Vilageidiotx

Political Standing of the RoleplayGuild.

Or a general (if such a thing can exist) one for Europeans, and to have us Americans take it and see how we politically lean based on our answers to questions important to European politics.

@Dinh AaronMk

This would be pretty interesting to see.

Political Standing of the RoleplayGuild.

Remember this pivots on American politics. As I said above, these things were being pimped by our Libertarians back in the day, usually as a way to hook conservatives into their camp. So yeh... they aren't the most well written.

RPGC #10: The Moon! -- Voting and Discussion

Green Moon

Okay, so all and all you did pretty well. The pacing in the first part was pretty good, which is usually pretty tricky for battle scenes. The plot itself was well rounded and moved into itself, and you have a style of writing that is absolutely approachable so that no effort has to be taken by the reader to translate it.

Criticism-wise, I have one thing to say that encapsulates the primary weakness; it feels like most of this is an outline for a novel rather than a stand-alone short story. If you imagine each scene as the gist of a chapter... yeh, this could easily expand into a novel. So after the first battle, it feels like you are rushing toward the end and perhaps neglecting the flesh of the story you are telling. There are also a few loose ends to note. A small one would be the relationship between Final-Form Mellin and Werek. With that it feels like you are trying to develop a plot point, where he likes her but she just isn't interested, but then it ends up not going anywhere so it sort of ends up feeling like you just wanted and excuse to describe her new boobs. The big one though is the moon. The situation with the moon is there, it is developed, and it is in the title, but it doesn't really do anything for the main plot.

To go back to that first criticism though, there is a positive thing you can take from that. Being like the outline of a novel means that, if you want to take the effort, you could easily expand what you have and end up with a novel. It'd be a matter of tying things together and writing more, but you do have something there to work with.

The Bamboo Cutter's Daughter

Okay, so the first thing that hits me here is all the alt-universe historical terms. The first half of the story absolutely bombards the reader with these and provides too little too slowly to help the reader understand what these mean, which makes a good chunk of the early story a tad arid and confusing. The easiest way to mitigate that would be to outright create a conversation to explain these terms in the first half. You could have also have backed down on the variety of terms to simplify. For instance, breaking it down so there are just two nations that once were at war, and have the immigrants come from that same nation. If it were me though, since what you had was something of a palette swap of mid-twentieth century history, I would have went ahead and used the real world nations so I didn't have to explain anything.

I don't know enough intuitively about Japanese folklore to say I am making my judgement with the adaption in mind. I did skim the wiki page to get this gist of it, but that's about it. So with that in mind, I think you probably could have done with better set-up for for the twist. Aside from saying she is a bamboo cutters daughter (which itself isn't set-up because it requires knowledge of esoteric outside sources to understand), and that she was an Ace, we don't get enough telegraphing for the twist at the end, making it seem a bit of a non sequitur.

You hit your stride more in the landing sequence methinks. You back up a bit on the alt-history terms there (or i just understood them by that time, i dunno), and you throw a number of things that makes the reader think something is about to go down, which creates suspense. I'd say in that middle bit, the story was at its most immersive.

We had a name for it, once.

At first I opened up the hider, saw the short size of it, and thought "O dear, you can't get enough done in this few words to be called a short story."

But naw, I was wrong, you pulled if off.

The way you do this twist reminds me of golden age sci-fi. There is a Rod Serling appeal too it, in that it's sudden and melodramatic, and once the curtain has been pulled on that twist the story abruptly ends. In doing this it takes what had been an average story and quickly pops it into place in a way that is quite enjoyable.

The set-up is sufficient for the twist, but until the twist happens the story does feel a little redundant. I feel that very little happens until the very end, and we mostly have some rather tame descriptions of life that in themselves don't feel especially engaging. You especially dwell on his occupation too much instead of developing anything else around him. The only other thing that feels meaningfully criticizeable is the following sentences.

I am compelled to cast my gaze back to the ground. There’s nothing comely nor elegant about the sight of that hideous wreck glaring down at me.

That came off as a tad purple, and it sticks out for some reason. You almost get the feeling of a regular dude suddenly trying to channel Shakespeare.

But all and all I liked it. The twist was satisfying, and that is always a significant accomplishment.

Moonbeam

Hey! Western mythology! I was way into reading up on this stuff when I was a preteen, so you earn brownie points for drawing on it.

This was a nice little play with mythology. When the twist happens it isn't a non-sequitur since you had telegraphed with the wolfs and the moon feelings that there is something going down. I'd say the weakness here is dialogue. I could see how maybe you pulled from an ancient tradition of translation-sounding dialogue, but what I got out of it, especially at the beginning, was the stilted sound of two things pretending to sound like people. So, for instance...

