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I'm in for treats!
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Oct 31, 2023 16:54
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TheMackening posted:I'm in for treats! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyEaHN7QKik
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Oct 31, 2023 17:01
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In, treat.
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Oct 31, 2023 20:45
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Thranguy posted:In, treat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjvvK-Rj0WI fixed link The Cut of Your Jib fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Oct 31, 2023 |
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Oct 31, 2023 20:53
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Bonus Treat for rusty pumpkins: If you sign up in the next 24 hours and haven't participated in TD during October, you may ask for a re-roll on song choice. If you haven't participated in September OR October you may choose your own sufficiently Halloweeny song
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Oct 31, 2023 21:03
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In. Treat!
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Oct 31, 2023 22:30
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Lord Zedd-Repulsa posted:In. Treat! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nts2GRGDTE
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Oct 31, 2023 22:38
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Trick me
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Oct 31, 2023 22:43
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Ouzo Maki posted:Trick me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YvAYIJSSZY base song is a banger so next person to sign up, pick a song for Ouzo that will make it painful
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Oct 31, 2023 22:47
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Global Trick (flash rule) for Día de los Muertos: every story must include a toast to or offering of food for the departed
The Cut of Your Jib fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Nov 1, 2023 |
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Nov 1, 2023 19:12
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in. treat.
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Nov 4, 2023 03:01
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QuoProQuid posted:in. treat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMOakrucBME
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Nov 4, 2023 03:51
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Ouzo Maki posted:Trick me forgot the treat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Il7G4KUuHg
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Nov 4, 2023 04:40
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Subs technically closed. But since the week relatively lean on entries, if anyone feels like banging something out use this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zakehtCDhiw Unsigned submissions must be in by Nov. 6 12AM ET, or three hours before the sign-ups' deadline. Entries must include: 1. a friendly headbutt 2. a vampire bird 3. a good cup of coffee 4. A toast to or offering of food for the departed RIP and mash it up with this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqQuihD0hoI The Cut of Your Jib fucked around with this message at 09:32 on Nov 4, 2023 |
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Nov 4, 2023 08:34
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Unregistered entry based on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zakehtCDhiw and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqQuihD0hoI containing 1. a friendly headbutt 2. a vampire bird 3. a good cup of coffee 4. A toast to or offering of food for the departed Nestend 1286 Words “Dad, I think we need to go. I can barely see the sky anymore.” Russell looked up from his coffee at Addie. Her face was full of the same worry he privately greeted in the mirror this morning. Addie’s blonde hair hung like a short silky curtain around her head, secured by a worn Levi’s ball cap. “What’s the matter, Baby Girl?” Asked Russell. Addie looked at her father’s face hidden under a bushy black beard. Bags sat pleadingly below his bloodshot eyes. She only noticed how tired her father had looked recently, but she figured he’d been that way her whole life. “I hate it when they bite you,” said Addie as she pushed around some fries on her plate. Russell’s smile poked through his beard as his jaw raised below it. “Joke’s on those lovely things when they do. Watch this.” Russell picked up a bottle of Heinz off the greasy tabletop of their diner booth, raised it high above his head, and shot it straight into his coffee. “Nooooo!” His 12-year-old daughter squealed like she used to when she was in diapers. “To your health, dear death birds.” Russell raised his cup of coffee to the window and looked up at the pitch-black sky. Addie was right; there wasn’t much of it to see. A blanket of bloodthirsty blackbirds smothered the small town of Howler and probably went much further out. Addie, meanwhile, only had eyes for her father at that moment and clutched the tabletop with giddy anticipation as her father gulped down his ketchuccino. “Aaaaaahhhhhhhh!” Addie banged on the table and sent bits of her scrambled eggs up in the air. “Enjoy sucking on that!” He shouted at the window. “Sir,” their exasperated waitress approached the table, “I honestly don’t have the strength for this right now. Get out before I call Jeff.” Addie frowned at the waitress, and worry returned to her face. “It’s OK, Baby Girl. Can’t blame her. We’re just a couple of loons to her, right?” “I wish she could see what we see,” Addie said as she looked up at the birds. “Yeah, I get that. But she can’t, and I don’t want to meet Jeff. I’m gonna hit the head, and then it’s time to scoot.” Russell checked the bill and left 15 dollars on the table before going to the bathroom. Addie picked up the check, rolled her eyes, pulled an extra 5 out of her back pocket, and snuck it under the pile of bills her father left on the table. ***** Russell parked his motorcycle down a beaten path that led to Gordon’s Beach. Addie rose out of the sidecar and pulled off her helmet. She looked up at the swirl of birds that followed her and her father. “I swear it keeps getting bigger.” “Maybe,” Russell glanced up. “But it’s the same amount of flesh off my back every time. “Mmhm,” said Addie as she rubbed last month's scars over her coat. “Well, let’s shake it; we probably only have ten more minutes until they start up with us.” The father-daughter duo walked on a path beset by dunes until they arrived at the beach proper, made a left, and started walking toward home. “You know, I haven't had a meatball sub in a long time," Russell mused as they walked down the shoreline. "You could've ordered one at the diner, why didn't you?" "Ah poo poo, you're right. Guess it'll have to wait till our next outing," Russell said as he looked out over the dark horizon. "Do you think we'll ever be able to go to restaurants like normal people?" Addie asked as she kicked a pebble across the sand. "Think it's best to stick to our little 3 AM monthlies, Baby Girl. We're light on cash and light on passing as normal." Addie patted the wad of bills in her back pocket. Nice and thick, probably a couple thousand, which meant Dad probably had a couple hundred. Addie had scrounged a newspaper during their last outing. They had enough for an under-the-table apartment. But, when she looked up at their cave, which they just arrived at, she found that she didn't want to be anywhere else. "Down, Addie, down!" Russell tackled his daughter and covered her with his body as the vampire birds descended upon them. ***** “That was a bad one, Dad,” Addie said as she held her knees to her chest. “Unnng..” Russell groaned as he tossed in his bedroll. “That was a demon hellride. We made it, though. They didn’t get you, did they?” “No, Dad. They didn’t get me,” said Addie as she quietly applied pressure to her hips where some of the birds snuck in flesh-rending bites. "Now, please, just rest. You need to rest." She needed him to rest, too, so she could attend to her wounds without breaking his heart. She got up, silently winced, gritted her teeth, and walked over to her father. She gently bumped her forehead into his. "Rest up, Daddy." She watched his silhouette cast by the Coleman lamp between them become more still until, finally, he slept. ***** "Vats a gud fub," Russell said through a mouth full of meat and bread. Addie chuckled as she sucked up the last bit of strawberry milkshake in her tin cup. The sauce in her father's beard served as a wretched contrast to his pallid color. He didn't look this bad last month. The swarm above had, again, swelled in size, and Addie nervously drummed her fingers on the table. "We gotta go, Dad." "Oh!" Russell shook his head and snapped out of his sandwich trance. "That's right, let's get out of here." In a slight panic over his negligence, Russell stood up and hurriedly beckoned Addie along. Addie quickly examined the check on the table, paid the tab with her back pocket funds, and ran after her dad. ***** The monthly dark of the moon felt thicker than usual as the birds descended upon Addie and her dad. Russell, as he had for the past eight years, threw Addie to the ground and then himself on top of her. As the birds poked, pecked, and rended into his back, his face showed Addie a new flavor of worry. “Dad?” She asked. “I think this is it, Baby Girl.” “God dammit, daddy!” Addie slapped her father in the face. He winced, and she slapped him again. Puzzlement danced across his expression, but he lay there just the same. She slugged him in the jaw and felt her father’s weight fall on her. She pushed him up, threw him to her left, and rolled on top of her father. The birds didn’t care if it was father or daughter; they feasted just the same on Addie’s fresh back. If she hadn’t been mentally preparing for this moment for weeks, she would’ve screamed. But she didn’t. She squeezed her father’s limp body tightly and winced in silence until the birds finished for the night. The birds flew off into the dark night and left the gnawed father and daughter on the sand. Addie lay quietly for a minute, not wanting to check and see if her father survived the ordeal. “Addie?” He called out. “Dad!” She jumped on top of him again and hugged him tightly. “Ufff,” he reacted. “Easy, Big Girl.” Addie sat up. “Big Girl?” “Suppose so,” he slowly sat up beside her. “You saved our butts, didn’t you?” Addie looked down at her sneakers and kicked them together. “Yeah,” Russell said, and he chuckled. “That’s my Big Girl. Let’s go home.” Addie nodded. She reached into her back pocket, and her fingers found a newspaper clipping. She decided that when they got to the cave, it would be time for an adult conversation.
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Nov 6, 2023 03:52
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the dance 1404w removed derp fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Dec 15, 2023 |
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Nov 6, 2023 04:50
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Prompt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMOakrucBME -- Flies 516 words The apartment was a one-bedroom walk-up in a pre-war building three blocks from the park. It had exposed brick, large windows, and the original crown moldings. It had an in-unit washer and dryer. It even had an unnaturally pleasant set of neighbors, bright-eyed people who smiled and waved as she smoked on the front stoop, waiting for the super to let her into the unit. She knew she wanted the apartment the moment she saw it. She signed on the spot when the super arrived and told her it was only $1,400 a month plus the deposit. “It’s the flies,” the man explained with a sheepish look. “During the summer, they’re, well…” She waved him off. She’d dealt with worse pests since moving to New York—cockroaches, spiders, rats. If flies were the worst of it, she’d just stock up on some bug spray. Those first few wintery months, she hardly noticed them. There’d be the occasional buzz beneath the hiss of the radiator of the delicate carcasses along the wood-paneled window sills. Every so often, she’d swat an errant bug away while she lay on her bed reading at night. It was nothing. It was less than nothing. January slid into February. February mutated into March. The flies were no longer content with remaining discrete but began to appear in greater numbers. She’d return to her beautiful apartment to find swarms buzzing around her kitchen trash can. She would sit in her living room to discover them crawling through the leaves of her ferns. She tossed the flower pots and began replacing the garbage bin every day. Still, the flies remained, becoming ever more insistent. She’d open kitchen cabinets to find them crawling, wriggling through her groceries. She’d feel the unpleasant sensation of their many, tiny legs against her skin as she tried to install the air conditioner. Their incessant buzzing haunted her as she slept and as she ate and as she worked and it wasn’t long after that that she bought the spray and the glue strips. She rampaged through her apartment, poisoning the air and sullying the apartment’s many amenities with ugly, yellow strands. But they persisted. April crept toward May and no longer did the traps keep the flies at bay. Great strips of teeming black hung from the walls and ceilings, buzzing and rattling as they struggled against the blue. The original wooden floors vanished beneath gleaming, little bodies. The windows which had once let in so much light and air, now grew dark and dense from thousands of bodies. They were in her clothes and her hair and between the sheets of her bed. Their larvae writhed in her food. They were everywhere and all-consuming. There was only one way to save her beautiful apartment, she realized. There was only one way to purge it of this pestilence. She drew a can of bug spray from the fly-dense closet. With a shaky hand, she removed her lighter and drew it close to the spray. If she had one regret, it was that she would not get back her deposit.
