sebmojo posted:

Write a story, post a story. That's all you need to know.

systran posted:

The prize is knowing you beat everyone. If you lose though you get a loser avatar. If you win after getting a loser avatar though someone will buy you a new avatar to commemorate your redemption.

The personal challenges (brawls) are just separate things, but your win/loss record (for brawls and for weekly contests) is all tracked here: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/

login/pass is "thunderdome" for both

This week is a weird week and it's very confusing. I am judging and I don't quite understand how it's going to work, but if you just write a story and submit crabrock will figure all the complicated poo poo out for you anyway

quote:

"Quack Quack" said the duck, which meant that he simply didn't give a gently caress about Hue or Lue, or any other relatives looking to turn him into bird stew. He was a duck with class. He didn't beg for crumbs or kiss Uncle Scrooge's rear end. He took what he could take: didn't matter if it was a dip in the gold pool or a trip to Ms Mallard that left her tail in a sorry state.


No-one messed with Dewey the Duck. He was the big bad bird with all the luck. When the gangbanging fowls flew by, what they wanted most was for Dewey to die. But those squakers were always laid out quick; Dewey's sneak attacks were the worst and they left many a grieving mother lieing by their son's hearse. Dewey was responsible for many a atrocity and now he was coming for his family's inheritance money.

Sitting Here posted:

are you kidding me right now

Sitting Here posted:

I read that out loud to my BF and now he's threatening to break up with me.

Broenheim posted:

This week is a bit strange, but what you did was a big no-no. Entenzahn asked the people who signed up this week to write based on his prompt to see who gets his wonderful and excellent service into their team (which will obviously be team Ock). You weren't signed up, so there was no need for you to give us your writing. If you would instead of posting immediately, you'd realize what you had done. If you were really confused, you could've just posted in the thread, and we'd tell you that you should NOT have submitted.

Teddybear posted:

Some family poo poo's come up-- I'm out this week, sorry.

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

You are so 18.


You are the most 18 year-old to ever be eighteen. I forgive you, because I was 18 once too, and I wince with recognition every time you post.

Also it's Huey and Louie could you really not spend ten seconds googling it before you posted. I know you're going to say they're deliberate errors and it's your style and I just don't get it man but I really hope you look back on this one day and laugh.

sebmojo posted:

Story's due in 3.5 hours, cupcake. Post it and maybe crabrock will let it in.

1200 words, on war. Easy.

Echo Cian posted:

God drat shut the gently caress up and write something new for ONCE for god's sake

Also, as someone recently told me:

Read the thread

Read the thread

Read the thread

READ THE GODDAMN THREAD

crabrock posted:

The Saddest Rhino posted:

Phobia posted:

Blonde Hair, Blue Eyes, Gentle Smile
(1285 words - out of 1340[1200 word limit + 140 word bounty])

I’ve worked for the English Department at this University for over thirty years, met so many bright and seen my share of graduations. In fact, I'm certain quite a few parents in the audience have taken my courses in the past. The thought of playing part of that sort of inheritance really warms my heart.

I am retiring next year. The fact that my time is coming to an end has made me stop to contemplate. I can remember a time where getting into university was seen as a privilege, not a right. I am sure I don't need to tell you that things were rough in America on the cusp of 1940's. Those attending university were kids who came from well-to-do backgrounds, who had someone to pick them back up when they fell. But, haha, you could say I am an exception to this rule.

Today, I will not expound about the world you will soon be entering. That is knowledge I feel you should learn on your own. No, today I will tell you about how I was accepted into this school.

When I was your age, I wanted to come to this very same school. But then Pearl Harbor happened, and everything changed.

We did not know about the concentration camps. Back then, information was quick but very limited. All we knew was that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were in cahoots with the Germans and the Germans were taking over Europe. We did not go over to Europe because we wanted to be the heroes. It was revenge, pure and simple, and while the people being recruited had little experience, they were hungry for that same vengeance.

I was one of them. Sadly. I was shipped to Normandy around... 1944. It's very hard to remember what month, but it was around Fall. My memory of my training is very vague but I know for a fact that they simply taught us how to fire a gun. That was it. They shipped us out without so much as a pat on the back.

We were ordered to go to Antwerp, in Belgium, where we would be stationed. We would have to walk, and it as the naval forces would run the risk of being blindsided. It took us two weeks to arrive at Antwerp. I was involved in a few skirmishes around that time, nothing like what the movies like to show. I was lucky in those regards, though at the time I did not see it as luck but something much greater.

