Personal Note: It's baaaack ...
Aug. 22nd, 2007 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nebroadweFinally, I'm in a writing mood again. What a relief. I'd begun to worry that I was stuck for good, despite having plenty of half-formed drafts in the queue. I really must finish up "The Weight of the Paper" as soon as the latest EdWin ficlet is tidied away. (Well, I had to do something with my second prompt from the Fire and Ice Challenge -- particularly since my first reaction to it was, "Ye gods, I can't write about that!" Challenges come in many guises. :-)
Today also marks the arrival of the Reader's Poll for the 2007 FMA Zombie Apocalypse Challenge over on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fma_7sins. Not as many entries as hoped, but some entertaining work among the few that made it over the transom. (Spoilage behind the cut.) "Countdown Till Dawn" is, IMO, the cream of the crop: a well-written short which uses the zombie apocalypse as the nightside mirror image of the Ishbal conflict, as experienced by a younger Havoc and colleagues. Good characterization, nice action sequences, well-constructed metaphor. It gets one of my votes. "How Not to Fight a Zombie," on the other hand, didn't move me all that much; I wasn't enamored of the OC the writer introduced and didn't find the story compelling. "Revolt of the Flesh" cheats a bit in its explanation of the zombies' origins, but it's got atmosphere; I was almost more creeped out by the Body-Snatchers-style betrayals in the mid-section than by the climactic brain-gnaw. "Welcome Back" begins very strong, with a character death and some useful psychological work to bring its protagonists to the point of inadvertently triggering the apocalypse (not to mention a useful workaround of the what's-dead-stays-dead principle), but once the zombies appeared the story rushed toward its denouement rather too quickly. The contest deadline may have been a factor there, so I don't count that as much against this piece as I do its excessively soft-hearted ending. Whaddaya mean, nobody dies except the red shirts?! C'mon, when you mess with the fundamental forces of the universe, you have to pay the price -- that's part of the morality-tale aspect of horror. Grr. But "Evil Dead: Array of Darkness" makes up for all by being, well, remarkably silly. With pictures. I chortle in my joy. :-) I encourage anybody with a yen for horror to head over, read and vote.
Today also marks the arrival of the Reader's Poll for the 2007 FMA Zombie Apocalypse Challenge over on
fma_7sins. Not as many entries as hoped, but some entertaining work among the few that made it over the transom. (Spoilage behind the cut.) "Countdown Till Dawn" is, IMO, the cream of the crop: a well-written short which uses the zombie apocalypse as the nightside mirror image of the Ishbal conflict, as experienced by a younger Havoc and colleagues. Good characterization, nice action sequences, well-constructed metaphor. It gets one of my votes. "How Not to Fight a Zombie," on the other hand, didn't move me all that much; I wasn't enamored of the OC the writer introduced and didn't find the story compelling. "Revolt of the Flesh" cheats a bit in its explanation of the zombies' origins, but it's got atmosphere; I was almost more creeped out by the Body-Snatchers-style betrayals in the mid-section than by the climactic brain-gnaw. "Welcome Back" begins very strong, with a character death and some useful psychological work to bring its protagonists to the point of inadvertently triggering the apocalypse (not to mention a useful workaround of the what's-dead-stays-dead principle), but once the zombies appeared the story rushed toward its denouement rather too quickly. The contest deadline may have been a factor there, so I don't count that as much against this piece as I do its excessively soft-hearted ending. Whaddaya mean, nobody dies except the red shirts?! C'mon, when you mess with the fundamental forces of the universe, you have to pay the price -- that's part of the morality-tale aspect of horror. Grr. But "Evil Dead: Array of Darkness" makes up for all by being, well, remarkably silly. With pictures. I chortle in my joy. :-) I encourage anybody with a yen for horror to head over, read and vote.