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  • Locked thread
anime was right
Jun 27, 2008

death is certain
keep yr cool
bye

anime was right fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Oct 27, 2015

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Thyrork
Apr 21, 2010

"COME PLAY MECHS M'LANCER."

Or at least use Retrograde Mini's to make cool mechs and fantasy stuff.

:awesomelon:
Slippery Tilde

CancerCakes posted:

I was actually thinking of helping out with judging this week but crabrock beat me to it.

I think I can hear the screaming from here

Do it anyway. :unsmigghh:

Capntastic
Jan 13, 2005

A dog begins eating a dusty old coil of rope but there's a nail in it.

In for wizards. Wizard me, please.

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
So, don't nobody worry about number of submissions or judges. Just write yer very bestest wizard stories and we'll take care of the rest. We do have plans to handle the large volume of entries (assuming you lot don't drop out like pansies), and lots of people are stepping up both in the thread and in IRC to offer crits. Basically, this is going to be a bomb-rear end orgy of blood and fiction. That's p cool if you ask me.

That said, while a few excellent people are stepping up to do crits, it would be great if people do at least one crit this week. I'm not making it mandatory, but it's great practice, and it's something to do while we're judging. Normally, we ask people to save their crits until after judgment, but that could take a hot minute, so I'm gonna say that once submissions close, it's open season on crits.

now go write me some loving awesome wizards

anime was right
Jun 27, 2008

death is certain
keep yr cool
bye

anime was right fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Oct 27, 2015

Tyrannosaurus
Apr 12, 2006
I will write a free crit to anyone who submits by Saturday. Bring on the blood.

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007

Capntastic posted:

In for wizards. Wizard me, please.

You have power over void and vacuum. You could probably thrive among the stars, but you can also call upon nothingness to aid you in a variety of ways in the earthly sphere. What nature abhors, you can bend to your bidding.

Thyrork
Apr 21, 2010

"COME PLAY MECHS M'LANCER."

Or at least use Retrograde Mini's to make cool mechs and fantasy stuff.

:awesomelon:
Slippery Tilde
On a serious note, can you enshrine this prompt for posterity? Because goddamn if anything else, it'll make great fodder for the future. :magical:

vvv: You're a good person, and im a terrible one for not reading the OP entirely. :v:

Thyrork fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Apr 23, 2015

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Thyrork posted:

On a serious note, can you enshrine this prompt for posterity? Because goddamn if anything else, it'll make great fodder for the future. :magical:

ok

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT







needs more graphs

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007

crabrock posted:

needs more graphs

Capntastic
Jan 13, 2005

A dog begins eating a dusty old coil of rope but there's a nail in it.

I hope people get heavily penalized for "spell"ing errors!

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

new banner for crabrock to dry his judgetears on

Cache Cab
Feb 21, 2014
Hello Thunderdome,

A while back I registered on these forums to compete in your little contest, and while I’d like to say I learned a lot and am grateful for the critiques--that writing in your contest helped me grow and blossom as a writer and all that flowery poo poo--well...I can’t say that. Why? Because even though most of my stories were good, I only ever got dogpiled and shat on because I didn’t conform to your arbitrary standard and circle-jerking set themes. What’s her name blood queen wrote a story about a girl who plays on a magical harp but is confused and in dreamland and somehow I’m supposed to care. Seriously, who cares about poo poo stories like that? Oh, she won with that story? For the 17th time? Right, because it’s Thunderdome. It’s the place where the same people always win with the same tired stories. It’s the place where taking risks is punished, a place where trying to combine elements from Joyce and King and Hemingway all into one story--making a loving iceberg of stream of consciousness horror and seeing where it takes you--is shat upon and earns you a dishonorable mention or a loss.

The fact is, those of you sitting on the blood throne of the little dying forum’s tiny little thread are going to park your asses there while people like me move on. That’s right, I’m a published author. How many of you can say that? How many of you jerk each other off 800 words at a time but have never seen your work published outside of the SA paywall? How many of you have earned real money from your writing? I have, and only after I stopped caring about what the Thunderdome inner-circlejerk thought did I really grow as an author.


