SF's "Write Your Butt Off!" Writing Competition XV - Voting Thread

[eclipse]

And now it's time to vote for Round 5~!

The prompt and entries

Voting closes on June 18 at 9:00 PM HST. I'll leave this as "vote for two", but if Boron wants to change it, that's fine~!

[Sunwoo]

I'm going to make a ~slight~ change to the voting and say that instead of picking your top two to just pick your favorite entry. Since we only have five entries, I think picking your favorite will suffice for this one.

[eclipse]

Gotcha. Did you want to redo the poll, or should I?

EDIT: Poll, uh, redone, but the question is a wee bit misleading!

Edited June 15, 2015 by eclipse

[Sunwoo]

Fixed the poll question, hopefully it should be good now.

[Sunwoo]

I hate double posting, but no one's posted here in over 16 hours so …

There seems to have been a bit of a drop-off in interest and voting in this competition lately (or so it seems at least), so I talked with eclipse and suggested that maybe we make the voting period last five days instead of whatever it originally was. However, if we were to implement this change I have to ask all participants to make sure they have a prompt that they can get up within the next day if they win. And remember, you don't need to have a prompt if you can't think of one -- "anything goes" will also suffice.

Also, I welcome all criticism and feedback on my entry, and I encourage people to review other peoples' entries as well if they want it.

[Snowy_One]

I'm not disinterested. I just couldn't think of anything because this is a hard prompt to work with.

[eclipse]

My lack of entry was intentional. . .though I wish we'd get a few more people!

Anyway, I'll do critiques later (as in, when my stomach isn't busy emptying itself).

[Magical Glace]

I'm all for it!

Either way, voted for Boron myself. I found her characters charming.

Edit: Also whoaaa I'm getting votes despite the lack of Touhou knowledge, I'm surprised...

Edited June 16, 2015 by Fujiwara no Mokou

[blah the Prussian]

Edit: Also whoaaa I'm getting votes despite the lack of Touhou knowledge, I'm surprised...

Well, I for one did my research before going in.

[Magical Glace]

Well, I for one did my research before going in.

Interesting. And exactly as planned, more potential Touhou players

[Snowy_One]

I was already decently well-versed in the Touhou-verse. That Fujiwara No Mokou is my favorite character (just ahead of (9) ) helped a lot.

[Sunwoo]

So, uh … we have like two days left in the voting phase and if the amount of votes there are is any indicator of anything people don't care enough to vote.

Although I don't want people campaigning for votes, you guys are free to share the link to this thread and all of the entries with other people to encourage them to vote and maybe participate in the future.

[Kriemhild]

From what I can gather, I can't actually vote for this round since I'm the host. However, can I still post reviews before the end of the Voting Phase? Or do I need to wait until after the Voting Phase to post reviews?

[Sunwoo]

From what I can gather, I can't actually vote for this round since I'm the host. However, can I still post reviews before the end of the Voting Phase? Or do I need to wait until after the Voting Phase to post reviews?

You can post reviews whenever you feel like it. I think eclipse just prefers to not post reviews until the voting phase ends, but there is no rule that you have to wait.

[eclipse]

I hold off on reviews when I host because I don't want to influence votes beforehand. I want to stay perfectly neutral.

Speaking of. . .I know the voting was extended, to tomorrow? If so, that's another 22-ish hours from this post.

[Sunwoo]

All right, I'm pretty sure the voting phase for this cycle is over. No more votes, please. I can't do stuff right now, but if you get back before I do, eclipse, could you post the final vote tally? Thanks in advance.

[Jotaro Kujo]

Let me just shimmy my way in here for a tic...

The winner of this week's prompt is Sunwoo! You have until Monday at 11:59PM to get next week's prompt up!

Edited June 21, 2015 by Jotaro Kujo

[Kriemhild]

Okay, finally reviewed all the entries for Round V. Sorry for the delay, I was kinda busy with my flight and stuff. Anyway, here are my reviews:

[spoiler=Glaceon]Very strong opener. The reader immediately gets pulled into a world bathed in flames. Mokou's narration is written really well, allowing the reader to understand and appreciate the destruction and despair from Okuu's rampage. What's especially notable is that you never actually directly stated that Okuu destroyed Gensokyo, but it was very effectively conveyed from Mokou's narration.

