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Thursday's Word Bounties so far... Tyrannosaurus: Weirdness, check. Victorian gentleman addressing a family drama from 1986, check. Author has confused "beautiful writing" with using a thesaurus, check. Interracial gay sex apparently included for shock value, even though this isn't particularly shocking as we don't live in the 60s, check. +50 words SurreptitiousMuffin: While being facetious, Muffin still manages to crank out better words than any of the rest of you. Four times. Your take on the cocaine prompt was particularly good. You get +8==D words. Fraction: Too direct a take on the concept, and the action occurs at a sufficient distance that the getting-high just feels extraneous. Also, under the 150-word stated minimum. +50 words Crabrock: Your first is an amusing way to pull in one of the main prompt's challenges. Your second is actually really good. Your words will be fired from a sacrificial cannon. Sebmojo: When you parody bad writing, you do it well, co-judge. Obliterati: Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. Interesting. I have some bones to pick with the words Napoleon uses; they're often very clinical, as if a man who's just had his entire army smashed and is retreating in disgrace through a bitter winter, is some kind of climate scientist. There's a few points that are unclear. Is the "meat skeleton" the horse, or a cute way of saying he's zapping Nappy himself? Decent for a first-time entry. +50 words, except you didn't sign up for the main event, so bleah. Kaishai: Hallucinogenic, to the point where I lose the action a few times. A lot of strong language, but not much inventive language - see Muffin's bits. I do like the "baptized" line though. +50 words Fumblemouse: You wrote an actual story. Still, it's a cute take on "with trees and poo poo". I giggled a lot while reading, so you get +100 words. The Saddest Rhino: If you'd stopped after the first vignette, you might've done better. It's amusing and has a strong sense of character. The middle one is weak, and the third is obviously a dick joke, so I'm discounting it. +50 words docbeard: Ah, an escalating series of letters from someone peripheral to the action. A fine choice if you were telling a story, but I wanted a vignette with pretty words. Also, the three letters should probably have dates or something on them, as I originally thought they were all sent at the same time, which was very confusing. +50 words Word bounties remain open for another 22ish hours for those who haven't already submitted one. Erogenous Beef fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Nov 23, 2013 |
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Nov 23, 2013 13:31
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Word Bounties are now closed. Bad Seafood: Some nice metaphors and images here. The "collage" typo is pretty funny; if only it'd been intentional. +100 words, even though I know you won't use them. The rest of you have 21 hours until Main Event submissions close.
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Nov 24, 2013 12:01
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Nov 25, 2013 10:33
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In the midst of all this thunderdrama, I bring to you  Thunderesults LXVIII Blah blah all failures blah blah divorce blah blah blood of thundersons and whorefish. There was a lot of tepid mediocrity this week. You got strange ingredients and most of you churned out cold porridge, a strange flavorless mush that exists only to torment children in Dickens novels everywhere. Also, much like a Dickens novel, ... no that's about as far as that comparison will go. gently caress you all.  Winner: Fumblemouse who brought some pain to the stage with an immolatory tale of revenge. Despite an elevated weekly wordcount, he did more than many of you in a third less prosegoo. Arise, Rat King. Of lesser stature but still some import, the judges will honorably mention that Quidnose should probably wear one of those ankle monitors when around banking establishments and God Over Djinn is pretty decent at pasting together the kooky and heartwarming, particularly for a virgin 'domer.  Loser: TheRamblingSoul. Soul, if you make a salad, you don't toss together beans, pecorino, passion fruit and sliced dicks. Your word salad, however, is analogously incoherent without any of the implied delicious minerals and proteins of the aforementioned dish. And we couldn't decide on any dishonorable mentions this week because, well, you're all terrible, but terrible in your own unique special snowflake ways. For details, wait for crits. They are forthcoming.
