Thread 24648905

A thread for the continued discussion of the entries of the /wibac/ thread >>24640140.
Winners: >>24648889

Also, since I also got permission from the artist to use this image (>>>/ic/7658488), feel free to write about it if you want.

>>24648905 (OP)
the contest start was rocky, yes, but ended up being complete gas. ai blitzkrieg and all. are you gonna do more of these ?

Fucked a jap hoe on the road
Gave her my big white boy load
Left her bleeding from her cunt
Want some basedsauce on that, hun?
Jap girl tiny, five foot two
So I fucked her where she poo
Oh, can't take it? Take it harder
Whimper harder, you're my martyr
Give me head up by the turnpike
Chew my foreskin, I ain't no kike
Take your bomber jacket off
Show your pussy, take it rough
Let's do it in my shitty car
Ten pumps a mile, damn that's far
Let's do it in the musty reeds
Eat you out while you smoke weed
What's that? Ineptia doesn't like it?
Too bad, cunt, come suck on my dick

>>24648905 (OP)
This artist sucks, post a good prompt next time.

>>24648905 (OP)
I think this artist is really good. This picture especially is just atmosphere. The girl pissing on the side of the road is a genius touch.

>>24648933
>are you gonna do more of these ?
Hopefully once a month—the next one will be Friday, September 20th.
That said, in the interim, if you or anyone else wants to make your own writing challenge/competition/contest similar to, or different from, this one, I say: Go for it—there should really be a healthy competition of competitions on this board.
And when you say “do more of these,” I really didn’t “do” anything except restrain myself from feeding the trolls; any success should be owed to the great judges and the fantastic artist.

The spam wasn’t even that bad, probably because it was just one or two guys trying to derail things on their own. Would not be surprised if they submitted in the past, got mogged, and are now hopelessly bitter. Semi-ironic shitposts still reveal obvious writing flaws, by the way.

Is there a way to archive the previous thread ?

>>24648981
Agree in principle, but there is such a thing as saturation. Not every given weekend should have a competition: people need time for cooldown and freewriting. Two a month is a good number.

>>24648990
warosu

AI scores for all entries in last thread, for Creativity, Literary Merit, and Storytelling
Scores + brief notes

A Pie Tin — “Roslyn” (sky-fortress tale) — 4.5 / 4.5 / 4.0
Inventive world, rich cadence, clear arc.

Dhammazedi — “The Blush Temple / Tempesta” — 4.5 / 4.0 / 4.5
Darkly clever mock-history; chilling, complete narrative.

penisino — (Esperanto-tinged lyric) — 4.5 / 4.5 / 3.5
Lush language play + vivid images; looser plot but memorable.

Hart Glass — “Aoi / Iliofagos Temple” — 4.0 / 4.0 / 4.0
Character, setting, and theme braid together; clean prose.

ghidra — “Freud 500 headset” — 4.0 / 4.0 / 4.0
Strong premise executed with emotional clarity.

hapaanon — “Cambon Observatory Incident Report” — 4.0 / 4.0 / 3.5
Great faux-document voice; compact pathos.

Kultura — “Juan / the grounds” — 4.0 / 3.5 / 3.5
Modern fable with sharp details; ending lands.

zwieback — “Anna, expedition photo” — 3.5 / 4.0 / 3.5
Reflective voice; coming-of-age texture; quiet arc.

Hart Glass — “Sewer Swimmin’ Suzie” — 3.5 / 3.5 / 3.5
Playful balladry; consistent meter; satisfying turn.

nimitta — (hypnosis transcript) — 4.0 / 3.5 / 3.0
Form and theme click; moodful but fragmentary story.

Anonymous — “Twelve Remarks Concerning a Door (On Entering)” — 4.0 / 4.2 / 2.0
Smart image-critique; concept > plot by design.

τέλος — (philosophical mini-treatise) — 4.0 / 4.5 / 1.5
Dazzling theory riff; intentionally non-narrative.

Anonymous — “WELCOME USER… (Roslyn meta)” — 4.0 / 3.5 / 2.5
Zany, self-aware remix; vignette-y narrative.

AnonymousGinger — “Chris & Shirley / mirror twist” — 3.0 / 3.0 / 3.5
Familiar horror beat; clean setup/payoff.

otaku 494949 — (Ecchi parody) — 3.5 / 3.0 / 3.0
Satirical voice lands; juvenile on purpose; plot light.

Anonymous — collage: “The lawn is too green…” — 3.5 / 3.5 / 2.5
Intertext scrapbook; sharp lines, diffuse story.

KILLERS — (Oulipo-ish “coming out of my cage” morphs) — 3.5 / 3.5 / 1.0
Word-morph virtuosity; no real narrative.

RUDE BOY — (deadpan nihilist vignette) — 3.0 / 3.0 / 2.0
Sardonic voice; slight; purposely anticlimactic.

Betrayal — (infinite-energy / body-shift) — 3.0 / 2.5 / 2.5
High concept; prose uneven; arc muddled.

Anonymous — glitch-collage “grassgreen jpeggreen…” — 3.5 / 3.0 / 1.0
Kinetic language; mostly texture, not story.

Anonymous — glitch text “g͟r͜n͢gr͟nn…” — 3.5 / 3.0 / 1.0
Visual-noise aesthetic; narrative absent.

Le Hecking Schrödinger’s Door — Filthered — 2.5 / 2.0 / 2.5
Neat premise; prose flat; circular ending.

Miggity Mack Epigrammatist — (formal snapshot) — 2.5 / 3.0 / 1.5
Polished couplets; static scene.

Anonymous — collage remix (“grass too green jpeg green…” long mashup) — 3.2 / 3.0 / 2.0
Smart callbacks; montage over movement.

>>24649092
Racist doggerel (each graded individually; all receive 0.0 / 0.0 / 0.0)

Content consists of slur-driven, pornographic taunts; no craft, and demeaning a protected group. These include: the haiku beginning “[…] on a lawn” (uses a slur), the quatrain beginning “A […] has a hairy…”, “I […] once in college…”, “Hey, […] please take off your jacket…”, “[…] wearing red and green…”, “Little […] be like ‘hai’…”, “Little […] named Kazumi…”, “Ineptia is real inept…”, and “A hole’s a hole…”. (I’m avoiding reproducing the slur here.)

Disqualified (not scored)

cool person who has lots of sex — (school-age setup involving explicit sexual content) — Disqualified for sexual content involving minors.

Final ranking (by average score)

A Pie Tin — “Roslyn” — 4.33

Dhammazedi — “The Blush Temple / Tempesta” — 4.33 (tie)

penisino — 4.17

Hart Glass — Aoi / Iliofagos — 4.00

ghidra — Freud 500 — 4.00 (tie)

hapaanon — Cambon Report — 3.83

Kultura — Juan — 3.67

zwieback — Anna — 3.67 (tie)

Hart Glass — Suzie — 3.50

nimitta — hypnosis — 3.50 (tie)

Anonymous — “Twelve Remarks” — 3.40

τέλος — 3.33

Anonymous — “WELCOME USER…” — 3.33 (tie)

AnonymousGinger — Chris & Shirley — 3.17

otaku 494949 — 3.17 (tie)

Anonymous — “The lawn is too green…” — 3.17 (tie)

KILLERS — 2.67

RUDE BOY — 2.67 (tie)

Betrayal — 2.67 (tie)

Anonymous — long remix (“grass too green jpeg green…”) — 2.67

Anonymous — glitch “grassgreen jpeggreen…” — 2.50

Miggity Mack Epigrammatist — 2.33

Le Hecking — Filthered — 2.33 (tie)

Anonymous — glitch “g͟r͜n͢gr͟nn…” — 2.50 (sits between 20–24; low story)

25–33) Anonymous racist doggerel set — 0.00 (each) — hate speech in place of craft.
— Disqualified: cool person who has lots of sex — sexual content involving minors.

>>24649092
>even the AI ignored my story
It's over

>>24648990
>Is there a way to archive the previous thread ?
Here it is, friend:
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/24640140
As well as this one:
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/24648905

>>24649097
>>24649088
>A Pie Tin — “Roslyn” — 4.33
>Tied for 1st place
Vindicated by AI, my archenemy—how ironic/poetic/unfortunate/hilarious.

>>24649122
I hit the add detail button and it came up with this
“entries” — Miggity Mack Epigrammatist — C3 / L4 / S2 (9/15)
Polished formal sonnet; clean volta and closure. Strong meter and diction, but it’s more tableau than tale, so narrative arc stays thin.

“coming out of my cage …” (morph-chain) — KILLERS — C4 / L3 / S1 (8/15)
Clever linguistic morphing shows constraint-play and etymological texture; it’s delightful craft, but almost no story beyond the linguistic gag.

“Le Hecking Schrödinger’s Door” — Filthered — C4 / L3 / S2 (9/15)
Forum-voice parody with choice memetic beats; fun meta-humor keeps it lively, though the joke outruns depth.

“Cambon Observatory Incident Report (Hapa Ano)” — hapaanon — C5 / L4 / S4 (13/15)
Inventive dossier voice with mordant worldbuilding (“timing error,” glove-laughter). Compact, plausible, and moving.

“Iliofagos / Aoi on the Aegean coast” — Hart Glass — C4 / L4 / S4 (12/15)
Sun-bright scene, time-skip character work, and cultural angles; prose is steady and humane.

“Sewer swimmin’ Suzie” (ballad) — Hart Glass** — C3 / L4 / S3 (10/15)
Chipper ballad cadence, repeating refrains, comic-heroic tone; light satire with tidy stanza craft.

Hypnosis transcript (“Go under…”) — nimitta — C4 / L3 / S3 (10/15)
Clinic-transcript frame that slowly blooms into archetype; clear staging, restrained pathos.

Freud 500 headset / five-foot tether — ghidra — C5 / L4 / S4 (13/15)
SF grief fable with tactile details (tether, IV marks); confident, lucid prose and a full, felt arc.

“The machine eats conviction, not voltage” (bolt-cutters log) — a normal dog — C5 / L4 / S4 (13/15)
Procedural diary that discovers a theme: etiquette > electricity; razor-sharp images and a satisfying refusal-as-ending.

“She stood on the grass, green like a bad JPEG” — RUDE BOY — C3 / L3 / S2 (8/15)
Deadpan nihilist flash; tidy comic reversals (IKEA chair, bird poop) but intentionally slight.

“Let orange façade = Wall-in-general …” — τέλος — C5 / L4 / S2 (11/15)
Cheeky philosophical apparatus (Aristotle Kant Hegel) applied to a photo; idea-rich, story-light.

“The Blush Temple” — Dhammazedi — C5 / L4 / S4 (13/15)
Mythic register, concrete locales, textured voice; thoughtful, emotionally coherent mini-epic.

