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Dear Mr. E. Beef: I understand we are to compete at producing works that must contain at least one incident of a repugnant nature. As I have admired your abilities in storytelling for some time, I am most pleased to meet you in the arena, knowing that whoever wins, I will have had the honor of facing an opponent worth my respect. That said, after I wipe the floor with you I'm going to force-feed you maggot-riddled cheese at the end of a rusted fork removed from the rear end of a two-week-deceased bum who stuck it up there to try and retrieve the corpse of a gerbil so long dead it had begun to liquefy. Fondly yours, Kaishai P.S. This occurrence will advance the plot of my future bestseller, If I Beat Erogenous Beef (Spoilers: I Did).
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Apr 26, 2013 04:11
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Come to Dust (1,190 words) (Flash rule: Something revolting/disgusting must happen, and it must advance the plot.) The horses sensed the infant simoom first, five miles yet from the oasis Ethan and Howard had wanted to see. Ethan marked the growing heat without knowing what it meant. He got an inkling when the wind drove the breath from him, and then his sweat-darkened mount threw him to the sand and fled with half their food and extra water; Howard's bay carried off the rest, while Howard sat up where he'd landed and shouted curses after the animal as though that would help. Ethan grabbed his cousin's shoulder and pointed at the low, sloping cliff a hundred or so meters distant that they'd been using as a sight guide. "Shelter!" he shouted over the hissing air. The cliffside didn't offer much protection from the sand or from the heat that dried his damp shirt in seconds. Ethan huddled against the stone nevertheless, turning his back to the simoom. Wind and grit scraped flesh from his neck. He could hardly breathe or see; the storm smothered the sun. He inched sideways, scrabbling for an outcropping that could shield them better. Howard's grip threatened to break his other hand. His fingers dug into more sand--sand, not rock; he pushed his whole hand through a gap in the cliff. Its dull edges dug into his wrist, but he felt open space beyond. He grabbed at those edges and pulled, pushed, dislodged a stone and sent sand scattering. He hit the crumbling wall with his fists and shoulders, then with his feet as more of it fell. Howard shoved him aside and threw his greater bulk at the gap, forcing a way through. Ethan followed. Broken rock tore at him through his clothes, and the blood cooled his cooked skin. The air in the cave was old, stale, hot, but not hot enough to kill: he sucked in a lungful. He fell to his knees, coughing up grit. Water sloshed in Howard's canteen. Ethan fumbled for his own and drank less than he wanted, but more than he should. For several long minutes, the men sat and breathed. "Still got the flare gun?" Howard rasped. Ethan felt for it and found it on his belt. "Yes." He sighed. "We just have to wait." Howard flicked on the lighter he always carried. The little flame bounced light off the walls around them, revealing that they sat at the head of a corridor leading deeper into the cliff. And on the walls, cut into the stone-- Words. Ethan staggered up and pulled out his own Bic. Words? The incised lines had that regularity. The same swoops and curls repeated themselves several times within the reach of his light, but he'd never glimpsed a language like this. Greek, Phoenician, Sumerian, Arabic--he would have recognized any of those, any script that might make sense. Howard's light slid from view as his cousin rose and moved down the corridor. Ethan walked close behind. Writing lined the man-made hall, beginning at least a foot above their heads, as he saw when he held the Bic high. The ceiling was natural rock; the floor, packed sand. But such details no longer mattered to him once he reached the end of the hallway. The six pillars spaced around the chamber didn't reach the ceiling: they were decoration, carved with secrets he might never know. Four bowls--copper?--sat at the corners of a very deliberate cairn built of darker stones than could have come from inside the cave. The bowls held things. Ethan noticed that much, but not what, not yet. "Jackpot." Howard half-knelt, half-fell beside the cairn with a grunt and switched the lighter to his left hand. With his right, he grabbed and moved a stone. "We shouldn't. We should let a museum do it." Ethan's protests were halfhearted. "Here, you hold the lights." At least he would be more careful, he told himself. Howard sat back and grunted again in impatience while Ethan shifted rocks as delicately as his shaking hands permitted. Then even Howard was silent. In the grave, on a bed hollowed from sand that had preserved her for unknown years, lay a woman. Her skin shared its color with dried dates, was drawn taut against her high cheekbones, high forehead, tiny mouth. Long wisps of black clung to her scalp. Her robe had once been a deeper blue. The knife at her side held a bright edge; the chain draped across her chest and shoulders had lost none of its golden luster. The contents of the bowls were death offerings, then: smoothed turquoise pebbles, ancient seed pods, powder that might have been incense once. Dried, dark residue clung to the fourth. Ethan whispered, "She's beautiful." He eventually took his Bic back from Howard. His cousin seemed more entranced than he, staring at their find. Ethan wanted another look at the pillars. How could the writing be so different from anything he knew? If he could only translate it--he surely couldn't, but if he could-- Cloth rasped on sand; he glanced Howard's way, and so he saw his cousin grab the gold neck piece. Howard failed to be delicate for the thousandth time in his life. The man touched the corpse with his heavy fingers, and dried flesh crumbled under them with a wisp of dust visible under the flame. The robe sank in as the ribs beneath collapsed, but Howard didn't stop there. He pulled his hand out of the body. He reached for her thin neck. "Stop it!" Ethan tackled Howard, his lighter dropped and forgotten. Howard's light flew away; everything was dark, his cousin's rancid sweat overpowered the strange odors of the tomb, and Ethan wrestled with a sudden monster made of muscle under fat. Howard's hands closed on his neck. Howard rolled them over, onto the corpse. The fragile skin tore and disintegrated under Ethan's back, the remaining ribs gave way as easily as a feather bed, her lungs and heart were the powder on his skin, and the grip of her knife jabbed into his side. He twisted and pulled the knife from beneath him. He shoved it into Howard's gut and jerked it up. A wash of hot liquid hit him first, then the slippery intestines, and Howard's hold lost its strength. Ethan gasped and inhaled a woman's remains. He pushed his cousin away. Then stabbed him again--in the heart, or near enough. Just to make sure. He crawled a fair distance from the corpses before he vomited. It took a while to find one of the lighters. He almost had his breath back by the time he did. The tomb didn't smell of the dust of ages anymore, but of blood, bile, urine, and perforated bowels. Tears cut through the filth on Ethan's face when he saw what was left of the woman. He arranged Howard's body beside hers; he placed the stained knife between them. Then he flicked off the lighter and crept back down the corridor to wait: for the storm to end, for help to come, for some hope of understanding.
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Apr 28, 2013 19:58
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In, submitting to Eldritch Tales of the Uncanny.
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May 2, 2013 17:34
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Kaishai posted:In, submitting to Eldritch Tales of the Uncanny. Nubile Hillock posted:
 IF HILLOCK DOESN'T LEARN TO READ, I WILL SIC LEVAR BURTON ON HIM.
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May 3, 2013 22:56
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Dear Editors: Please consider the following story, "The Blood on the Page," for inclusion in Eldritch Tales of the Uncanny. My work has previously appeared in Geriatric Dome of Sadness, Song and Story, and The Revision Review. Thank you very much for your time. Sincerely, Kaishai -------- The Blood on the Page (1,196 words) The library tower loomed in the night, and despite the lack of a moon or visible stars, it cast a shadow across the path to its back door. I stood in that darkness, holding the chilled door handle; more than the cold I felt the weight of my colleagues' hatred, as though they could know where I was or what I planned. The faculty strike was not a week old on that night of October 13, 1989. You might think such a span of time too short to invite disaster; yet I, who had for five years studied and guarded the tomes on the tenth floor, could not leave them unwatched, though it made me a wage slave forever. "Solidarity, Dr. Reeve," the head librarian said in my memory. "It is our key to everything." Not all locks should have keys. I opened the door. I navigated by the beam of a flashlight; I walked fast past the propaganda posters on the cork board, red triangles and black triangles in brooding pairs. The reference desk lay ahead, and there, as they had promised, Dr. Alicia Vasil and Dr. Gregory Faulk waited for me. I was polite enough to nod to Gregory before I crossed to Alicia and folded her in my arms, breathing in her scents of books, ink, and orange blossoms. I kissed her. She allowed it, for a moment--responded for a moment, but a moment only, and then her hands were on my chest, pushing us gently apart. "Daniel, we have company." "And I'd like to finish with this before morning," Gregory said. He was, as she was, a fellow caretaker of the eldritch texts. He had a lean and hungry look, but so had I; knowledge such as we possessed reduced the appetite. "I want to check all the wards," I said. "All. The building has a shadow." Both of them frowned; Gregory nodded. "Then we'll begin with the second floor." The musty papers of the document archive lay placid in their piles. The religious and psychological tomes kept their proper order. But while each shelf on the fifth floor bore a ward sign, gaps pocked the rows of sociology books--irregular gaps, perhaps coincidence, perhaps meaning nothing more sinister than industrious students, and yet I didn't like those black spaces. Like the path outside, the gaps were darker than they ought to be. On the sixth floor I found propaganda covering a shelf ward. The posters already stained the walls with revolution, and this one had to be a recent addition: the paper was crisp, the colors unrelenting. I tore it loose. The ward underneath was dead! Even as ice washed through my veins, my mind worked: why? How? The paint hadn't been disturbed! Mere paper shouldn't interfere with the ward's power when steel and concrete did not, yet its energies were gone! My eyes fixed on the poster. Bloody red, depthless black, it displayed its own powerful symbol: halves of a flag divided. Had the triangles hung just so, in just such a way that their edge had covered--cut across--the sign beneath? Could such chance have ruined us? "Alicia! Gregory!" My summons echoed from the walls. They came to me. They knew, as soon as they saw the ward themselves. My hands groped for theirs: we stood united in the solidarity of fear. Then we ran to the elevator. If you call this folly, I won't contradict you. Yet we had to run--toward our terror or away from it, and we chose the former way. I heard a violin as we ascended. I hesitate to call its discordant sound music. My pulse beat hard as the doors slid open on that citadel of ancient pages, of bindings made from human skin, of old secrets and older blood: the tenth floor. The soft yellow lamps were lit. The missing texts from below lay stacked in piles of the same precise height, outlining three individual paths toward the center. I kicked them aside. Alicia stepped forward first, but Gregory and I moved to walk abreast with her. The lights went out then; the unseen fiddle screeched such a note that I cried out. Alicia seized my arm, and I would have seized Gregory's if it had been there to seize; my fingers closed on clammy air. The unholy shrilling stopped. The drum of my heart replaced it, sped to a frightful tempo. Green light pulsed up ahead, once, twice, beyond an open doorway I knew too well, and it illuminated Gregory as he staggered through. The glow emanated from the pages of a great book lying open in wait on a podium in the middle of the chamber. Gregory gripped the podium's edges so hard the wood creaked, and his voice was a cry of despair: "Ei vadas n'ghlar ilfenu! Xenti! Ilomen das xenti!" A stirring beyond the reach of the light--scales shifting on scales-- "Ashath ilomen xenti!" Impossibly sweet chittering rose at the final word. Gregory screamed; his fingers snapped; he reached for the book as he collapsed, to claim it or to close it, but he fell without touching it, still and dead. The chittering became chiming inside my head, so beautiful. Alicia let go of me and moved toward the tome. I grabbed her and held fast, or tried, but she raked her nails across my face with wild fury and tore herself free of me. Her glasses hid her eyes behind a reflection of cancerous green. I snatched them away. I glimpsed her tears before she punched me hard enough to send me skidding across the floor. Her mouth moved: I heard a song that was never hers. I had my feet under me when her fingers dug into her eyes and clawed them loose. I reached her in time to hold her as she died still calling for the Being in the dark. And then it was my turn. I won't! I shouted within my own mind. You're alone, the chimes sang. Join your friend and your lover. Solidarity, Dr. Reeve. I looked on the text. The twists of its words slid into my brain and cut the stitching that made me whole. I had no union within myself; every word I spoke split me further; in the void between my fragments a golden eye opened, and it had the square pupil of a goat. I knew What would come into the world. With nails and teeth I split my flesh. With blood I blotted out the words. I chewed until the red poured from my wrists and washed out the black. I couldn't talk with a mouth full of meat, I couldn't read a text that gore obscured. I couldn't survive the noise of Its screaming. But my blood dried into new words on the page, these that you read, telling the story, for I am bound to this book and will hide its secrets until there is no one left to find them. Alicia and Gregory are free; that is my comfort. In this space between death and life, I stand alone. I prefer it so.
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May 5, 2013 22:21
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Thunderdome Week XL: Poor Richard's Thundervision Judges: Kaishai, Erogenous Beef, and V for Vegas. This week's motto: There are no gains without pains. Imagine this phrase sung by Russian grandmothers in front of a spinning oven and you'll have an idea of what's in store for you. Behold Eurovision: Europe's answer to Thunderdome, except with even more pop music, pyrotechnics, weirdness, and inappropriately attached LEDs. Your task is to choose one Eurovision entry video from this year's line-up--unless you're systran, in which case you're instantaneously FLASH RULED to work with England's masterpiece. Your story must somehow relate to the song and/or video. Setting, theme, tone, characters, whatever; you must incorporate something, and the closer you get, the less of your liver the judges will tear out and devour. ADDENDUM: Because we love crack-inspired LED fantasies as much as anyone, you have the option of choosing Eurovision videos from years past. However, since we'd like to encourage the use of this year's crazy, you must find and provide a link to anything pre-2013, and you will receive a flash rule. In addition, you must choose an aphorism from Benjamin Franklin. Work that in too. Announce which aphorism and which video you want in your sign-up post; you may change your choices at any point before the submission deadline. Aphorisms and videos are not exclusive: if every last one of you wants to write about the Greek submission, feel free, as long as you explain why that guy keeps touching his moustache. I must know. Note that you don't need to literally quote the aphorism. Let it serve as a theme, a guide to a plot, a character trait, or something else more subtle than a brick to the face. Sign-up deadline: Friday, May 10, 11:59pm USA Eastern. Submission deadline: Sunday, May 12, 11:59pm USA Eastern. Maximum word count: 1,300. Go forth and get your dance on, contestants.  Countries Competing: Voliun (Malta; Tomorrow, every fault is to be amended; but that tomorrow never comes): "Paradoxical Gambit" magnificent7 (Romania; Anger is never without a reason but seldom with a good one): "The Choreographer" SurreptitiousMuffin (Finland 2006; Join, or die. Flash rules: Must incorporate Biblical verses and Lordi's hat): "Chainsaw Buffet" Radioactive Bears (Ukraine; The way to be safe is never to be secure.) perpetulance (San Marino; Men take more pains to mask than mend): "Graceful Exit" JonasSalk (Switzerland; Wish not so much to live long as to live well): "Do the young die?" Auraboks (Switzerland; Half a truth is often a great lie. Flash rule: Must involve non-Euclidean geometry): Shame unto the seventh generation. Down With People (France 2008; If you will not hear and obey reason she will surely rap your knuckles. Flash rule: Shaving a beard must be a turning point of the plot.) crabrock (Georgia; If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing): A kidney stone. Fumblemouse (Belgium; If you would have a faithful servant and one that you like — serve yourself): "His Feminine Side" systran (England; ‘Tis easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it): "Cephus' Blessing" CancerCakes (Montenegro; Great beauty, great strength, and great riches are really and truly of no great use; a right heart exceeds all): "BitchFight" NikaerDrekin (Latvia; Man’s tongue is soft, and bone doth lack; yet a stroke therewith may break a man’s back): "Passionate" Bad Seafood (Greece; The wolf sheds his coat once a year, his disposition never): "Old Habits" Jeza (Ireland; Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.) Kaishai fucked around with this message at 05:47 on May 13, 2013 |
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May 8, 2013 17:03
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Muffin's Pick's So Nice, We Flash Ruled It Twice! The lead singer's hat has to appear in the story somehow. I don't care how. Just make it happen.
