From one of the more respectable members at least. Then again, you didn't even read did you?
I did. His argument is basically about machismo, which seems to imply the best person to lead our nation is in fact Stone Cold Steve Austin. I won't deny that inferred machismo is a reason why Trump is doing so well, or that it (like jawlines) is one of the things that people are naturally drawn to when voting, but I don't think responsible people use it as a deciding factor in their president picking. Mr. Naruto Forums seems to be looking for a war chieftain, somebody to lead him on a raid to steal women from the enemy camp. What we are actually electing is head bureaucrat. Somebody to lead a complicated nation-state. He brings up Thutmose and George Washington as evidence, but I can very easily supply a Claudius or Thomas Jefferson to rebut.
And that's all irrelevant because the only benefit a macho president affords you is negotiating power, and I don't think Trump has that. Trump's a diva - take him from the cameras, and from people financially beholden to him, and his power of persuasion melts away. He's good with crowds. But put him in a room with Putin, and all of that will fall apart. He'll just be a dumb face in a circumstance like that. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think the guy is the end of the world. Actually, if we have to have a Republican President, I'd prefer it to be Trump because he's not going to put out much effort towing the party line, and I think he would do an effective job of embarrassing that party which in itself is a fairly noble cause. But comparing him to George Washington is insulting. Washington and Lincoln weren't famous for running their mouths. They were thoughtful, intelligent people who made tough decisions after careful consideration.
Mountain Dew is good. Mountain Dew's Voltage is pretty darned tootin' good. Mountain Dew's Baja Blast is just Heaven in a can.
I like voltage more than the other mt dews, but it is no doubt the most corn-syrupy thing on the market. It's like drinking melted jolly ranchers. I usually go for those if I am awake a long time, since I don't like coffee and energy drinks are overpriced. But when I am not tired, I look at them and premonitions of diabetes flashed through my brain.
Diet Soda seems weird to me. If you are on a diet, drink water. It tastes better. Diet Soda is the refreshment equivalent of flagellation. You don't need to punish yourself for needing to diet. I have the same opinion about chicken burgers. If you're going to eat and drink healthy, eat good healthy things, not bad facsimiles of unhealthy things.
I'll go through these one by one before voting. Vote will be at the bottom.
Imma go ahead and note that I know jack shit about poetry, so if I sound foolish trying to judge this, just know that I probably am. Anyway, I like the idea, it feels sort of like it could be a patriotic song in some fascist country. The only line I had to read twice and think about was...
his palace looms above the lower, his throne is a step to reach which is higher
After looking at it a bit, I interpreted to mean "He's above the commoners and near to heaven." But having a vague line did trip up the flow of the thing. The woolen cape mention was interesting, suggests this is probably set in a different period? I love what little details can do to a story, so the dissonance of woolen cape against all of this high language gives me a feeling of cultural depth that could easily have been missed if you had stuck with nothing but high language. The Thane and Thralls bit suggests something Germanic. So I suppose, if it is any worth to you, the image this conjured for me was that of some sort of Scandinavian brand of Nordic Fascism.
I feel like I am missing a few things here because I didn't participate in the Glorious leader game attached to this contest. I would say that it is difficult to imagine exactly what perspective this is supposed to be told in because it is so bombastic (satire perhaps, from the perspective of a Cicero-esque character poking at the dictator with words? The line about a white stallion riding a white stallion, with a crown that is "the master of all headwear", suggested satire to me, but not so certainly that I held onto that idea for the rest of the story.). I can't entirely commit to say that it is too bombastic to be believable because, considering North Korea, the idea that somebody in a dictatorship might be driven to write something so ridiculous isn't impossible to swallow. It might be a good idea for future writing to think about the way stories are framed. The vague nature of this one could possibly be argued to be one of its charms, making the reader like a historian finding a new original source and trying to place it within it's context. But this writing doesn't really present a context at all, so it leaves the reader out of the loop for the entire duration and makes it difficult to become truly interested in what is being said. It might have been a good idea to place hints as to who the Glorious Leader is in reality. That would give the reader something to hold onto, and give the writing more substance. Maybe you did exactly that, and I am just too dense to see it. I'll have to read the other reviewers reviews to see if they got something that I didn't.
