jamesbondsmith

Hi,

Submitting this one for some feedback. It’s only a short one, a bit over 1000 words. I just want to point out that it is a very rough draft and while the idea has been bouncing around my head for a while it was mostly written in one go after a couple of drinks.

I was thinking of submitting it to a competition in August, so I’ve got time and words to add (word count is 1000-2500). I’m not married to the title, just thought it up while renaming the file to submit here.

A little extra info: 

Are there any spots left for this week? I'm currently smashing out a first draft piece for a short story comp (months away, so waiting a week isn't a problem)

Can we still revive this thread?

I picked it up because I saw it on a list of games similar to Bioshock (I'd just finished the 2017 Prey which was also on the list).

I wasn't quite as invested in the lore and location as I was with Bioshock, Prey and Dishonored but it was so much fun just telekinetically hurling desks at the bad guys.

That said I did find myself wanting to work in the FBC after seeing the 

Still an awesome game and I gush over it if I see someone who's just bought it.

Hi,

I've been trying to get back into music lately and I think I've come up with some cool chord progressions/riffs, but I'm concerned that if I think it's cool then someone else will have too and already recorded it.

Is there some kind of resource to check whether someone has already recorded something or do I just have to listen more widely/find people who do and hope no-one recognises anything?

I googled how Shazam works and that appears to be based on digital information within the audio files themselves, not the combination of various musical notes, and so playing something into that wouldn't help too much.

Would anyone be keen to read a short story I've been working on? I've had a bit of trouble with writers block with this one, so I've only just finished a draft for it. 
I was hoping to enter it into a short story competition which closes in a few days (5pm AWST 15th of March), so a quick turnaround would be appreciated. It's a touch under 1100 words (max is 1200).

Hi, I had a question. 

One of my coworkers is Mormon and going on a church based teaching volunteer 'mission' (sorry, I'm not sure what to properly call it).

From what I understand it involves going across the country for 18 months and apparently it is unpaid. Is going for that long on a volunteer basis... normal? Maybe it's because we know each other through our income stream but it feels weird to say the least.

For reference I am completely non-religious.

Which elements of speculative fiction (fantasy, scifi, horror etc) do you think would warrant academic study?

I've been vaguely considering going back to university for a Masters or PHD course, but I really would need something that could hold my interest for 1-3 years.

My honours thesis was focusing on the Hunger Games series, and I looked at Baudrillard's precession of simulacra and how various characters fitted into it while also looking at if audiences had actually paid attention to the critical media literacy messages (I got kind of marked down for being too broad and splitting my efforts between the two). I thought about focusing on the latter more closely, but it's really hard to make judgements on whether people 'miss the point' post Death of the Author.

I also thought of looking at healing and injury-induced disability in high-magic fantasy (I had a bad experience with a certain series), or perhaps something to do with ludonarrative dissonance (when the messages from a game's story and its gameplay are on conflict).

I finally got round to starting the show, and after two episodes, I'm liking it.

It is a little generic at times, but LOTR is basically the original that a lot of generic fantasy is accused of ripping off. It's like someone nowadays stumbling onto a seminal work of art decades after people have built on the foundations that art created (or at least popularised), like listening to the first rock bands from the 60s fifty years later, or Superman after decades of superstrong flyers in comics.

The Bioshock series (it's on my name badge at work, and my house keys). I love them all, but I love the second despite the fact people seem to dislike it. I'm so keen for the new one coming.
Horizon Zero Dawn is also up there, even if I wish I could upgrade the facial animations to the level of the sequel.

Started replaying Skyrim, and I ran into the same problem as last time where I'm paralysed by choice. Also, I was hoping for a completionist run but I'm also averse to being mean, which cuts out a whole bunch of quests.
 

IMO the whole Jurassic Park franchise works because every character is dumb, but the first film worked because this was the first time they'd done it, and you can chalk it up to hubris. Every subsequent just gets dumber and dumber because of how many times it's gone wrong before. So I guess writing yourself into a corner is a far harder issue to fix when you have millions of dollars and hundreds of people who have put time and effort into what doesn't seem to be working.

