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WesFord's picture

Poor Bastards

By WesFord in Teleport Us

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Description

Grey is on a mission to save his brother with the aide of an unlikely ally.

*Note* This is the second iteration, altered after reading feedback from the original post.

Comments

Chi's picture
Chi from Sydney, Australia is reading The back of the Milk Carton March 4, 2013 - 6:06am

Hey Wes, 

Okay, the title is fitting, but I don't get a sense of what they look like and the sensory input of the opening scene. I know they're bloated, but have their cheeks filled out and what do they smell like? Do they smell like rotting flesh or do they smell Alien?

This paragraph is interesting:
 

He’s one of them. Used to be one of them, a Skitcher. So far he’s the only one of the invaders that has defected. We were going to try to kill him, he was the first one we ever came across that was by himself. We were excited to finally have one of them to pull apart and discover weaknesses in. Weaknesses other than feeding off the fat stored in human bodies

Albeit, do you have to let us know this early in the piece and not later on? There is so much drama in this paragraph that you could exploit in building tension between these characters and the distrust between them.

This is just gorgeous:

.” Below us, in what was once a warehouse, are beds filled with mountainous humans. Their skin stretched thin and tender, bright pink lightning bolts where the skin struggles to stay in tact orbit around their guts, run down their limbs, up their tits.

This is pretty fantastic too:

A lot of what I know is known in the sense that I memorized what Ticks said, so I know it. The way, in school, I knew the pledge of allegiance, but I didn’t understand the words coming out of my mouth.

I'm a bit hesistant of the term "poor bastard" repeated over and over when referring to the infected. It worked the first time, but the third time I saw it, I no longer feel sorry for the infected, but rather annoyed at the writer for using the term.

, “Why do they take them out of the DreamNet to feed?” He didn’t answer me. He resigned himself to making the noises that gave him his namesake

What does the body language of these two characters convey to each other? There is so much tension in the above paragraph that you can mine.

The issue that I have with the rest of the story is the distance between the protagonist and the emotional response he would experience in each scene. He tells us alot about what he is going through, don't get me wrong, but the lack of empathy and emotional depth detracts from some very wonderful prose.

I think engaging the emotional part of character will really help in this piece, because it will help the protagonist build up tension in parts of the story where he is alone. He is also teamed up with someone that he does not trust, hence the internal monologue may be paydirt in building up the drama between Grey and Ticks.

Nice work with the memories and Matty, it does create empathy. Although, I think there would be a mixture of emotions between these brothers, especially if Matty does not like Skitchers and Grey is with Ticks

-Chi

WesFord's picture
WesFord from America (CO, NE, NC, AK, NY, WA) is reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, Portable Atheist by Hitchens, 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill March 4, 2013 - 1:07pm

First things first, thanks for taking the time to read and for the response.

There's a handful of your criticisms I found interesting, largely because there are pieces of resolutions to your criticisms in the story that I thought would be enough to not cause questions or concerns. Apparently I'll have to play with those pieces more to make them clearer or stronger. Thank you for that.

Everybody wants emotions, but nobody seems to want to speculate as to why he doesn't "appear" to have any. That's another one of the pieces I thought was clear, but apparently isn't. I'll have to look it over.

Thanks again Chi, appreciate the read and the opinions.

Wes

Chi's picture
Chi from Sydney, Australia is reading The back of the Milk Carton March 4, 2013 - 3:47pm

Hey Wes,

Fuckin' A. I understand where you're coming from. Yeah, I get what you're saying with the emotion thing and it's an easy criticism to trot out infront of people just to say "Oh, you didn't do that...nah, nah, nahnah.".

For me, what keeps me flipping pages is this: Being emotionally invested in the character and wondering what is going to happen next. Its that tension and fear for the character that keeps me glued to the page and wondering where all those hours went because I spent all that time reading. Without the emotions in the story, your story lacks bite and after a while the reader will get up and do the laundry.

Even if this guy is burying his emotions under a rockpile of "I'm going to get through this.". There is that internal conflict that bubble up to the surface. There's that survivor guilt that gnaws at him. There's that "Why am I working with a skitcher" internal dialogue that constantly contemplates killing Ticks. There's the fear of his brother being a inflated green mess for the rest of his life. Yes, the character can shove them all down, but especially in the first person, use that to crank up the heat on the protagonist.

Hope this explains my position a little more.

Thanks.

-Chi

 

WesFord's picture
WesFord from America (CO, NE, NC, AK, NY, WA) is reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, Portable Atheist by Hitchens, 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill March 4, 2013 - 1:08pm

First things first, thanks for taking the time to read and for the response.

There's a handful of your criticisms I found interesting, largely because there are pieces of resolutions to your criticisms in the story that I thought would be enough to not cause questions or concerns. Apparently I'll have to play with those pieces more to make them clearer or stronger. Thank you for that.

Everybody wants emotions, but nobody seems to want to speculate as to why he doesn't "appear" to have any. That's another one of the pieces I thought was clear, but apparently isn't. I'll have to look it over.

Thanks again Chi, appreciate the read and the opinions.

Wes

EdVaughn's picture
EdVaughn from Louisville, Ky is reading a whole bunch of different stuff March 4, 2013 - 2:12pm

Wes, this is an interesting story. A little scifi-horror thing going on. I dig it. I don't have much to say about it other than I would like a little more description in what the Skitchers look like exactly. I had a hard time imagining it. It wasn't clear if they were humanoid or not. I got the impression they were insect-like but I wasn't really sure. Also there is a point when you introduce Ticks that you say "we" were going to kill him. Not sure who the "we" are. Grey and his brother or other humans out in the world? Overall a cool story. 

Juice Ica's picture
Juice Ica from Rhode Island is reading The Twelve by Justin Cronin & Beautiful Creatures March 6, 2013 - 10:02am

Dude. DUUUUDE. I read the original draft you posted on here and this one is light years better! I wish I had known sooner that you had posted a new draft so I could gush sooner. Wow. I loooove this story now and the last line near killed me. Really well done, great editing job and I can only say good things about this. Nice job!!!

Adam Jenkins's picture
Adam Jenkins from Bracknell, England is reading RCX Magazine (Issue 1 coming soon) March 25, 2013 - 3:19am

I liked this, a nice little contained story that hinted at a much wider world but without seeming like it was overly condensed. The human farming aspect is not an original idea, but it does not feel derivitive here. I was torn while reading it between hoping for a happy ending of sorts, and half expecting Grey to be caught and hooked up himself, all the time knowing exactly what was happening to him. What I liked about your ending is the ambiguity as to whether or not they are moving on to a better situation. Waking them up during feeding is nicely nasty, but it does take away a little from that ambiguity. I can understand other commenters wanting to see more of the Skitchers, but that wasn't a problem for me. Calling the friendly one Ticks, and the way you describe them moving, made them very insect-like for me. Not describing them fully just meant I could picture them as I wanted to. Good story!

ArlaneEnalra's picture
ArlaneEnalra from Texas is reading Right now I'm editing . . .. March 28, 2013 - 8:49pm

Huh! I read this a long while back, I know I did! Apparently, I didn't comment on it then. :( I noticed you stripped out the parts about what was going on inside the DreamNet. The story does seem to flow better without the context switches between reality and the dream. You might add a bit about what the dream is like.

Excellent Work!