scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/3clxme.md

[Weekly Challenge] "Ever After"

• Author: u/alexanderwales Time flies like an arrow*

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3clxme/weekly_challenge_ever_after/

• Score: 21

• Created: 2015-07-08T22:56:59

Post:

Last Week

Last time, the prompt was "Buggy Matrix". /u/eaglejarl is the winner with his story, and will receive a month of reddit gold, super special winner flair, and $50. Congratulations /u/eaglejarl! (Now is a great time to go to that thread and look at the entries you may have missed, especially the late entrants; contest mode is now disabled.)

This Week

This week's challenge prompt is "Ever After". The hero has won. The villain has been defeated. The princess has been rescued from the dungeon. The vizer had been exposed, the evil artifact has been destroyed, and the galactic government has restored to a state of democracy. That's where the typical story ends. What comes after "winning"? Remember, prompts are to inspire, not to limit.

The winner will be decided Wednesday, July 15th. You have until then to post your reply and start accumulating upvotes. It is strongly suggested that you get your entry in as quickly as possible once this thread goes up; this is part of the reason that prompts are given a week in advance.

Rules

• 300 word minimum, no maximum. Post as a link to Google Docs, pastebin, Dropbox, etc. This is mandatory.

• No plagiarism, but you're welcome to recycle and revamp your own ideas you've used in the past.

• Think before you downvote.

• Winner will be determined by "best" sorting.

• Winner gets reddit gold, special winner flair, and bragging rights. Due to the generosity of /u/amitpamin and /u/Xevothok, this week's challenge will have a cash reward of $50. (Next week's challenge will not have a cash reward.)

• All top-level replies to this thread should be submissions. Non-submissions (including questions, comments, etc.) belong in the meta thread, and will be aggressively removed from here.

• Top-level replies must be a link to Google Docs, a PDF, your personal website, etc. It is suggested that you include a word count and a title when you're linking to somewhere else.

• In the interest of keeping the playing field level, please refrain from cross-posting to other places until after the winner has been decided.

• No idea what rational fiction is? Read the wiki!

Meta

If you think you have a good prompt for a challenge, add it to the list (remember that a good prompt is not a recipe). If you think that you have a good modification to the rules, let me know in a comment in the meta thread.

Next Week

Next week's prompt is "The Chosen One". See the entry at TV Tropes. This is what happens when destiny says so, or when the last of his kind needs to do what only he can do. Sometimes, the Chosen One is picked by his community, while other times it's the universe itself.

Next week's thread will go up on 7/15. Please confine any questions or comments to the meta thread.

Comments:

u/erenthia [+12] (5 days later)

The Cycle

u/eaglejarl [+1] (7 days later)

This was a great twist, and I especially liked the fact that you made sure the final sentence was on the next page. It put a layer of meta on it that worked for me.

u/eaglejarl [+25] (6 hours later)

Happily? Ever After

u/TennisMaster2 [+1] (5 months later)

That last line cracked me up. I've previously heard or made that same joke, or perhaps both; loved it.

u/royishere [+5] (5 days later)

Remember, prompts are to inspire, not to limit.

If you say so. :)

Truly A Miracle

1,642 words

u/Coadie [+9] (9 hours later)

Happily ever after

Word count: 1,834

u/Coadie [+1] (a day later)

So I ended up finishing this in a rush in order to meet the opening of the challenge. I'd appreciate criticism of the story as it stands, and whether people think it is worthwhile extending it.

The ending would probably still be the same, it would just be a bit more of a journey to get there. Alternatively, the ending could be more positive, with the current ending narrowly averted.

u/Kishoto [+2] (a day later)

Just curious.

u/Coadie [+1] (a day later)

Ah, thought it was more obvious. Spoiler

u/Kishoto [+2] (a day later)

Ah, I see.

u/Chronophilia [+1] sci-fi ≠ futurology (2 days later)

Well, the two interpretations don't contradict one another.

u/Coadie [+1] (2 days later)

That's not bad! Might use that if I extend the story. It has the benefit of Spoiler

u/None [+1] (3 days later)

How do you deal with the thermodynamic issues inherent to ?

u/notmy2ndopinion [+2] Concent of Saunt Edhar (6 days later)

If this is equivalent to spoiler, then Kishoto's interpretation makes more sense IMO.

