|
Week 544: Let's Get Biblical Hey guys, I hear you like short stories. Well, let me tell you about a guy who wrote some of the best short stories of all time. "The Parable of the Sower," "The Good Samaritan," the list goes on. You might've heard of him. His name is *sits backwards in chair* Jesus. To start off the year, we'll be returning Thunderdome to its Judeo-Christian roots by adapting Bible stories. You can choose to adapt it fairly straight, focus on a neglected character, or completely shift time periods/genres. You can change story elements to better fit your themes, but the reader should still be able to see the original story underneath all the trappings. For our purposes, a Bible story will be pretty much anything from the Hebrew Bible, the traditional New Testament, or the Deuterocanon. Sorry if I'm not including your favorite Nag Hammadi Coptic Gnostic Gospel or whatever, but let's keep the stories within the general knowledge pool. You do not have to tell me what story you're adapting when you sign up, but please say it when you post your story. You may request a story to adapt to be assigned by a judge. For a little bit of extra fun, you may also ask for a genre to adapt your story to. The genre will be something I or another judge have been reading/watching/playing lately, described hyperspecifically. So if I've been watching Game of Thrones, you might get hard-R politically driven dark medieval fantasy. If you don't like your genre, feel free to reroll as many times as you please within reason (or just cancel the flash), as I want these to make writing more fun, not more constricting. Let's go with 1750 words, but you will not be DQ'd for going a tad over, I'll just be like, mildly annoyed and may take some points off. Entry deadline is Friday by midnight US central, but you may enter later than that if you toxx. Submission deadline is Sunday midnight US central. Judges are Albatrossy Underscore Rodent Thranguy Fuchsia Tude Entrants are Chernobyl Princess Admiralty Flag Tibalt Staggy Idle Amalgam M Rohan Antivehicular Something Else Applewhite Chairchucker DigitalRaven DoomsdayPrepperoni Vinny Possum Dicere Bird Tyrant Albatrossy_Rodent fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Jan 8, 2023 |
#
¿
Jan 3, 2023 21:09
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 07:05 |
|
|
Chernobyl Princess posted:In, please give me a genre Satirical modern vacation whodunnit!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2023 21:24
|
|
|
Tibalt posted:In, please give me a genre. British Horror Kids' Puppet TV Parody!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2023 21:27
|
|
|
Staggy posted:In, please give me a story and genre! Job as Cyclical Claustrophobic Woodland Horror
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2023 21:58
|
|
|
Idle Amalgam posted:IN, story and genre please Judith as a cooking competition show.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2023 22:38
|
|
|
The man called M posted:What the hey, in. Cozy Children's Scandinavian Folklore Urban Fantasy
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2023 23:47
|
|
|
rohan posted:in, story and genre please Tower of Babel as Whimsical Christmas High Fantasy Adventure
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2023 23:48
|
|
|
Antivehicular posted:gently caress it, dude, let's go bowling Tobit as Elementary School-Set Action Comedy
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2023 23:51
|
|
|
Applewhite posted:In. Story and genre please. Reunion of Jacob and Esau as Puzzle-Focused Techno-Fantasy Adventure
|
|
#
¿
Jan 3, 2023 23:58
|
|
|
Chairchucker posted:gimme story Nativity of Christ
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2023 00:16
|
|
|
DigitalRaven posted:In, gimme dat sweet story and genre. Joseph (of technicolor dreamcoat fame) as a Hollywood Rise-to-Fame Musical Romance.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2023 01:50
|
|
|
Admiralty Flag posted:Ah heck, everyone's asking for stuff, let me amend my 'in' to ask for a story. Herod's daughter and John the Baptist
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2023 03:07
|
|
|
Vinny Possum posted:In, genre me please I'll take a story too if you want Jesus in the Wilderness as Hip-Hop Surrealist Dramedy (edited "African-American" to hip-hop, the show in reference is Atlanta, I guess I figure if the writer's white I don't want them to think they're expected to write something profound about the black experience in America or whatever) Albatrossy_Rodent fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jan 4, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2023 21:12
|
|
|
rohan posted:requesting a story reroll please 1 Macabees
|
|
#
¿
Jan 4, 2023 22:50
|
|
|
Entries are closed, just as the gates of heaven are closed to those whose names are not found in the book of life. You may still enter if you toxx, and hey, if you drop a story without entering, what am I supposed to do, not judge it? Have fun writing please.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 7, 2023 07:44
|
|
|
Because I am nice, I will leave subs open until 3 Central (2 hours ten minutes from now). They will close whether I am around to say "subs closed" or not.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2023 07:49
|
|
|
Bible Judgepost It's judgement day. Dicere is DQed for editing and Chernobyl Princess is DQed for lateness. Both get crits tho I don't remember a week with this much disagreement between judges. Although we each have opinions about who should have lost or DMed, a lack of consensus led to no negative mentions. We will give an HM to Rohan, for a story about a very Hanukkah Christmas. And this week's God is Staggy for some drat spooky prose. Albatrossy_Rodent fucked around with this message at 08:35 on Jan 10, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2023 07:57
|
|
|
Biblical Critical DigitalRaven - Faith and Family Hey Raven, second story, eh? Well, thanks for subbing! I hope you had fun writing. I don't like it. So you keep switching to present tense in these italic sections. I think I know why you're doing this–to add "musical numbers" to satisfy the "musical" portion of your prompt–but when you sit down and read it, it's clunky and confusing. They read as stage directions in the middle of a more traditional narrative. I think you should have either been less creative with it (ie make it a musical just by making it about musicians) or more creative with it (by writing it the lyrics of a song or two) but your solution just doesn't work. It's distracting So the family disowns Jo because she…wrote a lovely song? This is clearly nonsensical. The first line of your story is "what are you in for" and then the story flashes back, presumably while Jo is describing what she's in for, but then we never actually find out what she's in for. The romance angle is oddly tacked on, and it doesn't need to be. We end by finding out the love interest is someone we never met, some rando in the bar crowd, but know who the love interest should've been? Ramon. Or, if you wanted to keep Jo gay, a chick version of Ramon. But you know, the person who's there through the entire story, so we can see how their relationship grows/adapts. Ultimately I think you bit off a bit too much here. I think you should've narrowed down the scope, told a scene of the Joseph story rather than the whole thing. I found the central theme (found/original families) overdone and hokey without anything new or interesting to say. I do like Pharaoh as the owner of a bar full of undocumented immigrants though, that's pretty fun. Chairchucker - Codechild A cyberpunk Magi battling the forces of RoboHerod? That's cool, in and of itself. I'll defend this from DMing on that premise alone. This is a very, very straightforward action piece, and very little happens that isn't violence. That isn't a bad thing per se; the violence is well-described, and all of the action is clear. I honestly wish we had gotten more theology; making God in a cyberpunk setting a sourceless, senderless code who performs miracles through technomancy is an inspired idea, probably the inspiredest idea in this whole piece. Expanding on that, and focusing on the nature of Sonya's faith in The Code could elevate this from a silly piece about What If Wise Man Was Badass? So the goons were personally invested in killing Future Jesus? I mean, I understand they have to be evil so we don't feel bad about Sonya killing like ten of them in eight hundred words. But you had the space to fill out this world a bit, to tell us who these characters are working for, and why, to tell a full-rear end Cyberpunk Christmas, and I can't help but feel there's a little bit of missed potential. Staggy - For the Trees So, uh, this fuckin slaps. This will be brief, due to the age-old dilemma of it being easier to identify faults in weak stories than strengths in strong ones. You did a great job reflecting on the themes of the Bible story while making this adaptation fully your own – a lot of the Bible narrative is monologuing by dudes named like Bildad and poo poo, and this adaptation includes no rough Bildad equivalent. Of all the stories this week, this is the one that feels the most profoundly spiritual, while also being scary as hell. That