7b54e1b00d1e994f955ee4d60 Posts

I would call it a request or instruction made during an interview, regardless of your belief that people would normally call it an interview "question."

I was in support of having you and leonard be honorable mentions actually, just for the hilarity of having everyone win. That may have been a bit ridiculous though.

I will PM you my comments and corrections shortly.

Yes, it is no different in that there are essays that make requests of the participants, but a question, or a query, requires a question mark because it is posing something for the participant to answer. "Where do you live? What city were you born in? How old are you?" A request for information is usually asking for elaboration, it can be worded as a question, but if it is not worded as a question, but worded as a request or an order, then it is not a question, it is a request, or an order. "Explain to me where you live. Describe to me what city you were born in. Tell me how old you are." If you want to phrase the sentence as a question, I would suggest instead of saying "Describe a moment when you went beyond the call of duty to help someone," say "Could/Would/May you describe a moment when you went beyond the call of duty to help someone?" Though avoid using "Could/Can" since those usually end up with snarky responses like "Yes."



That would be grammatically acceptable if you decided to do it that way as well. A bit artsy, but your monologues tend to get like that anyway.



I believe you could elastically stretch the definition to work the way you have, but it still sticks out to me as being just a bit improper. Merely my comment that it was a poor word choice was noted because I felt that there were alternatives that fit in better than "decided" such as "deduced," "concluded," or even simply "felt."



No, I've totally ignored all comments and parodies of works so as to keep my edits and opinions my own. If you would like, I can skim it over, but I won't critique it seriously.

Good to hear! I think with your abilities, you should be able to handle it well.

Also, the judges making "non-entries" has been done before, in our 2013 Winter Writing Contest. They were horridly depressing. It fit in well with the theme. I also believe leonard wrote one last year as well. So, you're more than welcome to do so.

Entertaining monologue quite akin to noire-type mystery thrillers. The involvement of mystery, asking questions with few logical answers, the supernatural beings present in many historical horrific tales, this entry does a great job of aligning with the themes, in addition to keeping interestingly bizarre, along with the jaded narrative that we have come to expect from leonard. A fine entry.

Here is every error I found, which is honestly not too many. I'm rather impressed overall:



You need to use the hyphen to connect words that don't make grammatical sense on their own. If you were to only use one of the words and not the other and it doesn't make sense, then they need to be hyphenated and connected. "Freckled-face and ginger-haired individual."



Same issues as above, but also missing the word "a" after "also" and before "picture."



I believe there should be a comma after "curiosity."



The issue here is that you proclaim that to be a "question" that the applicants should answer, but that is not a question, it is a request. This is a big problem because you continually refer to it later as a question when it isn't one:



Also that last one, you use a comma when you should use a period.



"All the more gloomy" isn't the term you should be using, rather the correct form is "made even gloomier."



"Decided" is a poor word choice because seeing Hennessey walking mindlessly into the den and figuring that he is done for isn't a decision, it is a deduction.



"Lies" is the correct form.



"Hideous-looking."



"In" is not necessary and should be removed.

Thank you to everyone for your participation this summer! I really enjoyed everyone's entries and now that the winners have been announced, I will reveal my comments and corrections to those who request it, in their thread or in private.

Congratulations to Yanker and xninebreaker for winning your subscriptions! You did marvelously.

To Yanker, that is a wonderful idea. It's so wonderful that we've even done it in the past. As I recall, we've had Valentines and Halloween writing events with no prizes before, I even submitted works to them. We didn't do them this past year or so since the users who initiated them became inactive. I might as well do that, but I usually like to reserve myself for winter time. Shame that there won't be another summer contest from Cinia, but I hope those of you will look forward to winter. And actually, since you won this past winter, Yanker, I'm extending to you the right to judge alongside myself and Cinia (the other winner) if you wish. I sponsor the prizes myself and more people usually are active around then anyway. Are you going to be available around December-January? More for January since users have all of December to write, we only judge after the deadline of New Years. I'm also thinking that since the number of participants has gone down, that makes us able to extend the word limit as well. Those of you awaiting winter can look forward to that.

My experience with ERPing/cybering is actually decently vast. I started on AIM during my teen years with people I met from RP chat rooms who were also into it, but it wasn't anything intense or long-lived. Eventually I stopped using AIM altogether and used video games.