I ended several lives in that time. Each one was a very long distance away, close enough to shoot down, far enough not to get any on me. While the first one took a lot of nerve on my end, the second came very easily to me. And then the third. And the forth. I did not feel a thing. I did not lose sleep over any of these lives, not at the time. These people were the enemy. The devil incarnate. That's what we told ourselves around the fire. It's what helped us sleep at night, kept us going. Don’t think too hard, just shoot.

We arrived in Belgium just before Germany tried to recapture Antwerp. They call it the Battle of the Bulge. And, unfortunately, my luck had ran out. We arrived right in the thick of it.

The battle lasted for over a month. Many of the soldiers died over that time. Food was running scarce. But that bravado from before was still running through my veins. I was so stupid, so naive. Blood was shed in those woods, staining the snow-covered ground and turning it redish ink. Good men died. And yet my hubris was so strong, it didn’t even phase me. All I cared about was defeating the enemy, fighting for my country.

One night, I got too cocky. I stormed ahead into the trees, planting myself a good few paces from my squadron. My back was up against a fallen tree. The Germans were coming upon us, I could see them in the treeline. My aim was good and I was at a perfect position to pick them off. I took down five or six of them before a bullet tore through my leg.

The pain was so great that I stopped. The gun flew out of my hands but I was so focused on my leg that I...I didn't notice my comrades were retreating. Eventually the German forces started pushing up and, thank god, they didn't notice me sitting there. A few positioned themselves at the same tree I was, but I was so silent they must have thought I was a corpse. Again, I was lucky. But my leg was bleeding and I knew that I would die unless I did something about it. I was about to make a limping break for it when...

...When this young kid passed by. He stopped there in the snow, then he turned to look at me. I knew immediately that he was the enemy. He pulled the gun towards me but he did not fire. I bore down on my lip to stop myself from screaming. I was out of ammo and there was a bullet in my leg. There was no escape. I was going to die.

But he didn't shoot me. He just... lowered the gun, looked around at his comrades in the distance, then brought a finger to his lips. Then he shrugged his bag off his shoulder, unzipped it and... he tried to fix my leg.

He was the enemy. I kept telling myself that. He was the enemy, I had to shoot him. But I didn't do a thing. I just let this complete stranger patch my leg up. He must have been a medic, someone who knew how to take care of bullet wounds. He stopped several times when he heard a set of feet crunching in the snow. Each time he would just put his finger to his lips, and I would just nod.

He smiled once he was finished. This young man looked at me for a moment. He was blond, with blue eyes, like an angel. He looked at me for a very long time, nodded, then left. I never learned his name, he never asked for mine.

One of the Allied soldiers found me and brought me back to camp. I was sent home, never given any medals but received a full scholarship to this University. I graduated with a Bachelors in English, then turned right around and started teaching here a few years later. I have lived a good life. And yet I realize would have happened if it were not for the kindness of a single man. I slayed a dozen other young men, just like me, and did not feel a thing. But that soldier, the one who saved me, I… I still see his face in my sleep.

This was not meant to be a gritty description of what I saw. That would take over a hour, and my time is very brief. Very few of you can imagine what any of this is like, and for that I am happy. You have been given this very same chance without having to kill a single soul. I would not ask that of any of you.

So go out there. Make a name for yourself. Find the love of your life. Live. But do not forget that there are multiple sides to everything. Think critically, never one-sided. Because you have the luxury of not having to carry the weight of a dozen men on your shoulders. I do not.

quote:

I saw another little glimpse of hell tonight; thankfully the details of it are rapidly receding from my mind and falling back into the subconscious. Due to this my little dream (or rather nightmare) journal will grow increasingly distorted and novelized by the second, but this is something worth recording. This will also destroy me if it ever gets into any psychological evaluations, but I've made my peace with the fact that the NSA can end me at any time.

The sequence of events I am about to describe can best be categorized as an expansion of the infinite terror loop I may have described to you earlier, but much more mundane and much more perception shattering. Right now I’m just going to jog down the remains of what I can remember; later I’ll search myth and theories on the mind to give me some context of its twisted meaning. The worst part about it was that this “event” was the longest loving dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream within a …dream you’ll ever loving meet, which means I have already lost crucial details on how the creeping madness could have reached such horrible heights.

I have already lost most of the first dream sequence; I can only remember snippets of something apocalyptic and ensnaring, like being swallowed by the icky and constricting black maw of hell. It must have gone on for awhile, for when I “awoke” I had already fallen into a panic. For the first time in more than a decade I truly and utterly feared the dark, and what seemed to leer at me in the blackness.

