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In and I'll take both a flash rule and a classic fight.
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Mar 1, 2017 20:06
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Secret of the Silent Fist 1296 Words Prompt and Flash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds_-Gbs88eI Your story must include a volleyball net. He stood behind the All-American Sporting Goods counter, hair grey and the skin of his face leathery and cracked, but unmistakably the man in the old newspaper photos. The Silent Fist. The man who singlehandedly kept the Adders out of Edge city. Founding member of the Seven. A legend, a living legend thank goodness. “I need you to train me,” I said. “And I-” “What do you mean, train you?” he said, feigning confusion. I wasn’t buying it. “I can show you how to use the equipment, if that’s what you want.” “No,” I said. “I mean in the ways of the five lost martial arts. The dead city fighting styles. I need to know your healing mantra.” “My healing what?” he said, with an amused, curious smile. For few seconds I had thought it wasn’t just an act. But now I knew. “Your Warrior of Ilium healing mantra, the thing you concentrate on to clear your mind and allow your body to regenerate.” “Sounds handy,” he said. “Could use something like that when my back acts up. But you’re barking up the wrong tree, kid.” The doors swung open, slamming into the stops, and in they came. Seven young men. Six wearing spiderweb tattoos, jeans and white t-shirts with bleach-blonde hair in various punk styles, the seventh bare-chested but for his ink, bald, and well past seven feet tall, all muscle. He glanced at the ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service’ sign by the door, hawked his throat, and spat a gob onto it. “Now just wait a minute,” said the manager. “This ain’t none of your business, geezer,” said the one with a head full of hair-spikes. “This is between King Spider and the kid’s mom.” “Yeah,” said the one with a sideways mohawk. “She’ll get the message nice and clear when we send her what’s left of you.” Spikes snapped his fingers and a pair with half-shaved heads left and right rushed me. I’m not too proud to run from a fight, especially at these odds, but with the Silent Fist right there watching me? No way. Lefty threw the first punch, towards my head. I shifted left and grabbed his arm, then swung him into the aisle full of shoeboxes. My back turned to Righty. He grabbed me in a bear hug. Lefty stood up, shook his head, and began delivering blow after painful blow to my upper chest. I took enough to get his rhythm down. Then I delivered a toe-stomp followed by a backwards shin-kick to my captor. His balance failed and I bent forward, putting his forehead directly in the path of his cohort’s fist. With Righty dazed and Lefty nursing his hand, I broke free and went on the offensive. One solid hit to the jaw for Lefty followed by a flurry of body blows to Righty and they both were on the ground groaning. I looked across the store. The Silent Fist was in front of the counter now, facing sideways mohawk, keeping him at bay with his cane. Spikes growled, reached into his pocket and butterflied open a knife. Everyone but baldy did the same. Single and double mohawks started moving toward me while sideways lunged at the Silent Fist with his knife. He ducked, making his opponent slice harmlessly through air. “drat this back,” he said, backing away with his cane, still hunched over. I did my best against the knife-wielding thugs, taking nicks and surface wounds while getting a few solid kicks and punches in. “Now would be a good time for that healing mantra, gramps,” I said. “You’ve got some moves, but you’re not ready for Ilium technique yet, kid.” “Then what can you teach me?” “Okay, lesson one. Anything can be a weapon.” He leaned forward on his cane and with his arms alone twisted his entire body through the air around it. His legs hit sideways mohawk in the arm and face, knocking away his knife and sending him to the ground. A full rotation later he came back to the ground and stepped over his foe, raising the cane above the goon’s neck. “Don’t get up.” I backed down the aisles, looking around. A few volleyballs, which I threw behind me to slow them down. Then I found something heavier. A bit too heavy. I’d have preferred a baseball bat or hockey stick, but the long tall cardboard box was just barely small enough for me to hold and swing. I hefted it, then turned to face the mohawk boys. It had plenty of reach to keep them back, but was too slow to land any hits and heavy enough that I was tiring out fast. They slashed at it as it passed by, breaking down the box’s integrity. Clever. If I kept swinging it the contents would break free, leaving me defenseless. I shifted to a quarterstaff grip. More control, but it meant they could move in closer. They kept slicing at the box, tearing gashes out of it, exposing the contents within. A volleyball net, two steel poles with rope netting wrapped together. I grabbed the poles directly. It was a much better grip than I’d had on the box. I could swing faster, more forcefully. I swung low, caught both of their legs, knocking them back on their asses as the remnants of the box flew off. They scuttled away, then got up and ran. Spikes saw that the huge bald one had been standing fascinated by the mannequin in the self-powered elliptical machine. He slapped the mountainous man’s back and said something in a language I don’t speak. Then he turned and ran out of the store just behind the others. Big and bald moved towards me, fast. I wound up like a major-league slugger and took my swing, hitting him hard in the side. He barely noticed. He grabbed my shoulders, lifted me up, and threw me across the store. I landed hard, most of my left side just a mass of pain, but I kept hold of the net. The Silent Fist was next to me, still hunched over. He pressed his cane to the floor and shoved. I could hear the cracking bone as he came to a stand. Baldy ran straight for us. I handed the Fist the loose pole, letting the other unwind a few rotations, and when the charging mass of muscle was about to run us down we both stepped aside, leaving him to run face-first into the tight netting. I quickly ran around him and took the other pole from the Fist, shoving it through the netting crosswise and twisting them together. Baldy struggled against the ropes. They strained but didn’t break. Then the Silent Fist walked up to him and delivered a quick punch to the neck, knocking him out. Pompeii pressure point technique. “What’s your name, kid?” he asked. I stood, still catching my breath. “Not having a student whose name I don’t know.” “Andy Li-Quan,” I said. “Li-Quan?” he said. “So your mother is...” “Sue Li-Quan, yes,” I said. “I’m your grandson, gramps.” “You could have opened with that.” “Sure,” I said. “But I wanted to earn this. And haven’t I earned the secret of your healing mantra?” “You’ve got it wrong,” said the Silent Fist. “The Warrior of Ilium technique isn’t about healing. It’s about fighting through injury. And the mantra isn’t a word.” “Then what is it?” I asked. “Pain,” he said. “My mantra is pain. Focus on it. Ride it instead of letting it ride you. Speaking of pain, we should get those cuts of yours seen to. And then you can start to work.” “Training?” I said. “No, cleaning. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this place is a mess.”
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Mar 6, 2017 04:45
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Mar 7, 2017 08:07
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Crit of No War but Lass War by BeefSupreme (week 235) Most of the failings of this piece have to do with the format, and thus the prompt. I'm left wondering how this is a monologue, exactly what are the circumstances in which the speaker is able to deliver this long and this pointed a speech to a captor without being interrupted repeatedly and/or terminally, by violence. The content might work better as Solliloquoy, cutting out the sense of direct address. The second problem with this piece is its impersonal nature. You don't have a character here, you have an empty vessel serving as spokeswoman for all of Soviet womanhood. Instead of telling a story about some other group of women near a different city, I think you really need more details about this particular speaker's part in the struggle to make it work. Crit of New World Orders also by BeefSupreme (also week 235) This was was the comic piece, and while it's not actually all that funny it does at least reach the level of amusing. You take the opposite approach with this one, having a speaker who is constantly being interrupted with comments we have to infer, and it mostly works. But I think that it sort of stops working and falls apart at the end: "Why does it look like my face is melting? What's that supposed to mean?' Maybe Bob Newhart could have sold that as a one-sided conversation bit, but you're asking a lot for pretty much any other actor to pull it off, or to sell it to a reader. I've not no idea how pregNANT ought to be said. I mean, the typography suggest the first half of a singsong word and the second half of roughly shouting it. I think that even apart from the part I mentioned earlier, the ending doesn't really work. I mean, I'd hope she'd have started multi-level-marketing to her local circle of friends before faking a sorority reunion, and any face-melting issues would have been shook out at that stage. Or that even-more-experiences Karen would have seen the problem coming earlier. At least try to establish some unusual heat/direct lighting situation earlier if you want to end that way. Although there's probably a stronger ending out there to be found.
