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I'm in. Here you go.
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May 27, 2014 18:09
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Broenheim posted:gently caress it, I'm in with this: drat, softball. http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=1557 Cheneyjugend posted:I'm in. Here you go. ... http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=356
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May 27, 2014 18:20
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After a too-long hiatus I am BACK. Prepare yourselves  And my picture is of this fine establishment: 
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May 27, 2014 18:35
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Nikaer Drekin posted:After a too-long hiatus I am BACK. Prepare yourselves http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=2153
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May 27, 2014 19:10
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God Over Djinn posted:You'll live to regret this day. To make it more official, and update the due date. Djinenzahn Brawl Write me a dramatic, thrilling story whose plot is driven by information asymmetry between the involved characters. You may shift POVs and employ multiple scenes to accomplish this. For extra challenge, at one point in the story, a major character must brush their teeth, and this must be important. Wordcount: 1500-2500 words. Due: 7 June @ 23:59:59 CEST (GMT+2) Don't make me want to shoot myself, mmkay?
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May 27, 2014 22:11
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Alright. In like I've never been. Which means, uh, followed by a picture of mining procedures?
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May 27, 2014 23:32
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D.O.G.O.G.B.Y.N. posted:Alright. In like I've never been. Which means, uh, followed by a picture of mining procedures? http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=1666  Flash Rule: a man of wealth and taste
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May 27, 2014 23:42
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Erogenous Beef posted:
Urban Greenspace 762 words Marlena stood and sprayed the rows of green and red and gold. Zucchini, Serrano chiles, and golden Amana heirloom tomatoes glistened, wet diamonds winking in the sun. She pumped the handle of her manual sprayer, building up pressure. “Spraying piss all over our vegetables again? You gross bitch.” Cassie grinned at Marlena from the doorway, Dolly Parton concert t-shirt over her work skirt. Jacket, shirt, tie, Keen flats, and bra had all been shed between the front door and the balcony. She clamped her fingers around her nose and stuck her tongue out. Two bottles of River Horse Summer Blonde hung from her other hand. “You can’t even smell it, dumbass.” Marlena shook her head and sprayed a row of eggplant. “It’s a twenty to one dilution.” “It’s loving disgusting, is what it is.” Cassie stepped out onto the balcony and kissed her on the cheek. Then she reached down and gave her other cheek a squeeze. Marlena giggled. “Cut that out. Trying to work here.” She started in on the cucumbers. “And not only is urine a great fertilizer, it’s saving us a ton of money. Think about how many flushes I save because I’m willing to sit on a Towa however many times a day.” She raised an eyebrow and looked Cassie in her blue, blue eyes. “And we’d save twice as much if you’d lower yourself to do the same.” “Hey, I make most of the money around here.” Cassie flopped into a lawnchair and opened a bottle of beer with her Devils keychain opener. “I can waste it instead of acting like a cavewoman.” “Gimme one of those.” She snatched the Summer Blonde from Cassie’s hand. “Open yourself another one.” Marlena knocked back a good slug. Sweet malt, lemon and orange, clean and crisp as a breezy summer day. “You like it?” Cassie opened the other bottle and took a sip. “Great choice,” Marlena said. She tapped her bottle against Cassie’s. “You ready for dinner?” “Not yet. Let’s just sit for a little while.” Marlena settled into the other chair. Both women sipped their beers and looked out at the sun, orange fire dipping below the Philadelphia skyline. Camden’s dirty, brown suburban sprawl spread out before them up to the river. Concrete hi-rises, soot-stained brick townhouses like their own. Sirens wailed fitfully. A man and a woman were having a loud argument in Spanish from the next building down. Smoke from a dying apartment fire smudged across their view of the Delaware. “You know,” Marlena said. “It’s so sad to see how beautiful the river looks when you know how polluted it really is.” “Uh-huh,” Cassie said. She took a long sip of her beer. “We live in a shithole, baby. Kinda the price of staying debt-free while I work up to partner.” Marlena shook her head. “I’m not complaining about here, exactly. It’s the whole world, almost. Poison in the air, water, soil. But it’s really easy to see here. You know someone was shot in a drive-by just three blocks away today?” “I didn’t.” Cassie took a pack of Marlboros from her skirt pocket and shook one out. “That’s the kind of thing I