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May 14, 2024 12:25
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I'm in, with a flash!
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May 14, 2024 15:53
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Chernobyl Princess posted:In, flash Two departments/teams share the same floor. In the eyes of management, one is a cost-center pariah and the other can do no wrong. Whether it’s the ability of the teams (or their bosses) for doing corporate political judo, historical reasons, or some other explanation, the disparity is blinding in their shared office area. You don't have to use this example, but to illustrate (and based in truth): If one team gets a fleet of top-of-the-line smart whiteboard-tablets on wheels, the other team has an ignored requisition ticket submitted to ask for working dry-erase markers.
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May 14, 2024 18:39
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Paranoid Dude posted:I'm in, with a flash! Sales in an office cube is even tougher. You’re expected to mingle and banter with those in direct competition with your livelihood. The tech folks just rolled their perfect, egalitarian solution for distributing sales leads optimally. When you are free and ready to work a new lead, you click a button on your screen and the system will claim a fresh lead for you and dial out to them on your phone automatically. Simple! Perfect! There’s one small problem: when there isn’t an unclaimed lead in the system, the button does nothing. When a lead does arrive (from the web, or however those tech guys do it) whoever clicks the button next gets that one. Call it a small use case oversight, I'm sure a fix will come around in six months or so. Oh, and also they keep staffed up to make sure leads never sit around unclaimed. The result is you have a cubical ocean of sales reps, spending at least a third of their day just clicking a button madly to try and win the next new lead that comes in from the rest of the field. Absurd and annoying, but no big deal for the younger reps who grew up with video games. The older folks still in the biz, though, they may have decades of savvy experience but they haven't dabbled with a video game in 30+ years and they've already got a touch of arthritis settling in… You don’t have to use this exact example, though feel free to, but the gist is a celebrated high tech system is woefully far from the mark when it comes to actually making the job easier, better, or fair. All it did was make hell that much worse, but good luck trying to talk sense into anyone in control of the thing. Bhaal fucked around with this message at 19:16 on May 14, 2024 |
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May 14, 2024 19:07
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 Thunderdome DCXIV Crits!Fairy tales are often pretty formulaic. I think we all understand that and so when tasked with writing one, the tendency is to try and put your own spin on it. I really get it, but sometimes you want something familiar. Some stories this past week followed close to what's traditional, while some just took the set decoration and made something new. I mentioned (here or Discord, I forget) that there were a lot of typos this week. I mostly didn't bother bringing them up in crits to not seem nitpicky, they just seemed weirdly prevalent for some reason. Fat Jesus Small Rabbit, Big Sound I read every story this week twice and I have to admit, this grew on me the second time around. The writing is proficient and the rhymes are actually pretty good. I love a good pun as they're a great way to make a lot of people angry in a short amount of time, and your character names are great. All that being said, the characters in this felt like stereotypes and it was cringy enough to draw me out of the story in the first half. I also couldn't identify a three of anything in here. MED Flyerant The Big Four Oof. I want to like this, and you definitely did everything you could with the pun and premise, but it reads like a rough draft. There's some good in here. I enjoyed the line "they ruled the kitchen with an iron chef." Something like that is... well honestly it's dumb but it is the exact kind of dumb that I resonate with. I think you need to examine what your words are accomplishing in some areas. For instance, "delectable delights" are basically conveying the same information. Its the same with "by the time I got there, the police had already arrived" and "even thought I had not been called, I had arrived." These two are describing the same action. You could easily replace the former sentence with the latter and lose nothing. This is told in first-person by Hercule, but he's hiding in the closet at the time Rosemary is killed. Instead of visual details of what happened, we need aural ones. MED-LOW Last Emperor Bedtime Fits the prompt and theme, and the voice is appropriate to fairy tale. I'm not sure that the framework of a grandparent telling this story to their grandchild is necessary. It doesn't detract either but without serving a purpose, I think you'd have been better off without it. The same goes for the characterization of the three spirits. The traits they're described to have don't really play much of a part in the story. You know what was good? "It was not within Uma’s nature, or any good Spirit for that matter, to ignore the plea of any animal" That line gives us a little characterization and motivation that also helps the story move forward There's some redundant or awkward language in spots. "A few moments later Bryn arrived and spoke to her sisters and their turtle. They explained the predicament they were in and what they had tried so far." These two sentences describe the same action. I appreciate that this piece was tied to a real world phenomenon. A lot of old myths and legends were told by people trying to understand the world around them. Among this week's entries, this one was unique in that regard. MED Kuiperdolin The Ogre's Cakes I think this one did the best job of aping the fairy tale story voice. I liked it for that, but the anachronisms like the President and journalists are out of tune with that voice and don't seem to serve any purpose other than being different. The set up works but would've been perfect if we could get a reason for the ogre to even agree to eat these cakes. So arrogant he doesn't think a cake can harm him? Too hungry to stop himself? Too smart to eat the last little bit? That last one would would have dovetailed really well with how the rest of the story played out. There are some really great details here. You promised us the three best cakes in the world and I think that that curse needs the amount of detail you put into the cakes to pay off. The line about the cake "so soft that a feather would have made a dent in it" is perfect fairy tale bullshit. This type of story recounts fantastic, unbelievable events and that is EXACTLY the kind of thing a tale like this needs. Ditto on the ogre becoming so thin it gets carried away by the wind. Honestly just a couple of fixes and I could have seen this as this week's winner. MED-HIGH Jossirossi The Three Shadows I mentioned voice a lot in these crits, and this is one of the stronger ones. More like a parable, but very much fits a fairy tale vibe. Like Last Emperor's story, you went with the grandparent telling a story framework, and like theirs, I'm not sure what purpose it serves. Here it's a little more intrusive what with the interruption in the middle. It only really adds to the piece if we know why this is of significant to the person who is telling the tale, hearing the tale, or both. Hey, you've got two threes! First the aspects of the storm and then James's negative feelings. That's not a complaint, just an observation. It works, although for Anger, Fear and Doubt, I'm not sure we got enough space to really explore what they meant to him or what his past experiences had to do with them. The walking stick in particular feels kind of weak. If my anger is going to manifest to me in the middle of the night, I feel like something worse must have happened. Maybe with "Cordiala?" The name pops up once but is a dead end. If this person was important enough to bring up, I think they needed more space in here. MED Shwinnebago The Three Celestial Sisters and the Five-Sided Fortress You've introduced your three right off the bat but I'm not a huge fan of how the opening is framed. "The days of the Ogre, Nogol Blalorth, are numbered." Are they? That sentence suggests a struggle that is nearing completion, but this story doesn't fit that position. If anything, seems like the Ogre is doing fine for himself if "the last thousand times" they tried to reason with him he's just kept rampaging. Even if that thousand isn't literal, it obviously means he's been a thorn in their side for a very long time. In any case, its five paragraphs to set up what comes after. There's a lot of fat to trim here. There are some odd choices with the prose. I gotta call out the line about rabbit. I have no idea what "the divine oceanic sense of time flattened and hope elevated" is supposed to tell us about Rabbit. That and "manifold lepidopteran" really stick out. The swarm of butterflies is good fairy tale bullshit; it fits in with things like Loki turning into a salmon to escape Thor, or the princess who could feel a pea through a dozen mattresses. I have a few more thoughts but don't want you to feel like I'm beating on you. If you want any of the other details you can PM me but I'll get it if you just want to let it be. MED-LOW Chairchucker Doing Hard Time and Fairy Dust Hey, it's the shortest story! It's a bit bare bones overall, but the writing is clear and pretty precise, so I can't complain. I would have liked to have known what it was Parsley was getting. The early focus is on this but it's just dropped. I'm guessing something like magic fairy dust given the title, but what this is for isn't really obvious. Fuel for magic powers, maybe? I'm guessing it had something to do with the escape plan. I'd have liked to have known what the plan was too. This is one of those endings that is more of a stop than an actual end. Actually I'm not sure if the last scene is totally necessary if the previous one could have been expanded a little. Just some thoughts by your three fairy godmothers on how things went and/or how they felt about it. MED-HIGH Thranguy Beastly Don't have a lot to say here. This is the most technically proficient piece of writing in this round. That being said, it's not without a handful of typos. ("apartmeclose" "and I she was right") Still, the story flows logically from one scene to the next with very little excess baggage, if any. Very tight. Very specific. The details make enough internal sense that a reader isn't going to get taken out at any point. It's also really not a fairy tale. Even with the title, the link to Beauty and the Beast feels tenuous and I cannot identify a set of three anything here. It's really a sci-fi story and I felt a little lost at times. Gabb? Dumbsystem? What are those? Basically A+ on the writing but this strays very far from the prompt. MED-HIGH Bhaal Something Gnew in Etru This was ridiculous. That's not meant as disapproval. It's extremely silly and childlike. Of all the entries this week, this one felt most like something you might spot in a children's book and the voice fit pretty well. The constant rhyming was a little annoying at first but obviously a necessity to tell the story you've presented, and I have to respect keeping it up (and mostly keeping the meter) for the entire tale. That had to have been a pain to put together, particularly with the stupid "Gnomish accent" I saddled you with. Oddly heartwarming. MED-HIGH
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May 14, 2024 19:09
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TY for crits, fairy nuff. This week's prompt! Does this have to be set in a modern human office (Mad Men, Glengarry Glen Ross kinda thing, etc?) I'm in, anyway. e: Bhaal posted:Nope, it does not need to be contemporary! Kafka's time was a century ago (just looked him up and the 100 year anniversary of his death is this June 3, wow), and I'm sure centuries from now our methods of demented professionalism will only improve. I daresay the same goes for any species advanced enough to be so degenerate. Fat Jesus fucked around with this message at 22:41 on May 14, 2024 |
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May 14, 2024 21:38
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Nope, it does not need to be contemporary! Kafka's time was a century ago (just looked him up and the 100 year anniversary of his death is this June 3, wow), and I'm sure centuries from now our methods of demented professionalism will only improve. I daresay the same goes for any species advanced enough to be so degenerate.
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May 14, 2024 22:32
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In!