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Nov 26, 2013 01:08
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Thundercrits LXVIII: Wherein Beef Eats the Pain Nubile Hillock - something something SPACE 2315 This is amusing, but you need to lose the intercut scenes with the pirates. They add absolutely nothing while eating up your wordcount. The pies thing is fun and cute, but it's your only moment of levity in what is otherwise a by-the-numbers spaceship boarding story. It gets a little bit saved by the WALL-E sequence at the end, except I don't really see the dude as being suicidal over pies. I need either more pathos or more wacky. Your choice, bro. Also, once you get into the WALL-E sequence your prose starts getting confused. For a second there, I thought he was using the extinguisher to somehow blow out the windows. I think you went a hair too far with the future-lingo, it started to grate around the pie fight scene. Verdict: Butt-flossing with C-Ration Space Bacon. God Over Djinn - Enemies This is convoluted and almost works. It’s weirdly serious and tongue-in-cheek at the same time, but the extended Antarctic sequence interrupts the flow a little too much. It needs to be more personal and vivid to really illustrate how it changes Charlie; right now, his personality darkens for no apparent reason other than the plot demanding it. Also, Amelia is basically just a camera, which bugs me. Mechanically, you’re mostly doing pretty well. It flows nicely, although there’s still some cuttable verbiage. Minor things. Try to edit another 5% off your word count next time, just as a challenge to see how tight you can get with language. You do a weird mix of tight- and distant-third-person. At some points we’re close up on Amelia, watching Charlie, and at other points (“Amelia feels the soft percussion…”) we’re super distant. The middle section is extremely distant and cuts between Charlie and Amelia too much; just focus on the important character and let the important parts of the other character filter through the POV character’s perceptions. Overall, though, this is oddly touching. You've managed to graft some decent emotional moments in among the weirdness, which is a difficult task. Like Hillock's, I either need more wackiness to distract me from the sudden character shifts, or I need to get inside your characters' heads more. Verdict: Hip-deep in ice-cold poultry gizzards. TheRamblingSoul - Baptism By Blood Straight off, your title’s a cliche. That makes me pause even without reading your story. You open slow and weak; you really could’ve just started with the all-caps text and then cut to running in the forest. Okay, dude. Next time you write, don't do five lines of coke right before drafting. The enter key is not your sparring partner, stop hitting it. Short paragraphs can give your story a swift, breathless pace when used right. If you write your entire story like that, it’s like trying to sprint through an entire marathon. Collect your sentences into nice paragraphs and break at appropriate times - dialogue/action alternating between characters, breaking to emphasize a given action or sentence, shifting between dialogue/action and exposition. Between the aforementioned enter-key problem and the constant jumping between past-action, current-action, texts and thoughts, this is like watching a powerpoint presentation controlled by a sugared-up eight year old. Meanwhile, despite being in a continuous high-tension RUN RUN OR YOU'LL BE WELL DONE action sequence, your over-padded, passive language is pushing me far, far away from actually giving a poo poo. Your italics device doesn’t work well, especially since you use it simultaneously for Dave’s internal thoughts and, later on, to convey messages relayed by the kidnapper. That’s confusing. Pick one. Start cutting adjectives, adverbs, sensing verbs. You're in the first person, goddamnit, you should rarely, if ever, need to tell me "I saw <something>". Just say the thing! You’ve got weird problems with time and tense. In the second paragraph, Dave is running through the forest. Further down, after the police bit, it’s suddenly tuesday and he’s sitting at home? Also, your characters don’t speak like people. A terrified, traumatized girl can somehow barf up a full expository paragraph of what happened? Which, you know, we could’ve guessed from what Dave had just walked through? This is bad, really bad. Verdict: You are the foie gras. Kaishai - Tasting and Judgment Another person immediately telling me about the past.  Your opener, to be honest, leaves me really cold. I get a bunch of details about the emperor, but they don't seem to ever much matter in the story that follows.This moves slow and I don’t get the end. Devere’s character doesn’t come through strongly enough in your first half for the tension of the confrontation to really seem to matter. If eating the emperor’s beard is a death sentence, and Miyosen is kinda-sorta trying to poison them anyway, why would Devere test the beard and why would anyone else have eaten it if he hadn’t tested the beard? The story is vivid and macabre, but the logic behind it is all very foggy. I do like the inventiveness here, though; the idea of a cabal of rulers who consume hair and nails to take on the strengths of their original owners is interesting and a good take on the prompt. Random notes: Italics on "firmly", necessary? I don’t think so. The mere addition of an adverb is enough emphasis. How does the edged voice relate to knowing about the curled hairs? I'm confused. “Duller than his vestments” - oddly jarring. I see the contrast you’re going for, but I don’t think this works. Just cut to “tarnished silver” or something. Verdict: A clockwork Faberge cat which hacks up hairballs. The hairballs are soaked in mother-of-pearl. Docbeard - Explosive Results