You followed the ficly formula perfectly! Congrats!

And is a sarcastic and unconstructive critique a perfect example of the sort of feedback I can expect on Ficly, or are you special?

A few of the word choices are a little awkward, particularly the splintering skin, but the ending pretty much explains it all. I liked it, sort of fucked up, but light-hearted and fun in the end. Kinda wondering what inspired it, but I guess what else should I expect from a Robot-head?

There’s a lot of potential for a full story here without telling us a damn thing of what is going on. Was this written just for fun?

There are a few fellow sarcastic people here, but I’m possibly the worst.

There was this huge string of stories just like this a little while ago of: “I’m doing something dark and evil… SURPRISE! It’s not dark or evil! hahaha! Get it? Cuz I wrote it like it was interestingly dark, and then it turned out to be pretty innocent?! Isn’t that clever!?”

Your writing is fine, but once you’ve read one of these I just never want to read another. It’s like having to revisit cancelled sitcoms with laugh tracks.

You “never want to read another”? Then surely by your own logic you should just ignore entries like these and leave their threads unmolested? (P.S., JACripe, it’s for the Gore and Cults challenge, there should be a wee link up on the right there…)

I find it easier to bypass stories that I percieve as having little or no merit and reserve my votes and commentary for salvageable projects. Comments to the effect of “Congrats, you wrote something shit” helps no one and did nothing except make me wonder whether you were a troll.

Hypothetically, if I had recently been bombarded with poetry at my workshop and you were a poet with several varied entries, how on earth would you feel if I went through your submissions and 1-voted a couple of them simply because they were over-familiar?

I have to somewhat agree with JACripe on this one about the word flow feeling odd. The use of the word “reverentially” seemed out of place to me, mainly because I was expecting the word “reverently” Both have the same meaning, and are interchangeable, but “reverentially” caused me to stop and re-read.
Also, same sentence with “reverentially” had way too many commas, and comes close to being a run-on. The use of a semi-colon (aka the super-comma) or two would have helped.
Also, I had to look up “AIBO” to get the joke. That could be because of my ignorance. Was anyone else thrown off by AIBO?

Hopefully you understand my comment, and Twyst ain’t a bad guy, he’s just blunt sometimes.

I had no idea “AIBO” was capitalised in official usage until I looked it up myself… maybe it would’ve been best to stick with “Aibo”? I half thought of making it a pinata, but that didn’t fit the imagery.

And yeah, I can appreciate that giant run-on sentence being a mouthful (or rather an eyeful). Guess a hyphen or s-c wouldn’t have gone amiss!

Maybe the reverentially/reverently thing is British/American English difference? I see the former all the time over here, but I suppose the point stands that if they both mean the same thing, the latter could have just as easily been substituted…

The gore & guts challenge doesn’t preclude cliché story telling. And that’s what this is. So maybe if you tagged this “cliché” then maybe I could have avoided it (which would be appreciated in the future).

As to your other point, if you couldn’t pick up on the fact my comment on your story was that it was cliché and not just “shit” well then… now you know what “formula” means tied to a bad rating.

Hypothetically, if you voted my work as bad because it was cliché, it would be completely valid.

The point was not that you should avoid reading things, it was that you should avoid pointless commentary and having to further expose yourself to any content that has the audacity not to meet your standards.

“It’s like having to revisit cancelled sitcoms with laugh tracks.”

“Having” to? Is someone forcing you at gunpoint to read the whole thing and make your little throwaway remarks?

And I never meant to imply that the challenge excused any flaws, that was for JACripe’s benefit.

I’m fully aware that your one-liner meant you thought it was unoriginal, but again my point stands- it was entirely unhelpful. I’m brand new, remember? I haven’t read half of what you’ve read here.

I don’t track everyone’s membership, my mistake though in my criticism, it wasn’t helpful.

However we did get a good bit of dialog going didn’t we?! I tend to ruffle feathers until that happens… most stories and comments are entirely too boring lol. Lets be friends!

No.

I think someone just got burned…for being rude. Zing!

“No” isn’t very helpful. Please respond in a more constructive way!

Duly noted!

Next time someone new comes by and you think you’d like to befriend them, review their work from the outset rather than trying to mark your territory with a masturbatory one-liner.

That comment was so much better than your story, write more like that!

Nah, I think I’d rather just leave the site so you can win.

It’s probably time for me to go too! We both lose!

WHOA THERE! I’ve read your stuff, and it’s all really good. so maybe this one didn’t hit on all cylinder’s, but don’t let jackass comments from Twyst cause you to leave.

Uh.

As in logging off, Krull. It’s like midnight over here.

Twyst, what exactly do you want to be tagged as cliché? What qualifies? Who gave you the almighty power to define what a cliché is, and whence does your arrogance come such that you get the authority to perform an action that is tantamount to demanding that he tag stories “cliché” so you can avoid them? Edcrab does not cater to you.

So he writes a story like along those lines. Granted, it is an oft-found template, but that doesn’t make the story bad. Don’t penalize him for writing another story in such a similar vein just because you happen to think it’s overdone. Stories are stories. If everybody felt like you do, comic books never would have blossomed because “it’s just the same old story”. Heck, literature in its entirety would be dead—it’s full of common elements.

@Edcrab: I liked it.

I think Edcrab needs to relax a bit. He needs to remember that everybody on the site is a writer not an editor. You aren’t going to get 100% contructive comments to turn you into a commercial writing success. The site isn’t about that.

If you want every comment to have something constructive in it, here you go: What in the world does the title have to do with the story? What sort of cult would let Patrick join, and why did Lisa let the ritual go on so long if the AIBO most likely wouldn’t count?

Granted, we’re not editors, but we should all show a level of respect – I don’t crave constructive criticism, but politeness doesn’t cost anybody anything – granted, as DoIt says, there are issues, particularly with the title – and the AIBO punchline lost a lot of pizazz for me in that I didn’t know what an AIBO was, but it wasn’t awful – it certainly wasn’t a 1-pencil story…

Oh, and welcome to ficly ;)

Harmless nailed it. I don’t necessarily expect a copy-editor to wade in with a word-by-word analysis, but actual input is always more welcome than pure snark. I don’t give a flying expletive about getting transformed into a commercial writing success, but I imagine the site isn’t about alienation and impoliteness either.

That Satanists would let Patrick anywhere near their cell is part of the suspension of disbelief (can’t imagine anyone like him making it through the auditions!) and the implication is that Lisa discovered Patrick in the act- could’ve done with a line explaining that, I suppose. The title is based on the obnoxious phenomenon of 133tspeak, which is probably a bit too narrow as a reference, akin to the AIBO issue. Maybe I should’ve gone for a Furby!

And thanks for the welcome.

god Ed since when have you cared about anyone giving you a low vote

You’ve gone soft

Also this is prety poor by your standards, just saying

It’s not the low vote- people are entitled to their opinions, I just think I’m entitled to have those opinions presented in a certain manner.

Also, hello V. Didn’t expect to see you here.

so basicaly Im allowed to say you’re a petulant baby with thin skin but if anyone else did that, it’s rude because theyre strangers

I shall remember

Also you are a petulant baby with a thin skin

I think the best part is how this has made it into the “most active” column due to the discussion here.

I’m never going to live this down, am I?

Man seriously? Ok, given the leet speak title, the story makes a smidgen more sense, but it doesn’t dispell my original impression of a mom catching her kid performing a fake ritual. But yeah, what Villain said. Your other stuff is good.