SGInc Story Workshop 1.9 Poll and Comments

Well. a respectable turnout, at least!

Well. a respectable turnout, at least!

What do you mean "at least"?

It means I haven't had time to read and rate all the entries. But seven sure beats the last two workshops, which attracted only four and two (!) entries.

I haven't had a chance to read the stories yet myself. (Special apologies to ace, who sent me an advance copy of his.) But I look forward to reading them this weekend. Feedback, and a vote, will follow.

In the meantime, thanks to all the contributors!

I voted for Infinity Crisis Chapter 2 by DKC, it was a hard choice for me because I relay liked A Little Bit of Fun Chapter 8 by Conceptfan. But I really relay liked the first chapter so much so that it is one of my favoritist stories evar! And the second chapter did not disappoint me either.
All the stories entered were great jobs, but I based my vote my particular likes and the DCK and Conceptfan come the closest to them.

To: Ace191
Re: Turnabout (Chapter 12)

While I've always enjoyed the humor and inventiveness of your stories, your style sometimes seemed a bit unpolished. Here, you show some real improvement in that department. Your prose is smoother, your dialogue is more natural, and your imagery is more effective. You do a good job juggling your various plot elements (including two nicely differentiated seduction scenes). And the humor and inventiveness haven't flagged. (Brainiac condemned to watch soap operas? Ha!)

But -- IMHO -- I think it's time you started reeling this fish in, and I'm pleased to see that the final paragraph of this chapter promises a showdown between Clark and Ultrawoman. As always, I'm curious to know where you're taking this story next!

There was just one sour note: Why did Jimmy Olsen get the super serum? I can see how it fits into Ultrawoman's grand plan to aggravate Clark, but read the top of the screen -- this is SuperWOMENMania! Couldn't Lois have given the serum to, say, her sister Lucy instead? ("Why, Clark, an ultrawoman like me needs a supergirl to confide in ...")

My $ .02 --
Argonaut

To: BW
Re: Conspiracy Theory

I was glad to learn that you were planning to enter this workshop, and especially glad to find out that your entry was a continuation of "Home Invasion" -- a story you wrote at my urging!

Your stories about Melinda and John are a refreshingly different contribution to our "genre." They're a happily married couple, of which the wife happens to be a super-heroine -- and neither one of them seems to have any problem with that. The scenario may not offer the kind of dramatic conflict you find in, say, a Marknew story -- but it does make for a nice change of pace.

You've established just the right tone for your stories -- light and amusing (while avoiding the excessive jokiness of "This Is A Job For -- "). It actually does remind me of Moonlighting, a little. In fact, I've begun to picture Cybil Shepherd and Bruce Willis as Melinda and John (even though Melinda is a redhead).

Two suggestions, for what they're worth: (1) Your descriptions of Melinda in super-action tend to be somewhat perfunctory. Try punching them up a bit. Aim for vividness and effective detail. (2) So far, Melinda and John seem to be taking her transformation a little too matter-of-factly. Now that John's name has been cleared, maybe your next story could show Melinda exploring her newly gained super-powers, and John getting accustomed to the idea of being married to a super-woman.

And you should ask admin to number your stories so that readers can follow them in chronological order (I'm talking about dramatic time, not order of composition).

My $ .02 --
Argonaut

To: Brantley
Re: His New Super Girlfriend

I thought your criticism of My Super Ex-Girlfriend was somewhat misdirected -- instead of criticizing the movie on its own terms, you seemed to wish it were more like an "AU" story. So I was curious to find out what kind of sequel you'd come up with.

Well, I was surprised -- pleasantly -- to find that you'd written a story that builds naturally on the movie, remains true to the characters, and maintains its light tone. I can see your story being used as the treatment for a sequel that will, alas, probably never be made.

Actually, I'd qualify that statement in one respect: The "gory bits," though mild by the standards of, say, a Conceptfan story, did seem out of keeping with your story's overall tone. And the terrorists were a little too realistic, and their plan too plausible, for a piece of escapist fantasy -- IMO.

Overall, however, a highly enjoyable yarn, mixing humor with straightforward super-heroine action. And it was fun imagining a cutie like Anna Faris as G-2!

I caught your reference to H. G. Wells, by the way -- a nicely apposite allusion, since Tono Bungay is a satire on entrepreneurship and advertising!

My $ .02 --
Argonaut

That's it for now. If the other three stories are as enjoyable as the three I've already read, this will be one of the best workshops ever!

