The Beast's Lair Secret Santa Contest! Legacy Edition (2019)

[Dullahan]

idle thoughts.

Eyes - recovers, even if only a little, the imagined vista of suburban powerlines seen silhouetted against an evening sky - a very 2009 kind of vista correlated to the first season of bakemonogatari. for this it deserves all the credit. all that is good in the LN genre is here - the delicate cultivation of the eventlessness of post-historical suburbs. irrupted into, naturally, by violence - this is where it starts to flag. the irruption is not drawn as delicately as the surface it breaks.

Palingenetic Descension - "Hunger. He remembered feeling hungry, once." - atrocious. the gravitas apportioned to a single word by this singling-out ahead of repetition is unmerited this early; the effect is bathetic and resembles bad YA. far more effective would have been simply to remove it and begin with the second line. there is very little historical sense here on the whole, in form and in content. commit sudoku and try again.

more later

[ItsaRandomUsername]

Didn't expect

Spoiler:

the Bokurano cross

, but it was used to good effect in the Zelfic.

Actual reviews and impressions of all these fics to come Soondere^TM.

[SpoonyViking]

I won't go into detailed reviews, at least not yet, because I don't want to give away which one I wrote, but for the most part, these fics are very good! I thank and salute the other authors for their work, and I hope my Secret Santa enjoys their gift!

[ItsaRandomUsername]

Quick and dirty observations, actual reviews to come when the voting period opens:


Eyes: Very engrossing, rocks that vintage Tsuki/old LN vibe, so ye, rather Tsuki/Boogiepop, but with its own identity.

no. i/Fist = Hammer > Nail: I've a soft spot for Bazett, and this was solid enough on its own that it worked. GG, author.

Spinning Wheels: Oh no, it's incomplete. Tho, I'd down for future continuations, what with the writing and handling of Clock Tower stuff and characterization.

Palingenetic Descension: Rather short, but it had some strong and creative imagery that I can appreciate.

The Lost Branch: One of the best Zelfics I've read since Lunatique. Also the only one I've read since Lunatique, since Zelfics have a huge stigma of being bad. Thanks for not being bad.

The Golden Sword: also incomplete, but at least it has a bit of intrigue and a dece amount of style to at least carry it and make it decently interesting enough that you'd wanna see it conclude

Blood Circuit: I may be overlooking this, but it was fairly evocative of early Urobuchi-done Nitroplus work, namely Kikokugai. Good use of the prompt and tying it to Chinese ancestor culture, too.

The Fourth?!: prob lowkey a Dies Irae cross, so I'd prob go w/it to the end due to curiosity's sake for the novelty. also, nvg, ngl. also also IC.


EDIT:
re: The Fourth?!: tbh I wish this stayed incomplete

[ItsaRandomUsername]

Also, p sure this is the first contest of this ilk to not feature Servants and Grail Wars in any meaningful capacity? Neat. Even the fic that had Heroic Spirit channeling went took the path less traveled and used figures that don't even have Servant versions yet.

[Kirby]

The fic "The Fourth!?" has been updated, and completed.

[Dullahan]

no. i/Fist = Hammer > Nail - fundamentally a story about power [institutional], control, and subjectivity. yet in that precise capacity, a missed opportunity. the power depicted at work is of an older type: the externally imposed law as discipline which one must constantly struggle to identify with, struggle against one's (tendentious term) lower nature. inspector javert? keep a stiff upper lip, stick to the code - a nineteenth-century kind of power. the pop-orientalist set dressing becomes quite apropos: against the lascivities of the 1001 Nights orient, the european [colonial officer?] must 'keep his head' so to speak. what makes Bazett a good worker is precisely that she is able to 'keep her head', i.e. to identify closer than others with the external law which determines her actions, to hold her head above the

succubus

morass of sensuality

which threatens from within. this is done. the threat is resisted, warded off as if at the last second. yet in the presentation there is a suggestion - inchoate - of a different kind of power. precisely insofar as defeating Keyboard Facesmash (i have forgotten her name, forgive me) entails entering into her trap, indeed even submitting to the lower nature up to a point: does this not suggest a more radical vision of the power effected by this institution, CT, over its employees? by submitting to the interior law (up to a point), the institutional exterior law (the sealing designation) is enforced. this 'up to a point' entails a shying-away: but what if the story did not? what if the external law was not merely something consciously striven towards identification with, but something which operates even - especially - when one 'submits' to one's innermost desires?

would this not be a far more radical - and perhaps terrible - vision of the existence of a 'possession' of the CT: that what makes Bazett such a good enforcer is that, even when doing exactly what she (and only she) desires, her actions are all the more strongly determined by the external law of the institution?