"JAAMESjamessJAmesJamesJAMES!" Schizophrenic whispers and pretenses floated in and out of my mind, the only thought i remember clearly being that a hidden fiend was lurking in the night. Eventually I gathered up the courage to go for the light switch in hopes of dispelling the unseen presence, humming nursery rhymes and Jesus Loves me all the while in an attempt to ignore how its shadow hovered a few feet over me as if in wait to bore down and snatch me in its undoubtedly sharpened claws. After cowering through the greatest flinch of all time I hit the switch: nothing happened. I tried again; the light was dead.

Trying not to freak out, I opened the bedroom door and hobbled out of the room. I tried light after light but nothing worked. Even my night vision was failing me, and it became increasingly difficult just to open my eyes. A gangrenous puss had started to encrust my face, and my panic began to mount.

As is expected from a man in the middle of his death throes, I cried out for my mother, who was conveniently lounging in the darkness of my living room.( Although now that I think about it I was never able to actually see her and I should have had no real reason to label whatever it was as my mom) I had become a child again- my body and mind had reverted to approximately around the time when I first got pinkeye. I begged my "mother" to help get rid me of the gunk, but either she was another ghoul come to torment me or I had also gone deaf because I couldn't hear her response. The end of this dream sequence is muddled, but I believe that it just bled out as faint flashes and whispers of pandemonium surrounded the home.

The third sequence was just a mindfuck. At that point was lucid dreaming, and aware that I was trapped in a nightmare that I couldn't wake up from. Sometimes I would be crawling in the darkness, other times would involve me fighting with advanced alzheimers and a dark dissolution of the self while my body remained chained to the bed that my mind was lost in. You know how sometimes you dream that you wake up and walk around the house? This happened to me again, and again, and again. At a certain point I assumed that I had tapped into what the mystics call 'astral projection', meaning that my soul got to wander but my body didn't.

Add to this my vision continuing to go in and out of focus, the continued breakdown in my cognitive condition as a malevolent and primal figure just out of eyesight (and well within during my periods of blindness) continued to loiter and, worst of all, the utter repetition of it all and you can see why I lost it. Before things got real bad a piece of myself started to enjoy the trippiness.My predicament may have been ghoulish, but a part of me honestly preferred its novelty to the monotony of my dead end existence. Waiting tables and getting fat always seemed like just another hell that kept people from looking for salvation by pulling its punches five times out of ten. What came next made me realize how wrong I was.


The final dream within dream within a...was just voices: terrible, stupid voices. They seem to have started in the midst of me crawling through the hallway, but they only picked up when I was back to being trapped in my dreaming body. I seemed to have lost most of what was said, but I can vaguely remember flashes of cartoon characters like Bullwinkle, Princess Bubblegum and the Iceking, possible manifestations of whimsy, logic and the sweet escape of dementedness. The pivotal scene involved the voice of the Alchemist from The Venture Brothers, Dana Snyder. (come to think of it he was ranting like Master Shake, but more coherently) At first his levity was a welcome break from my paralyzed dread, but the voice soon started to tell me to do worse and worse things, and as I sat in my motionless body I began to dream these things into consciousness.

At first I thought the voice was offering me a way to buy my way to freedom, but now I think It was just having fun saying things like “wouldn’t it be great if you killed everyone you’ve loved in such and such way ha ha”. Me actively doing these things appeared in a dream bubble right over my head, and for one moment I actually enjoyed being the one who dished out torment.That moment passed. I realized that this was the gate of hell and made one last desperate attempt to break free. I woke up for what seemed like the hundredth time, and it's taking awhile for me to accept that I'm finally awake. A little part of me still believes I’m asleep and have just been granted a few moments to enjoy turning on every room-light possible.


gently caress Sleep. gently caress sleep with a stick. You ever wonder how it feels to be stuck with Freddy Kruger? It feels like this times three. Having an adversary you can at least pin a location on gives you the benefit of knowing which way to run. Not this. I'm still afraid that this isn't over, or worse, that it'll happen again and again. I saw another little glimpse of hell tonight. Thankfully, the details of it are rapidly receding from my mind and falling back into the subconscious.

God Over Djinn posted:

Is there any precedent for an entry getting a DQ and a loss at the same time?

quote:

The way I've usually spent my summers has always been different from the way it’s usually spent by others. Where I live its summer year round; the weather stays hot 9 months out of the year (not to mention the odd winter Monday that sees temperatures fluxuate from 40% to 85% Fahrenheit)  and  vacationers perpetually flock to our crappy little attractions. There is basically nothing to do here besides take an hour’s drive to Disney World to watch bored Brazilian families try to bond over rides I’ve ridden a thousand times. I might also drive west or east for a while until I hit an overcrowded beach, but after a while a person realizes that a weekly ogling of bikini babes isn’t worth the overwhelming likelihood of developing skin cancer. Unlike most people, I have too much access to vapid frivolity.