My work is published in this collection. If you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...YVMTQC3JTDRNCP6

My name is Cassius Caab, author of Dr. Scienticius’s Method, which was published in the January 2015 issue of Beyond Science Fiction. I’m not really here to “stick it to” those who dismissed my abilities, but I’m here for those of you who are frustrated that you never earn an HM, that the story you spent days on and that all of your friends couldn’t get enough of wasn’t good enough for some uptight bitch (or bastard) with an MFA in the field of Who Gives a gently caress. Write with your heart and take risks. Do something creative, and don’t be afraid to be scathing or controversial or crass. All of the greatest authors--Kafka, Joyce, loving Nabokov--weren’t afraid of what some no-nothing critic thought. They wrote what was in their gut, and maybe it was mixed with bile and stomach acid and half-digested borsch; but that’s what is real and so that’s what they wrote!

How To Write From Your Gut

Alright, so I’ve got your attention, now what? You’re wondering how you’re supposed to write without your precious critique, without scraping and begging for a handout from the inner-circle? Do what I do, get out of your chair and take in a deep breath. Hold it in. Can’t hold it? Keep holding! Don’t breathe! You’ve got a red-hot coal in your chest now and your lungs are going to burst...good! Hold a while longer. Boom! You’re gasping for breath and something is coursing through those veins. Seize that feeling, it’s your blood pumping and reminding you that you’re alive. Ask yourself what you want right then. When I wrote Dr. Scienticius’s Method I was sick of all the bullshit within society and I just wanted to break free from it. I looked outside, and it was dark, and I imagined I was a wolf just running free through the grass in a steppe somewhere. Hunting and killing and loving. Licking the dew from the grass when I was thirsty and couldn’t find a stream--those are the kind of details I thought of and I felt them raw. Then I wrote it, and I thought, “What is stopping me from doing this?” Science and the societal prison bars it built. So I got the feeling from my gut, which was that I wanted to let go and live a life through just my senses, but there’s all this cold and uncaring science getting in my way. Science isn’t going anywhere, but maybe, in some other world or future it could free us? That’s the world I imagined, but I didn’t just imagine it--I felt it, lived it.

This is why Dayne Edmondson published this piece and why he wouldn’t want to publish so much of the “winners” from various weeks of the Thunderdome. It’s what’s holding everyone here back. Maybe some other people have left the Thunderdome and realized this on their own, and maybe they didn’t want to come back. Well, I know a lot of you who keep losing, Paladinus, Someguy TT, Benny the Snake...your stuff has heart, and if you use my method you can hone it into a sword of the finest steel. But you need to find your own forge, and you need to stop scraping and begging for scraps in this thread. Winning here only means you followed the script, didn’t forget your lines, and you did “good enough” to get a gig on some soap commercial or maybe as an extra on CSI: Minot, North Dakota, but you ain’t geting cast by Lars von Trier or David Lynch by just reading your lines and having high cheek bones.

How To Experiment: Why Each New Story You Write Should be a Hand-Grenade in the Pond

Every time you write a new story, you should feel scared. You should hear yourself mumbling, “But...I’ve never done that before!” Rather than give you vague and generalized advice, let’s dive in and see on which stories I threw the largest proverbial stick of dynamite into the metaphorical tranquil pond that is the staleness of the Thunderdome.

Week 84 and 85: The Baptist parts I and II.

Scroll down to my section on PC Writing...this deserves its own section

Week 89: The Last Birthday Party

In this piece I took an insane risk, and in my opinion it paid off. Writing is just words on a page, but in this piece--that was basically like Danielewski on acid--I turn even that basic element on its head. Yeah, it’s still words on a page, but the words are changing colors and the page itself isn’t even static. I got disqualified for my efforts.

Week 90: Dr. Scienticius’s Method

Right, this one got published, but whichever unpublished amateurs judged it didn’t even give it an HM. As I stated earlier, I wrote this straight from my gut while basically turning the scientific method upside down and giving it a swirlie. The framing device here is also pretty out there, and I even break the fourth wall with a play on my real life name. This was basically my first stab at writing fantasy, so not only did I tackle a unique framing device, I did it while writing in an unfamiliar genre.

Week 95: Life Lessons

This one was a response to the tepid tripe that usually wins. In real life you don’t always transform from a grotesque insect to a beautiful lepidoptera, a lot of times you gently caress up, and it sends you into a nosedive, and since you’re nosediving you can’t see straight, so you gently caress up some more. Finally you’re about to hit the ground and have one last chance to pull up, but instead you just accelerate.

