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in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZcqaolcjUI
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Apr 23, 2024 18:30
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 10:19 |
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The Cult of Dionsyus - The Orion Experience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZcqaolcjUI you ever do it with a merman before? It was high school graduation and I was high off a pot brownie thinking about drowning myself in the Santa Cruz ocean. It wasn’t a serious inclination. Mostly it was because my old friends were texting me things like human being after my hook up decided to out me. Then there was the what the gently caress am I gonna do after high school. And that I was a teenager who liked 13 Reasons Why a bit too much. The ocean did have an appetizing look to it, though. I always thought the ocean here was much more romantic than down south. It was night, clouds obscuring the moon, and the ocean roiled at my feet. It would sometimes lick at my toes, foamy coldness wrapping around my toes. The water had a cruelty, an uninviting chill that I always liked. Almost like the ocean challenged me to drown in it. “You okay?” a male voice said to the side of me. I was mostly alone on the beach, a few families and couples higher up on the beach, sitting and laughing. I didn’t see anybody walk up to me. “Yeah,” I said, then I looked to the side. It was a quite handsome guy, bare tan chest and defined arms. Swimmer look. I didn’t have the tact to not obviously check him out, and I scanned his body down. His legs were completely submerged into the ocean, which was insane given how cold it was. Then I noticed they weren’t legs. “You’re a loving mermaid?” I said. “Or merman? Or whatever the gently caress?” He bobbed his head, “Yeah, I suppose.” “They’re loving real?” I said, and then realized that it was quite possibly the dumbest thing to say since there was a merman literally sitting next to me. “Are you okay?” he asked. “No, there’s a goddamn merman sitting next to me.” “Before that,” he said. “I didn’t like how you were looking at the ocean.” I blinked, trying to move past his finned lower body. I looked out across the water, at the blinking lights of a distant ship. “You ever think about drowning?” I asked. He pointed to his neck. Gills fluttered there. I have no clue how I missed those at first. “Little hard for me.” I laughed, and then I realized I was laughing at a real life merman, and laughed even more. “Why do you wanna drown?” the merman asked. “I don’t know,” I said. I could feel the pot in my body burning at the words in my thoughts. “I just, I think it’d be nice. You know, to be done.” “You got a lot of other ways,” the merman said. “Drowning kinda sucks. Trust me, I’ve seen it a couple times.” I looked out at the cold gray sea. The waves were moving in closer, completely submerging my feet. The bitter cold numbed my toes. “I just always loved it here. Seemed like a nice place to die. You know, kinda romantic. My first memory was coming to a beach. Seems okay for it to be my last.” “If you wanna go in,” he said, reaching his hand out, “I can give it to you.” His palms were smooth and veins pushed against the skin of his forearm. I could get lost in those arms. “But,” he said, “I won’t let you drown.” The pot made it easy to take his hand. He didn’t say anything. He just pulled me in, like I was the tides moved by the moon. We went deeper and deeper into the water until we were completely submerged, my eyes closed. The water froze my body, ached my skin, but right when I was about to give in and ask for him to let me go, he pulled me tighter. His muscled body was warmth itself, so powerful that my whole self burned with heat. “Look,” he said, and I opened my eyes. The salt water didn’t burn. The dark water spread across us like an endless sky, shivering fish floating off in the distance like shooting stars. The chill of the ocean peeled at my skin, then relieved by his body’s warmth. We went deeper and deeper, the pressure pushing on my back. If I could die here… “You won’t drown,” he said. We reached the ocean floor, my feet pressed into sand. Crabs scattered away from us, broken rainbow shells spread around us. “This is where I wanna die,” I said. Then he kissed me. His tongue tasted of salt and fish, his breath like an ocean breeze. He pulled me in so tight that my body couldn’t resist if it wanted to. I gave in, his entire form pulling me in. The ocean shifted. The sand gave way. The whole world was nothing but him. “Don’t drown,” he said. “Please, don’t drown.” The world existed again. We were at the bottom of the ocean. Light couldn’t reach us. The cold of the world breached past his warmth. I remembered graduation, where no one talked to me. The text messages. The boys at school I could only imagine about holding. The great expanse of the world and the nothingness that I was. Lost, with nowhere to go. A future that I wasn’t ready for. “It’d be so easy,” I said, “to just drown.” “Don’t, though,” he said. “Why not?” I asked. He let go of me. The deep chill of the ocean consumed me. The weight of the water pressed down on my head. Odd fish spun around me, slimy scales scraping against my skin. I shivered against the freezing water. I reached out into the waves, looking for him, looking for his warmth, for something to hold onto, looking for someone else. “You loved it here, right?” he asked. I couldn’t see him, or feel him. “This is it, right? Where you want to be. Why did you come here?” Because when I was twelve, my mom brought me here. I would run into the cold water, dip my feet in, and run back. I would pick up broken seashells and try to find one that was intact. I would steal glances at the shirtless college boys playing beach volleyball, not understanding what I was feeling. I would sit down and soak in the ocean breeze. I would lay down, close my eyes, and just enjoy the cold. The ocean around me didn’t change, but I remembered that. Just enjoying the cold. And I felt it again. The icy cold wasn’t like a knife anymore, but like an old friend poking my ribs. The fish’s mouths gaping open were like buddies laughing. The sand brushed against my feet like someone holding my hand. I closed my eyes and cried. Not because I was sad, but because I was here. The place I always wanted to be when I couldn’t understand anything. The deep bitter cold the best friend I ever had. A hand, not warm this time, wiped across my face. “We’ll wash those tears away,” he said. “Me and the waves. Every time you need us, we’ll be here.” He kissed me, his tongue deep in mouth. His body collapsed into mine, his tail tightening around my chest. We fell into the sand, our bodies tied together. His body no longer had that fake warmth, but a real chill to it. The chill that I always loved. We spent our time together, our bodies pressed against each other, sharing each other’s cold. After we had enjoyed each other enough, he took me back to the beach. His lower body was covered by the waves while I stood on the sands, the Santa Cruz pier lights blaring behind me like a foreign place. We stared at each other and he smiled, knowing words weren’t needed anymore. I bent down and gave him a final kiss. It was salty and bitter and cold, like the ocean itself, and I’ve never forgotten that taste.
