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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.

SlipUp posted:

Brawl at the Monster Mash.

In flash me

Zero-gravity fencing.

In, Flash me someone.

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BeefSupreme
Sep 14, 2007

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022

Thranguy posted:

In, Flash me someone.

fighter jets

in and flash me

Anomalous Blowout
Feb 13, 2006

rock
ice
storm
abyss



It makes no attempt to sound human. It is atoms and stars.

*

In and your flash is mountaineering.

Saucy_Rodent
Oct 24, 2018

by Pragmatica
I mentioned this in the discord, but please give me all the flash rules you can, make them all big and stupid as you please, I will incorporate all of them into my story

NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo

Saucy_Rodent posted:

I mentioned this in the discord, but please give me all the flash rules you can, make them all big and stupid as you please, I will incorporate all of them into my story

Speech is explosive. Interpret as you will.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Saucy_Rodent posted:

I mentioned this in the discord, but please give me all the flash rules you can, make them all big and stupid as you please, I will incorporate all of them into my story

soup for blood

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.

Saucy_Rodent posted:

I mentioned this in the discord, but please give me all the flash rules you can, make them all big and stupid as you please, I will incorporate all of them into my story

A palanquin chase

Yoruichi
Sep 21, 2017


Horse Facts

True and Interesting Facts about Horse


In and I would like THREE flashrules

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Yoruichi posted:

In and I would like THREE flashrules

horse_kiss.gif

Anomalous Blowout
Feb 13, 2006

rock
ice
storm
abyss



It makes no attempt to sound human. It is atoms and stars.

*

Yoruichi posted:

In and I would like THREE flashrules

Friendship is literally magic.

J.A.B.C.
Jul 2, 2007

There's no need to rush to be an adult.


I've thought really really hard about this, but count me IN and give me a flash.

Also, can I get a Thunderdome Discord link?

Yoruichi
Sep 21, 2017


Horse Facts

True and Interesting Facts about Horse


J.A.B.C. posted:

I've thought really really hard about this, but count me IN and give me a flash.

Trickster fox spirits (sexy ones)

J.A.B.C.
Jul 2, 2007

There's no need to rush to be an adult.


Yoruichi posted:

Trickster fox spirits (sexy ones)

Is that allowed?

Yoruichi
Sep 21, 2017


Horse Facts

True and Interesting Facts about Horse


Me giving you a flash rule? Yes, read the prompt.

Sexy foxes? Please interpret this as you see fit within the constraints of the prompt (which I believe specifies PG13).

J.A.B.C.
Jul 2, 2007

There's no need to rush to be an adult.


Yoruichi posted:

Me giving you a flash rule? Yes, read the prompt.

Sexy foxes? Please interpret this as you see fit within the constraints of the prompt (which I believe specifies PG13).



You specified sexy foxes but I must keep it PG-13.

I do hope you know what you have unleashed, good sir. I accept this challenge.

Saucy_Rodent
Oct 24, 2018

by Pragmatica
Titanic is PG13 and it has boobs. Just don’t describe any fleshy things going into other fleshy things and you should be ok

Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh

Yoruichi posted:

In and I would like THREE flashrules

https://youtu.be/wn5YFnrD1u8

Chairchucker
Nov 14, 2006

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022




Saucy_Rodent posted:

I mentioned this in the discord, but please give me all the flash rules you can, make them all big and stupid as you please, I will incorporate all of them into my story

Casino heists are cool imo

Yoruichi
Sep 21, 2017


Horse Facts

True and Interesting Facts about Horse


take the moon brawl entry

Camembert
870 words


Milk

I awake in warm milk, swirling, cradled between Mother’s palms. Loose strands of auburn hair curl behind her ears. There is music playing and she hums along. She checks notebooks and thermometers, strokes and stirs my silken body.

She places me carefully in my mould. I luxuriate at how it cups my gelatinous form. Mother watches as I weep whey tears. Her hands are so gentle as she turns the mould to ensure an even curd. At night - my first alone - she wraps me in warm padding. It soothes my loneliness though the dark hours.

When she salts my skin the touch of her fingers is sweet agony. It is my first blemish. I can feel the change beginning inside me. I am swollen with potential. Mother knows it, and her anticipation thrills me.

