GotWoot Story Contest - Preliminaries - Round 2

[enkoujin]

I was eating while reading these stories, so I really didn't like "Live Arm" and "Jack the Green Slider" that much.

"Madness Door"

This is no place to become a knight. There will be only death and destruction when the day is done.

Beautiful quote; this single quote gives a good example of foreshadowing that gives view to the aftermath of the ending.

Spelling and grammar check is strong needed to improve the story.

There were too many unimportant things in this story. There should have been more focus and build-up leading to the protagonists' progressing anti-heroism for a stronger impact of the revelation of him switching sides.

Lastly, pay attention to the tenses you're using. You switched between past, present and future tenses in one story. It was pretty confusing.

"The Mechanic"

...You are an average man. And that, my friend, is the most powerful being of all.

I think is one story I have truly understood out of all the entries so far. I loved how the symbolism in the story was used as well.

My take is that Michael was born going down a path that he was unhappy from the beginning and ended up being a mechanic. This is greatly emphasized when he changes his mind, when encountering "Elusive", from a choice of a luxurious convertible to a woman.

Since he is already 47 years old, in a traditional time where it was uncommon to wed after the age of 30, the man has become lonely and depressed. It's hard to find a woman who would take you at that age, leaving him with a stained image - exemplified by the oil and grease that's on his hands, clothes and on his handkerchief (which, back then, was white adding more significance to this piece in the story).

What gives away to his insanity is how a single person would want to keep his house neat and clean even though no one will visit him. It's very unexpected because this is a mechanic here and one might not think of mechanics as "neat" or "clean" people who keep things tied together. Here's another quote to strengthen my opinion:

...It was then that Mike realized that some of these memories were not his own, but he was too happy to care.

So in the end, "Elusive" is actually a form of his insanity that has finally manifested in a humanoid form. The most important thing is that "Elusive" is a combination of both Michael's desire of female companionship and his own mother. Because he has been calling himself "average" all the time and has not succeeded with women, the only time where it is mentioned in the story of being praised was when his mother said:

...[Michael was] destined for greatness

Now compare it to "Elusive"'s quote:

I have watched you crawl from the depths of the mud pit and rise upon two legs. And from that I have seen you fight great wars and suffer great sacrifice in the defense of ideals. I have seen you love. I have seen you rage. I have seen you fly to the moon. The message of humanity will echo throughout space for all eternity.

Is it not true that a caring mother can understand the depths of our souls because we are their creations? We have all crawled out of our mothers' "mud pits" to begin walking, to fight internal wars with ourselves and have supported us through our failures. They have seen us get angry and they have seen our successes no matter how insignificant they are to ourselves.

In actuality, "Elusive" is Michael's [dead] mother (implied) that is comforting her son and telling him that it acceptable to be average at his age because he can no longer attain anything greater than he is right now. Michael's mother is the only woman in Michael's life that has ever given sincere love to him and may be asking him to reunite with her in death (or in heaven) because that is Michael's true desire.

The other and last parts seems a little bit confusing, so the ending is very ambiguous (but intentional, I'm sure). It is possible that he became insane and was content with that fate because he's in a "better place", killed himself and achieved "nirvana" status (with his life flashing before him) or that "Elusive" was actually real and he is being pulled through space-time continuum.

A little bit of extras to note as well - the reason why he didn't achieve greatness was because he was born during the wrong time and probably had many failures that were out of his control. A 1957 Ford convertible indicates that it may have been around that period of time and assuming the setting takes place in the US, during Michael's life, he would have been in his 20's when the Great Depression hit along with the recessions during the 1940's and 1950's. If this thinking is correct, that adds more to the author's credibility.

I'd say nothing much to improve on. A lot of personal preferences here and there, but the author delivered and I was very satisfied. I have my money bet on this one out of all the stories so far.

"A Live Arm"

Something wonderful.

Something bad.

That's what I felt about this story.

Maybe I have biased tendencies towards grotesque and horror stories, but I didn't feel anything out of this. It started off pretty good, but I just didn't like what happened to the protagonist.

The author clearly wanted a big impact with the horror shock that the author himself had an arm that had a mind of itself.

However, as Ryllharu has said, it lacked a climax. Nothing was resolved and there was no closure reached. Maybe if there was a continuation or sequel to this story, this would have worked, but as a short story one-shot, the impact was less powerful.

I also agree with KitKat in that it is basically a story of one person killing another with no deep meaning behind it. It certainly catches a person's attention, but it feels as shallow as reading a college student's submission to their college's newspaper. It was interesting to read, but it lacked details and emotion which was its downfall.

In conclusion, character build-up would be essential to improving your story.

"Jack the Green Slider"

Her jaw dropped.

My jaw dropped and I believe I have a pretty good idea of the author's identity on this story judging by their writing style.

I can't say much about this story because it's about romance and I haven't read many romance stories at all, so I don't know what to say about it except that the story was forced. Absolutely forced, unreal and tragic.

For the author, I'd say improve your grammar and I know you were trying to be creative with your unique writing style, which added flair, but I didn't feel that this was the appropriate story to synchronize with that writing style.

[Sapphire]

WTF? A TIE AGAIN????

[Yukimura]

Oh wonderful another tie. I suggest the ties from this round and last round be pitted against each other in a round 2.5 with one vote per person and the two best be treated like the runners up from rounds 1 and 2 to save on confusion and clutter later in the contest. I'd say both runners up from this round are hands down better than runners up from the last round but that's just me.

[shinta|hikari]

I think that's fair. Since people have already read the stories, a quick sudden death voting of 24-48 hours should suffice, and it should also be held simultaneously with the other rounds. It's just voting anyway.

[SeanW]

A Live Arm: reasonably well written, with an entertaining twist. But it was far too bogged down in baseball technicalities and particularly pitching jargon. The author obviously has a deep love for the game, and for the story to really grab you, you'd better, too.

The last line is cute, but problematic. The thing is, we're never told whether the guy is right- or left-handed. D'oh! This largely demolishes the significance of that line.

Jack the Green Slider: cute. Maybe too cute. I'm pretty sure I get the idea, but it could do with a little foreshadowing in part 1, so the twist wouldn't seem to come quite so much out of the blue. If it weren't for what tiny threads there are tying the two parts together (the color green, sliding), it would be a completely lame "and then she woke up" ending; with those threads, the twist isn't quite as clichéd as that.

Decently well written. I felt the dating montage was a bit of a cheat, but only a bit. Good amount of human interest. I was amused by the Americanized twist on the old anime cliché of the high school girl running out of the house with toast in her mouth and colliding with the cute guy; it's done subtly enough that it's not an in-your-face nod to otaku. Otherwise, it keeps clear of any deep niches like Live Arm's baseball.

Close call, but I'd definitely have to give the nod to Jack.

[SeanW]

Instead of tie-breakers, I suggest we just move both tied stories on. So we have three stories each from rounds 1 and 2.

[Sapphire]

Yuki wants to move the tied stories on, but have the lower two have their own special bonus round bracket (as well as runner-ups).

[XanBcoo]

I'm happy that The Mechanic did so well in this bracket. It was clearly the best of this group.

I agree with criticisms that have already been said about it. The first page or so contains rich imagery and a clearly intentioned main character. It kind of falls apart after that and the writing style seems to shift dramatically. Not really sure what happened, but the first page is good enough that I can forgive it.