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I will judge.  for crits out by 1/12/24
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Jan 6, 2024 13:54
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thunderdome winner
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Crits! The Calculus of Being Derivative or Losing Sight of E by The Cut of Your Jib The one where some kids grow up and other kids don’t get to. First thoughts: I don’t think I get it. Every sentence is beautifully written, every paragraph is lovingly designed, the visuals are wonderful. But I feel like I’m missing something. After watching the video: I think I get it now. It certainly catched the vibe elegantly. I think my issue is going from names to non-names, I think we are still reading about Jenny and James? I think by the end James has died? I think we are seeing Jenny forget huge swathes of her life due to some form of dementia? It’s beautiful, as I said before, but the story itself remains obscure to me. Backdrop People by Sailor Viy The one where some people try to get free of the world with drugs and murder First thoughts: I like this. Weird formatting often doesn’t work, but it works here. This story could have just been another pair of unpleasant people doing unpleasant things to one another, but it’s voicey enough to keep engagement and not so graphic that it turns the stomach, and it ended on the only note that it could have. After watching the video: Translating the curiosity and melancholy I see through the lens of violence and rage was a really neat choice. The Pilgrim by beep-beep car is go The one where a spacefuture man goes to ask a godlike intelligence a question and return to his home with the answer First thoughts: The beginning is kind of slow with all of the names and the repetition. I like the concepts you play with here, I like the little glimpse into this society. I think I’d like to read a longer form version of this story, where Gis has some more space to exist as a person and for his fears and sorrows to be more explicitly known. After watching the video: I even more appreciate now the decision to make your main character an older person, as well as a childless person. This is their mark on the future: getting to ask this question, and it has been asked a thousand times before. I like where you ended it, with the question remaining a mystery. Boxes by Toaster Beef The one where her mother dies and she mourns the smallness of her mothers life and her own. First thoughts: My favorite so far. Confusion and grief and panic all rolled into a little island surrounded by slate-colored water. After watching the video: You capture the combination of fear and sorrow inherent in the word very well. Cassie’s desire to experience more of the world and her reasons for not having done it make sense. I also agree that I’d like the sisters to have been more present… even as asides about whether or not they’d help with the boxes, or whether or not Cassie would even assume that. But it remains one of my favorites of the week. Family Tradition by TheMackening The one where she wakes up in the cabin and misses her father First thoughts: This is the best thing you’ve written for the ‘dome so far imo. It speaks to a specific moment, a specific feeling, and meets what I perceive (without having watched the video yet) as the prompt perfectly. After watching the video: Yup. You got it. It has an ever so slightly slow start, your first two paragraphs maybe combining or reworking into something that really hits the emotional hammer as hard as the rest of it., but it is very, very good. Voyager by Staggy The one where a generation ship experiences a series of existential crises before delivering its cargo First thoughts: I love ship AI stories and this is a good ship AI story. I love that it spans such an incredible timeline. I love that none of the mysteries are answered. Excellent and in contention for the win from me. After watching the video: I think what I love most about your story in comparison to the video is how the focus is on the importance of the moments not remembered. All of these changes that happened, good, bad, just weird, all of them happen despite the memories not forming. You hit that note, “maybe memory isn’t the point, maybe there isn’t one,” and it works. Confessio inlacrimabilis: A Tearless Confession by Flyerant The one where a cop tries to help his crooked partner get his act together before IA gets him. First thoughts: It’s got the emotion, but it falls flat for me. It could be that I’m just not the right audience, but I couldn’t quite get swept up in this one. I was left uncertain as to the stakes, really, once the threat of violence was gone and once IA showed up. I wasn’t even sure what the main character wanted to have happen. After watching the video: I’m not entirely certain this hit the note. It’s almost too understandable a sadness, almost too direct a story. It started off with a bunch of really good character detail that gradually got lost, I think it needs that added back in. The Damage You’ll Do by Slightly Lions The one where a couple breaks up in reverse First thoughts: Beautiful and heartbreaking. I love every part of it. HM or win for sure. After watching the video: Yes. Perfectly done. [b/]AITA? (Am I That Alienated?)[/b] by Sitting Here The one where sisters scatter their mothers ashes and have themselves a lovely sibling fight First thoughts: It’s interesting to read a story about grief and a person who has died but the grief isn’t about the dead person. The mother’s death is such a backdrop to grieving the fractured sibling relationship. After watching the video: You capture that wavering, the desire to experience and be a part of nature while also knowing you bring your own context to it while also not really wanting to be rained on and bleeding on the beach. I want to be at home here, I can’t be at home here, maybe I don’t actually want to be here. Maybe I can make some peace with that. Three Little Words by BeefSupreme The one where a man questions what he means when he says “I love you” and thinks about the women to whom he has said it First thoughts: A melancholy, anxious story about a melancholy anxious topic. I appreciate the focus on the sequencing of events, it’s very much the way people recount things in couples therapy. Everything has to happen in its proper order, and people fight so much about what happened when and was it raining or not… You honestly probably could have ended the story at “Another thing of which I am certain: I never again—not that night, not any other moment in our relationship, and not on any day since—felt as joyful as I did in that moment before I reached her door, sun shining, flowers blooming, love and certainty in my heart.” But I don’t dislike how it did end. After watching the video: I don’t have much to add except that I was absolutely wrong about ending it at that earlier line. Cold Fire by Ceighk The one where a guy has much bigger anger management issues than he’d thought First thoughts: It’s always gonna be hard to slip a story about therapy past a therapist, but this one worked okay. The beginning to a modern-day Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I would probably read more of this, just to see where it went. After watching the video: I see the shape of it, but I wish there were some hint as to what is happening here, actual possession, losing time, a dissociative disorder, some neurological event… this may simply want more space than flash fiction allows.
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Jan 9, 2024 23:23
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In for this week. Flash please.
