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sparksbloom fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Nov 27, 2017 |
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Oct 16, 2017 01:38
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Oct 17, 2017 23:28
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sparksbloom fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Nov 27, 2017 |
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Oct 23, 2017 02:31
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Week 273: A Wicked Pack of Cards (Knight of Swords, from my favorite deck, the Mary-El) I think there was a tarot week sometime in TD history. I wasn't around for it, so I don't care, I'm doing this anyway. You have 800 words to write a story inspired by whatever tarot card you're assigned. Don't worry about looking into esoteric meanings -- I'll be handing out cards from decks with evocative images, but if you want to look into accepted meanings and symbology, you're free to do that as well. If you , you'll get an extra 300 words and an extra card. The story must be about a friendship that's being tested. In the tradition of tarot, you are not allowed to have any literal death in your story. Some general tips for this week: You can feel free to look up card meanings, but I'm going to be a little disappointed if your story reflects the established, Rider-Waite-Smith meaning (which is what you'll see if you look up "insert card here meaning") and not what's actually depicted in the card. For example, I gave two people the Nine of Wands -- one from the Mary-El, and one from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. If the person assigned the first card gives me a story about fatigue after a long battle, I'm going to assume you didn't trust yourself to look at the card. These are evocative images on their own, and I didn't spend two hours digging up cards from decks with distinctive art for people to ignore them completely. That said, if you don't know anything about tarot, it might be helpful to know the suits: Wands are fire, passion, the thing someone cares more about than anything else in the world; Cups or Vessels are water, emotion, the unconscious, and sometimes spirituality; Swords or Knives are air, the intellect, the mind, and communication; and Pentacles, Discs, or Coins are earth, material things, the physical world, and practicality. If your card isn't any of these, it's a Major Arcana card! These symbolize the greater things, the highest themes in life. These in particular are culturally mythologized enough that any kind of established meanings will probably be the same, no matter what deck you're looking at. If you do want to look up established meanings, this is a pretty good site, though it'll be most useful if you got a Rider-Waite-Smith card. Entrants: Dr. Kloctopussy Simbyotic steeltoedsneakers QuidProQuid Sham bam bamina! Fuubi Thranguy sebmojo Sitting Here Okua Deltasquid Obliterati Fumblemouse Antivehicular apophenium Tyrannosaurus magnificent7 SerCypher flerp Jay W. Friks Yoruichi ThirdEmperor Djeser CantDecideOnAName Ironic Twist Nethilia Exmond SurreptitiousMuffin Aesclepia BabyRyoga Maigius UraniumPhoenix Chairchucker spectres of autism Judges: sparksbloom Flesnolk Hawklad Entry deadline: 11:59 PM, Friday October 27, EST Submission deadline: 3 AM, Monday, October 30, EST sparksbloom fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Oct 30, 2017 |
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Oct 24, 2017 10:27
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The Chariot (Tarot of the Silicon Dawn) The Fool (Tarot of the Pagan Cats)
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Oct 24, 2017 10:50
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Strength + Knight of Cups (Rider Waite Smith) QuoProQuid posted:sure. i guess. Ace of Swords (Mary-El) Sham bam bamina! posted:In. I hated my last story as I was writing it and need a palate cleanser. 8 of Cups + The Star (Rider Waite Smith) Fuubi posted:Yeah, in. Queen of Disks (Thoth) Thranguy posted:You know I'm in. King of Disks (Mary-El)  sebmojo posted:yeah gently caress it, in Eight of Disks (Wildwood)
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Oct 24, 2017 20:10
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Sitting Here posted:hmmmm.....in The Devil (Ostara Tarot) Okua posted:Hand me a card, I'm in. The High Priest (Tarot of the Silicon Dawn) Obliterati posted:Fucksake also in Six of Swords (Rider Waite Smith) Deltasquid posted:In, please. The Tower (Thoth) Three of Stones (Wildwood) Antivehicular posted:Never done Thunderdome before, but there's a first time for everything. In. Nine of Wands (Mary-El) Temperance (Ostara Tarot) 4 of Swords (Tarot of the Silicon Dawn) magnificent7 posted:IN for the doing. Ten of Swords (Rider Waite Smith) SerCypher posted:in! Knight of Wands (Mary-El) Seven of Pentacles + The Moon (Rider Waite Smith)
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Oct 24, 2017 21:08
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Jay W. Friks posted:In with a Justice + Eight of Swords (Wild Unknown) Page of Pentacles (Tarot of the Silicon Dawn) Nine of Swords + Page of Pentacles (Wild Unknown) The Sun (Slow Holler) CantDecideOnAName posted:Maybe I shouldn't but gently caress it I'm IN. Six of Vessels (Wildwood)
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Oct 24, 2017 21:32
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The Hanged Man (Mary-El) Nethilia posted:*dragged IN kicking and screaming* Seven of Knives (Slow Holler)
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Oct 24, 2017 22:53
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Exmond posted:Im In Nine of Wands (RWS) SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Yeah sure I'm in. Four of Cups (RWS)
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Oct 24, 2017 23:24
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Aesclepia posted:Let's do this! I'm in! Three of Cups (Shadowscapes) Nine of Swords (Prisma Visions) Some general tips for this week: You can feel free to look up card meanings, but I'm going to be a little disappointed if your story reflects the established, Rider-Waite-Smith meaning (which is what you'll see if you look up "insert card here meaning") and not what's actually depicted in the card. For example, I gave two people the Nine of Wands -- one from the Mary-El, and one from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. If the person assigned the first card gives me a story about fatigue after a long battle, I'm going to assume you didn't trust yourself to look at the card. These are evocative images on their own, and I didn't spend two hours digging up cards from decks with distinctive art for people to ignore them completely. That said, if you don't know anything about tarot, it might be helpful to know the suits: Wands are fire, passion, the thing someone cares more about than anything else in the world; Cups or Vessels are water, emotion, the unconscious, and sometimes spirituality; Swords or Knives are air, the intellect, the mind, and communication; and Pentacles, Discs, or Coins are earth, material things, the physical world, and practicality. If your card isn't any of these, it's a Major Arcana card! These symbolize the greater things, the highest themes in life. These in particular are culturally mythologized enough that any kind of established meanings will probably be the same, no matter what deck you're looking at. If you do want to look up established meanings, this is a pretty good site, though it'll be most useful if you got a Rider-Waite-Smith card. edit: also, I'd love some co-judges!
