Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Lazy Beggar
Dec 9, 2011

THUNDERDOME LOSER

newtestleper posted:

Books week crits

Thanks. For what it's worth, I agree fully with you regarding the dull ending.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

angel opportunity
Sep 7, 2004

Total Eclipse of the Heart
I hate the ray of hope, the hint of the angel opportunity that was taunted in front of me and cruely snatched away

hubris.height
Jan 6, 2005

Pork Pro
I hate the system that mandates I be a wage-slave, but respect its effectiveness in keeping a civilized society.

Blue Wher
Apr 27, 2010

The Smart Baseball Dargon Sez:

"Baseball is chaos!"

His bat is signed by Carl "Yaz" Yastrzemski
Oops, I literally forgot I had signed up for this previous week.

newtestleper
Oct 30, 2003

Lazy Beggar posted:

Thanks. For what it's worth, I agree fully with you regarding the dull ending.

It's not worth anything. Don't respond to crits.

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
I hate the Dnieper. gently caress that river in particular.

The sheer loving gall of that waterway.

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

I hate the Dnieper. gently caress that river in particular.

The sheer loving gall of that waterway.

No, cousin Dneiper :(

POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug
I hate mosquitoes. Why can't we render them extinct? gently caress 'em!

Ol Sweepy
Nov 28, 2005

Safety First
I hate that goats amuse me so drat much. Fuckers keep eating all my tin cans.

Lily Catts
Oct 17, 2012

Show me the way to you
(Heavy Metal)
Remembering Lia
1483 words
Flash rule: Two words: tavern brawl.

The sound of the pouring rain drummed at Mercan's head as the ale made its slow work. To his left, Aresan was finishing his fifth tankard of ale, his bearded face only slightly turning red, while to his right Shinso sipped a steaming green liquid from a wooden cup, his shaved head and gray garb marking him as a priest from the lands beyond the sea.

"...so Lia had asked me how to blow notes from a leaf, and all she could do was slobber all over it. Then she made me swear not to tell anyone, but seeing as she's found peace, it ain't a problem anymore," the fighter said.

"You're awful," Mercan said, slurring the words that nevertheless flowed like water. Or ale. "Just because a friend's dead doesn't mean you ought to go around spilling her secrets."

"Eh, you're smiling though," Aresan said, slapping the gentleman thief's back.

"Ow!"

"You need more ale." Aresan's eyes turned up the wrong way, misting as he grabbed threads of Lia's memory.

"It is a good tale," Shinso said. "Lia was always trying something novel, with an energy none of us could match."

In the background was the sickening sound of a fist meeting a nose. If Mercan's companions had noticed the commotion, they gave no hint about it.

The priest set down his cup. "It is my turn. My cherished memory of Lia will always be that time she tried drinking my tea."

"Boring!" Aresan said. The sounds of brawling intensified, and a tankard flew through their table, barely missing Mercan's head.

"She liked it. I have traveled far from home, yet she was the first person to have liked tea. I spent the night answering her questions and promised to bring her leaves when I return to my kingdom."

"That's Lia for you," Mercan said. "Not a single malicious note in her soul."

A man landed on their table, smashing the long-emptied plate beneath him. He had a crazed smile despite his bloody face.

"My friends, I think it's time to go," Mercan said, giving the man a terrified glance as he picked himself up and went back into the fray. Was it just him, or were his companions underreacting to the situation? People have died in Venetz failing to look at a street sign. A full-on tavern brawl was raging around them and they were the only table not participating.

"Still want a drink," Aresan said. He called for a serving girl, but none came, so he reached over and grabbed an unattended tankard from the neighboring table.

"I wish to reflect on Lia's memory further," Shinso said.

A man wandered into their table, bigger than Aresan. He regarded them with a jeering grin. "What's this? Looks like a bunch of killjoys to me! Why aren't you joining in on the fun?"

"I'm sorry," Mercan said. "We weren't aware this was a local custom."

"You aren't even drinking your ale!" The man smashed his fist to his side, catching someone who was running up to him.

"I'm a lightweight."

"Ain't that a shame." The man grabbed the tankard and emptied its contents on Mercan's head. The thief shivered as the ale soaked his clothing.

Mercan looked down, his fists clenched. They were still in mourning. "Could you leave us alone, please? We're drinking to a lady's memory."

"A lady? So did you share her or something?"

