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  • Locked thread
Mercedes
Mar 7, 2006

"So you Jesus?"

"And you black?"

"Nigga prove it!"

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




https://youtu.be/swo423cXQuE?t=44s

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Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

Benagain posted:

When is this due again?

if only there was a post which had the prompt in it, that we could read to gain secrets and value

Chili
Jan 23, 2004

college kids ain't shit


Fun Shoe
Alright, enough pussyfooting out of me; in.

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
in

Emmideer
Oct 20, 2011

Lovely night, no?
Grimey Drawer

Chili posted:

Alright, enough pussyfooting out of me; in.

:same:

in

BeefSupreme
Sep 14, 2007

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022
hell why not :toxx: for DOUBLE BEEF ACTION








aka two entries

SkaAndScreenplays
Dec 11, 2013

by Pragmatica
Yes It's A Man Giving A Monologue:
So it's not appropriate to the prompt...
But it's still one of the best loving speeches in the history of film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4PE2hSqVnk

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010

SkaAndScreenplays posted:

Yes It's A Man Giving A Monologue:
So it's not appropriate to the prompt...
But it's still one of the best loving speeches in the history of film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4PE2hSqVnk
lol excuse you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGQToJ9RR-4

almost there
Sep 13, 2016

SkaAndScreenplays posted:

Yes It's A Man Giving A Monologue:
So it's not appropriate to the prompt...
But it's still one of the best loving speeches in the history of film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4PE2hSqVnk

Alec Baldwin won the Oscar for best supporting that year for that role, and that's literally the only time he's in the movie. In the same vein I recommend checking this one out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35DSdw7dHjs

curlingiron
Dec 15, 2006

b l o o p

Okay, I guess I should do this since I'm halfway through writing my entry already.

I am in.

Entenzahn
Nov 15, 2012

erm... quack-ward
in :toxx:

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
New Long Walk thread is up

For those who don't know, Long Walk is where we :toxx: to write lots of words each month. It's cool, you should do it.

Kaishai
Nov 3, 2010

Scoffing at modernity.
Critiques for Weeks VIII, CCXXXII, CCXXXIII, and CCXXXIV: Deep Into That Darkness Peering

More crits, catching up with the past two recap episodes and offering a preview of things to come in the next.


Week 8: Martello's Girlfriend Said, "I'm late!"


budgieinspector, "That's Showbiz": Dialogue tags would go a ways toward keeping the twins distinct from the start, and the long back-and-forth early on could certainly use a few. Long is a fair adjective for the story despite the word count. The fifth and sixth scenes stick out for repeating ideas that have already been established. I know Lucy wants a normal life; I know Welk is straight-laced and strict. If the twins were offered a contract right after their audition you could cut both scenes and lose nothing. What bemuses me in the end is why Darcy thanks Lucy for taking the blame, because Darcy's still out of her dream job and doesn't even have love to show for it. I can't call that a happy ending, and as ways for Lucy to get her quiet life go, it's roundabout. You'd have the same conclusion for less trouble if Lucy told Darcy where to stick it at the end of their long conversation. The extended path isn't a particularly entertaining or interesting one, so I'm left wanting more from the story than I've gotten.


*************************


Week 232: I want to crit your blood


SkaAndScreenplays, "Salvage Law": Sequels must stand alone. Assuming the judges will take the time to go read more of your words than they have to is about as hubristic as toxxing to HM. Even if they did, you're being judged on this entry, and it's a weak one that's worse yet when considered in isolation. What's the reader's investment in the recovery of the Aegis? Or Thessalia and Jenkins? Or the setting? You don't do much to set any of these up, instead throwing the reader in head-first--a tactic that would be more effective if the conflict, characters, or setting were interesting. Instead, the story's main point of tension is resolved off camera; the characters are talking heads; the setting is barely sketched. Needless scenes and subplots also bloat the text to a fare-thee-well. That business with Maura and her grandfather? Cut it. The kiss? Cut it. Neither of these contribute to this particular story. They connect to some larger work from which it has been carved. Turn the scene of Thessalia waking up from a vomit stupor to yak at Norris for paragraphs on end into a scene of her doing something to repair that ship, holy criminy Christmas cripes. The question of whether the team will escape the moon isn't a suitable climax: it lacks tension because there's only one reasonable answer. There isn't much tension anywhere, mind you, since every scene is people talking to each other with maybe a little action on the side. On the issue of the non-existent proofreading, I don't know what to say. I doubt you so much as hit the preview button. You had days to go and were toxxed to HM. Dear God, let this be the wake-up call you need regarding slinging unproofed poo poo at the judges. You have the potential to write good yarns, Ska, but nobody here can help you if you won't help yourself.

*****

SkaAndScreenplays, "The Fires Of Discontent:": I'd spit at the sight of this format in any other week, but you were asked to write from your soul and draw on whatever it is that compels you to write. So, a screenplay. Fair enough! "May the winds of change fan them into a conflagration which engulfs the dead wood of tradition in a conflagration of progress." Not fair enough at all! This comes after stage directions that read like descriptions in an online roleplaying game. The voices of Charlotte and Araspasia could probably be more stilted, but it would take some work. Oh, hey, no wonder the RP descs are there! You've written World of Darkness fanfic! The E in Caine gives away your source material. You even refer to clans, so let's see if I can guess: Toreador and Ventrue? At least you didn't write a Fishmalk. Don't lean on other people's intellectual property for your Thunderdome entries. Don't ever publish fanfic without giving credit to the source. Otherwise, this is--naturally--talking heads talking at each other, and nothing happens beyond an exchange of threats. Maybe I'd come to care whether Dahl or Araspasia rules a city over the course of a longer play to which this was the intro, but all you've done as it stands is set up a conflict between names on a page. I'd rank it very slightly below the space story.

*****

Prester Jane, "A Cave Adventure.": Welcome to Thunderdome, Prester Jane. Your story tells me right away that you don't have much writing experience, so you're in the right place! The rough mechanics (missing punctuation, awkward comma splices, etc.), overuse of -ly adverbs, repetition of words ("I started to feel excited," "Nathan said excitedly," "his excited voice," all within four paragraphs), repetition of ideas (yes, I know these kids find interesting things to play with in the cave; you've already told me so), flat prose (the repetition has a lot to do with how flat it is, but painstakingly describing every minor action doesn't help) and missing words ("I think its a Mom") are markers of an amateur effort. The Purdue Online Writing Lab and its exercises can help you with sentence-level issues. The OWL won't tell you to avoid crappy twist endings, so I will. What? You mean these kids were in a closet all along??? That definitely justifies reading about their protracted adventure in finding a shoe! You've written about something inherently kind of boring and counted on the twist to zing the reader, I imagine, but even if the twist weren't also dull it wouldn't make the rest of the story good in retrospect. Stick around and keep practicing.

*****

steeltoedsneakers, "An Interrogation": I'm curious whether you've read the Wheel of Time or this fruit-based torture technique is either an urban legend or an actual practiced method. Regardless, you burn a good few words on the methodology and manage to make incipient torture a humdrum affair. The whole story drags its heels through Sam's "comic" mauling. To your credit, I expect any humor is supposed to be of the black sort, but that requires a sharpness this piece just doesn't have. I appreciate the moral re: work ethic while thinking there had to be a better way to illustrate it.