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Oct 25, 2017 00:39
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Flesnolk posted:I'll co-judge. Much appreciated! Maigius posted:IN! The Emperor (Fountain Tarot) Hawklad posted:Okay I'm iN too. The Moon (Rosetta Tarot) Uranium Phoenix posted:In and Queen of Swords + The Lovers (Tarot of the Silicon Dawn) Chairchucker posted:In I guess The High Priestess (The Dreaming Way) Sitting Here posted:8==D Ace of Wands
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Oct 25, 2017 16:57
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spectres of autism posted:in gimme someth cool The Hierophant (Mary-El) 
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Oct 25, 2017 23:06
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Tyrannosaurus posted:If we Both cards. Edit: entries are closed! sparksbloom fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Oct 28, 2017 |
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Oct 28, 2017 02:17
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Still looking for a third judge -- please let me know if you're interested!
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Oct 29, 2017 01:51
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Hawklad posted:I can judge if you're still lookin' Sure, come on aboard!
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Oct 30, 2017 01:26
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Oct 30, 2017 08:02
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 WEEK 273 JUDGEMENT  I thought this was a pretty solid week. I only had a handful of stories that fell into my personal low or mid/low stacks, and I thought everything else was pretty solid. If you didn’t HM this week, don’t feel bad -- there were at least five more stories on my HM candidate list, and at least half the stories this week were in contention for a high mention from at least one of the judges. Only one DM this week, and it goes to Exmond. Please don’t get discouraged. You’re making progress, but there’s still too much pulp action in a week that called for emotion and strong characters. HMs go to Nethilia and Sitting Here. In the end, these stories edged out their competition in offering more complicated and nuanced takes on their themes, and also making me feel a thing. The loss goes to BabyRyoga, due to a combination of mechanical errors, a near-incomprehensible conclusion, and a lack of an actual friendship in the story. And the win goes to Ironic Twist, whose story this week was dark, bizarre, and a little off-putting, just like The Hanged Man himself. The throne is yours, Twist!
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Oct 31, 2017 04:01
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Crits, part 1 BabyRyoga -- “A Transgression” As far as I can tell, there’s no “friendship” being tested here, but that’s secondary to the larger problem of my having no idea what’s going on here. As in I can’t exactly tell who’s speaking at the end of the story, on the most literal level -- I assume it’s gotta be the teenager, because the older guy has a dagger in his neck, but with the way the paragraphs are broken up, this isn’t entirely clear. And on a more macro level, I have no idea what the boy is hoping to gain in joining bird club, or why he’s so certain in having the moral high ground here. All of this means it’s really hard to take this story seriously, and the grammatical errors and stylistic quirks (too much all caps onomonopia for my taste, thanks) don’t help either. Speaking of style: “A crooked smile slowly formed upon the lips of an older man - a professional of sorts, complete with your run of the mill suit and tie combo.” Is this really so much better than “An older man, dressed in a suit and tied, smiled?” Low. CantDecideOnAName -- “Favors” This comes to a conclusion that I enjoyed, that manages to convey a nice emotional range in relatively few words. I just think it takes too long and requires too much scene-setting to get there, especially since it’s delivered in this “as you know” style that doesn’t seem very organic. But once the scene’s set, I get a good sense of who these characters are, and the dialogue’s well-written and flows well. I enjoyed the subtlety around the exact situation, and it’s a little more unsettling to not have the circumstances defined precisely. I do wish we had more insight into why Brennan changes his mind at the last minute, some window into his thought process, or at least a sense of what he has to lose -- that sort of thing would make this more immediate. But I think the story is pretty successful in doing what it sets out to do. Mid. Yoruichi - “Paper Dreams” I like the tone of this story and its theme of striving for dreams, and I like the way it contrasts the selfish and selfless dreams. Unfortunately it doesn’t really click with me on a deeper level, and I feel like the story is holding me at a distance, like a dream you try to remember and then you can only remember one or two images from. I think the issue is that this story is so awash in similes that there isn’t enough concrete detail to really seize upon; these characters are archetypes, and they could be anyone. On one hand, that’s good for some readers, who find that sort of thing relatable. I need the specificity to really seize on things. But -- back to that other hand -- this is really something of a fable, a punishment for putting too much stock in idle dreams and hoping, and do fables really need specificity? I don’t know, but I do know this is a