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Nov 6, 2023 05:45
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Love and Regret Words: 1410 The room was dimly lit by a flickering, fluorescent light in the distance. The cement floor of the large basement room was bare and spotted with old water stains here and there. The cinder block walls were covered with sound dampening panels from floor to ceiling. The room was empty, save for two people within. Matteo looked down at the man sprawled on the concrete, head cocked to the side like a curious dog. A beginning pool of blood was gathering on the floor around the man’s neck. The death rattle had started, and blood gurgled slowly out of his mouth. Matteo tsk-tsked. “Dying already, are we? I thought I was going to have a bit more fun than that,” he pouted. With the toe of a fine leather boot, Matteo nudged a goblet towards the expiring body. “I may as well pour myself a ‘to go cup’,” he smirked. Matteo knelt over his uniformed victim, dark hair brushing the dying man’s camouflaged chest. Matteo lifted the man upward, gently cradling the back of his neck and looked into his eyes. “Stop shuddering. You will feel no more pain.” Immediately, the man stilled. Matteo pulled a switchblade from a coat pocket and snicked the blade out. With a quick, practiced flick, he sliced the blade against the already-damaged artery in the victim’s neck. Blood poured and Matteo angled the neck so that most of it landed in the goblet. Like squeezing the last bit of juice from a lemon, the vampire gave the man a little shake before tossing the now lifeless corpse to the side. He stood, goblet in hand and looked down at the body. The vampire raised the goblet in salute. “Thank you for your service,” he said, entirely too pleased with himself as he grinned sardonically at the former soldier. He took a sip and his eyes rolled back in his head in ecstasy when the warm, red liquid touched his tongue. After savoring the taste a moment, he walked up the couple of steps and through the basement door, closing it gently behind him. A short service hallway later, he was in the theatre. He made his way to his private box and settled in for the night’s performance, still savoring his meal in sips while the orchestra tuned their instruments. A striking woman with ribbon curls of dark hair makes her way to center stage from beyond the proscenium. “Buona sera, my friends,” she smiled out to the audience. “Welcome to Il Teatro di Laurina. I am so happy you have joined me this evening. For my night owl friends, please ensure your refreshments are properly disposed of during intermission and guests are kept quiet during the performance. Enjoy the show!” Polite clapping ushered her offstage as the house lights dimmed and the curtains opened. As the orchestra began its overture, the woman joined Matteo in the box. He nodded as she seated herself. “Mia cara Laurina, would you care for refreshments?” he asked and offered his goblet. “Grazie, amore mio,” she smiled as she took a sip and shuttered as Matteo had. “The fighters always do taste sweeter, don’t they?” she remarked. Laurina was his goddess, his lover, his everything. Matteo adored his maker. She had given him something in her deadly embrace that he had always craved. Freedom. Freedom to do and be whatever he liked. He only had to give up the sun for that new freedom. He gladly let her take his life to give him a new one. Tonight was the hundredth anniversary of his making, and they were celebrating. He always took a soldier for them to share this night, in homage of his former life. The playhouse was their home. So many memories here. It was such a pity that it would all be coming to an end tonight. Matteo was going to have to kill Laurina before sunrise, or he’d be dead himself on the morrow. It pained him in a way that made him worry he wouldn’t be able to do it. But it was kill or be killed, and he valued this new life she had given him more than anything. Even her. She had never told him, but he knew it would happen tomorrow. Old vampires like her were notorious for their patterns, their predictable rhythms. She only kept her lovers and spawn for a century, and she wasn’t a fan of loose ends. Her diaries had made that pattern clear. After she killed him, she’d carefully choose another mortal plaything. One that had the qualities that suited her and would serve her over the next century. She chose those who were love-starved but loyal. Strong, but emotionally beaten. It didn’t take a lot to bend that sort to her will, Matteo reflected bitterly. He himself may as well have been a lost puppy chasing after the first person to show it kindness. It helped, of course, that she was hauntingly beautiful. Quite the actress as well. She didn’t have her own theatre for nothing. She never chose someone who didn’t end up eating out of the palm of her hand. Weighing his options, Matteo concluded that surprise would be the only way he would pull it off. As old a vampire as she was, Laurina was very strong and very fast. A distraction would be necessary. After the show, they strolled down the street. Matteo told his maker that he wanted to enjoy some lively music for his centennial celebration, and there was a concert not far away. Laurina seemed to be more indulgent than usual and agreed, although she was sure the music wouldn’t be to her taste. The site was packed. The music was loud and fast paced, and the teeming masses danced with abandon. Matteo found standing room for them on an upper tier of the small concert venue and happily danced to the music. Despite herself, Laurina began swaying to the music as well. If it were possible, cold sweat would be rolling down Matteo’s back. The dagger hidden beneath his coat seemed unnaturally warm against the small of his back. The blade was silver-plated and inlaid with wood. If this didn’t work, nothing would. When Laurina seemed to really get into the next song, Matteo knew he had to take his moment. The balcony only had a few patrons and was shadowed enough that he should be able to pull this off without causing too much of a scene. If he could pull it off. Laurina turned away slightly in her dance and Matteo ceased the dagger, bringing it down towards her as fast as he could. In his nervousness at the task and attempts to play it cool, he hadn’t noticed their entourage closing in behind them. Just as he took out the blade, he heard a high-pitched whistle from behind him. Laurina’s arm shot up, grabbing his wrist. Long fingernails stabbed into his arm as she stopped his momentum. She wore a look of pure fury as she tightened her grip, shattering bones in his wrist and arm. The dagger clattered to the ground and Matteo fell to his knees in agony and despair. “Amore, really?” She almost looked about to laugh now, switching from rage to amused indifference in an instant. “I am surprised you had the coglioni to even attempt it. Did you really think I hadn’t noticed my diaries being out of place?” She squeezed again. “Or that you had suddenly spent quite a sizeable amount of money at a blacksmith that specializes in unique weaponry? You really are a dimwit.” At this she laughed derisively. Laurina flicked her eyes back to the vampires in the shadows and jerked her head forward. “Handcuff him.” It was then that Matteo noticed the trio were in security attire. They whisked him away to a thick tempered glass coffin on the roof of the theatre, bound and gagged. Right before sunrise, his goddess deigned to visit him one last time. “Your life and your death are mine to do with as I see fit,” she said coldly as she approached. She paused a few paces away and looked out at the eastern horizon. “I did love you; you know.” She looked at him, regret in her eyes. Regret for what was about to happen, or what had happened a century ago, he couldn’t tell. “I thought it might be different this time.” She walked away.
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Nov 6, 2023 05:54
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This is the song "Love and Regret" was written to. Apologies to the archivist that I didn't remember to quote the post when I submitted the story.
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Nov 6, 2023 05:59
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The Child see archive Thranguy fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Jan 8, 2024 |
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Nov 6, 2023 07:10
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Week 587 submissions closed.
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Nov 6, 2023 11:32
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Week 587 Results hello yes I am also judge this week Thanks all who wrote stories this week! A special thanks to Chili, who came in last-minute with a story that hit all the late sign-up flashes with gusto. I’ll make judging short, so you can all get to posting crits: derp wins no loss, DM, HM, DQ, or ocks Welcome back to the blood throne!