To: ManRam
Re: Latexxa (Part 2)

The scenario is kind of generic -- girl gains super-powers and goes on rampage of death and destruction -- and there may be a few too many superlatives and exclamation points. But I've always enjoyed stories that depict the sheer exhiliration of suddenly gaining super-powers, and yours certainly delivers in that respect. And your prose, though occasionally a bit over-the-top, is clear and vivid, and the action is easy to imagine. Plus, I enjoyed the way Lexa played on the phrase "hit the floor." A solid entry in what I think is one of the best sets of workshop stories we've seen in a while.

ManRam --> Manny Ramirez? Red Sox fan, by any chance?

My $ .02 --
Argonaut

OK, for what it's worth.... Here's my take on the SGI Workshop 1.9 entries.

I have to start by congratulating Ace, Argo, Brantley, BW, DKC and ManRam for taking part. "Real life" can be a time and energy consuming distraction from the important stuff and finding the necessary hours, opportunities and inspiration is a real challenge. Thanks for overcoming it to provide me with some great entertainment guys!

Here's my personal opinion on the stories (if anyone's interested). If you haven't read the entries yet beware of the spoilers (and hurry up and read them!)

In alphabetical order by title...

Conspiracy Theory by BW.
This was a good story, with a solid, credible plot. The characters and their motivations were clear in every scene and most of the action, especially the garage scene, was very easy to picture in my mind. Plus, there was the excitement of finding out if John would manage to clear his name.

At times, I felt the quality of writing did not match the first part of this story. The narrative was a little too simple in places, which gave the read a bit of a jerky feel rather than a smooth flow from sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph. This was especially apparent in the action scenes involving Melinda. I'd like to have had more descriptions of her using her superpowers. Personally, I think the story could have been a lot sexier if there'd been more detail depicting how she looked and how she moved.


His New Super Girlfriend by Brantley T. Elkins.
Wow! There's a lot going on here. A terrorist plot, which turns out to be a terrorist sub-plot, relationships (between G1 and G2, between the girls and their men and so forth) and a long what-happens-after section once the main plot has been resolved. For me, this meant the characterisation was spread a little thin and I found it quite hard to care about any of the personnel as a result.

Brantley is a lovely writer, and his sentences read and flow beautifully. Even though I wasn't enjoying the story itself, I had to admire much of his prose. It just that, in my opinion, put together, the sentences made a clumsy and complicated whole. The story seemed to be built around the terrorist attack on the shop. OK, that was revealed to be just a side-show, so we then got the girls dealing with the real menace after the end of the shop scene. That store scene went on a long time, with the actual "juicy" bit over in a couple of sentences. Some more description of G2 taking down the terrorists would've been great.

Anyway, after that, the girls take care of the big ship and the really dramatic danger of the dirty bomb in an undramatic way compared with the big build-up in the shop scene. That feels like the natural end, but there's a whole other story tacked on after that, once the drama is over, with dry details of G1 and G2's lives. Personally (and it might just be me) by then it all felt a bit anti-climatic and I just didn't care what commercial contracts the superheroines signed. G1 bearing her breasts on the internet should have been much more sexy than the way it came over. There's footage of her tits being shot on-line? Shame that Brantley didn’t take a paragraph or two to actually describe exactly what that looked like…

Argo in his comments above made mention of the relationship between plot realism and a fantasy story. I've been debating with myself whether I should mention this, but I feel so strongly about it that I have to. Just as many of us see our fantasies as a temporary escape from the all-too-real fears and horrors of our lives, I'd like my fantasy fiction to steer clear of contentious politics. There were a number of political opinions expressed in the story which were tossed in with sweeping, brief generalisations. What really bugs me is the way you presented these as facts, rather than the opinions of characters. Included amongst these was a particularly distasteful likening of would-be-mass-murders (terrorists) with people with very left wing views (communists). This was given as a fact in an almost throw-away line. Leaving aside the ridiculous and frankly, offensive implications, this has no place in a piece of ubergirl fantasy fiction.


Infinity Crisis chapter 2 by DKC
Flipping heck! Would it have killed DKC to proof read before submitting? I know time's tight, but he'd surely have spotted a load of typos with just a quick glance-through. Check out the opening two sentences: "Thomas Voukewn walked through the empty hallways of Page High School. It was seven O’clock and the schools hallways were empty." Er, so were there a lot of people in the corridors then?

My only other complaint about this was it was too short. I had a real feeling of disappointment when the page stopped scrolling down. I suppose I wanted it to go on forever. This was my favourite entry. Natasha is (duh) my kinda gal and, well, I found Inf Cris 2 an extremely sexy read from start to finish. All her scenes were brilliant. She has just the right attitude, her dialogue is completely credible and the descriptions of her killer body helped me picture her so well in my mind that I couldn't stand up for twenty minutes after I finished reading.

