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Post by J. Russell on Apr 12, 2016 21:43:14 GMT -5
PROMPT: "The stopped clock ticked over..."
Sam looked up to the broken clock from her pay-stub on the counter with a scowl of disappointment. Why had she expected that thing to work? It had never worked. She'd worked at Ernie's Bar for a full year, but each payday left her more dissatisfied. It left a bad taste in her mouth, like she was trying to hold back vomit, each time she saw her meager earnings. Already, she had barely made end's meet last week. The rent was due this week. Sam was wondering if she would be able to afford food when the door swung open.
Contrary to Hollywood cliches, no one looked up at the door as an ominous figure entered; although, the figure could easily be considered ominous with rain dripping off of the dark green raincoat he wore. Shadows and a hood hid his face as he dried himself in the entryway. The chatter in the bar continued as the figure shook off the cold and slicked the hood off of his head. His tired, blue eyes scanned the room as he ran his hands through his onyx hair.
The bartender was still entranced by her pay-stub as the drenched gentleman slid into a bar-stool and demanded as much as he asked, “Can I get a glass of water and a highball of Jack, lemon juice, and seltzer?”
“Never heard someone ask for that before,” Sam replied after brushing the worthless paper into her pocket. Usually, the bar-crowd only consisted of regular customers. Sam was prepared to serve anyone who stepped across the threshold, but they usually ordered the same things. Young people think they can drink round after round of Long Island ice tea, most order beer, and the old order specific cocktails.
This man was young, but he wasn't old enough to order some obscure cocktail.
“It's called a Joe Ricky,” the man explained as Sam poured the ingredients on the bar-top.
“I thought those used lime and gin.”
“They do,” the man grumbled, “now.”
Sam stirred the cocktail as she slid it across the counter on a coaster emblazoned with a cursive E. Something bothered her about the customer. There was something askew. Her gut instinct told her that the man wasn't there to rob the business, even if he did look more than a little threatening in his dark clothing, and he didn't seem hot-tempered. Still, something told Sam that the man was there for a reason beyond sating his appetite for liquor.
She'd been staring, confused, when the man asked, “Is there something wrong?”
“No,” Sam shook her head. “Sorry I bothered you.”
“You didn't bother me. You're the one who looks bothered. If I can ask, what's the matter?”
“Life.”
The man laughed, “Boy, that is a problem. What's wrong with it?”
“I'm stuck here in a dead-end job, the rent's due – there's no way I can afford to eat and pay it. That's just the tip of the iceberg.”
Sam turned to walk to the other side of the bar, but the man interrupted her, “Ma'am, I don't know what you're going through, but maybe I can help.”
Sam stopped and politely, or as politely as she could manage, explained, “Unless you can make all my problems disappear, I don't think there's much you can do.”
“Maybe I can change your mind about your problems. All I'm asking for is a few moments.”
“For what?”
“Your ear,” the man replied as Sam made her way over. She decided that she could risk talking on the job. It wasn't busy, and she could always go right back to working. Really, she was keeping the customer happy when she decided to listen.
The man smiled as he started his story. The gentle hum of the radio and murmur of conversation seemed to fade below his powerful, gentle voice. He began, “It's been a while since I've been here. Let's see... It was for my friend's twentieth birthday. Sort of a corny beginning to a story, but I've never told it before.”
“What's your name? That's a good place to start.” Sam asked. She couldn't bear to listen to a guy pour his heart out to her without knowing what to call him.
“You're right. A name is as good of place as any. Call me Rick.”
“Alright, Rick. Call me Sam.”
“The last time I was here, it was a bit more lively. Let's see. They'd just redone the place. Hell, you should've seen this place before. I'm sure you can imagine what they'd have to do to a building that'd been used as a livery for fifty years. The place literally smelled like horse shit. I left town after that birthday party, but the real excitement happened a while before.
“You know Ernie, right?”
“Yeah,” Sam answered. “The old man owns the bar.”
“Well,” Rick continued, “Ernie had this beautiful girl-friend back then. She was the homecoming queen and everything. Everyone liked her. Oh, what was her name... I think it was Penny. Yeah, Penny, Penny Prentice. Even I thought she was a heart-throb. Black hair, gray eyes, rosy cheeks that would make Marilyn Monroe jealous.
“I was there after they'd settled down. They were the picture-perfect couple. She was pregnant when she was murdered.”
“Murdered?” Sam perked up at that. “Why haven't I heard of this?”
“Something everyone wanted to forget, so they did.”
“What happened?”
“Well, it was the strangest thing. I only heard about it after the fact. Ernie and I were in the bar. We'd had to move a few things around. There'd been a brawl the night before, and someone broke in later. Ernie had shrugged it off. He thought someone'd left something behind and got it back. We couldn't find anything missing. We'd moved the stools, they were actual stools – not the kind that bolt onto the floor now, before. The regulars were all here, I was smoking, and the radio blared Sunshine Superman every couple of minutes.
