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Grizzled Patriarch
Mar 27, 2014

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



You Could Be a Winner
(1,240 Words)


*snip*

Archive Link: http://writocracy.com/thunderdome/?story=4598&title=You+Could+Be+a+Winner

Grizzled Patriarch fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Mar 15, 2016

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flerp
Feb 25, 2014
967 words

story about a dog who can’t fall asleep

on the barkchives

flerp fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Mar 15, 2016

Killer-of-Lawyers
Apr 22, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2020
Beat
Word Count: 1,050

Walking a beat at night really isn't that different than desk work. Everything just runs together, people and faces shuffling by, into and out of your awareness like reports in a pile. Your mind gets filled with the repetitive nature of your patrol, footsteps and the jingle of your gear serving as a steady, mindless beat. You reach one end of the patrol and you just do it all over again. Progress isn't really measured by time, but by events, those few moments that you can recall in between footsteps.

That night I was ten warnings and two citations into my shift. People filed in and out of pubs around me as I walked, like broad brushstrokes on a impressionist painting. It was chaotic and disorganized, like every other night in the city. I detested it. There was a sense of purpose to people around you when you walk a day beat. The shift is divided up into orderly periods of calm and quick moments of movement as people come and go from their jobs.

At night though, any organization is a warning sign. You know there's trouble when you see people looking in the same direction, mobiles up in the air, or perhaps standing around uselessly in a circle. Why do people do that?

So there I was, behind a crowd. I reached for my citation booklet with one hand and used my other to thread my way through the mass of people, barking at them to clear a path for me. It's hard being a short police officer. They were all gathered around a lamp post. A man was atop it, jeering at the crowd as they writhed and shuffled around him.

I don't know why people try and climb things when they're drunk. Maybe it's a throwback to when we were monkeys in the trees. Maybe the view is really nice from atop various municipal installations. I'd served after enough sports games though to know that it's a disturbingly common impulse, right up there with throwing rocks and public urination.

The daze of the endless beat was mostly gone by then. I could feel the bile rising in my gut, and the people were no longer just drunken brush strokes milling around. I reached for my truncheon. I remember that clearly. I didn't like using the thing as much as I didn't like actually arresting people. It's brutish and uncivilized, but then again, so is climbing up a street light.

I ordered the man down, knocking my stick upon the metal pole that he made his perch. I told the crowd, and the man, that the fun for the night was over. Most started to leave at that point. The man didn’t take to losing his audience very well though. He slurred out nonsense to them, and laughed before moving to an even more precarious position on top of the lamp. He unsteadily started to stand, vainly attempting to wave the crowd back even as I motioned them away. I guess at that point I called for some help. I thought it would take a ladder to get him down. I was wrong.

He managed, in spite of his inebriation, to stand atop the light pole. People cheered. Idiots. Half the blame for what happened is on the crowd. The man was just a clown, without an audience he'd be shuffling home in a cab, mumbling drunkenly to the driver about whatever useless thoughts filled his head.

He bowed to the crowd, and with his center of mass shifted forward, tumbled head first down to the pavement below. He fell on me. I think I tried to catch him. I'm not sure why, he was probably at least twice my size, and came down like a pile of bricks. His feet knocked me upside the head, sending my cap off into the gutter. His face landed right on the concrete sidewalk, and caved in with a sickeningly wet crunch.

It's funny. Usually my shift is a blur from repetition and boredom, and clear in times of action, but I can't really recall what happened with the crowd after that. I just remember recovering my composure and kneeling down to give whatever aid I could to the man. I don't remember him being very loud. I hope that the impact knocked whatever drunken sensation he had out of him quickly.

I don't even remember calling for an ambulance. I must have though, because one showed up, but by the time it arrived the man had fallen silent, dead silent. Not even a wheeze or a whisper came from him. Paramedics tended to him, and pulled me aside. I remember sitting on the back bumper of the ambulance, a paramedic checking my head as I heard the other one load the man, or the body, really, onto a gurney.

They asked me questions, checked my pupils, and then they were gone. I don't know what happened with the backup I had called. I'm pretty sure they came with the ambulance, but I don't remember talking to them at all. Later the reports assured me that I did. All I can remember was this nagging feeling that I had seen the guy before. Maybe I issued him a warning as he stumbled out of a pub, or tripped on the curb. Maybe.