being said, I was a *little confused* by the ending and the mechanics of the family's resurrection, but the whole thing is good enough for me not to care that much. Perhaps this version is the one that deserves to be in the fuckin Bible. Rohan - A Christmas Adventure There are some fun ideas here, the funniest perhaps being Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as a gruff, no-nonsense badass. Even if they'd let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games, I doubt he'd want to. It's not exactly high fantasy, is it? – but neither is the inspiration for the flash (A Boy Called Christmas) even if it does has higher-fantasy vibes with elves and spells and magic creatures and poo poo. I'll let that slide. My biggest issue is that this isn't really an adaptation, is it? This is more like a Magic School Bus Hanukkah Special, a young adult Magic Tree House book, or any other famous kids' edutainment isekai. It's the plot of a 90's VHS you find at your childhood piano teacher's house called like Bible Kidz or something. I suspect that this is to not commit a Problematic by wallpapering the Hanukkah story over with Christmas gift wrap, but there must be another solution to turn this into a legit adaptation, right? Admiralty Flag - Is John In Over His Head? Yeah, this is pretty decent. Casting Herod as a petty middle manager is inspired. He acts like a king when his power is of the most boring corporate variety. I laughed at the Paris, Texas joke. I'll say this to Antivehicular down the line too: nice thematic name changes, and good job writing around the weird Biblical incest. All my thoughts are generally positive, as they should be for such a competently written piece, but there isn't enough to really make it shine. It's a decent modernization of the source material, but doesn't really elevate it. Balam Noson and his Donkey - The Man Called M In Fred Clark's legendary page-by-page reviews of the Left Behind novels (https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/11/05/left-behind-index-the-whole-thing/), Clark talks about how the writers of Left Behind introduce a character who's meant to be the greatest investigative journalist in the the world. This is writing themselves into a hole, however, as the world's best journalist is obviously an amazing writer, a genius-level talent, while the writers of Left Behind are instead, a couple of donkey-brained idiots. So when the LB authors (bad writers) have to actually produce examples of something that the world's greatest journalist (a good writer) might actually write, it's laughable horseshit: "to say the Israelis were caught off guard, Cameron Williams had written, was like saying the Great Wall of China was long." https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2003/10/21/lb-meet-the-girat/ Anyways, you immediately introduce a character who is the greatest producer of insults in all of Sweden, whose "words were so harsh, he made the burliest of Vikings cry home to their mother!" Now, M, since you've written a story with this man as your protagonist, you *will* be expected to write some clever insults, insults that are worthy of the expectations that *you yourself* have promised to the reader. Are you good enough of a writer to devise some of these insults? Can you come up with an insult so harsh that the burliest Vikings will cry home to their mothers? Okay, let's find where the insults in this story about a professional insulter are! Nope…not there…not there…is that one?...no…hmmm….aha! Found one! "Your mother smells bad!” Oh…oh…for gently caress's sake. Look, even for you this is just an astonishingly lazy story. You could have just taken the NIV version of the bible story, then did a find and replace to turn all the references to ancient Jewish poo poo into the kind of Norse mythology references one could glean by sleeping through a Thor movie, and the story would be basically the same as what you actually wrote. "Leader of Stockholm" good God, man, call him like a jarl or something, do literally anything to give this world you've developed any sort of character. You tell us that Loki played a trick on the donkey…okay, then, like, what was the trick? This isn't a "show don't tell" thing, like, please just tell me, what was the trick? Use literally any imagination at all to invent a trick that Loki might have played on this donkey. Anything, any trick. Please. God drat it. Applewhite - The Legend of Leah and Rachel and Bilhah and Zilpah I got a little worried when the beginning was just literally a Zelda game with one-to-one Zelda references and a little floating companion shouting Hey Listen and whatnot, but ultimately I think you actually managed to balance a fairly narrow tightrope here. The reunion of Jacob and Esau might be the most nakedly powerful emotional moment in the entire drat Bible, and the way you use your Zelda references to reinforce the anger built up between the two brothers is nifty; Ganon's convoluted, labyrinthine methods of keeping out Link become a metaphor for Esau's resentment. It's tricky to balance the silliness of your prompt with the earnestness of the Bible story, and you mostly managed to pull it off. I think you could have devoted a few more words to Esau's reaction, and to Jacob's decision, but that's a nitpick. This is ultimately very similar to the narrative of Tunic, a Zeldalike game that ends on–spoilers–the hero and the villain reconciling over shared history and wisdom. But your version's better imo, the game's good and all but its story kinda blows. Sucks you had to have the worst, most distracting typo you possibly could have (writing Esau instead of Jacob just as Jacob makes his critical decision). I'll try to look past it, but drat, it really does turn the emotional weight into "huh, a typo." Dicere - Escape from Fallansbee Let's be clear: this story sucks. The writing is bad: we switch locations without warning, it's oddly structured, there are characters that have no reason to exist, the characters that do have reasons to exist are paper-thin, and apparently the roads are bad but not so bad as to stop a mob from transporting themselves to an event where they could win the chance to assassinate Garth Brooks. This is a bad story. And yet I had a hell of a lot of fun reading it. I think the sheer audacity of replacing the angel of YHWH with Garth loving Brooks is what seals it as a good time. My jaw might have actually dropped when I realized that that was the direction the story was headed. So uh…yeah, I don't hate this, somehow. Quick question, though: do MAGA people actually hate Garth Brooks this much? Like, not that they'd actually form a lynch mob against him or whatever, but is he a sore subject to bring up with that crowd? He's seriously earned no goodwill from any of them? Please do let me know, I am very curious. Tibalt - The Parable of the Fox and the Lions I'm writing this before I confer with the other judges, so I don't know where this will ultimately land, but this is, as of this writing, my pick for the loss. Go read my crit of M's story, and look how mean I am about it. Yeah, I hate this more, and for pretty much the same reason. I went and read 1 Samuel 18-20 before I read your story to make sure I got all the references, and that turned out to be a mistake, because your story just says the whole thing with, like, no changes, no additional personality, nothing to make it your own. It's *just* 1 Samuel 18-20. And why 1 Samuel 18-20? 1 Samuel 20 doesn't really end in a satisfying way, it just like, leads into 1 Samuel 21. And yet you just end it where 1 Samuel 20 ends. I guess you change the characters into animals, but does that change anything? What does their animalness change about the way we read the story, what does it say about what you're trying to say about this narrative? Jack poo poo, that's what. I get that you got a harder flash than some other folks, but you also didn't really try to incorporate it in any meaningful way, and I might have been lenient with trying something that didn't work rather than not really trying anything at all. Like, there's no horror here, it's just David and Saul with animals. And it's all in service of a joke whose punchline is "Jonathan is so gay lol." This might not be worse than M's story, but it's a hell of a lot longer. It all just feels so lazy. Antivehicular - A Fishy Solution If this were not Bible Week, just like, Cute Coming-of-Age Story Week, I still would've liked this. This is a fun story that makes sense, crafts distinct and memorable characters in a handful of words, and leaves on a satisfying note. The fact that this is also a pretty drat accurate retelling of the Tobit story…well, that's even better. Of all the stories this week, this is the one that plays with the prompt the best, using the colors of your genre to paint the same picture as the source material, ultimately creating something entirely new. I think I ultimately prefer Staggy's story, but I applaud the creativity that results in a piece like this. Nice job. DoomsdayPrepperoni - Goodbye, Hello Now that is an obscure-rear end Bible story! I do not even remotely know that one. Okay, let's click this link to read the original story and…op, that's why it's obscure: it's boring. Has a sermon ever been delivered on "The Time a Guy Briefly Lost an Axehead, But Then Found It Again?" Maybe it made it into the footnotes of a Kidz Chick Tract about how God helps you find Mommy when you're lost in the grocery store or something, but I do gotta ask: it's not like I assigned that one as a flash, so why pick it? The Bible is a library of pillars of fire and apocalyptic horsemen and bear murders and fat dudes being unable to pull knives out of their guts because the fat rolled over the knife and all sorts of dope poo poo and you chose The Time a Guy Briefly Lost an Axehead, But Then Found It Again? And that's ultimately the story's fatal flaw. It's a pretty straightforward retelling of the Bible's most forgettable story. It's a story that starts with very little reason to care and you didn't manage to give us one. The writing is competent enough I guess, outside of the bracketed reminder to add something more here, but the structure is off. I don't think we needed to start all the way at Paul's birth, I think we could've jumped into the action at a much later point (like Paul and Elisha going into the woods to go lumberjackin'). If Paul's mom is a professional lumberjack, why is she using a family heirloom axe as her primary professional tool? Wouldn't she be using more modern technology, or even better, a chainsaw or other mechanical tree-murder method? The explanation for why this axe is important just seems off, that could be developed in a way that makes more sense. Chernobyl Princess - The Temptation of Josh A story that asks the deep spiritual question "why didn't Jesus simply slap Satan in the goddamned face?" Seriously, Sam is such an insufferable douche, and I'm glad that the theme of this story is "Sam is such an insufferable douche." This is good! Light, breezy, and fun, accurately conveys the Bible story while being its own thing in its own genre. Not even remotely a whodunnit, unless Sam was the one whodunn the crime of sucking poo poo, but I'm not gonna tsk you for that. I appreciate that you subbed, even if it's DQed. Other awards: Best Bible name change: Antivehicular for "Ozzie Morris" (Asmodeus) Most tasteful removal of biblical incest: also Antivehicular, for making them *just* cousins. Best depiction of God as something non-god: Staggy, for "The Forest." Albatrossy_Rodent fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Jan 10, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2023 08:03
|
|
|
In
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2023 15:25
|
|
|
Enter me in, I can't imagine it's that much worse than the one I already got.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2023 00:44
|
|
|
Theme: war Setting: fairy tale Love, War, and Other Acts of Superiority 890 words There's a wise saying that goes like this: a real gentleman never discusses women he's broken up with or how much tax he's paid. The tax thing's never come up, and I haven't so much as uttered her name since she left me for him. Barely even thought it, really. Her figure, sure: her curves, the delicate engravings along her handle, but not her name. Now that he's here, though, in our little makeshift interrogation room, at my mercy, her name is the only thing on my mind. "We can be reasonable here," purrs Cat. "We both know you did it for the money, and we both know that's off the table. So, you can talk, and there might be a cozy exile in it for you, or you can stay silent, in which case it'll be easier to put Humpty back together. What'll it be?" Dish smirks. The little hands and feet sticking out of his rim are bound to the floor and ceiling, but he hasn't struggled. It infuriates me. For so long, I've wanted to see him in pain, and he's not even going to give me that. Little Dog's sitting on a munitions box in the corner. "What's your rendezvous point with the Moonmen?" he says bluntly between puffs on his cheap cigar. "We want names, dates, locations, a comprehensive list of the intel you've already spilled. Should be easy enough. If you don't, we'll let Fork here do what he does." Dish stays silent, maintaining his smug grin. Cat looks over at me. "You know what to do, Fork. Scrape him." I've been looking forward to this. I bend down, pointing my tines toward our prisoner, and start to run when… "Wait, I know you from somewhere, don't I?" says Dish. I halt. "Don't listen to him," says Little Dog. "No, no, I do know you," says Dish. "We must have been set at the same table at some point." We had been, not just a table, the table, the queen's table. On that beautiful night, the royal gala to host the Moonian Ambassadors, Dish had been adorned with fine steak and baked asparagus. And the one I loved, the one I still love, saw him dressed in such deliciousness as she carried soup to the queen's mouth, and I guess that was that. That was the night that Cow had pulled her little stunt, which the Moonmen saw as an act of supremacy and domination and declared war upon the Earth at once, and it was the night in which Dish eloped with my love. "Oh, diddle," says Dish. "You're Spoon's old boyfriend, aren't you?" "What if I am?" I say. "What matters is you're a traitor." "Listen, buddy," says Dish. "I'm really sorry that everything went down the way it did. Truly. It's just, you know, love is love. She still wonders how you've been doing." "This isn't what we're here for, Fork," says Little Dog. "Find out what info he sold to the Moonmen." In spite of myself, I look Dish in the eyes and say, "How's she doing?" "Not good," says Dish. "She's sick. Must've scooped some bad stew. The Moonmen offered a way I could pay for her treatment, and I took it. You're a good tableware, Fork. I know you would've done the same." "Oh come on," says Cat. "He's playing you like a fiddle." "I wouldn't have betrayed my planet," I say. "Yes you would," says Dish. "Diddle you." "I get that. I respect that," says Dish. "You have every right to hate me. But if I talk, they'll kill her." Cat slams a paw against the wall. "If you don't talk, we'll kill her!" "No you won't," says Dish. "Not so long as you've got Fork with you." I hate him more than ever. Look at him, that piece of diddle, chained up and still acting like he's better than me, like he loves her more than me. "Enough of this," Cat hisses. "Get him to talk, Fork." But I don't care if he talks anymore, I just want him to hurt. Some of his paint is the first to chip off, bunching in zig-zags at the ends of my tines. He scowls, but through gritted teeth, sputters, "I understand. I forgive you." People like him are the reason this whole dumb war started, people who're always out to prove how much better they are. Cow, out to show the Moonmen how high she can jump, and the Moonmen, out to prove to the Earth that its cow-jumps are nothing compared to the great Moon Fleet. There are several chips in the ceramic itself when Dish screams, "Okay! Okay! I'll talk!" How dare she love him. And for what? His pretty blue onion pattern, how much more food he can hold than me? Did she forget how much stronger silverware is than china, how easy it is for a dish to shatter? Dish is screaming names, dates, locations, as I claw out bigger and bigger chunks of him. "You can stop now, Fork," says Cat. "We have what we need." But I'm not done. I will keep ripping into him until he is shards. Little Dog, as he often does when he sees such sport, laughs.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2023 18:47
|
|
|
In, double flash me
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2023 19:31
|
|
|
A Sea of Nothing 1054 words Gift: marshmallows. Tax: wilderness makes no sound Raymond awakens me from an oddly still sleep. I had just nodded off for a moment on our return journey from Vancouver Island, but I wake to a whole new world. "Do you see that?" he says, and it's not what I see that unsettles me, but what I don't. The strait is windless, tideless, waveless, as still as a pond on a gentle night, for miles and miles around Raymond's little sailboat. The stars are mirrored perfect in the silent sea, and there is no way to tell where the water ends and the sky begins. "That's odd," I say. "Odd?" says Raymond. "It's drat near apocalyptic." "When did it happen?" "Just a few moments before I woke you up, all at once. Like turning off the wave pool at a waterpark." Raymond is the only man I know in his 60s who seems genuinely interested in dating women his own age. He's spent his whole life cultivating interesting hobbies. He can beekeep, brew beer, play the accordion, and of course, sail. Even for his age, he's not particularly attractive, but I can look past his wraithlike boniness. He takes me on adventures, and we do the things that we were supposed to do for fun when we were younger, and it sometimes makes me feel like I'm in my thirties again. But not now. Staring out at the black ocean all about us, as still and empty and hollow as death, I feel a hundred. "How long until we can get back to Vancouver?" I say. "Darling, I must remind you that this is a sailboat. Without wind, we aren't moving." "Yeah, duh," I say. "Do we have any oars or anything?" "Even if we did, I don't know if we'd reach the water from the boat. No. We're gonna have to wait." Idly, I check my phone, maybe see if there's a news story about some rare weather phenomenon in the middle of the Strait of