well-written story and my issues with it are nebulous. Mid. Aesclepia -- Girls Night In To be fair, this wasn’t the easiest card. I gave you the card that means “friendship” for a prompt that was “write about friendship,” which was probably one of the bigger challenges this week. But yeah -- I didn’t like this very much. Part of it is that nothing happens, and this wouldn’t be quite so bad if things didn’t keep threatening to happen. Like an actual conflict: whatever Lyn doesn’t want to talk about, or whatever the criminals are getting up to. But nothing explodes into an actual conflict, everything just gets swept under the rug, and all that’s left is small talk between these three people, and they’re lovingly portrayed, but it’s just not very interesting. I’m not sure why the criminals are even included at all, since they don’t get up to anything interesting, but instead they eat up words that would be better used exploring the conflicts of personality with the three characters you’re actually focusing on. Mid/low. Nethilia - “The Pains of Hurting Me” I love the depth of the sense of setting this story conveys in its very limited length. You’ve also conveyed the specificity of the relationship between Johnny, his mother, and Patsy, and how these relationships are inflected by the setting. It’s immediately engrossing, and I immediately feel like I know this world, this place, these people. The only part I don’t love is the ending. I like the violent fantasy of the skipping stone, but the last line lands a little flat, a little too passive, a little too generic for a story otherwise awash in specific color. Mid/high. Exmond - A Good Dog I think the two parts of this story don’t juxtapose well. I see what you’re going for with the parallel structure between the bear attack and the protagonist’s misgivings about his reaction to Ivy, but it doesn’t work because the bear attack is written like pulp. It’s silly and cartoonish, and it’s juxtaposed against an emotional core that I find much more compelling, except we don’t get any time to explore the narrator’s relationship to Ivy, his complicated feelings that makes dealing with her diagnosis seriously because we’re reading about a bear attack. People have given you the solid advice to move away from pure pulp, and I’m glad to see you’re trying that, but I wish you’d gone even more in that direction and developed the down-to-earth aspects of this story. You're right that I didn't specifically say "it has to be emotional" this week, but the stories that were most successful running with this prompt explored the sense that a friendship being tested is an inherently emotional experience, and milked that for drama. The part of your story with Ivy shows you intuitively understand this, but it feels shoehorned in, and there's tonal whiplash when it's tethered to the madcap bear attack. I think you could even have this work even better if it was a different animal attacking, one that's a little more grounded the everyday reality of this situation. A larger, violent dog, for example, wouldn't feel so over-the-top. Medium low. flerp - “⅖ Stars, My Dog Is Still Dead” I’m conflicted with this one, because on one hand this story makes me feel things, but on the other I feel like it’s a little cheap. The last line hits me right in the gut, and there’s other lines that do the same thing, like the kid playing with the dog’s scraps of fur. And I like the relationship you’ve captured between the narrator and his mother, which is a nice little portrait of unconditional love. But am I outing the coldness of my heart if I think this is a little thin? Once Mom comes by and interrupts the ritual, the story just vamps on this one note -- which is a moving and touching note, don’t get me wrong -- for a little too long, and I’m very conscious that I’m being emotionally manipulated. I do like feeling things and I have a soft spot for sad lonely kids, so I end up liking this a lot anyway, but I can’t really love it because it’s a little over-the-top. Mid/high. Okua -- “The Labyrinth” My main question reading this is what Lia’s motivations are here. There’s a moment where she feels used, manipulated, and at that point I thought she was bringing back the key to heal her friend. But then she swallows the key, and I’m left wondering why she wants it for herself. There’s a nice little self-empowerment tale here, of her learning to love her own talents, and I like that aspect a lot, which is framed by some nice imagery and able prose (although you have more than a couple typos.) But I think what this story needs is a clearer link to Lia deciding to keep the key for herself, or, if she’s not planning to use it just for herself, you need to make that clearer, because otherwise I’m getting flashbacks to the really disgusting parts of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, and I don’t think that’s what you’re going for. Mid/low. Antivehicular - “Surface Fire” Got bored halfway through the third paragraph and had to start over. Too much scene-setting and worldbuilding for such a tiny story. The prose is strong and precise, but I had a hard time getting into this. First of all, I thought the “apes in troops” thing was a metaphor at first, and later I’m still not sure if it is or not, and it also took me a while to realize Hrasha was an actual tiger. But after rereading this a few times, I kind of like it, and I think this story does a good job at threading the uncertainty of loyalties between these characters to the point where the final choice feels actually climactic. Mid.