This starts off promising, but then slows down fast. Your prose is thick and slow, like it’s like literary molasses. I’m not liking things like how you’re trying to slip in character description in dialogue. It feels stilted and wooden. Oh god the tense shifts, too. In one paragraph, you’ve got simple past, past-perfect, past imperfect and present. Jesus Christ. I’d say slice away the entire interplay between the protagonist and the golem. It feels like you’re trying too hard to info dump on us about who the golem is and why he’s a golem to establish a sort of cybermancer milieu, but it doesn’t work at all. The dialogue is just a stand in for bad exposition, and so it itself becomes bad exposition. Work these details into your story if they’re important, cut them otherwise. Your entire story is similar. Your characters are sock-puppets whose sole purpose is to jabber exposition at one another, often despite having ostensibly been together when the events they are expositing occurred. This hurts me, physically. Further, both dialogue and action are so overburdened with purple language and pointless details that I have trouble finishing each turgid paragraph before wanting to do something more entertaining, like my taxes. Your core problem is that nothing of import happens. There is no emotive weight nor a fascinating plot to drive me through the story. There’s no message, and I didn’t read any particularly poetic and interesting words. 'Mojo thought it was wry and humorous, which saved you from the bottom tier, but I wasn't very amused nor was my sense of humor tickled. This is an absolutely abysmal use of the dialogue-story framing device. We learn nothing about these characters, nor do they learn anything. The core mechanic behind a dialogue-driven story is that what is said and, more importantly, what is not said both show us important things about the characters and (generally) these things underscore some deeper tension between the two than the surface conversation indicates. Verdict: A lifetime spent sucking on tamarind candy; it's sour, sticky and without any nutritive value whatsoever. Tyrannosaurus - Nike You have a talent for hitting my particular literary hangups. I hate hate hate the following and will thank you to excise these things from your writing toolbox: “How many winters have you seen?” - Terribly fantasy-cliche. Unless this is illustrating something important, cut it down. Rozavelt seemed to nod approvingly. - He seemed to nod? He nodded, drat you! When you’re showing us an action, you don’t get to “seem” to anything. DO OR DO NOT, THERE IS NO SEEM. I glanced over at Rozavelt and he was smiling. - You’re in first-person. Just tell me “Rozavelt was smiling.” or “Rozavelt smiled.” and I’ll read it as the POV character perceiving the other guy smiling. This also means you can mostly cut your sensing verbs. I could see this, I could see that. No, just tell me what’s being seen. That’s one of the things first-person does well. I’m not terribly fond of this entry. Mechanical issues put aside, this seems to be the beginning of a much longer tale about Nike and Rozavelt. Rozavelt himself seems mostly extraneous except as a saviour at the end. He has no discernible character traits aside from “grizzled wasteland hunter”, which is pretty cliche. Nike seems like a blank slate, which is what I’m given to believe is popular in YA these days. Did you write Hunger Games fanfic? I think the core thing that’s bugging me is that the potential interpersonal tension between Nike and Rozavelt is defused at the end of the first scene. You want us to know that Rozavelt is a Good Guy, so you reveal he’s not a slaver, but looking for a hunter as an equal. (Which seems odd.) This would’ve worked better if the story was about Nike trying to earn Rozavelt’s trust, or vice versa. Without any interpersonal tension, everything after the first scene feels empty. Jarring Details: The middle scene seems to make the chickens seem really close, and then the third scene says it takes an hour to walk… somewhere. I’m not sure where, really. If Roz has a working gun and ammo, what’s he need Nike for? Bait? That seems out of character given the first scene’s ending. Verdict: Exhaustively copyediting Youtube comments for the Hunger Games trailers. Quidnose - Parachute Strategy I… what… the gently caress was that? That was some grade-B weird you just served me. A greedy bank robber gets foiled because a teller is too stupid to figure out he’s robbing the bank, and then he decides to chuck an old lady. I hardly even know how to judge this. It’s some dark comedy, competent without being great. Language could use some tightening in places. I think the thing is, it doesn’t quite hang together closely enough. There’s not enough of a bizarre line of logic between the ditty, the teller, and the old lady. And why is the robber hungry? I have to be missing something here. Still, it's amusing, it's competently written, and it stands well above most of the rest this week for being memorable. Verdict: An overdraft slip printed on a jockstrap, gently used. McSlaughter - Sins of the Father Another cliche-title, hoy. Okay, mechanically, we can do some cleanup. In a legitimate effort to speed up an action sequence, you’re using too many paragraph breaks. Just a few; the idea is sound, the execution is off. Don’t break between when a single character is saying something and when the same character then acts; paragraph breaks tend to signal switches in the action’s focus, like dialogue, so your action ends up like those fights in an early-2000s movie where it’s just two minutes of blurry poo poo while drums pound in the background. See also: The advice for TheRamblingSoul's story. The first half is pretty good. There’s tension there with the father’s mental trauma contrasting with the physical