Eka's Portal Writing Group - Oct 2009 - All Submissions In!

[Tobedumped]

Well, good news and bad news.

Good news: I completed a wonderful story about an attractive, disaffected 20-something female, beginning from the theme of "first timers."

Bad news: I ended up writing the entire story sans vore. Sorry, kids, I'm out for this month.

[KavenBach]

LOL... don't you love/hate it when a story takes on a life all its own?

(K-Bach Looks at the "Absolution" Soul Vore piece in his gallery )

[Black-Boo]

You have to hate that,..

[4ofSwords]

Alrighty! That's it for October. It looks like this was a lighter month for participation, which means a little bit less flexibility in terms of assignments, but I hope y'all enjoy the reads anyway!

Assignments will be out shortly, and then I'll be opening November.

[4ofSwords]

Sorry, kids, I'm out for this month.

I have sadness.

[Black-Boo]

My review on Jacque's The Many Journeys of Ian Scranton, Chapter 3: Captive Audience

Apparently 4ofSwords didn't listen to my preferances this month, but I'm sort of glad he didn't, as I got to read this little gem. I must say, details and concepts are as phenominal as ever. I'm curious where you pull all of this from.

Now I haven't read any sexual stories, only ones where it was implied, but the details in that scene were amazing. Though even though you're married...I'm curious how you devised a threesome. O.o Haha, I'm only pullin your chain.

The stomach scene was one of my favorites. You really got down to the nitty gritty. Referring to your review of my story last month "you don't FAIL BIOLOGY FOREVER." Seriously. I never thought of putting any of that into that degree of detail. Bravo.

Overall a charming read. Very well written, and great concepts, along with a great ending!

[Mirukani]

Review time!


Title: The Tale of Miss Foxfire
Author: Kruft

First thing that struck me was odd formatting. Line breaks and paragraphs are our friends. However, that aside, the story felt a little rushed. While furries in vore don't 'do' anything for me, Murrie was a fun little creature to read about. The tone also felt distinctly like something you'd hear people telling over a campfire. "I heard this happened to a friend of a friend" type of horror story, y'know? While the story did feel rushed, campfire stories like that tend to be. You skip out on finer details, trying to get in the main actions of what happened. So overall, I think it worked well together, especially for a first story.

I will reiterate on formatting, though. I didn't come across any glaring spelling errors or anything, but large blocks of text are difficult to go through. Then again, it could've been an error in reading the file on my part, which is why I usually stray away from .doc formatted files and stick with either .txt or .rtf when submitting downloadable files.

[4ofSwords]

Apparently 4ofSwords didn't listen to my preferances this month, but I'm sort of glad he didn't, as I got to read this little gem.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Please note, preferences are just that, and with only five other stories to choose from, the options are limited. I think there was only one of the five stories that fit your preferences.

I've had a number of people express dissatisfaction with the assignments they received this month, but please note, everyone, that I'm doing the best I can matching the preferences as expressed to the stories' themes, as listed. I am certainly not out to screw anyone.

[Black-Boo]

We understand. We just need to somehow manage to draw in more authors...

[Throku]

Well, good news and bad news.

Good news: I completed a wonderful story about an attractive, disaffected 20-something female, beginning from the theme of "first timers."

Bad news: I ended up writing the entire story sans vore. Sorry, kids, I'm out for this month.

Nooo!!! ehh...you lost me on the "sans vore"-part. *Looks in TBD's gallery* Nooo!!! It is not dere!

[Jacquelope]

My review on Jacque's The Many Journeys of Ian Scranton, Chapter 3: Captive Audience

Apparently 4ofSwords didn't listen to my preferances this month, but I'm sort of glad he didn't, as I got to read this little gem. I must say, details and concepts are as phenominal as ever. I'm curious where you pull all of this from.

Now I haven't read any sexual stories, only ones where it was implied, but the details in that scene were amazing. Though even though you're married...I'm curious how you devised a threesome. O.o Haha, I'm only pullin your chain.