“It was hot and stuffy from the busted AC. It was storming outside. The usual. We didn't make care about it, but another guy down the bar kept drinking water. Didn't order anything either. He had this strange look about him. It was a rainy day, but he wasn't wearing a rain-coat or anything. He wore normal clothes. You know, a flannel shirt, boots. Nothing really remarkable – in appearance. One glass of water after another.
“Finally, it gets to be around ten o'clock, and I'm about to head out. It was 9:59 when I pulled out my watch,” Rick stopped and pulled a simple brass pocket watch his father had given him, and his father had given him, from his rear pocket. It was scorched – Rick explained as he opened it, “The building had faulty wiring, or that's what the fire department said. The clock on the wall got electrocuted, and so did I when the lightning struck.”
“You got struck by lightning in this bar?” Sam asked bewildered.
“Sure as hell I did. The watch welded together. It's stuck on 9:59 like the clock over the bar. See?”
Sam turned and looked from the clock to the pocket watch. The watch was definitely damaged beyond repair. “Bullshit,” she said. “Why would no one mention that?”
“Because,” Rick whispered, “that's when the murder happened.”
“What?” Sam's eyes widened as she remembered what Rick had mentioned earlier.
“Penny, Ernie's wife, was found stabbed to death in the morning. The coroner said that she must have died the night before, around ten o'clock. There was no real easy way to tell. She was found outside, in the rainstorm, with symbols cut into her stomach.”
“Jesus Christ...”
“I doubt he had anything to do with it. See, what made matters worse was what came after. Ernie was a suspect even though he had been in the bar with all of us. He couldn't have murdered his wife, but the cops suspected that he managed to sneak out during the time the ambulance came to get me. Their whole case rested on one odd detail. One of the bar-stools in his bar had the same weird markings carved in it that his wife's body had on it.
“Eventually, a connection was made between a cult that lived out of town. They were a bunch of inbred hill-billies. You know, along the same lines as Deliverance, but it got worse. The one guy in the bar, the water guy, was one of the accomplices. They all were raving that the killing was part of some ritual.”
“Then what happened?” Sam asked. A few other customers at the bar had started listening, so they were all looking at Rick.
Rick smirked and shrugged as he continued, “What you expect. The trial was swift. They'd admitted to the crime and waived their right to an attorney. Ernie was the worst hit of anyone in the town. You could imagine that would hit you, your spouse being murdered in such a horrific way along with your only child.
“The worst part about all that insanity was that the guy from the bar, his name was like Charles Wayfield – sort of funny that Charles Whitman, Charles Manson, and all those nutcases have the same name – well he kept on jabbering that no one could kill him. He went through court, smugly proclaiming that his god, the second or third cousin of Cthulhu or some shit that no one cared about. He called them Kitanitowit like a perverse version of a Native American god.
“Well, he went so far into insanity that he even thought he'd live through electrocution. His execution went exactly as you'd expect.”
“That is?” Sam asked.
“He fried. No one is immortal. I was there with Ernie at the execution. It was horrible. It wasn't the last time I'd watch people die either. I was drafted, but Ernie stayed behind. He was too old for that.”
Sam blinked several times as she processed something. Rick was young. At most, he could be in his thirties. He'd nonchalantly mentioned a draft. The last time that happened was in the late nineteen-sixties. The young man in front of her had to be sixty years old. Obviously he'd made that story up. Sam decided to run with it though. She asked, “What was the point of that story? How does that relate to my problems.”
“You said that life was your problem,” Rick replied as the other patrons turned back to their drinks. “No. Life is my problem. It's a problem I've had to deal with for years. I've gone from place to place, and I'm tired. I can't ever stay for long.”
“Why not?”
“I don't fit in.”
“You seem like an average guy to me.”
“You've not known me very long,” Rick answered. There wasn't an easy way to explain his problem, which was unique among all beings, without acting crazy. Thankfully, he didn't have to explain what he meant.
This time, a few people did look at the door when it swung open. Sam did too. A familiar face strolled in on his cane. Ernie, the owner of the bar, far into his old age, hobbled up to the bar. He'd taken off his glasses to wipe the rain from them. “Hey Sam,” he said, “I heard there was a commotion going on here.”
“Nothing to worry about,” Sam shrugged. “Rick here was telling a story.”
“Was he?”
“It was a tall tale. Said your wife got murdered.”
Ernie stopped wiping his glasses. His hands shook as he slowly lifted them to rest on his nose, and he squinted at Rick. Then, he took a step back in horror. “CAL?” He screamed as he clutched his chest. “CAL? I- YOU...”
Ernie doubled over in pain and clutched his chest. Someone in the crowd ran up to start giving Ernie CPR, but he was fading. His shirt was ripped open as someone started chest compressions. Cal sadly looked on and noticed the tattoos on Ernie's chest matched the markings found on his wife's body. Cal flipped his drink coaster in his hands. On it, the markings that had been on the bar stool stared back at him. Cal's eyes widened as he pulled out his watch.