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Jan 24, 2024 01:13
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The Dance 1932 words flash, which I did use: the big dance Whenever the aurochs herd settled down for the night Piu practiced her dance steps. It wasn’t ideal to practice alone, but one worked with what one had. In the daylight, she practiced the official steps of the ceremonial dance, the ones that were expected of her. At night, by firelight, she practiced the secret steps. The hidden steps. The ones that, if she and her companions danced them correctly, would bring about the end of the gods and usher them into a freer, better world. They are only gods because we pray to them, Piu remembered, sweat dripping from her brow as she swept her wrists high above her head, then dipped low, kicking her right leg out to the side. If we didn’t pray, they wouldn’t have power. This dance will be the opposite of prayer. It was supposed to be, at least. Piu didn’t know enough magic to be able to say. But the resistance to the gods had been building, generation upon generation, until it had reached even the priesthood who knew how to touch the souls of the gods, and who could break their power. If it worked, hundreds of thousands of humans would die in the conflict that followed. Piu and her fellow dancers would likely die very quickly, but by then it would be too late. The gods would be wounded. Shown to be mortal. All those who came after her would have a chance to live in a world where they didn’t have to kneel. If it worked. So Piu practiced every day and every night, with her aurochs and horses and dogs as her audience, until one afternoon she was interrupted by a god. It streaked from the sky like a comet and touched down next to her, eyes blazing gold. Its shape was human, androgynous and beautiful, but the brilliance of the light scattering from its wings was blinding. The herd bellowed and scattered. Piu fell to her knees, prostrating herself before the deity, a gesture half built of habit and half on fear. “Rise, dancer,” the god said. Its voice was musical and full of humor. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I only saw you dancing from the air. You’re very talented.” Piu hoped that the completely natural terror at being faced with a potentially cruel and callous god masked the terror at the possibility of the secret steps being found out. “Thank you, divinity,” she said. Her voice trembled. Her body trembled. The god looked out at her herd, which had stopped some distance away and was watching them with dumb, cautious eyes. “Those are fine creatures. Are you their herder?” Piu nodded. “Yes, I’m driving them to the festival in Sheermount. For the sacrifices.” The god gave her a skeptical look. “You seem very small to be in charge of such a large herd of large creatures.” She’d heard that before. “They’re big, but they’re predictable. You don’t need to be particularly smart to out-think an aurochs. They go where the grass is and where the wolf isn’t.” It laughed, a warm, happy sound that felt like hot wine in Piu’s soul. “Will you be dancing at Sheermount as well?” “Yes.” Piu didn’t trust her voice more than that. It was so painfully beautiful, so bright and shining, and its pleasure made her feel so warm and comfortable… it would be so easy to tell it all her secrets. It probably already knew them, anyway… No. She focused on her memories of her mother and her siblings. No more. The god looked at her, as if expecting more, but Piu kept her mouth shut. It looked up into the sky and saw some of its fellows flying past. “I look forward to seeing the full performance. May I come watch you again sometime?” Oh. No. Oh, no. Piu smiled, weakly. “Of course, divinity. I would be honored.” ____ She continued to practice on the long way to Sheermount, though she was far more circumspect in her dancing of the secret steps. When the god visited her again, it took the form of a golden aurochs. Piu saw it and was instantly suspicious. One heard stories about what gods got up to with humans and shapeshifting. But it was a cow aurochs, not a bull, so it probably just didn’t want to spook the herd again. “I would like to see you dance before the festival,” it said. Its mouth didn’t move, its voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once. Piu hesitated. She couldn’t refuse, that would be rude. But maybe she could stall. “I am a herder, divinity. Dancing is a hobby and a devotion. I don’t understand why you are asking me. There are hundreds of real dancers in the cities, I’m sure.” The god let out an amused huff of breath, whether charmed by her humility or intrigued by the question, she couldn’t know. “I saw you from above, like I said last time. You dance well, and it seemed a shame to have your devotion go unnoticed. I was curious about a human who would dance out in the wilderness. I’m still curious.” “It won’t look right without the other dancers,” she said. “It’s a group performance. I’d hate to show you something unfinished, Lord.” “I understand,” the god said, magnanimously. It reclined on the grass and waved a hoof. “Maybe I’m just impatient and want to see the show before everyone else at the festival does. Please dance for me, Piu of the herds.” It knew her name. It knew her name and her function. She couldn’t let anything slip now. So she danced. As she completed the first movement, she wondered if she should perform the hidden steps. There was only one of her, but there was also only one of it. She’d trusted her resistance contacts when they’d taught her the dance-within-the-dance. She believed that it did something. She just didn’t know what it was for, in the grand scheme of things. Here was an opportunity to find out… Piu hesitated. Then chose discretion. Her heel struck the ground three times instead of her toe. Her hips swayed left instead of right. In some ways it was a more complicated dance, but it was the expected one. The one she’d watched since she was young, the standard “we worship you with all our bodies, have mercy on us,” dance. The “please don’t crush us to dust or burn us alive or eat our flesh, have mercy on us,” dance. Have mercy. Have mercy. Have mercy. Every step rang with the plea. It was making her sick, making her angry. How many humans had begged for mercy before the gods, and had it denied? How many children pleaded for mercy in the face of sickness and had the gods turn away? How many gods looked at humanity the way a human might look at an orange, a thing to suck dry before discarding the husk? They should beg her for mercy. And if things worked as intended, they would. The dance ended, as it always did, with Piu kneeling, arms open, head bowed, ready to receive divine judgment. The god looked on her silently for several long