[Dullahan]

Spinning Wheels [Fate/Zero AU - College/University] [Kayneth x Waver] [NSFW] - A noble effort. Valiant. Doomed, of course, but in such a way that its doom throws into sharp relief the properly tragic aspect of the attempt. Yes, your heart was in the right place. Beyond merely drawing persons and scenes deftly and concisely, what matters all the more is that the correct approach to this kind of setting is in evidence: a movement, as fast as possible, as far away as possible from the "Harry Potter Bullshit" - or, dare we say it, "Mahou Sensei Negima Bullshit" - or really any number of the multitudinous types of bullshit which hold sway over what the society of magi has been represented as post-FSN. Correct.

Unfortunately - Waver is fucking boring as shit and there's nothing anyone, however talented, can do about it.

- - - Updated - - -

The Fourth!? - Don't do my boy Mercurius dirty like this.

[Leftovers]

Here's some days-old thoughts.

Eyes

Good opening. Plain and effective, it sketches out a realistic environmental and emotional landscape, the latter being its greatest strength. The protagonist's circumstances ring of verisimilitude, and the intrusion of the supernatural is properly jarring, if perhaps muted in its psychological impact; the missed calls notification is a well-chosen device that helps carry a lot of emotion in that direction when necessary. As the tale of a character who's insignificant/mundane in the grand scheme of things experiencing a short but life-altering brush with the plot/supernatural, it hits the right buttons competently. I would contend that it doesn't hit them as hard as it should to perform above the formulaic norm. While grading based on a story's scope/ambition is sometimes an unconscious decision, well-trodden scenarios visited with a personal flair/innovation, a subversion of expectations, or sheer excellence in a literary aspect clearly elevates that instance from being perfunctory exercises of a standard concept - or comparison fodder. What Eyes lacked is precisely such a standout quality; it is a well-written story rendered mundane by its content, that I didn't feel a lot about, whose continuation I don't care to see.

no. i/Fist = Hammer > Nail

An intriguing premise and destination, intent on painting in a piece of that vast, empty space on the map between Britain and Japan. Small details - the enforcer's creed, the many uses of runes - are the little things that sell the image and the piece's authenticity in the narrow TM fanfic sense. There are instances of wording that captures its object of depiction very well, with the abrupt dissociation from the familiar-turned-alien compared to hyper-awareness of one's own tongue fantastically on-point; but also some obscurity in the spatial transitions, even allowing for some degree of fuckery with bounded fields. Plotwise my impression is of a mirror image of Eyes: the unique ideas are in evidence but their execution is hasty, almost sloppy, and Bazett's underlying personal struggle is tied to the unfolding action almost in abstraction, its role to provide an instance of irony - that an extreme expression of the thing Bazett wants is stifled by ingrained performative qualities - and otherwise related in detachment; emotional conflict rendered matter-of-fact. If that was the intended effect, underscoring her estrangement from her own emotions, the narrative payoff is similarly muted. In short, it blew its load too quickly, and both the suspense of the mission and the exploration of the theme suffered for it; there is also the sense that even more can be made of the innovative setting. Still, interesting things happen in a memorable way. Did you happen to watch Netflix's Witcher recently?

Spinning Wheels [Fate/Zero AU - College/University] [Kayneth x Waver] [NSFW]

Memery is the final refuge of the desperate, and there was obviously some desperation involved in the writing process. Consequently there isn't much to say about it. Some nice looks into the mental spasms induced by perennial anxiety and funny parallels to situations in canon deliver the chuckles. As it stands it's less than incomplete - merely a prologue. One only hopes that when it gets to the porn Kayneth will be a power bottom. Finish it, you knob. Also did you miss that this should be Tsukihime?

Palingenetic Descension

There are hints of an intent to invoke a mythic mode of storytelling, which isn't specified by the prompt, that works out fairly well for the thematic. The vivid imagery in the temple segment strikes a fine cadence of alluring grotesqueness, sensuous and monstrous forms, and a red mist of demonic revelry suffusing it like an arthouse film's colour filter - the horror that provides a lot of that is similarly balanced. It is there that the spirit of the subject matter comes through best. The execution of the prompt's particulars felt rather abstract; if the aforementioned narrative mode was more fully embraced, vagueness in the specifics of the events would synergise more with their framing. Overall, I liked it more than I thought I would.