Week 97: When Judas saved Jesus

Another DM. I guess the irony of the Thunderdome’s Judas figure writing about a twist on the accepted fable was lost on the judges. Anyway, I imagined there was this real, physical path somewhere in Palestine, and it was this hellish ordeal full of suffering and temptation. Imagine if hell were real, and a strip of it existed here on earth. Then, imagine if anyone who dared walk down this path and make it to the other side would go straight to Heaven, no strings attached and no questions asked. Now imagine that this path was created because of Judas. That’s what I did with this story, as crazy as it is.

Week 113: Vector

After my wife won full custody of the kids--after cheating on me--I was in a bad place (and remember, write from your gut!) and wrote this. I thought of my cheating wife and that scumbag she left me for dying of the bubonic plague. So yeah, I zoomed way in to both diseased flesh and soul, and I shined a loving fluorescent light on it. All the character flaws of both myself and my wife were lit bare in this piece, and maybe in my fury I made some typing mistakes, but this was raw and it was real. I think losing for this piece, which was like saying that my suffering just deserved a LOSS was probably the biggest tipping point that lead me away from the Dome, and toward success as a published author.

Week 114: Cassius

In this largely autobiographical piece, I channel a bit of Joyce, but it’s mostly all me. I’ve served, I’ve loved a wife and kids, I’ve felt pain and lust and longing, and in this piece you feel it all 100% unfiltered right from my axons and neurons to the page. Ever wonder what it’s like to be in your mid 40’s and see a girl that makes you feel like you’re eighteen again? Ever wonder what it feels like to know that you’re too old and there ain’t no fountain of youth and there never will be? Read this piece, which most of you probably didn’t because the judges overlooked it and couldn’t see it for what it was. It was too big of a splash in the pond.

gently caress PC Writing: The Real World is Cruel and Your Writing Should Show It

I got a lot of flak here because my story, The Baptist I and The Baptist II was loving “problematic.” So the guy grabs the kid’s dick? You ever read the news about the Catholic Church? Ever heard of Joseph Smith? You think the Mormon Church or other hosed up cults are all “different, and that’s okay?” gently caress that. Then everyone said these stories were somehow racist. Guess what, the Mormon church thought being black was some kind of disease up until 1978! Yes, the year of our Lord nineteen seventy-eight. These two stories reflected that, but the PC patrol here couldn’t see past my word choice or who the gently caress knows what. In the real world there are terrible things like Mormons and famine and children fighting in wars. I’ve got goddamn Jehova’s Witnesses clawing at my door every Saturday morning--poor souls who think selling brochures or bibles will give them ten-thousand ‘get into heaven’ points. Their existence is sad and they’ve been conned, and they’ll go on to con others, and if I write about how Jehova’s Witnesses loving whitewash black families--sever them from their roots and estrange them from their culture--then suddenly I’m a racist? Get real.

In Summary

I can write circles around all of you. If you want to respond to this and poo poo on me, don’t bother doing so unless you link me to something you’ve had published. I’m not going to bother arguing with you if you don’t have credentials.

With all that said, I want to put my money where my mouth is, so I’m in for this week!

Cache Cab fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Apr 23, 2015

Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh
welcome back :toot:

Capntastic
Jan 13, 2005

A dog begins eating a dusty old coil of rope but there's a nail in it.

Dan Brown, Eye of Argon, and Twilight were also published in print form and not a Kindle Digest so don't bother arguing about why they might be bad instead of good.

Everything's good.

This is Thunderdome.

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Cache Cab posted:

Hello Thunderdome,

A while back I registered on these forums to compete
in your little contest, and while I’d like to say I learned a lot and am grateful for the critiques--that writing in your contest helped me grow and blossom as a writer and all that flowery poo poo--well...I can’t say that. Why? Because even though most of my stories were good, I only ever got dogpiled and shat on because I didn’t conform to your arbitrary standard and circle-jerking set themes. What’s her name blood queen wrote a story about a girl who plays on a magical harp but is confused and in dreamland and somehow I’m supposed to care. Seriously, who cares about poo poo stories like that? Oh, she won with that story? For the 17th time? Right, because it’s Thunderdome. It’s the place where the same people always win with the same tired stories. It’s the place where taking risks is punished, a place where trying to combine elements from Joyce and King and Hemingway all into one story--making a loving iceberg of stream of consciousness horror and seeing where it takes you--is shat upon and earns you a dishonorable mention or a loss.

