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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rodrigo Istalindir" data-source="post: 3106168" data-attributes="member: 2810">Round 2 JudgementsmaxfieldjadenfoxYangnomeCat FightA hard-bitten detective story, with a RuPaul twist.Picture Use:The penguin as drop location is a great use of the picture. Quite ingenious! (although I’m with PETA on this one…) The dye vats, well used, but not necessary to the story. Could have as easily been a foundry or a sewage treatment plant. And I do wish Ari’s name had been Horatio…Sialia’s picture is amorphous, but you did a good job convincing me that it was Lady D, a safe, and a rifle through night vision goggles. The leap through space stretched a bit for me, but since you had set it up before with your description of the murals, I’ll take it. All in all, damned strong picture use in my opinion. OK, I figured out that we were talking drag queens as soon as we got to the club. Of course I actually sang at a drag funeral (ask me about it sometime) so I’m probably pretty aware of such things. It was funny, and silly. Canukistan made me laugh too.(I love our neighbors to the north!)  I am not at all sure why Mick is in the story. Well, OK, to set up the penguin joke, sure, but then he’s gone. I think it would have been more effective to have him as a recurring character. There were a lot of characters for such a short story. I don’t know that they were necessary either, but you did an admirable job giving them individual voices. A few typos, and some redundant bits, but a fun read.Guardian LurkerDye JobExploding penguins, the lottery, and men in black.Picture Use:Another exploding penguin. That’s just…weird. I’ll give you the penguin because it might or might not be a vision, but the man with a sword and a marble slab is kind of antithetical to CDM since it’s described as a vision. The dye vats picture use is OK, but once again, it played no part in the story beyond giving her a place to hide. The cable slide picture was a bit better, as there was a reason for it. The story is strange, but the idea is really neat. I had to read it a second time before I got that she’s dead, and that this is some sort of purgatory type place (or heaven). But the men in black with guns didn’t make sense to me. Had she done something wrong in life and gotten sent to heaven accidentally? I’m all for tales that require active participation from the reader, and I don’t need to be spoon-fed, but I would have liked a bit more guidance here, reasons, whatever. It seems like if she had some flashes that were clearer through the course of the story, the pay off would have been more satisfying. As it was, I kind of went, huh? Both of these stories had things to recommend them, but Yangnome’s picture use was stronger and his story held together better. Judgement for Yangnome.Rodrigo IstalindirYangnomeThis was a neat story.  It grabbed me early and had me smiling to myself throughout.  The penguin scene is beautiful and totally unexpected.  The overall style has a kind of Joe Friday staccato rhythm that really works and keeps the pace brisk.  You do a good job of keeping your cards close to your chest and not revealing things until the dramatically appropriate moment.A couple minor quibbles.  There are a number of awkward phrasings and grammatical errors that detract from the overall quality of the writing, mistakes that I'm sure would have been caught were it not for the time limit.  Little things like reusing a phrase twice in rapid succession ("ear to the ground"), or leaving out quotes for dialogue, nothing major.Picture use is superb.  The penguin is perfect Ceramic DM -- clever, unexpected, and it creates a memorable scene.  The dye vats, too, worked out very well.  It helped to establish the Ari character while riffing on the spy and fashion themes.  The 'night vision' use was clever as well, going for something a little less obvious than a ghost or specter but not stretching things beyond the point of credibility, and also working in some of the less obvious elements (the block as the safe, for example).  The zip-line was solid, but perhaps would have been better served being a picture of the hero instead of the villain, first because you had already specified Lady Daffodil as bald, second because showing a picture of the main character enhances the overall story.  Also, there was a little confusion on my part as to the gender of the main character (was that intentional?) and setting things up one way and then revealing the truth in the picture would have worked very well.GuardianLurkerOk, what is it with exploding penguins? Did I not get the memo?Here we have a eerie, ambiguous story.  The main character is sketched with thoughts and memories, making her seem somewhat ephemeral -- appropriate, given the conclusion.  There are some nice touches, like the pidgin-English in the vision and at the dye shop, that increase the sense of unease.The pace is a little too break-neck, I think.  We never get into Melissa's head, don't get enough time with her for her to come alive as a character.  The nature of the hallucinations seems a bit off, too.  What's the old adage -- "If you doubt your sanity, then you must be sane" ?  Melissa recognizes the penguin for what it is, but doesn't with the men in black.  If this is a sign she's getting worse, it progresses too quickly, I think.  And is the ledge that's really a spot of moss another hallucination, or an honest mistake?There are all the makings of a great story here, but I think it needs another pass to tighten it up and make the transition from normality to lunacy a little more subtle.The picture use doesn't help much.  As mentioned previously, hallucinations and dreams and such can weaken the effects of the pictures, because those states of mind lack any requirement for internal consistency.  A vision of a penguin on the beach is wierd but not especially hard to integrate -- it could have been a polar bear or reindeer or anything.  A real penguin on the beach tales more creativity to explain away convincingly.  Still, it was unexpected, and if I wasn't expecting one exploding penguin, I sure wasn't expecting two!  The ghost with the mirror/tombstone is much, much better, and a great way to both use a picture multiple places in the story, and to mitigate the negative aspects of dreams by making it possible to interpret multiple ways.  The zip-line as a means of death is effective, but it could have used a better set up earlier in the story.  Bonus points for setting up the change in hair-color with the dye vat scene.Exploding penguins aside, we have two very different stories here.  I found GuardianLurker's story intriguing and kind of haunting, but ultimately unsatisfying.  yangome's story, while a little rough around the edges, had excellent picture use and good pacing that carries the day.Judgement for yangnome, who advances 2-0</blockquote>

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