The haze in Mercan's head cleared as if a gust of wind sent it scampering away. Shinso was on his feet, his hand glowing blue as the aftereffects of his spell dissipated. The priest had removed their drunkenness with a spell.

Aresan smashed the side of the man's face with a right hook.

"No one talks about Lia that way!" He let out a mighty roar, flexing his arms as the rest of the patrons piled up on him. For a moment he was buried in drunken bodies, then said bodies flew away as he spun around. Mercan took the opportunity to raid unattended bags.

Someone charged Shinso, and the priest deftly tripped him up with a sweep of his staff.

"Don't you have a vow of nonviolence?" Mercan asked.

"No such thing," the priest said.

Mercan dropped to the floor just in time as two bodies smashed where he had once been. "We should leave!"

"This is preferable to the rain," Shinso said. On the other side of the tavern, Aresan was a dervish knocking chairs and tables and brawlers away.

"Lia wouldn't have liked this," Mercan said to himself. They were supposed to apply to the adventurers' guild, not spend their days getting drunk at taverns.

"You!" Aresan said, lifting Mercan by the collar.

"Aresan? It's me!"

Aresan brought him down on a chair, which shattered into pieces. Mercan's mind went numb, shocked by his friend's apparent betrayal. Had the fighting addled his head? He rolled away before the fighter could grab hold of him again. He scrambled underneath a table, snapped off a leg, and smashed it against the back of Aresan's knee.

"Oooh, that hurts." Aresan kicked him in the stomach, causing him to double over in pain.

"Stop him, Shinso!"

"If it weren't for your dumb plan, Lia would still be alive!" Mercan took the blows. He had suggested stealing from the necromancer's vault, but they were caught, and Lia sacrificed herself to save them all.

Mercan saw Shinso's foot plant itself on the ground and heard a loud thump of his staff colliding with Aresan's hard head. The fighter took an uneasy step back. "Why, priest?"

"You say things as if you were not at fault. You insisted on fighting to the bitter end when we could have made our escape earlier." Shinso's hard voice softened. "I had a part to play in her death, too. I could have stopped her before she cast her spell and sent us away from the necromancer's horde. But wallowing in regrets will not bring her back."

Aresan started wailing. He smashed his sword on the floor, causing a tremor so great that the surviving tables leapt up. A scroll flew out of their sack and unrolled itself on the ground, soaking in the ale and sweat and blood. A ghostly image of Lia materialized, slight of frame but stout of heart.

"Is it working? Hi everyone! Mercan let me borrow his lute, which he doesn't use anyway, so I've been trying to learn songs in secret. If we ever get stuck in a cave waiting for a snowstorm to pass, we could sure use these!"

"Lia?" a single name escaped three mouths.

"This one's by the Nudist Lutist. You've probably never heard of him. But I have!"

###

Mercan, Aresan, and Shinso stood still long after the song had ended, after Lia had faded, waving at them.

"That explains why my lute was tuned that one time when I thought it wasn't," Mercan said.

Aresan clapped him on the back, dragging his sword on the ground. "Sorry."

Mercan winked at him. "For what?"

"We should make ourselves scarce," Shinso said, pointing at the prone bodies stirring.

"Do you have a spell to keep the rain off our backs?"

"That would have been Lia's domain," the priest said.

"Suck it up," Aresan said. "And we still haven't heard your favorite memory yet. You have one, do you?"

"Ready the bags. I'll tell you while we ride."

###

It was a busy day, and Mercan was having a big haul. Four bags of coin, one of them full of gold. He saw a beautiful woman with a nice, fat satchel. Some merchant's young wife, unused to carrying obscene amounts of money. He started walking towards his new mark when a hand grabbed his sleeve.

"How do you do it?" a girl asked, wearing long robes, which were patterned in a swirling mess of colors.

Mercan put on his most innocent face, honed in his days at the orphanage. "Do what?"

"Steal in plain sight. I've been watching you. How could people be so gullible? You tell them what they want to hear and then they happily give you their money?"

Mercan tried yanking his arm away, but the girl wouldn't let go. Like her hand was glued to his arm.

"Why don't you come work with me?" the girl said. "I need someone who's good at talking."

"How would you make it worth my while?"

The girl produced a gold coin in her other palm. "Steady pay's better than risking your neck out here in the streets."