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Mar 10, 2017 22:32
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The Helpline 1430 words Prompt: https://i.imgur.com/q2ipsKl.jpg Five minutes earlier, Robin Keller, hiding in some secluded corner of her workplace, pulled out her phone. She considered calling 911, but doubted that the police could do anything or even for a minute believe her. She searched her contacts for someone to call, and saw among them an unfamiliar entry. The Helpline. ‘Impossible Problems Solved.’ She didn’t know how the number got there, suspects some new acquaintance adding their contact info put it in as well. She checked the list again, saw nobody more suitable. She pressed call, and had a short conversation with Contracts and Payment. And that’s where I came in. “This is Tori from the Helpline. What can we help you with today?” “It’s my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. And also boss. He’s a monster.” This is one of the tricky parts. We do relationship problems, abusive situations. Refer people to lawyers, sometimes. Make problem people go away. Usually convincing them to leave town in the middle of the night. For the worst cases, we get Cecil to strike up a different conversation with the problem, and let guilt run its course. Cecil’s good with guilt. But these days I’ve mostly been assigned more complicated cases. “What kind of monster, exactly?” “I don’t know,” said Robin. Her voice had an edge in it from the start, and now it was almost more edge than voice. “Demon? Vampire? I came into work early this morning and walked in on him and his secretary. He was, he was-” She stopped talking and started hyperventilating into the phone. “Drinking her blood?” I asked, trying to refocus her. “Yes. No. Devouring her, tearing the flesh from her bones with his teeth. And she was alive, and she wasn’t screaming, just staring forward and nodding.” “Did he see you?” I asked. “Where are you now?” “I don’t think so. I’m in the restroom.” I brought up the building plans and fired off a few texts to set things in motion. “Do you smoke?” “What? I quit last month, what does that have to do with anything?” “So you’re carrying a lighter?” She was. Closest way to get out of the building was the back exit, but that was an alarm door. So better to set off the fire alarms first, give three minutes to clear the halls and make sure one of our spotters could see the problem milling around out front. Robin executed the tradecraft like a pro, not letting the fact that she was soaked from the sprinklers slow her down. She slipped out back and into the car we put into the lot, left her phone behind and switched to one of ours, and followed the GPS to a hotel in the next down over. “The worst thing,” she said as she drove, “Is how familiar it was. I’ve been having nightmares. About the other secretaries. We all thought he was just a terrible boss with them.” “I don’t want to upset you any more,” I said, “But there’s a very real chance that he’s been manipulating your memory.” “You mean I might have seen that happen before?” The edge was back. “He’s a very powerful subterrestrial incarnation,” I said. “You can’t blame yourself for his manipulation. He could completely wipe your mind clean. It’s a good think nightmares aren’t based on memory.” “They’re not?” “No. Dreams are, but nightmares are more real, letting you view actual events happening in this world or another.” “Well aren’t you just full of comforting thoughts,” she said. “Okay, I’m here. Now what.” “Keycard is in the glovebox,” I said. “Go in, take a shower. There’s dry clothes waiting for you. Then you’ll need to go shopping for a few things.” “You people can set up all of this, but now I have to go out myself?” “What we’ve done so far are things we do often, for hundreds of clients each year,” I said. “The next part is unusual, and it’s important that you personally pick some of the items out.” “Yeah?” she said. “So what’s this for?” “Magic,” I said. “You’re going to be casting a spell.” While Robin showered, I walked over to Sal’s cubicle and filled him in on the situation. Sal’s our best magic man, and I wanted him guiding her through learning the incantation and picking out the reagents. I’ve got a bit too much of a materialistic viewpoint to be very good with spells. I mean, I know it’s real and it works, but something deep inside of me refuses to let go of the belief in atoms and electricity and all that. “No problem,” said Sal. “We don’t know just how strong this thing is, though. Is the budget on this one enough to cover it if it turns out to be a Sovereign-level?” “It is,” said Claire. She runs this office of the Helpline. She turned to me. “A word, in my office?” “Is something wrong?” I asked as soon as the door slid shut. “No,” she said. “You’ve been doing fine so far. I just wanted to impress on you that this is a very important case. Not only is this a problem we’d go well out of our way to solve on general principles, Contracts was able to arrange for special payment in this case.” “How many years?” Special payment was usually negotiated in years of a client’s future life. Sometimes the Senior Helpers took memories instead. Or other options. “Not years. FBC.” Or that one, the one nobody wants to say out loud. I wondered how commissions worked in those cases, but I didn’t say anything. That’s a jinx if ever one there was. She went over the plan, showed me a couple of places to tighten up in the aftermath. I had just enough time for a sandwich before Sal was finished. I put them on speaker while I ate. “So that’s it? That’s all it takes to kill a monster?” said Robin. “All it takes on your end,” said Sal. “We’re doing the real work back here.” Well, at the ritual circles down in West, Texas, mostly. “And I don’t need, I don’t know, some of his hair or something to make it find him?” “You were lovers, right?” said Sal. His voice sometimes hits me right there, with that word and a few others. If I dated co-workers and he wasn’t gay, there seriously could have been something going on. “That should be enough.” I switched to my headset and gave support as she performed the ritual. She spoke the words in dead languages, spilled her own blood, mixed herbs and fire and breath, killed a cricket with her bare hands. Back in the day it would have taken a goat kid for this, but magic marches on. Can’t take death out of the spell completely, though. I watched on my monitors as our magical energy drained, taking them down lower than I’d ever seen them. At least Sovereign-class, this one was. Sal got off the line. I stayed with Robin as our watchers verified the kill. It wasn’t hard. When Robin’s boss imploded the black hellfire unleashed took out most of the building. Hardly anyone inside died or was even hurt though. Black hellfire can only burn people Hell already owns. “Any last questions before we’re done?” I asked. “Um. About the payment.” Not my department, but clients asked all the time. I wasn’t exactly on a script, but there were limits to what I could say. “What do you want to know?” “What if I, you know, don’t. I mean, not ever?” “That’s one way of making that payment,” I said. “The Senior Helpers deal in intangibles, and a closed-off possibility is a powerful one.” “And if I do? What do they do with...” Robin swallowed. “With it?” “They don’t eat them,” I said. “Or anything else to hurt them. They raise them, give them an education and a place in the world.” “Are they happy?” A good question. “They’re fulfilled.” “Thank you,” said Robin. She hung up the phone. I sometimes wonder about my mother, about what problem was so horrible that she made that bargain, about whether she regretted it. Sometimes I have nightmares, watching myself as a bawling infant, torn from the arms of a screaming woman and handed over to three men, nearly identical triplets with their matching black suits, green eyes, and blood-red trilbys. I know I can’t possibly remember anything from then, that I was far too young. But nightmares aren’t about memory. And her face is always exactly the same.
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Mar 13, 2017 02:59
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In, and I'll take one of those lyric snippit things.
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Mar 14, 2017 00:25
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Suffer flash rush lyrics: Any escape might help to smooth The unattractive truth But the suburbs have no charms to soothe The restless dreams of youth 2230 Words A god walks into a bar... We didn’t know he was a god, of course. Not yet. But without making a sound he drew everyone’s attention to him, to his young face with ancient eyes. He slid up to the bar like a high tide slick with oil, carrying the smell of dead things. He slammed his fist on the polished wood. It looked forceful enough to break it, but made almost no sound. “A round,” he rumbled. “On me.” He lifted his hand and where it had been was a stack of twenties, stained with a spatter of deep maroon drops. I poured the drinks and handed them off to Moggi. She delivered them to the stools and tables of the regulars and irregulars. I poured him a Scotch, the good stuff, as our stock goes. Ten-year. He nodded at the bottle and at me, so I made myself one too. He lifted his glass. “To endings,” he said. “And to truth. To the dreams of locusts and mayflies. Drink up, and enjoy.” He took a drink. “Because none of you are walking out of here alive.” He waved his free hand in the direction of the doors while his fingers danced like a stenographer’s. The front door slammed shut. “Now wait a minute here,” said Aaron. He ran the volunteer fire department here forever. Had some kind of day job with the police. He walked up to the stranger. “You can’t just walk in here and threaten a room full of innocent-” He pointed his index finger at Aaron. It extended, growing three more knuckles and a nail more like the carpentry sort than the usual. His finger effortlessly pierced Aaron’s clothes and skin. “A lie,” he said. “Nobody here is innocent.” Aaron slid off the blooded finger, too dead to even keep bleeding. “Who are you?” I said. “Call me Va,” he said. “Va, of the Griga. In a time before history we ruled this world as gods. Now only I remain, saved by the very prison they made to hold me forever.” “A prison with a flaw,” said Moggi, “That lets you escape for a short time one year in four.” She’d do that sort of thing, say something that I had no idea how she could possibly have known. We spent a lot of time alone the four months she’d been working, before hours and after, talking about being outsiders, about hating having to live out here in the sticks, and every few nights she’d drop in a quote from an unpublished Turkish poet or a little detail of Elizabethan court gossip that I knew had to be both completely true and utterly uncheckable. Va turned to