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Oct 31, 2017 05:00
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Nov 1, 2017 01:57
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More crits: spectres of autism - “Owl (Mariel)” Oof. This is heavy and bleak in a way I really like, and I especially appreciate the way the addict’s self-loathing and excuses come out in this story, the way Booker only really sees meaning when he’s intoxicated. This all rings true. I also really liked the lines about sadness and fear, and being unable to trade. It’s a really strong emotional core, and I like the set piece of Booker describing sunsets to the old woman as well. What I don’t like is the TV that is literally broadcasting the word “fear” and literal messages saying “be afraid,” which seems like an awfully obvious way of evoking the dysphoric tone. But hey, it works for that well enough, it’s just a little over the top. I would have given this an HM, but one of my co-judges had this as a loss pick. Mid/high. Jay W. Friks - “Benny and Rothko” This feels padded and a little lifeless. Does this story really benefit from Benny sussing out the extent of the Devil’s mind-reading skills? I think it doesn’t, and distracts from what’s more interesting here, which is the relationship between Benny and Rothko, Benny’s insecurities about Rothko leaving, and what he’s willing to do when those emotions are tested. But there’s just not enough context to make these themes meaningful. Even when the story switches to action, the action is presented in this distant sense. This is an emotional chase scene, but the words you’ve chosen are so abstract, it lacks the visceral impact it needs for me to empathize with Benny’s emotional state. If you’re interested in working with this piece further, I’d be happy to do a line crit to show you what I mean. Mid/low. Tyrannosaurus - “korean|american” I love the dialogue in this one, though I have to admit I didn’t really “get it” until I read Thranguy’s crit, and I thought these were just Our Girl’s friends. I just liked this because the dialogue is lively and specific enough that I’m instantly invested in what might otherwise be seen as a really mundane conflict. Now that I see what you were really trying to do here, I like it even more, and I see it more as an exploration of anxiety, some of which is identity-based and some less so. Mid/high. Thranguy - “Three True Things” Excellent pacing. The story is constantly creating a sense of anticipation for itself, with the “three things” structure nicely entwined a narrator who’s enough of a person that I’m able to care for them. Pan’s dialogue is good, and the coda is a nice button on a story that otherwise threatens to be too tidy. I’m really enamoured with the kind of economy this story has, in covering a brief, meaningful episode and extracting a greater significance from it in well under the word limit. High. Ironic Twist - “Peanut Butter Breath” I loved this a lot for the imagery and the real sense of dread and mundane horror here. The idea of this kid diving deep under a water with a garden hose to just be in the presence of the one bit of love in his life hit me really hard. The kind of evocative imagery of the dirty, violent adults in his life on the surface stuck with me, too. But what made this so distinct is that this story asks us to sympathize with this young kid’s desire for oblivion, and it’s a little perverse, but by the end of the story I do. It’s messy and difficult, risky and bleak, and it’s memorable and powerful for exactly these reasons. High. Deltasquid - “The Energy” It takes way too long for anything to happen in this story, and when it does, it’s a conversation where people tell each other things they already know. I’ve also re-read this several times, and I can’t seem to locate the part where the tower actually catches fire. I don’t think the actual conflict between Hélène and Julie is bad, but it needs to be recontextualized and more immediate for this story to work and feel less dull. And the “you are lacking in empathy” part just seems so stilted and robotic. I like the image of her capturing the burning sculpture with her drone, but I think Hélène’s total lack of self-awareness isn’t intentional, and it comes off as distracting and frustrating more than compelling. Low. apophenium - “Predators and Prey” This is fine. Technically, it’s very competent, with an obvious arc and a nice full-circle ending. Unfortunately, I don’t get much more than that from this. These characters are pretty hollow, and their lack of names reinforces this. I wonder if this is intended as an archetypical story, a sort of fable, as the lack of specific detail about the country or surroundings feels significant. If not, though, this is more of a skeleton of a more specific, developed story than a compelling tale on its own. I can’t tell how the boy views the woman by the end, and that’s the kind of context that would help the ending land a little better than it does. Mid. Uranium Phoenix - “We Know Not The Hour” This is well-told and hits its beats well, with strong prose and well-developed characters, and if I have a criticism it’s that this friendship’s tension is dissolved through logic more than choosing fondness. It means that the character and their choices matter less, and drains some of the potential emotional impact from the story. I also feel like the town’s mob mentality is a little too familiar, and I think it’s a wise choice that the story focuses more on Kas’s internal conflict of judging whether Leylace made the right call in providing false hopes. It’s a story that’s really wrapped up in this ethical/political question, but because it’s made personal to these two characters, who have enough definition beyond the themes of the story, I still ended up really liking this. High. steeltoedsneakers - “Silence speaks volumes” The tension is building too slowly. I’m really bored. This is a story about friendship and you’ve given me one about domestic architecture. I like that you use the house itself to reveal things about Steve’s biography, but a lot of the description here is at the expense of providing information about the relationships between these characters. And by the end, I only have a very faint idea of what they’re even doing in this house to begin with. Couple that with the fact that I can’t see any relation to the cards at all, and you have a story that really frustrated me. Mid/low.
