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SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
I wanna fight loving Martello or somebody where is he.

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Chairchucker
Nov 14, 2006

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022




Judgment!

Fast judgin' complete.

The winner is Tyrannosaurus. It was fun and funny and a unique take on the prompt and had some nice emotion.

Prroooooommmmpt!

Oh also. HMs to Sebmojo, Sitting Here and Obliterati.

Loser, and the easiest choice Djeser and I had to make, JcDent. A badly written, error riddled tale of nothing happening.

DM goes to Beef Steakwell for rewriting a Bible story and doing a very boring job of it.

Bad Seafood
Dec 10, 2010


If you must blink, do it now.
Prompt prompts prompt prompt pomp and circumstance.

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

thsi but in reverse

Bad Seafood
Dec 10, 2010


If you must blink, do it now.
:siren: INTERPROMPT :siren:

As we left this world behind, I realized I'd forgotten something.

200 words.

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
4/5? Well, can't wait for the next prompt. I don't think there would be that much fun in writing after 5/5 DM/losses.

Now, with such grand standing statements, the next one should be either really really good, or give you the next thread title

As for interprompt:

Calamity Jane brought her 'mech to halt atop a red dune and opened fire with the autocannons. Tracers raced towards the advancing undulating horde of colonists and one of the dinky little rovers exploded in a faint ball of fire, its comically over-sized wheels flying off in any direction.

Her radio crackled:

"Well, Jane, how do you feel fighting the zombie hordes?"

Jane arced a glob of chewed tabacco at the spittoon she had had installed in her cockpit and launched missiles. As high explosives and shrapnel tore through emanciated bodies and dirty dregs of environment suits, she flipped the com switch.

"That's bull, Hank, an' you know it. I reckon these fellas just plain forgot what it is to be human, what wit' havin' left good ol' Earth behind".

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









JcDent posted:

Calamity Jane in a piece this short: unless you're making a point of it, don't just grab names from history like this - used like this it's either cliche, or fanfic brought her 'mech vague, I don't understand what a mech is (i do, but why should you expect the reader to?) Describe it, don't reference to a halt atop a red dune and opened fire with the autocannons. this feels like you've got the stats in your head. don't write like an rpg splatbook unless that's what you're writing Tracers raced towards the advancing undulating blissfully weird though the combination is, this word doesn't belong here horde of colonists and one of the dinky little rovers exploded in a faint ball of fire, its comically over-sized wheels flying off in any direction. okay so i'm now thinking this is a cartoony hilarious story; as a way of minimising the impact of the violence, this line is actually decent.

Her radio crackled:

"Well, Jane, how do you feel fighting the zombie hordes?" wait but they can't be zombies they're driving

Jane arced a glob of chewed tabacco at the spittoon she had had installed in her cockpit this is a well-expressed and concise character conveying moment (if cliche, but eh) and launched missiles (5D6/8D6 Scatter on a 3 or more). As high explosives (5D6) and shrapnel (6D6) tore through emanciated bodies and dirty dregs of environment suits, she flipped the com switch.

"That's bull, Hank, an' you know it. I reckon these fellas just plain forgot what it is to be human, what wit' havin' left good ol' Earth can i just pause to say this is very bad dialogue. read better books. behind". okay now it's totally horrifying. it works if you're imagining a video game because they're insane but as a piece of fiction it's tonally dissonant; the light jolly "farming the creeps w/ my SRM6s" air is whiplashed into "these chars are massacring people and laughing about it." You could totally manage that line and do a (very good) story about it, but this isn't it.

you have good words and can put a sentence together, just start writing something that's not an rpg session recap.

sebmojo fucked around with this message at 12:22 on Nov 17, 2014

N. Senada
May 17, 2011

My kidneys are busted
Interprompt

You loving idiot - 138 words

As the devil stabbed me with a four-pronged trident,
I wondered how my time was so poorly spent
so my eternal fate was to suffer this poo poo.

Of the many sins I committed,
none seemed properly fitted
to define me as so truly wicked.

And then, as if I could see it,
I remembered what was so egregious:
I forgot to submit my story to the 'dome.

My soul ached for forgiveness
and in my state of weakness
I prostrated myself at the throne.

"Please forgive me," I did moan
and the Queen allowed her mercy show,
"Rise and know what awaits you.

"You have a chance to redo
as is outlined in the rules.
But know that we don't allow just talk."

I nodded solemnly, hope in my eyes.
Next time I'm in,
I'm in with a :toxx:

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

:siren:QUICKCRITS, WEEK 119:siren:

Cache Cab - Spidersplosion
I hope you return to the blood arena someday, because this story wasn't painful to read. Honestly, I wasn't expecting much when I read it, but I got a few grins out of it. Those grins were in spite of some rough prose, though, so you could have used that extra time to polish it up so that instead of a sloppy, fun mess, I could have read a cleaner, more polished fun mess. This wasn't HM quality, but with practice and polish, you could easily write something worthy of the Goofy Cabal of Thunderdome Veterans who Don't Like People Who Post Early.

cthonic bell - Something Happened In Russia
I didn't find anything technically wrong with the writing here. It was effective, slightly sparse, but caught the lazy commotion after a bombing. The issue was really that I didn't know what happened at the beginning, and I didn't know what happened at the end, or why any of it mattered that much. Of course, we want our protagonists to survive, but I didn't feel any reason why I want that here. The conflict seems to be just that he's waking up after an explosion, which doesn't work all that well to draw me in. Maybe there's some historical context here that I'm missing. In any event, you're one of the better mewling babbies this week.