The stomach scene was one of my favorites. You really got down to the nitty gritty. Referring to your review of my story last month "you don't FAIL BIOLOGY FOREVER." Seriously. I never thought of putting any of that into that degree of detail. Bravo.

Overall a charming read. Very well written, and great concepts, along with a great ending!

Much thanks! I'm glad I was able to take someone out of their favorite genre and not have them gagging. And I pulled all of this from reading other authors, and a lot of quick-studying biology for the stomach scene. As for the sex scene... well, I am an erotica writer by trade.

[Kruft]

First thing that struck me was odd formatting. Line breaks and paragraphs are our friends.

Yeah, I know that. I sort of need a lesson in that.

However, that aside, the story felt a little rushed.

My ideas tend to run out very fast. So I suppose it was slightly rushed. Again, I need to work on it.

While furries in vore don't 'do' anything for me, Murrie was a fun little creature to read about. The tone also felt distinctly like something you'd hear people telling over a campfire. "I heard this happened to a friend of a friend" type of horror story, y'know? While the story did feel rushed, campfire stories like that tend to be. You skip out on finer details, trying to get in the main actions of what happened. So overall, I think it worked well together, especially for a first story.

I was trying to go for the campfire/scary bedtime story feel. It was essentially written as a kids' story, which I'm going to try and stay away from in the future.

I will reiterate on formatting, though. I didn't come across any glaring spelling errors or anything, but large blocks of text are difficult to go through. Then again, it could've been an error in reading the file on my part, which is why I usually stray away from .doc formatted files and stick with either .txt or .rtf when submitting downloadable files.

Again, I don't know how to format or split paragraphs very well. But thanks for the criticism, it helped. ^_^

[KavenBach]

My critique/review of “Goddess of the Desert” by Black-boo.

Hmmm... are these humans? Dwarfs? Furries? You give absolutely no description of any of them; we only find out Jazeirah has orange hair several paragraphs in. I'm not entirely familiar with the semi-recent Zelda creatures, but I'm assuming these “Gerudo” are elf-like humanoids... am I mistaken? It would be nice to have some kind of description for those of us not up to scratch on Zeldisms...

It's nighttime in the first scene? I like that you used “It's night time remember” to let us know without excessive explanation; however some quick mention of it beforehand might make it less of a sudden surprise. Up until that point I saw them as talking in broad daylight. Actually, to me the entire thing felt like it was happening in daylight...

We didn't have any clue that she'd been wearing a jewel on her forehead, not until you stated that the artifact had replaced that jewel.

Hmm, while the story is intriguing to me, personally I do have to say more description is needed to really draw me into the story. Having details of Jazeirah's appearance pop up well into the story was a little confusing (orange hair, which then turned red... a jewel at her forehead, really...? Suddenly she was naked, what was she wearing before?). Then again, that could be a matter of taste; some people prefer to have as much freedom to imagine as possible. Also, I'm assuming someone truly familiar with the Zelda universe wouldn't have HALF the questions I do, and would “see” these Gerudo and do on.

QUESTIONS: Is Jazeirah's realization of what happened too quick? Yes and no. She doesn't figure out she's grown huge at first, even after the mini-leever attack, so not too quickly, but when she reaches the temple she seems to take the change in stride rather quickly. Maybe just illustrating a few seconds more of confusion before she figures it out? Then again, in this world, perhaps size-changing is not all that rare so it makes SENSE that she'd figure it out so fast?

Is the whole first part of the story kind of cheesy overall? That's a rather subjective question. What could be cheesy to me could not be to someone else. I'm not even sure what exactly you mean. However, I don't think it's cheesy. Jazeirah breaks the rules to be “noticed?” Childish but makes sense, and seems to fit her personality. I'd maybe go with a different term than “hit the hay” when she decides to rest, but again, that's me. Like I said, if I, personally, could "see" these people I might have enjoyed the story more.

I can definitely see where this is going, and why she would end up being mistaken for a goddess. I'm almost picturing her developing a naga tail using her increased powers, to fit the goddess statue's appearance; I can well imagine her going on a power trip, since she already seems like a spoiled child anyway. I'm curious to see where this is going, and wonder how Shaza will fit into this. At the moment I must say I hope Nabooru gets chowed on... what a bitch?

