MISC #9 Voting Thread: Genres on Parade

[Hecatoncheires]

OKAY, LET'S FEEDBACK LOOK AT GO.

Pathfinder - Solid plot, but it felt a bit slow at times. I noticed enough typos to feel the need to suggest a more thorough editing process. The speech style of having people speak English peppered with non-English words and phrases can be neat and add flavor, but it started feeling overbearing about halfway through, like food that has juuuust a bit too much garlic in it. The ending was rather predictable and wasn't very satisfying, so it ended on a low note for me.

I hear you on the more thorough editing needed: I went back through and re-read a bit of what was submitted then got really fuckin mad with myself for some obvious fuck ups. As for the non-English stuff, I was trying to do a cheeky wee nod to Firefly/Serenity's method of having characters break into Chinese at points (hinting at a merging of cultures), but you're definitely right that it was used too much. That will need sorted. There's definitely some sections that could be tightened up and fixed so things flow more quickly, which will hopefully make things speed up a bit. Appreciate you taking the time to give your thoughts, mine duder.

i'm still hung up on the speaker immediately thinking the slanty-eyed character was chinese, instead of being more cautious and thinking, say, siberian, which come in greater numbers up north.

This might be one of the hazards of going hard on showing and hinting rather than telling: 'Pathfinder' doesn't actually take place in Russia/Asia (in my initial notes I had some scribbled thoughts on it being the nuclear winter-strewn wastes of Central Europe), but this clearly didn't come across well given that I made basically all the characters from Eastern Europe or Asia. And you're right about Koss making that call about Jen-sin's ethnicity too fast. It might make more sense if she picks up on it after he speaks.

@firejay1 YOU TAKE THAT BACK ABOUT MY KICKASS FONT. >:[

But nah, jokes aside thanks for giving a play-by-play breakdown of your thoughts as you went through: that was really interesting to read as it gave me a chance to see what beats landed and what didn't. Really glad you enjoyed the story, and thanks for taking the time to spot muh typos and fuck ups. I'll be going through 'Pathfinder' again with your feedback to fix things up.

 

[Kitti]

Pathfinder

The gender of the narrator isn't something made important and not even immediately known but rather shown fairly casually later on. I like that. I like that her gender only had a bit to do with social interactions.
I also think that the world building was quite nicely done. It feels complex and engaging without needing to go into long explanations about different aspects.
The language bits are good and I liked them sparingly but there get to be a lot of them and I think trimming those down will make them more meaningful with less tendency to skim over them going "something something, I get the gist" as I did in places.
There were some typos that could benefit from a closer reading, primarily things to do with tense agreement and letter moving/deletion. Though there were a handful, none were particularly detrimental to understanding.
The final showdown was a bit anticlimactic. I think I understand that you were aiming for a reversal on normal action tropes – that revenge doesn't provide magic closure – but I feel that having little in the way of conflict at the end makes it a pure falling arc and fizzles out somewhat.

Little Miss Robin Hood

This story from the get-go made me question the cohesiveness of it since it seems to contradict itself. An example that struck me at the beginning was this

Slipping through the crowd, nobody paid me any mind, assuming I belong to somebody there.

From this to:

Walking out of the market and into the streets I kept to alleyways, people start to suspect a little goblin wandering the streets alone so I stay out of view as much as possible but I always walk with confidence and that seems to keep most people away, thinking I know where I am and that I'm supposed to be there.

It feels fairly incongruous to me.
The conveniently heard conversation that leads to everything is also too heavy on the Exact Eavesdropping side to not feel shoehorned.
Though flawed characters can be appealing, children lacking wisdom, and character growth is rewarding to see develop, the main character did not resonate with me and I found her mostly unlikable.
The idea of modern race and minority dynamics with fantasy elements is an interesting one and exploring the class hierarchy of various races and their interactions is a nifty idea.

Function Interval

The siblings are fun and I enjoyed reading their banter with one another and the other characters. The snipping of dialogue and the scene set-up flowed well and I immediately pictured the heist movie montages, which I assume was the goal and was well-executed. Some of the characters (Mbizi) make stronger impressions than others (Taikki) but were an overall amusing cast of individuals. The action was well-paced and felt slow enough to explain and understand what was happening but fast enough to be interesting.
The ending as a "true" purpose for the heist is intriguing but I feel like its consequences could be looked at a bit more before the cut-off or perhaps some subtle foreshadowing. The way it is now isn't bad but I think feels a bit abrupt for me in comparison to the rest of the story.

Dark Sky

The story is short and, well, I'd say sweet but that's not quite the case. Still, you get the idea. I like the fact that the main character is revealed to be pretty limited in her understanding of the whys and hows since it's shown to fit with her background and the knowledge level of the general populace.
A good emotional connection between the grandmother and main character is developed for the reader to feel feelings about the loss of the grandmother for the main character. On this point, I think Stevie's could have been a little more powerful since Stevie's death didn't feel as impactful as the grandmother's death to me. The story on the whole was well-written and does a good job of stirring emotions. I thought the ending poignant. My personal taste would be to cut the last sentence for a more ominous ending with less finality but a well-written work on the whole.

RAM Heist

I think that this story had interesting ideas and a nifty concept with a little too much going on in fact to squeeze in. The pacing was a little off, I think, since the beginning starts of pretty slow and calm and maybe dragging on a bit but the warehouse scene is a bit much and very quick with a lot to take in and very intense in a short span before the ending scene where it becomes slow again with little action.
The mechanics are good and it told a compelling story but I think that the idea to story size ratio might have been overly ambitious and ended up squeezing on some things that could have been teased out a little more.

This is the Future

The prompt feels loosely followed and it takes a bit of interpretation to place it in the categories – it would help to look at the genre information since some of them have a range of hallmarks that might have improved the story's genre relevance.
I'm not sure I know exactly how a carnie walks with elephants – carefully? Analogies are meaningful if they conjure an image for people and without a comparative image struggle to illustrate an idea.
Your idea to make something of a philosophical piece is a daring one but I think certain aspects need to be more relatable in general or ends up missing their mark.

Omega Men

I like the idea of this story, post-earth people coming back to visit the cradle of humanity. The idea is a pretty interesting one and I like the idea of non-earth humans feeling drawn to seeing old world wonders. The primary problem with this story from my point of view is that rather than showing us the excitement and interesting shenanigans that the pair get into, it's recounted in short which takes away a lot of the motion and interest of the story. A good idea work that could do with more showing. The pair have different personalities but they are not explored until the end, where they are discussing their differences, to a degree that I could have pinpointed one by personality.

Second Chance

This is a neat concept and a cool idea for a longer story but there wasn't much to get me hooked into it. The character is fairly nondescript in personality, the events are hinted at but lack much in terms of plot. A good starting point and I encourage you to flesh these out! Maybe take a look at short stories to get an idea of small but meaty stories. It doesn't have to have a huge word count to be good but it does need to reel the reader in.

 

[Greenie]

My personal taste would be to cut the last sentence for a more ominous ending with less finality but a well-written work on the whole.

I had a should I/ shouldn't I moment with that sentence, to be honest, so I get what you mean.

 

[KJDarKnight]

@Kitti

I'd like to point out that it's not contradicting itself. Shes going from a crowded market where nobody would question a child running around, to the streets where people would. Two different places two different scenarios. It's not contradictory. At least not in my book or I wouldn't have done that.

As for the rest of your comments, thank you for your input :). I do appreciate constructive criticism, it helps me to improve.

I wish I had started sooner and had more time to refine my peice but that's my own fault so I do understand what you're saying. Hopefully when I get around to editing this I can improve on it. All the comments help!