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Public Reviews
1
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Review by aeso
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
A Bad Note to President Barrack Obama
By Tim Chiu

I am reading this because ignorantly enough, I don’t know much about the presidency or anything regarding it, really. I am interested in hearing your opinion, expressed, by a quick glance, by rhyme. “Please jump off a building, President Obama”. You ask this so nicely. Please is the magic word. You would like him to jump off, very specifically, a building. Not a wall, not a cliff, certainly not an airplane, and you ask very nicely. Please. You already scare me. That’s a lot of anger.

Blink…okay, I’m trying here, but I need to argue for the llama. I can name one thing I know about llamas: they spit maybe. I can say Obama is president…don’t know what that does. I can say he plays basketball. I don’t really follow the game. They can say he breathes air…we all do, nothing spectacular, but a llama spits.

“…a fruitcake in American history…” even if fruitcake really mattered here, which I generally understand the context, we are now adding a historical disclaimer to the guy. He sucks so much that it has affected history, I can roll with that, a lot of presidents probably have, but you know what I do know about this guy? He’s still in office. That means he has a chance. This man, and you have capitalized “American” so you have some pride in your country, is in charge of trying to take care of the country and repair mistakes made by past presidents, and you have already lost faith in him? It doesn’t matter if you and everybody you could threaten on facebook didn’t vote for him. The fact is, he is still president, and the fact that you would rather express displeasure…treason, if you will, against someone as iconic as Liberty herself, gives a whole new meaning to the poem to me. I’m not even halfway through it and I’m shaking my head.

And now I’m lost. Now he’s a “huge frickin’ loser”, but then the “patriotic duty, you fail to miss.” If I understand that, it means he has…well, failed to miss his patriotic duty. Meaning he has succeeded in his patriotic duty. Make up your mind. This right here is why I don’t follow politics.
Hey, look here. “You brought forth a nation in such a great mess, with higher taxation and uncontrolled spending”. Well, yes, yes he did. He brought forth a nation in such a great mess. It was like that when he entered the office. You dumping the fault of every president on one man? I never knew the role of president was so burdening and thankless. As you state, “Just rewards for you would be feeling the stress, of…” You know, I’m pretty sure he is, and I’m also pretty sure he’s probably doing what he can with what he has to work with. Stress comes easy by Americans. He’s feeling the stress of all the Americans. This sentiment is rather wasted, friend.

Maybe the best stanza is the last one. It finally gets to the point. You think he’s shady, guilty of running a dishonest term, and get me if I’m wrong, but here where it says “yet all of your clout still fails to muster, a decent policy which appears to be sane.” You have spent the entire poem trashing him. Discrediting everything you can discredit him with using the jargon you have, and yet you still expect him to deliver something regardless of how much faith you have lost in him as someone taking care of our country. I get it, you think he sucks, you support that with something you probably heard someone say once, but I don’t see a single opinion to enforce such discrimination towards a person you know absolutely nothing about except what the media and hearsay provides.

If I were to receive this note, which as the title implies you rather wish you could, even as much as you wish he could understand just how much you hate him for what he has done to the country, and yet, at the very end. You know, it’s like a Santa wish. Yes I was very very bad and have every right to be punished, and yet I-want I-want I-want. If you don’t like something enough to comment on it, at least have very strong, legitimate reasons for voicing this hate. It is terrible to carry an unreasonable amount of stress with you. You may argue it is valid, but I counter-argue, rethink this poem. What are your real reasons for voicing such negativity? These aren’t your opinions. I’ll pick out your words and you tell me why you chose them: Why “fruitcake”? why “gamely”? Oh please, explain “lackluster”. I want to know why these words were used. Maybe they would help me to understand the poem better.

I don’t mind the delivery of the poem and the rhyme, while strong and a bit forced, well. It was rhyme and it did. It seemed like a decent attempt at cultural sympathy. I realize you might not even be American. I realize sometimes I don’t know what it really means, either. Your poem showed me that if your mind was a human, it would be a seven-year-old buck toothed kid who is a little bigger than kids his age. Keep in mind that as that child ages, the rage generally matures. If nothing else, inside these words is the beginning of a voice that could shape how everybody believes about the American President.