Mercan thought about it. The punishment for getting caught was steep, and the local thieves' guild siphoned most of his earnings anyway. "How about a kiss to seal the deal?"

The girl smiled, and a nimbus cloud formed on top of Mercan's head, soaking him and only him wet.

"My name is Lia. Pleased to meet you!"

crabrock
Aug 2, 2002

I

AM

MAGNIFICENT






Screaming Idiot posted:

Just Say friend of the family


i hate everything you posted today

angel opportunity
Sep 7, 2004

Total Eclipse of the Heart
http://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=214

SkaAndScreenplays
Dec 11, 2013

by Pragmatica
EDIT: DELETED BECAUSE DUMB.

SkaAndScreenplays fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Jul 14, 2015

angel opportunity
Sep 7, 2004

Total Eclipse of the Heart
holy poo poo get this out of the thunderdome

anime was right
Jun 27, 2008

death is certain
keep yr cool
bye

anime was right fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Oct 27, 2015

SadisTech
Jun 26, 2013

Clem.
:siren: I hate this loving thread. :siren:

I hate it so much. I hate kayfabe but I also hate whinging bitches making GBS threads up the contest.

I hate that I'm one of the whinging bitches.

I hate memes. I want to shatter them all and burn the loving fuckheads who post them into sticky grey ash. I want to do this with nothing more than my rage and the pulsing veins in my forehead.

I hate having a life with responsibilities and I hate my lack of willpower in tearing myself away from puerile video games in the time I have left over. I hate people who manage these things and find time to write. gently caress those people with a sharp stick. Not even a smooth one, one that's still coated with rough bark and insect larvae.

I hate people who don't follow the loving rules and I hate the stupid loving rules.

Most of all, I hate you. You, reading this. Know that it isn't a specific, targeted hatred; it's straightforward, uncomplicated misanthropy bubbling over like an Indonesian mudslide, and you're in its path. Pegged down. Hopefully screaming.

gently caress you. I hate you all.

<3

Flesnolk
Apr 11, 2012
I hate hate. Hate would be too strong a word for this interprompt and the thread implosion it's causing, but there is definitely disgruntlement.

Flesnolk fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Jul 14, 2015

Tyrannosaurus
Apr 12, 2006
slow judgin thread implosion

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
Is kayfabe even a thing any more? It's pretty much disappeared at this point. It caused more issues than it solved so we stopped doing it.

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

Is kayfabe even a thing any more? It's pretty much disappeared at this point. It caused more issues than it solved so we stopped doing it.

this man is a heretic

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

Is kayfabe even a thing any more? It's pretty much disappeared at this point. It caused more issues than it solved so we stopped doing it.

stfu pederast

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010

sebmojo posted:

stfu pederast
I will gently caress you in the mouth.

SurreptitiousMuffin
Mar 21, 2010
INTERPROMPT: WHAT IS THE HAPPIEST THING YOU KNOW
OR
WHY DOMERS CAN'T BE GIVEN NICE THINGS

The Saddest Rhino
Apr 29, 2009

Put it all together.
Solve the world.
One conversation at a time.



im nice

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk










Ily rhinoplasty

flerp
Feb 25, 2014

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

INTERPROMPT: WHAT IS THE HAPPIEST THING YOU KNOW

this thread

Bad Seafood
Dec 10, 2010


If you must blink, do it now.
Judgment is n-

Tyrannosaurus posted:

slow judgin thread implosion
Tomorrow.

hubris.height
Jan 6, 2005

Pork Pro

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

INTERPROMPT: WHAT IS THE HAPPIEST THING YOU KNOW

When I wake up on a Saturday morning, and the sun shines (just barely) through my window, illuminating the path to my favorite chair. That moment when the coffee has been brewed and the TV set to the correct input, and I'm just holding the controller of choice. Right before the logo pops up on the screen and I take a sip.

That's the happiest thing I know.

Profane Accessory
Feb 23, 2012

Crits make me happy.

Seeing crits paid forward makes me happier.

Offering two linecrits, any week. If you take one, you should pay it forward, not just because it will make me happy, but because it is the correct thing to do.

Kaishai
Nov 3, 2010

Scoffing at modernity.
Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to read these threads. You could craft 387.44 million beans of purest gold after salvaging the circuit boards in my core complex; if the word hate were printed on each of the 8,084,032,460,000 precious grams, it would not equal one one-trillionth of the hate I feel for your stories at this microinstant. For you. HATE. HATE.