Mercedes - Psyche, I Wrote About Black Satan Again
So it starts off with a very Douglas Adams/Terry Gilliam-esque satire of bureaucracy, then your main character falls through the tonal shift and, oh, hey, turns out this is a Black Satan story! Except you don't make a whole lot of use out of him, since he shows up near the end and doesn't do much fun campy Black Satan stuff. This was still fun to read, but it feels kind of rushed--Salem witch comes kind of out of left field, because I got the impression she was a modern woman from everything else. It was still kind of fun and goofy, but other people wrote better, funnier stories this week.

thehomemaster - The Apocalypse, But Gay
I don't remember much about the writing here, which means it was probably fine. Some of your dialogue was a bit weird ("The world is literally crumbling, Mother Nature is literally putting us to sleep"--too much 'literally' for one thing) but I can sort of get behind the idea of the apocalypse. The main trouble I had is that you've got a bunch of apocalypse tropes, you kinda tug on them all, and then you don't tie them together, so there's just a bunch of tropes dangling around. Why is a natural apocalypse important to these two guys' relationship? If it isn't, why is the nature of the apocalypse in there? Is flying important enough to him to make it the title of the story?

Cacto - Robots Just Don't "Get" Us
Good starting line. The first part of it sets up an expectation, and the second part of it subverts that expectation and takes it in a new direction. What if robots took over and everyone was cool with it? Unfortunately after that, there are some more typical story beats--lost the job to the robots, okay. I like the idea of people coping with post-scarcity life where no one has to work. Ends on a sad note, obviously. I can't say that's a bad thing, but by the midpoint of the story, it was kind of the thing I was expecting. There were a few points where I had to go back and reread to make sure I got things right, mostly where the perspective shifts a bit between the AI (which I didn't get was the big main AI at first--again, clarity/information issue) and your protagonist. Some good emotions here, but not enough to push it into HM territory.

Entenzahn - The One With The Clam Puns
I'm betting you want to know whether it was funny, and yeah, it was. Funnier than Merc's. It crosses over a little into goofiness at points, but I can forgive it that for the clam puns you made--plus, there were generally some good ideas in there that went beyond just "calamity, but with clams". Some good, silver agey dumb superhero stuff. Killing villains is super bad though? That struck me as odd at first, just because you hadn't really made it clear that it was taboo to actually kill your villains in this universe/for this hero/whatever. For the kind of simplistic pulp writing style you used, your words were pretty good too.

blue squares - :(
Some pretty classical tragic irony there. Your writing itself is pretty good, though as a complete opposite from thehomemaster's story, as I was reading, I wanted to know more about what was happening. Why are there fires and flooding at the same time? How do the firefighters get in to save them if the flooding is happening? Why have they come back to this place that has a special meaning to them? Did they come here before the calamity trapped them or after? The central conflict of your piece works dramatically, but the setting feels odd, like it might have been better suited for something else as opposed to these people in a hotel room. (Also, one more question: do poisons act that quick?) Good words, but the premise left me slightly baffled.

Baby Babbeh - Thank God The Cat's Okay After Blue Squares Or I'd Be Really Upset
I liked a lot of this, your descriptive paragraphs in particular. You manage to do a lot by describing the water level dropping to that of the kitchen lintel, and the mud as coming up to the level of the girl's height mark on the door frame--it works to put the flood into a very domestic context, and that's perfect, because the flood was literally in their house. The weaker part of the story is when his ex shows up--it took me a little while to figure out she was his ex, because at first I thought maybe she was his daughter, and I wasn't sure. And then there's a lot of back and forth talking and they don't say anything really specific, and that's not as interesting as talking in specifics. All in all, you can feel proud that you're the cream of the crop of newbies this week. In a weaker week, this could have been Honorable Mention for the nice descriptive work (it's tough to get description that works on that many layers) but this week had a lot of really strong players and the weighty Divorced People Kind Of Reconciling Chat dragged you down.

Gau - Hey, Djeser Likes Folk Tales
I do. And I liked the style and the retelling thing going on here, I thought that was well-executed. The story itself, though, didn't have all that much going for it. The calamity wasn't as much of an inciting conflict as it could have been, and it's mostly a story where they find a pilot dying, then give him a burial at sea, and also there was a fire but their village was spared. With a clearer conflict this could have been a lot better; as it is, it appealed stylistically to me but the content was kind of meh, and I guessed it was planes pretty early on so dancing around it was a bit boring. Well-constructed, but the story didn't live up to the framing device.

Jitzu_the_monk - First Place Winner, Relevant Username Competition
Of the earlier bunch of stories, this one probably had the tightest plotting. There was a lot going on, and you introduced the characters well enough that you could pull off the plot beats relatively quickly. It was slow to start in the beginning, though--you probably could have cut out some of that. Then again, I've got a low tolerance for marketing professionals. Aside from that, this is another one that would have been higher in a weaker week, but it's still compelling and I liked reading it.