It's really hard to say. I scribbled a few notes down on my pad for a report that I didn't even remember taking to this day. Memory is a fleeting, fickle thing. I can certainly remember the sound he made when he hit pavement though. I remember watching the ambulance leave, still quite stunned from it all, before I faded back into my routine. It must have been fairly late in the shift by then. People were no longer populating the pubs, and had queued up at various kebab stands for a late night meal. Officer and civilian alike all ate from the same trough of hot fried food and greasy meats. I had gotten into line behind a drunken lady who was yelling at a stand attendant. I reached for my truncheon immediately and used it to guide her out of the line. That put me at ten citations, two warnings, and one arrest into my shift.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









deleted

sebmojo fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Jan 2, 2017

newtestleper
Oct 30, 2003

sebmojo posted:

sebmojo hosed around with this message at Mar 15, 2016 around 00:04

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









newtestleper posted:

where is sittinghere's story

that's an excellent question

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
Stuck Animation
1364 words

“It reminds me of the Sistine Chapel,” said Charlotte. She and Ali were on their hands and knees, deep in the brightly colored labyrinth of the Kidz Zone Magicastle play structure. Above them, the bright blue padded ceiling was spattered with a fecal mural so improbable that Ali and Charlotte could only stare in horrified appreciation.

“I mean,” Ali said, “do you think the kid was okay?”

“Oh, you can bet the little fucker skipped out of here feeling ten pounds lighter,” Charlotte said. She handed him a spray bottle, a fistfull of rags, and what looked like an ice scraper. “Newbies get poop duty. Good luck! I’ll be, uh, cleaning the Big Buck Hunter machine.” She scuttled awkwardly through the kid-sized space and disappeared down the red plastic throat of a slide.

It’s not unfair, Ali told himself. She has to deal with this every night. Charlotte was the arcade’s one-woman night crew: part janitor, part repair technician. Ali was slotted for a promotion to daytime shift manager, which meant doing a tour on the graveyard shift. To get a better understanding of how the arcade runs, they’d told him.

Ali gritted his teeth, donned his dust mask, and started to scrape.

-

He emerged from the Magicastle an hour later, jaded and smelling of bleach. He found Charlotte with her eye pressed to the scope of a plastic rifle, taking down two-dimensional elk on a boxy arcade machine.

“This is some sort of Faustian bargain, isn’t it,” Ali said. “This is why management has such high turnover. You keep this place running in exchange for fresh meat to do your dirty work.”

Big Buck Hunter was an old machine. The deer and elk jerked and stuttered across some pixelated, popup book version of Montana or Wisconsin or Vermont. They jerked and stuttered when Charlotte pulled the trigger and they died.

“Yeah, it’s good to be the dark elder god of an arcade,” she said, lowering the rifle. “You know, I hate being alone with all these old games all night.”

“That’s not very elder god-like,” Ali said.

“The sports ones are the worst,” she said. “It’s the crowds in the background, see. You’re not meant to be looking at them, ‘cause your attention is supposed to be on the game. But then you do look, and they’re these herky-jerky little pixel blobs stuck in an animation loop.”

Ali fumbled for something insightful to say. “Yeah, dumb Streetfighter A.I.s don’t make great company.”

“No, it’s like,” Charlotte said, then shook her head sharply. “Sorry. I get too much time to think.”

Ali leaned in conspiratorially. “You know, what I’ve wanted to do since I got hired,” he said, putting on what he hoped was a mischievous grin, “Is has have a one-on-one laser tag deathmatch.”

Charlotte straightened and turned to face him very slowly. “There’s something I should tell you, then,” she said. Her hands came up to rest softly on Ali’s shoulders. His mind went into a sort of tailspin, trying to reconcile the fact of her hands on him with the seriousness of her expression.

She took a deep breath. “The thing is, I am going to utterly destroy you.”

-

Ali pressed his back against a wall, sweating under the weight of his sensor vest. The laster tag arena was 8,000 square feet of ramps, corridors, platforms and bridges shrouded in artificial fog. And she was out there, somewhere. Hunting him. He’d scoffed when she offered him a head start, but it quickly became clear that he was her prey. He never saw her. The only sounds were his breath and the occasional sad chime his sensor vest made when she sniped him from a distance.

