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I've wavered about making this thread for a while because I'm not sure if it's too close to other games, but there can never be too many opportunities to say nice things about other people's work, I think! :')
In this game, you'll post a link to a literature you've written here on Toyhouse that you're proud of, and the person below will tell you what they like about it! In turn, you'll tell the person who posted above you what you like about theirs.
Rules:
- I don't want to impose a specific word limit, but try to pick literatures that aren't too overwhelmingly long to read: if you have a whole novel here on Toyhouse, just link a chapter! If the person below loves it, they can read the rest in their own time, but they're not obligated to for this game.
- Please write at least a few sentences for the person above you, and write something of substance! You don't have to write a dissertation on the piece, but write the kind of response that you'd love to receive! What about the piece did you like, or what did the writer do particularly well in the piece?
- Remember that this is a compliment thread (there is a separate thread for writing critique)! Please avoid criticism unless the person above you said they wanted it!
- You can post content-warned or mature-rated literatures, but you must mark that they are, and PLEASE LINK an all-ages lit as an alternate option in your post, to prevent the thread from becoming stuck if minors want to participate, or if people might just be uncomfortable with the subject matter.
- It's also OK to post alternate options for any reason! If you'd really prefer your first lit to be reviewed, it's fine to say that and even post a time limit if you want; For example: "I'd really love feedback on Lit A, but if a day passes, Lit B is fine as well!"
- All writing posted in this thread should be hosted on Toyhouse, via the literature feature! No off-site links, please.
- Claim first so you have time to read the person's lit and craft your response!
- Please ping the person above you so you make sure that they see your comment! If you're not sure how to do this, you simply type @THEIRUSERNAME, and they will be notified! This will not work if you edit the ping into your comment later (like if you wanted to claim and then edit your comment in); you must put it in when you first submit the comment.
- You are NOT ALLOWED to skip anyone in this thread. If you cannot see the post above you because the poster or you have blocked each other, wait for another person to comment before replying to the thread. Feel free to bump the thread to encourage others to participate!
- Let at least two people go before posting again. If you post in this thread often, try to vary the lit you post! If the thread gets stuck for a week or more, it's fine to post again even if only one person has gone since your last post.
- You can bump the thread as often as you like; I don't mind.
- BE NICE!
Other literature/writing games I highly recommend:
- Favorite Written Work From the User Above!
- Say something nice about the above user's excerpt (the same idea, but for shorter excerpts!)
- Critique The Written Work Above (if you also want criticism!)
- I Wanna See A Story...
- Say something nice about above user's writing! (for writing in character profiles, in general, etc.)
The first person to post can just link one of their lits and receive a free response. Have fun!
I chose to read through Episodes, so I could get a better feel for your writing with a longer piece! I thought it was really good! You certainly sell the very melancholic nature of the piece, thanks to the tone of Ben’s commentary/narration. It has a flat, empty quality to it and I do mean that in a good way, I promise. It totally sells that he’s going through such an emotionally exhausting time of his life and that he feels so lost and weary.
It carries over to all of the different oddities that happen to him as well. His loss has left him confused and reality is losing meaning for him. The slow pace of him just stumbling around, seeing all of this hazy, perplexing imagery does a good job of showing that he’s really having trouble keeping his thoughts in check.
The ending is nice and simple too. Sometimes you do just have that moment of realization, of clarity and everything is suddenly back to normal. Although really, it isn’t.
Overall, it’s a good piece! I thought it was a good read!
Hoh man hOH MAN I JUST, I READ THROUGH CANDLE QUEEN AND LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I LOVE THE IMAGERY AND SUBTLE HINTS ABOUT HER PAST TRAUMA!!! I really REALLY enjoyed the internal struggle "(You’re only fourteen and yet…), (You cannot get upset Mathilda! The entire country is watching you!)" like, I actually feel her struggle so much! It was such a tension-filled piece as well! "She's holding on, oh god is she gonna snap? Get it together girl but the fanfic's right, she's just 14 IS THIS IT WILL SHE SNAP?????" Like I seriously felt so much in such a relatively short story! Hell, it didn't even FEEL like a short story, I genuinely felt like I had gone through what Mathilda was feeling as she sat on the throne! (Did I mention the imagery because I AM W E A K FOR THEM!!!!) AND FINALLY THAT END LINE!!!
"The candles were laughing at her, but it wasn’t something she wasn’t used to anyway."
LIKE shjfdkfg I absolutely love ending on this, "I can deal with this, I've done it before anyway" tone like it always feels good but at the same time sad? Like you know she's been dealing with this for so long, but hey what's another year or two or more right? It's just, I can't even describe how much I love and appreciate that kind of end like it speaks to me? "Yo Mathilda's gonna get through this, albeit with exhaustion but still she will get through, what about you?" sdfgkl
Thank you for letting me read such a wonderful piece!!!
Haha, most of my literature here are fanfics, since they're almost always for fandom OCs BUT you don't necessarily have to know the fandom to understand! Any of them can be read as a stand alone (particularly, if you chose Adventure in Askr or Reply Compilations) and if there ARE connected stories, they're usually marked with (I / II).
Alright, Don't Wake Me Up was probably my absolute favourite story in such awhile! It was short but I think it was effective and powerful to lure me into reading more of it. I got a eerie feeling as reading this, watching somebody going down the mental illness drain after a death is interesting, and sad to see. I liked how you've portrayed and described stuff, and I especially enjoyed how you show how everybody's experiences with the deaths and such are different. It brings out the differences with the characters. Also I listened to the song, and man I love that song.
