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Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Chairchucker posted:

In I guess although writing a chick called Darcy is gonna be weird because I only know one Darcy and he's a dude, also sorry for making you want death I guess Fanky Malloons.

I was mostly kidding, the other judges have just set a precedent where it's fun to pick on you. I very much enjoyed the term 'Popeparade'.

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Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Chairchucker posted:

Only mostly, you say? Perhaps there is yet time to drive you to want to cut yourself.

In the Thunderdome I always want to cut myself. But only to make me appear more frightening to the other inhabitants.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
I won't be able to decide for sure until after 4pm tomorrow, which is when I have a meeting to determine whether or not to apply for some fancy rear end graduate scholarship. However, I like this prompt, so I will put myself down as a probably participating, pending more information. Deal with it.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
OKay fine, I'll sign up even if I have to write a stupid scholarship application this week too. THAT'S HOW MUCH I WANT TO WRITE, GOD.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

toanoradian posted:

Just don't submit the wrong one. I heard scholarship-giving organizations aren't very receptive towards flash fictions. Certainly didn't help me with my scholarship for undergraduate.

You don't know, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council might secretly love flash fiction about archaeology. Graduate students are supposed to be fancy and highfalutin' and poo poo, so it could totally work out in my favour. Right?

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Erik Shawn-Bohner posted:

AFK submitting my sexy Sonic/Breaking Bad slashfic to Iowa's creative writing department for review.

Hey man, if we all start doing it they'll just have accept it as the COOL NEW THING and start throwing money at us, hailing us as pioneers of the new age of flash fiction. At least, I hope so, because I really, really love free :10bux:

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

That helps. Apparently there's like four Eastern Daylight Times. By my count, there's about four hours until crunch time.

Oh good, that's four more hours for me to try and finish/edit what I wrote while hopped up on no sleep and cold meds, while hopped up on no sleep and cold meds. Good times.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
Alright, here's my entry. I can't really tell if it's any good, but I guess I'll find out soon enough. It doesn't have a title because it's cooler that way, okay? 1445 words:

Transcribed from the recorded statement of Earl Clifford, March 15th, 2012:

Det. Harwood: So, can you tell me how you knew the deceased?

EC: Yeah. Yeah, I knew them. It was back in the ‘60’s in New York. I was a detective back then, with vice, though I didn’t keep that title for long after I met those two. It was just after the Valachi thing, when the FBI was coming down on us to root out all those wise guys that had been operating right under their noses for years. That’s probably why they managed to get away with what they did - Lucy and Darcy, I mean, not the wiseguys. See, we didn’t really know what we were doing at the time, but we wanted to do something, anything, to make it look like we did.

It probably helped them - it sure as hell didn’t help me – that they were both beautiful. Well, of course they both were, they were practically identical. Mirror images, you know? Now, Lucy - or was it Darcy? I think it was Lucy. Anyway, one of them was right handed, and the other was a lefty; they wore their hair parted on opposite sides too. Other than that, I bet their own mother couldn’t have told those girls apart. I thought I was pretty good at telling them apart, but sometimes I’d start to doubt myself that I really knew which was Lucy and which was Darcy. And of course they loved that - thought it was just hilarious - so they’d lead me round in circles you know? I’m Darcy –ha-ha- just kidding, I’m really Lucy – oops – gotcha again, I’m really Darcy, that kind of thing. Drove me nuts.

Anyways, I met them – well, I met Lucy first, because she came into the precinct on her own the first time – I met them in 1964. Lucy comes into the precinct one day and asks for me by name, which was unusual, because I was a nobody back then. I’d only just made detective and been assigned to vice – never been in the papers for a bust or anything. They must have been following on the police blotter and seen I got promoted, figured I was young and naive enough to run the con on. And I guess I was, cause they got me good. Oh yeah, I sure made the papers after that, believe me.

So, where was I? Right, Lucy came in and asked for me, and I came down to the reception desk and seen how tiny and beautiful she was and I was taken in right off the bat. She was wearing this fur coat that almost swallowed her up, it went from her neck to her knees, and she had these big, brown eyes. Huge, they were, like a baby deer. You just wanted to swoop her right up put her somewhere safe. Which of course, she used to her advantage.

