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  • Locked thread
Tyrannosaurus
Apr 12, 2006
I'm in.

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QuoProQuid
Jan 12, 2012

Tr*ckin' and F*ckin' all the way to tha
T O P

I am excited for this prompt!

In.

Jeza
Feb 13, 2011

The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.
In. I don't mind judging if you're lacking volunteers.

Phobia
Apr 25, 2011

I'm a suave detective with a heart of gold in hot pursuit of the malevolent, manipulative
MIAMI MUTILATOR
and the deranged degenerates who only want their
15 MINUTES OF FAME.


OCK.
Kaishai, thank you. Spooks and specters are like my bread and butter. In.

Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi
Mar 26, 2005

I'm in and would love a flash rule.

Starter Wiggin
Feb 1, 2009

Screw the enemy's gate man, I've got a fucking TAIL!
Do you know how crazy the ladies go for those?
In and loving the OSC reference with sign ups.
Flash me please! (also an OSC reference oh man it's getting crazy)

The News at 5
Dec 25, 2009

I'm Chance Everyman.
In. Also flash rule.

Techno Remix
Feb 13, 2012

100% in.

Kaishai
Nov 3, 2010

Scoffing at modernity.

Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi posted:

I'm in and would love a flash rule.

:siren: Flash Rule: :siren: Your story must take place in India, but the time period is up to you.

Starter Wiggin posted:

Flash me please! (also an OSC reference oh man it's getting crazy)

In the spirit of Alvin Maker, your :siren: Flash Rule :siren: is that your setting must be the 19th-century American frontier.

The News at 5 posted:

In. Also flash rule.

:siren: Flash Rule: :siren: At least one of your ghosts was a journalist in life.

Further flash rule requests will have to wait a while so my co-judges can have the chance to distribute some, once they know who they are.

Noah
May 31, 2011

Come at me baby bitch
In as well.

docbeard
Jul 19, 2011

In.

Wungus
Mar 5, 2004

In.

Masonity
Dec 31, 2007

What, I wonder, does this hidden face of madness reveal of the makers? These K'Chain Che'Malle?
I'm in. Let's see if I can actually manage something I'm not embarrassed to submit this time.

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

In for ookie spooky ghosties

Lake Jucas
Feb 20, 2011

WHAT OF OUR BARGAIN?
In and flash rule me.

God Over Djinn
Jan 17, 2005

onwards and upwards
declaring myself in so beef can announce to everyone my wicked bitchin' flash rule

JuniperCake
Jan 26, 2013
Fantastic prompt. I'm in to reclaim my honor for not submitting the last time I domed.

As is our custom, I am prepared to submit a story, or fall on my sword. :toxx:

Nitrousoxide
May 30, 2011

do not buy a oneplus phone



I'm in.

Erogenous Beef
Dec 20, 2006

i know the filthy secrets of your heart
:frogsiren: Thunderdome 83: I Hate You All :frogsiren:

Too many people this week fixated on the need to have said-bookisms and forgot, entirely, that they were also supposed to be telling a story. So, let's have...


Sit-Down Time With Unca Beef: A Word about Plots

If I ding you this week for having “no plot” or “nothing happens,” then I suggest you try this. A few weeks back, I presented one form of basic story outline. See here for that one, plus some other general writing advice.

This time, I strongly advise you try using a simplified story spine. This is a device thought up by a playwright back in the early ‘90s, and the ideas date back much further than that. Fill out the following outline as a starting point for your story.

quote:

Once upon a time, … (1)
And every day, … (2)
But, one day, … (3)
And, because of that, … (4)
Until, finally, … (5)
And, ever since then, … (6)

This is a semi-abridged version of the original version. Write down a few of these; don’t get trapped inside one idea.

For a thousand-word Thunderdome story, try to pack (1) and (2) into the first paragraph or the first 100 words, and have (3) occur, ideally, at or before the 100-150 word mark, certainly no later than 300.

Spend most of your time dealing with (4). This is the meat and body of your story. About 300 words from the ending, build up towards (5) and then pull the trigger on (5) in the final 200 words. You could omit (6) if the implications from (5) are clear, but otherwise keep it down to a few lines, a paragraph at most.

This will give you a very basic, but structured, starting point for your story. It contains all the basic elements: setup, inciting action, reaction, climax and denouement. It’s not a guarantee that you’ll write gold, but hopefully you can at least fish out the smellier turds before you gleefully present them to the judges like cats hauling in dead birds.

For more on this specific structural technique, read the article.


Nitrousoxide - Five Shots

Yeah, buddy, five shots of hard liquor is about what I want in order to start reading the ‘Dome.

Boring shite. The first two-thirds is a dude getting paraded around and being told how lucky he is to have won some game show. It’s tired by the second paragraph, at best. This goes on for a few hundred words, and then some people shoot themselves.

Your protagonist is terribly passive - he never really reacts or changes based on the stimulus. He’s literally carried around and shouted at by the crowd/announcer. The outcome of the game show seems predetermined, so there’s no tension.

Work on your plots. See my note at the top of this post.

Also, your basic writing is clumsy as gently caress. Go read a book.

Drink five shots of: Toilet Duck.

Low pile.


Baudolino - Counseling

You didn’t read the prompt. And with all the other entries to go, you’re receiving no other crit.