As for GOT, I've heard that the showrunners had various reasons for wanting to move on, so they rushed it (which comes down to a human element of valuing our personal time and effort in the limited time we have alive, and that has only gotten worse since Covid). I felt that certain developments in season 8 could have been perfectly fine had they been built up over the 10 season run that GRRM and HBO supposedly wanted. Also, there are inherent risks in adapting a story that isn't finished yet, especially if there's a gulf in the respective creator's storytelling abilities.

@Duxredux yes, the daughter is the 'heir' so to speak, hence the comparison of the Prime Minister. Perhaps it could be a 'we need a noble to talk to the nobles' situation, but in that case I feel like her non-mage father could do it just as well.

The current vague plan is for them to try to convince the capital to send help to fight off the pirates as they are still a threat, but the struggle is why they would be OK with the people who just saved them leaving when the crisis isn't averted yet? As opposed to sending some other townspeople who might be less crucial to the defense. To use a Sanderson analogy, why send your Radiants away when you're surrounded by enemies?

On the other hand, I suppose it could create drama if them leaving wasn't 'sanctioned' by the town, especially if the daughter has to come back and lead them eventually.

Why would a town let the people who have just saved them leave?

Basically, an outlying town on the coast is attacked by pirates trying to carve out a land-based kingdom. The lord's daughter and a merchant apprentice (both mages) fight them off, but what little I had planned of the story involved the two of them and the master mage going on a trek along a sort of fantasy Silk Road to speak to the leaders of their nation, and I'm struggling to think of why the townspeople would be OK with letting them just leave like that. I've been thinking of it in similar terms to the massive public outcry to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison leaving for Hawaii during the massive bushfires in 2019/20.

The master/apprentice duo are merchants who sell enchanted objects (innate magic is very rare, but objects allow non-mages to approximate things like superstrength and ensure their weapons never lose their edge), so I thought they could perhaps donate their entire stock towards the defense efforts. But that does kind of pale in comparison to the scene I wrote on the fly one day where he basically turns a bow into a medieval rocket launcher.

Resurrecting the thread for another question: I ordered the ebooks through the pre-order store, which according to the FAQs means I don't need to fill out that survey (got a bit of a fright there when I checked my emails). Do I need to do anything else to receive the ebooks?

On 06/05/2022 at 7:15 PM, Ta'veren Kaladin said:

Here is my even more unpopular opinion.

Vin sucks. She's so annoying. I just can't like her, despite loving Mistborn. I enjoy reading characters I don't like, but it confuses me why so many people have her as their favorite. I do think is is a strong female character who isn't a stereotypical strong female character nor a stereotypical non-stereotypical strong female character. To me at least she's written as a person first, not as a strong female character. 

I thought she kind of fell into the subset of 'tough female characters who spend a chunk of the sequel worrying about her relationship with her boyfriend', which irritated me. Same with the Percy Jackson sequel series.

On 08/05/2022 at 8:11 AM, Philomath said:

I enjoyed this movie. The first Dr Strange was not actually my favorite so I liked this one better. But that really is just me. I thought it was well done. I had heard that this was going to be more of a horror film and I was nervous about it since that is a genre I don’t like at all. But it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Definitely elements of it, but it was manageable for me.

So here’s some of my thoughts on Wanda.

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So it ultimately wasn’t too surprising for me that Wanda became the villain, but I still am a little sad about it. She is a great character even still and I just wanted her to be happy and find some peace. I guess most versions of her did. Somehow… not quite sure how her kids exist in all the other multiverse realities but oh well. I do feel like WandaVision was required viewing before this. And I think the part I am most bummed about with 616 Wanda dying (I think she’s dead at least) is that we were just starting to see her at the end of WandaVision really coming into her own with her scarlet witch powers and I wanted a chance to see her use them for good as a hero. 

And some of my thoughts on some foreshadowing elements and character arcs in the movie.

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I feel like the line about “you always have to be the one holding the knife” made sense, but made it obvious to me that he likely was going to let someone else really save the day in the end. That felt like the very obvious arc. The happy/fear thing didn’t totally land for me either, but it wasn’t terrible. Part of that I think comes from the fact that I never liked his and Christine’s relationship in the first movie so anything relating to it here was kind of meh.