There was a bright flash.
The stopped clock ticked over to ten o'clock.
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Post by Ad Absurdum on Apr 25, 2016 16:50:54 GMT -5
J. Russell.
Let the record show I thought the prompt was fine. “Stopped clock ticked”, might sound like too much like children’s book tittle, but the idea behind it seems fine by me.
Sam, good name as well. Solid name. One of the best.
Unfortunately, there’s some flow issues from the get go. I know you were racing to get this out, but I was only ever going to write myself if you didn’t explicitly claim you were going to face off with James. You churned this out in around an hour and some parts show. Slight little word repetitions that always get under the skin. A few too many ‘lefts’ and two sentences in a row end with ‘week’. They are minor, but they really scar any prose for me. Also noticed a slip into present tense for a sentence, 4th paragraph.
Ominous figure. I think ‘stranger’ would have worked better here. Stranger connotes ominous and gets rid of a pesky adjective.
How we get the build up and the story gets pretty interesting! The bar has a pat, a hidden past. Murders and cults! Both good subject matter. Exposition purely through a story works here, and are mysterious bar man tells it well enough that I’m intrigued. But your perspectives start to go liminal and you begin to shift between Rick and Sam and I think it’s obvious that the story would have been better off from Sam’s confused perspective, because even when we’re in Rick’s head, I still left the story feeling pretty confused.
I mean, I can almost get what happened in the climax? I think. But it’s the kind of pondering that blunts any visceral impact. So many things happen at once and there’s no time to chew on them. Rick’s been cursed into immortality I think? Cal? Who’s Cal? Real name, I guess? But is it important? It’s in Caps so any reader is going to think it’s the key to unlock most of the mystery. The tattoos are the same as his wife’s. So, he did it? He joined the cult afterwards? Is this the element that will help remove the curse?
I'm left pondering like I just left a Damon Lindelof movie. All intrigue, with not enough resolution.
James (Evil Doppelganger)
Fucking cross examination is brutal! And you introduce it in the best way. It slices through the large swaths of paragraphs that have come before it. A single sentence. It detonates. It resonates.
I feel like you could have taken this further. It kind of adapts back into the normal ebb and flow of the prose after, but it would’ve been cool if you kept literally kept the embodiment of cross examination in the structure of the words. Maybe you’re a bit hesitant to do that after the Jim ending failed to take hold, but this would’ve been interesting. The narrator seemingly trying to regain control of her own story and those one sentence questions constantly throwing her off. Again and again. Until it isn’t quite her story, but something else, some other bastardized version of the truth. I understand it’s in past tense (it switches after I realize, maybe make it switch sooner, when she enters the gladiatorial arena) and it’s a bit harder to reflect, but I think it still can be done, cause, as is, continuing with the nice paragraph structure feels a bit too calm and collected for what actually happened within the story.
But, hey, this is a good story. It makes a great use of the theme I think. The idea of being in limbo. This kind of purgatory that exists in the courtroom not just for the defendants, but for the victims as well. You’re just wanting to move on at some point. Get through it. Push on. You really reflected that well here. Nice job. It’s a pity you’ll still be fighting off challengers and not enjoying the nice European sights.
My Vote: Doppelganger
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Post by James on Apr 6, 2017 2:58:08 GMT -5
REVIEWS PetesSo your story does a really good job of painting the protagonist. You gave me a great insight to his feeling and thoughts that made him feel both alive and real. From the start you built him slowly towards becoming a troubled young man and the process didn't feel forced, I especially liked how touching you made his farewell to his mother. He also had a nice complexity to his personality, both seeming world weary and yet still hopeful that he would meet his father, something he himself recognised as being futile but impossible to stop believing. Of course your style of writing was somewhat odd, but I kind of expected that from you and in this case I found it very fitting for the kind of story you were telling. It felt very much like the thought of a human retold to entertain the listener, like an old man recounting his youth. The final scene with the father was a little hard to follow what was happening, but it didn't terribly diminish from the pacing. I also somewhat enjoyed picturing the scene you were describing. Overall I liked the story, it was very emotive and almost poetic in its style. JamesA really good story that you did a really good job weaving with the historical outcome of the industrial revolution. There is a lot of themes you seemed to cover in this story, all of which I felt were done really well. Not only did you do a great job of portraying a fishing village and its troubled relationship to the sea, but at the start of the story you did a pretty good job of creating a childhood story of the kids growing up in the said village. Aunt Moroven is an interesting character. Her actions seemed very spiteful and I felt there a was a lack of backstory as to why she was so intent on ruining the livelihood of the older men in the village. Without that, the later half of the story kind of made her seem like just an allegory of the industrial revolution and the problems of over fishing. A bit more knowledge of the character would have made her more substantial. I really liked how the story grew from just one of children in a small fishing village to become something darker. The idea of the change brought by the industrial revolution being a curse on the older men was a very interesting take. VoteMy vote is for Pete. While I really liked James story, the way Pete told his story really attracted me. This was a very hard vote to call though. The Witch and