Talk:The Viral Game/@comment-7706473-20130718103525/@comment-7706473-20130718105312

Much obliged; it makes it much easier to take a pasta seriously when I'm not tempted to add pictures of insects or flowers. One thing you'll find is that we don't necessarily go easy on a pasta because it's your first here; it's a bit of a pet peeve due to how many people post really terribad pastas and use it as a 'justification'.

That said - this isn't terribad, although it definitely has some room to improve. Let's start with what I felt were some of the more contentious aspects. For one, using the name of yourself and the (presumably also real) lady_Axis is probably a bit dangerous to the sense of realism. Using yourself as a tool can make stories much more personal, but the problem is that the reader doesn't know you, and it runs the risk of feeling like a self-insertation. Having yourself being the star just to be the star.

But I liked how your character isn't particularly good or talented at the game, and gets by through the skin of their teeth; that does a lot to allovate the complaint. Next - the names of the Virii Gang and some of the computer stuff sounds a bit silly to my ears. Now, I'm no expert in 1337 hax0rmast4r doings, but it made me smile more then feel scared. Similarly -

I didn't really feel like the story was particularly frightening. The ending confrontation with GODDESS - ending where she is attempting to bumrush the player and finishing just before whatever might have happened, happened - is unnerving, as is letting the rest go unsaid and unsolved.

If I were writing this, I would've made the 'meat' more disturbing (some ideas: you build the Arena up well, why not focus less on the 'characteristatiscs' of the opponents and more on things about them that seem off to the player? Perhaps the Arena draws information from something the player knows they accessed on the computer recently...) and ended the story before 'Research and Findings'.

You didn't have any 'hyper-realistic violence', but having the ability of a computer program to cause people to search and seize the house of the end-user is more silly then frightening to most people - even if it could theoretically happen. Replacing the section with attempts to track down the dev_group and finding an ancient project on SourceForge or getting caught up in other shady internet things could be just as scary, if not more so.

Most importantly - don't think of this as your first pasta, or your last. It is a story, and deserves to be viewed as one. I'm sure that if you choose, you can improve it to ever more impressive heights. A lantana to symbolize determination to work hard.

I think you've got a good grasp of writing down, just inject some more fear and paranoia, and keep at it!