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May 8, 2013 20:26
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JonasSalk posted:Go ahead and pick mine for me. I'm about to rise to the occasion on this one! Also, I am in. Very well! You'll be taking inspiration from Switzerland and these immortal words: Wish not so much to live long as to live well.
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May 8, 2013 21:15
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Down With People posted:In with a pre-2013 entry. France 2008, with the aphorism If you will not hear and obey reason she will surely rap your knuckles. I cannot help but notice that your chosen video is festooned with beards. Your flash rule is that someone shaving off a beard must be a crucial turning point in your plot.If the shaven being is divine, there will be bonus points. If the being is a goddess, there will be bonus bonus points. Kaishai fucked around with this message at 23:58 on May 8, 2013 |
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May 8, 2013 23:50
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Nikaer Drekin posted:I'm in- feel free to assign me whatever song you want. No one has taken Latvia yet, so I bestow it upon you, you lucky man. Do those jackets proud! Thank you for the win and for the excellent crits, judges, while I'm posting. You got me fair and square on the weaknesses in my piece. I'm delighted you found it deliciously pulpy anyway. Nubile Hillock, the thought of slowly driving you to madness warms the inky void of my heart. 
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May 9, 2013 19:59
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With just under 24 hours left to sign up, some of you may be facing the quandary of which video to choose. Know that at least one judge would like to see stories based on each of the following: Moldova, Iceland, and Finland. Selecting these would provide contestants with a small measure of initial goodwill that they would then lose with interest if they screwed the pooch. Fortune and the voting bloc favor the bold! Also, if Mr. Seafood goes back on his plan to take GREECE and no one else steps up to that plate, I will grow a moustache (somehow) for the express purpose of stalking him, scowling, forever. Kaishai fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Oct 22, 2013 |
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May 10, 2013 05:10
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Sign-ups are now closed! Within the next 48 hours, we will witness the artistic efforts of fifteen splendid performers representing fourteen magnificent countries. There may be sequins; there may be wind machines; but all we are guaranteed is pain.
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May 11, 2013 05:32
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:When I went to go write today, I found the power had gone out. Turns out there was some big show on at the stadium and every fucker there plugging into every socket killed the power for the whole town. Also, the show involved tables of transsexuals and people in dog costumes frantically making satay sauce and it was apparently good luck to touch the white guy so I got bounced around like a loving pinball for two hours while trying to figure out when the show would end and the power would go back on. I got dragged up on stage at one point and they gave me a t-shirt. It's green. I'm wearing it right now. Your experience is so close to what it must be like to attend a Lordi concert, in surreality if nothing else, that I have to see what inspiration comes out of it. Request granted. Kaishai fucked around with this message at 16:24 on May 12, 2013 |
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May 12, 2013 16:19
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A reminder: there are twenty minutes left for everyone who hasn't surfed a crowd of people in dog costumes today.
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May 13, 2013 04:43
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Submissions for Week XL: Poor Richard's Thundervision are CLOSED! Soon the judges will convene to discuss the performances we've just witnessed. There will be a winner, and for that person there will be glory; his song will echo through the Thunderdome throughout the next year until everyone dreams of his death in a fire. The loser is destined to be forgotten. Probably. You never know with this audience. Radioactive Bears, Down With People, and Jeza didn't make it to the finals; presumably they collapsed under the weight of their glitter make-up and even now are in a dressing room somewhere, calling for help.
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May 13, 2013 05:44
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Week XL Results: Poor Richard's Thundervision  The judges three have cast their votes to the tune of epic sax and LED violin! While a majority agreed on the loser, the battle for the win was far closer. Most of you blended Benjamin Franklin and joyous Eurotrash into something worth a look. We'd dance to your tunes again, although I'll ask Erogenous Beef to share his booze next time. Eurovision wasn't meant to be viewed sober. THE WINNER: Bad Seafood, claim your crown! Be careful: it sparks. You took a crazy video down a quiet, somber road, yet you left in the perfect amount of absurdity. I'll see Greece's entry differently in the future. That makes me sad, truth be told. But it's worth it. HONORABLE MENTIONS: Fumblemouse is our second-place finisher. All the judges liked your work to varying degrees, sir, and I admire your interpretation of Bellarosa's video. You made it interesting and gave up none of its unsettling quality. Bravo. SurreptitiousMuffin, your flash piece is a small, perfect jewel; a work of art; a glimpse into a world where Lordi reigns. It took the video exactly where I expected, but it did so beautifully. CancerCakes gets a fistbump of respect for turning Montenegro's entry into something coherent. THE LOSER: magnificent7. Your story had precious little to do with your video or song. Given you had a warbling falsetto Dracula to work with, that's just goddamn tragic. Crits are coming; expect mine no sooner than tomorrow. Mr. Seafood, the glitter-strewn floor is yours. Kaishai fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Jul 3, 2013 |
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May 13, 2013 23:52
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Critiques for Week XL: Everybody on the Dance Floor To judge this wild mess of spangles and lights, I watched the chosen videos and read the lyrics first, making notes on each. As I read your stories, I looked for the themes I'd seen as well as visual connections. Most of you made it easy to tie your work to both your song and your aphorism. Your interpretations were interesting to see, including those of which I was less than wholeheartedly fond. Let's dance! magnificent7, for Romania: "The Choreographer" Lyrics: Cezar - "It's My Life" Aphorism: Anger is never without a reason but seldom with a good one. Kai's Video Notes: A man in a glittering tuxedo sings while Goths dance behind him in leather jackets and silk-scarf skirts. How much eyeliner does this guy have on? His falsetto rises to glory with a bunch of fire jets. Listen to that vibrato! I think I'm watching a Vampire LARP and it's everything I ever could have dreamed. Themes: love and life, possibly immortal life spent sucking people's blood and warbling about it. Falsetto Dracula wept. How does this relate to your song or video in any way beyond people snickering at the voice of your never-seen lead singer? You could have written this piece about any musical performance with a male lead and a female backup dancer, it didn't have to be Mr. Warbling Romanian at all, and that's such a failure of concept it takes my breath away. You flunked that prompt even harder than you did last week's. That is astounding. You did hit the aphorism. Your interpretation is straightforward, taken to incredible extremes, but I see Mr. Franklin's wisdom in the piece; due credit there. Never mind the prompts for a minute. Look at the story itself. It's too busy being edgy to bother being good. The premise of a woman being told she's too talented to sleep her way to the top is cliche; hell, it's straight out of Showgirls. So is the rampant vulgarity. So is the gleeful flinging about of bodily fluids. Suspicious of your murder method, I took a wire hanger out of my closet and tried to pull it over my head: surprise, it wouldn't fit. Virginia at least needed to warp that thing out of shape before it would do as a garrote. Now let's consider your grammar in terms of dialogue. It is terrible. Do you see this line? 'She said, “shut up idiot. I know what I’m doing.”' You put the first word of a sentence in lowercase. Never do that again. Never. EVER. I suspect the confusion comes from that comma after 'said.' Dialogue is a special beast with special rules. Here is a site that can serve as a guide around the common pitfalls. Outside of dialogue, you don't have that many sentence-level errors. In the sentence 'Out of the corner of her eye she caught a short man leaning in a doorway,' a better phrase would be 'caught sight of.' 'His faded getup blended into the grey hallway so well that she initially overlooked him' uses the wrong tense: it should be 'she'd initially overlooked him,' unless you mean she continues to overlook him after he speaks and after she notices his clothes. 'Alexander felt the slap from across the hall.' Bizarre. Did she slap him with telekinesis? If she crossed the hall to slap him, say that; if the distance between them is short enough she could just lean in to hit him, don't make it sound like they're far apart. This story inspires me to consider strangling myself with that hanger, but alas, I doubt it would work. Your piece for the brawl week was much better. I'm probably going to put together links to past winning stories/poems in TD and post them soon. It wouldn't hurt to read them--along with the relevant crits, if you're feeling studious--and think about what made them successful. The American judge gives you: 1 point. ********** systran, for England: "Cephus' Blessing" Lyrics: Bonnie Tyler - "Believe in Me" Aphorism: ‘Tis easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it. Kai's Video Notes: This is such a country song. Bonnie's voice has roughened a bit from her "Total Eclipse of the Heart" days. The beach is a better backdrop than the white farmhouse, and the sweeping sky shots are beautiful; there's still not much to this video beside the song itself. The house and beach emphasize Bonnie's isolation--when she sings 'When you're reaching out for something and there's nothing,' she should be singing to a mirror. Themes: pessimism, solitude, isolation, a plea for faith, possibly hollow faith. I somehow suspect Bonnie Tyler singing alone in an all-white house isn't the video you'd have chosen for yourself, but what can I say? Your torment amuses us. The flash rule could have limited or freed you: if there wasn't much to work from, there wasn't much to trip you up, either. The challenge was to turn something bland into something compelling. So how'd you do? All told, not bad. Your story suffers from an overload of exposition that still doesn't explain the religion you've created to my satisfaction. It seems to be centered on a belief in soul-mating and destined love, on faith in salvation through that love, and on... stalking and emotional blackmail? Creepy! Lindsey's line (side note: Lyra and Lindsey are too visually similar for such a short piece), “I thought Cephism was just that religion where, like, you get married and then even if the other person never converts... it’s fine as long as you don’t get divorced,” doesn't explain anything; it sets the reader up to be confused. 'You get married and then shouldn't get divorced' doesn't distinguish Cephism much from other faiths, and the marriage question appears to be a lot more complex than that. (Also, I want to share what I found while Googling Cephus to make sure this faith isn't real: 'Definition of CEPHUS: a genus (the type of the family Cephidae) of small sawflies having larvae that bore in the stems of plants and including serious pests esp. of cereal grasses.' Romantic!) Going back to the creepy bit, Lyra is right: Vaughn isn't being fair to her or presenting himself as a man she should be with when he puts himself in a position where he has to marry her or be a monk for fifteen years without talking to her about it first. I felt sympathy for both parties, but I couldn't root for them as a couple. At least you leave some room for interpretation with the ending--Lyra is glad he's there, but she isn't falling over herself with love for him; their issues aren't magically resolved, and I appreciate that. You made a good choice in not sticking slavishly to the visuals in the video and working instead with the heart and spirit of the song. It's all about love, belief, and faith, and you invoke those. You do so in a way that's far from pedestrian. You also catch the edge of desperation in Ms. Tyler's love song; intentionally or no, you show some of the problems as well as some of the wonders of such tenacious devotion. Your chosen aphorism applies in a different way than I would have expected. The desires Lyra has difficulty satisfying aren't her own. It's still clunky, especially in the beginning, although this is a good point at which to mention that your grammar has gotten noticeably stronger over time. I looked for things to nitpick and didn't turn up any outright errors, although '"Your drink is already paid for, ma'am"' could certainly use an attribution, and the running-through-fire scene has a few repetitive beats, with two sentences in a row ending in 'hand,' two sentences in row using variants of 'pull,' and two uses of 'the heat' in a short span. I wouldn't contort the text too much to avoid these, but you could say 'Vaughn's hand dropped away from Lyra's,' for example, and possibly 'her fingers still clasping Vaughn's' or something similar. You won't win, but you've brought no more shame on your Bonnietar than Bonnie brought on it first by making that video. The American judge gives you: 6 points. ********** CancerCakes, for Montenegro: "BitchFight" Lyrics: Igranka - "Who See" Aphorism: Great beauty, great strength, and great riches are really and truly of no great use; a right heart exceeds all. Kai's Video Notes: Why the hazmat suits and golden drills? Why is that woman giving the Invisible Man a lap dance? Ninja! The women look like they're about to have a dance-off, only now there are harlequin masks. Shake your butt a bit more, lady: the video's still too subtle. E. Beef wasn't kidding about the stripper nuns, but I don't think they're nuns, more like... baton twirlers? I'm not convinced any lyrics in the world could make this make sense. (After reading the lyrics: Nope!) Themes: sex, dancing, testosterone, sex, masquerades, sex, parties, not wearing a shirt. CancerCakes.  Someday the bro stories are going to get old, but they haven't yet for this judge, and Montenegro's entry begged for something absurd. I'm disappointed not to have seen harlequin masks, but you worked so much else in that I'll try not to hold it against you. You got the hazmat suits! The pipe welders! The women's clothing! The fighting! What's especially good is that you include all of this, and it doesn't read like a checklist you're marking off. This thing doesn't need its video for support. Ideally, of course, the stories wouldn't, but considering yours involves hazmat suits and caged fights between women in lingerie, having come up with a coherent explanation for them is quite a feat.Don't get too excited: I don't have much but praise for this (although there will be grammatical nitpicks; oh, yes), but as much as I like your piece, I like others more. I don't think this will be a win for you. It's very close to being the most entertaining thing on the field, though. Whatever vibe you were channeling here, bring it to future rounds and a crown may be yours yet. Grammar, now... your errors look to be of the 'didn't catch them in proofing' kind rather than the 'don't know what you're doing' kind, but 'Its my advertising' still makes my face curdle. You spell Proprietor as 'Proprieter' at one point, and you aren't consistent with whether 'The' is capitalized in his title. The phrase 'the roof of the cage' is too distinctive to repeat within three sentences as you do at one point. (Drop 'the cage' from the second use and it should be fine.) And then there's this: 'money,you.' Rrrrrrrgh. There are a couple of misplaced/mislaid hyphens and commas too. Everything here--the cyberpunk, the brotagonist, the inspiration--is over the top, and it's a gaudy, glorious-horrible monstrosity of bad taste that made me laugh. You nailed the video. You soooooort of got the aphorism. Great strength wasn't supposed to be of great use! But the spirit of the thing is there. Is it sufficiently in the style of Martello? I'll have to confer with my fellow judges on that one, but you're probably closer to the style of Nubile Hillock when all's said and done. The American judge gives you: 8 points. ********** Fumblemouse, for Belgium: "His Feminine Side" Lyrics: Roberto Bellarosa - "Love Kills" Aphorism: If you would have a faithful servant and one that you like — serve yourself. Kai's Video Notes: Those are some eyebrows. If we could combine this guy and Lithuania's singer, astounding things would happen. Women are springing out of his shoulders. Sir, please stop using women's hands to grope yourself. There's something unsettling in general about his interactions with these women, and what the hell did that one lady do when he touched her chin? I like the distinctly 80s sound of the song, but I have to wonder if "Love Kills" is something Mr. Intensity means literally. Themes: love, pain, despair, intensity, death of emotion, emptiness. You evidently picked up a similar vibe from that video. Your interpretation of the women splitting out of Bellarosa (I knew what I'd find at the 40s mark) is inspired. It's more literal than I would have expected, and in this case that's a good thing: you made a woman fissuring from a man work as something more than an odd visual. That's the only obvious visual cue you took, but I see the creepy emotionlessness of those women at play in Jo's sociopathy. The way Mr. Intensity interacts with his fembots may also play into your theme of gender relations. I respect your work with the prompts more than I like the resulting piece, though--it's good work, strong, but the ending wasn't sufficiently foreshadowed for my taste. It didn't come out of nowhere; I can see clues, but I wanted more. The opening paragraph implies that Joe hit his girlfriend. That's the strongest suggestion we ever see that he's the kind of bastard whose feminine side would be a murderous bitch because she's just like him. The story portrays him as an agreeable guy otherwise. Maybe he could have a more open mind toward therapy and a cleaner floor, but there's nothing to justify his subconscious (feminine or otherwise) being this coldblooded. The mood of the story's midsection is light and even warm; Joe cleaning house with his alter-ego is companionable, not chilling; and then Shell(e)y's revelation that the Femisil may be 'dangerous' is too vague to get much anxiety going before Jo pulls out that knife. You could argue that the tonal contrast makes the ending more shocking. But Joe's amiable demeanor raises a serious question: why is Jo a bitch? Because she's his feminine side--but if Joe isn't established as a bad man, then that line reads like she's a psycho because she's female, not because she's his mirror. Not what you intended, I think. (Maybe neither was intended to be true? Are her homicidal ways completely the drug's fault? There's less to suggest this, yet it would make some sense.) The lack of an ominous mood and the dubious justification for the gore made this less effective as horror than it could have been. That said, there are some clues that the way Jo 'serves' Joe as per the aphorism is by killing Shell(e)y, and that he wanted Jo on some level. His personality as shown works against this, too, though. I wonder if I'm only seeing that because it would make the aphorism fit. If the implication was intended, I like it; it just needs Joe to be more of a bastard to stick. Technical fussbudgetry: Shell(e)y's name is spelled two ways. The first paragraph feels long, and I'd break it before 'Still.' 