Fiction challenge anyone?

[BlueBard]

There are 5 stories... you could always use a D10 to decide...

[Uncle Yuan]

Sounds fair to me! 

BB - I'll PM you my PayPal name.

[Glitch Girl]

Heh, I wish I could afford that.... as it stands the "maybe there will be a prize, maybe not" is looking at "not"  thanks to some recent dental work (old bond left over from my grade school misadventures was starting to crack)

Still haven't heard from my friend, and though the d10 sounds tempting, I think no.  I will post a little bit of what I thought of each one for discussion purposes....

"Spring Break-Out"-BlueBard
I have to say I really liked the music motif throughout.  It was a nice linking element through the various scenes.  Amphibi-Man comes across as a very likable character and the story itself has a lot of charm.  As for the heroes... I don't think they work quite as well.  You could have almost done with one less since there isn't a lot for them to do.  Still overall I enjoyed reading this piece, a very nice use of the "Spring" theme.

Springing The Trap-BlueBard
I am reminded slightly of Uncle Remus' tales reading this because I had to read parts of it out loud due to dialect. That said, this reads a lot like a radio comedy for obvious reasons.  The theme "spring" as in "spring the trap"  does work and while I applaud trying a different writing style, I feel your first piece was stronger. 

Untitled-Xenolith
I like the POV of this piece, and there are some funny observations in here.  Your "villain" who didn't so much become a supervillain as happen into it is fun.  In a way, I would have liked it to have been longer, it feels very short.  The "spring" theme could be more prominent as well - my first thought was you were going to use Rubber Man in this way somehow, but instead most of the theme element is encompassed in the final paragraph.

Spring Ahead, Fall Back-Viking
I have a confession - I could not read this one in one sitting.  As soon as I hit "Clockwork Orange" I was reeling so much from that pun I had to walk around a bit and groan (and giggle a bit too).  And again at the spoonerism.  Oy... anyway...  The spring-powered automaton does fill the theme quite well.  The ending... I dunno, it felt a little too pat.  I don't know what I was looking for per se, but things seemed to fall together too easily. 

The Broken Spring -PreRaphaelite
AAAhhhh, awesome amounts of alliteration!    While I have to salute you for pulling this off, it does make it the toughest to get through since the alliterative quality is actually a bit distracting (I mean, it's actually kind of a dark story, once you get past the novelty of the alliteration).  Of coure, I was also reminded of a Patrick McManus short story ("Salami on Rye, Gold the Wild Gobo", if you read the latter half about Stretch and his poems, you'll get the connection) so that was a bit of personal distraction. The theme seems to have gotten lost, which was part of the challenge, though I 'm guessing it's a psychological spring that has sprung here.   Still... dang, I am impressed you pulled this off.

I'll be honest, I don't want to pick a winner.  What do you guys think?

[Viking]

Heck, I'm just glad to get feedback.  And to know that you enjoyed the story, even if the ending was too pat.  That may be a function of me writing in something of a Silver-Age setting, if you'll pardon the alliteration.  (I think I recall the Patrick McManus story you mention, though I remembered his friend's name as "Retch."  I was amused at how Retch's sibilant stories led Pat to similar sounds in his speech, like: "Sarah, send Sally for six or so seven-cent stamps.")

Sorry to hear about the recent dental work, by the way.

At any rate - I'm glad that the pun and spoonerism had the intended groan/giggle effect.  I wanted to work the spoonerism in, partly from a humorous typo Gdaybloke once made when attempting to type the name of the "Clockwork King," a villain in City of Heroes.  But it took most of the month before the inspiration hit to name an automaton the Clockwork Orange.  The story was also my attempt at exploring the traditional superhero trope of heroes first fighting one another due to a misunderstanding, and tweaking the trope a little.

[Xenolith]

It was a fun exercise.  I'm okay with not winning or losing.

[PreRaphaelite]

Haha, I'm not worried about the competition aspect, and most definitely was not concerned with a prize. I just thought it would be a bit of fun to fill an hour or two, and it was! Thank you for the comments GG and I agree wholeheartedly that it was a little difficult to read. This was not completely without purpose - after all, what is a 'Fiction Challenge' without challenging the reader a little?

[BlueBard]

For my part, I've already told Viking that I felt his story was stronger in comparison with mine.  But hey, that's okay. 