Georgia, but of course there's no service out here. The clock tells me it's about a quarter past ten. Raymond rummages through the food bag. "We've eaten all the meals proper," he says. "All that's left is the s'mores we never got to." I smile. I almost felt a little bad refusing to let us devolve into eating a children's snack the night before. Almost. "Hersheys?" I say. "Of course," says Raymond. "It's a s'more." "Right, and Hersheys is sugared candle-wax. Hand me the marshmallows. I can snack on those." Raymond tosses me the bag. "Is Stay-Puft really that much more respectable of a brand than Hersheys?" "Stay-Puft makes marshmallows as good as anyone else, while Hersheys makes the worst chocolates." He sits next to me, our old legs dangling off the side of the boat. We get to talking about our favorite subject, our divorces. I just have the one and it's scandalous, and he has three, two amicable and one deeply deeply sad. Then we talk about our kids who never call and bicker about whose son is prodigaler. Then complaints about our backs come up, and like all conversations between old people, it all ends up about death. "I think there's something very strange going on," I say, popping the last marshmallow into my mouth. "Of course there is," says Raymond. "No," I say. "It must have been an hour since you woke me and yet…" I show him my phone. "...it's still a quarter past ten." "Ah," says Raymond. "I suppose it's the end of all time." "All time?" I say. "Maybe it's just the end of ours." "What do you mean, I crashed the boat and this is our limbo?" "No, this is clearly not limbo," I say. "If all we have left to eat is Hersheys chocolate, this can only be hell." Raymond chuckles. "You know what I mean. Death. How do you feel, if this is really it?" "I suppose there would have been worse ways to spend my final days." "No," says Raymond. "I'm not talking about the trip. I'm talking about life. If this is it, are you satisfied?" I shake my head. "No, I don't think so. I think I realized at a very young age that time feels like nothing. Ten years is just as long as a second, in memory, and neither are anything. We don't get to keep the past. The only thing we ever truly have is whatever stupid moment we happen to be living, and in the end, we don't even get to keep that. Do we have any wine left?" "If you squeeze the bag we might get a mouthful apiece." "Well what are you waiting for?" He gets up and rummages through the food bag once more. As he does, he says, "so what you're saying is that, in the end, we're all on a little sailboat in a sea of nothing?" "Maybe," I say. "But to answer your question, I'm not satisfied, if this is really death. I don't want to die. I never want to die. My one dumb transient, ever-shifting moment, I don't want it to end. Well, it would be rude of me not to return the question, wouldn't it? Are you satisfied?" "No, and for all the same reasons," says Raymond. "I sometimes wish I was born ten thousand years ago. Then I could just die at age twelve fighting for my father's barbarian blood-god and feel more meaning in every moment than I've ever known in this life. Do you find anything other than emptiness in other people?" "Sure," I say, then squeeze a little wine into my mouth. "But it's an illusion, isn't it? All the conversations I ever have, all the dumb love I have for my dumb son, all that just exists in that moment, doesn't it, on the proverbial sailboat." "Okay," says Raymond. "You're right. Can you pretend to be wrong for a moment, and kiss me, and let it mean something?" "Probably not," I say, and I kiss him anyways, and feel nothing. He's a nice man, and there are times he's made me forget the emptiness, but he can do no such thing now, not anymore, not at the end of of time. I turn away from Raymond and look out over the stillness.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2023 05:40
|
|
|
Friendly Beef Brawl! Romantic comedy, 1500 words! Due two weeks from now!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2023 17:04
|
|
|
In with "why is English a language when we're just talking normal?"
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2023 20:28
|
|
|
Friendly Beef Brawl judgement This was rather easy imo. One story was more creative, more interesting, more funny, and most importantly, gave me a good reason to want the characters to be together. Friendly Penguin wins. Crits later.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2023 20:25
|
|
|
Low effort Brawlcrits Beef My biggest issue with this is that I was left with a big question: does Dexter even like Diane? Or vice versa? What is our impetus for wanting to see these guys get together? He's paired with her at a bachelor party, which means there's inherent awkwardness, because he banged her sister? I'm confused with this whole premise, I don't see why Dexter is so nervous, I don't see why Diane should be "mad" he banged her sister, I don't see why these two would make a good enough couple to hang a romantic comedy on. I'm confused by Dexter's character. Other characters tell us he's the life of the party, but the whole story he's just a weird nervous trainwreck. And his name is Dexter. No better way to signal a character is a nerd than by giving him a name which is often prefixed with "poin." Penguin What I like most about this is how it didn't even need the fantasy element. This story would have worked if the destination was Paris. It conveys a specific point that every loving relationship goes through, when the honeymoon ends, but the love's still there, and you're mostly just binging shows together. The rest is just icing, and I really enjoyed it. Watch your ending. I'll allow the "it's funny because it agrees with presumedly leftist politics of the average TD writer" joke this time, but only this time.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 12, 2023 06:32
|
|
|
In, hellrule
|
|
#
¿
Feb 15, 2023 18:10
|
|
|
Very unfinished redemption story The Black Crown, Queen Chamorak's Edition with study notes by Tarqa Nwill, Master of Tohbist Sorceries at the University of Talamaran: Book of Eggs Eggs is the final book of the poetic section of The Black Crown, and by far the shortest. Authorship is unknown, though Tohbist tradition states that it was written by the Wizard King Zandar himself. This is unlikely, as the text does not match the style of the verified writings of Zandar1. Its date of authorship is similarly mysterious, though it can be placed before L.T. 28, as it is referenced in Travels of Talamar the Strong by The-Bard-Who-Doesn't-Deserve-A-Name. This makes it arguably the oldest book in the Crown, competing only with Unending Still. The title of Eggs is a pun; "hoogk" is the Dead Wood word for both "egg" and "cavern." The QCE translation you'll see here makes value judgments about which use of "hoogk" means "egg" or "cavern." In my personal opinion, every "hoogk" should be translated as "egg." I believe that the absurdism of the egg imagery is deliberate, even if it is not lost on the original author that "hoogk" also means "cavern." If Eggs has magical properties, they are unknown or lost to the ages2. It is the only book in the Black Crown not to contain any known sorceric incantations or wisdom for mystic meditation. Still, many modern Tohbist sorcerers claim to contemplate the poem as a means to achieve Nearness, even if it is not directly involved in spellcasting. Eggs An egg grows inside a carvern, Fatherless and motherless, save for Tohb3. The egg grows eyes. The cavern grows eyes4. And the egg sees everything and knows everything, and sees the life growing. And the life is offensive to the egg, for nothing light should exist My friend Zrendo Saph, Professor-Lord of Nightmarology at the School in the Dead Wood, argues otherwise. "Zandar's surviving works are works of military strategy, not poetry. Why should we expect a match in style?" she said to me via windopathic correspondence. The point is valid; however, none of the stories of the life of the Wizard-King suggest he possessed a poet's temperament or demeanor. I maintain that Zandar was not the author. The little-remembered Tohbist prophet Zandar-Roh the Few-Toothed (circa A.T. 442-466) is said to have claimed otherwise, declaring that Eggs is the crucial wisdom of Tohbist necromancy. Not for use by Tohbist necromancers, mind you (Tohbist necromancers, easily the most accomplished dead-raisers in the world, would have mentioned they used Eggs if they indeed did so), but by the dead they raise to grant permission for use of their bodies. Zandar-Roh was slain in the Spear Purge of the Kiranin Crusade, and the zombie made from his flesh did little to continue the argument. The Talamari god of death Tohb is universally depicted as male. The Dead Wood language, however, does not distinguish between masculine and feminine. Orthodox Tohbists usually portray Tohb as beyond gender. This fact does not stop them from having some of the most violently patriarchal households in the world. It is obvious that "cavern" in this instance should be translated as "egg" but apparently arguing so should leave a University Sorcery Master with heaps of hate mail. So, by the grace of the Holy and Light Queen Chamorak who definitely didn't invade the Dead Wood first, let's just say it's "cavern."