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I've only got 1 story so far, The People Story episode 1. I'd appreciate it if somebody gave it a read and gave me their honest opinions. (Criticism is welcomed if you wanna comment some on it)
PRESENT TENSE! It might sound like a dumb thing to get excited about but most stuff is written in past tense. I have an enormous soft spot for present tense stories so honestly, this is a gem <3
I love how easy to read your story is! It's simple but so effective at hooking you right in; no need for anything overly complicated or flowery. Just a good flow of words and excellent characterisation to make it enjoyable! I'm really not good at the technical side of writing so reviewing things can be difficult but damn, it was just so much fun to read! Also the way you write dialogue is great because I'm a sucker for well written dialogue and it really adds so much to the characters and story. It really makes Henry and gang feel like real, developed human being. Like, they could be real and standing in front of me right now!!
Also can we please appreciate Henry's "I got my coffee. I’m prepared for anything!" because we know that feeling. Henry is all of us.
I don't have a lot of lit posted, but Moonstruck for something cute, or Prison Break for something creepy are good choices <3
officialhulk you've been waiting a while huh! let's go! I read Prison Break because I'm a spooky bitch =)c
The atmosphere of the piece was such a highlight!! From the get-go, the background information is so limited and everything we get about the setting is what the characters knows - what's inside the room, what she can hear, and later just that the hallways are mazelike - that made the entire thing feel really obscured, dark, and claustrophobic, which set the scene suuuper well!
I like the way you intertwined descriptions of the character with descriptions of the environment, like her nails brushing the peeled wall paper and her bare feet on cold floors, it was really fluid and effective! AND ON THAT TOPIC, the sudden drop of "talon-like nails" when I had no idea what this character looked like was such a HOLY SHIT moment, kinda realizing that she definitely isn't exempt to the horrors going on in this place. it made me sit up and wonder what the rest of her looks like! i'm not very familiar with deathclaws but the payoff by the end was still so good! =D cheers!
Here's my library! Hope you find something you enjoy reading! Concrit is welcome too!
I read Revolution 1.1. I really enjoyed this little picture into the world of your characters: it all feels lively and alive, these close relationships between the characters and their cross-cultural bonding. The small things like Galina's Russian term of endearment and the details of Thangam and her uncle's apartment, the smell of the incense from the altar, and the description of the meal he prepared, really add up to make the story feel tangible and real.
I feel for Galina-- Imane was being cruel and awful to her, but it's a conversation that feels realistic for partners amid a stressful situation: the frustration and anger of Imane reaching her last straw, the helplessness and despair of Galina as her life feels like it's suddenly falling apart. I'm glad she has neighbors who care about her like family! She needs that so much, and Thangam was a great friend to try to reassure her. Galina realizing that the closest people in her life had never liked Imane hit me, too-- I think we all know a friend who got so caught up in a partner that they were deaf to the warnings of others.
The ending of the story leaves the reader in suspense, and I like that that's how you handled the introduction of the revolution: something casually brought up among friends, but clearly the seed of something much larger.
That was just so cute? . . . I really loved the way you portrayed the affection the characters have for each other, it warms my heart . . . I also loved the dialogue about wanting to be a star, it seemed well thought out and made me want to learn more about the character speaking . . . I enjoyed your use of adjectives, you have very good choice of words . . .
For the next person: Hunger (author's note can be ignored/doesn't have to be followed if you want! TW//for implied abuse) . . .
butterfly it says the literature is invalid so i'm going with Amia: Anger! I hope that's alright.
The suspense in this is GREAT. I read this completely blind with no knowledge of the characters, and yet I can feel Amia's increasing anxiety like I had woken up in a dusty, ruined building myself. I honestly thought she had woken up to a place she'd been trying to avoid all her life, like she was a runaway and a certain facility was chasing after her, that she'd be a blameless victim in this.
But then there's more exposition, and I just went "oh no... ohhh no no no oh NO" at the subtle hints sprinkled in the exposition about indigo children and how the narrator compares the more 'innocent' indigo children to Amia, then there's the moment of realization from her that just had her break in tears. Oof. That hurts, I just wanna hold her and tell her it's all going to be okay. :(
I really like the little interaction between Amia and Jackie you wrote here! Jackie seems like he already knows what happened, assuming Amia trusts him so much to let him know about what she's capable of, and yet he still asked her like he didn't believe she would do such thing. Amia answering with such a vague sentence like she knows Jackie would know her enough to understand what she's trying to say. It's all really good!! The way you words things with the imageries are just (chef kiss) very pleasing to read through!
you can pick anything, but if you want reccs i really like no more dreaming of the dead for something angsty or it's not dirt cake and flowers for something more dorky! if you're feeling generous there's pull these old white sheets from my head which is also angsty and has 3k word count.
HHKS THANK YOU SO MUCH this is such a nice thing to wake up to ;u;
crescentseer HEY I really admire your chars and content so couldn't resist going for pull these old white sheets from my head and OH MAN...
This piece has such a strong start with that line, "If he still had a heart, it would try to beat itself out of its cage." There's so much mood-setting intrigue about Joey right away, and coupled with the internal monologue bit that goes, "It’s empty it’s empty what else would he expect there’s nothing there anymore," which came off as so... static-buzzy, the vibe of the piece was set really, really well. On characters, Hawkes in particular had really strong characterization, and their personality as well as Joey's perception of them was really clear and appealing <3
The whole piece has such an awesome surreal energy to it, some of the language making me wonder if certain things were metaphors or not. That wondering feeling extended into pieces like "Just... tonight. Like everything was fine" and "He smiles at the joke," which not only hurt the hell out of my heart but are so powerful without being explicit, which was super cool!
AND LASTLY STILL ON THE MOOD, the transition from the line "There's no other way" right into Hawkes' pov for the first time in the piece hit me HARD. That's clever as hell and raised a moment of "oh shit" that followed through with the very last line leaving it so open-ended and just so fundamentally unsettling.
Here's my library! Concrit also welcome!