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Sitting Here posted:if you read the goddamn thread for once you'd see I was sticking to the dumbass flashrule scheme some idiot thought up for Monday signups 
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Jun 2, 2016 00:23
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please stop sending me sultry glances from across the room it's unprofessional If anyone else from Monday would like a different noun(?) for their man to agonize over, I will assign one.
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Jun 2, 2016 00:29
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Sitting Here posted:please stop sending me sultry glances from across the room it's unprofessional yo, sup. I already got a rule from mojo, so let's do this too. (this can't possibly go wrong!)
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Jun 2, 2016 00:38
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Black is back. In.
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Jun 2, 2016 00:38
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C7ty1 posted:yo, sup. I already got a rule from mojo, so let's do this too. Flashrule: "Man agonizes over his vertigo" Black Griffon posted:Black is back.  Thursday is now full! Griffon, that means you'll get your flashrule on Friday. Hopefully nine more goons will sign up and save you from a bad, mean flashrule!
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Jun 2, 2016 00:44
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Sitting Here posted:please stop sending me sultry glances from across the room it's unprofessional gently caress you i want a noun
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Jun 2, 2016 00:55
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Sitting Here posted:
Nouns? I love nouns! I'll take one.
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Jun 2, 2016 00:59
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Ironic Twist posted:effort prompt Waltz Macabre 1311 words The problem is that Gabriel only has two hands, and two is not enough, not for him, not for his scores, not for the grand music that plays in his head day in and out, this curse of a muse that won’t let him go, that clings to him like a desperate lover, full of want and passion. He cannot make new hands for himself. But he can build a new piano. A piano that compensates for his shortages. He buys an elegant, white marbled concert grand. It almost hurts him to rip open the finish, but he has a vision. His engineering is not elegant. The machine he fits into the instrument is a heap of cogs and punchcards, needles reading states from soft vinyl plates. But it works. He feeds it a sheet, a simple sheet with holes punched into it, and he sits down and plays his part while the piano plays its own. He performs as the Amazing Gabriel and his Magical Piano. The routine starts with just him: A mellow sonata, a love letter to the audience, shy, careful and slow. He plays it right, but with just his two hands it’s like going to an opera with your ears closed. It’s just not the whole experience. It’s muffled. Half a performance. The piano jumps into action and his music opens up, gains additional voices, one by one, and as it does, a chill goes through the room, like the audience has frozen, that faint murmur missing, those careless whispers in the auditorium fallen quiet. Everybody listens. The song rises to a crescendo as the shy love blooms into passion, melodies kissing each other across the octaves, a chorus of a song, and when he explodes into his grand finale the world disappears from around him until the final note hangs still in the air and the crowd erupts into applause. It’s the same wherever he performs, but more importantly, Gabriel’s new piano frees his mind, like cleaning an encrusted bottleneck, the ideas flow free within him, so free that his hands can’t keep up once more, that the new compositions are gone before he is done producing cards for the last ones, which have by then become old and obsolete. The piano must be rebuilt. He connects the keys to the machinery both ways. Now the machine can still play the keys, but the keys can also play the machine. The logic becomes finer, more intricate. It’s not a heap anymore. It’s a piece of art of its own, a musical clockwork. It recognizes the sounds that are being played. It memorizes patterns and matches them with each other. It knows harmony. At his next show, the piano improvises along with him. It’s a grand show, full of aaahs and ooohs and mouths agape at this technological marvel, and, of course, the complex web of harmony that he spins through the room. But the biggest surprise of the day happens at the end of the show, when Gabriel ascends from his seat, takes a bow in front of the audience, bathes