the waitress, looking at her for the first time. Dissecting her with his eyes, down to the marrow and soul. “Interesting,” he finally said. “I had thought even the legend was lost.” “Lost, but found again,” she said. “Your outings have not exactly been quiet, have they?” “Are you here to challenge me then?” said Va. “Fight over their lives?” “Do I look like a fool?” “Perhaps not,” said Va. “Yes. My existence is constant lonely torture, punctuated by these too-brief little games. It amuses me to kill the guilty, and to hear they confess their crimes. So we’ll now be playing a game, a game of truths. Lie, or refuse to speak and there will be consequences.” He gestured to Aaron’s corpse. “Why should we, I mean, why play your little game,” said Janet. Former schoolteacher, present lush. “If you’re going to kill us all anyway?” “Are you in such a hurry to die?” said Va. “Life is too short. Every second counts, no? You may earn some form of spiritual disposition in this time. Or the Griga may leap from their tombs and drag me off to a new hell, and then wouldn’t you seem foolish for rushing things? So are you in a hurry?” Va raked the air in front of her with his long finger. Janet shook her head and stuttered. “Then confess. No lies, nothing unsaid.” Janet confessed. Mostly what everybody knew. The affairs with students just above this state’s shockingly low age of consent. A few names I hadn’t expected. Some not quite petty embezzlement, towards the end, when she knew her job wasn’t going to last long. Finally she finished, and closed her eyes, and prayed as best she remembered, waiting for Va to kill her. But he didn’t. Instead, he moved to the next person. The confessions alternated between the banal - minor thefts and frauds, a shoplifted necklace, the quiet murder and coverup of a neighbor’s annoying pet - and the lurid - affairs negotiated over picket-fences, half-remembered drunken hookups with partners likely incapable of saying yes and meaning it, furtive gay assignations in alleyways or parked cars. Those last often featuring yours truly. This town only has three young-but-legal gay men in it, and it’s not like the closet cases were hooking up with each other. “Surely there’s more here,” said Va. “The oathbreaking is of some interest, yes. But I can feel that there’s something a bit stronger here.” “Ask them about the Witch House,” said Moggi. Everyone flinched, even me. Moggi’s fairly new in town. I wondered how she knew anything about that. “The Witch House?” said Va. “An interesting request, from the room’s own witch. Thou shalt not suffer, as the book says, no?” “That’s more accurately translated as ‘poisoner,’” I said, regretting it interestingly. ‘Skewered to death after sassing/mortalsplaining to an ancient god’ is a cause of death that few would have predicted for me, but one that anyone who knew me would just nod at and say ‘Sounds like Ray all right’ if they heard it. But Va didn’t kill me. “Indeed,” he said. “So, little witch, would you drink what you’ve been serving?” Moggi froze in mid stride, and as the penny dropped a roomfull of angry glares settled on her. “Nasty stuff, a brew to burn holes in the gut. It might not have killed to many of you outright, but none of you would ever be well again.” He waved his hand at the angry crowd. “Don’t fear, drink away. I’ve turned it to salt. These kills are mine, little witch.” “No matter,” Moggi said. “So long as they die. The Witch House.” This wasn’t a side of Moggi I’d known before. I mean, she always talked a bit witchy, but I always took it as more the hippie sort of witch, more herbal tea than hemlock. Va turned to Eric, one of the men who had gone before with a list of petty infidelities and a hit-and-run on a parked car. “You didn’t mention it before.” “You asked for sins,” said Eric. “What we did to that bastard wasn’t no sin. drat near the opposite. Never lost one night’s sleep on it, and don’t think anyone else here has neither.” Va nodded. “Go on.” “Dersham’s house was an ancient eyesore right in the middle of town. Sat on a corner double lot. Old Dersham wasn’t a social guy. Let his front lawn grow wild, did god knows what behind the fences out back. And the homeowner’s association couldn’t do a thing since his place had been there since before there was even a division. So we left him alone, mostly. People said he was a witch, called his place the Witch House. People stayed away. “Except some kids haven’t the sense to stay away, seems. Little Billy Vesper disappeared for about a day and a half one summer, and when he came back he had a story about the old man in the Witch House snatching him up. Touching him. Interfering, that’s the word the police used. Only the police said they couldn’t do anything, that the story was too inconsistent to prove anything. So they were no use. We all believed Billy just like we’d have believed our own kids. So we got together and did something about it. Came out to the house at midnight with hoods and gas and torches and burned that damned eyesore to the ground, and made sure nobody game out neither. Va turned to Moggi. “Your father, I presume?” She nodded. “How did you survive?” “I wasn’t in the house. I was locked in the crawlspace beneath the toolshed. Punished for doing witchery, but that’s what kept me alive. I spelled the mice into holding still, then ate them raw. Taught myself how to pick the locks open with their spines.” “So that’s the story? Or is there more?” “There’s more,” said Moggi. “But the only one who knew about that was Aaron.” “Pity he can’t tell us,” said Va. “But his soul is fled.” “His soul, yes,” said Moggi. “But most folks hardly ever use those at all. All I need is his brain.” Va stared at her. “You think nobody’s learned anything new since your time? Take off his head, with a few bones of spine, and I’ll show you.” Va picked up the fallen man and grabbed his head, bracing with the shoulders. Flesh ripped and bone snapped. He severed the spine and flensed the bone clean. Moggi turned to me. “I’ll need a bucket full of wine, Ray. A Red, nothing too fancy.” I found a few bottles and a suitable receptacle, and Moggi did some magic while Va looked on amused. Aaron’s eyes snapped open. “What the-” “You’re dead, Aaron,” said Moggi. “ But I need you to tell everybody about the Witch House.” “Nobody needs to know about that,” said Aaron. “I said I’d carry that with me-” “To your grave?” said Moggi. “You’re past that. Time for the truth. I could compel you, but-” “No,” said Aaron. “I’ll tell. Sounds like you already know anyhow. After the fire went out, after the place was a skeleton of scorched wood, me and Eddie went in. To get the body, put something in the ground and be finished with the whole business. But we didn’t find a body. We found two. The old man, and a little girl, couldn’t have been more than ten. We decided to keep it from everyone as long as we could. Spend a week watching missing persons for miles around. Then Eddie dug up some records and found out that Dersham had kids, two young daughters, homeschooled and never seen out of the house. We decided to keep the secret ourselves. Wasn’t nobody in town who’d be better off knowing they’d helped kill an innocent girl. Holding that in’s probably why Eddie wound up the way he did, I figure.” “Now that’s more like it,” said Va. “Some real guilt on all of you. Enough truth. Time for the killing. Do any of you want to volunteer to be first to die? I won’t start getting truly creative until I’ve really gotten going, so the volunteers may have a better time of it. Just remember that you’re all guilty, that you all deserve this.” “Wait!” said Moggi. “They’re not all guilty. Ray was too young to be in the mob. He doesn’t bear their sins.” “He has others, then. And even if he didn’t, I’d still-” “What if I made you a deal? Spare him, and I’ll come with you. Keep you company for the next four years of your confinement.” “Little witch, do you even know what you’re offering? My prison was built to torture a god. For a mortal, I can hardly imagine. You won’t die. You won’t even go insane. It was designed to be proof against those escapes.” “I understand. I’ll do it, if you spare my friend.” “No,” I said. “What?” said Moggi. “I won’t let you do this. Go along with killing dozens of people and save me. You’re better that that.” Which wasn’t exactly true. I mean, she had just tried to poison everyone. But I was sure the Moggi I knew would have regretted it, maybe not instantly but eventually and bitterly. “They killed my sister,” she said. “They deserve death and worse.” “Then I do too,” I said. “Billy was never at the Dersham house. He was with me the whole time. Fooling around, figuring things out. Then he panicked when his parents asked where he was, and made up the lie to keep me out of it. He swore me to secrecy, and I let everything happen without saying a word. So I deserve everything anyone else here does.” Moggi stared at me, holding back tears. I wasn’t exactly a statue myself. I’d never said that before to anyone, barely even admitted it to myself. “I accept your offer, if it still stands,” said Va. “Come with me, and the choice is yours. Spare them all, or watch them each die painfully, for their sins. Which will it be?” * * * Nobody talks about that night, or about the truth about the Witch House. But some late nights, when the only people left in the bar are the ones who were there, I pull out old Aaron’s head - it hasn’t rotted one bit in all this time - and dip the spine in a bucket of decent red wine, and we all listen to his old war stories of firefighting or police paperwork, while we think about guilt, and grace, and the other things we’ll never talk about.
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Mar 20, 2017 02:23
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In
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Mar 21, 2017 06:49
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Sable https://thunderdome.cc/?story=5596&title=Sable Thranguy fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Dec 7, 2017 |
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Mar 27, 2017 02:07
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in and give me something really strange.
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Mar 28, 2017 06:01
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crabrock posted:your computer probably hasn't finished loading the page because you are old and your computer is from 1942 it's an enigma machine in case you didn't get that crabrock posted:whose dick do I have to suck around here to get banned? sebmojo is a bad hombre <- mod sass plz ban crabrock posted:https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3758791&userid=29698&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post458964012 Funny, I don't see the word 'in' in any of those posts. Maybe you should violate the toxx before calling it...
