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HANDY
Sept 30, 2019 18:36:20 GMT
Post by rockefeller on Sept 30, 2019 18:36:20 GMT
A couple years ago, Rox (who's also a lefty) and his main table-tennis buddy (who's right handed) started playing each other opposite handed. Not all the time. Maybe just every third match. At first it was like starting over, like being a little kid again. The concentration, the challenge, the hilarious mistakes and ridiculously slow pace of the games actually made it all, in some ways, more fun. Now Rox plays most club players right handed, just so it's challenging, but which it still often isn't. He picked it up a lot faster the second time. Moral of this story: Learning is more fun than knowing? Bragging is immature?
Moral of this Handy cap: Hmm... let's see... You have to trust the hand that jerks you off? There ain't no cure for gay? Getting dumped hurts? Humor, like erotica, is pretty damn subjective? Art transcends will, springs as from a mind of its own?
Rocks, who is admittedly not the pointiest pencil in the lift-top desk, never did manage to discern what this cap was trying to say. Like Moses in the desert, the themes seemed to wander and, in the end, inspired little enlightenment. Too cute perhaps. Sexy, but in a pubescent sort of way.
Because it's primarily a humor piece, it seems wrong minded to nitpick character motivation, but the MC's whole opening argument and rationalization for having his right hand replaced with an AI struck The Winky One as rather cherry-picked and shortsighted. Yeah, he could probably still play ping-pong, although serving might be tricky. But obviously he's never boxed, or applauded, or rowed a boat, or played guitar, or swum the crawl or butterfly or any other stroke, or typed on a keyboard, or tied a shoelace, or washed his hand(s). Even sex, as in with another person, to the best of Rox's recollection, tends to involve both hands. Yeah, one could probably still hitchhike and wave goodbye, but wiping one's ass might involve a nontrivial learning curve. So, no, not convinced. And then to have his "useless" hand amputated to work in some factory that exits the storyline within a few pages, well... didn't really seem premeditated. It's fun as a reader to wonder, What happens next? It's fun as a writer, too. But you have to wonder a lot harder and at greater length. Sorry, Rox knows he's just thinking (or whatever passes for thinking in his canister-shaped head) out loud.
The VC's bio and CV is pretty impressive. Dude's intelligent and literate for sure. Punctuation and grammar were tight. Only the comma in "Maybe, I thought..." early on forced him to reread while scratching his ping-pong-ball-sized carbuncle. So Rox is guessing this is either a trunk story (which is fine, Rox has a zillion of em) or a fun-off, one of those "Look Ma! No hands!" pieces we all love to write, but which is, nonetheless and whatever the case, getting a no here.
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HANDY
Sept 30, 2019 20:54:05 GMT
Post by bulldust on Sept 30, 2019 20:54:05 GMT
The Bullmeister has been his living his awesome life blessed for four hooves. Yeah, they’re shit for dexterity, ass-wiping and nose picking. But in a fight, the Bull packs a mighty wallop. Bulldust would never trade any of his hooves, even if he could trot around three legged without any problem. No! The Bull will remain a complete package, and an amazing package he is.
But let’s get to the cap “Handy”. Handy, Handy, Handy.
Yup. It was alright. A cleaver twist of anatomical autonomy. The absurdity of embedding an AI into one’s appendage was amusing on a level, but the continued upgrades and hoops the main character leaps through seemed a little too whimsical. But it almost had a slight Kafkaesk flavor to it, which the Bull can appreciate.
Gonna be honest here, the page and a half cover letter really made it hard to swallow the capital. Maybe the Bullmeister has a bit of envy or maybe it’s just if you’re going to blow your own horn with such intensity, you really need to back your shit up. Either way, it really put the Bulldog off.
The cap was good. It was not, however, the most excellent story out there ever. BUT, since the Bull was so tainted by the cover letter, he wonders if maybe he’s being biased against the cap on that alone. So, he’s going to put a yes vote in for a tie breaker, just to be fair. The Bull maybe a douchebag, but he’s not a complete ass-biting douchebag. So please, let’s tie-break this bitch.
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HANDY
Oct 5, 2019 12:26:21 GMT
Post by sturgeon on Oct 5, 2019 12:26:21 GMT
So, the Architext is busy, and he's asked me to break this tie. It was pretty weird, suddenly I was on the surface of some exoplanet and he appeared to me, looking all naked and sad and blue, and burbled on about throwing Venus into a black hole or something. I figure some other cosmic super being has upset him.
Which brings me to this story - Handy - a kind of slipstream magic realism delight about self-aware prosthetics getting out of hand. (Out of hand... geddit?)
Mr John VC (or should I say Jhon?), this will be a great story. But I can't in good conscience let it through the gate in its current form.
Instead, I'm gonna tell you what you need to do to fix it.
First, it's not clear at the beginning whether the AI-hand is physically attached to the main character, nor is it clear what happened to his own flesh-and-blood right hand. This sounds like a small point, but this ambiguity of attachment threads throughout the story and makes it difficult to visualise, which takes some of the wind out of the humour. Indeed, my esteemed colleague Rockefeller betrayed the same confusion when he said: "to have his 'useless' hand amputated to work in some factory" - but it wasn't the amputated hand that worked, was it? It was the AI attached to his right arm that was tapping away while his left arm was painting.
In short, you need to make it much clearer at the start that his flesh-and-blood hand was discarded, and the AI hand was attached in its place.
Furthermore, when the eye is installed I visualised the main character's eye being removed and the eye put into his head - and it took me a while to realise that you intended the eye to be inside the hand. Again, this needs to be clearer. At one point I was utterly confused because I couldn't figure out, when you were talking about the AI, whether you were talking about the hand or the eye or both. (The mouth was much clearer.)
The next biggest problem is pronouns. By the end of the story all is clear, but again, at the beginning, the switching between "her" and "it" in reference to the AI is confusing (and, I think, inconsistent). I understand that the main character calls the AI "it" to upset her, but you must be careful not to confuse the reader.
Those are the problems that force me reluctantly to say that this story is not ready for public consumption. The rest of these notes are small things intended to help you polish your work:
1. Second paragraph - why is the AI hand so hairy when later she is portrayed as being so feminine? Also, change the last sentence to "Hairier than my other hand, but nobody seemed to notice" to get rid of two "it"s referring to different things.
2. I agree with Rocky, kill the comma in "Maybe, I thought..."
3. The speech about 0 or 1 doesn't make sense to me. AIs are simple, they only think in 0s and 1s, or they are more sophisticated, and have moods and desires? One or the other.
4. "It was hot, but it was expensive" - non-sequitur.
5. How did he afford the first two implants? You said he was struggling for money? To be fair, this really doesn't matter and you should ignore this criticism.
5. (5 again because I told you to ignore the previous one, pay attention!) Auditory devices would be quite expensive should be just An auditory device...
6. How does Handy write a message on the back of the same canvas that the main character is painting on? This again makes her feel detached from his body, which adds to the confusion I expounded on above.
7. Handy didn't eat normally should be Handy didn't eat anyway, otherwise it sounds like she ate abnormally rather than she did not eat.
8. "Shhhhh. " There's a trailing space.
9. Well one night. I put the glove on Handy - That fullstop should be a comma.
10. belly bottom - should be belly button
11. I'm finally learning how to treat a lady from them - doesn't make sense, I don't know what you meant to say here.
Let me finish on a positive note. I really enjoyed this story. The humour was spot-on, particularly the way that you kept doubling down on the absurdity of the situation. I hear Rockefeller's comment about the mixed-up morality of the tale, but to me that didn't matter in a whacky comedy such as this. Now, go and do the story the justice it deserves.
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