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sh is banned, here are her crits as per her request Tree Bucket Your opening — specifically, the first four lines — promises an interesting premise with a funny tone. You chose a great setting/set piece (the room), and I think you do a good job describing the view and letting your protagonist have a genuine moment of unabashed wonder. I snorted at “Welp!” quoth I. The banter between characters is generally pretty good, though it’s unclear to me what the narrator is really doing at this party considering they suck at being there. Don’t get me wrong; they are endearing and entertaining, I just have no idea how they got into this relationship with their girlfriend and I have no idea why the girlfriend brought them! This story is very hammy, so a lot can be forgiven, but if you think about it too long a lot of bits don’t make a whole lot of sense. I thought there was a reasonable chemistry between the narrator and the honey-lady, and I think it’s safe to say the narrator will probably have a much nicer time with her. I didn’t really like that a couple minor characters got names, but none of the principal characters did. I get that ‘Beloved’ is kind of tongue in cheek, but in this case my preference would have been for more named characters. Semi-related: you don’t really need to capitalize Regular Nouns. I see a lot of writers do this when they want to signal an affectionate pet name, or to indicate the importance or singularity of a thing, but it’s not necessary to capitalize every significant Noun in the Story. Also, the Titanic and Cake references mean you’re probably at least as old as me. RIP. Brotherly Another strong opening! I am way into this story because I love weird impossible romances, but the orb-licking is so weird that someone with different tastes could find it offputting. I thought it was delightful, but have to acknowledge the juvenile part of my brain that is giggling at the implication that the protagonist is licking one large testicle. I think the voice is good, though it fit the opening (when the protagonist was a child) better than the rest of the story (when she is an adult). If I think too long about the premise, I’m not sure how I feel about the future of the relationship; the narrator’s choice to not tell jeremy that they are orb-lick ghostfucking is a little weird considering I got the impression she genuinely likes him. Like, she’s going to be having sex with him in the orb reality, but keep it a secret from his “real” ghost? It seems like they were home free to just be together and it’s not clear why the narrator would be selfish about it. Overall though I liked this. Yoruichi Okay this made me smile a lot. The absurd escalation of terribleness among despicable people was fantastic. The twist that the corpsified fiancee was in love with the mistress was great. The ending was deliciously dark and felt natural. I like that you didn’t give a gently caress about working out the “rules” of ghosts, it all just kind of works how it needs to. The writing was punchy and funny but macabre and descriptive when it needed to be. Simply Simon Haha okay I loved this, though I might be in the minority among the judges. I love the instant pivot to the absurd when the masked swordsman appears, and just like that we’re in a high-emotion duel. This is weepy family melodrama fit for American daytime TV, which I assume is on par with K-drama in terms of absurd theatrics. I think the only thing that bothers me is how little is made of Karla’s death. Antonio ultimately skewers himself on the same sword, becoming a sort of romantic shish kebab, but there isn’t a whole lot from Juan about the fact that he just murdered his betrothed instead of his father. Considering how important Karla was to both of them, I sort of wish she’d got more of the spotlight in general. Overall though I enjoyed this soap opera spectacle. flerp drat I really like this. I guess I should feel bad about the world drowning for a kiss, but it’s really very lovely, so I think I’d be okay with it. The ending made the hairs on my arms stand on end. Good poo poo. You’ve definitely improved at telling this sort of story over the years; a few years ago this might have been too repetitive, hitting the same notes over and over, but there’s this nice driving pace to the prose that kept me going. Oh fix ur typos tho u fartsicle Merc YOUNG MAN WHAT IS THAT APOSTROPHE DOING IN YOUR FIRST SENTENCE. I think you meant to write “servant’s head” actually but either way, don’t do typos in your first sentence!! But okay let’s see… Wow. This was a tragic bromance. I wept. I cheered with triumph. I wept again at Jasper’s sacrifice. I had sinful socialist thoughts. What a ride. In all seriousness, this was a goofy story that flew along by the seat of its pants and had a good time on the way. There’s some genuine