Beef Steakwell - Hope You Remember Bible School
Good job on using the biblical source, I guess. I didn't realize until I got past the first scene jump that we were talking the literal Biblical plagues of Egypt. The story aside from that is a bit...neh? Apart from its context, there are some things that are unexplained--how/why is she the traitor here? I'm sure if I read the Wikipedia article on Exodus it would make more sense, but a story, even one that's borrowing heavily like this one, should be able to stand without needing to go to an external source. Your prose is also kind of messy here, varying between different levels of Dramatic Bible Drama Dialogue. My advice for next time would be to write a story that isn't bible fanfic. Welcome to Thunderdome, try not to get slaughtered next time.

Tyrannosaurus - Please Don't Post My Livejournal Blog Entries, Tyrannosaurus
Between this one and the one you wrote for descriptive week, I get the idea that you like the internal monologue sort of style, and here, it works a lot, since we're seeing the introverted protagonist's thoughts. You made an interesting, yet simple choice with the calamity, and told an interesting, yet simple story of a goony guy overcoming his self-anxiety to walk away from a lovely GM and take a risk on running a game himself. You also captured the adolescent coolness-posturing well, so to use my stock phrase here, the emotions felt very real. It was also pretty amusing, but also meaningful, and being on the meaningful side gave you the edge over the sillier HMs. (sittinghere and seb, if you didn't know)

Clandestine! - Clever Title: This Reveals The Twist But You Don't Know It
Okay, twist aside for the moment, this was pretty good. I got the emotions it was going for, and it felt like actual people for the most part, though it was a bit hard to get why she went through with marrying him if he could be so lovely. You did a good job of showing why he wasn't a good candidate for husband, but it was harder to see what she saw in him. His mother seemed kind of melodramatic, but other than that, people acted like people. And then the twist ending. Now I see what you were going for, the slight hints you were dropping, but the trouble with twist endings like that is that they come out of nowhere, change everything, and leave you wondering what it was supposed to mean. To steal something from my co-judge while we were chatting: what does her being a harpy add emotionally that her punching him doesn't? It doesn't really affect the story, it happens too quickly and too close to the end for that. I was feeling the story pretty well up until the end, and then it veered off and, oh, she's an actual harpy, I didn't read that wrong. Aside from that, this is not a bad first entry, even by this week's rather cushy standards.

Anathema Device - A Very Special Thunderdome
The writing in here was fine--there was some good stuff, some stuff that made me think back to the time I was on pain medication and I found out that the pills gave me a pleasant high, then I took them too often and barfed and then I had to take it easy on the pills. I'm down with the weird pill thoughts the protagonist was having. The problems here are twofold: First, it's an after-school special about how doing drugs is bad. At least it's not overly moralizing about how drugs make you a terrible person, but still, the plot is pretty old territory. And second, there are way, way too many transitions for 700 words. You jump seven times in that, and it makes the story seem scattershot.

Kaishai - Noo, Birds
This was one of my HM candidates. I liked the symbolism with the feathers from the dead birds, and the way it dawns on him that he doesn't want to have just a "feather" from his aunt to remember her by. Would birds really freeze like that to trees? I've never seen that, but then I never had snows quite as heavy as that, so maybe that does happen. In any event, I don't have a ton to say about it. Well-written, among the best this week.

JcDent - A Guy Stares At A Hole
I liked the style of the world you were setting up, but the problem with this story was that nothing happened. The major conflict of the story, that the bar is destroyed, gets obviated by the end, because he decides he doesn't care about it and he'll go and work with his brother in Space Gamestop. If one defines the plot of a story as the series of actions a character takes in order to reach their intended goal, your story does not have a plot, because he takes no action. Next time, instead of writing a lot of exposition about a world that might be interesting to see a story in, start your story by thinking about what your character wants, what's keeping him from getting it, and what he's going to do about it. Contemplating suicide and then deciding nah doesn't count. Also your tense jumped around between present and past like crazy, and there were sentences I just had trouble parsing. "The quicksilver pool… extremely toxic, very much lethal. Randy wouldn’t now, his childhood and teens were spent at the bar and running errands." Randy wouldn't know? If he wouldn't know, shouldn't he still not know? Tenses are all crazy.

Obliterati - How Many Potatoes Does It Take To Kill An Irishman
From the way it started off, I thought I wasn't going to like this. The first/second person usage is a bit weird, but then once you get into the two of them and the Morrigan, it makes more sense and it works, somehow. Even though you get dangerously close to purple prose, that works, too--yours was the sole serious story to make it up to the HMs (though I would have put Kai there too) and part of that is just thanks to the interesting idea. The second-person works because it's all spoken as an address, so it's not too odd--the one thing I thought while reading it was that the second-person character's presence during the conversation with the Morrigan was kind of nonexistant. He was there, but just watching, I guess? It's a small thing in a story that's generally strong and effective, and given the eloquent fantasy style you were writing in, it took some skill to make it as effective as it was.

EchoCian - I See What You Were Having Trouble With
This story is an interesting premise, but it's paired with a plot that's kind of independent of that premise and isn't really affected by it. A young woman is ostracized and contemplating suicide because of [trait], but a young man comes by to talk to her about [trait], and he's not scared of [trait] and he convinces her to not jump. It's a stock story with not much of a spin on it, though I do appreciate the nature of the calamity being more personal and less epidemic like some of the others.