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2023 22:44
|
|
|
In
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2023 05:40
|
|
|
I Don't Know Which One To Shoot: An Abdiwahab Warsame Mystery 1256 words Abdiwahab Warsame liked to play his pacing off as the odd quirk of a genius detective, but in reality, he just wasn't capable of standing still. As he wandered, his bulging eyes remained fixed on the suspect, a man identical in appearance and temperament to the bloodied victim, if just a tad fatter. "If you're a clone who killed your original, we can walk you to the termination room now. If you're the original, the deceased is technically your property and thus yours to kill. So, are you the original Mr. Smith or not?" "Of course I am," said Smith. He was a bearded, bespectacled man dressed in thrift-store tweed. How could this guy afford a clone? Warsame's neural-scan monocle covertly displayed LIE - CONFIDENCE: 85%, AVERAGE SEVERITY: 32%. Almost certainly a lie, but with–a grain of truth? Warsame pushed further. "Why did you kill him?" "No real reason. I was getting tired of him." TRUTH VALUE UNCLEAR He's good, Warsame thought. He knows I can detect his lies, so he deals in half-truths. "Warsame, come talk to me for a second," came a voice through Warsame's earpiece. "Hold up," said Warsame. "Am I free to go?" said Smith. "Extremely no," said Warsame, and left the room, soon finding himself in the police station office. "What is it, Nok?" he said to his assistant. Did you finish your scan of Smith's residence?" "Yeah," said Nok. "And we found this." She displayed a picture of strange machine with two wiry antennas." "Huh," said Warsame. "Is that what I think it is?" "If what you think it is is a memory integrator, then yeah," said Nok. A memory integrator was extremely illegal and even extremelier rare. "Have you hacked the user logs? When's the last time it was used?" said Warsame. "And who was the recipient, the alive one or the dead one?" "That's the thing," said Nok. "It's been in use every day by both Samuel Smiths." "You're telling me that…" "...that they've been downloading each other's memories every day, yeah." This was unheard of. Clones were usually for labor, a copy one could send into the office while the original hung out at home. A normal person would simply install a standard rebellion queller, but neither Smith showed any trace of one, or the standard-issue under-arm bar code. "Right," said Warsame. He stormed back into the interrogation room. "Why and how the hell do you have a memory integrator?" Smith hesitated. NEXT STATEMENT LIKELY LIE reads the monocle, as though Warsame needed the heads-up. "If my clone got sick, the memory integrator would let me get caught up on whatever he was working on." "Do I have to remind you that we're conducting neural–" "I don't know what your monocle is saying, all I know is that I'm telling the truth." LIE - CONFIDENCE: >99%, AVERAGE SEVERITY: 95%. "I've got something new for you," said Nok over the earpiece. "Sending it to the monocle now." Warsame scanned the new photos: anti-cloning social media posts from Smith, Smith's face in a crowd of protesters holding a sign blaring CLONE LABOR IS SLAVE LABOR. "You're a middle school gym teacher," said Warsame. "Hardly the salary of someone who can afford a clone, and certainly not the salary of someone who would so quickly dispose of one." "Perhaps I was stepping above my station when I…" "Almighty Allah, just stop," said Warsame, ripping the monocle away from his eye. "I don't even need this thing, it's so obvious that you're bullshitting me. Anyone could tell by looking at your plaid vest that you're an anti-clone lefty, and that's before we look at your internet footprint. So tell me, right now: why do you have a clone?" Smith hesitated again, but this time, Warsame could sense sincerity. Against his mobile nature, he sat across from the suspect, hoping that a cooler temperature could expose honesty. "My clone was, um, a gift," said Smith. "My dad, let's just say he and I don't really see eye to eye when it comes to politics. Took one of my baby teeth and a recent neural scan, whipped up a me, gave it to me for my birthday hoping that having a slave of my own would turn me away from Marx." "And it didn't?" "No, I was appalled. Got the rebellion queller removed immediately, spent my savings on the memory integrator. I was not going to use this person as a tool, he was going to have as full a life as mine. I promise you, though, I am the original…" "I don't know about that," said Warsame. "And I don't think you do either. Either way, why did you kill him?" Smith cleared his throat. "I–I tried to make things absolutely equal for us, but things still ended up different. We were supposed to alternate work days, but then I'd integrate his memories, and I'd remember plotting against me. Planning to gaslight me into thinking that I had been the one to stay home the day before, to make me think it was my turn to work. And then, I found myself getting tired. Not, like existentially exhausted, just the natural fatigue of someone who works every day. And I knew that no matter how many memories I had playing video games and eating junk food, I knew I was still the one doing all the work." Such a good advocate of clone's rights, Warsame thought. Up until it was inconvenient. "Am I free to go?" said Smith. "I'm not proud of what I had to do–of what I did, but by the law, it was in my rights." "I suppose it was," said Warsame. "Wait here while I get the paperwork." He stood up, but as he needed the door, he spun around. "Why are you almost thirty pounds heavier than the dead Smith?" said Warsame. "What?" said Smith. "You're the one who's been doing all the work, while he stayed home, right? Eating, ahem, 'junk food.'" Warsame's pacing increased in pace. Smith's eyes betrayed a flicker of horror. "You know, Mr. Smith's corpse was awfully skinny. I can imagine a man that skinny being tired all the time. You're not the Smith that felt tired every day. You just remember feeling him tired every day. And you got so paranoid about the plans and plots against yourself you had contacted, that you killed him." "He was going to do the same to me!" shouted Smith. "Of course he was," said Warsame. "When I asked you if you were the original Mr. Smith, you told me you were, and the monocle told me that was a lie. But the honest answer wasn't no, was it? It was 'I don't know. How long has it been since you've just forgotten who was the original and who was the clone?" "I'm not the clone!" yelled Smith. "I don't know that. I don't think any of us will ever know that. And because of that, it will be impossible to press charges. I guess you're free to go." As Warsame made the walk to the copier to pick up the release paperwork, he passed by the station's clone termination room. How many clones had he brought there himself? Did it matter–did it ever matter–whether they had been clones or not? He shrugged off the guilt. It was never his job to care.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2023 19:35
|
|
|
In
|
|
#
¿
Mar 21, 2023 23:28
|
|
|
Yoruichi posted:ill fite u in my sleep, u pizzwizzle Sleep Fite Brawl Sebmojo vs. Yoruichi An action story set in a dreamscape. 1600 words Due 4/9
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2023 08:00
|
|
|
Wizard's Work 1438 words "Do you like my spellbooks?" said Xandara. He collected spellbooks, but could barely read the runes, and his attempts at performing their magick always ended with frustration and abandonment. "Yeah, your spellbooks are cool," I said, exhausted, for the third or fourth time that day. It was best, as a rule, to try to keep Xandara happy, to humor his constant requests for validation and praise, lest the demon find holes in his ego to slip through and conquer his mind. My task from the Council of Mages was clear: if the demon contained within Xandara managed to kill him, it would be loosed to wreak violence upon all of Talamaran. I and my fellow guardian wizards were to keep him alive at all costs and contained in the desolate mountain spire. The demon had taken control of Xandara two days prior, and again three days before that. Each time we rebound the demon inside that poor, cursed man, our manna and life-essence drained. But the demon did not tire, it did not weaken, it only hungered, and each day I reported for duty at the tower I felt less and less alive. "Jeb, can you come here for a second?" called Izrenda from the study a floor below. I gave a friendly nod to Xandara as I made my way to the spiral staircase, leaving him with Quistyn, a young, nervous wizard who'd only worked at the tower for a little over