Also, you’re obviously not taking the advice you get every week, which is to get someone to read over your poo poo and correct the spacing, punctuation, spelling and grammar mistakes. That’s not cool.

Drink five shots of: Twelve-gauge sabot. Preferably with white phosphorus.

Loser pile.


Cache Cab - To Say Goodbye

Your first line isn’t an incentive to read this, as it tells me you’re the sort of lovely writer who loves dumping redundancies all over their prose. Worse, your entire first scene is boring as poo poo. Guy comes home from work, proposes over Skype, The Other Woman demands a divorce.

This is so boring I was comatose before scene 2 even began. Too much tedious melodrama with nothing original to hold my interest.

Ugh, a shaggy-dog ending. Burn to death, thanks.

Drink five shots of: Molten steel, straight from the crucible.

Low pile.


Nikaer Drekin - Revenue, Pixie Style: A Scribe’s First Chronicle

If you have to lead off your story with a disclaimer, you’re in hot water already.

Ugh, pixie melodrama. No serious struggle or character development, characters aren’t particularly interesting, and your protagonist is basically just there to be a camera on the Strong Independent Sassy Girl Pixie.

A pixie is picked on, so she finds some berries and splats them against her tormentors. Snore. See plot advice, above.

Tediously written, overly florid, and your saidbookisms don’t contribute much.

Drink five shots of: DDT.

Low pile.


God over Djinn - The Way I Won

I’m not warm on this. Sibling v. sibling as mediated by a checkers game, and the POV kid’s blind. Starts out slow, and the middle sags. The first and second checkers games are utterly sapped of tension because we already know what’s going to happen: it’s in your loving title.

I see there’s one line in there that’s necessary to set up the “oops I dunno which pieces are which” bit, but… I dunno, it all rings hollow. Yes, yes, crippled folks don’t like being patronized for their disabilities. Thanks for saying something new and interesting.

What’s this story trying to say about the character? Is he now damaged and unable to trust anyone? Has this changed his relationship with his sister? We don’t know, because you cut away to some pointless scene with the principal, and so the story ends up as a fart in the wind.

Paper-thin characters, too much wannabe-poetic wank without any substance.

Drink five shots of: Syphilitic earwax, blended with pixie stix.

Middle pile.


Nethilia - Fifty-Yard Dash

Seriously, no plot at all. An asthmatic has an asthma attack after she wins a race. SO WHAT?

Learn to cut. You took 450 words to do something that should take maybe 50. Ugh.

Drink five shots of: Bull semen.

Low pile.


CaligulaKangaroo - You Should Be Honored

What the gently caress is this? Is this even a story? A guy yells at his roommate after his roommate drunkenly trashes the house. Ugh.

Unclear, boring writing. Boring characters. Not even sure what the gently caress it’s all supposed to add up to, nor am I inclined to go back and read this again to figure it out because it’s all so goddamned boring.

Learn to cut. Cut HARD. You have maybe three times as many words in here as you need.

Stop the ellipses. You’re not allowed to use them any more. They’re meant to be used sparingly, not as a way to just trail off dialogue which you’re too clueless to complete. Dialogue shouldn’t sound like you’ve transcribed a real conversation, with all the UMs and AHs and pauses and trail-offs. It should convey interesting and meaningful information (plot/character development), not just take up space.

Drink five shots of: Jungle juice. Make sure it’s at least half turpentine.

Low pile.


Techno Remix - Extermination

Hey look, lovely fantasy. And both your characters are awful cliches. You know what I hate? Fantasy, and especially trite cliched fantasy.

It’s almost impossible to follow this thanks to your writing, which manages to be both bloated and unclear. Cut hard.

Man, did you just rip off the last scene in Russell Crowe’s Gladiator and try it shellack it with generic fantasy patter?

Drink five shots of: Hemlock.

Low pile.


Surreptitious Muffin - The Treasure of Sierra Hermano

(Note: I hadn’t cottoned on that this was Bennyfic until I hit the second Benny story. Ugh.)

I like your first sentence.

Is Miguel black or Latino? Blacktino? He reads like a bad pastiche of both stereotypes.

Wait, is this some kind of racist humor? A wan-yellow body? What? How do you trade a body for cheeseburgers? I mean, I guess McD’s might take the meat off your hand and, well, let’s not follow that line of thought. Maybe it’s not a body. I can’t tell.

Uh, I’m not really sure what happened here. Why is Miguel important? Is he just there to illustrate Benny’s pedantry? Why is Benny panicking about James being dead? Was there a murder? If so, and he’s hauling the body in his truck, how come Zombie James is all rotten and poo poo?

Okay, wait, the body wasn’t in the truck. What’s in the truck? The whole thing seems structured like a running-away-from-a-murder thing but… Blah. This is messy and unclear.

There’s a couple points where you seem to want to lapse into poetry instead of writing clearly. Fight that urge.

Benny pile, mid.


The News At 5 - Golden Gloves

Oh great, a “guy wakes up” opening, I’m sure this’ll be riveting.

Two guys talk vaguely about an event which happened prior to the story’s opening, and then a pseudo-flashback. Do you have a particularly boring life? I can’t even comprehend what you thought would be interesting or poignant or meaningful about this awful pile of verbose sludge.

A guy wins a UFC match and runs away because his manager is evil/greedy/something. SO WHAT?

