Thanks for reading everyone!! I can see how the twist could be confusing, I was going for a twilight zone motif but that can be hard to pull off.
I like the idea that maybe the machine was trying to save his master, but ends up killing him instead, I find that to be more creepy than what I wrote :D
I wanted to convey his madness at being isolated for so long, which is why I had him talking to himself throughout the piece. I'm sure to some it may make more sense that he should have been two separate entities, but the twist at the end was what I was going for the whole time, so it would kind of miss the point.
I hope to work with Jenna on more of these, so your constructive feedback is really valuable! Thanks all!
Personally, this story was just wonderful, and I like this column more every time wednesday rolls around. It was so creepy and horrific that I'm lucky I didn't have a nightmare last night. I'm certainly fine with either the clockwork machine wanting to kill his maker or trying to save him. Both of these versions are just wonderful. I can't wait for next Wednesday!
Thanks for reading everyone!! I can see how the twist could be confusing, I was going for a twilight zone motif but that can be hard to pull off.
I like the idea that maybe the machine was trying to save his master, but ends up killing him instead, I find that to be more creepy than what I wrote :D
I wanted to convey his madness at being isolated for so long, which is why I had him talking to himself throughout the piece. I'm sure to some it may make more sense that he should have been two separate entities, but the twist at the end was what I was going for the whole time, so it would kind of miss the point.
Is the twist at the end supposed to be that the creation doesn't want to share a body, or that it is his body in the first place? Because if it's the second, you could at least fix the tone of the piece, if not the inconsistencies, by changing its supposed motivation.
Also, a little misdirection goes a long way. Glossing over major flaws in the perception of everybody mentioned in the story is not an interesting way to trick your reader. And when you start outright lying to your readers and blaming it on "he was crazy", that crosses the line into tediousness, rather than creepiness.
I'm a fan of a good twist as much as anyone, and I don't mind having to go back and reread so everything makes sense. But the whole reason twists are fun is because suddenly everything makes sense, not because suddenly everything doesn't make sense. If there are no hints or strange inconsistencies that the twist explains, then there was no point to the twist in the first place.
I wanted to convey his madness at being isolated for so long, which is why I had him talking to himself throughout the piece. I'm sure to some it may make more sense that he should have been two separate entities, but the twist at the end was what I was going for the whole time, so it would kind of miss the point.
I hope to work with Jenna on more of these, so your constructive feedback is really valuable! Thanks all!
I think part of the problem was that he kept addressing it as a second entity, especially the part about it wandering off at night instead of staying with him. Rather just talking to himself, all of which were reasonable thoughts, focus on other signs of insanity, such as missing time. The man lives in a house surrounded by clocks - surely he would notice if several hours of his life were just disappearing! Rather than mentioning him chaining the creature up, have him wonder why he's waking up in mud covered legs, that sort of thing.
I wanted to convey his madness at being isolated for so long, which is why I had him talking to himself throughout the piece. I'm sure to some it may make more sense that he should have been two separate entities, but the twist at the end was what I was going for the whole time, so it would kind of miss the point.
Interesting. I got the feeling that you came up with the twist about two-thirds of the way through, because having gone back and re-read it, even knowing the twist, it still doesn't make sense. The first two thirds are not consistent with the way it ends.
You can fall back on "He was crazy", but that's the lazy way to do an untrustworthy narrator. The key is ambiguity, not outright misleading statements. Instead of making everything point to it being a different being until the end where you go "Surprise, I lied, it was actually him all along", you need to make sure all your sentences work for either result. You have to thread in enough of a mix between ambiguous statements and clever foreshaowing that, when your reader goes back and revisits it, s/he has a moment of "Oh, THAT'S what that actually meant? I read it this way..."
An example would be Sixth Sense, where the first time through, it looks like the main character is talking to other people, and everything he's saying to them makes sense. But when you rewatch it, you realize nobody actually ever replied, or reacted in any way, to him. The twist both amplifies and is amplified by the story up to that point; it makes us view the rest of the piece in a new light on subsequent viewings, rather than just negate everything that happened before the twist.
This... did not do that. It was a cool story up until the end, but the twist completely ruined it for me. I'm sorry. No offense though; true twist endings are extremely difficult to pull off. You're a talented writer, and I look forward to reading your next piece.
I wanted to convey his madness at being isolated for so long, which is why I had him talking to himself throughout the piece. I'm sure to some it may make more sense that he should have been two separate entities, but the twist at the end was what I was going for the whole time, so it would kind of miss the point.
Interesting. I got the feeling that you came up with the twist about two-thirds of the way through, because having gone back and re-read it, even knowing the twist, it still doesn't make sense. The first two thirds are not consistent with the way it ends.
You can fall back on "He was crazy", but that's the lazy way to do an untrustworthy narrator. The key is ambiguity, not outright misleading statements. Instead of making everything point to it being a different being until the end where you go "Surprise, I lied, it was actually him all along", you need to make sure all your sentences work for either result. You have to thread in enough of a mix between ambiguous statements and clever foreshaowing that, when your reader goes back and revisits it, s/he has a moment of "Oh, THAT'S what that actually meant? I read it this way..."
An example would be Sixth Sense, where the first time through, it looks like the main character is talking to other people, and everything he's saying to them makes sense. But when you rewatch it, you realize nobody actually ever replied, or reacted in any way, to him. The twist both amplifies and is amplified by the story up to that point; it makes us view the rest of the piece in a new light on subsequent viewings, rather than just negate everything that happened before the twist.