If you want us to feel your powerful and enraging sentiment, don’t make us giggle. “Frickin’ loser?” Seriously? If you are going to get mad enough to write a poem about it, make the rage the focus. Don’t waste paper. Use that inspiration to create skivs and laserbeams. Don’t…use name calling. That’s just silly and I won’t take you seriously.

Overall, if I were to have read this poem with nothing but an open mind to something surprisingly different, I would definitely give you a 5 for entertainment value. It was a very plausible temper tantrum. However, for time-out purposes I’m only going to give you a 4 and ask you to think about what you said while you think about what you said. I would never admonish a sentiment if it were delivered strong enough to convince me to change my mind.

Please keep writing, and check my submission for a review; it’s for a class and honesty is greatly appreciated. Thanks!


*Gold* My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
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Review of Beggar's Sermon  
Review by aeso
Rated: E | (2.5)
Beggar’s Sermon
Religious Poem

This is how your poem is introduced to me. I’m usually fairly close-minded when it comes to items proclaiming their affiliation. I’m sure in the wake of either extremes evoking their response to personal faith it has been difficult to get an unbiased opinion. You introduced something that implies belief in something extraordinary. I know how I feel going into this, before I cringe and find something else, and what I hope to acquire from reading this is a sense of what your religion means to you.

First paragraph, positive feeling. Instead of your typical low-life bum with bottle in hand and depression afoot, you have the ever-faithful singing his words of praises on a cold stone walkway. This is a delicately balanced expression and I can feel the hope.

Hmm, the boy teases the beggar, “I silently stew, wishing for words of rebuke”, so a lost soul I see. He would like to help, but can’t think of something negative enough to discourage an ignorant child for discrediting what he doesn’t understand. What is grace and mercy? Oh let me tell you about God…no. NO. Don’t tell me about god. Here you have a moment, a pristine set up, for you to express your values in the religion, or even through the speaker. Here, you can do your religion justice. What is the difference between grace and mercy? Don’t assume everybody knows the bible by heart. Not everybody reads the assignment and it takes a lot of convincing to get somebody interested in a book that has been overused and aggrieved for centuries. I don’t want to hear what you have learned about your god. I want to know what part of this religion has made you want to write this poem. What is the difference between grace and mercy? Are you going to tell me what your god did or are you going to tell me your personal example that has shaped who you are? I don’t care about salvation and damnation. I am not convinced by this grand, culminating paragraph. I hope for more in the next.

Oh. Listen. It isn’t the sermon. The man with reply, so sincere, preaching from the street corner, a begger, maybe a wino, some stranger, and he has somehow managed to fill you with the magical and everlasting faith in a supreme being, something that will carefully shape every spiritual choice you make for the rest of your life, and trust me, religion’s a biggie, and the words that do it are, quite simply, “Grace is when God gives us what we don’t deserve…salvation, Mercy is when the Lord doesn’t give us what we do…damnation.” Let me understand. I am supposed to take the message of amnesty in hopes of receiving what I do not deserve, which sounds awesome, don’t get me wrong, out of a greater alternative: damnation. Just...damnation. Tell me, what is damnation? Could you write something so descriptively horrible that I would want to try to escape this phenomenon by any means, even submitting to your god? I am glad you are proud of something someone else wrote. Now tell me what you believe.

I appreciate trying to partake in wisdom offered from a glowing review, and I am certain that those who believe in god as you would see a greater love in these words. I’m sure this god has some kind of messenger who delivers and another that takes away…ironically. I enjoy the setup of the poem and very gentle simplicity of the message, but for what it is supposed to be, a testimony of faith, I swallow the remainder of my cynicism with a mouthful of warm spit and move on. Thank you for sharing, it, though!

Please review my submission in turn. I expect nothing but absolute honesty. Thank you!


*Gold* My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
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Review of The Fun House  
Review by aeso
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
I gift you with honesty and a fair review. If you don't want it, then don't read it. Thanks!

The Fun House
“Come on in…if you dare.”
A short story by Tom Buck.
Review by me.
I like the image used. It’s creepy in a child-like horror sort of way. I notice the “F” is missing and bigger in the title. I’m moderately interested.