heart in the friendship between the king and Jasper, and I can tell you had a lot of fun. I wouldn’t call it a high point in the literary genre, but that’s not what you set out to write, is it???? Idle Amalgam Oh dear, poor Crenshaw is wedged between two adverbs in that first line. If two of the first three words of your story are adverbs, you may need to rethink that sentence. And gosh, what a sentence it is! After the initial onslaught of adverbs, the sentence wanders down a garden path and ends with an azalea bush who may or may not be drawing the ire of the lobby staff. You’re missing a comma, so the sentence reads like this: quote:Drunkenly, Crenshaw nearly spilled out of the elevator but instead spilled the contents of his stomach into a nearby azalea [who was] drawing the attention and ire of the lobby staff. I think you got overly enamoured with things spilling out of other things tbh. Take a look at some of the other story openings from this week; a bunch of them do a great job of setting up the mood and premise. Last note on the prose: you used around 20 adverbs (drunkenly, nearly, shamelessly, classically, particularly, etc). I think adverbs are great. However, they tend to weaken sentences and take the ‘punch’ out of your action and description if overused. Onto the story itself: I’m not super well-read but I got sort of mid-20th century character portrait vibes from this piece, except it’s set in the modern day. Crenshaw seems like he comes from a time of rotary phones and postal correspondence, but instead he’s bumbling through modern dating. I can dig that. I wasn’t a super fan of the way time travel worked; I think you should have introduced it way earlier in the story. As it is, it sort of takes a bit too long to get to the meat of the story, which is Crenshaw realizing his feelings for Sarah too late, then getting a second shot at it when he’s struck in the head. Noah I can’t help but feel that you had to cut a lot from this piece. Camila’s betrayal and subsequent treatment of Soleo and Del Moray makes sense in a “I guess this could have actually happened IRL” sort of way. I don’t doubt that it’s well within Camila’s character to abuse her station for her own purposes. I guess my issue is just that the story is so tightly focused on the relationship between Soleo and Del Moray that I was expecting that to be the throughline all the way til the end. That’s why I figured you had to cut a lot of words from this piece; I’m wondering if there was a version that went into a little more detail about Camila’s motivations. Also, I genuinely wasn’t sure if Del Moray genuinely had ulterior motives, or whether it just benefitted Camila to falsely accuse him of trying to manipulate her to get to her father. I really enjoyed this story up until the point where the guys run back to their burning town. It was an operatic exploration of a pretty common scenario (two friends falling for the same love interest). Soleo is instantly likeable and it’s commendable that he was willing to quickly set aside his efforts to woo Camila in order to preserve his friendship with Del Moray ( and he had even retired his efforts towards Lady Carmila so as to hang onto at least something near to his heart. — I loved this line). Bottom line, you wrote a great bromance with a slightly confusing bummer of an ending. Thrangles I would watch this movie. It’s a very Thranguy take on superheroes. Wizards, dragons, alternate history, giant mechs, maybe even a dash of steampunk. Just the whole genre kitchen sink, duking it out with nazis. As usual, it’s ten pounds of story in a five pound bag, but it’s so gleefully insane that I kind of just grinned and went along with it. More typos than usual, which makes me wonder if you wrote this very fast? That would explain the breathless, madcap feel of it. Fafnir is definitely my favorite part of this. His sections don’t overstay their welcome but they do a lot to fill in a character who is otherwise very thinly sketched. I like that he got to dance with the extremely comic book journalist lady after the war. The ending fumbles a little bit because it tries to cram too much additional info in right there at the end. You just barely manage to make it work by implying that the whole story was actually the cinematic flashback of a best man speech. But like. An OSHA representative is measuring the flimsiness of your framing device, frowning, and thinking that it might actually be too flimsy to suffice, but since it technically meets minimum specifications they have to let it pass. Sebmojo One sec, I’ve got to check and see if I’ve got a bingo.
SEB BINGO In all seriousness, this piece has swagger and confidence and kind of knows what it’s about from start to finish. I love that this huge dramatic burning house is a character unto itself, and not only that, it’s a source of commiseration for the narrator.