'When he opened his eyes, she was sitting across from him'--who? The one woman you've talked about is Shell(e)y; the use of 'she' is confusing, so you should probably go with 'a woman,' or with 'his female image' or a similar phrase if you're not looking for suspense on that point. 'Jo looked back at him and twirled her finger against her head in child-sign for ‘crazy’.' The period here should be within the single quotes, assuming American English. You've got an ellipsis with two dots in it, f'God's sake. After all the complaining I've done, it may not be obvious this vacillated in and out of my top three. I respect the hell out of the mileage you got from your chosen video, and the piece was interesting and clever. It could have been better; it was still good. The American judge gives you: 8 points. ********** crabrock, for Georgia: A kidney stone. While what you've produced may be more unpleasant than the losing story, I'd have to see it to be sure; I've suffered enough without that, and so have you. ********** Nikaer Drekin, for Latvia: "Passionate" Lyrics: PeR - "Here We Go" Aphorism: Man’s tongue is soft, and bone doth lack; yet a stroke therewith may break a man’s back. Kai's Video Notes: It's young men bouncing around in sparkly jackets and pants. The silver jacket has tassels and swag like the guy wearing it is the most dazzling of Revolutionary War military generals, and it would be brilliant if it only covered a shirt. Love the keytar. What are those light-up boxes the mohawked one keeps tapping? I hope it's Eurovision's answer to Simon. Themes: glitter, youthful energy, vivacious life, refusal to submit to anxiety or despair. Cute, but problematic. You took a long time to get to anything related to your video. The first half or so is Mr. Brandike first settling in at work, then being threatened by a nervous man with a gun; there's some tension in this, so why does it feel like it drags? You've got extraneous text, but the bigger issue may be a disconnect in tone and thrust. Mr. Brandike is an rear end in a top hat, but not enough of one to be a cartoon (sad though that is), and his danger seems real. It reminds me of the opening of Sixth Sense when Bruce Willis was menaced by half-naked Donny Wahlberg. Wallace being so nervous makes him more perilous, not less. Then the second half kicks in, and you bring in a combination of Project Runway and American Idol that amuses me--it helps that I've watched both shows. Is What's in the canister? You never say. I'm assuming mace, but I can't stop picturing Cheez Whiz. Eyes shouldn't bubble unless it's a gory horror piece. You got your aphorism. You mixed the aphorism fairly well with the video you were given, too, but your connection to Latvia's entry is sketchy. The energy and joy of it aren't here at all. Maybe if you'd shown more of Wendell being happy and hopeful before Jim brought him down? Then it would be a subversion and potentially poignant, but as-is Wendell is a brief, flat figure before the critique that changes his life. You don't engage with the visuals of the video except to make fun of them, which is acceptable but disappointing. It might have helped with that as well if I could have formed my own opinion of pre-crit Wendell and didn't have to rely on Jim's. Your grammar's generally good; you use more words than you need and describe things you shouldn't, like the 'titanium-grade hand dryer.' 'Not only did his driver fail to show' uses the wrong tense; 'Not only had his driver failed to show' would be the ideal here. This entertained me in a light way: it's cute, as I said before. It lacks either gravitas or significant humor, though. The American judge gives you: 6 points. ********** JonasSalk, for Switzerland: "Do the young die?" Lyrics: Takasa - "You and Me" Aphorism: Wish not so much to live long as to live well. Kai's Video Notes: Aww, look at those friendly road-trippers giving the old man a ride. You shouldn't do that to a cello. WTF, musicians. I would kill trombone guy if I were in that car. Very friendly energy, though, and it makes me want to go on a road trip with these people (minus trombone) even if Vegas is right about the geometry. Uh, minus the peeing in a field too. Themes: friendship, togetherness, travel, helping one another through adversity, inappropriate treatment of musical instruments. I don't much like your execution, JonasSalk, but your subversion of the Switzerland video is rather neat. The old man gives a lift to the young in your version; in place of helpfulness and togetherness, he plans to kill them. They ultimately betray him and steal from him and cause his death. It's so opposite to what the song is about that it's still a response--and if this is a happy coincidence, that doesn't matter; it works. You've invoked visuals too, of course, with the very old man and his car. I sort of wish the young people had killed him by braining him with a trombone, but one can't have everything. Plus, your basic idea is pretty nice. A world where only one man ages and dies? How horrible it would be to be that man. Chuck keeps my sympathy through his decision to kill the others (though I'm sure it helps that he doesn't manage it) because his situation is terrible enough that it would have to warp his mind. Opening each section with a brief thought from Chuck worked for me, and you've got some good individual lines: 'I was headed that way too' is absolutely poignant. 'You’ve come far enough, we think' vocalizes your theme. You nailed your aphorism. These bright points are buried in bad text. At 658 words, you still have far too many. Take this paragraph: 'Yes, Chuck was that guy from tv. He was “the world’s old guy”, and that had always been fun enough. With age had come a legitimate celebrity and Chuck had enjoyed it. He’d enjoyed being an oddity, and was a regular on the late night talk shows due to his quick wit and easy going sense of humor.' Grammar quirks aside ('TV' should be in caps; the comma after guy should be within the quote marks; there shouldn't be a comma after 'oddity'; 'easygoing' is one word), you don't need this at all. How does it add to the story? It shows a facet of Chuck's character--but it's a facet that never comes into play. The young man's comment that he's 'that guy from TV, the world's oldest guy' sets up that he has a sort of celebrity without needing elaboration. Along the same lines, 'Chuck was one of the few people in the world able to own a gun, having reached a biological age where he was eligible to possess one. Most people stopped aging at 16, and a few went so far as 17, but almost no one reached 18. The clock turned off around this time and never turned back on' is a bunch of unnecessary and frankly nonsensical information. Why would gun possession be limited to biological age in this world? That's bizarre. What does it matter? Chuck has a gun; that's all we need to know. The details about when people stop aging are interesting but extraneous. I would like it much, much better if you used the italicized thoughts without adding 'Chuck thought' afterward (this wouldn't always be a good idea, but in this story the second thought--'these kids are far too trusting'--clearly is a thought and is clearly being thought by Chuck, which sets up the context for the rest of them), but if you're going to do that, don't split the thought and the attribution across paragraphs. Instead, it should be like this: 'Young people never appreciate death, Chuck thought as he drove his car down the road.' When they're attributed like this, treat thoughts as you would speech insofar as punctuation goes. It's all very passive, too, a lot of tell with little show. This doesn't bother me a ton, but you overdo it. 'At his age, a fall from a moving vehicle was as good a way to get killed as a bullet to the head'--I assume Chuck is dead or dying? But this is such a vague way to show it. Did he hit his head? Did he break a hip? Was it instant? Painless? Slow? Here's where you want some detail, to take us through Chuck's end. I don't mean get graphic with the violence--it wouldn't suit your tone--but make it crystal clear what happened to him. 'Not that he’d needed it now' is terrible. I'm guessing you meant either 'he needed' or 'he'd need,' depending on whether he's alive at that moment. This was in my bottom three, but it's much, much better than your entry from last week. Keep improving! The American judge gives you: 4 points. ********** SurreptitiousMuffin, for Finland 2006: "Chainsaw Buffet" Lyrics: Lordi - "Hard Rock Hallelujah" Aphorism: Join, or die. Kai's Video Notes: Look at that hat. Look at those pants. I haven't seen such dedication to make-up since I watched the making-of video for Thriller. The demon guitarists are the best goddamn thing. Themes: faith, the power of rock, rock as spiritual salvation, rebellion, triumph of the righteous, sticking a spark-showering battle axe in Europe's eye. Tons of energy and balls like steel. Best possible video choice save Ukraine 2007 (maybe), but the story will have to be amazing to live up to it. And what do you know? It is. It's maaaaaaybe too close to being Lordi fanfic--oh, hell, it is, and I wish you hadn't called the demons by that name, but it's a perfect blood-hued garnet of a flash. You give to your demon band a Biblical weight. You've made fanfic about a guy wearing a Finland hat feel powerful, mythic. I sense the wildness of Bacchic rites in the ways of Lordi's followers and find them not so hard to believe. "Hard Rock Hallelujah" isn't this serious ('Arockalypse,' c'mon); you've transformed it into what it might want to be. 'Oh come, all ye faithful. Come into our arms so we might love you, carry you finally home.' I love this line. It's shiversome. The prompts and rules are all present and accounted for. Your chosen Biblical verses fit the video/aphorism combination so well I doubt that you had to stretch much; I note the pipes. Lordi's hat. Goddamn, Lordi's hat. It's perfect. It's so close to tripping over the line between epic and stupid, but it doesn't. So before this crit gets cheesier from praise than the whole of the Ireland video, I should go into what I didn't like as well. This is an artwork, an image, a myth. A story? Not really. There's no character in it at all, as Lordi are presented as more of a force than as beings; it has no arc or plot, none of that. It's also predictable. I barely care since what I expected from Lordi's entry is awesome and awesome squared is what I got, but this shows more mastery of language and beautiful style than innovative thinking. That's probably what tipped me toward my other favorite at the wire. Yet the piece is an ideal example of its kind. For at least this once, not winning doesn't mean you need to change anything. Except the lack of a period after 'his hat of blue and white.' Change that. The American judge gives you: 12 points. ********** perpetulance, for San Marino: "Graceful Exit" Lyrics: Valentina Monetta - "Crisalide" Aphorism: Men take more pains to mask than mend. Kai's Video Notes: That glowing ball represents an egg, I think. The shroud is a cocoon. And... now an elderly lady is taking a bag off her head. Okay. It's all very dramatic, vaguely dark, and Meaningful until the giant red swaths of cloth show up. Maybe she's emerged from her pupation as an attendant of the opera into her true life as a singing scarf rack. Themes: a chrysalis, shrouds, facades, transformation into joy, dark into light. You went heavy on the themes, light on the visuals. I envisioned Mary as the elderly lady with a bag on her head in the video, although I doubt they're meant to be one and the same. I'm all right with this interpretation: it let you go to a completely unexpected place, and Mary shedding the chrysalis of her diseased body is fitting, if terribly somber. The bright half of the entry is missing. Hopefully Mary will find it in her pills. Your approach to the aphorism is the most muddled: Mary is taking many pains to try to mend her cancer, as are the people who developed her drugs, her doctors, etc. Martin is trying to 'mend' Mary's wish for death, however ineffectually. I can sort of see how everything everyone does for Mary is only an attempt to pretend her death isn't inevitable, but it's a stretch. There are grammar errors, none so serious or so frequent they do the story much damage. Some can be overlooked because of your first-person narrator, but I'll pick on a few others. 'The doctor said its because'--auuuuuugh. It's! A pastor and a religious woman would likely both know it's 'Thou shalt not kill.' You've used a few commas where you oughtn't, usually before a dependent clause such as in this case: 'He wished me well, and said he'd see me next Sunday.' That usage could be a quirk of Mary's, but it doesn't add anything to her characterization. In the sentence 'The kids across the road were outside in the sun, playing and laughing when Martin left,' you should have a comma after 'laughing.' Despite all that, the prose is competent, the ending sadly appropriate, and the diary format handled well. I like Mary. Her ultimate choice is obvious from the title; you justified it as well as you could. I sympathized with her exhaustion and isolation and the pill-filled tedium of her days. The down side of that is that it's a depressing piece, slow and sad, and not a joy to read, but not everything has to be. The American judge gives you: 7 points. ********** Bad Seafood, for Greece: "Old Habits" Lyrics: Koza Mostra, featuring Agathon Iakovidis - "Alcohol Is Free" Aphorism: The wolf sheds his coat once a year, his disposition never. Kai's Video Notes: Greece! Kilts! Accordion! Moustache! I don't understand this video; I like it that way. Who the man with the cheese is, why he's stalking them, why he strokes his moustache so compulsively... I yearn for a story to explain these things to me, yet I cherish the mystery. I'm not looking at the lyrics until I absolutely have to. Themes: fraternity/friendship, stalking, coincidences that aren't, the inexplicable, fleeing what one doesn't understand, moustaches, facing problems head-on. I love this story. After conferring with my co-judges I have a better idea of its flaws, but I still love it. You chose one of the easier videos to work with, since Greece's entry strongly implies a story of some kind; you used what it gave you, but you went in a sufficiently different direction that I didn't see this coming from a mile off. You shaved away the absurdity--mostly. There's just enough left to make it beautiful as well as sad. That line about tracing the moustache in the clouds is perfect. Well. Almost. It's missing a whole word. Took me a couple of reads to notice, though. 'I heard a small loud' is probably meant to be something else. ('Sound'?) 'I had never seen its equal, and suspect I never will' is slightly problematic given how the story ends, in that it makes me wonder how the narrator could hope to see more moustaches--for that matter, how he could tell the reader any of this. But his fate is uncertain; that he tells a story now makes it more so, and there's something to be said for that. 'He looked nothing like Arsen, but when I turned around there he was' doesn't read clearly: I can't tell whether you mean the eggplant-seller changed to look like Arsen (seems likely) or that the protagonist turned away from the seller to see Arsen elsewhere. In the sentence 'The man stood trembling with eggplants in hand,' I would prefer 'That man,' to make it as clear as possible that it's the protagonist you're talking about. I'm torn on what I think of the references to Arsen's popularity, because at first blush that doesn't seem to go anywhere. As I thought about it, though, I wondered whether this might be another and more subtle way that your aphorism is coming into play. Arsen wandered far and touched lives in life; he was everywhere. He can't shed that disposition in death. You've brought in plenty of visuals from your video and worked the title in besides. If my guess about the aphorism above is wrong, the words are still present in the protagonist's inability to get clear of alcohol. And you explained the moustache. You made the moustache-touching touching. The creepy stalker guy has become someone I want to know. The American judge gives you: 12 points. ********** Voliun, for Malta: "Paradoxical Gambit" Lyrics: Gianluca - "Tomorrow" Aphorism: Tomorrow, every fault is to be amended; but that tomorrow never comes. Kai's Video Notes: Fluffy, sweet, like a Kodak commercial. Friends in a park with ukuleles singing about nerd romance. Jeremy looks like Jeff Goldblum. His lady is from the 50s. Themes: love, pursuit, attraction of the unobtainable, the lure and inevitability of the future. The drummer's fro is amazing. Why are so many in the band wearing fedoras? I want so badly for this to make sense, Voliun, because I can almost... sort of... kind of... maybe wrap my brain around it? Then I read it again, and my fragile understanding collapses. Was I ever close at all? Have I stared too long into the abyss? Someday there will be answers, won't there? I feel the approach of an epiphany, but perhaps that is only encroaching madness. Okay. Seriously. I may be alone in this, but I see improvement here. Here's what I get as far as the plot goes: Maxwell is a time traveler, and at some point, perhaps in the far future, he throws himself in a river because his quest through time in search of a particular man has been futile. A necklace may have something to do with his time travel? He doesn't die. Instead, someone--Meline? And a man?--reset his timeline, bringing him back to his desk at some corporate office, on the day (May 12, cute) on which he remembers he's destined to meet Meline for the first time. He rushes toward the elevator, where the meeting will take place. But first Jeremy confronts him. It turns out Jeremy is the man who brought him back from the future, and Jeremy may have masterminded all this time travel in order to fix Maxwell up romantically with Meline, because Jeremy can't be with her himself but wants her to be happy. Is that remotely close? Let's say it is. It's still a bad story. It's overcomplicated, vague, badly structured, and the next best thing to incomprehensible. It has an ending, though! There's a final beat! Meeting Meline again restarts whatever time loop Maxwell just got out of; it hits that 'inevitability of the future' theme I see in the video/lyrics square in the face. The Groundhog Day-esque time looping addresses your aphorism, too. Addresses it well. This calls for a dance party.  Of course, I have endless questions. I don't understand the necklace, why Meline was a ghost, what the 'this' is that Meline isn't the only one in on, what the bit about clemency meant, what the 'just that' is that Maxwell is the most viable candidate to do, how a hot knife striking the spine would sting anyone with cold, etceteras, etceteras. The prose is better than in "S.O.S." It really is: 'Broken up smoke faded along the night's skyline as it reached out to the crescent moon' is a drat sight better than anything you said about those olive wines. But most of the lines are far from good. 'A calendar that is on the month of May with every day before the twelfth day was marked off with an 'x'.' Goddammit. You mean 'A calendar turned to the month of May, with every day before the twelfth marked off with an X,' I suppose. There are other clunky phrases, and if I tried pointing them all out we'd be here until next week. Poor grammar and proofing continue to be part of the issue, such as in 'Maxwell watched Meline skipped inside,' 'as the man made his decent deeper,' and 'Time passed and Maxwell has no idea what just happened.' The idea that there's a story here somewhere could be no more than a short circuit in my brain, but you undeniably used your video and aphorism for inspiration, and that edged you off the lowest rung. The American judge gives you: 2 points. Kaishai fucked around with this message at 16:08 on May 14, 2013 |
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May 14, 2013 08:47
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CancerCakes posted:
I'll meet you on the sands, CancerCakes, but gambling money is not in my cards. Would you consider alternative stakes? If you win, I'll ask someone to PM you an e-mail address at which you can reach me, and I'll write you a sonnet, sestina, or some other rule-bound form of poem on a topic of your choosing. Name your doom, bridgekeeper; I am not afraid.