*****

Hawklad, "Runes": Terrible first line: that wayward his has me trying to imagine how Aegar is at once chopping with an axe and being chopped by an axe. Go with "the man." Stick a he before heaves so you aren't saying Aegar's foot heaves the axe. I'm caught up in Aegar's slow, brutal death, the emotions and physical horrors of which are well described, until he and the rune-writer converse as though one didn't have a smashed stump in place of a leg and the other didn't have his guts falling out. The writer is the worse offender, as he might as well be chatting over tea for all his words suggest urgency or pain. It's the ending that ruins this story. Aegar is so maddened by the scratch scratch scratch that he uses some of his dying energy to kill a man, and then he picks up where that man left off? Why? The only answer that comes to mind is Hawklad needed to wrap up the story somehow.

*****

BeefSupreme, "When It Raines, It Pours": Ooh, I like the first section so well that I'm dreading what will happen to turn this into DM material. The punctuation is nearly spot-on too! Look at that perfect use of a semicolon! Beautiful. I see the sentences getting a little rougher as the story continues (caps or italics for emphasis: choose one), but it's nothing terrible. The action sequence is excellent. My anxiety increases. The third section is the weakest yet and shows incomplete mastery of hyphens. Still not bad... here we go. Final scene. The blocking isn't so strong here as in the earlier fight, and I have no idea why Grimace in whiteface just ran by. The pacing slows to a crawl as Mr. Raines expounds on martial arts. Is all of this going to turn out to be about inexplicably retro drug parties? Yes, sort of. The ending is, I fear, rather awful, if possibly not so awful as to have earned a DM in my book. The last confrontation is ridiculously short compared to the martial-arts duel with a nameless henchman; worst is the last line focusing on Iselle when Iselle never became more than a McGuffin. The whole entry leaves a bitter aftertaste of disappointment.

*****

kurona_bright, "Don't Fear the Reaper (Yes, Really)": Pthbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbt. Uncredited fanfiction. Shame on you. I laugh as I type that only because you weren't trying to get away with anything. It raises a point all the same: as one of the 1% of Thunderdomers who doesn't play Overwatch, I thought these characters were yours, which means you're passing off other people's intellectual property as your own and that's abominable and horrible and bad! Okay, my finger has been duly waggled, so let's look at what you've done with these nice fictional people you've stolen. To the surprise of no one, the story reads like fanfic, with the usual problems like an overload of backstory, expository dialogue--though you're getting better at that--and yadda yadda, you know the drill. I don't know what to make of the ending, since Gabe presumably remains dead. Is he going to hang around as Jack's pining-for-the-fjords boyfriend? The bankruptcy filing isn't the dramatic revelation you want it to be, either; it's not as much fuss over nothing as that old story about the D that I will never let you forget, but it's in the same family, so keep watching out for weak sources of drama lest you end up with melodrama instead.


********************


Week 233: IT HAS BEEN TOO LONG

Note: I come to form poetry looking for strict adherence to structure, a story or resonant message, and progression. I'm especially impressed or disappointed by meter, rhyme, and flow, and that shapes my reaction to this round.


Jay W. Friks, "The Last Quiet Place": Oh, dear, no. You either mistook which rhyme rule for villanelles you were allowed to ignore or believe toast rhymes with space--I suspect the former. The up side here is that I can (I think) gather the gist of your poem. An alcoholic who likely has other problems besides is locked in an institution, but he plans to get out and escape into death. Not bad. The down side is how awkward and sometimes nonsensical the individual lines are. The first and final stanzas barely make sense. Even the maybe-clever image of a security camera(?) as a cyclops doesn't hold up once I start wondering why the camera would ever be turned off; lines like "Kept behind risk and filled up space" look as though they're intended to be deep and artistic despite not meaning anything. The premise is worthy, but the execution's a mess.

*****

Thranguy, "His Name is Herschel, By the Way.": Ambitious. I think you're trying to show mastery of the form by confounding expectations while playing within the letter of the rules. This risky tactic paid off with the judges, but I see a poem that reads poorly and contains approximately 0.5% of an adult's RDA of substance. Recite it with any respect for the line breaks and it clunks and clatters. Even when I read it silently, my inner ear hates it. The line "This is more trouble than I've been in" is awkward no matter what approach I take. The poem tells a story, but an empty one: Colleen, Sam, and a pangolin go up to a tower, meet a monster, jump, are caught by a zeppelin, then get knocked out by tridents. Okay, so? It's not interesting enough to justify the read, nor are the individual lines memorable. (Various story-poems from this round are weak on those points, to be fair, and yours has some energy.) My end thought is that if you'd pulled this off--if the story were striking, if the lines were striking, if the rhythm were good or at least unobjectionable--it would have been clever, brilliant, a wonderful way to go, and I tip my hat to you for the attempt. For the result, not so much.

Side note for all, not just you: Capitalize is in a title! It's a verb, not an article, conjunction, or preposition.

*****

Chernabog, "My sorrow": Your subject matter gives you a tough row to hoe from the outset since everyone and his dog has read a poem about death and loss. Yours doesn't stand out in that field, but there's something to the final stanza, when the passionate cry becomes one of rebirth--or resignation--or mourning for having to live because he once was loved. But that flicker of depth is almost lost under the juvenile feel of the AAA rhyme scheme and the arrhythmic meter: a villanelle may not have to follow a set meter, but that doesn't mean just any sequence of syllables will sound good. "All your words have been exhausted so this is your last reply" is too long. The semicolon in your first refrain should be a colon. And the single, trickling tear is an image so overused to convey sadness that it almost makes fun of itself. I don't personally find this the worst poem of the lot, but it's the closest to trite, which could be what signed its death warrant.

*****

sparksbloom, "sparks bloom": This piece has a nice sway, only slightly irregular (the eighth and eleventh lines have the same number of syllables, but the rhythm is different), and it includes good wordplay in the two meanings of match. However, the rhymes don't all come off as organic. More noticeable to me are the words that aren't meant to rhyme but look as though perhaps they are: flush and match, which (despite the aforementioned cleverness of the latter) "sound" bad in conjunction with the -ash parade. My main issue with the whole is encapsulated by the line "although it pains me to rehash," as the poem strikes me as repetitive: one idea, one note chanted again and again. There's no progression or change and not much to enrich the impression of a dead love beyond what the first stanza conveys. Probably those issues are linked: I wouldn't mind the lackluster rhymes if they said more, wouldn't mind the stasis pattern if the lines were stronger. This one is worth tweaking and keeping.

*****

Hawklad, "Aurelia": Do something with the second refrain and you'll improve your poem at least twofold, because the current version sounds unbalanced in my mouth, ears, and mind and doesn't carry a clear idea to boot. Did the Fall of Man drive the world to the edge, or is the Fall itself the edge, or...? I just do not like it. The other quibble I have is that the environmental message becomes heavy-handed as the poem goes on, until I start thinking of Fern Gully and imagining the whole thing as sung by Tim Curry. Kudos, still, for good imagery and a solid tick-tock rhythm.

*****

GenJoe, "Ash Tray": Nothing about smoldering in an ashtray is romantic, passionate, or anything but gross, and that metaphor fails despite inspiring the title. That fourth stanza is the weakest of the lot, the one spot that asks with plaintive eyes for revision. I like the verses about the shift horn better than I did at first; I see now the endless shifts that "weeks of underuse" implies. I don't care for the "explain away an" that the other recappers like, however--I'd ditch away, because as-is the line feels a syllable or two too long. Content-wise, though? The story and its emotions are strong enough to overpower minor flaws in technique. The pitch-perfect second refrain makes ideal use of the villanelle form. I love everything about the last stanza, her good-bye hug that he doesn't recognize for what it is and the quiet flow from that embrace to the tearing note. I can feel the pain in both of them and hurt for both of them. drat good work for a nineteen-line poem. You slam-dunked this prompt. Congratulations!