So now he was holed up in the most remote corner of the arena he could find. It was a small room whose walls were studded with a floor-to-ceiling mosaic of mirror fragments. There was only one entrance. She’d have to show herself to take a shot at him.

Ali’s world shrunk to the size of the mirror-studded foxhole. He took his finger off the trigger just long enough to check the time on his cell phone; just after two in the morning. His eyelids had that heavy, clammy feeling of sleep deprivation. His hands shook from the mild adrenaline rush of being hunted by a petite janitor with a laser gun. Errant tendrils of artificial fog coiled through the air in front of his eyes, and the black lights made his head swim.

He jumped at the sound of Charlotte’s voice.

“Okay, I’m bored,” she called. She was just around the corner. “Ceasefire?”

Ali swallowed hard and lowered his laser gun. “Deal.”

She came around the corner, her gun tucked into the holster built into her sensor vest, which she stripped off and set on the floor.

“How long have you been, just, lurking out there?” Ali asked.

“I lost track,” Charlotte said.

Ali holstered his gun and lowered himself onto the cold cement floor. “Man, right now I want to be in a busy shopping mall, or, or, in Times Square, or something. Somewhere loud and busy.”

Charlotte sat down beside him. “You know what bugs me,” she said, “Is that, even right now, those stupid game sprites in those stupid machines are still stuck in their stupid little animation loops. It doesn’t matter that there’s no one watching.”

“I don’t know how you deal with this place every night,” Ali said. He couldn’t stop himself from noticing the smooth sheen of sweat on her bare shoulder.

“You see them?” Charlotte pointed at their fragmented reflections. “They’re us. They’re going to leave here and sleep, and eat, and come back to this place tomorrow to do all this again. And if they don’t, if they really give up, they’ll die in a ditch. And some other sprite will pick up the loop. Work. Eat. Sleep.”

Her words came fast and her voice was shaky. Ali felt her ennui like gravity. He watched himself lean in and press his lips against the corner of her mouth. The small, delicate muscles in her face were tense and unyielding. She didn’t move. He recoiled.

-

Charlotte didn’t say anything about the kiss as they dredged the ball pit. Ali fished up errant diapers and lost socks without comment. They swept and sprayed and sanitized and restocked. The arcade machines looked on with their fidgeting, flickering faces, like restless animals in an empty zoo.

Finally, Charlotte announced that it was six AM, time to turn themselves out into the cold, grey morning.

“I think I get it,” Ali told her when they were outside. “Your thing about the old games, I mean. They’re claustrophobic. There’s only as much of a world as there needs to be for the game to work. It’s not like the characters have other places to go or things to explore, or…” he trailed off. Charlotte was looking at him, her head cocked slightly to one side. There was a hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth, where his lips had trespassed.

“So I guess you’ll understand when I say I gotta go,” she said. She stretched her arms high over her head and looked out at the brightening morning.

“You mean for good.” Soft rain fell from low clouds, but Ali could make out patches of blue-gold sky on the eastern horizon. “It’s gonna be rough around this place without you.”

“Nah. There’s always someone to fill in the loop.” She looked at her feet. “I didn’t mind. Earlier, I mean.” She touched her lips lightly with one finger. “It’s a nice goodbye present.”

There was a vast, brief moment where it seemed like they were both waiting for the other to suggest they have breakfast, or offer to exchange numbers, or at least lie and promise they’d see each other again.

But they didn’t. A million things waxed, waned, and vanished. And then Charlotte was walking to her car without looking back, and Ali was watching her go. And the raindrops that landed in his eyelashes were like bits of shattered glass from something huge and brittle, now broken.

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

The long night is over.

Submissions closed

Will sebmojo and Sitting Here eat a DQ? Stay tuned.

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






Congratulations sh on her 100th TD submission.

Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh
Subs (have been) closed (for two hours).

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo
spectres is miserable crit of Lingering Things by CANNIBAL GIRLS

ok so i think the opening line puts the reader in the mood for like death, much like my mood. its kind of interesting because she waits until the voice grows faint to shut it off completely. like shed be the sort of person youd go to in a euthanasia situation.

its "scot free." i looked this up and this phrase originating w a guy named scott is a common misconception.

she is apparently trying to stealth a pregnancy which seems unwise so im hoping theres an arc here.