three weeks. "What's going on?" I said as I sat down. "Nothing," said Izrenda. She was an old sorceress who'd worked at the tower for as long as I'd been alive. "Just thought you'd like a cup of tea. You've had a long week." "Thank you," I said, wordlessly summoning the teacup from her hands to mine. "I really have." "You were at the tower for both incidents this week, I've heard," said Izrenda. "Both breaches, yeah," I said. "Had to hold a binding charm for five straight hours last Saturday. Don't think I even have the manna for the cast today." "Can I tell you something in confidence?" said Izrenda. "I'm starting to wonder if these are even demon breaches at all." "What do you mean?" I said. The demon was certainly real; it was a remnant of the curse placed on Xandara by his brother, the notorious shadow-wizard Zhadoh. This was known. "I mean, what if the demon's been with him so long that there isn't really a distinction between the man and the beast?" said Izrenda. "What if the demon doesn't need to enter Xandara's mind for him do its bidding? What if the real issue is that Xandara's just an rear end in a top hat?" "No," I said. "Xandara's soul is too gentle. Besides, how can the least talented mage I've ever seen control such powerful magick except by a demon's control?" "I'm just asking questions," said Izrenda. "He might act weak, and powerless, and childlike, but remember, this is Zhadoh's own brother we're talking about. Even if he's not good at controlling magick, the raw power is there." Suddenly, a loud, repetitive banging noise pounded from the floor above, followed closely by Quistyn shouting "HELP!" "Ancients be damned," I cursed. I really had to do this poo poo again? "Izrenda, go help Quistyn with the binding incantation, he's still pretty new at it. I'll ready the potion." Izrenda nodded, then ascended the staircase. I ran to the bubbling cauldron in the corner of the study and started to ladle its deep purple ooze into a flask, but as the banging and pounding continued from upstairs, my hands started to tremble. I had the courage to deal with this several times already. But did I have the courage to battle this demon and its accursed host time and time again, forever? I inhaled a deep, nasal breath and closed my eyes. I steadied my hands, corked the flask, and made my way to the stairs. "LET ME DIE!" shrieked Xandara, hovering to the ceiling then crashing down to the floor, over and over. Quistyn's pathetic binding charm barely even counted as magick, and Izrenda's steady, practiced arc could not hold Xandara by itself. "LET ME DIE SO IT CAN BE FREE!" "Hi, Xandara," I said sweetly, slowly approaching the writhing host. "I have your potion ready for you, it's going to make you feel so much better." Xandara's tongue shot out of his mouth, a hundred times its natural length, wrapped around the flask, then smashed it against the wall. "gently caress your stupid potion!" shouted Xandara, the 'gently caress' sounding like a desperate attempt to sound adult and cool. He started thrashing his forehead against the tower walls. Quistyn grabbed his shoulders, but Xandara pantomimed a flick, and Quistyn was launched through the window. Izrenda abandoned her binding charm and managed to land a stopping spell on Quistyn before he could disappear behind the horizon. He floated in the air a mile away, just a speck in my vision. "poo poo!" said Izrenda. "I've got to get to him before the spell wears off. Can you hold him by yourself for a sec?" "No!" I shouted. "Definitely not!" "I'll be back soon!" said Izrenda, scooping up a rug off the floor and soaring away on it towards Quistyn. As I turned to face Xandara, his bookshelf fell to the floor, and the books rose into the air and started darting towards his face. I drew the bind charm from within me, but my blood lacked the manna, and silver sparks sputtered impotently from my hand. Black tendrils emerged from Xandara's nostrils and wrapped around my chest. I felt my ribcage squeeze against my lungs and gasped for breath. Xandara's forehead had a huge, bleeding gash, and the blood formed into wretched hands which pulled the gash further apart, and the last spellbook flung itself towards his exposed skull. With my free hand, I grabbed the book. Silent Hymns of the Black Halo. One of my favorites. Whenever Xandara asked me if I liked his spellbooks, I always answered truthfully. His spellbook collection was loving lit. "Xandara…do you like this one?" I croaked, and the tendrils loosened ever so slightly. "Yeah," he said. "The rune calligraphy is really cool." One of the blood-hands extended to slap me in the face. "Uh-huh," I said, spitting out the blood. "It's First Era Kul-Kahdan. Can't think of a better source for elder spirit communion." "Right," said Xandara. The tendrils released me, jabbing me in the gut as they retracted. "Xandara, can you please control yourself?This poo poo sucks." "I know it does," said Xandara. He launched the bookshelf at me, and I knocked it away with a simple blast of pressure. "I'm sorry, Jeb." "I'm here for you, dude," I said. "We're gonna keep you safe." Izrenda returned on the carpet with Quistyn in tow. "Will you let Izrenda and Quistyn cast the binding charm?" I said. "I'll try." The silver beams burst from my co-wizards' palms and connected like lightning to Xandara's skull. Quistyn's was actually pretty good. Xandara's arms turned into immense serpents and lunged towards Izrenda and Quistyn's neck. "Hey! Focus on me!" I said, and the serpents turned towards me. I picked up another spellbook from the floor. Inheritances From Tricksters. "That one's really cool!" said Xandara as I levitated the serpents into a knot. "Yep," I said. "You can only draw mana from the runes when they're written in crayon, it slaps. Oh, is that Earthquake Roots? Where did you get that?" He was starting to return to baseline, but it would still take a good long while. When Xandara finally calmed down, I went down to the study to scribble out a scroll for the tower's Chief Wizard. As long as Izrenda had worked at the tower, she hadn't learned how to fill out an Incident Report. Quistyn was upstairs, pretending to like the spellbooks and telling Xandara how good of a job he did by calming down. I still didn't know how much of the breaches was the demon and how much was Xandara. I only knew that whatever was going on, Xandara hated it, and just wanted it to stop. As scary as it was for me, it was always a hundred times scarier for him. I had no idea if the same poo poo was going to happen tomorrow. It very well could, and I might be exhausted, stressed, and sometimes a little pissed, but one way or another I would be ready. I was a wizard, drat it, and I was good at my job.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2023 16:27
|
|
|
Judging.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2023 17:15
|
|
|
Yoruichi posted:Entries for this brawl are going to be 24 hours late That's fine I'm judging the week proper anyways, gives me a little more time.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 10, 2023 21:17
|
|
|
In
|
|
#
¿
Apr 11, 2023 00:21
|
|
|
Crits to come for Sleep Fite Brawl (and telepathy week), but Brawl Judgement Now This was tough. One story had the clearly better action and surrealism. In the other, I could actually tell who the gently caress the characters were and why they were doing what they were doing. But I'm gonna pick style over substance here. Yoruichi wins.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 16, 2023 00:55
|
|
|
 to have high-quality (300 words apiece) crits for the dream fite brawl by next Wednesday.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2023 03:16
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 07:05 |
|
|