********************


Week 234: Binging on Bad Words


Uranium Phoenix, "The Eyes of Eris": I would still be wondering why this lost, fleshy python and all, if it weren't for the final twist that pees itself the moment a thought so much as glances its way. Why would Eyes of Eris hire cyborgs to kill the miners they also hired, exactly? Why is destroying the station without solving that mystery a reasonable solution? Was Eris out to get the asteroid and also whatever's on board the Minor Miracle, which is to say a tediously peppy AI and a random maybe-cyborg, maybe-captain's-lover-I-guess? Nope, I'm not buying it from any angle. Emmy's twee "charm" is perceptibly forced in the pie factory line; Cythea is worse because Cythea barely exists. Alecta I like, even with the convenient array of bioweapon elements, so you deliver some of what the prompt asked. One interesting character doesn't save the story, unfortunately.

*****

Twiggymouse, "The Job": The point of view is nebulous, but that's less a problem than the lengthy, dull, cliche conversation that opens the piece. Jameson's haphazard use of contractions makes his voice stuffy in the least interesting way. Worse, Michael's right: I know exactly how this is going to go, and yet it takes forever to get to Jameson's predictable arrival at the West High. Worst by far though is that you set up a story but never actually tell one. What the hell? Your prose isn't too shoddy: flat in places, yes, and cliche-ridden, but these are just things that make me think you need more practice. The lack of a story is such a sin that I'd have given you the loss over Uranium Phoenix, easily, but I hope you stick around.

*****

Venomous, "Ears": First off, https://howdoyousaythatword.com/word/la-seine/. The pun draws me up short. Sure, your protagonist might pronounce it that way, but a pun that makes a reader stop to think about it probably isn't worth the cost, especially if you factor in the elbow-to-the-ribs execution. Moving on: you don't have much in the way of flow or coherency here. The beginning is awkward because who doesn't know the Mona Lisa is smiling? Why would Ricky be afraid of art critics? What? Then the amusing art-theft chat to which I was warming slams into a block of backstory with a crime-is-bad moral. Then! Then there's more backstory about Austerlitz, only this doesn't seem to connect to anything; then the narrator suicides because... because he does, and that's it. Nope. The PTSD and self-destruction don't fuse with the art talk and rampant cursing. Not a bit. Ricky ends up irrelevant. I don't know what you were trying to do if not to jam two stories together and make a misbegotten plot-centaur, and I don't know why you would do that. I'd probably rank this one lower than the losing entry too, though the bare hints of an arc put it above Twiggymouse's. The bright points are the narrator's internal descriptions of art and his argument with Ricky about it, which show decent character voice.

*****

Benagain, "Driverless": Your work has some of the same problems as Twiggymouse's. The shorter length is to credit for how much less annoying it is, but I'm still looking at a non-story that leads up to something happening (maybe) and then stops. Naomi comes off more as bitchy than as sympathetic in her aggravation because of her ire being at maximum from the start. How angry she is at little things and how apathetic to larger things suggest a human despair with a lack of control; good job there. I imagine a story about this woman could have drawn me in, if only one had been told.

*****

Metrofreak, "Home Office": You have my interest up through the delivery of the stiff envelope. You start to lose it when the exposition becomes overt. Once I know what's up, James puttering around his house isn't compelling anymore. The words drag on from there. You have too little story covering too much space; even as a character sketch this is repetitive; there's some nuance and certainly believable human behavior, but it is, alas, believably boring. This might be salvaged if you give James something to react to or act around: make something happen beyond his stages of loss.


2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 31, 38, 39, 42, 46, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 78, 80, 83, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 111, 114, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122, 124, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156

Kaishai fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Oct 29, 2017

GenJoe
Sep 15, 2010


Rehabilitated?


That's just a bullshit word.
I am in if it's not too late and will also get crits in this weekend as well

Tyrannosaurus
Apr 12, 2006
That's fine.

Sign ups are now closed, though, for real

Chernabog
Apr 16, 2007



Princessdom
639


They told me I couldn't be a firefighter or lumberjack among other careers. 'Those are jobs for men', they said. Maybe I was supposed to argue, to fight the good fight like my girlfriends. They love talking about that stuff, gender roles and whatnot. But honestly I didn't care, I just wanted to become a princess. Yeah, I know. That's both cliche and silly. And it perpetrates the stereotypes or whatever. I never actually spoke about it though. I wasn't about to commit social suicide so no harm on keeping it for myself.

It was most definitely an unrealistic career expectation. Maybe I could have become the princess of pop or princess of whatever-the-hell-there-is-to-be-a-princess-of. I could have earned the title. But that's not good enough, no sir. It's not the real thing. Perhaps the only way to achieve it would've been to marry a prince and the odds of must be pretty drat low. First, there aren't that many available princes around. Second, I doubt they'd have a reason to look at your average SoCal girl. Well, it's not that I consider myself average per se but not particularly distinguished either. I like social events, biology and good books. Long walks on the beach. What kind of monster doesn't? Not exactly princess material right there if I'm being realistic.

Why would I want to be a princess you ask? When I was a child my dad used to call me 'his little princess'. Well, technically he still does. It's lovely. He even built me a castle to play in. But that has nothing to do with it, I don't think… I don't know. Maybe I am just a childish dreamer indeed. Or stupid. I don't really believe that last part but it has to be considered. Who knows? A glamorous life where you get pampered all the time sounds kinda neat. Some might find it boring but not me of course.

In the end that's not the path I took, I mean, obviously. Nobody actually does that. Nursing was my real calling. Yeah... it has no resemblance to princessdom. It's not even like I'm in charge of anything, I'm neither a doctor nor a head nurse. I don't hold some position of authority.

When it comes down to it I just like to help people. Seeing their smile at the end of the days makes it all worth it. Because nursing is a real hassle I have to say. It's demanding tough work and certainly not for the weak stomached. When you have to clean somebody's blood or crap – that right there – is the real test of character. Many people can't handle it and they end up leaving. I don't get why they'd want to be nurses in the first place but I don't blame them for changing their minds. It's good even, to realize it wasn't the right choice before it is too late. Before wasting several months or years on something they wouldn't have been able to follow through. As I sort of did when fantasizing about my future.

Sometimes I wonder if those smiles on my patients are the reason I wanted to be a ruler of some sort: to be in a position of power where I could help tons of people. Maybe I could have gotten the same rush by working at an animal shelter, or the senate or as a firefighter even. Someplace where I felt I was making a difference. Perhaps my girlfriends were right about that, I could have been a firefighter. The idea is kind of amusing at least. And I would have rocked the hell out of that uniform for sure. I guess the only thing that matters is to do what makes you and the people around happy. At this point I wouldn't change my career for anything.

almost there
Sep 13, 2016

Lickin’ Bitches
675

There is nothing, I tell ya, nothing that beats that feeling when your skates first hit the ice and you slice across it. You know how bitches in the 20s said ‘cut a rug’? That’s how it felt. Like the ice was just this big, frosty, fuming canvas for me to gently caress up. Ever since the first time my Pops—god bless his soul—took me to the rink, I knew I was hooked. Having a big wooden stick you could just use to knock bitches knee caps out was fuckin’, what’s the word, cathartic. Ya, that’s the one.