danger of pinfinger. I think this would’ve actually worked a little bit better with less interjection from the other characters. The illustrative actions of the father between his lines work decently well, I think. The other characters basically just prompt him to go on most of the time, and that stuff can be cut unless you want to rewrite it to show us something of their character. The major problem I see here is that it feels like you’ve cut something huge out of the story, some line of logic that lets us figure out what happened to the guy’s father. As is, the story isn’t resolved, it just ends in a cop getting murdered. Things were pretty much going okay until the arrest, and then the whole thing flies apart into incoherence. I don’t really see the point to the chase sequence at all. It neither adds new characterization nor resolves older plot lines. Same for the inner-thought sequence that leads to murder - the logic there just isn’t plain enough for me. I will say you picked a difficult pair of plot elements; pinfinger is nicely worked-in, but chlorine trifluoride just feels pinned on. This narrowly escaped a dishonorable mention, as I was somewhat fond of the emotion evoked in the first half, but you really need to work on cliche-spotting and plotting. Verdict: Having to use a breathalyzer every time I start my car. By the way, I work as a whisky taster. Fumblemouse - The Torch Singer This starts off great, but the intercut between the singer igniting and the subsequent action is a little rough. I have a hard time believing the song continued behind someone burning and melting to death on stage! The ending death is similarly a little odd. If the air was too phlogisticated for human life, how does everyone else survive? Mr. Coffee’s still alive at the end. Oh, I get it. You’re directly saying she couldn’t burn up, which she’d presumably planned. It reads too much like a metaphor to me, as we’re not really in a close-third perspective to get that kind of idea from inside her head, so it seems like the narrator is telling me EVERYONE DIES. Work a bit on clarity, please. Also, obscure typo. “Phlogiscated" should be “phlogisticated.”  I’m not so sure your ditty was catchy, but, well, this is the strongest thing this week. Verdict: Laryngitis, and that means a dude with an alp-horn is going to be standing in your office all day. The Saddest Rhino - The Failed Buffet Attack, Pro Forma Murakami Tense shifts in the opening quoted paragraph, and there's typos littered everywhere. RHINO! It all mars your weird and wonderful similes. I love fries compared to POWs, the parking lot compared to a sandwich. But then: How do we know what the character is "about to" say?  How did a gun go off without anyone noticing? “Natalie ripped off her mask”. Where’s my Scooby Snax? Okay. On the other hand, I cannot stop laughing at the chocolate wonderfall scene. It reminds me of long college nights wasted drinking free coffee refills at Denny's until the morning shift got in and kicked us out. This story is hosed up, funny and self-referential in half a dozen ways. In spite of many, many, MANY flaws - primarily mechanical ones, but the story starts to drag before we get to the wondrous wonderfall - I still like it. Verdict: That part of Pulp Fiction where Samuel L Jackson shuts down Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, except you’re none of the three lead roles. You’re the guy laid flat-out by the doorway you can see briefly when Pumpkin and Honey Bunny run for their car. Next time, bro. Bad Seafood - Good Help This ends well before it needs to. Your big reveal is that the sweet little storefront girl is buying organs and body parts from some kind of sinister criminal, which you build to quite nicely. Thing is, without seeing any of the logic behind their actions, this is like Diana’s cover persona - pretty, but empty. Also, there’s a minor mistake in one paragraph: “The man before he was fat and bruised”.. I presume the man before her? Really, I don't have much to say beyond that. I thought it was unremarkable and bland, but not actively bad. Without any characterization or point, this is nice prose serving no master, and it's not hallucinogenic or vivid enough to enjoy as poetry, like some of your weirder weeks. Verdict: Spoilt leberwurst made from a hog raised on Canadian Club.
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Nov 26, 2013 01:47
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Brawlsults for  Fraction v.  Mercedesgently caress the suspense: Mercedes by a mile. Mercedes, while your piece was rocky in many places and has plenty of mechanical flaws, it had a huge redeeming feature: it was fun to read and immensely entertaining. The clincher, the reason you won this one, was that I actually wanted to read more, not only from the first line to the second, but from the second to the third and so on through the story. Hooking the reader and keeping the reader's attention is a difficult but VITAL thing in fiction writing, and you pulled it off. Don't let this go to your head, as there were still significant problems, which I'll point out shortly. Fraction, you tried to go for deep emotion, but the delivery was too flawed for me to actually empathize with any of your characters, and your opening was both slow and unclear. I was deeply disinterested for half of your story. These sins cost you the win. You have better basic writing mechanics, and, once you drop the G-bomb, the emotion from the protagonist comes across as very genuine. Unfortunately, we don't know enough about her relationship with her parents for that bit to matter, and you seem to be leaning heavily on the parent-child interaction for this piece's weight. Let's dive in. Fraction posted:A Chance Taken (724 words) And on to Merc... Mercedes posted:Black Magic 799 Words DONE.
