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Post by RielCZ on Feb 11, 2022 1:45:53 GMT -5
downrightdude, we would be ever so humbled should the Queen of the NT cometh to walk amongst us lowly Storytelling dregs. Good luck if you decide to enter! (And you should enter! It's a fun contest, and the new judge likes when new people submit.)
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Post by Kat on Feb 11, 2022 7:58:29 GMT -5
Gotta be honest, I was writing my entry right up against the 1 PM soft deadline, so the actual “narrative making sense” part was executed pretty weakly. If I could do it differently — ie, had time to read the previous entries more thoroughly before writing my piece — I agree that it’d be best to put the note into focus rather than sidelining it and then having the mom (honestly quite randomly) bring up the origins of the name Seashell. It’s something to learn from and pay more attention to in the future. Aside from that, I have to say I’m a *little bit* disappointed with the direction the story has taken thus far. My initial conception of the story was that it’d be a cute, Valentine’s Day themed story about Seashell’s grandma (I guess, the OG Seashell) getting reunited with her long-lost love after our MC goes on an adventure to unravel the mystery of where he went all those years ago. Now I’m not too sure what to make of it, but I guess the grandma went missing and the mom wrote the letter (in quite… antiquated language for her age?) Haha, no worries, I know that feel (though in my case it's not so much writing to beat the deadline but more of writing before I go to bed). Honestly? I was mildly disappointed when I wrote the starter for the Reina story a while back. There's another version of it that I haven't shared here where Reina actually meets ANOTHER Reina in the Advent Calendar and I preferred it over the version that made it into the STC. We all learn from the STC, that's how it goes...and holy heck I learned a lot from that huge pile of rejected entries before I could score my first trophy AHAHAHAhahaha. I also expected this to be a bit Valentine-y after the contents of the note were revealed! So I kept trying to pin the note on someone Seashell knew.
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Post by RielCZ on Feb 11, 2022 16:51:28 GMT -5
Congrats Kat! This was my entry. I finished it... just after yours went up. Ah well, I knew I was cutting it too close to the deadline, but I had a last minute (read: at 1:30 p.m. NST) idea. ..."I don't think so, Seashell."
The baby Lenny turned to look at Mabel, the oldest daughter of the neighbouring family. The neighbouring family from which Seashell had just stolen -- no, borrowed -- all her gear.
"How many times do I have to tell you to stay out of our house," said the Aisha, exasperated. "Or at least to tell us first when you're dropping by." The Aisha gave a thin smiled; she was about ten years older than Seashell, and the Lenny often looked up to her... as a source of information about where the Guardian of the River was. After all, Seashell was fairly certain they were in cahoots.
Mabel came and retrieved the bottle of olive oil Seashell was sporting. "No!" cried the young Lenny. "Not my Thyora's Tear!"
The Aisha softly chuckled. "What adventure are you going out on today, so-called Saviour of the Creek?" Her tone was not mocking, though maybe a little patronizing.
Seashell sniffled. "I was going to go and find Grandma Doris. I think she's trapped in a cave, surrounded by the fiercest of the fierce sea Neopets." Her sadness shifted to resolve. "I want to go and save her."
A look of unease washed over Mabel's face. "I heard she's been gone a couple weeks... I'm so sorry, Seashell."
The Lenny shrugged. "It's not your fault... Unless..?" Her eyes narrowed the Guardian's conspirator.
"Just an expression, Seashell."
"Hmm. Well... See?" The Lenny sighed as she gave the note to Mabel, who accepted it and read it. "Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Meaning that Grandma must have disappeared... well, almost 40 days ago. I know Grandma. When she disappeared, she would have calculated the days to Valentine's Day, and then thrown the note in the creek for someone to find."
Mabel scrutinized the page. "Seashell, did you ever turn the page around?"
"...No."
The Aisha held up the back of the page to the young Lenny's beak.
There was a map there...
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Post by downrightdude on Feb 11, 2022 17:51:12 GMT -5
downrightdude, we would be ever so humbled should the Queen of the NT cometh to walk amongst us lowly Storytelling dregs. Good luck if you decide to enter! (And you should enter! It's a fun contest, and the new judge likes when new people submit.) How do the story stars work? Are users allowed to write them? Or does TNT still do that?
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Post by magicalkitties3 on Feb 11, 2022 19:34:45 GMT -5
I agree with everything Kat said! This story has so many abrupt turns, it's kind of hilarious. I almost want us all to lean into it and just introduce a totally random off-the-wall development every day XD Let's embrace the absurd!
I've never seen a story turn out like this. Is this a first?
Also kind of crazy how many of us had the mom be a Faerie Lenny!