I have good news for you; you’ll clearly get rich writing. Every hospital in the world is gonna want some of this poo poo, because even a tiny dose - 50 words or less - will reliably put anyone and everyone to sleep.

Drink five shots of: Undiluted ether.

Low pile.


Masonity - Shotgun

Oh look, melodramatic student angst. Yeah, this is a totally new take on that idea. Snoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooore.

Great, so you spent 650 words having some guy awkwardly ask out his childhood crush. And they gon’ get hitched. SO WHAT? Plot advice, top of this post. Go.

Also, this is creepy as gently caress. Two people who’re just longing to bone suddenly decide to get hitched. A sweaty-palms goon and a doe-eyed chick? Please. Gooniest thing I’ve read in Thunderdome for a long time.

Also, I’m pretty darned sure student visas don’t get stapled to green cards.

Also also, what the gently caress is up with the spacing in this? No carriage returns between most paragraphs, and then like five all at once. Are you trying to signal the POV changes or something? There’s too many of them for such a short story.

Drink five shots of: Your own ejaculate. God knows you’re already on familiar terms with your own right hand if you’re writing this poo poo.

Low pile, loser candidate.


Entenzahn - Just Desert

Pun title detected. This better be good.

Wait a sec, is there one of those silent Thunderdome conspiracies this week? This is basically the same situation as Muffin’s story.

And his tells the same tale in half as many words. This one starts out clever, but the talking-animal device just becomes a way for hallucinations to barf exposition at us. The guy’s just there to be a microphone for us. Ugh.

Story also should’ve ended with a tiny golden bean worth one million US dollars.

Benny pile, low.


Jagermonster - Never Sicker

quote:

Sally rolled her eyes.

Yeah, and so did I.

Too much hair on this. The ex shows up, berates the guy and disappears. She’s pointless, cut her. Really, most of the first half of this could be cut, and you could’ve worked some of the exposition in the latter half’s dialogue into actions. Plot advice, top of this post.

This is basically “frat bro gets drunk and a girl’s kindness makes him think her of vaguely as a human being instead of fuckmeat”. Well, at least there’s character development. Vaguely. VAGUELY.

Not the worst thing I’ve read, but not great either.

Drink five shots of: Bottom-shelf Everclear. Then light yourself on fire.

Mid pile.


Whalley - Capital Offense

First scene isn’t so bad. Second scene is a lead-filled sock smacking me in the head with exposition, and the receiver’s “dialogue” makes no sense. The “items say a guy’s thoughts” gimmick gets old, fast.

Yeah, okay, we get the idea - a guy robs a bank, it’s an inside job, and he feels guilty. Great. Now do something with it. Instead of developing the plot or deepening the suspense, you just repeat the same idea over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

The third and fourth scenes add absolutely nothing to your character. At the end, he gets away with the robbery and turns into a materialistic oval office. Not exactly a new message, and it kinda blows away the whole point of your story. But at least there’s something here.

Thing is, the specific way you’ve resolved it is incredibly unsatisfying. It’s basically “a guy felt bad about robbing a bank, but then he got over it.” It’s handled so briefly, with so little apparently struggle, that it’s toss-book-across-room bad.

Drink five shots of: Disperse Red 9. Inhale some tear gas while you’re at it.

Mid pile.


WeLandedOnTheMoon! - Follow the Lady

Jesus Christ, five fat paragraphs of backstory at the opening. I’m asleep already.

Uh, okay, so a card shark stiffs a guy and forms a sort of partnership with a hooker. SO WHAT? Plot advice, top of post. It’s the biggest issue you’ve got.

This goes on way too long despite having no plot or character development.

Drink five shots of: Prison-tat ink.

Low pile.


Martello - Black Gold

Oh. Another Benny story.

Opening is a bit backstory-heavy, but promising. The prose flows decently and doesn’t immediately make me want to vomit.

Second scene, not so much. Way too much back-and-forth “way!” “no way!” dialogue. (That said, cyberpunk adaptation of Bill & Ted? Yes please.) I really need to know what the gently caress they’re going after, and why I should care. You drop that stuff in the late-middle-third of this scene and frontload the tedium instead.

quote:

They had been vest buddies

Kinky.

Drink five shots of: Ice-Nine.

Benny pile, mid.


Noah - Life Support

Eh. Terry Schiavo fanfiction. And the husband has regrets, so people hallucinate-speak at him because of regrets. Just like that bank story I just read.

Worse, you don’t even resolve that - the dude has some regrets and then, uh, he has more regrets.

Drink five shots of: Rubbing alcohol, via a tube in your throat.

Low pile.


Saddest Rhino - In Its Wings He Shall Find Paradise

Starts off a bit clumsy, too much dialogue, and this is mostly just a big fight scene. Also, Benny.

Benny pile, mid.

Schneider Helm - Look Them In The Eye

quote:

she never, ever looked above someone's waist when speaking to them

She stares at dicks the whole time. Great.

Right. So some girl with vague psychic powers learns to stand up to a bully and not psychically tear him apart or something.

Way too much hair on this; it’s unfocused. Introduce what’s unique about this situation in your first scene, preferably in your first few paragraphs. Your middle two scenes do no work; cut them. Also, your kids don’t really act much like kids. Except the bully, that’s fairly spot-on. The soliloquy in the last scene made me retch.