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May 14, 2024 23:44
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In, flash
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May 15, 2024 03:10
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Thranguy posted:In, flash Linguists would find a rich study in the dialects of the corporate world, but that's a dwarves-and-the-balrog type of proposition. I can tell you more, let’s arrange a “lunch and learn”. Full schedule for the afternoon? Maybe just a “brunch and brief”. Still too busy? No problem, we'll circle back and do a snack and share. You see, to succeed you need the right vernacular, and the right attitude. Tell people to “disagree but commit”, but don’t elaborate further. Citing the 2nd anniversary of something does not connote a winning trajectory. You’re celebrating it “being around almost over two years”. And whatever you do, always make sure to preface whatever you’re up to as “identifying key areas to focus on”. Whether it’s just a character or two, or just the way things are done during business hours, this mode of speech should be showcased. And get nasty with it. Real depraved poo poo. I once heard “generate understandment” (along with the others quoted above) used sincerely and not just the person getting tongue tied. Make us hurt a little. Bhaal fucked around with this message at 04:01 on May 15, 2024 |
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May 15, 2024 03:58
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quote:Flash: Slack. Teams. Email: All notorious for popping detailed notifications to your screen. When you copy and paste, sometimes the copy command doesn't take and the wrong thing shows up. Words: 1384 Title: IMPORTANT: Presentation to Investors on progress. 9am to 10am. Bemulax of the Black Undying sat in front of his crystal ball. The soft light from the ball illuminated his laboratory in long shadows. It was dark and cozy, with his cat Chubbins snoozing next to him, snoring gently. His desk was a jumble of scrolls, notebooks, half drunk mugs of tea, unopened bills with a red border, and dirty plates. A pot of tea steamed on his desk, the scent of bergamot wafting towards him. The meeting was supposed to start 7 minutes ago. Bemulax sighed and checked his crystal ball again. He was connected to the meeting, but still in the lobby. Nobody had let him in. Either they forgot about him (unlikely) or the host hadn’t connected yet (likely). With a sound like an eldritch bell tolling, he was finally let into the meeting. “Bemulax! How’s my lord of all that is unholy doing today eh? Still with the Black Undying?” Wayne was the head of Information Thaumaturgy. Wayne wore a seemingly endless parade of blue button down shirts with a white collar. Wayne played pickleball. Wayne talked about craft beer. When Bemulax first met Wayne, he placed his hand on his shoulder, thinking Wayne was a projection, a mindless creation of some Lich he didn’t know. Wayne took it as a friendly gesture and now when they meet in person, Wayne always touches Bemulax’s shoulders. Bemulax does everything in his power to avoid coming into the office. “Good morning Wayne. I’m doing well.” Bemulax lied. “I’m ready to present the progress on Alastair’s Asymmetric Algorithm. Did you hear any more from Exec about the name?” Wayne’s permanently affixed smile disappeared for just a split second. “Yeaaaah, sorry Bem. Marketing says that alliteration is in this year. We’re sticking with triple A.” “But it doesn’t even describe-” Bemulax stopped and took a breath. He’d hear back from them today. He only had to last a little longer. “Okay Wayne. Thanks.” Wayne narrowed his eyes and leaned in, the webcam making his nose look especially bulbous. “Bemmo, are you connecting on the laptop we issued you? Your video seems awfully misty.” “No, I’m connected on a personal crystal ball. I was building some of the subroutines and-” “Bemmmmmm Bemtabulous, Bemulaxian, we’ve been over this! Company work on Company devices, okay? We shipped you that laptop for you to do the work on it, not your old dusty Crystal Ball.” Wayne’s joviality grated at Bemulax. Wayne was endlessly friendly, but it was a friendship that was thinner than a coat of paint. Bemulax was pretty sure that underneath Wayne hated everyone and everything. Bemulax glanced over at the laptop next to his crystal ball. Chubbins used it as his bed most days. “Of course, Wayne. I’ll use the laptop from now-” The eldritch bell tolled 3 more times, and the rest of the stakeholders joined the call. Three faceless shadows appeared on the call, their names written in Enochian along the bottom chyron on the screen - with their pronouns. Wayne smiled broadly. “Wonderful! The investors have arrived. Bem! You gonna introduce yourself or what?” Bemulax blinked. “Oh, sorry Wayne.” Bemulax sat in his ergonomic chair a little straighter, and snapped his fingers. The fire in his stove roared dramatically, giving himself a dramatic outline on camera. “Good day everyone. I am Bemulax of the Black Undying, the lead developer for triple A, and will be giving a demo of our progress so far.” Bemulax was pleased that he didn’t pause when he said the name. He slid his chair back a few inches and made a complicated gesture with his hands and mumbled something in Enochian. As he incanted, a representation of Alastair’s Asymmetric Algorithm appeared in front of him. It looked like a nervous system, thin branching lines that came together and fell apart in nodes all across the representation. “Now, we’ve most recently been developing the collation of the output. I know, it may seem odd to work on the ending out of order, but Rebunian - he’s on my team - had discovered that if you take components out of the fifth octet of Lem’s Ultimate Ululation you-” With a voice like the tolling of a funeral bell, one of the investors interrupted him. “Bemulax is it? Are you on a virtual machine or something? Your presentation is coming though oddly.” “Bem is real old school.” Wayne said, chuckling. “He’s giving his presentation on his crystal ball.” Another investor’s shadowy figure bobbed a nod. “We approve of this use of vintage equipment, but please Bemulax, increase your power flow so that we may observe you more clearly.” “Of course, investor.” Bemulax closed his eyes and borrowed some heat energy from the fire. The flames dampened, but his crystal brightened and the representation of the spell took on an orange hue and became sharper, more concrete. “Better?” “Much. Thank you Bemulax; please continue.” “As I was saying, Rebunian found we were able to take some components out of Lem’s Ultima-” A tinkling of bells interrupted his presentation. He had barely gotten started! He glanced down and on his desk, right in front of the crystal ball, a pixie materialized! His eyes widened in recognition and he tried to sweep her out of view of the ball. His hand passed through her with no effect. She bowed. “Honored Bemulax of the Black Undying, I bring you glad tidings! After much deliberation, your application to Farseer Enterprises has been approved! We understand your desire to work the second shift, and are pleased that we can accommodate this request. Please return this onboarding paperwork at your earliest convenience.” The pixie opened a small portal and took out a black binder, secured with red thread and placed it on the desk. The binder steamed gently. She bowed again and disappeared in a teeny tiny thunderclap. It sounded like a cap gun being fired. Bemulax slowly raised his head to look at the crystal ball. He couldn’t read the expressions of the investors, but Wayne’s face spoke volumes. “Second shift? You were going to work both jobs?” He actually looked hurt. “Bem, I thought we had something here. I- You- I thought we were friends.” The three squares of the investors swirled and merged into one large square. They spoke with odd harmonics. “What is the meaning of this insubordination? Bemulax, are you committing espionage”? Are you planning on giving our secrets to Farseer? Have you done so already?” With each question, their voice increased in volume until they were shouting. “No! Of course not, honored investors! I was going to maintain a proper separation of the jobs. I-I just needed the money.” His eyes roamed the lab, searching for something - other than the past due bills - he could use. “M-my cat, Chubbins. He needs prescription food now an-” “SILENCE.” Bemulax’s mouth slammed shut. He tried to open it but found his lips sealed together. He felt the panic rise in his throat, but he forced himself to breath through his nose. In, and out. In, and out. His eyes were locked onto the crystal ball, He could not look anywhere else. As he stared, the image of the combined investors cleared. A being, taller than the corporate HQ towered over him, their eyes bubbling with black bile, and their mouth filled with jagged, bone white teeth. They raised a thin, bony hand, pointing. “Your contract with us is terminated. Per your NDA, we shall take back what is ours. Your equipment, your access and the knowledge you have gained for use at Wyld Corporation belongs to us.” A fiery hot wind whipped through his room. Bemulax of the Black Undying was helpless as his head was engulfed in a red mist which filled the room as his knowledge was forcibly removed from his mind. Chubbins’ ears flattened, but otherwise did nothing. Then, it was over. Bemulax stared at the crystal ball, his mind feeling much less full than it had mere moments before. Only Wayne was left on the call. “I’m sorry Bemulax.” He shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry it went down like this. I was going to put you in for a promotion after next quarter's performance reviews.” Wayne looked at something off camera and nodded. “Look, if you ever need a reference, reach out, okay?” and ended the call. Bemulax of the Black Undying stared at the dark crystal ball for another minute. He blinked and shook his head. Sighing, he took up the black folder the pixie had left. Opening it, he began reading the employment contract. They were offering him thirty percent less than he had been getting paid at Wyld Corporation.
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May 18, 2024 02:19
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The Fist of Baal 1465 words “BUY!” Junior sales orc Krac Vomit gave a final hard lash to the writhing old ogre strapped naked to the kitchen table. The elderly ogre gave a final shudder as Krac untied him and stood back, grinning his best sales grin. He’d been at it 20 minutes. “That was a pretty good spiel I gotta admit. What you think, Maglu?” The old ogre, Mr Fartz, asked his equally ugly wife who stood bored at the sink chopping breakfast manparts. “Oh, I don’t know dear, I think I liked the other gentleman’s offerings. But it’s your drat siege.” she said, going back to her cooking without giving Krac so much as a look. “Oh, wait up folks, I can throw in a dozen free barbed arrowheads. Perhaps the lady of the house would like to hear more?” Krac motioned to the kitchen table with his whip. “Thank you sir, but no. I get enough fake pain from old limp dick.” She went back to her chopping as Mr Fartz gave her a frown, then turned to Krac sheepishly. “I’m sorry, I think we’ll be going with the other feller’s deal.” he said, leading Krac to the door. Krac put his foot in the doorway as it closed. “I can give 10% off, on top of those free…” Krac looked down at the sudden tingling in his foot, now somewhat flat from the whack from Mr Fartz’s morning star. He removed his foot warily. “No, I said!” the old ogre shouted, then added, in a lowered voice, “And she can go eat her own drat pussy.” He slammed the door. Krac stared grimly at the numbers on the door, not really hearing the commotion inside. An entire morning wasted with zero sales. The day had gone from bad to worse, and he wondered if Baal would ever get tired of spreading his cheeks and inserting fist. ~ The next day, Baal did not let up. Krac had wanted to stay in bed, but Krac jr had a happy dream, and Gnawna had let him sleep with them to stop his wailing. Of course the kid got sick everywhere at 4 a.m from all the toads he’d eaten. So he’d got up and found a shirt, put it on, and looked for the iron. He was just finishing the collar and enjoying the steam on his neck, when the phone rang. His desperation to make a sale caused him to burn the side of his face when he tried to answer. By the time he’d found the actual phone, they had hung up. Another lost lead. Now, with the Fartz failure, he had no leads and nowhere to go but his desk at SiegeCo’s head orifice. He trudged along the bustling streets of Nar Yuck, down the million steps to the subway lava tubes with the millions of other ogres and orcs, pummelling each other with iron briefcases. They pushed him along in an endless stream to brave the death trains downtown, where they would emerge to shove their way to the surface, flooding out like Krac jr’s technicolor yawn across the business district. Freed from the horde, Krac trudged on, past UltraSiege, PainCo, Flayrack & Maul, around the corner past the sulphur fountains, crossing the street at Sodom and 5th, and entering his place of enslavement with dread. ~ Ms Bloodweltz was a young, overly attractive orc with large shiny glasses and a way of looking at you as if she could see your soul, or lack thereof, and know your every secret. Your family, your sexuality, your education, your debts, your social security number, your penis size. Everything. Krac recalled HR’s questionnaires were very thorough, and Ms Bloodweltz had forged an unholy alliance with them, since she ran the orifice. Ms Bloodweltz called to Krac as he attempted to sneak past. He got up from all fours as she peered at him from her counter of skulls. “Mr Vomit, are you some kind of hatchling?” She glared at him in contempt. Her voice froze him to the spot, and Krac had a sudden urge to pee. Bitch is some kind of wizard. Krac noticed his own reflection in her shiny glasses, slowly turning his head and touching his face to check if the mark from that morning’s ironing had faded. He finally noticed her eyes behind his reflection, just as he began to tousle his hair. “Mr Vomit, are you trying to be fresh with me?” The ice in her voice turned his giblets to water. “Sexual harassment will not be tolerated in this building below the level of junior executive. Do I need to call HR again?” She gave Krac a look that withered his parts as he fought for words. She rolled her eyes. “And…something… came for you.” she said, ominous portents in her voice. “Ah…no, sorry, I was just, um… what was that? What came for me?” Visions of corpse lords riding dread barlrax swept through Krac’s mind. “A lead.” She stood, her tight dress barely containing her, as she held out the lead with disgust. Krac took the lead from her, relief flooding through him as hugged Ms Bloodweltz in gratitude, her screams of outrage echoing through the sales department. ~ As HR orcs go, Pliers was a pretty good guy. Krac liked him, and he seemed to like Krac. Hard to tell, really, since he always wore an iron mask because a marazang ripper had torn off his face as a baby. Krac had heard the story many times, and knew it backwards, all nine hours of it. Pliers never tired of talking about himself, and his stories left out no detail. Krac probably knew as much about him as Ms Bloodweltz. Pliers finally wound up the tale of his siegeing trip to the plains of Zarg with his uncle Filthor in the summer of ‘82, and gave a sigh. “Good times, let me tell you.” “No need, I feel you.” Krac understood long ago why the windows of Pliers' 125th floor orifice were welded shut. “Well anyway, look at the time. It’s been a day already! Let’s see about YOU.” Pliers bashed away on his boneboard. He shook his head with a whistle, pointing at the screen. “Your sales are way down, old friend. And you’ve been naughty again. Not good at all.” “I sold 5 SiegeMaster towers the week before, 5 firm orders!” Krac protested. Pliers could only shrug. “Yeah, yeah, we know. We just didn’t have any.” “How is that my problem?” “They didn’t sell, so you made no sales. I don’t make the rules, and you don’t break the rules.” Krac blinked at him. “You guys been sending me out to sell siege towers you don’t have?” “Yes, and no.” He slammed the boneboard some more. “IT just haven’t updated the inventory yet to reflect our new models.” Pliers pointed at the screen and Krac leaned over. “They’re the same, just different numbers. Same price too, why didn’t they ship those?” “They got different numbers. You don’t mess with the numbers, spare a thought for the girls in accounts, bro.” Pliers shook his head. “I’ll go see the customers again, change the numbers, give them new invoices…” “We already gave out refunds.” “You gave out refunds?” Krac stared at the iron mask as it nodded slowly. “Well, just to the two our shadow reavers couldn’t kill. Sorry buddy. Says here you owe that commission back.” “This is bullshit!” Krac stared open mouthed. The iron mask gave no sign, but Krac liked to think Pliers sympathised. “It’s bullshit! Baal fist me dead!” “Careful what you wish for, bro. But anyway, this Ms Bloodweltz thing is getting old, and management has made a decision.” Pliers got up and came over to Krac, putting a hand on his shoulder. Krac prepared himself to die, or at least to find a new job. “Since you can’t help yourself regarding our sexual harassment policy, they have decided the best course would be… to make you junior sales executive. Congratulations!” “Junior sales executive?” Krac fought the urge to hug Pliers, uncertain of the extent of his new powers. “I’ll give you the new numbers, and a hot tip. The Silverhand horde are moving in down by the gates. They siege next moon, and…you’re the first to know.” “Really?” “Really. You better get thumbprints on dotted lines. Close that deal. Don’t take no for an answer!” He handed Krac the list. Dozens of leads. Krac gave a nauseating smile. He got up and shook Pliers offered hand. Pliers glanced at the wet stain on the chair before leading him to the door. “Get out there and whip up some sales, Krac!” Pliers called out, as Krac rushed off swinging his briefcase for the lifts of doom.
