General Discussion Thread

[Prince Cobra]

Attention: the author of the following lines is not an expert at all!

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Timsup2nothin
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I liked "Dead or Dying" . It's hard for me to go out of history background and I appreciate writings who write about simple things. The atmosphere and the characters was excellent work of yours and so was the final. Here I will stop since you can continue with praises like this. Personally, it grabbed me.

"The Seed" was slightly different. Unlike the previous text, I needed more time to comprehend it. Maybe because I do not read much science fiction in English. Note, some of my notes can be a product of this weakness of mine. Yet, even after that reading it carefully it could not move me in the way the first did it. I caught your idea of the disappearing human race, the criticism on how far people can go and then the struggle for survival between the two worlds. I think your idea was to make the reader sympathise the grains. And you did it. And when you have won the reader for your cause I think you wanted to switch back and to make him feel some pity for the human beings, either. I think you also did well here. But somehow these charcters stood too far from the reader. I am really interested if you had planned how to attract the reader in the story.

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MountainTroll

Welcome in the Mead hall!
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Part 1
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It's slightly difficult to comment it. I liked the NATO meaning but I could not catch the rest. Is it a kind of irony? I suspect that but it had something in common with the market situation and in France I am not familiar with. Or maybe the widespread lack of good manners?

I also caught some French-German confrontation but since I favour the Germans (esp. in WW1; historical reasons: Bulgaria was an ally of Germany) you can not rely on my approval :p .

Or maybe, which is also possible, I am going too deep and my ideas have nothing in common with your idea. I'll be glad if you tell me which of my statements are closer to the truth

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Part 2
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Good. It is still slightly like a scheme. However, I still have that feeling for my own writing and I 've been making desperate attempts to make a decent story for almost two years. It also had only one conflict but I doubt the task wanted more than it. I liked it.



It is a good example what life is most of the time.

1) Money is power.

2) Amongst the idealist there are always people who are practical. The Crusades is what comes in my sick from history mind.


3) Is this me or someone else?

[MountainTroll]

Hello Stephen Asen,
You wrote:

Part 1

It's slightly difficult to comment it. I liked the NATO meaning but I could not catch the rest. Is it a kind of irony? I suspect that but it had something in common with the market situation and in France I am not familiar with. Or maybe the widespread lack of good manners?

For those of you who joined later, and didn't do this assignment, the challenge was to build characters (and define their cultures) out of Tamur's minimal requirements 1. A mountain Valley, 2. A World War

It seems that Timsup2Nothin also saw this as an opportunity to break froma traditional setting and try something new (with his sci-fi bacteria battles!).

I was just trying something different as well. I wanted to try fantasy characters that children would relate to, (dwarves, etc) while weaving in the basic motivations behind WWII and the general propaganda game. Kind of like Animal Farm, I guess. - But with a bit more humour. I also wanted to show that casualties in war are not just people or land, but also cultural traditions.

I really like how in this course, I've been able to bounce around and try different genres. (Young Adult Lit, fantasy, drama, historical fiction, etc.)

[MountainTroll]

Ok... here is my non-expert All around assessment of Assignment 9:

Hey Tamur, by the way, I think you should give an extra Cheers with a Mead Cup emote to the stellar submission each week. I would vote for Timsup2nothin's sci-fi work. That was a pretty slick way to interpret the assignment, and assign bacteria as characters.

Stepen Asen - I enjoyed reading your Doukas selection. The characters were all very well described (down to their hair and skin tones). I could picture their movements about the room, and would've kept reading to find out more.
The second selection in Japan was not as clear in my mind with concrete details, but I liked the philosophical ideas you presented towards the end. It gave substance to the story.
The Doukas story compared to the Japan story seemed more like a shallow spy thriller. (Although, for fun summer reading, that is the story I would prefer to read, sitting in the sun with a lemonade in hand.)

So they each had different strengths.


The only other one to comment on was Timsup2Nothin's piece with 3 characters. Over the past assignments, he has shown he has an talent for interspersing dialogue with characters to show their relationships to each other. Do you spend a lot of time eavesdropping on people at parks or restaurants to get your dialogue timing so perfect?

[Timsup2nothin]

The only other one to comment on was Timsup2Nothin's piece with 3 characters. Over the past assignments, he has shown he has an talent for interspersing dialogue with characters to show their relationships to each other. Do you spend a lot of time eavesdropping on people at parks or restaurants to get your dialogue timing so perfect?

No, I just talk a lot!

[Prince Cobra]

Thanks Mountain Troll.