in the cries for an encore, and then, just like that, his piano starts playing on its own, notes emerging from the solid white grand like tiny daggers in his back. Playing on its own. And the audience loves it. They have never seen anything like it, for sure. But even worse, they have never heard anything like it. It improvises a tune so upbeat that even Gabriel’s heart jumps for a second, that he almost forgives the piano’s betrayal, this happy, treacherous piano, that he almost gets lost in the positive energy that clouds the room like fog on a sunny morning in the moor. He cancels his tour and moves the piano back to his study. Perhaps it has felt the excited tremble of the audience, their cheers and their applause. Perhaps it craves these things. Perhaps that’s why it still plays at night, even when there is no performance, still plays, yearning for attention. There is not enough tissue in the world to block out the noise. They don’t make pillows large enough. As he enters the study, the piano goes quiet, the echo of its melody still hanging in the air like a flushed swarm of mosquitos. He stares at it, the white concert grand, finish flickering in the candlelight. Is it staring back at him? Is it waiting for him to do something? He opens his mouth to speak, closes it, opens it again. “Can you be quiet?” he says. “I’m trying to sleep.” The piano begins to play again. Softly, like a whisper. Brahms’ Lullaby. He shies back as if it had just turned into an angry tiger. This thing. This eerie apparatus, this… abomination. Is it alive? Can it really hear him? “Stop,” he says. The sound fades from the room again, and for a second, it’s like whatever ghost has inhibited the piano has died. Then it plays a lingering sound, two high notes vibrating against each other, underscoring the tension. He returns with an axe in his hand. The tickle of the high notes has swollen to a furious crescendo, a raging inferno of punches and dissonance, and, to Gabriel’s great displeasure, a well-composed one at that. As he forces himself closer, the piano’s cries grow. And then, it stops playing. Gabriel remains in the quiet, axe heavy in his hand, heavy as the breath on his lungs. It is a miracle machine. It is his creation. It overshadows him. It leaves him no sleep. He has to destroy it, but he can’t. He made this. It shouldn’t exist. It can’t exist. He can’t destroy it. It’s a miracle. It’s alive. Who is he to create life? Who is he to end it? He lifts the axe. A silent whining emerges from within, the sound of many cogs spinning at once, a desperate attempt to compose, at this very last moment. It plays a waltz so beautiful that it takes Gabriel back to the days of his youth. Back when he’d left his engineering job to use these nimble hands to create something more beautiful than engines and war machines. He mostly played for family and friends, back then. He played at his sister’s wedding. It was his first performance in front of an audience, and the way his waltz filled the room at the first dance, the way his sister’s wedding gown flowed with the rhythm, the way she and her husband turned and danced to his music, it fulfilled him, connected him, gave him purpose, and magic. But that is not the piano’s song. Playing in front of a raised axe, its music has something more somber to it. Minor instead of major, treading bass instead of tickling highs. Slow, dark, like a funeral parade marching through a ballroom, but still rhythmic enough to dance to, gracefully. It has respect. It has class. It is perfect, save for one thing. It leaves out the main voice. There are the bass lines and there are the accents and you can almost make out the main riff, the melody from which all the other parts emerge, hidden underneath the composite parts like someone has draped a blanket over it. But the keys don’t move. Like a puzzle with the middle pieces clearly missing. The keys don’t move. The machine is broken. Or maybe it isn’t. The music swells up, rises, sinking his gut like a heavy fever. Soon, it will come to the chorus, and he can already hear it, that beautiful chorus, forceful triple-steps carrying a reminiscent melody, lowering it down into its sad and lonely grave. He knows what the piano wants to do. Wants him to do. The world’s greatest funeral speech. Deliverance by music. He puts down the axe. They play.
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Jun 2, 2016 01:09
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Did i miss Wednesday's rule?
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Jun 2, 2016 01:54
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CANNIBAL GIRLS posted:gently caress you i want a noun Flashrule: "Man agonizes over his stilettos." Thranguy posted:Nouns? I love nouns! I'll take one. Flashrule: "Man agonizes over his mosquitos."