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May 18, 2024 06:45
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I Did My Best, That’s The Scary Thing - 1459 Words “Apologies, my system is being slow.” My system was not, in fact, being slow. The current hold up was the Excel sheet needed to validate the caller’s details. This particular sheet wasn’t supposed to have a password, but somehow now it did and nobody seemed to know what it was. This left only one solution - brute force cycling of the departmental passwords. Redownloading the sheet on every attempt, since it force closed on failure. ‘ClaimsCorp123’. No. ‘TPA123456’. No. ‘Admin2018’. No. ‘Emergency2015’. There we go. 4th try’s the charm. It was unclear to me why I needed to update my password every month if sensitive policy data was still being stored with 9 year old passwords (or indeed no password at all) but I’d long given up questioning these things. “Could I start by taking your policy number?” -“Don’t have it.” Oh, hard mode. Okay. “Postcode then.” <Details Omitted for Data Protection Reasons> No hits. Hmmm. Many a handler had failed to locate policies that we actually had on file, through some combination of user error and software quirkiness, but I was a dab hand at Excel wrangling and knew all the tricks to get it to work. Stupid bullshit like adding extra spaces into postal codes to get them to search properly was now (sadly) second nature to me. The fact that I STILL couldn’t turn anything up made me certain that it wasn’t there. This presented a new puzzle - working out why we didn’t have it. “Do you, know who your insurer is?”, I ventured cautiously. A necessary question, but one that still made me feel like an idiot. -“Isn’t that you guys?” Sigh. The cat was out of the bag now. “You’re through to ClaimsCorp, a third party organisation that handles domestic emergency claims on behalf of Atlantic. But we also handle emergency claims from a number of other insurers so I wanted to check you hadn’t come in on the wrong phone line.” The logic behind third party administration was thus: for claims with a high seasonality or high weather dependency an insurance company could have an internal team that sat idle 80% of the time (and was crushingly overwhelmed the other 20% of the time) OR they could outsource the function to a third party organisation. And if that third party organisation handled claims for lots of different insurers, spread out across different parts of the country, then that would even out the otherwise uneven demand and allow them to field larger teams and build up more claim handling experience. That logic was sound enough, but in practice the process of offloading these claims introduced an extra layer of bureaucracy and dysfunction that made everything a little more complicated. Here we had one such example - in scenarios where someone couldn’t provide their policy details and possibly came in on the wrong phone line it lead to the bizarre theatre of the administrator asking the customer which company the administrator was supposed to be representing. -“So you’re not Atlantic?”. There was a hint of betrayal in voice. As though my call introduction had been some grand deception. “No.” -“But you said you were?” “We handle claims on their behalf and brand the calls as them.” The branding was supposed to make the claims process smoother and easier for callers. ‘Supposed to’. -“Whatever. Look, I just want to know if I’m covered for lost keys.” “I can only give you the correct advice if I know your insurer. Is it Atlantic?” -“Yes.” “How long have you been with them?” Our policy sheet was over a month old at this point, so wouldn’t reflect recent policies and perhaps... -“Three years”. ...that eliminated that possibility “Please hold whilst I query your policy.” I punched in the number for Atlantic customer services and worked my way through their 8 stage automated call routing system. Hold. [Please insert your policy number on the dial pad] My silicon friend, if I had that then life would be so much simpler. [You don’t appear to have inserted a policy number] Hold. [You aren’t calling from a telephone number we recognise. Please insert a telephone number associated with an Atlantic policy on the dial pad] Hold. I hopped back to the customer to appraise them of the ~zero progress I had made. “Sorry, I’m still in a queue trying to get through to customer services.” Hold. Our SLAs had targets of sub 2 minute hold thresholds, but this target was wildly inconsistent with the practicalities of call handling. If an outbound call left you stuck in a queue for >10 minutes it meant a lot of hopping back with zero information beyond telling the customer that yes you were still in a queue. And god forbid if you successfully got through during one of the reassurance hops only to get immediately cut off. After 11 minutes and 5 reassurance hops I finally made it through to an Atlantic handler. “I’m calling from ClaimsCorp trying to verify an Atlantic domestic emergency policy.” <Details Omitted for Data Protection Reasons> —“What’s your Atlantic payroll number?” Sigh. “I don’t work for Atlantic. I work for ClaimsCorp who handle domestic emergency claims for Atlantic.” —“I need a payroll number to discuss policies.” “No, you don’t. I called this number yesterday and you didn’t.” There was a strange asymmetry here. Everybody at ClaimsCorp had called Atlantic for a cover check, but seemingly nobody from Atlantic had ever received a call about a cover check and consequently had no idea how to handle them. Maybe their staff typically lasted less than day, maybe they reinvented their processes every week. Maybe they just liked loving with us. —“Sir”, he said in a manner that conferred the opposite of respect, “I need that payroll number.” Sigh. I terminated the outbound call and returned to my hapless customer. “I can’t validate your policy but in these cases I can process your claim on an assume cover basis. That means...” -“I want to know if I’m covered for lost keys.” Exasperation in his voice this time. More than a hint. There was a misalignment of interests here. As a company ClaimsCorp got paid per claim they handled, regardless of whether those claims were accepted or rejected. So as handler I was under strict instructions to set up claims on our system for EVERYTHING. When handling the most obvious rejections I was incentivised to keep callers on the line as I took all their details and worked through the necessary paperwork for a full claim. Conversely the callers themselves wanted an immediate ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ at the start, so they knew if it was worthwhile setting up a claim or not. At least this particular scenario had some ambiguity. “I’ll check. One moment please.” The other drawback of third party administration was that is was impossible to develop any scheme specific knowledge since you were handling calls from a pool of ~200 different insurance schemes. You were forced to double check things a lot, to the frequent disdain of callers. ‘Why do you have to check this, don’t you handle these calls all the time?’ was the cry and ‘Ma’am I didn’t even know this scheme existed until 10 minutes ago’ was the response that I, usually, managed to stifle. And checking policy guidelines meant braving the company intranet, which was an ordeal in itself. The system plain didn’t work half the time and no attempt to remedy this made any difference. Each month thousands upon thousands of IT helpdesk hours were poured into upgrading / optimising / fixing the system, with no discernible benefit to uptime or performance. IT tickets were raised in their millions and mass closed with no progress made. It was the most pointless waste of human life since the Battle of the Somme. I took a deep breath and rolled the dice. HOLY poo poo. It actually worked. I issued a silent prayer for this small miracle. Maybe that cancelled out the silent blasphemy. Neat, the Atlantic policy documentation had been updated too. That’s not the same thing as it being up-to-date of course, it just meant that I was looking at a version that was a mere two versions old rather than three or four versions old. I scanned through the relevant section and armed myself with the pertinent questions. -“Well?”, the caller nudged impatiently. “Let me take some more details.” “When did it happen?” -“Today.” “Lost keys? Or stolen keys?” -“Lost, I think.” “Were they lost alongside any identifying documents that link back to your residence?” -“I don’t think so? I just put my hands in my pocket and noticed my car keys were gone.” “Wait, car keys?” -“Yes?” “Ah, I’m afraid you’ll need the motor department....”