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May 14, 2013 20:03
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CancerCakes posted:Eurovision is on, greek moustache guy did the moustache stroke thing. Also the finland marry me lady sang "i'll gently caress you" all the way through the song. And the Romanian vampire warbled his heart out as he ascended to heaven in a ten-foot-high dress. A shame Montenegro's rapping astronauts didn't make the final, but it was still a good show.
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May 19, 2013 00:11
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Erogenous Beef posted:I don't have time to enter this week, but I want to poo poo out some fiction anyway. So... A chance to feed you your keister again, judged by Count von Count himself? It's like Christmas!  I'll see you in the arena, bro. And because I like a challenge, I'm in for this week as well.
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May 22, 2013 16:33
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Mine Before Thine (688 words) Mother Cowbird didn't want the bother of raising children, and she'd found a way around it by sneaking into her neighbors' nests when they were away and laying her eggs beside theirs. Unburdened, she was free to fly far and feed well while Mrs. Cardinal, Mama Sparrow, Papa Bluebird, and others took care of her demanding babies. Some parents rejected the fosterlings, but most endured them, knowing what would happen if they didn't. Take the Goldfinches: they had dared to toss out one of her eggs, so Mother Cowbird now stood claw-deep in broken shell and yolk in the Goldfinch nest. She nipped at a spot of blood amidst the slime. Mr. Goldfinch sped in on flurrying wings, too late. Mother Cowbird flew away from his chittered screams with a bit of shell still stuck to her beak. Chortling, she soared across a wide clearing and nearly became dinner herself. Hawk's cry high above warned her to dive for the trees; Hawk's claws grabbed at her tail feathers and pulled one loose. The larger bird chased her through the canopy of the wood. "Why are you after me?" Mother Cowbird shrilled. "You should hunt the Cardinals! They're so easy to see!" "I did, when there were more of them," Hawk retorted. "Old Mr. Cardinal is canny, and there haven't been any young Cardinals to chase for at least two years. I wonder why that is?" Fast as he was, Hawk couldn't follow her easily amid the tightly woven branches. She escaped into a tree hollow and waited for him to leave; to find someone else to eat, she hoped. After he'd gone, she went to hunt insects by the forest pond. She snapped up beetles and spiders left and right and soon forgot about Hawk. She spread her wings wide and sailed over the water, enjoying her full stomach--until a sticky tongue hit her from below. Mother Cowbird pulled free without much difficulty. Frog sat on his lily pad down on the water, gazing at her with golden eyes. "What!" she yelled at him, flying back and forth just out of his reach. "I'm too big for you to eat! Why aren't you snatching up Sparrows?" Frog croaked, "I haven't seen a Sparrow in days, and I'm so hungry. I'll keep trying to get you until one of us dies," and he jumped toward her, tongue lashing out, to prove it. Unsettled, Mother Cowbird left the woods entirely for the open fields cleared by her old friend, Man. She flew to his big white farmhouse and settled on his backyard fence. Man sat out on his porch. To her shock, he picked up the rifle that leaned against his chair and took aim as soon as he saw her; she barely evaded the bullet. "Why?" called Mother Cowbird. "I haven't done anything to you!" "I miss the other songbirds," Man said. "Besides, there are so many of you Cowbirds around now, you make good target practice. If you won't land on my fence anymore, I'll just have to hunt you in the wood." Mother Cowbird fled in a panic. Hawk would chase any prey he could, Frog wasn't a real threat to her, but Man didn't forget his grudges. She huddled on a high branch in the forest, her heart beating frightfully fast. But there--Papa Bluebird perched two trees away, his plumage bright even in the shade. Mother Cowbird flitted over to him and said, "I need your help! Man and his gun are after me! And my children, I suppose. Where can I hide and be safe?" Papa Bluebird looked down his slender beak at her. "Because of you and your children, I have no children," he said. "Man can shoot you all for all I care." He left her alone in the tree. Maybe Mr. Goldfinch would help her, Mother Cowbird thought. But probably not. Maybe the Cardinals had forgiven her for their broken clutches. Maybe the Warblers didn't mind their dead fledglings. Maybe-- "There you are," Man said. The shot echoed through the forest; spots of blood marked the feathers that drifted down.
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May 27, 2013 00:50
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The Glass Heart (1,071 words) (For my Thunderbrawl with Erogenous Beef. Prompt: Write a fairytale without inspiring resentment in Chairchucker.) A young man lived in a castle of glass. It was the only home he'd ever known, and he had little curiosity about the world outside. Everything he thought he needed lay within the walls, including the etched tablets that had taught him to read, to figure, and to work magic with sand and fire. For companionship, he had birds: talking glass birds of many species flew in his hallways, brilliant in the sunlight, shimmering under the stars. The mockingbird was his particular friend. She played games with him as he grew up; she told jokes that made him laugh; she defended him when other birds, even those larger than herself, pecked at him in some fit of temper. One morning, the young man walked with the mockingbird on his shoulder. They sang a duet until the crash of breaking glass interrupted their music. The young man ran in the direction of the sound and startled the woman who stood amidst the shards of a vase in his grand hall. He had never seen a human other than himself. Her hair was a dark brown threaded with copper, and none of his birds had plumage quite like it. She carried a sack slung over her shoulder; as she got over her surprise, her full lips curved in a smile. "I'm so sorry! I didn't realize anyone lived here! And then I heard singing, and I turned around too fast, and--" She gestured at the pieces at her feet. "I can fix it," the young man said. "Step back, please." She did; her blue eyes flicked toward the glass mockingbird. "What a pretty ornament," the woman said. The young man picked up two of the large fragments and fit them back together, then he spoke the words of mending. The line between the pieces glowed white. Molten glass flowed, then cooled at another word from him, and the shards were seamlessly joined. He did this with every piece until the vase was whole again. "Your magic is wonderful," the woman said. "Would you show me your castle, sir? I've always wanted to see inside. Would you tell me about yourself?" The mockingbird whispered in his ear, "I don't trust this stranger." But the woman's voice fascinated the young man: it was lower and softer than anything from a glass throat. He bobbed his head and led her on a tour of his home. He brought her to his atrium and orchard. Apples, peaches, pears, cherries, lemons, oranges--all fruits flourished there in all seasons, and the young man shared plums and tart raspberries with his guest. Several birds flitted in to get a look at the visitor, but the miniature peacock didn't strut for her, nor would the canary sing. The mockingbird perched on a low branch, where she could keep an eye on events. He showed the woman his conservatory, and he played her a song on the glass flute. He sat with her in his parlor, though she didn't seem to like the glass chairs. He would have taken her to the library, but she protested. "I've had a lovely time." The berries had stained her mouth a fine red. "But now I must be going." The young man felt hollow when she had gone. Loneliness was so foreign to him that he didn't recognize it. He returned to the atrium to look for the mockingbird, but she wasn't there--nor was the peacock or the canary. He searched the whole castle in increasing distress, and even with the glass hummingbirds lending their aid to the hunt, he couldn't find those three friends. So he did as he had never done: he left his shining castle and took the long road down the mountainside, through a forest, to the nearest village of people, and he found the woman there, sitting on a bench outside an alehouse with her bag at her feet. When she smiled this time, he saw only teeth. "Give them back," he said. She said, "No, I don't think I will. Your pretty birds will bring me a lot of pretty coin--well, except maybe for this one." She bent and pulled the mockingbird out of her sack; the bird's sooty wings were bound with twine. "I wouldn't have bothered to take this drab thing, but it attacked me when I picked up the peacock. How stupid! Do you want it back?" The young man saw the mockingbird's fear in her glossy brown eyes, and he couldn't speak. He held out his hand in a wordless plea. The woman dropped the mockingbird to the ground and set her boot on the little grey body. The young man found his voice: "No, please--" The woman stood and stomped on the mockingbird with all her strength. His best friend exploded in a crash of splinters and dust. "Will you chase me?" the woman taunted him. "Or will you stay here and try to put the bird back together again?" But mending wasn't the only thing the young man's magic could do. Pointing at the woman, he spoke the words of glass, and she became glass. Her blue eyes gleamed like marbles; the sunset light glowed through her hair. She was perfect, except for the deep flaw in her heart. When she opened her mouth to scream, her heart exploded in her breast, and deep cracks shot outward to split her body. She fell in jagged fragments to the dirt. The young man released the canary and peacock. He gathered the shards of the woman and put them in the bag with dry eyes, but he wept over the tiny fragments of the mockingbird, no longer recognizable as anything at all. Nevertheless, he gathered them too, and he took all the pieces back to the glass castle. He put the woman back together, save for the shard over the hollow place in her breast. He made a careful pile out of what remained of the mockingbird, and he cupped a hand over the slivers as he spoke the words of remaking. The splinters flowed together into a soft-grey heart. The young man placed the heart in the woman and covered it with the final shard. Then he spoke the words of love, and the glass woman opened glossy brown eyes. She smiled her first real smile, as white as the bar on a mockingbird's wing.
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May 29, 2013 21:45
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Chairchucker posted:Congratulations Kaishai, come and collect your prize of bragging rights or whatever. Thanks for the fast judgin', Chairchucker, and for the crit too. I will treasure these bragging rights forever. E. Beef, good match; someday our swords will cross again. To celebrate, I'm going in for this round with Frank Hayes, the jockey whose corpse probably made the winner's circle awkward.
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May 31, 2013 03:08
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Dead First (722 words) (Based on the death of Frank Hayes during a Belmont Park steeplechase in 1923.) "Please, Miss Frayling," I'd said. "I can win the purse for you." That was a hair's breadth from a goddamned lie, and she'd known it too. Sweet Kiss, win anything? The mare had never held a lead for more than five seconds with real jocks on her back. And there I'd been, her exercise rider, claiming I could do more with her. Miss Frayling hadn't bought it. The woman wasn't a fool. But she could be a softie from time to time. So instead of leading Kiss to the starting barrier on a calm old pony, I sat in her saddle and let the groom Wilkins take us up. Wilkins grinned so wide at me I could see all the gaps where he'd lost teeth. "You gonna fall off on a jump and break a hip, old man!" the kid chortled, and I gave him a tight smile. Kiss tossed her head, her neck nearly black with damp already. Couldn't blame her: the sun roasted us. Couldn't join her: after hours of sweating weight off my body, I didn't have moisture left to lose. Thirty-five years old. A hundred and forty-five pounds on a normal day. Miss Frayling was a fool, but she had nothing on me. Didn't matter. My smile grew as I slapped Kiss on her shoulder and waved Wilkins away. "I got a buck on you, Frankie," he confided before he went. We were a whole drat outfit of softies. My eyes fixed on the wire just ahead. The horse to our right moved into place, then the one past him. If that plug by the rail would settle down and stop showing his rear end-- He did. The bell rang; the wire flew up, and Kiss broke in the middle of the pack, just where we wanted to be. I kept the reins wound tight around my hands on the run to the first jump, then gave her the freedom she needed to launch us over the evergreen brush that swept dust from her belly. A pair of metal shoes flashed an inch from her nose. My heart lifted as she rose, the pulse in my throat fit to choke me, and I gripped the reins hard again on landing 'til she fought me and I let up just a hair. Seven jumps in, I loosened my hold. "Now, baby, now," I chanted, like she could hear me through all that living thunder, but maybe she did since she picked up her feet as we slid to the outside. One after another the other horses fell back; only Gimme beat us to the ninth jump, the favorite, the bettors' darling. I waved my whip in front of Kiss's right eye. Her hooves out-pounded the drum in my chest, and we were in front! Three more fences, half a mile yet to run, I couldn't feel the stirrups or the reins in my hands or see through the dirt on my goggles. I screamed, "Come on!" and she ran, ran, flew toward the tenth fence--swerved--my heart jumped-- I guess that'd be when I died. My sight came back as Kiss landed true, clearer than it had ever been. So clear, in fact, I might not have been wearing goggles at all. I leaned forward, kneading her neck with my hands, never mind that my fingers slipped through her flesh. "Come on," I said so softly that no human ear would have heard it. And she ran on for me. We drove past the finish line together. The crowd in the stands opened its mouths, waved its arms, but her hooves were all I heard. I tried to take the reins again, which is when I noticed they were tangled around a slack, heavy hand that no longer belonged to me. Sweet Kiss slowed on her own, exhausted in a way I'd never be again. I stroked her straggling mane. She lifted her head, one ear swiveling backward: she knew me still. The last sight I had on Earth was poor Miss Frayling walking over to congratulate me. I'm not sorry I missed seeing her face when she found a corpse on her horse--at least I kept my word to her. It's funny how much that means to me, even where I've gone.