But if you didn't mean for there to be a context at all and this idea is exactly as it is presented, I can offer one piece of advice. Your language is good. You know how to write vivid sentences, you're grammar leaves nothing wanting, and at no point did I feel like the language itself was an impediment. That is good, those are not easy things to master. But the problem is that even the best language isn't going to be enough to carry a piece without some other sort of artifice. If you don't believe me, try to read all of Psalms in the bible in one sitting. In short bursts, good language can make a good quote, but too much language without artifice becomes difficult to read because language itself isn't enough to keep the reader interested. Even a simple fun piece like this can be made three dimensional by some very simple turns of phrase, or hints about what is taking place. For instance, you could have started with the fluffy comparisons and slowly became more personal and more real, revealing piece by piece who the Glorious Leader is. You could have outlined a biographical essay, and then fluffed up each bit if biographical material so that despite the bombast the reader could pick out a true story underneath. Something in that vein might have helped ground the reader to the story.
Imma go ahead and note that I know jack shit about poetry, so if I sound foolish trying to judge this, just know that I probably am. That being said, this is the sort of poem that a simpleton like me can read and say 'Yeh, that's what a poem is supposed to sound like'. It reminded me of a sort of elementary school poem, like something kids would be taught so they could learn about the exploits of an important leader in their nation's history. Good King Wencelaus comes to mind as a comparison. I can't say anything negative about it - if there are any flaws in this piece, they are beyond my ability to detect. Perhaps you could have turned it into more of a story poem by expanding on these people who were rebelling against the King and what he did to defeat them? Only suggestion that I can think of.
I think what you need to attend to is perhaps a habit of using the same types of sentences in your descriptions. The beat of the writing reminds me of noir, where everything is simple and to the point, but you mix it with so many descriptors that it doesn't quite work. The idea was a really good one, but I think your tendency to get bogged down in descriptors and story context ended up drowning the suspense you were trying to build. I suggested to somebody earlier that they needed to add more context. With yours, I think you would have done well cutting some world building context and instead focusing on the build up of the scene leading up to the shooting. As it stands now, you just telegraph the martian woman a few times and leave it at that, which makes it where the reader knows she is going to do something. That isn't enough for suspense. One thing you could have done is focus on Tyler feeling suspicious about the entire scene around him. Build up suspense through the interaction of the Generals themselves, while telegraphing the Martian woman within the context of the General's conversation so that you think it will be one of them that ultimately brings about the drama, but when the Martian woman acts, it is neither a non sequitur nor blatantly obvious.
The only other thought I have is that the CAPITAL LETTERS things is sort of a turn off. Might be a good idea to tone that down a bit.
Well, I mean, you nailed it.
This story reminds me a lot of those PG fantasy movies that were big in the eighties. The positives are that your pacing is excellent, the story is textbook perfect, and the ending is satisfying. Considering this is an RP forum, that is more than any of us could expect. But praise isn't very useful, and I'm sure you'd like to hear critique.
The problem that comes about with a textbook story is that there isn't anything here that stands out as original. The final trial is appropriately dramatic and somber, but in an artificial way. I think that partially comes from the fact that each character plays their character-type to a tee, and it causes the characters to feel somewhat plastic. We've just seen them so many times that our responses feel almost expected. I think we've reached the point now where you have to experiment somewhat with the story formula for a story to really have a personality of it's own, even if that means just burying the formula so deep in the story where it isn't so noticeable.
You know the rules, you are probably more deft with them than anybody else in this forum. What I really want to see is what you can do when you break the rules.