This year I want the opposite of that. This year I want to drink in a little culture. I’m tired of lying about in the same heat I always lie in, except in these summer months I have to lie besides roasting Canadians and the lowest of the low.(otherwise known as wealthy New Jersians) I want to venture out and see something old that isn’t a Spanish slave fort or a memorial to the Confederacy. I want to go to the Grand Canyon.

 

The Grand Canyon: America’s greatest natural wonder. The Grand Canyon: the antithesis of gaudy hotels owned by Mickey Mouse that people like me are forced to work in. The Grand Canyon: one of the few places left where a man can just clear his mind and lose himself in the empty vistas of nature’s empty space. The Grand Canyon: opposite of lush, opposite of commercial and opposite of Florida.

This is the first year I can afford to go somewhere alone. My sister offered to share the bill and come along with me, an offer I was quick to deny. “I won’t be making any stops”, I said with an awkward smile. “You wouldn’t have fun with me driving day and night."That wasn’t even a lie necessarily; after consulting my trusty map app, my meager back account, and the tiny amount of unpaid vacation hours my boss had begrudgingly given me, I’ve realized that the only way I can actually get to my destination and back is if I get there without wasting time on luxuries like motels or looks at Americana or any disruptions of any kind aside from the occasional pit stop.

 

I’m looking forward to being alone on this journey. Three hours on the highway and I’m still excited at the prospect of uninterruptedly enjoying the countryside.  The road stretches on and on through nothing but the Florida boondocks that the interstate cuts through; it’s good to take in the serenity of the land while I listen to my music and catch passing glimpses of my fellow travelers.

 

It’s kind of funny making eye contact with these people.  So many hours with nothing to do have led me to start analyzing strangers via a passing glance. Five seconds is all I need to figure out the mindsets of most: Some like me are enjoying the ride and sticking their heads out to smell the clean country air; others are up to their necks in anxious children and can’t hide the glint in their eyes that comes with imagining shutting them up by crashing into a ditch. One guy looked so miserable sitting with his nagging wife that I could have sworn he was about to jump out of his moving truck and plead that I mercifully crush his neck with my front tires.

 

My little game is interrupted by the wreck in me. I don’t have time to see if the drivers are alright; my car isn’t the only one driving seventy-five mph tonight.  I wouldn’t be anxious to do so if I could anyway anyway.  Their problems aren’t my problems; my only problem right now is deciding when to pull over for a drink and when to pull over to take a leak. I don’t need to worry about strangers. I’m by myself; no-one’s weighing me down with their needs and inadequacies. . Later on, when I see an old man with his grandson pushing a stalled sedan, I can’t help feeling some guilt for not pulling over to help them. I may still feel a little bad leaving them, but passing shame isn’t enough to get in the way of my good time. Nothing is.

 

I got a flat half way through Louisiana. I had pulled off the interstate to get a burger when a freaking possum decided to cross the backwoods road I was then driving on. Swerving away from the wood-rat like the city slicking idiot that I am, I hit a curb and smashed both my bumper and the Smartphone I had been charging on the dashboard. When I got out to check the dent, I was too distracted by the thought of 18 hours of having to listen to country music to think about checking on the small but steady hiss coming from one of the left tires.

 

I noticed the wheel deflating a couple minutes after I left Burger King. I also noticed that I had forgotten to bring a spare. This was bad; not only was I probably the sole Hispanic stranded in the middle of crackercounty, I was an idiot who didn’t even  have a phone and would have to go walking in the dark through someplace I didn’t know to find some help I couldn’t  afford straight away. I never doubted that there weren’t some ATM’s in the back skirts of Baton Rouge, but with my luck at the time I was convinced that I’d never find one. Fortunately I wouldn’t need to.

A mud covered chevy pulled up behind me around a mile into my trek. As someone who associates the South with Forest Gump and Mississipi Burning, my immediate thought when the driver called out to me was to sprint into the woods and hide  until the Klan got bored of the idea of a lynching. Instead I decided to meet my movie death head-on by turning around and heading towards the mystery truck’s headlights. “Was that your car back there?” the stranger (who introduced himself as Travis) asked with a kind smile, throwing off my expectations of the dimwitted movie villain that I was expecting to meet.