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Nov 6, 2023 23:53
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WEEK 587 Music Trick or Treat Judge crits pt. 1 Quick thoughts— Love and Regret TheMackening Very straightforward prose. It’s clean and coherent, but nothing very exciting. For an immortal, the protagonist doesn’t think out the plan very well, and the subversion is just exposition dumped rather than giving us clues of mistakes throughout. In my eyes, style can gloss over a lot of plot or structure weaknesses, so especially if I’m judging a round, then go nuts with experimenting with language to find what you like. If you do like simple and straightforward, then try to iron out all the details so I don’t go ‘wait a minute’ why didn’t this prop get used later or why is it all coming out in a villain monologue. (see derp’s, I would say your plots are on par quality-wise, but there’s a fancy coat of paint on the other entry. If your plot intrigue was unimpeachable, that would be a very good thing to have, and you could build a reputation for having great plotting or characters with simple word choice, then a few standout lines would put you in contention week after week.) Nestend Chili The heart is a sweet father daughter bond between people who do some real dumb things. Good opening twist, it starts like post apoc, but it’s not. The characters make zero effort to prep or run which I found odd. They’re very passive in their hellworld. Building it up to make the reader question if it’s all in their heads would be cool. I’m unsure if that was part of your intention or not. Quo Pro Quid Flies It’s pretty well written, but the protag says, I’m not scared of flies, and she just isn’t. Even at the climax, they’re just a nuisance. Still, for the reader, the dread of the apartment filling with flies can be disconcerting, so the punchline style ending kind of deflates that. The whole thing stays in its lane, when it could have been good either as Mr. Bean style antics trashing the place, or Cronenberg horror. derp the dance Will style win the week? I think so. The plot’s not too convoluted, even with some hops and skips. A few clunky lines and phrases, but most of it is lyrical and fun to read. I think the ending should have just been spelled out. Thranguy The Child World building extravaganza but it’s too chaotic. Dropped threads (that’s a story for another time?), unnecessary details, and new details at the climax hold it back. It’s like I felt overstimulated by all the ideas, but when I step back and start applying some logic it’s a bit messy when there’s a potential macguffin around every corner. There was probably too much content for 5,000 words. __________ First time read-along comments/crits as I perused. Thoughts and questions as the stories unfold for me so you’ll see where I had confusion or an a-ha or bits that sent me off on tangents. Like always, if you would like more clarification or a more traditional analysis, hit me up, but I think this week is swimming in crits TheMackening Love and Regret Words: 1410 The room was dimly lit by a flickering, fluorescent light in the distance. The cement floor of the large basement room was bare and spotted with old water stains here and there. The cinder block walls were covered with sound dampening panels from floor to ceiling. The room was empty, save for two people within. Adequate setting, but doesn’t feel especially creepy. I think it’s because it’s all sight. Where’s the musty smell of the dampness, the odd thud of sound from the dampening panels. Maybe the way the light plays off of them. I know that the normal studio panels are kind of generic egg-crate looking, but the anechoic chambers have a more interesting pattern, or even the pyramid shaped ones that look dangerous. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w82HXQNDJAQ We’ll see where this goes, and maybe there’s a reason, but like rusty support pillars are a staple in slab basements, or the jutttering hum of a sump pump kicking on. There’s a lot more you could do to build atmosphere. It could be that I don’t mind a lot of detail, and I appreciate the philosophy of cut to the chase and get to the plot, but maybe it’s a case of figuring out what you like and running with it. But this opener sounds like the house inspector writing notes with simple matter-of-factness. Oh, maybe that’s the creep? Matteo looked down at the man sprawled on the concrete, head cocked to the side like a curious dog. A beginning pool of blood was gathering on the floor around the man’s neck. The death rattle had started, and blood gurgled slowly out of his mouth. I am a proponent of pushing action forward by eliminating all passive ‘was’ and ‘had’ helper verbs. A pool of blood gathered around the man’s neck” does the job and feels more immediate in past tense. It also helps with word count so I always edit those first. Matteo tsk-tsked. “Dying already, are we? I thought I was going to have a bit more fun than that,” he pouted. With the toe of a fine leather boot, Matteo nudged a goblet towards the expiring body. “I may as well pour myself a ‘to go cup’,” he smirked. This is another workmanlike passage, which does its job, but a little specificity can improve it. Is the leather suede, or patent-leather, or Corinthian, or some regional variety that would say something about the character more than expensive? Same with the goblet. I mean, there are two types of people who use goblets as I imagine them, Afroman and vampires. From context, I gather this is a vampire, but you could put a crest or something on it to indicate how old the vamp is, and where they originate. Quick details that say a lot. Matteo knelt over his uniformed victim, dark hair brushing the dying man’s camouflaged chest. Matteo lifted the man upward, gently cradling the back of his neck and looked into his eyes. “Stop shuddering. You will feel no more pain.” Immediately, the man stilled. Matteo pulled a switchblade from a coat pocket and snicked the blade out. With a quick, practiced flick, he sliced the blade against the already-damaged artery in the victim’s neck. Blood poured and Matteo angled the neck so that most of it landed in the goblet. Like squeezing the last bit of juice from a lemon, the vampire gave the man a little shake before tossing the now lifeless corpse to the side. So, there was already a pool of blood gathering, it seemed like the soldier was bleeding profusely. Not enough time really passed for any clotting, but even so, I’d imagine a vamp would just use a fingernail when teeth weren’t convenient, so interested to see if the switchblade comes back into the story. He stood, goblet in hand and looked down at the body. The vampire raised the goblet in salute. “Thank you for your service,” he said, entirely too pleased with himself as he grinned sardonically at the former soldier. He took a sip and his eyes rolled back in his head in ecstasy when the warm, red liquid touched his tongue. Thank you for your service is funny, but this is the first step-in where you’re telling me that he was too pleased with himself. IMO, you should let that up to the audience to decide. The grinned sardonically kind of tells us anyway. (On the fence about ‘former’, like I get it, but also that’s not the military mentality, so maybe popping it in italics or something would make it part of the vampire’s disdain, IDK) After savoring the taste a moment, he walked up the couple of steps and through the basement door, closing it gently behind him. A short service hallway later, he was in the theatre. He made his way to his private box and settled in for the night’s performance, still savoring his meal in sips while the orchestra tuned their instruments. OK, whoa, whoa, whoa. A theatre that has an empty basement? Strains credulity. Even a rehearsal space would be filled with junk, or at least music stands and chairs. So, since the soldier was in camo, this is relatively modern. If the vamp is plugged into modernity enough to say ‘thank you for your service’ then surely they’d fill up a thermos to keep the blood warm? A striking woman with ribbon curls of dark hair makes her way to center stage from beyond the proscenium. “Buona sera, my friends,” she smiled out to the audience. “Welcome to Il Teatro di Laurina. I am so happy you have joined me this evening. For my night owl friends, please ensure your refreshments are properly disposed of during intermission and guests are kept quiet during the performance. Enjoy the show!” Polite clapping ushered her offstage as the house lights dimmed and the curtains opened. Tense shift with ‘makes,’ Things like this don’t really bother much, but it will some. I did notice it. Again, ‘striking’ gets the job done, but it’s not very interesting. There’s not really much ambiguity about what’s going on, so why not give a detail—’cheekbones sharp enough to cut a jugular’ or something. And with that preshow housekeeping speech, I’m wondering why Matteo had to kill the soldier in the basement instead of keeping it fresh in the skybox. We’ll see. As the orchestra began its overture, the woman joined Matteo in the box. He nodded as she seated herself. “Mia cara Laurina, would you care for refreshments?” he asked and offered his goblet. “Grazie, amore mio,” she smiled as she took a sip and shuttered as Matteo had. “The fighters always do taste sweeter, don’t they?” she remarked. Laurina was his goddess, his lover, his everything. Matteo adored his maker. She had given him something in her deadly embrace that he had always craved. Freedom. Freedom to do and be whatever he liked. He only had to give up the sun for that new freedom. He gladly let her take his life to give him a new one. I do like unrepentant vamps. And the smattering of Italian is good. Tonight was the hundredth anniversary of his making, and they were celebrating. He always took a soldier for them to share this night, in homage of his former life. The playhouse was their home. So many memories here. Theatre of vamps is right out of Anne Rice, and probably others. Just noting it. It was such a pity that it would all be coming to an end tonight. Matteo was going to have to kill Laurina before sunrise, or he’d be dead himself on the morrow. It pained him in a way that made him worry he wouldn’t be able to do it. But it was kill or be killed, and he valued this new life she had given him more than anything. Even her. She had never told him, but he knew it would happen tomorrow. Old vampires like her were notorious for their patterns, their predictable rhythms. She only kept her lovers and spawn for a century, and she wasn’t a fan of loose ends. Her diaries had made that pattern clear. You could probably dress this up a little. Do all the olds eventually eliminate their progeny, or is this a habit of Laurina. Maybe early on, Matteo could thumb the diary and see tomorrows date in a cryptic entry. Then we have a clue that something is going to happen without spelling it out. And we know that Matteo is wise to the plan in a more intriguing way. After she killed him, she’d carefully choose another mortal plaything. One that had the qualities that suited her and would serve her over the next century. She chose those who were love-starved but loyal. Strong, but emotionally beaten. It didn’t take a lot to bend that sort to her will, Matteo reflected bitterly. He himself may as well have been a lost puppy chasing after the first person to show it kindness. So, it sounds like Matteo is describing a soldier of some sort to a ‘t.’ It would be heartbreaking if the soldier was still alive at this point and to find out that the annual tradition of finding a soldier to eat this year was actually Matteo bringing his replacement into the den. It helped, of course, that she was hauntingly beautiful. Quite the actress as well. She didn’t have her own theatre for nothing. She never chose someone who didn’t end up eating out of the palm of her hand. Weighing his options, Matteo concluded that surprise would be the only way he would pull it off. As old a vampire as she was, Laurina was very strong and very fast. A distraction would be necessary. After the show, they strolled down the street. Matteo told his maker that he wanted to enjoy some lively music for his centennial celebration, and there was a concert not far away. Laurina seemed to be more indulgent than usual and agreed, although she was sure the music wouldn’t be to her taste. They were just at an opera or musical something. Maybe the theatre should have been a straight play to add more contrast? The site was packed. The music was loud and fast paced, and the teeming masses danced with abandon. Matteo found standing room for them on an upper tier of the small concert venue and happily danced to the music. Despite herself, Laurina began swaying to the music as well. If it were possible, cold sweat would be rolling down Matteo’s back. The dagger hidden beneath his coat seemed unnaturally warm against the small of his back. The blade was silver-plated and inlaid with wood. If this didn’t work, nothing would. Dagger and a switchblade. BUDK customer spotted. When Laurina seemed to really get into the next song, Matteo knew he had to take his moment. The balcony only had a few patrons and was shadowed enough that he should be able to pull this off without causing too much of a scene. If he could pull it off. Laurina turned away slightly in her dance and Matteo ceased the dagger, bringing it down towards her as fast as he could. ‘Seized the dagger’ but that’s just a typo level mistake. A moment ago it was standing room only, now the balcony is sparsely packed? I mean, he had the soldier in the solitary basement. That could have been a fine place for a showdown, especially if he knifes her while she’s taking a drink from the body. In his nervousness at the task and attempts to play it cool, he hadn’t noticed their entourage closing in behind them. Just as he took out the blade, he heard a high-pitched whistle from behind him. Laurina’s arm shot up, grabbing his wrist. Long fingernails stabbed into his arm as she stopped his momentum. She wore a look of pure fury as she tightened her grip, shattering bones in his wrist and arm. The dagger clattered to the ground and Matteo fell to his knees in agony and despair. The entourage is a bit confusing here. Are these the theatre patron vamps, or more of Laurina’s thralls? I guess the tone so far seemed to be that Laurina was ‘monogamous’ until she moved on. But Matteo isn’t established as an artist or musician, and even as the prince of the theatre, it would be more antagonistic to say ‘her entourage.’ “Amore, really?” She almost looked about to laugh now, switching from rage to amused indifference in an instant. “I am surprised you had the coglioni to even attempt it. Did you really think I hadn’t noticed my diaries being out of place?” She squeezed again. “Or that you had suddenly spent quite a sizeable amount of money at a blacksmith that specializes in unique weaponry? You really are a dimwit.” At this she laughed derisively. If anything, a vampire would likely have amassed a vast fortune through the centuries. I doubt they pay attention to finances that much unless suspicious already. If someone betrayed Matteo then fine, but it’s not set up that way. This is the most important thing he’s done, so it’s fine for him to make one mistake and be caught, but it seems he was sloppy all over. She could have just beat him with supernatural strength and senses here, making his attempt futile no matter how careful he was. Laurina flicked her eyes back to the vampires in the shadows and jerked her head forward. “Handcuff him.” It was then that Matteo noticed the trio were in security attire. Yeah, it definitely should have been his replacement here rather than faceless goons tying him up. Cuffs seem a little mundane for capturing a vamp, too. Matteo already has a shattered wrist, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility to try and just tear it off to escape. They whisked him away to a thick tempered glass coffin on the roof of the theatre, bound and gagged. Right before sunrise, his goddess deigned to visit him one last time. “Your life and your death are mine to do with as I see fit,” she said coldly as she approached. She paused a few paces away and looked out at the eastern horizon. Could have been neat to contrast the cold tone of her voice with the first burning rays of dawn as they hit Matteo. “I did love you; you know.” She looked at him, regret in her eyes. Regret for what was about to happen, or what had happened a century ago, he couldn’t tell. “I thought it might be different this time.” She walked away. She forgot she spoke Italian. I expected one last line, at least. OK, so this is serviceable. It sort of lacks atmosphere through. Nothing was really sinister or spooky or even filled with intrigue or twists. Things are stated matter of factly. And I don’t mean that you have to make it an acid fueled nightmare to satisfy me, and I’m the biggest culprit that sacrifices coherence for lyricism, but I dunno, I don’t feel like this has your voice. I don’t really know what your voice is, and maybe you don’t either yet. But go back through this and see if there are any lines for the ages. The squeezed like a lemon line is probably the best, and it’s at the beginning. Nothing else really lives up to it. I think the structure is fine, even though there could have been a bit more tension and breaking up the exposition more organically. It just doesn’t feel like it has much life (ha). ______________ Quo Pro Quid Flies 516 words The apartment was a one-bedroom walk-up in a pre-war building three blocks from the park. It had exposed brick, large windows, and the original crown moldings. It had an in-unit washer and dryer. It even had an unnaturally pleasant set of neighbors, bright-eyed people who smiled and waved as she smoked on the front stoop, waiting for the super to let her into the unit. I don’t care for the term pre-war, but it is what it is. I feel like there must be an American equivalent to annee folles or something since the buildings in question were mostly built in the ‘20s. If you know it, you know this is a certain type of NYC building, and if you don’t you go on to elaborate beyond that. Anyway. Extraordinarily nice to see a stranger smoking on the stoop and not bitch her out coming into the building. Might have added a bit of intrigue if someone asks what she’s doing. looking to rent. oh cool, what apartment. 4A. oh. Oh, oh. She knew she wanted the apartment the moment she saw it. She signed on the spot when the super arrived and told her it was only $1,400 a month plus the deposit. Lucky ducky to sign before knowing the damage. “It’s the flies,” the man explained with a sheepish look. “During the summer, they’re, well…” She waved him off. She’d dealt with worse pests since moving to New York—cockroaches, spiders, rats. If flies were the worst of it, she’d just stock up on some bug spray. It would tie in better with the end if she joked about just smoking in the apt to keep them away, and the super says absolutely no smoking or something, then the flamethrower would be an absurd escalation from a cig. Those first few wintery months, she hardly noticed them. There’d be the occasional buzz beneath the hiss of the radiator of the delicate carcasses along the wood-paneled window sills. Every so often, she’d swat an errant bug away while she lay on her bed reading at night. It was nothing. It was less than nothing. January slid into February. February mutated into March. The flies were no longer content with remaining discrete but began to appear in greater numbers. She’d return to her beautiful apartment to find swarms buzzing around her kitchen trash can. She would sit in her living room to discover them crawling through the leaves of her ferns. Lidded can? Or the creep of flies trying to squeeze into the crevasses to get inside the in-cabinet trash cans. She tossed the flower pots and began replacing the garbage bin every day. Still, the flies remained, becoming ever more insistent. She’d open kitchen cabinets to find them crawling, wriggling through her groceries. She’d feel the unpleasant sensation of their many, tiny legs against her skin as she tried to install the air conditioner. Their incessant buzzing haunted her as she slept and as she ate and as she worked and it wasn’t long after that that she bought the spray and the glue strips. She rampaged through her apartment, poisoning the air and sullying the apartment’s many amenities with ugly, yellow strands. This feels like too much escalation for her to remain unfazed by the flies. She’s unsuspicious about why there’s an infestation, and doesn’t look to hard for a source or try some remedies before it’s a true swarm here. More buildup would be nice. But they persisted. April crept toward May and no longer did the traps keep the flies at bay. Great strips of teeming black hung from the walls and ceilings, buzzing and rattling as they struggled against the blue. The original wooden floors vanished beneath gleaming, little bodies. The windows which had once let in so much light and air, now grew dark and dense from thousands of bodies. They were in her clothes and her hair and between the sheets of her bed. Their larvae writhed in her food. They were everywhere and all-consuming. Maggots? It’s such a gross yet common word that it’s feels strange for someone to say fly larvae. But this is all good and uncomfortable. There was only one way to save her beautiful apartment, she realized. There was only one way to purge it of this pestilence. She drew a can of bug spray from the fly-dense closet. With a shaky hand, she removed her lighter and drew it close to the spray. If she had one regret, it was that she would not get back her deposit. Does the punchline deflate the horror? Maybe a little. There’s nothing to the character, really, so it’s about the conflict, and hopefully the descent into madness combatting the bugs. She kind of stays true to her word though, that she’s seen it all and the flies are nothing compared to the rats and spiders and whatever. I would like to see some revulsion or more Mr. Bean antics at any point over nuisance status. You could have tipped in either direction and done something exciting. Still, it’s short and the infestation paragraph or two stand out as memorable. ___________ derp the dance 1404w I have been invited to a dance. The invitation is on black paper that crumbles in my fingers like last year’s leaves, and the text is sprinkled on with white ashes. I knew it would come but not when, not in what form. - The form is paper, black paper sprinkled with white ashes. I’m joking but only sort of, putting the last line first and maybe breaking the paragraph there would be a killer open. I don’t want to die! Isn’t anything worth not dying? Isn’t any price acceptable to continue? To go on and on, and on and on. Any price, any price, paid over and over. - Isn’t not dying worth any price? I think this could have been tweaked for clarity and maybe word choiced so Any price, any price, over and over still retains its strength. At 12:05 Tuesday morning is when I notice the figure outside my bedroom window, lit but not lit by the moon. A shadow, but not a shadow, a shape, but not a solid shape, moving in the wind but not moved by the wind, and a pale and thin hand reaching out from a black like the scientifically blackest black made in a lab, a white hand from the black, holding a slim envelope. - Vantablack. I don’t know if you could shape some phrases from that, but it’s a cool word. Probably could have played up the disparity between scientific discovery and the unknown here. Still, it’s a good vibe up to this point. Is it true that every night is the longest night of the year somewhere on earth? I never thought the night could go on so long. I stared out the window for hours and the sun wouldn’t rise, then I opened the window, I took the envelope from that frigid hand and taking it I grazed the skin, and thinking about that slight brush makes me want to vomit. - Lol, no. But I suppose it is an interesting sentiment. I don’t know how this is going to end, but the “thinking about that slight brush makes me want to vomit” feels like it’s in the future post-story, so at this point it deflates it a bit. Like the narrator is re-telling the story at a later point. OK, next morning, so I guess it’s fine. I wake the next morning heart pounding skin hot and slick, pounding in my throat, chest and throat, and all I can see are her eyes, heavy brown eyes, so heavy they have gravity, and her black hair and a smile curved in just the way to cut my heart. Do you love me? she’d said then, holding my hand in both of hers, like a small creature, do you want to watch me grow old? - I get the repetition, but something is amiss with pounding throats interrupted. I’d maybe rearrange and add: I wake, skin hot and slick, heart pounding in my chest, my throat, heart pounding behind my eyes, and all I can see are her eyes So heavy they have gravity sounds a bit trite, but I feel like I’ve at least once said eyes so black they had gravity (and that means someone better definitely has), so it’s a lose-lose. Curved smile on rocks, though. The invitation said: You are invited to a dance. All is bright and all is night. You are invited to appear. All is near, all is near. You are invited. Bring one who is dear. And the location and date, the following night, at midnight. The paper fell to coaldust in my hands, and I thought of her, the one who is dear, yes, the only one who is dear. - I feel like here I’d avoid the immediate repetition with a callback: The ash white on ash black said: You are invited. Or just cut the ‘the invitation said:’ italics probably do the job on their own. Come to a dance with me, I ask as I mix us