Oh! Everybody knows a Johnny. “It”, so non-specific and curiosity-invoking. I wasn’t very interested in this paragraph, so I more or less just danced over the words, and I honestly believe that if the ending words, “without making the warning come true” hadn’t been there, I probably wouldn’t have continued reading.

Sweetie, please, please let it be an amazing fun house. I want something beyond incredible. I want to experience the rapture and horrifying events of your funhouse world to the extent and treachery your mind is capable of. If there are clowns, they had better be more terrifying than anything my clown-fearing mind could dream up. I want to know horror, and if this is horror, then it needs to be more than just tentatively stepping on toes through a thousand mirrors and those little containers of white face paint. Just, please. Let it be an amazing fun house.

With a delicate hair ruffle, here, I’m kind of feeling wry in regards to your character becoming some form of deity among the friends. You better not let me down with this. I’m expecting great things from you now, your holiness.

Okay, some kind of telepathic clown head..? Maybe…?

This sentence should be impossible. “…spent the rest of the afternoon sketching a map of the inside of The Fun House from memory.” There is a story in itself right here. I want to know the exact details of WHY these details are known by heart.
Your lead character is losing his god-status. Is that deliberate? It’s nice to try to humanize him, but this is just a bit too neurotic. He has forty minutes before he sneaks into a Fun House that he somehow knows by heart, and looking at a clown head somehow caused a reaction inside him to make him freak out before anything happens? One minute he’s Proggy the Powerful and now he’s whining about how scared he is. This bothers me and makes me unable to concentrate on the story.
Oh, this made me laugh. “I had flashbacks of our last adventure.” How many stories is that in one short sentence? And he’s sitting here freaking out over a clown?? You do know eventually you grow immune to this sort of thing, right? Unless you are really watching too much Scooby Doo.

Your sentence, “”That excursion now seemed like child’s play compared to this one” made me wince because I just kind of got on to you for that, so I’m going to re-read the paragraph. Ok, a broken gate at the back of a neighborhood cemetery. Late at night, yeah, you know, I’m convinced that as he’s speaking to me he’s lying through his teeth. I don’t believe he went to the cemetery. I think maybe he waited by the gate. “I had managed to appear calm that night”. I just have to conclude with, Why. This paragraph does nothing to set up the story for me. If you want me to be scared good and proper with your funhouse, you better scare the daylights out of me with your cemetery.

Dread. This word is boring me. I want to hear how your bowels are churning like you ate a bowl of ghost pepper chili. I’m not feeling dread. Scare me!
Ok. What on earth happened to Johnny. He was a pretty cool guy until he started whining. Your guys are wimps! This story is going to need a plot twist where one of them grows a set. I’m going to root for Becky.

I lied. I no longer like Becky. She is mean and a large scary clown with razor wire for teeth needs to eat her face. Why? “Becky giggled, as she usually did when I teased Johnny about his weight.” Becky sucks. I’m rooting for the clowns from now on. You are intruding on their space. Rawr.

“…a foul odor demanded my attention.” I giggled. I’m sorry, I did. You’re scared to death, inside a clown that is terrifying you telepathically, a “grotesquely dressed attendant” is no longer at my back, and I just landed hard on concrete. Yeah, I would say there is nothing about the situation leading up to that line that wouldn’t have made me giggle.

Yawn. Mirror Maze. And something really stinks. Rats? OOooh wait, Drah-coo-la. And now Becky’s missing, excellent. This story is going exactly to plan.

Shoot. She came back. Course, I was away from the screen to type this and got to enjoy it longer. If I had continued reading, it would have been as traumatic as flicking the lights on then off. She was behind you! Terrified whisper, “I…don’t know” –oh wait! There she is. I don’t really like this part much.

Sorry. The f-bomb went through my head on this one. “While walking through the castle, I nearly dropped dead from fright when we passed a coffin.” Up to this point, I was pretty impressed they were all still standing. You scared yourself with a bad vampire…, no, I have to repeat this here. “an awful replica of Count Dracula sat up and grinned at us.” I’m thinking Sesame Street here, man. Come on!