"Spring Break-Out" was written in two days.  I managed to find inspiration, but didn't have a lot of time.  I cut corners -- intentionally.  Scene transitions were abrupt.  My heroes were parodies of stereotypical archetypes.  I thought about expanding the story with fight scenes and escapes and misunderstandings, etc... but all that would've distracted from my goal of telling a short, enjoyable story about a villain who basically plays 'hooky'.  Nearly all my efforts of character development went into Amphibi-Man.  I like him too.  He breaks the stereotype of the bad-guy mutant bruiser.  He's smarter than his enemies give him credit for, more easy-going than anyone expects him to be, and other quirks of character that I'll reserve in case I write him again.

BTW... Amphibi-Man hums because he can't whistle.  That might be a story for another time.

"Springing The Trap".  I admit it.  It was a throwaway story.  It was dashed out in one day.  The goal was, again, to produce a short, enjoyable read with the hope that it might inspire someone else who wouldn't ordinarily post to post something.  Again, loaded with stereotypes -- including the over-complicated over-the-top deathtrap.  The only thing novel about it was the transcript angle and that would never have worked as anything but a very short story.  UberMaster was difficult to write for.  I decided that the transcript was being generated by a speech-to-text program.  This led to the notion that UberMaster's bad accent would result in mistranslations into other words... sort of like a spell-checker gone wrong.  Yeah, GG... the read out loud effect was also very intentional.

But if I had to be objective, I would have nominated Viking for the win.  The story flowed better, the detail was richer, and the amount of effort that went into it was clearly seen.  If it had any real weakness, it would be the presumption that you were already familiar with the Lion and the Unicorn characters.  But the story didn't have to be standalone and it was likely that the audience had read his previous tales.

I have to confess... I couldn't get through the alliteration story.  The effort that went into it is admirable, though.  My personal feeling is that a story should be easy for a reader to digest... but I broke that principle with UberMaster so I won't be slinging stones

I am also familiar with the McManus story you were referring to.   I can confirm that "Retch" was not the character who wrote the 'S' poems in that story but I don't remember for sure if the name was Stretch or Slick.

[Viking]

Thanks for the additional tidbit of feedback, BB.  I actually did try to put in sufficient background detail so that recurring characters would at least be comprehensible to new readers.  So, if anyone read my story that hasn't read my previous "Lion and Unicorn" stories, and felt at all confused or at a loss, I would very much appreciate hearing about it.

I realized that some of my previous works had automatically presumed familiarity with the Lion and the Unicorn, and the world that I have crafted for them, so this story was also an experimental attempt in making a story that would be accessible to first-time readers of the material.  I would very much welcome feedback on this point.

Likewise, if people feel that the story had an ending that fell together too easily, I would welcome confirmation on that point.  Especially if they have a sense of where they would have otherwise taken the story.  (This is not a slight against GG in any fashion - I've certainly had my share of reactions where something inexplicable just rubbed me the wrong way.  But if you have a subsequent moment of clarity, I'd appreciate hearing it.)

Let's see... there's some feedback I can give on other stories, too...

The alliteration in "The Broken Spring" was indeed eye-catching, but I agree that it ultimately made the story somewhat hard to get through.  I feel that as a literary tool, alliteration probably does a better job in smaller chunks.  Such as, if there were a single character that spoke primarily in alliteration, or simply made an introduction in alliteration.  (A scene from the movie, "V for Vendetta" springs to mind.)  Used sparingly, alliteration is a powerful, attention-grabbing tool.

BlueBard's portrayal of the UberMaster's speech patterns is another interesting experiment.  I normally am extremely hesitant to try inserting deliberate misspellings as a portrayal of accents so thick you could cut them and sell them in slices.  Part of this reaction is the fear that I'll portray the accent badly.  (Though BB has said that UberMaster is deliberately intended to have a bad accent.)

I'd say that my favorite example of thick accents written well would be that of the Jagermonsters in the Girl Genius online comic.  Something about their portrayal just resonates with me.  (It probably gains flavor from the fact that illustration allows the text balloons to be drawn in a jagged fashion, which further implies a rough and gravelly voice.)

[BlueBard]

Viking, after a close re-read I'd have to say you did a pretty good job of reintroducing the characters.  It was in fact just subtle enough that I missed that fact... meaning it didn't get in the way of the story and flowed naturally enough that I didn't catch it.