At first my Pops would take me to the rink at the community centre only about once a week, but soon I’d start begging him to take me as soon as he got back from wrangling trout. He’d smell like fish guts and try to B-line it for the recliner without me noticing. But I noticed alright, I always noticed. Poor soul must have not known how bad he smelt. I’d corner him and just hee and haw until he couldn’t take it no more and you bet your finest loonie he took me once I started moanin’ like that.

Soon I’d get big enough to check bitches into the glass. Once that started to happen Pops would start bringing his buddies down from the fishery over to the rink and they’d stink up the whole place, getting drunk as skunks, but smelling worse. It didn't take long after that for Pops to forgot all about that recliner of his.

I’d start to get so good it wasn’t so fun no more. I remember a moment, right after a real savage game where I knocked one of the older girls so hard on to the ice she didn’t show up for picture day that year, when my Pops was untying my skates for me in the locker room and just stopped in the middle of it, looked up at me with tears of pride in his eyes, and said, “You’re what Tim Horton prays to God he doesn’t come face to face with on the ice.”

Fuckin’ eh, right?

Fast forward through my small town high school years and I get accepted to play varsity at the University in Toronto. Candy coated dreams: The Big City. Glitz and glamour and hockey. I packed my bags, said goodbye to my pops and just like that I was on my own.

The Big City.

Toronto smelt like sewage and everybody walked around like they had a cucumber shoved up their rear end. But I didn’t care, I was just there to push disc. And push disc I god drat did. Every day, up at 6 pushing disc and lickin’ bitches. That being said, don’t think me ungrateful when I say that it didn’t take long for home sickness to settle in. I found myself detouring through the fish market in Chinatown after practice just to get a whiff of Pops and his buddies. It reminded me of the rink at home. My home arena.

But then I met Elizabeth.

Elizabeth smelt like a woman should, like black grip tape and talc and tulip-y mildew. She was our centre and controlled the rink like a sexy Gretzky on Adderall. And god drat her because she could just tell I wanted her. But she wasn’t like those other bitches, she was kind. She’d let me untie her skates for her and walk her home. We’d even hold hands along the way. In Toronto, nobody cared if you did that.

She showed me I wasn’t playing hockey for me. She told me I was only playing it for my Pops, but my Pops wasn’t there to watch me anymore was he?

After I met Lizzy I quickly started to soften up. Melt, even. I just didn’t feel like hitting bitches anymore, ya know? It just started to seem…barbaric. Elizabeth became my ice swan and I wouldn’t trade her for all the hockey player’s prayers in the world.

kurona_bright
Mar 21, 2013

Thank you for the crit :)

steeltoedsneakers
Jul 26, 2016





kurona_bright posted:

Thank you for the crit :)

Yeah, thanks Kaishai

Jay W. Friks
Oct 4, 2016


Got Out.
Grimey Drawer
Moonlight Goes Back Home (542 words)

A dragon's roar sounds from the land below. A flash of red and yellow and the crackling of flames continue after the roar.

Moonlight: It’s here.

Moonlight pulls a frayed blanket off her skinny form and throws it into the space between the moon and the earth. It drapes across the empty space forming a staircase from nothing.

Moonlight: I watched them. I waited. And now I can leave this place with my own keepsake before I bring the rest back home.

She picks up a skinny rabbit from a small shuttle beside her in the crater she was sleeping in. She descends the staircase.

Moonlight: Let’s go my Toto. I’m so glad they left you here with me. I’m sorry you didn’t have much to eat. I’ll find you a nice place to sleep down below.

She lands on the Earth in the midst of the ruins of a bunker. A massive rumble echoes from her landing. She starts overturning rocks and debris with one hand whilst holding the rabbit in her other palm.

Moonlight: My mother told me patience was the greatest tool of spirits. You find such fun things when you wait long enough. There’s plenty of stories in leftovers. I heard their radios and saw some of their shows when I was close enough to peek. I will grab everything still holding words and songs, and dances…

She pulls a set of ballet shoes from a wreck with her pinky.

Moonlight: This dance looked painful. I remember a young girl breaking her foot in front of me during an eclipse. They put on the show because it seemed good fortune to do so. She didn’t think so after they made her stand so still, so long, on such thin toes. Fragility should make you want an easy life I’d think.

She picks at pieces of pottery and DVD’s.

Moonlight: Here it is! The Wizard of Oz! I saw this in a New York blackout. A funny old man put it on with his generator to calm the rioters. It worked for some. But not most. If there was ever anything I wanted to take with me, it was this. It’s a beautiful movie. Innocence, animals, monsters, magic, and the hope of parents that their children will stay with them.

The sun rises. The ocean glows an emerald green as it crests the horizon.

Moonlight: I wish I could take something else but mother will get mad at me. There must be many things left in the water. This ocean is so pretty. No people are left, but it still shines with their passion.

She looks back up at the moon and dismisses it. It floats away into darkness. The sheet unfurls to the earth below.

Moonlight:Well, I got my keepsake from this journey. I will bring the rest of it to my little sister. She deserves a better home to watch the lands below from.

Moonlight digs a small hole for her rabbit. She grabs the sheet and wraps it around a mountain. She floats away, pulling the Earth away from the sun.

my cat is norris
Mar 11, 2010

#onecallcat

Yo I worked kind of a lovely exhausting job for awhile but I'm freeeeeeeeeeee so I'll see you for the next prompt.

Entenzahn
Nov 15, 2012

erm... quack-ward
Sally (Catharsis)
479 words

Don’t take this personal doc, but I’m done with fairy tales. Alright? There was a time when I believed in that whole Power of Positivity thing, but now I see that’s an idea happy people sell to the dumb and desperate. Might as well tell me how the night is always darkest before dawn. And maybe that’s true for you, because you’re normal. People don’t look at you and see a gross tub of lard. When you’re like me, it’s always dark, never dawn. When you’re like me, every day is a new chance to get hurt. Some passing comment, or some unbelieving stare, or somebody online telling you to kill yourself because how dare you be on a dating site looking like this.

They say the first cut is the deepest, but that’s bullshit too. Not if the second cut hits you in the same spot, and the third, and the fourth. Eventually it gets there, you know? That’s how all this hosed-up-- this world never cared for me. Never. And gently caress all this poo poo about how, oh, you gotta love yourself before other people do it for you. You spend twenty-eight years of your life being nothing but trash, your parents think you’re a nuisance, your teachers think you’re a moron, your friends think you’re a joke, and now every single man that looks at me sees this: Fat Sally. That’s all they see. You try put a picture of your positive spirit on Tinder, tell me how that works out for you.

So you want to know why I keep eating? Because it makes me feel good. Because it’s the only thing that makes me feel good. Because what happens if I stop? I’m still a fat piece of poo poo. That’s still what everyone sees. I’m still a hundred-fifty pounds overweight. I still get exhausted tying my own shoelaces. I’ll be like that for years, no matter what I do. Trapped. Like this. And all that time I’ll still be Fat Sally, and that’s all people will see, only now when I come home I’ve got broccoli waiting for me. Look me in the eye. Look me in the eye and tell me that’ll be a thing I can pull off. Because I know myself, and I know I can’t lie myself into thinking that everything’s hunky-dory when there’s nothing left to hold on to. No matter how much you try to peddle this poo poo to me.