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Apr 29, 2024 02:01
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Week 613: Something Awful Times Connections youve probably heard of the new craze going around called the new york times connections. its a daily puzzle where you create four groups of four similiar words out of sixteen. its fun. this week youll just be doing that. i have a site that generates endless connections and i will give you a set from it. you will choose four words from that set of sixteen words and use those as your prompts. up to you which words you choose (they dont have to be a connection) and how you interpret them. here's a sample of what a prompt will look like  thats it. have fun. logistics stuff: sign up deadline: sometime in the morning of saturday PST submission deadline: sometime in the morning of monday PST word count: 1616 no poetry judges: me flerp flyerant someone 2 flerp fucked around with this message at 18:42 on May 2, 2024 |
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Apr 30, 2024 19:45
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 Toaster Beef posted:Yeah, in 
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Apr 30, 2024 23:27
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 Quiet Feet posted:I am IN to write many words about four words. do w/e you want  
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May 1, 2024 03:25
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JossiRossi posted:Going to take a risk and try my first Thunderdome...  shwinnebego posted:hit me w them connects 
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May 1, 2024 21:02
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Chairchucker posted:hello may i have a thing and also in  sign ups closed
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May 4, 2024 16:19
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submissions closed
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May 6, 2024 17:15
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results this was an okay week. just kinda boring. Quiet Feet wins again. it had a character with inner thoughts and things like themes and ideas. wowza. newbie JossiRossi gets an HM for a story that had characters doing things. yippie! Toaster Beef gets a DM for a bad twist. oof. no loser, unless you failed connections today.
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May 6, 2024 22:00
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 10:19 |
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Connections Crits Quiet Feet this is actually pretty good. the prose flows well, the premise itself is pretty interesting, the characters feel realized, and there’s even a theme of names and identity and the loss of people being linked with the loss of names. but this story has an issue that comes to mind something said by Yahtzee (you know, the Zero Punctuation guy), which is that “is this the most important part of somebody’s life? and if isnt, why arent you writing that?” i dont really agree with this statement 100% of the time, but i think this feels mostly like a snippet of a person’s life that isnt super consequential. really, nothing much hapens to the character. sure the standard zombie attack stuff does happen, but the character’s ideas on names or identity arent really challenged and your character ends mostly where they began -- disconnected and wandering in a broken world. sure they got the battery but like… that doesnt matter. i think the names and identity stuff is pretty good, but i was left wanting more out of this rather than a small snippet of a standard survival story. this has a common issue that ive noticed in a lot of TD fiction, which is that this feels like a “starter story” aka a story that explores the character and some ideas, but the story around it isnt particularly relevant to the characters and ideas or it doesnt try to explore those characters in any real capacity. as such, i wanted more out of this story in terms of actually exploring its themes and ideas and character rather than a small bit of a generic zombie survival story. JossiRossi this has quite a bit of mechanical issues but the heart of it is alright. i find myself not particularly gelling with the characters, with the main woman being kinda nothing besides a sort of nonsense bureaucratic enforcer. the kid is actually sort of alright, and the conflict around the money is something thats a bit cliche but it is at least interesting. i think you needed to find that center a bit quicker, though, since it sort of comes out of nowhere that the kid valued doing the job and being trustworthy than the money. however the characters work and make decisions to solve those issues and there is some decent tension here with the kid. i also think the perspective shifting doesnt quite work for me. its a bit jarring, even with it being motivated by the scene shifts, and i think the woman perspective just… isnt quite all that interesting? idk i just find myself centering onto the kid since they seem like they have the most to explore within the flash and i think this story isnt quite certain where its heart lies. shwinnebego this story hits a personal pet peeve of mine, which is a story constructed around somebody that the author clearly hates, and then constructing things around the character to make that person look terrible. its weird, and something i havent been able to quite reconcile in fiction, which is that Juliet’s ignorance is one meant to resemble people’s actual ignorance (which does exist) but because it’s in fiction, Juliet isnt a real person and so all the stuff about Juliet being unaware of things (esp egregiously is those 3 paragraphs about things happening to Muslim families that Juliet doesnt know about which just feels super mean spirited) are things that you, the author, make her unaware of. idk its something that has left a poor taste in my mouth and while there are people like Juliet irl. overall though, i think the issue is that this is mostly a soapbox story, and doesnt really try