seconds. “You dance beautifully,” it said at last. “Your company must be pleased to have you.” “Thank you, divinity.” “You bring such intense emotion to your movement,” it continued. “I wonder what inspires such rage.” Piu rose a second faster than good manners would permit. “I am sorry, my Lord.” The god shrugged. “It’s fine. I am just curious. I haven’t seen this anger before.” Tread carefully, Piu, she thought to herself. Out loud, she said “You may have noticed, oh holy one, that the order of things does not favor humanity. We are preyed on by demons and commanded by the gods, and between appeasing the two we must also fend off starvation and disease. It is difficult sometimes to find enough food for oneself, let alone offspring.” The god put its head on one side, flicking a perfect, golden ear. Flies did not settle on its flanks, Piu noticed. “The gods are often kind to their favorites,” it said. “And cruel to those they dislike,” she said. She regretted it immediately, but plunged ahead, the words pouring out of her as if from a cracked waterskin. “And indifferent to the suffering of the rest. I care for this herd, but they really belong to you, the gods. If you were to drop out of the sky and take one with you for your own use, I could not complain. And I could only hope and pray that you spoke up on my behalf when I report to the temple, otherwise your priests might stone me to death for stealing your cattle.” The god looked shocked. Or as shocked as an aurochs could look, they were not emotive creatures. “You think we would not speak up for you?” Piu shrugged. “You are the first god to whom I have spoken. I expect you will be the last.” It stood up and paced back and forth, not looking directly at her. “You feel… slighted by the gods.” She’d said too much. She’d let too much show. Her anger was too hot and it would ruin everything. Perhaps she should have done the secret dance, should have drained this gods power or put it to sleep or locked it away or whatever the dance did. Now all she could do was hide her intention in the truth. She let her exhaustion show. “I feel that it doesn’t matter what I feel. The gods take, we give. This is the role we play. I am young, and the young always question things we see as unjust. One day maybe I’ll see the justice in it.” “You are learned, as well as a skilled dancer,” the god said, slowly. “Have you considered the priesthood? To speak to a god who might listen?” Tread very carefully, Piu. “My mother and siblings were members of the priesthood, divinity.” “Were?” “The god to whom they were sworn… chose to bring their priesthood into themself.” This was a terribly, awfully, horribly polite way to describe being eaten alive. Piu had been outside the temple when it happened. She’d heard the screams. The god considered this. “Your family died serving us.” “They did, Lord. As we all do.” She gestured to the herd. “If a snake bites me while I’m following the herd, I’ll have died to feed you as well.” The divinity stopped pacing and bowed its head, bovine eyes lowered to the ground. “We are, perhaps, not as fair as we should be.” Pie did not, would not trust herself to respond. But the god was not a fool, and could read her agreement on every line of her body. “Thank you for being so direct with me, Piu. I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time. There must be a better way for us to shepherd and protect humanity. What’s the point of us, otherwise?” It extended its radiant wings and flew away. Piu watched it go. She wasn’t sure if she were relieved, encouraged, or saddened. The gods knew they were unfair. Maybe they could change. Maybe there was another way, a better way. No. It was too little, too late. The dance would go on.
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Jan 29, 2024 04:24
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In. Also, Posting. Prompt 3, Gooseberry Pie/six sentences Godmother 129 words Threads flow from her gnarled wrists, red as war, thin as hope; each one is a debt, aged like fine wine in the gnarled body of the Godmother. When a task needs doing, the Godmother examines the ledger of her heart, plucks a string, calls forth a godchild who is bound by honor and thread and iron needles to earn the gifts bestowed at their birth. She is not cruel for the sake of it, but a broken promise wounds both ways and her old bones ache so badly already. If they are wise and clever they may escape with their soul unmarred, the crimson thread unweaving from the warp of their bodies when their debt is satisfied. So be wise and clever, godchild. Do not disappoint her.
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Feb 2, 2024 02:25
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In, lyric and vibe please and thank you
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Feb 27, 2024 02:51
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Sleeping Is A Gateway Drug to Being Awake 1511 words Desolation I’m goin’ where the sun keeps shinin’ Alastar awoke from cryo in blind panic. The AI of Delta Lorelei V played soothing music in hisear. Nothing was wrong, everything was fine. Alastar would have preferred some soothing anxiolytics in their IV line, but Delta Lorelei informed him that it was going to be stingy with those until the colony had their fabricators set up and running. This was part of why Alastar was awake in the first place, thirty days before landing on his new homeworld: there were terraforming engines to prepare for deployment, bacterial and algal lines to wake from dormancy, and every single living soul aboard needed time to rebuild their bodies after over two centuries of stasis. It was hard work, but they were all prepared for it. Everyone on board the ship had at least two PhD’s, and none of them were afraid of the scutwork and mindless labor that setting up terraforming would require. They were doctors, scientists, researchers, engineers… and they were going to start a new world far from Earth. Hopefully. Priya liked to remind him that they might also all die. “That’s the problem with planetary exploration,” she said with macabre delight. “Unless someone figured out some new space travel tricks while we were out, it’s not like we can just call back for help.” Alastar didn’t like thinking about that. So he kissed her instead, and for a while neither of them thought about much of anything. New data came streaming in every second as they grew closer. Alastar was focused on the atmosphere. It was mostly nitrogen with some oxygen, but not quite enough oxygen, and it had higher carbon dioxide levels than humans could tolerate for long. He spent most of his time locked up in his tiny little lab, trying to get his oxygen-producing algae to survive in water engineered to mimic the new world’s