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a doom review

Started by LashSlash, September 16, 2010, 09:23:03 AM

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LashSlash

http://z3.invisionfree.com/The_Grail/index.php?showforum=263

check this link for a review of the cafe doom --- you may have to register or log in or whatever....

Ed

Thanks for the review, Daniel. You might get in trouble with Sara for posting a link to the Grail, though. She said this to Delph -- "Delph, I'll decide if I want to promote the Grail on other forums. Which is a definite No at the moment."

I don't think I'm her favourite person at the moment, either. I posted about our comp on her competitions section, which I thought would be ok because it says, "Heard of a competition from beyond the Grail? Let us know," but she seems to think it was rude of me not to ask her first:

QuoteFrom my experience, on a few forums, the courteous thing to do is to find out if forums allow you to advertise. Most Mods and/or admin get "narked" by members who just sign up to promote their own comps etc. Especially from ones who have no idea even what the forum, they are posting in, does or has going on.

She might think I asked you to write a review of the Cafe and post it there, too, I suppose. Perhaps you could make it clear to her that's not the case? I don't think I'll be posting there again, but I don't want to leave on bad terms.

Thanks for the positive review, all the same. It's good to know how things look through other people's eyes :smiley:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

LashSlash

#2
Quote from: Ed on September 18, 2010, 07:07:50 AM
Thanks for the review, Daniel.  IT WAS A PLEASURE  You might get in trouble with Sara for posting a link to the Grail, though. I DONT THINK YOU -- YOU CANT GO AND WRITE A REVIEW OF A 'PHANTOM SITE' WITH NO DIRECTION WHERE ITS TO BE FOUND, CAN YOU?  ANYWAYS A GOOGLE SEARCH WOULD HAVE FOUND CAFE DOOM IN A TICK She said this to Delph -- "Delph, I'll decide if I want to promote the Grail on other forums. Which is a definite No at the moment." ..... HUH?? SOUNDS A BIT STRANGE.... SARA IS RUNNING HER OWN COMPS WITH A NICE PRIZE INCENTIVE, I SUGGESTED SHE POST HER COMP INFO IN THE COMP THREAD OVER HERE, LIKE YOU DID YOURS OVER THERE.... LIKE, WHY NOT? MOST OF US ARE PINBALLING AROUND THE SAME LIT-SITES AND WE ALL KNOW EACH OTHER AND THERE IS NO REAL COMPETITION BETWEEN SITES --- ONLY FUN GROOVES...

I don't think I'm her favourite person at the moment, either. I posted about our comp on her competitions section, which I thought would be ok because it says, "Heard of a competition from beyond the Grail? Let us know," but she seems to think it was rude of me not to ask her first: PEOPLE THINK WHAT THEY THINK -- WHAT CAN I TELL YOU? [A JEWISH COMMENT,  THAT CAN MEAN ABOUT 3 DIFFERENT THINGS]

QuoteFrom my experience, on a few forums, the courteous thing to do is to find out if forums allow you to advertise. Most Mods and/or admin get "narked" by members who just sign up to promote their own comps etc. Especially from ones who have no idea even what the forum, they are posting in, does or has going on. WHAT CAN I TELL YOU  [2 MEANING S IN THIS CASE]

She might think I asked you to write a review of the Cafe and post it there, too, I suppose. SHE DEFINITELY DOES NOT  THINK THAT -- SHE ASKED ME TO DO A REVIEW AND OUT OF SHEER CONVENIANCE TO MYSELF AND WANTING TO START THE 'REVIEW' THREAD AT THE GRAIL WITH A POSITVE REVIEW I CHOSE THE DOON CAFE Perhaps you could make it clear to her that's not the case? I don't think I'll be posting there again, but I don't want to leave on bad terms. DUNNO MAYBE SHE'S GOT PROBLEMS WITH GAY GORILLAS POST BEE-JAYS - IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN -- BUT I SEE NO REASON FOR YOU TO STOP POSTING THERE -- I SEE THAT SOME STUFF WAS DELETED BY HER.... THATS DETRIMENTAL AS CONTROVERSY IS ALWAYS A POPULAR THING AND IF HER AND MONKEY-MAN BLUNT HAD A FULL BLOWN BARNEY IT WOULD ONLY PROMOTE THE GRAIL --- THATS IT! SHE'S NEW AND SHES TRYING HARD -- HAVE AN ALL OUT BLOW-AROUND WITH HER --- YES, IT WOULD BE A GREAT HELP .... I THINK ... BUT NOT MANY THINK LIKE ME.... Thanks for the positive review, all the same. It's good to know how things look through other people's eyes :smiley: THE REVIEW WAS AN HONEST ONE IN MY EYES

Ed

Yeah, I just don't understand what it was all about, but I can live without the drama. :scratch: Seems to me like most of the deleted posts had to do with Sara putting her size sixes where her molars hang out. You would have had a field day, Daniel. Probably would have got yourself banned from another forum :grin: It's a shame the thread got wiped clean, but I can understand her not wanting her regulars to see some of what she said.
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

leatherdykeuk

I've been a daily poster on the Grail for years. I'm not really sure what's going on at all. It smacks of 'Writer's Den' takeover. I suspect the site may vanish without warning at some point.

Ed

Must admit the thought crossed my mind, too.
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

LashSlash

Quote from: leatherdykeuk on September 18, 2010, 06:24:00 PM
I've been a daily poster on the Grail for years. I'm not really sure what's going on at all. It smacks of 'Writer's Den' takeover. I suspect the site may vanish without warning at some point.
....

'Writer's Den'  --- does anyone have a link for this???

leatherdykeuk

Quote from: LashSlash on September 19, 2010, 01:55:22 AM
'Writer's Den'  --- does anyone have a link for this???