No power? I am giggling. “You said there was no power.” I’m thinking in light of the technological world of Strange and Depressing phenomenon, this is the most heart-stopping sentence I have read so far. I say this with love.

Honey. No. “The Barrel O’ Fun”? It’s okay to name rides in a story. That makes it realistic. “Barrel O’ Fun”? Not so much in a horror story, lumpkin.

A mummy.

OH god bless. Seriously? This has to be the story maker right here, the one thing that describes your main character perfectly. In italics, “Are they playing a trick on me?” Yes, let your mind jump to the most logical non-extreme in comprehension. This is the response to a “terrifying scream”. I slap your hand here. No. Bad. I want you to take this scream and make it ANY REASON to get this italicized sentence out of the story. I am ice cold serious. A hero of a story should have any saving quality. Even the lowest bum at the end of the life cycle has a seriously beautiful character flaw that miraculously restores the faith in the characters at the end of the tale, satisfying the reader into convincing themselves the time was well spent. Your lead character does nothing for me. Create your lead. Explain what something would sound like. Make this story worth telling.

“My voice sounded as if it came from a scared little girl.” Oh please, I’m telling you, nothing in this fun house is that bad.

I gasped. A plan? You’re coming up with a plan? Are you seriously still trying to convince yourself this is a stunt? This isn’t courage. You aren’t reacting out of fear. There is no logic to this. There is nothing terrifying here. Think, man, for one minute. A clown, pulsing, sending terrifying images into your head from the safety of your home. A “terrifying”—NO, not horrified, not petrified, not hot-fudge sundae glue gun liquidated, but simply, antagonistically, “terrifying”. If I see something that is scary to me and it induces a verbal response that is more guttural, there will be one of two options. The fight, or flight, response. If it is a scream of fight, it will be the primal note made before the body savagely defends itself whether you want it to or not. It will be loud, it will be powerful, and it will be a rallying death cry. This is the sound that decides whether or not you wish to help a friend fight a foe to the end. It evokes your own response: go help NOW, or get out. In short, yes, it will be enormously terrifying. I am not going to worry about a plan. Your friend is good to go.

I was almost scared, for one moment. If you could change that word, “terrifying”, to something horrific, or some graphic and heart-wrenching description, that would help. I want to hear the sound of something dying, something with no hope left. Then let your lead character keep trying to stupidly come up with a plan. In heroic moments, stories worth telling, you don’t think, you act. The only thing that could make this truly scary for me is if the main character ignored the cries for help. Yes, very scary. But what you have, not so much.

Ooh! Werewolf! Casual name-drop of a zombie. These words alone don’t scare me. Drop them as descriptors.

Eh? I’m going to be absolutely honest. Right here, this paragraph, “Diving onto the slide, I hit the ground in seconds. I ran to the front of the building and waited, hoping my friends would appear, and we would run to our bikes laughing. I prepared to act as if I knew it was a joke.” You could delete everything after this sentence, I wouldn’t have to read a single word more, and this story would be just right, as is. Absolutely everything. Because then it leaves a great, terrifying wonder at the end. Here I am, enjoying a roll-my-eyes kind of laughing story, enjoyable like an afternoon of Spongebob, when all the sudden…! The story stops. And then I start thinking and then I’m scared. I don’t want to read anymore. I have accepted your story as it is, as scary. I refuse to scroll further. Everything to this point, I approve and am unable to offer a review for the rest of it.

As such: very, very nicely written. I admit, I didn’t see it coming. I thought it was going to be something silly that I had read a hundred times, overworked, but instead of telling me the same unspeakable story that never seems to be quite justifiable, it allows me to add my own details. 5/5!

I hope my words help you! Please review my submission as it is for a class. Thank you for sharing your story with me!
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Review of Don't Tell  
Review by aeso
Rated: 13+ | (3.5)
My dear:
Because a true writer wants an honest opinion. May my words benefit you.

