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A very well written chapter, though sadly I did not really enjoy it. Once again you're hitting on my serious pet peeve of people being punished for things that are not their fault. I was willing to let it go before as you gave some fairly good reasons for Sasha, but now two more of our leads have fallen victim to it. I'm really sorry, I hate to rain on everyone's parade, and if you are enjoying this story I ask you disregard me. And for what it's worth, Barbara's first eruption was superbly built up and spectacular in execution. I just can't help but feel indignant-by-proxy for our heroines and however many other women on this cruise who had their chance at the prize snatched away by a failure of the cruise's facilities, not their own bodies; it's not fair, it's not right, and it's not fun. 

All that said though, I will reiterate that the writing in this story is fantastic, easily the best written story I've read here for quite awhile. And outside forces aside, I am enjoying the rising tension as the days drag on; in fact, I kind of wish you could emphasize that more, show a bit more of how many women are still in this and what their state is like. Most of all, I am positively desperate to see what happens to Cath, how big her bladder bulge will get, how much longer she can last, and how big her own eruption will be when she inevitably fails. Or if she has some secret that's at the heart of her confidence; could she be one of those rare women who has lost her ability to involuntarily urinate? Is that why she's so calm and can quaff down seemingly endless liters of drink, because she knows that no matter how full she gets she couldn't wet herself if she wanted to?

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9 hours ago, watchinghold said:

A very well written chapter, though sadly I did not really enjoy it. Once again you're hitting on my serious pet peeve of people being punished for things that are not their fault. I was willing to let it go before as you gave some fairly good reasons for Sasha, but now two more of our leads have fallen victim to it. I'm really sorry, I hate to rain on everyone's parade, and if you are enjoying this story I ask you disregard me. And for what it's worth, Barbara's first eruption was superbly built up and spectacular in execution. I just can't help but feel indignant-by-proxy for our heroines and however many other women on this cruise who had their chance at the prize snatched away by a failure of the cruise's facilities, not their own bodies; it's not fair, it's not right, and it's not fun. 

All that said though, I will reiterate that the writing in this story is fantastic, easily the best written story I've read here for quite awhile. And outside forces aside, I am enjoying the rising tension as the days drag on; in fact, I kind of wish you could emphasize that more, show a bit more of how many women are still in this and what their state is like. Most of all, I am positively desperate to see what happens to Cath, how big her bladder bulge will get, how much longer she can last, and how big her own eruption will be when she inevitably fails. Or if she has some secret that's at the heart of her confidence; could she be one of those rare women who has lost her ability to involuntarily urinate? Is that why she's so calm and can quaff down seemingly endless liters of drink, because she knows that no matter how full she gets she couldn't wet herself if she wanted to?

Hey thanks for reading and the compliments, it means a lot!

Sorry it wasn't all to your tastes, I thought you might not be a fan of that bit given your earlier critique. However, I thought that it fit the story well to add in that extra scene around the main holding contest, plus im kind of releasing about a chapter in advance so it was mostly already written. It can be hard to please everyone, but im glad to see you are still enjoying some of it!

In terms of why it happened and the background / behind the scenes of my thoughts, which are irreverent to the story and also probably wont make it any more enjoyable for you, sorry. But it might help explain my thought process if thats of any interest or might help it look a little bit less random.

On the base level and looking at it from the point of view of the cruise its not in their interests to help the women last longer given that they loose money for each one that makes it to the next day. Its kind of underhanded, but at the same time they are not deliberately making the women loose it. With the belt, it was a combination of Sasha's writhing when they were attaching it and her desperate and hopeless attempt to take it off incorrectly that lead to the jam. Again, not the cruises fault but then again if its happened a few times so you might think they would fix it if they really wanted too. Although I doubt that Sasha would have made it another 16 hours without peeing , but thats not the point you are making, which I agree with it being a tad unfair for what happened to her to have happened. 