Also the psychic powers don't seem to matter much. You'd have to bring them up in the first scene and, perhaps, hint at the potential problems during the middle scene.

Drink five shots of: Cafeteria chocolate milk which you forgot and left in your locker all summer.

Mid pile.


Joda - The Sale

Great, another story that opens with two guys talking around something. Don’t do this. When a story opens, we need to know who is involved, what’s happening, and what’s at stake. The way you open, it’s like overhearing two people in white morph suits have a phone conversation, and you’re not privy to the details, so it’s not interesting at all.

Uuuuuuugh. A salesman has to sell things. So he goes to a bar and whines tediously to a bartender, and it turns into a gradeschool argument about the social responsibilities of capitalists. And then John Galt cuts a fucker.

Go back to D&D.

Drink five shots of: John Galt’s semen. You’re already sucking on that thing, might as well swallow.

Low pile.


Lead Out In Cuffs - Atlanta’s Deathrace

You have issues with clarity, and they largely arise from overusing pronouns. By the third para, I thought your protagonist was a dude and had just had his face shredded off by a minigun. (This made me happy, because I thought the story would end soon - I was disappointed.)

STRONG WOMAN DON’T NEED NO MAN. uuuuugh.

Then a lot of tedious ACTION ACTION ACTION SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY.

This is just clumsy as poo poo. Strong woman don’t need no man, except this guy who shows up and then she beats him and rejects tradition or some poo poo I DON’T GIVE A gently caress, BURN IN HELL.

Drink five shots of: JP-4.

Low pile.


Jeza - A Knock-Out Blow

Yeah, okay, opening with a fight. The fight goes on too long. The prose is fine, it’s sweaty and tired and smelly like a boxing match, but since I barely have any idea who the characters are, or what distinguishes them, it’s got the emotive weight of two sides of beef colliding in a meat locker.

I’m going to pretend Sergei is actually IVAN DRAGO from Rocky 4, because that’s cooler.

Third scene is Lifetime boo-hoo bullshit. Boxer feels bad about beating up his opponent. No one else will forgive him - except his opponent. Well gee ain’t that all bunnies and unicorn farts. Saw it coming a mile away.

This is basically Ivan Drago Has Feels, the story. Meh. Plot advice, top of this post.

Too long, cut more.

Drink five shots of: Whatever Ivan Drago injects in the training montage for Rocky 4.

Mid pile, if only because your actual prose is competent.


Kaishai - Silver and Gold

Christ, not another sports story.

Okay, winner’s guilt, champions self-criticism. Captured nicely. You’re just this side of making your protagonist a whiny douche, and you’re just this side of me vomiting from yet another Lifetime-channel feelgood piece.

Decent prose. Lose the first scene, though. There’s a few places where you name characters who never appear again - cut the names, if not the characters.

Characters are pretty thin, and I’d prefer to see some character development instead of just nice words about a guy worrying.

Drink five shots of: Eazy Cheez.

High pile. Holy poo poo, the cheese stands alone. The only high pile person this week. Wow.


Starter Wiggin - Sink or Swim

expositionexpositionexpositionexposition expositionexpositionexpositionexpositionEXPOSITIONALDIALOGUE expositionexpositionEXPOSITIONALDIALOGUEEXPOSITIONALDIALOGUEexposition expositzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Plot advice, top of this post.

Also, STRONG WOMAN DON’T NEED NO MAN. bleah.

Drink five shots of: Discarded IVF menstruum.

Low pile.


Anathema Device - Fortune and Greed

Benny the Snake has survivor’s guilt. At least it’s short.

Benny pile, mid.


docbeard - He Won

Benny story. And other TD injokes.

Benny pile, don’t care.


Djeser - Alicanto

gently caress’s sake.

Benny pile, don’t care.


Sebmojo - Maintain Perfect Form

What is this? A woman goes for a run and has vague recollections about vague arguments with her dead husband (cancer)’s brother. She’s testy at him for no apparent reason.

Vague vague vague vague vague. I’m not even sure what the story’s central argument revolves around. Serious clarity issues here. You spent too long trying to make pretty prose and not enough helping your reader understand poo poo.

Drink five shots of: Mechlorethamine.

Low pile.


Tyrannosaurus - After The Sinking of the Queen Anne

Uh, is your captain a grizzled pirate or some poncy London twat in a Victorian picaresque?

So some pirates have an argument over an issue which is never described. And the captain kinda vaguely says “oh well no one else can be captain can they” and there’s some murmurings of this crew being also the crew of some enemy ship that they sank and what?

Were you drunk when you wrote this? None of it makes any sense. Plot advice, top of post.

Drink five shots of: Tequila. The kind that wears a plastic hat on top of the bottle. And make sure you drink five bottles, not just five shots.

Low pile.


QuoProQuid - Gold

ugh.

Benny pile, don’t care.


-- DEADLINE HERE - EVERYONE BELOW HERE IS DISQUALIFIED AND A SHITBAG --


Ursine Asylum - A Conversation

quote:

NO GODS, NO KINGS!

Someone’s been playing Bioshock recently.

Jesus, this is a giant pile of fantasy cliches. Two characters shouting fantasy cliches at one another. And one of them is a Joan of Arc stand-in. Snooooooore.

