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Post by rorschalk on Feb 8, 2023 15:52:34 GMT
Chris, I slipped into your skin in order to lighten the load on them there floorites, savvy?
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Post by rorschalk on Feb 8, 2023 18:27:55 GMT
In order to ease the workload, I took the liberty of being you. Could you post this as rockefeller for me on the floor? I tried, but the old password for rox doesn't seem to be working.. The old mormon kid's credo with the @ instead of an a, right? All one word?
Dear Mr. VC,
I liked the evocative settings, the trees in the moonlight and Bobby's ruminations about the resilience of their eternal cycles. However, the failure of this cap to enthrall is partly due to its construction. The God ball ought to be introduced far sooner. The mundane events of a fight at work and Bobby the foreman's attempts to smooth it over while hankering for the sweet buzz of forgetful pitchers of beer bogs the whole thing down. Your bio states your aim to create "challenging and vibrant" characters, but Bobby, imo, is dull and emotionally stunted. To fix this cap, I'd suggest making Bobby something of a Jesus freak to begin with, which would explain his default to blood being the key to the ball's inner workings. The investor wouldn't question the immediate leap of his to cut himself open as a way to try and actuate the ball. Right now, as is, it just is so arbitrary that it's impossible for the investor to do that old "suspension of disbelief" for that detail in your venture.
I applaud you for showing the fallacy of academe's fallacy of white privilege for the blue collar workers making their way in a mill town. The discussion of Columbus and his failings is torn straight from the lecture hall of any college professor's symposium across this here land and is now cliche instead of speaking truth to power. But that's just an editorialization on my part. A lot of people will give you points for that. But insofar as it belongs in a creative work of fiction, imo, depends on if the VC is writing it at face value to score points with his fan base of fresh faced college graduates, or including it ironically to confirm the ubiquity of this worn out trope of indoctrination. All I'm saying is we need new blood, a new boogey man to displace the old one that's run its course as far as impact on inquiring minds go. Speaking of Aztecs, Cortez would be a new and perhaps deserving body to exhume to focus historic wrongs of the past type outrage upon, and a better tie in to your venture, to boot.
Getting back to Bobby. Dull and emotionally stunted is fine to begin with. But, like I said, the cap's construction is a big part of its downfall. Over half of it is just Bobby having dull thoughts about his existential meaninglessness of his life and then, like a thunderbolt from heaven, the old Deus Ex Machina that is a cheap and too easy crutch to kickstart a venture stuck in neutral (unless you're Aeschelus or that guy who wrote Oedipus Rex, but I digress), that is too say, unearned and too out of the blue for the investor to not throw up their hands in mortification and exclaim, "Yeah, sure!" At least give us some clue as to the identity of the guy giving little black boxes to humanity for their "good."
The thematic notion of godless people becoming their own Gods is a timely and absolutely valid one. I think you're aiming in the right direction, but instead of just blood, there's got to be more flesh on the bone, so to speak. By making Bobby more extreme to begin with, you can contrast his eventual swing to the polar opposite extreme we often see in the actions of past godless men who made themselves God and genocided large swaths of their own populations because they couldn't cotton to the fact that they, too, were fallible.
I hope this clarifies a bit on why we're passing on your venture and help you perhaps rework it into something that is more vibrant and enjoyable, as well as sensical in that it keeps its contract with the reader to keep them in the moments of the narrative without forcibly ejecting them by plunking something down before them that's impossible to believe.
Best of luck with your writing in the future
--
Theodore Q. Rorschalk
founder and CEO of Total Quality Reading, LLC
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Post by rockefeller on Feb 9, 2023 14:04:49 GMT
I know it's silly, but I'd rather not have words put even in my cartoon character's mouth. It's fine crit, more than I'd be able to deliver, and so not me. Why not just pick up another avatar to post on the floor as? Doomey had quite a few.
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Post by rorschalk on Feb 9, 2023 16:07:28 GMT
Understood. Good idea. Will do.
Also, don't forget to post this in the business office thread on the site. Full transparency is our business.
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