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May 19, 2024 12:21
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Managerial Style Words: 1244 Date: Monday, June 3rd. Time: 8:00 a.m. “Morning Mike!” Crystal set her bag and jacket down on the grey office chair in her cubicle. Mike poked his head out from the entrance to his cubicle. “Morning Crystal, good weekend?” “Honestly, I thought Friday went a little too smoothly, with the database migration. Was worried everything was going to go haywire the second I relaxed about. Kept waiting for a call from David.” Crystal said as she settled into her chair and turned on her workstation. “Who?” Mike said offhandedly over the cubicle wall. “The boss?” “Oh right, of course. You’re still green, database migrations happen all the time around here, don’t let it worry you too much.” “I’ll try. Saw a new car out front? Know whose it is?” There was a small commotion over by the break room. People were getting up from their cubicles and assembling in a rough semicircle around the entryway, where a woman stood shouting to the room, “Gather up everyone!” Mike kept attention on his workstation. “I think we’re about to find out.” Crystal got up and joined the crowd to hear what was being said. “As you might know, David has been transferred to another office. My name is Amanda and I’ll be taking over while a full time replacement is found. You’ve all been doing really great work, and I want us to all feel like a real family here, so any questions, comments, concerns, let me know!” There was a low murmur among the workers. “I know a new boss can be a little nerve wracking, but don’t worry,” Amanda said, “I’m not here to change things!” - - - - - - Date: Monday, June 10th. Time: 8:00 a.m. EST “Morning Mike!” Crystal set her bag and jacket down on the brown office chair in the cubicle. Mike spun his chair around in the partnership cubicle they shared. “Morning Crystal, this weekend go more smoothly than last week?” “A little better. After the database migration on Friday, I was concerned that maybe we’d missed reconstructing some alias references, but so far so good. No calls from Amanda, and that’s all I hoped for.” “Who?” Mike said as he finished logging into his workstation. “The… boss?” “Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, you got another migration under your belt, so you’ll be sleeping like a baby over the weekend in no time.” Crystal sat into her chair and turned on the workstation. “So, did you see that beat up bug with the surf board on it in the parking lot?” There was a commotion that they pair could not see. Work partners strayed together out of their shared workspaces and toward the open middle congregation lounge in the center of the large room. A man in the middle stood on a chair wearing an open Hawaiian shirt, faded shorts, and sandals. “Mahalo everyone!” Mike stayed in his chair. “Pretty clear who it belongs to.” Crystal got up and walked over to the circle of workings ringing the outside of the lounge. “Alright, rock on everyone, we real stoked today, right? So, like, Amanda’s been transferred, really bummer, ya know? But, I’m Macklin and I’ll be riding this wave ‘til we find someone permanent. Let’s keep on keeping it cool!” The workers shuffled a little in place. Some let out a forced chuckle. “I like to be pretty cas, chill, you know, I’m, like, not like those other stuck up corpo types, but don’t worry,” Macklin said, “I’m not here to change things.” - - - - - - Date: June the 17th, Monday Time: 5:00 a.m. PST “Morning Mike.” Crystal set her beach bag down at her personal desk. The cubicle walls were gone. Replaced with sets of desks on wheels. People had clumped their desks together haphazardly across the office floor. Mike had left his new wheeled desk in the same spot as his cubicle’d one had been. “Morning Crystal, you are looking better today, finally resting?” “Yeah, I did, still a bit anxious, the new database infrastructure was new to me, but I was pretty sure it was good. Macklin not calling really made the weekend fly by.” “Who?” Mike said as he loaded up a spreadsheet at his workstation. “The boss!” “Oh right. Well, we hardly need the bosses for this anyway, we know what we are doing.” “Thanks Mike! See this is why I never moved my desk around the office, happy right here. So did you see-” “Did I see the Humvee that was dressed up for the Apocalypse taking up 2 parking spots?” Crystal a bit shyly responded, “Well, yeah.” Everyone in the office heard the man before they saw him. He was shouting from the large corner office that had been dark the week before. “Ten hut you maggots! And I say that as a compliment because maggots are hard workers! And HR told me to stop calling people names!” A tall man with a rectangle crew cut, and a tight cut olive green suit with creases that could cut steel. “Go meet the big man I guess.” Mike said, not looking up. People were lining up, and standing straight even though they hadn’t been told to. “Macklin’s out, transferred to other duties! I’m Sgt. Slade! You can call me Sgt. Slade! You’ve all done well, a strong unit, I’m proud of you! The crowd refused to relax their pose. “I talk a big game, strike an imposing physique, and I may sound like a hard rear end but don’t worry,” Sgt. Slade said, “I’m not here to change things.” - - - - - - Date: 24 JUN 24 Time: 0800 Hours “Morning.” Crystal had dark glasses on. She slowly sit down at her seat. The long table housed a dozen workstations. All the workstations faced toward the eastern wall of the office. Rows of exposed computer screens made observations easy. “Morning Crys-whoa.” Mike was taken aback by the state of Crystal. “Are you ok?” “Ok? Mike, I am great! I just had the best weekend I’ve had in ages! Went for drinks with some friends. Saw my brother for the first time in ages. I had a goddamn date Mike! It was an absolute blast.” “Atta girl! Glad to hear you finally got to leave work at work. The database migration on Friday went perfect thanks to you.” Mike was beaming, proud of his friend. “So, you saw what was in the parking lot?” Crystal managed to utter through her exhaustion and happiness. “You know I did.” Mike said as he typed something into his workstation. At the front of the office, where all the computers were facing, came a voice. “Greetings Earthlings! My name is Cremdax! If I can have the attention of your aural cavities please!” A large creature seemed to be stooping to avoid hitting the ceiling. It’s skin shimmered and pulsed, light pulsing through cracks of chitin. It was wearing a red tie. “Gonna head over?” Mike asked with a bit of a glimmer in his eye. “Naw, I think I’ll stay here and get some actual work done.” Crystal logged into her workstation and started reviewing maintenance tasks for the day. From the front of the office, among the crowd of workers, two mouths on opposite sides of what approximated a face seemed to be speaking in unison. “I know I may seem a little different, and I’ll try to keep my spikes from marking the walls, but don’t worry,” Cremdax said, “I’m not here to change things.”
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May 20, 2024 02:22
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The banality of Katya's dream gun Word count: 1455 Content Warning: mention and brief discussion of sexual assault As I go to sleep I think about purveying mass violence. There is nothing quite like vividly imagining a submachine gun in my hands that I use to put down various members of the ruling class to help me fall asleep and, more importantly, to distract me from the bubbling anxieties over what cringe thing I might have said tonight over the course of six manhattans. I wake up with that same anxiety around the corner, but I need to get out of bed within nine minutes so my usual appeal to inner ultra-violence as a lo-fi benzo replacement won’t be viable. I awkwardly hump my pillow to propel myself into another lovely day with a pro-forma orgasm. I’m not going to bother showering today. I swing by Dunkin’ for a 20 oz. iced black coffee and head over to the ugly college campus that I work at. By 8:56am I’m properly installed at my desk in the open-floor plan office of the radically inclusive Center for Intercultural Thriving. “Hi Katya!” chirps Associate Dean of Students Lara Hui from the corner of our open office. Lara’s a 35-year old enby professional Mx. Manager with a pink femme undercut. “I love your button!” gently caress, I forgot to take the Free Palestine swag from yesterday’s stand-out off my backpack this morning. “Yeah thanks, Lara. Nice sweater.” “We’re going to be meeting to talk about exactly that in just a couple hours, so make sure to clear your 1pm,” they say as their face turns into a living smile emoji before they take a sip of their coffee and turn back to their whiteboard meeting with our three student staffers. I remove the button from my backpack. My 11:30am meeting is with a kid named Srith, who I’ve seen many times over the course of the year. She’s been going through it with her family and she has a pretty clear sense that school sucks. It’s not a notion I have any interest in disabusing her of. “Hi Srith, it’s great to see you,” I say to her in my voice that is 80% genuinely friendly, because I do actually like this kid, and about 20% put-on compassionate affect. I sometimes think of this voice as my ‘empathetic service worker’ cadence, though it feels unfair to call it ‘emotional labor’ when really I’m just acting like I give a poo poo about someone who, well, I actually do give a poo poo about. But when I’m hungover, even that requires me to summon some extra effort. This, at least, is not really my boss’s fault. “Hi Katya,” says Srith. She sounds happy to see me, but her face looks pained. “How have you been?” “Can’t complain. The weather’s nice,” I say, and now I’m putting on at least a 30% front to this kid who, again, I actually do like, but I obviously can’t tell her the truth about my generalized post-booze dysphoria. Nor can I tell her about my messy late night call with my TERFy high school friend that I care about in spite of myself. That I said “I love you” prematurely to a new friend at the bar earlier in the night and then wanted the Earth to swallow me. That I drove home after having five drinks, telling myself it was only three over the course of three hours and therefore fine. “---I feel like there’s nobody I can trust in my friend group, in my family, or even in this horrible school administration. If I talk to the mental health office about what happened they’re going to force some kind of legal escalation, I know it,” I find Srith in the middle of a story. God dammit. I missed the beginning of it because I was spaced out and hungoverly indulging in an anxious navel-gazing recap of the causes of my anxious hangover. Smooth. “That is so loving real,” I respond, trying to play my inattentiveness off. “And thanks for being vulnerable with me about it, I’m glad that we can talk about this. So you can’t talk to your friends about it either? Has that been the case for a while?” She’s starting to tear up. “They all think that I’m overreacting, even though to me this rises to the level of sexual assault! But he’s directly said that if I tell my friends about it he’ll make sure that they ‘learn the truth’ about me, that I’m actually crazy, and that I’m a ‘compulsive liar.” I hear a sob. “Oh my god, Srith, that is absolutely awful. I want to be really clear with you right now: you haven’t done anything wrong, and the things he is saying about you are emphatically not true. You are not a compulsive liar, and you are not crazy.” I feel sorta like I’m reading off of a script, but what I’m saying is true. I feel another pang of violent intent, this time towards this kid’s abuser, rather than whatever global purveyor of evil my inner revolutionary LARP center has latched onto for the week (Donald Rumsfeld? He’s been dead for years, but thinking about filling him with imaginary bullets is like a solid 2mg of ativan for me). “Thanks, Katya. That’s actually super helpful to hear, even though part of me knows that it’s true and that this motherfucker is chronically full of poo poo and everything that’s happened to me is an open-and-shut case of abuse,” she says. I open up a little bit about my own history with abusive pricks. I think it’s helpful for her to hear about, even though the fog in my brain and the acetaldehyde in my liver is making it slightly hard to speak fluently. She leaves my office just before 1:00pm. God dammit, I feel like I actually helped her. I didn’t find a full-fledged solution for her, and cycles of abuse are, well, cycles. But I like this part of my job. Lara begins. “Hello fellow Thrivistas!” I almost vomit. “We’re here today to have an open and honest dialogue about how we deal with the evolving situation in the Middle East. As an office committed to diversity and inclusion on campus, our Prime Directive!” - they make a vulcan hand sign - “is creating a caring community for all of our students.” Lara continues, “It has come to our attention that some of our staff in this office who are, first and foremost, student facing, have been expressing political opinions both on and off-campus.” They make no subtle glance in my direction, thank god, and I’m pretty sure I see some of my co-workers looking more spooked than I am. And now I feel like an rear end in a top hat adopting such a brazen “you only need to outrun your friend, not the bear” posture. At a time like this? Ew. “Please remember that this is an academic institution, first and foremost. And while we respect and value all of the diverse skills and lived experiences that you bring to our office, you do not have the expertise needed to speak out on issues as complex as the Middle East, and it is not becoming of our mission to discuss these issues with students.” They go on in a similar vein for about 45 minutes At 2:30pm, Zeina, a Lebanese junior comes into my office. Her face is blank. I’ve gotten to know her well this year, and she seems positively lifeless today. “My aunt was killed last night in an airstrike,” her voice flat. “My god, Zeina, I’m so sorry.” I feel a combination of empathic grief and a paralysis of the tongue, which pisses me off instantly because I am in fact extremely well trained in grief counseling, and the reason I’m tongue tied has nothing to do with my skills or even my hangover and everything to do with the disgusting gag order that I just received. “Thank you, Katya. I don’t really know what I need, but I want you to know that when I see you wearing your pin around campus, it means everything to me,” she says. She seems to instinctively take my quiet as support, and I think that my non-verbal cues are sending her a large chunk of the love and rage that I feel. We sit in silence for a while. “Zeina, thank you for coming to see me,. We can always talk offline.” I write down my Signal number on a card and pass it over to her, something I’ve never done for a student before. I drive directly to the liquor store after work, but this time I buy a twelve-pack of non-alcoholic pale ales. And as I drift off to sleep, I feel no shame for any prior actions. The sub-machine gun of my mind’s eye feels less necessary tonight. I matter to the kids I helped today. For now, I can just breathe into that. shwinnebego fucked around with this message at 22:23 on May 20, 2024 |
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May 20, 2024 04:31