Also yeah I don't want another missing person story... it just doesn't inspire any ideas in me. Maybe because it's so open-ended? I need a springboard. But with a plot like this you kind of have to make up every aspect of it, and that's too much for me XD The who, the why, the where, etc. Anxiously awaiting someone to figure all that out so I can add onto it lmao
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Post by Kat on Feb 12, 2022 1:49:31 GMT -5
downrightdude, we would be ever so humbled should the Queen of the NT cometh to walk amongst us lowly Storytelling dregs. Good luck if you decide to enter! (And you should enter! It's a fun contest, and the new judge likes when new people submit.) How do the story stars work? Are users allowed to write them? Or does TNT still do that? If you mean starters, yeah, users write them now, though you have to wait till the current story ends to submit. Seconding Riel here, you should give this one a shot! I agree with everything Kat said! This story has so many abrupt turns, it's kind of hilarious. I almost want us all to lean into it and just introduce a totally random off-the-wall development every day XD Let's embrace the absurd! I've never seen a story turn out like this. Is this a first? Also kind of crazy how many of us had the mom be a Faerie Lenny! Also yeah I don't want another missing person story... it just doesn't inspire any ideas in me. Maybe because it's so open-ended? I need a springboard. But with a plot like this you kind of have to make up every aspect of it, and that's too much for me XD The who, the why, the where, etc. Anxiously awaiting someone to figure all that out so I can add onto it lmao Likely not the first, there have been stories that are pretty off-the-wall (like the one where I placed the fate of Neopia into a pair of socks, yes) in the past. Actually I didn't have the mom as a faerie Lenny until she was said to be so; the mom in one of my entries was an Aisha and the character came back in my winning entry as a neighbor instead. Considering I left off the entry to "there's a secret code in the note", I'm sure all the random turns haven't stopped yet. A few notes about this entry - I had one wherein Seashell would in fact successfully get away with "borrowing" the weaponry but then I thought...she's still a kid. She's not a ninja. Someone has to find her. And then I just kinda ran with that, reintroduced Estrelle as a neighbor with a bunch of BD equipment, and then kept Seashell from running off by herself. I suddenly remembered Storytelling 417 which also had some codes in paintings a la Da Vinci Code - and it's special to me not only because of that, but also because I slid a NeoQuest II reference into a winning entry for kicks only for it to be selected, and then it was one where two endings were published, mine and Diana's.
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Post by downrightdude on Feb 12, 2022 16:19:51 GMT -5
*makes a note to try out next round*
*throws typewriter at plant for inspiration*
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Post by Twillie on Feb 18, 2022 22:41:11 GMT -5
Congrats to tttxyv and Kat for being two of the three published endings for the latest Storytelling round! From what I've heard, multiple accepted endings is a rarity that hasn't happened in a long time, so it's exciting to see such a milestone happen and from some greatly skilled writers and forum members! =D
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Post by magicalkitties3 on Feb 23, 2022 20:20:56 GMT -5
Oh my god! I can't believe I got to start the story this time! I'm so excited!! I love the second entry can't wait to see where this all goes!
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Post by Kat on Feb 24, 2022 8:42:51 GMT -5
Congrats to tttxyv and Kat for being two of the three published endings for the latest Storytelling round! From what I've heard, multiple accepted endings is a rarity that hasn't happened in a long time, so it's exciting to see such a milestone happen and from some greatly skilled writers and forum members! =D Ehehe thanks Twillie! I was actually part of one of such stories many years ago (it was 417) wherein two endings were posted. I probably thought "oh, I didn't get the endiHOOOOOLY MEEPITS THERE'S TWO ENDINGS AND ONE OF THEM IS MIIIIINE" Oh my god! I can't believe I got to start the story this time! I'm so excited!! I love the second entry can't wait to see where this all goes! Congrats! It's super fun to start a story and then sit back and watch where it goes. At first I had absolutely no idea what to do for the next entry but then my brain was like "petpetpet but HUGE" and then I thought of him playing Flight of the Bumblebee Springabee on bagpipes.
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Post by magicalkitties3 on Feb 24, 2022 21:42:33 GMT -5
RielCZ loooooove itttttt omg what a clever idea
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Post by magicalkitties3 on Feb 26, 2022 20:10:21 GMT -5
What happened to Friday's entry?
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Post by RielCZ on Feb 28, 2022 18:37:32 GMT -5
Thank you so much magicalkitties3! According to Mac, the judge, they were busy with their kid on Friday so didn't have time to update it. But that's OK. I like today's winning entry, but I admit I was intrigued by a mute/speechless protagonist and hoped that would be sustained, heh. Though, as a broad-classical music nerd, I am absolutely enjoying all these composer/piece references. And yesss, the 3x last story was incredible. I hope we can have more multi-ending stories in the future.
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Post by magicalkitties3 on Mar 2, 2022 1:57:41 GMT -5
Aaaaaaah, this story is so cute and clever so far! Rielcz, I didn't even realize the protagonist was being set up as mute! Interesting idea. Something to keep in mind next time I introduce a character...
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Post by June Scarlet on Mar 4, 2022 10:36:08 GMT -5
My entry made it in for 909! This makes for my second ever win.
Interesting story behind this entry as well. Late last evening, Twillie posted a link to a thread titled, "Zero entries for today's stc!!" where Mx Macabre challenged the writing community to continue the story within the three hours before they went to bed. I decided to go for it, along with a few others.
It took about 45 minutes for me the write the whole thing, not very long considering. It would have been nice to bring up the Unidentified P3, but I was on a time crunch for this entry, and wasn't able to figure out how to do so quickly enough. Also would have liked to have described the battle in greater detail.
Also this song is a reference to "Entrance of the Gladiators," better known as "That Circus Music Song." I imagine it being played as originally written though, which was a battle march.
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