Ladies bump

 

Really enjoyed this Jayney! Although I would have voted for Grace, But she didn't have five men to please.

Good luck in the vote!

 

CAW10
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This is an interesting take on reality television and where it appears to be headed. The opening scene (the mirror), for me, is reminiscent of the opening of The Truman Show. That movie turns the reality show genre on its ear by utilizing technology to eliminate the contrivance of cast selection. In Truman, the audience really are voyeurs looking in on a genuine life, misshapen and truncated though it is. Contemporary reality TV (and your story) do not go quite that far. The "stars" are casted performers. I have never watched The Amazing Race, but I have been in the vicinity of televisions that have played it for others, and I have gleaned enough to be able to suggest that your story could perhaps be summed up as The Amazing Race, with Sex.

I also think it is interesting to juxtapose your story with The Hunger Games phenomenon, and all of the tedious buzz I hear about how it could be a plausible future. Please. The ritualistic savagery of that dystopia has a grandeur to it, which I doubt the human race could ever hope to achieve as it devolves. In that sense, your future is much more plausible and, dare I say, befitting: the descent of the human race into vacuous profligacy.

I have read some of the technical critique by other commenters. Certainly the piece could use some tightening here and there, but on the whole it is well written. I am torn as to the prevailing tendency toward the laconic in contemporary literature, and if you have read my work, you will know that I intentionally push back against it. Literature today is skeletal in its economy, and I think the trend represents less a purposefully developed aesthetic than the subservient indulgence, by famished authors, to the diminishing attention spans of their audience. (Just look at all of the bestsellers. Hunger Games is a children's book. Dragon Tattoo is written by a journalist, and reads about as fluidly as a six-column-inch op-ed column. Rowling and Meyer are read by adults, and the children's books of Tolkien are now taught in graduate school as high literature.) Too much of today's "literature" reads like the storyboard of an animated short feature-- action sequences, scrawled in outline, that beg for pictures.

I am convinced that there is room at the top for rich literary exposition, if it is done well. Stylistic guidelines certainly do have a purpose, but writers can handicap themselves and lose confidence if they try too hard to adhere to rules in isolation. I think it is better to organize literary style guidelines into a thematic framework, and to either abide by them or break them judiciously, as necessary.

 

If I had any doubts about your claim to be aesexual pseudonym reincarnated, you've just put them to rest. This is a classic AP review.:excited:

 

Yeah. (sheesh.) I get into just as much trouble as clarise, as I once did as aesexual pseudonym. If not more. (sigh) Though, I gotta tell ya, it's been nice to sit out of the present tempest in a teapot, up there in the sticky. Screw that. I've been having fun, just reading and writing stories.

Speaking of which....

I got off on a roll with all that technical mumbo-jumbo and neglected to mention that this story rocks! So, I'll finish off my "review" in classic A.P. style:

A.P.'s totally rational and objective score: 10:10 (10 for chops, and 10 for hawtness!)

 

Such a fantastic story! I really enjoyed the humour of this tale, and would love to read a follow-up about Angelique's year on top

Good luck in the challenge Jayney:rose:

 

I'm not going to apologise for bumping this old story from four years ago, I was inspired to re-read it by another current thread (as of May 2016), and although I wasn't particularly pleased with it at the time it isn't anywhere near as bad as I remember it. Technically it is quite poor, as @BlackRonin correctly pointed out, and the critique he gave me on this thread was an enormous help to me in my writing - I still remember his words every time I sit at the computer to write.

 

Good for you. I wound up re-reading a number of my own old stories recently in the process of going through old CAW entries.

This would be an interesting story for someone to attempt to follow in CAW #27.

 

Thank you.

I wish I had bumped it two months ago now, for that reason. It was suggested to me at the time that there ought to be a sequel following the adventures of Angelique on her year as the Miss World-style reigning champion, and also the pervy Bachman family. One might need to more carefully define the fact that the two sons were over 18 - at the time this story was written that was unnecessary - I intended them to be high school aged anyway, so this story would still meet the new no-underage criteria.