Hope I wasn't too rough on ya?

[Jacquelope]

Here's my review of 4OfSwords' "The Many Deaths of Samish, Chapter 4".

Okay, first the irrelevant stuff. This story is loaded with loose ends that actually got me interested in experiment with the idea of unresolved issues in my "Many Journeys of Ian Scranton" series, which is actually inspired by this story.

Now for the critique...
If one read straight through these stories without skipping to Chapter 4, the most obvious questions that come up are, "How is it that Sam gets eaten so often? What happens to his memories? Why is he so dull? How is it that Sam has hot babe who is obviously well to do, even though he's such a loser? And why is he such a loser?" Well, all this gets answered in masterful fashion here: he's the victim of an Eldritch Abomination!

And I gotta hand it to you about your sense of humor. Sam may not have punched out Cthulhu, but he sure made me laugh when he made fun of her name, thereby totally taking the air right out of her mighty monologue in the paragraph before. That takes either some really big brass ones, or a major dose of downright stupidity.

So I have a few questions for ya... would this relationship qualify as symbiosis? And where did you learn how to get the Cthulha character down so well - basically, where did you learn how to craft such ... eldritch vernacular? And will Cthulha be subjecting Sam to soft vore or hard vore? Or both"?

Anyway, this is some awesome stuff. I'm glad I signed up on Eka's just on this alone.

[Jacquelope]

I've just read Mirukani's "Poetic Justice" and, well the biggest thing that got me was how short it was.

I have a few questions... was Seishak moved from Solcan's temple to Rydal's because he's good at killing people? I would like to have seen something that explains that a little more - maybe a little more show than tell? Also, why does Seishak dislike being touched by people? Also, he mentioned the priest wanted to be 'inside' him... I didn't exactly see that. I did see where the priest kept bugging him, which itself was kind of stupid. What was his motivation for not leaving Seishak alone? Also, there isn't much description of the characters, or where they are.

I see the potential for a big story here, but a lot of loose ends are apparent here. Is that the intent?

I don't intend to be harsh, especially because M/M vore squicks me half to death and a 1000 word story is in that sense a Godsend; I only saw one spelling error (heirarchy vs hierarchy). And for a bunch of assassins/killer monks, getting eaten is indeed a fitting punishment. I certainly hope no one saw this nameless priest walking into Seishak's room or noticed he never came back out.

[Mirukani]

I see the potential for a big story here, but a lot of loose ends are apparent here. Is that the intent?

Very much so. Seishak is one of the main characters in a novel I'm (trying) to write. This, and probably any other vore story you see with Seishak, Sar, or Lyshev in it are going to be purely character-driven exercises taking place in a world I've been working on for five years XD I don't want to clutter this page with a long explanation of what's happened until the point this story's meant to take place in, so I'll try to just answer your questions/concerns and keep it short.

1: Seishak was never a monk in Solcan's temple. He used to be nobility, but was disowned and chose to be a monk for the opportunity to devote his life to study. He's a necromancer, so serving a god of death seemed fitting.
2: Ah heh... Seishak was molested by his older cousin for twelve years. As a result, he severely dislikes physical contact and is antisocial besides.
3: The priest was flirting with him, and Seishak just wanted to be left alone.
4: I guess I was half-intentionally vague on character and setting descriptions. Seishak doesn't pay much attention to his own appearance, aside from his hair, and I wanted the priest to be as anonymous as possible. As for the setting... I'm not quite sure what to say on that matter XD A library or study of some sort, given that Seishak's trying to work. But I didn't put a lot of thought into setting beyond that.


Lastly: stupid i/e mixups! *shakefist*

[Black-Boo]

My critique/review of “Goddess of the Desert” by Black-boo.

I'd highly recommend you change this post when I edit my story.