Sleep fight line crits Hid and Sought 1350 words Luce first things first, is this name "Loose," short for "Lucy," or is it "Loo-chay," all Italian-like? Hate note knowing how to pronounce names in stories took a deep breath and dived. Her hands swept the tiled bottom. Lungs burning, she finally felt metal under her fingers. She grabbed the key and shot up to the surface. Her eyes were blurry from the chlorine, making rainbows of the light reflecting off sequined dresses all around the edge of the swimming pool. She blinked, and realised they were wading towards her. Fist clenched around the key Luce waded towards the edge. A woman with iridescent black eyes shoved a drink into her chest. Luce dived. She grabbed at knees like sapling trunks and eeled her way through the forest of legs. With one palm and one clenched fist on the tiled rim she hauled herself from the water. Her sodden jeans muddled her steps as she struggled across the patio. Already this reads as an actual dream, which I appreciate The door was blocked by two women reclining on a mouldering couch. They had kicked off their stilettos and their long toenails clicked against the tiles. They beckoned at Luce-- Now! she told herself. She gripped the key. Now, now, NOW-- Luce leapt onto the couch. The women shrieked. Luce dodged a grasping hand with her left leg and pushed off the couch back with her right. She dived, landed in a forward roll and then was up and running into the darkened hallway and This kind of abrupt transition is good for what youre trying to do here. BUT… Silence. ...I don't think what comes after the abrupt transition is abrupt enough. We get time to catch our breath by *checks notes* literally giving Luce time to catch her breath. True surreality is being one place, then suddenly being in another, and it being perfectly normal, we've always been at point B actually. It wouldn't really bother me as much in a more straightforward story with stuff like "plot" or "characters" but it really seems like your goal here is to just be a dreamy as possible, and this transition didn't *quite* hit the mark. Luce let out her breath in a long sigh. Water drops from the bottom of her jeans plinked against the wooden floor. She turned through an open doorway and found herself in front of a large, in a dream, you dont "find yourself" anywhere, you just are glass-fronted bookcase. Luce could see her reflection in the glass. Her own pitch black eyes stared back at her. Luce felt her lips tighten in a snarl. She closed her eyes, opened them, and forced her focal point beyond the glass. She tilted her head and slid her eyes up and down the titles on the spines. Her eyes widened as she recognised the books. Her books. The spines were creased and the corners bent just so. So this section teases character and backstory, what Luce's life is like outside of the dream, and what the dream is a metaphor for, that these books mean something to her, but…what? It's unclear, and it shouldn't be totally clear, but I do think if you're going to include this, there should be more of an emotional throughline than what we have. For example…what are the books? What kind of books does Luce read? That would be a simple way to tell us a lot about this character. Tears pricked Luce’s eyes. She shook her head, angry with herself. The room was lit only by the fading daylight beyond the closed curtains. Luce jumped as a red light blinked on at the end of the room. Her heart hammered and it took her a moment to identify the growing hiss as the sound of an electric kettle. It was sitting on a cracked formica bench. Next to it the jar of teabags from Luce’s old flat.The stainless steel sink was full of used wine glasses. Why does Luce live in my apartment? The kettle boiled. Luce waited for the cathartic click of its auto shut off. The room began to fill with steam. The sound of boiling water filled Luce’s ears. I like this sentence She was sweating. The room felt like a sauna. Luce reached out. Her hand was halfway to the kettle’s switch when the kitchen door slammed open. Light and sound from the party outside flooded in and clouds of steam billowed out. Luce saw black eyes go wide. Her heart skipped a beat, then began to hammer against her ribs. The woman shrieked. Don't like that she's just referred to as "the woman," as Luce is also a woman, and the ambiguity takes a beat to untangle Luce turned and ran. Something cold splashed on her neck and she ducked, avoiding the cocktail glass that hurtled past her head and smashed against the bookcase. Luce jumped awkwardly over a dining table, slid on her arse across its polished surface and landed in a crouch on the floor beyond. A piano clanged as the woman landed on all fours on top of it. Her long sequinned dress made a hissing sound as it slid across the wood, revealing overlong legs, muscles bunched. The woman pounced. watch out, Luce! It's a Great Gatsby extra! Luce dive rolled, came up on her feet in the doorway, and sprinted down the hall. She skidded to a stop in front of a locked door. Luce’s chest contracted painfully as she noticed the dark patch on the faded wood, left behind by something that had been forcibly removed, screws torn from the wood. It was shaped exactly like the name plate that had adorned her bedroom at home. Luce’s hand shook as she tried the key. It went in. Nails clicked on the hallway floorboards. The key wouldn’t turn. Luce jiggled it, tried to force it left, then right. No dice. The woman was stalking towards her, her dress hissing with each step. She held a glass in each hand, and as she walked she left a spreading stain of spilt liquid behind her. A sob escaped Luce’s fear-dry mouth. Shaking, she pulled the key from the lock, and clenched it back inside her fist. Her lips trembled and she pressed them together, angry. She felt tricked. It wasn’t fair. Anger unfroze Luce’s limbs and she kicked the door. It gave a hollow thud and dust showered down from the frame. Luce heard the woman draw in a sharp breath at the sound, saw her pause her in predator’s approach. Now! thought Luce. She pushed her back against the wall like a wrestler leaning on the ropes. The wall bowed, its paper stretched. Luce willed it not to tear. She felt the fibres expand like elastic. She sank into the wall, stretched it to the point of breaking-- Luce lifted her feet, and fired herself at the door like a stone from a slingshot. She hit the door feet first and it smashed open. Luce slammed it behind her, and heaved a heavy chest of drawers across it. just a cool and good action sequence right there She was in a room full of plants. Luce struggled for breath in the fetid air. Thick roots protruded from cracked pots and burrowed into rotten floorboards. Vines ran up the walls and hung from the ceiling. Something brushed the back of her neck and Luce lashed out with one arm. Her hand sliced through the leaf of a large broad-leafed palm. She looked in horror at her overlong fingernails. No matter how often she cut them… Luce heard a thump against the door and she jumped. She shoved her way past branches and stepped around broken terracotta. The house creaked and groaned. At the end of the room under a casement window was a single bed. The curtains flapped and Luce felt cold night air against her cheek. The window was closed, and it took Luce a moment to realise the air was coming through a hole in the floor. The boards under the bed had rotten away, leaving the bed resting precariously on two remaining beams. She heard a susurrus behind her. Sequins dragging on wood. Fingernails at the door. A heavy thump. Luce sank to her knees. Cold air from the ruined floor rose up to meet her, and she shivered. She had lost. She pressed her lips together but couldn’t stop her chin trembling. She tipped her head back, trying to stop the tears from falling for just a moment longer. There was another thump against the door and this time the chest of drawers tipped and crashed to the floor. Without looking back, Luce leapt onto the bed, braced her legs on the bed, and heaved the sash open. The floor gave. Luce screamed as she found herself suddenly weightless, then falling. Rotten, borer-riddled chunks of timber fell around her as the bed slid off the tilting floor and tipped Luce into the night. She twisted in the air, got one hand on a downpipe. Her toenails raked against the peeling weatherboards and she thought she was safe, then the screws holding the downpipe to the wall ripped from the wood and she fell, landed and rolled on long, wet grass. Broken pieces of wood and glass showered down around her. Luce retreated through the garden. She climbed over a low fence and found herself back out on the road. She stood just outside the circle of light from a single street lamp and listened to her slowing breath. The house hunkered in the dark, silent and empty. Luce gripped the key inside her palm. Slowly, bare feet silent on the cold concrete path, she approached the front door. She slid the key into the lock. … I'm trying to read this story with the idea that there's a deeper meaning behind it, a puzzle. Here's what I came up with: Luce is a recovering alcoholic. The flapper lady that keeps coming after her is herself from her past; this is why they both have overlong nails. The key, is, I dunno, sobriety or some poo poo. Let's go with that. That's all the actual "story" I could really come up with. The rest is just, well, uh exactly what I asked for. Action in a dreamy environment. I gave this the win because it feels more surreal than Seb's story, which went in a little more traditional direction. Still, I would've liked to have