I'm not sure what you mean by "But she's too far gone for me to stop her". It sounds like Mokou is stating that she wouldn't be able to knock Okuu back to her senses, but that implies that Mokou would actually have tried to restore Okuu's sanity... which doesn't sound like something Mokou would do. Note that when writing a story in first person, everything needs to reflect the narrator's own subjective perspective, so you can't even state general facts without relating it to Mokou's point of view.

Mokou's initial reaction of "I'll fight you any day of the week" fits very well and serves to illustrate her relationship with Kaguya. That even after the world is getting destroyed and stuff, just seeing Kaguya's face makes Mokou want to pick a fight with her. Although the narration is through Mokou's perspective, the "usual annoying, teasing manner" also implies that Kaguya also actively picks on Mokou generally so the hostility isn't exactly one-sided.

The reference to Keine (I assume Keine is the half-beast) was nice, especially the indirect implication that Keine is no longer alive. Mokou's feelings about Keine were also expressed well, to the point that she was willing to work alongside her greatest enemy in order to fulfill Keine's goal.

Unfortunately, though, the reference to Keine also created a dissonance between the reader and Mokou, at least for me. This section implied that Mokou really cared about Keine a lot, putting her dream over her hatred for Kaguya. This feels contradictory to her attitude at the start of the entry, where she was thinking about how she has nothing to do and people wouldn't consider her a monster or anything. If she cared about Keine so much, I would expect Mokou to at least think about Keine and her wishes at the start when everything was being destroyed. The fact that someone like Kaguya was able to make Mokou start caring about Keine's wishes makes me feel really disconnected from the character of Mokou, which is NOT good for a story, especially for one written in first person.

There are ways to make this work out though. For example, maybe Mokou was trying to detach herself from the world and driving Keine out of her mind due to how painful it was to think about her, until Kaguya forced her to accept the reality that Mokou truly cared about Keine enough to protect her dream no matter how much she tried to run away from the tragedy. This would probably be trickier to write though.

The part with Eirin was nicely written. It's a bit odd that Mokou would refer to Eirin as the "creator of the accursed Hourai Elixir", since it seems like Mokou still respects Eirin (addressing her as "Miss Yagokoro") and didn't hold any grudge against her. The "Why am I not on my own?" is a nice and subtle way of implying that Kaguya wanted to get along with Mokou.

I feel like there's some kind of meaning in how Kaguya normally sends Mokou to the nobility, but then decides later to send Mokou to the peasants instead. I suppose because the nobles would be easier to convince, since they care more about preserving what they have? Anyhow, this section was okay, regardless. The language barrier did make it a little difficult to appreciate the development in Mokou's character though, but it was still quite apparent nonetheless.

The last part is the weakest section of the entry imo. Having "hate of my life" in quotes was nice, since Mokou was now starting to feel differently about Kaguya. But well, aside from Mokou seeing a different side of Kaguya, there wasn't really much to justify Mokou's change in attitude towards Kaguya. This technically relates to the entry as a whole, but it caused the last section to feel really sudden and rushed.

I'm guessing the focus of the entry was about how Mokou and Kaguya become close friends (also relates to the prompt), but I feel that this development wasn't illustrated very well in the entry. Back when Mokou first agreed to help Kaguya, she still emphasized that she was only doing it for Keine's sake. It's understandable that their mission together would bring the two of them closer, and this was also implied by "We had gone through a lot while trying to gain faith for Yatagarasu", but that's extremely vague and doesn't sufficiently justify the massive change in Mokou's perspective of Kaguya. It would be better to have actual examples of experiences that the two of them had which directly affected Mokou's perception of Kaguya.

I should also point out that Mokou's initial motive for helping Kaguya was purely for Keine's sake. I am guessing that Mokou's motivations started to change along the way, but this was not implied in the entry at all. There was nothing to imply that Mokou ever gained any other motivations, like actually caring about the people directly or wanting to help Kaguya fulfill her wish. Without such indicators, it feels like even Mokou's final "Alright" was purely for Keine's sake, in that fulfilling Kaguya's request would help further Keine's dreams. I don't think that was your intention in the entry, so this really needed more elaboration.