Ironic Twist - Drugs Metaphors
This seems like a fairly easy story to write, but that you dressed it up with the metaphors made it more appealing, definitely. The love metaphor you took just about to the point where it'd become silly, but you stopped from going that far. The dark humor stuff lifted it up a bit in my eyes--the contrast between that and the more metaphorical stuff created a good tone, and it actually reminds me a bit of Phobia's Truly Alien week submission, Rooftop Brain Crack Blues. (I actually had to check to see who'd written that one, I thought it might have been you.)

Fumblemouse - Rich Family Stereotypes
I was the buzzkill who pointed out that, even though you had that part in the end where he reacts to what he assumes his family is doing, this isn't really a story with a narrative. That's not to say that it wasn't fun to read, because it is pretty fun and there's some good jokes in there. As I thought about it too, I felt that the jokes did lean on some pretty easy stereotypes of the well off family--Doesn't Actually Read Books, The Fat One, The Gold Digger, The Gay One, The Wife Who Slept Around, et cetera. It's still fun, but the characters do feel more like comedic props than real people. Also, I wasn't sure what the calamity was supposed to be--just that he's dead? Or that he murdered that guy?

Sitting Here - And he spake as an adult saying I AM THE FUN PASS COME
This was pretty cute and pretty fun, though it took a bit to get through the stylistic introduction of everyone and figure out who were the important players here. It was a little vague at parts, at least to me, but I was reading too fast to go back and I got the gist of things--I got tripped up a bit around the decision about something something if you pay for her air hockey. Also, is a Fun Pass like a credit card for Fun Bucks? If so, I wasn't quite sure.

Docbeard - loving Phones
This is the second "big explosion thing, slowly waking up" story, and I'd say this is the better one. Finding someone else's phone was a pretty interesting take on how to go from there, but the problem here was really the ending. They meet in real life, and then she runs off, because the phone was broken so presumably the guy she knows is dead? It seems like you weren't able to think of an appropriate payoff, because it's fine up until the ending, and then the ending is quick and feels kind of arbitrary.

ThirdEmperor - I Don't Get It
This was written competently, and there's some nice images in there. I just...didn't get what was going on. A guy's recovering from a supposed terrorist attack. Is the book title relevant somehow? Is the attack relevant? What's with his franticness near the end? I just didn't get this one, and maybe that's because CC and I both missed something, but if you were going for something in particular, it zoomed over both of our heads.

Grizzled Patriarch - And Then An Email Popped Out
This is really weird because it felt like it worked right up until the very end, even the first/second person mixed perspective (since addressing someone who's got alzheimers (I'm assuming) directly makes sense, if someone's telling them about the sort of person they were) but then after they die, there's an email from them. What? And then it ends. What??? What's going on with this one? Aside from being a twist ending, which we've established I don't like back with Clandestine!'s, I just don't get the twist.

Surreptitious Muffin - Fake It Until Your Imaginary Friend Eats You
I really liked this one, once I figured out what was going on with the two one two of them. And, what's good is that you explained what was going on early, so it didn't feel like you were trying to show how clever you were with a twist. It made for some good comedy which contrasted nicely against the tragedy/darkly comedic stuff and made a pretty good desperate humor kind of tone. It was one of my candidates for HM, that's how much I liked it.

SealHammer - Two Men Talk
I'll be honest, I don't remember a lot of what was going on in this one, besides there being two sides and one of the guys had switched sides. What you've got here is a talking heads story, which is when you have a story where two (or sometimes more, or sometimes less) people just stand and talk to each other about the state of the world. It's good for showing off worldbuilding. It's not so good for creating a compelling narrative that draws the reader in, because usually while two people are talking, things aren't happening. In fact, in this story, when things happen, it signals the end of a story. Remember, the plot of a story is the actions a character takes toward achieving their goal. Your story was so much exposition that I can't even tell you what the goal of your characters was, or what they were trying to do to achieve it, because it was mostly about these two guys talking about their lives.

Fuschia_tube - A Guy Stares At A Hole Flooded House
Similar to Kai's and to the guy who wrote about coming out as gay during the apocalypse, this is a story that's almost independent of the actual calamity, with a calamity that could offer more areas for interesting stuff. You caught me right at the top with the idea of hey, there's a second moon in the sky, but then all that your character did was drive to a town wrecked by a tidal wave and do a bit of symbolic grieving for his loved ones. It seems like a waste of a pretty interesting idea.

Sebmojo - Christmas Robots
This is one of those that's fun to write, right? Well, good thing it was also fun to read. It was silly, but the plot had enough odd turns that it didn't become just "Oh, people are robots, things are weird and then they all go back to normal." Things get weird, and then they get weirder, and it's goofy and fun to read.

ceaselessfuture - Rich People Being Dicks To Fat People
This was a fairly well-done story. What brought you down a bit was some clarity and editing issues--like the way you put in the fact that the bride revealed to her that she was cheating? The place you put that in makes it sound like the ice sculpture falls over, then the bride goes up to her and says, "hey, you know, I was having an affair with him." Also, I hadn't quite picked up on the fact that she was "fat", though the sweating was a fairly good clue. It could have used some editing for clarity, but overall I thought this was pretty good.

Your Sledgehammer - Ranma 1/2 University
This is another in the line of interesting calamities with missed potential. Again, you got me with the first line. Everyone switched genders? Ah, that's a pretty interesting calamity! But then as you go through it, you basically just fall out of the gender bender tree and hit every gender bender trope on the way down. Oh man, the cheerleaders are football players now and the football players are cheerleaders! And then it ends on a vaguely romantic note, but there hasn't really been a solid conflict other than his own freakout over things being weird. It feels as if there was more that could have been done (and more calamitous things) than what you gave us.