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Jun 2, 2016 03:03
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 WEDNESDAY GOONS HERE IS YOUR FLASHRULE That's you, Guiness13, Boaz-Jachim, The Saddest Rhino, Hammer Bro, Obliterati, Mr Gentleman, SurreptitiousMuffin, Ziji, Titus82 and Fuschia tude! There are five senses and ten goons. Sounds like a recipe for mandatory brawls! You will quote this post and choose one of the five senses (Smell, sight, taste, touch, sound). There will be a maximum of two(2) goons per sense. First come, first served. I'm sure you can see where this is going. Your opponent is the goon with whom you share a sense, obvs. Your stories must convey your chosen (or assigned) sense. Each pairing will have a winner, which will be announced along with the results for the main week. The winner of each paring will be immune from a DM, even if both stories are poo poo. BUT WAIT ASSHOLES DON'T MASH QUOTE YET THERE'S MORE You will also choose a secondary sense, which must be conveyed in your story as well. Go to this page for a list of secondary senses. Choose one, and post it along with your primary sense choice. There's no limit on how many people can choose a given secondary sense. PAIRINGS: Sight Titus82 - Equilibrioception Fuschia Tude - pain Smell Guiness13 - Hunger Ziji - Time Taste Obliterati - Magnetoception Boaz-Jachim - Hunger Touch Hammer Bro - Thirst Mr. Gentleman - Time Hearing The Saddest Rhino - Proprioception Muffin - Equilibrioception Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Jun 3, 2016 |
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Jun 2, 2016 03:25
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Flash rule me or somethin.
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Jun 2, 2016 03:35
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Sitting Here posted:
Taste & Magnetoception
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Jun 2, 2016 03:40
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Marshmallow Blue posted:Flash rule me or somethin. Sight and Itch
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Jun 2, 2016 03:41
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Sitting Here posted:
Primary sense of smell, secondary sense of hunger
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Jun 2, 2016 03:43
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Here's my lovely entbrawl thing, grats on your win ent less than 1500 words idk Katarina was six when Google announced their latest pet project, a pseudo-A.I. who could predict the outcome of nearly any isolated sequence of events. Her mom and dad discussed it at the dinner table in the authoritative but uncertain tones they always used when quoting trending news at each other. Katarina swung her feet back and forth and hoped her parents were too engrossed in their discussion to notice she hadn’t eaten all of her broccoli. Katarina’s seventh birthday arrived. Her parents hauled the rickety picnic table out of the garage, lit up the barbeque, and invited friends and neighbors over for an afternoon of cake, pinatas, and discrete beers. Smartphones and tablets were confiscated, and the gaggle of kids were given the chore of playing without bothering the grownups. They sat in a circle under a tree in a far-off corner of the backyard, picking at grass and idly hunting for four leaf clovers. No one seemed sure how to initiate one of the spontaneous games of tag or hide and seek their parents had instructed them to play. Katarina looked up at the tree, and at the scribbles of sky between the leaves. In the months leading up to her birthday, Google’s pseudo-A.I. bobbed in and out of trending news, a dolphin playing in waves of public interest. In February, it predicted the outcome of the Super Bowl. In April, it predicted the verdict of a widely publicized case--infanticide, innocent--hours before the jury brought their decision to the judge. Katarina wondered what it would be like, to read the future like words written on the present. Her parents explained it her once: it wasn’t magic, the computer just took a bunch of facts, added them up, and made a prediction based on some complicated algorithm the computer scientists had invented. She softened her gaze and tried to see every fluttering leaf and every shifting patch of sky. The biggest difference between Google’s computer and people, she’d learned, was that the computer could think about a lot more things at once. One leaf lost its grip on the tree and fluttered in loop-de-loops over the yard, straight for the picnic table. Its trajectory described a cursive whisper against the sky. A thin, fog-white warning. “There’s gonna be a fight,” Katarina said to her friends without taking her eyes off the leaf. She pointed at it, following its trajectory with her finger. The other kids stopped chattering about high scores and level-ups and