briny, acidic oceans. When he wasn’t there or with Priya, he was in the gallery, where a massive screen displayed the planet in exquisite detail. It looked like Earth. It looked a lot like Earth. The continents were in different positions of course, and it still had ice caps glittering at the poles. But the oceans were deep, sapphire blue, and the landmasses were green and reddish brown, and there were masses of white, water vapor clouds. It was both hauntingly familiar and achingly different at the same time. Everything was working out as planned. They reached orbit on the later end of the predicted schedule, but not so late they were concerned about resources. The probes went down, came back with data about local flora and fauna. The researchers drew lots to be part of the first team down, and Alastar won. They all piled into the shuttle, bursting with excitement and delight, trading theories about the palm-sized, whiskery swimming things that populated the planet’s rivers. Alastar couldn’t help letting out a breathless, giddy gasp as the shuttle detached from Delta Lorelei with a thump, leaving the crew weightless and Alastar awoke from cryo, confused and disoriented. He choked, there was something in his throat, something keeping him from swallowing. Fingers weak from decades of slumber and slippery with acceleration gel scrabbled at the oxygen tube. Delta Lorelei flashed words in his vision: Please stand by, we are experiencing technical difficulties. Do not remove your breathing tube. Assistance will be here shortly. A face appeared above him, gold-brown skin made ashen by stress and fear. Priya gripped the tube with her own weakened hands and pulled, and it was the worst thing Alastar had ever felt in his life. He gasped, sucking air. “What…” he panted when he could finally speak. “What’s happening?” “Something’s gone wrong with the cryo pods,” Priya said. “Delta Lo is waking everyone up.” “They cryo pods…” Alastar looked to his left, where racks and racks of pods were opening, the crew members waking up with varying degrees of shock and fright. Except some of them weren’t waking up, some of them remained inert, the bodies within them unmoving. “Oh… oh poo poo.” Alastar checked the ship’s clock. Delta Lorelei was busy, it couldn’t respond with any complexity, but he didn’t need complex mathematics to see that they were seventy-five years into their journey. “Without cryo we won’t survive the trip home,” he said. “Much less to the planet.” Priya nodded, grimly. “Maybe we can fix it. We have food and oxygen for a few months, and that was meant for…” she trailed off. Alastar knew what she meant. Without the full crew, they could survive longer. Maybe. Alastar moved on to help with the next person’s awakening, removing the oxygen tube as safely as possible, sharing whatever comfort he could. He passed one of the dead cryo pods and froze, more in confusion than horror, seeing his own face staring lifelessly back at him. Alastar awoke from cryo to dull red lights and sirens. He stared at the ceiling. There was no tube in his throat, no wires wrapped around his arms. The acceleration gel clung to him, making a sticky, sucking sound as he climbed out of his pod. “Hello?” He called. “Delta Lo?” The AI didn’t answer. He looked at the pod next to his. All systems were green. Everyone else was asleep. Even the ship was asleep. So why wasn’t he asleep? He wandered the neverending corridors of the ship, the grey and beige and blue patterning of the walls and carpet were hypnotic. Numbing. He tried to use one of Delta Lorelei’s interfaces to find out what had gone wrong with his cryo tube, but they were all in the elaborate machine language that AI used to communicate, not readable by humans without specific training. He didn’t want to give up. He had food, he had water, and he had time. He could learn the language. Alastar read and walked, and walked and read. He grew hungry, sometimes, and assumed he must eat. He grew tired and assumed he must sleep. Until one day when Alastar awoke from cryo. “Oh, come on!” He shouted, waving an arm at the ceiling. “What the gently caress is this?” He stood, not bothering to tremble or feel his atrophied muscles. “This is stupid, you don’t dream in cryo, everybody knows that.” They’re dying, Alastar. Alastar gritted his teeth. “Delta Lo? Is that you?” Yes. They’re all dying, Alastar. I’m dying. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. “Just… hold on a minute…” Alastar held up a hand, and saw it wither in front of his face. He looked on in horror as everything around him melted, disintegrating into a muddy soup. Alastar awoke from cryo. He was naked, standing on the surface of the planet, watching the alien sun rise. He took a deep breath, smelling spearmint on the air. The ground beneath his feet was covered in a deep, springy mosslike plant that fluoresced slightly in his footprints. A chilly breeze passed by, causing him to shiver and to wish he’d had clothes. There were things analogous to trees, tall structures of cellulose topped with great, black fronds that were probably for photosynthesis. Shimmying up one to cut down some leaves took no time at all, the lower gravity helping him along, and he was able to fashion a comfortable cloak for his journey. He walked, in silence, for what seemed like years, and he was content. Alastar awoke from cryo. He was standing on the bridge, his hands were so wet they were dripping. When he walked back to the pod bay, he saw that every pod was open, and every face had been gnawed off by some animal. His mouth tasted like iron and salt. Alastar awoke from cryo, screaming. He tried to find something sharp, something to cut his wrists to end things, but all he could find were seashells. Alastar awoke from cryo, weeping, curled into a ball in his tube. Alastar awoke from cryo. Alastar awoke from cryo, lying on an exam table, surrounded by concerned faces. He didn’t respond. “Dr. Alastar Gregs?” The voice was worried. “Dr. Gregs, are you all right?” “No,” he said. And hated himself for it. He’d promised himself he was done with responding to dreams. “There was unusual brain activity during the transit,” the worried voice continued. “You didn’t… it looked like you were awake the whole time.” “Dreaming,” he said. “Yes.” There were murmurs of sympathetic horror. There were assurances of therapy. Delta Lorelei offered its counseling programs through its medsystem, which he declined. After a few days, he went back to work on his algae. Focused on work, he could almost feel normal. People started to treat him like he was normal. Once he was planetside he stopped pretending. He left the colony at night, stripping off his clothing as he went. Alastar walked through the fields of fluorescent moss, waiting to wake up from cryo.