-reaction critting ends here-

ok so this was really good 2 me. its hard to follow her motivations in like a linear line but thats true of anyone i run into when i go outside so whatever.

i liked the radiowave stuff as foreshadowing a lot. it sort of sets up that shes ready to follow symbolic patterns and she enjoys sort of being in control of the amount of influence her husband has on her life, or rather just how much he actually is present.

ive had dreams and experiences when you think youre following hidden rules and then everything goes wrong cuz you spaced out somewhere important. the whole hammer explanation felt really real.

so i guess the crit i have is that the person freaking out part is relateable but sort of under her core the character is a jerk and she sort of returns to being a jerk, albeit in a natural progressive way (despite the craziness.)

i wouldnt dm this but writing is blood. namaste

Rathlord
Sep 5, 2015

Angry know-it-all.
Sunset

Word Count: 919

Sunrise. Sunset. Sunrise. Sunset. Ren watched them zoom past, almost that quickly. In orbit around Earth at five miles a second, a day or night was barely there before it was gone. By his estimation, it was about seventeen minutes.

He looked up just in time to catch one more sunset. As the angry red giant slipped below the horizon it cast off a single ray of light, searing his vision like an archangel’s sword. For someone seeing it for the first time, it might have been stunning. But to Ren, it was just another reminder that this wasn’t the home he remembered. He still had fond recollections of green, and not the sickly blue-green of the algae blooms that sustained most of the scattered humans now. He remembered blue, the last of the oceans, ever retreating from the incessant heat.

His chain of thought was interrupted abruptly by the oxygen alarm. It beeped slowly, only once every dozen seconds. It would start beeping faster as his ship lost more oxygen, until it became a steady pulse. At that point it wouldn’t matter- there would just be vacuum. He idly dialed down the volume until he could barely hear it. The alarms reminded him of the day he’d left. They told him he was one of the lucky ones. His parents had enough money to buy one ticket, and they’d chosen him. He’d sat crammed into a stuffy metal rocket with hundreds of other terrified people as alarms blared to warn of their departure. Ren had felt totally alone that day, even as he felt claustrophobic among so many people. But it didn’t compare with how alone he felt today, his ship orbiting upside down above the scorched planet.

The quiet beeping niggled at his mind. He knew he should do something about it, but in this moment of soft tranquility everything faded away. He didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to deal with the busted panel that was keeping him from leaving and draining his all-important oxygen. He just wanted to float freely and remember. Caught up in the moment, he unclipped his harness- there was no reason to be strapped in, after all. The earth fell completely into shadow, as close to a midnight as it came up here, and Ren closed his eyes and let himself float, arms outstretched, transfixed by nothingness. The alarm was getting more urgent now, but he didn’t mind. His troubles slipped away, as weightless as his body, and Ren felt content for the first time in a very long time. He was ready, ready to sleep, ready to dream of things he’d never see again, ready to forget.

CRACK. Ren flailed awkwardly around, utterly startled by the noise. His watch had smacked against the glass canopy in front of him. His father’s watch. His jerking motion had set him spinning, but he allowed himself one final moment of remembrance. Father had given the watch to him on the last day. There had been a look in his eyes, and in Mom’s. There was fright and sadness, as he’d expected, but there was something else as well: hope. He could never forget that look, no matter how hard he tried.

Ren grabbed one of the handholds, stopped his spinning, and launched himself along the corridor to the back of the ship in a quick, practised motion. The alarm was blaring rapidly now. He slammed into the rear wall of the ship, but he swiftly adjusted his momentum to push himself down a side passage. In a move that only a space kid could pull off, he slithered into his EVA suit in a matter of seconds. In just a few more he’d flung himself out of the airlock, untethered.

Oxygen was a pressing concern, but not the pressing concern. If the sun came up while he was outside he’d be cooked almost immediately. It was all his suit could do to keep him cool enough to manage the radiant heat from the earth. The sun’s angry light already glimmered around the outer atmosphere. Ren’s suit absorbed the scattered ambient light and kicked the air conditioning into overdrive, but it wouldn’t be enough for long. He quickly fired his magnetic grappler at the tail end of the ship and slapped a patch onto the small hole. Chances are he’d been hit by a bit of rock or satellite, but what it was didn’t really concern him.

