The Backrooms

hihi! thanks for reading <3

if there are any super glaring SPaG errors please forgive me i posted this after 2 hours of sleep on a shitty air mattress

~ Chara

The problem is not the format but the fact that if this is a beginning to a larger story it should've have a better hook. Besides the Oveerser B there is little to nothing or am I missing a hidden offset? You barely Expander the original text besides making it have much more sense and overally sound better. The main problem here in my opinion is the lack of potential story it was supposed to have. As I said before if this is supposed to be a beginning to an entire saga of articles it doesn't do a great job of making me interested because I really don't know whats going on.

Other issues:

- The concept is still very video-game-like.

- Another thing is the theme and formating, The font you used is very hard to read at least for me and the pink theme doesn't help that at all. I liked the formating and theme or lack of it in the original much more.

I appreciate that you decided to flesh out this concept but for me it was a failed atempt in my opinion. I can help you though if you want I might be busy though.

idt that a videogame-esque article or a weird intro are inherently bad, but i was not sold on the execution. the strikethrough text and warning come off as cliché rather than ominious and the list of effects is neither scientifically complete or driven by some personal viewpoint. either commit to formal, thorough investigation or write the article through the lens of a compelling character. atm, it's just not super developed and i think you can do more with these odd cards.

I loved the concept behind the initial page, so I was pretty excited to see where the rewrite would go. While kept faithful to the original, I feel this was played a bit *too* safe, and the page is suffering for it.

While I understand that this is going to be part of a series, it is also the *hook* for that series rather than a middle entry, so my normal criteria of "I don't vote on series pages until I've read the series" doesn't really apply here.

I would like to see you try this again. My suggestion would be to increase the length of the article to start teasing more of this "series" you discussed. As of right now, it feels like the only thing added to this page was some glitter and tropey "ooooh altered text" lines.

This really feels like an unfinished page or a draft. I don't see something interesting besides actual concept behind it. The original page behind the tarot decks was a little bit more scarier then yours. I feel like you made it way safer then it actually should be.

Following this it also felt a bit unrealistic to my taste. For now, I'd really like to see you try to rewrite this draft again, and improve its length and narrative. I hope you succeed in the next rewrite.

-1

It's neat seeing someone take my own page and do something with it!

Or, well. Yknow. You've read the other comments, you know what I think. The original concept of the page was the random swingy nature of the cards, so seeing the reverse half be removed is quite strange. The outdated wording on the remaining effects being retained also don't help. There's nothing wrong with adding story to these things, but the cards' effects should also be warped around said story, else it feels like two concepts that clash.

Since the original page is so heavy on the effect table, either you refine the effects, or have them be related to whatever story you want to start telling. That would actually be pretty neat: An anomalous tarot deck that has a million and one possible outcomes that relate to a group/force, and their effects having to be deciphered after long periods of testing. Kind of like the fun value events in undertale always relating to Gaster in some way.

So this page plays itself far too safe, that's the main first issue I have with it. I don't usually check the original versions of the con submissions, I like to judge these works on their own merit because, unless the page is really off the mark or really bad, I think it's only fair to look at a rewrite like a new, original piece. But I did for this one, and I have to admit it feels like you changed almost nothing. Granted, if I had looked at the fine print I'm sure I could've seen little changes, but it does feel like comparing Fifa 09 to, like, Fifa 24 or whatever the most recent one was before they renamed to Madden.

The point is, the differences are there, but let's be honest what we have is two football games that are basically the same if you're not paying attention. It's an image, some fluff text, a big collapsible with every card ever inside, and… oh yeah no that's it. I kinda feel that's also an issue. For what is, apparently, the first in a series, this has no hook. This reads like the google doc explaining what an object used in a story is, like for a pitch or for a story outline. There's no actual intrigue or even explanation for how these fit into whatever you're going to do. Are these objeccts… used by the main character(s)? against them? Do they want to get them, are they in their backstory? Did tarot decks kill their grandma? Who knows, certainly not me.

I also want to take a moment to talk about the tarots themselves. I read this during crit night, and… everyone involved had the same reaction. "This is like we're reading a wiki page for binding of isaac." They're very videogamey, almost to a fault. What does the "safest route" mean in the real world? We're not trying to reach the end of a dungeon, we're trying to live day to day in an alternate hellish multiverse. How are my stats like strength measured? Surely strength is just… whatever my muscles can do, but how do you quantify that? They're not a set value. Is it based on your deadlift? I don't know, and that's not good for the reading experience. If you want these to feel less flat, they have to all be unique. Be crazy and stupid with them, and maybe have effects that aren't immediate?

Like, okay, I'm not huge into tarot decks, but I do know they're a more…. predict your future kinda thing. How much more interesting would these cards be if they literally made your future? Sure, some could have immediate effects, but how interesting would it be if you pulled out the cards and… kablamo, your past is cryptically told to you. Honestly, that crux is really interesting for a series for me. Maybe someone got the "you're gonna fucking die in 2 weeks" tarot card, and is fighting that, while the big bad got the "you cannot be slain by man" card. Or y'know, something that can have a logic flaw in it for the main hero to overcome.

Continuing on from that point, imagine using this on someone. It'd be a risk, you could make your terminal grandmammy die even more horribly when you're tryna help her, or make someone you hate immortal and famous forever, but wouldn't that be cool to explore? Maybe. The thing is, I'm now inventing my own rewrite for this page, because this page didn't really do much of one itself.

With a rewrite, you can afford to be more experimental and uncaring with what you cut and keep. Your version, should it succeed, will be replacing the original, after all. You can do whatever you want. Should you come back for a second stab at this, which I recommend because this idea is fun, really give us a hook for your story and wider series, improve the cards to feel more realistic (think about how the cards would actually look if you saw them happening in front of you, or even to you), and… you might have a winner!