The fact is, those of you sitting on the blood throne of the little dying forum’s tiny little thread are going to park your asses there while people like me move on. That’s right, I’m a published author. How many of you can say that? How many of you jerk each other off 800 words at a time but have never seen your work published outside of the SA paywall? How many of you have earned real money from your writing? I have, and only after I stopped caring about what the Thunderdome inner-circlejerk thought did I really grow as an author.


My work is published in this collection. If you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...YVMTQC3JTDRNCP6

My name is Cassius Caab, author of Dr. Scienticius’s Method, which was published in the January 2015 issue of Beyond Science Fiction. I’m not really here to “stick it to” those who dismissed my abilities, but I’m here for those of you who are frustrated that you never earn an HM, that the story you spent days on and that all of your friends couldn’t get enough of wasn’t good enough for some uptight bitch (or bastard) with an MFA in the field of Who Gives a gently caress. Write with your heart and take risks. Do something creative, and don’t be afraid to be scathing or controversial or crass. All of the greatest authors--Kafka, Joyce, loving Nabokov--weren’t afraid of what some no-nothing critic thought. They wrote what was in their gut, and maybe it was mixed with bile and stomach acid and half-digested borsch; but that’s what is real and so that’s what they wrote!

How To Write From Your Gut

Alright, so I’ve got your attention, now what? You’re wondering how you’re supposed to write without your precious critique, without scraping and begging for a handout from the inner-circle? Do what I do, get out of your chair and take in a deep breath. Hold it in. Can’t hold it? Keep holding! Don’t breathe! You’ve got a red-hot coal in your chest now and your lungs are going to burst...good! Hold a while longer. Boom! You’re gasping for breath and something is coursing through those veins. Seize that feeling, it’s your blood pumping and reminding you that you’re alive. Ask yourself what you want right then. When I wrote Dr. Scienticius’s Method I was sick of all the bullshit within society and I just wanted to break free from it. I looked outside, and it was dark, and I imagined I was a wolf just running free through the grass in a steppe somewhere. Hunting and killing and loving. Licking the dew from the grass when I was thirsty and couldn’t find a stream--those are the kind of details I thought of and I felt them raw. Then I wrote it, and I thought, “What is stopping me from doing this?” Science and the societal prison bars it built. So I got the feeling from my gut, which was that I wanted to let go and live a life through just my senses, but there’s all this cold and uncaring science getting in my way. Science isn’t going anywhere, but maybe, in some other world or future it could free us? That’s the world I imagined, but I didn’t just imagine it--I felt it, lived it.

This is why Dayne Edmondson published this piece and why he wouldn’t want to publish so much of the “winners” from various weeks of the Thunderdome. It’s what’s holding everyone here back. Maybe some other people have left the Thunderdome and realized this on their own, and maybe they didn’t want to come back. Well, I know a lot of you who keep losing, Paladinus, Someguy TT, Benny the Snake...your stuff has heart, and if you use my method you can hone it into a sword of the finest steel. But you need to find your own forge, and you need to stop scraping and begging for scraps in this thread. Winning here only means you followed the script, didn’t forget your lines, and you did “good enough” to get a gig on some soap commercial or maybe as an extra on CSI: Minot, North Dakota, but you ain’t geting cast by Lars von Trier or David Lynch by just reading your lines and having high cheek bones.

How To Experiment: Why Each New Story You Write Should be a Hand-Grenade in the Pond

Every time you write a new story, you should feel scared. You should hear yourself mumbling, “But...I’ve never done that before!” Rather than give you vague and generalized advice, let’s dive in and see on which stories I threw the largest proverbial stick of dynamite into the metaphorical tranquil pond that is the staleness of the Thunderdome.

Week 84 and 85: The Baptist parts I and II.

Scroll down to my section on PC Writing...this deserves its own section

Week 89: The Last Birthday Party

In this piece I took an insane risk, and in my opinion it paid off. Writing is just words on a page, but in this piece--that was basically like Danielewski on acid--I turn even that basic element on its head. Yeah, it’s still words on a page, but the words are changing colors and the page itself isn’t even static. I got disqualified for my efforts.