If spoiler

u/blazinghand [+6] Chaos Undivided (3 hours later)

The Gone Day

Fanfiction of Canon HP, set after the books.

u/Chronophilia [+4] sci-fi ≠ futurology (2 days later)

Today's life lesson is that Avada Kedavra-ing the Dark Lord does not instantly solve all everyone's problems forever. One that a lot of writers seem to gloss over.

It seems a bit strange that Aurors wouldn't know what a gun is, but then this is canon HP...

u/Kerbal_NASA [+6] (20 minutes later)

Memoirs of the Cold Traitor

u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (23 minutes later)

Please submit as a link to outside of reddit, per the announcement last week and in the rules this week; it's mostly a readability issue. (You can just edit this post.)

u/Kerbal_NASA [+2] (31 minutes later)

Oops, thought that was only going to apply to long (>1 reddit post) stories. Editing now.

u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (35 minutes later)

"Long" was a little too poorly defined, so I just made it a blanket rule. A single reddit post is 10,000 characters (~2,000 words), which takes up a screen and a half on my laptop, so I think that's "long". But it's open to interpretation, which isn't really a quality that you want in rules.

u/Kerbal_NASA [+2] (36 minutes later)

Makes sense, good decision.

u/Kerbal_NASA [+2] (3 days later)

I'd really love criticism/feedback. If anyone takes the time to reply about this or any of my other stories, I'd be super appreciative!

u/Chronophilia [+5] sci-fi ≠ futurology (4 days later)

I like the idea. It reminds me a lot of The Sword Of Good - taking a D&D murder-hobo protagonist and dropping them into a world where actions have consequences and the NPCs are people too. Was that your inspiration?

The main scene was excellent. The new emperor was funny and memorable, and the narrator makes a fine straight-man to emphasise his wacky blockheadedness. The old emperor is also a cool character. I think the introduction and the epilogue could have been folded into this scene more neatly; /u/alexanderwales has talked about the importance of beginning and ending on a strong point, and here your middle is easily the best part. All the best characterisation and humour is between Carillion, Ferion, and the narrator - the two other speakers aren't interesting enough, there's no sparks flying between them and any other characters.

The way the narration uses informal language makes a nice contrast between the way the narrator talks in his head and the affected style he uses out loud. I think you've overdone this a bit - "Sigh." is not a sentence, and breaking the fourth wall by saying "my dear reader" should only be done for comedy purposes. I think the dramatic moment where the main character decides to become the Cold Traitor (whatever that means) really suffers from this, because he doesn't come across as serious or angry - just bored and jokey.

And there's a couple of mistakes and stylistic quirks that distract from the story. "Plyable" should be "pliable". If you correct "kingdom" to "empire", you should also change "royal" to "imperial" throughout. Magical essence is usually spelled "mana", not "manna". The first "its" needs an apostrophe. Minor things like that.

Hope this was helpful to you. Happy 4th Reddit anniversary!

u/Kerbal_NASA [+2] (5 days later)

Thanks so much for the feedback! To answer your question, my inspiration for this was was two main things. The first is the conversations I've had with people who have very strong opinions on absurdly complicated political issues that they haven't even given much real thought to. The second was just that I thought it would be funny to portray a rational version of certain fantasy tropes, especially the heroic power fantasy ones. Oh and the evil orc bit was almost completely lifted off The Sword of Good.