It died a few years ago. The Grail was made from the writers who'd been dumped.

Ed

Wasn't it called 'The Writer's Desk' at some point, too?
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

LashSlash

Quote from: leatherdykeuk on September 18, 2010, 06:24:00 PM
I've been a daily poster on the Grail for years. I'm not really sure what's going on at all. It smacks of 'Writer's Den' takeover. I suspect the site may vanish without warning at some point.

raych, you = prophetessa! .... woke up to find the grail has been shut down.....

LashSlash

[as the link to the frail-grail is down.... i took the liberty of posting the review here, if anyone is interested] 


Café Doom is more than the run-of-the-mill wwweb lit-site – it's a hangout for ardent devotees of Horror. As its name says: it's a café; take a seat, chill and hang with friends, if you dare: your waitressa could very well turn out to be a Zombiessa, out to eat you.

At last count there were 355 members This is a respectable membership for any forum. Some more stats, if it's of any interest: 37162 posts in 3412 topics... stats are stats – whichever way you read them. It's the here & now that counts.

Here & now at Café Doom - the Home Page:
'Release the hounds of hell' is the top line of the page. Vaccinated canines or not, I didn't actually shiver in my boots, though the page itself was black. The horror genre is far removed from my own spheres, as far as far can be, so I must admit it was with some trepidation that I skipped the home-page and entered Café Doom's forum.

Here & now at Café Doom – the Forum:
'Yikes' – another black page! This one filled with the normal run-of-the-mill threads we find on most sites, with one notable exception – 'The Dark Arts' forum. Here I discovered a world of art devoted to: not letting you sleep at night, and if you do manage to drop off - don't dream. Writing skills aside, the posters of some of the images are talented artists in their own right.

I have always thought the mainstays of any self-respecting lit-site to be a flash-challenge comp and a works-in-progress section where peer critique and help are exchanged on a quid-pro-quo basis. Both these are instrumental in developing and honing writing skills.

The Doom Flash Challenge operates quite adequately. The turnout for the comp is adequate and the turnover is adequate too. Personally, I enjoyed more the entry poems than the fiction, which was rather genre orientated.

Unfortunately the Ye Olde Workshoppe, the works-in-progress thread, is largely dysfunctional. I used an old ploy to see if I could draw some Zombies out from their crypts [if that's where they hang out] – I posted some smut. It seems Zombies like smut...

In general helpful feedback was short and short in coming. Something was missing and on investigation I discovered an inner room to the Doom Café - an inner critique workshop. 

This inner critique workshop provides the best formal critiquing that I've found anywhere. Join it, if you can. I asked around and was told: 'The only downside is the workload. They use a rigorous template for critiquing, and in the first week of each month that you use the workshop you need to write substantial and well thought out critiques for at least four of the stories posted - and these may be thousands of words long each. Still worth it, in my opinion.' And I tend to agree. If you want to make the effort to improve as a writer – it's all there, there for the giving and the taking.

Some literary fora are boring. In general the forum banter in the Doom Cafe is jovial, witty to a degree, and acceptably sophisticated. Lit-forums can be touchy places - indicative of a closely knit website, of cyber-buddies, hyper-sensitive about their own work and hanging out with each others' foibles. In some lit-sites this does not bode well. In a flash things can go terribly wrong when rudeness takes over and sarcasm rules and 'in-cliques' vie for wank-supremacy.

The great thing about Cafe Doom is the lack of cliques and all those associated bad feeling some forums get. There is an opinion that this happens because horror writers get rid of all their angst in their stories, leaving them as some of the most well-adjusted and normal people in their 'real' lives that you'll find amongst any set of writers.

I was told this: 'I joined originally because of their annual (free) short story contest. I stayed because they're a great bunch of people and it's one of the friendliest sites around.'

Take a look at 'The good morning, good night thread' – over two thousand one hundred posts of people sharing and caring for each other. This says it all!



Ed

That's fairly typical of the site's predecessors -- the shut down with no warning trick ::)

I wonder if Paul will start another now, as he was going to do in the first place. Best of luck to him if he decides to. In any case it would be better than The Grail under Sara, IMO. I didn't think she was right for the job, which she seems to have proven by giving up on the place. But then you never know until you've tried.

What do you think precipitated the shut down? Did she get stick over deleting all the members who hadn't posted in the last six months, perhaps? That's the only thing I can think of that might have made her jump :scratch:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

Ed

Ah, I see it now:

QuoteSorry, that previous post was a bit cryptic.

The reason I said what I did is because I know "Phoenix" was/is "Little Buddy" - who was a Mod on The Grail from the start.

Email address, Jane?

I have just checked my birth certificate - and no, I wasn't born yesterday.

New here? Why, did you not rejoin as Little Buddy and say so?

Makes me wonder what can of worms I have taken over here? And I can see now why Paul was close to closing it down. Too much heavy stuff going on for me.

I have closed the FB account and all useless threads on the boards.

I can stand a few silly people getting out of their pram when a site is under new management, but liars I can't, and won't put up with.

It's the end of the road for The Grail. But it always was a cul-de-sac.

Sounds very jaded :scratch:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

leatherdykeuk

Oh FFS.

I'd have taken it over just to keep the daily haiku and flash threads open.

Damn it. I liked posting there and swapping haiku with Catherine.

delph_ambi

We can find another temporary home for the haiku. Maybe here? I know it's not exactly in the Cafe Doom genre, but at least this place has reliable leadership.

Writersdock still has a daily flash going.

Couldn't believe it when I logged on this morning and saw what Sara had done.  :(