Week 90: Dr. Scienticius’s Method

Right, this one got published, but whichever unpublished amateurs judged it didn’t even give it an HM. As I stated earlier, I wrote this straight from my gut while basically turning the scientific method upside down and giving it a swirlie. The framing device here is also pretty out there, and I even break the fourth wall with a play on my real life name. This was basically my first stab at writing fantasy, so not only did I tackle a unique framing device, I did it while writing in an unfamiliar genre.

Week 95: Life Lessons

This one was a response to the tepid tripe that usually wins. In real life you don’t always transform from a grotesque insect to a beautiful lepidoptera, a lot of times you gently caress up, and it sends you into a nosedive, and since you’re nosediving you can’t see straight, so you gently caress up some more. Finally you’re about to hit the ground and have one last chance to pull up, but instead you just accelerate.

Week 97: When Judas saved Jesus

Another DM. I guess the irony of the Thunderdome’s Judas figure writing about a twist on the accepted fable was lost on the judges. Anyway, I imagined there was this real, physical path somewhere in Palestine, and it was this hellish ordeal full of suffering and temptation. Imagine if hell were real, and a strip of it existed here on earth. Then, imagine if anyone who dared walk down this path and make it to the other side would go straight to Heaven, no strings attached and no questions asked. Now imagine that this path was created because of Judas. That’s what I did with this story, as crazy as it is.

Week 113: Vector

After my wife won full custody of the kids--after cheating on me--I was in a bad place (and remember, write from your gut!) and wrote this. I thought of my cheating wife and that scumbag she left me for dying of the bubonic plague. So yeah, I zoomed way in to both diseased flesh and soul, and I shined a loving fluorescent light on it. All the character flaws of both myself and my wife were lit bare in this piece, and maybe in my fury I made some typing mistakes, but this was raw and it was real. I think losing for this piece, which was like saying that my suffering just deserved a LOSS was probably the biggest tipping point that lead me away from the Dome, and toward success as a published author.

Week 114: Cassius

In this largely autobiographical piece, I channel a bit of Joyce, but it’s mostly all me. I’ve served, I’ve loved a wife and kids, I’ve felt pain and lust and longing, and in this piece you feel it all 100% unfiltered right from my axons and neurons to the page. Ever wonder what it’s like to be in your mid 40’s and see a girl that makes you feel like you’re eighteen again? Ever wonder what it feels like to know that you’re too old and there ain’t no fountain of youth and there never will be? Read this piece, which most of you probably didn’t because the judges overlooked it and couldn’t see it for what it was. It was too big of a splash in the pond.

gently caress PC Writing: The Real World is Cruel and Your Writing Should Show It

I got a lot of flak here because my story, The Baptist I and The Baptist II was loving “problematic.” So the guy grabs the kid’s dick? You ever read the news about the Catholic Church? Ever heard of Joseph Smith? You think the Mormon Church or other hosed up cults are all “different, and that’s okay?” gently caress that. Then everyone said these stories were somehow racist. Guess what, the Mormon church thought being black was some kind of disease up until 1978! Yes, the year of our Lord nineteen seventy-eight. These two stories reflected that, but the PC patrol here couldn’t see past my word choice or who the gently caress knows what. In the real world there are terrible things like Mormons and famine and children fighting in wars. I’ve got goddamn Jehova’s Witnesses clawing at my door every Saturday morning--poor souls who think selling brochures or bibles will give them ten-thousand ‘get into heaven’ points. Their existence is sad and they’ve been conned, and they’ll go on to con others, and if I write about how Jehova’s Witnesses loving whitewash black families--sever them from their roots and estrange them from their culture--then suddenly I’m a racist? Get real.

In Summary

I can write circles around all of you. If you want to respond to this and poo poo on me, don’t bother doing so unless you link me to something you’ve had published. I’m not going to bother arguing with you if you don’t have credentials.

With all that said, I want to put my money where my mouth is, so I’m in for this week!


Cool welcome to TD

Capntastic
Jan 13, 2005

A dog begins eating a dusty old coil of rope but there's a nail in it.

Cache Cab posted:

Hello Thunderdome
Word Count (1941)

Will line crit this later

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
dude cache cab you can't even write a compelling boast-post but you're bragging about some bullshit small town self pub where your application process involves the use of a glory hole?