Come up with something original. Also, have your characters do something or change or make a choice that affects the story. People talking the entire time = snoozefest.

Low pile.


Phobia - Ratings High

Oh gently caress’s sake. This starts kinda promising, and then he reads her lips - this is where you have to tell us what she’s saying, because the character knows, and reacts to it, but we don’t know. This is a lovely, cheap “trick” that serves only to infuriate the reader!

Ugh. She’s talking/she’s not talking. Walker’s a blind oval office or something. This is getting tedious to read.

The gently caress. The gently caress happens? Did you just start an entirely different story midway through?

I’m not going to bother rereading this to figure it out.

Low pile.


Sitting Here - Goldrushed

oh, benny story. no fucks given.

Benny pile.


Oh, and in case you’re wondering about the metrics I use for the piles:

Low pile: Unredeemable garbage. Throw away and start over.

Mid pile: Deep, serious flaws. May have a decent idea or two, but needs a major word-one rewrite and possibly plot surgery to save.

High pile: Minor flaws at most, otherwise generally decent. Maybe even good. But that’s unlikely.

a new study bible!
Feb 2, 2009



BIG DICK NICK
A Philadelphia Legend
Fly Eagles Fly


This is me signing up and also requesting one of them flashed rules.

RunningIntoWalls
Dec 8, 2013

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Sign me up. Lurked long enough for you guys to rip me a new one.

Paladinus
Jan 11, 2014

heyHEYYYY!!!
In and would appreciate to see some flash rule thrown at me. But would I really? :iiam:

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
I am still chasing the ghost of victories past. In.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









I'm in to judge, subject to the crazed computational whims of the K.A.I.S.H AI.

sebmojo fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Mar 11, 2014

Entenzahn
Nov 15, 2012

erm... quack-ward
In.

QuoProQuid
Jan 12, 2012

Tr*ckin' and F*ckin' all the way to tha
T O P

Can I get a flash rule for this week's prompt, please?

The Saddest Rhino
Apr 29, 2009

Put it all together.
Solve the world.
One conversation at a time.



Oxxidation posted:

"Special" Mention: Every Single Mother loving Benny the Snake Entry

None of them were funny, all of them were bad in their own special ways, and since they technically qualify as fanfic Beef and crabrock moved to have them DQ'd anyway.


As most badly-planned conspiracies go, this had a lofty goal - to ungrump the grumpy judges. Alas, as is the way of such things, they have the unintended completely opposite effects. Which is to say, most participants shall not be sorry, though they are likely breathing sighs of relief at not being made losers.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RiDsh-WZDtrdv80BKPxeL_nXoRte7hehh33W045Op2U/edit?usp=sharing

angel opportunity
Sep 7, 2004

Total Eclipse of the Heart
"In," systran bellowed.

Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007
Five Shots (nitrousoxide)

Missing punctuation, typos, and horrendous belaboring of the point sank this long before your scrabbling for decent saidisms did (it became clear really quick that you were just grasping for verbs that meant SPEAKING VERY LOUDLY). When you’re going for lists like the first several paragraphs of this story it’s best to keep things short and punchy so that each image is retained in the reader’s mind as they move on to the next; as it stands, each fabulous prize was dragged out so long that the prose just trudged. The concept was sort of darkly funny in a juvenile E.C. Comics way, and the erection line got a snort out of me, but I’ve got no patience with people who don’t proofread.

Counseling (Baudolino)

Oh God, no, gently caress this, I’m out, I’m done. You omitted the saidism right in your first attribution, your quotes are an unreadable scrambled mess, and I’m hitting capitalization, punctuation, spacing, and spelling errors every time I let my eyes settle on a clause. This poo poo doesn’t even merit a full read. I’ll leave that up to people with more time to kill.

To Say Goodbye (Cache Cab)

I knew there’d be at least one story like this, using the saidisms as puns to match the actions being performed, but at least you did it with some aplomb. I’ll admit I giggled like a frilly little schoolgirl at some of these. You carried the gimmick a little too far, and there’s not much to the actual story, but at least the scene itself is believable and contains a start, middle, and end. If the plot had been constructed with as much care as the puns this would be a top contender, easy.

Revenge, Pixie Style: A Scribe's First Chronicle (Nikaer Drekin)

Yeah, no, if you wanted me to read the rest of your saga you should’ve submitted earlier. Them’s the breaks.

I was originally railing on the multiple punctuation marks, saying that it made your piece sound like a grade-schooler’s essay – and then I got to the end and found out that that’s basically what it was. This can also help to excuse the grating enthusiasm, go-nowhere story, and occasionally inaccurate saidisms (yelping is a brief, high-pitched vocalization, for starters, and makes it sound like Z’s hiccupping all his words if you tack it onto a sentence). Your framing device deflects the worst of my wrath, but I’ll be watching you. Clever dick.

The Way I Won (God Over Djinn)

Oh man, me and the other judges did not agree on this. I was a big fan of the hyper-sensory language, the others not so much; I felt the imagery shored up the lack of plot, the others not so much. crabrock gave me this big treatise on why it was bad, it involved a PS4 and a sweater or something, I don’t even know, we should be proud that he even managed that much with his tiny, tiny pinchers.

