by Anglerphobe » Tue Mar 27, 2018 6:49 pm
It's very hard to vote when the entries are so disparate in theme and style. It's good that people get to unleash their ideas but I have no idea how to judge them on it. For now, I'm abstaining E - I made up my mind in the end. - I will also shamelessly steal KK's format for reviews, and in future may act as if it had been my idea all along.
The Devil Left Georgia
I enjoyed this the most out of them. Silly, funny, just the right amount of absurdity. I'm not one for references, myself, but I can accept it here as it's quite well done. I'm not particularly familiar with that song or musician but I didn't find any problem with it. There may be more interesting stuff for the more affiliated that people like me might miss. Good reference hustle, in short.
Scream: An Impression
Flashes of brilliance stretched just too thinly in this one. I like some of the... wordplay? I guess? The use of disordered, slithery prose is actually effective in a lot of places, but it often loses its place and becomes laborious to read through. What I'd say it needs is more of a meter and rhythm to it, to become more poetic and less clustered and irregular. It never kept its flow long enough to let we warm to it completely and it's a terrible shame because I liked where it was going and how it was getting there. I have to echo KK's comments about synonym abuse too, but that is secondary to the above point. It bothers me when it's staggering the flow but doesn't when it isn't.
The Death of Frank Henry
The concept is cool, and it's well executed. It does seem shallow, though. This feels like the form of a longer and deeper story, left a little bit stunted by the short length. Having so many scenes thrown through at that pace gave me that impression. It came off disjointed at times. I also find the dialogue pretty awkward in almost every instance. It definitely tends to feel more like exposition than conversation.
I would love to see this one as a more fleshed out piece.
The Storm
I had a problem keeping up. At the first attempt, I re-read parts of it more than once after getting lost. I don't know whether this was the author's intention, of course. The uncertainty and confusion was used well for suspense, making this one the most immersive for me personally once I got to grips with it. This one also feels like it would be more at home as a longer piece, part of a larger and more developed story. That being said, I don't know whether the scarcity of exposition was deliberate.
I dig the emergency phone call transcript expository outro. I'm a shameless mark for them when they're done well and this was a peach.
E - reading this back it sounds like I'm roasting everyone. This wasn't intentional, I just didn't want to just re-hash stuff that KK said. Kudos to all the authors for their work.
"Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive,
Thou, teaching thrift, thyselfe couldst never thrive.
So, like the whetstone, many men are wont
To sharpen others, when themselves are blunt."
Anyone who has any kind of opinion fucking disgusts me.