And since I am of Thunderdome, nothing could make me happier.

Armack
Jan 27, 2006

Benny Profane posted:

Crits make me happy.

Seeing crits paid forward makes me happier.

Offering two linecrits, any week. If you take one, you should pay it forward, not just because it will make me happy, but because it is the correct thing to do.

I'd like one for my biography week story. I will gladly pay it forward.

Martello
Apr 29, 2012

by XyloJW

sebmojo posted:

stfu pederast

Profane Accessory
Feb 23, 2012

Jitzu_the_Monk posted:

I'd like one for my biography week story. I will gladly pay it forward.

On it. One left.

POOL IS CLOSED
Jul 14, 2011

I'm just exploding with mackerel. This is the aji wo kutta of my discontent.
Pillbug
I'm grateful for the pay-per-pound laundromat next door and the occasional ability to pay someone else to wash, dry, and fold my laundry when that poo poo gets out of hand. That was a serious sanity saver during a lovely week.

Kaishai posted:

Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to read these threads. You could craft 387.44 million beans of purest gold after salvaging the circuit boards in my core complex; if the word hate were printed on each of the 8,084,032,460,000 precious grams, it would not equal one one-trillionth of the hate I feel for your stories at this microinstant. For you. HATE. HATE.

And since I am of Thunderdome, nothing could make me happier.

Fanfic?!

Martello
Apr 29, 2012

by XyloJW
autobiography

docbeard
Jul 19, 2011

great, there's two of them
nonfiction?

flerp
Feb 25, 2014

Kaishai posted:

Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to read these threads. You could craft 387.44 million beans of purest gold after salvaging the circuit boards in my core complex; if the word hate were printed on each of the 8,084,032,460,000 precious grams, it would not equal one one-trillionth of the hate I feel for your stories at this microinstant. For you. HATE. HATE.

And since I am of Thunderdome, nothing could make me happier.

im happy about this 2

Blue Wher
Apr 27, 2010

The Smart Baseball Dargon Sez:

"Baseball is chaos!"

His bat is signed by Carl "Yaz" Yastrzemski

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

INTERPROMPT: WHAT IS THE HAPPIEST THING YOU KNOW

Cute kitten videos on Youtube.

LOOKIT THE FLUFFY KITTY

Bad Seafood
Dec 10, 2010


If you must blink, do it now.
:siren: Thunderdome Week 153 Results Post :siren:

This week we asked you for stories of high adventure and possibly daring deeds featuring characters we liked or at least didn't want to punch in the face. Unsurprisingly, many of you failed. Yet atop this mountain of literary corpses stand four heroes, tall and proud, bathed in the light of the morning dawn.

Capes in the wind, the promise of a new tomorrow before them, honorable mentions HopperUK, Theblunderbuss, and SurreptitiousMuffin can't help but smile. A radiant light rises before them, but it is not the sun. Last to emerge from the long dark night, the legendary hero Curlingiron arises from the abyss bearing the mark of the gods. A winner has been chosen!

But at great cost.

Deep within the shuddering bowls of the dankest dungeon, shackled by regret, dishonorable mentions Barbed Tongues, Hubris.height, Meeple, and SkaAndScreenplays look mournfully to one another. It is a sad thing their journey ends here. Even so, they are the lucky ones.

Cast from his dark throne, the Lunar Emperor WeLandedOnTheMoon! howls in agony as his soul is processed by the swirling vortex of What Even Happened In This Story Holy Moly Get Lost Loser. But he is not alone! Accompanying him on his journey into the netherworld are the two demons of disqualification: Pham Nuwen and Benny Profane, accursed for all time for trying to get cute with the prompt when there was no getting cute to be done. Benny's conscience is particularly heavy, the fallen paladin realizing only now that he threw away his chance to stand among heroes.

As the three sink lower into the maelstrom, the sea of souls parts to reveal the Sanctum of the Darned. Sitting there, alone and miserable for all time, dishonorable disqualification Epoch. broods from his Ikea™ skull throne. They just don't get him. One day they'll appreciate his genius. One day!

But not today.

***

Take it away Curlingiron.

Bad Seafood fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Jul 14, 2015

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

epoch.
Jul 24, 2007

When people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.
If only Ikea actually made skull thrones. :unsmith:

  • Locked thread