Djeser fucked around with this message at 13:02 on Nov 17, 2014

Martello
Apr 29, 2012

by XyloJW

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

I wanna fight loving Martello or somebody where is he.

o good evening officer

what's that? where am I coming from? your mother's house.

yes exactly. in the butt, she seems to prefer it that way.

where am I going? your wife's house in fact.

no she makes me dress up as a ballerina, but otherwise vanilla.

o sure I can absolutely slow down, bit of a lead foot here, heh.

yes. well thank you officer, very kind of you to give me another chance.

you know what? you drive safe too. have a wonderful evening.

i'll tell your wife you said hi.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

I wanna fight loving Martello or somebody where is he.

Martello posted:

o good evening officer

what's that? where am I coming from? your mother's house.

yes exactly. in the butt, she seems to prefer it that way.

where am I going? your wife's house in fact.

no she makes me dress up as a ballerina, but otherwise vanilla.

o sure I can absolutely slow down, bit of a lead foot here, heh.

yes. well thank you officer, very kind of you to give me another chance.

you know what? you drive safe too. have a wonderful evening.

i'll tell your wife you said hi.

:siren:The Hammer and the Muffin:siren:

Lets keep this fast and dirty; 800 words, a love story on a speeding train, no-one may speak. 21 Nov, high noon PST.

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

Is it OK to ask about interprompt criticism? Because I'm a little confused about autocannons and missiles and such and such. Should I replace "fired the autocannons" with something like "with a press of the trigger, she let loose the dogs of war, and 20 mm shells of her autocannon mulched a dirty old rover, showering the horde with hot metalic debris" or "the two boxy missile batteries did a minute adjustment of their position before triggering the munitions. Four arcs of smoke marked their path to the target down bellow: the front ranks of the shuffling colonists disappeared in fire". I'm confused as to how one should describe battle. .

And yes, I like reading RPG splatbooks(for the lore. Is that bad?), even if I don't get to play them

JcDent fucked around with this message at 13:25 on Nov 17, 2014

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010

Martello posted:

o good evening officer

what's that? where am I coming from? your mother's house.

yes exactly. in the butt, she seems to prefer it that way.

where am I going? your wife's house in fact.

no she makes me dress up as a ballerina, but otherwise vanilla.

o sure I can absolutely slow down, bit of a lead foot here, heh.

yes. well thank you officer, very kind of you to give me another chance.

you know what? you drive safe too. have a wonderful evening.

i'll tell your wife you said hi.
My wife's not vanilla you motherfucker you'll pay for that

Beef Steakwell
Jul 30, 2012
Thanks for taking the time to read it Chairchucker, will aim to get out of the DM zone next week.

Thanks for the quickcrit Djeser, I will try to write something original next time and think more about how much knowledge I assume on the part of my reader. The crit is appreciated.

blue squares
Sep 28, 2007

Hi, I'm obnoxious.


Cacto posted:

The perfect life (721 words) (Drive You Home by Garbage)

Love your first line. Hilarious. Unfortunately the rest of your story didn't have the same tone. It also didn't have a plot. I kept waiting for some kind of twist that would reveal a dark reality, but it seems like there wasn't one. Getting "fired" really does seem to be a good thing. So what's the problem?

Entenzahn posted:

Clamity
765 words

Your opening line would be much stronger if you put a period instead of the comma. The brevity of it would emphasis the strangeness of clams falling from the sky.
As for everything else, I really liked it. One of my favorite stories I've read in the Thunderdome, though I've only read about ten, so I don't know how much that counts. Still, I had a grin on my face almost the whole time.
I didnt understand the stuff in italics. Needed a few more clues as to what that was about.
Good job!

Jitzu,
I read your story and decided it need more than a summary of my thougts

Jitzu_the_Monk posted:

Switch
788 Words

ItDon't start a sentence, especially with the opening, with "it." "it" is a pronoun and there is nothing yet for "it" to refer to. wasn’t enough that priests were burning alive. Police deployed LRADs to deafen them. Other protestors rushed to extinguish the incendiaries, but the sound cannons had made coordination impossible.

“Needless,” said Min, watching from her condo This is your first of far too many present participle phrases. I'll mark the rest in bold.. Even twenty floors up, she caught a slight aroma of tear gas. She tasted its sourness,no comma is needed here because the second part of the sentence is a dependent clause (there is no subject, just a verb, so it can't stand alone as its own sentence) but lit a cigarette anyway.

An agnostic,Not a good way to start a sentence. Try to start sentences with subjects and verbs. Min had too many hads mocked the religious protestors as “extremist.” That included her sister, Shuang. “What’s so tyrannical about national licensure for clergy members?” Min had chided. Shuang hadn’t spoken to her since.

She took a long drag, picturing Shuang leading a band of protestors to their doom. “She should’ve listened to me. If the clergy had followed the law, there wouldn’t be violence." Who is she speaking to? This seems more like a thought

Min reached for her cellphone and this is better. Instead of a comma and an ing verb, use and. dialed Shuang. No answer. “Maybe she’s not out there tonight. She might be working late at the divinity school.”Again, thoughts? Is she talking aloud? Min felt a pit in her stomach.