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Nov 1, 2017 20:13
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sparksbloom fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Nov 27, 2017 |
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Nov 6, 2017 03:20
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Nov 9, 2017 04:07
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sparksbloom fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Nov 27, 2017 |
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Nov 12, 2017 04:29
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spectres of autism posted:someone brawl me ok ok
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Nov 13, 2017 22:24
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Tyrannosaurus posted:
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Nov 13, 2017 22:33
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In. Oceania, after.
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Nov 14, 2017 06:33
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sparksbloom posted:In. Oceania, after.
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Nov 14, 2017 14:31
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sparksbloom fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Nov 27, 2017 |
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Nov 20, 2017 04:31
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Nov 21, 2017 05:29
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sparksbloom fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Nov 27, 2017 |
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Nov 22, 2017 05:07
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The Mushroom-Consciousness 930 words Prompt: Mushrooms in London by Karia, Another Day In Los Grano D’oro by Broenheim I started to worry once I saw the third guy clutching his stomach, throwing up in the muddy grass. I looked into my bag and asked the mushroom-consciousness if something was wrong, but she told me it was all part of the purging process. It was my first time selling my mushrooms at Fest, and I felt terrible the body load was so high. Cultivating mushrooms taught me that each of my mushrooms contained the universe’s untranslated voice, and tonight, it sounded like the mushroom-consciousness was screaming for reckoning. “Excuse me. Can I have a word?” Even before I turned around, I recognized Clara’s voice. She was a Fest legend, though I’d never spoken with her myself. For fifteen years, she’d called contra dances during the daytime while trip-sitting after dark. “Excuse me. My friend’s been throwing up for an hour.” I’ve never been good with confrontation, especially from people I don’t know that well. I felt small as I stammered a response. “Sometimes people don’t take well to it, you know, it takes a while--” “I’ve been trip sitting for ten years. I know what mushrooms are like. This isn’t it. You’ve made my friend really sick. I know other people are sick, too. Do you know what you’re doing? Are you sure you’re selling the right mushrooms?” “I’m sure.” I felt terrible that people were hurting, but I didn’t appreciate the insinuation. I knew my stuff. I’d read a dozen books on mycology, done hundreds of hours of research, and spent even more time meditating -- both sober and not -- communing with the mushroom-consciousness. “I’m sure don’t know what you want from me,” I told her. “But I’m sorry people are sick.” “People are hurting,” she said. “Come with me.” I followed her. I felt I owed her that much, since her friend was sick and all, even though all I wanted to do was return to the campsite, smoke a bowl, and forget this night ever happened. Clara led me into the part of the campground where people built amateur art installations. Usually it was silly, unsubtle stuff. Last year’s highlight was a sculpture of Donald Trump masturbating, covered in peanut butter, so that birds would gnaw on it. This year’s highlight was obvious, even from a distance: a fifteen-foot tall wooden catapult, surrounded by tiny effigies of people I couldn’t make out in the light. A circle of onlookers had already gathered. About twenty festival-goers congregated in a half-circle around the catapult. A half-dozen looked extremely ill. Some were dry-heaving into plastic bags; others were lying face-down in the mud. Those well enough to see me pointed as I passed, and I looked down at the sodden earth and wished it would swallow me. “Well, I found him,” she said. The crowd booed, and I fixed my gaze inside my bag. Give me some help here, I said to the mushroom-consciousness, though I was too afraid to move my lips. Trust me, she responded. “They’re not poison,” I said. I stuffed a dried mushroom in my mouth, trying to swallow it whole. I gagged, which probably didn’t help my case. “I’m sorry these are so rough. I honestly didn’t expect that. But if you all just give it another hour--” “I have a better idea,” Clara said. She looked at the catapult, then back at me. “You can’t be serious,” I said. “I thought we were going to talk. You can’t--” I rubbed my eyes. “This isn’t real.” “Real?” she said. “Of course it’s real. It’s not a complicated thing, a trebuchet. It’s a lever with a payload. And it either has the structural integrity to launch a payload, or it doesn’t.” She paused and licked her lips. “Let’s find out.” On Clara’s cue, the crowd started to move. I winced and braced myself, but the people took hold of a ropes while Clara picked up one of the effigies and stuffed it in the trebuchet’s basket. Then, upon another cue, they yanked at the rope, sending the effigy rocketing toward the clouds. There was silence for a moment. “Can you give us any reason why you shouldn’t be next?” Clara asked. “Because you’d seriously injure or kill me, and everyone else here will be fine in a day or two,” is what I meant to say, but I’d forgotten that I’d given myself over to the mushroom-consciousness. Instead I said “Nothing at all.” I didn’t feel a trace of nausea. The semicircle began to encroach, and I lifted my arms up to allow folks to carry me into the bucket, dropping the bag of mushrooms as I surrendered. I gave Clara and the others a thumbs-up, and the now-nonplussed horde shuffled into their same positions. Even the sick folks were propped up on their hands, watching me, watching the basket. Under the blanket of peace and calm, I still felt a gash of fear spill loose as the ropes went taut in their hands. Clara shook her head, started to say something, and rose her hand in a stop signal. But the crowd must have misinterpreted it, because in a flash of movement, I was airborne. The fear broke loose, and with it came panic, betrayal, and waves of radiating pain from my neck. I couldn’t look down, where I’d dropped the bag of mushrooms, but as I reached the arc’s apex and began falling, I realized this: The mushroom-consciousness wouldn’t save me. The mushroom-consciousness had rejected me. There was just the rapidly approaching ground, spored with acres and acres of mushroom-unconsciousness.