drinks, and she laughs, On halloween! Should we dress up? Yes, I say, yes, we’ll dress as ghouls, as something dead. I hand over her glass and she raises it, To the dead, then, she says. I smile and drink, but cannot bring myself to answer. - This good I met her when I was dying. A nurse and a patient, cliché, but real. Cliché because it happens so often. Her eyes were the first thing I saw as consciousness coalesced. Floating above me in the white void, an LED halo glowing behind her. Mr. Salomon? You’re awake. First words, first voice. First her in my new life. Relationships forged in these kinds of fires rarely last, but ours did, somehow. - LED halo makes me think of the ring lights for tiktoking so it might have been cool once upon a time, but it conjures other ideas now. Also, LEDs are cool, so the fire metaphor doesn’t quite work. I’d have chosen halogen or sodium arc or something that is clearly a hot incandescent light. Where’s this dance, she says, where are we going? I drive on silently for a moment, then I say, as the invitation told me, the graveyard of course. A dance in a graveyard? Isn’t that a bit juvenile? It’s halloween, I say. She is wearing a skirt, knee high green stockings, a wispy black cloak, a witch’s hat. I, a skull mask that she chides me for wearing in the car. But I wont remove it, if she sees my face, my eyes, she’ll know. The moonlight paints the asphalt with a strange glimmer, and we roll on, pinetrees sliding by on either side. - You have light effects as metaphor but there’s not a nice throughline as far as I can tell, it would have been neat to have the tech of lights evolve throughout the piece. Maybe even saying the tar black at the beginning and then popping off with Vantablack closer to the end or in the moment of death before ‘revival’. ‘The moonlight zoetropes the glimmering asphalt through the shuttering pine trees’ more A/V tech references. I died from a car crash. I went out the windshield rolled over the pavement and off the road and stopped facedown in mud. They pulled me out, who knows how long later, pushed gunk out of my lungs, heaved me into an ambulance, and there I died, my heart stopped for 49 seconds. This is what I’ve been told. What I remember is: driving, then blackness, and then voices, flashing lights, and faces looking down on me, then fading to gray. And I knew I was dying. I could feel the end. I was being filled with end, which replaced the life that was draining out. And I screamed and screamed, I don’t want to die! Screams that only echoed in my mind, in that weird gray place, silent to all else. Or so I thought at first. - I’d ditch I died from a car crash. Not needed and deflates the suddenness of the rest. Again, I think you could have played more elegantly with the colors and lights in this sequence, especially being more creative with the gray. I stop at the entrance to the graveyard and we get out of the car. There is a low fence that we easily step over, no one is on the street to see us break this little rule. Where is everyone, she asks, and I point ahead to a large bare oak that grips the sky like a jagged octopus. We’re meeting under that tree, I say. But where is everyone, are we the first one’s here? I lead her on, between headstones, fresh or crumbling, mossy or gleaming, until we stand together at the base of the oak. - Good juxtaposition, and I’d be even more abrupt and lose Or so I thought at first as well. It’s bad for clarity, but good for vibe, so we’ll see what the other judge has to say. bring one who is dear, one who is dear... - I don’t want to die! my scream echoed in the gray void. Am I dying? Am I spirit? Am I floating up and away, fading, fading--and these thoughts triggered such terror that I knew I must still be living. Then, in the endless flat gray I saw a . at the very limit of my vision, and it grew, to a fingertip, a baseball, a figure, cloaked in black and wavering as if in heat, floating toward me, black sleeve outstretched with a pale white hand pointing. No, no! I want to live! I screamed, whatever screaming might mean in that place, and I felt the cold disintegration of the end vibrating in the tip of that white finger, reaching for me, no! I’ll do anything! --a pause, a cessation of the deadly vibration, and then I felt rather than heard: anything? - In heat means something very different than your intention, lol. The dot coming close is neat. Dance with me? I ask her, holding out my hand. What, here? She laughs, looking around. We don’t even have music, she says, and I unlock my phone, tap a few times, and set it on a nearby headstone as dramatic piano notes ring out, Franz Lizst’s paraphrase on Dies Irae. I hold out my hand again and she takes it reluctantly. I don't know if I can dance to this, she says. Just try, I say, Just try, and we step in a small circle, in a forced kind of waltz. And the moon is high and white, and in my peripheral I see the black figure standing beside the oak - Yeah, this is sudden, the transitions should transcend time and space the whole way through. I mean the song choice is on point, but lol trying to waltz to it. aannd I see some 4/4 and it was probably written that way, but modern arrangements use bizarre time sigs like 2/6 which I didn’t know was a thing. I’m not an expert at reading sheet music, but waltzing would be highly idiosyncratic so if it was deliberate choice then it’s great in its awkwardness. and we laid in bed and she held my hand like a little pet, like a precious treasure, do you want to watch me grow old? she asked. Tears glimmered, I kissed her - Good bounce back in time in the middle of this. Yeah, definitely should have made everything more disjointed. and its pale finger is pointing and vibrating with the end, but not my end, and we waltz clumsily in our little circle as the piano rings out, and I feel the flesh receding from her palms, I watch her eyes sink and her cheeks sag, and lines form at her mouthcorners, deeper, darker, and she hunches over as the figure points, and her steps slow and she stumbles, weakly tipping into my arms, and I look down at this desiccated remnant, the flesh sagging like limp rags on her bones, shrinking and drying up, and her eyes, still open, still dark and heavy brown beaming out from the pits in her skull, watching me, wet with tears and bright with confusion, and her lips roll back from her teeth and her haircolor drains to a pale frizz, then gone, gone, a dead husk in my arms, her skin crumbling blackly, like the black letter in my fingers, coaldust and gone. For a moment her eyes seem to live on in the pale skull in my hand, then all is still and quiet, and dark and empty, and the bones crumble from my grip into a pile at my feet. Some word compounding that probably shouldn’t be. Or lean into it and pepper the whole thing with mouthcorners and haircolor, or maybe break up life and death with different styles so that ‘death’ runs together even more. It’s tough to tell if there was intention in that. It’s a decent horrific bonefying the girlfriend scene. Some wordsharks might go off about ‘crumbling blackly’ but I don’t mind. ‘Like the black letter’ right after feels a little awkward though. I drop to my knees at the bones, heaving sobs, gasping, I rip the mask from my face. It’s done, it’s done, the price is paid, it’s done. But the figure is still there, and it points again that finger full of the end at me, I feel the void growing in my chest, No! No, I don’t want to end! No! The figure pauses. And I know what is required. So I’m interpreting this as coaldusting the grim reaper and taking its job. I don’t know if being more clear would help or hinder, but a sealed invitation with a fresh address in the protags hand might have clinched it or protag pulls the hood over their own head. Things aren’t too esoteric, everything’s pretty well spelled out until the ending, so why not just wrap it similarly?
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WEEK 587 Music Trick or Treat Judge crits pt. 2 First time Read-along comments __________ Chili Nestend 1286 Words “Dad, I think we need to go. I can barely see the sky anymore.” Russell looked up from his coffee at Addie. Her face was full of the same worry he privately greeted in the mirror this morning. Addie’s blonde hair hung like a short silky curtain around her head, secured by a worn Levi’s ball cap. “What’s the matter, Baby Girl?” Asked Russell. Seems out of order to ask ‘what’s the matter’ after she says she can’t see the sky anymore. That feels pretty unusual. We’ll see. Addie looked at her father’s face hidden under a bushy black beard. Bags sat pleadingly below his bloodshot eyes. She only noticed how tired her father had looked recently, but she figured he’d been that way her whole life. Character description sketches are good or maybe it’s just pulling from elsewhere like The Last of Us or maybe The Road that this duo feels defined already. I suppose that doesn’t matter. A few words and I filled in the gaps so it works. “I hate it when they bite you,” said Addie as she pushed around some fries on her plate. Russell’s smile poked through his beard as his jaw raised below it. “Joke’s on those lovely things when they do. Watch this.” Russell picked up a bottle of Heinz off the greasy tabletop of their diner booth, raised it high above his head, and shot it straight into his coffee. Maybe a brit can weigh in, but I’d wager that Heinz over there is first associated with baked beans, and with Heinz being the famously ‘slow’ ketchup this is slightly strange. Oh, I guess it’s a plastic squeeze container. I think diner, I think glass bottles, but ymmv. “Nooooo!” His 12-year-old daughter squealed like she used to when she was in diapers. “To your health, dear death birds.” Russell raised his cup of coffee to the window and looked up at the pitch-black sky. Addie was right; there wasn’t much of it to see. A blanket of bloodthirsty blackbirds smothered the small town of Howler and probably went much further out. Addie, meanwhile, only had eyes for her father at that moment and clutched the tabletop with giddy anticipation as her father gulped down his ketchuccino. “Aaaaaahhhhhhhh!” Addie banged on the table and sent bits of her scrambled eggs up in the air. “Enjoy sucking on that!” He shouted at the window. This whole scene is fairly enjoyable, I knew from the silky hair that Addie is youth, but with this reaction, I can’t really tell how old she’s supposed to be. I pictured ten or twelve at first, but maybe it’s six or eight? “Sir,” their exasperated waitress approached the table, “I honestly don’t have the strength for this right now. Get out before I call Jeff.” Addie frowned at the waitress, and worry returned to her face. “It’s OK, Baby Girl. Can’t blame her. We’re just a couple of loons to her, right?” “I wish she could see what we see,” Addie said as she looked up at the birds. Oh, it’s not a post-apoc at all. I think this is a good subversion of the setup. They don’t seem too loony yet though, just normal father-daughter goofs. The town covered with murderbirds seems like it would be more taxing on the psyche. We’ll see. “Yeah, I get that. But she can’t, and I don’t want to meet Jeff. I’m gonna hit the head, and then it’s time to scoot.” Russell checked the bill and left 15 dollars on the table before going to the bathroom. Addie picked up the check, rolled her eyes, pulled an extra 5 out of her back pocket, and snuck it under the pile of bills her father left on the table. So Addie is maybe even older than twelve if she’s fixing tips with her own money. Pulling a fiver out of Dad’s wallet on the table (and an extra for herself) I could maybe see for a pre-teen, but maybe the smacking the table and squealing is a little too juvenile? IDK. ***** Russell parked his motorcycle down a beaten path that led to Gordon’s Beach. Addie rose out of the sidecar and pulled off her helmet. She looked up at the swirl of birds that followed her and her father. “I swear it keeps getting bigger.” “Maybe,” Russell glanced up. “But it’s the same amount of flesh off my back every time. “Mmhm,” said Addie as she rubbed last month's scars over her coat. Oh, Addie gets eaten up too? Uh oh. I think it’s vague enough to be a shared hallucination until this point, but that line feels pretty real. Maybe you could have toed the line a little more with is it actually happening? “Well, let’s shake it; we probably only have ten more minutes until they start up with us.” The father-daughter duo walked on a path beset by dunes until they arrived at the beach proper, made a left, and started walking toward home. “You know, I haven't had a meatball sub in a long time," Russell mused as they walked down the shoreline. Not much of a shake it. Feels like they should be hustling to get to some sort of defensive structure. If it’s inevitable and there’s a reason why they can’t ever avoid the birds, then getting a move on wouldn’t matter. "You could've