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Mar 4, 2024 05:33
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I shall J U D G E
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Mar 8, 2024 20:25
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Short crits! Please feel free to poke me in the Discord if you have any questions. I had a lot of fun judging this week, all of these stories were great. Trickle Down Dragon by Chairchucker The one where a dragon eats the richest people in the world until they develop philanthropic works as a defense mechanism. This is really fun, a nice little revenge fantasy for the little guy. I’m not sure about the last line, though. It’s either too pat and cute or it just needs a few tweaks to work. On the whole though, good story. Medium Dragon Rider by beep-beep car is go The one where a dragon rides into town on a motorcycle, fixes a generator, and a kid gets a huge crush on her because… well I mean just look at that sentence, wouldn’t you?! It is very cute and yeah, very vibes. The thing that dings it for me is the character voice. Not the stammering or the sudden, terrified obsession with a supernatural beauty, but it’s hard to buy it as a fifteen-year-old. At least part of it is the lack of contractions in the speech, which make it feel a little overly formal. I guess the frame is an older man telling stories of his childhood and meeting the dragon, but because that framing isn’t explicitly called out, but I dunno, I think I would have liked that tiny bit more… I guess urgency or a sense of focus on the action from Baldwin. Medium. Of the Red Dragon and the Women Clothed With The Sun by Ceighk The one where a woman lets god speak through her, and guides her to save her lover. This has an incredibly strong voice that doesn’t waver, even as the character doubts. The trappings of the story are pretty well known, but the way Mary experiences divine revelation, the way she starts to think about Agnes in order to maintain her composure, and that final, grim line make this. Winner or HM Remembrance by Black Griffon The one where dragons team up to try and save a kid who had been kidnapped by humans. The worldbuilding and the themes were amazing, but I think the scenes-out-of-order thing did you wrong here. I don’t understand why she had to die for Nava to figure out they were a dragon. I don’t understand why that did it but all the fire and fighting didn’t. I suppose she had to go dragonform to break the human-trance? But like The vibes were immaculate, but the structure underneath couldn’t support them. Medium low Smoke and Cinders by curlingiron The one where a fairy godmother who is, critically, also a dragon, helps out her goddaughter. Again this week we have flawless execution of character voice. She is fussy and prim and obsessive, you can just see her holding a little porcelain teacup in her dainty black claws while telling you this story. It’s a relatively straightforward retelling of Cinderella, but you get away with so much telling instead of showing, up until the very end, because the voice doing the telling is incredibly strong. HM. Sovereign by Thranguy The one where cyberpunks heist a dragon hoard This was metal as hell. Fast paced, excellent voice, the dragon feels appropriately draconic and menacing. But like a lot of heists it suffered from character bloat, too many names to keep track of in a work of flash fiction. HM for sure. Love and Thunder by My Shark Waifuu The one where a mayor winds up doing couples counseling for a pair of dragons Another piece where the humor really makes it. I loved how alien the dragons were, how their problems were close enough to human problems but their conceptualization of those problems was so profoundly different that human solutions sounded weird and dumb to them. The plight of the mayor was excellent. I think the pacing could be tightened up, but honestly it was a great story with a hilarious ending. Medium high.
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Mar 12, 2024 03:04
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In and flash please
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Mar 18, 2024 19:51
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Hi, My Name Is Kathy, And I Have A Demon. Flash: "Children are not to be blamed for the faults of their parents." 1851 words My mother gave me my demon on my fourteenth birthday. “My mother gave me mine when I was about your age,” she said through a somewhat misty smile. Her demon smiled as well, clinging to her tightly, watching with huge, violet eyes as I picked up the small, toadlike creature. It clambered up my arm, leaving a little wet trail behind it. I didn't want this thing. But it was a gift, mom taught me that you never refuse a gift. That would be an insult. I knew that insulting Mom would mean three hours of crying, so I smiled my brightest smile, and said “Thank you, Mom. It's great.” It reached my shoulder and dug sharp little claws into my neck as I spoke. I must have lost control of my facial expression, because the mistiness abruptly disappeared from her face. “Well excuse me for breathing,” she snapped. “I just wanted us to have something to bond over, for crissakes! Why can’t you just be happy with anything I do? Why are you always so ungrateful? Am I that terrible a mother?” I had learned not to refuse a gift, but I hadn’t learned to not interrupt yet. “You’re a great mom,” I said. “My demon just pinched me when I wasn’t expecting it.” “Oh, go cry in your journal about it. You can’t blame everything on your demon.” She stormed away, fuming, before coming back five minutes later to tell me why I was wrong to be upset with her right now. I didn’t have a journal, obviously. Mom would have read it. She was petrified that I’d fall in with the wrong crowd, that my friends who did things like play D&D and oboe were actually secret drug kingpins sent to lure me into a life of crime. That’s what happened to her in high school, minus the D&D and oboes, and it ruined her life. “You’re the only good thing that came out of that,” she’d tell me some nights when she was drunk and her demon was asleep. Those were good nights. I kept the demon in my backpack at first. Rookie mistake, letting demons near your homework. It changed my answers or leaked whatever fluid coated its skin all over my papers and made them illegible. My grades started slipping. Eventually I figured out you could keep a demon in a Nalgene bottle. It seems cruel, especially when they’re little and animal-like, but it doesn’t actually need air. And I really needed to get good grades so I could get into a good college so I could get a good job so I could take care of Mom in order to repay her for raising me when she should have been being a kid herself instead of looking after an infant. And her demon, of course. I wasn’t the only kid with a demon in school. We could always see each other, even if the demons were hidden in pockets or backpacks or were creeping in the air vents. We found each other, clumping together at lunch tables like platelets at a wound. We’d cautiously trade stories about our demons, and if we were very comfortable, we even showed them to one another. That’s how I met Gerri. Gerri was the first nonbinary person I ever met and I thought they were the coolest person in the entire world. They wore leather jackets and overalls and huge, batlike shawls and combat boots and had eyeliner so sharp you could cut yourself. They complimented my Nalgene when I brought out my demon for the first time. “That’s smart,” they said, tapping on the plastic. “I wish I’d thought of that when mine was smaller.” Gerri’s demon was hard to hide. It was slender and winged, with a body like a dragonfly balanced on its tail, and huge, horrible eyes. It didn’t have legs that I could see, but it left red and weeping marks on Gerri’s shoulders when it touched them. I hated it. I hated it almost as bad as I hated my mother’s demon. But unlike my mother’s demon, Gerri’s never told them to hate me. Or if it did they didn’t listen. “I don’t like your friend,” Mom said one day, apropos of nothing. She had the weirdest way of saying ‘friend’ when talking about Gerri, as if without “girl-” or “boy-” prefixing the word it didn’t count somehow. We were in the car, of course. That