Look. Doc. I’m sorry. I know on some level you’re really trying. But that’s just what it is. No man wants me. No one. And it feels… it feels bad. And if we’re being honest, cake is the only thing that makes me feel good ever once in a while. And I can’t give that up.

So you tell me what to do.

Seriously, please.

Please…

Please tell me.

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
Sulfur/baccy/woodsmoke
700 words

Look nah, look – you’ve got it backwards.

So this pommy oval office comes in, and I asked him if he’s got a durry, and he’s like “if you suck my cock” and I’d never wanted a smoke so much in my life but I like to think I’m not that far gone. I know the house is a shambles but I try to have my poo poo in order. I did not suck that pommy cock.

I mean I almost did. I was on the fence there for a wee bit, but then his wee boy comes in and he’s wearing different-coloured socks. He’s maybe ten, and his face is the wrong kinda dirty – not like he’s been playing outside, but like he hasn’t seen a shower in months.

Kid has probably seen enough without having to watch his dad get a blowie from some rando in a squat.

Hehe, squat.

Funny word that. When you can’t afford to live in a real house, you squat – you’re not quite on your knees, but close enough. It’s easier to go down on your knees, you know – just fuckin let the world whatever. Now holding a squat, that takes real courage. Kia kaha, motherfucker; banzai, Zapata, a billion dead proles can’t be wrong.

So I said “oi gently caress off” then I felt a bit bad because of the kid. ‘dad shakes his head and pulls out a ciggie; lights it, takes a drag, just kinda looks me up and down like men do. There’s a redness around his eyes, and his fingernails look like he’s been rooting through pigshit. What’s a bloke with a bloody kid doing in a place like this?

Looking for trouble, that’s what.

There’s a lot of people live in the squat, alright? I’m not expected to keep track of everybody and/or what they’re selling. So the pom leers at me for a while, then he grabs the kid by the arm and drags him off into one of the other rooms. ‘comes out about twenty minutes later with a poo poo-eating grin and a gun. Never seen one like it outside of movies: little silvery revolver with a short uh, barrel thing. He looks at me, then he kneels down and presses it into the kid’s hands.

“You wanna be a big boy?” he says, and I’m starting to get worried. Kid shakes his head, looks at his feet.

“Shoot that fuckin whore,” he says, and lifts the kid’s hands up. Poor kid’s in tears, and I’m frozen in place. Trigger goes click, barrel rotates, and everything’s going reeeeal slow while my brain tries to shove my whole life before my eyes, which I do not wanna see.

Click, empty. Crazy oval office’s laughing now, waving the gun around. Kid’s on the floor crying while his old man tells him to stop being such a girl. The gun was empty the gun was empty he’s saying. You’ll never be a man if you’re scared of a little boom.

It was a little boom. Movies teach you it’s a big explosion, but it was almost a soft little click. Kid kinda weaves back and forth a bit, then falls over. There’s no blood, and they don’t show you that in movies either. A little hole in a dark shirt (was it white, once? Hard to tell, but it was getting darker) and he falls onto his face like he’s a puppet and his dad cut the strings. Turns out, clothing can soak a fair amount of blood before it starts going everywhere, and kids ain’t got all that much blood in ‘em.

Pop, flop, game over.

They don’t show the smell either. It’s rank-yet-woody. It burns, but soothes. There’s nothing else smells like gunsmoke.

Dad’s holding the gun, eyes wide, then he drops it and does the nugget: just fuckin hoofs it outta there superhero fast, not even looking back. Didn’t have a phone to call the ambulance even if I wanted to, but it was obvious the kid was dead -- right in the head, point blank.

So I sat in the same old place, and waited for the sound of sirens.

BeefSupreme
Sep 14, 2007

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022
No War But Lass War
381 words

You will kill me, I know that. Your officer will tell you to put me in a ditch and shoot me in the back of the neck. You will ask me for information, but you will get none. You would kill me either way. We are familiar with such methods, you know. You did not invent them.

Am I making you nervous? Is it because I know your language? Is it because I am a woman? You should be nervous. You have killed many of our men. Millions. But you have forgotten about the women.

You fascists never learn. You thought we could be cowed by cruelty. You thought if you burned enough villages, killed enough people, we would stop fighting. Your leaders are not paying attention. Did you hear what happened up near Minsk? Your officers left four soldiers guarding a village of women and children. You thought them harmless. When the rest of the soldiers returned the next day, they found the village burned to the ground and a trunk in the middle of the road. Inside it were the heads of your four soldiers. We are no strangers to cruelty.

You Germans believe you are more intelligent than everyone else, but you do not know everything. You will learn that we Soviets know a little bit more about winter than you. Our cities are built for it. So are our people. So are our tanks. Are yours? Your uniform looks nice. Does it keep you warm at night? I thought not.

Do you actually believe this Herrenvolk nonsense? That you Germans are a part of some sort of “master race”? What an extraordinarily foolish idea. Well, we have ideas of our own, and perhaps you did not account for that. When you looked east, you saw a nation of 80 million—men. Because in Germany, your women do not fight. You fools. In the Soviet Union, we believe in equality. Marx argued for all people to work, and to be paid. He did not mean just the men. Lenin himself fought for the emancipation of women. Our women work in the factories. They work for the Party. They wear the Soviet uniform.

Soon enough, you will know the result. Bullets fired by women kill Germans just the same.

Kenfucius
Dec 8, 2016
First Entry

Normal
Word Count: 687



(A woman stands in front of a door, holding a key. She raises the key to the door, then stops, and turns to face the audience.)

“How was your day?” I know my husband will ask when I get home, for he always shows me that simple kindness. I love him and have loved him and will continue to love him because I know that this is no empty gesture on his part. My problem, on this day, and it’s not the first time it’s happened, is that I have no idea how to answer. Can I tell him that my path to work was momentarily blocked by two men who declared me a Goddess? He’d most likely be amused, or tell me how he agrees in a misguided attempt to put a smile on my face. Just as he’d be likely to darken his gaze and clench his fists as I tell him how those compliments turned to epithets when I refused to slow my pace or turn my eyes.

None of those reactions are useful, they aren’t what I want or need. So do I smile, tell him “same old, same old,” and let him live in blissful ignorance? Do I keep my mouth shut, as I have so many times before?

I stay silent because it’s normal.

It’s not that I don’t think he’d sympathize, or that I believe he’d fail to offer welcome comfort. It’s that I know he wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t understand why the girl who works for me, just turned seventeen, had to hide out of sight while I called the police. All this to thwart a man, twenty years her senior, who refused to leave of his own accord, because he didn’t understand just how charming he was not. No, my husband would not understand this, and he certainly wouldn’t understand why that girl’s fear turned to laughter and pity as calm reasserted itself upon the day.

But I understand, because at sixteen, that girl was me. Locked in a walk-in chiller inside a German deli, shivering and starting to see the humor where there was none to be found. He wouldn’t understand that I still laugh at the memory.

I laugh because it’s normal.

So should I speak? Should I shout and rave and declare that the world should not loving be this way? Should I declare that I am tired of the unsought attention and the undesired advances and the undeserved abuse? I don’t even know if I can make my husband, whose idea of normality is completely removed from mine, see what I’m really trying to say. Even he, in his oafish attempts at solicitude, has moments where he, all unwitting, perpetuates this status quo.