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Jun 2, 2013 17:39
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The Saddest Rhino posted:would someone crit my story Well, okay, since you showed me adorable baby rhinos. When it comes to the overall picture--characters, setting, theme, especially voice--I can't offer much criticism, because I love them. Your effusiveness would grate in almost any other kind of story, but here it's just about perfect: all that use of the vocative O!, the repetition of words, everything fits together to build a colorful voice for your narrator (whom I'm assuming is a janitor, by the by). Most of the suggestions I have for improvement are grammatical, and I'm not even sure of them. Several of your 'errors,' whether intentional or not, enhance your choice of style. The only way I can crit this usefully is with a line-by-line, so here you go. Proposed changes and comments alike are in bold. --- How Beloved Baby Rhino Fell into Despair; or, Sadness Is a Blessing Where the rays of the sun shone the brightest and where the raindrops fell the least, there lived a (you've chosen not to capitalize baby rhino's name, and I'm down with that, but in this instance it's confusing without an article) baby rhino in those so-rare spots of the Borneo rainforest Shall I call baby rhino the sweetest thing? O, how I hope! (The vocative 'O' shouldn't have a comma after it, technically speaking--and it isn't technically appropriate here as far as I know. 'Oh, how I hope!' would be more grammatically correct. Mind you, I enjoy the effect as it stands.) Shall I call baby rhino the politest of all baby animals? O, how I wish! There are so many kind, nice and pretty words I would use to describe baby rhino, but alas, I am no liar, and I can’t, can’t, how I wish I could! For the momma of baby rhino, she was also the loveliest (are you sure this is the adjective you want? 'Most beautiful' doesn't have much to do with how much she loves her son. Maybe 'most loving' or the not-actually-a-word 'lovingest'?) old rhino -- how much love she gave to baby rhino, perhaps just as much as And baby rhino’s momma, she kept to her word, and how baby rhino he was, o, (another technicality: the vocative O is always capitalized, but I like it this way) the happiest little rhino you know! He was given the finest of fruits and leaves to chew and chomp on, and his little bed was adorned with the finest feathers and shadiest leaves his momma could find. But o, the happiest little rhino you know, he How his insatiable wants (In the caption, the sentence 'ah, but I wish you to be happy, so permit I shall you to sit on momma's face as so' is a wreck! I suggest 'Ah, but I wish you to be happy, so permit you I shall to sit on momma's face like so.' Technically there should be a comma after 'face,' but I don't think that matches your voice, so screw it.) One quiet evening, baby rhino woke up in his little nest. “Food, food!” he cried, as he always did. But o beloved baby rhino, where had your momma gone to? Look for yourself outside your nest, outside your sweet, comfortable home, and you should see that she was nowhere to be found. (The tenses are a mess here, and I'm torn on what to suggest. I think keeping things in the past tense would be better, so maybe 'Had you looked for yourself [...] and you would have seen' etc. I don't entirely like this replacement; it doesn't have the same charm, but the tense free-for-all makes me shudder every time I look at it.) Baby rhino hopped out: “Food, food!” cried Baby rhino’s stomach made a whimper, and he walked to see his aunts and uncles and cousins for food. But o, baby rhino, he did not know how tired they Sniff Ran he, guided by the smell, and he stopped before a flower. And what a flower, dear astute reader! It was taller, much taller than baby rhino, leaflets of purple and green and white “Who are you?” asked baby rhino. “What are you saying?” “I am crying!” the flower said. “For I have no happiness in my life!” “How do you not have “Tall I may be, towering I may be,” the flower said. “But the bloom of I, corpse flower, is no joy! For I am terrible in look and smell, and soon Baby rhino laughed. “How silly!” he said. “Could you not ask your momma to give you “I do not have a momma to give me “But everybody has a momma!” baby rhino (if you're going to go with lowercase, be consistent!) protested. “I have a momma who brings me everything!” “What if you do not have a momma anymore?” asked the flower. Baby rhino hopped back. “Momma would not leave? Momma loves me!” “What if she can’t come back to you?” (This is the story's weakest point. Why would the flower say these things? Why does it sound like the flower knows something about momma, especially given that momma is fine? Is the flower a huge, smelly, lying jerk? It has sounded more pathetic than mean so far. I enjoy this corpse flower interlude, but it's somewhat out of place and probably needs to be tied more gracefully into the whole. Expand this part of the conversation a bit and make the flower sound less omniscient and ominous.) Baby rhino, o what feeling was this, when happiness Baby rhino, o how fast and how swift he ran! Would momma no longer bring him fruit and leaves? Would momma no longer hug him to sleep? Would momma no longer comfort him with her large horn? He cried for momma, “Momma!” but momma did not answer. How little rhino, how he seemed to be the smallest thing in the whole wide rainforest! How the birdsong O, beloved little rhino, how low (In this caption, 'Here depicts a picture' is like saying 'Here a picture pictures.' Either 'Here is depicted'--too formal, maybe?--or 'here is pictured' would be less redundant. In the phrase 'to my and my own shame only,' I suggest a change to 'to my shame and my own shame only' despite the repetition. You say 'it tiniest sorrow' when you should say 'its.') Saddest little rhino! All day and all night he mourned his old life, when, ah, a miracle! Child of his momma looked up “Silly baby rhino,” said baby rhino’s momma. “I was just tending to your cousin Peacock, who, foolish And momma, she told baby rhino the story of silly Cousin Peacock, until he closed his eyes and slept. And momma, though she did not know why, saw that baby rhino had not tantrumed (this isn't a word; if you care about that, 'thrown a tantrum' would work) for what he wanted. And perhaps, perhaps, baby rhino, in being for so short a time a saddest little rhino, would And that shall we see, when we return to baby rhino and his momma. For now it’s time for other stories, and if you shall so enquire, perhaps I shall Kaishai fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Jun 4, 2013 |
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Jun 4, 2013 07:17
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Nubile Hillock posted:Still need a judge + prompt for me and jonas! Kaishai, I'm lookin at you.... Allrighty, then! Nubile Hillock vs. JonasSalk Thunderbrawl: Last Wagon Train to Thermopylae You both like ancient Greece, do you? So do I! The terms of your battle, therefore, are these: write a story inspired by Greek history and/or mythology through the Peloponnesian War--400 BC is your cut-off date. Your stories don't have to be set in that time period, although that would be acceptable. Write about archaeology or Space Spartans if you so choose; an imaginative interpretation will work in your favor if you pull it off. Just make sure you don't leave me wondering what the hell is so Greek about this entry. I also wish your story to include a wagon in some way. Whether it's greater than the sum of its parts is irrelevant to me, Hillock, you weirdo. Maximum word count: 1,100 words. Deadline: Sunday, June 9, 11:59pm U.S. Eastern.
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Jun 5, 2013 16:24
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In. 15 You doubt that Grace will talk your mother into a trip to China, so you decide not to worry about that. Your own plan is much more feasible. For years your mother and your uncle Zakhar have both bandied about the idea of you going overseas to visit him in Yakutsk. You spring the notion on your mother as soon as you get home, and after several phone calls and e-mails to Russia, everything is arranged: your trip begins three days after Christmas. Uncle Zakhar meets you at the airport and drives you to his condo, which is tiny, but you're so glad to be off the plane and out of the shattering cold that you barely notice. For the first couple of days you stick to getting to know your uncle. Then, over dinner, you work chrome diopside into the conversation. "Sure, there are mines south of here," he says. "Far south." "Could we visit?" you ask. "You want to freeze your fingers off? Nothing is happening there now." "Uncle Zakhar...." You decide to bring him in on the secret. "Have you heard about the Zopper Toothpaste treasure?" His response is not what you hoped. He slams his palm against on the table. "This is why you came to see me in winter like a crazy person. I'm your hotel so you can play the hunting game. No! I won't take you to the mines. I don't want to hear about it again." He's harsh, but he's not wrong, and guilt almost stops you from borrowing his car, some money, and a credit card the next day to make for the mines on your own. You promise yourself that when you find the treasure, buying a house larger than a closet for Uncle Zakhar will be your very first act. Driving around in a foreign country, in a "borrowed" vehicle, with a learner's permit and maps you can't read isn't the easiest way to conduct a hunt, however. It's fortunate that you find men who speak English in a gas station between Yakutsk and the mining town of Aldan. They're willing to point you toward a productive mining site in exchange for cash bribes, but their laughter follows you out to the car. You reach the site at night. Instead of the openings into underground shafts that you imagined, the mine is a wide bowl, a quarry, open to the snow and sky. Looking south, you spot three familiar stars: Orion's Belt. Orion! The Hunter! Excitement drives away all your doubts--though they rush back as you consider the pale blanket that hides everything but the general shape of the earth. Taking a flashlight from Uncle Zakhar's glove compartment, a shovel and snowshoes from his trunk, you creak slowly down into the bowl. Digging aimlessly won't get you anywhere; the site is far too big. You shine your light around, and you think you see an answering glint to your left! A reflection? Another light? Is someone else here? Or could the flash have come from a marker left by Mr. Zopper? If you want to investigate the glint, turn to Page 9. If you sit tight and watch to see whether the light comes back, turn to Page 18. Kaishai fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Jul 15, 2013 |
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Jun 5, 2013 20:53
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Nubile Hillock posted:STILL NEED A BRAWLJUDGE SOMEONE GODDAMN VOLUNTEER GODDAMMIT HILLOCK LEARN TO READ IT'S ON THIS PAGE AND EVERYTHING.
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Jun 5, 2013 22:35
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A New Song (888 words) (Verse: Psalm 40, also found here.) "Prisoner 8526, how do you plead?" "Not guilty, Justiciar." "Prosecutor Reynolds, how do you find her?" "On the charge of breaking and entering, guilty. On the charge of assault, guilty. On the charge of murder, guilty." "The bastard killed Jackie! He murdered--he--!" "Silence from the condemned!" Colonial police fixed cuffs around Mallory's wrists and marched her from the court to surgery, where rubber-clad fingers forced her jaw open and a laser cut her vocal cords: she would never speak against Theodore Reynolds again, to his prosecuting brother or anyone else. They took her to the clay pit and gave her a shovel, with which, they told her, she would dig for the rest of her days. The slow give of the clay beneath the bite of the blade felt enough like the give of Theodore's chest under her knife that Mallory could pretend she killed him again, a hundred times, a thousand times. It helped. A latticed laser fence guarded the pit and its workforce. She'd glimpsed it every day through her laboratory window. From a distance, the crisscrossing beams had a sharp beauty. Only inside did one hear the high-pitched whine of their generators, a constant through every hour; a concert that never ended; a nightmare from which she couldn't wake. A few weeks into her sentence, another prisoner escaped the sound by throwing himself at the fence. Prosecutor Reynolds--a frequent visitor to the pit--watched him die. Mallory tightened her grip on the shovel and prayed: O Lord, keep me sane. Get me out of here. She struck the ground until her new calluses tore and blood ran down the shovel's handle, and she counted each blow as an execution. He deserved it. He deserved it. Footsteps behind her one day warned Mallory to turn. A woman's shovel slammed into her shoulder, and Mallory screamed silently--they both did: the attacker bared her teeth in a mad rictus--as her collarbone cracked and agony jolted through her right side. She lunged up and swung her own shovel with her strong left hand, clubbed the other woman to the ground, hit her in the head with dirt-encrusted steel. One more blow. One more death. Mallory dropped to her knees and felt the woman's neck for the pulse that wasn't there. The woman's open eyes were hazel, like Jackie's. The orange light of Pollux turned her hair the same shade of chestnut that Jackie's had been. Crumpled on her side, she was helpless now, just like.... Rough hands hauled Mallory away from the corpse and to the guardhouse to be patched up and shot up with painkillers. The body was gone when they sent her back to work. But she remembered. Her prayers changed. Lord, protect her soul. The feel of clay breaking under her shovel made her tear ducts burn. The dust stained her hands, vivid as rust. Or blood. Keep her safe from him, if he isn't in Hell. I couldn't do it. Whenever she closed her eyes she saw her little sister, not smiling as in life, not laid out in her casket with Theodore standing in a husband's place and trying to look sad, but sprawled on the red dirt. She deserved so much more. Tell her I'm sorry. Please. Months passed. A year passed. She lost count of the shovel blows, of the prayers she mouthed soundlessly. Her pleas and her regrets kept her tethered to sanity by drowning out the lasers' incessant keen. Lightning flashed in the west, and storm clouds turned the afternoon to dusk. Guards led each of the other prisoners into the guardhouse, but Mallory kept digging as rain pounded the dust from her hair and turned the ground under her feet to slime: forgotten, perhaps. Overlooked, perhaps. The wind and the generators sang a duet. She dropped her shovel and half-ran, half-crawled for the lee of a boulder. And that was where Prosecutor Reynolds found her. The rain made a shade of him. He stood over her with an energy pistol aimed at her forehead. She could make out that much: the nearest laser light gleamed off its end. In a flare of lightning, she saw his cold face. He looked so much like his brother. O Lord, do I deserve to die? If she did, then so be it. She trusted Him to judge as she no longer could. White fire struck one of the generators. Electricity roared and metal shrieked over the whine that keened higher for a microsecond--Prosecutor Reynolds hit his knees, covering his ears and screaming, screaming; he hadn't spent a year under the song, and Mallory wrenched the pistol from his hand. Then she was the one above him, bracing herself against the boulder and fixing the laser sight between his eyes. Theodore's eyes. They stared at her again, disbelieving again, and again terrified. Mallory's lips formed words: God, Jackie, forgive me. She slammed the side of the weapon into the prosecutor's temple. He collapsed, but his pulse beat strong under her fingers and the rain. Through the gap made by the dead generator, Mallory left him and the clay. She climbed out of the pit, and her feet found solid ground; she laughed, wildly, and sound emerged from her throat, raw and new and reborn.