She has prepared a space just for me in her pantry. It is my throne room and my boudoir. Every day she checks me, turns me, handling me ever so softly. My skin feels alive, and when I see myself reflected in her eyes I know that I am beautiful.

Mold

I bloom. I am feverish with my efforts. My insides churn, dissolve and are reformed by the multitude I host. My spores spread throughout the pantry. They settle on Mother’s potatoes, furring their eyes, and creep past cinched plastic to nestle into her bread.

Skinned with soft, white fuzz I no longer require daily turning, but Mother is no less attentive. I await her visits with thrumming anticipation. She gazes at me, caresses me with a single finger, and I tremble in response.

Others she takes from the pantry, but never me. I recline, resplendent in my place of honour, and watch as my spores are transported into her sweet, dark mouth. The sight fills me with a deep, hot restlessness that I struggle to understand but know that I cannot deny.

Darkness

I am alone in the dark. When Mother took me from the pantry I exalted for I thought that at last the day had come when we would be united. But no. She lifted my wooden tray and carried me, through a burst of bright sunlight, the scent of her warm breath, my spores dancing around me, gleeful, across the kitchen and down, down. She sequestered me away in a small, dark cupboard. Alone.

I am so cold. I hope her potatoes rot and her bread tastes foul. My once-smooth skin hardens and puckers. Grey wrinkles mar my surface. I turn inwards. My growth has slowed but it hasn’t stopped. Deep inside I seethe at my abandonment. What was once sweet, white milk twists and churns, becoming yellow and pungent.

The cupboard stinks of me and my despair. I sag with age, my skin can barely hold my body together. I can no longer remember Mother’s face; an eternity has passed since she betrayed me. I long for oblivion.

Ripe

Pale dawn fingers the edges of my prison. The door cracks and a shaft of light cuts across me. I recoil, so unused to brightness. In the open doorway is Mother, her head limned with light. Her face is in shadow; why has she come for me after all this time?

Despite myself I quiver as she lifts my tray. Warm air and light floods over me and I am overwhelmed. I have returned to the world! But my joy is cut through with horror at what I have become. My skin is grey and deeply lined. I am so ripe I can barely contain myself. My crevasses ooze.

Mother places me on the bench and I behold her face again for the first time in an age. Her brow is furrowed, lips pursed as she examines me. She extends a single finger. My anger flares; she left me alone for so long! But when she touches me I tremble. Her lips part. I catch a glimpse of the sweet darkness between her teeth and I know that all I want is to never be apart from her again.

A flash of white sunlight on steel. Mother lifts the knife. Even as I shiver with fear at the coming pain I feel hot anticipation. The knife comes down and Mother strikes right at the heart of me. She splits me open so that I am laid bare before her. My ripeness gushes forth, rich and yellow, and my potent smell explodes across the kitchen.

“Eat me, Mother!” I cry, and with a final shudder I let go of everything. I let myself spread across the tray in an ecstasy of abandon.

Her nose wrinkles and she squints her eyes. Mother turns her face from me and coughs into her elbow. Holding her sleeve tight over her nose and mouth Mother lifts me up. I see a tear slip from the corner of her eye and as she upends me above the bin. There is a rush of air and I separate from my tray, the solid foundation of my life. I come apart as I fall. The last thing I see is Mother tossing my tray into the sink and turning away, so I close my eyes and--

flerp
Feb 25, 2014

Saucy_Rodent posted:

I mentioned this in the discord, but please give me all the flash rules you can, make them all big and stupid as you please, I will incorporate all of them into my story

pangolins

sparksbloom
Apr 30, 2006
In, :toxx:, and flash me.

newtestleper
Oct 30, 2003
In and :toxx:

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo
brawl v yoruichi

if ur not judging this and feel like reading it for some reason, maybe ingest some thc first? im rly tryna break into stoner lit lol

SUN DOG

2000 words

Somewhere there is Heaven

And you will find it

-Lingua Ignota, “An Urn”


I. the Body

Hive-Milk is a sugar rush. Leam’s heart churns ashen gloop into a silver flow that rushes his limbs into paryoxsm. He knows to hold on. On his cot he’s fetal holding a glass vial of nothing. The glass glitters. A tremolo of empathy and bliss mixed with desolate grief fills him. His mind's eye drifts past the bone of his skull. Sees his mesh of skin, the home genes knit for his soul. It's monstrous at first, a flesh exodia. Soon chrysalis takes him to fay child, pale of skin, elfin of face.