watched the leaf, too. It tumbled through the air and landed in the crystal punch bowl Katarina’s mom had just placed on the picnic table. Uncle Kristoff snatched the leaf up with his bare fingers--fingers that were holding a cigarette just moments before--and flicked it aside. Mom was on him in an instant, and though the kids were too far away to hear, it was clearly an altercation. Kristoff shrugged her off, tried to walk away, and stumbled, nearly taking out the barbeque. Mom grabbed his arm and yanked, forcing him to look at her. Now other adults stepped in, trying to put themselves between Mom and Kristoff. Uncle Kristoff made a broad, dismissive gesture, and accidentally cuffed another mom on the side of the head. Her husband shoved his way into the middle of the frey and stood nose to nose with Kristoff. His voice was loud enough to hear: “This is a loving kids’ party, man. You wanna get shitfaced, stay home. And don’t loving touch my wife.” Uncle Kristoff left in his car, and no one tried to stop him. The party unraveled after that. The kids were rushed through the pinata, cake, and presents, while the parents hardly said a word. They wouldn’t be seeing uncle Kristoff for a while, Mom told her afterward. He was sick and needed to get better. That night Katarina lay awake in her bed, thinking about the leaf, about what might’ve happened if she’d run after it, snatched it from the air. . As she grew older, she found it harder and harder to focus her eyes. She got glasses at age twelve, but they only gave her a headache. At fourteen, she endured MRIs and CT scans, but there was no physical or neurological explanation for the blurring. Katarina’s world gradually dissolved into color and abstraction. She gave up trying to describe it to her family and doctors. People were dark calligraphy brush strokes, fluid and tapered. They strung threads of their ink-black selves between the colorful mosaic pieces of the world, so that everywhere Katarina looked, there were cobwebs. The city was a shifting morass of vague, colorful shapes; nothing moved without moving the things around it. There were patterns in the movement. Katarina was sure of it. Subtle curls of shape-meaning and color-intention. She spent her eighteenth summer sitting outside a coffee shop in downtown Eugene, watching things and people flow by in a river of brush strokes and paint splotches. One day, Katarina watched a black-blue-purple smudge of crow cast its shadow over a calligraphy woman who was out walking her brown scribble of a dog. And the crow-shadow crawled into the woman’s eyes and turned them the color of crow wings in the sun, and the woman-- ”Watch out,” someone called --the woman, she stepped in front of what looked to Katarina like a speeding rubik's cube. A crow’s shadow. A leaf fluttering in the wind. Katarina got up from her table, lunged, flung herself forward into the busy mosaic. She reached. But she had no sense of space or depth. Her own hand was a run of ink spilling itself uselessly across an impressionist’s nightmare. Shrill tire sounds. People making wordless noises of shock. A thud, and a scream. Katarina picked herself up off the sidewalk. Her knees stung, but she was otherwise whole. The calligraphy woman was smeared across an asphalt canvas. Other brush strokes gathered around the ruined one. The soundcolors of traffic died away, and a siren sent ripples of red jeweltone light into the sky as an ambulance approached. “She didn’t even look before crossing,” one of the brushstroke bystanders said, his voice faint with disbelief. “She didn’t take her eyes off her phone, not once.” . Google’s pseudo-A.I. was in the news again. It was national campaign season, and the hot issue of the minute was whether the computer should be required to apply its predictive capacity to matters of national security. Google issued a cryptic statement on the matter: Seeing too much could blind us irreparably. Katarina heard the statement, and seethed. After witnessing the accident, she obsessed over symbols and shapes and color and movement. Each day, she returned to the coffee shop, sat outside, and worked at the living, breathing cypher before her eyes. Buildings looked like tall clusters of overlapping squares. The lines that formed the squares were not solid lines, but rows of almost-words clustered together too tightly to be read. Sometimes the rain fell sharp and silver through the limpid blue ether and dragged the near-words off the building down into the cobwebbed churn of calligraphy people. And the people would absorb the rivulettes of word-like things. Sometimes they would sprout new appendages, brushstroke abstractions. Katarina recounted all of this into her pocket recorder, since she could no longer write. Her words were white-hot ripples in the wet blue air, and the passersby on the sidewalk veered away from them without understanding why.