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Mar 29, 2017 21:38
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There Are Stories of the DutchmanKaishai posted:
1200 words The best ticket on offer is no good to me. It would get me to New York in twenty-two hours, and by that time my father will be dead. I buy it anyway. It’ll get me into the airport. I pass through security and slightly unfocus my eyes, looking for the signs. Most airports have a VIP lounge. Big ones have more than one, most of them secret. One for millionaires. One for people even richer. There’s others. Only a couple airports have one for wizards, but Heathrow is one. There’s an invisible rune on the door. I trace it and walk in. I don’t recognize anyone inside. No surprise. I’ve only been in London three months, hanging with street level magic users. These guys are aristocrats. One of them, has the long beard, robes, a huge staff and a coke-bottle-lens monocle floating in front of his left eye, sees me coming. “You look like you need something,” he says. I nod. “Well?” “I need to get to New York. Immediately if I can.” I say. “What’s the rush?” says a pompadoured wizard in a plaid jacket. “If any of us could manage teleportation,” says one, four foot tall and bald, “Do you think we’d be hanging out at the airport?” “It’s my father,” I say. “He doesn’t have much time left, maybe a few hours. I need to-” “Are you sure you’re even a wizard?” says the small one. “If it’s your father, just do blood magic. Should be able to keep him up and pain-free for-” “I know Ghall’s Sympathy,” I say. I conjure a complicated fractal illusion left-handed, by way of credentials. “He’s my stepdad, technically.” My biological father left when I was ten, then died before I could... “Sorry,” he says, then goes back to cheating at solitaire. “I can help you,” says the one in plaid. He offers his hand. “Call me Shaw.” We shake hands. “Aaron,” I say. “How?” “There’s a plane that can get you across the Atlantic fast enough. Supersonic, about two hour trip. That good enough?” “Should be,” I say. I’d done the divination, knew exactly how much time I had. “But I thought they stopped flying those years ago.” “They did,” he says. “But flight 668’s still going. You hear the story?” I hadn’t. He tells it to me short. Passenger flight, back in 1967. Got hijacked mid-flight, the old fashioned way by a bunch of thugs who wanted to take it to Cuba. Killed about a dozen passengers and crew taking over, so the captain wasn’t having any of it, said he’d take the plane straight to Hell before he’d land it in Havana. So they shot him. The copilot said the exact same thing. The pilot did fly in straight to Hell, and Hell’s where the terrorists departed. But it turns out there wasn’t enough fuel to make it to Heaven, so it’s been flying its usual route ever since, faster than anything short of a rocket “Now it’s mostly ghosts who fly 668. But the living can come,” says Shaw. “Interested?” I am. We negotiate a price. Fairly dear, several rare books from my library. “Now, there’s something you to need know. You’ve got to be very careful with the crew. Polite. The plane’s only solid enough to hold you up so long as they want it to be, so if you get them angry-” “I get it.” “I don’t think you do,” he says. “You married?” I shake my head. He pulls out a gold ring. “Take this. Only polite way to turn down a proposition from one of them is to flash one of these, and they will proposition you. You aren’t dog-ugly, and they get plenty lonely and bored with each other up there.” “But what if I-” “Ever been with a ghost?” he says. “Didn’t think so. Ghosts aren’t substantial enough even at best, if you get my drift. Everything you’d be doing would be entirely for their benefit, and if you can’t fake an ending convincingly they’ll get offended at that. Better to avoid the trouble entirely.” I take the ticket and follow his instructions, through the unused corridors of Heathrow to where the ghost plane loads. I board, take my seat, listen to the pre-flight instructions. I order my drinks and, just like Shaw predicted, have to flash the ring a few times to avoid joining the mile-high club. We reach altitude and the seat-belt light comes off. I start my drink and hear a voice I haven’t heard in decades. “Aaron? Small drat world, that’s for sure.” I turn around. He sits down next to me without asking permission. I close my eyes for a second, trying to force him to be a passenger by sheer force of will. I turn my head and open them. He’s wearing a flight uniform. Don’t give offense I think. “Hi, dad,” I say. We sit in awkward silence for a while. “I know you didn’t go down with the plane,” I finally say. “Nah,” he says, smiling. “Joined up in ‘92.” “Why?” “It’s a living,” he says. “Like that bird on the Flintstones says. Funny, huh.” “Not really.” “No, not really. But yeah, I got debts, and they pay me, so...” We keep at it, small talk with long awkward silences. He asks why I’m flying with ghosts, and I tell him. “This guy, he been treating your mother right?” “Better than,” I say, then catch myself. “Better than right.” “Shame, then,” he says. “About the cancer, that is.” I don’t say anything. The attendant brings another drink. The plane flies, a thunderstorm gathering around it. No turbulence, but when the lightning flashes, under that second of electric light my biological father, the crew, and the rest of the passengers’ bodies fade to translucent and I see only glowing skeletons, laughing and flirting and passing the time. “I should probably get back to work,” he says. “Wait,” I say. “Yeah?” “Thank you.” “For what?” he says. “I mean, I know I’ve not done right by you or your mom, not hardly. So what’re you thanking me for?” I brace myself. He’s probably not going to fade the plane and let me fall. He was a bastard, but not that kind of bastard. I hope. “For dying. When you did. If you’d been alive when I started learning real magic, well-” “You’d have killed me?” He says. “Really?” “I was a pretty angry young man those days.” “Well, uh,” “So I’m glad you kept that off my soul at least,” I say. “Well, that wasn’t what I was thinking about when I drove ‘round that corner,” he says, “But I’ll take what I can get.” He gets up and goes back to the front of the plane. I finish the drink and close my eyes. In a few hours I’ll get to say goodbye, say ‘I love you’ one more time to my actual father. In a few hours I’ll have to say goodbye to him. I’ve got so much more to say to him before he goes, but right now I can’t find any words other than those three.
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Apr 3, 2017 04:11
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In and  for Box 8
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Apr 5, 2017 05:46
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The Unsolvable Problem https://thunderdome.cc/?story=5627&title=The+Unsolvable+Problem Thranguy fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Dec 7, 2017 |
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Apr 10, 2017 03:05
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In Pitch: In a biopunk near future, a pair of youngsters stumble across a fairy ring of mushrooms, tailor-engineered by an unliscenced, underground mycologist, and are swept away to a place hidden in the shadows of their town, at once unfamiliar, dangerous, and tempting.
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Apr 11, 2017 07:48
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Pomegranate Seeds https://thunderdome.cc/?story=5644&title=Pomegranate+Seeds Thranguy fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Dec 7, 2017 |
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Apr 16, 2017 22:49
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In, , flash.
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Apr 19, 2017 02:56
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The Rebel’s Part 1538 words “Do you ever regret it?” asked Voxariel, Senior angel of loyalty and unrelenting pain in the nethers. “Falling, I mean.” Even upside down her face managed to radiate perfect blissful smugness. “No,” I said. “Why do you ask?” “According to the philosophers, our kind only had free will for that one decision. While the mortals steer their fates with every decision, for us, all situations we should find ourselves in are the inevitable consequences of that singular choice,” she said. “Are you sure? That you have no regrets at all?” She almost had a point. When you’re handcuffed, naked and upside-down, foot firmly caught in the noose of a traffic court Judge’s autoerotic asphyxiation setup, suspended above a toilet full of vomit and holy water it’s difficult for anyone to be completely free from regret. - But it doesn’t go back to the Fall. At the most it goes back to when I met Cassie, when I put a little bit of my Name into a charisma spell without realizing there was a sorceress present. And even that’s probably too far. It really just goes back to this morning, when I told her my good news. “So you’re saying you’re no longer in corruption?” she said, narrowing her eyes a bit. “Yep,” I said, beaming. “I’m not just another faceless cog in Mammon’s snakepit. I’ve got my own personal domain now.” “Malfunctioning Toilets seems like a fairly trivial domain,” she said. “This is starting to look like a lateral move.” “There are no trivial domains,” I said. “This comes with titles, new powers-” “Oh,” she said, perking up. “Does that mean a new Geas?” “Yeah,” I said. There’s still a little bit of that original compulsion left on me. It’s not that I can’t lie to her or evade questions. But it’s always uncomfortable, like holding in a really persistent fart. Better just to let it loose. “I can’t shapeshift out of restraints, and if someone else puts me into one I can’t take it off myself at all.” “Ooh,” she said. “I do have a favor I need from you. You just have to let me tie you up when I pay you for it.” I grinned. “Only,” she said. “What?” I said. “Well, I thought you’d still be plugged in to corruption. I’ve sort of got two thousand dollars in parking tickets outstanding, see, and...” (Can this be true? Is the great Jalthrak in love? What? Of course not, Vox. It’s a relationship entirely based on rational exchanges of favors. Nothing more. You tell yourself that. Why a mortal, though? What other choice do we have? The rules that let us be honest cheats don’t apply to when Demons are dealing with each other. There’s the whole West Side Story thing with your lot, but since you’re all built like Ken and Barbie and we’re built like sixteenth-century codpieces and, I don’t know, the female equivalent, well, maybe that works for some people, but not me.) Where I was I? Right. I figured, why not put the new powers to work. So I put on my best suit and headed down the the courthouse. Did a nice big whammy on the first floor restrooms, flooding them with three inches worth of former Lunchables and ex-goat curries. The civil suits are down there, the ones with real money at stake, so I was pretty sure that would be the sole priority of the janatorial staff today. Then I headed upstairs, to Judge Lemuel’s area. Traffic cases aren’t usually complicated, but the defendants in Lemuel’s court received extremely swift verdicts, leaving him free to spend the afternoons locked in his chambers. But would he enjoy the fruits of his fast judging with the stench of sulfur and spoiled fish billowing from his private washroom? I decided to find out. He swung the door open. Before I could say anything, he pointed at me. “You,” he said. “Goltrex warned me about you.” One of my former coworkers must have spotted me, tipped off my former boss. He grabbed my hand. “Get in here.” I let him, since this was mostly what I wanted. But then he slapped the handcuffs onto me. “That should hold you until we decide what to do with you. Stay here, or the bailiffs will take you to a holding cell.” Then he left, gagging slightly as he went. As soon as he’d walked away, I sat down at his desk. You’d think they’d teach a bit more information security here, but the man’s password was ‘YourHonor1’, barely one step better than ‘password123’. I did some quick copy-paste work and all of Cassie’s tickets were dismissed. So all I had to do was go home. The door was out, but I had the power to travel toilet-to-toilet now. So I could head straight to her place to trade a little fun times for her getting me out of the handcuffs- (Hold on. Yes? Earlier on it was her getting a favor and you receiving sex. So? Sometimes one of us wants it, sometimes the other. Does the word ‘pretext’ mean anything to you? I’ll tell you what. I’ll get you out of those handcuffs right here and now if you admit that this is an actual relationship, that you have feelings for this woman. ...) There’s no way I was going to ruin my suit taking it through the toilet dimension, so that had to go. It’s possible to take off a suit while handcuffed, but that would do almost as much damage, so I just teleported the entire ensemble back to my closet. That’s when I heard the door open, so I ducked into the bathroom. I was about to dive in when I felt it, massive pressure pushing me up against the back wall. It pressed harder and harder against my chest. I squirmed away as best I could and found myself inching up the wall towards the ceiling. The bathroom door opened, and I saw the cause of my trouble. It was Father Daniel. Father Daniel’s a drunk, and a bit of a pervert besides, but he’s got real faith. The kind that can work minor miracles. The kind that keeps me from coming close to him like a magical restraining order. He took off his shirt and pulled out a little whip, then started whipping his own back, breathing in the miasma coming from the toilet. Mortification of the senses, what they call it. Touch and smell, today. I think it was working for him, until he breathed in a little too deeply and started retching, adding his own vomit to the mess in the toilet. He looked around, wiped his chin, put his shirt on, and put away his whip. Then he started praying, which hit my ears like a jackhammer playing post-Beatles Paul McCartney songs while an ocelot in heat scratches a blackboard with its claws and whispers the phrase ‘moist crevices’ at me. And I’m not sure if he meant to, but he consecrated the toilet water. So much for that escape route. Then he quickly got up and zoomed out of the bathroom. The force of his faith no longer pinned me to the ceiling, so I fell, and for a second thought that my face was going to be melted off, but it turns out my ankle had gotten caught in the little wire slipknot Judge Lemuel had set up in there for obviously perverse reasons. - “So are you going to help me get loose or what?” I said. Voxariel laughed. Then she laughed some more. Then Cassie clocked her in the side of the head with a paperweight, and down she went. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. The window was open, and she had a really good flight spell and an okay invisibility one, so there were only a few reported sightings of a naked man flying across the city. When we were at her place, she said “I sort of thought you might have a bit of trouble. I guess your old work friends are jealous of your new status as Demon Prince of poo poo.” “I wish I was the Demon Prince of poo poo. Gobazz does that. He’s technically my boss, but he pretty much spends all day sitting on his throne.” “And by throne, I assume you mean-” “Well, of course. Where else do you think that the flaming turds that rain upon the damned daily and nightly come from.” I turned to look at her face for a second. “Speaking of which,” I said. “Of what?” she asked. “Damnation,” I said. “Uh, do you have any plans with that regard? I mean, consorting with demons, that’ll pretty much do it.” “Oh,” she said. “I’ve got a reincarnation plan in place, so don’t worry. It’s sweet that you care, though.” “Yeah,” I mumbled. “Just don’t tell Vox, okay?” “So does this mean the next time I want you over for a booty call I won’t have to flush garbage down my toilet until it backs up?” she asked. “Let’s just try text messaging,” I said. “See how that works.”
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Apr 24, 2017 03:21
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Thunderdome Week CCXLVII:: Crimes Against Literature This week I’m looking for some crime fiction. Not mysteries, not police procedurals. Stories about criminals, doing their thing. Complicated heists. Wacky capers. Assembling the string, betrayals at the split. Elaborate confidence schemes. Well-executed assassinations. Or cascades of poor decisions leading to calamity. Think Donald Westlake (Richard Stark included), Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen, Lawrence Block. Think the Coen Brothers and Tarantino. You’re probably going to have a cast of fairly unpleasant characters. Keeping the reader interested and engaged will be your challenge. Feel free to cross over with other genres. Pre-90s Period pieces may make stealing cash more viable, or you may want to do a Western, Fantasy, Science Fiction or what-not version. No Fanific, nonfiction, erotica (sexually based crimes are, as the voiceover tells us, considered particularly heinous, and will be a very hard sell), poetry, political screeds Word Count: Well, I said ‘complicated’ and ‘elaborate’, so let’s say 1500 words. If that’s not enough, toxx up and you can have unlimited words. Signups close Friday at Midnight Pacific Time. Submissions close Sunday at Midnight Pacific Time Judges: Thranguy BeefSupreme Mrenda Criminals: ThirdEmperor (toxxed) Fleta Mcgurn (toxxed) flerp (toxxed) SKaandScreenplays (toxxed) Djeser Sittinghere (toxxed for the called shot) AllNewJonasSalk Jay W Friks (toxxed) Flesnolk (toxxed) Development sparksbloom (toxxed) Surreptitious Muffin (toxxed) Uranium Phoenix (toxxed) The Cut of Your Jib Kaishai Thranguy fucked around with this message at 00:12 on May 1, 2017 |
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Apr 24, 2017 08:02
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Sitting Here posted:less shitposting more 'in' posts you fart inhalation specialists You forgot your bold tags So if people out there have gotten so creatively dead inside that they can't come up with any ideas to start a story without getting spoonfed a flash rule or something, I guess I can give out things people can be trying to steal if you ask when you go in. Thranguy fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Apr 25, 2017 |
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Apr 25, 2017 19:08
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Less than 24 hours remain to get in. Not too late yet, though.
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Apr 28, 2017 09:00
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And signups are now closed. But it's not too late to particupate in this week! Two shiny judge positions are still wide open; let me know if you're interested in reading this week's crimes against literature.
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Apr 29, 2017 08:20
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Submissions should be closed around now. However, they're not. They'll stay open until I've finished reading the stories already in. And that will be that; no additional mercy for toxxes.
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May 1, 2017 08:01
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Subs closed now. Judging probably tomorrow evening, depending on the cojudges
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May 1, 2017 09:23
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Week 247 Results So, apparently I must have stolen last week’s win from an ancient pharoah’s tomb, because the Curse of the Mummy fell upon this week, in the form of no less than four different stories that were basically versions of The Mummy’s Curse. Lots of crimes going supernaturally wrong, lots of protagonists dead by the time the story ends, and not nearly enough fun. There were some exceptions, however: Sittinghere’s Sickly Sweet and The Cut of Your Jib’s Love You Can’t Jump Over had enough good prose and charming characters to earn HMs. And Uranium Phoenix ascends the blood throne for Even the Gods Get Lost Here, a story that delivered everything I wanted from this week, not least of which was a well-crafted story. On to the negatives. flerp scores a DM for The Memory Thief, for aggressively low stakes and not actually having anything to do with any crimes we could find. And that brings us to the losers. On the one hand, we have a story dealing with challenging subject matter that manages to be too bland to evoke even the revulsion it should, Fleta Mcgurn’s Journey to Zion. And on the other hand, we have the worst of the four Mummy’s Curses, a rambling uneven narrative with far too much confused and pointless prose burying the few high points, Jay W. Friks’ The Blue Colby. Where there are two losers there must be a loserbrawl, since these losertars don’t grow on trees. So the two of you each have until Monday (May 8) midnight PST to deliver a 700 (max, but try to get close to that cap) word story about someone putting something back where it belongs. With no supernatural elements whatsover. Hopefully one of you will write well enough to lift the week’s curse. Meanwhile, welcome back to the Blood Throne Uranium Phoenix! Edit: Also part of the Mummy's Curse: Forgetfulness. In particular, forgetting to formally DQ Djesers...thing. Because, yeah, c'mon. Thranguy fucked around with this message at 22:40 on May 1, 2017 |
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May 1, 2017 20:24
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Crits Against ‘Literature’ Fleta McGurn: Journey to Zion The opening is nothing special (and may be introducing too many characters too fast and possibly in the wrong order), but it does economically establish a situation. Although possibly the wrong situation? I initially thought of a priest, three nuns, and maybe some novices or wards, but this may be more of a Mormonesque (cult? No, just the Mormon faction) group marriage thing in the next few lines? Retelling the story of Abraham is a bit of a waste, here, since you’re not bringing anything particularly new or interesting to the tale, not giving their unique perspective (and come on, Hagar is right there, part of the story that gets skipped over) on it. I’m not sure how to feel about this one. It certainly falls into the category of ‘being entirely too cute with the prompt’. And more than that, well, I thought that you had too many character in it but the real problem is that you don’t have any, not really. Nobody in this story is displaying any actual agency, not even Frank. A Frank with a rock-solid faith might have driven an interesting story, if you’d allowed him to encounter any actual adversity against his goals. A completely depraved Frank might have allowed a different story to be told. But we have a cypher here. His having enough nonmormon in him to have a cigarette habit could have added depth to a stronger character, but there’s not enough there for it to play off here. About agency: imagine the version of this story where instead of how you end it, we get to the actual ceremony and someone (you could use any of the female characters for slightly different results) shouted out “Where is God now to stay your hand, as He did Abraham’s?”, and then the consequences played out. (Which reminds me, the story of Issac is pretty much exactly the opposite of on point here...) I mentioned in the prompt itself that sex crimes would be a hard sell, and I don’t think that you’ve gotten over that hurdle. You’re simultaneously dealing with some deeply disturbing subjects and delivering a boring story, and for that you end up as my loss candidate, by a hair. (1/10) ThirdEmperor: Sea Shanties The opening doesn’t grab very strongly, partly because it barely has any character in it at all. The description is doing its job without doing much more, and the action is pretty minimal. This could be a story where you’d be better off starting later than you did. Okay, I can get behind the idea here, pirate/divers descending in with a magic box to steal the siren-song of the sea witches. Solid. But I’m not sold on the execution. Part of that is the ending. This feels like the kind of nautical tall tale that ought to end in an ‘and I alone lived to tell the tale’ equivalent (and doing that kind of ending would let you go first person and thus get a stronger sense of the main character. I think I was wrong about the beginning: you probably should have started this story considerably earlier, and given time for your characters to be developed in more depth and make a reader get to know them before they have to go silent. I suspect this will be in the middle of the pack. (5/10) Surreptitous Muffin:Radio silence A good opening bit. My concern is that you have too many characters in it. (I’m particularly wondering if Kat will have enough to do in the story.) Or not, it looks like Kat may be the viewpoint character, in which case introducing her so late doesn’t work well in 3rd person. The narration is very informal for 3rd person, too. (I really hope the theme this week isn’t ‘stories that should have been in 1st person but couldn’t because the viewpoint character dies and people know I hate that.’) condused? Should probably be ‘fused’, what an awful place to put a typo right in the middle of your gimmick... Okay, not dying at the end but quite possibly insane. This is very similar to the previous entry, from the same kind of ‘thieves attempt to steal the ineffable and are punished for their hubris’ part of the collective unconscious. Different in the details, of course. This one does a better job with the characters, I think. I find the ending a bit unsatisfying: this has enough elements of a first contact story that I’m wanting a little more understanding by the end of it, and there’s enough ambiguity (is she okay now, and able to help the crew safely loot the ship or warn them off? Or is she in a state where bloody