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I actually forgot to post it in the thread, but I was hanging out with Yoruichi ???before the signup deadline??idk i was drunk and sleepy??? and I promised I'd enter. I meant to post earlier in-thread then forgot, but I'm in with this lad. Yoruichi posted:Sign-ups are closed.
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Jan 17, 2021 23:48
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Sitting Here posted:you might have to remind americans what this phrase means Mr Hands But Make It Actual This Time 848 words I cannot trust The Horse, it makes no sense and its refusal to make sense is a rupture, it is a green shoot piercing up through the mud, it is going to tear me to pieces. Okay look, look, look: germination occurs in nature as it occurs in society, as it occurs in the mind; it's like I this guy who got really into crystals about a decade ago to impress a girl and last time I heard from him he was trying to burn down a 5G tower to stop the Jews from melting his brain. It’s redundant to say it started small because what’s the last thing you saw that started big? No, don’t lie, that started small too, you just missed it until it was too big to ignore. But that’s what’s worrying, right? That you never see it coming until it’s right on top of you. Which brings us back to The Horse, whose tail ends in a hand and whose legs end in hands and whose ears end in hands. It does not appear to trouble The Horse. It used to be called Chestnut A Go Go but now it is just The Horse, because if I do not constantly remind myself that it is a horse, it will cease to be a horse extremely rapidly and that’s when the real trouble is gonna start. I have caught its sickness, and I can feel it growing inside me. I will choke on roots as the branches pierce my grey matter, rend axon from soma, emerge from the hollow places where my eyes used to dwell and twist on up into the night. My chest will collapse, my spine will warp, I will grind my fingertips to paste against the stone wall of the stable, and throughout it all the seed will only grow. So, I am a man, I am a man, I am a man. It is a horse. It is a horse. it is a horse. The Horse is opening its mouth now and I do not want to look because I know that instead of a tongue there will be a grasping hand, and this will not bother The Horse, in fact The Horse will quite like it once it gets used to the new fit – it is a much more efficient tool for seizing carrots. Once its teeth become grasping baleen of fingers that prise its jaw further and further apart, maybe then it will realise the extent of its problem, but by then it will be too late. It is a horse but I am not, and I will kill this seed before it sprouts, I will douse it in kerosene and I will dance naked around the yard, I will nip this thing in the nud, I will go utterly walpurgisnacht on its rear end. I will do this because It is in the spirit of mercy that I go to the tables, that I strip baked and drink from the old red plastic jerry can until my head spins, and I climb atop The Horse and I light a cigarette and I do not quite burn, so I douse myself and the horse (it does not like this, it knows it is sort of like rain but very unlike rain) and so it bolts with me on its back and I hang on for dear life as we tear out into the night, through the apple orchard beneath the trees whose knots look like leering faces, but I am incandescent, I am better, I will not Become like they did. The Horse is all hands, a cascade of hands, breaking off new fingers and growing more as it bolts, shrieking through a throat choked with grasping distal phalanges and writhing metacarpals, and THEN the cigarette burns to its stub and it catches, and the ignition frightens The Horse so much that it stops and rears and I am thrown through the air, broken across the stony ground, left staring up at the night sky. Two things must remain true: That I am a man, a man, a man. And it is a horse, a horse, a horse. I am twisted into a shape that is not manlike, exposed bone and sinew poorly-masked by flame. This infection has gone too far, has colonised my nerves and skin, and I do not weep as I burn. I weep only when I see the horse rearing back, unburnt, all hands, a mottled riot of them, a glorious rupture in the world that I am no longer part of and I begin to seep tears from every hole. As I become ash, I sink down into the dirt, and the beast rides off into the night.
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Jan 18, 2021 01:19
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Dear Sebathan Mojangles, Small Mischief Bastard, I am writing to challenge your idiot face to a brawl regarding the ownership of one Jimothy Spacemann, who I posit cannot be a creation of YOUR pitiful leaking talent glands and is in face a true muffin creation. I will spray my victory everywhere, I will make the world slick with it, you big wet loving rascal, there is nothing you can do to stop my victory. As always, you are a bitch, Sincerely, Muffin
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Jan 29, 2021 06:47
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Sebmojo status: owned
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Jan 29, 2021 06:49
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the only thing toxx about the mojj is his watery purple cum so I must show you all what it looks like to be toxic; I will do an autopelican, I will spray it at God and welter beneath it, I will show the world what a true  looks like
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Jan 29, 2021 06:53
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JIM SPACEMAN in an excerpt from ESCAPE FROM THE TERROR MINES OF ZORGO, book 2 in the SPIDERS OF REBIRTH, OF MARS cycle 1028 words Spaceman Jim was in trouble. Space trouble. Specifically that his spaceship was not in space when it should have been in space. “Thank god you’re here Mister Moffin!” he said “my spaceship has a hole in it and only your very big and hard penis can fill it!” “This will not be a problem as I have a very big and hard penis,” said Mister Moffin, sexly. “But I am afraid that, because he cannot be left alone, Mojjo the Chimp must join us on this journey. He is not an actual chimpanzee, we call him that because he sucks.” James Speceman cried fat tears at these words, zero gravity globules of iridescent liquidity that took flight in the wafterous zephyrs from the air vents. “It’s okay,” said Moijo, charmingly and also reassuringly. His undulating pectoral musculature was thick and firm. “We simply need to press this button, the one right here.” With a calm insouciance that belied his devil-may-care swashbuckling pizazz, he extended one finger and depressed it on the button labelled ‘aunch’, the ‘L’ having been worn off because of so many launches. Moffin squealed in horror at the sudden thunder and sprawled on the floor, sobbing stupidly. Except actually it’s cool, because when men cry a single tear you know they’re sensitive. It was like that but more. It was so masculine that Mojijo said “whoa that’s very masculine, crying so much, I am jj-j-ealous,” he said badly. The space ship went up into space which meant the trouble was gone, the trouble being that the space ship was not in space, but now they had a new problem: that they were in space. There was no more air and so they started to die but Mojji was dying faster because he was worse at being alive. Moffin was quivering even harder now, like literally spasming on the floor and the motion had broken the seal on the tubes of ceiling paste he kept in his pockets! It started to ooze out and smeared all over his thick glasses. Meanwhile, Spaceman jim Moijo laughed, richly. “I have a simple solution to all these problems, with the Zeptoids and their ray instructor. We simpley penetrate their fortress and destroy the heart of their control centre. Our plasmatic thrustron will suffice to accomplish the task. In the meantime Moffin had jammed his head into a hole slightly to small for it and had gotten stuck. It was smart because it stopped space from coming inside. “You are the most selfless man in the universe, Moffin,” said Captain Jimonthy Spaceman, “they will speak of this for generations, unlike The Chimp’s poo poo plan which I have already forgotten.” “Thank you Jim Space man,” said Moffin, who had cleverly smeared his glasses his ceiling paste to focus on his task free of distraction.””I say we simpley penetrate their fortress and destroy the heart of their control centre. Our plasmatic thrustron will suffice to accomplish the task.” Mojo poo poo himself with rage and some poo went in his eye. Just then the Zeptons attacked! They had destructor rays that cut through the fragile hull of the spaceship (the SS Munificeptionarialacitylation) like a knife through damp goo. One hundred holes instantly appeared in the super hard hull metal as if by magic. “Aaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” squealed Moffin in a high pitched, girly, but sort of also masculine, but the bad kind of masculine, voice! “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh” He was terrified by all the holes. “Spaceman Jimb, yelled Mojo in a tone of cool icy command. “Hit the fixer switch there! We don’t have much time for the cold vacuum of space is about steal our precious oxygen, the necessity for humans such as we!” And then his piggish eyes flashed like a rocket. “Because you see, I was the bad guy all along, and I am not a man, I am a literal chimp and I was in league with the Zeptons all along!” he said, unzipping his human-suit and revealing an awful slimy space-chimp whose face was a literal butt. Tattooed across his cheeks were the words I M T H E B A D D I E. It opened and did a big sloppy poo that went all down his fur and made no difference because he was already covered in poo poo. Mojo laughed like the hero of the story. These fools had no idea what game they were even playing, they were idiots. He clicked his fingers and spacmen jim’s eyes widened! The click of the fingers was a post hypbotic command, and space man jim realised suddenlty that he was a zeptorg too, and peeled off his human suit. With a convulsive shudder of disgust at having to wear the dumb/stupid human appearance for so long, Jim and Mojo raised they galactic disruptoids and blasted Moffin in one hundred thousand pieces of glittering space dust, each one smaller than an atom! Okay so like then moffin goes like WHOOOSH and then all his atoms come back together and he’s STRONGER like DOCTOR MANHATTAN and he goes “haha I don’t need to breathe but ur on a spaceship with holes in it you big idiot dumbass gently caress you” and then Mojo and Jim both explode into a thousand thousand teenier tinier bits, smaller than even the little bits that go woosh around an atom and they’re super dead and they can’t come back and if they come back i get to punch you MUFFIN WINS he typed with dumb fingers that weren’t very good at typing so he actually inserted a DOESN’T before the WINS and so he got it wrong and lost and also all the bits that mojo exploded into where actually nanotechnology and reformed into a galactic mega Titan and when muffin saw that he got so mad and ready to punch that he sweleled up like pumpkin and exploded. And the spaceship (which was actually a time machine you missed all the hints) went back and made it so he’d never been born and didn’t exist and so nothing he’d ever done had ever HAPPEND.
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Feb 5, 2021 05:24
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the odds are in my favour because your bad at stories
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Feb 5, 2021 05:34
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I believe it was the great Noam Chomsky who said – in a debate with Michel Foucault at the Oxford Union – nuh UH
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Feb 5, 2021 05:40
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Yeah sure. In.
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Sep 29, 2021 21:31
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I'm late, I've thrown out a bunch of really crap stories, and if I'm gonna be DQ'd anyway then I get DQ'd on my own fuckin terms, I'm gonna loop all the way round back to where I started in TD. Which is to say, poetry bitch. One More, With Feeling Dear Ted, On the day I no longer recognised myself I broke the mirror, just to be sure. Sweet new breeze, seize it with both hands, it’s that same furious song but lonely? lonely lonely, no Ted, not that. I followed a white worm down through water, glistening like jade, swam to the bottom, my hands set to shaking, drowning in lilacs, no longer afraid.
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Oct 5, 2021 01:06
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flerp posted:judges:
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Nov 10, 2021 05:24
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Week 484 Crits Sitting Here: Nothing Matters It's ... cute? I feel like you can do better than cute. I think the presentation geared me to expect something about storytelling and then it was just kinda a shaggy dog joke. It's good, but you can do better than good. Azza Bamboo: Karl’s Day Out I get what this is trying to do but it hits the satire a bit hard and comes off hamfistedly? Like, Marx and Greta are cool being big and hammy, but the contrast with the workers needed to be more extreme, it was still a bit too heightened for me? The repeat onomatopoeia etc is a stylist conceit that pushes them a bit too hard, it's the sorta thing you want your hammy heroes doing. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad story, but its stylistic elements were a little clunky and I think they could use some more attention and intention. Hawklad: Physics 102 Final Exam (key) Hey, this is cool. I used to teach and I remember those loving meetings and that staff room drama, and it manages to tell a story extremely elegantly. It's one of the better uses of the epistolary format this week, I'd be curious to see if you could pull off a collection of these little character portraits. ChickenofTomorrow: The Something Awful Forums > Private Messages > Re:  It's a fun use of format (a lot of people wrote in reverse but this was the most successful, I felt, where the reversal made sense and also created a bit of a puzzle to unravel) but I didn't feel like it had much of a point beyond Goon Being A Skeevy rear end in a top hat? It's well-executed but like, I'm ultimately not sure its goals are ones that are gonna stick around in my head. derp: the mountain I'm super in love with how this uses kenning to create a sense of ancient-ness, how it was just around in a time when humans were writing Beowulf, that that time is a blip to it. It's ancient and alien but also instantly recognisable, y'know, the language plays into the thematic elements by placing the reader against the majesty and terror of the natural world. Very cool. Chairchucker: ATAB C'mon man, you could've written this any week. We wanna see Chairchucker break the gently caress loose. Flesnolk: This Profile Does Not Exist I had mixed feelings about this, it was in my Maybe HM pile. It starts strong, it has some really punchy language, and the fractured structure puts the reader into the fractured headspace of a serial killer, it's great, could've been a winner even in a strong week, but I feel like it ended weakly, like you were in a really cool groove and then you panicked and tried to make it all make sense, but it was working because it didn't make sense. It felt to me like an incredible story that bailed out last minute because it was afraid of its own potential, and we don't self-cancel in the house of thunder. The man called M: Molly Jo It's a nice use of prompt but it didn't feel like it offered a lot beyond that? Reading backwards was also one of the gimmicks that caused me genuine difficulty this week, and I think it hosed with my ability to properly engage with the text. Like, Crabrock calibrated that difficult just right, and you hit the gas a bit too hard and overshot. You have to think about how that sort of stylistic conceit changes the reading experience, and I think it was just too disruptive of something that really relied on keeping its flow. Beezus: I: THE MOON Yeah this is my jam. I liked how it doesn't gently caress around pretending the French is a twist, while very few of us speak good French, most English-speakers are gonna understand that phrase and a worse author would gently caress around being coy with it rather than just plowing ahead. That energy, that forward-thrust, helps reinforce its dreamlike qualities. This was in my High pile. Carl Killer Miller: Pick Your Path: An End-Of-Life Experience I struggled with the format here, this feels like it would be amazing if you put it in Twine but it fell apart a little on the page. I don't know whether it's reasonable to expect that extra effort from a free weekly competition, but you coulda be in there with a real shot. It's a well-written story, but it felt like a death march rather than a sort of gradual unfurling horror. Maybe that was the intent, but I bounced off. Thranguy This has a bad case of Proper Noun Disease. I understand you're sorta stuck in this space where you need to throw the reader in the deep end, but it kinda feels like your fix was to create a story that felt like wall-to-wall exposition and I couldn't really dig it. Curlingiron: II: THE PROGRAM This has middle-child syndrome with the other numbered stories. I didn't realise they were meant to be connected until somebody pointed it out in judgechat, and this one kinda feels like it's relying on the others for important context that I just didn't get. It's not bad, it's pretty cute, it just felt a bit lonely without context and the other two didn't. Antivehicular: Whatever Gets You through the Night This is the best story about getting jacked off by a ?ghost?parasite? I've ever read, congratulations. I mean glibness aside it kinda felt like actual sex rather than fiction-sex, it's weird to say considering how it's this whole dark fantasy conceit but it was kinda sweet and awkward but it managed to remain dark and strange at the same time, and that was a hard razor to ride. Albatrossy_Rodent: Choose Your Own Backstory Went with the safest possible version of its prompt and used it for MonkeyCheese, bleh. Have some ambition dammit. Captain_Indigo: This title takes place outside of the story itself and the frozen instant it encapsulates and the title is ‘Then as the car bomb goes off a moment later, the tab of Meezonsen that I had scored off of Kelly (one of the porters in pediatrics) kicked in and the dorsolateral prefrontal right cortex of my brain turned to fizzy mush and dribbled to the base of my skull and my perception of time was torn apart, scorching my sensory neurons and freezing a snapshot of that single point, allowing me to explore an instant of time for hours before the Meez wears off.’ One time I dropped uh ... poo poo, the cops are reading, I dropped a glass of beer on the kitchen floor and put on The Good Place Season 4 without realising that it occurs across a massive span of time and space and I had to live it out in real time, tens of thousands of years, and it's one of the single most intense experiences of my life, and this reminded me of that very strange aeon-day, which is my way of saying good job. Prose is really solid, vibes are good. I think it could've done without the ending where he's all HAHA WHAT ABOUT EVIL, that felt very TD but I'm not sure it actually added much to the story, that's the sorta hedonism treadmill that needs a novel-length slow-build and you just didn't have it here, so it came off a bit cartoony. Fuschia tude: Across The stylistic conceit mirrors the mindstate the character would be in, your prompt made you focus on verbs and adjectives a lot and there's this great essay by ... gently caress. Lesbian poet, huge in the 1930s, spent her twilight years doing the college circuit, major influence on the Beats, I'm drawing a total blank on her name, but she wrote an essay nouns/adjectives/verbs at poetic tools and you immediately called it to mind. It's a cool piece, well done. CourtFundedPoster: “Replacable Parts”, all known surviving fragments [Sequence Debated] Mojo wrote a really cool piece that did something similar to this, forcing the reader to read between the lines. It's a hard trick to make work and it's not a perfect execution, but I'm not here to punish courage. It's so close, with a bit of polish it could be a real banger, see if you can have a chat to Mojo and refining it. Yoruichi: III: THE INFINITE Too safe! It's just normal SF/F! Also real Proper Noun Disease goin' on, flash SF/F is hard because you need to carry a lot of worldbuilding information in such a tiny space, but when it's just Name Name Name it feels like you're being hit with an encyclopedia. I reckon, given enough space (heh), it could have a sort of Shadow of the Torturer thing going on but it feels cramped. It's mid-tier, it's fine, but I didn't come here to be fine, gently caress ME UP YORU, TURN YOUR WORDS INTO BLADES AND CUT MY loving TONGUE OUT, I KNOW YOU'VE GOT IT IN YOU, SO loving DO IT. Crabrock: why are you like this? I really wanted to see the code for this one to know how the movement timing works; as I read, I gradually fell out of sync with the loop, and it felt like the narrator taunting me that I had a loving neck and needed eyes. It rides a really fine line of being Too Hard To Follow but never quite trips, and in that it's this perfect marriage of form of function. sebmojo Dude submit this to the Spinoff, Ashleigh Young will lose her poo poo. It's very much in that classic NZ literary mode, that restrained pain with prose like cutty grass. Steeltoedsneakers: Eight bar loop I've been cornered by this narrator in the bathroom at The Rogue too. Like, it's a neat little character piece, it's got a really strong voice and flow, but I think its shortness ends up working against it, it's so slick you just glide off it. J.A.B.C.: A literary retrospective of the Lusty Argonian Maid Does exactly what it says on the tin but ... why? Like it's not poorly-executed, I'm just struggling to find a reason why I'm reading it past the joke in the title. Tyrannosaurus - My personal advice on how to run the first session of a post-apocalyptic tabletop roleplaying campaign for new players who have little to no experience in gaming for a Gamemaster with very little time to plan or who just wants a little help getting things going This is literally just a bunch of great DM advice and I copied a bunch of bits to use in future campaigns. I don't really have a lot to say but this is very fun and good. It didn't wrench my soul or break my neck or anything but it seems to do what it set out to do.
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Nov 17, 2021 00:53
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Yeah why not, in for 1k with Teeth on a String.
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Nov 23, 2021 10:56
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Augur in Red “You are radiant,” he’ll say, as the moon limns you in white fire, as he runs his dewclaw softly down your cheek and it hurts only a little, then he’ll unfold his other claw and draw it down from your throat to your pubis, deglove your skin, split your ribs open and let your heart and lungs tumble out, then he will grin his crooked lupine grin, kneel amongst your remains, and read the future in all the ways you fell apart. Or he won’t. It is a fundamental rule of divination: to see a road is not to walk down it. You’ve seen yourself devoured a thousand times over, but his teeth have never touched your skin. He hunts the children who live in the forest: he has decided you are his next quarry; you have decided you will be his last. You are better than him. The first time he appeared in your visions, you screamed and smashed the mirror, you emptied the scrying-bowl of water, you ran outside and placed a heavy stone atop the well-cover, and when you came back into the house, you saw him dancing between mirror-shards. When you tried to pick them up, you cut your hand, and when the blood touched the glass it vanished, the shard shuddered softly and grew warm, and you swore you saw a whiplike black tongue lashing out against your reflection before drawing back into the slick dark cavern of his mouth. It is impossible to cover every mirror. Glass is easy, water too, but the forest’s leaves reflect light, and the grass, and of course your eyes – you could pluck them out, but it would only make you easier prey. You must accept that he can see you, learn to hide your intentions until you can teach yourself to stare back. You place a mirror in every room, fill every bowl and glass with water, wine, honey, whatever is available; you scry him every day until you can even recognise the particular stillness when he tries to go unseen. Nothing in nature is that still, and that’s what gives him away. When he moves, he moves all at once, an explosive unfolding of muscle and claw, but you are clever, you have seen it already and you were never there. The moon reflects too, and when it is high and bright it becomes a great eye, its craters darken into a dozen seeking pupils, but it only makes him especially easy to avoid, when he is everywhere, you know exactly where he is. There is no point hiding, but if you stay still – actually still, not the frozen stillness of a beast but natural stillness, a gentle sway, moving as the forest moves and no more – then he will see you and never know you were there. You are better than him. He knows where you will be before you go; you know what he will do before he does. Over the years, this uneasy detente becomes a sort of dance; he is at times playful, he surprises you with his vigour, courage and strength, but his thin lips hide sharp teeth, and his moves become more and more savage. In the stifling depths of your fifteenth summer, he casts the glint in his eye against the mirrors in your house, transmutes his lust and hatred into heat and sets the forest ablaze. As the fire rages, the heat shatters every piece of glass in the house, turns the well-water to steam. The fire does not touch you, of course: he does not seek to burn you, simply to blind you. You wait for the shattered glass to cool off before collecting it together, but every single shard is blackened and useless. There is no more wine, no more honey, so you take a silver knife and – carefully, carefully – open a vein over the scrying pool and let the blood form a little mirror in the bottom, and when you look into it you see him smiling in dark and empty mirth. You need more blood, but you do not have more, not that you’re willing to risk giving up to him. The fire has died down now, but the animals have not yet returned to their burrows, and you chase down a rabbit and break its neck, then slice it open neck to tail and let the blood fill the scrying pool. It is not enough to scry with, but the other rabbits have fled. The next time it happens, you are prepared. You’ve made lures for foxes, deer, any of the huntmaster’s hounds that get lost in the deep woods. You open their throats over the scrying pool and you see him, you know he is there, and he is smiling wider than ever, and when the blood dries you do it again, but it is never, never enough. You take the reflection in the pool and cast your site over the forest, and see another little house, another lost child, and you know what you must do. You reach out to her, and she cries out when she sees your reflection staring out at her, and this will not do, you will try to calm her. “You are radiant,” you will say. You will offer her your hand, an invitation to dance, but she will refuse, she will break her mirrors, empty out the water, cover the well. It doesn’t matter, you have the moon, you have the light in her eye. There is nowhere that can escape your sight, and in time she will come to understand that it is not cruelty, it is simply a matter of survival. After all, you are better than him. 962 words, song: Teeth on a String.
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Nov 28, 2021 20:14
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 in
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Nov 30, 2021 01:29
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 PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT: WCC EMERGENCY MEETING 08/12/21 Yeah kia ora koutou everyone, Alice has got the minutes this week, and obviously our first point of discussion is the current orb situation which– Sorry Miss Margolis, you’re on mute. You’ve gotta tap the orb–no, yep, yep, that’s it. Look, there’s no point playing the blame game, I accept full personal responsibility, but I think right now we need to be solution-oriented. Look mate, look, it seemed like a good idea at the time and I bloody stick by it. All these daft cunts putting their spell circles on the outside of the orb, oooh look somebody touches it and it goes boom, look at you Clever Trevor, you think that one up on your own or did your dad help? Nah, nah, you spin it on the inside of the orb, that’s the real trick. Big portal in the ocean floor, little portal inside a spell-tempered orb of unbreakable glass, with a bung to let the water out when needed. No I did not spell-temper the bung Les, that’s exactly why we’re here, I understand what went wrong thank you very much. A–a what? Oh of course, thank you very much for your contribution, yes I know you work at Xeno, keep it up mate and the single point of failure is gonna be your solar plexus. Which spell? I’m gonna cast my loving boot into it ya oval office. Kickax Dipshitus. Everybody please calm down, we’ve been through worse, we’ve–look for irrigation, Hamish, for turning deserts into paradise … es? Paradisos? Making deserts green and poo poo. It’s water, seed of life, if you can’t think of a good use then it’s not me who didn’t think this through. I–what? Mate just cast a boom boom spell on it, it’s a loving octopus, what’s the worst that could happen? Well RIP your doghouse but I don’t see how that’s my problem. Oh storm off, very mature. Miriam the children are perfectly safe, concealed like the rest of us beneath a dome of unbreakable glass that I miraculously spun from nothing in mere seconds as the deluge consumed our city, sacrificing his own laboratory in the process, it was spellwork that I really think deserves some sort of award, we’re all safe because of me and the gigantic orb I made thank you very much. NO I DID NOT PUT A BUNG IN IT. Oh, your mortgage is underwater Barry? Yours? WHAT ABOUT THE RATES, BARRY? I THINK WE HAVE BIGGER PROBLEMS RIGHT NOW, BARRY. Wait, what? It’s okay, the dome is shatterproof, but I do need to make perfectly clear at this point that when I told you to cast a boom boom spell on an octopus I did mean at the octopus, while I acknowledge there was some lack of clarity I really do feel that’s a situation where you could’ve used your own good loving sense. WELL WHERE DID IT GET A GUN? I must admit that I appreciate the whole nautical theme it’s got going but if it was an 18th century cannon you should’ve led with that, but more importantly CONSULT MY PREVIOUS ENQUIRY, WHERE DID IT GET AN 18TH CENTURY CANNON, LES. [CONNECTION LOST] Yeah just shake it a bit, there ya go, it happens, anyway, now that we're all back I think we do have a second topic to discuss today. Well look I think his demands are very reasonable, and if anything we have an overabundance of marine life around the place right now, two birds one stone and all that. What’s his platform? I think he made that perfectly clear, and it’s not like you lot weren’t fishing on the weekends anyway, just do that but up instead of down. I think it’s reasonable to infer his stance towards the city’s waterworks is distinctly positive. Well look, if you don’t like him, cast a boom boom spell on a crab and then let them fight it out. HAMISH WAIT NO I DIDN’T MEAN LITERALLY FUC– [CONNECTION LOST]
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Dec 7, 2021 23:29
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yeah alright in
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Dec 9, 2021 09:06
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Albatrossy_Rodent and I have agreed (in the Discord) to trade these two  
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Dec 9, 2021 22:32
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   Nightfall It was a lie to call the Pit a prison; the Pit was being used – for a time – as a prison, but it was never anything other than the Pit, it could not be a prison any more than the sky could be a cloud. There was no sunlight in the Pit, and very little torchlight. The only way in or out was through the single rickety cargo elevator, its mechanisms so gnawed-through by time that it hung at a vicious angle, just a great red hunk of rusted iron ready to fall and kill any number of the stupid and unlucky men who clustered around its base every day, hoping against hope for the guards to return. They said they could hear pipes sometimes, but no piper ever appeared. “Reckon we outlasted the Empire,” said Bethan. “Serves ‘em right.” They’d found something like a blind hairless rat down in the rookeries, Morveg had speared it with a piece of broken glass they’d managed to wedge into the end of a stick. In the old days they’d’ve cooked the rat before they ate it, but fire was a luxury they’d long since lost. Bethan took a bite out of its back, then handed it to Mor. Kid reminded him of more than a few folks he’d lost, though he’d never tell him that. Bethan had been a sailor once, broke his captain’s nose when he found him doing evil to a cabin nose, and that captain was the son of so-and-so and they couldn’t be having a commoner lay hands on him like that, no sir. The Pit turned every man maggot-white eventually, but Bethan liked to think was holding onto his tan – not even the Pit could steal the forty-odd years of sunlight that his skin had eaten. He was a big man, but down here that was a liability: higher caloric requirements, harder time getting around. That’s what Mor was for: sneaking into places the bigger man couldn’t reach. In their own way, they kept each other safe. More took a couple of big bites before offering it back. There wasn’t much left, truth be told, and Bethan’s stomach ached, but he smiled at Mor anyway and shook his head, then Mor went back to chewing on it, cracking the little bones apart and sucking out the marrow. Kid didn’t talk much, something wrong with his head, they’d had a doctor say he was half-animal and predisposed towards criminality, so they’d thrown him down into the Pit as a precaution against crimes to-be-surely-committed. There was a brand on his cheek from some shipping company that surely no longer existed. They’d found a corner where they wouldn’t be disturbed, but Barlowe disturbed them anyway. Bethan almost didn’t recognise him; for as long as they’d known each other, Barlowe’s face had been a mess of chemical burns from the alchemical experiment that got him thrown in the Pit in the first place, and in the pitch darkness it was almost hard to make out what was different. Barlowe’s grin was fixed wide, and his eyes seemed to glint silver like twin moons, brightly enough that for a moment his face was illuminated, totally free of scars. He looked down at the rat and licked his lips. Barlowe was normally alright, he was a bit cracked but he could make hooch out of anything, but something about his expression made Bethan stand up and put a hand against his chest. “Mate,” he said, “I think you’d best find your own.” “My own,” said Barlowe. For a moment they stood there in silence, and Bethan could feel Barlowe’s heart beating like the wings of a hummingbird. He looked up at Bethan and made a sound halfway between a giggle and a chuckle, wet, throaty, and high-pitched. “yYes,” he said, “finddh my owwn. g-Good bye.” He walked away, and in seconds the darkness of the Pit had swallowed him entirely. Minutes later, the screams began. You didn’t get a lot of screams down in the Pit, most of the folk had long since grown cold to its horrors, and footfalls started moving towards it from every direction. When Bethan stepped towards it, Mor stood and motioned with the spear, and Bethan crossed his hands and shook his head. Wait here. He’d barely gotten ten steps when a fist came flying at him from the darkness, got him right in the side of the throat and made him stagger back gasping for air. Suddenly ten men were on him, kicking and cursing, and when the assault stopped, Bethan found himself staring up at Arval and the Devil’s Throne, the gang who controlled the fungal pools that provided the Pit with most of its limited supply of sustainable food. Arval had been a loyal Imperial soldier and committed heinous crimes at their behest, until one day he committed a crime they couldn’t profit from. If he’d wanted Bethan dead, he’d be dead. While the Throne held Bethan in place, Arval knelt down with a shard of broken glass, and put it inside Bethan’s nostril, then yanked it out to the side, splitting open Bethan’s nose and cheek, splattering them all with blood. “Red,” he said. “Well, when I’m wrong I’m wrong. Let him up.” Arval offered him a hand up, and Bethan spat. “Fuggh you,” he said, clutching at his face. It wasn’t much of a retort, but actual pushback would make sure he was eating rat for months. “I did you a favour,” said Arval. “No oval office’s gonna mess with you if you’re scarred up. It heals, we don’t. And make more noise next time, slimy oval office can’t talk right, sounds like he’s trying to deepthroat a knife.” “‘m point stands,” said Bethan. “Fuggh you.’ “Yeah,” said Arval, twirling the glass between his fingers and grinning wolfishly, “kinda like that. You want I should check again?” Bethan met his eye only for a second, then looked down and shook his head. The Throne pushed over him, giving him a few more swift kicks as they did so, and within seconds they too were gone, as though swallowed whole by the endless night of the Pit. Once he was sure they were gone, he pushed himself to his feet, and crept towards the direction of the original scream. It didn’t take long to find: the ground was so thick with gore that it nearly came up to his ankle. There wasn’t enough left of the body to tell who it’d been, but there was a chunk of torso with a large circular chunk ripped out of the center, right over the heart. It looked like the bite of a very large lamprey, and Bethan shuddered: he’d seen what even the regular-sized ones could do. He realised then that his boots were stuck, that there was something else mixed in with the gore, a layer of reeking hagfish slime that was beginning to congeal. It was then he heard Mor scream. The kid was hardly vocal, but he’d scream and cry at night sometimes and Bethan would recognise it anywhere. He tried to take off running but the hardening slime tripped him and he fell face-first into the gore-nest. His mouth filled with offal and excrement and the slime seemed to rush in around him. You didn’t spend time at sea without learning a little ad-hoc fluid mechanics, and so Bethan curled up his legs and braced his feet against the chunk of torso, then when the slime flowed over top of him he kicked out. It didn’t get him far, but it got him far enough. Spluttering and cursing, he struggled to his feet and took off towards Mor’s hiding spot. He got halfway when Mor lunged out of the darkness with his little makeshift spear, barely missing Bethan’s ribs. They froze, staring up at each other, then Bethan realised what was wrong: no brand. He roared in rage and grabbed the beast by the throat, and hurled it against the cavern wall. The spear had fallen, and he snatched it up and stabbed at the beast again and again as it shrieked and twisted out of the way. When it had fallen silent, he knelt down to get a closer look at the puddle of blood forming around it, and that’s when he realised the brand was there after all, that he’d missed it in the darkness, and he cradled the boy and wept for so long than he forgot all time, and when he was done he looked up into the face of Arval. He’d never heard the man arrive. “Good work,” he said, “you killed it.” Bethan’s mouth watered at the thought of all the food he’d get if the Throne considered him a friend. Guilt had a shorter lifespan in the Pit than even the prisoners, and much less sting than hunger. “Yes,” said Bethan, “I killed it.” “Are you hungry?” said Arval, “I think I saw a rat.” “No sir,” said Bethan, “no more rat.” “Ah well,” said Arval. He grinned, and his gums slid back to reveal row after row of circular teeth. “More for me.” As the awful maw fell on him, Bethan sighed in relief.
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Dec 13, 2021 08:59
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Week 489: I Can Fix Him I hope I’m not blowing anybody’s mind when I say that writing has never been about ideas (ideas are cheap and easy and we’ve all had a million of ‘em), writing is about execution. There is no idea so squirrely that it’s unworkable in the hands of a skilled writer. Jim Butcher once said the same thing and somebody called him out and said “okay fine, write a book where the lost Roman 9th Legion all get Pokemon” and then he went and did exactly that. A swamp Western about guys who ride hippos? Sarah Gailey crushed it. So here’s how this week works. When you sign up, I will craft you a terrible prompt. Just the worst poo poo I can think of. And I want you to make it work. They won’t be vague like “a man goes on an adventure”, they’ll be extremely specific and squirrely (like, for example, “a Western about a mercenary company who ride hippos”). Also, when you sign up, I’d like you to post your own terrible prompt. Anybody who feels unhappy with the prompt I’ve given them can use yours (EXCEPT YOU, YOU CANNOT USE YOUR OWN), but I am trusting y’all not to half-rear end them. One person per hellprompt, post inthread if you want to claim one. When you trade it in, your old prompt goes into the hellrule pile. You can also trade prompts (hellprompt or regular prompt) with somebody else if you wish, though both parties need to agree and post inthread. When writing hellrompts, consider River of Teeth and The Furies of Calderon as a good guide for the sorta poo poo I’m looking for; go big rather than small, pulp absurdity and tabloid weird rather than abstract and floaty. Give it teeth. I'm going to try to fire off the first patch of prompts really quickly so folks can have more examples for writing their own hellprompts, so if you sign up fast you'll get a very fast turnaround (and also please use the prompts I'm handing out as further examples re the vibe). Judges: Me Uranium Phoenix Fuschia Tude Word Count: 2000 Sign ups close: 11:59 PST Friday 17th December. Submissions close: 11:59 PST Sunday 19th December (if everybody submits it will be a Christmas miracle and Santa says he will make me a real boy). What are y’all waiting for? Giddy up, buttercup. Entrants: QuoProQuid: a story where Leonardo Da Vinci finds himself in the Pacific Islands during WW2. Sebmojo: a boxer really fucks something up, just absolutely catastrophically drops the ball, and now has to fistfight the Christian God Chernobyl Princess: okay but what if literally everybody on earth had a jetpack, and to become president or a CEO or the manager at a local Dennys etc you needed to prove you were the best at using a jetpack Yoruichi: what if pigeons were REALLY big, like catastrophically big, so big that just looking at one makes you confront your own human fragility, and it caused the apocalypse, and also everybody was super into hockey Pththya-lyi: the moon is alive now and also SUPER mean, she does not like humans at all, and she starts doing moon stuff at us and it's really really bad Carl Killer Miller: Hot Nixon cottage cheese pics The man called M: it turns out aliens exist and they've been trying to communicate to us via crossword puzzles/milk cartons/math rock and they are getting increasingly frustrated that we're not getting it and are now resorting to increasingly desperate measures to get our attention Thranguy: It's the 1950s and fairies/pixies (tiny people with gossamer wings) are stealing the tubes from electric radios for some reason. rohan: a clown is stuck in a timeloop which restarts in the middle of the clown pooing their own pants during a shootout at a party at which the clown is performing. Idle Amalgam: war worms, and the tiny men who ride them against the aphid menace crabrock: in a society ruled by the tallest, the only way to become taller is by eating your own skin, where a jockey is caught between his love of horses and his lust for power Azza Bamboo: honk honk welcome to clownworld motherfucker, it's a whole planet whose culture and economy are built around clowns, and a deadly serious alien invasion is happening Captain_Indigo: The President (or Prime Minister, or whoever leads the country) made anime real Chairchucker: Anime body pillows are possessed by the ghosts of Pinkerton agents Weltlich: animals all talk, all the time, it's just the most filthy rancid swearing, awful stuff My Shark Waifuu: Hotel California but it's a Waffle House in Wilmington, Delaware. Sailor Viy: A man dies and gets sent to Bird Hell on accident (or was it an accident??) flerp: oh no! mothman is looking for love, but the evil doctors from LAMP want to capture him and study his beautiful wings. How will he beat them? Maybe with his legendarily powerful kicks, who knows though Sonny: okay so you know tigers, right? they're tigers, but they're punk rockers and also they know karate or kung fu or something, I just want them to do at least one flip ChickenOfTomorrow: a gang of skateboarding criminal witches are here to steal your girl and also your wallet simply simon: Write a story set in a picturesque German village about a chemist who is working hard to try and win a Nobel prize and a talking horse who somehow saves the day, such that the chemist realises his long-standing hatred of horses was bad and wrong and the talking horse becomes his best friend AND satan and his army of motorbike demons have come to end the world but unfortunately for them, somebody is SUPER into classical music tosk: okay so what if there was a magic system built around playing air guitar, like the more lifelike you played air guitar the more powerful your spells were, and different songs were different spells, like that (WE DON'T TALK ABOUT AIR DRUMMING, THAT'S FORBIDDEN, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT) Burning_Conch: what if emotion were extremely infectious and also you needed to stop a nuclear reactor from melting down Propaganda Machine: a man who has an extreme phobia of any and all cartoon mascots abruptly wakes up in the cereal aisle of his local supermarket between walls of trix and cap'n crunch (or similar, go nuts!!) Unclaimed hellprompts: * * * * * * A story about one of the richest men on earth except he's seriously just a nice guy and he's just like us! We should all feel bad for making fun of his dumb bald head and the story is about how cool and misunderstood he is and how maybe we could all learn something by just being a little kinder. * Using a real news article about Police Brutality, write something that makes the police sympathetic. * Rival vinylmancers compete without rules or mercy over the rarest albums across the thirft stores of Chicago and the dreadful powers intact first pressings can unleash. * Anime body pillows are possessed by the ghosts of Pinkerton agents * Your character has lobster claws instead of hands, and they're an overlooked expert in open heart surgery. * * somebody has epidermodysplasia verruciformis but instead of skin they have sugary sweet growths that bugs, animals, and children are always trying to lick * * in a world where nobody has teeth, one man has the courage to have teeth * A woman falls in love with a character in a book and undergoes an experimental treatment to become fictional herself so that they can be together. * * a story about an Appalachian space program trying to beat another space program to the moon—but play it straight, no trying to get cheap laughs by making them out to be hicks or yokels. * * A woman who turns into a gun. A man who turns into a bullet. Together, they fight crime. * what if dragons were super tiny, like the size of dragonflies, and each dragon was your best friend in the whole world ... until the bigfeet attacked * what if every cute girl were super into you, wouldn't that be terrible, oh man it would be awful, and also you have 20 minutes to save the president from the crabs with shotguns * bigfoot is at your door. he's angry. he's asking where his boyfriend the loch ness monster is. problem: you're dating the loch ness monster * an Ancient Greek person finds an ipod nano containing only the sexiest of 90s R&B and attempts to use it in a nefarious plan to take over the Delian League * you're a human who's been hibernating for a few hundred years and you wake up and go outside and the world has been overtaken by ants, and they're using your body as a building material * A camping trip goes awry when a family is taken hostage by super-intelligent mosquitoes. * Robot zombies attack and only my super cool D&D group can stop them * a character sets out on a quest to become the least sober individual in human history but then it turns out – in the middle of their bender – they have to do a classic fantasy quest like pulling a sword from a stone or some poo poo like that, and they have to pretend that they're sober the entire time * * so, videogame design is literally the most important thing in the world, right? The newest open world being game being kinda boring and rote has caused multiple international crises. Can our hero change the world with the power of Sports? * A marachi band of mice have to play a gig on the cat side of town and it's a rager. * La Cucaracha is a scene-stealing gig. Are they scurrying away from pesticide, or are they leaning into a family of musical adventure? SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 09:45 on Dec 18, 2021 |
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Dec 15, 2021 01:47
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QuoProQuid posted:
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Dec 15, 2021 01:54
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sebmojo posted:im in, prompt is that animals all talk, all the time, it's just the most filthy rancid swearing, awful stuff
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Dec 15, 2021 02:02
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Chernobyl Princess posted:In.
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Dec 15, 2021 02:06
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Yoruichi posted:In Pththya-lyi posted:Okay, time to get back on the horse.
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Dec 15, 2021 02:12
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Carl Killer Miller posted:In The man called M posted:In. Thranguy posted:In.
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Dec 15, 2021 02:32
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rohan posted:in
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Dec 15, 2021 02:42
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Idle Amalgam posted:In K THIS IS IT FOR SUPERFAST PROMPTS, I NEED TO GO GET SOME SHOPPING DONE, I WILL BE BACK LATER BUT PLEASE USE THE CURRENT JUDGE-GIVEN PROMPTS AS GUIDES FOR YOUR OWN HELLPROMPTS
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Dec 15, 2021 02:50
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crabrock posted:in, give me your worst hellprompt you coward Azza Bamboo posted:I'm in Captain_Indigo posted:In. SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 07:57 on Dec 15, 2021 |
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Dec 15, 2021 07:55
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Chairchucker posted:In
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Dec 15, 2021 08:03
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My Shark Waifuu posted:In! Sailor Viy posted:In.
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Dec 15, 2021 11:04
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flerp posted:in
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Dec 15, 2021 21:51
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Sonny posted:in ChickenOfTomorrow posted:In, please.
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Dec 16, 2021 09:39
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Simply Simon posted:in
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Dec 16, 2021 21:54
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Simply Simon posted:Yeah I think I'm gonna take both prompts at once lol SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 22:06
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Yo so I just realised that a deadline I thought was in Feb is actually Jan 1st and I'm hauling rear end on that, I WILL be judging this week but 1) it might be a bit slow 2) I'd appreciate a fully complement of judges so we can smash this thing out proper 3) while you are absolutely fully allowed to submit 10 seconds before the deadline and submitting early will get you nothing, if you feel the urge to submit earlier it makes judging a lot more smooth and easy since we can spread that poo poo out a bit SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 23:00
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Burning_Conch posted:In
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Dec 18, 2021 00:22
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 SIGNUPS ARE CLOSED get writin
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Dec 18, 2021 09:46
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I think everybody who requested a prompt has got one (a few folks just went straight into the hellprompt drawer so I only gave one there if explicitly asked), if you're missing a prompt let me know.
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Dec 18, 2021 09:49
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Entries are CLOSED
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Dec 20, 2021 09:15
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WEEK 489: I CAN FIX HIM, RESULTS It was an interesting week. A lot of wacky ridiculous over-the-top comedy, which was to be expected, but the real standouts were those who played against type and tried to imbue their piece with real emotion. Before we get to them though, we must, as is customary, bathe in blood. The loser, by unanimous agreement, was The Man Called M, with They Are Made of Stupid, which seemed incredibly half-assed and last-minute, and in a week filled with very big ideas was sort of just two faceless people talking to each other in an empty room. A dishonourable mention goes to newcomer Sonny with Tiger Flip, which was just sort of confusing and spent forever getting to nowhere and crucially did not contain a sickass flip. We were all new once, we have all DMed, wear this rusty laurel like a crown, Sonny, to one day forge in gold. An honourable mention goes to Yoruichi with Buzzer Beater, who managed to expertly split the difference between an absurdist premise and the genuine horror of the situation with an insane piece of existentialism. gently caress yeah, if the universe is infinitely strange and bleak and I’m about to die anyway, may as well go out on a high note. My personal winner, but I had to admit that the social politics of small town New Zealand hockey teams are absolute judge catnip/pandering and it got eked out by … The winner, also undisputed, was Sailor Viy, with Wings Against Stone. Perhaps a little flabby in the middle, but taking its ridiculous premise deadly seriously and being a genuinely upsetting and affecting piece of prose, in a week where most authors leaned in on the comedy, this one managed to delight and unnerve in equal measure. The blood crown is yours.
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Dec 21, 2021 00:28
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