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Bhaal posted:Sales can be a tough space. You need to be competitive. You need killer instincts, and that je ne sais quoi of understanding and connecting with someone’s inner motivations. The Silver Star Words: 1469 “Tonight at ten, more on the horrifying incident of the four year-old who was strung up and crucified by his peers and left alone for nearly four hours,” the television sputtered in the break room. The recent grad intern sipped his instant coffee with a worried look at the television. -- EXCITING DEVELOPMENTS IN FILM: A SILVER STAR REEL’S JOURNEY Many young people often ask “how do you take my favorite cartoons and nature documentaries and put them onto reels you can view at home?” Silver Star, a Proudly American film manufacturer based out of Texas, is more than happy to answer! The first step is to have a finished film master to work off of, then […] and that’s how you get your home videos! But this is only where the magic begins for Silver Star! At Silver Star, we treat films with a special process called “deanodization” which uses chemicals extracted from chemicals such as silver, gold, and dimethylmercury! This is often called “silvering” a film by enhancing the brightness of the whites on playback that you’ll be sure to forget! Make sure you only play deanodized film on a Silver Star-approved device! Fig 33.4: Silver Star Press Release, May 20, 1990 -- Next on: The Jimmy Jimson Show: More exclusive interviews! Meet the Texas boy who earned national attention after being crucified for nearly six hours a decade ago! [jump cut to Jimson and the boy laughing together] “I mean, who does that,” Jimmy asks the crowd to roaring applause. “Well, I learned a lot about my upper arm strength,” the teenager says sheepishly to the host. [jump cut to the teenager making the pose of crucifixion in front of the crowd as Jimmy loosely imitates the pose, cartoon sfx in the background] “I guess some people got it, and some people don’t,” he laughs. -- “Welcome in, Mr. Boseman,” the senior marketing team lead said curtly when the executives stepped in. He felt an instinctive need to defend his team after the memo they had received that morning and he knew that it was highly likely they were all going to be fired regardless. The old executives ignored him. “How are you fixing this,” the shortest and most round executive growled. The team lead suppressed a sigh and gestured towards the intern, “I wish I could take the credit, but Mr. Lind here came up with a brilliant suggestion. If you would, Mr. Lind?” The intern cut in just a bit too soon to shed the feeling of his youthful awkwardness around presenting to large groups. “What if we could force people to adopt Silver Star devices?” the early twenty-something asked with a small smile to see the executives nod in intrigue. “Force, huh? How, and would it be legal?” “Oh, quite! I’m sure we’re all aware of the anti-piracy measure around deanodized films, yes? Well, what if we ran ads that forced viewers to be subject to the anti-piracy measu-“ “Unfortunate side-effect,” the team lead corrected. “Yes, what if we ran ads that forced viewers to be subject to the unfortunate side-effects of not using Silver Star machines? We could run local ads to see how the strategy does, and-“ “Mr. Lind?” one of the senior executives asked, cutting off the boy. “When could you start reaching out to stations?” “Um, immediately, sirs,” Lind gasped. “Oh, and one other thing? Congratulations on making team lead of marketing.” -- EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: The Child Who Was Crucified Five Years Later: Q: I hate to ask, but many question the veracity of your story. If you were bound to a shoddily made cross, how did you get down without breaking or toppling it? SS: It was really scary at the time, but I realized that my friends weren’t all that great at tying knots, especially not ones meant to suspend people from. I was able to wriggle my wrists so that the rope slipped off. Q: Right. So, the rope was able to suspend you, and you were able to easily shake it off? SS: After four or so hours, yes. Q: Indeed. There’s been some small manner of speculation with what happened next, so would you mind setting record straight once and for all? What happened when you got down and approached the house? SS: I would be happy to, sir. When I got down, I approached the house my friends were in. The house was as quiet as death and I couldn’t hear a thing except for the TV droning. I assumed my friends were asleep, so I went to the backdoor and started pounding on it. It was one of those, you know, glass-sliding backdoors – the kind that really just rattle if you hit them right. So I’m wailing on this glass door, and notice that my friends and their parents are watching the TV – just sitting there in the dark with the bright white program or something washing over them. -- MODERN DEVELOPMENTS IN US URBAN LEGENDS REGARDING VHS AND TELEVISION (1999) By Suresh, Fatima […] In particular, deanodized film seems to have always carried a bit of mythological value behind it. The playback on non-approved devices would play back randomized visuals and playback audio backwards and slowed down creating a disturbing effect. Immediate myths about deanodized film being demonic spiraled out from the first Texas communities that saw the film being sold for three times cheaper than ordinary VHS tapes, only to find that they didn’t have access to approved players. Things were made even more strange when certain companies became aware of the reputation of the process and started to request certain visuals be included as a “B-Side” to their films as an easter egg – often times slowed down “money shots” in pornography or scenes of especial brutality for horror films. -- “Silvered” Film Manufacturer Faces Class Action Lawsuit November 9, 1990 Texas-based company Silver Star is being accused of creating “behavioral irregularities” following their sudden broadcast of “silvered” advertisements on a local Texas public broadcast station during a relatively popular children’s broadcast “Reading with Chuck and Anne.” Local parent group Wives United Against Technology (WUT) railed against the advertisement run, as the ads were “disturbing” in nature because of the washed-out color and strange audio. “I don’t understand why they had to broadcast in the middle of the day during a children’s show,” one WUT member told us. “There’s plenty of shows they could have advertised during, why not one of those shows like that painting fellow with the hair.” Silver Star have not commented on the controversy, but public records show that they have decided to renew their ad run for the same time slot. -- Mr. Lind was typing out a new press release regarding the advertisement program when he heard a knock at his door. “Lind, marketing team lead,” a stranger in a black over coat and suit asked. “That you,” he asked in a gruff, curt grunt. Lind had never seen this man around the office, and his suspicions were answered when the stranger flashed a badge. “CIA? Yes, Lind is myself,” the twenty-two year-old answered with wide eyes. “Good. Hear you’ve been playing ‘demonic recordings’ on public broadcast?” “No, we’ve been playing deanodized broadcasts-“ “On a medium where the majority of players can’t handle deanodized broadcasts? Lots of reports of strange happenings due to the technology.” “Yes, we’re aware of the complaints, we’re ending our advertisement run today,” Lind said with a sigh. “Don’t. Purchase more.” The stranger said and slammed a check on the table. They tipped their hat and left the office. “Wait, I-“ Lind called after them, then realized how many zeroes were on the check. His head felt light and he could feel himself going feint. The recipient of the check wasn’t Silver Star. It was payable to Bartholomew Lind. -- SS: Well, Jimson, thanks for having me But, there’s something I need to get straight. A lot of people have been calling the veracity of my story into question, and I feel like I can finally get off my chest what really happened. JJ: That’s so cruel, S. So cruel that people would speak over your experience. SS: When I got to the house at 9:55pm, I’ve told people that I couldn’t see the family nor the broadcast, because I was scared. What I really saw was some of my closest friends watching what seemed like snuff videos. Holes drilled into miscellaneous flesh, rats getting their tails cut off. I saw a medical program removing someone’s eye surgically. JJ: That’s terrible. SS: And they just watched! Six of my closest friends and their parents! Just watching! It was so strange. Thank you, I just needed to get that off my chest. [Fade to black] “In memoriam Sam Silvestri 1986 – 2001”
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May 20, 2024 04:33
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Be Not Afraid 537 words ● Whoever it was who said ‘Do not call forth what you cannot put down’ was a coward and there is no place for cowardice in the modern business landscape. ● Our first core value is Leadership, for which we invoke Michael, Micha-el, the general of Armageddon. The A-player team member practices leadership when initiative is called for while also embodying followership, which is also leadership, by becoming perfectly attuned to the officers, able to proactively anticipate what direction they would give and apply it intuitively. ● Demonology is last-century thinking. Theology is the one before that. Theurgy and Theogony is the disruptive new zoetic technology that will dominate the new reality. ● Our second core value is Teamwork, for which we invoke Raphael, Rapha-el, the trumpeter of the last trump. Everything we do is in teams. Even when working on a solo project you form a team with yourself now, yourself in the past, and yourself in the future, and only by harnessing these three oxen under one yoke will the A-player achieve peak performance. ● When we ask how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, how many angels can be compelled to dance on the head of a pin, what we are describing is an energy density more potentially explosive than the combined nuclear arsenals of the nations of the world, more productive than a thousand suns. ● Our third core value is Communication, for which we invoke Gabriel, Gabri-el, the deliverer of prophecy and visions. The A-player knows when clarity is called for and when it is not, can deliver news in frank and accurate numbers or shroud it in symbology and metaphor, clear as pure ice to the officers, clear as swill and mud to outsiders. ● While demons are traditionally bound and commanded, the legacy documentation concentrates on petition and supplication when dealing with angels. This reflects a lack of imagination and initiative. The key insight in modern theurgy is that angels definitionally lack free will, which means that their actions and responses are entirely predictable. We can calculate the precise circumstances that will induce mercy or wrath and dynamically apply them to the customer use cases. ● Our fourth and final core value is Accountability, for which we invoke Uriel, Uri-el, who drove Adam from Eden with a flaming sword. Radical self-criticism and self-praise are the tools through which the A-player develops their talents, and equally harsh peer-directed Accountability is critical in creating the culture of constant improvement that drives success. ● Angelic binding is only the first stage of the corporate vision. Once the monetization of practical theurgy in civilian and military spaces has been achieved, our cash flow can be reinvested in the Job project, the construction of exoskeleton suits suitable for wrestling and binding Leviathan and Behemoth, commanding hurricanes, laying the foundations for a new Mars, and eventually into Theogony and ascension. ● The A-player, with Leadership behind, Teamwork before, flanked by Communication and Accountability, stands within those four quarters ready to meet and exceed personal and team goals and expectations, to bind the power of the first-created to our will, and to storm the gates of heaven and succeed where the Adversary failed.
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May 20, 2024 09:26
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Blackmail 828 words Flash: Two departments/teams share the same floor. In the eyes of management, one is a cost-center pariah and the other can do no wrong. The righteous indignation that carried Dr. Julian Chase from his lab all the way to the C-suite had begun to cool by the time he’d reached his boss’s door, leaving him feeling stupid and petty. He knocked anyway, reasoning that his boss was not only financially incentivized to ensure the smooth running of the various labs within the organization, but that he was also Julian’s oldest friend. They’d practically founded the Institute together, after all, melding magic and medical science in ways that blurred any meaningful distinction between the two. Dr. Graham invited him in, the distracted from on his face lightening when he saw that it was Julian standing outside his door. He held up a hand, asking for a moment of patience. “Two seconds, Jules. If I don’t send this email now I won’t send it.” Eight and a half minutes later, Dr. Graham returned Julian’s smile. “What can I do for you?” No point beating around the bush. Julian took a deep breath and said “It’s the new mage-tech intern that you said you were getting for the lab.” Dr. Graham’s brow furrowed. “Are they not working out? They came highly recommended from the Arthurian Academy, and had a decent technical background before that.” “No, their resume is impeccable,” Julian admitted. “It’s that they, like the last three interns and techs you’ve hired, have gone to Merritt’s lab.” Julian was unable to keep the venom from his voice when he said the hated woman’s name. A biotech prodigy who had leaped into the world of magic with both feet, Merritt had written one paper identifying the biomarkers for magical potential and now everyone thought the sun shone out of her narrow rear end. But she had no real loyalty to the Institute, not the way Julian did. She’d been here for what, five years to Julian’s thirty? It was insupportable, he had to believe that Dr. Graham saw that. Dr. Graham sighed and leaned back in his chair. He tapped a pen, idly, on the razor-sharp edge of his lacquered, black desk, a nervous staccatto. “I told them they’d be helping you with your projects. Have they?” “Yes, but…” “Julian, I’m going to be blunt,” the force of Dr. Graham’s interruption snapped Julian’s jaw closed on whatever he was about to say. “You’re a brilliant scientist, but you’re a lousy manager.” Julian looked aghast, all affronted dignity. “When I was allowed to control my own people we were incredibly productive!” Dr. Graham winced. “You were invoking the forgetfulness clause in their nondisclosure agreements so they’d keep coming to work after you screamed at them.” “That’s just how labs work, you don’t question your principal investigator, you do what they say. If you don’t, there’s consequences. It’s not like I ever actually injured anyone, not like when we were in Dr. Malcolm’s lab.” The appeal to shared history made Dr. Graham smile, but it didn’t last. “The memory clause isn’t foolproof, emotional information sneaks through. Your lab had an inordinate amount of people having sudden, unexplained panic attacks. That’s not how we want to do things here, Julian. That kind of brute force control? It didn’t work out for Dr. Malcolm and it’s not going to work for you.” “But why her?” “Dr. Merritt is skilled but inexperienced. I paired her with you because of your work ethic and loyalty. I’d hoped your better qualities would rub off on one another.” Julian scoffed. “Please. I’ve seen the way you look at her. You hoped she’d rub something else.” It was the wrong thing to say. Dr. Graham’s expression shuttered, became icy. “You will learn to work with her or you will find other accommodations, Dr. Chase.” Julian marched away from Dr. Graham’s office without another word. He stormed back to his own office. He wanted to dramatically fling himself into a chair, it felt like the right move. But chief scientists didn’t dramatically fling themselves, especially not where anyone might see them. And anyway, the chairs had dodgy hydraulics and probably wouldn’t support dramatic flinging. So he sat down instead and pulled up Merritt’s personnel file. She’d signed the same nondisclosure agreements that Julian had, gotten the same glyphs and runes tattooed into her scalp that prevented her from speaking about the secrets of the Institute. Those agreements gave the Institute broad leeway to bring not just forgetfulness, but pain and misfortune into the lives of people who broke them. He pored through the fine print for hours until he found the subclause he needed, then he sat back, smiling. Now all he had to do was wait. She had to gently caress up sometime. And when she did he’d run her out. Dr. Graham wasn’t going to see sense. So Julian would do what he had to do. He’d find some other accommodation, some way to knock Merritt off her profoundly undeserved pedestal. This was his lab. He’d find a way to keep it no matter what.