Hastily he turned back towards the airlock. It was too late, though, the sun was about to rise. He could feel the heat already. The aircon rattled and coughed, barely managing lukewarm air. Sickly sweat poured down him, making his suit sticky and slimy. His skin prickled uncomfortably. He tried to press the large button to open the airlock, but his arm cramped uncontrollably. He pulled himself to it and smashed his helmet into it. It opened slowly, too slowly, but he shoved himself in and managed to crash into the next button. Dots swam before his eyes and he lost track of which way he was facing. He drained the radiation-absorbing liquid in his suit onto the floor of the airlock and swam clumsily into the ship. Sloughing off his suit, he hardly noticed the melted solar coating.

As he clambered drunkenly back into the cockpit, he fired the engines, angling the ship so he didn’t have to see the red, angry sun rise until he was far, far away.

Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh
JUDGMENT FOR WEEK 188: SUN’S UP, SHITDICKS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO88HHSWg-c

I’ll make this quick. Not a bad week, not a great week.

Dishonorable Mentions go to:

FreudianSlippers for Castle Doctrine, which was a lot of lazy plotting and lazy, un-proofread writing
Killer-of-Lawyers for Beat, which was a boring story about a man falling off a streetlight and a cop getting existential,
and
Tyrannosaurus for Listening to: (Stronger) What Doesn’t Kill You, a story where the humor didn’t hit and there wasn’t much else to hold it up.

Loss goes to Carl Killer Miller for Dust Dust Dust All Night, which was really hard to enjoy or admire, from characters to plot to writing to using bulletpoints to convey plot.

Honorable Mentions go to:

spectres of autism for Things (Sirens), which was a vivid and thought-provoking piece that could have used just that much more polish,
and
sparksbloom for Reroll, which had possibly the most creative concept this week and was very successful at executing it.

The Win this week goes to what we ultimately agreed was the most solid and complete story, and definitely the most charming one.

Enjoy your breakfast-in-bed, anime was right.

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






I came in to help sort some of the top ranked stories, and these were all I read, so don't add me to your murder list if you did poorly and are salty about it.

judgemode on

Ivory Ornament
too many adjectives imo. "something feels wrong" too vague. "The grass collapses beneath my feet" unneeded. "With stillness it hangs." roll eyes. Interesting concept, but at the end I'm not really sure I see the thematic connection between him plucking the moon from the sky, and him being kinder to his mother. This story is a little rough around the edges with some awkward writing and lightly purpled text. Could do with a few more rounds of editing. Because of high concept but roughness, guessing this is Thranguy. [the link between the moon and the mom summoning light was pointed out to me during judging. It's a better thematic connection than nothing, but I think it could have been a little more convincing. It's too on the nose, that she happens to prattle on about exactly what he had been doing. It seems contrived, and could be more organic.]
Grade: B+

Reroll
The writing in this is ok, but while most scifi/fantasy does too much world building, this one isn't enough. I don't really know what's going on. I could do with a few lines of exposition here. At the end, I'm not really sure what the point of all this is. Why can the baby fight so well? What is the meaning? Not very satisfying conclusion. In the showdown between this and the moon one, this loses out because there needs to be just a tiny bit more explaning of what something is. Ground me a little bit first next time, as it's very exhausting to be totally in the unknown and trying to guess what things are.
Guess: Broenheim, because canine ex machina.
Grade: B-

Sirens
I have no idea wtf this one is about. I don't like it. Too focused on describing things that I don't have any reason to care about. this piece is basically just ~emotions~ and ~descriptions~ which is a type of fiction I don't really like. I save that stuff for poetry, not prose. anyway this is basically just a story about taking drugs, but instead of drugs they drink sugar water, which surprisingly doesn't make it more interesting.
Guess: ???
Grade: C-

