[Winter Contest Entry 2015] Mother Knows Best

An interesting tale of cannibalization and the personification of these small mammals is very typical of your previous works. It’s hard to read a story from you and not expect the characters to just be symbols, but I wouldn’t necessarily call that a bad thing. The repetition in this story is acceptable to further signify the importance of the feelings and emotions going through Judas as he continues to witness the things that haunt him, which is very common for moments of trauma. However, if you remove the repetition, then you can see that you only used half the space you needed for the content, which is an amazing feat. However, I feel like some parts could have used more explanation. For instance, when Judas returns to his mother in the climactic scene, he asks her why she’s doing it again, but it’s not certain if she’s doing it again by cannibalizing another sibling, or doing it again by still continuing to consume the corpse of John. Although that’s not detrimental knowledge, it does further expose whether it’s a repeat offense or the continued apathetic sin of the previous, and I think that one of those makes her into a bigger sinner than the other.

On a positive note, the status of your story is something I’m proud to expect from you, something lacking in errors both in syntax and grammar. There were some areas I had to be certain about, such as capitalizing Mother and wondering if “The less we are in the family, the more food there will be for each of us, and to keep you all alive, I had to get rid of the weakest link.” could have been better arranged, or possibly spliced. Also, in my opinion, you should eliminate your use of the word “then” to describe the proceeding motions and descriptions of characters, since the word actually provides very little when the continued sentence already applies the knowledge that the motions occur subsequently. I’m referencing your sentences “I then proceeded to the dining area.” And “She then put up a face of anguish.” It’s just a fluff word and serves little purpose in those instances.

Well done on this entry overall.

Below are the major things I found issues with, in addition to the previous "then" sentences.



This implies that he’s eating himself. I suggest a better subject identifier. Even later it’s discovered it’s a she doing the eating, it doesn’t help the initial mental image created by this lone sentence.



This could be worded more appropriately, such as “The less of us there are in the family,…” “The less we are in the family” implies something like genetic distance, or some odd physical phenomena.

Yeah, I actually copy-pasted a large chunk of text in the early parts of the story into the portion of the story that shows Mother's second offense.



Thanks for pointing it out. I'll make it clearer that Mother's doing it again by cannibalizing another sibling and not consuming the same corpse as before.



Actually, At first, I named Mother as Jessa, but decided against it. I took the name Jessa from Jesus. This is because I wanted to have Judas and his siblings share a theme of "followers", hence, Judas (the apostle who betrayed Jesus, or in the story's case, the son who betrayed Mother), and John (Jesus's youngest apostle, or in the story's case, Mother's youngest son). I thought that people would take it the wrong way if I named an equivocating cannibal close to the name of a significant figure in Catholicism. But since I dropped that idea, I guess I should've left "Mother" uncapitalized.



Noted.



I see. It's a bad habit of mine to put in needless words. I guess I overlooked the word "then" when I was proofreading my work.



Understood. I'll make it clearer when I revise my work.



I really didn't think about that, but I guess it's true that it can be taken that way.

Thanks so much for leaving your comments on my work! Hopefully the other judges post theirs here as well when they find the time to do so. I'll keep in mind all the advice you've given so far for future contests (though I guess the next one won't be too soon, considering the gap between Winter Contest 2014, and Summer Contest 2015 haha). I wish more people would join next time though!

Can I begin by judging the entry by the 3 criteria I listed out in the "Winners Thread"?

1. Must be readable:

Thank you for giving me a hint of what is the story about at the beginning. I don't mind it since I like jokes even though I know how it is going to end. I wouldn't say that the first few paragraphs are readable because so little is given. While I understand that this is part of the setup, you could have indicated more clearly that we have a main character whose mother is cannibalising his siblings.

For example some lines indicating that the 'scrawny killer' is his mother would be certainly welcome in my book. (The scrawny killer came up to me and placed her blood glistened lips lightly on my cheek. It was a soft, tender and motherly peck. Motherly it was so for that killer was also my mother.)

When I tried to go through it, I nearly thought that the person doing the killing and Mother Rat were two different people. Revealing it through dialogue didn't help.

I wouldn't mind if you just say outright that Judas committed matricide. The whole point of the story is to induce disgust and horror surely?

I understood the story thankfully only after opening the spoiler and the second criteria is really the reason why I placed this entry among my top 3.


2. Must be humorous:
The twist at the end is exactly what made it humorous. I have developed a taste of laughing at suffering to the extent of being sardonic. (For that to work though, it must contain some element of humour which this entry had in the twist.) I appreciated the wit in the story which is really hard to come up with. The spoilers at the end (and at the beginning) are to me the cherries on top that adds to the humour. Long story short, the humour in this story fits my tastes.

If it only could be better presented!


3. Must be written in my style:
It isn't written in my style. That needn't be a bad thing if you have tried reading what I write.

You will disagree with what I wrote. It really boils down to my tastes in reading which is why we have 2 other judges (who might share the same opinions as me) and the polls (which are won by whoever has the most connections in the forum). Congratulations on getting runner-up though!

I actually agree with the stuff you wrote.



Clarity has always been one of the problems I have when writing. A lot of times, I wonder if the way I wrote something would be too difficult to understand or would making it more understandable make it seem like I'm spoon-feeding too much or make it seem like I'm treating the readers as "too stupid to understand so I have to dumb it up a bit".



I should've left more hints as to what Judas and his family were.



:(



Thanks! Hope to see you next contest either as a judge or fellow contestant!

I would try to assume that all readers are stupid should you task me to write a story with plot. Reading comprehension and artistic interpretation were never my strong suits so I would be more than happy if the writer treated me like an idiot and explained what is going on. Yanker's entry did that quite well I feel and so do children bedtime stories.

I was never a fan of modern literature which does away with explaining things in a forthright manner.