the SeaThis is going to sound grumpy because I haven’t reviewed anything in a long while so I’ve forgotten how to do much more the criticize. I’ll try to get some positives in by the end though. I had a hard time getting into this. The first paragraph had some really wonky sentence structures that I got hung up on quite a bit. I understand you said you wrote it some time ago, and maybe that’s the issue. Honestly, it was very dry up until the kids began investigating Aunty’s house. I actually switched my head voice to David Attenborough and that seemed to help. I had some problems with your juxtapositions and word choice in a few places as well. When you first talked about storms, for instance, you made mention about how the men hated them because they were the vengeance of angry gods intending to drown them, but their wives loved the storms because afterwards they got free shit. Really didn’t paint a very pretty picture of the relationships in this town that the women folk were more concerned with phat loot than their husbands’ wellbeing. I’m not certain if that was intentional or not, but it kinda made it hard to like these folks. “Genius in a crowd of cowards” and a “lake in the face of our raging sea” are a couple of others which didn’t really work. In the first, the idea is to draw a contrast between the boy speaking up and the others; but genius and coward aren’t mutually exclusive, and while lakes are typically calmer than the open sea, a lake within in a sea is imagery which doesn’t work. Found myself puzzling over those for a while longer than I should have. “Ungainly” is not a word I would use to describe an “unplanned child growing with too many limbs.” That metaphor does not work. In a surprising turn of events, I had some real trouble with the dialogue here, which isn’t a complaint I usually have about your work. Maybe it was because it was so sparse that it really contrasted with the rest of the story when I encountered it, but it felt very… flippant. Like, when it was the kids dialogue it was pretty alright, but the witch and her children were just like, “Hi, I’m gonna make a little speech, you’re going to accept it and then we’re gonna do what we’re gonna do.” It was like you didn’t really even want to write the dialogue, even going so far as to state that the character who would normally be reacting weren’t prepared to talk; “they had no plan to open a dialogue.” I guess my biggest complaint there is that Morovren’s dialogue took a mysterious character and robbed her of her mystique. She was just some lady who didn’t give a shit (an why would they not return and burn her house down after what they saw? Why acquiesce to a witch’s request when her children are clearly some kind of demon and she basically promised they’d return to that house?) And finally, the sex scene… I found it odd that Morovren chose a more submissive role there. One, just because she’s clearly the aggressor, and two, because the dude had just been shipwrecked half-drowned, and bounced off a bunch or rocks, how was he even able to stand up? Also, “we saw him drop to the floor, dead.” What floor? They’re outside. Word choice. I like the paragraph about bravery. About how the kids chose the more cowardly time to admit what they’d seen. I thought that was a really good observation. And there were other passages like this which were really good. Pretty much any time you drew the line between childhood and maturity, any time you played directly to your central theme, you did so in a fairly inciteful way which I really liked. Overall, I think it’s a good story, with and interesting premise and themes (who doesn’t like a good coming of age story?), but it’s bogged down by uncharacteristically clumsy craftsmanship. Two Sons and the SeaHave you ever read Jonathan Livingston Seagull? I remember reading it and getting a very similar feeling to what I got reading this story… “Get to the point.” Your story doesn’t suffer from a lot of the word choice issues that unfortunately plagued James, but it’s really flowery and self-indulgent which, while fine in small doses, just becomes cumbersome to sift through after about 3,000 words. At a certain point I just wanted something, anything, to happen. When your protagonist is sitting alone on the deck and has his first encounter with the mysterious sailor I was like, “Alright, finally something to break this up a bit.” Then I get another few purple paragraphs telling me what they talked about rather than getting to hear the conversation which, since I’d already heard the story of his youth, I suspect would have come across redundant. I dunno. Unlike James review I’m going to keep this short since there’s a lot less explicit things to pick at. I don’t totally get what you were going for. I mean, your protagonist grows up never knowing his father, comes to idolize this fantastical image he’s created and chooses to follow in his imagined footsteps; then he has a child of his own who is reared under completely different circumstances, but that kid still wants to follow in those footsteps… I mean, you’d think there’d be some difference, right? Is that what you’re shooting for? The idea that kids will seek out adventure and fantasy regardless? It was really well written, and there was some beautiful imagery in there, great descriptions… But it just wore me down. And in the end, there wasn’t a whole lot of payoff. Strip away all the decoration and there just wasn’t really much of a story here. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for this when I read it, but I think, ultimately, I’d have preferred fewer commas, fewer question marks, and more actual story. I’m gonna give it to James. Despite its flaws his story pulled me forward. The other felt more like an obligation. KaezThere’s a style you’re aiming for here. A memoir of sorts, a tell-all. It’s first person, but more importantly it’s autobiographical to a fault. A man not only telling us the events, but critiquing and providing scrutiny towards every single aspect. It’s the audio-commentary to one’s own life. This means it’s very tell, not show. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, as I said, it’s how autobiographies go. But at the same time, autobiographies work because we already have a general gist of the person, we have the base plot of their story–now we want the razor sharp analysis of every detail of it. We want the fresh perspective. A break down of events from the person themselves. We have an outside point of reference to relate to. Still, there are points where it works. The beginning is quite strong, mostly because there is a decent balance between events occurring and the narrator reminiscing. The ensuing action after the father reveal is also pretty good. The man is experiencing some shit, there should be some thoughts running through his head. But for most of the time on the man’s head, we are stuck inside this man’s head, and it begins to feel very claustrophobic and quasi-authoritarian. Nearly nothing is left for the reader to discern, everything is broken down by the narrator. No stone is left unturned. We are subject to the event, followed by a critique of the event, with each one lasting a solid paragraph or more. No action is left unqualified. Questions are asked upon questions that it feels like diminishing returns….and I suppose that’s the point, an exercise in futility. The man’s stuck on a ship, so we’re stuck in his head. But at the same time, it feels like style here is compromising the story as a whole. The story chops in and out of the man’s stream of consciousness, but I don’t really ‘feel’ anything from it, because I feel so passive here, because the narrator is doing all of the work. They tell and tell and tell and tell, everything dissected and laid bare. I can wonder about the eye, and about the visitor in the night, but why bother? He’s doing it on the page for me. When the protagonist is taking the role of being the hypercritical reader for his own story, it’s hard not to feel sidelined. When story beats do happen, they’re subject to the exact same clinical dissecting that it makes the story’s pacing feel flat. The visceral becomes pedestrian. I understand that this is a man giving a post life autopsy of his own memories, but it really grinds down on the events happening, making the spectacular feel unspectacular. The father reveal is saved from this, due to dialogue playing a role, as well as chance for us to finally discover something alongside the protagonist–and it’s a really good scene!–but it’s immediately swept away. For the ending, we either have a really dishonest narrator, or we have the protagonist getting a wife due to some really ham-fisted lines. Either way, that’s not my main issue. My main issue is that this introspective character who has been waxing on about the sea, the universe and such, while now waxing about the beauty of this woman comes to his catharsis. It’s not even love, and the woman is described in such a way that she doesn’t feel human, it’s more of an infatuation that comes to help the protagonists realize his father’s intentions. You have great potential before this moment on a beach, a sense of existential dread, the encounter with the eye, the beauty of the whale song, but instead it’s this moment, in which a woman flirts with him, that instead triggers this sudden realization. It feels cheap, a deus ex machine with little prior context. The last page and a half is nice, albeit spoiled by the method in which it got there. The writing is on point, and the final exchange actually had a nice sense of closure and made me long for more dialogue in this story…as long as the dude wasn’t trying to flirt. James There’s an issue of dolloping out exposition when it becomes important to the story. Berlewen Bay only becomes noted when it becomes important to the plot, the Wreckers get described when it becomes important to the plot, Aunt Morovren only mentions her children when it becomes important to the plot. Two of those are kind of nitpicky, admittedly, but it does help with avoiding exposition dumps breaking the flow of a good scene. Each of these details are only conjured up when the plot needs them, when it would’ve helped for at least a few of them to get mentioned earlier to help foreshadow, give a sense of mystery and texture to the story, or raise suspense. It’s much more satisfying to the reader when elements described earlier come to pay off later, rather than snapping them out when it’s convenient to do so. “Why don’t you ever let you children play with us, Auntie?” “Well, they’re a quiet bunch, you know? (And literally fucking devil faeries).” The wrecking scene is good. I kind of pictured the Fantasia song with the brooms and Mickey playing when Aunt Morovren started clearing up the beach, but overall it had the right amount of unease and supernatural flair. After the wrecking set piece, I feel a lot of the elements are weaker in comparison. I think it’s because there’s a lot of potential for conflict in this story, but none of them are really taken advantage of. The tension of Aunt Morovren perhaps knowing that the children were watching her is dispelled with a single throwaway line. The tension of the children caving and telling their fathers because they realize they very well might be the next victims as they go to sea is ignored and within the next paragraph, they’ve already spilled the beans. It makes elements of the narrative feel tacked on to one another, rather than a cohesive whole. The most egregious example of this is with the faerie reveal. There’s a bit of tension when Morovren hints at her children (and there could have been more if she had mentioned them earlier), but the actual ‘pulling of the curtain’ moment feels lazy. Aunt Morovren casts the equivalent of a Call of Duty flash bang, and the story just casually regulates the ensuing escape to a single throwaway line that only some people were privy to seeing. There’s massive potential for some skin crawling conflict or horror or…anything. But it’s discarded (until narrative utility requires them to appears in the finale, although there is some tension in knowing that the faeries are out there...doing faerie shit). And then nobody else mentions the faeries in that scene again. After seeing what’s supposed to be arguably the most horrifying sight they’ve ever laid their retinas on, and it feels like they just ignore it, going back to the ‘kill the witch’ schtick. It makes the event feel like an intermission, not the sudden horrific catharsis that it is supposed to be. The problem with the finale is that