ordered one at the diner, why didn't you?" "Ah poo poo, you're right. Guess it'll have to wait till our next outing," Russell said as he looked out over the dark horizon. "Do you think we'll ever be able to go to restaurants like normal people?" Addie asked as she kicked a pebble across the sand. "Think it's best to stick to our little 3 AM monthlies, Baby Girl. We're light on cash and light on passing as normal." Presumably they could pass as more normal if he cut out the wackiness. I like that Addie isn’t a scold, but it would make sense for her to at least comment about fitting in, especially if she wants to be more present in society. Addie patted the wad of bills in her back pocket. Nice and thick, probably a couple thousand, which meant Dad probably had a couple hundred. Addie had scrounged a newspaper during their last outing. They had enough for an under-the-table apartment. But, when she looked up at their cave, which they just arrived at, she found that she didn't want to be anywhere else. "Down, Addie, down!" Russell tackled his daughter and covered her with his body as the vampire birds descended upon them. I presume we’ll find out where they get their money and why Addie has significantly more. The death birds are explicitly vampire birds. Shifts the tone from an existential or psychological threat to physical, so yeah, a little hustle and they might have made it inside and prepped for the attack. They were riding a motorcycle, so definitely helmets, right? And it wouldn’t be out of place to wear padded motorcycle leathers in a diner, so why not always some makeshift armor? ***** “That was a bad one, Dad,” Addie said as she held her knees to her chest. “Unnng..” Russell groaned as he tossed in his bedroll. “That was a demon hellride. We made it, though. They didn’t get you, did they?” “No, Dad. They didn’t get me,” said Addie as she quietly applied pressure to her hips where some of the birds snuck in flesh-rending bites. "Now, please, just rest. You need to rest." She needed him to rest, too, so she could attend to her wounds without breaking his heart. She got up, silently winced, gritted her teeth, and walked over to her father. She gently bumped her forehead into his. "Rest up, Daddy." She watched his silhouette cast by the Coleman lamp between them become more still until, finally, he slept. Sweet little coda to the violence. ***** "Vats a gud fub," Russell said through a mouth full of meat and bread. Addie chuckled as she sucked up the last bit of strawberry milkshake in her tin cup. The sauce in her father's beard served as a wretched contrast to his pallid color. He didn't look this bad last month. The swarm above had, again, swelled in size, and Addie nervously drummed her fingers on the table. "We gotta go, Dad." "Oh!" Russell shook his head and snapped out of his sandwich trance. "That's right, let's get out of here." In a slight panic over his negligence, Russell stood up and hurriedly beckoned Addie along. Addie quickly examined the check on the table, paid the tab with her back pocket funds, and ran after her dad. So I’m not sure what’s going on yet, why do they always go to the diner on attack night? Or do they always follow them, it’s just that they risk it only every so often. The earlier conversation about acting loony suggests maybe they could go out more with some effort to fit in. ***** The monthly dark of the moon felt thicker than usual as the birds descended upon Addie and her dad. Russell, as he had for the past eight years, threw Addie to the ground and then himself on top of her. As the birds poked, pecked, and rended into his back, his face showed Addie a new flavor of worry. “Dad?” She asked. “I think this is it, Baby Girl.” “God dammit, daddy!” Addie slapped her father in the face. He winced, and she slapped him again. Puzzlement danced across his expression, but he lay there just the same. She slugged him in the jaw and felt her father’s weight fall on her. She pushed him up, threw him to her left, and rolled on top of her father. The birds didn’t care if it was father or daughter; they feasted just the same on Addie’s fresh back. If she hadn’t been mentally preparing for this moment for weeks, she would’ve screamed. But she didn’t. She squeezed her father’s limp body tightly and winced in silence until the birds finished for the night. The birds flew off into the dark night and left the gnawed father and daughter on the sand. Addie lay quietly for a minute, not wanting to check and see if her father survived the ordeal. “Addie?” He called out. “Dad!” She jumped on top of him again and hugged him tightly. She’s never stood up to jump back on him. “Ufff,” he reacted. “Easy, Big Girl.” Addie sat up. “Big Girl?” “Suppose so,” he slowly sat up beside her. “You saved our butts, didn’t you?” Addie looked down at her sneakers and kicked them together. “Yeah,” Russell said, and he chuckled. “That’s my Big Girl. Let’s go home.” I like the change in nickname signifying the rite of passage. But I’m still left a little unsure about what age Addie is supposed to be. Addie nodded. She reached into her back pocket, and her fingers found a newspaper clipping. She decided that when they got to the cave, it would be time for an adult conversation. Money never explained. Even if they just picked up recycling with a cloud of birds ever present, you could probably underpin a social statement into the fabric of the story. The father daughter bond is pretty good overall, but Addie seems to be cogent enough that there should be a plan to avoid or defend against them. At least a reference to failed plans and they accept their fate until she can save up enough for an apartment? Or gas money to try escaping elsewhere? I think some more logic and urgency for a straightforward action horror is called for, or a bigger twist that it’s just Dad’s mental illness and Addie doesn’t actually see the birds and now she has enough money to get him some meds or something. ____________ Thranguy The Child 1400 words Baxter was a dead planet. That much was certain. That was expected. The distress code that burned out their q-bits and angstron-width wormholes was not one used casually. The response, sending me through trispace on a Pakh ship, was not cheap. The Pakh are not friends. I am a full null, almost unique in human space. Only one in billions are capable of passing through trispace with their minds intact. Angstrom? I can’t tell how much is haste and how much is intentional, but in general, I’ve noticed some sloppiness with jargon in your heavier scifi. Typos are never a dealbreaker to me, but it does take me out of the story if it doesn’t cause outright confusion. Angstroms and q-bits aren’t load bearing details for this one. You introduce trispace and nulls and Pakhs and this time that all seems interesting and clear. The capsule's airlock reeked of ammonia. The Pakh filter their atmosphere for guests only enough to be survivable, not to be pleasant. When it opened on Baxter, it wasn't long before I missed those clean, simple smells. You can tell a lot about a planet from how it smells. Dead ones are no exception. Rot. The planet wasn't sterilized. Smoke, burning buildings, cordite. War, or something like it. Ozone, too. Old weapons and new. And fear. Good setting description, it’s a nice change of pace when people use senses other than sight to describe a place. I checked my communications package. The Pakh contract still demands they stay in orbit, awaiting my return. The return call is all we trust to them over the open airwaves. The rest I'll deliver in person, when the job's done. The job is investigation, evaluation, and action. Find out what happened. Decide if the planet can be resettled and if there is an ongoing threat. Eliminate any threats. There's other stuff I'm supposed to do. Baxter hosted seven smaller nonhuman communities. In theory I'm supposed to destroy or collect any evidence of human responsibilty, in case any send their own investigators. It's not high on my list of priorities. Straightforward mission briefing. Let’s get to it. Baxter is–was a small colony. One city. A belt of mostly automated farms. The rest left as wilderness. Makes the search easier. I landed near the city. I started my search there. Most likely place for answers, and good to find out what I can before it burns down. So at this point, my main curiosity is where all the weapons came from. It’s reasonable that the humans would settle next door to alien races and come packing heat, but what’s so valuable about Baxter that more than one species wants a taste, especially in the frontier? Maybe a little bit about how if the settlements are relatively small why the whole planet smells of death. Is localized but expansive like say, wildfire smoke, or is it a complete world-ender. Let’s see. I have to mask up just before the city limits. There's a level of death-stench where the gag impulse kicks in hard, a level where there's literal hazard to health. I've walked through charnel yards before. None this big. It doesn't bother me the way it does most people. I've wondered. If it's the same thing about me that lets me move through the spaces beneath space without shielding. If the reason I'm immune to psychic influence is because I'm dead inside, an incomplete person, lacking some key qualia of consciousness. It's a theory my trainers have brought up before. Great philosophical thought for the null, I wonder if ‘handlers’ instead of ‘trainers’ would be better, or go all in and invent some Bene Gesserit type org to drop in instead of a generic, possibly military? hierarchy. It's not genetic. It doesn't breed true. If it did they'd have loaded a thousand vats with us. There's nothing that stands out in my history either. No great trauma, no trouble in school. I took the pilot tests as a joke, and scored so far outside the psi-sensitivity range that they had to drag me to three different test rigs before they believed it and recruited me to the program. Yeah, a program codename. The bodies in the city tell stories. Violent, short stories. Strangers moved to sudden violence, carried out bare-handed and with animal viciousness. It looks just like what a Madbomb would do. And that's a big problem. Interesting device. Something unusual did occur beyond turf skirmishes. So now my questions shift to why a Madbomb? If it frenzies everybody, then there’s a risk of destroying whatever resources are there, which is what seems to have happened. And also the stench of munitions in the air in an area where people attack bare-handed and feral. The nonhuman settlements? We’ll see. "Graham," Sergeant Dobbs is saying. Earlier. First mission. I'm there, in my head. Some places you never leave. I was still on Baxter, of course. Still aware of the dead I was wading through. But my thoughts put me back here. Madbomb. A small one, just big enough to turn a small research facility into a warzone. The Sergeant keeps pinging my comms until I respond. He's flying a drone from a thousand klicks away. He can see it, but he can't smell it. "I hear you," I say. A little bit unclear, is this a second mission on Baxter, or just memory bleed in another mission with similar parameters and a first encounter with Madbomb tech? "There's likely to be one left. Last one standing." Like I hadn't read the brief. Just about every living thing that breathes oxygen is vulnerable to psychic attack. Humans, maybe more than most. Naturally psychic species usually get wiped out within a few years of contact with the rest of the galaxy. Artificial psychic attacks are crude but effective. Blissbombs, Lovebombs, Sadbombs. All against the laws of war and peace. But Madbombs start wars, the kind that don't end easy. Interesting worldbuilding, but at this point open questions on where humans stand in the galaxy—did they travel through meatspace to set up Baxter, and why on a planet with other species there. I think if I were willing to use these psychic weapons, I’d sadbomb, then round them up and blissbomb them back home as slave labor rather than extincting them. This one turns out to be a terror cell, one of the new apocalypse cults. A bunch of dissatisfied youths from Origin Brynn mixing the most lurid parts of Terran religion into a toxic brew. But that's later. The mission is now. Walk over the dead. When the last man standing comes at me with a stick with a nail in it, shoot him three times in the center of mass. Find the Madbomb, which is not a bomb. It's a device, and it doesn't stop working until I explosively deconstruct it. OK, I was waiting for a baddie to appear and resolve some of the why but this is a bad tease. Apoc Cult explains the wonton destruction over a resource grab but still nails in sticks, not munitions. The mixing of memory and present is still unclear though, This one as in the memory Madbomb, or the current one, and is later referring to later in the the memory or later in the present and this is a flashback in a flashback? Maybe everything is a jumble of time for the null. Let’s see. The memory played out, freeing my mind to think about the situation at hand. Baxter. If it was a Madbomb it was a big one. Planet sized. Even the cameras observing parks on the other continents showed the local fauna going berserk. It would take a multi-system policy's resources to build something like that, but then why use it somewhere as much of a backwater as Baxter? I almost get tagged. Instinct takes over, something inside recognizing the glare before the flash. I roll forward, then to the side and take cover. I almost shouldn't have bothered. The opposition's aim is lousy. The only danger in the first shots would have been if I'd dodged straight into the line. The next two aren't much better, but they do let me get eyes on them. Not a sure thing with my sidearm at this range, but I get lucky, connect and take them down with the first attempt. This calls for re-evaluation. Madbombs don't have guards. Madbomb victims can't use anything complex as a gun. This feels impossible. Non-oxygen breathers, there’s a ship full of them in orbit. Seems like a well trained operative would go to that first, unless the guard appears human, but the only description is ‘opposition.’ Which is fine. My training and in-armor databases have extensive protocols for the impossible. I open the Hypothetical Threat Matrix and feed it the data. Meanwhile, I keep moving. I figure, and the HTM backs me up, that whatever controls the shooter can see with their eyes, knows where and when it went down. Keep moving, keep aware of ambush points and potential sniper nests. I find a couple, take them out with as little information leakage as possible. The good news is that they aren't good at their jobs. Slow. Lumbering. Even. Move like marionettes, like each muscle is under careful conscious control. That rang a bell. I dive into the matrix and check up on Puppeteers. So here are the Baxter baddies, I suppose. If Puppeteers are the reason psychically attuned races are exterminated early then wouldn’t they more than just ring a bell? And right after that I open comms with the Pakh ship. There are protocols. Memory tests, independence tests, complex cognition tests. The pilot passes all of them but the joke, and Pakh don't have a sense of humor that's all that compatible with most other species, in the water or ammonia domain. Close enough. He isn't happy, but he acknowledges my request. He leaves the system, went to trispace and presumably home. Well paid space Uber grumbling about leaving? The protocols are fun though. When my backup gets here they'll test me. But there may not be a level of response good enough. Letting a Puppeteer loose with a starship would be a galactic level crisis. Better to glaze the city from orbit and leave me alone on a farm somewhere. It might even be a real farm. Punctuates the threat level. The end of the mission is a whole bunch of things I can't talk about or don't want to talk about. The Puppeteer was a child. The parents, recent immigrants, thought it was premature. It was the opposite, slow to develop because it's every biological functions was being consciously controlled by something that leaked through the colony ship's psychic shielding and took up residence. When it was one and a half it was puppeting its parents. The facade only lasted another few months, and when it was cornered, it lashed out. Madbomb, planet scale. So there is some sort of psychic shielding? Why not use the colony ship on the ground to protect against Madbombs from alien species? A feral colony inside a psychic shield bubble. I think it would have been simpler if any psychic has the potential to be born a Puppeteer super psychic rather than introducing them as some outside entity. Might also at least present a rationale for psychic genocides. It knew I was going to kill it. It had no guards in place. It tried to attack me, mind to mind. It hurt, which is more than what any of the test or training devices could do. It didn't stop me. Center of mass. After the first shot, it spoke, and what it told me I'm not allowed to tell anyone, ever. I fired the follow up shots. But this is a hell of an exposition dump wrap up. Thirty days, give or take, until backup arrives. Every time i get thirsty I bring up the census, read through a hundred or so names, and pour one out for the dead. I don't know if I'll have time to finish the whole list. The Apoc Cult is forgotten for another day but the double flashback could have been cut entirely to add more to the ending. I think the Madbomb is well explained without the rest. The warzone setup doesn’t make sense after the facts of the story, especially if the puppetmastered colonists aren’t very good with basic guns. The climax and resolution are just plopped there. But there’s a ton of world that could have been better explored. It’s like putting together an immaculate molecular gastronomy meal with hundreds of components then jumbling them in a stew pot. It’s still fine, and some bites are great, but you have to wonder about what could have been. If all the adventures are part of an idea factory for an epic space opera, then I hope to see it someday.
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Nov 6, 2023 23:55
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 Thunderdome week 588: Eat the Rich for Thanksgiving The rich are richer than ever and continue to be awful and irredeemable and gleeful in their loving of you and I and the earth. For this week I want to go to a fantasy land where a rich person faces a consequence! You may have the rich person as your pov character, or not, they can be a focus, or in the background, but importantly: I want catharsis! I want some rich a-hole getting completely ruined due to their own greed, hubris, evilness, or whatever. I want to pretend that justice or at least karma exist for a while so please do not subvert this and have a twist where the rich guy wins it will not go over well, please just give me this. Unfairly-northern-hemisphere-centric-rule: all stories must take place in the fall, if I can’t tell it’s fall time I will be very put out. 1666 word limit. Usual rules apply Unusual rules also apply: signup deadline friday night midnight pst BUT you may still enter without signing up, but in that case you will only have 1000 words. Submission deadline sunday midnight pst I don’t generally give out losses or dms, but if you gently caress with me i will If you ask for a flash rule when you sign up I will give you a kind of rich person to destroy. Judges: me ?? ?? entrants: Jib beep car baby ryoga a friendly penguin flippinpageman vinny possom Ouzu Thranguy derp fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Nov 11, 2023 |
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Nov 7, 2023 00:04
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in, flush me a real turd(ucken)
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Nov 7, 2023 00:09
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The Cut of Your Jib posted:in, flush me a real turd(ucken) you get an oil baron
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Nov 7, 2023 00:10
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nonjudge crits Nestend by chili A father and daughter haunted by vampire birds that no one else can see. Heartwarming moments, a heartsrtring tugging story overall, but I found myself to be very distracted trying to figure out what the birds represented. I feel like pointing out that no one other than them could see the birds worked to your detriment, because from that point on I was unsure if their wounds were real, and was expecting this possibly was some metaphor for a disease that the father had. But the wounds do seem to be real by the end of the story, which then made me wonder why they don’t do something to fight these birds, perhaps wearing armor on their backs, or spending their time planning/researching/experimenting methods of defense. That, of course would be a different story and is not what you want to focus on, but the lack of this kind of behavior lends further to my confusion over whether the birds were inflicting them with literal wounds or not. In the end it doesn’t matter much to the point of the story, which I did enjoy, just typing thoughts here. Flies by qpq Nice, gross flash fiction. Flies everywhere, sufficient crawly skin feelings, i felt that the end needed to be a bit more extreme, to top the weirdness of the flies themselves. The lighter and spray bottle image is weaker/lesser than the nutso house full of flies, so the end needs to top that somehow. Big impact in such a few words as is, though, nice. Love and Regret by the mackening A struggle between two vampires. Both the character’s thoughts and actions make sense and are believable. I thought the intro was a bit unnecessary, and I would have preferred more details about the character and his past relationship with his maker instead. As I read the story I was thinking ‘there is no way he’s going to succeed’ and I was right, so something to help convince me he has a chance in hell of succeeding would be good, maybe some special skill he has, or some extreme effort he’s put into preparing for this. I liked the twist in the final sentence that she may have actually wanted to keep him, though of course, that could have just been a final jab to give him some more pain before he died. Enjoyable read, some typos but I was pulled along by the story very strongly and curious till the end. The child by thranguy A loooot of explaining in this one. At times this felt like a synopsis of a much longer story. I liked the concept of a madbomb, and the idea of some rare special people immune to mental attacks like that, also liked the general vibe of the story, but so much explaining of how the world works that there was very little space for the actual story.
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Nov 7, 2023 00:16
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Crits for Week #587 derp - the dance: I find these kind of lilting, lyrical pieces a bit hard to process so take my feedback with some shakes of salt but I had a hard time making heads or tails of this. The imagery is strong in places and the motif of dance plays pretty slickly throughout. Overall though, the piece feels like it’s supposed to be haunting but I’m mostly confused. QuoProQuid - Flies: I mean, OK? It’s a singularly minded freakout piece about flies showing up for some reason. It doesn’t really work because this piece needs some room to breathe and allow us to accept that something like this could be accepted in the larger world is it the question of “how is this legal”, or “why doesn’t this personc all the landlord” or somesuch feel more valid than it should be. I need more than I’m seeing here to get brought in and suspend my disbelief. TheMackening - Love and Regret: The opening paragaprah of your story is so boring it hurts. Like the descriptions themselves are fine but just look at how your first four sentences of a 1400 word story begin “The room” “The Cement” “The Ciner Block” “The Room”. Get this done with one longer sentence or something but also consider something else first to get your readers to care about where we are. Like honestly, if you just reworked the second graph a little, you could start with that and then get to the descriptors. You’re also just wildly loaded up with passivity where you really don’t want it. In a scene that’s supposed to convey something big you’ve got: “A beginning pool of blood was gathering on the floor around the man’s neck. The death rattle had started, and blood gurgled slowly out of his mouth.” For a quick rewrite: 'A pool of blood gathered around the man’s neck as he uttered a death rattle and blood gurgled out of his mouth.' Much more efficient and it makes us feel closer to the action. OK, that’s enough scrutiny, gonna read the rest now. One last bit of scrutiny because I can’t help myself “Made his way” is one of the worst cliches out there. I got called out for it years ago and it always stuck with me. You have an opportunity to paint a picture for how a character moves, take it, don’t sweep over it. The language of the piece isn’t really consistent. You write pretty plainly/casually in places and then flex things like “on the morrow” in others. As for the story at large? I guess it’s fine. I kinda wanted a more impactful ‘gotcha’ moment I guess. And I’m not really sure why we needed the whole first scene reall. Thranguy - The Child: The staccato, cold nature of the telling of this story is clearly deliberate but makes it challenging for me to engage. I’m also uncertain of how much we really need here before the actual mission gets underway. It feels very retrospectivey and baggy. The mission is then kinda glossed over, especially “the rest of…” and I don’t know. I’m not sure what you were after this one.