Hmmm... are these humans? Dwarfs? Furries? You give absolutely no description of any of them; we only find out Jazeirah has orange hair several paragraphs in. I'm not entirely familiar with the semi-recent Zelda creatures, but I'm assuming these “Gerudo” are elf-like humanoids... am I mistaken? It would be nice to have some kind of description for those of us not up to scratch on Zeldisms...

Ah...yeah I'll see if I can't fix this. The Gerudo are dark skinned humans with orange hair.

It's nighttime in the first scene? I like that you used “It's night time remember” to let us know without excessive explanation; however some quick mention of it beforehand might make it less of a sudden surprise. Up until that point I saw them as talking in broad daylight. Actually, to me the entire thing felt like it was happening in daylight...

We didn't have any clue that she'd been wearing a jewel on her forehead, not until you stated that the artifact had replaced that jewel.

Hmm, while the story is intriguing to me, personally I do have to say more description is needed to really draw me into the story. Having details of Jazeirah's appearance pop up well into the story was a little confusing (orange hair, which then turned red... a jewel at her forehead, really...? Suddenly she was naked, what was she wearing before?). Then again, that could be a matter of taste; some people prefer to have as much freedom to imagine as possible. Also, I'm assuming someone truly familiar with the Zelda universe wouldn't have HALF the questions I do, and would “see” these Gerudo and do on.

Why must I be so bad with detail...? I'll get to work on fixing these points up. Thanks for pointing these out.

QUESTIONS: Is Jazeirah's realization of what happened too quick? Yes and no. She doesn't figure out she's grown huge at first, even after the mini-leever attack, so not too quickly, but when she reaches the temple she seems to take the change in stride rather quickly. Maybe just illustrating a few seconds more of confusion before she figures it out? Then again, in this world, perhaps size-changing is not all that rare so it makes SENSE that she'd figure it out so fast?

Tellin ya right now size change is all but common. I'll put in the few seconds you've suggested. :3

Is the whole first part of the story kind of cheesy overall? That's a rather subjective question. What could be cheesy to me could not be to someone else. I'm not even sure what exactly you mean. However, I don't think it's cheesy. Jazeirah breaks the rules to be “noticed?” Childish but makes sense, and seems to fit her personality. I'd maybe go with a different term than “hit the hay” when she decides to rest, but again, that's me. Like I said, if I, personally, could "see" these people I might have enjoyed the story more.

Hm...Well i'm glad that you liked it and found it fitting. I'll leave that as is then...Now I kind of wanted to leave the beginning vauge, but I guess that was a bad idea? I'll change it.

I can definitely see where this is going, and why she would end up being mistaken for a goddess. I'm almost picturing her developing a naga tail using her increased powers, to fit the goddess statue's appearance; I can well imagine her going on a power trip, since she already seems like a spoiled child anyway. I'm curious to see where this is going, and wonder how Shaza will fit into this. At the moment I must say I hope Nabooru gets chowed on... what a bitch?

[s]Damn you caught me[/s]Well I've gotten a scene planned out to give her motive for the power trip, so yay. And in that same scene, Nabooru will be showing her softer side.

Hope I wasn't too rough on ya?

Eh. I've had worse. Thanks for pointing this stuff out. I'll get onto fixing it right away.

[Black-Boo]

Okey dokey, updated my story.

Next part is for november kiddies!

[4ofSwords]

These are my extra-curricular comments on Black-Boo's "Goddess of the Desert".

I think, based on what you wrote to KavenBach, that I might be reading a different version of the story than him. On the one hand, I think it's a good idea to make sure you keep the same story file posted through the whole month (or until all your reviews come in) just to make sure you're getting apples-to-apples comments, but on the other hand I'm really glad I got to read a completed story (with vore)!

Type of Critique Preferred: Gentle please. I know it doesn't have vore, but htat's YET. i'm sure I'll get some in before the end of the month, bear with me.
Questions for the Readers: Is Jazeirah's relization of what's happened too quick, and is the whole first part of the story kind of cheesy overall?