Reality bleeds in slow first, then at speed as memories flood. The memories are frantic, claiming neurons from void in pitched battles. The voids surrender. How cruel is the rush of life and love? No life and no love. No joy remains in his bleak spellbound life. Mother's words drift through, gentle, kind. The Hive isn't real. The Hive-Milk isn't real. It's not safe to believe in unreal things.

When i grow up, he told her, I want to be a hive. She smiled and held him against her barren womb. After him there's been no more children. She'd tried. Been debased by so many kings. That was when he was a boy.

Leam’s stand from his cot is ascension.from the grave. The imprint etched in the cot will uncrease to space. Blood is strength and his veins are venters now to the soles of his feet. Slow death remains here on the cot. Now is his chance to be free. Believe in nothing.

Nothing.

Please believe in nothing, he’d told himself. Hold on. He'd held on, never wavered, as the milk blooded his fingers. They'd scrabbled the cot plush, torn strips of fuzz. Fuzz smears his fingertips. It’s proof he felt it.

Now he faces his Mother, guardian of the hall beyond. Mother is now a bloated thing. Smears of puke glisten her lips. The spell has gnarled her fingers to claws. She hasn't let him leave.

Paper dolls strew the chamber. He’s cut them from notebooks and scribbled names for.them. Should he bring them? He thinks of God cutting him from void and scattering him to cold alabaster. Leaving him alone and forgotten. Heat seeps from his feet, numb by when he’s gathered the last doll. There’re nine dolls stacked so he reads only the top name. One doll, he thinks, with nine aspects, and the top is God.

God's name is Craeac.

"Beware," Mother says. "If you cross me i will rend skin from you. Better to bleed out tattered than to walk the hall. To walk the hall is to die alone. There's no one out there."

But someone gave me the Hive-Milk.

Mother speaks slow the ancient mantra. "Kings die. Queens creep towards death." Her lips carve each word with sure, defined strokes.

"Foolish child. My child. To believe in the Hive. No Hive remains but I’m here and I love you." Time dulled copper eyes once aurora green. Mistrust clouds them, a knowing he won't obey.

He treads closer. The paper dolls cling to his heart, Hive-Milk still lacing his limbs. His mindscape, caged again in his skull, brought back knowledge with its return. Speak God's name and weave Him a tapestry of fate.

“Craeac,” he says.

There is nothing, then sorrow. Tears fall slow at first to mingle with the lines of puke. Then both join in translucent union and twine their way to the chrome floor. They. thicken as the tears flow like molten diamond across pockmarked cheeks. Mother folds to her knees. Her bulging flesh drapes her waist in billows, her arms strainingt.

Bitter smile. "I never thought you'd go so far." Her eyes gleam in forlorn madness. "To think my own brood..."

“One isn't a brood, he says. Even this tires him. Resolve ebbs from him with each breath. He's drowning under the spell. But to swim through it, to work towards the sunlight one day... To breach the surface. To see the sun glint across water. The ripples in the ocean are worth it. They will be.

A ripple never fades but bloods the whole ocean through the years. All he needs is to put one foot ahead of the other. Over this freezing ground.

Mother lets him pass.

II. the Tomb


The name of God rings in his ears, though Leam has turned Him over, face down, nestled in palm.

His door ends the Hall. The Hall creeps into the distance past where he can see. Halogen light lines the ceiling in effervescent streaks. Who keeps light flowing? It must be the Hive. He walks the Hall hopeful, though the light flares in glitching sparks and hurts his eyes.

The Hall ends in an arch veiled over with silken gloop.. Gossamer shines in fades of neon light, His questing fingertip dips in. Sticky stuff smears it when he pulls out. Tendrils of gloop go taut before parting from the web. Translucent lines droop from his fingers.