Jay O
Oct 9, 2012

being a zombie's not so bad
once you get used to it
Welcome to TD, you of the clearly least sensitive butthole on the planet.

Capntastic
Jan 13, 2005

A dog begins eating a dusty old coil of rope but there's a nail in it.

Cache Cab posted:


this is the type of persecution bullshit that I'm talking about. I've posted way less than some of the other people in this fight and I tried to handle it appropriately by brawling my dissenters, but still I'm the only one who is punished.

you won't even have to wait for my toxx, I'm done with this poo poo. I just wanted to be a better writer for my own personal self-esteem reasonse. I had a really lovely day at work and I really can't deal with this right now on top of everything.

Chairchucker
Nov 14, 2006

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022




It's a Christmas Easter ANZAC Day is pretty close I guess miracle!

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007

Cache Cab posted:

Hello Thunderdome,


You're the wizard of easily preventable, virulent diseases. You can inflict all kinds of mumps and bumps and sores and sniffles, but god help you if your victims are anywhere near modern medicinal equipment. Your power is unleashed through chanting, which is central to every single act of magic you do.

Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Apr 23, 2015

POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug
It's know-nothing, dammit. When you refer to an old American political movement, do it right. (Please submit a story. Wanna read lots o' stories about wizards. :3:)

anime was right
Jun 27, 2008

death is certain
keep yr cool
bye

anime was right fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Oct 27, 2015

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
so you gonna redeem yourself by brawling me for real cache cab or you gonna back off

Im sure a ~~~published author~~~ can beat me

anime was right
Jun 27, 2008

death is certain
keep yr cool
bye

anime was right fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Oct 27, 2015

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007

LOU BEGAS MUSTACHE posted:

imo lets not A) gloat passive-aggressively about getting into a mag i think almost anyone in TD could stumble half drunk into B) make fun of a guy for getting somewhere and improving himself even if hes being kind of weird about it

hotsoupdinner
Apr 12, 2007
eat up
Guys please don't post in this thread unless you also post an amazon link where your works can be found.

Amazon.com/giantbuttplugs is mine.

Capntastic
Jan 13, 2005

A dog begins eating a dusty old coil of rope but there's a nail in it.

hotsoupdinner posted:

Guys please don't post in this thread unless you also post an amazon link where your works can be found.

Amazon.com/giantbuttplugs is mine.

TD is more about the work itself rather than the critiques and reviews, pal

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
Sorry, here is a list of my works

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Ironic Twist posted:

welcome back :toot:

:)

JuniperCake
Jan 26, 2013

Cache Cab posted:

Hello Thunderdome,


Grats on the sale!

newtestleper
Oct 30, 2003

Cache Cab posted:

Hello Thunderdome,

Congratulations! It's awesome when any 'domer gets published, and more should be trying harder to join you. I know there are people here who get published and don't feel the need to post about it in thread.

That said getting a story published is not a rebuttal of any critique you got here.

Ol Sweepy
Nov 28, 2005

Safety First

Cache Cab posted:



My work is published in this collection. If you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...YVMTQC3JTDRNCP6

...
With all that said, I want to put my money where my mouth is, so I’m in for this week!

Congratulations on the publication.

Hope you saved your payment from them for a new avatar when you lose this week. :smuggo:

Ol Sweepy fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Apr 23, 2015

Martello
Apr 29, 2012

by XyloJW

Cache Cab posted:

Hello Thunderdome,

A while back I registered on these forums to compete in your little contest, and while I’d like to say I learned a lot and am grateful for the critiques--that writing in your contest helped me grow and blossom as a writer and all that flowery poo poo--well...I can’t say that. Why? Because even though most of my stories were good, I only ever got dogpiled and shat on because I didn’t conform to your arbitrary standard and circle-jerking set themes. What’s her name blood queen wrote a story about a girl who plays on a magical harp but is confused and in dreamland and somehow I’m supposed to care. Seriously, who cares about poo poo stories like that? Oh, she won with that story? For the 17th time? Right, because it’s Thunderdome. It’s the place where the same people always win with the same tired stories. It’s the place where taking risks is punished, a place where trying to combine elements from Joyce and King and Hemingway all into one story--making a loving iceberg of stream of consciousness horror and seeing where it takes you--is shat upon and earns you a dishonorable mention or a loss.