If I really let myself focus on all of these things running through my mind, I start feeling the tears well up. Frustration flooding me, looking for an outlet. But if I let it out, there it is, yet another hysterical stereotype. I’ve grown used to it, so I clench my teeth and hold it in.

I don’t cry because it’s normal.

I know I’m not alone in this, I know I’m not a single voice crying into the void, and I don’t want anything special. I want two couples who I count among my dearest friends, one black with a daughter and the other white with a son, to know their children will have the exact same opportunities. I love the fact that they talk to each other and those children as if they are family, due the same respect no matter how different they are. I want everyone to raise their kids the way my friends do. Those two children are brother and sister, in every way but blood, and all their differences will mean nothing in the face of that shared bond.

Is it too much to ask for that to be normal?

(The woman turns back to the door, opening it and stepping through. From off-stage, a male voice calls “how was your day?” The woman turn to the audience again, and gives them a sad smile.)

Kenfucius
Dec 8, 2016
Second Entry

Little Heart Attacks
Word count: 611



You know how people say that things can be as serious as a heart attack? Well, let me tell you, my heart attack left me in stitches. Actual, literal stitches, because they had to operate. You remember, of course.

Also, I thought it was funny as hell.

First off… I didn’t realize what was going on straight away, honestly. I just thought I was constipated and overdoing it. I’m not as young as I used to be and the ol’ digestion isn’t as reliable as it once was, so this is not new. Anyway, as it turns out, what I initially thought was a pain in my rear end became a pain in my chest, then it became a pain in my rear end all over again because I fell off my throne before I could get myself decent.

You heard the noise, barged in, and called the ambulance, I remember that, son.

I don’t know if you knew, but I never actually lost consciousness. I was in so much pain I couldn’t make a noise, but I was awake, and I remember you fixing my clothes for me. It was sweet, kiddo, but the look on your face! It was a picture, if I hadn’t already succumbed to a cardiac event, seeing how awkward you were at seeing your old momma with her pants around her ankles might have made me laugh myself into one.

Plus, you spoiled things for me doing it, too. I suppose it’s sweet that you defended my modesty and all, but one of those paramedics was a real cutie, I remember that! I’d have jumped on his face and shouted giddy-up cowboy given half a chance.

Maybe I should see if he still works here when my visiting time is done.

Remind me to tell you all of this again when you wake up, son. Let’s be honest, what good’s a mom who doesn’t mortify and embarrass her kid given half a chance?

Oh, and that was the other thing! Speaking of mortification, remember how your grandma always used to say that you should always wear clean underwear in case you ever have to go to hospital? Well, I hate to tell you, son, but… yeah, about that....

Now don’t you worry, your mom isn’t some slob who wanders around in dirty underwear all the time but… look, it was the morning, okay? I hadn’t showered yet, I wasn’t going to put on the clean stuff until after, I was still wearing what I slept in.

On second thoughts, you might have done me a favor with the paramedic. Can’t wear dirty underwear on a first date, that’s just gross.

Anyway, son, the point I’m making here is… somewhere in there, I thought, just for a minute, that I was going to die. But here I am, years later, still kicking, and able to look back on that day and see the funny side. And somewhere inside that coma listening to this, you might be thinking the same thing that I was during the worst of it.

Stop.

Listen to your mother now, I’m still older and wiser and always will be, and if I catch you thinking about not waking up, well… you are not too big for me to take you over my knee, you hear me?

So, take your time if you need to, but at some point, you ARE going to wake up. When that happens, I will be here, and I will find a way to make you laugh. Life’s always a little more worth living when you can laugh about it.

Goodnight, my sweet boy.

I’ll see you in the morning.

sparksbloom
Apr 30, 2006
.

sparksbloom fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Nov 27, 2017

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.
How to Steal a Car (...and Why)

700 words

Well, it really is my car. A deal’s a deal. The moral arc of the universe bends towards me becoming the owner of Rex Wallace III’s beautiful silver 2016 Jaguar F-type R Coupe, soon after it passes into the unworthy hands of Rex IV. Only, it turns out that stealing a car is insanely difficult.

Don’t get me wrong, Lise. Any fool with a little know-how can jimmy a car door, and if the car’s old enough, hot-wire it into starting and go for a little ride. For anything made this century, you really do need the key, so you have to either force the driver out after they’re in there, which isn’t my style, or else lift the keys out of someone’s pockets, which is. Most of the time the keys will even helpfully show you exactly where the car is parked. But that’s just borrowing it for a few hours. So maybe you know a guy, can take it to some warehouse in the part of town where everything smells like smokestacks and slaughterhouses and someone pays you pennies on the dollar and it’s broken down for parts or shipped off to Albania. But that’s not stealing a car.

Look at it like this: let’s say that instead of a sports car it was a rare baseball card that old Rex had promised would go to whichever of us - bio-son Rex Quads and goddaughter-turned-ward Vikky Thackeray - managed to end our senior year’s first semester with the higher GPA. Like, a really expensive baseball card, a signed Ty Cobb rookie card or something like that. What does it mean to steal that card? Well, it means that neither Rex winds up having it, which, sure, the chop shop method would cover, but it also means that the thief would have it, fully theirs to take out and look at and lovingly wax and tool out on the highway. And if they did, as would be completely natural with a baseball card with that kind of performance ratings, happen to exceed the posted speed limit by a few dozen miles per hour, they’d only be stuck with the speeding fine. There wouldn’t be any licensing or registration or baseball card identification number that would tell the friendly officer that this was a stolen piece of cardboard and make him far less friendly.

Neither one of us had been much of a scholar. We each had our distractions, him with fast girls and bad cars, which he’d fix and flip for a profit, and me with fast cars and bad boys, which I’d drop as-is and flip the bird. But we both knuckled down. And I beat him fair and square. Got accused of cheating a few times, but since it was bull it didn’t stick, and got accused of ‘hiding my light under a bushel’ by more than one condescending prick teacher. But when the grades were posted, I had a solid 3.3 up against his 3.1.

But Triple-sticks tells me he’s going to give Quads the car anyway. Says instead he’ll pay for college. ‘One of the state schools of course. Not one of the Ivies.’ Says once I hit eighteen his obligations are done. And then he twists the knife. ‘You know, the only reason I agreed to be a godparent was to get closer to your mother. And it worked. Oh, don’t worry. There’s no chance we’re related. It wasn’t until well after you and your sister were born that-’

The next four words were, well, exactly the ones you’d expect. And the only reason I didn’t slap his smug face was that I knew he wanted me to. That he’d have been more than happy to send me off to juvie or some home for violently insane young women. That even though he could make something up and do just that anyway, he thought himself above that. But if it were true...

So that’s when I decided to steal that car, and if I can, in a way that he won’t even collect the insurance. And I have about five months to figure out how. So can you help your sister out?

sparksbloom
Apr 30, 2006
.

sparksbloom fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Nov 27, 2017

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.
The Seventh Portrait

449 Words

Along the living room mantle, above
The old bricked-up fireplace hang six years of
Family portraits, Me and Frank and Buddy
And Jenny, of course Jenny in each one.
My eyes avoid them, drawn past every year
Drawn right, to where the seventh would have been.
We always took them just before the start
Of each school year. Nobody made the choice
To not pose without her for one this year.