Overall, while your writing was generally good, your presentation could have been a lot better. The whole "survivors in a post-apocalyptic setting working together and getting close" theme feels really generic, but you could have still refined it to present a unique story. Keeping Keine as Mokou's initial motivation was a pleasant surprise, though as I mentioned before, the introduction of Keine really messed with the reader's connection with Mokou. The lack of specific experiences that improved Mokou's opinion of Kaguya didn't help with justifying the "getting close" bit.

Basically, whatever you decided to write ended up being[ written really well, but the events you chose to present just weren't sufficient to capture the essence of the story. And Mokou's perspective didn't really flow very well across the separate parts (which is especially crippling for a first-person story).

Also, with respect to presentation, there needs to be more whitespace. Please don't rely on word-processing applications (MS Word, Google Docs, etc) to automatically create the whitespace for you. Try to at least keep white space above and below the set of radioactivity symbols.

[spoiler=Maerk]Nice opener that keeps the reader interested in what comes ahead. Not sure about "literal girl next door" though; might be better to word it as "girl-next-door" to fit with "literal" (otherwise the word "literal" would only refer to "girl", and you're probably not trying to emphasize the gender here).

The exclamation mark at "My father was always the stick in the mud, his monotone voice sounding as though it wanted to kill the vibe that we had goin’ on!" since the first part already killed the tone of the sentence.

The conversation between the parents was fine, though there should be a lot more of Stephan's perspective, since the story is written in first-person. If you just want to narrate the events as they are, then third-person writing may be a better choice.

Stephan and Lici going outside was written better, with Stephan's perspective conveyed pretty well. "You haven't changed" was spoken thrice instead of twice, which is... weird. The events flowed really well here. I'm quite confused at "That muffin tasted good though!", didn't both Stephan and Lici acknowledge that it was bad?

Stephan and Lici finding out and reacting to what their parents were doing was written well, too, with very fitting behavior. The "resolution" though (if that was a resolution), from "Even if I can't be your knight..." onwards was not actually very clear. It took me until the epilogue ("That was seven years ago") that Stephan and Lici just decided to accept the relationship between their parents and live on as step-siblings. Which was quite sudden and awkward. Try to elaborate on the resolution in a clearer way.

Overall, I actually really liked this entry. I think it was a very creative idea to have a romantic relationship transition into a step-sibling relationship due to selfish parents. The events were also written pretty well, to the point that you can really appreciate how hard it must have been for Stephan and Lici to find out about their parents. I also liked how you ended it, with no satisfying solution but a proper resolution about how Stephan and Lici just accepted and went along with it, since they couldn't really do much.

Also, there were A LOT of grammatical and punctuation issues in this entry that I didn't bother to list down. They didn't hamper the reading experience so it's not too bad, but I would strongly suggest proofreading more thoroughly, or asking someone else to proofread for you.

Finally, the entry was pretty hard to read since it was just a big block of text with no white space. Yeah, try to add an extra line of whitespace between paragraphs. Don't rely on auto-whitespacing from word-processing applications (MS Word, Google Docs, etc), since they don't carry over on SF posts.

I would have voted for this if I had a vote, fyi.

[spoiler=Archie]Oooookay, fyi I am unfamiliar with Hetalia so I was kinda clueless about a lot of stuff here. It would have been better to include a spoiler for Background Information (instead of the trigger warning).

The opening began with five names mentioned in the first paragraph, which is uh, a little too much to introduce all at once. Also, it would be a good idea to cut down on the details (such as last names and where they're from) if they're not important. Keep it simple instead of overloading the reader with unnecessary information.

Nice way of indicating Gilbert's narcissism, though mentioning "awesome me" twice (even though the second one was in dialogue) felt a bit redundant. Still though, since you're narrating in first-person, it would be nice to have more of Gilbert's thoughts and feelings instead of filling it with nothing but dialogue.

The dialogue itself flowed well, though. But I actually had a hard time understanding the situation, besides the obvious fact that Nikolai and Elena were dating. Why is it an impossible thing? Which family were they referring to when they mentioned showing love through fighting and tormenting? How are Gilbert, Antonio, and Francis related to Nikolai and Elena anyway? Are they just random people discussing the latest news? Again, this is mostly due to me being clueless about Hetalia, sorry.

Switching to Elena's perspective when Gilbert is narrating the tale is really weird. It would make sense for the story to be told through Gilbert's perspective, of course. Not a big deal though, since Elena's perspective still adds extra insight to the events.