The plots are clear and believable but imaginative. I loved Natasha's menacing of Jarred, and the "candy-store" line she uses to humiliate him without even using her powers. I wish you'd made more of the superbreath scene, but that's just my taste, and to be fair, even Natasha was disappointed! The final scene was great. I thought Jarred's reluctance to involve Natasha with the bullies which was worn away by the bullies themselves was terrifically handled. And what a brilliant last line!

I can't wait to find out what's in Infinity Man's secret room, and what Natasha does about it. (After you tell us what she does to those poor, poor bullies!)



Letexxa Part 2 by ManRam
The best thing about this as has been mentioned, was Lexxa's self-discovery. This was great. I could really feel her wonder and excitement as she finds out what her body can do. I also enjoyed the descriptions of the heroine - very hot.

The action was well-handled, too. I could picture everything that happened. The floor-smashing bit was creative and highly entertaining. Of course, she's a bad girl so I enjoyed her flaunting her power and I thought the violence was well-portrayed and exciting to read.

This was a very short entry, and I'd have liked more descriptions of the action and a lot more of Lexxa's thoughts and feelings. I felt a bit short-changed in that there's not enough there to build an impression of the lead character's personality. Still, great stuff!



T4000+3m by Argonaut
Props to Argo for probably the cleverest idea to come out of this workshop - 5 different mini-stories, each focussing on different "types" of ubergirl. And because the characters are all familiar from the interactive story on these forums, we don't get bogged down in the background to each one. Normally when someone tries to be all things to all people they fail on all accounts. But the vote is showing that Argo's successfully managed to appeal to fans of good girls and bad girls. No mean feat, that!
Argo's usual quality writing style is present. His depictions of scenes, his sentence flow and his dialogues all make for an enjoyable, entertaining read. The man’s a good fiction writer and he seems to be getter better.

The five self-contained mini-stories format does have a drawback in that none of the stories have any time for plot or dramatic development (this is partly substituted by the reader having to fill in the gap between the characters as Argo depicts them and their last appearances in the interactive story). But there's no single, satisfying "tale" where we follow a character through a series of events.

My favourite bit, of course, was the very beginning. I was getting so turned-on imagining the spoilt uber-uber-princess and her unstoppable selfishness. Then my bubble was burst and the slightly school-ma'am-ish morality of Paris' jailer sent my "excitement level" (cough) back to zero.

The "plastics" scene also started wonderfully. Again, I was simmering nicely. I almost came to the boil when Aaron was shoved against the locker. But the spell broke when the three girls turned out to be crap. Not only was the finger-wagging, holier-than-anything teacher a massive turn-off, but the girls meekly accepted her admonishment. What kind of bad girls do that? They outnumbered her 3 to 1! Why didn't that confrontation become a school-destroying fight? Argo's one of our most talented writers, but his impressive characterisation skills seem more at home with "good" girls...

Anyway, I'm nit-picking because T4000+3m is a very well written, entertaining and imaginative work. The voting speaks for itself.


Turnabout Chapter 12 by Ace191
All the way through Turnabout, one thing has come across more than anything else: Ace's fantastic sense of mischievous fun. Happily, Chapter 12 continues this trend.

If I found DKC's story the most sexy, then this one was the most sheer fun. Lois is a extremely imaginative and wonderfully wicked femme at times. The situations she throws the other characters into are enjoyable, always entertaining and usually completely unexpected. I read this with a smile on my face a lot of the time.

I think Ace's writing had improved since the first chapters. I feel there's a nicer flow now which adds to the delight of reading.

On the negative side, this is crying out for more descriptions. The action is covered sometimes in the briefest possible terms, and personally I think this is a lost opportunity for injecting some sexiness along with all the fun. Oh well, I can't have it all...


Overall, a great workshop with something to like or admire in every story. Thanks again, guys!

Just a few comments on the comments regarding "His New Super Girlfriend."

Argonaut is probably right about the discount store scene being too gory -- it certainly wouldn't have been used in an actual movie sequel, unlikely as the prospects for that are. But I stand by the banana boat terrorists -- after all, there was a terrorist missile heading for New York in the movie (Jenny's petulant attitude in that scene was something I especially didn't like.).

As for Conceptfan's complaints, well, the story -- like the movie -- was supposed to be about the characters, and what he regards as anti-climactic was justified in that regard, I think. As for not going further into Jenny's bullets-and-boobs video... well, that sort of thing's been done to death. But the illustrated version of the story at my site has a terrific manip by Shadar that might make him happy:

brightempire.com/hannah.jpg

By the way, congratulations are in order for Argonaut for his landslide victory. Transformatrix sure has legs as well as breasts! And it was great to see such entertaining fare from the rest.