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in, 
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The Noises of Early Summer Lawns 894 words It’s the first weekend of summer, and Kyle’s dandelions will not shut up to save their own lives. Mrs. Carrington and I are sitting on chairs made of thick-woven grass, sipping rosemary and hibiscus iced tea and listening to the early murmuring of the neighborhood’s lawns, just breaking the surface of the dirt again for the first time in several months and cooing at their surroundings, but the May wind keeps blowing and waking up Kyle’s dandelions. Every gust prompts a “Hi,” or a “Hey, it’s me, Kyle.” Kyle is the kind of neighbor that does not let you forget his name. In another couple of weeks, more dandelions will sprout on the other lawns of the neighborhood, letting us all know Kyle’s horoscope for the day (he’s an Aries) or advertising his koi pond business. It’s enough to make you want to advance on his property with a fleet of riding lawn mowers and hum Ride of the Valkyries. I know better than to say such things aloud, though. Cutting down someone else’s lawn is like giving them a tattoo against their will. Mrs. Carrington is still talking while I stay quiet and attempt to listen. She talks about how things have changed in the neighborhood in the past ten years, people in the neighborhood don’t talk to each other anymore, there’s less of an openness and a friendliness in the air. She grabs the other pitcher of iced tea, the one made with jasmine, rainwater, and Miracle-Gro, and waters the roots of her armchair, punctuating her point. Her lawn sighs, and her armrests hug her tight. It’s been one year since the Amerson boy disappeared, and three more years since Charly Delacroix’s bike was found around the corner from where we are now, tipped over onto a storm drain, helmet unbuckled and placed neatly on the sidewalk beside it. I sip my tea and stare off across the way and nod, patting my grass chair, fibers trembling under my weight. There are only so many people like Mrs. Carrington in the neighborhood nowadays, who don’t invest in Keep Off The Grass signs, who make room for guests who want to gossip even though it’s frowned upon. As if right on cue, we hear the sound of a lawn mower firing to life from the end of the lane, and we both turn our heads towards the noise before immediately turning away, pretending nothing happened at all. Every other day, Mr. Waverly mows his lawn down to the bare earth, sowing the ground with handfuls of office staples and paper clips after he’s finished. I refuse to tell him that it’s been forever and a day since they stopped putting iron in office supplies, and besides, it’d be like throwing rock salt on the tip of an iceberg. The lawns in this neighborhood grow down deep, deep into the ground. Ask anyone around here how deep of a person they are, and they won’t lie to you, but they won’t exactly tell you the truth either. I remember the week after Mr. Waverly first moved here, how the grass formed in front of his house in the shape of a woman curled up underneath a sheet of dark green, the curve of her bare hips and thighs like the arc of a question mark. He had the mower delivered to his house by Sunday afternoon. We finish our glasses of iced tea, say our goodbyes, and head back to our gardens. We don’t speak about it, but we both know that’s where we’re going. If talking about other people’s lawns is impolite, then even acknowledging the existence of each other’s gardens is like pulling naked photographs of the other person out of your pocket. I guess I prefer it that way. Some things are not to be shared. I make my way to the back of the house, towards the far corner where my garden sits, a patch of dark soil surrounded by bleached white stones. A bed of white and pink chrysanthemums sits there, leaves dark and shiny, and I beam down at them with pride, bend over and stroke the blossoms as they sway in the wind and chitter with affection. I take a wrinkled finger and pry one of the blossoms to the side, and I look down at him, the child no bigger than a cicada, curled up near the roots of the flowerbed, sucking his thumb in the shade and fast asleep. I smile, then stand up and clap the dirt off my hands. Mrs. Carrington’s one of the few people in the neighborhood that still talks to me, because I let my lawn grow wild, let the grass grow until it’s around three feet tall, sweet-smelling and bright and curled into stalks. The summer is still young, so the grass is still pushing through the earth after having been cooped up underground over the winter months, but before long the sun will beat down upon the perfect meadow of tall, thick blades of green, the type of place to lay back and sink deep, deep down and forget the passage of time, a soft bed that curls around you and swallows up the sky, all around you the sound of laughter, the type of laughter you only know from when you were a child, unabashed and unashamed.
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Jun 6, 2021 12:58
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Thunderdome Week 462: Buzzfeed Dot Com: 1000 Words That Will Make You Feel Old Prompt: Write me a story about feeling old that isn't a downer. As an additional requirement, before you sign up, go to the Billboard Hot 100 chart for June 12, 2021, pick a song, and post it in your sign-up post as an individual flash rule. e: No repeats. Wordcount: 1000 No: Poetry, non-fiction, erotica, political satire, Google docs Signup deadline: 11:59 PM EST, Friday, June 11 Submissions deadline: 11:59 PM EST, Sunday, June 13 Judges: Me Chili sparksbloom Entrants: Black Griffon “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” Djeser “Build a Bitch” Taletel “Save Your Tears” rohan “pov” Idle Amalgam “Telepatia” QuoProQuid “Good 4 U” Thranguy “All I Know So Far” crabrock “Wasted On You” Barnaby Profane “Beautiful Mistakes” Rhymes With Clue “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home)” MockingQuantum “The Business” Dome Racer Alpha “Maybach” Dome Racer Sigma “Blinding Lights” Staggy “Calling My Phone” Sailor Viy “Hell Of a View” My Shark Waifuu “Astronaut in the Ocean” ZearothK "Traitor" Yoruichi "Track Star" Ironic Twist fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Jun 13, 2021 |
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Jun 9, 2021 02:20
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Taletel posted:In. you should probably pick a song, asap
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Jun 9, 2021 08:32
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Yeah uh signups closed I guess
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Jun 12, 2021 06:59
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okay, yeah, we're done, subs closed
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Jun 14, 2021 05:18
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WEEK 462 RESULTS God, gently caress y'all motherfuckers. Idle Amalgam eats a DQ. Djeser wins for writing a competent and perfectly fine story. No HMs this week. Kiss my rear end. DMs this week go to Dome Racer Alpha, Dome Racer Sigma, ZearothK, Rhymes With Clue, and QuoProQuid for wasting my time. The Loss goes to Barnaby Profane for making me read Adam Levine snuff fanfiction. You could've written your story via RNG and it would've come out better. Try harder. Djeser, wash the taste of this week out of my mouth, please and thank you.
