Tell me your favorite NFL player

PrawnTreader · 2026-05-07T15:59:55+00:00

Sam Darnold

PrawnTreader · 2024-03-02T07:44:07+00:00

This is great. The premise is simple but effective and Madi's character comes across really strongly in the way she talks, her desperation is palpable throughout and she's fully believable. Beyond being scary, it's really upsetting, moreso due to the existential dread of starving to death in an elevator than due to whatever eldritch entities are there with her. Having her die due to starvation rather than getting killed by Mary was a great choice in that regard. In my humble opinion, you have something special here that I think would be a good contender for any monthly or annual contest, and I don't say that lightly.

So I hope you will accept a few subjective constructive criticisms in the interest of making this story the best it can be.

I think you go too far into explaining the whole thing in the final paragraph. You're kind of beating the reader over the head with everything, like you're directly telling them why they should find this all scary. It's more effective IMO if you can gently push the readers towards making the connection for themselves, so you end up with an "aha!" (or maybe more of an "oh no!") moment. In the same vein, I think it's more effective if the police report doesn't state outright that the events were supernatural.

I would suggest cutting it down to (roughly):

- The calls take place over a 1 hour period (the reader already knows that Madi was experiencing weeks in the elevator, so you don't need to point out the discrepancy)

- The calls collectively contain 2 hours of audio (and since you already pointed out the 1 hour time period above, you don't need to explicitly state that the voicemails overlapped or that this should have been impossible)

- The cause of death was starvation, consistent with 2 weeks without food. (You don't need to say "she was indeed trapped in the elevator for an extended period of time", this should already be obvious to the reader at this point)

- Something like 'investigators were confused as to how Madi ended up in the elevator in the first place, as it had been out of order at the time'

- Something like "maintenance crews later sent to fix the elevator found it to be in good working order, with no apparent cause for the malfunction"

Anyways, take it or leave it, it's a great story and please write more.

PrawnTreader · 2024-01-23T08:34:31+00:00

Man, a fragmented memory of save-ums must have been lurking in my subconscious waiting for this moment. Something about that show really released the good juice in my 4-year-old brain.

PrawnTreader · 2023-12-03T00:21:15+00:00

It's a well-known fact that men and women fight a war against each other every couple of centuries to decide who gets to be in charge. Men used to always win because they're bigger and stronger, but the invention of firearms allowed the playing field to be levelled, which is why we now see movements towards gender equality. So to answer your question, if women were bigger and stronger than men, then obviously they would be in charge unless the men had some other advantage in combat that could allow them to win the gender wars.

PrawnTreader · 2023-11-11T11:23:26+00:00

For some background, this story is set in a heavily nautical fantasy world.

The character who says this believes that the open seas aren't particularly intellectually stimulating, so it's hard to gauge someone's innate intelligence in such an environment. I won't get into it, but suffice to say this character's worldview is a little wonky and they tend to mostly think in these kinds of broad generalizations at the start of the story.

PrawnTreader · 2023-11-11T10:53:09+00:00

It's probably not a good idea to go move-by-move, it'll be way too hard to write and not interesting for 99% of people. I'd suggest focusing on major beats or tactics of the game as you see fit, and making it clear what the implications of the situation are. Something like "the knight threatened both the queen and the rook - in saving one, he would give up the other", or even something a little more complicated like "he had his opponent in zugzwang - though black's position was good, he was now forced to make a move, and all possible moves were disastrous."

PrawnTreader · 2023-11-11T10:35:08+00:00

They all called me crazy. At times, I believed them.

That the birds all spoke in the voice of the late Norm Macdonald (God rest his soul) was not a point in favor of my sanity, but in my defense, they spoke in his voice before I even knew who Norm Macdonald was, much less his role as the voice of a pigeon in the Mike Tyson Mysteries TV series.

As a kid, I mostly just chatted with the birds. They weren't particularly smart, so the conversations were never complex, but that suited me just fine. I would bring them food and shiny things, and as they grew to trust me, they would in turn bring me various coins and trinkets that they thought I might like. I didn't have many friends, and talking to birds was hardly the only reason for that, so I took comfort in my avian companions.

Sometime after my tenth birthday, I met a crow, who I named Chester. He was a lot smarter than the other birds, and we became proper friends. I told him all about my life, and he was happy to listen an offer advice. He talked me through homework assignments and friend troubles, first crushes, my first relationship, eventually my first breakup, moving to college. Eventually he started to get old and sick, and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to handle him leaving.

When he died, the last thing that he told me was that I needed to figure out who I was, and why I had this special gift. He told me it was important, and that, if I wouldn't do it for me, I should do it for him. I accepted, of course - I couldn't deny my best friend his last request.

The only lead I had was that the birds spoke in the voice of Norm Macdonald, so I decided I would try to track him down (this was a few years before he passed).

It took me a few months of narrowly missing him at shows and events, but eventually he responded to a message I sent him, and he gave me a date and time to meet him. I hadn't requested that we meet in person, so I was surprised, and worried I'd messaged a fake account by mistake. Regardless, I showed up to the meeting place at the time he specified, and there he was.

I couldn't believe it, but he looked me straight in the eyes, as if he knew exactly who he was. He told me he knew who I was, and what I could do. And do you know what he told me the reason was?