“The wolves are rather friendly, as long as you show you’re a friend.” He grabbed a pouch of wine.

“Wine? I fail to see why you’d need wine unless you’ve been getting drunk alone you’re whole life.”

He smiled. “I didn’t always get drunk alone. Once I had someone to drink with. You remind me of her.”

Diana's line feels like a thing someone wouldn't say, and that you just had her say it to set up his response. It just sounds so... unnatural. Or...

“There’s nothing to tell that you can’t hear in some bard’s song, a book of poetry or even one of your classes that you continue to skip.”

“You’re evading my question. And if you want to know why I don’t go to school it’s because they try to keep me in a little box where it’s what they say or nothing at all. That’s not learning, it’s a prison.”

This just doesn't sound like people. When I read it, I read it like a first-time actor blandly reading lines off of a page. There isn't any native emotion or humanity in it. It's sort of difficult to describe why that means, but if you read it out loud you'll probably get what I mean.

The other thing you could have done is expanded on the middle part and the walk into the woods so you build up a little more mystery and suspense. All and all I think the plot is solid, it's these internals that would do with a little reworking.

MoonDoings

First thing I suppose I want to say is about what is said in the notes. You could have easily called it MoonSports. It was pretty obvious from the first description that they were doing sports, and you didn't take moon out of the title so it was pretty obvious where this was happening. It doesn't affect any judgements or anything, just though I should comment on it.

Okay, so this is a nice as a concept piece. I don't know enough about physics to judge how you rendered the idea of sports on the moon, but I see you had fun coming up with your own interpretation and really interpretation is all any of us can do anyway. The weakness in this piece is that it really doesn't do anything. There isn't really a plot, or a direction, implied by this piece, so it ends up feeling more like a scene montage for an untold story than a story within itself. There is probably style bias in this opinion I am sure, but I think this piece would have benefited from something driving the plot. Maybe this isn't just a vacation, but some sort of high-school sports competition where teams are competing to go to the Martian Semi-Finals? I dunno, something like that, create the sense that there is more going on than pure description.

The Princess of the Moon

I don't know much about poetry because I can't write it at all, so when I judge it in things like this I always do so from a "I don't know art but I know what I like" perspective. Now I got that out of the way...

I think this is nice. It's the meter they usually use for kids stories, isn't it? The first thing that comes to mind is "The Night Before Christmas". It's neat, cleanly written in the sense that you don't seem to break the meter, and the imagery involved never breaks from the simplicity of the pattern. And it does absolutely and completely remind me of a professionally published children's story. As in, you should legitimately consider trying to sell it for children's publication.

Uposatha

I don't... get this one I am afraid. I could see it being something you could do poetry with, but writing this in prose makes it feel like more of a practice exercise for writing rather than a completed work. Without context, it just sort of... is there. The prose isn't bad, but you'd have to do more with it to make it into something.

Selenophobia

First of all I want you to know that you nailed it. I was worried that it's length would make it a painful read, especially after having just came home from work, but it wasn't at all. I think the ending was exactly what you want. Any more explanation would have been as likable as explaining a joke just after telling it. You know what to tell, and what not to tell; what to hold back, and what to show. You know how to give a person's imagination something to do to fill in the blanks. Just, really, be proud of this.

So the criticism that I have won't be related to the plot except for one tiny thing;

It was his dad. Lance Montague's reputation ensured that his son had front-row seats to what was quickly becoming the second worst moment of his life, even from beyond the grave.

...i don't think you should have gave it away here. You pretty much telegraph at the beginning of the launch sequence that you are going to kill off Diane, which dampens the suspense. If it wasn't for the conspiracy bit, this would have soured the ending entirely.

Your prose is good in the sense that I didn't have to make an effort to read and keep reading, but at the same time I feel it is a bit unpolished. It feels like you fall back on cliches a lot. The dialogue also isn't especially polished, and has the immature melodramatic feeling of the dialogue of shows on the CW. A good thing to try and do with dialogue is to read it alone without context from the rest of the writing and see what type of characters you end up with. Doing that makes Harry look like a little snot, meaning his character is very dependent on inner monologue.

The other thing that I couldn't help but notice is how, despite being distant in the future, you could easily transport what is going on into any decade in the late twentieth century and nobody would notice. What I mean is, it does not feel like this takes back very far in the future at all. Any time a character looks back to the 2030's or whichever, it sticks out like a sore thumb because nothing seems like it belongs in that late a date, let alone later.

Vote

My @vote goes to Selenophobia.