almost don’t even want to know about. Makes me think we should just bite the bullet and move across the river.” “I don’t wanna lose my Jersey residency, and I don’t want us to go into debt.” Marlena sighed and held her bottle up to the sunlight. “I just wish my writing was making us any money.” “It will, baby. Someone will catch on to your genius eventually.” “Sure.” Marlena laughed. “I’ve been published once in a queer spec-fic rag. Not exactly the most marketable credit.” Cassie scowled and blew smoke out her nose. “I didn’t invite you to be my kept woman so you could compromise your artistic integrity to be marketable.” Marlena blinked her eyes at Cassie. “Kept woman? I’m the one that keeps you, you bitch.” Both women laughed and settled into a peaceful silence. “I don’t know,” Marlena said after a few minutes. “It’s just like we live in this wasteland of slag and pollution and, and ugliness.” “Then this is our perfect little garden in the heart of the waste.” Cassie flashed her brilliant white teeth. “That’s pretty good.” Marlena saluted with her beer. “Maybe you should be the one writing. I’ll go do your job. I bet I can lawy’ with the best of them.” “You’d eat them alive.” Cassie put out her cigarette in her empty beer bottle. “I think I’m ready for that food.” Erogenous Beef posted:Extension granted. However, I demand penance. Dunno if this was just for making GBS threads Rear, but since I abused her extension I'll go for it. smoke, salt, fat, meaty cliches are only bad when they don't taste divine eggs, benedict, oh! what did old arnold do to earn this legacy?
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May 28, 2014 02:40
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Forgot to ask- do we have to continue the original story?
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May 28, 2014 04:44
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CommissarMega posted:Forgot to ask- do we have to continue the original story? no
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May 28, 2014 05:51
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I'm in with this:
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May 28, 2014 07:48
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Sitello Brawl Uh I got v busy, enjoy ur win Marty. Simple things 1500 Cierra looks out to the west. Her mind is flayed skin, a dead flap hanging on by a string of grey dermis. A wind comes. It tugs at the dead flap, blows sand into the necrotizing fleshy place underneath. The wind is a voice: “You didn’t do it, did you?” The wind is blowing out of Jason’s mouth. He’s standing behind her in the front yard of their rented house. Cierra can feel that he is standing in her shadow. She imagines herself from behind: A tall black silhouette eclipsing the sun. If only Jason didn’t know she was human; she could be a pillar of stone or a tree stump. “Do what?” “You know what.” “I’m too poo poo for a job. You know that.” “Cierra,” Jason says, his voice angled plaintively downward. “...” There is a long silence, and Cierra wonders how anyone could possibly fill it. By the time she knows that she needs to speak, to assuage Jason’s worries, he’s already talking again. “You know I never wanted to do any ultimatum-type things.” The wind in his words rattle through Cierra, whipping her insides around like naked winter branches. She cannot even begin to think of how to erect a barrier against this wind. “I’m just at my breaking point. I work. I cook. I shop. We haven’t been to bed together for, what, six months?” Jason says to bed together like he is holding the words with two fingers, like a dirty diaper or soiled rag. Cierra sees the scene in third person: Herself, standing out by the chain link fence that separates their yard, which is an overgrown square of grass, from the potholed street beyond. Between her and the setting sun is a row of houses, and behind that, another row of houses, whose roofs peek up over the first row like the backdrop of a popup book. She sees herself say, “I’ll try,” hardly moving her lips. - Get Paid to do Homework! the job listing reads. Full time students welcome! “But I’m not a student,” Cierra says, leaning back in her computer chair. Jason is leaning over her shoulder, his breathing heavy with excitement. “No, I called today pretending to be interested in the job. Just to, you know, find out if you’d be able to do it. They mainly just need someone to babysit the reception desk, that’s why it’s open for students. It’s just answering a couple phone calls per day and saying ‘hi’ to nice old people.” Cierra closes her eyes. She is Sisyphus at the bottom of a hill. Jason’s breath is hot desert wind in her ear. “You said you’d try,” he says in that parental, I’m-About-To-Count-To-Three tone. - Cierra finds herself in an ergonomic grey desk chair in a room that sounds like computers. Across the polished desk from her is William Evertson, who owns the Luxe Condominiums. “Now look, you aren’t going to just up and leave when something better comes along, are you? I’ll be honest, we don’t usually hire people with this sort of cee-vee,” Mr. Evertson says. Cierra reaches across the table and taps her resume. “My last date of employment was two years ago. I did accounting just long enough to pay off the student