He sighs and pulls webbing apart. Minutes seem like decades. A sickly scent plumes from the gloop as its strands lose the pattern. The scent’s a siren, slowing him, bidding him stay with the gloop and go no further. Even now he begins to wrap threads around himself like braces. Soon like fitted sheet but then he remembers the name of God. God remains unstained though Leam's arm drips with gloop. it's God who guides Leam through the arch. Leam emerges streaked with threads of gloop like warpaint.

Beyond the arch is the Tomb.

Putrid death assails him. He’s in a courtroom-sized chamber lined with raised stone coffins. He knows kings lie here. The weight of dead kings crushes him, one by one given up their souls to Mother's womb. Yet Leam's faultless. They made their choices. A voice not his own tells him to be brave. To journey deeper into the Tomb, for why else has he come here? The voice is firm as the cold alabaster he treads on.

As soon as he reaches the final coffin he knows the voice is his Father's.

His Father lays in the last coffin. Unlike the others it’s hewn from stone the black of obsidian. It stands before Leam like an altar.

Leam removes the slab.

His Father hasn't decayed. The cheeks, though, are sunken, the nails and hair long. Father’s eyes are sapphire blue and glitter as if caught in freeze.

Leam waits, but with coffin open Father has nothing more to say. Nothing stirs in this tomb of kings. His Father is alone, walled by obsidian slats. Leam can't leave him like this.

Leam places the paper dolls on his father's chest one by one, reading their names aloud. Craeac, Draerrinn, Pyyl, Citin, Ce, Fluch, Tainda, Veak. He stops at the last doll. The eight dolls lay 'cross his father's chest as if scattered by wind, though the air is dead as any who lay here.

The last doll Leam keeps to himself. He drags the slab shut and hears his Mother’s breath..

She stands in the threshold, teeth bared, clutching one hanging arm.

"Your father deserves no slaves. Know you of your origin seed? Your genes, your blood? Oblivion was his mindscape, a nadir vast and long. When we joined my vista was death."

Wordless, Leam gestures with a sticky arm to the other tombs.

"Bright with hope," she says in spit, "and mercy. Yet none took. None found triumph in my womb. So invoke your Hive-Mind. i'll show you how. For he has passed his void on to it. Nothing is what you'll find. Nothing. Love is dead."

His arms shake as if the weight of the last paper doll is too much to bear. It rustles against his chest. "I'm not sure," he says.

"Kings die," she says. "Queens creep towards death. Where does that leave children?"

She smiles. It’s a sick smile that glistens with spit. Her hair strands her face, wet with the gloop of the web she stands within. As if the archhung web etches her into space and time, here and now, and he's outside it all. Surreal, to stand in this place of death and holding, and know such strangeness.

"I prayed you'd be stillborn."

Foreign force strings his nerves, bids him raise the paper doll to his lips. The name he marked still stains the doll. It comes up now to aside all else. It keeps presence in the threadbare moment as if gold shining through clay.

Leaath.

His Mother raises her dead arm, and he’s gone before the name passes his lips.

III. the Void

I made an echo of you. I kept you with me, and an echo faded out to join the Body. Was it not warm inside the Body?

Leam has no self. He’s a thermal in an amaranthine void. He has the heat of soul but no substance. His vista springs from a deeper place than eyes.

The Void talked to him. He talks back, soundless, in the resonance of soul heat.

It was boring, he says. The axe bores into stone again and again. All I did was sleep.

I kept you with me because I was alone,
Father says..

So where am I? Leam asks, and sees himself.

Leam is a black insect. He's chitin shelled, the thorax obsidian black, legs weaving a slow dance across the Void. Each movement is struggle, halting, a grind. The body bristles with sparse strands of hair. Eyes search the Void, sick mounds of bubbles like black jewels. Leam-insect squirms, writhes.

i was alone, Leam’s Father says. Do you know what that feels like? I'll remind you.

Endless writhing, Leam says, isn't better.

The dolls are here now, ghosts flaring above Leam-insect like stars. They no longer wear names. Leam thought he'd know God but none command each other. They dance and play on wings of light, crossing arms and palming each other. As if weaving a loom. Always in orbit, choosing new partners. All eight wear smiles.

Leam-insect lurches once again. The ghosts circle around it like a living halo as they play.

And the ninth is back with Leam's body. Back in the Body. An empty comfort to an empty shell. Satan in the wait for him to return.

Leam's seen enough. He wants his insect self, thorax bulging, eyes bleeding pale light, to break. spill its guts into this Void. This darkness that is his Father and once was the Hive-Mind. The insect trembles, jaws clacking. beat slow, like a steady heartbeat, that the ghost dolls dance to.

Leam drives himself into the shell. Seeps through cracks in chitin, creases in armour, yawning abysses, into the churn. His thermal becomes current, ripple that bloods the whole ocean. It strains against the shell from within. Tides swell as the blood heats and bursts in waves against the chitin.

The ocean forces the shell apart. The husk sunders down fault lines stressed by the violent blood flows. In spills void swallows the flood of dark blood. Soon all that remains is empty, sundered shell fragments. There’s a sickly wiggle of legs and then final stillness..

The paper ghosts scream. There’s lilt even to their screams, their voices soft but strong. They descend on the centre and remd with awful claws but there is nothing to rend. Leam's heat’s now faded away slipped out back to the Tomb that joins the Body.

Leam finds his feet, staring down his Mother, her arm still raised as if holding blade aloft..

Leam holds the Devil whose name he now reads.

IV. epilogue


One day Leam does leave the Body. There are rituals, portals. He passes into new light where the sunbeams pierce him like swords. Sacrifices helped him work toward it, and he is no longer whole of limb.

The sun glinting against raw nerve feels like ocean water, like the lapping of dog tongue.

SlipUp
Sep 30, 2006


stayin c o o l

sparksbloom posted:

In, :toxx:, and flash me.

Pirate battle!

yo I want two more flashes for myself, hit me peeps

NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo

SlipUp posted:

Pirate battle!

yo I want two more flashes for myself, hit me peeps

Flowers are significant.

NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo
I'd also like one more flash plz...

Yoruichi
Sep 21, 2017


Horse Facts

True and Interesting Facts about Horse


NAGA LIU KANG posted:

I'd also like one more flash plz...

The vampire was the good guy

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
in.

Anomalous Blowout
Feb 13, 2006

rock
ice
storm
abyss



It makes no attempt to sound human. It is atoms and stars.

*

SlipUp posted:

Pirate battle!

yo I want two more flashes for myself, hit me peeps

Carnivorous plants.

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
just a reminder that signups/subs are UTC which means they both close early as gently caress for americans

a friendly penguin
Feb 1, 2007

trolling for fish

In

Uranium Phoenix
Jun 20, 2007

Boom.

Alright, I'm in.

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
Signup is closed, missing flashrules coming after I finish my coffee.

Basic Bee
Apr 17, 2020
In.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Ironic Twist posted:

WEEK 406 RESULTS
:toxx:ing for this week’s crits to be finished by the time Week 407 closes subs. Bleh.

misread this, but like sh said subs are closing 5-7 hours earlier than normal this week

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
Sorry, late on the flash rules: today went faster than expected. I believe this is everybody missing one, ping me if I missed you.

Anomalous Blowout: when a whale dies, its body falls to the very bottom of the ocean. This is called a deadfall, and can feed the denizens of the abyss for months or years.
newtestleper: fungus is neither plant nor animal -- it sits in between
Sitting Here: dimension hopping and trippy 70s sci-fi visuals
a friendly penguin: just, goth poo poo. Bones, people wearing black, hats with really wide brims. You know, the Vampire the Masquerade LARP aesthetic. Love it.
Uranium Phoenix: cops who do kung fu and/or any other relatively impractical martial art
Basic Bee: dramatically throwing your badge or other symbol of office down onto the ground because you're done with this whole corrupt sham of a system

Antivehicular
Dec 30, 2011


I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

BEWARE: I JUDGE

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
REMINDER: all flash rules are optional, you don't have to stick to anything except the main prompt

Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh

Simply Simon posted:


In flash myself


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuEmG0Oxa2M

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Ironic Twist
Aug 3, 2008

I'm bokeh, you're bokeh
Week 406 Crits

Together, Lorn

Use of the prompt: Way more creativity than most of the other stories this week. I appreciate it when someone takes a swing on a concept.

Pros: The language is polished and evocative, and it carries this story forward more than any other part of it. The story itself feels a little sparse, but it held me through the power of its poetic description. The ending also tied up the story in a reasonable way, which was satisfying.

Cons: I don’t think you needed the beginning paragraph, even though I kind of liked reading it. Not knowing if the snail is mystical or not would make the ending have more of an impact. Really, in general, the biggest problem this story has is its capacity to overshare. I got a large feeling of “and then, and then, and then” reading the middle, where we as the reader were dragged forward through the plot without seeing much of anything advance because of the character’s decisions.

Overall: We both agreed on this story as the win pick because it did the best job at being a satisfying and polished story. It’s not without its flaws, but it’s a good story that leaves a mark.

Heavy Losses for a Paparazzo on the Make

Use of the prompt: I didn’t understand exactly what was humanoid about it, but it wasn’t a straight up robot or cyborg, so there was an effort made here.

Pros: Once I get past the rapid-fire nature of the technical description, there does seem to be a fairly solid and enticing world present in this story. Unfortunately, it feels like you didn’t know what to do with it.

Cons: This is an intriguing concept for a story that’s really let down by the poor execution. I wasn’t lost or confused by the description so much as I was confused by why I was reading any of it. Rick is sort of a blank slate as a character, so I never really wanted to root for him. There weren’t any visible stakes beyond “get the photo before the competition,” and the relationship Rick has with Dany is too muddled for me to really draw anything from it. And the ending...man. Another addition to the long, long line of “I don’t know how to end this story so let’s end it with fire or blood or violence” endings. The kind of ending that leaves you with all the wrong questions because it was thoroughly and completely unearned. Do better.

Overall: Had promise, but that’s almost all it had.

White Lies

Use of the prompt: I liked it on a conceptual level, but I was disappointed once I actually read the story.

Pros: The language is polished, and there were no points where I was confused as to what was happening. It sounds like I’m damning with faint praise, but I’ve been judging in TD for almost 6 years now, and I fully appreciate when someone writes a clear and concise sentence.

Cons: The concept of dating a humanoid creature who’s able to read your mind on a whim--sometimes without consent--seems to me like it could be the jumping-off point for an interesting society. Why would anyone bother with lying at all? Would there be ways for humans to mask their thoughts? Would there be informational wars and espionage with mind-bell agents on both sides? Would someone see a mind-bell creature and automatically distrust them and move to the other side of the street to avoid them? Would people with mind-bells only be able to date other people with mind-bells?
This story doesn’t delve into anything nearly that interesting, just a series of “Oh, is she cheating? Is he cheating? Oh, he found out she was cheating! Oh, she was the one who was cheating all along!” Which is not automatically a bad premise for a story, but because it was so short and so cluttered, it didn’t give me any opportunity to care about anyone I was reading about. It felt like I was watching a chess game with only pawns.

Overall: This could’ve been way better, and not because the writing was poor--because the choices made here didn’t lead to a satisfying or interesting read.

For Your Thoughts

Use of the prompt: Cyborg, replicant, supersoldier, it’s about the most tired direction anyone could go this week. This reads like a character I’ve seen dozens of times throughout different media.

Pros: I...didn’t hate the technicality of the description sometimes? I didn’t really love it either, but the parts that I could comprehend were well written. It sets up an okay atmosphere, if not a terribly creative one.

Cons: The story you essentially told me here was “a woman android/cyborg/replicant tries to assassinate a man at the bar, but before she can even make an attempt on his life, the man waves a hand in front of her face, then disappears, and now she has free will.” That’s it. The only thing of importance that happens in this story is that the main character now realizes that she can do things to move the plot forward, something that did not happen in the majority of the 780 words I had to judge. And beyond that, it was just straight-up bland and forgettable. Even though the atmosphere was ok, the backstory felt really unclear, and it felt like the story had no peaks and valleys. Everything was the same level of importance and interest, and it all blended together into beige bathwater.

Overall: I had no problems giving this the loss, simply because it wasted my time more than anything else I had to read this week. Also, “hand casually draped across her breast” gave me an unintentional laugh.

Contentment

Use of the prompt: Could’ve done a lot more with it, to be honest. The djinn had the eye makeup in the prompt picture, but it’s still just a standard variety djinn.

Pros: Some of the descriptions of the scenery--when they didn’t have grammar errors or typos--were nicely written and picturesque.

Cons: At its heart, this is a story about a guy choosing to stay the same and not make a wish for anything, which is understandable, given that it’s a djinn and djinns gently caress you over with their wishes. But it makes for a very boring story. If you’re basically choosing to have your character not make a choice and not advance the story forward, then something else besides the plot has to be exciting or compelling. And that isn’t happening here. The dialogue isn’t compelling, the character feels a bit pale, and the setting--even though it was nice at points--was still less advanced than it could have been. Also, the first line didn’t need to be there. Also also, proofread your writing, for real. This could’ve had a shot at avoiding a DM if it wasn’t so messy.

Overall: A lot of your problems could be solved by reading more and writing more and learning from your mistakes. Contentment is what you want to avoid.

Over the Moon

Use of the prompt: Meh. It was a smidge more creative than others this week, but it felt like it did less work than it should have. It felt more like a cameo.

Pros: Stupid in a slightly charming way. Felt a lot like a children’s book, and I didn’t entirely hate the vibe.

Cons: This felt...rushed. Like there was no room for anything to take hold or have impact. I didn’t really care about the main character because there was no space for me to care about the main character or Nancy. It might have been more fruitful to tell the story from Nancy’s perspective, where she gets to see the cow leave for the moon and then come back with the cow space invaders. Or just start the story on the moon. On a sentence level, it feels like the words are flat and emotionless. Just because you’re telling the story from a non-human perspective doesn’t mean that the words have to be simple. And there’s a lot of wasted space in the middle of the story as well.

Overall: You were going for something this week, but what you could conceive exceeded what you were able to execute. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it, either.

Blood Phantoms

Use of the prompt: In love with this. This is what I was hoping for when I came up with this prompt.

Pros: The story was satisfying in a way that I didn’t expect, and the language was sharp and on-point. It was a well-structured plot arc, but I think you could’ve pushed it even further, to be honest--I liked it because I knew how it was going to end but I almost wanted it to surprise me more.

Cons: Lots of little technical things--the italics tags, Ijalazi and Ijazali, Loosening the bindings--you’re aware of these already. It was also a bit hard to follow at points because of the details that weren’t fully explained, but not so hard to follow that I didn’t want to keep reading.

Overall: This was my favorite story this week. I just wanted it to be a little bit more polished.

An Age-Old Philosophical Conundrum, Solved

Use of the prompt: Felt a bit shoehorned in, to be honest. Not bad, but not great.

Pros: Lighthearted and funny, which I can appreciate to some degree. On a sentence level, it wasn’t difficult to read and it engaged me.

Cons: The second line of dialogue from Thessa was where I deflated and went “oh, so we’re doing this, huh.” It felt like you broke character and just made them talk like people from our current era. That was symbolic of the feeling I had about this story, which was that you didn’t really know what you wanted to do with it. It made it feel like a first draft, even though there were no parts that looked unfinished. And it ends where it should start! I would’ve had much more fun reading a story where a sphinx teaches someone how to tell riddles! That’s a much stronger concept!

Overall: Thoroughly inoffensive. Maybe if this had been a stronger week, you’d be in trouble, but I thought it earned its no-mention.

Lance and the yeti

Use of the prompt: So many people this week trotted out something I’ve already seen. If I saw a yeti in real life, I’d be surprised. If I saw a yeti in a week where I specifically asked people to be creative with their prompts, I’d be bored. And I was. At first.

Pros: I mean, you still do corny and lighthearted and bumbling really well, and this reminded me of that. It’s the strongest thing this story has going for it.

Cons: It’s hard for me to talk about cons for this story without feeling like I’m taking away what made it work in the first place, but it takes way too long to get to the interesting part, and like UP’s story, I felt like it ended where it should have begun. I was unimpressed with Lance as a protagonist, and he doesn’t really do a whole lot in this story, except switch places with the yeti at the end.

Overall: About the same as Phoenix’s story on a lot of levels, but this one actually made me laugh, which was why I was fine with it getting the HM.

Ironic Twist fucked around with this message at 11:09 on May 24, 2020

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