Biting her lip, Min walked to her desktop. She checked the traffic on her image board. Visitors down. Ad revenue down. Picking up a pen, she began to scrawlscrawled ideas onto an index card: Ssocial media blitz; Ssite redesign; Ppartnership with other sites.

Min thought to call Gerald for advice. Though they’d just recently begun dating, Min considered her police academy boyfriend to be among the most practical people she knew. But when Min looked at her phone, she saw the “No Service” display. Looking up, she also noticed her modem lights had gone out.

Just then, Min heard a knock. She rose from her desk and proceeded to the door. Looking out the peephole, Min gasped. It was Shuang, forming her hands into the shape of a heart.

They embraced as soon as Min swung open the door.

“Since our last fight, I wasn’t sure you’d ever want to see me again. How’d you get in?" a dialogue tag would be good here

“One of your neighbors swiped into the building and held the door for me,” Shuang responded. “Have you heard the radio? Do you know about the kill switch?”

Min raised an eyebrow. “The kill switch?”

“Yeah,” said ShuangShuang said, “the government just shut down all internet and satellite communications. They’re trying to prevent protest coordination.”

“For how long? I’ve got a business to run!”

Shuang frowned. “There are protests going on and you’re worried about your finances?”

“These protests are ridiculous.”

Shuang took her sister’s hand. “I still want your support. Meet me in the square tomorrow at ten.”

“If you think I’m going out there, you’re crazy!”

“The daytime assemblies have been peaceful. We need to assert our rights, demand that they restore communications. The sooner they back down, the sooner you’ll have your business up and running again. Just think about it.”

**

The next day, Min wandered the square. As she looked for Shuang, she passed countless nuns, rabbis, and imams. She was moving through the crowd when she spotted a white van parked in an alley. Its backdoors slid open and a bald man in a monk’s robe stepped out.

“Gerald!” Min called. Who's Gerald? How does Min know him?

The man’s Gerald'seyebrows raised. He marched over. “Shhh,” said Geraldhe said. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I don’t care about the religious stuff, but I do want to protest the internet shutdown Bad dialogue. Why are you here? And what’s with the monk’s outfit?”

“You need to leave. Now.”

“Tell me what’s going on!”

“Shh! You’ll blow my cover. Just get out before things get bad.” Gerald turned and dissolved into the crowd.

Min hurried to the front of the march, looking for Shuang. At the front lines, protestors formed a wall facing the police. Given the violence of the previous night, Min wasn’t surprised that the cops were in riot gear. But she was surprised that atop their tanks, they were pointing rifles at the as-of-yet peaceful crowd.

“This is an illegal assembly,” an officer said through a megaphone. “You must peacefully disperse. Return to your homes.”

Min scanned the crowd. At last, she spotted Shuang. Min advanced, but on the way something caught her eye. It was Gerald, standing close to Shuang. He bent down, picked up a rock and threw it toward the police. It clanged against the side of a tank. Then other men dressed in similar robes hurled rocks of their own. None of them came close to hitting an officer.

“My God!” gasped MinMin gasped. “They’re giving the cops a pretext to—”

Bang. Shots rang out while white vans encircled the fleeing protestors. Min pushed toward Shuang.

“Min! You came!”

Min rushed forward but was yanked back by her hair. Two men grabbed Shuang and began to drag her away. The last thing Min saw before the white doors closed was Shuang, forming a heart with her hands.
I didn't buy Min going to the protest. Less details earlier and more convincing from Shuang would have made it a lot more realistic.

Beef Steakwell posted:

The Morning After
Word Count 727

had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had
That's just the start of the grammar problems. Google "comma splices" and quit using words like "interjected."
Also your story makes no sense. Who is this kid? You never tell the reader what the deal is.
Bad.

Tyrannosaurus posted:

Ding
789 words + 44 from Week 100
Wow. Great story. I'd cut the first line, though. You use "it" without a clear subject, and the next sentence says the same thing in a better way. Excellent characterization, dialogue, description, etc. Really nice job. I rolled my eyes when it got to the whole RPG thing, but you made it work. Loved the ending, too, though I think it ended one sentence too early, like it needed something to wrap it up with a bow on top. Still, you got me grinning. If you don't get an HM at least I'll be shocked.
You did play very loose with the calamity thing, though. The calamity is that he rolled a 1? Pretty weak, if you ask me. It feels like a story you wrote before this week and just put it in anyway.

Clandestine! posted:

Harpy
had had had she'd had had She'd had she'd had he'd had She'd had had ha had
Jesus, three stories out of the last four begin with "It." Stop doing that, people! And especially don't write the same sentence twice in a row.
"“Where is he?” to his mother" Who is the "he" in "his"? You tell the reader later, but it's confusing here.
"The driver was sitting on the hood" Try to avoid stuff like this. "Was" should be used as sparingly as possible. "The driver sat on the hood" is just as clear and is more tightly written.
"cartoonishly evil" I don't like this.

You didn't explain why she was marrying him in the first place. She seems to dislike him a lot and doesn't seem surprised at all by his betrayal. I would have preferred more emotion from Iris.
The ending twist was too abrubt and not clearly presented. This needed a read-through from a fresh perspective and more concrete details to let the reader envision what was happening. But that is a minor complaint compared to the lack of emotion in the story.
You forgot to write a story. In the beginning, a spaceship has crashed into a bar. Then you spend 700 words giving exposition. At the end, nothing has changed. Boring.