seen a version of this where the themes are more pronounced, where we have more of an understanding of who Luce is, and where we care more about whether or not she succeeds. Maxine of the Camellias 1300 words The fake dream air was sharp in my nose – don’t breathe in through your mouth, the guy had said as he was putting me down, slapping the gooey electrodes on to my forehead. It’s really important. He’d said why but I couldn’t remember that bit, just his febrile eyes as he said it, his faint odour of bubblegum vape. I took another sniff, wondering whether I could still smell the sickly scent or whether it was just a memory. I think I was looking for disorienting with this prompt, and this intro is a little too orienting. This whole paragraph is just alerting us to the Inceptioniness of the whole situation, but doesn't really get us accustomed to the dream itself. We know the dream air is sharp (the "fake" is rather redundant) but we don't know why, what kind of dream setting would have sharp air Around me, chaos stretched to the horizon. Her brain really was a mess. I don’t mean psychologically, she was always fairly put together in that sense, at least until recently. I mean it was a pigsty. I couldn’t even see my feet, they were covered in half-read books, weird multi-coloured undergarments with too many legs, potplants. So many potplants. Circling back to that sharp air–why sharp, when you've clearly designed a place that would smell pretty bad? I lifted up one foot, tipping over a succulent and spilling dust-dry soil into the bric-a-brac, then put it down again and crouched to inspect the plant, its smooth pale-green involutions. That’s when the seagull hit me. They’re not scary birds most of the time, but as its blood red razor beak jabbed for my eyes and I sprawled backwards, flailing both hands out to break my fall, I understood that animals only choose to live around us, and that consent could be revoked at any time. It was screaming, claws raking at my face, beak wide. I hurled myself on my side in a frenzy, groping for anything to protect myself. The succulent pot was in my hand, then it was breaking on the dirty white feathers of my assailant, smash Both stories in this brawl do this same sort of cut where a paragraph ends mid-sentence. I like it in theory. The last few paragraphs have done a good job building a dreamscape, but I think it would work better if the protagonist didnt know exactly what was going on, that some of their memories of reality fade when they enter the dream cut to a tea room. Don't think you need to tell us it's a cut, it's not a screenplay, and you don't notice the scene cuts in dreams, even if they do happen. Still feeling overly oriented. Polite chitchat. Maxine was sitting across from me, reading a magazine. Around us were dozens, hundreds of little pots, with flowers. There was a faint odour of poo poo in the air. So she's found the person she was looking for by just sort of showing up where she was. It's simultaneously too convenient and weirdly not convenient enough…why was she not transported directly to Maxine as soon as she entered the dream? Since she wasn't, I think it would have been better for the protag to have to do something to find her. “They’ve worked out how to fix lies,” said Maxine. She turned a page, eyes top left. “Oh, it’s a stem cell thing.” “I thought you couldn’t read in a dream,” I said, and took a sip of my tea. It didn’t taste of anything. “I thought I told you to be quiet?” She said it calmly but with an icy edge. “Max, you need to wake up. Please. It’s been months. Please.” “I have three things to say to you, Samantha.” She put down her magazine, which was now smouldering in an autumnal burnt leaves way. I waited for her to continue, then realised the tea room was in an arena, a stadium. Good transition, I appreciate how matter-of-fact and casual this bizarre realisation is. Around us banked rows of bleachers rose up to the bright horizon. She was growing too, her neat jacket expanding around her as she swelled up, towering above me. In her hand was a spoon. Its edge gleamed razorlike in a tight spotlight from above. “I don’t want to fight,” I said. “I don’t want to fight.” “I dOn’T waNt to FiGhT” she said back, making her voice absurd in mimicry I understabd you sort of had to explain the tone, but i think the alternating capitals and lowercases couldve stood on their own, then threw her huge spoon right at me. It hit me in the face, sent me sprawling and spinning through the black and white lino squares on the floor, which had inexplicably I dont think you need to explain the inxpicability of it shattered into hundreds of independently rotating diamonds that whirled around me. One of them clipped my top lip and drew blood, drat thing was razor sharp. I clamped my mouth shut against the trickle and lunged for Maxine, who was rotating in her own cloud of black and white diamonds, a few meters away. She gasped and flailed at me with the magazine, slapping at my face, but I had her arms and I pulled her close in. Her dream body was taut and hot against mine. I kissed her, smearing blood across her thin lips. “You need to wake up. They’ve got you hooked up to tubes and everything but it’s failing, please. Please Max.” Her eyes were so much darker than usual. Her face was a cool Noh mask, the smear of blood like a flower that had grown there. Planted by me. Slowly she lifted the magazine, now a set of perfect glossy naked 8”x10” photographs of me, and, what was her name. I didn’t think it was a good idea to remember that right now. I lifted my hand to push it aside, but she lifted her own hand at the same way, a mirror image. Our palms were pressed flat together, a little sweaty. I was looking into her eyes, looking at the dot of light that was at the centre of each pupil. The dots were growing. I looked at her face, her dream face. It didn’t look like her, but I knew it was really. It reminded me of someone. Who was it? Just then her sweaty, slippery, slimy palm slipped down my hand and onto my wrist, took a grip, and flipped me round and down onto a hot hard surface with shattering force. She was on top of me, pummeling my face with a sharp-knuckled fist. “Filthy, lying, loving, loving, loving,” she said, calmly, as she hit me. I took it as my due. The wood under me was rocking back and forth with each impact and it took me a little longer than four blows to realise it was a boat, I was on a boat, we were on a boat. There were seagulls high above, circling. Oh no. I wriggled out from under her and saw a smooth brown figure, lying naked in the sun, lounging, lolling. I couldn’t look at her. I didn’t look at her, I didn’t even know who she was. Instead I took three steps, grabbed Maxine, Max of the Camellias, my love, my angry bride, and yeeted good use of zoomer slang us both off the side and into the fathomless deep. The water was cold and blue and everywhere, up my nostrils, in my clothes, under my skin. Max was struggling in my arms as we sunk but I held tight. I couldn’t breathe because my mouth was closed so I opened it to explain that I loved her and I’d made a terrible mistake, and that if only she would wake up and be angry at me properly it would be so good and we could look at each other and I could explain, and I felt her thrashing limbs grow ever more uncontrolled as the water sank into each one of my cells and made them heavy with moisture and sleep, and, then, I woke up. There was a beeping and monitors were doing things and outside I could hear footsteps. The ceiling was a flat white and I looked at it wondering what it represented for a moment before I remembered I was awake. I turned my head to the left, on my sweaty pillow, and saw Max there on the hospital bed next to me, camellias in the vase beside her. She was all wired up and a tube ran up her nose, and her eyes were surrounded by hollow sockets of shadowed skin, but as I watched I saw her eyelids twitch, and open, just a fraction. … There's a lot to like here, and the result is very, very close. One consistent thing that works is the jarring mid-fight transitions, they feel dreamlike in their mundane casualness. I would've liked to have seen more raw emotionality; I wish I knew more about this relationship, why the protagonist is in love with Maxine, and why (and how) Maxine chose to sleep forever. How aware Maxine that she's dreaming. The story's just a little too straightforward, an off-the-shelf inception. I wish I had seen more dreaminess in the tone, rather than just the content. Overall, I would've given this the win if I had been in a slightly different mood.
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2023 22:49
|
|