I definitely agree with you on the intro; rereading it, it feels very disjointed from the rest. It definitely needs a rewriting in a way that ties into the epilogue. See, this was supposed to be a sample from her memoirs, but next to nothing in the writing actually suggests/evokes that. Which I think explains some about why the epilogue, particularly the fourth wall breaking moment, feels so off. I think the story would benefit hugely from an intro rewrite.

I fixed the spelling and "it's/its" is the bane of my existence, thanks for pointing that out! And I completely forgot about the royal/imperial distinction, thanks again!

I didn't even realize it was my cake day, that's cool! And yeah, your comment was super helpful! When I get the time, I'll rewrite the intro completely and make some changes to the epilogue. If she survives the intro rewrite, the intro character might get merged with the epilogue character to make characterization easier/better.

u/eaglejarl [+1] (7 days later)

mana", not "manna"

Technically, manna-with-two-Ns is the edible stuff that God gave the Israelites in the Bible. (Just as a point of interest.)

u/Chronophilia [+4] sci-fi ≠ futurology (2 days later)

Three Weeks Later

1,794 words

It's a few days after the start of the competition, but I didn't find a good idea until now.

u/Pialgo [+2] (3 days later)

Fight-Off

Fanfiction of Avatar, 16 years after the film. ~1 300 words

my first story in english. And this is not my mother tongue. So sorry in advance for any eyes i will burn. If you have remarks or corrections, i will listen carefully !

u/fortycakes [+3] (6 days later)

Right. Some corrections to use of English, I haven't tried to touch the story content:

• "they come with three ships" should probably be "they came with three ships" - past tense rather than present
• RDA should be "Research Development Administration" - one S in Research and one P in Development.
• "worked on the bridge" -> "was working on the bridge"
• Equally "checks" -> "was checking"
• "ceases" -> "ceased"
• "some random value" -> "a random value"
• "antenna listens" -> "antenna listened" or "antenna was listening" - in fact, it might be a good idea to go back through and check the tense of all of the verbs, as otherwise listing them all here will swamp other advice.
• Speech in English text encloses each sentence in double quotes "like so" rather than enclosing the entire conversation in one set and separating lines with -. Attributing sentences to the speaker often helps, even with just a "said Wade". More helpfully, you could use the attribution to tell us something like Wade's rank.
• "are bigger" -> "is bigger" - "the probability" is a singular phrase so we use the singular form of "to be".
• "So you record it?" -> "So you're recording it?"
• "tick fluid" -> "thick fluid"
• "Classical question" -> "Classic question"
• "I try to summary what you have said" -> "I'll try to summarise what you've said" (possibly "what you've told me")
• "lighted a hologram" -> "lit a hologram" (or possibly "turned on a hologram")
• "How do they have completely industrialized Pandora in two decades?" -> "How have they completely industrialized Pandora in two decades?"
• "SETI had never detected anything" -> "SETI never detected anything"
• "Do you have heard of" -> "Have you heard of"
• "Whatever the conclusion will be" -> "Whatever the conclusion was" - this looks like it should be future tense, but past tense is more correct

u/Pialgo [+1] (7 days later)

Thank you a lot ! I will correct these errors !

u/eaglejarl [+1] (7 days later)

Speech in English text encloses each sentence in double quotes "like so" rather than enclosing the entire conversation in one set and separating lines with -

Riffing off something that /u/fortycakes said in his comment, here's some rules about punctuating dialogue in English.

• Double quotes around the spoken part.
• There is always punctuation inside the closing quote.
• If you are going to have a dialogue tag (e.g. 'said Bob', or 'Bob said') after the dialogue, one of these is immediately inside the close quote: ? ! ,

All of these are correct:

• "Tom always loved you."
• "Tom always loved you," Bob said.
• "Tom always loved you," said Bob.
• "Tom always loved you!" said Bob.
• "Tom always loved you?" said Bob.

This one is NOT correct:

• "Tom always loved you." said Bob.

Here's a more complete version. It's actually pretty interesting, and worth reading even if you're a native speaker.

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