Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Herremann the Wise" data-source="post: 4288489" data-attributes="member: 11300">Round Three Piratecat vs. Rodrigo IstalindirARWINK’S JUDGMENTPiratecat / MemeAh meta-text. I love me some meta-text and I enjoyed the way Piratecat used the connections to familiar narratives to good effect here. The voice and language is great and the story itself is very clever, but by the end I was left with a lingering feeling that I hadn’t actually enjoyed this quite as much as I could have for two key reasons.The first is the need to explain the world the story takes place in, which seems to linger on for a couple of beats longer than it really needs to. This is a tricky thing to balance, but I felt like the nature of the world was being pointed out to me a few times more than necessary to make sure I’d “got it” when I’d already process the world and wanted something else to happen. The nature of the world is right there in the title, so I think Piratecat could scale back and trust the readers to figure things out without explicitly explaining the details.The second largely comes down to the characters, who don’t really engage me. Piratecat’s got a great world set-up and he provides us with conflict, but the danger is all external to the characters. I was looking for some kind of internal conflict and path for both the old keeper and the new, and it never really seemed to arrive.Rodrigo Istalindir / UntitledRodrigo starts strong here, but I think the story loses its way during the post-split. The set-up drew me into the story without any problems and I found myself intrigued by the notion of the holy worm and the world that’d given birth to these characters. And then I lost track of what was going on – I’m not sure *why* Charlie is so deadest against the bugs and willing to risk his life on breaking out rather than doing the job he was hired for. I think the ideas may be there, but they’re being rushed through, and the ending lacks resonance as a result. Worse, the lack of context in the finale makes some of the picture-use seem slightly arbitrary rather than honed – the set-up for it isn’t quite as strong as it needs to be in order to make things inevitable. The bears, for example, are one of Chekhov’s metaphorical guns – if they’re going to be fired in the third act, we need to see them hanging on the wall in the first; besides, that final image is too god not to set it up and use it at its best. JudgmentThis is another really tough round, as both competitors wrote well-enough that they deserve to go through to the finals and both turned in stories that are perhaps just a few tweaks and a little extra time away from being truly awesome. I think the round is going to Piratecat by a cats whisker though, primarily on the strength of the meta-textual games and the subtlety of some of the icons that slip in. THE JUDGMENT OF HERREMANN THE WISEI thought this set of pictures was diverse and vivid – perfect for putting two Ceramic DM veterans through the ringer. I have to say, neither of these excellent stories disappointed.Piratecat has gone the philosophical route which I absolutely love. The blending of so many iconic references was excellent, the story resonating with some powerful ideas. Rodrigo’s near-future action thriller was excellently written, with the foot to the pedal for most of the journey. However, the finale here seemed rushed and what should have been one hell of a showdown revealing what Charlie’s real involvement was never eventuated. Still, I did enjoy this story.All in all, I felt that PC has dealt with the images provided better than has Rodrigo, weaving them seamlessly together, finding some wonderful interactions between them that drive the story. Rodrigo in this regard has some excellently used images – the road sign – and others less so – the wild things, woman in the tree.As such, Piratecat gets my vote for this round with a very complete package.MALDUR’S JUDGMENTPiratecat: damn that is a nice bit of storytelling. I especially liked the way you used the roadsign not found, and the max and the monsters picture.Rodrigo Istalindir: damn solid start, very roadwarrior/cyberpunkish story, one of my favourite genres. The roadsign explanation was very well done, I didnt see that coming, very clever. The end however I found slightly less, there seemed to be a difference in how the attitude towards tech was portraited. great story overall though <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Judgement: Rodrigo Istalindir, though I would have loved more of the first part of the story, and less of the seciond part <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />FINAL JUDGMENTCongratulations to both our competitors for some excellent stuff this round, you had the judges in lather. There can only be one winner though and so Piratecat advances through 2-1 but props to Rodrigo for an excellent competition.</blockquote>

Verification