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Nov 27, 2017 03:19
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the last of the Tarot week crits: Fumblemouse -- “Into the Wood” This story is a breezy, fun read, but it wasn’t funny enough to rate because of the comedy or sincere enough to rate because of the emotion. I did like the beats of the ending -- like, yeah, it’s sweet that these two friends are going to be trees together -- but on the other hand, it feels like the correct decision would be to try to get help or an external opinion. And that’s because this story wants to have the absurd, just-so logic that would make that ending work, but it’s not absurd enough that it’s satisfying. What I mean is that Suzy is aimlessly bantering while her friend rapidly turns into a tree, and she’s simultaneously taking it seriously and not taking it seriously. It comes off as a really uncertain, hard-to-read tone, which makes the story unsatisfying when you look at it for a long time. But while judging, I appreciated the simple story and the fun banter amidst all the heavy, dense stories people wrote this week. Sitting Here -- “Sober as the Sky” I like the way this story uses specifics to highlight the desperation of this situation. The runner of the dwindling light of the cell phone as a modern candle was a nice touch, as well as Skye’s “recovering alcoholic-math.” The cell phone light is also a nice way to manage tension in the bounds of a short word-limited story. And I think the way this story handles alcoholism in this “we’re dead, so why not” situation is compassionate and well-thought out. I do feel like these characters are basically the same person, though, and when I first read the story, I wasn’t sure which character was in recovery until I re-read the beginning several times. And upon re-reading, I’m not sure if the bottle getting knocked out of Mara’s hands is intentional or accidental -- and I’m not sure that ambiguity is intended. That said, I really like the last lines, and I really like the general tone of the story, the sense of desperation that builds and builds. Well-deserving of its HM. sebmojo -- “The lesson of the axe” This struck me as a little too familiar and too long winded, though the co-judges liked it. None of these characters feel animated enough to make this take on “knowing the future is kind of depressing” feel especially necessary; the fourth section alone seems to be the point of the story, and the surrounding sections don’t really add much to it. Like why is Sergei just destroying the stones now? Why are they in clear display when they’re associated with that kind of trauma? If there was more established about Sergei and Mikhail’s friendship, I think this would have worked better -- it would have served the story more than the entire second section. ThirdEmperor -- “The Night’s Post” This is a rich story, told passionately and written with ambition. The voice here is distinct, and the world is well-developed. It’s clear a lot of thought went into this piece, and I appreciate the specific, sensory details and imagery here. Unfortunately, the prose style here is really not my thing, and I found myself losing focus through the winding sentences in almost every paragraph. When the long sentences work, they’re dreamy, desperate, full-hearted things: quote:They are soft things of a flesh like wet gray clay that shape themselves manlike; their hands are always poorly done though, too long in the fingers, the skin too loose. When they don’t, they’re confusing and interrupt themselves: quote:They gurgled and gestured and taught me a mixture of, among other things, lye and coffee berries brewed under moonlight, promising it would take me away. You also have a few comma splices, including the second-to-last sentence. I can see someone who enjoys this kind of style seeing these sentences as a plus. I found it distracting and frustrating, and it doesn’t help that the first few paragraphs feel vague and aimless, which put me in a bad mood and bad attitude while reading this story. Now that this isn’t toward the back end of 26 stories I’m trying to read very quickly, I can appreciate the depth and detail in this story, but its denseness feels like an obstacle between me and the story itself. Obliterati - “Where the Metal Meets the Meat” I’m afraid I can’t read your refrain here (“Some things are worth fighting for…”) without thinking of that For Better or For Worse strip. The prose is able and fairly strong, but the story has clarity issues. For example, there has to be a better way to inform us about the narrator’s cyborg nature than the “auto-targeting unit,” which reads like the protagonist is handling a gun. It’s a good impulse to not infodump at us, but the lack of context for the situation of the protagonist makes this story a little confusing. I’m also not sure what this story gains from the second-person perspective. There’s no reason for the protagonist to be telling this to Maria, because she was there. And I don’t feel any sense of intimacy with Maria’s character, and if you’re trying to create that with a character portrayed as mean and dense, I’m not sure why. I do see potential here, though. There’s a solid idea and solid thematic content behind this, and I like the sense of melancholy and mourning