The Lost Branch

You attempt to portray, without exaggeration, something very difficult: to shake off the memes and depict what apprenticeship to Zelretch means, what his perspective looks like, and to give the man himself a new dimension while making sure his original one doesn't slip into parody. In this you succeed. The Zelretch we are shown has a depth and complexity of personality that allows for a rationalisation of his qualities - his formative experiences - to be traced. He has a strong sense of duty for a reason, his powers were developed to operate in specific ways, and he wasn't brought into the world a perfectly formed character. Revisiting one of his past 'failures' is an excellent way to depict this progression, in the youthful recklessness of a man with awesome power who hasn't yet realised the cost that it entails and the responsibility that he holds; accept my appreciative nod at the tribute to Lunatique in the framing device of a tale to a student as well. That I am unfamiliar with the crossover had no bearing at all on the experience, as the premise was laid out in clear enough terms - I imagine that delivering it in a way that didn't sound completely ridiculous was the most difficult part. There is a tasteful sprinkling of details and homages - lore that was or-would-be, in some other world/work - and a clear idea of what a world would look like to someone who has seen so many of them - seen in Zelretch identifying people by title or family name, which are more constant throughout worlds than individual identities. Exposition is handled well for the most part, excluding some heavy-handed, positively GDesque mentions of Alaya and the Throne in conversation, which must have shifted timelines from the tree where you are a prolific FFN author. In the same vein, I do not think the details about the other side of the crossover add anything to the whole; some things should only be alluded to, and a revelation of the cosmic thunderdome ought to drive the point home without the full scoop on the workings behind it. Still, a story about someone as powerful as Zelretch being pervaded by a sense of hopelessness as each failsafe measure comes up short and his powers prove inadequate should be commended. That you did this while skipping all the cool explosion-laden parts with the best textual justification for timesaving/laziness that I've seen doubly so. Good job, you made one of the deadliest prompts known to man work.

The Golden Sword

Another one that seems to have been written under the pressure of time, with pacing and flow suffering for it. Eschewed paragraphs, focus that flits manically all over the place, and a lack of narrative buffers that allow each element its time and space to sink in compose the picture of a rushed piece with little control over its own pace. If the intent was to depict a muggle being overcome with a sense of wonderment at the myriad displays of opulence and magic, it simply does not convey that effect, at least in its current formatting. Places, sights, introductions, thoughts on the present, thoughts on other things; this mass of information flies by without discernible rhyme and without coming together to create solid images about the setting or the characters, as it is not given enough space in between for the reader to process them, the transitions from one topic to the next perfunctory at best but mostly jarring. This is unfortunate especially because it undermines the descriptive flair that is liberally deployed throughout the piece - leaving none of the constituents introduced adequately, least of which the narrator/protagonist. An idea I would offer is to visualise the point of view as a camera that focuses/lingers on a specific sight/aspect of the world at a time, progressing according to the logic of movement in space; creating a more congruent experience of seeing the boat to share initial thoughts, entering and seeing the interior to establish the locus, meeting the people inside in a realistic/non-video-gamey talking-to-all-the-npcs way to set an introductory note for them and establish the premise through dialogue - all throughout you piece together a solid first image of the narrator. As you're dealing with OCs, assigning initial roles/traits for the reader to latch onto is important. Regardless, magic auctions are neat, and I'm down for Lei-Jun Lang and any insights about the Chinese magic order that she'd bring. This is ultimately another prologue, presumably aiming to go down the noir path of the prompt, and I would like to find out how it would develop.