The good, briefly – your framing device accentuated the saidism gimmick (of course a blind kid would carefully categorize the way other people spoke), your plot and imagery were solid, your saidisms varied and complementary to the characters. Your story occasionally became too twee, especially in the last line of the last full paragraph (“And so I had won...” belabors your point in a way that’s too sugary even for the tone you’ve established up to this point), and, as with most pieces, some of these images could stand to be cut to keep the prose moving more briskly. But you should return to this, it’s got potential beyond a one-and-done flash fiction entry.

Fifty-Yard Dash (Nethilia)

Competent. Your choice of scene was super-obvious given the prompt I’d set out, but your prose didn’t sag in any obvious places and you had some nice images (exhaling the medicine in particular). Your saidisms, likewise, weren’t anything to scream about, but since you went the “keep tacking on additional actions to the original attribution” route, they meshed with the rest of the prose and didn’t significantly trip up your flow. I think you had the chops to make your submission longer, and a little more imaginative than “asthmatic girl wins race,” but this piece feels like a solid middler nonetheless.

You Should Be Honored (CaligulaKangaroo)

This was one of the entries where the saidisms hindered the piece instead of helping it. The scene you set was decent, especially where Jerrod’s inebriation was concerned, but your dialogue was typical back-and-forth talk with extra words tacked on to the attributions, which wrecked your flow. I think the narrator’s lines could have been chopped out almost completely with very little being lost, since his questioning doesn’t appear to make Jerrod say anything that he wouldn’t have said anyway, to himself (or possibly to the floor, if it is a good listener).

Also, “nationalized television?” Keep your government hands out of my bat-ball games

Extermination (Techno Remix)

I do not like fantasy, fight scenes, or sentences beginning with prepositional phrases. You did not make a good first impression.

Even disregarding that, your story was dull. God, I don’t give a poo poo about these people. I barely paid attention to your dialogue because it just blended into the same gray mass as the rest of your story. And I hate ellipses, too, so you started and finished with pet peeves. At least you seem to have proofread it.

The Treasure of Sierra Hermano (SurreptitiousMuffin)

I feel like you’re being cheeky here. I’m not totally certain who you’re being cheeky at, and it makes me angry. later edit: I now know this is a Benny story and as usual you torpedo yourself by being too clever, mark your calendars everyone

This was solid despite being badstory fanfic. Your dialogue was almost totally seamless despite the lengthy attributions, and the story started strong despite ending with a wet fart. Not going to spend too much time on it because you already know you had to cut things short, so I won’t say anything you don’t already know.

Golden Gloves (The News At 5)

Your imagery was clumsy (AJ’s throat is the path of razor blades, but when he swallows there is nothing there, perhaps they are ghost razors), and your dialogue had that same issue as Kangaroo’s where it’s just back-and-forth he-inquired she-opined. This doesn’t really feel like a complete piece, either; there’s a beginning, but no middle or end, populated only by your cipher of a protagonist and a cigar-chomping corrupt managerial type who probably should go back to whatever comic book he escaped from.

Shotgun (Masonity)

What the poo poo is up with your spacing? What the poo poo is up with your dialogue? What the poo poo is up with your non-plot? Why is all this poo poo up, and why is it all raining down on me?

This couldn’t have been more phoned-in if it were literally typed out on your phone, one-handed, in the bathroom, while your coworkers wondered why the gently caress you weren’t at your desk. Two desperately uninteresting people have a stilted conversation and hopefully spontaneously combust as soon as they step outside. Get it out of my sight.

Just Desert (Entezahn)

Another one. Whiffing a conspiracy here.

Unlike Muffin, you didn’t have the writing chops to back up your cleverness. He at least set a scene between two characters; you wrote a half-assed fable featuring someone else’s non-character and three authorial self-inserts beating a dead horse. It still sorta-functions even when divorced from the source material, but your imagery is weak (how many times can you reiterate that a desert is hot and a guy is tired?) and your dialogue too smarmy to engage my attention. I’d have rated this more harshly if it weren’t for some of the hardcore duds this week.

Never Sicker (Jagermonster)

Well, I like the title. That’s something.

Man, this piece went back and forth and up and down. Your narration veered from obnoxiously tell-y (“He needed to end the cycle of infatuation that had gripped him almost immediately upon starting school.”) to actually quite nice (astronomy with the spins) and your dialogue was unobtrusive one minute and clangy he-stated she-delved the next. Also, “epiphany” has no formal verb that I know of, and if it did, it would probably be spelled with an “i.”

I was ready to toss this on the “positive” side, but the ending was hideously weak. He lies on the ground and blurts some rumination on friendship, cut to credits. You would’ve been better off keeping him in the grass while Don’t You (Forget About Me) came on the radio inside. Actually, make that the ending and thank me later.

Capital Offense (Whalley)

Here’s the rare piece that would’ve sorta sucked if not for the prompt. It’s more summary than story, often unsubtle in its narration, and the actual plot is nothing to scream about, but the way the objects “talk” is a clever way to get around the saidisms and also highlights Chester’s growing paranoia. I didn’t even mind you skipping the attributions for Chester’s own dialogue, because it differentiates him from all the interrogating inanimates.

That said, the ending blows. Not only was it a weak, overlong way to state CRIME REALLY DOES PAY, but you completely tip your hand re: the gimmick of the story. It was obvious to anyone paying attention that the objects were questioning him; you didn’t need to spell it out, and especially not at the end, where it just feels like you’re insulting the reader’s intelligence.