Interestingly enough, I also did some ERPing on Neverwinter Nights, downloading the nude mods, and the hand mods that made it so your fists weren't blocks. That was kind of fun, but also not too long-lasting. The adult theme'd RP servers are some of the only ones that exist today, and many are specifically French, funny enough. Ever since Gamespy shut down though, you have to use alternate methods that allow you to connect to a peer-2-peer network so you can access servers, like NWNlist. Neverwinter Nights 2 also has a decent selection, but it's the less-optimized, though prettier cousin. I haven't used these for those purposes in almost a decade though.

After that, I kind of put ERPing on the back burner as my love for hentai manga and doujinshi consumed me, I came to FAKKU, and here we are... Until recently.

I actually got subbed to World of Warcraft by a friend this summer and started playing it legitimately for the first time. Naturally, being a literary-inclined individual, I created some characters on the more highly-populated RP servers, and there is a pretty active and diverse collection of people who ERP there, and since the game is now free up until a point, you can use it to RP with little investment besides the giant download. If you are a free account, there are some restrictions that you have to get around, but it's easy enough. Mainly with the download of a Roleplay addon that allows you to view custom RP profiles, you can read some pretty interesting people's characters or desire to RP certain settings or scenarios. Some of it can be cringe-worthy, as you stated, to most people. (I don't really care, I've outgrown the insecurities of finding things "cringy," especially being a hentai fan, it's kind of hard to judge others.) But if you can get passed that, there are many people who just want to ERP randomly, but there are also a lot of people who ERP really weird things you may never have thought of or wanted to think of before. Not that I mind, but some people might. Like RPing as futas, or animals, or desiring "bad ends" to their RPs where it ends in vore or slavery or things like that. It can get dark, but some people can be fairly normal too.

It's actually because I was doing this for a time that I learned of f-list, or made more aware of it at least, since many users link to their f-list profiles from the game's RP addon. It seemed to me that f-list is just a template, though allows customization, which is good. Whether or not "furries" use it are of little consequence since its purpose is really just to outline your fetishes (or your character's) more specifically in case anyone is interested in similar things. Then again, I only really dealt with it because it was included in people's RP profiles to give examples of things they like or don't like, which can be helpful when you're in an inn with 50 people and you're not sure what someone's into or not. If you decide to explore this further, I can give you a lot more advice, but that's the basic side of it.

Outside of that, I wouldn't know where to point you to find dedicated ERP communities other than Googling for them. You can find some pretty interesting places just by trying that and checking sites out, forum-based or real-time chats. The issue with easy to find and access real-time places is that you're really rolling the dice on what you'll find there. Sometimes you find the really talented RPers who are detailed, but other times you'll find the illiterate tweens exploring their sexuality, and of course that's a no-go. That's also where you find the simple casuals who just dip into RPing and barely use description or those who have very typical scenarios they want to act out, like high school setting or doctor-patient teacher-student roles, or taboo settings like mother-son stepdad-daughter, you name it. For some people, that's their thing though so I won't really judge what they do if they like it.

I think you're best trying to find a community that is account-based where users have profiles that are capable of being very descriptive and has good customization, linking to something like f-list, for example.

Lastly, you won't be blacklisted or mocked for such a thing (I won't mock you, at least). We may not be allowed to cyber here, but it's not exactly forbidden to talk about. I mean, this is an adult site, after all. There are much odder things to discuss, but I'm having trouble finding something that's so wrong that it wouldn't be up for discussion. I can't really think of anything. But that may be because I was a psych major and these things seem very natural to me. As long as you're not breaking the law, I suppose. Best of luck figuring it out.

I'm looking forward to reading everyone's entries. I hope you come up with some nice creepy tales for everyone to enjoy a few months early of the scariest time of year.

Best of luck, and remember to proofread thoroughly!

Because pure love transcends class, and the mature look is great too:

The Night the Anemone Blooms by SAVAN

This is really exciting! Even more than releasing an HD touch up, to have Mr. Maeda actually go back and modernize the art is certainly more than expected. I hope the Kickstarter is successful and that it meets all the stretch goals as well. We need the entire series to come out in full.

Best of luck to the publication team, and to Maeda-sensei as well. Looking forward to seeing how the project develops!

Third person past tense is the de facto style for narrative prose. It's also the easiest to read and follow from the view of a reader who looks into the world from an objective standpoint. However, there are strengths to writing in first person present if your goal is to help facilitate the perspective of the main character as your priority.