So I sat her down at my desk and I asked her what was up, why she wanted to see me. And she leans in, real close, like she’s afraid of being overheard and says “It’s about my sister, Darcy. She’s in trouble and I need your help.” And then she lets one single tear fall from those big, deer eyes that she had, and that was all it took. She was a fantastic actress. They both were. She played me like a fiddle, right there in the middle of the precinct and I never even suspected what was going on for a second.

She told me that her sister was involved with this wiseguy, an enforcer they called Tall Paul. Darcy had seen and heard some things that upset her and she wanted out, but she thought they’d kill her if she just left so she wanted our help. They’d thought about it for a long time, Lucy told me, and come up with a plan that they thought was pretty foolproof, and maybe I’d like to hear their idea?
I was so taken by Lucy that I said, of course, let’s hear it and see what we can do. Well, this plan of theirs was pretty crackpot, but like I said, I was young and dumb and didn’t know nothing about anything, so I heard her out. Now, you’re going to look at me like I’m an idiot, and it’s true, but I thought it was so simple – and by that I mean it was really goddamn dumb- that it had a shot at working because nobody would believe that we would actually do it, you know?

So anyway, Darcy wanted out, but she also wanted to bring Tall Paul and his crew down because she didn’t like what they were doing. Disagreed with their business practices, so to speak. She knew they were planning a big job, she said, so she was offering to inform on them so we could set up a sting, and in return we’d get her and Lucy into witness protection afterwards. So far, so good, right? Wait ‘til you hear the next part. Lucy proposed that we take her on in the typing pool at the precinct, so that she could feed us information on Tall Paul from Darcy. Meanwhile, Darcy would tell Tall Paul everything Lucy had told me, but make him think that it was all a scam, that Lucy was giving us fake info to throw us off, and that she wasn’t really going to leave him. So Tall Paul would think that Lucy was his mole in the precinct, but really Darcy was our mole in his gang. Cuckoo right? But that’s what we did.

It must have been a great game for the girls. They pulled all of our strings, the precinct and Tall Paul and his crew for months. And we never suspected what they were doing, because why would they be doing anything? At that time, you know, you’d never even stop to think whether or not a woman might be smarter than you. Especially not if she was pretty like Lucy and Darcy were. I learned my lesson on that front soon enough.

Of course, once we realised what had happened, we saw it had been staring us in the face all along, but it was too late. Tall Paul and his crew did pull a heist on an armoured bank truck, like Darcy said they would, and we did catch them, like Lucy promised, but it turned out we all got played. Boy, did we ever.
They had a couple guys on the inside for the heist, one in the bank and one in the truck. Once the truck was open in the loading bay behind the bank they shot the other driver and transferred the money into another vehicle they’d made up to look like the original. Then they drove both of them away like nothing happened. That was the part we knew about. Lucy and Darcy arranged things so that both trucks ran into our roadblocks as planned, only thing was both trucks were empty.

We didn’t understand at first, why there was no money. We figured Tall Paul was lying when he said he had no idea what happened to it. It was the truck driver who eventually tipped us off. Said Darcy had told him to drop the money before heading out of the city. Turned out that Tall Paul really didn’t know where the money had gone, because Tall Paul was dumb as a box of rocks. Told us the whole heist had been Darcy’s idea.

Well, by that time we’d been interrogating those guys for a good couple hours. By the time we got to where Darcy had told the driver to make the drop, she was long gone. Lucy too. We couldn’t believe it. And of course, they had counted on that, because by the time we all picked our jaws up off the floor and got our asses in gear and the whole drat state locked down they were probably already in Mexico and untouchable.

That pretty much ended my career, even if we did get Tall Paul and his boys locked up for a while. I got to hand it to them though, it was a ballsy con. Taught me never to trust a pretty woman, too, they love to mess with you just because they can. That’s how I knew it was them when I read the papers – sounded just like them to find a way to mess with everybody even from beyond the grave.

Det. Harwood: Thank you Earl, you’ve been very helpful.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
drat, I wondered why the thread suddenly had 77 new posts since last night. That's what I get for going to bed early because I'm a pussy and can't handle life when I'm sick. I have something to attend to in the next hour, but rest assured that my next post in the thread will be proof of my submission to the other (lesser) thunderdome.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Erik Shawn-Bohner posted:

Their due date is the 30th, so feel free to submit until then.

