GotWoot Story Contest - Preliminaries - Round 3

[Sapphire]

Hi all!

GotWoot members have each written their own original short story.

Vote on your top two favorite stories!

If you participated in the contest, you have to vote, but you can't vote for yourself.
Therefore, you have to vote in every voting bracket but your own.
Please read ALL of the stories before you vote!
If you only vote for one story your vote is automatically discarded.
Pick your FAVORITE two (or at least the best two), trolling the other vote screws the other contestants over. If you do this I will know and hate you forever.

Preliminary rounds 1 - 5 have 4 stories each. The preliminary groups were completely randomly chosen. The top two stories from each bracket of the prelims will move on to semi-finals, then the winners of semi-finals will duke it out in the championships!

Authors will remain anonymous until the final results are declared! If an author wants to respond to a voter, they can do so through me.

Voters should give personal feedback below to our budding or seasoned authors!

The voting period for each round is 72 hours.

ROUND 3 - FIGHT!

Note: Round 2 voting is still open for about 16 more hours. (till 06/28/11 4 PM EST)

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Pastebin Mirrors
Screwed Story - no mirror, was sent as PDF
The Flu
(Not) Your Average Chat
The Beginning: My Orgasmic Seventeenth Summer

Readability Mirrors
Screwed Story - no mirror, was sent as PDF
The Flu
(Not) Your Average Chat
The Beginning: My Orgasmic Seventeenth Summer

[KitKat]

Alright, time for comments!

Screwed story - Umm.... at least we got a small amount of amusement out of your predicament.

The Flu - I'm kind of a sucker for the post-apocalyptic genre, and this story was no exception. Interesting writing style, that gave a sense of a dizzying amount of time passing. I feel like it should be made into a tv miniseries, with the amount it covered. I just wish there was a better sense of who the author is. What is this half-mad survivor like? There were also a few small spelling/grammar mistakes, but not such that it detracted significantly from the story.

(Not) Your Average Chat - Well, I think it's fairly obvious who authored this funny and cute little anime parody. Kudos on fitting all those references in there. I did find the dialogue confusing though, and the breaks between the different sequences weren't very well marked leaving confusion whether something was a continuation of one event or a different event at a later time. Though having some self-referencing of the story to itself was rather clever and tongue-in-cheek, I think the impact was lessened by the chaotic flow. Switching from past to present tense was also a little distracting. Overall, I enjoyed this one.

The Beginning: My Orgasmic Seventeenth Summer - Please, I would rather not read your lesbian sexual fantasies. Good stories might contain sexual themes as part of the story, but when the story is sex for the sake of writing about sex, that's just literary porn. No thank you.

[twofacedkitsune]

This round was really hard to critique.

edit: I tried my best to evaluate the stories for what they were, or seemed to try to do. (since I felt it would be unfair to have my vote affected by how well the author could speak English, or their preferred subject matter)

Screwed Story - ...no comment haha.


The Flu - This was hard to comment on. The writing style was.... written as if in a feverish state. On one level, this makes it hard to engage the reader, yet on another, sorta supports the whole description of the Spanish Flu: "The fever killed most; those who survived were often touched. Wracked by guilt, delusional, suffering all the mushy-brained confusion a soft boiled mind can manage. Loss of senses, loss of speech, loss of direction, a lost mind and a wasted species" especially when the narrator himself is affected by it. It probably wouldn't hurt to be more specific about things (e.g. switch out words like visions, madness, panic, etc. for more specific visuals or events). But I would try to find some happy medium between the delirious prose and specificity.


*(Not) Your Average Chat - I think the area that could use the most work would be the story's "believability" (believability on multiple levels - narration, story progression, dialogue, story details, etc.). For example, it was narrated first-person, from a character who supposedly has had very little exposure to anime/otaku culture his entire life, yet at the same time, the prose was riddled with anime references, etc. This style of narration (as well as much of the dialogue and how the story plays out) could function as a critique of anime/anime love stories (if that was the intention), but otherwise I felt like it kind of undermined the protagonist's credibility. Here's an example of this:

"To be honest, I find anime pretty mundane, or even stupid. 90% of the shows are generic to the core, and fan service has replaced plot in terms of importance. It is riddled with overused elements, and even the art can be all over the place. I do not understand its appeal at all."

The first sentence makes it sound like the protagonist doesn't have any interest in anime (i.e. doesn't watch it, steers clear of and has no interest in anime/otaku culture). But then this is followed by a series of critiques that, due to their specificity, would be really hard to make unless he had watched a lot of anime, or was fairly knowledgeable about it.