murder is the only way to recreate her religious ecstasy and is going to lure everyone in the crew to their deaths? Probably still in the middle group? (6/10) Kaishai: Rose Gold Strong images in the opening here. And we have another viewpoint character dying at the end. Sigh. Thunderdome isn’t working under the Hayes code; criminals don’t need to suffer ironic deaths by the end of every story. And in this case I’m not sure how deserving these deaths really are. Why do the roses (and Maigrette) accept the Minister’s/Queen’s rightness in owning and hiding all this wealth, anyhow? I mean, it might make sense if the riches were the property of the city’s dead, but for some reason you go out of your way to make the gold something that was put there after the plague was over. Middling, I guess. (6/10) Ska and Screenplays: The Bulldog and the Barman A screenplay. Interesting. And a soundtrack. Early on, it’s not sufficiently clear that Marcy is the barmaid, feel like the all caps naming convention inherent in the format could have fixed that. The story here is entertaining. You have some actual characters, which helps. But the actual plot is a bit predictable, not straying nearly far enough from the subgenre’s tropes to be interesting, not doing enough to put the reader (viewer?) on the side of the eventual victors. High so far but probably going to be short of a mention. (7/10) flerp: The Memory Thief The actual opening isn’t much special, but the opening dialog is enough to get me interested in this concept. I like the technical side of this one. I do have one complaint, though: once you’ve set up ‘we’ll talk about what the protagonist gets out of this’ in the first scene, you shouldn’t end without going back and pinching that thread off. Wait, no, two complaints: I don’t see the prompt here at all. This guy does not appear to be doing anything essentially crime-like, considering that the owner has asked them to remove the memory. Highish quality prose dragged down to the low area for those reasons. (4/10) Jay W. Friks: The Blue Colby The opening is fairly strong. I’d have hyphenated battery-licking and screw-ups, but okay. But ‘a frowny face’ wrecks the narrative tone completely and pulls me out of the story when I hit it. The first flashback is not good at all: too much exposition, both direct and in the form of ‘as you know Bob’ dialog. There are a few good character bits in there, but most of it is just wasted words that aren’t even particularly relevant to the ‘what she knows about the vault’ question we got into it with. Things aren’t going well for thieves this week, are they? Low, second serious DM/loss candidate of the week. There are some good bits to it, but too much bad between them. (2/10) Djeser: Why I Didn’t Submit This Week by Djeser DQ, obviously. But good on you for propitiating dread tdbot. Uranium Phoenix: Even the Gods Get Lost Here drat, that’s a fine opening paragraph. “The Cat’s Erie”? The Cat’s Aerie would be an interesting play on words, but does Erie mean anything other than a great lake not present in this presumed secondary world? I looked it up, and no, no meanings apart from the lake and its Native American origins. The dialog in the second scene shouldn’t work (too little tagging and blocking, too many talking heads). But it does, just barely. I suspect that the section could be improved, but it’s already doing the job better than it has any right to. Should be ‘was so renowned’. Malek’s dialog is a bit too exposition-y. I mean, I think that’s a character trait, but you’re laying it on a bit thick. Anyhow, a good story all around. And the clearest hit on the sort of story I was hoping to read this week. The jargon gets a little thick toward the end, but definitely the best story so far, my pick for the win. (10/10) Flesnolk: Mohave Evenings Comma between Kingman and Arizona. Strong opener otherwise. ‘even now’ isn’t right in a past-tense story. Things really really aren’t going well for criminals this week. This story is all character without enough plot. We learn about these peoples’ war crimes, but nothing at all about how they’ve parlayed them (or some other thing, for that matter) into exotic-car-drivingly large fortunes. And when it appears briefly that the on-screen characters might display a little agency and move a story forward, everyone gets slaughtered. Not nearly as bad as you seemed to think it was in irc. In the middle group, I think. (6/10) Sittinghere: Sickly Sweet Opening has some substance to it, shows a bit of character, but isn’t as eyegrabbing as it could be. Opening is slow but interesting. No sign of crime so far though. Ah, split point of view. The criminal side so far is a bit less interesting than the mark, although maybe the cageyness about what the plan here is will pay off interestingly? Okay, some good words here. I still think that Malik is a far more well-realized character than Cassie, though, possibly because his personality shows up more indirectly, while Cassie’s narration is more flat. There’s a part of me that wants to know at least a bit more about what the conspirators’s motivation behind all of this is HM, falling a bit short of the other good one so far. (9/10) The Cut of Your Jib: Love You Can’t Jump Over Okayish opening. I’m having some trouble placing the setting, time-wise. Music on AM radio? But he talks about syndicated stations too, so ? Okay, it’s clear that this is set in the present, abundantly clear later on. So I have no idea what’s happening in the paragraph starting ‘Bill Crampton”. He somehow got a retired politician to visit a bank on live tv? Needs to be clearer. Okay, that was sweet. And it probably came the closest to having an actual criminal get away with a crime that the reader can cheer him on for. I mean, he didn’t get away, but he got something sort of like what he wanted anyhow. Possible HM. (8/10)
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May 1, 2017 22:54
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Jay W. Friks posted:I forfeit to Fleta and will take the loss for crime week Thranguy. Sorry for spraying curse jizz all over your nice crime lab. Well, that's unfortunate, and not just in that it probably means that a mummy is going to take us all out one by one over the course of the summer. But whaddayagon'do? I mean, apart from going in with a for box number 9, that is.
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May 2, 2017 02:19
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Fragile Creatures https://thunderdome.cc/?story=5688&title=Fragile+Creatures Thranguy fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Dec 7, 2017 |
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May 8, 2017 04:07
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Thunderdome Week CCXLIX:Thunderdomers Assemble! This week, I want to see some stories set in a superhero universe. You don't need to write stories of superheroic action. You can, but almost any kind of stories should work. Still, it should matter to the story that they're in a world where that sort of thing happens. And speaking of worlds, since superhero universes are usually shared between a wide array of creators, this is a collaboration week, in the style of Voidmart and Domegrassi of 'dome history. Share characters, locations, backstory, and so on, in small or large groups. It's allowed, and even encouraged: people who join in the collaboration side get 500 extra words to play with. Hop on IRC and I’m sure someone will set up a secret channel for you to work out the shared details. ( Edit: I'm told things might be happening in #notallhumans )I’m hoping lots of people join in this week, lots of people participate in the collaboration, and lots of people just have some fun writing. Stories with energy and joy in them will probably go over better than dark and brooding ones, but follow your own muses. I'll be giving classic golden/silver/bronze/chrome age comic book covers as flash rules on request, each of which comes with 100 extra words Don't use the fictional characters on those covers, even with the serial numbers filed off. Just let the situation depicted inspire your story. If you want, you can specify a publication date for your cover No Fanfic, Erotica, Politcal Rants, Poetry. Also, No Origin Stories. If you feel the need to tell who a superperson is and how they came to be, it had better take up less than 5% of your story. Word count: 1100 (plus extras) Signups due Friday 11:59 Pacific Time Submissions due Sunday 11:59 Pacific Time SuperJudges: Thranguy Uranium Phoenix SuperEntrants: Djeser Fleta Mcgurn flerp (toxxed) Mercedes Jay W. Friks Hawklad QuoProQuid Bad Seafood Solitair The Saddest Rhino Deltasquid ThirdEmperor The Cut of Your Jib Tyransosaurus Thranguy fucked around with this message at 06:00 on May 13, 2017 |
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May 9, 2017 06:43
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Djeser posted:And gimme a cover, why not https://www.comics.org/issue/17124/cover/4/ (Aquaman #5) Fleta Mcgurn posted:In; and please flash me. https://www.comics.org/issue/48658/cover/4/ (Power Pack #60)
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May 9, 2017 07:51
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Hawklad posted:In. I'll check out the IRC to see about the collab action. Flash me! https://www.comics.org/issue/35314/cover/4/ (Legion of Super-Heroes #275(
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May 9, 2017 20:02
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Solitair posted:IN. Gimme a cover, and I'm open to collaboration. https://www.comics.org/issue/8268/cover/4/ (Plastic Man [Quality] #23)
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May 10, 2017 22:34
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The Saddest Rhino posted:ok throw me in with a cover page https://www.comics.org/issue/35124/cover/4/ (ROM Spaceknight #15) Just a bit more than 24 hours remain to get in, everyone else.