The fact is, those of you sitting on the blood throne of the little dying forum’s tiny little thread are going to park your asses there while people like me move on. That’s right, I’m a published author. How many of you can say that? How many of you jerk each other off 800 words at a time but have never seen your work published outside of the SA paywall? How many of you have earned real money from your writing? I have, and only after I stopped caring about what the Thunderdome inner-circlejerk thought did I really grow as an author.


My work is published in this collection. If you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...YVMTQC3JTDRNCP6

My name is Cassius Caab, author of Dr. Scienticius’s Method, which was published in the January 2015 issue of Beyond Science Fiction. I’m not really here to “stick it to” those who dismissed my abilities, but I’m here for those of you who are frustrated that you never earn an HM, that the story you spent days on and that all of your friends couldn’t get enough of wasn’t good enough for some uptight bitch (or bastard) with an MFA in the field of Who Gives a gently caress. Write with your heart and take risks. Do something creative, and don’t be afraid to be scathing or controversial or crass. All of the greatest authors--Kafka, Joyce, loving Nabokov--weren’t afraid of what some no-nothing critic thought. They wrote what was in their gut, and maybe it was mixed with bile and stomach acid and half-digested borsch; but that’s what is real and so that’s what they wrote!

How To Write From Your Gut

Alright, so I’ve got your attention, now what? You’re wondering how you’re supposed to write without your precious critique, without scraping and begging for a handout from the inner-circle? Do what I do, get out of your chair and take in a deep breath. Hold it in. Can’t hold it? Keep holding! Don’t breathe! You’ve got a red-hot coal in your chest now and your lungs are going to burst...good! Hold a while longer. Boom! You’re gasping for breath and something is coursing through those veins. Seize that feeling, it’s your blood pumping and reminding you that you’re alive. Ask yourself what you want right then. When I wrote Dr. Scienticius’s Method I was sick of all the bullshit within society and I just wanted to break free from it. I looked outside, and it was dark, and I imagined I was a wolf just running free through the grass in a steppe somewhere. Hunting and killing and loving. Licking the dew from the grass when I was thirsty and couldn’t find a stream--those are the kind of details I thought of and I felt them raw. Then I wrote it, and I thought, “What is stopping me from doing this?” Science and the societal prison bars it built. So I got the feeling from my gut, which was that I wanted to let go and live a life through just my senses, but there’s all this cold and uncaring science getting in my way. Science isn’t going anywhere, but maybe, in some other world or future it could free us? That’s the world I imagined, but I didn’t just imagine it--I felt it, lived it.

This is why Dayne Edmondson published this piece and why he wouldn’t want to publish so much of the “winners” from various weeks of the Thunderdome. It’s what’s holding everyone here back. Maybe some other people have left the Thunderdome and realized this on their own, and maybe they didn’t want to come back. Well, I know a lot of you who keep losing, Paladinus, Someguy TT, Benny the Snake...your stuff has heart, and if you use my method you can hone it into a sword of the finest steel. But you need to find your own forge, and you need to stop scraping and begging for scraps in this thread. Winning here only means you followed the script, didn’t forget your lines, and you did “good enough” to get a gig on some soap commercial or maybe as an extra on CSI: Minot, North Dakota, but you ain’t geting cast by Lars von Trier or David Lynch by just reading your lines and having high cheek bones.

How To Experiment: Why Each New Story You Write Should be a Hand-Grenade in the Pond

Every time you write a new story, you should feel scared. You should hear yourself mumbling, “But...I’ve never done that before!” Rather than give you vague and generalized advice, let’s dive in and see on which stories I threw the largest proverbial stick of dynamite into the metaphorical tranquil pond that is the staleness of the Thunderdome.

Week 84 and 85: The Baptist parts I and II.

Scroll down to my section on PC Writing...this deserves its own section

Week 89: The Last Birthday Party

In this piece I took an insane risk, and in my opinion it paid off. Writing is just words on a page, but in this piece--that was basically like Danielewski on acid--I turn even that basic element on its head. Yeah, it’s still words on a page, but the words are changing colors and the page itself isn’t even static. I got disqualified for my efforts.