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Jun 15, 2021 05:37
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to have week 462 crits done by 2359 PST Monday June 21st
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Jun 15, 2021 17:12
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yeah, in
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Jun 15, 2021 18:24
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Week 462 Crits alright. here we go. Dome Racer Alpha and Dome Racer Sigma Yeah, out of everyone this week I have the least amount of patience for your I Can’t Drive 55 bullshit so you both have to share a crit. I could almost get behind the Speed Racer versus Racer X dynamic y’all have if both of your stories weren’t so incredibly boring and basic. You really don’t need to register gimmick accounts in order to eat the first idea you have for a story and poo poo it out in under a couple hours. If I wanted to fix this story I’d actually write something compelling that tried to subvert the prompt in some way rather than just write Sunday-newspaper-cartoon-rear end nonsense. But you do you. Yoruichi “It’s possible my body thought motherhood was preferable to the way I’d treated it. I’d always been a runner, and runners always got injuries. That’s just how it was. You ran until it hurt, then you taped it up and ran some more. It wasn’t that I hadn’t known what my body was trying to tell me. I wilfully ignored it. Told it to shut up and stop complaining. I figured healing could come later. When I was old.” This passage, and it isn’t the last one like it, illustrates the thing that tripped me up about this story, in that every sort of interesting conflict or hurdle happens before the story starts, and then we’re only left with “is she going to win the race or not” and neither outcome seems particularly satisfying. The inner monologue feels honest but it feels far-removed from any sort of immediacy or urgency, and the story doesn’t give us that either. Profane The only thing I have to add to this is that I could believe you don’t even know who Adam Levine is from reading this story, other than that he’s in a band and he’s a douchebag. This story seems married to the prompt and it’s not even a happy marriage. Pass. Djeser This was solid, but it shares the problem almost all of the stories this week had in that there’s not a lot of motion or intrigue or urgency. The dragon doesn’t really do anything in the story, the curse just seems like a reaction to the kiss rather than a conscious decision by the dragon. The atmosphere was solid, but I wanted more of a journey, even if it was an internal one. Sailor Viy I’m gonna cut down that motherfucking tree. Neighborhood bureaucracy is dry as gently caress even when it’s not, and we have a secondary POV to keep us even further from any sort of excitement. The sentences are fine and competent but I struggled to find anything about this story that was even halfway interesting. Black Griffon This is more or less the reverse of Viy’s story in that it’s interesting and there’s a lot going on but it’s not competently constructed. The opening paragraph doesn’t need to be there, there’s a lot of signifiers coming in hot and heavy in a story that doesn’t have the time to flesh them out, there’s this dilemma of the human element versus artificial intelligence and by the end of the story it gets cast aside in favor of “sure, destroy the place that I own, who gives a gently caress”. This is one of the stories this week I might have given a shot after a second or third draft, but we all want things that we can’t have. Staggy It feels like you ripped page 327 out of a novel and made that your story. NOthing loving happens here and the only thing that would save this story is if there was layers and layers of context prior to this relationship between You Me and Dupree that the story desperately wants us to care about. My question is why a phone shoved in a box for decades still has a charge and is still getting calls. God forbid something weird and interesting happens. My Shark Waifuu Like I said in the recap, this had a decent amount in common with the winner of this week in that it was a stock premise executed at an okay level. I could’ve seen this getting a positive mention if there was more depth of character. And more of a sense of urgency. And if the language was a bit more interesting and story-specific. Ok, so maybe it would’ve still had trouble, but after the first half of this week I was starved for a story that had something even halfway interesting or compelling in it. MockingQuantum As I’m reading these stories again for crits, I keep wishing that I could take two at a time and smash them together and end up with a decent story. A lot of people half-stepped and wrote half-stories this week, and if I could take the setting and characters of this one and smash them into the plotting of SharkWaifuu’s, we might have something here. As it is, this was a waste of a good premise. You had a good idea and then you just sort of