Pfft,editing is for the weak.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
I'm just going to watch sadly from the sideline this week because I slacked off on a bunch of poo poo last week when I was sick, so now I have to catch up with myself. Barf.

Also, I fully expected to lose last week, and am quite surprised that I didn't :downs:

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
Aughh, I wish I could do this one, but I have so much poo poo going on this week. Bah.
Don't put me down as officially in, but I will submit something in the event that I finsh my grant application, human anatomy specimen labels, and take-home exam before the deadline. :downsgun:

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

sebmojo posted:

Anyway if your problem is exceeding the word count because of too many smilies... well. You may wish to consider some of your authorial choices before we do it for you.

Brb, writing a story entirely in smilies. With no line breaks.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Martello posted:

Swinemaster's post owns even though I ain't even read the story yet.

I'm back f'real. Sitting in my own house, clad in Zubaz and a long-sleeved NY Giants 4-time Super Bowl Champion t-shirt, drinking Middle Ages Grail Ale and eating salame toscano.

But are you doing goblet squats? Did you even lift your couch yet? :colbert:

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Sitting Here posted:


BTW, entries close tonight in roughly 14 hours at 11:59 PM PDT. All you fence sitters and tittybabies get in here. Thunderdome is hungry.

You're not the boss of me :argh:

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

BarbarousBertha posted:

I was actually referring to the couch lifting thread. I will be sure to forum stalk La Fanky on my quest for swole now, though, so thanks for that tip.

poo poo, Martello, look what you've done, I'm going to actually have to go lift a weight or something now. You jerk.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
Congrats, Jeza!

I was pretty bummed that I didn't have time to enter this week, not even with a tried and true late-and-therefore-immediately-disqualified effort. I really liked this prompt :saddowns:

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Martello posted:

The real question is, did you have time to lift this week? :colbert:

I was busy enjoying a multi-day taper-week carb binge and then beating my half marathon time by 23 minutes, so no :colbert:

Also, I'm in this week FOR REALS.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
removed

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
Thank you kindly for finally recognizing my literary prowess and making me UNDISPUTED WINNER. Jeza, I forgive you for mistaking my gender, as my giant balls can be quite confusing to the uninitiated. Incidentally, my giant balls are also the reason Martello has a crush on me.

Martello posted:

The one fly in the ointment was you and your name changes in the middle of writing a story - you left one "Martha" in there.

gently caress. I thought I ctrl-F'd them all after realising half-way through that I already used Martha in a previous Thunderdome submission. Can you imagine how good I'd be if I actually paid attention when writing this poo poo?

Also, all of you losers whining about getting a new prompt RIGHT loving NOW are just going to have to hold on to your panties for a while because I was busy. Deal with it, bitches.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
:siren:THUNDERDOME WEEK XIII:siren:

As the smoke clears and the bloodstains from the most recent battle get raked back into the sandy floor of the 'dome, the battle scarred winner emerges from the shadows. Biceps rippling, face stylishly streaked with the blood of her opponents, she throws back her head and howls at the moon.

Sup bitches?

This week's prompt, as demanded by Martello is :spooky:horror:spooky:

Pfft, you say, that's child's play, you say.

Well, the caveat, demanded by me, is that you are banned from using a supernatural or magical source. The horror must come from something grounded in reality/nature/the real world. That means no zombies, vampires, werewolves, or any other bullshit of that nature.

Word oval office: STRICT LIMIT of 1400. You will be punished for going over.

BONUS POINTS if anyone happens to write a story featuring my secret desired subject matter. That subject matter is not fan fiction, FYI Sitting Here.

Your beautiful and sexy judges this week (in order of beauty and raw sex appeal) are:
Me (obviously) :wink:






Martello
Jeza (I think?)
Bear Sleuth (belated congratulations!)



