutions don't fail because of countless reasons, or that power eventually corrupts everyone. No, they fail because the new leaders are as bad as the old from the very start. Callous self preservation now as a stand in for rampant self interest in the future is a pretty nifty thing to include. If I would change a few things, I would start by giving the 'man' a name (and a better speech). I can see why you wanted to make him as a faceless and nameless stand-in to so many revolutionary leaders, but in the actual piece it detracted the clarity of writing, which is more of a detriment to the story as a whole than the benefit it'd give to your intended message. I'd also reread and reword the climax of the story where the boy was used as a meatshield. Specifically the paragraph from the door opening. The protagonist being slow and not realizing it all might add to the innocence, but as a concept it is overused as a lazy crutch to bandaid bad writing. It'd hit far more if the protagonist actually had the presence of mind to see it happen, but be too surprised and physically inferior to change matters and handle the 'man'. All in all, good job. Writing: 4/5 Theme: 5/5 Enters whim: -2 Total: 7/10 ---- Story B. Story B might be the reason my scrollwheel's been acting up lately. Or well, if not the reason, it definitely highlighted the fact. I know nowadays we are all about less being more, but I am quite old fashioned in the sense that I do like having more than three paragraphs on my screen at one time. The fact half of those are just 'drip drip drip' distills me with the emotion a riot should have: it makes me angry. Now whether this is good writing is a completely different question. Anyway a fist person viewpoint is a quick way to score points as I do enjoy it more than a third person limited. That makes the cardinal sin of changing the viewpoint midway, here just three paragraphs (or one screen) in, all the more enraging. Why? A simple reread of the piece would've highlighted the fact. If it was a conscious decision to do so, the decision was horsemuck. If it wasn't a conscious decision, it's pure laziness at play here. One of the annoying prisoners asked to 'define better' to which my answer would be 'not this'. I would also recommend Gower's article regarding dialogue punctuation. https://chooseyourstory.com/help/articles/article.aspx?ArticleId=4309 Anyway while I was busy looking up the article itself, we're back in Ms. Sue's first person point of view. She easily handled some ruffians, even backvaulting over one. Now how do you envision this? A backvault after all, is pretty slow all things considered. You need to fight gravity to and once in the air you're not really maneuverable as there's no ground to push off to change directions. Then the story quickly turned into some metaphysical cosmic loredump about the world instead of, you know, the riot and I quickly skimmed the ending. Yeah I'm sure the rest will have enough to say about this so I'll refrain from the matter. Needless to say, I didn't like it. Writing: 1/5 Theme: 2/5 Enter's whim: -1 Total 1/10 ----- Story C: Now as much as I dogged on it for the double spacing, I did quite like the opening sentences. It had an interesting premise and build upon the idea. I also quite liked the detail used to describe the Parisian setting itself. It was a bit needlessly wordy, but who am I to dog on someone's writing style. Oh right, I am Enter, a notorious enjoyer of all things involving cumulative sentencing, comma's, and overwrought modifiers. It was needlessly wordy, man. And if even I say it, it's gotta be true. Despite the writing itself, I am quite content reading about the coming and going of the Parisian rats. Have you seen those guys? They're huge! The novelty of seeing them described in thunderdome writing is very entertaining, though I must mention the almost autistic need to describe them turning left, then right, then right, then north, then left, then left, then beneath the false ceiling, around the stalactite, left again, right, and finally up. That is a solid 50 out of just 2000 words describing absolutely nothing. In fact, the further into the story I go, the more this entire thing reads like a self wanking session to just show the author's knowledge rather than impart a clear visage of the thing you're actually writing about. For example the epiglottis like structure: I only know how such a thing would look like by pure chance. But how many would have seen it, let alone have a clear mental image of it to place within the scene you're trying to portray? Maxilla and mandibles (or mandibulae if you want to keep to the extra fancy Latin) do sound very fancy. But this isn't an anatomy book, man, the skeletal jaws will do just fine. And I guess that is the crux of my entire rant. The writing stands too much at the forefront for me to focus on the scene itself. I liked the style at the very start, as it showed something different, a quirk that gave the story personality. However with every ensuing paragraph it almost tried to one-up itself to the point where we're reading about epiglottis like structures and I'm interacting with the words and sentences themselves rather than their intended meaning. I could envision story A's riot. I could even envision story B's Mary Sue backflipping over some probably stinking prisoner. However, the way these rats are scurrying about escapes my mental grasp. Part of it could be that you're last and I'm grumpy from the previous entries, but I don't think so. You spend so much time and words detailing 'inconsequential', for lack of better word, things, my eyes tend to glaze over and the less I care for these rats that inherently are very much capable of holding my attention. Hell, you used so many words to describe a whole lot of stale air the actual climax, the thing that actually mattered to the little plot there was, that little Titou either grasped his powers or grew mad, is just a few sentences. The cats came way out of the left field and there is no conclusion to the story to speak of. Absolute pacing of a trainwreck. Fuck man, it's so bad it almost made me forget my main gripe with the story: you managed to write a story set in Paris without a fucking riot in it. Writing: 3/5 Prompt: 0/5 Enter's whim: -3 for fucking up a story about rats. Total: 0/10 Fuck you twice. ---- So yeah story A still won. Could've skipped the reading and the rant itself and just kept to just that quick scroll through the thread for all it mattered.