A couple minor plot issues- is it even possible to become so knowledgeable about the world of anime in such a short period of time (enough to make specific references to say, Haruhi or Evangelion)? Or to even watch so many shows in such a short period of time? Why is the protagonist trying to get closer to this girl?


*The Beginning: My Orgasmic Seventeenth Summer - ...again, no comment haha. It didn't get me going, but the writing/dialogue/story progression all flowed well, and didn't feel forced or unnatural. Of all of the stories in the contest so far, this was by far the easiest to read, and I wasn't getting bogged down by ambiguities or forced, unnatural dialogue/story progression. While the story doesn't score points for originality or innovative writing, it did occasionally have a few details that kept it interesting and helped prevent it from being too generic... like the thing about the dog toy.

[enkoujin]

Good Lord. I'm not going to vote just yet because I felt all of these stories were hit-or-miss. You either like it or you don't.

"Screwed Story"

So here I am, the story of how I screwed myself coz I'm lazy.

So I really liked the title - it was the only good thing about it, really due to a great pun.

I also liked how the author was trying to be artistic with the font sizes and the intended spelling and grammar errors. This was the very essence and uniqueness that made it different from the other ones. It was easy to read with the bigger fonts.

All in all, it was like reading someone's Facebook/Twitter statuses. I'm not into that kind of thing, so I'll have to pass on this one. It could have been better if the author had more interesting things to talk about while procrastinating.

"The Flu"

We see patterns where none exist; life is random.

I liked this passage for some reason; surely, it must have greater meaning for the entire story, but I can't decipher anything just quite yet.

From what I've interpreted from a quick read, what I got was that the protagonist kept on heading West which alluded to such historic events like the Oregon Trail, the Gold Rushes of California and the flux of immigrants to settle on vast lands in the Canadian prairies in search of hope of a better quality of life than their current ones. This seems to be consistent as the protagonist moves from an apocalyptic setting to one of a social utopia.

The main messages I got were a handful. There were messages about enduring hardships by moving forward and that individuals are insignificant when compared to communities and even the cosmical stars. There existed messages about humans always being forever plagued, whether physically or psychologically, despite being able to move forward. Additionally, I think the author was trying to say that humans should walk around our environments to truly understand them. These were powerful messages, but unfortunately, this was not effectively communicated through this form of writing.

In the last paragraph, I think that the protagonist tried to cross the Pacific Ocean as a closure to the story assuming he/she started off living on the east coast of the US. This is supported by what he said earlier:

...More daylight, less despair, a semblance of hope, manifest destiny. Hah; destiny. My destiny was to live.

If the sun "rises in the East" and he is heading West to get there, one may conclude since the protagonist is heading East, which is where he started, before the Flu hit, he will find lots of "sun" and therefore, peace there. I could be wrong, though, since the only community in the story that became the sanctuary of the world is New Mecca, which I can only assume is in the Middle East. In that case, there has to be some religion involved here which is not my forte.

What I can say is that the author tried to cram a bucket of fried chicken down my throat with no beverages to help me swallow. It's not a bad style, but like the others from round #2, there was a lack of characterization, build-up and association with the protagonist. It was just setting, setting and more setting. Like the previous story, it was like reading Facebook/Twitter status updates over the course of someone's life.

Frankly, I think this should be redone as a log or journal with fewer concentrated scenes with emphasis on the lives the protagonist saved, the ones he failed to save and his experiences in different orders. Then, the audience can try to piece together the fragments to form a greater picture.

"(Not) Your Average Chat"

“End of conversation.”

Probably one of the more viable stories here because of the theme of anime that the audience shares a common interest in.

I thought this was more of a parody-novel written by the SHAFT animation team. It was a protagonist that was more-or-less breaking the fourth wall by mentioning stereotypical protagonists' lifestyles in romance-comedy-harem anime.

I may be wrong in my references here, but this entire dialogue felt like a conversation between Senjougahara and Araragi from "Bakemonogatari".

The protagonist seemed clueless of the conversation while the girl of interest felt quiescent and introverted. I felt that this theme is very similar to "Nogizka Haruka no Himitsu" in terms of both main characters, Ayase and Nogizaka, except that the girl of interest is more "tsundere" and that the protagonist became more like Takumi Usui from "Kaicho wa Maid-Sama!".