stopped, I’m repeating what other judges have said here, but to add something new--why not just have the kid go crazy? Or at least start foaming at the mouth until ATV dude slaps him. You can’t set up a traverse dimension that makes you go crazy if you look at it directly and then not have that happen when someone does. You no-sold your own finishing move. You didn’t fire your own Chekhov’s gun. ZearothK Cut out everything but the last letter and then write all the cool poo poo you really want to write about blowing up the moon. Next. QuoProQuid Given the amount of time spent in TD talking about how death and murder are weak ways to end a story and how that can lead to some embarrassing reads, you’d think that’d be less prevalent these days, but I guess none of us are immune to the siren call of “and then that one guy died, the end”. I think of all the stories this week, I’m the most curious to know what the thought process was with this one, and how you ended up with this story and this ending. Why is time-travelling murder the solution to this problem? It’d be more understandable if Tanner was a Dead Zone-type monster that would eventually start WW3, but no, he’s just an rear end in a top hat and Future Charlie really wants to go back in time and kill him so that then she’ll...potentially not exist. Why. Thranguy Yet another half-story. Exactly one thing happens in this story that’s of any importance and it ultimately doesn’t matter all that much. I don’t care about any of these people and the perspective of the story is too far-removed to force me to. I could buy this from the up-close POV of a child who’s sweating bullets in a packed train car seeing people in gorilla masks with guns advancing menacingly, but this is all told from a perspective from way after the story where it’s clear that Everything is Mostly Okay. Probably just as much of a wasted premise as the Warprunner story. Rhymes With Clue So, this was a bit of a mess, and it’s kind of a shame, because some of these characters I kind of felt resonance from. If you had taken away the nonsense improv framing gimmick and just made it a story about a mother-in-law getting for-real drunk on purpose in front of her daughter and daughter’s husband, then the story would’ve had a better shot at being competent. The faking-being-drunk-improv-class thing made no goddamn sense and the word count wasn’t long enough for you to make it make sense. Simplify things for yourself next time. Take a simple idea that you think is cool and execute it to the best of your ability. Ironic Twist fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Jun 22, 2021 |
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Jun 22, 2021 03:39
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in,
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Jun 22, 2021 22:21
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Statuesque 1199 words I’m flexing and posing in front of the adoring crowd, muscles oiled and shining in the noonday sun, and I feel like I’m going to outlive the statue they made of me. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Valdo the Magnificent, Champion of Arrow Falls!” Galette roars into the megaphone, pacing in front of the crowd. The men and ladies in their fitted wool suits and gingham skirts clap politely, the shopkeepers and newsboys in their caps and knickers cheer and wave their arms. Vendors move through the crowd, selling water ice and beer for five and ten cents apiece. Horses drag their carriages past the town square, their riders unable to ignore the show we’re putting on. Galette smooths his beard and keeps going: “The pinnacle of physical performance, this apex of an absolute Adonis, and yet he has a secret to his success!” Gallette taps the side of his head as I squat down, prepare myself for the final feat of strength. “Do you want to know what it is, ladies and gentlemen?” Galette says, smiling at the crowd. The crowd roars back in approval, and without hesitation Galette whaps his hand against the side of our caravan, unfurling a red banner with gold lettering: VALDO’S MAGICAL ELIXIR, LIFE-PROLONGING LIQUID, FIVE DOLLARS AN OUNCE. “The nectar of the gods, ladies and gentlemen, brought down to this very town from Mount Olympus, and if you need any further proof, look no further than the man you see before you!” Galette nods at me, and I grab the five-hundred pound iron cannonball and pick it up off the ground, then hoist it up over my head, all of my muscles straining. The crowd erupts in thunderous applause, the sun glinting off of their smartphones as they raise them in the air, capturing the moment forever. For that single second, I feel like a god cast in marble--and then my shoulder seizes up. I stumble, the pain shooting down my back, and then I grimace and bear through it, the crowd cheering me on all the while. Hours later, Galette ducks back into the caravan, yanks his beard off of his face and throws it onto the table, grabs a fat orange from the fruit bowl and takes a bite out of it, peel and all. “That was some poo poo,” he says, orange juice dripping down his chin. “They can never get enough of you.” I look over at him from the couch, too exhausted to even move. “It’s not working right,” I say. “Huh?” “The stuff. It’s not working right. My shoulder hurts.” Galette looks over at me, scrunches up his face. “So? Double up on the dose. Get a new one.” “You keep saying that.” “I keep saying a lot of things. I’m the talker. Your job is to stand there and lift things.” Galette spits the leftover orange peel on the floor and takes another bite. “By the way, we’re going on tour again.” I raise my head off the back of the couch. “How long?” “Just a little while. It’s been a bit since we got out there, saw the coasts. Get some of that salt air--” “How long?” I repeat. Galette swallows. “‘Bout a year or two.” I jump up from the couch. “No. Absolutely not.” “Val--” says Galette. “You know why I did this in the first place, Galette.” “Val, they found the well.” I take a step back. “Huh?” “What, you think we could’ve kept that hidden forever? They found it, Val. You saw it yourself.” I sit back down on the couch. I did. Walking through the forest, I saw them, with their black vans, testing the water, running experiments in the dark. I lied to myself, pretended it was something else. “See, exactly. You think they’d be letting us still do this whole charade if I--” He shuts his mouth, takes another bite. I looked up at him. “If you what, Galette.” “If I wasn’t so persuasive. And you weren’t so good-looking.” “You gave them the formula, Galette.” He looks at me, chews, spits out another peel. “Maybe.” “You’re telling me--” I put my head in my hands. “You sold us out. You sold this whole town out--” “Hey,” says Galette. “Hey. Valdo. Look at me.” I look up at him. “Remember what you said a hundred and twenty years ago?” All of my muscles strain at once, like I’m getting ready to pick up another cannonball. “I said I didn’t want anything to change. I said I wanted to keep everything the way it was, right in that moment--” “That’s not all you said, Valdo.” “Fine, what else did I say?” I throw up my hands, the blood rushing to my face. “You tell me. You’re the talker.” “You said you wanted the town to live forever. And it will, Valdo. It will.” Galette drops the half-eaten orange on the table and spreads his hands out in front of me, like he’s painting a picture. “Bottles on every store’s shelf, those old glass ones with the fancy label on the front, written in gold: Valdo’s Magical Elixir, Pride of Arrow Falls, Made Since 1886, Prolongs Life, Cures All Ills, Just Fifty Dollars An--” He’s so wrapped up in the moment that he doesn’t see my fist rushing towards his face. I punch him in the jaw, send him flying back against the wall of the caravan, every muscle in my body tensed up. He slides to the floor, slumps over, spits a tooth into his hand, blood dripping down the side of his face. He looks up at me, then inspects the tooth in his palm before popping it into his mouth and swallowing it. “Good for the digestion,” he says, smiling up at me. The gap in his smile is already gone. “You filthy, lying rat bastard,” I say. “Rats are hard to kill,” says Galette. “Just like gods.” He coughs, then hoists himself back to his feet. “We leave tomorrow morning.” Without a word, I push past him and storm out of the caravan, into the moonlit night. I walk towards the statue at the end of the square, my likeness shadowed and alone in the dark. I stand in front of it, my bronze twin. They made it about fifty years ago, many decades after I pledged to never abandon Arrow Falls, made a promise to the great-aunts and grandparents of the people who are here now. I look forward ten, even five years into the future, all the hundred-year old homes and stables and general stores bulldozed away to make room for factories and refineries and workers’ dwellings, a statue of a broken, backstabbing god among the ruins of his hometown. I reach forward, wrap my arms around the statue, bend my knees, and lift, as hard as I can. Every tendon is crying out in pain now, not just my shoulder. I strain and grunt and gasp for air in the dark, and the statue doesn’t budge an inch. I fall to my hands and knees, tears running down my face, breath huffing in and out of my lungs, knowing that I have all night.
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Jun 26, 2021 18:11
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Yoruichi posted:This, again. woops, my apologies do what Yoru said, y'all
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Jun 27, 2021 04:45
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Zurtilik posted:I'm formally posting my "In". I had PMed you during my probe. Gotta get writing soon, the days creep by quicker than you think! Oh believe us, we know
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Jul 2, 2021 07:35
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in gimme birb
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Jul 6, 2021 08:33
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