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May 12, 2017 06:41
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And signups are now closed. Write good words, everyone. Or at least write some words. One judge position remains open as well.
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May 13, 2017 08:14
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Submissions are now closed.
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May 15, 2017 08:13
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Judgment for Week 249 This was, alas, not a particularly good week. The best stories all had some fairly serious flaws to them. Much like, say, a classic Silver Age Marvel Superhero. Two stories get honorable mentions: The Saddest Rhino's Maybe Next Time Just Get a Divorce, Okay, an overly violent one-joke story that was nonetheless funny, and The Cut of Your Jib's Power of Suggestion, a cute story that, like many stories this week, sort of fell apart at the ending. Most of the stories were fairly bad. But a few stood out in their badness. Dishonorable mentions go to Fleta McGurn's Children of Rho-Man #300 - The Dissolution for being a general muddle and Hawklad's Dirk Biggly and his Hands of Destiny, for being a parituclar offender in the ending problems category and suspicion of being an origin story in some interpretations of that non-ending. This week's loss goes to Jay W. Friks Jack-in-the-box, for, yes, again, problems with the ending, as well as several gaping plot holes throughout. Which leaves us with this week's winner. With a story who's greatest weakness was a very slow opening, the prose went through a heroic arc over the course of the text and transformed itself into something with compelling action, actually interesting characters, a kinetic plot that was in keeping with the week's genre/setting and an ending that was neither predictable nor unearned. Welcome to the blood throne, just in time for the exciting week 250 Solitar, for Overthinking It
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May 16, 2017 03:28
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In, with a flash.
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May 16, 2017 18:53
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Supercrits So tell me, conspirators: does SUPR actually stand for anything? Rho-Man Issue #099: Turnus, the Final Confrontation by Deltasquid Strong opening, bringing a little class with some Virgil. Claimed collaboration words, and made me wonder if I’m going to get a lot of superheroes of antiquity or a massively sprawling historical legacy epic, either one of which would be cool. Less pleased with the post-prolog opening line, ‘relished’ doesn’t quite work that way and the narration choice is risky, we’ll see if you pull it off. Mostly you do, but mostly by backing out of the strongly present narrator until the end. Overall, this is pretty good. Not great; there’s not enough substance to it to let it be more than what’s on the surface, but the surface is some well-described action. 6/10, high middle Artificial Selection by Quo Pro Quid Sort of flat opening line. Spelling out an acronym on first use is only a rule in journalistic prose, but it’s a fairly good idea in general, especially when you’re already doing naked exposition to start with. Although if the whole gag was ‘this doesn’t stand for anything’ I guess there’s no choice here, and if every story had spelled it out that might have gotten tiresome too. This one suffers a lot from trying to put too much into the small wordcount. There’s a lot of exposition, which is delivered in a direct and not particularly interesting manner. And not enough character. Marco doesn’t get enough development to let you care about him that much, Pat barely exists other than as an excuse for Marco not to be talking to himself, and that leaves the piece’s villain, Malcolm, who doesn’t really get enough motivation either. The plot, as well, such as it is, feels rushed: I really can’t believe that security would be so unbelievably lax in this situation. And the ending...well, it needs more to work, even if it’s just answer the question of whether there’s enough reception in the garage for the phone’s camera to be uploading directly to the cloud... First person would probably have helped this story a lot, and not just in ruling out ending the story that way. It’s basically a one-character show, and first person or a might tighter third person point of view would have helped a lot in giving that character enough personality to carry it. Having read the entire week, I feel like this story/author should have done whatever they could to have posted much later in the day. If it could reliably have been read last, it could have trimmed some of the exposition and put those words to better use, and would work better as the ending to the SUPR cycle than it does as something that turns everything else into a flashback. 3/10, on my DM list Children of Rho-Man, Issue #300 - The Dissolution by Fleta McGurn Nice, so it’s both more antiquity and some legacy epic. We start with a purely classic invocation, and then the prolog shifts into Star Wars scroll text, which is an okay model to set up a story fast. The prose of this one works better than the first part, but the story is a bit of a muddle. Why does Mars think Minerva is dead, and why is Venus assisting the deception? And when you set up expectations for a scene with Mercury, you either need to deliver or at least show a reason for not delivering it, because otherwise all of those words are just wasted. The ending seems a bit excessively clever: you actually have a fairly decent ending, as these things go, which makes framing it as a cliffhanger not quite work. 4/10 Maybe Next Time Just Do a Divorce Like a Normal Person, Okay by The Saddest Rhino I see that the theme this week is ‘very long titles’. I don’t disapprove, as such. The opening is a bit trite, but has some punch to it. I like the prose in this piece. Peppy. (re)morse code is probably a bit too cute. I thought that when you killed Rosie off you’d lose me, but you managed to steer into the curve, hitting the Letterman point where repetition becomes funny again. 9/10, Strong HM pick, but the one-joke-ness of it all, (think too much about it and it falls apart) really hurt it in the final analysis. The Return of the Merman Hero, Moustache by flerp Okay opening, doubling up ‘sinister’ does some harm though. This is a very silly story. And not in a good way. I don’t think you can really pull off the ‘Lex Luthor stole forty cakes. That's four tens. And that’s terrible.’/ Spidey Super Stories kind of vibe and still have your hero behave this immorally, it just doesn’t work. Which is a shame, because if you’d gone fully into that kind of weird but simple morality, you might have done a lot better. (You spend too much time with the hero apparently motivated only by the wax, so the whole ‘might lose powers and fail to save the world’ business comes across as too much of an afterthought or self-serving justification.) 4/10 Dirk Bigly and His Hands of Destiny by Hawklad I hope this isn’t just a Trump joke coming. I’m finding it difficult to believe that college ball is a powered free-for-all without drug tests for SUPR and the pro game isn’t. The opening is okay. Present tense is an interesting choice. (And you slip out of it a few times.) But the persuasion happens too fast, without enough resistance to really be believed. ‘like a microdactyl’s wet dream’ is a simile so on-the-nose that it’s barely a figure of speech at all. (Also, is softness really part of this equation? Do microdactyls have wet dreams about being able to properly masturbate, is that what you’re saying? Why wouldn’t they just dream about sex? If I just killed a joke by explaining it, it was a mercy killing.) That’s a whole lot of words you’ve used not giving your story an ending, not even making it remotely clear what the two options he’s considering are. Depending on what those options are, this might in fact be the one thing I forbade this week, an origin story. (The most obvious interpretation is that, deciding whether to go on being a bum or to try his hand (as it were) at street-level vigilantism.) 1/10, my loss pick. Jack-in-the-Box by Jay W Friks The logistics of the opening stop me dead. Why is the sports car parked inside the building? How does it get out? You don’t describe any glass breakage, and revolving doors have too must non-glass to drive through. Then we have some extremely cavalier death Past that, I’m left wondering how supervillainy is viable in this shared setting. I mean, this guy is doing it, but he just barely is getting his supplies at all, and you’ve established that there are other villains out there. How do they get their constant supplies of SUPR? “lab rat’s” should just be lab rats. And then we have the ending, which, just doesn’t work as an ending. As an ending, this scene is just having a previously unhinted-at stranger appear and solve the character’s problem for them. It’s not a horrible scene, but maybe it should be the beginning, with the earlier stuff showing up in flashback or not at all, and the rest of the story dealing with the more interesting action that it sets up. 3/10, On my DM list. Overthinking It by Solitair Hm. Yes, maybe. Four long paragraphs before the narrator says that the actual story is about to begin is too much. Still, while the prose so far has a few awkward moments, the concept is compelling enough. What I’d want to do here is probably cut those four paragraphs in half. (the Niven reference should be the very first thing on the chopping block) Then split what’s left in half again, and move what you can to later on, after the action has started. I’d also consider working a moment of the action directly into the opening line. Okay, I like this. I like this a lot. There’s a bit of awkward prose, and your one line of dialog has a nasty garden path in it that made it take several reads to understand, but it has an actual story, actual characters, an ending, and heart. The collaboration part seems a bit weak: the superpowers don’t appear to work like everyone else’s, so you’re left with a mention of Rho-man. (I’m not sure if Downcount was a reference to an unwritten story intended for this week. It works fine as a piece of quick worldbuilding if it isn’t.) And thinking about the situation, you’ve probably made your character a bit too overpowered. As you have it, the only way anything bad can ever happen to his team or city is if he slips up, if the danger is completely inevitable, or if the brainstorming session encounters a mental block. At some point, every would-be villain of note’s plans will start with ‘Step 1: Kill this guy’, especially if we’re taking him as deliberately explaining this to someone not likely to keep it secret... 10/10, win pick. Supply And Demand by Bad Seafood Pretty strong opening here. I’m getting a strong Venture Bros vibe here. Well-executed, though. But there’s a lack of substance that hurts the story. (Why is this employee, unlike every other one of the Iron Mandrill, not subject to being fired for delivering bad news? I feel like that question is where the story might find something more interesting to be about, in text or subtext.) 7/10, on the HM borderline Power of Suggestion by The Cut of Your Jib This is cute. The opening does what it has to and not much more. Like I mentioned on Artifical Suggestion, I feel like everyone hurt themselves more than a little by not trying to coordinate posting times, that this should have been the first Olympus/SUPR story and the one that was posted first ought to have been the final one. This one establishes SUPR better than most of them, and establishes that natural powers exist but are rare, that sort of thing. Takes a little long to introduce the actual main character, though. And there’s a typo in the very last line that hurts the story a lot. (either the ‘or’ should go away or a word is missing, maybe ‘SLAP’?) So I’m left wondering if you’re saying, at the end, that Kid Chyron’s pills are actually real SUPR and that he’s stopped taking them and therefore the swear marks aren’t appearing after he just swore, or if you’re saying that his mother isn’t verbally or physically abusing him. Ambiguous endings can be okay, but when the ambiguity is clearly unintentional, not so much, and it doesn’t help that both of the options are fairly weak as endings go. It’s always tough to end a story on ‘something doesn’t happen’ 8/10, above the HM borderline