I'd like to say I like the allusion and multiple references to "Neon Genesis Evangelion", "The World God Only Knows", "Gosick", "The [emotional and physical state] of Suzumiya Haruhi", "Steins;Gate" and many more that I forgot to pick up, but I didn't due to personal preferences. It's a hit-or-miss with anime/manga fans whether they are casual or hardcore.

I enjoyed it and the execution was interesting and not overdone. Excellent spelling, grammar and spacing. However, I felt that there was something missing and I can't quite put my finger to it. It's a hit-or-miss story.

"The Beginning: My Orgasmic Seventeenth Summer"

"Yes! We're gonna have so much fun together!"

The flow was good, but I felt like I would rather watch some smut than read it.

Grammar, spelling and spacing were all well done. Otherwise, I don't have anything to say about it. It's another hit-or-miss story.

[Sapphire]

Screwed Story - This story is hilarious. Also, I'm one of the main characters of the story, so how can I not like it? And while I was doing the posts, I was totally unaware that I was a character in someone else's story, so I'm really freaked out. It leads me to many questions. Were the actions my own, or was I just a puppet of the author's wim? Am I being controlled by the author now. Is there someone, somewhere, writing a story about this very post?!

The Flu - Great, provocative writing. I like how the story is set in the future. I like how the West is once again used as a promise land.

Survival of the one was meaningless, it was the group that must persist.

I hope the negative parts of this get expanded in part 2, do not want communism society in my post-apocalyptic world. :<

How did he save a life? I need more details. Also reminds me of The Book of Eli a bit. I'd slow the narrative down so we got to see more of the (inevitably interesting) aspects of his day to day life.

(Not) Your Average Chat - I HATE tsunderes. Can't stand them. Their presence pisses me off. And "tears falling on fists" is physically impossible I think, but was cute. I like the slight breakings of the fourth wall, and I thought the "End of Conversation" parts were very original, as I've never really seen it before. I hate the main characters though, it's one boring noob trying to impress a total bitch (let's not say tsundere, tsundere is just another word for bipolar bitch anyway). I must be dumb because I don't understand the last bit of the story at all, let me reread it.

No, I'm still confused by her reaction. Is the tsundere pissed off and overloaded by too much human interaction? I know someone like that, I STEER CLEAR. But the main character just keeps derping along, trying to get to know this pre-stages sociopath better.

I have to agree with TFK on his observation of the litter of anime references that the protagonist makes, though he claims to have no anime knowledge. However, this would prolly sell well with anime fans, so I might end up putting it on the FP when the contest is over. It can be a "how many anime references can you find" game. I like the dialogue, it's very novelesque. When no one has anything to say anymore (due to whatever reason, like being a BITCH or a boring anime noob with no social skills) the conversation just ends awkwardly.

My Orgasmic Seventeenth Summer - This is exactly like the stories I see on Nifty or Literotica, so when all is said and done you can always throw your stories on there, and get thousands of views. I felt like there was too much exposition and not enough sexing, I mean I think 3 of those pages of exposition could have been replaced by sexing. And I don't want no normal lesbian sex, I want CRAZY sex that I've never even heard of, stuff that's titillating and insane so you go, "damn, never seen that before," so GotWoot can speak of it for generations to come.
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Can't decide which to vote for. If I vote. I pretty much hate (Not) Your Average Chat, but it was well-written enough to make me emotional which is no easy feat. I am a main character in Screwed Story, enough said. 17th Summer has sexing, and the first paragraph seems to imply promises of craziness. The Flu is just awesomely written and post-apocalyptic, which I LOVE.....
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PS - I really need enjoukin's intepretation of (Not) Your Average Chat because I don't get it.

[Sapphire]

Author of (Not) Your Average Chat says [spoilers, highlight to make visible]:

The switching between past and present tense is intentional. It is because the POV of the protagonist moves along with the story. In narration parts, he mulls over past events, so the tenses follow. In the conversation parts, he is actually narrating while events happen, so it is in present tense. The reason for doing this is to make the development more exciting. If the protagonist/narrator himself does not know how his attempts will turn out, the readers won’t either. I know it seems arrogant to toy with an established rule, but I wanted to be adventurous.

I agree about the transitions. I think that was mainly due to the word limit. The story is already 50 words over, which I believe is pushing it. I tried my best to make use of the length.

About the believability, the first 5 conversations happened in a span of a week (as stated in the story), which meant that the protagonist did some hardcore watching and research. It is possible, if you sacrifice sleep like most otaku do. Take note that he was only watching stuff that he mentioned, meaning really popular shows and some recently airing shows. He chose what he watched for a purpose after all. He did not just watch them too. He studied them.