Ahh, I didn't participate in the Glorious Leader forum game part of the contest, so I feel I lost a lot of what is going on here. When I got to the part where you starting naming stuff from the forum game, and name-dropped MDK, I felt like I wasn't reading a submission so much as just another post in the contest thread. Also, were there supposed to be words in those blocks, or were the blocks just blank spaces used to convey the perspective shift? Because I played around with them and never got anything but block. Either way, I think that, all and all, this was too much of an in-joke and it doesn't manage to compete on it's own merits.
There is just a lot going on here. I think you work so hard at world building that you slow down the pacing in places. This is especially noticeable in fight scenes, where you break up the action with paragraphs of either description or unnecessary cut-aways. There is one point where, in the middle of the battle, you end up describing the history of the cloak before going into detail about how the split occurs. That pretty much killed the fight. The other place it is noticeable is in that final scene with the witch, where we cut from Alice's teleportation, to the Witch recognizing Marlon, to whatever is happening with Yang, and it happens so fast and with so little action that it takes effort to work out exactly what happens. The Alice and death bit didn't feel like it added much anyway.
I think your imagination is quite impressive. I can tell you enjoy dealing with this unique, ethereal sort of world. What you need to practice is toning it down a bit. Figure out the things you need to tell, and the things you need to cut. It can be stressful trying to reign in your imagination when there are so many ideas you really want to write about, but sometimes you just have to teach yourself restraint. I took a writing class in school years ago, and our teacher touched on this very point. As she said, "In writing, you have to learn how to kill you darlings." Even if there is an idea, or a phrase, or a world-building point you really like, it won't always fit the narrative, and sometimes you just have to drop it.
Good vignette. You did an excellent job at putting together the two characters and drawing them out into three-dimensional figures. Anna is mean spirited, narcissistic, and self-righteous. Alex is petty, immature, and possibly a little desperate. They seem like real people, and that is always an accomplishment.
But there are a lot of holes here. Did Anna get murdered? Did she kill herself? Was drugs involved? Why did she have the prescience to know her approaching death, then use that knowledge to write a letter to a school rival? Was the third friend there for mysterious reasons pertinent to the mystery, or only a device to end the argument between the cop and the protagonist? That the protagonist replied to the cop at the end that Anna wants to be buried in an unmarked grave highlights the immaturity and pettiness of the character, but surely that shouldn't be the end? Realistically, the authorities aren't going to take Alex's word for it when it comes to a will, and their behavior will come to light probably within seconds of the ending. That's why I see this more as a character vignette rather than a fully fleshed out story. The character development is excellent, but the larger story leaves a lot wanting.
There is an ethereal quality to this that is absolutely perfect for what you are doing. I think you managed to, better than anybody else, crawl into the mind of your protagonist and stay there. Reading this gives a quality of childhood lost - like Johny is stuck partially in the jungle, but even more so in the youth he lived before going to war, and these two things together compliment each other seamlessly. You carry it first from the wispy, almost cheesy writing of the first few paragraphs as introducing the childish aspect of his life, and then you get darker as you go along so that the reader feels that darkness too.
I think the only problem is perhaps sometimes your writing gets so flowery that it becomes sort of vague? That works really well in a piece like this where the writing is supposed to take place in a sort of foggy mindset, but there are a few places, particularly near the end, where more grounded writing might have helped.
Okay, so after deliberating, I whittled down the finalists for my vote to An Ode to King Han, Firebrand, and What's Wrong with Johnny. I would say these three all had near equal merits, so that the judgement now becomes more about personal taste. The thing that chose it for me is that I am a push-over for character development (if the story itself had held water a little better, retribution would have been in the running too). With all that in mind, I give my @vote to What's Wrong with Johnny. All three finalists showed that they know how to use writing and are very comfortable in their respective styles, but the creative use of language in injecting the personality of the main character into the writing itself is what wins it for What's Wrong with Johnny.
Wilted Rose