As for the lift, I was always planning on putting in an extra scene in as I thought it fit the pacing of the story well. But it was kind of hard to come up with something interesting / with some degree of bladder peril that wasn't just about beating someone else at holding their pee. So I began thinking about what could go wrong on the ship, especially with so much pee soaking into the floors over the first 2 days. Thats when I thought about the fact that given the somewhat cheapskates (given their decision with the belts) of the cruise operators, there could be some other issues like electrical faults. Wether they were caused by lack of maintenance or in my head by the passengers accidents and lack of water proofing. Thats where the idea came from, but I also wanted to make sure it wasn't going to cause anyone to loose the competition, or at least any of our main characters. Like you say, I agree it would have been a bit unfair to have that happen and would probably have been a bit anti-climactic. But at the same time it is possible other passengers had a similar issue, but I hadn't explicitly thought about that. Realistically I feel like its unlikely something like that would happen. It was just another little bit to add to the story and being a little unfair was kind of the point, as I guess most accidents are caused by something unforeseen happening beyond the control of the characters.  

 

Again sorry it hit your peeved button, but I do appreciate the feedback! 

All good and bad comments help me figure out what people respond well too, although I have to say a lot of this is pure vanity of writing for myself. But I do still take peoples comments into consideration, especially when planning the extra little bits around the main stories. So thank you.

 

Some of the things you are talking about will be answered in the next and likely final chapter, but I dont want to give away too much yet. 

Its like 75% written so it hopefully wont be too much longer, but the endings are always hard to finish and make sure they live up to the hype.

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I loved the latest chapter!

And personally I enjoyed some of the aspects watchinghold critisized the most:

IMO it is good that you focus on the main protagonists.

They ocationally observe another desperate women or meet them in a line. How would the story benefit by focusing more on those (totally irrelevant) women? It would just be a distraction. Focus on a few characters and do not try to fit in too much. Yes, a series like Game of Thrones with it 4000 pages can and should focus on tons of characters. But not a short story.

Know where your strength is and focus on that.

 

My taste differs in the "they wet without being at fault" too. At first, I do not think they are not to blame. The could have gone before going to bed. If you wait until the last second there is always a chance that something goes wrong.  (Especially if you have taxed your bladder to the limit!) Yeah, an elevator without energy isn't the most impressive idea ever, that's true.
But the most important part IMO: It made the hold earlier on of Barbara even more impressive. The reader learns from the second accident, that she had taxed her muscles to the absolut limits. This proud women with her very strong bladder took her bladder to the very limits. And muscles that have been that much taxed do not go back to their normal state. No, they remain strained for some time. Barbara decided to put more strain on her bladder by not relieving herself before going to bed. Well, that was a mistake. We see that her bladder is still weakend, because she was at her absolut limit.

That makes the whole story much more believable and I enjoyed this development a lot.

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You raise a very good point; it really isn't in the cruise's interest for too many people to win. Must admit, having seen and thought about this story mostly from the participant's perspective, I'd forgotten that. Running a cruise in and of itself isn't cheap, doubly so with this vast amount of beverages being consumed, so it makes sense that the organizers might want to tip the scales a little more in their favor. Thus the continued use of a belt design known to fail under certain circumstances; they know it's a problem, but because fixing it or buying a different belt with an improved design would both cost more money and increase payouts thus decreasing profits they keep using the older faulty design. So while I would shudder to think of this cruise's Yelp reviews, I get why they do it. Because capitalism is a hell of a drug.

Also, with regards to the ship itself, while it hasn't been specified, I can easily imagine the ship being more on the older side. My first (and thus far only) cruise was on a ship called the Ocean Breeze, which I later learned was almost 50 years old by the time I was on it, having formerly been the SS Southern Cross (a minorly historic ship, being one of the first passenger liners to have all it's machinery space at the very stern, as is common on modern cruise ships now); that ship didn't even have elevators, and while it was fairly well kept, that's not always the rule when it comes to old cruisers. And even brand new ships are often far from free of teething troubles. So taking that into account, plus as you mentioned everything being steadily saturated with liters upon liters of pee, the electrical failures become more understandable as well.

I still won't say it exactly sits well with me, but I do get it. And I thank you for your patience with me; I'm really not meaning to rag on your story, it's expertly written and I am enjoying large aspects of it. Heck, a part of me is wondering if the faults will start to get more severe as those who have already lost the contest start to leak again and are joined by those with even bigger bladders than Barbara; I can almost imagine the cruise staff glancing with dread at those without marks on their wrists, looking at their pseudo-pregnant bulges and shifting legs like they're ticking timebombs. It was just a thing that got to me before, but I appreciate your willingness to offer a reasonable response and reason.