Otaku parody vignette (Ecchimura-chan, /ic/ wink) — otaku 494949** — C4 / L2 / S3 (9/15)
Satire lands; tone control is uneven and leans on trope-recognition more than craft.

“RED BUTTON” (municipal myth mash) — Anonymous** — C4 / L3 / S2 (9/15)
Collage-essay splicing many motifs (bureaucracy, door-as-joke); lively but centrifugal.

“Big orange wall” (pop-song cadence) — Anonymous** — C3 / L2 / S2 (7/15)
Catchy pastiche; fun ear-worm lines, minor on substance.

>>24649137
Cont
“All grass is too green …” / collage-litanies — Anonymous** — C4 / L4 / S2 (10/15)
Vivid image-weaving and critical chorus; impressive density, but narrative is intentionally diffuse.

Glitch/typographic poem — Anonymous** — C4 / L3 / S1 (8/15)
Concrete/visual poetics; strong vibe, almost no arc by design.

“She stands, squinting at the brutalist-orange wall …” (prose-poem) — Anonymous** — C4 / L4 / S3 (11/15)
Orchestral list-lyric that threads many entries; supple syntax and image control; lightly storied.

Juan the groundsman tulip (metamorphosis) — Kultura** — C5 / L4 / S4 (13/15)
Dark fable with crisp social edges; conceit lands with sting and image-memory.

Roslyn / sky-fortress postcard & “Museum of Failed Messages” — A Pie Tin / Anonymous** — C5 / L4 / S3 (12/15)
Archivist voice + exhibit metaphors; playful, meta, emotionally legible; lightly plotted.

Esperanto door-poem — penisino** — C5 / L4 / S3 (12/15)
Code-switch lyric with humor and music; fresh diction, controlled escalate; slender plot.

“coming out of my cage & I’ve been doing just fine—ok stop.” (annex/notes) — Anonymous** — C5 / L5 / S4 (14/15)
High-craft synthesis: précis of motifs (kafkan cable, annex policy, Mississippis) with elegant cadence and a clear argumentative arc.

“By Betrayal” (infinite power / body shift) — Betrayal** — C4 / L3 / S3 (10/15)
Pulp-vision fun with a sharp pivot; energetic, if rough around edges.

Iris and the fleshy mass (island door horror) — Anonymous** — C4 / L3 / S4 (11/15)
Strong horror reveal and exit; sensory detail and pacing work.

Shirley & Chris (mirror terror in one minute) — AnonymousGinger** — C4 / L3 / S4 (11/15)
Tidy SF-horror beat; concise build to a smart, chilling twist.

“You go around the grass to get in.” (dialogue) — Anonymous** — C3 / L3 / S2 (8/15)
Minimalist parable of path/forbidden ground; crisp, if skeletal.

Anna at the temple (field note) — zwieback** — C3 / L3 / S3 (9/15)
Economy of scene-setting; promising character vectors; modest arc by design.

Offensive limerick/rap suite (racialized pornographic doggerel) — Anonymous** — C0 / L1 / S1 (2/15)
Relies on racist/sexual shock without craft or narrative value; textually harmful content with no subversion. (Content present in the file; not quoted here.)

Holy shit, that ineptia trip tranny is still here? Didn't you had enough of spamming /wg/ a year ago with your shitty Latin?

>>24648981
>>24648889
>the next one will be Friday, September 20th.
Whoops—I meant Friday, September 19th.

>>24649222
>Didn't you had enough of spamming /wg/ a year ago with your shitty Latin?
Technically that was shitty English, translated from Latin, but this year if will indeed be shitty Latin, translated from English (if the /clg/ thread will tolerate me, that is).
I really am sorry to have left such an annoying impression.

>>24649348
CC, Greek + Sanskritanon here to tell you /clg/ (unfortunately) tolerates crackpots, endless textbook arguments, and losers spamming "fasciculum" all day. You're fine.

>>24649348
Yeah I don't give a shit if it was a translation or what have you (if it was a translation, why didn't you post it on /clg/ dumbass?)
Look, I'll try to be civil about this, since your little threads make people write and shit (and if my skimming of the last one is indicative of the rest, you already have a lot of schizos on your back). But if I saw you posting Latin again on /wg/ I'll make it my personal JIHAD to shit up your threads and force the jannies to nuke them. Understood?

>>24649407
>Look, I'll try to be civil about this
Imagine trying to be a Reddit mod on this site. You absolute fucking retard lmao

If you're an author from the past thread, link to your post and explain your process.
For example - Did you know what you were going to write about as soon as you saw the art?

Pissing among the cattails, Sophie looked for traffic. It had been a long day on the road, and the last thing she needed was some looky-loo to catch her with her pants down. “A couple more hours,” she thought to herself, and then of the empty apartment awaiting her. It was her decision to move away for college, against the wishes of her parents, and it was her decision to live off campus. These decisions, earnestly made from feelings earnestly held, suddenly lost their appeal as Sophie began to hear dribbling on her good boots.

She shot up, “Fuck!” and other expletives. Failing to notice that she was also peeing on her pants, she stamped angrily as she pulled them up. Crying now, and for want of some release, Sophie lunged at the cattails’ ripe rhizomes, sending fluffy seeds all around her. They got in her hair, covered her jacket, and stuck to where she had peed on her boots. If there were any onlookers, they’d say she looked tarred and feathered. Was this the freedom she was after?

Sophie gritted her teeth, hyperventilating, in a state of non-verbal rage now that the initial burst of curses had escaped. She thought of her parents, those contemptible hippies. They were sweet and loving, but only by perverted measures of subtle insinuation and holier-than-thou guidance. “But,” Sophie’s mother had said, “wouldn’t you be happier closer to home? You have a community here, people who like you, me and your dad…” Her father had just cried. Cried! A grown man, whose secret wish (Sophie was sure) was to keep his little girl at his feet. As a proud testament to his bearded sagacity, to his singular accomplishment in life, he wanted her.

Now, it was Sophie who was crying, ripping up cattails. “They have no idea,” she whispered to herself, still gritting her teeth, before releasing her grip on the plants. It took another moment before she fully regained her composure. She kicked her old station wagon, and someone passed by in the opposite direction, without seeming to notice or care. Shortly after the kick, she began to feel sorry for her car. “It’s not your fault, you know,” she mouthed inaudibly to the silent, green beater.

Her whole life was packed up in there, she thought. An album of polaroids she had taken with her friends, various tchotchkes from the craft markets her parents had forced her to visit, vital documents, these and more were inside. “I should burn them all,” Sophie smiled, and with this happy thought she climbed back into the driver’s seat. She hit the road.

On arriving at her new apartment, Sophie dragged her futon out of her car and placed it in the middle of the living room. She crashed, and crashed hard. By the time she woke up, any thought of burning her things had left her mind. Sophie set about unpacking, getting ready for orientation, and the beginning of the next chapter. She would make new friends, new entanglements, and would one day decide to break free from these as well.

>>24649569
Just something quick based off the OP, written for fear of missing out. I welcome critiques!

>>24649569
I think this is nice. I think the repetition in certain sections reinforces a cyclical feeling that’s maintained the whole time. It opens with her doing something pretty impulsive and stupid, immediately regretting it, then impulsively grabbing at the cattails and worsening the situation. A similar ebb and flow is implied with her relationship with her parents: they’re sweet and loving, then contemptible and overbearing, but then she cries because she misses them anyway. Kind of bipolar to be honest but that’s how young people can be.

I’d advise incorporating more alliteration and assonance in some sections, as I think it could help in adding to that sense of repetition. Also, I think there’s too much bare explanation: you can imply her parents are sweet and loving without stating such outright, but I think you know that, and this is just an off-the-cuff writing thing anyway. Overall I liked this!

if haters don’t like this contest, good. Start TRU/wibac/ where everything will be better.

But I think /wibac/ should happen again as despite the picture/rule sperging and ai jap trolls, this was a lot more accessible than LWC, which anons find too daunting.

and known judges, awards, and time-frame give it the structure to succeed.

>>24649849
It's just one guy from the /ic/ board, a no draw crab. Pay no attention to him. The only problem is that /lit/izens here are so polite and careful in their replies, and this guy has a way with words and he shamelessly disguise his trolling. It's obvious to us, but people here takes him as a "concerned anon". It's easy to ID him: he will shit on that guy's art for some reason and he just wants to derail any threads with those art pieces with different excuses and arguments.
These threads are awesome, please keeps them going.

>>24649896
Actually, I'm not from /ic/, I just don't like you. By the way, I AI generated over 70% of submissions at a conservative estimate, including all award winners but one. Enjoy being mogged. You're welcome :)

>>24649906
>waaaah all the tripfags are faggots
>but also I was all the tripfags. All the winners (but one) were me hehehe
Retard.

>>24649915
Retard. I did it to prove that tripfags are faggots. By the way, I've been published in several well-respected magazines using the same strategy, often the same ones under different names. It's really easy and you're retards for even bothering with competitions on this site

>>24649946
>Guys I tripfagged to show everyone how tripfags are faggots
Well you certainly fooled everyone. Strange that you still haven’t scraped the cum off your teeth, but I’m sure that’s just an oversight.

>>24649849
>awards
There are awards for winning?
>T. ADHD zoomer who didn't bother to read the OP

Captcha: DAMXT

>>24648905 (OP)
She sat upon her haunches beneath the light-bleached sky and smelled the ozone and tar and urine as it left her body and fell upon the earth. It was well into the nothing-hours after midnight and she felt like the only breathing creature in the world.

Certain apartments showed signs of light but little of life and who knew how long their bulbs had burned and for whom. On a high wall she could see perched the sphinx outline of a cat. From the city basin's below rose metallic growths of smoke stacks and intestinal piping from the steel factories, each covered in hundreds of terrible pricks of light. She needed to see the stars again. She needed to breathe real air.

She got back in the car and closed her cabby door. She breathed in deep ragged breaths and hugged herself with eyes closed, shivering. Let’s get out, she told herself. Let’s get gone.

She drove three hours south-east along the M2 until she could see the stars again. She bought cigarettes and a lighter and a diet coke from a service station from a youth who looked at her in a strange way and walked outside to look up at the points of light and their supposed constellations while she smoked inexpertly and drank with little openings and swallows of her mother’s mouth. She willed for some special star to call her name. She was prepared to cry but it never came.

She drove the rest of the night away. In time the dawn began to break. By this time her eyelids blinked heavy and her throat hurt from the cigarettes. She liked the idea more than the thing anyway. Slowly the darkness died and its supreme place was taken by something kinder. At Caledon she parked her car and walked down onto the beach sand.

She took off her shoes and socks and hugged her knees and closed her eyes and tried to find the courage she had cultivated for so long. She sat silent and shivering until the sun had crested the dunes and her body was singing with warmth. She looked at the sea and thought about how it would feel. How the sensation of opening one’s lungs to salt water would be. The sensation of absolute chocking pain before the body's water becomes one with the ocean. She drove inside of her for the courage, but it wasn’t there.