loans, that’s it. I just want a simple thing that I can be good at.” Mr. Evertson looks at her over his round glasses. “There’s not much opportunity for advancement.” “I am friendly, consistent, and on time,” Cierra says, hearing Jason’s voice in her head. They’d said the words together, before he’d dropped her off for the interview. “Some people just want to be those things. I’m not looking to be anyone’s boss.” Mr. Evertson takes off his glasses and rubs at the bridge of his nose. After a moment, he says, “You know what, I’m going to do it. I’m going to hire you. I’ve owned this place for forty years, and there’s a type. And I think you’re that type. Can I assume you’ll be available to come in on Monday?” Cierra stares into Mr. Evertson’s face. His words are not matching up with the script. A thought-loaded freight train screeches to a halt, reverses directions. “Monday,” she says. “Monday is great.” - Cierra is mostly bored for the first two weeks of her job as Receptionist at the Luxe Condominiums. But it’s a good kind of bored. She can spend most of her time staring up at the elaborate baroque ceiling of the Luxe’s lobby, counting shapes in the woodwork. Most of the folks who shuffle by give a cheerful hello and a comment about the weather, then get on the waiting shuttle to go thrifting or grocery shopping. Some of them want to talk. When the residents want to talk about pain, Cierra doesn’t know what to say. “You want to die, but then when you start dying, you want to keep moving. You’ve got to keep moving,” ninety-year-old Ethel Claire tells her one day, when the shuttle is late and the residents have to stand longer than usual. Cierra sees herself almost say: but wouldn’t it be easier to just stop? And then she doesn’t know what to say, because what she has to say is wrong. But she can’t not believe it. But she also can’t tell Ethel, who’s survived two open heart surgeries and a hip replacement, that suffering leaches all meaning from life. So she says, “I think the shuttle just pulled up,” because it has. “You’ll see someday,” Ethel says as she shuffles away, leaning heavily on her walker. - “I’m proud of you,” Jason says when Cierra brings home her first paycheck. “Look, you don’t have to pay me rent. You could save up, go to school for something you’re actually passionate about.” “...” Jason deflates slightly. “Babe, don’t you want to make something of yourself? Do something you’re proud of?” The sun is setting. Its light lances into the small living room, bounces off of the glass coffee table and into Cierra’s eyes. She opens her mouth, then closes it. A terrible truth too large to fit through her throat is lodged somewhere under her sternum. Mrs. Claire died today, she had rehearsed saying on her way home. She fell over right in the lobby, and I froze up. I watched myself not do anything at all. One of the other residents had to come around to my side of the desk and dial 9-1-1. I won’t be going back, Jason. Mr. Evertson says that whoever runs the reception desk needs to at least be able to dial 9-1-1. Her first paycheck, and her last. “I can hardly be responsible for my own life,” she whispers, knowing that Jason will only hear one of her codes, one of her games, the twisted mouth of her psychic defects spitting riddles at him. It would be so simple, to tell the truth. He would understand. Except the truth is too large, and too close. “Oh, Cierra. Tell me you didn’t quit.” “Not exactly, but….” She’s almost gagging on the truth. There’s no way to fit it into words, how she watched herself watch the life go out of someone, knowing that she should at least try to get them help. It didn’t matter whether it would have made a difference; she couldn’t have known that when she was sitting in her desk chair, watching her body from the outside, counting the shapes in the looping woodwork of the ceiling. Jason is looking at his shoes, hands on his hips, shaking his head. His face is red. “I thought you were doing good Cierra. But it’s always like this. It’s always, you do something long enough to get me off your back, and then you go right back to slacking off.” This is the conversation she’s been waiting for. She floats around herself, a disembodied camera, not defending herself, not explaining. Sheer psychic pain has ejected her from her body. She is in herself, and in the pain, and in the air all around herself at once. She starts laughing. “I think you should go stay at your mom’s house for tonight, maybe. I just don’t think I can deal with this,” Jason is saying. Cierra is laughing because the pain is so pointless, so baseless. She can walk right out of this living room and onto a beam of orange-red evening light. She can stop. It had been so easy for Ethel Claire, so simply slump down through her body and out of the world. To impale herself on a sunbeam, Cierra thought, couldn’t be much harder. Twenty minutes later, Cierra is at the bus stop, watching Jason’s car drive away. The bus to Burien, where her mother lives, is in two minutes. It comes and goes. The evening is balmy, and the sun is still throwing warm, jagged light onto the faces of trees and houses. Another bus comes and goes; the sun falls below the horizon, and the sky turns pink-purple-blue. Cierra looks out to the west, and tries to simply stop.