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Nov 7, 2023 00:41
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In, flash me please.
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Nov 7, 2023 00:52
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beep-beep car is go posted:In, flash me please. you get a media magnate!
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Nov 7, 2023 01:11
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Week 587 - Unsolicited Crits for (Other) Contestants I’ve never done crits aside from draft swaps, so I thought it might be nice to do that on a week with a low entry count (thanks Chili for the idea!). Here was the crit criteria I went with: 1 – Does it relate to the song(s)? 2 – Did it include all the applicable flash rules? And 3 – My overall impressions and critique. Nestend by Chili – Unregistered Entry 1) Does it relate to the songs? Vampire Bat by Wesley Willis – Definitely. This song is so, so weird. I love it in a WTF way. Dragula by Rob Zombie – I think it fits the vibe. Relistening to the lyrics, there’s some specific callouts, which I like. 2) Did it include all the applicable flash rules? ✔ - A friendly headbutt ✔ - A vampire bird ✘ - A good cup of coffee – Eh…maybe before it was ruined with ketchup? ✔ - A toast to or offering of food for the departed 3) Overall impressions and critique. I’m guessing the title was supposed to be “Nested” instead of “Nestend.” I tried to look nestend up to see if it was a reference I wasn’t getting. They go out in the middle of the night once a month. Are the birds out less that night? It doesn’t seem that way. What’s stopping them from going out during the day instead of on a different night? Scars aside, I would like more info on what makes them not pass as normal people. Is it related to why no one else sees the birds? I’m assuming they are something supernatural, but what? Overall, I’m interested. It feels like you took the chunk out of the middle of a larger story, though. Lots of things alluded to without resolution. I would love to read the rest of the story. the dance by derp – Registered Entry 1) Does it relate to the song? Danse Macabre by Duran Duran – Yep. A lot of imagery that echoes the music video and they dance in a graveyard. 2) Did it include all the applicable flash rules? ✔ - A toast to or offering of food for the departed 3) Overall impressions and critique. As if the rest wasn’t already unsettling, dancing to Paraphrase on “Dies Irae” would have had me running for the hills. It adds another layer of creepy and I dig that. Love the imagery of both Death and of the nurse decaying as they dance at the end. I liked it. It told an interesting story that stands on its own, even without answering all the questions. I did think it was better on the second read. The first time through, I felt like I needed to read those initial descriptions a couple of times, especially of Death at the window. I found the flashbacks a bit jarring. While that added to the unsettling nature, I think a little more separation or indication between past and present would have made it flow better. Flies by QuoProQuid – Registered Entry 1) Does it relate to the song? David Lynch Has a Painting Made of Flies Eyes by SSVU – It’s about flies, so I feel like it fits as much as any story is going to be able to fit this song. I would have liked some existential crisis, though. 2) Did it include all the applicable flash rules? ✘ - A toast to or offering of food for the departed 3) Overall impressions and critique. It’s absurd and sardonic and about flies, so it fits the prompt pretty well. Points off for no toast or offering for the dead, though. It’s short and sweet. Given how many times the song says “existential crisis,” I think having the story show the character having some of that inner conflict would have been nice. We get her dealing with the problem in an exponential way with an extreme but amusing finish, but what is she feeling over all of these months with the problem getting steadily worse? How does that affect her? The increase in the issue is ludicrous, but she just seems to try to slog through it. I feel like seeing those inner workings would have elevated the story significantly. I do know that you were dealing with a time crunch this week, so I get that this entry wasn’t quite as polished as you would have wanted. I liked the direction you were going in. The Child by Thranguy – Registered Entry 1) Does it relate to the songs? Spellbound by Siouxsie and The Banshees – Absolutely. I am glad I listened to the song after I read the story. It fits super well but would have given so much away if I did that in the reverse order. I suppose that’s somewhat true with the title too, though. 2) Did it include all the applicable flash rules? ✔ - A toast to or offering of food for the departed 3) Overall impressions and critique. This is so good. I could read a whole series of novels set in this universe. Your sci-fi is on point and I loved “Going Ataxx Hunting” too. “The Child” tells a complete story while still leaving me wanting to read more. A few spelling and grammar nitpicks, but nothing that leaves me confused on the intent. I feel like the offering to the dead might have been tacked on as an afterthought, but it still works, and it closes out the story well.
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Nov 7, 2023 01:21
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Crits for Week #587 Chili - Nestend: As I mentioned in the Discord, I enjoyed some of the ambiguity of this piece — how much of it is real, what’s the allegory alluding to — but was a bit distracted by some needless ambiguities in setting and timeline that might have strengthened the piece overall. e.g., the first visuals we have are of a sky blackened by birds, which is very atmospheric; but, later, we’re told they can only ever go out at 3am (why?) so the sky likely would have been pretty dark then regardless. The timeline aspect is also a bit confusing: I can understand a father calling his child “Baby Girl” well into her childhood, but when he switches to “Big Girl” later on I can’t tell if that’s a sign of her character growth, or if I should be reading a timeskip into the line “as he had for the past eight years”. Has this been going on since Addie was four? Or is more time passing in the story than is clear? The story works well despite these issues; I’m just not clear which ambiguities are intentional and which are just a lack of detail / words. (Also, the ending didn’t work on a first read, as I’d forgotten entirely about the newspaper clipping. That might be a me problem, though.) derp - the dance: This is quietly horrifying, and better on a second read. “do you want to watch me grow old”? Yeah, that’s the poo poo. If I had any criticism it’s that I’m not super clear on what sort of bargain is being struck, here. Death is obviously claiming someone else (someone near, someone dear) as a sacrifice, but then … also wanting to kill the protagonist? Who’s then constantly trying to find someone else as an offering for however long it is between dances? I mean, I get it, in a piece this stylistic you can’t really set the groundrules for this sort of arrangement, but it feels like you’re introducing unnecessary complexity into what should be a pretty gut-punchy moment. (Also, if this is the first time he’s sacrificing someone — which tracks from him meeting her just after he “died” — the earlier references to “on and on, and on and on” feel a bit premature, unless that’s chronological trickery.) QuoProQuid - Flies: The mechanics are decent, but the story’s a bit underdeveloped. I think for this story to really land it needed to turn up the horror another notch or two; show us something truly frightening about the flies. Larvae writhing in her food is a good first step, but it doesn’t go far enough to justify the ending, for me. The protagonist is also a completely blank slate; all I know about her is that she’s just moved from New York. I’m not saying we need a lot of characterisation, but it would be incredibly easy to introduce some aspect of her character that could elevate the horror of the flies. Why is she there? Why does she want that apartment so much? What’s she doing, besides reading in bed? When she comes home, where has she been? Answering these questions might well lead to an ending that’s a bit more satisfying than the somewhat-cliche “kill it with fire” line; some solution that’s specific to her character, circumstances or relationships. TheMackening - Love and Regret: Vampires are a pretty well-worn trope, to the point where every vampire story I read these days feels like it will have an obligatory twist or difference or subversion to make it stand out. And so when you started off with a story about a vampire killing his maker because he knew she’d killed her previous spawn after a hundred years, I’m instinctively waiting for some sudden twist. To be honest, I was anticipating the twist being that the whole thing was a self-fulfilling prophecy: she killed each spawn because they tried to kill her on that night, while she would have been perfectly content to keep them alive. I’m not sure if that’s quite where you were going with that last line—my expectations definitely flavoured that reading. If she was being sincere, and she’d actually planned to keep him alive, I think that needs to be more clear. As it stands, it’s all a bit … expected? At no point do I feel like he’s going to succeed, but I’m interested in hearing how he fails. Him simply leaving diaries out and not hiding his purchases seems a little bit underdeveloped. I also don’t think you need the two different locations for this story — you could likely tell the entire story in either the theatre or the concert. Thranguy - The Child: Please tell me your NaNo project this year is some sort of space opera epic, because I’d love to see where you go outside the constraints of a 1500ish word story each week. This story has strong writing, some really interesting ideas and characterisation, and just a bit too much going on at the end for it to feel like a solid self-contained story. Introducing the Puppeteers toward the end, when we should be wrapping up rather than adding new story concepts, makes the solution feel a bit out of left-field and unsatisfying. The idea of a character abandoned on a planet because nobody can quite be certain they’re infected with some mind-control virus is definitely horrifying, but I think for the ending to truly land we needed a bit more foreshadowing early on.
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Nov 7, 2023 04:26
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In, and I will take a flash rule!
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Nov 8, 2023 03:38
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BabyRyoga posted:In, and I will take a flash rule! you get a techbro who did something with AI
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Nov 8, 2023 04:04
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In
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Nov 8, 2023 14:21
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In! Flash me a rich rear end in a top hat please!
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Nov 8, 2023 15:13
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FlippinPageman posted:In! Flash me a rich rear end in a top hat please! You get a pharmaceuticals guy
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Nov 8, 2023 16:14
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In, please flash me
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Nov 8, 2023 18:44
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Vinny Possum posted:In, please flash me you get an agriculture ceo
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Nov 8, 2023 19:11
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