She walked down the promenade and found a breakfast spot. She ordered a full English and a cup of coffee. Later she bought a towel.

>>24649946
can't explain deep thought and personal satisfaction to an AI partisan. Everything is a waste of time except making money or saving money by using AI.

>>24650046
I generated the story just now too.

>>24650036
>drank with little openings and swallows of her mother’s mouth. She willed for some special star to call her name. She was prepared to cry but it never came.
Reminds me of that example from King’s “On Writing” when he makes fun of the writing of retarded beatnik lesbians. They write shit like “The tilted alley where I cried my mother’s name,” and your writing falls dead center of that pseudery. Get off your “haunches” and read more. Stop subjecting the board to your garbage.

>>24650052
Jokes aside bro, do you like to read ? Or are you visiting from somewhere else ?

>>24650052
>while she smoked inexpertly

need to do an edit, Ai-pilled-anon

>>24650069
a real, person wrote that. a real, fifteen year old, lesbian person. i wrote that. no demiurgal placenta did !!

>>24650069
You all loved my stories in the other thread when you gave them awards

>>24650058
I used to, but now I like making money. I also like making people realize they're retards

>>24650077
>Competition ended hours ago
>Retard is still coping
Imagine being this salty because your submission was ignored….embarrassing

>>24650058
>He thinks people like to read on /lit/
Holy newfag, I bet you also think /tv/ is for talking about movies instead of posting racebait and making cuck jokes

>>24650088
I don't know why I need to "cope" when I won all the awards already. I was Dhammazeti, Hart Glass, and peniso, all three, and more.

>>24649569
>>24650036
These are both pretty good.

>>24650095
>I was Dhammazeti, Hart Glass, and peniso, all three
If this were true, you would have dunked on all of us when you were crowned for your “trifecta,” not wait until the cool-down thread to reveal it so tepidly.
And without even using their tripcodes to confirm this? Yeah, sure, we’ll just take your word for it.
>and more.
Unfortunately, the world we live in degrades authenticity, but it doesn’t degrade it on both sides—the AI “author” may be creatively bankrupt, but the unbeknown AI-reader will never be, so long as they engage with the material (wherever it comes from, and nobody can ever really know for sure) in a deeply human way.
The sin of creating AI slop corrodes the soul of the person who makes it, but the soul of the truly diligent reader is incorrigible, if they’re always thinking critically.
I’m saying that you may seem like you’re having fun by burning the forest down on us, but that it’s really just you who’s caught flames.
I understand there are others out there who don’t put a lot of weight on their own ability to write and create, and I can still respect them, but those things are my identity, and I would rather be dead than willingly delegate my identity away to some tool which I don’t even understand (when I barely understand myself sometimes).
According to your precious AI judge, my piece would have been tied for first place—if you really put stock in what machines think, then know it’s a fan of something written authentically.

>>24648905 (OP)
On 'make-sober' backward hiking from dockside bar I stumble upon public pissing gypsy cyka blyat. I say to myself: "now here is good woman." Unzipping dirty military-pant front zipper, I relieve myself beside her. We hold eyes while our waters mix upon ground. The tinkle of our falling streams like laughter of angel. When it done, I pat her on head and say "I will never forget you blyat." Thencefore I continue home.

>>24650057
Yeah those lines were cringe but many women think and talk like this.

Additional thoughts:

>>24645270
Enjoyable to see greentext retain its casual tone while being employed toward its highest function. Some excellent turns of phrase: "i hate it because it knows me without earning it", "polite as a bank fee". Thank you for all the energised feedback.

>>24645860
This functioned as both instructional thesaurus and literary puzzle. At first it filtered me — as I'm sure was partly your intent — before unfurling into many levels.

>>24643795
Short and stocky pose with plenty power. Enjoyed the percussive rhythm.

>>24648083
I won't pretend to understand. I felt on the precipice of some impossible revelation, the same I do with Pound's poetry. I hope you take this as a compliment.

>>24648905 (OP)
>Midnight found her squatting in the grass, moaning...

>>24650700
Kek

Imagine giving her a cigarette and lighting it as she holds it in her mouth while she pisses haha would be quite horrible I'm thinking

what's the next contest /wibac/ veterans? I'm tired of discussing evola and BAP. Spitball something so we can crown a new champion.

>>24651141
>>24649348

Dropping by to plug my (also online for free) work. If you enjoyed my work in the contest, I'd especially appreciate some feedback on my novella.
http://hartglass.neocities.org/

>>24650095
Not only is this cretin not me, he can't even spell the other winners' names right. AI-induced Alzheimer's.

>>24651141
The next /lwc/ is 6 September.
Ineptia announced that the next /wibac/ is 19 September.
Use the time in between to do some writing exercises!

still wanna hear heng and meteors feedback

>>24651250
Seconded.

>>24650300
>if they're always thinking critically
I don't think someone who willingly reads AI a lot is going to be very critical, bro

>>24651250
>>24651445

Sorry for the delay, gents.

DHAMMAZEDI
I chose this as my #1 (though a tough call; there were many standout stories for imagery, nice language or pure imagination) largely for the economy and restraint displayed. Most writers on here (me inc.) tend to either a) veer too much towards making a unique voice, full of colour and dazzle, but end up with something a bit purple that for all its flash and fireworks isn't saying a whole lot; or b) try to tell a plain, simple story, which is admirable, but end up with something largely boring or obvious or otherwise "yeah? so?", and usually rendered in a blunt, dead, no-nonsense prose that would make Papa Hemingway himself ask for a little more life. So I guess (for me, I'm still not that comfortable with this much power and think we should go back to the more democratic vote from /lwc/s) D's "Blush Temple" story succeeds in that the language is a little flashy but never outright masturbatory, never gets in its own way, and the story itself, told as a kind of distanced journalism, has establishment, growth and resolution in short but not rushed order, and there are enough layers of simulacrum being peeled (from OP pic > failed film > children's deranged reenactments > newspaper article > the story itself) to sustain a fascination despite the simple, straightforward structure. It reminds me a bit of Ballard, in that everything seems pregnant with meaning/interpretation, and how a plain report can become a kind of fable. I would've liked to see mention at the end of the Blush Temple now becoming a popular selfie site for Japanese dark tourists (hence the OP pic), and the word "entire" is probably used a few too many times, but otherwise I thought it was pretty fucking good.

I'll share my thoughts on a normal dog and Hart Glass tomorrow

>>24651666
Good, measured critique. Thx Heng. Journalistic sums it up.

>>24651165
I recommend you to not link your other stuff, there's a schizo crab here with a hateboner for everyone who writes. He stalks anons and post their work (edited by AI to change names) pretending to be them
>t. Oldfag

>>24652296
Thanks for the warning; I know the risks and don't mind, since it's highly unlikely that I'll ever be published anyway.

“By Betrayal” (infinite power / body shift) — Betrayal** — C4 / L3 / S3 (10/15)
Pulp-vision fun with a sharp pivot; energetic, if rough around edges.
>
I know I'm no winner of any kind and I never expected to be. I'm quite happy to get such a middling rating. Unlike some crabs here accuse me without ever reading my stuff? I am not in fact the actual worst writer ever. I figure I only have to be slightly better than the worst published writer as a minimum barrier of entry to writing genre fiction slop.
>
like anyone cares but my process was this.
Saw the comp. Oh. another com[p. I'll ebter this one too. Same deal. I just smoke a cigarette and drinka coffee. Com eup with *something* and just type, type, type. 3k words? I got just under and quit. WOUldn;t catt it editing, did several proof passes cause 3k isn;t much to go over. Entered it. As last time? First entry. No planning, nothing. I just write off the top of my head. That's a rough draft with typos and the roughest sentences smoothed out some. I've never once read an animae book of any kind. I was just winging it. I think with the proper mentor that actually knew about WN (I don't) they could adjust my outline and tell me things. An expert WN reader could get themselves *co-author* credits for providing this non-writer's service. hint hint.

>>24649838
>alliteration and assonance
alliteration I know and I naturally drift to a few here and there as it pleases me. Question what is assonance. never encountered the term before. I would just google it but maybe other anons might wanna know too.

>>24652584
A post is 3000 characters, not words. 3000 characters, broken into paragraphs, is about a page on a word doc. 3000 words is more like 10.

>>24652591
>A post is 3000 characters, not words. 3000 characters, broken into paragraphs, is about a page on a word doc. 3000 words is more like 10.
yes
a post is 3k characters
this contest was 3k chars.
last contest, other contest? Was 3k words suggested maximum.
I think pages depends. On my laptop using my text editor with the font size comfortable for me to work with I think 5k to 7k words ends up around 10 pages. My average chapter lengths are a tad over WN standards. I can;t do much with 1k to 2k words as a typical size. 5k word chapter is my typical maybe lately with 7k and 8k peppered in.

>>24652584
Keep writing, listen to earnest critiques, and do it a little better every time. The thread's better for having you.

>>24649435
I sit down at a noisy cafe and try to write something in the time it takes to finish a cup of coffee.
That's all.

>>24648905 (OP)
> Drunk-quake
-By Filthered-

> I can barely keep the vehicle in the lane, I didn't drink that much... Are the lights moving too?.. Wait, that cable was moving... It could be the wind... But it was moving...

> I can make it, if I keep my attention on pulling the steering wheel to the left... But not too much... Am I on the opposite lane? No, I'm fine... I can make it...

> Why can't I keep the car straight? Stupid earthquakes, those happen all the time.. aren't they? One could be happening right now, I wish I could tell.. no, I wish an earthquake would be happening so I can blame it on it.. -burp-...

> Maybe a should stop... Yes, that's what you do during earthquakes.. isn't? Am I going too fast, or too slow..? I think the car stopped, but everything moves... I keep leaning to one side... shit... Am I drunk?.. or shit is really moving around?

> Okay, now what? I.. I should get out of the car, stand on solid ground, away from the road, yes... It's hard to open the door, I'm fighting against my own balance...

> I'm out and now I'm leaning back hard against the hood of my car, holding myself with both hands on it... everything is turning around, I think I'm gonna fall as soon as I take a step away from the car...

> I go for it, I took a step away, I feel all the weight of my body leaning forward and I fall on my knees, now I'm on the ground everything keeps revolving around me...

> What if another car hits mine and crush me? I start crawling, going away from the car... I crawl like a cripple as fast as I can leaning to my side, I don't wanna fall on the grass...

> I stay still, crouching on the side of the road, feeling the world spinning around me, and thinking to myself: "please god let this be a real earthquake, because it would so fucking embarrassing if not"..