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May 20, 2024 11:53
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Thank you all for your submissions to this week's Thunderdome! I've just come out of a multi-hour judging committee meeting and the results are in: 1. It was very close, but the winner is shwinnebego with The banality of Katya's dream gun. Congratulations! You married the feelings of futility and rage in an environment that has all core ingredients of a workplace hell: banal evil, false neutrality, and toxic positivity. You executed very well in a technical sense, and also took a more novel approach to explore some painful truths while staying tied to the spirit of the prompt. Please take some time after your shift to collect a cheap plastic plaque and amazon giftcard from HR. 2. Two honorable mentions go out this week. First to Silver Star by Paranoid Dude. Very impressive style and voice. e: definitely the best opening as well, what a banger start to any story. Second HM goes to I Did My Best, That’s The Scary Thing by Elite. Also well executed, but in particular you really captured the soul of what I was looking for. I worked in call centers way back in the day. You unlocked some intentionally forgotten memories. 3. There are no failures or DQs this week. Overall this was great therapy for me, and I know I'm far from alone in having to deal with lovely corporate/office/work life, so I hope this was cathartic for others as well. Bhaal fucked around with this message at 18:44 on May 20, 2024 |
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May 20, 2024 18:35
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Thunderdome 616: Bigger than the sum of its parts Hi, friends! We humans need stories, and our stories need characters. The narrative form often compels us to develop the inner life of characters, and the relationships between a few of them. In real life, though, individuals are are embedded in vast social networks. Throughout our quaint history, our collective senses of identity have spanned villages, nation states, and continents. Communities and collectives, not individuals, have been the main agents of history - for good and for ill. I spend a lot of my time thinking about community and the power of collective action. I also spend a lot of my time locked in my own skull like a good neoliberal ego-monster subject. This week, I ask you to bridge this gap through the magic of flash fiction. The Prompt: tell us a story where a community, collective, or movement is in some way a protagonist. Where individual characters are struggling to achieve something, or even really do achieve something, as part of a community, collective, or movement much greater than themselves. I am looking for stories that center the community, the collective, the movement, or whatever entity is Bigger Than Any One Person, giving them star billing and, well, a sense of life adequate to the real role that these collectives play in our lives. Please interpret any aspect of this prompt as broadly as you want. There are absolutely no genre constraints here, nor do I have any prejudices about mood, tone, degree of fantasticalness, etc. FLASH RULE: I will provide you with a mass social movement from real life history for inspiration for a cost of 200 words. Word limit: 2000 words (1800 with flash) Deadline to sign up: Friday 5/24 by 11:59pm EDT Deadline for submissions: Monday 5/27 by 12pm I've never done this before so would very much love a co-judge or two. Also this is my first time doing one of these posts so please lmk on discord if I hosed something up and need to edit/add/subtract something. Oh and I'm not doing any losers or dishonorable mentions or whatever, not my vibe Signups are closed Entrants 1. Chernobyl Princess 2. Paranoid Dude 3. Thranguy 4. Bhaal 5. Quiet Feet 6. WindwardAway shwinnebego fucked around with this message at 23:00 on May 25, 2024 |
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May 20, 2024 20:15
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I’m in to judge
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May 20, 2024 21:05
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In
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May 20, 2024 22:58
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I'm in
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May 20, 2024 23:12
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In
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May 21, 2024 02:14
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Thoughts on Thunderdome 615. I wasn’t completely happy with my entry when I posted it, but it had reached the stage where if I didn’t post it I was never going to. With the benefit of a couple more days of thought I think it does too much explaining. There’s at least a couple of explainy paragraphs I could trim which would make it punchier. I think twists perform quite well in short fiction (obviously you don’t want to shoehorn them in all the time though) which is what I was aiming for with my final line but I think it just doesn’t hit hard enough. Other thoughts. -It was very heavy on internal monologue. Some amount of internal monologue was necessary to give characters personality here. e.g. If you have a professional (stifling) office environment then you can’t have them exclaim “HOLY poo poo that actually worked” but you can have them think it. But even so it was probably too heavy on internal monologue. -My tenses were all over the loving place in my first draft and it was a pain in the rear end to tidy up. -I liked the little shorthand I used to denote who was speaking in an otherwise difficult to follow conversation. I imagine some people might tut disapprovingly at it, but I thought it was a lean and efficient way to differentiate speakers. -I didn’t do anything to establish the other characters in the story, but I think it makes sense not to do so given the story I was writing. These are people the viewpoint character has never met, will never meet, and only has paper thin assumptions on based on the tone of their voice. I could’ve said “he sounded gruff” or “he sounded snotty” but I don’t think it would’ve added much. Not describing these characters at all fits with the reality of faceless detached call handling. -I had lingering worries about the piece itself being dry and boring. I tried to include playful turns of phrase where I could (maybe tried too hard at 1 or 2 occasions) but it’s just tricky to portray a job/setting that is deliberately supposed to be dry/boring without the story also becoming boring. Very happy to receive a HM though I suspect I benefited from: A)Being a new entrant. B)Having real world experience to draw from. C)Having a real-world setting when many others took a fantasy spin on things. Might write some thoughts on the other entries too.
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May 21, 2024 13:15
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i'm in
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May 21, 2024 18:14
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Alright, I'm in, and will take the flash
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May 22, 2024 00:37
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Bhaal posted:Alright, I'm in, and will take the flash The Bhakti Movement, 7th to 12th century India  Caste structures in medieval India became inflexible and even more oppressive than before, and they entirely governed everyday life. They created extremes of inequality, privilege and disprivilege, but little could be done or said against them as the system was supported by the all-pervasive Hindu religious ideology. It is in this background that the Bhakti (literally, devotion to god) movement arose in South India between the seventh and twelfth centuries. Essentially a protest against caste oppression and the excessive ritualism of the brahmin priesthood, the Bhakti movement preached universal equality in the eyes of god. If a person expressed genuine love for god, it would manifest in love for his or her fellowmen/women. Bhakti reflected traces of the earlier Buddhist way of life but also held much in common with Sufism, whose teachings were on similar themes. These two streams together created a medieval mysticism that was independent of sectarian or orthodox practice and particularly disavowed caste customs and their tyranny. Like the earlier shraman tradition, Sufism and the Bhakti movement also remained inwardly oriented and could not much influence caste Hindu society. Even conversion to Islam meant an escape only for the converts, but for those who stayed behind, there was no change. They perhaps faced even more hardship because of Hindu rigidification in response to the challenge from Islam. Although Sufism and the Bhakti movement clearly preached equality on a spiritual plane, and gave rise to a number of both untouchable and brahmin poet-mystics who condemned caste, no specific movement for an egalitarian society arose from their message. (Above excerpted from: Teltumbde, Anand. The Persistence of Caste. Zed books. London, UK. 2011) As Anand Teltumbde notes above, while this movement preached spiritual equality of the human soul, it did not translate into any sort of mass political struggle to create a new and more egalitarian social order. Nonetheless, in the face of the fascist Hindutva with Modi at its helm, I like to view these ancient anti-caste traditions as a sort of movement ancestor for those who seek to build a mass base against caste and Hindu supremacy in South Asia. Notably, Brahmins themselves, those at the top of the caste hierarchy, were deeply involved in the Bhakti movement. The solidarity, or, in the eyes of their caste-fellows, treason, of these Brahmins, has powerful echoes for many struggles today. shwinnebego fucked around with this message at 04:00 on May 22, 2024 |
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May 22, 2024 01:18
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Elite posted:Thoughts on Thunderdome 615. Hello! Generally if you'd like to discuss your own entry (before or after results) the place for it would be The Thunderlounge thread. Crits of other stories are always welcome here, though, if you feel up to it. You can also ask if anyone would like additional crits if you don't feel like doing all of them, or sign up to judge a week if you do!
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May 22, 2024 02:34
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Suddenly had an idea and I'm IN. We'll see if I have the time to put it together or not! 
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May 22, 2024 14:14
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Thunderdome DCXV Crits! I feel like these are a bit more general than I'd like. In part because my brain is totally fried this week, but I also realized Bhaal had a more specific vision for the week than I was completely picking up. My time in office environments is pretty minimal. Hell, one of them was working returns for a delivery company and my "office" was in the warehouse itself, surrounded by a cage. I was the only "office" worker located out there and it only lasted three months. Long story short, I think my experience of the kind of workplace politics being envisioned for the prompt is somewhat in caricature from other media, and so I've tried to focus less on how well any individual piece followed it. This was a really solid week in any case. 1: Beep Beep Car is Go – IMPORTANT: Presentation to Investors on progress. 9am to 10am Good scene setting with lots of details. It's easy for us to picture this. The bit with the crystal ball was a nice touch. I think readers can empathize with Bemulax, although a little more detail might have strengthened that feeling. Is he really deeply in debt just because of his cat? The unopened bills suggest something is afoot but pinning it on the cat specifically gives it the air of an excuse. I couldn't help but notice that you start your sentences with character-as-subject a lot. It's not technically wrong but it makes the prose feel a bit stilted. MED 2: Fat Jesus – The Fist of Baal Alright, I've read three stories in a row and you've got a very particular voice. Your characters are ugly, their subjects are ugly, and their events are ugly. BUT, that's not a bad thing! It absolutely works here in a grotesquely comical way. I get Korgoth of Barbarian vibes. Love the detail of Krac ironing his shirt while wearing it. The furtration and arbitrariness of the office environment works for Krac and against him at the same time. Feels like a good use of the theme this week. One minor nitpick: what is a bartrax? That took me out for just a split second. PS: If you haven't read anything by Irvine Welsh, you should. Although it wouldn't surprise me if you're ahead of me on this one. Welsh wrote Trainspotting and a lot of other stories with deeply messed up characters doing bad things to one another. He was not fond of quotation marks. I admit I got halfway through his first book of short stories, The Acid House, before giving up. Not because the work was bad but because I find myself not as able to deal with stories about people suffering these days. MED-HIGH 3: Elite – I Did My Best, That's the Scary Thing Not a lot to say on this one. Prose is fine and carries us along without embellishment. It's frustrating to read in the sense that the exchange made me want to put my fist through a wall. So, yeah, effective on an emotional level. I think we've all had phone conversations that went like this, if not necessarily from the customer service end. Drives home how lovely it is for everyone involved. MED-HIGH 4: JossiRossi – Managerial Style This works, and it's fun, but more of a sketch than a story. The little notes that describe the time change were amusing to read. What I take from this is the "more things change etc" theme. There's some anxiety to the constant changes, particularly as they get just a little more odd each time, but I think I wanted more of a payoff to that. MED-HIGH 5: Shwinnebago – The Banality of Katya's dream gun This one takes a while to get where it's going, but it feels to me like the most complete piece this week. Our MC is polished and consistent, and their mental state shifts between the beginning in the end in a believable and understandable way. Gets a little wordy in spots though I can see it as this particular character's voice. MED-HIGH 6: Paranoid Dude – The Silver Star I keep waffling on this one. There's something there. The format is interesting and the concept is good but it doesn't quite come together, like a really cool puzzle I just don't have all the pieces for. There's a little awkwardness with word choice in some spots. "Chemicals extracted from chemicals" reads awkward, for example. Maybe "materials" or "elements" would be a more suitable replacement for the second "chemicals" there? Uses the prompt as a jumping off point, but it feels more like a background element. MED 7: Thranguy – Be Not Afraid Reads like a PowerPoint presentation, or just a piece of documentation. I just didn't feel invested. MED-LOW 8: Chernobyl Princess – Blackmail Word choice is fine. Nothing that really grabs a reader's attention but nothing that detracts. Graham tapping the pen is a nice detail that makes the events seem more real. My main issue with this is that it's titled "Blackmail" but we never actually get to the blackmail. You've built a setting a reader would probably want to know more about, but we don't get much use out of it besides the mind wiping NDAs. MED
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May 22, 2024 16:32
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Sign me up for this week!