The dialogues for Elena's sections were done really nicely though. Even though I don't know anything about Hetalia, I was still able to get a clear idea of how the characters relate and interact with each other, which is quite impressive. A lot of the dialogues could have been phrased better though, and I think the pacing was a little too fast. Consider spending more time relaying Elena's thoughts, feelings, and observations.

I assume the Ace of Hearts carries some symbolism; I'm going to guess that it's as simple as just "the ace of my heart", as an indication that Nikolai actually does like Elena back. I suppose there might be some more Hetalia-specific meaning, but it's a nice touch.

Epilogue was nice, short and ended on an amusing note. Good job with that.

The main problem with this entry is that there was pretty much only one important scene and it was paced a little too fast. Having only one main scene is fine, but you should take the time to elaborate on it clearly so that the reader can truly appreciate what's going on, instead of just quickly explaining the event and leaving it at that.

Also, I should point out that aside from the numerous grammatical issues, a lot of the stuff here could have been expressed a lot better. I'm not actually sure if it's acceptable for other people to help you with that though (ask Boron), but effective phrasing can help a lot in improving your entry.

[spoiler=Boron]Nice opener with well-written dialogues that spark the reader's interest in finding out why it's so unexpected that Robin and Kenji got along. Yumei's narration also worked really well, providing the reader with details that they needed to know without it being feel out of place for Yumei to think back about those details.

Yumei described Robin as a blunt and opinionated person but left out any descriptions for Kenji. This is really odd, because the apparent incompatibility between Robin and Kenji should be due to traits from both sides, instead of just Robin. Unless Robin was the kind of guy who doesn't get along with anybody, with Kenji not being exceptionally notable, but this was not what the entry implied, since there were clear references about Robin and Kenji specifically ignoring each other.

Holly accidentally warped them, so I'd expect her to be panicking the most. And yet, she was unconcerned. And wasn't surprised at seeing Robin and Kenji being close friends. This kinda blatantly implies that Holly knows more about the situation and probably even set it up. Considering that this is still Yumei's narration, it's kinda strange that she would mentally note Holly as an exception twice without actually drawing attention to how odd it was. I assumed you were intending for the hint as being more subtle, in which case it would be better to mention Holly as an exception only once instead of twice (in addition to the detail that Holly was the one who warped them).

Kenji's grammatical error could either be due to lack of proofreading, or an indication that his English isn't very good.

Entire first section was written really well, with everything flowing really smoothly in an entertaining manner. I especially liked how you added small stuff like "I'm older than you" which aren't relevant to the story since it keeps the story entertaining and makes the characters feel more real and relatable.

Not sure how to feel about how the second section has both Robin and Kenji's perspectives mixed in. I suppose it makes sense since both Robin and Kenji are retelling the story together, but it still feels like a neutral narration that seems inconsistent with the style from the start of the entry.

Robin felt certain that Kenji disliked him, especially after their first two conversations; once again, only Robin's side is mentioned here. Was there something about Kenji's reaction that assured Robin that Kenji disliked him? Or did Robin indiscriminately assume that everybody who has seen his worst qualities (not "qualifies") would dislike him (which also doesn't seem to be implied)?

"Your face is a predicament", excellent and amusing demonstration of Robin's character!

“This place you are in was cut off from the rest of the world not too long ago. A really bad man used the power from a magical crystal to engulf everything into a void." This dialogue feels really unnatural since the bad man doesn't seem to have anything to do with the fact that Robin and Kenji are cut off from the rest of the world. These should be clarified as separate ideas to keep the dialogue flowing smoothly. Like, adding something like "Anyway" or "More importantly" before the second sentence.

Robin and Kenji being concerned about the bad man instead of worrying about not being able to get out is kinda odd, especially since Robin seems to doubt the lady's words.

The old lady also neglected (probably deliberate) to explain how stopping the bad man would allow Robin and Kenji to leave (since she implied that they can't leave until they took the bad man out). Was she trying to imply that she knew a way to get them out but wouldn't tell them until they fulfilled her demands? This really isn't very clear, so I'm not quite sure how Robin and Kenji were able to make sense of what she said, even if they do acknowledge that her behavior is suspicious.