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May 18, 2017 06:21
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Girl, You’ll Be a Wolfman, Soon 1876 Words When I told my boyfriend about the lycanthropy thing, he said “So you turn into a monster three days out of the month? How does that make you different from any other woman?” So when I transformed a few minutes later, I ate him. Well, only a little. Only a couple fingers. So I don’t have a boyfriend any more. And, to answer your question, yes, technically, I have tasted human flesh. So I guess that means no cure for me, right? Well, I guess that means that I’ll be paying your psychiatrist rates rather than your witch rates. Which one’s higher? Wait, no, don’t tell me. Hardly seems fair, but ancient curses aren’t known for being fair. You want to know what the capper is? When the moon is full or nearly full, what I turn into is a wolf-man. Emphasis on the -man part. Complete with a pretty darned impressive wolf cock. It’s erect most of the time and there’s nothing I can think of to do with it. Claws aren’t exactly made for rubbing one out, and when I’m wolfing it’s all about blood lust rather than the regular kind. Anything that moves I’d rather try to kill and eat than gently caress. So what’s left? Humping the furniture? Don’t get me wrong. I mean, I’m not killing or eating everything I see. Not anyone so far, knock wood. But that’s what the wolf inside is always pushing for. I’ve thought about going online, looking for someone whose fetish is getting taken by a werewolf, but I’m sure half of those would completely freak out if they found out it was possible, and the other half are probably Buffy Van Helsing wannabees ready to turn around and start swinging a silver dagger. I wonder why it’s only the vampire hunters who are famous, and not anyone who makes a career of fighting werewolves. Or maybe not. We’re our own worst enemies. Which is a cheery thought to end the session on. === It only took three months for me to be sure that urban werewolfing was not for me. The first time, well, the first time I was too terrified to get into much trouble. I spent each night running and hiding, worried too much about running into the police to even notice the hunger and bloodlust. The second time was the whole thing with Keith, and after he hosed off to the hospital I bolted. I didn’t know if he would call the police or the loonie bin, or, I don’t know, animal control, so I had to get out of the apartment. He didn’t, he just sent one of his friends a week later to pick up his stuff, but I didn’t know that. So I spend the entire weekend prowling about, sort of worried but calm enough to start noticing the hunger. It really is like those old cartoons, where you see every person you meet as a walking roast turkey or steak. And every stray cat looks like a fresh-out-of-the-microwave Hot Pocket, objectively disgusting but ever so tempting. The worst part is that this is the kind of city where a person could go around in wolf form and everyone would assume you’re just cosplaying or filming a movie or something and leave you alone. Except, well, you know. Except for that constant way past the call-your-doctor phase erection that wouldn’t be part of any costume anyone would take out in public. So it’s still hide, try not to eat anybody, try not to eat any stray cats. Exhausting, and then you wake up naked and hope nobody found your clothes and keys where you left them during the night. The next month I tried staying in. I bought six roasted chickens, locked all the doors, made sure nobody was coming by, and tried to wait out the nights. I’m never going to see a dime of my deposit on that place. Also, not going to do that again. On the third night the drat TV got stuck on some channel showing a Baywatch marathon, and I couldn’t work the remote with my claws. So from here on out, it’s camping, the more remote the better. I never really thought of myself as an outdoors girl, but there are lots of things I never thought of myself as. Carnivore. Potential cannibal. Part-time penis-haver. So there’s been a lot of adjustment. = = = I’ve been doing research on my condition. Sorry, Theresa. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but it never hurts to get a second opinion, so I found another witch to help me find out how this happened in the first place. Hector’s more of a curse expert anyhow. He agreed that there’s no reversing it now, but he could tell me a bit more about how it happened in the first place. It’s an old curse, sort of free-floating for centuries. It’s triggered by massacres, war crimes, that kind of thing. A warrior becomes an outlaw, so they lose their outward humanity to match their souls, and if they survive it passes down to their descendants, some of the time. Hector wasn’t clear on what else it takes to trigger it. So I got on a plane and went home. I’d been meaning to tell mom about the whole thing for a while, and I hadn’t been back home in years anyhow. After I had my luggage up in the guest room but before she started cooking dinner, I asked her. “Do you know anything about what Dad did in the war?” “What? Oh. Well, it was a war. Horrible things, I imagine.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why do you ask?” “Well,” I said, “Do you remember how he’d disappear for a few days every month?” “Oh,” she said. Then she looked at me again. “Oh dear. Cassie, who did you kill?” She knew about the curse, knew even more than you or Hector. We had a long talk. Dad never told the whole story, but there used to be a village called Balusil and now there isn’t. He’d have nightmares, night terrors about it. “Now maybe he was drunk and maybe he was sober when he hit that tree,” she said, “But either way, in his head I’m sure it was that night catching up to him.” And she knew what should have triggered the curse in me. That I must have killed someone. “Well, I haven’t,” I said. “I think I would know.” “It doesn’t need to have been recently,” she said. “It comes in your mid-twenties no matter when you-” She stopped, then turned to and continued almost in a whisper. “Did you have an abortion?” “What?” I said. “No. Wait, would that even-” “Not in my book,” she said. “But you know, ancient curses...” Aren’t known for being particularly woke. The whole punishing me for stuff my dad did should have been a clue, there. But no, I hadn’t. I had no idea who I was supposed to have killed. = = = I lied to you. I did have one idea. But it was a crazy idea. Although these days, I’m not sure what’s not crazy for me. I had to check it out. make sure before I said anything. Funny, you’ve never asked me about my dreams. Different kind of therapy, I guess. But I do have the one nightmare, not every night but more often than I’d like. And when I’m in that nightmare I think that it’s a thing that happened. I always just thought that was the way dreams are. Like when you keep having that dream of walking across campus wearing only a t-shirt, and in the dream you remember it happening dozens of times before. Then you wake up and are glad it was just a dream this time, and it takes you all morning to realize that those memories were also a part of the dream and you never actually did that in the waking world. That kind of thing. I’m on my school trip up in Colonial Williamsburg. I’m twelve I guess, and a group of us are in the real town trying to get some real food and I get separated from the group. Then there’s an old man with a blurry face pulling me by the arm, dragging me into a house. Touching me in places I still don’t really like to be touched. There are stairs to a basement. I jerk my arm loose. He’s off balance. I shove. He falls. I turn and run. That’s the way I remember it, inside the nightmare. But usually it plays out differently, worse. Not being able to break free, getting dragged step by struggling step into an infinitely deep basement. It had been a while, but after that conversation with Mom I started having the dream again, and one cold-sweat morning I got up and did the research. About that time the local police did find Charles Zeska, fifty year old creep, at the bottom of his basement stairs, with a broken neck and a stash of kiddie porn. He was in ‘an advanced state of decomposition’, so they probably didn’t find him until well after we were all back home, and probably the police either assumed he tripped or didn’t care who might have pushed him. I sat there staring at the computer screen for about an hour. Almost called you for an emergency session right then. But the more I thought about it the more okay I got with what twelve-year-old me must have done. Even if it means a lifetime of being a wolfman three nights a month. And even that’s not been so bad, lately. I’ve met someone. It was on one of those monthly camps. We both had our eyes on the same site, and it turns out it was for the same reason. We ran into each other as werewolves that night, and mostly growled suspiciously at each other for a while. Then we got together and had a chat the next morning. Her name is Karla Vikkers. She’s got a completely different kind of werewolf curse - she doesn’t even really think of it as a curse, just a sort of thing that runs in her family - and when she transforms, it’s into a wolfwoman. Well, we hit it off, and so now I’m some kind of weird lesbian I guess? Except we don’t do anything more than hug in human form. But she’s just this incredibly cool person. It’s not just the intense werewolf sex. I mean, just the other day we were watching this documentary show about professional boar hunters, and she said “Hey, we could do that.” Which isn’t that unusual. But she’s actually doing it. We’re actually doing it, heading down to Alabama to eat the wild pigs that try to ruin a poor farmer’s way of life. How cool is that? So this may be our last session, for a while. Unless...wait, can you do this over Skype? Great! I can tell that there’s a lot more work to be done. But I’m ready to stop worrying about not being things that I thought that I was, and start figuring out what I actually want to be.
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May 22, 2017 03:25
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 19:46 |
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Sestercentennial. Also, PROMPT!
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May 23, 2017 08:46
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