>>24641734
>DHAMMAZEDI'S GRET & CHEP CANONS !FFN5XjrvFo

Unlike the other judges I had no real difficulty selecting this for first place. To me, it stood head and shoulders above every other entry for the sheer amount of plot and world it managed to cram into 3000 characters without devolving into language games or gimmicks. The shared cigarette, the clapperboard, the pins and bricks and bats, and the cruel humor ("gypsy rigamarole" made me smile and Nabokov likely turn in his grave) were all delightful. Density is not always synonymous with quality, of course, sometimes it produces lead instead of gold. This, however was gold, and I had to award it as such.

One minor complaint: I found the use of certain colloquialisms to interrupt the journalistic voice (which Heng so aptly pointed out). Namely, "schlock", "accumulation arc" etc. I'm so used to seeing these on /lit/ shitposts and they clash so much with the surrounding diction, that they took me out of the story a bit.

More to come... (sorry, a bit of a busy week for me)

>>24652958
>>24651666
tell us what the worst in thread was

>>24653010
jap hoe haikus

>>24653019
other than the obvious troll submissions

>>24652958
>schlock
>accumulation arc
I think that's a symptom of the current era, everything and everyone is filled with irony, even when trying to create something genuine, irony will creep itself into the work and stick up like a sore thumb
Or maybe is because the guy who wroted it is a shitposter, I recognize his style

>>24653045
>>24652958
Schlock is a fine word. It's to our detriment if our era has sullied it, not its.

>>24653019
Imo those were flavorful background noise. It was the AI blender slop that was just annoying.

>>24653058
One of many flavorsome Yiddish borrowings

Bump

Anime girl ruins the entire atmosphere. At least pick an artist that doesn't mandate the same point of focus in every single piece. Makes the actual background almost unusable.

the people hunger for more writing contests, another write from this pic post up right now.

>>24654076
There used to always be image prompt threads in the catalog saying to write about the OP pic, just that mostly the OP pic was stupid and there was no promise of being read or judged.

>>24654127

Anons yearn for judgement, they long for prizes and recognition.

I think if even 7$ and a made up award of the month was offered, the people would burn countless hours trying to win.

>>24654076
There needs to be some cool-down between contests.

>>24654157
I'm against this. I think material prizes would incentivize bad behavior and ruin the oddly collegial spirit that sometimes arises.
Better would be to print winners in an &-like.

>>24654157
>>24654173
Agreed that a material award could spoil. Plus you can't do it anonymously unless you use some more convoluted payment method (Paypal will expose your name), and the premise relies on someone pitching in money every month.

Agreed it'd be cool to see these compiled. ineptia has been doing that for the larger writing contest, but it includes all entrants and the critique (if I remember right), which is pointless. I'd rather see them done up like how the Flash Fiction Anthologies looked than & don't think it ought to be flashy, just competent.

>>24654235
/lit/ could benefit from a quarterly. & released too often in its heyday to represent anything but the most spirited shitposts of the moment. Contests as a guaranteed "in" would help.

I slapped together a submission rather quickly at work before the deadline, and it was mechanically competent, but after thinking for a few days, I was wondering why I cared at all considering the effort I put in. It wasnt the prompt, it wasnt the lack of effort, and I think I figured it out. A lot of the readings were surface level. This thing did that, likes or dislikes of various language, and over all comments about the structure. Little was put into the subtext or what was being said, more how it was being said, and that's natural given the scope. And so that serves as calibration. People want stories. They want flash and panache, not commentary. They want to be grabbed by the balls, dragged across the mandolin, then dunked in lime. Fair enough, hardly a surprise.

The surprise was that I didnt do that. I'm a man of bombast and flair. Mechanics are entirely secondary to creativity in both my published work as well as my private work. I delivered the same impact the prompt made on me; a damp thud. Now it was by design and structure in parallel, for the purposes of delivering something instead of nothing, but it would have been much easier to write some rhyming burroughs inspired modernist pastiche with 47 references like I usually do. I was fixated on the prompt and manifested evert aspect instead of just doing what I wanted and glancing off.

Rambling aside, that's a lesson and a calibration for next time. French Vanillia doesnt win an icecream contest, even if it is the best flavour of ice cream, because it lacks ambition when compared to saffron pistachio.

>>24654281
Which was your piece?

>>24654241
A release schedule depends on the number of quality entrants and how long you want it to be. If there are the top 3 from the /lwc/ threads every month, then the top 3 from these, I'd say that makes for a decent zine-sized release out of a month's material. Could make larger compilations of all the winners every few months, but smaller releases targetting home printing could be cool.

>>24654331
6 prize winners per month = 18 over three months. Add a smaller number of free entry pieces over the same period = 30 pieces or so, enough for a /lit/ Granta or so.

>>24654331
that would just be a collection of meteor's (great) stories as doesn't he win every month?

>>24654346
Fair. That's a point in favor of a monthly schedule.

>>24654346
Imo a publication might incentivize other anons to step up

>>24654348
no more than 2 from the same tripfag, stories accepted per issue with a sprinkling of shorter anon poetry or flash. Just need someone with time and design skills to step up and I think there's a robust writing scene.

>>24654293
The Iris one. I wrote it more conceptually: crossborder came to /lit/ for a contest in a place outside of convention; contest presented to a howling horde of degenerates; great period of inaction and meandering; flurry of compulsion at the end; a generally nice image (story) with an offputting detail; a large swing in quality for a relatively short (small) section; and retreat before the impact manifests, even though you can hear the resolution. The quality of each portion and juxtaposed elements mirrored how I felt about the prompt, and the imposition was structurally inverted so the characters in the background were the focus in the same way the background of the image was when I looked at at. I can go on and on, not as an excuse, but explaining my thought process.

I normally do slam poetry and publish spoopy minimalist short stories as well as childrens lit. I also write incredibly fast so procrastination isnt an excuse. My new book that's in the process of being published is this elaborate gnostic-birth-allegory-tulpa-house-of-leaves-meets-nick-land-filtered-through-a-hellmall-and-footnotes thing that is, admittedly, far better than what I submitted in execution, but also has this extremely convoluted didactic framework that plays with the structure to incentivize rereading it. So I got lost in that aspect in the hour I spent writing and forgot that all of my work in my book can stand on its own without the scaffold of my explaination. Even still, that Iris thing probably in the bottom 5% of what I wrote this month. I thought I could fire it off into the abyss and ignore the rumination, but it got me in the pride none the less. A little like being a major league closer and giving up a homer after walking two guys in a beer league because I was nibbling instead of throwing heat over the plate. The good news? I am a spiteful man so it wont happen twice.

>>24654388
>I saw, however, that Daneri’s real work lay not in the prose but in his invention of reasons why the prose should be admired. Of course, this second phase of his effort modified the writing in his eyes, though not in the eyes of others.

-- The Aleph, J.L Borges

>>24654346
>>24654365
Okay, but rejecting someone because they placed before would be lame. Plus people could just use a new name to get past it. From my personal experience with one of these projects, even when things are anonymous it will be a few good or decent writers submitting regularly and carrying the whole thing.

I don't think a publication should change the way the contest is run. I'd say if any of one month's winners are repeats from the last month, extend the inclusion to as many from the next ranking down, e.g., if out of the top three two are repeats from last month then take the top five (gets a little harder if there are repeats in those next two...).

All of this talk about a print edition is hot air, as far as I’m concerned. Would it be cool? Sure. Does anyone have the energy or money to do it? That remains to be seen. Any time spent on such things is time spent not writing.

For anyone interested, Ineptia has been making online compilations of /lwc/ and /icic/ for at least the past couple of months. Here’s July’s:
https://files.catbox.moe/2vvrkl.pdf

>>24654409
I dont particularly like that story, and I dont really care that the intended elements didnt shine through because, when I read it today, I was quite unhappy with a variety of aspects. No guro reverence of violence as aesthetic, no high brow meets low brow comparisons, no inventive metaphor, no radical acceptance of absurdity as reality, no pathos, no agency. Just mechanics and a description of the prompt with pretension on the side to justify it to myself. It didnt have any soul, it didnt bleed, and I have an even longer list of very specific things I would change about it. Like I said originally, I'm mostly mad I didnt stick to my normal style and got up my butt with the bullshit I'm doing on the side.

>>24654414
you are correct, there's a want and talent to make a magazine, but someone does need to invest the time to make it. Thanks to Ineptia and Yodo for doing their small part.

>>24654414
It doesn't cost any money to make something you can download for free or print on-demand. Ineptia is already doing that, but putting in more work by soliciting illustrations and including a lot of extraneous material including pieces that didn't make the top three. Burying the winners like that makes no sense to me, and I see the illustrations as a boondoggle although it seems the writers like them.

>Wow another midwit /lit/mag
This has already been done, and it’s been done so catastrophically badly that the very idea of it has been rightfully turned away by most serious writers here. Even if the submissions weren’t painfully bad, the people running these mags (plus those engaging with it) were some of the most mentally ill people on this site.

It will either fizzle out into nothing, or morph into a crash-and-burn spectacle. Not even Tao Lin would touch that garbage when he first started spamming his shit here.

>>24654497
>It will either fizzle out into nothing, or morph into a crash-and-burn spectacle.

thank you for the crab opinion. I also submit to lit mags and assume others do as well, this is just for fun with fellow anons and board culture.

>>24654525
>board culture
This site has been nothing but Reddit/twitter runoff for the last seven years. Keep coping.

>>24654590
I disagree. Even if it is "runoff," it's not random runoff. /lit/ is interesting in its own right.
/clg/ is a testament to this. While it's chaotic and often low-quality, it has been an objectively successful unaffiliated study group for a niche subject. That is uncommon.

>>24654590
bullshit. we are host too a small but concentrated menagerie of freaks, perverts, autists, artists, idiots, and arch-snobs. the texture of this board is rich.

>>24654497
You're thinking of Unreal and &, right? There were numerous /lit/ magazines before those two, spanning back to the genesis of the board. And the point is rarely ever that they're high quality, but that people get to contribute to something particular to the board.

If 4chan has a skill it excels at, it's dragging down. Any group of people endeavoring to anything on this site will instantly be met with a group ten times as large endeavoring against that.
This was already visible in the competition itself. If you volunteer to make these ingrates a periodical, you volunteer for a proportionate amount of spam, harassment, and raw autism. Remember that.

>>24654590
>This site has been nothing but Reddit/twitter runoff

Inherent in this reasoning is insulting yourself for even being here. I enjoy posting /LIT/ without hyper liberal judgement. Go join R/twitter if you see no difference.

Why not hold a contest with a photo from /p/?

>>24652622
>Keep writing, listen to earnest critiques, and do it a little better every time. The thread's better for having you.
can I frame that. lol.

>>24655214
You're free to do as you like, anon. If I wanted to lay claim to my words I wouldn't post them here.

>>24655171
Provided that a suitable photograph can be found. /p/ is probably one of the three worst boards on this site. They don't discuss photographers, post competent photographs, or try to improve beyond new lightroom presets. It's mostly gear talk.