Blood Circuit

Apropos of the preceding advice, this piece is very cinematic, as can be noticed in the very first scene, which very deliberately places its focus on audiovisual details - environmental shots, emphasised motions, tiny details in the physical world in full-blown zoom, all with a soundtrack playing in the background; downright traileresque. This is a mode that persists in all aspects of writing, the differentiation between them akin to shifting between cinematic techniques; following this trail of thought I would describe the genre at hand as stage drama with action thriller aspirations and an eclectic aesthetic debt. The primary specification is largely derived from the dialogue - the approach as well as the content - which I am finding difficult to describe; the closest I can get to feeling accurate is that the spoken lines are stark in structure, charged with the mood of a given scene, delivered with finality that all but implies the pause of deliberation before and after them, invoking rather than expressing. The flip side is that dramatic statements can also come off as the textual equivalent of 'rehearsed', which must also be tremendously unhelpful - think of it, if you will, in the context of the drama metaphor, affecting human interaction but building towards a greater effect than that of the content of dialogue on its interlocutors. The narrative structure, alternating from the finale in a good old-fashioned ascending boss rush punctuated by minion encounters which presents thrilling applications of the combat magus concept and the flashbacks establishing the backdrop of events and circumstances which led up to that point is a simple and effective method of ameliorating the cost of anchoring interpersonal relations and emotional responses on signifiers - sect unity and duty, betrayal, retribution - rather than organic development. The action is, again, excellent - an original imagining of magecraft's operation in China, the way it mingles with the muggle world, with a distinctive application of ye olde concept and a nice remembrance of qi being a thing - but the drama which lies at the heart of the piece is instantiated with a degree of style unequal to its substantiation. In human words, you key into the tenor of drama very well but there isn't enough substance to the drama for it to feel important, nor for the reader to feel much about it at all. The B-side scenes didn't do enough as character-establishing snapshots to provide a backbone to the action, telling the story in broad, impersonal strokes that relied too much on the aforementioned signifiers for investment in the human side of the drama to develop. Without distinct emotional attachments, the connections between the relationships that you lay down in the interludes and the aftermath of them being broken are left hanging, serving only to tie up the plot's cause and effect - not that the plot and its execution wasn't gratifying, quite the opposite, but I reckon criticism is more useful in a broader sense. In the spirit of nitpicking I would also note that placing the focus on the revenge story rather than the invocation of heroic spirits rendered the concept of ancestor channeling more of a cool feature of a story that didn't have the space or thematic disposition to dwell on it and follow the idea through; the way the prompt was executed - as a permutation of demi-Servants predicated, to my understanding, on ancestry - wasn't quite what I'd expected either. With the complaining quota fulfilled at great length, it should go without saying that I enjoyed this story quite a lot and am glad my prompt engendered its creation.

The Fourth!?

There are fundamental problems with the writing of this entry, such that I doubt a few ostentatious and vaguely condescending comments would rectify. Generally speaking, I would invite you to examine the other entries in this contest and replicate their descriptions of such things as the characters' thoughts and feelings, their surroundings, and the events that are occurring around them, even in the bare minimum of words, as that is a major factor of what constitutes good writing. It would also serve you well to acquire an understanding of tone and tonal consistency. I did not get the sense that this story aimed at anything less than a serious exploration of the prompt, yet it aims to pursue that by means of crack fanfiction. A workable definition of "serious" here would be "conforming to the internal logic and rules of the setting through realistic behaviour"; an example of "crack fanfiction" is Zelretch recruiting Shirou (why?) to go to the Root (how?) and record it (what?) with a camera (what??). Dialogue is also stilted at the best of times, disattached from the social dogma at worst; Rin talking about ＳＥＬＦＬＥＳＳＮＥＳＳ is not the behaviour of a human being. I'm not sure what remedy to recommend for writing realistic human dialogue; your best bet is probably copying other fanfics, or the VN, or other media, or talking to people and watching them talk in real life. The rest of the entry might as well not have been posted, seeing as it appears to be a final boss from some non-TM visual novel reading out a wiki article to Shirou offscreen before he noticed the effulgent aura of ＳＥＬＦＬＥＳＳＮＥＳＳ and offered to make him a god, thus triggering the total collapse of reality for all that I can tell. To say that it made no sense would undersell my incredulity at reading it. You essentially skipped telling any kind of story, and what you sent in as an entry was the equivalent of a skit transcribed on the phone during a toilet break. The prompt was technically fulfilled, though I'm sure no one was happy about it.