But it happened without words, like so much
Has in this life suspended for so long.
No one decided to preserve her room
Just as it was before she disappeared.
(A lie, of course, it was ransacked and searched
and then restored anew three times or more.)

Strangers and friends alike will try to raise
My spirits with those words: “You still have hope.”
They’re right. We still have hope. And hope is cruel.
Hope leads you to a new heartbreak with each
Knock on the door or unknown number call
And into thoughts of things distant to come:
A phone call from some city in ten years,
A tired stranger with her name and voice
with years of dire survival on the streets
imploring help and pardons through the tears.
Or the same story with a different end,
Some dutiful policeman on that phone
Who followed trails of breadcrumbs back to here
To put a name and family to ‘Jane Doe.’
A million more scenarios unfold
Until I wish for any end to come,
Then curse myself for what I briefly wished.

My husband and I do not share a bed.
In two more years, when Buddy’s college-bound
We likely will no longer share a house.
It’s my own fault, of course. Some months before
Our life’s load-bearing block was snatched away
And the whole tower tumbled down, I slipped.
Took up with some fair man who filled a void
I never knew gaped in me ‘til we met,
Now gone across the ocean. And Frank knows,
But doesn’t know, for sure, officially.
He won’t hear confession, won’t talk it out,
Alone or with a counselor to help.
He lives in hope. No, next-door, in denial.
I live in hope. And hope has wicked fangs
With barbs to tear and venom-stings to give.
I see her, in piece-meal, all of the time:
A classmate with her hair, seen from behind;
The brand of bag she carried on a chair;
Her eyes on some mad woman in the park.

I watch the archived news of families
Of children who were found after long years
Abducted by some micro-cult or fiend.
They say ‘I never gave up hope.’ I know
They really mean ‘Hope never let me go.’

curlingiron
Dec 15, 2006

b l o o p

https://thunderdome.cc/?story=5485&title=Damsels+%26+Diplomacy

curlingiron fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Dec 29, 2017

flerp
Feb 25, 2014
429 words

Pretentious Bullshit

archive

flerp fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Mar 14, 2017

Chili
Jan 23, 2004

college kids ain't shit


Fun Shoe
Aaaaaaand, it's gone!

Chili fucked around with this message at 12:38 on Jan 2, 2018

katdicks
Dec 27, 2013

SO BIG
Us Women
521 words

You know, at my first annual review with my boss, I only received satisfactory marks. I remember leaving that meeting absolutely devastated. He said, “Nancy, health care is a man’s game. If you want to play, you’re going to have to hold your own.” Of course, I threatened to report his sexual discrimination to HR, and, well wouldn’t you know it, I received outstanding marks on my next annual review.

But, going through your review now, you can see I’ve graded you as outstanding on practically every aspect of your job. Attendance, thoroughness, accuracy, you’ve done just a – well, an outstanding job. Ha!

You’ll notice that for leadership, though, I’ve only given you an above satisfactory. This is a very important quality, and, like I said before, you’re going to have to hold your own. Right now, I get the impression that you’re just too dainty to be in a senior position. You know, this isn’t the 50’s anymore, us women have to be strong, we have to look out for each other, and that’s why I’m telling you this now. You’re going to have to man up if you’re ever going to be a leader in this department. Right now, all of the account holders would just walk right over you. You see?

So even though I can’t give you a promotion, I can try to get you a raise. I understand the wage gap more than anyone, and I’m a progressive person - a forward thinker - and I want to be part of the solution. So I’ll make your case to our HR department, let them know you’re an up-and-coming woman of color, and see what they’ll do for you. Not that it should make a difference, but you and I both know, mentioning it never hurts. Now as far as what you do with that money, obviously it’s your decision, but you just got married, right? Well, husbands are bad news, let me tell you. They tell you they love you and next thing you know they’re asking to start a joint bank account and move in! Well, from one woman to another, go ahead and have a joint bank account, let him know you’re happy to share your hard-earned money, but make sure you have a secret one just for yourself. Every smart woman has one. I call mine my Mad Money Account. Ha! I keep enough in there just to make sure that if I ever want to fly away to Cuba, I can.

Of course, I wouldn’t actually do that. I’m happily married. My husband and I have been together for twenty years now. But, like I said, every smart woman has one.

Anyway, we’ll talk about promoting you to senior at your next annual review, but for now I’ll fight my hardest against those pricks in the HR department. I think I might be able to get you something nice. How does 2% sound? It’ll be just great.

Like I said, us women, we have to look out for each other. Now do you mind being a dear and shutting the door on your way out?

Metrofreak
Mar 17, 2009

THUNDERDOME LOSER
Sam vents (535 words)

You’re an rear end in a top hat, did you know that, Kyo?

Don’t hide behind this soft rear end ‘hey Sammy, you sure you’re ok?’ crap. Say it to my face. Tell me I don’t want to loving be here. You’ve got your parasite crap, Mel’s got god whispering in her ear to fight evil, Dan’s not a person anymore, and don’t start me on Vam. But here’s me, poor Samantha, no sob story, no compulsion to join this merry little band. She’s normal, she’s fine, she shouldn’t be here.

Is that what you think?

gently caress you, Kyo. What is it that you think I even do? Do you think I’m running around with a loving magic makeup kit? That I’m some kind of scummy conman that’s in over her head? Or maybe you think I’m one of those capes that makes pretty illusions: smoke and mirrors, holograms maybe. Do you think I’ve tricked my way into the hero business? Is that what you think I’ve done?

I’m not some two bit magician. I don’t make pretty pictures. I reach into your brain and dig around and find the memories I want and staple them together until it makes you think what I want you to think. I don’t even do the legwork, I just want something, and everyone around me reaches into the deepest filing cabinet for all the scents and sensations to make it real. I’m two steps away from straight up controlling your reality. And you know what? I don’t always know what’s real, and I can never turn it off.

I don’t even know when it started. I don’t know if I ever didn’t do it, maybe I was born like this. Did you know my mom died? I didn’t. I didn’t want to know, so all those memories, all those experiences, they just kind of filtered out when it happened. I covered it up, and everyone around me was complicit. Because I made them.


You think I’m the normal one, Kyo? You’re half demon, Mel’s some kind of chosen one, Dan’s a family of space worms, Vam’s an alien, and I’m still the worst monster on the team.

And if I wanted to, I could walk away whenever I wanted. You would never know. You’d forget. You wouldn’t miss me, you wouldn’t hate me, it’d be like you never even met me. I don’t have to be here. I don’t even have to exist. I am a seamless patch to the world, and if I want, I can leave a seamless hole.

I choose to be on the team. I choose to be your friend. I try not to lie, I try to stay out of your guys’ heads. I know I’m batting a hundred on that, but I loving try.

So if you don’t want me here, just tell me. Because I want to be part of this. I want to be your friend. I want to be here and now.

If you think you’re better off without me, or if you or anyone else thinks I should leave it to the real heroes, tell it to my face, or shut up and stop trying to protect me. Cause I don’t loving need it.

Chili
Jan 23, 2004

college kids ain't shit


Fun Shoe
Aaaaaaand, it's gone!

Chili fucked around with this message at 12:39 on Jan 2, 2018

Uranium Phoenix
Jun 20, 2007

Boom.

Entry One
Who Holds the Walls of Byzantium?
383 words

Empress: The court is dismissed.
[Exit Court]

Empress: Oh, but I tire of their schemes!