was her way, to start a conversation when I was trapped. “I don’t like all that black that they wear. It makes them look like a weirdo.” “They are a weirdo,” I said, staring out the window. “It’s truth in advertising.” Our demons were in the back seat. I saw mom look at them in the rearview, then look back, her lips compressing into a thin line. She didn’t like that our demons were so different, I think. Her was lanky and tall, all fast, explosive motion. Mine was still a squat little blob, mostly mouth and claw, and it didn’t move much at all unless I carried it. “I don’t know why anyone would want to be seen that way. And they’re rude. They never look me in the eye, and I can barely hear them half the time when they talk.” “That’s not their fault. That’s just their demon. It doesn’t like them to-” Mom tapped the brakes abruptly, slamming me against my seatbelt and knocking my voice away. She stared at me, not at the highway, but directly at me, and jabbed a finger into my bicep with every word. “We. Don’t. Talk. About. Demons.” I could have pushed back. Maybe I should have pushed back, but we were going a mile a minute and there was a mail truck in front of us and it was going so much slower than we were and I could almost hear the tortured shearing of metal and shattering glass of the upcoming car crash and I knew that stupid, blue triangular eagle logo was going to be seared into my mind forever so I pressed myself against the back of my seat with all my strength and just said “Okay!” She looked back at the road and hit the brakes again. The car skidded into the next lane over and someone leaned on their horn. We didn’t talk for the rest of the car ride, but I saw her demon whispering in her ear, its malevolent eyes fixed on me. Mom’s knuckles were so white on the steering wheel. I thought she wanted to hit me. I thought she was holding the wheel so tight to keep herself from hitting me. I broke up with Gerri the next day. Their eyes flickered to my backpack, where they knew my demon was hanging out in its nasty little bottle. “It’s doing this, isn’t it?” They asked. “Just tell me, we can still make it work. Demons say all kinds of poo poo.” “No,” I said. “It’s not. It’s just…” I didn’t want to lie. I couldn’t tell them that my mom’s demon was so much worse than mine. “I think it’s better for both of us. I really do like you, I hope we can stay friends.” They accepted this with all the usual grace of a high schooler, which is to say it was a loving dramabomb disaster that got me kicked out of our tiny social circle. I don’t blame them for that, it was mostly other kids spreading poo poo on tiktok that caused it. My mother was thrilled. But it didn’t last long. Nothing could thrill her for long. I got accepted into an Ivy, which she bragged about to her coworkers and then had screaming panic attacks about me actually attending. The cost. The distance. She’d rant to me for hours about how I was bankrupting her, how she thought that she could be done sacrificing for me, how could I leave her alone, how could she have raised such a selfish daughter. So I went to a state school instead, so she could sigh and remind me of all my wasted potential. “At least maybe you’ll graduate with your MRS!” She said once while we were out to eat. Someone at another table snorted. Mom preened. It became her favorite joke, one repeated every time I visited. To underscore the point, she started leaving magazines about diet tips and the best ways to catch a man. Always a man. I’d never dated a man. I don’t remember college. I drank a lot. I took a lot of drugs. My demon got bigger, started talking to me. It told me everything I knew, that I was a fuckup who didn’t deserve anything I had. I went to an inpatient psychiatric unit the summer after I graduated. You know what’s hosed up? Mom was the only person there for me when that happened. She showed up every time I could have visitors. She brought me my favorite foods and she said all the right things during family therapy. She cried with me. She told me she loved me. She said she didn’t remember the thing with Gerri and the car but she believed me and that she was sorry. I really thought she’d changed. People ask me why I don’t talk to her anymore. I sometimes wish I had something I could point to, something big and hosed up and obviously traumatic. Then I feel like a fuckin’ shithead. Who gets jealous about other people’s trauma? I don’t have one moment. I’ve got five hundred little moments. If you don’t have a demon too, you might not see how every one of those moments adds up. I’d been living with her for three years, three really bad years, and had just gotten back from another inpatient stint when I got the email from Gerri. They said they were in a 12-step program and as part of their eighth step they were reaching out to apologize. We met. We talked. They apologized for what happened in high school. I broke down and told them about my mom, about how she treated me back then, about how she was treating me now. About how nothing changed and nothing was allowed to change. They took my hands and looked me in the eye. They said: “You’re not responsible for her.” It wasn’t that easy, of course. Both my demon and my mother were pretty sure I was, in fact, responsible for her. But it sank in. Slowly. I moved out, she didn’t die and I felt better. I stopped picking up the phone every time she called, she didn’t die and I felt better. We haven’t spoken in nearly two years. She hasn’t died, and I’ve never felt this good in my life. Because now I have a daughter. And if anyone tries to hand her a demon Gerri and I will kick their rear end.
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Mar 25, 2024 03:23
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Thunderdome 608: Back On My Bullshit Hello everyone. I have just written a novel. It is not a good novel, it is an alpha draft. Which means I have been just entirely on my bullshit, doing exploration writing, just throwing pure Vibes on the page. So for this week, I want you to spend 2000 words being on your bullshit. Write the story you want to write in your personal favorite vibe. For inspiration, I will provide every entrant with a Tarot card, pulled from the CELTIC TAROT DECK.  If you would like a flash, I can provide you with a three card spread for the cost of 500 words. To be clear, we're looking for stories that are: 2,000 words about your favorite thing in your favorite genre and I will give you a tarot card for bonus inspiration OR stories that are: 1500 words about your favorite thing in your favorite genre and I will draw three cards for you. This card deck does have dicks in it. You are allowed to write erotica IF AND ONLY IF your card has naked folks on it. All other exclusions apply, no google docs, no editing, no political screeds. Sign ups due by Saturday 12am edt Submissions due technically by Monday 12am edt, but practically speaking you've got until I wake up, more like 6am. WRITE WRITE WRITE. Chernobyl Princess fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Mar 26, 2024 |
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Mar 26, 2024 02:37
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beep-beep car is go posted:I am so in, with a tarot for bonus inspiration  shwinnebego posted:I am in  derp posted:Oh dammit I gotta be in, gimme 1 card  juggalo baby coffin posted:i am in, I'll take one tarot card 
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Mar 26, 2024 03:40
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Antivehicular posted:In, three-card spread for me plz/thx  ...sorry the glare cut off the Page of Swords name there
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Mar 26, 2024 03:59
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rohan posted:in, Congrats, you get the first dick card!   Hawklad posted:In with one card  Albatrossy_Rodent posted:Yeah give me a card.  Captain_Person posted:Hell yeah I'm in, gimme one card plz  Chairchucker posted:Hello three cards please 
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Mar 26, 2024 13:05
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Nae posted:Hi my name is Nae and I’m back on my bullshit, so I’m in with one tarot please!  Nethilia posted:y'know what, gently caress it, I might be able to pull this off. 