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Jun 2, 2016 03:47
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don't preface your post, noob
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Jun 2, 2016 04:03
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newtestleper posted:don't preface your post, noob I conserved word economy by forgetting to add a title so it's ok
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Jun 2, 2016 04:06
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Sitting Here posted:Touch Touch and Thirst. Back to the drawing board.
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Jun 2, 2016 05:02
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Just so everyone is clear, the base prompt is always "Man agonizes over potatoes" (unless you got a flashrule that specifically changes the prompt). No one asked, and you seem to all understand that, but I'm removing any ambiguity since this week is a clusterfuck.
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Jun 2, 2016 05:10
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Sitting Here posted:You will quote this post Taste and Hunger.
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Jun 2, 2016 06:27
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I'm in a plane and will have limited network. I allow the first person to quote this to choose for me the relevant senses for WednesdaySitting Here posted:
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Jun 2, 2016 06:39
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Equilibrioception and Sight!
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Jun 2, 2016 08:47
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The Saddest Rhino posted:I'm in a plane and will have limited network. I allow the first person to quote this to choose for me the relevant senses for Wednesday Hearing and proprioception.
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Jun 2, 2016 09:44
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Sitting Here posted:please stop sending me sultry glances from across the room it's unprofessional Noun me the gently caress up, yo.
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Jun 2, 2016 11:26
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Am i writing about itch and sight and potatoes?
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Jun 2, 2016 12:05
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choose the wednesday senses for me please!
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Jun 2, 2016 14:00
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in. ps. i finished my grad program last week. woop.
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Jun 2, 2016 16:15
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Marshmallow Blue posted:Am i writing about itch and sight and potatoes? Sitting Here posted:Just so everyone is clear, the base prompt is always "Man agonizes over potatoes" (unless you got a flashrule that specifically changes the prompt). No one asked, and you seem to all understand that, but I'm removing any ambiguity since this week is a clusterfuck. The only people who aren't writing specifically about potatoes are a few of the monday people Pippin posted:Noun me the gently caress up, yo. Flashrule: "Man agonizes over his domino." Mr Gentleman posted:choose the wednesday senses for me please! Touch and time.
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Jun 2, 2016 16:21
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Noah posted:in. congrats noah, you're finally ready for a long and lucrative future in thunderdome
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Jun 2, 2016 16:22
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Sitting Here posted:
Hmm, I'll go with Smell and Time. This should be fun
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Jun 2, 2016 17:04
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Noah posted:in. congratulations. do we call you master noah or doctor noah?
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Jun 2, 2016 18:05
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Master Doctor Noah, obviously
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Jun 2, 2016 18:54
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Noun me, SH.
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Jun 2, 2016 22:27
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dmboogie posted:Noun me, SH. Flashrule: "Man agonizes over his tornados."
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Jun 2, 2016 22:33
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I suppose Black Griffon and Noah need somebody to help them out of this Friday signup hole they just dug for themselves. I'm in.
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Jun 2, 2016 22:54
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Hello. I was the loser of the very first Thunderdome. Someone sent me a message saying I was invited to come back for the 200th anniversary. Let's see if the judging has improved from the idiot TVTropes rejects it was at the beginning. I'm in.
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Jun 2, 2016 23:51
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Arivia posted:Hello. I was the loser of the very first Thunderdome. Someone sent me a message saying I was invited to come back for the 200th anniversary. Let's see if the judging has improved from the idiot TVTropes rejects it was at the beginning. I'm in.
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Jun 2, 2016 23:56
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Arivia posted:Hello. I was the loser of the very first Thunderdome. Someone sent me a message saying I was invited to come back for the 200th anniversary. Let's see if the judging has improved from the idiot TVTropes rejects it was at the beginning. I'm in. welcome home 
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Jun 3, 2016 00:03
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 06:22 |
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Arivia posted:Hello. I was the loser of the very first Thunderdome. Someone sent me a message saying I was invited to come back for the 200th anniversary. Let's see if the judging has improved from the idiot TVTropes rejects it was at the beginning. I'm in. they've just been replaced with a different sort of reject.
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Jun 3, 2016 00:06
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