Sign-up Deadline: Friday, Nov 2nd 11:59pm EST
Submission Deadline Saturday, Nov 3rd 11:59pm EST

Get to it :argh:

Sacrifices to the Blood God Participants:
Sitting Here - SUBMITTED OVER WORDCUNT :argh:
Toanoradian - A Malloonatic Submission.
Canadian Surf Club - SUBMITTED A BEATING.
Chairchucker - SUBMITTED (Alas.)
Omniphile - DEAD TO ME.
WHR 49.5 - DEAD TO ME (Worse than Chairchucker)
Baggy_Brad - MEGASUBMITTED.
Noah - DEAD TO ME. REDEEMED.
Jeza - Submitted a drunk, muscle-rage lasagna
Black Griffon - DEAD TO ME. REDEEMED.
Slothmonster - SUBMITTED.
Swinemaster - SUBMITTED.
Toaster Beef - SUBMITTED. TWO TIMES, WHAT.
Capntastic - SUBMITTED.
Kleptobot - SUBMITTED WITH THANKS

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Martello posted:

It took me a little while to figure out what you were doing with that giant space. Nice.

I must say, I was tempted to leave the rest of you out entirely, but then that would have made no sense.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

This is terrible and you are terrible. Horrifying, even. But in the worst possible way. :argh:

I encourage everyone to incubate their stories for a while before posting them. Are your babies truly ready to be spawned at this early stage of the game?

Also, no footnotes allowed from here on out. If it's too much of an aside to go right in the body of the text, then it's too much of an aside to be there at all and you should just get rid of it :colbert:

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Chairchucker posted:

This is a terrible rule and you are terrible. :colbert:

I try, dear heart, I try. The thunderdome has been filled with too much excitement and not enough fear and desperation lately, so you all better watch out :colbert:

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
12(.5) hours until the sign up deadline :supaburn:

Since I had a truly horrifying dream last night, I am taking that as a divine signal that it is now an appropriate time for you to begin submitting your tales of horror and deviance IF YOU DARE.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Kleptobot posted:

gently caress it, I'm in. Thought I'd have the story down as well but it looks like I'll need a little more time.

Time waits for no man, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED :spooky:

ALSO: Signups are officially closed! That means you have less than 24 hours to submit your tales of utmost horror and depravity. GIVE THEM TO ME.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

WHR 49.5 posted:

Gah, I'm out. I won't be able to get anything in in time.

You are a terrible human being who is EVEN WORSE THAN CHAIRCHUCKER.


Hey guys, remember how I said there isn't enough fear and desperation in the 'Dome lately? Well guess what? I hope y'all are good at last-minute baby-killing/editing, because I'm instituting a
:siren:THUNDERDOME FLASH RULE CHANGE:siren: and cutting the word oval office to 950.

If you submit your story before I leave my house to go to the gym then you are exempt from the word count reduction (that gives you about two hours). Otherwise, you better get to work tightening the hell out of that story you probably haven't even started writing yet.

:colbert:THUNDERDOME :colbert:

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Toaster Beef posted:

Just to make sure - does that mean I don't have to edit my submission down?

I mean, I will if I have to. To appease the thunderdome. But I ain't scurred.

You don't have to, though it would be SUPER HARDCORE if you did.

Also, Sitting Here, how dare you ignore my arbitrary rule change?! You are a buttlord and I hate you :argh:

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
:siren::spooky:Submissions are closed, motherfuckers.:spooky::siren:

Omniphile, Noah, Black Griffon, you are all hereby dead to me. Unless you submit before I check this thread again in the morning. HOWEVER, you can now only use 700 words, and they better be 700 words of LITERARY GOLD :argh:

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Toaster Beef posted:

Hey dingleberries, I said I was in and here's my proofstuff:

YO THE THUNDERDOME HAD OTHER PLANS; THE NEW VERSION OF THIS IS DOWN YONDER.

I still have a copy of the old one, for comparitive purposes.

Noah, Black Griffon, I am (somewhat) impressed with your moxie.

JUDGING WILL COMMENCE SHORTLY SOON AT SOME POINT.

Edit: Jeza, Bear Sleuth, email me so we can talk about JUDGE STUFF.

REDACTED

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Fanky Malloons posted:

Edit: Jeza, Bear Sleuth, email me so we can talk about JUDGE STUFF.

rcurlacher at g-mail


Email me or I'll fire you, and then everyone will be mad about the judging because Martello and I are straight up douchebags :argh:

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Bear Sleuth posted:

Oop! I didn't see your edit. Judgements coming shortly.

So you're going to email me? I don't have PMs because I'm a cheap bitch.