The narration at the beginning that had information on “average” anime happened after their first 2 conversation (as implied by the completely past tense narration in the thought segments). This means that he has already done some serious research, and knows enough to say what he did.

The rest of the references increased gradually, and reflected what kind of research he has been doing. The must watch research allowed him to reference Haruhi and Geass. The otaku lingo and recent show research allowed him to use the term tsundere and comment on GOSICK. The rest of the references and comments are made possible by the other stuff he watching during the rest of his free time.

I know it is a bit confusing, so let me explain the ending for those who got didn’t get it. The last part is basically the girl asking why the protagonist is hanging out with her even if he ends up being bullied as well. The reason why she was so quiet and reserved is because it lessens the bullies’ attacks. The girl stopped talking to him because she didn’t want him to get involved in her troubles. The protagonist said that he doesn’t care about all that because those are not important (even the reason why he likes her, which is why he intentionally does not reply to her question). It supposedly ends with a kiss, which was implied by the protagonists actions and the quoted (meaning spoken) “End of conversation” line.

I tend to fit too many things that people won’t notice in my stories, and I apologize about that. The 2500 word limit really was challenging. Thanks for all the comments so far!

[Sapphire]

I sort of gleamed the bully part from the text, but still, her reaction was very... ugh... tsundere-ish. I wish she was more like Tora, and could beat the bullies asses, at least. The increase of anime references as time goes on makes sense.

I thought this was a lesbian story?

Well, my looks are fairly good, even if I don’t look like a girl or cute at all.

Why does the protagonist do all this stuff for the antisocial homeless looking girl? Now the protagonist seems like a creepy stalker. :<

I like how the story's main setting is in the classroom, yet still allows us to imagine all the stuff that's happening on the outside. (Not much though, sitting in class and watching animez at home).

[RyougaZell]

Screwed Story: I wasn't amused by this attempt to be funny. It lacks structure, idea and purpose. Its just a cluster of random ideas. If the purpose was to portray what goes around the mind of someone with a mind-block, it didn't deliver enough explanations or feelings to really understand it.

The Flu: The story has a central idea of events that happened and what the main character did afterwards. Yet the story has a problem. The title and the content. I wouldn't name this story 'Flu' when the 'Flu' changed from the central theme to a background event no longer important as the story progressed from a viral catastrophe into a supernatural plot with a character with powers. Grammar and narrative are okay, but the focus is lost and changed as each paragraph passed.

(Not) your average chat: The relationship between the characters was perfectly portrayed, conveying both their feelings to the audience, aided by a very good grammar and distribution of paragraphs. The main problem, though, is that the story tries to hard to please this forum's members by making references to current series. It would have been better to use another hobby that wasn't 'anime' or make the character anything else than 'otaku'. If using this was a must... the references should have been only un-aired series... not series we could have seen yesterday. The use of jokes from this series only hurts the story itself. The breaking of the 4th wall was a terrible idea. Funny, but terrible. In the end this story feels like a piece of fanfiction instead of a story due to all the copyright infringements.

Seventeenth Summer: A bunch of smut so I won't go into detail of the plot. Characterization is good, progress is good.

To be honest... I will only be voting on Summer based on grammar, characterization and arrangement of ideas. If I could vote for only one story I would. Flu and Screwed don't manage to qualify for a vote, so Summer gets it. I don't expect this story to pass from the 2nd round though.

[Sapphire]

I disagree with you about (N)YAC Zell. Like "A Live Arm," the author wrote about what he knew. This made me more comfortable to read it. However, referencing fake titles would be interesting too.

[RyougaZell]

The story works as it is Saph. The problem I see is that it can't be used as a legal story because of all the copyright issues. I know that wasn't part of the rules or anything, but I think that an original story should not use other works to make itself better.

Heck, I voted for it because its good and fun... but making the character speak like Keima from TWGOK or act like Okabe from Stein's Gate, while funny, is plagiarism. Even the title takes advantage of the recent Evangelion movies.

[Janice]

but making the character speak like Keima from TWGOK or act like Okabe from Stein's Gate, while funny, is plagiarism.

Making a character speak or act like another character from another story isn't plagiarism. You can't copyright a personality.

[RyougaZell]

Making a character speak or act like another character from another story isn't plagiarism. You can't copyright a personality.