Follow the Lady (WeLandedOnTheMoon!)

Your story does not actually begin until the fourth paragraph, which is a problem. Your story does not consists of much other than a dude scamming some dudes and then sallying forth to scam other dudes, which is another problem. Your unremarkable plot has almost nothing in the way of interesting description to grease the way, which is a third problem. Your saidisms clang, do nothing for the dialogue, and in a few cases are omitted entirely, which is a problem of personal offense to me. You were already out at the third strike; now the audience is throwing poo poo at you.

Black Gold (Martello)

Well, the first paragraph was exactly what I expected. The rest...should have also been exactly what I expected. All of you kids are going into detention together and there will be no overrated coming-of-age dramedy’s made about it, so help me.

I knew from the start that you’d come off pretty well on this prompt, since your stuff is already naturally pulpy and saidisms come with the territory. Still, your beginning was definitely the strongest part of the piece – you got caught up in the back-and-forth dialogue during the middle, and in the end your, ahem, homage kind of cannibalized the plot. Still, decent-ish.

Life Support (Noah)

Oof, that opening line is a jawbreaker. I’m still having trouble parsing it. The judges are looking at the faces of Bill and the his parents, and the latter party also happens to be the Lumb family? A sentence this simple shouldn’t make heads spin.

And now after reading the rest that doesn’t seem so important, because what the low-calorie gently caress is this? Are you going for some farcical tragicomic bent here? Magical realism? Is Bill telepathic but unaware of it? Wherefore the lighthouse? Is this Ken Levine? If so, your videogame writing skills are subpar.

Even if I overlooked the concept, your prose was miserable and your saidisms bland. I’ll just pull the plug here.

In Its Wings He Shall Find Paradise (The Saddest Rhino)

At least now I can see this crap coming. Also, I hate you all.

I could say that the blocking was a mess and your saidisms did nothing to enhance the dialogue, but that wouldn’t matter, because you were wholesale copying the bad blocking and bad dialogue of someone else, and the parts you did add were equally disjointed and pointless. Indeed, that’s the rub. Unto you, miserable ungulate, I deliver my most damning criticism at all – of all the Benny parodies, this was the only piece where I often could not tell the difference between it and the original story. Go and sin no more.

Look them in the eye (Schneider Heim)

This one had a bunch of ambiguities which I don’t think were intended. You lay out Eunice’s character and habits clearly, but the conversation with her mother, to me, suggested something supernatural about her habit of never looking people in the eye (“control it,” “lose it”) that never seemed to be picked up on again. Or it could have just been in reference to their hair, in which case her mom would have to be literally telepathic. I reread the story several times to pick up the thread and never found it.

Beyond that, the prose was competent and the plot unremarkable, or at least it just seems that way to me, grade school was a while ago. Middle of the roader. Still, the ending was sweet, even if it did have that loose thread nagging at me.

The Sale (Joda)

Oh God shut up shut up shut uuuuup

You start with talk, you clog the middle with talk, and none of the narration in between the talk is vivid or compelling in the least. I zoomed down that waterfall of back-and-forth to find that your protagonist had shanked a man. Why? Who cares! Also your capitals and punctuation were a goddamn mess. It’s lowercase after a comma and uppercase after a period. Not hard to remember.

Atlanta’s Deathrace (Lead out in cuffs)

First two lines: you have my attention.

This was breathtakingly stupid and some good fun, but could have been a lot better. You’re crap at describing the race – something this high-octane should be taking place in breathless long-form sentences of clipped syllables so that each image rushes through the reader’s head in one over-stimulating mass, not separated into neat little two-line paragraphs like a loving card catalog. Still, this could’ve been a lot worse for Love & Loss on the Death Track.

A Knock-Out Blow (Jeza)

Well, at least this was better than the other “boxer-man hurts other boxer-man and is very sad about it” story. Everything started going downhill once you changed scenes to the hospital, since there wasn’t much to either character besides grief or recrimination, respectively – you also skipped two attributions, and with a wordcount this high I am not cool with that. You could have gone a lot further with the conceit that Sergei is only in control when he’s in the ring – as it stands, it feels like your story only gelled in the last few paragraphs.

Silver and Gold (Kaishai)

Someone had fun with this. This piece was one of the few sports stories that accurately captured the sport in motion, and your saidisms were at once present and nearly invisible, which is impressive. The plot was pretty by-the-numbers for this prompt, but its execution was deft enough so that I didn’t particularly care.

Sink or Swim (Starter Wiggin)

In which feminism ends civilization as we know it. Paging the Cerebus guy.

You didn’t do enough to make your concept interesting, the dialogue is expository noise, the framing device does nothing for the story as a whole, and Janelle had may as well end the story by jumping on her menstrual cycle and ramping through a flaming hoop while fireworks spell out gently caress THE PATRIARCHY in the background. That would’ve been better, actually, write that instead.

Fortune And Greed (Anathema Device)

No.

He Won (docbeard)

Also no. Liked the opening image, though, you should’ve done more with that.