I've only ever played one Zelda game (whichever one it was that came out with the Wii), but I really thought you did a good job of capturing the feel of the game. The world, and revelations about the world, are quirky and sudden and matter of fact, which fits the game style. Since I'm not really a Zelda aficionado, it's still a little difficult for me to get visuals on everything and have a good idea of what's going on (though I take it from KavenBach's review the descriptions you have of the Gerudo are new in the revision, and they are helpful), but if your target audience is the Zelda fandom I think they'll be able to dive right in. The characters come off as a little happy-go-lucky (Jazeirah's pending death in the desert and Alec's death sentence seem to be momentary concerns for each of them), I think that also really fits the mood I got from the game.

Grammar and spelling all look fine - nothing really stood out to me as being wrong. In the rich text version you uploaded, the italicized portions are surrounded by HTML instead of italicized, but I got the idea. I like the fact that you broke out points of view in an easy-to-follow format, but at the end where they were bouncing back and forth really quickly, I think I would have rathered you just stayed in Alec's or Jazeirah's point of view for most of the scene. The one thing I'd really suggest changing is the Gerudo's pants being called "Arabian" style. It's a comparison that takes me a little out of context, and I think it would be better just to describe them, since there's no "Arabia" in their world (to the best of my knowledge).

As to your questions: Given the setting in the Zelda world, I don't think the realization happened to quickly, and I think Jazeirah showing how common magic is as she realizes that she's grown helps to make that clear. If she can produce water and fire and clothing at will, what's a little growth spell thrown into the mix? I didn't find it particularly sappy at any point, but I did think that the scene between Nabooru and Shaza seemed a little odd - almost like it was setting up a future scene where Shaza will go looking for Nabooru, or like Nabooru was going to tell Shaza she was guilty for murder for allowing Jazeirah to leave.

My overall assessment: it was pretty well written, and fun, and probably especially fun for someone interested in the Zelda fandom.

[4ofSwords]

Here's my review of 4OfSwords' "The Many Deaths of Samish, Chapter 4".

Woohoo!

Okay, first the irrelevant stuff. This story is loaded with loose ends that actually got me interested in experiment with the idea of unresolved issues in my "Many Journeys of Ian Scranton" series, which is actually inspired by this story.

Hopefully these are the good kinds of loose ends, though. My intent with this chapter was to pose at least as many questions as it answered about the first three chapters. I don't do a lot of that kind of loose-end/mystery writing though, so I can't really judge how successful it is.

If one read straight through these stories without skipping to Chapter 4, the most obvious questions that come up are, "How is it that Sam gets eaten so often? What happens to his memories? Why is he so dull? How is it that Sam has hot babe who is obviously well to do, even though he's such a loser? And why is he such a loser?" Well, all this gets answered in masterful fashion here: he's the victim of an Eldritch Abomination!

Hahaha! Yup! I especially like the picture at that link. I'm pleased that this qualifies as a trope.

And I gotta hand it to you about your sense of humor. Sam may not have punched out Cthulhu, but he sure made me laugh when he made fun of her name, thereby totally taking the air right out of her mighty monologue in the paragraph before. That takes either some really big brass ones, or a major dose of downright stupidity.

Hopefully it reads as a little bit of both. I tried to write Sam's personality a little differently in this chapter - maybe more full, more confident. He's without the blinders that Cthulha imposes on him in her little garden on earth. When it's months between chapters I don't know if that comes through or not, or if I should emphasize it more, but it seems like it came through a bit.

So I have a few questions for ya... would this relationship qualify as symbiosis? And where did you learn how to get the Cthulha character down so well - basically, where did you learn how to craft such ... eldritch vernacular? And will Cthulha be subjecting Sam to soft vore or hard vore? Or both"?

I would call it "agricultural". I suppose you could call the relationship between a dairy farmer and a cow "symbiotic" - the farmer gets what he wants from the cow, and the cow gets a longer (?), easier (?) life - but I don't know if that's typically the way the term is used. And I'm glad the elder god patter worked for you! It''s hard to know what will come across as deep and mind-bending, so I resorted to shallow and arrogant.

Anyway, this is some awesome stuff. I'm glad I signed up on Eka's just on this alone.

Thanks! I'm flattered!