The main character said 'I can see the ending' and pretended to speak with his secret agent. Don't tell that isn't copying Keima and Okabe

[KitKat]

The main character said 'I can see the ending' and pretended to speak with his secret agent. Don't tell that isn't copying Keima and Okabe

I think you're mistaking this story for a genre that it was never intended to be. From what I understand, the author never intended realism (correct me if I'm wrong, author). This story is a parody, and as such it follows different writing conventions. The characters are more social constructs made from an anime culture, and their interactions are a commentary on that culture.

[Sapphire]

He's not making a profit so it's fine. There's no legal issue with making references to other anime in one's story. If it really was an issue (like in Japan) he could just change the titles slightly like they do in Genshiken.

Some shows are total parodies of other shows, like "Community," and "Yakitake Japan," and "Tower of Druaga," and some are just tribute anime to nerd culture like "Denpa Onna," and "Lucky Star," and "Genshiken" and countless others. If you see it as copying the personality of a character, you're possibly just noting how extremely archetypal, tropey, or common the character is.

Copying many lines and phrases (without it obviously being a reference), however, is questionable, but I haven't seen the shows so I wouldn't know.

[RyougaZell]

Correct. Hence why I voted for it. Its the best of lot. But the character ends with no personality as he acts as anime characters, despite being portrayed as someone who doesn't like anime.

[Buffalobiian]

Smut and I Rode West tied for second for me. I ended up voting for sex because I enjoyed the characters, but it really is pretty much a tie.

Anime story took first place

[kokujin-kun]

Okay, one sentence reviews of all the stories I read this round:

Screwed Story:

Nice blog post.

The Flu:

Managed to cram in a whole lot of tropes about dystopian futures.

(Not) Your Average Chat:

Give this dude a generic light-novel publishing contract, stat!

The Beginning: My Orgasmic Seventeenth Summer:

It actually made me half hard, so it gets points from me.

[Dark_Sage]

@ whatever the first one was

Fuck you. Your submission wasn't funny. If you're gonna bitch out, at least make a shitty story that shows you don't care, rather than blog your shitty life to me. You got invited to a wedding? Great. I invite you to jump off a bridge.


@ Not Your Average Chat

Wow, like omg! What a cute (LOL) story!

Seriously? What is this shit?

The intro paragraph reads like the intro to a Nickolodean series. "I'm so average in a way that's not average in the way that average is thought of. Check out The Average Life of Jesse, weeknights on Nick!" But at least Nick shows have their characters get into wacky hijinks. This story would have been at least readable if that had been the case. Unfortunately for me, the author tried to take in a totally different direction.

Oh, before I rip this story's vagina apart like a group of black guys who see a white girl at a rap concert, I just wanna let you know that a parody has to be funny for the "It's a parody" excuse to work.

“Hey, would you like to go home together?”
“I can’t hear you through my AT-field.”

Oh, what wit. What hilarity. This ranks right up there along the all-time greats, such as

Oh hey, we should be friends.
Oh, I'm sorry, I have to go Poketraining with my Pokemon because you know this is a Pokemon reference.

and

What did you get on your test score?
Oh, my test score is OVER 9000!!!!

Amazing. I don't know how long it took the author to think of that one, but I can't see more than half a day having gone by for it to finally pop into their head.

And yes, I get that the idea is that the main character is average. You repeated the word seven fucking times on the first page. Do not ever fucking do that again. It's tedious and makes my head hurt.

OH COOL MORE ANIME REFERENCES. ASTRO BOY, ANYONE?

You know what? Fuck this, I'm not pissing away my life on a play-by-play commentary.

This story is one of the most pathetically-written pieces of shit I've ever read and I've read Lord of the Rings. I have no clue how the author managed to write this thing up to seven pages, but they at least deserve some kudos for trolling my ass into reading it all.


@ the one with orgasms 'n shit

This is a poor excuse for... well, everything. Let me put it bluntly, if you're trying to get people engaged in your story, don't write like a middle schooler who just found out what a puberty is.

Your writing is atrocious, and considering it's not that hard to write a story about carpet munchers, I'm fucking disappointed.

I wish I didn't have to vote for two entries or I wouldn't even bother voting for this waste of e-ink.


@ The Flu

+1 brofist for you for your unnatural love of the comma.
-1 brofist for writing like a pretentious twat
+1 brofist for STILL managing to write better than the other entries here

Overall? *brofist*

[Sapphire]

Legitimate criticism Dark_Sage, please.

[Sapphire]

Author of The Flu says, "The Bay area (SF) is New Mecca, as there was some confusion".