that the protagonist has for their lost humanity. Dr. Kloctopussy -- “Spring Break” This was one of my favorites from this week, because how can you help but feel for Eglantine? The prose is nimble, witty but not ostentatious, and captures a relatable kind of loneliness. I like that the story has real emotional stakes even though the story’s light and jokey, and it’s rare that I read a story that balances these things as well as you have here. Maybe Aurora and Meulusine skew a little close to caricatures, but I’m not sure the story needs them to be more developed. I like all the specific instances of them marginalizing Eglantine and then Eglantine coming to terms with her disappointment about it. Really good work. Sham bam bamina! -- “Start With a Large Fortune” This isn’t a complicated story, but I kind of like it anyway. I like the short scene collage approach, and I think you use it well here to connect these little snapshots of Evan’s disillusionment with his job. The one about the rotting chickens is the best, because it’s almost tangential, but it’s specific enough to tell us most of what we need to know about the Evan and his restaurant. On the other hand, there’s not enough here to develop Cal, and that makes this story one of many this week where I have to ask “why were these people even friends at all?” And while I can definitely sympathize with Evan’s anxiety to tell his friend he’s leaving, I feel like Cal’s anger and lack of sympathy isn’t contextualized enough, which makes their final confrontation come off as overly broad. But I think the story does a lot to capture the atmosphere of the failing restaurant, as well as Evan’s ambivalence about it and desire to do other things, and that makes it feel like it’s got a lot of potential.
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Nov 27, 2017 21:23
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In. I'm not great at writing light stories unless they cross the line into silly. This week I'm going to write something light, fun, but grounded.
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Nov 29, 2017 18:12
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Thanks for the crits, Sham, Canty, crabrock, and Jay!
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Nov 30, 2017 04:35
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Prompt: Bad at being light without being silly American Eel 533 words Danny can only be a human for five years, then he has to go back to being an eel, and that sucks. His time runs out at midnight, so all week we’ve been doing fun human things, like playing catch in the park, eating Taco Bell, and talking about girls we like. But now we’re sitting on the bleachers of our high school as the sun sets, looking up at the stars, and I’m feeling sad that I won’t get to hang out with my best friend again. “You can still visit,” he says. “At least until we move on, which shouldn’t be for a few months. Just come down to the river.” “It won’t be the same, though.” He shrugs, and lights a cigarette. If I didn’t know he used to be an eel, I’d have no idea. Danny’s short and pudgy and his dirty-blond hair goes down to his shoulders, and he smokes like he was born with opposable thumbs. “Do you guys have an exchange program?” I ask him. “Like, can I be an eel for a while?” “I’d have to ask the Eel King. But I don’t think your chances are good. Sorry. It’s just… eels don’t have a lot of magic, and we’re supposed to use it for practical things, like not getting torn apart by dams.” “I just want to say one last time that I’m sorry for everything we’ve done to eelkind.” Danny doesn’t say anything. I know this is a sore spot for him, because even though he’s educated me, I didn’t know a lot about eels before we met. Like one time he tapped me on the shoulder and he zapped me with static electricity, and I thought that must have been some leftover eel thing, but it turned out he was just wearing a sweater on a dry day. And then he told me that electric eels weren’t really eels, and he wouldn’t talk to me for a week. “What are you gonna miss most?” I ask him, after he’s been quiet for a while. Danny stubs out his cigarette. “I don’t know. Maybe the other animals. Petting dogs.” “When you’re an eel, you can’t pet any dogs,” I say, laying on the gravitas. It’s supposed to be funny, but he gets serious. “It’s true. You can’t.” He spits off the side of the bleachers. “Being an eel kind of sucks.” “Maybe you can ask the Eel King if you can be a dog for a while. See how that goes. Like if there’s ever any excess magic. I’d take care of you. Give you tasty treats.” I’m trying to make him laugh again, but he looks up at the sky, into the moon, and sighs. “That’d be nice,” he says. I don’t know what to say, and I’m afraid to make any more jokes. So I point at a far-off flag pole, and say to Danny: “I’ll race you.” He starts to say something, but before he does, I yell “Three-two-one go!” and jump off the steps, and a few seconds later I hear his feet behind me, and I hope it’s not the last time.
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Dec 4, 2017 04:15
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hell yeah in
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Dec 5, 2017 03:35
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 In.
