Halloween workshop - Disscussion Thread

Hi all,

here you can discuss the Halloween workshop, if you are going to post spoilers please use the spoiler tag.

Fats

Eight??! It really is kid in a candy store time . I don't have a lot of history with the site to make comparisons, but it seems like the turn out's been really strong over the last year.

I'm about 3/4 done reading through this sack full of treats. Picking which one to vote for is not going to be trivial. A ton of charm and humor along with the scary and macabre.

Thanks for all the participants! Only through a few of them so far but really enjoying the variety and depth of the entries.

ElF

Agent00Soul wrote: Sorry for the stupid question, but where do we vote?

Fats just set up another thread for the voting .

My apologies for my entry which was riddled with typos and a few things that were rather rushed. I'll post a much tighter v2 after voting concludes. Thanks to AuGoose for his editorial services and suggestions!

ElF

lfan wrote: My apologies for my entry which was riddled with typos and a few things that were rather rushed. I'll post a much tighter v2 after voting concludes. Thanks to AuGoose for his editorial services and suggestions!

ElF

Well, you abused the word 'sexy' a bit too much (I counted 5 times in 2 lines), but I think that your piece has a very classic charm to it ... and I noticed you reused the pool balls scen from Awakening

Woodclaw wrote:

lfan wrote: My apologies for my entry which was riddled with typos and a few things that were rather rushed. I'll post a much tighter v2 after voting concludes. Thanks to AuGoose for his editorial services and suggestions!

ElF

Well, you abused the word 'sexy' a bit too much (I counted 5 times in 2 lines), but I think that your piece has a very classic charm to it ... and I noticed you reused the pool balls scen from Awakening

Yeah, I tend to reuse that word a bit much.....as for the pool ball scene, it was actually a bit different in my mind. Though they did both involve a pool table.

ElF

castor wrote: The night of Changes.

We got several of "Girl on Halloween gets her wish granted" and it feels like that at first-but its not. No she gets what she doesn't want. And i liked that. You do a good job of creating the details of your heroine and make her seem like shes about to enter into an ubergirl story-but you do a good job of slowly peeling back the onion of it, and have it turn into a kind of intresting horror comic story, and while the good monster bad monster stuff at the end is maybe a little vauge it does have a neat feel to it.

I can also say this-it inspired me to want to take a stab at this kinda story, which is something that not every story does-so great for inspiring me

This commentary made me scratch my head a bit because I really didn't consider my story being based on a "wish granting" gimmick at all, but I can see what you mean. I'm more interested in understanding why do you think that the confrontation at the end was vague. I know that there are a lot of details I left out because I didn't want to make this story into an info-dump, something I was acutely aware because I decided to go for the path less traveled and make my main character a lycanthrope instead of the usual supergirl we all know and love.

Okay I've finally finished my second reading pass and I'm trying to put down my usual feedback run, although this time I'm both a little biased (guess why ) and a little out of my depth since Halloween isn't that much of big deal for me so I might be missing some obvious elements of some stories (apologies in advance).

All Hallow Eve by Castor

Well let's start with the hard ones. This story is one that really left me cold because I really can't see how it fit the SWM-scape. I'm not fan of BDSM, but I have some friends that are into it and they give me some pointers in that regard. This story dwindle between the acceptable -- the idea that a BDSM relationship is actually based on something more than the basic mistress/slave relationship -- and the completely wrong. Also the Halloween theme seemed a distant element at best, the story could have happened any day of the year if the Owner got the fancy of throwing a party.
Superheroes and sexuality have long history [insert random Wonder Woman joke here], but I got the feeling that this story is just BDSM fiction with a random side-dish of superpowers and almost no female empowerment. One can make the argument that the Owner is the empowered woman here, but I really don't see how secluding herself in a luxirious mansion is a sign of empowerment, no matter how good she is at anything else. This is just my opinion, but I found myself really scratching my head with this one.

Costume Drama by Geekseven

The lovely thing about G7's narrative is the feeling that there's a great deal of world-building behind each one of them that he's not sharing. I can't really put my finger on it, but I got the distinct impression that many of his most recent stories might one day collide into a massive world spanning narrative.
On the subjet of this particular tale I found it quite interesting, but a bit forced. I really enjoyed the wish-granting element that I found very in line with the one key element of Halloween I understand: "Semel in anno licet insanire" (For a day every year is good to go insane). The whole idea behind the masks is to be someone else ina legitimate way and this story took the concept and turned it up to thirteen, which I really liked.
The one bit that left me cold is the "perfect coincidence" of having those two specific character wishing to be one another more or less in the same moment. It's a workable narrative tool, but it felt a bit left to its own devices without a bit more context on the involved characters and their previous encounters.
Still even with that little bit I loved what I read and I can totally go another round with these characters.