Review for “Don’t Tell! Don’t Share!”
By colorfulpoet

The title doesn’t strike me as very interesting. It contains two directives. I don’t like being told what to do. The only reason I clicked on it was because it promised reward. I accepted. I read the first line. “I locked up the front door, being the last one done work.” The first part is boring. You locked up the front door. There is nothing descriptive in that sentence that makes me wish to continue the paragraph. The part after the comma doesn’t make sense. I had to read it a few time to understand what you were telling me. With all the love in the world, if nothing else I have to read about your review, please change the title and opening sentence. I dread reading the rest of it, but I will anyways.

Well. The second sentence isn’t much better. I had to read too long to find out the modifier of an hour, and then a surprise upon me: “not a single customer came”. I don’t care how biblical you are or aren’t, but it reeks connotation. The title, “Don’t Tell! Don’t Share!” offers lascivious promise, but at best it is rated PG 13. I’m not sure if I wish to continue with this story anymore.

Ahh, this implies youth. I almost wish that I weren’t going to be so direct, but I suppose if my words help, it was good that you learned so young. Wisdom…sigh. I’m too young to be so wise. I am noticing a few basic sentence structure errors and some issues with punctuation, but nothing that a re-read won’t help. I’m going to continue with the rest of the story. I am interested.

Mm, specify which is the brother and which is the cousin. Ok, this is cool. Next paragraph. Mystery! K, now I’m hooked. Hush. Anxiety. This isn’t going to end well.

Love Ariel, beautiful description with just the right amount of words. Hey, you know what would be cool? If you knew the exact area where you got stabbed. Would add an element of realism. Jeez, the crisees of children these days. The thing that scares me isn’t what is written, but what might have possibly inspired such a story.

I mean, look at it. “I closed my eyes, my life being sucked right out from under me.” You can feel the chasming there. You don’t have to get stabbed in the gut to know what that feels like. Good line. Trevor sucks.

Oooh! “Her voice was that of a humming-bird”! That is so delicate! I love it! The heart of gold, a bit cliché. Leave me on the voice of the humming-bird. That’s how you end that sentence. What a nice sentiment.

Alright, this isn’t fair to you. I totally started to skip over the whole medic part. If you’ve read one medic scene, you’ve read them all. Nobody knows enough to know what it would look like so they are always descriptively the same, and so vague. Make a conversation happen here. Become aware. Don’t describe the result. Add an event. You mention the ambulance, so explain why it’s memorable. Otherwise, it’s just another ambulance.
I know a little nursing stuff. I worked in hospitals as a while. Love the people, did a lot of overnights. I wish it were just as easy as checking a heart rate or an i.v. Find out how bad it is. I apologize, but a female nurse…would never say “take it easy until then”. That just makes me cringe, and I’ve worked with some bad nurses. Let me put on my matriarchal robe and guide you to the world of volunteering, even if it’s only for one hour in your life. If you want to write a story, understand the experience and the world of hospitals. Some patients are lonely. Talk to them. Research is only scary if you’re not interested in the subject.

Your doctor dipped into a cliché. Eek. And I lost interest with him. Something about a punctured lung, maybe a hernia, please. Pick something. I once met a patient who was in a full metal brace with screws and dangling bits that looked terrifying. Bad, bad car wreck, they had to rebuild his calves because they got pushed up into his femurs. Check out doctors. The media glamorizes them in some ways, but you never know until you meet one in person. They’re actually kind of interesting.

Ha. “This whole situation really sucked.” Serious understatement. I lolled.

“They were both white from what I could remember. I don’t really remember anything else. After they mace me everything was one big blur.” This sentence should never be changed. It is the story.

I love the romance. It’s very subtle and sweet.

I love this line. “…her eyes were turning a deep green. I knew she was getting mad; her eyes gave it away every time.” I have never heard of this phenomenon before. Interesting.

Ok, it was a rather sweet love story. It was conclusive and gentle, and not very aggressive. Depending on the style you are going for or the audience you are trying to target, it is a good story. If you sat me down with a cup of tea and told me this story without looking at the notes, that would be the version I would ask you to write down. There is a lot of detail left out of this story that could improve the quality. The clue is to see where you write a paragraph if there are any questions left in it. If there is, add a paragraph. Uncover the mystery.

I enjoyed the time spent reading your submission and would love if you would read mine in return. I only ask that you be honest. I will never improve if the audience is uninterested.

Thank you kindly, and please, keep writing!
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