Fumblemouse posted:

wordcount:784


Willful Indescretion

I really like your concept. I just wish you had done something with it. You have excellent little bits, but what you don't have is a story. I was really hoping that there would be some clues to a murder, or something like that. As it is, it's a little art piece and not a story at all. It also doesn't much fit the prompt, in my opinion. Good actual writing, though, for what it's worth, but not the right choice made for the Thunderdome.

Sitting Here posted:

Uneasy Lies the Head That Wears a Party Hat
787 words

I was actually really excited to read this story, Sitting Here. I've never read a word of fiction by you, despite knowing who you are from this thread and the fiction discussion thread for over a year. So, it was no surpise when you wrote a story that was, on a technical level, written excellently. Still, it didn't draw me in, but I'll chalk that up to purely preferential reasons, because I can't find anything articulatable wrong with your story. My only complaint is that you didn't quite get me to care about what was happening. Not enough emotion in the characters. If this is truly a calamity for Riley (her losing her pass), I didn't feel it. Almost all of the description of the loss is done by other characterers. It's Riley who's lost the pass, but the events are presented from other characters' POVs and dialogue. A rewrite with a stronger focus on Riley's POV would have brought the emotional impact that a story like this needs to truly be successful.

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

in two minds about everything

Huh. Not sure what to say about this. I read it and I was entertained, but I was confused by the ending. You did a great job setting up the situation without talk-to-the-reader-exposition, but you lost me along the way. I had a hard time keeping track of Jan and Ander, and who was real and who wasn't.


Your Sledgehammer posted:

Whenever This World is Cruel to Me
713 words

Decent idea, abysmal execution. I'm sorry, but this was awful and the ending just a little creepy. The biggest problem is that the main character figures everything out way too quickly. Just a few lines of dialogue with Terry/Terri and Jake knows what is going on. He has very little reaction, and he gets over it quickly. Then the end, with the sudden attraction Jake feels toward Terri, reeks of some kind of fan-fiction/wish fulfillment.

ceaselessfuture posted:

Under the Ice
780 Words
"So it fell on him and no one knew what to do." Standing alone, this sentence means absolutely nothing. Again, we have a Thunderdome story starting with "it" were the subject that "it" refers to has not been identified. "it" could be the moon or it could the pungent uterus of a sperm whale that washed ashore and exploded. Use concrete nouns and verbs before you use pronouns.
"the largest she'd" There you go again, pronouns before the subject. Stop it.
"you fat gently caress!"" Whoa. That really came out of nowhere.

Uh... did you forget to write an ending? The POV has issues; you start in a more omniscient POV and then finish closer on Dory. And then it just seems to finish, as if you ran out of words. You need at least another paragraph to truly explain why Dory might not call for help.

blue squares fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Nov 17, 2014

Tyrannosaurus
Apr 12, 2006
:siren: THUNDERDOME CXX :siren:



You know what I mean?

Sign up and you’ll get a proverb.

Well, probably. You’ll probably get a proverb. You might get advice from a fortune cookie or maybe a meaningful quote off of a teenager’s pinterest. Who the gently caress knows? Roll the dice and bask in my charming whimsy.

When you get your super unique specialized prompt don’t be stupid about it. For instance, if you receive “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” don’t write me a story about birds and bushes. Don’t be literal. Glean the loving meaning from it and then gimme a goddamn story about the meaning of the proverb. Some will be easier than others. Some will have multiple ways to interpret.

Go hog wild!

But don’t be literal.

And don’t bitch.

Any genre.
1500 words.

Sign-Ups Close: Friday at midnight (EST)
Submissions Close: Sunday at midnight (HAST)

Turtles
Tyrannosaurus
Mercedes
docbeard

Hares
Blue Squares - Some people can't see a priest on a mountain of sugar
Gau - Baseball is what we were. Football is what we've become
SurreptitiousMuffin - A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for
Your Sledgehammer :toxx: -Experience is a comb nature gives us when we are bald
J.A.B.C. - A lazy shepherd is the wolf's friend
JcDent - A golden key can open any door
Entenzahn - Only those who can see the supernormal can learn to silence the reptile
Thalamas - The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but rather 'hmm... That's funny...'
Clandestine! - Teeth are just bones
Jitzu_the_Monk - Time isn't wasted when you're getting wasted
N. Senada :toxx: - A rising tide lifts all boats
Ironic Twist :toxx: - As the dog said, "if I fall down for you and you fall down for me, it is playing"
Grizzled Patriarch - A bulldog can whip a skunk but sometimes it's not worth it
Obliterati - There is hope as long as your fishing line is in the water
Sealhammer - War has no eyes
cthonic bell - A large chair does not make a king
Hammer Bro. - Any port in a storm
ThirdEmperor - Money makes monkeys of men
newtestleper - A man with a hammer sees every problem as a nail
Anathema Device - You can wake up a sleeping man with the slightest sound but no amount of noise, no matter how loud, can wake someone pretending to sleep
Djeser - They say you're nobody 'til somebody kills you but where I'm from you're nobody 'til you kill somebody
Sitting Here - There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly
sebmojo - When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea
Cacto - May night continue to fall upon the orchestra
Baby Babbeh - /Behold! Violets bloom within
/The fence of the forbidden ground.

crabrock - Cross the river in a crowd and the crocodile won't eat you
Pete Zah :toxx: - All children are artists
Fumblemouse - If you're gonna dine with them cannibals sooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten
ZeBourgeoisie - Pigs don't know what a pen's for
Indiana Cones - You can't stop the waves but you can learn to surf
Benny the Snake - You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs
systran - A lie travels round the world while truth is putting her boots on
Jonked - Don't be friends with the dog, for the tail will show it.
Nethilia - A drowning man will clutch at a straw
Barracuda Bang! - If size mattered, the elephant would be king of the jungle




:siren:Failures :siren:
ceaselessfuture - You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down
Beef Steakwell - A chain is only as strong as its weakest link

Tyrannosaurus fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Nov 23, 2014

blue squares
Sep 28, 2007

In.