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Dec 19, 2017 06:24
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 17:52 |
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Plans 1,144 words Online I don’t tell anyone I’m a merman. I let them get disappointed. The last one was Kelsey. We matched on Tinder and we sent jokes back and forth. She loved sailing so I told her she should take me sailing sometime. Little did she know I didn’t want to go sailing after all. We made plans for dinner at a Moroccan place but I didn’t go. I made a video for YouTube where I talked about my two pineapples a day diet. I’m passionate about fitness, and I’m passionate about my brand. I’m also passionate about making plans. That’s why I liked Kelsey, because we would make a lot of plans. She got mad at me for not showing up. She said Seth are you coming and I said I’m here just look harder. Then she didn’t respond to me. I asked her if she’d forgive me and give me another chance. I told her she scared me because she was beautiful. She asked if I was really fourteen years old. She said once she thought she was building a really close connection to a guy she met on a roleplaying forum, but it turned out he was fourteen years old and she was twenty-six. I said no I wasn’t fourteen and I offered to show her ID, but she said no I don’t even care. Then I said are you free next weekend for sailing lessons. Then I said that four more times. The last time she sent me an address. What time, I ask her. Sometimes the people at the beach see me on my phone. They take pictures. The children want to take selfies with me. I let them, and then I make sure they get my business card, which has my YouTube account and my Instagram. But I worry they might make comments about me being a merman. I lay awake at night and worry they will spoil the whole game. I just don’t think anyone would take my fitness tips seriously if they knew I was a merman. I think they would say These fitness tips aren’t for me because I’m not a merman, and maybe our biology is different. Then one day BuzzFeed posts a link to a video called “MEREMAN [sic] SIGHTING” and it’s a couple of teenagers playing Marco Polo with me. The people in the comments say I am a guy in a suit. That’s the majority opinion. A smaller minority suggests I am an alien. And some people who watch that video recognize me and they start sending me messages. The hardcore fans realize they have never seen me from the waist down and soon all the fans are trying to see my feet, which I don’t have. I ignore it and post a couple videos about the supplements I take, but the fans are merciless. They want to see me run a mile on shore. They organize a campaign where if I am to run a mile, they will donate several thousand dollars to a charity that feeds malnourished kids. But, like I said, I love making plans, so I say Yes I will run the mile. What time? The day comes and goes. There are a lot of haters. Then one day a fan shows up at the beach. He’s a tattooed guy in his twenties. He says Hey are you the Two Pineapples A Day guy. I say I’ve never heard of him. Hey, he says. You are a merman. It’s true. He takes pictures, and I guess the malnourished kids get fed after all, because he did this. I don’t know, some people were talking about it in the comments, and I didn’t want to read the whole thing. It’s time for me to disengage anyway. Unplug. I have been routinely skipping sailing lessons with Kelsey. I don’t go to them but I apologizes. She gets mad at me, but I remind her I’m not fourteen, so she forgives me. I’ve started to hide underwater and watch her show up to sailing lessons. I’m thinking of proposing, soon. Sometimes I think about throwing my phone into the ocean, and that means no more plans with Kelsey, no more adoring crowds yelling Hey Seth I love your abs, no profile in the New Yorker someday. I could just get a new phone, anyway. I think about getting a new phone to film myself throwing my old phone in the ocean and posting it six months later, when the controversy dies down and fossilizes into urban legend. Instead I make a video, still filmed from the waist up, where I tell my fans I’ll be having a meet-and-greet in Kansas City. I even look up a real location in Kansas City and call the promoters. They send me a contract and tell me that they will pay me three million dollars to make my first ever public performance. I sign the contract, which is one of my favorite parts of making plans. The day of the meet-and-greet I don’t go, and I'm working on a new video when a wave of fans come by the beach and start chanting. It scares me, and they’re making a lot of noise, so I dive under the water. I wish they’d just go away. I know this is a part of being famous, having to please people, but I just want to talk about pineapples and for random strangers to send me messages like “I love your abs.” But it turns out the fans are even ready for this, as a young guy in a snorkel swims next to me and says something I can’t understand under the water. When I come up to the surface to escape him, there is a helicopter circling overhead. Then I hear someone call through a megaphone: “Seth, is that you?” I see the sailboat first, and then I see Kelsey. I don’t like when people come by unannounced, so I dive deep under the water and try to get my bearings. Then my mouth gets covered by a net, and I am loaded into a government submarine. I wonder if Kelsey will protest for my release. As I am experimented on I wish I had saved a video of me destroying a phone. I wish that I had given my log-in information to someone else, so they could continue my legacy. But now I have faith in the fans. They found me once. They can find me again. I imagine Kelsey will come into the submarine, that she will take on the government agents and take them out single-handedly, or at least advocate for me to have more free-swimming space than the thousand gallon tank they’re using now. If the fans don’t save me, Kelsey will, I reason. I realize the government agents are really just my fans. I treat them like that, which they seem to like. I am apparently on the front cover of a top-secret news cover. They want me to appear at a special meeting of important diplomats. They say I will add character. I say yes, and plan to not go, but they just take my tank and bring me to the special meeting. I take a vow of silence. They take pictures. It all seems very unfair.
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Dec 26, 2017 06:56
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