Louder than moonlight
It doesn't look like much. [...] “Doesn't look like much,” was this repititon purposeful? "a drummer build like a snowman." tsk. no real conclusion here, is there. You may think that the whole discovery of mandrake giving up his life to save the girl was the big reveal/conclusion, and it may have been, but then you set up a new conflict and leave it unresolved, which I don't like in a story so much unless it gets my imagination flowing with all the possibilities there could be. this doesn't do that. guessing GP from the ending, though the writing is subpar for it to be him.
Grade: C+

judgemode off

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
random crits maybe some more later

Anime was right

This was pretty good. I don’t quite understand why or how this guy grabbed the moon.. Like, he takes the moon but then he wants to put it back up there so why’d he do it in the first place. It’s an interesting conflict and you do some interesting stuff but the plot isn’t all that engaging. I liked your character and was interested in him but the ending feels rather unearned. You tried to make your character change at the end, I appreciate that, but I don’t feel like change is warranted. Like, I don’t think “putting moon back up in the sky” equated to “now i’m interested in my mother” which is like he gained some empathy. The prose was pretty good, there were a few bits of vague word choices and weird phrases but overall, cool, but a bit weak on the plot + ending. I do think this was p. cool and interesting I just think this idea can be pushed farther.

Trex

I’m really not sure why this needs to be in present tense, especially when you have time skipping as well. There’s a fun tone in this but it also feels a lot like strawmanning which is really weird. Like, idk, the whole conversation about the beatles and what not feels like so obvious? Like that’s how i’d imagine someone who liked the beatle would imagine a conversation with someone who didn’t like them. It’s like a youtube comment chain but in dialogue, where I hate everyone involved. I don’t hate this, but the substance here, the whole “relationship gets torn apart because of a mixtape” gets overshadowed in the middle by you focusing on how much this guy doesnt like the beatle and thats just not right, i mean c’mon on. They’re like the best band ever so like, how does somebody not like them? That’s my problem here, you get distracted by your own wittiness and banter that you forget what your story is about or what my interest is. I don’t give a poo poo about your characters talking about the beatles, I want to know more about the relationship between vampires but I don’t really get it. I get some of it and some of it is told through the dialogue, but it really boils down to “guy who doesnt like new stuff gets mad at girlfriend who likes new stuff” and that’s kind of their personality in general. He’s old fashioned, she’s into the new stuff, how ever will they get along? They don’t really grow out of that. This is like a rom-com opening where the female lead gets mad at her boyfriend and then she meets the new guy who just totally gets her. It all feels very much done before. Except they’re vampires but that actually doesn’t mean anything. Like, there’s a few throwaway lines and also he turned into a wolf pup (that’s what vampires do????). I think that if it’s possible for me to say “what if these characters weren’t vampires” and still see the story working without major edits, you don’t push the concept far enough and is just there. Still, enjoyable to an extent and it feels like you had fun with it, but idk, wasn’t really my jam.

Sitting Here

For about half of this story I was like “wtf is the point?” Then the kiss happened and I was like “what? Ok????” God drat, I feel like that’s like a really weird thing people do is that they put a guy and a girl together and theyre like “THEY HAVE TO FALL IN LOVE THAT IS THE ONLY WAY” and it’s like this could work just fine, maybe even better, if they were just friends. I was like wtf, they know each other for like a day and they kiss already? It feels rushed and it also feels very unsure of what it’s trying to be. Sure, it’s supposed to be a love story but like there’s no real overarching conflict and it’s not really clear on where it’s going in the first place. It’s trying to say things about work and people moving in and out of life but it’s also trying to be a love story and also trying to be about a day in the life of an arcade worker but it never really reconciles them. As such, the whole poorly rendered crowd stuff feels tangential and the love story feels like it comes out of nowhere. I didn’t hate this though and I thought this had some cute moments but it felt unsure of what direction it wanted to go so it never really figured itself out.

anime was right
Jun 27, 2008

death is certain
keep yr cool
thunderdome CLXXXIX: knight time

write a story about a knight. not a squire. not a lord. a knight. you dont have to abide by sword and sorcery, just keep things tight and knightly.

also, because knights are full of honor, there are three honorable rules in addition to the other usual ones:

1: there will be no middle of the pack stories this week. honorable people live or die by honor. should you not win or lose, you will be guaranteed either a dishonorable mention or an honorable mention. dont shame your ancestors here folks.