[ItsaRandomUsername]

Eyes:
The first fic of the bunch, and it's also one of my favorites of said bunch, too. The portrayal of the supernatural's encroachment onto mundane life's own mundane but-not-insignificant dramas feels like an close-to authentic pastiche of vintage TM, and the time taken to elaborate on the POV characters own struggles and thoughts helps to ground and endear the narrative. Though the supernatural doesn't reach Tsuki's heights, it's still a top-marking work within this contest exchange. Good job, author! Really, I mean it.


no. i/Fist = Hammer > Nail:
Conceptually solid, executed competently, and outshined by other more deserving fics. The interplay between concepts, content, and execution shies from being remarkable, but I still had a good time with it regardless. It said and did what it needed to, maybe could've gone further, but its a breathy and easily digestible work that also offers a uniqueness that justifies its existence. Kinda like an amuse-bouche, I guess. Not good enough to place, but definitely'd be my fourth pick from the top if I had to rate all of these fics from most to least. Also, it had Bazett, so that was rad. (and to answer your question, no, not yet. Me and my idea guy are just horndogs. :V Also, the shoe fit)


Spinning Wheels [Fate/Zero AU - College/University] [Kayneth x Waver] [NSFW]:
Incomplete though it is, there's a distinct glisten of ponderous care and deliberated intent. There's a notable amount of care on this take on the Clock Tower and its literary baggages to put even the author of El-Melloi II Case Files' work on the same subject material to shame, let alone a given rando's fanficcery.

There are, however, promises and foreshadowings that have potential to be - as they used to say on the Ye Olde Interwebz - "very interdasting." If more of this is to come in the future, then you can bet your bottomest bitchest of a dollar that I'll smash the ma-fukken subscribe button. That this story came from my prompt might make me a tad biased, since I got lucky and got my prompt written this year, but I trust in your talent and imagination. Good job, author!


Palingenetic Descension:
Another amuse-bouche-y fanfic, and the last of the intentionally-so ones (i.e. not incomplete, or, well...). I liked this one, too. Its foreboding, atmospheric, nightmarish, etc. etc. buzzwords buzzwords. You wrote a convincing and imaginative hall of hedonistic monsters with their own palpable yet alien culture, and that was the undeniable highlight of the fic. Though the Tohno connection felt a mite obligatory, I still understood the need for and appreciated its inclusion. GG, writer.


The Lost Branch:
This one owned. Definitely one of my favorites out of this contest. I like how it not only humanized the oft-inaptly memed Zelretch, but it also provided a fun mystery to solve by way of the crossover element. It provided meaning and context to Zel's actions, past and present both, and also provided a means of hope for the future. This worked better than it had any right to, and it shows you cared.


The Golden Sword:
Sadly incomplete, but the snappiness of the narration and the underlying (and currently unresolved :c ) mystery made this one a brisk read that, fortunately for you, compels me to want more. So yeah, not the toppest of tiers out of this batch of fics, but I like what you got so far.


Blood Circuit:
Another of this contest's "Big Three," for me. This one: hardboiled, action-packed - evocative of Hong Kong action cinema - and utilizes lore that we know of (Heroic Spirit channeling) via existing cultural tradition (Chinese ancestor reverence) to result in an organic, albeit isolated take on supernatural powers. With some CG, sprites, music, SFX, and some more KB of text, I could easily imagine this work transitioned into a Nitroplus-styled visual novel, and given my nostalgic weakness for Nitroplus VNs (especially those of Urobuch Gen's and Narahara Ittetsu's work), consider that high praise of a sort.

Only downside, to me, is that I've got brain worms that make me stupid and make it hard for me to remember names of any sort, let alone Asian ones. But that's totally a "me problem", so I won't hold that against this fic.


The Fourth!?:
Everyone else has written it way more in-depth than I ever could or would care to do, so I'll just say it was "a disappointment" and leave it at that.

- - - Updated - - -

Votes to come come, well, 1/1. See all'a y'alls next year.

[Rafflesiac]

Blood Circuit: Cool, like an action movie. The cadence was fairly repetitive though, and the shifts in tense disrupted my reading.

The Fourth!?: *sigh*

[Kirby]

The voting period is over, and the contest has officially concluded.

The winner is Blood Circuit, first place with 15 points!


In second place we have The Lost Branch with 9 points, and in third place we have Eyes with 6 points. Thank you all for participating, and making this the contest where everyone turned something in!

[ItsaRandomUsername]

GG to the winners, their positions are very-much truly deserved. The others--sans, well, y'know--were also good in their own ways, too, so I'd say this year's contest was pretty satisfying and pretty successful.

[SpoonyViking]

Indeed! Congratulations to the winners for, well, winning, and to everyone else for the good stories! And thanks for running the contest again, Kirby!