Alicanto (Djeser)

FFFFFFFFFF

Okay, actually, I’d say this was the best of the short-bus Benny bunch. The telltale-heart angle you took with the bird allowed the story to exist as a piece independent of its source material, the prose was clear if not thrilling, and it managed to have a beginning, middle, and end, always a tragically rare distinction in Thunderdome. Your saidisms were weak, your protagonist whined too much about how desperate and miserable he was without ever really conveying it besides pantomime melodrama, and your ending was limp, but well done for being the only member of the kutup klub with some imagination.

Maintain Perfect Form (sebmojo)

Your prose is solid as ever, though I get the impression that this is a two-paragraph scene stretched out ten times longer than it should be. The Hawaiian lent flavor, though I dunno if it had any larger purpose; if all of these vowel-choked trees were evergreens, would it have changed the story any? Your flash rule was a bitch and it’s cool and all that you managed to see it through, but it definitely hurt the story in the long run. You’ve got all this tight narration and then the clumsy saidisms come it and the sour notes gently caress everything up. Still, it’s a character-based piece that’s not Benny fanfic, I’ll take what I can get.

After the Sinking of the Queen Anne (Tyrannosaurus)

I have a weakness for pirate-speak. For unearthing this secret you will pay a terrible price.

The scene itself was decent, though your saidisms made little sense even by this week’s standards (you cannot prop words, even if you are a turtle shell with a hallucinatory voice), and it was definitely the beginning of a story rather than a story in itself. Still, the voice was fun and I could gather the thrust of the backstory in the few hundred words you provided, which I guess Beef missed? Oh well!

Gold (QuoProQuid)

I guess it’s fitting that yours was the last thing submitted on time. Easily among the worse Benny entries, right down there with the original.

A Conversation (UrsineAsylum)

Who the gently caress unironically types in all-caps and thinks it’s a good idea? And it’s generic shouty fantasy, and you were late. Get it away.

Ratings High (Phobia)

Oh, this is the Hunger Games fanfic. Too many characters, too much talking, not enough action to fill the spaces in between. No reason to care about these people or whether they live or die, and your narration snaps from one person’s perspective to another without much in the way of a clear transition. And you ended with a straight “he said.” They are the last two words of the story! I feel so betrayed.

Goldrushed (Sitting Here)

I come to the end, and see Benny the Snake.

The only reason I haven’t ended this with a meticulously crafted ten-thousand word curse that would boil the seas, rend the skies, and revive Rob Schneider’s acting career is because it’s you, Sitting Here. Even then, this was low-effort by the Benny Brigade’s standards and definitely by yours. Just like I’d hoped, I am disappointed in new ways.

I could finish this with a clever book-saidism quote, but I think that for this week the sound of a single gunshot would be more appropriate.

curlingiron
Dec 15, 2006

b l o o p

Okay, I'll bite. I'm in, and I need a flash rule.

Fumblemouse
Mar 21, 2013


STANDARD
DEVIANT
Grimey Drawer
The endlessly munificent Kaishai has appointed me co-judge and set me about the task of providing Flash Rules to the many remaining supplicants. "Leave them plenty of room to move," I am told, and I shall. You may all have the perfect freedom to Kneel and Quake before the Wisdom of Kaishai, maggots, because it's fun to watch you all wobbling about like weebles with the DTs! Use your apportioned Wisdom well, and surely Kaishai will see beyond the stench of your putrid offerings and into your heart of hearts where that which you meant to write resides.

Lake Jucas: The tygers of wrath are wiser than nightmares.
WeLandedOnTheMoon!: A dead body suffers not injuries.
Paladinus: Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of your victims.
QuoProQuid: Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse dead children.
curlingiron: The cut worm forgives the wicked knife.

Lead out in cuffs
Sep 18, 2012

"That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."




In. I've already completed my first draft. :ghost: Why was this one so much easier to write?

Also, thanks, Beef. That story spine thing helped a lot.

\/ \/ \/ Yes of course. Relax. Emphasis added. \/ \/ \/

Lead out in cuffs fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Mar 11, 2014

The Saddest Rhino
Apr 29, 2009

Put it all together.
Solve the world.
One conversation at a time.



Lead out in cuffs posted:

:ghost: Why was this one so much easier to write?

NOPE PUT IT ASIDE FOR A DAY AND THEN LOOK AT IT AGAIN AND REWRITE EVERYTHING ALL OVER

Barracuda Bang!
Oct 21, 2008

The first rule of No Avatar Club is: you do not talk about No Avatar Club. The second rule of No Avatar Club is: you DO NOT talk about No Avatar Club
Grimey Drawer
I'm in and would love a flash rule, please.

Nethilia
Oct 17, 2012

Hullabalooza '96
Easily Depressed
Teenagers Edition


In for this week.

Kaishai
Nov 3, 2010

Scoffing at modernity.

Barracuda Bang! posted:

I'm in and would love a flash rule, please.

Taking inspiration from the Wisdom of esteemed Fumblemouse, your :siren: Flash Rule :siren: is this: A hideous throng rush out forever / And laugh--but smile no more.

perpetulance
Mar 24, 2013

THUNDERDOME LOSER
After a long absence, in for the week. And :toxx:.

Bad Seafood
Dec 10, 2010


If you must blink, do it now.
Okay I think that is enough for one sabbatical.

In.

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
Ghost stories? Move over kids, daddy's home. In.

Flash Rule me.

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Jay O
Oct 9, 2012

being a zombie's not so bad
once you get used to it
In, :toxx: and Flash Rule please!

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