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Jun 9, 2013 22:36
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 NUBILE HILLOCK VS. JONASSALK: THUNDERBRAWL RESULTS FOR THE BLIND!!! THE PROMPT: Write a story inspired by Greek history and/or mythology prior to 400 BC. Include a wagon. THE WINNER: Nubile Hillock. Read on for a breakdown and individual critiques. Nubile Hillock, your mélange of ancient Greek and modern Western cultures won you the fight. You've got a gift for making a story feel true to this period of history, and apparently it doesn't matter when or where it's set. I think you may actually have failed at what you were trying to do: this isn't humorous. If it was meant to be, no dice. You achieved a different and magical effect. JonasSalk, you were outfought this time, but your piece was worthy of the challenge. You used your wagon as more than a there-and-gone prop. You retold a classic myth in a mostly credible and amusing way. Individual crits follow. Nubile Hillock: "The Oracle of Selfie" You chose to bring Delphi to a modern-day setting. Bike polo is your Pan-Athenaic Game, weed is your sacrificial smoke, an iPhone is your Apollo (I think he'd rather be an iPod, but I won't claim to know the minds of gods), and a... barista is your Pythia? This part of the setting doesn't work that well: I can't tell what the Oracle's modern analog is supposed to be or where in the mall your protagonist consults her. This bothers me since I suspect I'm missing a reference. I'm not sure either whether the protagonist is high as a kite and she's taking him for a ride, or the protagonist is high as a kite but has stumbled on a vestige of genuine Olympic worship. I'd prefer the latter, but it doesn't really matter. Your fusion of times may not be 100% effective, but I'm impressed by how Greek this still feels to me--as in your Draco piece, you've captured a mindset, and if it's not authentic, it's close enough to let this non-expert imagine a mall as an echo of Hellas. I didn't expect this piece from you. Greek bros? Maybe. Serious Greek drama? Maybe. A cross that manages to touch on both types of story, absurd but not funny, and oddly luminous for it? Not so much. In a way, this is your best work that I've read. I think its magic lies in the dead earnestness of the protagonist, however nonsensical his beliefs may look from outside his mind. Grammar is a weak point. 'I ran my hands along my steel steed’s spine, it was warm from my touch. Still I could divine nothing, the Gods were mute.' In the first sentence the comma should be a semi-colon or period; the comma of the second should be either a semi-colon, a period, or a full colon. Most of the errors I see are of this kind. They don't ruin the story, but every one is a small distraction. You also use 'lucent' when you mean 'lucid,' unless the protagonist is glowing. 'Dead set' shouldn't have a hyphen. What's the delicate paper bag? Is that a gift card in there? Would this make more sense if I knew what the temple was supposed to be? Last but not least in weight, this is a vignette and not really a story. 'A strange man visits an oracle to find out whether his next match will suck, with unfavorable results' doesn't have much in the way of plot or character arc. Did I still enjoy reading it? I did. Would it stand alone outside this thread or this prompt? Doubtful, but maybe, and I'd want to read the magazine that took it. JonasSalk: "Here The Sun Falls" This probably isn't the best work of yours that I've read--for my money that would still be your Eurovision story, although you came close here. It's definitely the best humor piece I've seen you do. I got a grin out of this retelling of the Phaeton myth. I particularly like how you took the wagon part of the prompt and made it central to the concept--you did a better job in this regard than Hillock. You've arguably got more of a plot arc, though yours is also pretty thin. Things happen. Is there a conclusion other than Helios getting a nap? Sort of, but that ending depends somewhat on knowledge of the Phaeton story. You have a few problems. The worst is probably that the second two paragraphs of your second section don't fit, though the godly Muzak line is funny. Elevators? Companies? In every other respect, this is set in the age of myth. The modern stuff sticks out like a sore thumb to no purpose. On a related note, Phaeton knows in this section that Helios drives a goat wagon, but later he demands to ride his father's horses. This isn't consistent. 'He had heard that the goats did poo poo thunder and piss wind, but that made no sense as they were sun goats not storm goats' is a good line (I could take or leave the 'did' in the first clause; it sets up a rough formal/informal language contrast, and I think that's what you're going for, so okay), but 'Let the goats poo poo piss and fart thunder on him' feels like overkill, like you're flinging those words about for the joy of doing so, teehee! It's a touch too much. Plus, Phaeton's got a point: why would sun goats be horning in on Zeus's schtick? Try picking just one of those verbs and changing 'thunder' to fire or flame. Your ending is dark if one is familiar with Phaeton's fate, as I'm sure you are. Helios naps while his son burns himself to death and nearly takes the world with him. This has a lot of potential; it could work better if the humor were thinned out, and the removal of the elevator gag might be enough. If you were going for that dark mood, I suggest changing 'Look at the flame' to 'Look at him burning' or something similar that leaves no doubt Phaeton himself is on fire. On the other hand, if you wanted a lighter end that focuses more on Helios getting his nap, those hints at Phaeton's real story work against you. Finally, the verb tenses in this are a mess. 'Helios had found that one does not take a wagon and goats out for a galloping jaunt' switches between past perfect and present, yikes. Most of your present-tense interjections don't work for me, except for the final section addressing the reader directly and the parenthetical asides. I could do without the bit about copyright infringement, but 'for verily, I say unto thee, the ladies do love sex under the sun' got a chuckle. This story may not have won, but it's cute and a sign that you're continuing to improve. Kaishai fucked around with this message at 09:15 on Jun 10, 2013 |
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Jun 10, 2013 07:39
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JonasSalk posted:In: "No man is rich enough to buy back his past." As you are the first to claim a quote someone else has also chosen, I give you a Flash Rule: Duplication must play a role in your story.
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Jun 12, 2013 02:50
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PoshAlligator posted:Not really feeling decision making today, and I love all of his quotes (a pocket book of which is on my desk right next to me), so I'd prefer it if you gave me a quote. A quote for you: "Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not." And with it, a Flash Rule: Someone in your story must make an important decision.
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Jun 12, 2013 20:48
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Sitting Here posted:Step into my self-pub erotica thread *waggles eyebrows at u* Flash Rule: Your story must include an entrepreneur. Preferably a billionaire.
Kaishai fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Jun 13, 2013 |
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Jun 13, 2013 01:10
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Dr. Kloctopussy posted:Someone hit me with a flash rule, pretty please. Two for the price of one: Flash Rule #2: One of your characters should be remarkably polite.Kaishai fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Jun 15, 2013 |
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Jun 15, 2013 04:44
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Critiques for Week XLV: In Which Too Many of You Make Me Envy Oscar That Whole Being Beyond Pain Thing Not one of Thunderdome's better weeks, though there were a couple of gems amidst the dross. Oscar Wilde's ghost would be disappointed if it could tear itself away from ghostly absinthe long enough to care. sebmojo and I agreed altogether about who rose to the occasion; alas, we agreed on the loser too. Also: thank you for the nautilus, mysterious benefactor! Mercedes, "Anger Management" Quote: "True friends stab you in the front." I will try to be a true friend to you, Mercedes! You can't make up your mind whether you're in third-person present tense or second-person present. That's a level of error that makes submitting five days before deadline seem rather unwise. Seriously, what the hell: Zoraida is the protagonist, but lines like 'Yet somehow the two of you bonded immensely and you now consider her your best friend; your only friend really, besides your boyfriend' float around like a half-decayed fish corpse in an aquarium, trailing slime everywhere. The not-word 'alright' is a fragment of intestine that has broken loose to hover before my disgusted eyes. I don't know what using 'your' in place of 'you're' would be in this metaphor--a string of fishy fecal matter tangled around the body? Sure, why not. Strained comparisons aside, you don't keep the verb tenses straight even within one perspective. 'Zoraida explodes, holding her beer bottle like a club and swinging it at Rucks. He was not expecting such a sudden attack. His arms didn't come up quick enough to protect his temple from the vicious strike.' Present, past, past. Pick one. The characterization, pacing, and structure are varying degrees of bad. Zoraida has a single personality trait, her anger. Rucks has two if you count 'being kinda racist' alongside his cheating ways. Elise is cardboard, so switching to her perspective in the second section serves no purpose but to dump exposition on the reader's head. None of the deaths in the story move me at all. I don't care about these people. Maybe if you'd stuck to Zoraida--shown her reaction to hearing about Elise's death, given her more than one emotion--then I would give a drat whether she hangs herself. Maybe. At least she'd be more than an Angry Black Stereotype. Speaking of which, making Zoraida a stereotype is the only thing your profanity achieves: I give you a D- in Effective Cursing. There's no point to a tragedy in which you feel nothing for the main character because she's a one-dimensional caricature, race-based or otherwise. You hit your flash rule. The Wilde quote applies only if I squint. I could read it as 'Elise went around behind Zoraida's back and thus wasn't a true friend,' and that's fair enough but irrelevant to the plot. Zoraida attacks Rucks head-on, but since she kills him, I'm not sold on the truth of that friendship. To sum up: You gave everyone else reason to think they didn't need to write brilliantly to avoid losing this week. Thanks for that. Next round, bring characters with some depth to the table. ********** PotatoManJack, "Starting Over at the End" Quote: "Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future." What you've got here is a chain of exposition. You tell everything and show nothing, and your telling is passive, unengaging, and padded with details that don't matter. The result is dull. Barely anything happens. You could cut your first five paragraphs. We don't need to know Michael's past for the sake of the plot or your quote, and they don't do much to develop Michael's character. The detail that he didn't want to physically hurt anyone, while nice, isn't worth starting us off with such an infodump. It's like the opposite of a hook. If you badly want the flashback, it could be slimmed quite a bit. It doesn't matter that Michael and Nathan staked out the shop, that it was a chain store, that the cop was off-duty or even that he had a gun, that Nathan could have been busted but wasn't, that Nathan wouldn't be picking Michael up; this is all just bloat. Unnecessary details plague the story, and what makes it worse is how repetitive and/or redundant some of them are. You tell us four times that Michael expects Billy to be waiting for him. 'Three years had ingrained this reaction in him'--you've already told us how long Michael has been in prison, and the adverb 'automatically' in the previous sentence implies the ingrained reaction part. 'A fanfare of hoots and hollers that accompanied any prisoner being released'--I'd cut everything after 'hollers'; we don't need to know the prison's rituals, and we already know Michael's being let go. Etc. Once Michael's out of the prison, the infodumps improve. The one about David establishes character and pertains to your quote. David shouldn't have to tell Michael their mother is an only child, but otherwise I believe their conversation, given their circumstances. You still have too much exposition and too little else. I'd sort of like to see David drive Michael to the home where their parents are so Michael has to face what's become of them first hand. The 'I have six months to live' thing is cliche. Again, I'd prefer something different. Michael's future could have involved helping David rather than supplanting him. That said, I like where you went with 'every sinner has a future,' and I like sainted David's 'past' being nothing more sinister than not making enough time for his brother. It still had consequences for the family. Your grammar's pretty rough. Lots of missing commas, especially in and around dialogue. Missing or extraneous words mar certain phrases: 'a few minutes silence,' 'because of a bad luck.' If you don't see the problems yourself when you have time to edit, take this to the Fiction Farm and ask for help. To sum up: Dull. Not terrible, mind you. I hope you have more time to revise next round. ********** Schneider Heim, "All That They Could Do" Quote: "Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes." Bugs? Troopers? Is this fanfic? It seems strangely familiar.... I haven't read that much SF of this type, but I still recognize the cliches of alien 'bugs,' a barking sergeant, young troops getting a glimpse of reality in the scars on an older soldier, and a series of horrible deaths on the way to the final confrontation. You haven't done much new with any of it. On the other hand, until the end you handled the ideas competently, and the story was mildly engaging. Most of your cast was cardboard, but Abnett and Bowens had potential. Then bugs gassed them and everyone died. Bowens didn't survive, neither did Abnett, and I can't see the point of any of it. The troopers didn't make particular mistakes that caused their deaths. They died because of a lack of information, as best I can tell. They had no agency. So where's the story worth telling? You address the quote, and your grammar is pretty sound aside from 'alright' (ugh), 'when I had been a lowly trooper like you' (this should be in past tense, not the past perfect: 'when I was'), and 'as a biter slayed him' (should be 'slew'). You should be safe this week, but don't make a habit of non-endings. To sum up: It would be a decent pulp-style read if it had a meaningful conclusion and either contained more original ideas or used familiar concepts in a more original way. sebmojo agrees, however, that you've written fanfic, and you are therefore disqualified. ********** PoshAlligator, "The Importance of Being Greg" Quote: "Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not." '“How did you know I said it without an 'e'?”' Groan. 'Sheep of a cloth.' What? 'Quesadilla, quesadilla.' I cannot put myself in the narrator's place if 'I' don't call Greg out on the difference between 'que sera, sera' and food.  Maybe the idea is that Greg mixes up sayings left and right, but 'I' could stand to reflect on the fact for the reader's benefit. So you landed the cruelest of flash rules--for us, if not for you. Probably for you too. You didn't do so badly; this isn't a story that benefits from being in second person at all, and that's a missed opportunity, but at least you stayed in the perspective throughout, and the plot was easy to follow. Up to a point. I wonder whether I'm missing a reference to a play or a work of Wilde's that would make the body-swap at the end make some sort of sense. 'Word vomit' might be going too far, but there's an incoherence here for which the second-person perspective isn't responsible. Looking under the spoiler tags, I agree your important decision didn't come across in the sense you meant it to--all I see is Mike pressing her about how he's weird, never deciding to tell her anything. His decision to play along with Greg's Patty Duke scheme covers that flash rule, though. I saw the reflection of your quote in the unfairly-good-for-Michael outcome before I checked the spoiler, so that's all right. But this doesn't read as tragedy or comedy. Regarding your question: I think you could have combined the last two scenes with some sort of one-line time jump along the lines of 'You're too preoccupied by the question to enjoy the rest of the play.' You were out of words, but you could have clipped some out of the first section's banter especially--you could have cut the Wild/e joke. Nothing of value would have been lost. (Seriously, it's too cutesy-meta for this story.) The Scooby Doo interlude could have been canned wholesale. Three scenes wouldn't have been too many. I wouldn't have minded four, even, as long as they each had a point. You should do another round of proofreading and/or take this to the Farm. Small points: I strongly suggest using Greg's name instead of 'he' in the first sentence. You need a period after 'quesadilla.' You frequently put commas before dependent clauses (clauses with no subject of their own, such as 'and have to admit you're not entirely sure what Greg's on about'). In such cases, either lose the comma or stick a subject in there: 'and you have to admit' etc. The name of the play should be underlined or in italics. The clause 'you know he knows you did it' makes my eyes cross. (What did I do? Did I murder my rich great-aunt for her inheritance? Oh, wait, I shrugged. Somehow this seems a dramatic way of putting it!) To sum up: I don't dislike this as much as my criticisms may suggest, but it's neither funny nor sad. Nor is it altogether coherent. ********** Auraboks, "What could possibly go wrong?" Quote: "Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." You've used a narrative voice that suggests a third party is telling this story to the reader, which makes your mix of present and past tense kinda-sorta work (some lines read better than others; 'it was the best idea anyone's ever had' makes me wince), but the sentence 'Bob was willing to admit that fire was on par with his new idea' stands out. A third-person narrator can be thinking about cavemen having good ideas, or Bob can be thinking about it, but when they both do I feel like I'm witnessing some kind of freaky mind meld. 