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May 28, 2014 08:27
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Obliterati posted:I'm in with this: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=504
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May 28, 2014 08:45
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Oops, forgot to add the breakfast haikus. water boiling now simmer; the egg drops in soon, poached eggs on toast overlooked spinach withering in the crisper a healthy breakfast
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May 28, 2014 08:54
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Erogenous Beef posted:To make it more official, and update the due date. :/
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May 28, 2014 10:57
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Time for the weekly http://imgur.com/FQCPChc
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May 28, 2014 14:45
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Someone's got to come in last. Hit me:
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May 28, 2014 17:48
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lambeth posted:Time for the weekly http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=65 Drunk Nerds posted:Someone's got to come in last. Hit me: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=247
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May 28, 2014 18:01
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 Sittello Brawl: Judgment Martello posted:Urban Greenspace - 762 words All right, you've got a nice opening sentence and a decent hook opening your second paragraph. I generally enjoyed this, despite it being a vignette. The middle felt a bit saggy (possibly a result of being a vignette), but your prose was crisp and clear, as were the characters. My complaint? It's a vignette and it's not really sparkling or clever enough to be a standout piece. It's a portrait of two women with very different lives eking out an early-twenties existence in a slummy area. Pleasant, but I'm left unfulfilled; I don't know what idea ran beneath the surface here aside from some vague sense of twentysomething ennui. You hit the prompt nicely in two different ways, both the overt "nice garden/lovely area" way and the subtler "nice relationship/hard life" way. Your first line is nicely iambic, but your last line... eh, not so much. Sitting Here posted:Simple things - 1500 This felt like it was written in haste. The prose is very muddled and I had a very difficult time tracking the actions and motivations of your main character; it felt like I was peering through cheesecloth. What I'm able to divine is that a woman with some sort of social anxiety disorder gets a job after her boyfriend nags her about it, then fucks up, gets thrown out and is so anxious that she just ends up standing at the bus stop, paralyzed by her own dysfunction. Erm, yay? I mean, you did go for writing an actual story, which is a point in your favor over Marty's vignette, but the prose itself was so cloudy, and so dominated by dialogue, that I had a difficult time reading your characters as something other than paper cutouts. I never understood the whys of the girl's motivation aside from "she is depressed/anxious and/or lazy." And you left the crucial scene -- where she's so paralyzed by dysfunction that she lets an old lady die -- off-camera, which was a "toss up hands, I'm done here" moment. Neither your first nor last lines were in identifiable meter, nor was I able to drag out how your broken character related to the Whitman poem, aside from just being broken. I didn't see a seed of perfection in her. Martello Wins Now for the haiku subbrawl. Martello posted:smoke, salt, fat, meaty The first one is clever and the second catchy. This is a strong showing. I am also predisposed to liking bacon haikus. Sitting Here posted:water boiling I hate both poached eggs and vegetarian breakfasts. Egginess aside, the first one's decent, in my mind, but something about the second rankles. Also, I dunno about you, but I think "water boiling" is four syllables... So, for the haiku subbrawl,  Martello Wins
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May 28, 2014 22:31
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sebmojo posted:http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=1666 I didn't quite ask for a flash rule, but alright! I'll take it, anyhow. Hope I can guess his name, eh, eh.