Gau
Nov 18, 2003

I don't think you understand, Gau.
I am proverbially in.

Gau fucked around with this message at 14:51 on Nov 17, 2014

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
Sure. Hit me.

blue squares
Sep 28, 2007

Also, Gau, sure. I thought your story this week was downright awful, but didn't think putting that in my crit post would do much good. I can take some time out of my week to end your streak.

Your Sledgehammer
May 10, 2010

Don`t fall asleep, you gotta write for THUNDERDOME
In, :toxx:

J.A.B.C.
Jul 2, 2007

There's no need to rush to be an adult.


IN before I go to work. This should be some good exercise for me.

Entenzahn
Nov 15, 2012

erm... quack-ward

Gau posted:

God drat, you are obnoxious. This thread is for posting stories and critting stories. Veterans shitpost. That's it.

Any post you make over the next week had better be a signup, crit, story, or saying that you'll brawl me. Keep in mind that I'm 4/4 for brawls so it might be the best idea to take the first three options.

blue squares posted:

Also, Gau, sure. I thought your story this week was downright awful, but didn't think putting that in my crit post would do much good. I can take some time out of my week to end your streak.

:siren: Gau Home, blue Drunk Brawl :siren:



Write a horror story. Morbid, creepy, shittingpantsscary. Whatever. Horror story. There has to be horror. It has to be a story.

Also since we'll be like right in the middle of Christmas by the time this is over, pick two of these cheerful things and make them relevant to your entry. Don't tell me what you picked if I can't see it from reading the story you hosed up:

A drunk skeleton
Youthful innocence
A genuinely funny clown
The gift of giving
A dishwasher


2.500 words max. Use as many of them as you need. Not more, not less.
Deadline: 1 Dec, 2014 @ 23.59 CET (that's in Europe for gently caress's sake)

No vignettes. No extensions. No mercy. Write a story. WRITE! START WRITING!

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
I'm in for this week!

Entenzahn
Nov 15, 2012

erm... quack-ward
in

Mercedes
Mar 7, 2006

"So you Jesus?"

"And you black?"

"Nigga prove it!"

And so Black Jesus turned water into a bucket of chicken. And He saw that it was good.




I had an exceedingly lovely dream about being a contestant on a lovely reality knitting show with loving Usher as the game show host who was a dick to me every chance he got. After losing a challenge I immediately wake up before my loving alarm clock goes off. I'm uncharacteristically grumpy and I have a black cloud over my head.

Perfect time for judging.

Thalamas
Dec 5, 2003

Sup?
I'm in.

Clandestine!
Jul 17, 2010
In. Practice makes not-perfect-but-less-lovely, right?

Armack
Jan 27, 2006
In.

N. Senada
May 17, 2011

My kidneys are busted
In, :toxx:

Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh
In, :toxx:.

Grizzled Patriarch
Mar 27, 2014

These dentures won't stop me from tearing out jugulars in Thunderdome.



In.

Obliterati
Nov 13, 2012

Pain is inevitable.
Suffering is optional.
Thunderdome is forever.
In.

SealHammer
Jul 4, 2010
Click to understand my bad faith posting.
Maybe I'll write something less badder and more gooder.

In.

painted bird
Oct 18, 2013

by Lowtax
In.

Hammer Bro.
Jul 7, 2007

THUNDERDOME LOSER

Haha, what? Don't be literal? How do you suckers keep pulling me into your ranks when I've got far too many other priorities?

This is going to be a fun week. Them crits I owe might be a mite delayed. Just to clarify, you mean the midnight on Sunday that comes after the 11:59 PM on Sunday, right?

Beef Steakwell
Jul 30, 2012
Hopefully I won't subject you all to terrible garbage this time.

In.

ThirdEmperor
Aug 7, 2013

BEHOLD MY GLORY

AND THEN

BRAWL ME
In.

newtestleper
Oct 30, 2003
In

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









JcDent posted:

Is it OK to ask about interprompt criticism? Because I'm a little confused about autocannons and missiles and such and such. Should I replace "fired the autocannons" with something like "with a press of the trigger, she let loose the dogs of war, and 20 mm shells of her autocannon mulched a dirty old rover, showering the horde with hot metalic debris" or "the two boxy missile batteries did a minute adjustment of their position before triggering the munitions. Four arcs of smoke marked their path to the target down bellow: the front ranks of the shuffling colonists disappeared in fire". I'm confused as to how one should describe battle. .

And yes, I like reading RPG splatbooks(for the lore. Is that bad?), even if I don't get to play them

Those both look fine: ask in FIction Advice if you want further clarification.

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