Edit: Unless you already emailed me and we're waiting on Jeza. :argh:

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
:siren: It's JUDGIN' TIME :siren:

It was a close contest this week between three entries in particular, but through a mixture of some deliberation and some straight up dictatorship, I am pleased to declare Toaster Beef the esteemed winner. Please report to the thread for adulation and await further instructions from Martello.

Capntastic and The Swinemaster came in as close runners-up, so feel free to lord it over the rest of the losers if you want.

Baggy_brad was declared our regular, everyday loser for writing a story that was more about some girl's boobs than anything else.

And, for Chairchucker's efforts this week, we felt the need to create a whole new category: extra-super-loser, because :drat:, son.

Really though, in my heart you all lost, because nobody used my secret horror prompt desire that I thought was super obvious. Not a single gruesome instance of parasites, or even delusional parasitosis? FOR SHAME :smith:

Critiques forthcoming either later this evening or in the morning, because I'm busy, yo.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
Chairchucker:
Not horror, not funny. Poor show.
Cliched. It was all a dream? Really?
Your main character talks like an absolute douchebag. Anyone who says "totally bogus" and "what the deuce" unironically needs to be punched in the face repeatedly.
I suggest that next time you sit on your idea for a couple of days and let it develop, and then maybe edit a couple of times before you post it.

Swinemaster:
Some beautiful descriptive language, butI found the one-sided dialogue slightly confusing, because it wasn't clear to me at first the he was talking to himself.
Intersting use of the prompt - you built up the tension pretty well, however it was too difficult to distinguish between what was real and what wasn't, which detracted somewhat from the story itself.

Sitting Here:
NOT ALLOWED TO WIN FOR GOING OVER THE WORDCOUNT :argh:

Good use of the prompt, in a similar vein to Swinemaster (imagination vs reality)
I thought that this line: " I ran like a deer, like a bird in flight, like a rabbit going to ground" was overkill, I would have liked you to choose one and then continue the metaphor throughout the piece to better illustrate that sense of fear.

Kleptobot:
You had an interesting idea, but the execution was too melodramatic. There are a number of spots where you need to tone it down, for example lose the all caps for yelling, and don't use evil as a descriptor. This could be good with a large dose of refinement.

Slothmonster:
Nice inversion of the "it was all a dream" trope, but why does he actually have a kitchen knife at the beginning? That makes no sense when you think about the fact that it was his (terrible!) fiance pranking him.
Also, you did a surprising amount of telling, not showing for having so few words in your story "my brain frantically compartmentalizing the trauma and the fear" as one example.

Toanoradian:
The paranoia angle was good, but I found your story only faintly creepy since it didn't really go anywhere. I'd like to read a longer version of it though.
Now that you've pointed out that the protagonist is supposed to be a child, it's somewhat creepier, but that's not clear at all in your story. Grown ups like candy too :colbert:

Baggy_Brad:
Talking about koalas in a horror story made me expect a drop-bear joke - not revealing what the titular megafauna was left things too ambiguous, and made me suspect that you were trying to get away with something unnatural. That, or they got eaten by a kangaroo.
I liked Tanya's characterisation, but you don't need to make so much of her boobs. Your unecessary mentions of her bra, her cleavage, etc added a misogynistic tone that wasn't redeemed by anything else in the story. Also, you seem to be missing a word in the last sentence there.

Toaster Beef:
Good use of the prompt, and mad props for taking a tight story and making it tighter, thus schooling us all in the fine art of editing.

Canadian Surf Club:
Points off for this ending up more tragic than horrifying, aside from the general horror of being an old person, but otherwise well written. Made me sad because me grandma has memory issues, you jerk :argh:

Jeza:
DRUNK POSTING ISN'T ALLOWED :saddowns:
This did actually make me cringe a bit though, so good job even though you're not allowed to win. Like Bear Sleuth, I was expecting a lot more entries in this vein, although I'm pleasantly surprised that it didn't turn out that way.
PS: congrats on finishing your book!

Capntastic:
This was a very nice use of the prompt. I like casual horror of a bunch of people ignoring a dying man on a beach for days. I think you could have made more of the bodily effects of drying oneself into jerky in the sun for extra horror though - I think you started to at the end with the skin peeling, but there was a lot more you could have done with that.