I'm just going to point out here that having a giant block of italic text is kinda annoying to read. Especially if there are a few non-italic words inserted in for emphasis. Italic text would work better in short bursts that flow normally with non-italic text. Not really appropriate for a giant wall. Despite being a narration within the narration, it would still be better to use normal text for this.

Okay, yeah, Kenji's English isn't very good, this seems to be pretty apparent here.

It's kinda weird that Robin wouldn't find it odd that he and Kenji were able to chat with each other so naturally, considering that he was really worried that Kenji disliked him before this.

The lack of mental reaction towards the strange man is kinda odd. There should be some glimpse to Robin's thoughts and feelings about encountering the strange man, even if it's quickly cut short by the strange man quickly attacking them.

Fourth section (breaking into the man's house and fighting a bunch of shadow dudes) was written pretty well. I'm not very good with reviewing action sequences, but this one was exciting enough for me to stay interested in reading, while still going a good job of demonstrating the teamwork between Robin and Kenji.

...no action sequence for them taking out the main bad guy? That's... really disappointing, actually. It would have been better if the detailed action sequence before this involved taking out the bad guy, rather than put the details on taking out the minions while the fight bad guy just gets a short summary.

The woman was a bad guy too, to nobody's surprise. This was a good place to stop Robin and Kenji's narration too.

Last section was nicely written. The interactions between the characters were really entertaining and wrapped up the story very well. I have to agree with Jonie that this was a pretty important event for Robin/Kenji to not disclose until asked, but I can kinda understand how they didn't really consider it to be a big deal.

...Wait, so Holly didn't actually set Robin and Kenji up to the uncharted land? What was up with all those hints about her being unconcerned about their fates, and not being surprised that they reappeared as the best of friends? I thought that was supposed to be a clear hint about Holly being the mastermind behind all these events...? Was that just a red herring, or was that meant to be a clue pointing towards extra details that weren't explicitly conveyed by the entry? ...Okay, now I'm actually wondering if you scattered more hidden clues throughout the entry, and that I've only actually barely just grasped the full story behind these words. It would be really cool if that were the case, but this is all I have at the moment.

Overall, I think you did an excellent job with the first and last sections, which involved interactions between the different members of the Ensemble. The characters depictions were really good and the dialogues were very entertaining to read through. Aside from that, you also wrote the action sequences pretty well.

The main problem with the entry though, was that it kinda messed up the execution of the core theme, which is supposed to be how Robin and Kenji became friends (since that's the story that the others were pestering them to narrate). It's fine that Robin and Kenji ended up getting along really naturally once they started a conversation, but there really should be more details. How did the conversation start? What did they say? How did Robin/Kenji feel about the start of the conversation? It's not really fair to just brush up all these details with a simple "But the moment he had started up conversation everything seemed to fall into place" summary, since it's supposed to be the core theme of Robin/Kenji's narration to the rest of the Ensemble.

Part of why I couldn't really appreciate the Robin/Kenji development is because only Robin's character was really fleshed out well here. His thoughts and dialogues (and also Yumei's narration) provided a clear picture of the kind of person that he is. Kenji, on the other hand, felt like a really generic and normal character with no notable characteristics besides his trouble with English (which isn't really related to personality). Even if it was purely due to Robin's character that pushed the two of them into a state of mutual ignorance, there should still be more insight on how Kenji thought or felt about Robin, more than just the single sentence of how Kenji had no idea how to talk to Robin. Even if you wanted to keep the narration focused on Robin, Kenji's stance should be indicated through his dialogue and behavior.

The other aspects of the Robin/Kenji narration were quite good though. Kenji reassuring Robin that he didn't kill anybody, Robin and Kenji fighting the minions together, especially with Kenji conjuring up a shield to protect them both, these events were well-written and did a good job of illustrating that Robin and Kenji shared a close bond of mutual trust.

Basically, you did a good job of showing characters interacting with each other and in writing the action sequences, but the entry was quite lacking when it came to developing the characters and their relationship with each other. Which is especially disappointing when this seemed to be the core theme of this entry.

[spoiler=Ragged]Oren's mental narration was written really well, allowing the readers to quickly get a firm grasp of the setting while presenting all relevant details in a logical coherent manner.

...did Leibach really become an emperor simply because he told Chrom to... um, get lost? Because I find it odd that this incident alone was the only reason why Leibach was selected. If there were other factors involved, even if they're not relevant to the entry, they should at least be referenced vaguely.