2: killing is not honorable (and predictable and boring). for every character that is murdered in any fashion, or dies in a violent manner, subtract 100 words from your word limit.

3: you will be assigned a CODE OF CHIVALRY that your knight must abide by and must be relevant to the story.

word limit: 1300

no erotica, poems, fanfiction etc etc whatever

deadline:
signups 4:20PM EDT friday
submission: 4:20AM EDT monday

the order of judgment is home to three powerful thrones and in them sits: anime was right, sparksbloom and sebmojo

valiant and noble defenders of whatever (23):
sitting here
flerp
killer-of-lawyers
grizzled patriarch
thranguy
tyrannosaurus
rathlord
hotsoupfordinner
newtestleper
slipup
boaz-jachim
surreptitiousmuffin
skwidmonsters
pokeylope
paladinus
julias
lazy beggar
j.a.b.c.
carl killer miller
benny profane
froglight

anime was right fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Mar 16, 2016

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
in m'laddy

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
im in to get my 9th dm

Killer-of-Lawyers
Apr 22, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2020
Alright, let's have a code to abide by. In.

Grizzled Patriarch
Mar 27, 2014

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



Alright this is pretty much one of the things I'm worst at so I'm In.

Thranguy
Apr 21, 2010


Deceitful and black-hearted, perhaps we are. But we would never go against the Code. Well, perhaps for good reasons. But mostly never.
In

Tyrannosaurus
Apr 12, 2006
In.

Rathlord
Sep 5, 2015

Angry know-it-all.
In

hotsoupdinner
Apr 12, 2007
eat up
In.

anime was right
Jun 27, 2008

death is certain
keep yr cool

your knight is sworn to protect all royal house pets.

flerp posted:

im in to get my 9th dm

your knight may not work during the three great praying hours of the day.

Killer-of-Lawyers posted:

Alright, let's have a code to abide by. In.

your knight refuses to sleep until their job is complete


Grizzled Patriarch posted:

Alright this is pretty much one of the things I'm worst at so I'm In.

your knight may not draw a weapon until injured in combat


your knight is a strict vegan and faces consequence of death upon animal product consumption.


your knight must slice off a finger or toe for every loved one they fail.


your knight is chaste.


your knight works only for the highest bidder. all money made is given to a local orphanage.

newtestleper
Oct 30, 2003
in

anime was right
Jun 27, 2008

death is certain
keep yr cool

your knight must abstain from any and all drugs, even ones as minor as caffeine.

SlipUp
Sep 30, 2006


stayin c o o l
in

anime was right
Jun 27, 2008

death is certain
keep yr cool

your knight has sworn never to tell the truth.

Boaz-Jachim
Sep 20, 2015

CANERE CORAM LEONE
Rise, Sir Jachin

anime was right
Jun 27, 2008

death is certain
keep yr cool

Boaz-Jachim posted:

Rise, Sir Jachin

your knight has sworn to follow every order given to him by the king or queen, no matter how ridiculous or impossible it may seem.

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
Anime is bad. In.

anime was right
Jun 27, 2008

death is certain
keep yr cool

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

Anime is bad. In.

your knight has sworn to obey the laws of an obscure and hated religion

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Week gently caress Whatever Crits, They're For This One Part One: The Tragedy Of Forty Glowsticks For Five Bucks And Nothing To Do

This was a whole week of plain oatmeal, a week of getting off of work at 5:15 and coming home to eat a leftover quesadilla. The bad stories were the most boring of the bunch and the good stories only stood out by being marginally less bland.

Guiness13 - For Old Times' Sake
Some dickhole shows up, asks his friend to see his mom, turns out he was just running from some thugs. There's glimmers of something more interesting where this guy is forcing this druggie not to shoot up, but the overarching plot was just boring and the protagonist was a nothing of a character. He's got a car. That's all I know about him. The ending is an unsatisfying end to a boring plot--I mean, I'm glad that Generic Guy isn't dealing with Junkie Jerk any more, but you failed to pull off the 'gently caress this, I'm going home' ending.

Mid-boring.