Noah:
This was pretty good for having been cut substantially to satisfy my whimsy. Only referring to Jolene as Skinny's mama once or twice made their relationship a little confusing though.

Black Griffon:
No, you gently caress off :colbert:
This was actually pretty great, you managed to condense a fairly horrifying concept into very few words, well done.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

pipes! posted:

If the current judges don't get their poo poo together by tomorrow I am arbitrarily selecting the next round's judges because yes.

poo poo is being gotten together as we speak (type?). Well, providing the other judges are awake, anyway.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Sitting Here posted:

Toaster Beef/Fanky, whichever of you want to stay on this week.

I do quite enjoy judging it up, and would like to continue to do so as long as people aren't tired of my poo poo. Not that I was around last week to give you guys any.

Also, I will post my critiques soon, dear hearts. I am just finishing them up for you.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

gently caress yeah, judging forever!

Here, have some critiques you worthless hounds:

Swinemaster
I'm, probably biased because I love end-of-world scenarios, but I really enjoyed this - the inversion of the bubble being for other people's protection was pretty cool. It could use some tightening up - for example, I think somewhere you said she "tasted the x taste of y", which was redundant -- but otherwise great. This was one of my faves of the crop.

Cdn Surf Club
I liked the idea, and the "oh poo poo" nature of the story, but I hated the ending. That last paragraph was way overdone, and it would have been much better to just cut the whole thing.

Jeza
This was hilarious, but not over-the-top, which I enjoyed. I really like the idea of a world where zombies are just an everyday annoyance. This was another of my favourites, but it could still use some editing -- you have a habit of over-describing things, which is kind of wearing sometimes. For example, the line "Jericho howled in a screeching blah blah blah..." would work just as well if you left it as "Jericho howled."

The Saddest Rhino

This was an interesting attempt, but oh God, the tense shifting was so irritating. Also, the repetition of the first two lines at the end seemed arbitrary and pointless to me. Not a fan.

Noah
I really liked this interpretation of the prompt. Again, even though you were aiming for brevity, there are still things that can be cut.

Saviour X
Something about this feels off, perhaps because you had to cut it down so much. It seemed a little bit all over the place, and I just wasn't feeling it.

Bear Sleuth
Dost ye even hefte? :swoon:
This was hilarious, but had some glaring semantic issues and and and and and

Sitting Here
This is just beautiful. I love it.

Kleptobot
You defnitely had too much action happening for a 650-word story -- everything just sort of falls apart and becomes a jumble of images after the emergency stairs. The idea is to do a lot with a little, not to cram as much story into as few words as possible.

Sebmojo
Solid story, and a nice use of the prompt. This was another of my favourites and might have even won, but was overshadowed by Sitting Here's masterful effort.

Chairchucker
This was actually pretty rad, way to go! You should write things with less words more often. However, you're still showing this weird compulsion to insert terribly unfunny jokes into your stories with the line “Hey, what on God’s green earth – actually two thirds blue but the point stands - does this clown think he’s doing?” :rolleyes:

Capntastic
This was nice and tight, but I read it a bunch of times and I just...didn't get it. Maybe I'm just dumb, but the punchline/concept eluded me, and it was annoying so I'm going to blame you instead of myself :argh:

Toanoradian
This was fun, but was more like an exercise in explaining punctuation. Nevertheless, I applaud your originality and esotericism.

Black Griffon
This was probably the most boring way you could have presented that story. Even if it was a real newspaper article, I'd still be bored. You kind of went the opposite way to Kleptobot in that you stripped everything but the barest facts, and that didn't really work for me either. Welp.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Sitting Here posted:

I wish I could make/afford a banner ad right now. The old blood is strong, but new blood is sweeter :unsmigghh:

Just invade all the other threads you frequent and demand that people enter the 'Dome OR ELSE.

Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?
Congratulations all you bastards who got accepted! I was surprised to receive a form rejection, as my entry was so bad I was expecting a personalised one that read simply "gently caress YOU FOREVER."

Now, what's all this about Chickencheese?

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Fanky Malloons
Aug 21, 2010

Is your social worker inside that horse?

Capntastic posted:

slip onto an eReader and share.

Sounds hot.

Capntastic posted:

Also, become a Kindle Millionaire.

Sounds hotter :wink: