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Better enter to secure my spot in last place! I hope to at least submit something entertaining 
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Sep 14, 2021 21:37
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 09:49 |
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The Base of the Bluff aka total trash Word count: 767 From zero, nine-point-eight-one metres per second. Twelve seconds and four hundred and fifty metres to reach free fall of one hundred and ninety-five kilometres per hour. More, if you worked for it. The gravity of Earth controls everything. The slope of the sun’s rays, the moon, the tides. Attraction. Repulsion. The water rushing past at the bottom of the bluffs. Always going downhill. That’s how things were for Arthur. A dead end job, a dead end marriage, his only shot at ownership a small plot in a local cemetery. Falling through life, taking the path of least resistance, until the Earth finally got its chance to pull him into itself. He didn’t really want to be here today, but it would have been too much friction to say no. Nobody ever wanted to say no to Emily. “Scared?” she called back to him, a smile teasing her lips. She’d already scrambled over the edge, frizzy red hair struggling to escape her helmet. His sister was younger, dumber, and much more successful. She had a white collar job, a wife with legs for days, and fancy initials after her name. Heights weren’t something foreign to her. Arthur had to admit the truth. “I’m ninety-percent scared, ten-percent desperate to take a piss.” She cackled. “Good luck with that, dumbass. Should’ve done the big boy pee before we got dressed.” A family classic: the macho act of standing at the top of a cliff, dropping trou, and letting it rain down on the world below—hands on hips as Joe Shuster and Stan Lee would have intended, of course. In his shoes Emily would have power-posed her way to a big boy pee for the ages, and she wouldn’t have let the “boy” part stop her. “Hurry up and hustle, get your scaredy-rear end down here.” Arthur was keenly aware of the loose dirt clinging to the rocks of the bluffs and how easily it could dunk on him. Jesus. Would it really have been harder to say no to this? It wasn’t even legal. He was pretty sure, anyway. Tentatively, he turned his back on the drop and bent over, placing one hand firmly on the ground. With his foot he searched almost blindly for purchase, pausing awkwardly once he achieved success. His other foot had to go somewhere. Or his hand? Maybe backwards was a bad idea? “Oh my God, what are you doing?” Emily burst out laughing shrilly. “Why the hell don’t I own a GoPro, what are we even doing up here without one. This belongs in a museum.” Out of the corner of his eye Arthur could see her miming a picture frame with her gloved hands, smirking up at him. Well. Dying was probably less ignominious than this anyway. He scrambled down ungracefully, sliding the last leg into a hard landing, steadied only by his hands scraping down the side of the rock face. Thankfully, his suit was plenty tough enough to take it. They stood beside each other on the tiny outcropping, arms kept close to their bodies as they waited for a break in the wind. It should be easy, shouldn’t it? Just do it. Don’t think about the ending. Except this wasn’t like following along in the wake of everyone else, pulled in the same direction. He had to actually do something to get where he was going. “Ready?” Emily asked, when the window of opportunity opened. “As I’ll ever be.” She jumped. Arthur watched, knees locked, as she plummeted over the edge head first. Fearless, but not weightless. Bound by the rules of gravity, like everything else. She never let that stop her. He took a shaky breath and let it out slowly between his teeth. He was ready. When he followed her, for a moment he felt the world stand still—everything condensed down to what was right in front of him and nothing else. Emily, already well ahead of him in her flashy yellow suit. The river, so far below it looked fake and could have been painted. A last deep gulp, the beginnings of the air whipping around his ears as he fell. He saw his wife—Colleen—eating dinner alone while he said “yes” to yet another box ticking exercise from his boomer boss. He saw the way her smile stiffened when he agreed to let his parents spend the weekend on short notice. And he saw the way she looked elsewhere, wistfully, when they were in public. Arthur spread the wings of his suit. A much finer specimen of big boy. It was time to stop free falling, and steer.
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Oct 9, 2021 03:40
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 Congrats to the winners! Thanks to everyone who read my submission, and especially our judges - really appreciate the feedback and that you all went the extra mile with the video! Your comments are very kind and insightful. I definitely sabotaged myself, I thought I was blowing it with conveying the characterization and didn’t have a punchline/twist coming, so my idea to make it more engaging was to have a ~mystery~ “what are they up to?” running through the piece, but… it wasn’t a fun mystery to solve and frustrated everyone lol. LESSON LEARNED. Should have doubled down on the character work instead, especially the secondary character. Btw for anyone confused since it was intentionally confusing - they’re BASE jumping (which I know nothing about, so that was fun on a time limit). This is the first time I’ve posted something for wide consumption/crit. Really hyped, this was a blast! Thank you so much Chili for organizing. Thoughts on the Discord Loved it, it lets people chat and celebrate while keeping the thread easy to navigate during the actual competition window. Two possible adds that I think would have helped: 1. Some pinned guidelines on what to post on the discord, like where to go for rules clarification and where we should or shouldn’t post identifying things like titles and word counts (I’m a moron who didn’t understand what “anonymous” meant, I thought the judges would be anonymous, like we wouldn’t know whose comments were whose - I probably should not have been pinging Chili from the finish line channel with questions SORRY). 2. Maybe a pinned post just for the submission rules? Word count, format, time window, editing rules, that kind of stuff. Just to make it easy to find while people are rushing to the end.
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Oct 9, 2021 19:48
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