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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="mythago" data-source="post: 1893858" data-attributes="member: 3019">Berandor       Macbeth, "Words"  A very good story about the power of storytelling. Don Diego is a mysterious figure and remains so even after the story's end. Why did he chose to kill the protagonist's father?  What was Diego's goal all along? We don't know.  The constantly changing attributes for Diego's storytelling expertise were very illustrative; I really got into the speech pattern. You always have an excellent flow in your stories, this is no exception.  One question arose quite early; when the protagonist refers to Diego "as a legend, or maybe a virus. I still haven't figured out which." He killed his father on Diego's behalf, and he still doesn't know whether to call the man legend or virus? Can't have been that much of a guilt trip, can it?  I also want some more detail on the stories that come to life. Mischievous faeries are in the village - and what? Do they flutter about, do they disappear after a day or two, or what? And what happens to the Burro? The protagonist's father "finds" it, and then? Shoots it, drives it away, eats it?  Still, it's a chilling progression from rain to nightly sun to murder. His words could surely hurt.  The ending was a little jarring, as well. While this narrative level has been there all along, it doesn't end with Diego's story, and I somehow got the impression that this was an afterthought. Who's the child that the narrator is referring to? Is it *his* child? Is it just a figure of speech that he loaned from Diego? Has Diego come back? What's up? The ending left me with too many questions and too little resolution.   Piratecat: "Reunion"  A totally different story. Where Macbeth is wonderfully dark, "Reunion" is funny. Two wizards meeting again - is it a yearly event, or a monthly meeting? Anyway, you really get the impression of two people having lived a good part of their lives with each other, what with the constant arguing and making fun of each other. As much as they pretend to be annoyed at each other's antics, they relish this time on the bench, and you get to feel that.  Now, I wonder about the younger one's eyes. After the owl eyes have been introduced so emphatically, the wizard with the mustache is left eyeless still. That irked me somewhat.  Just like the suspicious looking sandwich. Shifting its eyes, whistling an innocuous tune, wearing a trenchcoat, the sandwich sure looked suspicious. I got what you were saying, but it sounded curious nevertheless.  Then  we learn that the older wizard is "usually so precise", which is of course followed by great misunderstandings and banter, but also with him using "purpose" for tortoise. Just for the misunderstandings, which are funny, but not precise. And by "grub", I suppose the younger means <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=":)" /><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=":)" /><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=":)" /><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=":)" /> chafer grubs (hello language filter!).  Still, this story is *funny*. Grin, chuckle, chortle funny. "They don't make squirrels like the used to" is probably my favorite phrase, whereas "the tale of the purpose is connected to the donkey" makes me think of the "Court Jester" with Danny Kaye.  There isn't really a conflict here (except for the misunderstanding), just two people reminiscing about good times. And morass instead of mer-ass isn't too precise, either.  Oh, and when the younger thinks about translucent grubs, "doubtlessly picturing his friend..." it sort of breaks the narrative as it shows us his thoughts, and it's not very funny because you end up explaining your own joke.  A funny little piece, even if not much of a story.   The pictures  playme  - Piratecat's pic is a vicious court jester who just discovered the mandolins's side effects. That forced grin really gets me. After laughing for the pufferdove story, I start chortling again when I see that face. An ingenious use!  - This is Don Diego (de la Vega? Who knows). Macbeth's mysterious minstrel dominates the story, even though his motives remain a little muddied. Diego can use the power of stories for real life changes. A good, strong use.   seat  - Macbeth's bench is sat upon by Diego. As long as the storyteller sits there, nobody notices the surroundings, but when he has left (or vanished), the green plants stick out like a sore thumb. It wouldn't be that strong a use had Macbeth not given us the plants to look for - a very efficient way of lending this pic weight.  - Piratecat has an old bench where wizards meet regularly, sometimes refurnishing the thing. It's a nice detail that the two old men meet on an perhaps equally old bench, comparing their skin to it's surface.   