This... did not do that. It was a cool story up until the end, but the twist completely ruined it for me. I'm sorry. No offense though; true twist endings are extremely difficult to pull off. You're a talented writer, and I look forward to reading your next piece.
Excellent - I think your point about ambiguity is really salient. I had the twist in mind the whole time, I was just worried about over-cluing it and tipping the reader off too soon. Looks like I took that idea too far. I don't think I was outright lying to the reader either, or rather that wasn't my intent.
Bah. An author responding to his readers? That's not how you're supposed to do things. You're supposed to ignore us in the forums so we can thrash you without needing any of that 'logic' stuff. How on earth are we supposed to build up an audience resentment like the one against JVL when you're here being all 'reasonable' and 'open to audience feedback.' It takes all the fun out of being a soulless heckler, I will tell you that.
In other news: Yeah, what the other guys said. I'm gonna go complain somewhere else now.
For linking a card to Gatherer without writting the name of said card for readers, use the autocard brackets together with and equal sign and right the name of the real card. Then put the message you want inside the tags, like you would do with autocarding. Like this:
I like storm crow because I really like crows in real life, as an animal, and the card isn't terribly stupid, but packs a good deal of nostalgia and also a chunck of the game's history. So it's perhaps one of the cards I have most affection to, but not because "lol storm crow is bad hurr hurr durr".
Although I do assume you deliberately refer to them (DCI) as The Grand Imperial Convocation of Evil just for the purposes of making them sound like an ancient and terrible conspiracy.
Now, now. 1994 doesn't quite qualify as "ancient".
Oh, it's a brilliant plan. You see, Bolas was travelling through shadowmoor, causing trouble, when he saw a Wickerbough Elder with its stylin' dead scarecrow hat. Now, Bolas being Bolas took the awesome hat and he put it on his head, but even with all his titanic powers of magic he couldn't make it fit. He grabbed some more scarecrows, but then a little kithkin girl asked if he was trying to build a toupee. "BY ALL THE POWERS IN THE MULTIVERSE!" he roared, "I WILL HAVE A HAT WORTHY OF MY GLORY." and so he went through his Dark Lore of Doom (tm) looking for something he could make into a hat that would look as stylish on him as a scarecrow does on a treefolk. He thought about the Phyrexians, but they were covered in goopy oil that would make his nonexistant hair greasy. He Tried out angels for a while but they didn't sit quite right. Then, he looked under "e" (because in the Elder Draconic alphabet, "e" for Eldrazi is right next to "h" for Hat) in his Dark Lore of Doom and saw depictions of the Eldrazi, and all their forms. "THIS SHALL BE MY HAT!" he declared, poking a picture of Emrakul, "AND WITH IT I WILL USHER IN A NEW AGE OF DARKNESS -- ER, I MEAN A NEW AGE OF FASHION!"
And so Nicol Bolas masterminded the release of the Eldrazi.
The last couple days have been roughly every perverse fetish imaginable, but it only got "creepy" when speculation on Mother of Runes's mob affiliation came up?
I like to think up what I consider clever names for my decks, only later to be laughed at by my wife. It kills me a little on the inside, but thats what marriage is about.
Of course, the best use [of tolaria west ] is transmuting for the real Tolaria.
Absolutely. I used to loose to my buddy's Banding deck for ages, it was then that I found out about Tolaria , and I was finally able win my first game.
Browbeat is a card that is an appropriate deck choice when there's no better idea available. "No better idea available" was pretty much the running theme of Odyssey era.
Modern is like playing a new tournament every time : you build a deck, you win with it, don't bother keeping it. Just build another, its key pieces will get banned.
I always find it helpful when im angry to dress up in an owl costume and rub pennies all over my body in front of a full body mirror next to the window.
Dymecoar:
Playing Magic without Blue is like sleeping without any sheets or blankets. You can do it...but why?
Omega137:
Me: "I love the moment when a control deck stabilizes. It feels so... right." Omega137: "I like the life drop part until you get there, it's the MtG variant of bungee jumping"
Zigeif777:
Just do it like Yu-Gi-Oh or monkeys: throw all the crap you got at them and hope it works or else the by-standers (or opponents) just get dirty and pissed.
Normally it's difficult to pick up on your jokes/sarcasm. But this one's pretty much out there. Good progress. You have moved up to Humanoid. You'll be Human in no time.
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?" You know, anyone who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it! That makes it real. Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction; it doesn't make the word any more real than any other word. If you love a word, it becomes real. --Erin McKean, Redefining the Dictionary
This article almost made me change my profile picture to chronomaton .
That's a pretty strong endorsement.
...Except that now I'm imagining you struggling to keep your robot arm from lopping off your head. And all your posts after that point just consist of ticking and whirring sounds.
I can't tell if this is terrifying or just really, really silly.
Anyway, to echo the others, I thought the story was interesting overall but the twist didn't quite work. That said, it was cool to see the card get expanded on this way. It has a great flavor on its own, and this adds a lot to it.
Ryan, are you on the creative team, or another team at WotC?
The twist also didn't work for me. I was enjoying the story up to that point, though.
The implication also seems to be that the arm and head were the only parts that were still human. The torso contained that intricate clockwork and those two parts were the only parts the creature needed to replace with clockwork to be "complete". Even setting aside the question of how he could survive without a heart, lung, digestive system, etc., I can't see the logistics of it: how would a man with one arm be able to remove that arm and his head and reattach them to a clockwork frame? Or, how would he be able to remove his torso to replace it with the clockwork one?
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