'Take no notice of the pencil he was holding being flung across the room.' Ow. Now you're turning the story itself to present tense, and you're making me picture the pencil being flung while he was holding it. No sir, I don't like it. (The idea for this chatty narrator was fine. The execution hurts you because the voice distracts me from the story instead of adding humor as I'm guessing you wanted it to do.) The quote. Enh. I'm not crazy about how you've worked it in. Billy says it aloud (more or less), but neither brother seems to hold it as a personal view. Still, that counts, and it's clear you were going for comedy; some of your lines amused me, so I'd call you the most successful thus far in that respect. That's not saying a lot, though--with the story ending with Bob's launch instead of the launch's outcome, the joke feels incomplete to me. You had room to take it further! To sum up: Wonky execution mars the humor for me, and this, too, could use a stronger ending. ********** Nubile Hillock, "and such" Quote: "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." Okay, this is one of those 'let's see if I understand this' stories. My take: your narrator is one of several people camping out on a beach; he doesn't know why, or at least he doesn't remember. In fact, he doesn't remember anything of his life before the beach. All he knows is the routine of lakeside bonfires with Mona presiding as prophet and priestess. He isn't satisfied; he wishes to recall, but when he presses Mona too far, he dies of something like electrocution. I'm wondering whether it isn't all a metaphor for excessive drinking given the Hangover Halo, an idea that intrigues me. Are the forgetfulness, the isolation from the outside world, the dull complacency, the endless repetition, the 'nothing,' and the ultimate death all part of this? Maaaaybe I'm reading too much into things. That would be pretty cool if it were true, though. Anyway, ignoring interpretations that may be harebrained, your setting leaves me with a lot of questions, like how the bonfire replenishes itself and what these people are living on if they've been there any length of time. (How many Pop Tarts did they bring? You should capitalize brand names, by the way.) How does the narrator know how to interpret the feathers on Mona's mask when he and the other characters appear to be drifters from the modern Western world? 'There is nothing' is the truth, and searching for more leads to oblivion. This is grim. I don't know whether I'd call it tragedy. You switch from past to present and back again with gleeful and ill-considered abandon. I'd suggest sticking to present for this one: the immediacy works. To sum up: This is interesting. It may be ambitious depending on what you were trying to do. The conclusion is abrupt and verges on meaningless, however, and there isn't much emotion on the surface level--it almost needs to be a metaphor to work. ********** Sitting Here, "Symbols and Maps" Quote: "Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more." I like this, and I have only two serious problems with it. First: comedy? Tragedy? I wouldn't call it either. It's certainly not funny, but a moment of realization without loss isn't tragic. If anything, the protagonist's future looks more hopeful at the end than in the beginning. Second: there's a lot of infodumping in the early paragraphs. The second and third paragraphs are pure exposition; the second works for me, the third does not. Probably because it reads more like 'look at what I know about the dot-com bust' than like anything intended to establish character or relevant setting details. '"That was some voodoo you pulled when you were with Appster. When are you gonna stop kicking all our asses man?"' isn't very graceful either. There's rather more elegance in your approach to your quote, specifically its second half: the implication I see is that the lady artist (or whatever she is) is leading Erik toward the kind of true progress she has already begun. Nice. Erik and the lady are intriguing people. They reach a conclusion--a moment of change--and I'm satisfied, if curious about what happens after. It's my favorite piece so far, but that not-tragic-not-comic element could do you in. To sum up: It needed to be comic or tragic; it was neither. Other than that, I quite enjoyed it. ********** crabrock, "Manual of a Dream" Quote: "I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability." Something about the way this was written set my teeth on edge. Other stories of yours haven't done that; the phrasings here are unusually strange. Every time I got past an odd bit of structure, grammar, or word usage, another one would leap up and go for my throat. It's a shame. This is a weird, quirky tragi-comedy, a cross between a horrific Twilight Zone episode and a ridiculously goofy one. The execution is lacking, but the idea's a keeper. Among the things that drove me nuts: the line about Joe working a job doesn't make sense. Making all those dolls on commission is a job. If you mean a desk job or formal employment, say that--or better yet, don't; that sentence and the one after it don't tell me anything Joe I couldn't figure out from him having a zillion dolls in his workroom, and they make the first paragraph awkward as sin. That colon in the first sentence of your third paragraph doesn't work for me at all. I'd far prefer 'he said' be thrown in. Who did Joe promise these dolls to? His client is a big blank space in the story and it bugs me. 'Joe’s insomniac neighbor had finally known what it was to sleep the first time the soulless vessels filled the night with their unholy wailing'--I can parse this sentence, but there has to be a better way. Your prose veers toward purple at the oddest times. I think you're doing it for comedic effect? It's not working that way, at least not for me. In the first sentence of the second paragraph, you wanted 'were articulated' since articulated, as a verb, means 'expressed clearly.' The number in 'I have 6 days' should be spelled out. I'd stick to one perspective, Joe's, if at all possible--except for the last paragraph; that PoV switch works just fine. You could chop the sentences/clauses in Harry's point of view without losing anything, and it would do wonders for your structure. Good use of your quote. I'm amused by Joe creating the dolls as the equivalent to God creating Man. I wouldn't say you hit tragedy or comedy cleanly, but your mix holds the idea of each. You get full marks on the prompts. To sum up: It was put together in such a way that I didn't enjoy reading it. That said, the idea was kinda fun. The conclusion is the high point. ********** Walamor, "The Price of the Favored" Quote: "Those whom the gods love grow young." Theo's heist sequence is a bit rough in a likely-to-get-better-with-practice way: the exposition's a little clumsy, and the actions don't flow as well as they could. It reads sort of like 'Theo did this. Theo did that. Then Theo did this, and that, and such, and Theo did this, and it's a run-on sentence.' Stress on sort of because it's not nearly that bad. You've varied your phrasing and rhythm. Theo and Sophia's conversation is better, the goddamned 'alright' aside. I believe these two as a couple of idiot, amoral kids. But then... oy to the vey. Sofia and Theo explaining the Favored is awful. It's out of nowhere, this renewal thing, and it has nothing to do with the plot--if Sofia were a spoiled princess stringing Theo along for money, this scene could play out exactly the same. You bring the concept into the story with the grace of a mortal man trying to shot-put an anvil. It doesn't need to be there, which means the quote hasn't been folded into the story. There was nothing before this point to suggest a sci-fi setting, either. The abrupt change of genre is most disconcerting. The death of the romance-that-never-was is suitably tragic, though. If that eleventh-hour infodump just weren't there... you wouldn't be my winner or close to it, but I'd probably like the piece. One minor point: when you say 'Guards were collapsing on him from all directions,' a different verb would be better; maybe 'converging'? To sum up: Your otherwise-okay work is kneecapped by horrible exposition. The quote needed to influence your story, not to be shoehorned in at the last minute. ********** Nikaer Drekin, "Monsieur Musée and the Loss of the Lexicon (Or; The Benefits of In-House Security)" Quote: ""The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you." Nikaer Drekin posted:yeah screw editing amirite guys No.  Your mistakes aren't so bad aside from the dangling participle in the sentence starting with 'Formerly your everyday curator'--it needs more proofing, but I was somewhat distracted from that by Hercule Poirot as an art-powered Superman. I doubt M. Musée is meant to be Poirot, but I imagined David Suchet with his little moustache as your protagonist nonetheless, and I highly recommend this exercise. I had little choice but to love your work afterward. And it gets better! He rockets out of the Louvre! He fights against truth and understanding! His utility belt is filled with paint! The ending wraps up the story in a satisfying way! Of course, as I read over it again I noticed things like the inconsistent capitalization in mon Dieu and the way you italicize Mona Lisa but not The Astronomer. Rrrgh. But the serious scratch on your canvas is Musée's infodump about the Vivisector. This homage to anvilicious comic-book exposition--if that's what it is--would be less of a sore thumb if its longest sentence weren't so contorted. Your use of the quote is great: you've centered the plot and climax on its idea. If your interpretation is literal, I'm not inclined to complain. Your choice of genre is obvious. In my books, this is successful comedy. To sum up: One of the best of the week; this tickled my funny bone the most. It's not a clear winner, however. There is another. ********** Jopoho, "Incompetent" Quote: "Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives." A few stories could have stood to be longer, but yours is the only one that very much needed to be shorter. Your premise doesn't support much length. You wrote about a bored man being bored while interesting/horrible things happen out of his view, and it works--the sense of missing critical events in favor of nothing of importance puts me in sympathy with Eric--but dragging the boredom out so long... well, it's boring. You could cut the paragraphs about water-sliding and fake emergencies. They have a slightly comic tone anyway that doesn't fit the overall mood. What remained would be enough to establish that Eric hates the dullness of his job yet is determined to do it well. Aside from that, this is a decent piece: I wince for Eric's horror when he realizes what he's done, and because I care what happens to him, it's effective tragedy. The prose is competent, albeit rough around the edges. One example: 'Not unusual for the time of the evening, but it happened a lot more suddenly.' Awkward. 'Not unusual for that time of the evening, but it happened suddenly' might be better--the 'but' already implies that the suddenness is unusual. Your first paragraph reads stiffly to me. 'Each passing iteration' and 'alleviate the pain of chlorine burning one’s eyes' are rather formal phrasings for the context. You use the past tense in places where you should use past perfect, such as 'In his time, Eric never saw anyone so interested in that fence': the correct tense would be 'Eric had never seen' etc. It all just wants more polish. The line 'You stuck with the protocol created to save lives, and I ignored it to save lives' is so ham-handed that it lessens the impact of your ending. Try to make Brian sound less self-righteous. You could possibly stop with 'Look, everyone did the right thing in their own way.' I'm not entirely sold on Eric's choice being stupid as per your quote. If I were him, I would have expected Brian to yell and wave his arms and try a lot harder to get my attention if it were life and death. But the quote clearly influenced the piece. Oh, and the title is excellent. To sum up: Shortening this would improve it by leaps and bounds: boredom is not exciting to read about at length. It's still a decent story, though. ********** Accretionist, "The Last Maid" Quote: "In marriage three is company and two is none." I took your quote to mean that married couples don't spend much time together; you went a more adulterous, 'three's a crowd' direction. I wish you'd gone the other way, if only because that might not have led to the soap-opera-style death dominoes that make your ending less tragedy than farce. It's so contrived! Sarah's death is an unfortunate accident, fine, but Sam happens to head straight for the pregnancy test, then kills himself; Tabitha independently decides to kill herself right after Conrad gets home to hear the shot; it's all set up so Conrad will suffer as much as possible. That's what I mean by death dominoes: everything has obviously been arranged by you. This is not a natural sequence of events. The characters are puppets. As with Mercedes' story, I feel nothing for them. Summing up most of the deaths in a clumsy infodump at the end didn't help. Jeeze criminy, Samson was never even alive on camera. You shifted from past tense to present tense midway through the story. Don't do that. It served no artistic or dramatic purpose here. (And switching mid-sentence as you did in 'Sarah's head snaps back as Tabitha reached for her collar' will never look right.) I'd go with past tense if I were you since the present tense increases the overdone feeling of the drama, but it's more important to be consistent with whichever one you pick. Formatting-wise, some sort of symbol (# is popular) to mark your scene breaks would make for easier on-screen reading. You switch PoVs within the same scene, too. Are we seeing Sarah and Tabitha's fight through Sarah's eyes or Tabitha's eyes? Choose one and stick with it. Other issues are comparatively minor, but a few dialogue attributions in Conrad and Sarah's conversation would be helpful, and be careful of using he/she when it might not be clear which he/she you mean. Such as here: 'He tried to focus. He still hadn't when she arrived.' The last 'she' was Sarah. I can figure out you mean Tabitha now, but I have to stop and think. To sum up: Pretty bad, sadly. You're lucky that other stories were worse. This probably needed a sense of restraint more than anything. ********** JonasSalk, "Look, There Be Gold" Quote: "No man is rich enough to buy back his past." This... is really bad. I wavered, but you ultimately got my vote for the loss because I could barely parse your piece. Two first-person protagonists? I see what you were trying to do, but--you didn't mention the main character's name before 'older Bagger' showed up, and I had no idea why the tap-dancing hell Ronnie was talking to a Civil War carpetbagger all of a sudden. The ending isn't worth trying to keep the duplicates straight. It appears to be going for poignancy--which Bagger is dead?--but this premise and treatment and everything aren't rigged for emotional depth. And think: if you'd written the older clone's perspective in third person instead and hadn't revealed his identity, the reader wouldn't have known who this mysterious rich man was until the Raggy Blue Enigma Team unmasked him. Talk about a missed opportunity. Also, it sounds like this Jack person had four eyeballs. That's weird. The forming and reforming of the team doesn't make sense even on the second or third read. Do they replace the whole team with clones every time a single member is shot? 