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May 28, 2014 22:40
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D.O.G.O.G.B.Y.N. posted:I didn't quite ask for a flash rule, but alright! I'll take it, anyhow. Hope I can guess his name, eh, eh. One of the perks of judgement, to make up for the wearying task of trudging through acres of barely considered drivelprose, is delivering Flash Rules like lightning upon the unprotected scalps of the unworthy, whether you want one or not. Keep your head low, friend.
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May 29, 2014 02:06
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Fumblemouse posted:One of the perks of judgement, to make up for the wearying task of trudging through acres of barely considered drivelprose, is delivering Flash Rules like lightning upon the unprotected scalps of the unworthy, whether you want one or not. Yes. My insolence shames me and thus I bow, and in penance beg for another flash rule to be granted upon me, cumulatively with the previous one.
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May 29, 2014 03:08
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omgshutup
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May 29, 2014 03:10
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I'm in.
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May 29, 2014 04:03
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magnificent7 posted:I'm in. Oh my oh bless my lucky stars http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=158
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May 29, 2014 04:20
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You loserbrawlers had better be working hard.
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May 29, 2014 13:00
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sebmojo posted:
As promised, here's a Long-form crit in the form of bold interparagraph comments for most stuff, with some callouts on the side for minor issues and/or jokes. TL;DR: CLARITY, GOD drat YOU.
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May 29, 2014 16:25
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:
Oh fantastic and powerful Muffin, Know that before I hit the post button, I won't fake a sob, I've got a new job; My challenge you should probably roughen. I am here to request an extension, (as I suffer from some apprehension); The deadline is soon, Oh great, wonderful goon, I hope that this won't cause contention.
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May 29, 2014 17:10
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:You loserbrawlers had better be working hard.
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May 29, 2014 17:11
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magnificent7 posted:I am. Your story (which I must start from) is too good. Sets a very high bar. 2) no it doesn't. It's probably the worst story I've written for the dome; it's so bad that I went back and wrote a second entry for that week because I hated it so much. 3) I don't like kiss-asses. Pseudoscorpion posted:Oh fantastic and powerful Muffin,
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May 29, 2014 17:40
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:1) I wasn't talking to you.
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May 29, 2014 17:43
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magnificent7 posted:My deadline is Friday? Or that other rear end kisser? Funny hobby you've got for an illiterate.
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May 29, 2014 18:10
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magnificent7 posted:My deadline is Friday? Or that other rear end kisser? The post about loserbrawlers and the Friday deadline both concern a special brawlfest that Muffin has set up. They're unrelated to the round proper.
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May 29, 2014 18:15
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Erogenous Beef posted:
Next time, T-dog.
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May 29, 2014 19:14
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Erogenous Beef posted:As promised, here's a Long-form crit in the form of bold interparagraph comments for most stuff, with some callouts on the side for minor issues and/or jokes. Chrs. Enable comments on yours so I can reciprocate, pls.
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May 29, 2014 23:35
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Echo Cian posted:Funny hobby you've got for an illiterate. quote:magnificent7 (SA) At least he actually writes (while having a job and a life)
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May 30, 2014 03:02
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If it's not too much trouble, could I please have a story? I'd like to enter this week. I spent the last few weeks thinking about the feedback I've been given in the Thunderdome and believe that this week I can make some improvements. In fact I had a friend read an edit of my story and he said it was very good. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't bullshit me, on account of us being friends since fourth grade, but I need the razor sharp teeth of Thunderdome to confirm for me that my skills are improving. I'm hoping I get a real doozy of a last line, so that I can impress everybody.
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May 30, 2014 03:14
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 I'm in.
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May 30, 2014 04:38
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Cache Cab posted:
And you need an image.
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May 30, 2014 04:55
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| # ? Apr 18, 2024 11:10 |
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Entenzahn posted:Rebirth sebmojo fucked around with this message at 11:28 on May 30, 2014 |
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May 30, 2014 11:15
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