I did love the set up to the dream walking using the his own dead body though. That landed perfect for me. Definitely thought the same as Christine like “how can you do that without a you there?” And then he did and it was fantastic.

Overall it was a good movie for me. I am still struggling to grasp a little bit after this how (Loki spoilers)

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Loki and the TVA connect with everything going on with the multiverse. Did it always exist? What was really getting pruned by the TVA? Was it multiverse realities or just branches off of 616? Did they exist but were inaccessible to 616? Anyway, still trying to make sense of that myself but maybe I am just thinking too hard about it.

 

As I think i understand how the Multiverse works (it bent my brain a little to be honest)

@Eluvianii I definitely see what you mean about WandaVision. 

What did people think of the movie? 

I'll be honest, I felt it was being hyped on the power of its multiversal cameos (so many spoilers coming)

That said, it was definitely an emotional ride, which is what art is all about.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

The competition has a word count of 1500-5000 words, and seeing this piece is just over 1600 words I've definitely got room to expand it. It sounds like the story-within-a-story is OK, but the framing device needs work. I guess I was going for a slice of life type story, but I see what people mean about needing more of an arc.

It looks like I didn't have anything to worry about with the song

I'm definitely thinking of including this character in other works, perhaps as kind of an interlude character like in Stormlight Archive. This would probably be his final appearance, seeing as

On 3/18/2022 at 1:42 AM, Wax said:

So interesting, no one posted here in 2020 or the first half of 2021. 

Well, if I can do it retrospectively for stuff I played:

Prey (2017) a worthy comrade of the Bioshock games, and arguably did a better job of achieving some of its goals. I find myself wishing I could live in Rapture, Columbia or Talos 1, before I remember the horrible things that happen during the games and underpin the whole community from the start.

The Dishonored series is great, and I would say it definitely did a better job of achieving the goals of the Last of Us Part 2.

I think I first played Horizon Zero Dawn during early 2021, when Playstation gave it out for free. It cemented itself as one of my favourite games, and I've easily put over 100 hours into it (to be fair, a lot of that is repeatedly dying against bosses while under-equipped or searching for collectables). I love the lore and the writing, but the facial animation really needed work. I'd heard the Guerilla was a European developer and I thought the lips were out of sync etc because they were being dubbed into English, but I'm pretty sure it started as an English-language game, and the faces were incredibly wooden anyway. Fortunately, they worked towards fixing the issue in the DLC and sequel. 

More of a general thing, but is anyone else frustrated by the camerawork in a lot of modern internet-based TV? I first noticed it in the Witcher Season 1, where someone's eyes can be in focus but their hairline is blurry as hell. 

I'm not sure how they'll tie everything up in the final episode, seeing it's supposedly around 45 minutes and I've heard there isn't going to be a second season.

How likely do people think it is that they're telling the truth about not requiring intimate knowledge of the wider MCU?

This is a short story that I did a while ago and was considering entering into a competition. The comp has no theme stated.

One of the requirements is that it is ‘original’. Obviously I’m not going to plagiarise stuff, but it was inspired by a song. If anyone notices which one it is, please let me know in case it is in fact too close for the rules. Maybe if you notice it put it in spoiler tags so I can see if a lot of people pick up on it?

Otherwise, I'm not really looking for any particular feedback, just wanting to see what people think.

Is there an opening for this week (25/4)? I've got a pretty short piece with a deadline at the end of next month

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Sorry I'm responding late, work is hectic right now even without getting called to cover shifts all the time.

I'll take on the critiques, but I do feel like some questions might be answered later on in the piece. Would people prefer to see it in 5k word installments, or to see the entire piece at once? That might help with structural issues people brought up.
To refer to some recurring comments, M is dead in the opening (my thought was kind of like ASOIAF where the POV character in the intro dies), but MD is a minor recurring character. As for MD's outfit, I'm not really much of a fashion type, but I imagined her as attempting to blend in with corporate environments ('corporate kidnapper chic', I call it later) and there is a scene where the quartermaster for her organisation is trying to put her in impractical clothes.

General fandom: