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Antivehicular posted:
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Sep 24, 2018 10:52
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Submissions are closed. If you want to be the third judge, you have about 12 hours to say as much.
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Sep 24, 2018 13:12
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I can't judge, obviously, but if your short on crit givers I can donate a set to the week.
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Sep 24, 2018 14:01
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Interprompt: Trains are pretty cool! 125 words.
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Sep 24, 2018 17:35
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Tyrannosaurus posted:Interprompt: Refrigerator Car (121 words) I wake, and wonder why I am not dead. My fingers brush the bullet holes, but feel only numbness. Beneath me lie jagged, icy somethings. The room rocks and clacks. A train car. Cold penetrates through to my bones. In the flickering beam of my flashlight I behold the mound. The bodies of my fellow protesters lie jumbled and frozen. I expect revulsion or grief, but find my stomach growling. Yet some new and alien instinct tells me that these empty husks will not sate me. I wait. The train slows, then stops. The doors open and blinding light floods the car. Warm bodies enter. Soldiers. Their scent teases my nostrils. I rise, and to a chorus of screams, I feed.
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Sep 24, 2018 20:27
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Did you know that the first train only had one wheel, and was built over one million weeks ago? Most people don't know, but the train was actually named after John Coltrane, and so was coal. This is why coal is often pulled around in trains. These cool conversation starters, as well as seventeen other interesting facts, are all available in Cool Train Facts by me, Turk Durkington. It can all be yours for the low cost of 1.99 trains. Buy my product.
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Sep 24, 2018 21:27
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The Eternal Conga-Train 121 words I see the long, slow arc of my future bend before me. It is a procession of figures, each faceless, each nude, each stripped of anything to signify that that creature was once human. I stare at the mangy scalp before me and try to see a face in it. I once had. I once was able to turn the pattern of scabs and scars before me into a face, but even that visage is gone. I weep to remember the days of shredded rags! My knees buckle and I see the ground rise. But no, of course not. The faceless hands behind me grab my emaciated shoulders and haul me upright. I will not be allowed to break the chain. **** Dancing is fun!
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Sep 25, 2018 04:47
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Tyrannosaurus posted:Interprompt: Trainsformation "I'd like you to all know, that as of this moment, I identify as an Apache Helicopter." Thomas the Tank engine said. Those words would change his life forever. He looked out at the collection of rail cars, cabooses, and trains. His people, his family, his friends. He saw in them a mixture of fear, of acceptance, of loathing and of happiness. It could be worse, but it could also be better. "I hope I can count on your support as I go through my transitioning phase." Thomas unclasped his roof and from his caboose emerged four large rotor blades. Bertha, his mother, was in such shock she derailed. A few others tooted horns in appreciation while others gasped in horror. Thomas felt his steel frames weight and revulsion ran through him. They told him that it would be hard, but you can't resent your body, that in time things would be better. He looked at his steely frame and then looked up at the sky, his 6000 hp engine whining to a high pitch as it started up. He looked at Mr. Conductor. "Permission to fly... sir?" Mr. Conductor wiped away the tears with his hat. He had retired trains before, just never like this. It was an odd feeling, like seeing your best friend wrap themselves in a cocoon and come out. They are still the same person but so different. "Granted. Show them that you can fly Thomas." The rotors turned, faster and faster until you couldn't track them. Thomas wheezed with effort, his coal engine pushing energy to the rotors. He wanted this, he wanted to shake his trail coil, to ascend, to be whole! Sweat stung his eyes, his coal engine burned his body, but still, he continued. He closed his eye, pushing further and further, until... He felt a breeze, and heard a bird cooing. Thomas opened his eyes and found himself in the clouds, a flock of birds to his left. Below him, the train tracks looked like tiny toothpicks assembled in a pattern. Thomas looked towards the horizon, and moved, unhindered by rusty train tracks. Thomas smiled and as he went where no train had gone before, he knew he was free.
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Sep 25, 2018 05:37
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i dig this
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Sep 25, 2018 05:40
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Rural Trainboys (125 words) England, Shropshire, Wroxeter. Two barely-legal teen boys entered an abandoned bunker to bone. Dick showed James a train. "That's cool! Where did you get it?" "It cost me five quid and a blowjob. Give it a try!" James jumped in the train and started down the hill. The train crashed for mechanically inexplicable reasons. Dick found James on the ground bleeding from his leg. "It's OK, we can put a tourniquet on it, and you can run and call 999," said James. Dick perused his watch. "Oh no, I'm late for my daily buggering from the janitor!" "Well I think it might be better if you just left me to die, then." "Yes, I think that's best." Dick was buggered by the janitor. James died.
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Sep 25, 2018 05:51
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Rural Trainboys (125 words) 
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Sep 25, 2018 05:57
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Rural Trainboys (125 words) 
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Sep 25, 2018 06:15
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finally a reboot i can get behind
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Sep 25, 2018 06:15
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Sitting Here posted:finally a reboot i can get behind Best place to be, probably.
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Sep 25, 2018 07:36
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Ah, my train has arrived, PROMPT as ever, and the conductor is asking who is going to get IN. I climb on board and we're off in a FLASH.
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Sep 25, 2018 18:49
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Rural Trainboys (125 words) Nice
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Sep 25, 2018 23:11
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Tyrannosaurus posted:Interprompt: Going Underground 125 words The keys to the Kingdom of the Underground are embedded in the dead. Its citizens carry the mummified hands of the old world's commuters, subdermal access chips glimmering through papery skin. You can, too; there are plenty of corpses left. One swipe gets you past the ancient gates and into a terminal-city, where old-world microreactors give power and light. Merchants fill the vast vaulted squares, and buskers fill the air with music. Spend your life here, if you like. Learn gardening or wiring or the guitar. Share in the bounty. If you're braver than that -- and you surely are -- the trains still run, between terminals and beyond. Board the first one you see. Fate rewards the bold. Go Underground, child. The new world awaits you.
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Sep 25, 2018 23:58
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WEEK 320: THE RESULTS This was a week where a lot of you played it safe. Perhaps it was the source material that the Archive graciously dispensed, or maybe the fresh fall air had a chilling effect on the craziness, but the stories this week felt almost sedate and very middle-of-the-road. Also, several of you inserted sexual violence or violence against women into stories that didn't have it before, and what the gently caress was up with that? Anyway! A mostly middle-of-the-road week means a short mention list. Your winner for this week is Sitting Here's "Narcissus," which felt like one of the few pieces this week that really took risks or got weird with its source material, and those risks paid off. The single HM for the week goes to Tyrannosaurus with "When You're Here, You're Family: a Waffle House Story," which was also weird and endearing. Truth be told, the judges heavily considered giving you a joint victory, but we didn't want to muddle succession and enrage the PORMPing hordes, so here we are. Great work, both of you. This week's sole DM goes to AllNewJonasSalk's "A Wizard and a Pipsqueak," which took a perfectly decent sci-fi adventure story and took out all the plot progress, replacing it with barbarians and completely gratuitous ritual sacrifice. Bad times! However, following the important Thunderdome principle of "don't apologize for your submission," the loss has to go to M. Propagandalf's "Groomer," which was apologized for and also extremely unfinished, and in fact only vaguely getting to the plot at 75% of the week's wordcount. PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: DO NOT APOLOGIZE FOR YOUR STORIES. ALSO, TRY TO FINISH THEM BEFORE POSTING. Welp, time to climb out of the dumpster and go take five showers. Sitting Here, take the throne.
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Sep 26, 2018 00:09
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Crits for week 320 Congratulations Thunderdome, you took bland, middle of the road stories and wrote… even blander, more middle of the road stories. I at most skimmed the prompt stories and glanced at the flash rules, so if I didn’t understand your genius that’ll be why. Narcissus by Sitting Here This is completely bizarre, and I love it for that. This is what ultimately earned it the win, as it was the only story this week to take a weird idea and execute it well. But I think it’s missing something, namely Marcus. We learn about him from the behaviour of his various doplets, but he doesn’t actually appear, except as a corpse. So while the idea of being crushed to death by the weight of one’s manifest ego is pretty cool, for me the story felt a bit flat. 6.5/10 The Wind in the Pines by NotGordian This feels like 3 cliched stories - teenage girl has fight with dickish boyfriend, young girl has magical encounter, abused woman is driven to violence - glued awkwardly together. There’s some (weak) foreshadowing of the encounter with the fey, but they pretty much pop out of nowhere. The protag reacts with exactly zero surprise, which aside from being weird is really dull. The implied violence at the end (is she really going to stab him?) also comes out of nowhere. The main problem though is the lack of characterisation of the protag. She is mildly sassy to start with, but after that just kind of drifts along. You also need to watch out for small details. You say she gets sore feet after walking half a mile - this isn’t very far and she’s wearing sneakers, so this doesn’t make sense. At most she walks a couple of miles before giving up and going off into the woods. People walk at about 3 mph so again this can’t have taken her very long. The way you described the bluff, with the city visible below, made me think she could have walked home in a couple of hours, which isn’t that big a deal. If you’d made it clear that he’d left her in the middle of nowhere, and she’d been trudging along for hours, cold and frightened, before being drawn to the fey, the whole thing would have had more tension and hung together better. 4/10 The Sisters of Sarah Jane by Mr. Sunshine There’s no way a story this dark should have been so boring. You spent a lot of words describing how to make dolls from corn stalks, instead of telling us about the girl, what she’s like and how she feels. Because you spend more words describing the girl’s fantasies than the horror of her real situation the story loses its emotional punch. The ending implies that the father has beaten the last sister to death, but you say that the other family members died of influenza, so I’m not sure why dad is suddenly a murderer. We also don’t get to see Sarah Jane’s reaction to this news, which leaves the ending feeling very hollow. If you haven’t you should read SurreptitiousMuffin’s recent winning story Canto III for an example of how to do a snapshot of horror and grief well. 4/10 Hunger by Entenzahn I quite liked this - a good creepy zombie-y version of the original. But the lack of characterisation of poor zombie-dude or weird speaker-guy means I didn’t really care, and didn’t feel much tension. If I was given a reason to care about whether the protag lives / dies / becomes a zombie this could have been quite good. But as it is it’s a bit flat. 5.5/10 Recovery by Ottermotive Insanity The pointless bookending with a story about a spy (who uses a drug infusion to teleport into places to retrieve things??) ruins what could otherwise have had potential as a weird dream sequence in which someone confronts their past demons. 5/10 Three Dreams, Taken by Thranguy In which a wizard fucks a man to death, because that’s how that works, apparently. Aside from the fact that I think someone needs to take Thranguy aside for a little talk, this isn’t too bad. To really make it work I think you needed to give the young wizard a name and make it clearer, earlier that he wanted to escape from Justine. As it is I was confused about which character to focus on. 5.5/10 Haunts by Pham Nuwen This isn’t terrible, but neither is it particularly interesting. The characters are all pretty thinly sketched - the protag is a trader, Julian is a dick - and no one experiences any emotions or challenge apart from being a bit annoyed. And everyone is dead, and then they’re still dead. 5/10 When You’re Here, You’re Family: a Waffle House Story by Tyrannosaurus I really liked this. A great mix of ridiculousness and human poignancy. I like that the protag spends a whole para wondering what fish-dude’s dick looks like, because anyone who thinks that that’s not the first thing they’d think about when confronted with a fishman at 2am is lying to themselves. The only thing that lets it down is that the Waffle House, church and Olive Garden references are unnecessary. The story isn’t about any of these things and these words would have been better spent on your characters. 7/10 Conspicuous Consumption by Chili I don’t quite get the connection between the man giving up on life and the house deciding to eat him. I felt like there was a metaphor here that I just don’t understand. There’s not enough to this character to really make me care about what happens to them. The “oh well there goes my toe” style works against the story in this respect, because the lack of concern from the protag kills any tension. It’s also not mad enough. The premise is pleasingly weird but the story is too low-energy to really pull it off. 6/10 The Merman Gourmand by apophenium Listen Thunderdome, this is for all of your benefit: horses do not neigh when they get a fright. I don’t care what movies you’ve been watching, this is not a thing they do. They neigh to communicate with each other, that’s it. Incorrect descriptions of equine behaviour will not be tolerated. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I actually lol’d at this story, particularly the ending. I liked the contrast of the teenager-esque attitudes and the comedy-horror of a monstrous sea-creature attacking a horse and getting shot by a sexy cowboy. But given this is a daft story I feel like you needed to dial up the bonkers a bit. The story needed to be written with more energy to really deliver on its nutty premise. Still, you get a higher score from me than some of the other stories this week because at least this was an entertaining read. 6/10 A Wizard and A Pipsqueak by AllNewJonasSalk Gavin is a barbarian. Davey is a spaceman with a nice mother. The unnamed protag does not like Davey. There is an unlikely encounter, in which nothing happens. Gavin continues to be a barbarian. The end. Having assembled the ingredients for a story, you needed to do something with them, instead of just laying them out. 3.5/10 Exit Light, Enter Night by Solitair This story was a little slow to get going but once it did I enjoyed its crazy pinballing and dark ending. I think it just needed a better set up for the protag’s descent into madness. Maybe have him be more euphoric about his fortunes finally changing, or something, so his fall is more satisfying. At the moment the “oh how nice I’ve got a new job let’s go out for a fancy beer” beginning doesn’t quite match the rest. 6/10 A Part of Everything by Fleta Mcgurn This was strange, and sweet, but doesn’t quite come together. I think there was maybe a little bit too much unexplained weirdness and not enough about the relationship between these two beings. There’s not really any build-up to their separation at the end - for example, we don’t get much insight into the consequences for Evelyn, or whether she wrestled with this before making her choice. 6/10 Kayfabe by Invisible Clergy This story is missing its critical elements - who are these two guys, what is their relationship, why do they have a beef with each other, and does that get resolved? Ironically actual wrestling is better at this than your wrestling fanfic. 5/10 Loose ends by Lead out in cuffs This feels like a summary of an action movie. But without some more characterisation I’ve got no real reason to care whether Tommy lives or dies, or Anne for that matter. You needed to create more tension by making it clearer what is at stake for the characters. If this was a full length movie Anne and Tommy would have fallen in love and her decision at the end would have been heart-rending. As it is it’s just a bit, “oh well he’s dead.” 5.5/10 The Marble by Sebmojo This isn’t bad but I don’t think the build up justifies murder-suicide as an ending. Wouldn’t he want to save the city? Or at least live to see it, now that he’s worked out how to get in? The city is a non-entity, and it felt weird to not learn anything about it and not have it play any role beyond being a lump of something mysterious. To be honest I’m more curious about the city than I am about the characters, whose relationship I’m not really feeling. 6/10 Groomer by M. Propagandalf Do not preface your stories with an apology, excuse or general whining about the state of your story. I can tell it’s not finished, I’m not an idiot. But well done for submitting instead of failing. But unfortunately this is only half a story, and a waffly one at that. The pompous style the alien’s voice is written in is fine in principle but it’s way too wordy, and I found myself wishing that the story would hurry up and get to the point. We also need to see more of Brian. Is he likeable? Should we feel sad that he’s been chosen by these aliens for mysterious purposes? Or is he a dick who deserves to get eaten or whatever they’re going to do? Without this there’s not much reason to feel invested in the story, beyond mild curiosity about where it’s going. 3/10
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Sep 26, 2018 00:30
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 Week 321 - Objectionable Objectification  Right, I'm about to turn 30 and am feeling the sphincteresque clutch of age tightening its grip. So let's make this short and snappy like me. Your stories will all be from the perspective of an object. Not a plant, not an animal, not a person, not an anthropomorphized singing candelabra. A normal, everyday(ish) object. here's a list to help you not gently caress up:
When you sign up, I will assign you an object. If you have something you feel particularly compelled to write about, you're welcome to choose your own object. I reserve the authority to veto self-chosen objects that don't fit the spirit of the prompt. All genres are welcome so long as you don't break the above rules. No spoiler tags, quote tags, google docs, political satire, screeds, erotica, or fanfic. Word count: 630 words Signup deadline: Friday, September 28 at 11:59:59PM PST Submission deadline: Sunday, September 30 at 11:59:59PM PST Judges: AgingHere Apophenium ThirdEmperor Objects: derp - you are a camera Antivehicular - you are an ace of spades playing card Ottermotive Insanity - you are a hospital bed Thranguy - you are a palimpsest steeltoedsneakers - you are a pack of cigarillos Yoruichi - you are the posts of a four-poster bed. flerp - you are a puddle M. Propagandalf - you are a grand staircase Hawklad - you are a snowglobe (or rainglobe, or sparkleglobe, or etc) Invisible Clergy - you are a stone bird bath sparksbloom - you are a wrought iron gate WhoopieCat - you are a trophy CascadeBeta - You are a freshwater fish tank (you are NOT the fish inside) NotGordian - you are a Meerschaum smoking pipe sebmojo - my object is a set of keys Mr. Sunshine - you are a very old bottle of wine Staggy - you are a deflated basketball Anomalous Blowout - you are a note someone dropped on a sidewalk Entenzahn - you are a secret box that looks like a book Fleta Mcgurn - you are a Zippo lighter AllNewJonasSalk - you are a bag of meth curlingiron - you are a carbon monoxide detector Beezus - you are a statue of the Buddha Djeser - you are  LITERALLY A BIRD - you are an antique hand mirror Lead out in cuffs - you are a teapot solitair - you are a gideons bible SurreptitiousMuffin - you are a grandfather clock Bad Seafood - you are a sheriff's badge exmond - you are a smart TV JOHN MADNESS - YOU ARE A GROCERY STORE SHOPPING CART Fumblemouse - You are a tangled Slinky toy Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 08:20 on Oct 1, 2018 |
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Sep 26, 2018 01:55
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Okay I will do it
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Sep 26, 2018 02:03
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In with whatever object you assign.
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Sep 26, 2018 02:06
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In
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Sep 26, 2018 02:08
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In, objectize me
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Sep 26, 2018 02:08
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In
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Sep 26, 2018 02:09
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In
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Sep 26, 2018 02:11
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good word count in
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Sep 26, 2018 02:14
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In.
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Sep 26, 2018 02:18
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In, please objectify me as well.
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Sep 26, 2018 02:54
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derp posted:Okay I will do it you are a camera Antivehicular posted:In with whatever object you assign. you are an ace of spades playing card you are a hospital bed Thranguy posted:In, objectize me you are a palimpsest you are a pack of cigarillos you are the posts of a four-poster bed. flerp posted:good word count in you are a puddle you are a grand staircase Hawklad posted:In, please objectify me as well. you are a snowglobe (or rainglobe, or sparkleglobe, or etc)
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Sep 26, 2018 03:00
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Cool prompt. Consider me in
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Sep 26, 2018 03:58
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Invisible Clergy posted:Cool prompt. Consider me in you are a stone bird bath
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Sep 26, 2018 04:20
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Inne
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Sep 26, 2018 04:21
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In. Objectify me, please!
WhoopieCat fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Sep 26, 2018 |
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Sep 26, 2018 04:24
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sparksbloom posted:Inne you are a wrought iron gate Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Sep 26, 2018 |
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Sep 26, 2018 04:28
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In
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Sep 26, 2018 04:39
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WhoopieCat posted:In. Objectify me, please! you are a trophy You are a freshwater fish tank (you are NOT the fish inside)
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Sep 26, 2018 05:16
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In, random object please.
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Sep 26, 2018 07:01
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NotGordian posted:In, random object please. you are a Meerschaum smoking pipe
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Sep 26, 2018 07:10
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 17:09 |
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Sweet prompt. In.
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Sep 26, 2018 07:21
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