 

Travis’ camo t-shirt and slight drawl couldn’t mask how far and beyond common decency he went with all the things he did to help me. Easy to be around and a far better conversationalist than I’ll ever be, he sacrificed his free time in the middle of the night to patch up and replace my busted tire free of charge, which was a kindness to strangers I know I’d never do. Now that he’s helped me on my way I regret not bringing people like him along on this vacation. It’s good to be around good people, especially people who talk enough to eliminate the need for these lovely radio stations.  I pity the bumpkins who can only tune into Arkansas NPR.

 

Now’s not the time to get lonely though. Realizing the drawbacks to being alone on the road may have been an ordeal, but it isn’t enough to make me turn back around.  The reason I went on this trip was to understand what it meant to be by myself; I can survive a few more days of tedium.  Besides, its not like the journey is more important than the destination. My sacrifices will be worth it once I get to the Grand Canyon.


God, I hate the Grand Canyon.  For three hours I’d been stuck in the congested traffic jam that led into the park (which the jabbering vacationer on the phone next to me insisted was a “queue” instead of a line) and now that I’m in I immediately want to leave. A tourist attraction this massive should have at least something to do. Yes I wanted some quiet contemplation, but after all the miles it took me to get here, I was thinking that I could at least go bungee jumping or something once I was done meditating.

 

Instead I’m staring at a rocky hole in the ground with an overly sociable Midwesterner father  to keep me company. He means well: I’m grateful that he shared his meal with me while making memories with his kids, but his bland monologues about college football and nature are driving me insane enough to go ahead and throw myself off a cliff, which lucky for me is only a minute or two away. I envy his kids; not because they have a great father (which I’m sure they do) but because they can turn up their iPods to drown out the droning nothingness that he passes off as speech.

 

There is nothing to do here. The air is dry and dusty, the land is parched and cracking and the multitude of middle aged sightseers take up every piece of shade and fill it with their incessant small talk. Evolution didn’t mean me to visit here; without the humidity of the Caribbean my lungs have shriveled up and are ready to explode. The wind has also turned against me, and when it’s not making me wheeze it’s searing my face with projectile sunburn. I probably only have minutes before this alien environment finishes me off.

 

“What you gotta understand about the senate is” Oh my God, I’m gonna jump. If this guy keeps talking I’m gonna walk up to that giant boring rear end hole in the ground and savor the freeing bliss of my body hitting its  bottom with a tiny echoing crunch. That being said, his company is better than nothing.  I have to have something to pay attention to aside from the “natural wonder” these yahoos keep gawking at. Even if I brought a thousand friends the tediousness of this over glorified ditch would still compel me to end my life.

 

 I’ve obviously made a mistake coming here.  I’m not capable of introspection.I need to leave. I need excitement, I need stimulus and I need Florida. Florida: The Sunshine State. Florida: where retirees go to die and refugees come looking for a better life. Florida: the melting pot where people of every ethnicity and tax bracket are never too far apart, and where places to entertain them are never too far away. I’d give anything for a movie theater or even a retention pond to remind me of it and make me forget that could I’m stuck in this desert.

 

On the return trip (which I’m starting right now) I’ll have to decide what I’ll do first once I get back. A day riding roller coasters or hanging out on the pier should wash this Canyon’s taste of dust and monotony out of my mouth. I can’t believe I got sick of too many sources of fun.  I’ll never leave home again.


 

The Saddest Rhino posted:

Kaishai posted:

For future reference, we aren't. From the OP:

God Over Djinn posted:

If you don't want to do the work, then why would you bother entering? We don't give out prizes.

The Saddest Rhino posted:

Have you considered that when you enter a weekly writing exercise it is to hone your writing skills and not dump old stuff you have written on unsuspecting people. In addition, it's way over the word limit and likely doesn't meet the prompt.

Also dude you refer to some adventure thing cartoon in this pool of word vomit out of nowhere and I really don't know what to say.

Gau posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8PyTo6NyXA

Mercedes posted:

"Officer, I was only going 22 miles over the speed limit!"

"Why you being a little bitch, I only stole 22 dollars out of your wallet!"

"Honey, I only slept with 20 women besides you. Oh, and 2 men."

Sitting Here posted:

Flash Geis

Sithsaber is now anathema. So help me, if I see anyone responding to him in this thread once he's off probation, I will close the thread and y'all can go start a big kerfuffle with the mods.

Judges, you can DQ/declare him loser as you see fit, but honestly I think much like with the proverbial drunk stranger who stumbles into your campsite, it's better to ignore him until he stumbles off.

I didn't care about it in the FA thread, but Sithsaber has worn out his value as an entertaining sideshow in Thunderdome.

Sithsaber, piss off until you can post like a normal person. You're just providing endless fodder for mockery and it's embarrassing.