underneath the surface  - Piratecat uses the pic as a reference to grubs which are soon enlarged and merged with squirrels to produce fluttersquirrels, err, squirrelmoths, err... It's a minor reference in another moment of complete misunderstanding that fits the story and enhances the theme, but is not really important to the "plot".  - Macbeth uses the pic for Diego's first "wizardry", as he changes the grubs to drops of water left behind by a rain torrent. It works, if only because the mentions that the rain might have been animated/water elemental-like.   chew  -Macbeth gives us Burro, a crazy creature from a  strange story. The burro eats because it doesn't want anybode else to eat, out of pure spite and envy. A great touch that really enhances the pic. I still don't know why Diego made it come alive and destroy a lot of the harvest, though, so the pic seems a little forced.  - This is the morass, and if not for this pic, we might be left wondering what the heck a morass is. Only by seeing it do we make the connection and get a glimpse at the story's themes before they are spelled out as transmogrifiying. It's a good use. Normally, I'm not too fond of pictures that aren't described/referenced in the text, but the morass gets a description later on, and as someone who disregarded the pic on the first reading, I can say the story works despite the lack of explanation for the morass. Be careful in these uses - if they don't work like here, I don't like them.   hot  - Whump. Whump Whump WHUMP. Pufferdoves exploding, accidentally fulfilling the prophesy about blood rain, reader laughing. What can I say? It's a very creative use (that is to say the pufferdoves seem to explode in a giant fireball), but one of the story's highlights.  - The kids playing under the midnight sun is a great image. The ritual to call the fiery globe is a little creepy and gives a great waring sign. I actually expected later rituals to become more dangerous and perhaps even bloody, and this really counters the good feeling we get about Diego after the rain. Great use, even if we didn't get to know what the boy's father thought about it.   Judgement  On strictly narrative merits, both stories are tied. I enjoyed both tremendously, "Reunion" for its humor and "Words" for the dark tale it spins. But I already knew both of you could write.  So my decision hangs on the pics. And again, both of you have very good uses; curiously, I thought your strongest pics were the same despite having very different stories (hot and playme).  [sblock]It's a close call again, but the inventiveness of Piratecat's pics prevails. Exploding pufferdoves and a cursed mandolin make me give my  POINT TO PIRATECAT[/sblock]       Maldur   Piratecat  The iconic bench that every village needs so the old men can sit and chat the day away. But does this make you a cross between a feline and a pirate? <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" />     MacBeth  Nasty little twist, but I like it stories do have power don’t they.      Judgement:  My vote for Piratecat, I liked the stories about the same, but the story being slightly more "fantasty" made me decide.        mythago     Piratecat – “Reunion”     “What do you get when you cross two old magicians with a Jack Benny sketch?”     The story wobbles a bit at the start (the part about donating money, for one) and then settles in, told through dialogue, somehow avoiding stereotypes of grumpy old men and cranky wizards. There are times when it goes a little *too* far in the “as you know…” direction, of explaining to the audience what the characters know all too well, but the device of reiterating a favorite old story works nicely.     The use of “chew” was wonderful, “playme” a stretch, the rest decently done. One can’t help but admire exploding pufferdoves.       Macbeth – “Words”   I liked one of the stories. I say that because it seems like two different versions of the same basic theme. In the first, we get pretty sinister foreshadowing of a terrible end, the children led astray by a storytelling Pied Piper. The second story kind of slides into a different plotline altogether. We lose the concerted action by the children, the escalation from leaves to hot embers, the pitting of the children against the elders, and go to one boy being used to punish his father. We don’t really get a sense of what Don Diego is doing; why he has come to the village. Getting the narrator to kill his father seems kind of a pointless use of his power (and he came all the way to the village for this?)     Very nice use of the bench to show not only Don Diego’s location, but his absence. “chew” was, I thought, weak; why Burro has a tail isn’t really explained except that he came from a story. I would have liked to see the balalaika appear again later in the story, since it’s such a big part of the original picture of Don Diego.         Judgment for this round: [sblock]Piratecat takes it 3-0 and goes on to the final round![/sblock]</blockquote>

Verification