Ylisse and Plegia are discussing an alliance in... Ferox's palace? I find that odd too. Wouldn't it make more sense to discuss the alliance in Ylisse or Plegia (leaning towards the latter since Chrom seems to have taken the first step)?

Kayleigh's mental narration is a very good complement to Oren's, allowing the readers to gain a clear insight on Ylisse's and Plegia's contrasting perspectives on the situation. That being said though, having more mental narration here leads to the pacing of the actual events as being quite slow. At this point, I really want to just rush through so that stuff can actually happen.

"The woman who sat upon the Chon'sinn throne was said to be crazier than even the rulers of Plegia" - does this imply that Leibach was considered as being crazy? At this point, though, I'm not quite sure why Leibach would be considered "crazy" from Chrom's perspective, so this part was quite confusing for me.

Kayleigh was not given a gender until the end of the second section. Since Kayleigh is an OC, it's up to the reader to imagine all the details that are not mentioned in the entry. If the author wants the reader to set certain attributes (such as gender), this should be mentioned early on in order to avoid forcing the reader to change an already established mental image later on. Note: The name "Kayleigh" is unfamiliar to me, so if Kayleigh is a common female name or something, then it's okay. Early clarification is still recommended though.

Five minutes later, ten minutes later, twenty minutes later... these sections slowed down the pacing of the story even further >_>. At least it picked up after twenty-two minutes later though.

Kayleigh and Oren wouldn't break the rules, but they got in and placed the bottles and horns anyway, which is technically breaking the rules, isn't it?

"Yeah, my sisters a pretty good, a pretty good with magic too.” Not sure if this is supposed to be drunken speech or lack of proofreading.

"I, she’s, I, she’s all I got left, and I love her so much…” Okay, yeah, it's just drunken speech, heh

“Her husbans a real prick,” Poor Gregor

Overall, I was actually really disappointed with this entry. Chrom's and Leibach's characters weren't fleshed out enough for the reader to appreciate the hostility between them. And this was completely overturned by some drinks? I mean, yes, it makes sense that they become buddies after a drinking session, but it's quite unsatisfying that the whole point of the entire entry was just to illustrate that fact. The wonderfully detailed and thorough openers that described Oren's and Kayleigh's perspectives were well set up... just for a story focused on a short event where drinking created a friendship between two otherwise incompatible people. And that's it. We don't even get any insight on how Oren and Kayleigh react to this besides "looked at each other".

Basically, the primary focus of your entry should have been elaborated and explored to a much greater extent in order to become significant enough as an acceptable core for the story. As it is, it feels like an awkward and incomplete snip that was pasted just for the sake of the prompt. An entry should be able to stand up on its own without the prompt. the prompt should only act as a guide or constraint.

Also, congratulations on winning this round, Boron! Why did you have to pick such a difficult theme for me to work wiiiiiiith???

Edited June 22, 2015 by Formina Sage

[Sunwoo]

All right, the voting phase has officially started. Since we had eight entries this round, you may vote for your top two favorite entries. Also, in accordance with the new voting phase length, votes will be accepted until Sunday July 12 11:59:59 PM PST. However, this means that whoever wins this round must have their prompt ready to go and posted within an hour or two after a winner is declared.

To everyone who entered this round, please prepare a prompt so that in the event that you are declared the winner you can post it the moment this cycle ends.

This cycle's entries can be found here.

Edited July 8, 2015 by Sunwoo

[Carnation07]

It's two votes per person, right?

[Sunwoo]

It's two votes per person, right?

Yes, two votes per person for this round.

[eclipse]

Er. . .

On one hand, voting's over.

On the other hand, there's four votes. Total.

Want to extend the voting period? I haven't had time to read everyone's stuff.

[Sunwoo]

Considering the extremely lackluster turnout of voters this week, I'm cool with extending the voting period. How much longer should I extend it to, though? I do want to start next week's competition on Monday to keep things consistent, so how does ending the voting period on this coming Friday sound? It gives the winner two days to come up with and post a prompt, too.

[eclipse]

Works for me.

[jankmaster98]

I don't know if it would help at all, but maybe changing the topic name of the poll (V) to match the number of the cycle (VI) might get more voters in. Just a possibly weird and useless thought. I'm still trying to think who to vote for...