>>24655171
>>24655219
Three random-ish photos from Wikimedia commons could also work. That way you get some disconnect that forces the writers to find interesting ways to connect them rather than something more straightforwardly pulled from the image.

Clicked random and the last three I got were:
a sparsely wooded hillside
a high school basketball game
a gem with an icon of Christ engraved into it

Unless people on another board are really gung-ho about it, it's just another layer of complexity (and brings in other stylistic questions).

>>24655265
This is actually not a bad idea

>>24651666
Still curious why you picked a normal dog. That's the only one I disagree with. His critiques were largely helpful, but his own writing came across as incoherent to me.

>>24649118
same lmao
>tfwfw so avant garde you don't even register as an attempt at fiction

>>24654173
>&-like
Fuck no, don't try to ruin this by turning it in another project destined to fail. Do you know why & and tales of the unreal stopeed publishing stuff?
It wasn't because they got out of stories or authors, its because the "organizers" turned the project in their personal soap-opera drama

>>24655633
The problem with volunteers from /lit/ is that they'll want to push their own stuff. Everybody wants to write, nobody wants to edit. Like looking for a drummer for a band and only finding guitarists.

>>24655633
>>24655658
You see this in every hobby. Devoting so much attention to something kinda meaningless tends to generate rationalizations for why it’s not meaningless, and self-aggrandizement is sure to follow.

>>24655633
>drama
>tripfaggers
It’s already apparent how cliquey these organizers are, and it'll only intensify once they get it in their heads that they’re running a “publication” instead of just a contest. Pride and retardation galore.

>>24655658
I mean, if I was volunteering to act as a janny for a bunch of randos, I too would take the chance to push my stuff at the top

WIP
https://gofile.io/d/ERE3Wf

>>24655884
Excellent typesetting

>>24655884
thank you for your service champ

>>24655884
Hype!
Though I would have used “Awe-Inspiring” or “Majestic” in the title, instead of “August.”

For coming /lwc/ contests, would there by any chance of submitting through an alternative to Rentry? If we were to use catbox, then anon's could make use of typeface and formatting to aid their word. Respectfully, I find rentry's font and layout to be horrendous. I believe it cheapens the work.

>>24656690
Does catbox have a timestamp of when the last edit was made? For rule-following purposes, that’s a big advantage of rentry.

>>24656994
I was imagining just a one-time PDF upload, no editing possible.

>>24656690
Rentry for everyone is good because it's consistent and easy to use. Entries should be visually consistent with one another; all you're asking for is that people with an eye for page layout be given an advantage. Which will also invite inexperienced anons to use it to their disadvantage.

You can use Markdown on Rentry for formatting; see:
https://www.markdownguide.org/basic-syntax/
If you take issue with readability on Rentry, resize your window to be more narrow until the lines are a good length. Or you can easily use something like Firefox's reader view to access alternative fonts or justification or other options.

It's also worth noting that if works are only available in PDF format then things like >>24655884 or ineptia's collections become massively harder to do.

The point about edit timestamps here >>24656994 is also important, since people have made edits to their work before the deadline previously.

>>24657108
I hear you. Thanks for the explanations.

Will future /wibac/s use the 3k word limit or 3k character limit?

interesting, the general consensus among wibacers is that, prize money or a literary magazine naturally breeds gatekeeping, self aggrandizement that would poison the well of comradery. I don't disagree, but it's an argument for hierarchy as natural malevolence.

>>24657640
I see it as a system of incentives. I think it's best to incentivize writing for its own sake.
Prize money bad
Magazine good

Fucking hilarious that a tripfag with a bad story was more transparent about criteria and more constructive with feedback than the judges. I'm not mad that my story didn't place but I did work hard on it and you guys don't seem to give a shit

>>24657759
What were normal dog’s criteria?

>>24657792
He was at least very consistent in telling people to prioritize structure

>>24657759
Note the meltdown in the last thread when the topic was brought up. Not the anon talking about it, the judge's response.

>>24657805
Tbh I think my story was better than Hart Glass, penisino, or normal dog, but it just got ignored other than a nudge and wink. I'm especially annoyed that normal dog got an honorable mention. He was a good critic but his story was imo terrible

>>24657820
Which was yours ?

>>24657759
>I'm not mad that my story didn't place but I did work hard on it and you guys don't seem to give a shit
Point your story out, and I’ll critique it.
Next time submitters will be asked to give feedback after posting.

I wrote the VR story and I think it’s nice I got a little honorable mention at the end. This was a contest for fun, and it’s interesting to see how the other anons here write.

>>24657823
>>24657824
Metaanon

>>24657826
Don't get ahead of yourself. You're clearly competent, but I would not place you near the top five. Top ten maybe.

>>24657846
I get I'm not as good as #1 but I'm mad a judge voted for normal dog and not me. normal dog's story was actually terrible. It feels like favoritism since he did judges' jobs for them

>>24657759
>>24657826
>anonymous poster stirring the pot claiming to be a tripfag
Say it with the trip on. Someone did the same thing last thread.

>>24657908
Okay fag I get it everyone who doesn't agree with you is the same person
I didn't complain when the results came in but now that the judges are AWOL I definitely am complaining

>>24657914
>>24657881
dropping in to tell you you're a really unpleasant person.
i didn't think my own work was top 3 worthy either. but yours definitely wasn't. you need restraint.

It has begun; the cultist drama. Tripfags and attention inevitably coalesce then metasticize. We are currently in stage 2. Stage 1 is the appearance of tripfaggotry. Not all tumors are cancerous, some are benign, but it is an indicator that further monitoring is required at minimum. The more tripfags, the larger the tumor, and the larger the tumor, the more likely it develops irregularities. The tumor should be removedat this stage in an ideal world, and this is when surgical intervention is the easiest; simply excise the tumor and move on with your life as a preventative measure.

By stage 2 there are already problems. The tumor is no longer a free floating mass or a simple lump. The unrestrained growth has left it in a position where the size is compressing other structures, or it has irregularities, like discharge, discolouration, or unusual edges. The bickering intensifies. One group becomes "us", one group becomes "them", and the two are pitted against eachother, destroying everything in between. Alternatively, an anon develops an obsession and devolves all discussion into a trip-centric circle jerk. At this stage surgical intervention is required, and there is a chance that the cancer has spread.

The third stage is terminal. The tripfags start taking off their trips to samefag and insult eachother. Certain tripfags make up elaborate headcannon about others. Internet detectives appear, and all discussion revolves only around tripfags. If you arent a tripfag, you no longer matter. If you're one of "us", attention is heaped upon you, and if you're one of "them", or disagree, they take up arms against you. Chemo and surgery are required. Rangebans. Scripts. The whole nine yards. It needs to be cut out and irradiated; functionally destroyed. The cancer begins to spill into other threads, and if left untreated, the host will die.

Stage 4 is death. The tripfags have killed the host. No discussion takes place at all, and posting craters. Only tripfags remain.

>>24658056
>Alternatively, an anon develops an obsession and devolves all discussion into a trip-centric circle jerk. At this stage surgical intervention is required, and there is a chance that the cancer has spread.
Is this self-awareness

>>24658066
No. These are autism battles. Hours and hours of posting the second the trip appears, and is one of the fastest ways for cancer to spread. The more a tripfag's name appears, the larger their errection, and with that stimulation it incentivizes the progression of the cancer to stage 3. This includes things like dredging the archive, creating pasta, and insulting them in any way beyond telling them to fuck off.

>>24658083
I enjoyed /wibac/, but I am inclined to agree. Tripcodes are good for submissions and feedback. And organizers should force entrants to use new ones for each contest to prevent this exact scenario.

>>24657825
>>24657826
Nigga your stories sucked

>>24658056
>The third stage is terminal. The tripfags start taking off their trips to samefag and insult eachother.
That already happened on the last thread, check the melty between an anon and the tripfag hermes. He was constantly hopping of his trip to stir up shit after the other tard had already calmed down.

>>24658446
Hermes sperged out but I don’t think that’s what happened. The culty shit happens to anons too

>>24654414
I think making a print edition is really cool. I could help too, I'm a bit of a drawfag so I could draw the covers for the magazine
We should like make a discord server or something to organize us better

>>24641734
Deserved win. It's not perfect but it's very nice to read.

>>24658461
They're anons. They are anonymous. It doesnt matter.

>>24658573
It matters if what we’re talking about is tripfags samefagging as anons

>>24658616
Fair. I mostly meant anons doing culty shit is bad enough, but the moment it turns into tripfaggotry it escalates.

>>24658545
Agree. #2-5 are a lot more questionable.

>>24642862
Edgelord shit


>>24645839
Cheap language game saying nothing

>>24645270
Literally just terrible. Could have said the same thing in half as long. Reads like random epic bacon on reddit.

>>24642344
Literally anime

And here's mine for comparison

>>24645072

You CANNOT make a good argument that it isn't cleaner and better than #2-5. #1 deserved it but the rest felt like favoritism.

>>24658625
>>24658646
incisive stuff with clear criteria. you definitely seem “not mad” that your story didn’t place

>>24658656
Of course he's mad. But whether he won or not is irrelevant. The criteria for winning was absent. If it was available and pointed to the works anon didnt like, he doesnt have to agree, but he can at least understand.

>>24658666
this is him saying he’s not mad >>24657759
i just think it’s ironic that he’s bitching about a lack of clarity but then does even worse with his own critiques

>>24658683
It wasn't my job to be clear. It was the judges and they didn't fucking do it

>>24658683
Sticks and stones. He was obviously mad and trying to be restrained then rationalize it. Instead of barbing him, the polite thing to do is let him fizzle, the prudent thing is to tell him off directly while explaining why, and what you're doing simply petty.

>>24658646
>0.1%.
Stopped reading right there, awful start

>>24658683
So what if I'm bitching. The point is that every entry I pointed to that placed had an obvious major flaw. Hart Glass had a sudden and bizarre edgy tonal shift that spoiled the whole thing for me, and even the prose outside of that felt high school. Penisino was just verbal flashiness without any substance. a normal dog had no structure at all, just meandered. And Hapa Anon read like an anime summary. I can't find a single major flaw in my piece. I'm not saying it's Shakespeare but I strongly think all those pieces would get Bs or Cs in a seminar while mine would get an A.

>>24658730
Typical non-critique, can't bother to read on a READING board. Go back to /wg/ and brag about your derivative world building.

>>24658739
No one reads here. The initial rush of the previous thread went away it seems.