'Randomly selected' clones? Did you write a crossover of Scooby Doo and Parts: the Clonus Horror? My head hurts. The story's meant to be funny, but it isn't. Plot holes I probably wouldn't care about if I were busy laughing gape wide before me. You have a lot of grammar issues. A missing space, an unnecessary carriage return, 'it's' in place of 'its,' etc. Proofing can't save this story, but watch out for the small stuff in the future. I will say, you hit your flash rule and kinda got your quote. Kiiiiiinda. I must have missed Bagger trying to buy back his past, unless it was part of Ben's nebulously defined plan. I think, at this point, that the advice I'd most like to give you is to rethink these all-but-fanfic parodies of outside sources. Your Greek brawl story did cute things with an established myth, but reinterpreting cartoons and fairy tales didn't work so well in your pulp entry, in your fable, or here. I'd like to see more ideas that come just from you. To sum up:  ********** Fumblemouse, "The Proposal" Quote: "The well-bred contradict others. The wise contradict themselves." Is the Dowager's feather part of a boa? A hat adornment? A peacock plume rising from a slash in her skirt? The mystery intrigues me, but it's irrelevant to the story at large, much like the rest of your first paragraph. You had to get Samuel and the Dowager off alone, but this is slapstick overkill compared to the sophisticated humor in the main body of your piece. ('Sophisticated': Hep C and HIV start to look classy when you've read a lot of TD stories, I suppose.) Actually, the HIV may be a small step too far, but otherwise your humor is the right level of ribald to contrast with the decorum of the setting and premise without becoming crass. Huzzah! And maybe the problem with the HIV is that it sounds rather less plausible than the rest of the revelations, tipping the scales toward a 'the Dowager is lying to ruin Angela's life' interpretation. I prefer being unsure of whether she's telling the truth or not; it's funnier that way. Poor Samuel is certainly wise to go back on his decision if he has received accurate information--a cad to lie about all that colliding of worlds and suchlike, but wise. Taking the Dowager at her word may be less sagacious. Nikaer's superhero gave my funny bone a sharper tap, but this story--the lack of a period after 'matchstick' aside; darn it Fumblemouse cut that out--is probably the more technically proficient. You do what Schneider Heim didn't by taking some familiar character types (lovelorn fiancé! Imposing noble biddy poised to stand in the way of his happiness!) and steering them down a road less traveled. My sympathy's with Samuel, but the Dowager (Dowager what, by the way? Duchess? Countess? Small point, but it bugs me) is the life of the story. I probably shouldn't be as pleased as I am that she died happy, given givens. To sum up: Character, humor, skill: this piece has them all, and it ranks second only to the adventure of Super-Poirot in my affections. The distance between them is so slight that I readily gave my blessing to your victory. ********** magnificent7, "Helping Death" Quote: "Moderation is a fatal thing; nothing succeeds like excess." I'm going to pick on some aspects of this, but let me say first that it's good. It's a huge improvement over your losing pieces. I like your idea; the execution and conclusion let you down somewhat, but the former is more rough than bad, and the latter would be a snap to change if you're so minded. The good: your protagonist is a psychopath; you never come out and say this. His actions and thoughts illustrate it. He intrudes on the deaths of strangers, believing himself some sort of guide because a dying man once looked him in the eyes. Other people's deaths are all about him to him, whatever he tells himself. As creepy as I find him, that creepiness seems intentional: you're in control of it. I can spare him a scrap of sympathy until the end, and that's enough to make me care what happens. The bad: those one-sentence scene introductions only last for two scenes and don't fit. I would cut them. The protagonist's motivation for deciding he was born to assist Death is thin even given his odd mind. I'm not sure how to fix this; maybe he needs to think about it longer. 'It wasn’t enough to watch a man die by accident' strongly foreshadows your ending--too strongly: I was just waiting for him to kill someone sooner or later, which stole the thunder from the conclusion. The way he personalizes Death really seems to come out of nowhere. I wonder how he got into the houses of the bedridden people; if he broke in, you should mention it. The conversation with Mrs. Langdon feels out of place. Most of all, I don't like your final line. This would be a deeper tragedy if killing Mr. Johnson did not put Death behind the protagonist; if it had been a futile, wasted, horrible gesture; and if the protagonist realized he could not escape. Letting one murder solve his problems is unsatisfying. Maybe it's the quote. To fit the story to the quote, the protagonist had to succeed. Away from TD, there's no reason you have to stay wed to the prompt, so I suggest rethinking this part if you do a rewrite. To sum up: A good story with the potential to be better. Keep writing like this, and someday you'll wear the crown. ********** toanoradian, "Quotesman No More" Quote: "I have nothing to declare except my genuis." Really, quote site? Really? Huh. You went absolutely literal with this. I don't see the quote anywhere in it save as a quote. Turning a mangled quote and your flash rule into a story of mangled quotes appeals to me, and so I call this choice good. You've filled your entry with other people's words and shown your research (knowledge?) to a degree that would be tedious in many cases, but it works here: the result's a bit meta; it's quirky; it's intriguing. It's not funny, though. And not tragic. I'd guess you intended the former, but I'm honestly not sure. You do, I think, take the quotes too far. That whole flashback to Langdon winning the contest--was the point to show what a quotesman does? That's what I thought, but then Sophie Wickham got the Quotesman of the Year Award for inventing a quote. Maybe the award is for best quote and not best quotesman; that would make more sense. (Although it sounds more like word salad than anything she'd get a prize for. Enh, awards go to strange things.) It's fuzzier than I would like. I don't get the ending. He's so put off by misquotes that he throws up. Where's the conclusion? Can he no longer be a quotesman, thus the title? Was there a point? I dunno! If I had to guess I'd say you got your legs cut off by the word limit. The vomit is still a more conclusive beat than some of the other stories managed, so there's that. The most significant technical errors I noticed were the tense shifts toward the end. 'The headaches had invaded his head and he can smell burning.' I know how you feel, sir. Also in present tense: 'his headaches sharpen.' To sum up: An intriguing, original approach to the quote, but the story itself is murky and lacks a satisfying conclusion. You wouldn't have won, but you wouldn't have lost. Kaishai fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Jun 19, 2013 |
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Jun 18, 2013 16:36
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In. 18 Crouching in the Siberian snow with your flashlight off isn't the most pleasant thing you've ever done. But sure enough, the distant flash appears again, and it moves in such a way that you're pretty sure there's a human hand in control. Who else would be out here? You're tempted to find out, but that silent light sweeping the basin, searching for you, makes your stomach knot up. You wait, doing your best to look like a rock. Going right and away from the light seems like a good option to you. You force your chilled knees to bend and your legs to work, and you keep to the mine's rim. The light doesn't return after its third sweep, and you cautiously flick yours back on. There's nothing to see but snow, a few outcroppings of stone, and a pennant the color of Raspberry Mint Explosion toothpaste. Wait a minute! You flounder toward the iced-over flag that sticks up at least two feet from the snow. The white crust around it is undisturbed! You hold your flashlight between your teeth as you put Uncle Zakhar's snow shovel to excellent use. Perhaps three feet down, braced against the quarry wall, you hit something wrapped in leather and fur: a wooden chest the size of your torso. Opening it with shaking hands, you expose hundreds of teeth made of gold and pure diamond to the Siberian starshine. They sparkle and gleam, every one of them cavity free. You've done it! You've found the great Zopper Toothpaste treasure! As you punch Uncle Zakhar's number into your cell, you wonder whether you can convince him his new house should be somewhere warm. THE END Kaishai fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Jul 15, 2013 |
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Jun 22, 2013 04:08
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Brick Red (1,003 words) (Thought experiment: The Utility Monster.) Only a few crayons remained in the middle of the table. All goofy colors, too: brick red, yellow-green, cornflower, periwinkle. Louis settled on the red for his pterodactyl, scrawling its wings across an entire page of paper with considerable artistic satisfaction. Adult footsteps approached his chair from behind. "Louis?" Miss Carol bent so her face hovered over his left shoulder. "Sam needs the brick red for his picture. He's drawing a schoolhouse, did you see?" "I'm drawing a dinosaur. A brick-colored dinosaur," Louis said. Miss Carol held out her hand. "I'll be done in a minute," Louis muttered. Miss Carol gave him half that, maybe, before gently pulling the crayon out of his hand and taking it to Sam's table. Sam didn't have a single sheet of paper, he had a swath torn from a butcher's roll. All the missing colors lay scattered near his elbows. The scrawny boy accepted the brick red from Miss Carol with his usual wide smile; Miss Carol, as always, smiled back. Louis had to admit Sam could draw good stuff--whatever he was working on, it would look like a grown-up had done it and would end up in some hall or other of the daycare center. Not in the room they were in, the one reserved for school-age kids: Sam's pictures already filled the nearest walls. Louis scowled down at his legless pterodactyl. He overheard Miss Nina, their other supervisor, say to Miss Carol, "We need to buy another box. Maybe you should have let Louis keep that crayon." "He's just scribbling." Miss Carol dismissed him. His ears burned. "There's plenty else for him to do. I don't think he enjoys drawing all that much, and it makes Sam so happy." Louis crumpled his dinosaur into a ball. On his way to the corner where the blocks were kept, he threw it in the trash. He built a small city out of the wooden blocks that smelled like a carpentry shop, square-block houses with triangle-block roofs arranged in rows. By stacking two rectangular blocks edge to edge, he made skyscrapers. He forgot all about crayons in the pleasure of urban planning. Miss Carol's voice from above surprised him. "Louis, you've had the blocks for half an hour now. It's Sam's turn." "I could help with your city?" Sam offered, flopping down on the carpet. "It's looking pretty cool." "Well...." "Or you could help Sam build one of his castles," Miss Carol said. "I'm sure this one will be even better than his last!" "No thanks," Louis said. He retreated to the bookshelf to pick out a book he knew Sam had read recently. It couldn't keep his attention, and he watched Sam--not smiling, for once--build an awesome block version of Sleeping Beauty's castle. Miss Carol clapped when it was done. Then Miss Nina herded them all outdoors to play. Louis got to the only basketball first, but a boy named Ben tried to slap it out of his hands. "No way, man, I've been waiting all day to shoot hoops with Sam." "Keep waiting! I want to practice my shots!" "Why bother? Leave it for kids who can actually play," said Ben, and he kicked Louis hard in the shin. Louis's yell brought Miss Carol running. "What happened? What's this racket?" Ben said, "Sam wants the ball, Miss C!" "Well, I'm sure Louis will let him have it if he's asked nicely. Won't you, Louis?" She gave him a brilliant, fakey-fake smile. Her hands were already reaching for the basketball. "No, I won't! I hate you!" Louis shouted at her. The other kids stared at the scene with wide eyes, none wider than Sam's. "I hate him!" Back inside, sitting in time-out with Miss Nina keeping watch, Louis fantasized about cramming all the crayons down Sam's throat. Throwing blocks at him until he ran away. Stuffing him head-first through the basketball net. It didn't help. He knuckled a hot tear out of his eye. Sam's finished picture lay where Louis could see it, and Sam had drawn a whole town in miniature, from a brick school to stoplights shining bright, true red. Eventually the other kids came back in and Miss Nina turned Louis loose to join them. He wandered back to the crayons. He would never draw a city that good; he wanted to draw one, just the same. But Sam came and sat next to him. "Here," Louis snapped, shoving all the colors and paper at the other boy. "Just take them." Sam pushed half the paper back, and he moved the crayons to a spot both boys could reach. "I'm not driving you off. C'mon, we can both draw." "Maybe I'll want the red," Louis said. "So maybe you can have it. Maybe sharing would be more fun. Why do you hate me?" Because my fun gets taken away and given to you. Because you're so good at everything. Because you aren't mean about it, so I can't even want to hurt you. "Because--" Louis searched for an eloquent expression of all his reasons. "You're a butt." Sam snagged the black crayon and scribbled fast. "Yeah? Well, this is you," he said. He turned his paper so Louis could see a stick figure with a huge posterior. Louis went for the red and scrawled an even bigger butt with a tiny stick head and stick arms barely visible on top. "Behold a masterpiece," he said, and he wrote Sam's name beneath. Sam gave his next stick Louis a top hat so large it had slid down to cover his face. "I call this 'The Mayor of Blocktown.' An improvement, if you ask me." "This one's me too, see, kicking over your castle!" The boys swapped colors and taunts readily, grinning as they got into the game; even Miss Carol couldn't find an excuse to interfere when Sam was so obviously happy to share. And if his stick figures were technically better than Louis's, neither boy bothered to notice.
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Jun 24, 2013 00:39
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Thunderdome Week XLVII: The Rule of Three The Judging Triumvirate: Kaishai, The Saddest Rhino, and Nikaer Drekin. The Triple Crown. Three strikes, you're out. Three Fates; three Furies; three blind mice. Bad things happen in threes. The third time's the charm. The number three crops up a lot in Western culture, and to celebrate my third term on the Thunderdome throne, I'm giving it a place in this week's prompt: Write a prose story involving the tripartite integer. This is a very open prompt. I don't care what subject or genre you choose as long as three plays an obvious, significant role. Triplet protagonists? Fine. A love triangle? Fantastic. Three-headed armadillos rampaging through Australia? Why not. That leaves you a lot of room to showcase your talent, but there are no excuses for messing this one up. Creativity and cleverness will serve you well. Anything less will earn you the judges' threefold wrath. That said, you can ask for a flash rule if you're starved for inspiration; just don't count too heavily on liking what you get. Remember Martello's  challenge! As long as they follow the prompt, wedding stories are A-OK. But note Rhino's Flash Rule: No traditional white weddings allowed unless you can make it interesting. Caveat: no monkeycheese humor.Sign-up deadline: Friday, June 28, 11:59pm USA Eastern. Submission deadline: Sunday, June 30, 11:59pm USA Eastern. Maximum word count: 999. Those with the courage of three ordinary mortals: Jonked: "Deaths Come In Threes" Sitting Here (Flash rule: The main character must know or feel something s/he can't hold inside): "Because" V for Vegas: "Wadi Halifa" Nubile Hillock (Flash rule: A character in the story must be concerned about his/her finances): "Fuk U" Bachelard rear end: "Full Count" SurreptitiousMuffin: "3 O'Clock" sebmojo (Flash rule: A very old person still working a job must be in the story.) Mercedes (Flash rule: Must write a character who fits a common stereotype but is still three-dimensional): "The Iron King" (Submitted past the deadline) crabrock (Flash rules: Must write a ghost story involving a real person, set in a third-world country; the culture of the country must be relevant): "The Hunger" Greatbacon CantDecideOnAName (Flash rule: One character must be devoutly faithful): "Holy Fire" JonasSalk (Flash rule: The story must have a scene set in a yard sale, flea market, or other secondhand outlet.) Auraboks: "One end" toanoradian (Flash rule: Must include alligators): "Marriage and a Consensual Affair" (Submitted past the deadline) Erogenous Beef: "Find Them And You Can Resist" Voliun (Flash rule: The story must involve jewelry): "A Gate's Graceful Descendent" magnificent7 Schneider Heim (Flash rule: The protagonist must struggle against the control of something outside him/herself): "Three Useless Wishes" asap-salafi (Flash rule: Someone in the story must find love in spite or because of his/her unique home décor.) Steriletom: "Bliss" Fumblemouse (Flash rule: Volcanic activity must be an element): "Magma" Jagermonster (Flash rule: Fearsome creatures must find a kind of happiness in the story): "Birth, Curse, and Choice" Phil Moscowitz Ceighk (Flash rule: One character must suffer a personal catastrophe): "Black Lyne" Blarg Blargety systran: "To Reach a Sun's Rays" Kaishai fucked around with this message at 07:51 on Jul 1, 2013 |
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Jun 25, 2013 05:09
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toanoradian posted:What was the challenge? The link goes nowhere. Fairly caught, thanks, and the link is fixed now. Your Flash Rule: I want to see alligators in your story. Living, dead, as food; whichever. It doesn't have to be a wedding story, but if you go that route, perhaps this may offer inspiration.
Kaishai fucked around with this message at 09:51 on Jun 25, 2013 |
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Jun 25, 2013 09:22
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A lot of daring souls this morning, I see!sebmojo posted:Flash rule me, 'shai. I hunger for it. Hunger, do you? Enough to eat this? Your Flash Rule is that your story should include a very old person still doing his/her job, with apples and facial necrosis optional.JonasSalk posted:I'm in for a crit and I'm in for a flash rule. An experiment should be collaborative. Some artistic experiments bring joy and beauty to the world. Some do not. Your Flash Rule is that your story should take us to a flea market, yard sale, or other secondhand outlet where the latter results are likely to end up.Voliun posted:Jumping in on this while taking a flash rule. Voliun, I'll give you a tip: I like jewels very much. Your Flash Rule to make jewelry important to your story could work in your favor if you do it justice.I'm not saying it needs to be tasteful jewelry, mind you. Fumblemouse, magnificent7, and Bad Seafood, thank you very much for the crits and the crown. My story could have had more bite, you're absolutely right. My last seven TD stories had involved people dying, so I went light to get out of a darkness rut. I'm glad it worked out and flattered that at least one of you couldn't tell I've never been an eight-year-old boy. 
Kaishai fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Jun 25, 2013 |
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Jun 25, 2013 16:50
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