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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Berandor" data-source="post: 3336408" data-attributes="member: 225">Comments on the last match-up:[sblock]maxfieldjadenfox: Yours is an interesting story, though I can't decide whether it's a coming-of-age theme or more like a superhero creation story <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I somewhat missed a stronger characterization of the protagonist/narrator; she comes off as pretty care-free, and since nothing really affects her overly much (save for perhaps the giant-head nightmare), I had a hard time being affected, as well. One extremely cool sentence was how the giant bug reminded her of home <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I also liked how her jobs fell through; I half expected roaches to overrun New England, and I also expect her now to be somethiong like a spirit of destruction. As for the pictures, it's always hard to transform a more episodic structure into a cohesive whole, and I think some pictures could have been implemented a little stronger. With the skiing chicks, see how carpedavid used the pic in a similar way, but with a bigger background. It feels more natural in the story. All in all, an enjoyable entry, but I'm missing the unique element.carpedavid: Yesterday, I wrote a blog entry on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and I watched Thank you for Smoking (which stars a lobbyist working for big tobacco). So this story feels like the third side of a triangle. Ryan was very well drawn, and his change of mind at the end was realistically unspectacular – he didn't go from Saul to Paul in a paragraph or two. The one thing that imo didn't fit was the fly picture and the surrounding explanation. We have a fairly realistic story, even though with somewhat futuristic technology. We have a supernatural element*, i.e. the tree spirit, and a classic conflict of morals. And while global warming is not fully understood yet, it is enough of a scientific phenomenon that we sort-of know what its effects may be. Giant insects are not one of them, as far as I know. The matter-of-fact explanation of these monsters as a byproduct of global warming took me somewhat out of the story, especially since it seems like mostly a random effect caused by the picture. You tied it to the character's hatred of bugs, I know, but during the last part of the story I was still wondering where those giant bugs came from, and why we hadn't killed them or were trying to kill them all. I mean, a normal fly can be a total nuisance at a summer picnic - what's a ten-foot-fly gonna be? Other than that, a really cool story that I enjoyed a lot, almost as much as Rodrigo's. Thanks.*I read somewhere that you can get away with one unexplained phenomenon, but more than that endanger the reader's suspension of disbelief (if they aren't logical extensions of the premier "macguffin"=.[/sblock]</blockquote>

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