J.A.B.C. - Off Week
A nephew stays with his ghost-hunting uncle for a week. This is an interesting setup, but instead of telling me an interesting story, you gave me three episode summaries from a CW show about two family members hunting ghosts with cool weapons. What do the characters want? Where did they try to get what they want? Did they achieve anything at the end? I don't know, because it feels like I just followed around someone for the night. A list of experiences is not a story in and of itself. A story needs conflict and resolution, and the only conflict I saw was in little blips that were covered front and back with more worldbuilding about how to hunt ghosts.

Mid-boring.

anime was right - Ivory Ornament
This immediately stood out to me, even after only reading two stories this week. I was like, ah, yes, this is interesting. A story should start being interesting immediately because otherwise I'm going to put it down and go do something that doesn't involve deliberately boring myself. It's all about this one central action, and trying to rectify that, so I get the conflict clearly, and by the end, I think I got what you were going for with the mother's role and how his understanding of her has changed somewhat. The tone really worked for me here, it gave me the sense of a monochrome Chris Van Allsburg illustration.

Top-interesting.

sparksbloom - Reroll
I wasn't as big on this initially, but in a week of very, very boring stories, this ended up standing out. It's a complicated premise, and at points you veer close to having your character just explain to the reader what's going on, but in the end it works, for the most part. The 'vessel' really confused me, because I thought it was a ship, but then it was a bird, but then it wasn't. And while I understood the conflict your character was going through, I didn't quite sympathize with him, because you are kind of a jerk if you're killing people just to prolong your own life.

High-interesting.

hotsoupdinner - Bring Me Down To The River
There ended up being a weird amount of rustic stuff going on this week. I generally liked this more than not, but there wasn't anything here to particularly grab onto and go "ah, yes, this is very good". The tone wavered in and out of this True Grit narration style you tried to do in the beginning. Most of the story is dedicated just to leaving, and I'm not sure what the wolf adds that you couldn't have done with the bear. The ending is realistic but kind of annoyingly ambiguous--yeah, they're in the river, is she okay, or just waking up because it's cold, or what? I don't know if explaining that would make it better, but I just felt unsure of what the 'new day' stuff really meant for them.

Mid-interesting.

Thranguy - Louder Than Moonlight
This story's tough. You did cool stuff. You hosed up too, though. The weird magical music festival/marketplace is neat, and the setting details work well. But your protagonist is barely a character, and for someone who seems to know about the narrative conceits popular in fairy tale stuff, she sure doesn't question where her friend got that flower. And she seems particularly willing to accept that what's his face is actually what's his face, and not Slightly Different Devil. And then at the end suddenly it's someone's soul is forfeit but it's not his soul it's your soul but it's also the girl's soul and then they have a fiddle-off. There's something really cool in there, but the main plot is kind of plodding until it becomes rushed nonsense.

Mid-interesting.

skwidmonster
Mar 31, 2015

THUNDERDOME LOSER
In with a :toxx: for science paper week. Just couldn't make that poor ostrich gently caress a dude.

Pokeylope
Nov 12, 2010
In for the very first time.

Paladinus
Jan 11, 2014

heyHEYYYY!!!
Can't pass on a prompt like that. In.

Julias
Jun 24, 2012

Strum in a harmonizing quartet
I want to cause a revolution

What can I do? My savage
nature is beyond wild
I'm In.

However, since a knight's chivalry demands that he honors his promises, :siren: I will also submit my entry for Week 188 before I submit my entry for this week. :siren: :toxx:

Lazy Beggar
Dec 9, 2011

THUNDERDOME LOSER
In, bitte.

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anime was right
Jun 27, 2008

death is certain
keep yr cool

skwidmonster posted:

In with a :toxx: for science paper week. Just couldn't make that poor ostrich gently caress a dude.

your knight has sworn to respect and protect the flag of their country.

Pokeylope posted:

In for the very first time.

your knight has sworn to bring all criminals to court and trial no matter the triviality of the law

Paladinus posted:

Can't pass on a prompt like that. In.

your knight has sworn to never strike a person they deem their lesser.

Julias posted:

I'm In.

However, since a knight's chivalry demands that he honors his promises, :siren: I will also submit my entry for Week 188 before I submit my entry for this week. :siren: :toxx:

your knight treats their animal companion as if they are their equal in all aspects of life.


your knight has sworn to never wear shoes again after a certain incident.

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