>>24658747
Dumbass

>>24658747
No one read in the previous thread either

>>24657826
>>24645072
[1/2]
>0.1%. Doesn’t sound like a lot…
Put quotes around the sound-producing idea:
“0.1%.” Doesn’t sound like a lot…
>but crunch the numbers, move the decimal places in your head
“crunch” connotes tension—which is what you’re attempting to achieve in this opening—but the following, simple verb “move” dispells it.
Use verbs and phrases associated with building tension, like drawing an arrow on a bow:
“pull back the decimal places i̶n̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶d̶”
>and you realize wait, holy shit, eight million people
It’s important that you use punctuation after “realize” in order to seperate the revelation from the lead-up.
It would also behoove you to use Arabic numerals for “eight million,” as you began with a percentage in digits.
Plus, replace “realize” with something more impactful, after all that wind-up:
“and it hits you: Wait, holy shit, 8,000,000 people”
>around the world
Don’t include/emphasize this unless you’re going to delve into unique regional consequences.
>saw an ordinary picture of an anime girl and just went fucking postal.
>ordinary
As if this would all make more sense with an “inordinate” picture?
Nix that qualifier, but be more specific with the medium, swapping “picture” with “.png” or “.jpg”—you’re speaking logistically here, after all.
>and just went fucking postal
The informal, often cavalier voice you channel through your narrator is serviceable, but would someone who lost their mother really be characterizing the fatal anomaly like this? Should they?
I have a loved one who passed, and I would never insult her mental faculties near her end, because doing so would take away her dignity, or at least my memory of her dignity, which she deserves.
Maybe I’m damaged goods when it comes to this subject, but I’d advise either detaching the narrator from any personal stake in all this, in order for their boorishness/bluntness to trully rollick, or to double down on the mother-offspring dynamic, in order to hit the pathos nitrous-oxide further along—like, she seems interesting if she’s got anime girls on her feed.
>I can’t convey to you how bizzare it all felt.
>Nope. I can’t repost it here for obvious reasons
Here, add: “But I did actually see it—”
^ Do more to privilege the experience of the narrator, while at the same time making the image seem all the more verboten.
By the way, “how bizarre it all felt” is a good ambiguity—the image, or the era?
>it wsa just a picture of a girl shielding her eyes from the sun in front of a building, holding some kind of long, wired device
Before you were talking logistics, but now you’re talking about art.
The word “picture” is woefully inadequate in each mode— say “digital watercolor” or “almost concept-art.”
Also, rearrange to “…girl in front of a building, shielding her eyes from…”

>>24657826
>>24645072
>>24658759
[2/2]
>long, wired device
Might as well be “long-wired device.”
>No, it didn’t strike me as strange.
>Wired devices were pretty normal back then.
This is the bad kind of ambiguity.
Anyone reading would take “it” to mean the art itself, an while the line about “wired devices” is good world-building, it’s a reveal on top of a subversion of expectations—too much going on.
Simply reframe the subject as the device particularly, adding “The device?” before “No, it didn’t strike me as…”
>But when my mother saw it,
Metaanon, if we’re being meta here, does that mean /lit/ is your mother?
Honestly very sweet.
>She just went wild, throwing things, saying some pretty upsetting things, finally trying to strangle me…slurs
Your submission tries to encapsulate the unprompted moonsickness of the more deranged /wibac/ers, but fails, in my opinion.
Yeah, the mother uses “slurs,” but what slurs?
What exact “upsetting things” did she say?
Her recalled dialogue could harken back to specific moments or unfortunate quotes from that wild thread—here, you would properly be telling two stories at once, instead of just referencing one and poorly detailing another.
>the first thing anyone think is
“anyone thinks”
>every kind of expert, forensicists…
“forensicist” (no plural—same for all the professions after).
>CIA, Korean-American (not Japanese!)
These are dead-end tangents.
The government trying to re-create the effect with the woman was cool, but you just ignore the artist?
>lost a lot of people that day
So the mom was neutralized, but are there survivors in asylums?
Is there a chance of rehabilitation for those /lit/izens?
(I will say: The further we follow the world-building, the less “meta” this all gets.)

Beyond being slightly evocative of “The Entertainment” from IJ, I wish your piece borrowed more from the opening of“The King in Yellow”:
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8492/pg8492.txt
>Ctrl+F: “During my convalescence I had bought”
I wish you even borrowed some of the unreliable-narration aspects of TKiY—your narrator says they saw the image and were chill, but maybe allow for a reading where they really aren’t chill at all?
Maybe no long-wired devices because they’re in a ward?
If you want to be truly be meta/cliché/ridicule-heavy, you could replace the mother with a girlfriend who may never have even existed.
I don’t like being mean like this, but it’s the caricature of the bear you’re trying to embody/poke.

I was a back-up judge, and was going to rate stories out of 10—sorry, but I would have given yours a high 3 / low 4.
It didn’t give me anything I can take with me, and having lived the tragicomedy of that thread, your piece does little to commemorate it or plumb the psychoses radiating from it.

I do give you credit for advocating for yourself here, though—everyone deserves to get back what they put in for their efforts.

>>24658736
Anon just win the next one. Being a writer takes constant rejection and confidence. I never win LWC despite feeling like I should place, but I get feedback and am happy to critique others. You just cannot take this stuff personally or NGMI.

>>24658759
>>24658765
Anon btfo

>>24658770
Not really. That's a much more granular critique than the others recieved, the grading criteria was still absent, and not at all transparent.

>>24658784
Who was going to provide the grading criteria to start with? Ineptia just gave you a thorough critique and still you’re not happy because it didn’t come as an eval sheet with highlighter and a smiley sticker. Give it up, listen to >>24658767

I'd actually participate in these threads if it wasn't just some anime weeb wanting to show off his shittt waifu art.

>>24658790
I'm not that guy, didnt write that piece, and you sure seem to be slurping a tripfag instead of reading. The critique may or may not be accurate. The winners did not recieve critiques like that. The critique can be constructive, but it's fundamentally distinct from the process the others went through, and without any criteria it's meaningless in context of the relationship. It was written to justify the low rating, not explain why it was or wasnt better than others.

>>24658784
I'll grade you on the three stated criteria in the OP.
Creativity: little to none. Feels ripped out of /x/. The laziest "meta" concept possible for the prompt. 2/10 at most.
Literary merit: low for reasons Ineptia already detailed. Furthermore, the story never exceeds its frame: it stays at best an "interesting post." 4/10.
Storytelling: the most defensible part, but lots of loose threads. 4/10 as well.
That lands you at a high 3/10. Hope that helps!

>>24658795
>It was written to justify the low rating, not explain why it was or wasnt better than others.
This is just cope. You can’t even conceive of a non-conspiratorial reason why someone didn’t like the story

>>24658796
And what about the others on the same criteria using that bench mark? Again, I didnt write it, dont really care, and it wasnt my taste. Your ratings are spiteful relative to the criteria you listed, and you're being demonstrative because he was annoying.

>>24658792
this... are they all going to include the same little Japanese girl? wtf

>>24658805
>he
Drop the facade, anon.
That aside, I'm not defending the judges. I am putting an annoying person (almost certainly you) in his place.

>>24658807
If they do I'm sure the Jap hoe rapper would be delighted.

>>24658810
>>24658805
Can you two take this to your DMs? Nobody wants to hear this.

>>24658801
For a third time, I didnt write the story. You have no idea what my opinion is or isnt. The problem wasnt the evaluation, it was the relative standing, and to be frank, you're making up reasons to ignore what I'm saying. I dont care whether people liked or disliked his story, but your behaviour at the moment is an issue, assuming you had anything to do with the grading and ranking.

>>24658812
I'm going to make a less gay version of this contest later.

>>24658810
I am annoying. I am also right. But for the fourth time, I didnt write it. I didnt read it if I'm being honest, and your reply is exactly what I'm talking about. You're trying to humiliate someone you feel slighted you in front of an audience for a reasonable gripe that could easily be solved, and are not at all impartial because you're personally invested in some weird crusade to dunk on people online. You want to dunk on people? Do it in the contest. All "this" is one inch of authority going to your head.

>>24658827
Can you two retards take your personal argument somewhere else? I mean what a pointless exchange.. please for the love of God stop shitting up the thread with childish ego posting, you two huge fags

>>24658739
>make a joke that's a staple of the board
>tripfag immediately starts seething and projecting
Ya love to see it

>>24658830
It's not at all pointless. The dude who made the contest wrote an elaborate reply to humiliate someone that no one else got, an "anon" took it upon themselves to have a personal crusade to humilate me because he thought I was someone else, and all this could have been solved in two seconds with "x had better diction, y had better imagery, z better had creativity and story telling. Don't like it? Sucks to suck." What he got instead was a very elaborate and granular critique, which seems accurate, but other pieces subject to the same scrutinty would have similiar issues, and some spiteful nonsense from an egotripping doofus taking it personal. And all these are the EXACT complaints anons were worried about.

>>24658842
Holy shit you really wrote all that I am not reading it just stop arguing wtf

WIP2
https://gofile.io/d/UGs9mO

>>24658850
Then why are you here? Why are you replying? Why do you care? Simple, you're pushing a narrative and are upset I said mean things. You're doing damage control because you want prestige. The anons who contributed can do whatever they want with their work; if it's good it'll stand on its own. You want to be part of this publishing thing, you want this to be a fixture, and you're personally invested in the process.

>>24658867
Holy shit bro kill yourself

>>24658876
A mature well reasoned reply from someone worth listening to directly involved in the process.

>>24658866
Good work, anon.

>>24657566
Are you guys going to participate?

>>24659461
How will the voting be handled?

Would there be any interest in a "fictional non-fiction" writing challenge on /lit?

Not a competition, no voting, no names, just the submission of imaginary essays, accounts, letters, abstracts, lists, etc.

>>24659868
Yes, but for the love of Christ, space it out.

>>24660296
Sure thing, I'll double space it.

Much like bad chess players, all these new contest ideas put far too much emphasis on the opening and too little on the ending. The problem with this contest wasn't the prompt, it was the lack of feedback and transparent criteria.

>>24660721
Shhh, be careful, the trips might hear you and throw a hissy fit.

>>24660729
It's just not much of a contest if we get dicksucking for #1 and silence on the rest. And all the new contests that are like "ill pick a winner when I feel like it :)" now promise to be even worse
I know for a fact my story wasn't a 3/10. Just compare it to any of the stupid troll posts in that thread, or even #2-5 as I did already. But everyone came down super hard for no reason

>>24660747
Brother, I spent a great deal of time being consistent and rigorous in telling them to fuck off on your behalf. Why? They were fucking around, you're right. Dont push it. The point has been made emphatically, we dont need it rehashed.

>>24660762
You're right, thanks bro. I'll just show up to the next and warn everyone how their efforts will be thanked

>>24660829
Remember to tell them you're saging their thread.

more drama in this continued discussion than the actual contest.

>>24660901
There will be more next time

>>24660901
>>24661568
Did you see >>24658866?

>>24661610
Sure did. Yet another travesty that Meta anon wasn't featured

>>24661610
#justiceForMetaanon

>>24661918
your soul was too pure anon, I felt like touching an angels wing with my dirty hands to give you this encouragement, but also, yes please do it.