it’s passive. It’s all action from the antagonists with no reaction from the protagonists. We get a description of each of the children arriving, and the knowledge that our protagonists know, but we get pretty much nothing on their thought processes. The children have been observers for most of the story–save for their confession–watching as the narrative unfolds around them. This event should illicit…something from the characters at some point, but wherever it is, it isn’t present in the words. Their reaction is incorporated into that of the entire town’s which shouldn’t happen, as there is integral information which separates the children and the fathers from everyone else. It’s a distinction that doesn’t manifest in any way. Also, again, a single throwaway line is meant to convey that the fathers don’t have the will or power and I don’t buy it. They had the will to murder these fiends mother, and now the lack of sea is going to reduce them to such a catatonic state that they’re going to just mope around. Perhaps they feel that causing any more trouble will doom them further? Perhaps they’re ‘taken care of’ in such a way that everyone else glosses it over due to the harvests coming into town? Just give us something. Despite that, the last line leaves a memorable impression. The revenge isn’t overstated, nor mellow dramatic. It’s of a simple insidious sort of thing. A conquering of legacy. The overall idea is cool, but I feel there were some considerable flaws with the execution. * * *I’ve rethought my choice and I’ll probably keep rethinking it. My main critiques were with the presentation and structure of each story, so I felt I had to turn to the characters themselves to render a decision. Pete, despite all of what I said, still managed to present an interesting character. The goal was made apparent in the beginning, a search for his father, and the actual scenes with the father were really well done and actually conveyed a good sense of loss and emotion. There’s just…also just a lot of ‘Stuff’ to get to those moments. James, presents a solid set up and an intriguing scenario, but it fumbles half-way through and never fully recovers for me. A large reason for this, not quite mentioned above, is that our narrator is a conglomerate. A group of children. A ‘we’. It keeps the actions neutralized. They go to the Bay and they tell their fathers, but everything is else is passive. When the climax calls for action, for a strong voice to emerge, we get nothing. So, Pete for me. Pete: Your story starts by making the reader wonder. What happened to make the man's life turn to hell after such an idyllic childhood? The words are poetry to my ears and glimmer well on the page. Severed instead of served, minor glitch in the system. He's dreaming of a life that didn't exist, that no longer existed, and dreaming of a day when he could meet his father again. The sentiments here are pure and I can see how full of hope the man is at this point in his life. Just around the corner is his father and back home his mother lay. And then the specter enters his life. Giving him all he desires to give another: Share his experiences, but at what cost? Is this ghost his father, truly? I suppose he'll find out after wretching overboard. And go overboard he seemed to have. Again, the transition is beautiful and there is an artistry I don't see very often in the descriptions of the moment. It flows well and doesn't feel jumbled in the slightest. And then he meets another person, a mysterious other. The love of his life. And then...uh. Okay. Happy ending! Fuck yeah! Except I can't help shake the feeling that the front of the story made it seem like something really terrible was going to happen. Will something terrible happen? I don't know, the ending makes it feel happy and wonderful and that everything in this man's life went right, but I can't help shake the feeling that it wasn't originally supposed to end this way. That either the author or the father stopped the badness that was to be expected from happening. This is a beautiful story, but thematically I can't help feel that it was either purposeful subversion or accidental tone shift and the fact I can't tell which is somewhere grey. The man's life contradicts the sour tones of the beginning of the story and that in of itself is damaging to its quality. Not because it was inconsistent, but that the entire story ended up feeling like it couldn't decide if this was a happy or sad tale and ended up defaulting on happy. Its somewhat flashy-feeling, despite the initial dourness, but that isn't necessarily bad. Still, I really liked this story. I'll read it again some time and see if I still feel the same way. James: This is a much less dignified tale than Pete's. In the sense that it feels like its taking itself less seriously and just exists. There's a certain flourish to some writing and it can be a good or bad thing. The lack of it here bodes well. The feeling of the boys' understanding of what was outside of their town, while limited, still had a whiff of knowledge that feels frowned upon. A lot of small towns are like that. Oh no, Berlewen Beach. Boys, don't go! Some mysteries can only remain good if you don't solve them! The description is a little over the top, but it adds flavor to the story. But guess what, it IS dangerous because shits about to go down. Like. Oh shit. What if he spots them? Will she spurn them or do something horrible? And...she fuck-murders the survivor of the wreck she caused. Wow. That's super evil witchy. I like that it happened this way only because there's so many tropes of the good witch that a lot of good stories just avoid the bad witch being the only one around. Thematic tension up the wazoo in here. And then childhood ends, much like the lights in these children's eyes. And jesus-fuck, does the horrortrain continue once the secret's out. Frozen Fetuses, blinding light, horrible screams, and then...she just lets them murder her via drowning. Things go to shit in town for a while after that, but then, a year out, her children...come into town as full-adults? The town prospers? So, murder the witch who knew that it would eventually come to this and her heirs make the lives of everyone better? Happy Ending, Fuck Yeah! Except...this doesn't feel deserved at all. The