Do you dream in color? by Lustmonster

When Lustmonster told me that he was going to participate into this workshop I expected a lot of things, but he managed to surprise me. A lot!
In more than one way this a companion piece to LFan's and The Doc9's stories, it works on the same gimmick, but reversed the point of view, making the final result both the same and completely different. The world-builder in me is screaming: "How the heck is possible to gather all the energy needed for something like that stunt?" but after re-reading I told him to can it and just enjoyed the ride.
The one hard thing in this story is the point of view, being limited to a single character, who is also limited to a single location can be a really hard limit on a writer and a reader. On one hand I would love to get more details and more color to an otherwise unknown quantity (the main character), on the other I don't know if it would have been possible without making some radical changes to the story.
All in all something really unexpected and a pretty brave attempt at something completely different.

“GiVE uS sOMetHiNg GOoD To eAT!” by AuGoose

Beta-reading alert

Venom. In more than one way I've always been suprised he didn't get more used in this community given that it's pretty much a portable power-set with an in-built guide on how to use them ready to be exploited. I guess his "icon of the '90s" reputation is a bit too much.
AuGoose's entry is like a clockwork, every bit of it clicks very neatly into place and the story unfolds in a very clean way, an impressive result for a story that was written in two days or so. I'm a bit on the fence about having the main character getting the "body deal" alongside all the power and tricks, but it's not the end of the world. Goblin is a very natural choice for a villain, given that he's pretty a Halloween themed villain -- although this rendition felt a bit more like the Joker for some reason -- and provides the right amount of lunacy, pumpkins and danger to put the scare into the story.
The one thing that threw me off a bit is the pace, it's not bad at all, but it's a bit uneven, like a montage with some bits of slow motion added in.
Overall a very good story with a rather unique main character.

Neewollah by TheDoc9

Before going any further I have a question: what does the title mean?

For his second outing on this site TheDoc9 delivers a story that is actually quite stunning. At first I wasn't thrilled by the choice of using the Supergirl TV show as a base, but I loved how he snucked bits from other DC stories in to create something that worked. The fact that the story was solved by wisdom rather than violence was like the icing on the cake.
The one downside to the plot, for me is how very predictable the two new supergirls are. While I understand the constriction of working with such a limited timeframe, I would have loved to see their personalities not matching their costumes and having maybe a couple more nuances here and there.
Still for a second story in the genre this a stellar piece and if it's any indication of Doc's potential I'm really stunned.

One Halloween Night by Lfan

One sentence: classic in design and execution. Lfan's entry is everything I'd come to expect from one of our most seasoned members. The story has the feeling and the pacing of many old works back from the SGInc days which is both its charm and its limit. It's beautifully crafted -- in spite of the abuse of the word "sexy" -- and well balanced, but also a tad too predictable. I love this story, even if it's just nostalgia, but I wished it had just a pinch of something more.

The Bargain by TwiceOnTuesdays

The Bargain felt very much like a companion piece to my own entry and this makes me very biased in judging it, because every step of the way I was mentally thinking of how I would have written a certain moment. Tricking the devil (or in this case being tricked) is classic Halloween theme and Twice used it to produce a very classic feeling story, but it has one terrible limitation I had to but head with myself: exposition. The info-dump provided by the main character in the middle of the story was both needed to understand the ending and a pace-killer of the first order. When I reached the end I had to go back and re-read because I felt almost as lost as the Visitor.
Yet the story has its charm and I don't think I could have find an elegant solution to the problem in the short time we had to work with.

In my defense, the "body deal" Megan Moore benefits from is canon - Eddie Brock experiences dramatic physical development of his human form while hosting the symbiote, and several of the later hosts/offspring also shape up nicely. It may just be a device to allow the artists to go back to drawing idealized/exaggerated forms for those characters but it's a real thing in setting .

Neewollah will make more sense when you consider how Mister Myxlptlk is typically undone . Similarly the aliens in One Halloween Night downloading information from Earth's "Central Wall" is hilarious once you ask yourself 'what the hell?'

AuGoose wrote: Neewollah will make more sense when you consider how Mister Myxlptlk is typically undone .

Wait ... oh, right ... well played.

AuGoose wrote: Similarly the aliens in One Halloween Night downloading information from Earth's "Central Wall" is hilarious once you ask yourself 'what the hell?'

Belive it or not, this one I got while reading.

thedoc9 wrote: Woodclaw,

I really like the idea of a "nice" girl being somehow thrust into a villainous role against her will... don't flame me if one of my future stories uses that idea.

Thedoc9

Ideas are free to reuse, as far as I'm concerned.

Although I really didn't consider any of characters a villain, just assholes.

thedoc9 wrote: I really like the idea of a "nice" girl being somehow thrust into a villainous role against her will... don't flame me if one of my future stories uses that idea.

I'd read it!

voting is due to end at of Tuesday if there is extra demand for an extension I'm happy for that to happen.

Fats