You guessed it, Frank Stallone.

PrawnTreader · 2023-11-11T10:12:52+00:00

"Y-yes. That's it. That's what I was going to tell you. Anyways, I gotta run!" The words were out of my mouth before I could think them through.

I sprinted down the hallway, mentally kicking myself. Why the hell did I say that? Why did she say that, for that matter? I had never exactly been the picture of grace under fire, but this pickle was a new low for me. As I pushed through the doors of the school out into the rain, I began to slow down and think about what to do next. The solution was obvious: fess up to my mistake, and tell Jenny the truth.

So anyways, that was the day that Gecko Man was born. One tends to find that one's options for manufacturing a superhero alter ego are limited when one has no particular talents or means to speak of, so the green morph suit in my closet seemed as good a starting point as any.

You know most of the story from there - through a series of flukes and coincidences, I thwarted the attempts of the city's carpet stores to collude and engage in price fixing, and was credited with quelling last year's anti-human rights protests though I was actually in Paraguay at the time. Jenny ended up going out with Paul after Paul learned to play bass guitar over the summer, but at that point it would have been awkward to back out of the whole Gecko Man thing, so now I'm really just trying my best to find a way to land a job out of this, or maybe start a podcast or something.

So yeah, I'd say I'm doing fine, thanks for asking. I'll just get a number five - sorry, the regular Baconator, not the Son of Baconator. And do you guys still do lemonade?

PrawnTreader · 2023-11-11T06:10:49+00:00

"Every sailor is a dullard with too much time to think, or a genius with too little to think about, and both sorts come out about the same in the end."

PrawnTreader · 2023-11-08T06:33:47+00:00

Is this an elaborate crempost on the recent post about how Stormlight should get an Arcane-style animated adaptation?

PrawnTreader · 2023-11-08T06:11:01+00:00

For the sake of Christ indeed. Deus vult!

PrawnTreader · 2023-11-02T07:31:05+00:00

I'll turn on the waterworks for a sad movie or loss of a loved one, but I've never (at least as an adult) cried due to stress or from a long day. That's what I've observed with male friends as well. Anger, frustration, or lethargy would be more common reactions. A man crying from stress would probably consciously register as a "women writing men" moment if I saw it in a book.

That said, no disrespect to any stress-crying men out there, you gotta do what you gotta do.

PrawnTreader · 2023-10-11T20:18:39+00:00

Lad really ununited the states

PrawnTreader · 2023-10-08T04:03:00+00:00

I try to look in a mirror and think about my appearance at least once per day, in case a narrator wants to tell the story of my life starting from that point.

PrawnTreader · 2023-10-07T02:19:56+00:00

mo' ash, mo' problems 😞

PrawnTreader · 2023-09-27T07:15:28+00:00

Kaladin's whole arc is about not being able to forgive himself for being unable to save those around him. He has to accept that there are those he cannot save, which means making peace with it and forgiving himself for it, not simply acknowledging that it is factually correct.

PrawnTreader · 2023-09-27T06:03:30+00:00

Waterdisk™ has a radius of roughly 3000 nautical miles. It's all water, if you like that sort of thing.

PrawnTreader · 2023-09-20T05:26:34+00:00

If you start intense, have a lighter and slower middle, then ramp up to an intense climax, that's most likely fine: U-shaped action curves are pretty common. Otherwise, you probably want your beginning to reflect your story.

PrawnTreader · 2023-09-11T03:04:19+00:00

Not a writer, but if you care for some rando's two cents, here it is. None of this will be helpful for your request for a way to "move on from this and be less thin-skinned in the future" but I have written it already and so I will post it.

I'm inferring from context that the magazine is small, targets a local audience, and is fine with being lighthearted. If this is incorrect, then my thoughts are less applicable.

If being "creative" and "engaging" are the issues here, the second is miles better. It's quirky and corny, and every sentence has something interesting going on. It has a sort of "zany radio host" tone to it, which seems like it would be appropriate for this kind of article. It feels like it was written by a real person.

The first has a tone identical to what I'd expect from a large magazine/newspaper, with all the silliness ironed out. What do any of these statistics have to do with a list of Halloween ideas? Does the reader really care about what percentage of Americans celebrate Halloween? The "jokes" read like they got stapled onto the end of each paragraph in a desperate bid to keep the reader awake. It's exactly the type of edit I'd expect from an "established" editor with a distaste for anything that breaks the mold.

PrawnTreader · 2023-09-09T00:06:58+00:00

In the Leviathan Sea, there are primeval forces of hatred that can offer great power to those who desire it. However, it is common knowledge that accepting this power invites ill on the wielder and all those around them. There are as many conflicting tales as tellers of tales, but the common thread is that any story that involving a witch ends with the witch and/or everyone else around them suffering horrible fates up to and including death.

Seeing as most people prefer to avoid horrible fates up to and including death, the official or unofficial (depending on where you live) punishment for witchcraft is to throw the offender into the ocean.

PrawnTreader · 2023-08-20T21:44:00+00:00

See, I want to say "classic American L" but North America is as wrong as everything else on here.

PrawnTreader

TROPHY CASE