boys, instead of going to Aunt Morovren and confronting her, gather a mob to kill her and she's totally chill with this. Like, it was meant to happen. And what's the deal with the frozen fetuses, children she had with sailors she murdered? Did she really love the town that much? I liked the story, but man does the ending give me a headache. There's something missing here and I'm not sure how to make it better. I'll probably come back to this one too to see if I feel the same. My Verdict: Ultimately these are both fantastic stories. Some further edits, some thematic elements tightened, and these are definitely publishable. Unfortunately both of these stories ended up making me feel like the endings were completely undeserved and made no sense. Yes, there is a stereotype that I'll just give these blank-ass reviews about what I liked, but here its difficult to say what I didn't like other than the endings. I LIKE happy endings, yet these are both undeserved. The protagonists either followed their dreams and got a happy ending just cause their dad wanted them to succeed or a town murders a witch and is rewarded by her mystical frozen fetus children. Great stories, badly thought out endings. Pete wins my vote. Barely. PeteThe first thing that occurred to me by the time I finished this story was that a promise had kind of been broken. I'm referring to this line: "Don't think me such a fool to believe it was ever such." It's a great line, really eye-catching and got my interest piqued in your story immediately. Yet this theme of rose-tinted glasses never really felt like it had the catalyst or payoff that it deserved. Not once does the story really give me a visceral example of him remembering something that wasn't true, and I never get a glimpse at what might have really happened. The idea is referenced multiple times throughout but it always left me hanging, waiting for something to happen to tie that knot. The second thing I thought of was, "this should've been narrated." As in, the entire story read and flowed beautifully as if the character were speaking to me, and not writing to me. It felt like a wasted opportunity, then, for him not to be literally speaking, orating this story to his son like the main character wanted his father to tell him his own stories. I think the story loses a bit of its authenticity and its charm when you reach the end and find that that's missing, that it's actually meant to be something pulled from (presumably) a journal or a letter. Those are my "big picture" criticisms. From there my next biggest plaints were smaller things, like the main character revealing early that he never found his father...only, in a way, he eventually does (in a way!), and he would've known that when he said he didn't. Even if it was "just a dream," the character seems to acknowledge that there was something real about it, so it just doesn't seem like something he'd say. Speaking of his father: I think it would've been nice if his father's dream-face had matched his childish idea of what he'd look like, with a scar across his cheek and all. Close to the beginning, you use two very similar similes in two back to back paragraphs - one about clouds whipping around like vipers, another about memories that claw up like rabid beasts. I don't know if that's really even a problem, but their proximity makes them kind of stand out and be noticeable in a way that maybe you didn't want them to be? I don't know. Anyway, I felt like I should say something about it. On the third page, there's a line about how his teacher spared him the "gruesome tense." I really liked this part and the idea of it, but I felt like the execution could've been slightly better. The way it is right now, he directly quotes himself, and then paraphrases the teacher. If he paraphrased himself and then directly quoted the teacher - which would make more sense to me anyways, that he'd remember her words more clearly than his question to her - then we'd get to see the tense that she used ourselves, which would then set up that line about sparing him the gruesome tense a little more effectively. While I really did like the prose style, a few times it felt a bit over-indulgent and rambling, with lines like "Quick was I in learning and ever eager my curiosity, my desire to learn more, to know more." I don't feel like that litle expansion really added anything for me, seeing as I already know what curiosity means. In particular I really liked the dream sequence and its immediate follow up with the emotional relief of that romantic little beach scene, which was really effective for me. That was the point where I really decided that I liked the story. James
This story is really weird, in ways that are good and bad. To start off I want to say that...more or less the first third, the entire section leading up to the reveal that Aunt Morovren is a "wrecker," was fantastic. But at that point, things fell off really, really sharply in quality and consistency, in my opinion, and the story started to meander. The buildup was excellent, super effective and amazing - I was on the edge of my seat reading it, getting super into these kids' spooky adventure. I feel like I really can't compliment that part of it enough. But then the details started to get filled in more and more and things worked for me less and less. To be precise, my issues really start when the kids follow her to the beach. At this point, you have three things that happen that I think could have been done better. First, we have this really vague and colorful description of what Morovren is doing on the beach with the lanterns. Second, we're taken out of the scene to be told what a wrecker is. Third, Morovren sucks the soul out of the shipwreck survivor's dick. The way these scenes are structured and written don't flow well to me. I wanted a more clear description of what was going on with the shipwreck and her little beach ritual; the scene winds up being kind of amorphous, which took me out of the very good pace the story had been holding previously. Then I'm taken out of the scene completely to be given, essentially, exposition that really ought to have been somehow delivered at the very beginning of the story or not delivered at all (in a way that almost leaves more questions than it answers, like "how the hell didn't they already figure this out?" imagine if in the middle of a murder scene in friday the 13th, one of the characters stopped and went "Oh, it's a dreamspooker!" and then he explained exactly what a dreamspooker is), and then we have the sex, which is described very quickly and matter-of-factly when really it ought to have been given that flourish you gave the writing for the shipwreck, imo. When they return for the lynching, again, we get a climactic scene that seems awkwardly handled. The dialogue in particular here really takes me out of the story, a problem that -sort of- feels like it's always present, with the characters just seeming too casual about everything. Yes, the character here is meant to be unafraid of her death, but it sucks the drama out of the scene for her to treat it like a joke. Body language wise, your descriptions of her seemed more like she was playing an important part, doing something significant to her, but dialogue wise she came off as though it was just another tuesday. The same thing happens earlier in the story, less noticeably, and then very noticeably again later on with her children. Another issue with this scene is that I feel like the imagery you're conveying is not really deserving of the reactions the characters in the scene give it. People screaming, everyone is completely horrified, at some fetuses in blocks of ice? That's definitely weird and bizarre, but terrifying? Idk. My own reaction and the reactions being given by the characters were not even close. I don't know enough about story structure to give a real thoughtful, agreeable, and indepth critique of that, but something about the way it was all set up seemed very off to me. As if there's too many climaxes in this story or something. The conclusion winds up being brief, passing very quickly, almost feeling like an epilogue. Thematically, though, I felt like the story was strong and did a good job of communicating those more subtle ideas, though I'm not sure I've really cracked the meaning entirely yet, and maybe if I had before I wrote this review I would like the story more. big vote time: pete All right, here we are. I wish I had more to say to you gentlemen about each piece. You're both excellent writers who poured a lot of time and effort into these stories. But ultimately my main critique of each is that they didn't truly capture my imagination, my excitement. Despite their level of craft, which is a base level you gentlemen have honed, the depth was somewhat lacking to me. Also there were spelling errors and for that I will never forgive you. James:This is a folktale full of inventive new ideas, but I don't think they are brought to their fullest potential. It's all rather staid to me. A story about a child, or rather a group of children, watching a witch have sex after causing a shipwreck, bringing a mob to her house, for her to release fetuses that were being held in stasis before being forcefully drowned? It's certainly not something I've read before. But as characters our witch, and, notably, our narrator, are so benign that the story ultimately passes without leaving much of a mark. The witch is 'scary' in a way that the children tell us she's scary. But her actions are all so simply related that I never felt an ounce of existential dread or threat. She destroys a ship, sure, but the when are the children in danger? The townsfolk? The point of the story may be how she was loyal to the people she served, and her children after her, but it didn't feel built too. There's wasn't too much color to her. I mean, you essentially describe and then immediately redescribe a wrecker with her actions and the child's narration. Similarly the narrator is just one of the pack, hardly distinguishing himself as a unique actor in the events--or, at the very least, how the events currently uniquely shape him. You don't necessarily have to spend time on it, per se, but I think the story would benefit from how what happened is currently affecting the man who is purportedly telling it. The description of Moroven as sexy is an ample opportunity for editorializing, for example, but is told in a fairly sterile way. Ultimately I feel like there's no real character for me to latch on to, which ultimately makes the story feel more shallow than it deserves. The story lacks character to me. Even the character of the sea doesn't have much personality or say in this mystical story, which is something I think you should explore. I felt your opening was the strongest part of your story, the ending the weakest. After writing all this I feel a little unfair. There's a style you're going for here, and definitely succeed at. It may simply be I disagree with how this plot and style mesh. A different creation of the plot may serve it better. But I think for the story you have a different style would be more useful. Pete:I didn't end up falling in love with the style, but I certainly didn't hate it. I definitely enjoyed it however. I bring up to you two things to take note of. Firstly, my eyes would begin occasionally skimming through text on their own, whether I willed it or no. This may simply be a partial symptom of my digitized brain, but not entirely. When constructing poetic language, there's a tendency to construct circular. If it's built that way continually the eyes can get a little hazy. I also feel that this is a good story to use to discuss the idea of the education of a character--you make a point to mention that our narrator can read and write, but even so--our storyteller is a whaler, and a cabin boy. The vocabulary and diction of our storyteller is certainly understandable and forgivable in the heightened place this text lives in, but there's a degree to which I wonder if the carefully crafted poetry might not go farther if it stood out in certain places. That simplicity could be allowed to thrive more often. The meeting of the first love was the weakest moment of the story for me. The moment that stood out to me was the sequence of falling into the water, and particularly the moment with the whale. Ultimately, my decision came down to the story I felt was told more inventively. My vote goes to Pete.PETE WINS! CONGRATULATIONS!
THE KING IS DEAD; LONG LIVE THE KING |
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