@wedgeantilles: I see your points, and I agree with them; Barbara bursting so soon after her massive eruption the night before is indeed more believable, not just from the exhaustion of her muscles but also from whatever fluid either hadn't been processed yet or was backed up in her body because she was so extremely full; many a story of real extreme holding shows women who were able to hold it for long periods of time suddenly sporting bulges as big or bigger than before mere hours after releasing, or if not that then simply being unable to hold back the flood until their muscles have had a chance to rest. Likewise, I grant you the case that the girls could have chosen to go before bed, though I would temper that excuse with the reminder of impaired judgement, pride, and there being prize money on the line; the fewer times they go, the more money they win, at least that was my understanding. And it wasn't so much that "an elevator without power isn't original," my issue was more than I disliked that Janet (who I didn't think was fully out of the contest yet) was forced to wet herself and thus be disqualified by a situation beyond her control; "she could have made it if the elevator hadn't failed, therefore she shouldn't be punished because she didn't cause the lift failure" was my reasoning. But, as Mark pointed out, it's both understandable that such mechanical faults would start occurring on a ship saturated with pee, and not in the contest organizer's best business interest to employ the best of facilities, thus I understand and agree with the reasoning more and largely retract that criticism.

As for the focus on other women, I wasn't meaning that the story should focus on a lot of irrelevant background characters to the exclusion of the main cast. Though I have seen such things done before, sometimes to great effect, you're right to say that the primary focus should be kept fairly insular on the main group. I only meant that I would have liked a bit more observation on their surroundings, like how many other women around them are sporting marks on their hands versus how many are not; with the climax of the story closing in it would have been interesting to see how many other people besides our heroines and Cath's party are still in the running for the grand prize.

Edited by watchinghold
Responding to wedgeantilles (see edit history)
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19 hours ago, watchinghold said:



I still won't say it exactly sits well with me, but I do get it. And I thank you for your patience with me; I'm really not meaning to rag on your story, it's expertly written and I am enjoying large aspects of it.

 

Hey, no need to apologize - you did not rage at all! You gave a (well founded) opinion, that's perfectly fine!
Yeah, my opinion differs, but that doesn't make yours any less legit 🙂

It's always nice to read praise, sure - but I am equally sure that the author values your opinion a lot. In fact you benefit more from critic than from praise. Because the critic has another perspective. And even if you do not share that persepective, you gain something from it. Always. If you are prepared to listen - which most persons will do if the critic is well written and not just a "rage". And like I already said, your critic was the former and definitly no rage.

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39 minutes ago, wedgeantilles said:

Hey, no need to apologize - you did not rage at all! You gave a (well founded) opinion, that's perfectly fine!
Yeah, my opinion differs, but that doesn't make yours any less legit 🙂

It's always nice to read praise, sure - but I am equally sure that the author values your opinion a lot. In fact you benefit more from critic than from praise. Because the critic has another perspective. And even if you do not share that persepective, you gain something from it. Always. If you are prepared to listen - which most persons will do if the critic is well written and not just a "rage". And like I already said, your critic was the former and definitly no rage.

Hit the nail on the head, my thoughts exactly.

Also thank you both for having a nice discussion about this, it is nice and refreshing to see there are still people on the internet who can disagree but have a cordial chat about something

Edited by Markj9494 (see edit history)
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18 hours ago, Melificentfan said:

Loved that story it was a very enjoyable read 

Thank you for your continued support, glad you enjoyed it.

18 hours ago, Dtravis said:

Really great story, thank you! I hope you'll be writing more.

Thank you, Im sure I will be writing more in the future. Its good fun, although it can take a bit of time for my ideas to form into something good enough. But I've been meaning to write a chapter for the DSP interactive story by Railgun sama, I love the premise of it. Although that will be a much shorter stand alone kind of thing. 

14 hours ago, NotDusty said:

This was superb all the way through. Straight into the omo hall of fame for me.

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it and that is high praise indeed!

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