Week 90: Dr. Scienticius’s Method

Right, this one got published, but whichever unpublished amateurs judged it didn’t even give it an HM. As I stated earlier, I wrote this straight from my gut while basically turning the scientific method upside down and giving it a swirlie. The framing device here is also pretty out there, and I even break the fourth wall with a play on my real life name. This was basically my first stab at writing fantasy, so not only did I tackle a unique framing device, I did it while writing in an unfamiliar genre.

Week 95: Life Lessons

This one was a response to the tepid tripe that usually wins. In real life you don’t always transform from a grotesque insect to a beautiful lepidoptera, a lot of times you gently caress up, and it sends you into a nosedive, and since you’re nosediving you can’t see straight, so you gently caress up some more. Finally you’re about to hit the ground and have one last chance to pull up, but instead you just accelerate.

Week 97: When Judas saved Jesus

Another DM. I guess the irony of the Thunderdome’s Judas figure writing about a twist on the accepted fable was lost on the judges. Anyway, I imagined there was this real, physical path somewhere in Palestine, and it was this hellish ordeal full of suffering and temptation. Imagine if hell were real, and a strip of it existed here on earth. Then, imagine if anyone who dared walk down this path and make it to the other side would go straight to Heaven, no strings attached and no questions asked. Now imagine that this path was created because of Judas. That’s what I did with this story, as crazy as it is.

Week 113: Vector

After my wife won full custody of the kids--after cheating on me--I was in a bad place (and remember, write from your gut!) and wrote this. I thought of my cheating wife and that scumbag she left me for dying of the bubonic plague. So yeah, I zoomed way in to both diseased flesh and soul, and I shined a loving fluorescent light on it. All the character flaws of both myself and my wife were lit bare in this piece, and maybe in my fury I made some typing mistakes, but this was raw and it was real. I think losing for this piece, which was like saying that my suffering just deserved a LOSS was probably the biggest tipping point that lead me away from the Dome, and toward success as a published author.

Week 114: Cassius

In this largely autobiographical piece, I channel a bit of Joyce, but it’s mostly all me. I’ve served, I’ve loved a wife and kids, I’ve felt pain and lust and longing, and in this piece you feel it all 100% unfiltered right from my axons and neurons to the page. Ever wonder what it’s like to be in your mid 40’s and see a girl that makes you feel like you’re eighteen again? Ever wonder what it feels like to know that you’re too old and there ain’t no fountain of youth and there never will be? Read this piece, which most of you probably didn’t because the judges overlooked it and couldn’t see it for what it was. It was too big of a splash in the pond.

gently caress PC Writing: The Real World is Cruel and Your Writing Should Show It

I got a lot of flak here because my story, The Baptist I and The Baptist II was loving “problematic.” So the guy grabs the kid’s dick? You ever read the news about the Catholic Church? Ever heard of Joseph Smith? You think the Mormon Church or other hosed up cults are all “different, and that’s okay?” gently caress that. Then everyone said these stories were somehow racist. Guess what, the Mormon church thought being black was some kind of disease up until 1978! Yes, the year of our Lord nineteen seventy-eight. These two stories reflected that, but the PC patrol here couldn’t see past my word choice or who the gently caress knows what. In the real world there are terrible things like Mormons and famine and children fighting in wars. I’ve got goddamn Jehova’s Witnesses clawing at my door every Saturday morning--poor souls who think selling brochures or bibles will give them ten-thousand ‘get into heaven’ points. Their existence is sad and they’ve been conned, and they’ll go on to con others, and if I write about how Jehova’s Witnesses loving whitewash black families--sever them from their roots and estrange them from their culture--then suddenly I’m a racist? Get real.

In Summary

I can write circles around all of you. If you want to respond to this and poo poo on me, don’t bother doing so unless you link me to something you’ve had published. I’m not going to bother arguing with you if you don’t have credentials.

With all that said, I want to put my money where my mouth is, so I’m in for this week!

good job bud, yet another published domer

thehomemaster
Jul 16, 2014

by Ralp
This is too good to be true.

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



This is what you call kayfabe, right?

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
As happy as we all are for Cache Cab, can I ask that we please move his post-release after party/congratulatory orgy over to Fiction Advice? I don't want to miss any signups, god knows this is going to be a sparse week.

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crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






ATTN new people: cache cab is crazy, and is best ignored. same goes for benny the snake and sitting here.

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