to do anything but make political statements about people like Juliet and their failures. im not saying you cant write political essays about shithead liberals, but as a story, it doesnt land with any weight. i think, in part, the issue is that Juliet just doesnt feel quite like a real person. i dont think you must write from a place of love, but i do think you need to write in from at least a place of empathy and understanding, and i dont get the feeling that you really want to explore about Juliet and what they do, but rather, just dunk on them. and dunking can be cathartic, but its just kinda “make up a guy to get mad about” level of fiction. Chairchucker hey whats up chucker. this is okay. i noticed all the dialogue and went who the hell wrote this and it was chucker and i was like okay yeah that makes sense. i think theres some decent bones here. jingles being a jester thats on the edge of being one of those cancel culture comedians (and the bit of never hearing the joke is pretty good) and the protag being just a dude who plays the straight man is pretty good. honestly, i think polly is a bit of a weak link. she’s a witch but she doesnt really have the same type of energy the protag and jingles has. she’s a little bit wacky but kinda lacks an archetype that doesnt really play off any of the other characters. i think i wanted more out of the witch. Toaster Beef the will they wont they is okay, although the specifics around the relationship is pretty barebones. there’s some chemistry, but it does tend to just be about physical attraction than anything which is fine ig, but it doesnt quite have that sort of history that id come from exes torn apart because of extenuating circumstances. then we get the twist which is fine but then kind of just deflates the rest of the story. like its just some magical force/dad that kept them apart? i was hoping for something that would force the story to change how we looked at these characters. they look outwardly as a happy couple, but there was something that forced them apart. if that something was something that painted the characters in different lights, like a trait or job or event, this couldve had a good twist that would make us reconsider how we viewed the relationship. as it is, its just two people playing coy about their relationship because they have a disapproving dad which is just meh. the fact the dad is poseidon just isnt enough and actively deflates the story. like it wouldve been interesting if the reason they broke up was because of a flaw one or both of them had! but nope, theyre just two people who are attracted to each other who cant be together because their dad said no. yawn. just because their dad is poseidon doesnt change that. they also dont even struggle against the dad. they just accept it, gently caress, and then move on. Thranguy there’s some good tone work here and i like the characters quite a bit. but its all kinda setup innit? a lot of it has good energy, but it feels more like an exploration of the character and tone, which is fine. its pretty fun and could make a good, longer story. but it aint a longer story, so it kinda just deflates at the end and doesnt really go anywhere. but yeah jack and his granddaughter have a good dynamic and id like to read more about them if you ever go back to them, just in a more complete story without a bunch of setup. beep-beep car is go personally i WANT to like stories about mature people having a mature conversation about their relationship but also… its just kinda boring LOL. can this never work? idk but it doesnt here. i dont really have a good handle on these characters. tonally they are pretty indistinct. not much either happens and the characters are very quick to go “here is my issue”, “omg sorry, ill try to do better about it!” which just… isnt really a conflict. i remember sebmojo saying a good conversation in fiction is like a fight scene, with testing and advances and retreats and the like, and think thats part of the issue here. theres no sparring, no real apprehension, no fear of putting yourself out there. characters are quick to put themselves out there and theres no real tension because of that. also, the relationship just feels generic, with no real chemistry or history that gives energy to the character. i think the issue here is that the character flaws just dont really feel… there. like ones a bit of an overworker, the other one is an insomniac and the issue is… they dont go on enough dates? im not necessarily looking for a big drama filled mess of issues, but there doesnt seem to be any major issues going on here lol. so its a fine bit of decent dialogue between people but there’s just no energy. rohan a story about a happy go lucky animal that slowly befriends the crotchety old man. we can see all the bits and where were going to go and i found myself not really particularly engaging with this story because i knew exactly how it was going to go because its been done a hundred times before. its fine and cute but its just so hard to be engaged when i know whats going to happen and where the story is going basically straight from the start. mechanically its okay, altho i think brock’s change, particularly the inviting barry inside, felt a lil unmotivated and the really satisfying parts of these stories is where we get to see that shift from a crotchety old man open up and be kinder, but that moment kinda happens really quickly without much explanation or effort from any of the characters. if anything i would want barry to do more in this story and try to get brock to open up, its mostly barry bemoaning the fact that he has to deal with brock until brock just kinda relinquishes. also, not a fan of the names. i understand the badgers = B starting names, but brock and barry are just too similar esp given that they get said so much because they share pronouns. if youre married to the B starting names, id probably have given barry a nickname or something.
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May 8, 2024 21:33
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