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May 23, 2024 21:51
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There is No Middle Ground (1848 words) Reets looked over the object once more, scratched the fur on top his head with his paws. The thing was red and sort of like a sausage link. It had a long, wiry tail, just like Reets's own. The weird sausage thing didn't smell like food though, it traced the air with chemicals and danger. Not a scent for eating. Not a safe scent. "What is it again?" Reets finally asked Chitt. Chitt was almost two years old and knew things. His fur was going white around the muzzle. He just shook his head, as if he were explaining to a child. "It's a tee-en-tee. They use them in, uh, cartoons and TV shows. BOOM! Real dangerous." Chitt knew about danger. He risked climbing up outside the office window and watching the television over the leather-faced night watchman's shoulder every night. From this corner of the warehouse the BANGs and CLANGs from the old black-and-white set in the security office could still just barely be heard, if you held yourself silent and listened. "So you can't eat it?" Tikik asked. She was so quiet that Reets had forgotten she was there. Tikik was young, barely two months old, and still smelled of fear whenever she left the nest just like any rat her age did. "I'm starving," she added. "Definitely not food, no. When'd you last eat?" Chitt asked. "A few hours ago. I found a beetle." Chitt grumbled but pulled a chewed up corn chip from his cheek and handed it to her. Reets felt guilty. He'd found two Good & Plentys and hadn't shared. They'd been pure joy. "What if we used it to blast a hole in the break room wall?" Reets asked. "No way, too dangerous," was the older rat's reply. "What if we set it off on the other side of the warehouse? Got him to come out and look and snuck in while—" "Just stay away from it," Chitt interrupted. "I'm gonna tell all the others to keep out of this area 'til it gets moved. Let a human find it in the morning." *** The night watchman was out of his office, out on patrol, but they managed to avoid his boots on their way back to the warrens. Tikik's brothers both got stomped two weeks ago. Chitt, at his age, had lost too many to count. Everyone had lost someone. And it wasn't as if the old watchman was angry with them. He was perfunctory, ending them with a dull crunch and a swift deposit in the refuse bin, as if it had been no problem at all. There was nothing to be done about it, no strategy, no plan. Their kind had lived in the warehouse a long time, crouching in corners, hiding under trash in wet drains. Leaving to seek food at night when the lights were half off, and sleeping in the day when people came. Dying was what they did. Reets's own mother, he could still remember the hard CRUNCH of her and the soft pap of her body hitting the papers in the waste bin. In the nights that followed he didn't sleep, didn't want to dream those sounds. And he didn't talk about it because it wasn't a him problem, it was an everyone problem. And everyone was avoiding their own version of that dream, and you were only telling them what they'd already felt and seen and didn't want to know again. Eventually, he stopped dreaming. BOOM! Reets thought about that word again as he walked the main drain. It had a big sound to it. The warehouse was noisy with people during the day, CLANGing in big machines, STOMPing with big feet and driving SCREECHing machines moving boxes here and there and all over, but he wasn't sure he'd ever heard a real BOOM. Maybe a CRASH when one of the big machines dropped a pallet, but never a BOOM. He wondered what it would be like to hear it in person. The warrens were busy at night. There were more rats than the watchman knew. "Hey, Reets!" Reets turned. Approaching him with her hair all done up in a pink streak was Skeen. Reets laughed. "What happened? You look ridiculous!" They rubbed noses, stood and embraced. "Found a bottle of nail polish down near the lockers. Looks good, right?" "Hah, I guess it does." "You take good care of Tikik? If my sister gets killed out foraging I'm gonna be pissed," Skeen said, grabbing Reets head and rubbing her knuckles hard into his scalp. "Oof, stop! She's fine! Slim pickings tonight though." "You have to eat bugs?" "Uh, yeah." Reets hoped the lie wasn't so obvious on his face. "Bugs suck. Wish we could get back to the break room." "Yeah. Not gonna happen with the old man's office between us and there." "A few of us are gonna eat some of that spotty green mold and hang out under the shoebox. Wanna come?" "Yeah, sure!" *** The mold was green. The mold was good. Reets wasn't sure where it'd first been found but the rats his age had taken to growing it on the underside of an old shoe insole that had fallen beneath a radiator. It tasted somewhere between dirt, grass and licorice, and left trails of color in your vision. The shoebox was a chill place, wedged between a broken radiator and a concrete pylon behind a bunch of crates that hadn't been moved even since even Chitt could remember. It was dark and convivial. A place to go to hide together. Other rats rutted in the dark: friends of his, friends of Skeen's, friends of friends silently squeaking stories to one another or just eating the night's findings as they enjoyed the high of the green mold. Skeen was laying on her back, slowly waving a match in front of her face. Sharing the shimmer of the little light. "You ever think about settling down?" Reets finally asked. Skeen laughed. "What? Rutting and starting a family? Nah." "Why not?" Reets asked. He liked Skeen. They were both six months old now, and he liked the scent of her fur, the shine of her eyes. Wondered if there might be something between them. "I wouldn't want to trap a litter in a life like this. Hell, I don't wanna be trapped in this life. Some days, I don't know." "What?" Reets asked. "Some days, I just wanna be released. Like just wake up and poof, I'm vapor. Floating all over. No hungry belly to worry about. No dark boots from above. Just poof. Gone and dusted." Reets breathed in deep, staring at his fingers as they left shooting stars in the dark. "Chitt said the break room used to have the best stuff. Good & Plentys all over the floor. Skittles. Chips. Bread. Bits of sandwiches. Everything swept into the corners or under the vending machines. Ever think about that?" asked Reets. "Huh?" "They don't want that stuff but don't want us to have it either. Like make up your mind: is this trash or not? If it is trash, what does it say about us that they'll protect it over us?" "Yeah," Skeen responded. "Yeah." She dropped the match into a puddle and the shoebox was suddenly in total darkness. The susurrus of other rats surrounded them a while, a handful had listened to the conversation, sighing agreement. Somewhere beyond was the distant thunder of the watchman's TV. "Hey Skeen, you ever think about the future?" "What future?" Reets could only nod. He hated it, hated the dark wall ahead of them both. Ahead of them all. Rats died. All of them would be dead. So what? All their dreams would be dead long before that. He couldn't even see an incremental future, a future just a little better for him, just a morsel better for a litter that was just a delusion of his. There was no middle ground between the wall and what he wanted. "Yeah, you're right." The mold was wearing off. Escape only came in moments, in a little candy or a mind cracked with mold. Those joys. Temporary. Miniscule. Volatile. "Hey Skeen, you want do something fun?" *** Skeen talked to her friends, Reets to his, and in an hour, everyone knew. Including the old rats like Chitt that tut tutted because it wouldn't change anything. Not a thing. And they would be better off accepting what they had, of course. In the end, it took only seven of them, though many more followed to watch, and see. They smelled of anxiety, and something else Reets couldn't put a finger on. Some feeling between hope and bloodlust and an anxious prayer for another momentary joy. It took only four to carry the tee-en-tee. Only one to hold the matches. Two more to carry the twine the would need to tie it in place. It took so few of them. They made their way to the office, swiftly. Quietly. The night watchman was sitting in his chair, one leg kicked out on top of a box beneath the desk in front of him, the other foot firmly in a polished black boot along the cement floor. The TV went POP and CHEER and WHISTLE. They brought the tee-en-tee like pallbearers to the watchman's foot. Nobody had ever bothered to study his face before. The man was just another nebulous thing as steady and normal as the rest of the furniture in the office. Reets and Skeen stood the tee-en-tee on end. Two other rats gently, so gently, tied it to his leg, and tied his leg to that of the chair, while a hundred other eyes watched as if at worship. Skeen had brought the match, handed it to him. The rest of the rats scurried off to watch from the open doorway, all but her and Reets. The clock on the wall sung two AM, and the old man sighed as if woken out of sleep. He reached for a black flashlight on the desk and moved to stand. As he rose he felt the tug of the string around his foot, and looked down without much of an expression. Reets looked up. They locked eyes, man and mouse, and then he looked at the crowd of rats gathered in the doorway, and back down to Reets. But the expression in the watchman's eyes didn't change. Didn't flicker at all. It was discarded and hollowed out, like what he was seeing was just not something that was really possible, like he was just a dream that had no power to change the faces he saw there. The skin of his own face was like sheets of crumpled waste paper. His hair was white. How long had he been here? Something on his surface looked tainted and tired. Futureless. Familiar. Reets stared back into those tired eyes and found something reflected in them. Something that didn't dare dream. Something that could be safely erased. He didn't even blink as he struck the match.
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May 27, 2024 03:51
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Praxis 921 words They arrested everyone at the Market Street protest, not the usual grab-process-release business but serious come to your house between 2 and 4 AM two days later and haul you off to jail arrest. You meet interesting people in lockup. That's where I met Joanne. And also Mal and Shia, sure. But, well. We were all deep in the movement, had screennames we recognized. So there we were, a newly formed cell. And we got to work right away. First thing we did was spread the word about Prose. These days most everyone uses an AI assistant in court, and the expensive lawyers are the ones who can smoothtalk there way around. Back then it was all new. The earliest versions of Prose were awful, either apt to spew out sovereign citizen bullshit whether you asked them to or not, or else they just told you to take whatever crappy deal the DA offered (just like the public defenders they were trained on.) But we had the next generation. The kind that could take you through every step of the process, kicking and screaming. And the kind set up to do just that. People knew for years that the system couldn't handle the caseload if there ever was a large-scale plea bargain strike, and putting a lawyer- a legal assistant for self-representing individuals, to be precise- that all quote-unquote thinks the same in thousands of defendant's hands finally started to crack that collective action problem. The system fought back, tried to make examples, get people to break ranks. But it was already beginning to crack, and we added five dozen protestors to the strike. They kept us overnight. Brought charges on most of us. But most of them were dropped, eventually. And the next day we found out why they went after that protest, found out that someone blew up the fifth floor of Verona Towers. The offices there were a real murderers row: oil companies, crypto banks, military contractors. I never found out which was the main target. But three security guards were there, two died instantly and the third didn't last the week in the hospital, all ex-police. And someone decided our protest was a distraction to help that happen. I hope so. I'd killed before. Sort of. I was in a mob, people in the mob threw molotovs, the fires spread, people died. Most people cop out in those kind of cases, not me. So I was, you know, ripe for radicalization, as they say. You know what they say: the first person in a group to call for violence, for direct action is the undercover cop. And everyone knows that. So it took a long time for any of us to speak up. The sex helped. Once the four of us had hosed in every combination and permutation, well, we figured cops wouldn't do that. But it was also a distraction. Easy to get into a rut, sex and drama and protests, getting tear gassed and concussed and spending a night or two in lockup while the country burned down around us. It was Joanne who first talked about it. But we were all all-in as soon as she did. “There are people,” she said, and we all know just who she was talking about, “Against whom there is no possible violence that is not justified self-defense.” I like that version better than what came out in the manifesto. It's cleaner. Pithier. The obvious exceptions are obvious. But Mal was the one who wrote that, and he's a detail guy. Me, I was ready for action. It felt like a game at first. Wargaming out scenarios, how to get someone with a decent security detail. Poison was mostly out, unless you also neutralized any medic on the scene or used something super-nasty like radioactive heavy metals, which nobody outside of intelligence services had access to. Bombs could work but also would likely kill innocents too, and we wanted to be about precision. It came down to two options, a sniper rifle as far away as you could manage, or something nice and sharp up close. Shia was the only one of us who'd even fired a gun before, and he wasn't exactly a crack shot. So up close. Infiltrate the target's life. Wait for the right opportunity. We made a dozen plans, for a dozen different targets. Then Shia's father got sick and he went East to be with the old man, and Mal went with him, and it was just Joanne and me trying to play house for a while and fighting all the time. And then I got a little too rough at a protest, scratched a counterprotestor's ugly face but good and he turned out to be somebody important’s son, which meant I got to use every last feature of Prose, arrest to arraignment to trial to sentence, thirty months, minimum security. Joanne stopped visiting after one, between overcrowding and good behavior I was out in ten. I kept in touch with Shia and Mal, sort of, and was still up for the streets, if less willing to brawl. When the news broke I knew it was her immediately. I recognized the plan. I was a killer for the third time, still without getting my hands dirty. She did not make it to prison alive. I feel like I'm doing nothing but waiting. Waiting for the next arrest. Waiting for the revolution. Waiting for the world to end, for the walls to cave in.