The court chatters away like gossiping husbands! Vacuous, hollow as their ambition. All the aristocrats, from the patrikias and magistrissa to the lowest kephale—they are too busy clawing up, crawling up the stairs of power to have vision. They peer so intently at the next step, that they cannot cast their eyes beyond the daggers they plan to bloody. They have not gazed from the ramparts. They have not seen as far as I.

Would that I could unearth all their petty secrets and plots. They are sinners who defy my divine right. They would cast down God for twenty-nine silver less than Judas and spit in Her eye if they thought it would gain them a copper coin more. But, I fear if I dug up the roots of hell, I might topple the spires of heaven. For it is stability that strengthens the empire, and doubt that cuts at its foundations. So I must leave them to their games, and smile as I lift my poisoned chalice.

And I must acquiesce to their demands, and make Ionnes strategos of the south. A male general. A male general! Shall the court abandon the other gains of civilization? Perhaps we should embrace stone tools and cannibalism as well, or ask our barbarian neighbors for high culture! Men are fair on the eyes, their shapely figures fit for depiction with marble statues and oil on canvas. They are not fit to command, any more than they are inclined to figures or reading! History has proven that well enough. It was not merely the Fool Paris that damned Troy with lust, but the man-kings of Greece who then followed with equal blindness, so insecure in their honor they could only prove it with sword and fire. No, they are irrational, beastly things. I pity the soldiers that must follow that male. But I must grant the court their symbol, their token.

The empire will endure, not from force of arms, but from the alliances I have forged, through the pride of its citizens in their Sovereign, from the great works that I have commanded. They shall remember in time that it is I that keep the walls of Byzantium.

Obliterati
Nov 13, 2012

Pain is inevitable.
Suffering is optional.
Thunderdome is forever.
The Truth in Our Stars
517 words


“Come home,” the first message says. Of course it's you. I know the code that comes through clear, if staccato, in the pulsar's pirouette, bathing my ship in hyper-focused neutrons. Morse. You thought it 'elegant', once; now, though, who knows what you think?

I see that message a lot. It's so very you. Straight to the point, as dramatically as possible. But you diluted the effect. You tried making the signal stronger. Longer. Different pulsars. Everything. I'm not impressed. You only get to break physics once, dear: after that, you're just showboating. Besides, others made it out.

Beneath me, the engines tick-tick-roar as they come up to charge. I wrench down the lever and I get the hell out of there. I'm still ahead of the chase. The Conduit beckons. One more jump, and you can keep this drat galaxy. I told you what I thought about your mind upload bullshit then, and if you catch up with your drones I've got one final nuke for my last word. You were always a lover of codes and patterns: interpret that.

I drop into the final system before the Conduit, right into your waiting message. “Come home,” the pulsar burbles, like you didn't break down ours for parts. I wish I was insignificant to you, like everyone else was. My only home lies beyond the Conduit: there, with the other survivors, I can finally build a life free of you.

I sit there, floating in space beneath a pulsar's pleading, and wonder what that will be like. No more running. Just an entire galaxy without you in it. It sounds like paradise, but first I have to pass through the eye of a needle. I pull the jump one last time, and I leave you for dust. Right?

The Conduit system revolves before my screen, and you've beaten me there. The portal is ringed in your ships, slaved to your will, defying relativity in your reach. I realise, as you planned, that there were no survivors. Are you happy now? If there's one human thing left in the silicon you call a mind, it'll be that smug grin. I can see it now, curling, sneering. How will you mock me in your new world, with no face?

“Come home,” says the pulsar, then it twists, changes, and the Morse shifts. I peer at the growing screed of words on my terminal. Your empathy circuits must be doing overtime. Reminiscing. Apologising. Cajoling. Each one ends, a coda, with “come home.”

My eyes drift over the field of stars, seeking out our point of origin. But it is gone. Our whole cluster, blotted from the sky. Guess you completed the Dyson spheres you were so excited about.

I point my ship straight at the Conduit. Your ships swirl in a formation too complex for my eyes to follow. I prime the nuke, set the timer, and push the engines to max. I flip open the microphone, and I laugh. Go to hell! My parents never liked you, you know. They always said you'd amount to nothing. Beep bee-eep beep, motherfucker.

Uranium Phoenix
Jun 20, 2007

Boom.

Entry Two
Lovebugs
303 words

The stupidest species in the world? Plecia nearctica. Lovebugs. They—no, gently caress you I haven’t had too much to drink, gently caress off! So lovebugs, they’re loving idiots. Seriously, baffling. You ever seen ‘em fly around? They don’t fly. They waddle through the air. Like they’re constipated. Like they—gently caress off, she asked me about stupid species and I have to study the drat things so I should know. I’m cut off? You’re loving cut off!

Anyways, these fuckers, maybe you know ‘em as March bugs, they waddle through the loving air and just crash into poo poo. Ever seen it? This fat little bug, red dot, slow as hell, just doot-doot-dooting around and it’ll just run into you! Like my grandma when she hit pops, car was going two loving miles per hour but she just couldn’t stop it until bam! Knocked him over, shattered hip. Dumb as hell, I tell you. These little buggers, they should be extinct they’re so dumb. But they ain’t. There’s so many of ‘em they’re a public nuisance, they can swarm big enough to clog the radiators of cars and cause accidents. Like how this guy right here accidentally made my drinks with half the vodka he should have. Yeah, you think I didn’t notice?

And the mating. Know how lovebugs have sex? They have to look away from each other. Asses touching, eyes in opposite directions. Ain’t that loving a metaphor for something. So there’s the stupidest species, right there. They’re called lovebugs, but don’t know a drat thing about love, either. Just big bumbling idiots that gently caress up people’s cars, can’t see eye-to-eye on anything, just too stupid to live. Wouldn’t know love if they ran head first into it, and god knows they run into everything.

But they just keep going. They just keep going.

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Benagain
Oct 10, 2007

Can you see that I am serious?
Fun Shoe
Death and the dog 345 words

Welcome to the free vet clinic. I’m the person who will be putting your dog down. Oh I’m sorry, you don’t think it’s that serious? You want a second opinion? Here’s a second opinion, you shouldn’t have been allowed to get a dog.

Shut up and let me tell you how you got here. Your dog is an Australian Shepard, which means you went to a puppy mill and picked out the one with the bluest eyes. You didn’t do any research or preparation whatsoever because it’s a dog right? How hard can it be. You wanted a fluffy bundle of love that would stare at you with those eyes and wiggle around with its cute little fur pattern and be your best friend only when you wanted to pay attention to it and not a second longer.

You wrote off the first time it destroyed the house while you were away at work because it’s a puppy, but by the fifteenth time you started to get annoyed. You put it in a crate without properly training or acclimating it so it got stressed and started getting sick, and now here you are, having managed to pay about 1500 dollars to buy her but somehow unable to afford spaying or vaccinations.

You’re here because you never thought about a goddamn thing past your own happiness and now you’re trying to make yourself feel better by dropping it off at the free clinic. You tell yourself you’re coming back for it but after day two of a house where nothing’s destroyed you’ll say that she’s probably better off with us, and we’ll find a loving home for her. You won’t think about how hard it is to adopt out a dog with a sickness that people know destroys homes. You’ll move on, and she’ll be dead, and the only reason she’s dead is because you loving killed her.

Go home, sink into your couch, and turn on your TV. If you need to pet something get a stuffed animal. I hope I don't see you again. For the next dog's sake.

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