But what happened to that OTHER workshop?

Infinity Girl is f*^%ing hot. Ouch.

DKC gets the vote.

To: conceptfan
Re: A Little Bit of Fun ( Chapter 8 )

Thanks for the props, cfan -- and right back at ya!

Your story featured quality prose, vivid imagery, and a blow-by-blow account of some over-the-top ubergirl action -- everything your readers have come to expect. (The absence of a "novelty factor" is probably why it didn't receive more votes in the poll.) The alternating point-of-view kept the narration from getting monotonous, and you obviously devoted a lot of care even to the scenes that didn't involve the two girls directly. (I enjoyed the rivalry between the two generals -- was it meant to be a parallel to the contest between the two ubergirls?)

I do find Tara and Lyda harder to distinguish now that they're lovers. In the earlier chapters, one of them was the "alpha girl," always taking the initiative and prodding her somewhat reluctant friend. (You see? I've forgotten which was which!) I don't see why that couldn't still be a feature of their relationship. Maybe a future chapter could present a "lovers' spat" between the two of them.

The one thing I often miss in your ongoing series is plot development -- a sense that the individual episodes are part of a larger story-arc. In particular, I'd love to see some of your girls go public -- display their power to the general population rather than individual males or isolated groups of men. I envision something like a scene out of a 1950's science-fiction movie, in which an entire city flees in terror from a flying saucer or giant grasshopper -- except, of course, that it would be, say, Empress Ria instead. (Hint, hint!) That would give you a chance to really pull the stops out!

Anyway, the latest chapter of "A Little Bit of Fun" was a whole lot of fun. I don't know how you'll keep the next chapter from being a rehash of this one, but I look forward to finding out!

My $ .02 --
Argonaut

To: DKC
Re: Infinity Crisis ( Chapter 2 )

Like conceptfan, I found the prose a bit choppier, and mechanical errors more numerous, than in your other stories. I got the impression that the deadline was impending and you hit the "Submit" button while the story was one revision shy of completion. Hey, I think most writers have been there -- myself included.

Besides, you delivered the goods -- terrific displays of ubergirl power and a main character that even a "nice ubergirl" fan like me can appreciate. I don't see Natasha as a sociopath like one of conceptfan's girls, but rather a self-centered adolescent who wants to have fun with her powers and settle some scores -- a little bit like Marknew's Jilly Milly, perhaps?

Additional props for spot-on dialogue, an intriguing plot-line that ought to carry the story a long way, and a cliffhanger that has me hungry for the next chapter. (I enjoyed Jarrett's change of attitude in the final paragraph -- from "C'mon, let's go" to "Fuck it, they're all yours.")

My $ .02 --
Argonaut

P.S. Feedback on this batch of stories has been somewhat meager -- surprising (and disappointing) considering how many strong entries were submitted. C'mon, people! You don't have to write lengthy critiques -- just a single line on your favorite story, or a few words of encouragement to a new writer. If you're a writer yourself, I'm sure you know how much it can mean. If not -- believe me, it can make a writer's day ... and give him some motivation to go back to the keyboard.

Special congratulations to Argonaut whose story, "Transformatrix 4000 - Three Months Later" won the largest number of votes in the poll.

Golly! And the other stories were all good!

I see that "naughty ubergirls" and "nice ubergirls" are running neck-and-neck in Yosh's poll ... so it probably helped that my story offered both.

I'm curious -- did readers have any strong preferences among the five "mini-stories"? If so, perhaps you could take a moment to tell me which one? No need to give a reason -- just post "the Plastics chapter" (or whatever) on this thread, or send me a private message. Please and thank you!

I'd like to launch a new "T 4 K" story line soon, and your responses may help me decide on a direction for it.

Transformatrix 4000 -- Three Months Later


More Part III for me please.

Argonaut, I just read "Transformatrix 4000 -- 3 Months Later". Like was said in one of the previous comments, the Paris Hilton section was incredible. I've always wanted to write a story with her, but after reading the part you wrote, I don't think I could quite do her justice.

The short story with the three cheerleaders was also quite good.

Can't say that I like how either story ended, but that's just based on my personal preferences. Regardless, excellent job on the whole project.

Thanks, Berkhart!

But remember -- "Transformatrix 4000" is an ongoing, interactive story. None of my chapters has ended as long as long as there's someone out there who might decide to pick up where I left off.