In third person past tense, you make the story about a world. In first person present, you make it about a person and their life at that moment. There are motives and reasons for both, but what it ultimately comes down to are your literary goals and what you feel more comfortable with. Although, perhaps your goal is to use one you're less comfortable with for practice.

Either way, I'll respond to this in the same unhelpful way that I usually do when someone asks me for stylistic advice, and that is that it's entirely up to you, as it should be. People will have their own preferences for either style and you should not place such heavy weight on opinionated stances when making such a crucial decision as allowing your audience to decide your literary style for you.

That chuuni style is pretty humorously poetic and unique though.

Hnnng, man. You killed it with that ending. Many people would call it sappy, but that is perfect in my eyes. A tough battle, on the verge of death, and pulled away surviving, but not without a cost. Some characters grew a lot, while others stayed as likable as they originally were. You worked hard to produce this, and you followed through and finished it. I think you should be proud of it and of yourself, and even if you won't follow through with publication, it has helped you grow and practice a great deal. You will always have it to look back to.

Congratulations, and well done.

As is necessary with my posts, here are a few areas I noticed that could be improved:





I suggest a revision of this sentence. Maybe you just need to insert "and" between "it" and "flies"



I think it should be "I think he's a pretty decent bloke..."

I think it was sufficient. My previous comment reveals that I didn't necessarily see it coming, but I also could put together the logic in previous chapters, and also your recollections in this one, that it wasn't created out of thin air. I still think Dracula should have detected it from her since he spent so much time close to and torturing her, but I'll let it slide.

No errors to report here, just take your time with the next few chapters and go out with a bang. Oh, and then please give it a proper resolution too.

Not too bad of a plot development, though I bet you will sadden those who expected the hero to win so easily. Will be interesting to see how this develops, though. You'd best not disappoint.

Speaking of disappointment, I somewhat expected Judith to have been turned by Dracula merely for fun. That level of sadistic corruption would have been welcome coming from him. I'm also not even sure why Bran even locked Alice's manacles in the first place. If he planned to fight him from the start, then there was no reason to actually secure them. This doesn't change the plot much since she can attack him and be stopped in the same manner.

I did find it interesting that the lore of this world is that Vladimir Dracula is the first vampire, which is kind of expected, but I'm also a big fan of White Wolf's Vampire the Masquerade pen and paper RPG in which the biblical figure Cain is the father of all vampire clans, cursed with the mark of Cain (vampirism) from committing the first sin. Keep to your own lore though, I'm appreciating it.

That said, the necessary fixes:





into the wall





He says this in his previous monologue:



There's only a small difference. Change it more or leave out the redundant question.

You're progressing things just fine at a reasonable pace. This is a novel, not a television show. It has an end. That being said, I can truly feel the rising crescendo of this piece with those two chapters. It's also a pleasant sight to see such dramatic progress in everyone's character development, from Bran and Alice, even Shizuka. This is the moral meat of this tale, and as someone who appreciate it, you're doing it decently well.

I will be looking forward to the climax of this story, and the resolution to come. Take your time, now.



Slides.



Error in the sentence structure and logic here. You might mean "just because you have not seen something doesn't mean it doesn't exist."



Them.



Her director is a "she?" Isn't her director Hector? Is that not Hector?



On the sound.

Those are some pretty drastic plot developments. It will be interesting to see how they progress. Not too bad at conveying the emotion of shock here either. It's also interesting to see that you won't shy away from the more horrid stuff like killing off a character.



I take.

Really nice, I actually read through this chapter a lot easier than others, but I suppose that's probably because I prefer this kind of mood and tempo within a story. I also didn't find any errors, so that's a bonus. "Storeys" looked weird to me, but that's because it's British English of course.

I like that you're still working on the story despite how busy you've been. Keep it up. This is a great novel you're writing.

I think I appreciate this little eye of the storm. Looking forward to reading about how they'll survive here.



I'm guessing the second arms is a duplicate in need of deletion, otherwise that's a grotesque image. I'm just imagining her finding a use for all those vampire corpse arms from back at the mall.

Interesting resolution to that action sequence. Will be even more interesting to see how things pan out and where you're taking this.



Coven.



I think this should be "from."



Don't think "it" is necessary.

Well, I think Michael Bay describes this chapter pretty accurately, that was pretty action-packed. I think some of it was pretty hard to follow, but that may be because you rely heavily on descriptive writing when others may want to imagine it in their minds. Of course this creates a conflict, but one that is unavoidable. I think you're fine doing what you're doing, but others may have more trouble than I did.







A question mark.