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May 27, 2024 13:03
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Threads of Fate 1326 words The thread that supplies the loom of fate is spun by human hands. Helene learned from her mother, who learned from her mother, who learned from her aunt. She spun fleece from the island’s sheep, silk from its silkworm bowers, linen from the fields of flax, nettledown, thistledown, and when no other fiber was available, she’d spun threads from her own hair, all to feed the always-hungry loom. Helene and her fellow servants are not prophets, though prophets do occasionally make their mad and desperate way to the island, begging for a glimpse at the cloth they’d spent their lives and sanity trying to view in dreams. There isn’t exactly a ban on looking closely at the Weave, it’s merely considered juvenile, so usually someone will take one of the poor, shattered things to see it when they drop off supplies or stop in to do maintenance. Sometimes the prophets are rather cross about how easy this last leg of their long, arduous journey is, the house containing the great loom isn’t up some massive peak along a treacherous and winding trail. The island’s hills are rolling and gentle, the path well-maintained by the servants of the loom, and while the loom itself is the size of mountains and takes up far more than mere physical space, the house that contains it is of modest size. The size is the problem with looking at it, really. It’s the tallest thing anyone has ever seen, and stretches longer than the island. That it is constantly being gathered up on the cloth beam, rolled underneath more current history as the project continues, is the other. To see the Weave as it is being produced would be the harrowing, death-defying climb the prophets had craved if the clever servants of the island hadn’t carved hand-holds or placed winding stairs up and down the legs. This isn’t sacrilege, it’s self-preservation. Fate is impartial, after all, not kinder to her servants than she is to anyone else. The simple philosophy of the island is that it is up to humans to look after humans, and that serving the loom is a communal act of faith rather than an act of bargaining. But curiosity is sometimes more powerful than gods, and certainly more powerful than human caution. When Helene saw war-thread, her own thistle and nettle spinning, dyed red with blood and madder, wrapped around a shuttle and left leaning against the Weaver’s chair, she was struck by an urgency to see the pattern her thread was making. War was coming to the island. Helene knelt on the Weave, holding back tears that might mar the cloth, trying to trace the story of what was about to happen so she could bring it back to the elders. “A decade ago, a king lost a wife and a son to famine and plague. He means to burn the loom.” The words sounded fake, unreal even as she said them. Burning the loom was ridiculous, like trying to destroy the color purple. Grim, the eldest of the elders, a man whose name had once been ironic but age had turned accurate, clearly agreed with Helene. His customary scowl barely shifted, registering more confusion than dismay. “Would that even do anything? For all we know the Weaver has a thousand looms. Why would she miss this one?” “Your grandson has a thousand sheep and still gets upset when one is carried off by eagles or wolves,” Beatrice pointed out. Bea was Helene’s great-aunt, a woman with no particular talent for spinning or woodworking or any of the arts directly supporting the loom, but she was an incredible weaver in her own right. Everyone in that room wore some article of clothing made from Bea’s loom. “Some men just want to spread their hurt around.” “The real question is if we should do anything about it,” this was from Maya, a practical person and the island’s doctor. “Helene, did the Weave show resistance? Did it show the effort succeeding or failing?” Helene opened her mouth to answer, but was cut off by a snort from Grim. “Are we prophets now, trying to glean insight from the great pattern?” “Don’t be an rear end, Grim. Let the girl answer.” Helene swallowed, then spoke. “I’m not… I haven’t exactly studied how to interpret the Weave. There are ships coming to the island to burn the loom. I think they’ll be here in a few weeks, if not a few days. Do we even have warriors of our own? Do we have time to make armor? Or weapons? How long do those things take?” “Too long,” Maya said, nodding. They were the only one there who had ever lived off of the island, the only one who would know. “Any resistance we mount would have to be assisted by the great Weaver, and we know she merely records. We should flee into the interior of the island and wait.” Grim sat up, affronted, flinching as his arthritic spine protested the abrupt movement. “And leave the loom undefended? That would be a gross abrogation of our duty!” The debate was soon all anyone on the island would talk about. To defend the loom or to abandon it? Some people set to putting spikes on the beach to make ship landings more difficult. Some blacksmiths set to making swords. Some youths set to practicing with them, and Maya set to setting broken wrists as inexperience and enthusiasm met catastrophically. When the ships came it was all for nothing. As part of the camp that supported hiding and surviving, Helene had been sleeping near the Weaver’s house when the ships made landfall, and was awakened by screaming. The foreign warriors had not been slowed by the makeshift obstructions on the beach, and were making their way through the town toward the loom, slaughtering her people along the way. Panic. People scattered. Some ran into the woods, some ran toward the fire and violence. The flight response drove Helene toward familiarity and into the Weaver’s house. She regretted it immediately. There was nowhere to hide here, the sandy flagstones were assiduously swept and kept uncluttered by both the servants of the loom and, probably, the Weaver herself. Helene resisted the urge to hide in the warp, if the warriors gained access and burned it… when they gained access and burned it… She fled in the opposite direction of the door, sprinting across the expanse of floor, praying that distance would mean safety. She heard the splintering of wood and shouting behind her, the foreign warriors had caught up. She pressed herself into the far corner, hands against her lips, tears streaming down her face, as flaming arrows pinpricked the great loom, fire blossoming from those scattered seeds like a wildflower meadow. Helene watched, first in fear, then in horror, then in anger, then in numb, grudging acceptance as her world burned down in front of her. — Helene’s skin was streaked black and gray with ash. She could smell nothing but burning. She made her way down the mountain slowly, following the trickle of other survivors back to their destroyed home. Maya was dead. Grim was dead. Bea, still living, was coordinating rescue and triage. Helene should help with that, she thought. She should help. Her home had been ransacked, the food and wine broken and befouled. She had nothing anymore. Neither home nor purpose awaited her. Still, weeping, she searched the wreckage, because it was what she could do right now. Underneath the pile of splinters that was once her bed was a little bag, protected from the warriors by its size and obscurity. It contained a few ounces of flax and a drop spindle Helene thought she’d lost years ago. She stared at the objects, the hazy, smoke-rich light turned the fiber to gold. She sat down on the floor and began to spin.
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May 27, 2024 13:35
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The judges have conferred and determined that the winner this week is Quiet Feet. Thank you for your service to the great rat resistance. All three submissions made good efforts responding to what I think is a challenging prompt. I wouldn't say anything this week totally blew me away, but there was something to like about each story. QF wins for having a fun and creative take on the prompt and for going really big on the idea of a collective. Crits below, happy to hear feedback on the crits as I haven't done this before. Crits: Quiet Feet There Is No Middle Ground This is a great premise, and the small bit of world building you do around the rats is compelling. The beginning drew me in quickly. The ‘register’ of the rat-speak is a bit inconsistent (“Bugs suck” kinda pulled me out in particular. And towards the end you call one of them a "mouse," which got stuck in my pedantic craw). The idea of trying organize together against their nemesis, the night watchmen is a decent one, but for it to really click I would like a bit more of (1) what it is they are fighting for - it seems a bit on the nihilistic side right now, and not in an interesting way, and (2) if the night watchman sees his lethal work as pedestrian, is there something bigger they’re targeting? I don’t necessarily think you need the rats to have a Ratmunist Manifesto that analyzes the role of the night watchman in the larger system of anti-rat oppression or anything so on the nose, but I found myself wanting a bit more. There’s a vague gesture towards a shared plight, even solidarity, between the watchman and the rats (futurelessness, resignation?) but it’s under-developed. Overall though I found there was much to like in this story. Chernobyl Princess Threads of Fate In terms of responding to the prompt, I like the idea of a collective of weavers who are in turn part of a larger society. Their task seems to be one of social reproduction, at once aesthetic (creating beautiful clothes and tapestries) but also cultural and even practical, documenting histories and gesturing towards the future through seemingly prophetic weaves - or at least weaves that prophets might interpret. The world building ended up being a bit confusing, though, with a lot of categories of people coming up very quickly without much explanation (prophets, elders). This made it a little hard to get into. The motives of the outsiders were unclear, which made the entire raison de etre of the central society less clear, weakening the story. I think that by clarifying the motivations of the attackers more, or providing a more concrete object of conflict, the rest of this interesting idea would crystallize more. In any event, interesting world, and a nice attempt to respond to the prompt! Thranguy Praxis This story grew on me over its course. It definitely does the prompt well, subordinating the main character to a cell, which is itself very obviously part of a bigger movement. I find your style here to be kind of gritty and masculine, which isn’t my personal jam all that much, but by the end of it I was feeling some feelings. There were a few typos and confusingly written sentences that slowed me down and muddied the waters (e.g., “I'd killed before. Sort of. I was in a mob, people in the mob threw molotovs, the fires spread, people died. Most people cop out in those kind of cases, not me. So I was, you know, ripe for radicalization, as they say. You know what they say: the first person in a group to call for violence, for direct action is the undercover cop. And everyone knows that. So it took a long time for any of us to speak up.” - I’m not actually 1000% sure what is going on here/how the first bit connects to the second) The sense of escalation is somewhat palpable but I think could be even stronger. This is verging on a political/realism suggestion but I think the cops/state would be escalating their violence/repression more than commeasurately with a radical movement escalating like this one, and with more of that in the mix the stakes for the characters/movement would likewise be higher, adding to the narrative tension. Overall, I’d say this was good and if you had more time to polish it it could have been great shwinnebego fucked around with this message at 20:38 on May 27, 2024 |
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May 27, 2024 20:20
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Thunderdome DCXVII: Toybox Writing is hard! Work is hard! It's time to chill out and relax and get some play time in. I want some bite-sized stories this week. On that note, you have 500 words to write at least one story, but can write as many stories as you want. Did you have a story that went 400 words? Want to write another one using the last 100? Go ahead! Or don't. I ain't the boss of you. One minor thing though, you'll need to take three toys out of the toybox below. These "toys" are settings, characters, objects, rules, etc. You can pick which three, or you can tell me "Quiet Feet, I'm IN but too old for this poo poo" and I will randomly roll your three toys via an online die roller. You can share toys, meaning you can pick something someone else already did. If you do write more than one story, you'll need to pick another three for each subsequent entry. Usual restrictions apply. Entry deadline is Saturday 3:00 AM EST! and final time for submissions is Monday, 6:30 AM EST! Why do I feel like I just gave myself a bunch of homework? Judges Quiet Feet Chernobyl Princess ??? Entrants cptn_dr (47, 77, 58) Shwinnebago (24, 6 12) beep-beep car is go (5, 55, 94) Thranguy (50, 24, 94) Captain Person (40, 15, 35) quote:
Quiet Feet fucked around with this message at 11:41 on May 28, 2024 |
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May 28, 2024 00:15
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Quiet Feet, I'm IN but too old for this poo poo"
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May 28, 2024 00:43
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cptn_dr posted:Quiet Feet, I'm IN but too old for this poo poo" 47: boxer shorts with hearts on them 77: love 58: a tribe of marauders Quiet Feet fucked around with this message at 01:07 on May 28, 2024 |
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May 28, 2024 01:02
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Quiet Feet, I'm IN but too old for this poo poo etc
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May 28, 2024 01:12
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