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Mar 26, 2024 18:56
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Lord Zedd-Repulsa posted:In. One card please. 
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Mar 27, 2024 14:36
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Quiet Feet posted:What the hell, haven't done this in a while.  Tyrannosaurus posted:You know, maybe I should get back on my bullshit, too. In for three, please.  MockingQuantum posted:In with three please 
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Mar 28, 2024 01:40
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Ceighk posted:1 card please Nine of Shields has her titties out 
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Mar 28, 2024 02:58
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forest spirit posted:I'm in for three cards! This is my first one so I'm excited! Welcome! 
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Mar 28, 2024 16:28
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forest spirit posted:If this is too much to ask, feel free to ignore, but is there a way you could reverse some of the cards with a tiny shuffle? The cards are absolutely here just for inspo so I haven't been doing reversals, but if you want to know, the hanged man and the 3 of wands were both initially reversed when I pulled them
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Mar 28, 2024 17:22
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Entries closed, thank you all for writing words, judgment shall follow.
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Apr 1, 2024 12:14
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WEEK 608 RESULTS One of the things I love most is when you read a story and it's abundantly clear that the author is just absolutely having a blast with what they're writing, and I got that this week. Honorable Mentions go to Lord Zedd-Repulsa for Stormy Nights and to Hawklad for Virus. There are no negative mentions this week, but unfortunately Nethilia does take a DQ for going way over the word count. The judges this week have very different Vibes we look for in Thunderdome, so look forward to some excitingly divergent crits, but we both agreed that a knife in the hand by Tyrannosaurus fully deserves the win. Take us away Tyrannosaurus!
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Apr 2, 2024 16:21
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WEEK #608 CRITS Personal Corporatehood by juggalo baby coffin I really love the worldbuilding you did. I had just been talking to some friends about why scifi just doesn’t seem to be as wet as it used to be, and this story is practically oozing. The concept of a physical body being a corporation and each organ able to resign or choose to move on to another corporate entity is excellent. Unfortunately I feel like it gets kind of muddled here, where there’s just So Much Going On. We’ve got Biledyn negotiating on behalf of Atomheart and the Regret Conveyer negotiating on behalf of Cloud Solution, but I don’t get a super clear understanding of what the stakes are for them within those frameworks. Without that framework, Regret Conveyer accepting that she’s troubleshooting comms seems out of nowhere. Also I feel like the body horror would have been cleaner if there was a hint more realism, like if her liver running off caused a whole lot of poisonous metabolites from all her other poo poo to start building up dangerously high. The vibes are very strong, but the narrative needs some work. Needs Must by beep-beep car is go Excellent worldbuilding, interesting concept, but it falls down in that it didn’t start in the most interesting place. I wanted to see Fool’s Errand doing cool ship stuff! I wanted to maybe see it trying to drive an even harder bargain with Melody while in the thick of things! It’s clearly very clever, doing a “oh, just one more thing…” would have been awesome to read. The negotiation was fine, but it wasn’t as cool as it could be. Also… since no romance happened between Melody and Helen, Helen checking out the Empress’s rear end felt a little out of left field. I’m very pretty critical here, but that’s mostly because I want to know what happens next rather than being left on this cliffhanger. Timmy Willikins and the Ever-glowing Thunder by Quiet Feet This story is good. You were clearly On Your Bullshit while writing it, it’s self-contained, leaves us with a good cliffhanger, and the idea of killing horrors from beyond time and space with their own gallstones is fuckin’ hilarious. But despite all these things I really struggled to get invested in this story, it was so apocalyptic-brown. This is a good sign that I’m just not the audience for this story, because on a technical level it’s great. It just failed to resonate with the head judge this week. The Hag of the Lake by Chairchucker This is my bullshit. Witchy romance against the odds, conflict mostly happening offscreen or inside character’s heads… I dig this. It needed more description to really pop, unfortunately. Cozy stories like this really rely on their settings to envelop the reader in the lack-of-conflict, and the setting here is elided or only briefly referred to. Spending more time describing Rosemary’s cottage or garden, or even the physicality of Rosemary and Brian, would have done a lot to elevate this. Moderate Rapture by shwinnebago I just finished reading an anarchist historiography of revolt and insurrection in the American South, so this was pretty perfectly timed to make me laugh. As a piece of flash fiction I think it needs a little bit of work, starting in the meeting rather than in a classroom and then a meeting would simplify your blocking and give you back some more words to do more of your incisive, acidic descriptions, which are where this story shines. The Shape in the Catacombs by MockingQuantum This is a perfectly nice story. The pacing feels a little off, it’s hard to know how long Daya has actually been down here. The story-keeper’s introduction is satisfyingly creepy, but their combat doesn’t feel as urgent or physical as it could. A brief moment of the story-keeper trying to draw a story from her without her consent would have absolutely amped up the tension, there’s enough fat here to trim at the beginning that this could be managed. But even as is, it’s pretty okay a small price to pay for friends by Albatrossy_Rodent Yeah I really liked this. Middle school loving sucks, especially when you, as a middle schooler, kind of suck. This story leaned into its unpleasant, messy, too relatable vibe. And for that I commend it. Unfortunately, I don’t have a whole lot else to say about it. It worked. Witchwork by rohan You got the big dick card and chose to write a story explicitly absent big dicking, and I suppose I must commend you for that. I