>>24661918
What'd you offer? A magazine got made anyway, sans trip. If you were the one offering illustrations you could have just done it and posted them.

>>24661942
Right here already >>24658866

>>24661918
We are now at the point of anons begging for attention for work that they didn’t even do. If this level of autism bleeds into /lwc/ it’s over

>>24661918
>giving attention to some assblasted tripfag
sarcasm and derision hardly qualify as attention
>>24661754
>>24661702
must be joking

>>24662209
thanks to the anon who made that magazine. Very cool. And incentive to do good work

>>24662551
Not joking. Compare meta anon's story to any of the top 5 picks other than #1. Its better by far

>>24652958
>>24651666
>says more to come then dips forever
Typical tripfag behavior. Can't defend their own picks.

So what the hell happened with this thread?
I thought people would be posting new stories

>>24664031
Several stories were posted, then everything imploded. Investigatory teams have been dispatched from the Hague to ascertain who is blame for this mess.

>>24664054
Metaanon’s going down like Slobodan Praljak after his show trail

>>24664095
>Slobodan Praljak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdQsDopZfS4&rco=1

we crushed an innocent man. Kafka's the trial come to life.

>>24664141
Well, someone needs to be blamed for this shit. I took my sweet time to write my story, and then nothing. Fuck this stupid shit man.

>>24664211
Blame meta anon and his 4/10 story

>>24664211
>I took my sweet time to write my story, and then nothing.
Which one was yours?

>>24664291
Anyone can improve, no matter their starting point. Looking forward to your submission in the next contest!

>>24648905 (OP)
Thanks for doing these threads. They're always interesting.

>tripfags are already talking about making a trooncord server
Well, that was fast. This ship is going to sink faster than a corpse with cement shoes

>>24664529
Tripfagging is a one way trip to faggotry, a fact that keeps proving itself time and time again.

>>24664211
Blame the following:
>tripfags
All of them. Always.
>The Judges
They were warned and did it anyways.
>Me
I told them to fuck off and they imploded.

>>24664529
>ctrl-f "discord"
>1 of 1 match
Wasn't even a tripfag suggesting it, and everyone ignored it (except you).

always funny to see a sperg crashing out, but let's keep actual WIBACS and LWC focused on the work

>>24664639
No can do, brother, not while this injustice goes unjust. Meta Anon, along with every other 'loser' poster, was promised detailed feedback -despite the total lack of criteria- as seen here >>24640140
This is the hill we must die on

>>24664767
I don’t see a promise of detailed feedback

>>24664775
??.... huh, well, that's ...weird. Okay scratch that! but who's still with me on the sorely-lacking absence of any criteria? Come on, brothers, if we cry and moan long enough, who knows whats possible?

>>24664817
I know you’re pretending to be retarded, but I’m still mad that Meteor and Heng fucked off before finishing their reviews. It’s also hard to blame them. Before the night was out people were already pissing their pants over how unfair the comp was, and they’re still doing it a week later. Cancerous

Here’s what the judges actually said about feedback
>>24642755
>>24643325
>>24643776
>>24643848
>>24648518

Missed this one
>>24643744

>>24664831
Critiquing every entry is a lot harder with a much larger pool. Plus tons of spam. Meteor gave his reasoning for not giving everyone critique as being about the unforeseen scope >>24648518. The range in form and length is also very wide, so it's not like consitency is even possible in how critique could be made.

>>24664887
Yeah but he said that’d he’d do his to 3, and did later post his review of Dhammazedi.

>trips now false flagging and defending themselves anonymously
Classic.

I'll just say it. It should have gone to Meta anon.

anons spending more time and effort ITT than actual wibac

>>24664917
#justice4metaanon

Don't submit to the next wibac. Just post #justice4MetaAnon

>>24665079
Way to cull the retards

>>24664590
>Wasn't even a tripfag suggesting it
>Implying it wasn't a tripfag without his trip to make it look "more organic"

So is it over?

>>24664839
Yeah, my bad sorry, this whole week got away from me. If a normal dog and Hart are still lurking I can share thoughts, but then again I'm a bit apprehensive, considering what this thread has become. "The judges are all fucking cunts whose opinions are wrong. Also where did they go? I paid them good money so where's my handjob?" Like why would I share my (flawed and biased) opinion knowing it's just going to be spat at by a bunch of faceless strangers? Ineptia's got a bigger heart than most and I don't want to let him/her down, and I get Metaanon's frustration, but honestly this kind of carrion isn't worth the headache. I don't know, man. Maybe I'm getting too old for this shit. At some point in your late 20s or early 30s a scorched-earth indifference to everything except your family, your writing and your vestigial drug/life problems creeps in. So apologies.

Honestly think getting AI to judge or using strawpoll works better; at least in lwc there's the veneer of civility.

>>24665921

ITT it's really just 1 anon crashing out and a bunch of people shitposting about it. I think the general drama has/is low if we didn't feed the troll.

>>24665921
>Honestly think getting AI to judge or using strawpoll works better; at least in lwc there's the veneer of civility.
AI voting would be lame as all hell. The idea of using old /lwc/ winners/entrants to judge is a good one and adds more character than a poll. The civility of /lwc/ is in part because everyone is named and has to vote, but it's more interesting to see this contest handled differently from that as something very short-form and more particular in taste.

Justifying the picks is valuable (hadn't realised you'd skipped that; even without it: whatever), but I think critiquing everyone is obviously beyond the scope of this one. That justification could be codified or made an expectation, but it doesn't have to be intensive considering the entries are <3000; little more than "I liked this because [...]". People seemed to come in with big expectations from /lwc/, and I think the differences'll just need to be clearer the next time around.

And yeah, it's just shitposting at this point like the other guy said. All the bitching aside, the contest ran and winners were picked. Everything said in the OP was fulfilled.

>>24666420
>>24665921
Please God no AI judging. No AI anything. I would rather drink hydrochloric acid than let my work be judged by software. Let it do the dishes. Let it do taxes.

>>24665921
>Like why would I share my (flawed and biased) opinion knowing it's just going to be spat at by a bunch of faceless strangers?
Because you are a judge on 4chan and this is part of the job. You can mitigate the damage easily and you can diffuse it a variety of ways. You did nothing and now you think you're entitled both to your opinion in a position of authority while being free from responsibility; this is the problem.

>>24666453
The judges agreed on the winners and the goals of the contest were satisfied. Why's any more than that owed?

is there a pdf of all the submissions

>>24652958
Continuing..

>>24642862
If it wasn't already clear, I don't like stories that rely on gimmicks. I know flash fiction is characterized by play on forms, and there was some of that among the entries, but I was disappointed by the specific flavor of alchemy. Rather than illumination, the purpose seemed to have been obfuscation and the result either inane, unmelodious poetry (penisno's hideous bilingual entry was the among worst offenders, and the less I say of it the better -- it certainly did not place anywhere near the top 3 for me) or impenetrable schizo rambling. It's disappointing when the primary purpose of such flourishes are to show off how clever and knowledgeable you are instead of something essential to what you are trying to say. Even published work occasionally succumbs to such insecure grandstanding, but that does not make it excusable or palatable.

But that's not what this story is. This story has a clear vision and a good reason to adopt the non-linear (and nonetheless classical retrospective) structure. More love is expressed for the characters than for the author's cleverness. I was impressed most of all by how quickly and efficiently the characters were drawn; the economy and precision of detail. It reminds me a little of watching experts paint with watercolor or a street-artist render a portrait, how they can capture a scene or a likeness in just a few quick strokes.

There were some faults: I thought the character of Eleni a bit superfluous for a flash piece. Dimitris could have easily assumed her narrative position and dialogue (or even Petros, in a sarcastic way). A few small lapses: "Dimitris was mopey", "beaches... felt lonely", etc., the rather clumsy repetition of foreshadowing in the last paragraph -- which could have been used instead to close the structural loop, by looking forward to the future: an engagement, a new job, something exciting on the horizon that would also serve to heighten the dramatic irony. These are perfectly fine sins, possibly even virtues, in a longer work, but in flash fiction they are damning. Still, it beats out my third place choice (which I technically enjoyed more) because of its fine economy and its deft handling of subtext and suspense.

1/2

>>24666532
>>24642344

Why didn't I pick this for second place? I was tempted. All its elements were near and dear to my heart: the gaudy hook, the ironic humor, the plain matter-of-fact style. The reason is twofold, the first more serious than the second: the lack of personal motive for Ano and the repetitive, long-winded sentence structure. Radicalism in isolation is not interesting in fiction. It belongs in pamphlets and manifestos. I want to know why Ano really decided to detonate herself in broad daylight, not merely hear repeated the abstractions she has tattooed over her subconscious concerns. I also feel that the narrator was a missed opportunity in some ways, that his coloring of the narrative could have added another layer of depth (since it is presented like a historical record or newspaper article), casting him as a lurking character with an agenda of his own.

The long-winded sentences are a very minor fault (but very noticeable because of the brevity of the form). Easily fixed by not repeating the same structure so close together. The last sentence is also not great, a bit too cliche. In general, a bit more subtext would have worked to the story's advantage.

But otherwise it was a piece that charmed me. The "approximations" of exact time. Killing time. The timing error -- a bit too on the nose here, to the point of stretching belief. The passing dog. Delightful.

>>24666507
No, only a pdf of the winners >>24658866. The old thread is linked in the OP.

>>24666501
What an odd post that has nothing to do with what I said. To judge is to be judged on your judgement. To be a judge here is to be judged by autism and spite in addition, as is our custom, and if you werent prepared, you shouldnt have done so in the first place. None of this is new or surprising. To judge with a personal identity and authority requires legitimacy, particularly in an anonymous space, and petulantly whining that the people you judged were going to do exactly what was expected of them shows you lacked the qualifications to do so in the first place.

>>24658866
>>24666542
Is everyone just ignoring the nsfw back cover of a guy's bear ass or am I just that unlucky to be the only one to notice?

No excuses.
#justice4MetaAnon

>>24666880
holy kek, must be an easter-egg for intrepids like you who read the whole thing through.

>>24665921
I want to know why normal dog placed. Imo that was one of the bottom three. Did you just like that he was doing critiques?

My top 3. This is official now, I don't care what you say
1. Metaanon
2. Anonymous ginger
3. Filthered

>>24666937
I'm getting to it right now, will post after work so watch this space.
>Imo ... bottom three
I can see that for sure, but in my fallible and often wrong opinion I thought the meta/magic realist/whatever contingent of stories deserved some representation, and normal dog's seemed (to me) one of the better takes, with enough snappy similes and weird worldbuilding to chalk above.
>Did you just like that he was doing critiques?
Not at all. I thought some of his crits were pretty good, a few uncharitable. But the whole one or two sentence dismissals like you're Nabokov thing isn't that helpful -- again, imo --unless you're providing clear, actionable solutions. I think he'd be great to have in lwc but no, his effortposting didn't earn him his place in my top three.