liked your tale of journeywoman witchcraft. It relied a bit too much on circumstance-without-apparent-consequence for me to really dig into, but the worldbuilding was solid and intriguing. It’s hard to write intrigue in 1500 words, kudos for trying it Dead-Drop by Captain_ Person So, I spent this whole story wondering who Rovhal is, waiting for that name to come back up. I appreciated her clever ruse and her scrapper-with-a-heart-of-gold character. But the beginning dragged on before you got to the nice, meaty, “blow them the gently caress up with mines aaahahahahaaaa fuckers” part. I know “delete the first three paragraphs” rule is sort of Thunderdome cliche at this point, but this story might have worked better if those words had been deployed later. shipwreck by derp No lies, derp, sometimes you write the stuff I wish I had the chops to write. This stream of consciousness, not-quite-panic-attack poo poo is so good, and so well-suited to your style. It’s so voicey that it’s hard to crit. This is another that I just don’t have a lot to say, it was just really good. Righteous Arrogance by Nethilia So, you know this got DQ’ed because of word count. And I think the problem is that it didn’t deploy those extra thousand words as well as it could have. If it had spent extra time on the queen’s revenge, or on what she did as queen to consolidate power among the house staff once she was queen, it would have been top shelf. Lingering on the misery left the ending murder feeling listless rather than empowering, and that listlessness didn’t feel like a choice you were making. An editing pass to strike whichever emotional chord you really mean to strike would make this really incredible. Watcher, Shifter, Ladder by Antivehicular This was a really neat interpretation of the cards! It also just feels like it needs more space to breathe. I want more of every one of these three characters, and even more so I want to see more of the conflict between Liadan, Caomh, and Sorcha. What is Caomh prepared to do to stop Sorcha from climbing? What influences him to let not just Sorcha, but his old friend Liadan climb? The motivations of these two divinely inspired beings, once they are re-grounded in mortal flesh, aren’t clear, and I’d love to see that confusion as a serious force on the page. You’ve made a very cool world here and I’d read more of it! Stormy Nights by Lord Zedd-Repulsa This is very much like the nightmares I have on a regular basis. Killing a friend through clumsiness, through accident. This is a chewing and painful story and deserves its HM. Crystal Garden Guardians by Nae This is your bullshit all right! I love the world you created and the interaction that happened. I am extremely curious at the guy who brought fists to a guns and magic fight and thought that was a clever and cogent solution, but hey. Lovely setting, nice characters, I’d probably play a second session of this Powered By The Apocalypse setting. Virus by Hawklad This was my favorite of the week, personally. I don’t think it was helped by the second-person perspective, which is why it’s an HM and not a win, but I adored the premise. I had been wondering where all the slimy, suppurating scifi had gone, and oh look, it’s here! Good work, I’d love to see this edited and in a magazine somewhere. a knife in the hand by Tyrannosaurus I tried to explain to my husband what this story was about, but it was very difficult to describe why it was so good. Part of it was the prose quality: you didn’t have a sentence out of place in this story. Everything led into everything else, so that the happy, almost-romantic but definitely-vulnerable ending felt earned instead of merely wished for.
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Apr 5, 2024 19:41
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In and flash please
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Apr 11, 2024 00:55
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Hospitals and Hallucinations 500 words Flash: Demon 46, Marchosias There’s a scary crucifix in the hospital room with me, which is hosed up in the context of an orthopedic rehab. The image of Christ Crucified grimaces along with me, His eyes fixed upward, full of pain, looking all eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani. Why did they choose this icon over a nice, friendly, Christus Rex? Is it supposed to reduce my suffering by reminding me of His? I don’t have a roommate. It’s just me and the Son of God, hanging out all mutilated-like. “It’s a miracle I’m alive,” I say to Him. “How much more a miracle would it be for you to fix my hands?” Christ rolls His eyes. Or maybe that’s just a shadow. There are dark curtains over the windows, but I can see quite clearly by the light of the various monitors they have me hooked up to. I feel like I should be crying. “I played guitar for my church’s praise band,” I tell Christ. “I made a joyful noise for You every Wednesday and Sunday. Why would you do this to me?” “Consider, perhaps, that I didn’t do anything to you. That ‘free will’ means the freedom to cross an intersection at the wrong moment.” “Consider my balls,” I say. “Hey, at least you didn’t lose those, too.” Jesus tries to shrug, but his shoulders won’t move much in that pose. “You’re afraid you’ll never play guitar again.” I’m afraid of a lot of things. I’m afraid something is broken inside my head because I can’t cry. I’m afraid I won’t be able to fall asleep because of the burning in my hands. I’m afraid I’ll twitch a muscle wrong and the fixations will rip through my flesh and I’ll do even more damage. I’m afraid that my own hallucination is about to give me the same sermon on hope and perseverance that my mom gave me. “You’ll probably never be as good as you were,” He says. “Sorry. Sometimes bad poo poo happens. It’s not a moral thing. Your hands got smashed in a car accident.” “So I just have to live with everything being worse than it was before?” He shrugs. “Kinda. Not really. Just stuff related to manual dexterity.” I scowl at Him. “That’s a stupid way to run a universe, dude.” “Take another fuckin’ look at me, you think I don’t know that?” There are pins in my hand and it feels like I can count every one of them. There are grisly external fixations protruding from my bones. I am shattered in so many ways. “I think my life is over,” I say. “Or I’m going to have to get a new one.” Jesus doesn’t have an answer for that. I finally sleep. When I wake up, the scary crucifix has been replaced with a silent image of Madonna and child. I don’t know if this feeling is relief.
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Apr 15, 2024 04:24
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In, flash
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May 14, 2024 12:25
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