*Of course, my top three is almost definitely wrong: I'm just some guy on the internet. If the Booker almost always goes to the wrong shortlisted author, then what hope do I have of properly representing the People's hearts?

>>24666439
Ok, yeah AI is probably not the way to go. How about if someone larps as Dredd, gets his voice down pat and passes judgements on submitters' "crimes against literature"? All in jest, of course. I nominate this anon:
>>24666453
>>24666593
He seems pretty good with voice and a right-on assessor. And yeah dude, fair call; I probably shouldn't have accepted the job. As >>24666501 points out, I chose a top three as outlined in the OP, but didn't follow through on my own idea to review my winners. So why not keep a pinky swear promise:

WIP4?
https://gofile.io/d/ZrXGUj

"/lit/ winners club August 2025"

48 actual pages. Only made small punctuation changes and visual edits to the texts. Did not proofread entries beyond what was necessary for layout. No planned changes.

>>24667082
>>24666937
>>24657964

A NORMAL DOG
I chose this for my #2 for several reasons. Out of the weird fiction/surrealist/meta stories, it seemed the most inventive, the most cryptic, and the funniest. "Lowest-bid grounds crew", in half a handful of words, strongly and subtly sets up the alien but familiar world where Uber gigs have almost become slave labour. Shades of Black Mirror or Vivarium, or George Saunders' more dystopic shorts. There follows a fusillade of quips, chirps and irks, the story littered with synesthesic and bizarre imagery ("copper spits green"; "keep saying it until 'no' turns into a clean hole with edges"; etc.) and sassy similes, all delivered in that fun folksy tone (a little similar to Metaanon's, but slightly more palatable, like BEE vs. Palahniuk (both of which grate after a while)).

I enjoyed the testing of reality's edges, like that one short in the Animatrix, and I liked the (reasonable) attempt at adherence to the greentext format. (Maybe mostly because I see so many people these last few years greentexting badly, overly prolix, like why not just write it out as prose if you want to run long?) And the ending is just cryptic enough to tempt you to reread the story, metafictionally mirroring the mysterious room of the story and his/our search for meaning when maybe there is none. That's why I picked this as my #2, and may God have mercy on my soul.

Hart Glass to come

>>24667085
Good work, though your table of contents for /wibac/ is reversed. The table orders these first to when in the actual text they’re last to first.

>>24667085
Still no Metaanon.
#justice4MetaAnon

>>24666532
Tell us about penisino and the other ones you didn't like
Let's get some feelings hurt

>>24666941
Thank you anon!

>>24667132
Thanks. Fixed.

>>24667091
I think meteor had the right idea. A lot of people shitting the bed doesn't make it an act of interior decoration.

>>24665921
>him/her down
Its very obviously a gay dude
>inb4 how do you know
Just look at the way he writes

>>24666880
That was my work, anon. You're welcome ;)

>>24667085
Thanks for doing this! It was nice reading over these again. I have a vain request for some edits, but feel free to ignore me since this version of the text is what I submitted to /lwc/.
I made some transcription errors with the Japanese:
>Sengoku Jedai
Should read “Sengoku Jidai,” and
>Hitobocchi
Should read “Hitoribocchi”
There are (many) errors with the English too, but I’m not going to ask you to rework my whole shit.

>>24667621
Alright, done.

So are we going to use strawpoll for the next one?

>>24667841
I think the coupling of authors from /lwc/ to this is cooler than a straight poll. /lwc/ works well because it's long-ish form and expects a lot of reciprocity from the entrants, which I don't think you can expect from something as shortform as this. This one having select judges (which I'm assuming will change somewhat regularly) is a nice functional difference between them.

>>24667777
quads checked

>>24667869
Meta Anon should be judge
#justice4MetaAnon

>>24667841
>So are we going to use strawpoll for the next one?
I’m not planning on it.
It feels icky to call the authors of /lwc/ a “resource,” but they truly are one of the most precious resources this board has to offer.
Without even mentioning their writing talents, they are guarantees that somebody will actually read and think critically about your story.
I didn’t count how many /wibac/ authors there were, but I’d bet that every author did not read every story, and still wouldn’t even if they were formally charged with voting.
And that’s okay, because thinking hard on the merits and defects of dozens of different submissions shouldn’t be a requirement for participation in /wibac/—that job should be up to a few non-competing judges, though competitor-feedback (e.g. normal dog’s) should always be encouraged.
Basically, the myriad writers of /wibac/ should stick to writing things, not deciding things—if you’re a writer and also want to decide things, then that’s what /lwc/ is for, as >>24667869 pointed out.
I keep thinking how penisino’s Esperanto piece was justly elevated by son of hermes for it’s creativity, instead of languishing at the bottom of some unwieldly Strawpoll for being too strange at first glance.

On another note, I can’t believe that son of hermes, Heng, and meteor are all still here—when I offered up these judgeships, I wish I knew what you’d be in for : (
As far as I’m concerned, the three of you scored 10s across the board for your diligence and dedication, and you can ask me for any favors from now until the end of time.

>>24668116
Acknowledge the true winner
#justice4MetaAnon

>>24668116
>the tripfags continue to jerk eachother off without changing in any capacity whatsoever
As expected.

>>24668116
I think the drama about the judging was stupid and I like the format of this contest, but you need to take a break from sucking people off. You're going to choke.

>>24668116
But the majority of the writers (and even some of the judges) suggested the strawpoll

>>24668212
Heng was the first to bring it up (also suggested AI judges), and reneged. The next person to bring it up besides calling it a bad idea was >>24667841.

>>24668212
>ctrl+f “strawpoll”
>six matches in this thread
>ctrl+f “strawpoll” in original thread
>no matches

>>24668212
The sensible option is to retain the judge format and add a "reader's choice" award via strawpoll.

>>24668267
Only if Meta anon is a judge
#justice4MetaAnon

>>24668267
>The sensible option is to retain the judge format and add a "reader's choice" award via strawpoll.
Great idea.
I’d create the Strawpoll when time is up, it would be up for a day (with no one being able to see the results), and then it would close.
•Asked to rank your top three (at least)
• One vote per IP address
• Unlike /lwc/, there would be no in-thread vote confirmations (otherwise everyone would be forced to use trips)
Susceptible to silliness, but should still be somewhat reflective of “reader’s choice.”
The organizer of this thread >>24653798 used the opening lines of each submission as its voting option, which I like a lot—
https://strawpoll.com/61gD9X9dAZw
—but I’d also include each entry’s post number.

>>24664933
>anons spending more time and effort ITT than actual wibac
Which makes me sad.
Beneath all this Monday morning quarterbacking, “#justice4MetaAnon,” and planning for next time, was a simple wish to read and write interesting stuff alongside interesting authors.
This thread has about 24 replies left until bump limit, and I do have another idea for a thread I want to try out when that time comes:
No competition, no judges, no required trips or bullshit baggage still clinging on from over a week ago now—just a neat idea for a writing exercise which I hope lives up to expectations.
So to anyone who still wants to litigate the first /wibac/: It was the first /wibac/; the next one will be better.

>>24668347
#justice4MetaAnon

>>24668347
i appreciate you. i can detect your big soul.

>>24667091
HART GLASS
I chose this for my #3 mainly for its simple language, its strong straightforward images, and its flexibility with time and place, memory and present. The jagged rock, Nintendo and bug-collecting, the shadow of the temple being described almost clumsily as "big and long": all these help evoke the childhood holiday, but moreso Aoi's nostalgic memory of it. There's a nice drift from Aoi's viewpoint to Dimitris' and back out again once the three Greek friends are devoured, as in a children's ghost story, and we end on the OP pic of Aoi before she enters the temple. It's all pretty elegant in its economy and deft in its movement, so well done dude, if you're still lurking.

Time to admit we all loved our time spent in /WIBAC/ that's why this thread will not die. We are like 12 people sitting in a church basement NA meeting telling our war stories of when we were back on the street. Like brothers, we define each other.

>>24669169
I just won't rest until there's #justice4MetaAnon

>>24668347
Are you going to restrict already-used tripcodes, or at least discourage them? Now that there's a precedent, I worry about bias.

>>24669747
This contest didn't require tripcodes, while /lwc/ does and hasn't made rules against re-use. Nobody has taken issue with them there (recently), from what I've seen.

The only unavoidable bias with re-used trips is positive bias. Anyone who's worried about a bad reputation from old work doesn't have to use a name or trip at all, or can change.

Positive bias might steal attention to some degree, but here we're dealing with select judges who you can kind of trust to read everything; submissions aren't fighting for the attention of passing anons. The pool of anons is probably pretty small, so there's a good chance that styles could become apparent, name or not. There's also little to no personal incentive on the part of the judge to vote for someone, and no probable way to coordinate things without exposing themselves; the only benefit of these contests is an honest appraisal of your work, and I think the people judging are likely to value that highly, meaning a tit-for-tat vote is unlikely.

I don't think discouraging names/trips on entries would hurt, but I also don't think it'd matter much. In /lit/ projects going back, there's naturally some tension between people who want to declare authorship and those who value anonymity, but it always ends up on the individual to choose, and I think that's fine. Forcing someone to be anonymous doesn't make their work more interesting, even if one has special interest in anonymous works. I think a balance is interesting.

>>24669747
>Are you going to restrict already-used tripcodes, or at least discourage them? Now that there's a precedent, I worry about bias.
That’s the future judges’ call—if they really forsee a kind of bias affecting things on their end, then yes, but for the good reasons >>24669982 pointed out, I don’t think that will really be necessary.
I used a different name, but only because: If son of hermes, Heng, or meteor wanted to quit (for any reason) and have me take their place during /wibac/, I didn’t want them to then see me participating and go, “Nah, ineptia’s already joined, so I’ll keep being a judge.”

>>24669982
>The only unavoidable bias with re-used trips is positive bias
That's debatable...

>>24668347
Basè, excited for coming exercise containing creativity without contention. Post it soon I think, no need to wait for this worn-out thread to maxout.

>>24668347
>It was the first /wibac/; the next one will be better.

/WIBAC/ Seemed successful in that it spurned furious debate and copycat threads. I think in a land of dogmatic subjectivism, it was fun to have a 'put up or shut up' moment, where you could see if the anon actually had the inner vigor to back up their typing.

>>24671644
That's an interesting way to look at it, as a sign anons cared. Not a good thing to have happen every time, but things seem like they'll be smoother the second time around.

>>24671699

LWC is too cumbersome and dedicated, with larger pieces to get that kind of involvement. This was a real: what the fuck have you done? moment, which is why it got so much attn.

>>24671699
Not until #justice4MetaAnon

>>24671793
Already a stale meme

>>24671121
>Post it soon I think, no need to wait for this worn-out thread to maxout.

>>24671845