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Nov 27, 2013 00:37
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And this is how you grab my loving attention. Black Jesus slam-dunks bottled water into a basket of chicken. Tone: established. Set phasers for fun.
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Jeza posted:I met another man who was wounded in hatred IN. Mine. You will rue this day!
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Dec 3, 2013 01:41
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Save your words for that thing you're making. The one we're all going to
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Dec 4, 2013 01:22
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So, who thought Thunderdome wouldn't be of use? Anyone? And hey, who remembers Sitting Here's week last month where she tricked us into submitting to a mag? Good. Because, oh hey, I got published thanks to that week. Keep doming, kids. To celebrate, I give you a thing. AND NOW BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BROGRAMMING. Duke Guncock and the Nazindie Menace (1945 words) Stylish, well-polished boots smashed Duke’s ribs. He rolled for the tiki hut’s door, but the bootmen were champion goalies and kicked him back against the bar. Duke’s beer glass fell and shattered. This was not how Spring Break was supposed to start! His tormentors were tall men, blond, blue-eyed, and frocked in black-and-silver Boss uniforms and fair-trade woolen checkered scarves. One shimmied to Duke’s side and raised a skinny cane with a ball-peen tip. “Halt!” A short man grabbed the assailant’s arm. “It is not yet hammer time. Haul him up!” Duke shoved away the uniformed men, braced himself on a stool and stood. Shortie had side-swept hair, black plastic glasses and a tiny, well-waxed mustache. “They spilled my drink.” “We will spill worse if you do not co-operate, Herr Guncock.” Adolf Hipler wiped his spectacles on a paisley chamois. “Where is the metal man?” “You’ll never—“ Robot Lenin smashed through the ceiling and landed atop the bar, his chrome dome glistening amidst the tiki torches. He stood with steel hands on hips, staring down at the uniformed men. “Duke, I am not fond of the Germans by any means, but at the present time it is more advantageous to use them than to challenge them.” Hipler gestured to his goons. “Take him away!” The steel stallion of the working class dismounted the bar and leaned to Duke’s ear. “The bourgeoisie incites the workers of one nation against those of another, in the endeavor to keep them disunited.” He raised tungsten eyebrows and let himself be led from the tiki hut. Duke surged to the door. The short man raised a finger and force-slammed Duke against a bamboo wall. Duke sprung to his feet, tattooed fists raised. “I’ll kick you into next Tuesday, geek.” “Still holding on to what you believe, little lion man?” Electricity crackled about Hipler’s hand. “Now that your brobot is mine, we can have fun.” Lightning crackled across Duke’s face. His unkempt stubble exploded into a combed vandyke. Duke sank to his knees, cupping his chin. “Feel the shame in your defeat, Herr Guncock! We will purify the land of your mainstream ‘bro’ scourge. Come tomorrow, the only sons that rise will be Mumford’s!” Duke knelt, his magnificent abs writhing with rage. What was Robot Lenin’s plan? Even Duke’s biceps of the broletariat would be powerless if Hipler dropped an irony curtain upon Bromerica. “Ever the master of evil, Adolf.” A hooded figure with an immense beard appeared in the doorway and held out a hand. “No more.” “You!” Hipler growled. “We meet again, at last!” He threw lightning at the new arrival. The bearded one caught the power in his own hand, flung it aside and shoved Duke out the door. “Quickly, to the car!” He shook a can of the King of Beers. Foamy pilsner gushed forth and hung in midair, a humming rod of low-cal lager. The hooded man swung his Bud Lightsaber and cut the supports holding up the tiki hut. The beach swarmed with laser-armed Nazindie stormtroopers. The two men retreated along the shoreline, dodging and deflecting thrumming beams of acoustic energy. “You got here in the nick of time.” Duke punched a laserbeam back at the Nazis. “Got one!” “Don’t get cocky, son.” They snuck around a boulder and there, on the sand, hovered a stainless steel car with six raised gull-wing doors. Duke dove into the stretch DeLorean. The man seated himself at the controls, closed the doors and rocketed the car into the sky. From the tiki hut’s rubble, a solitary, black-gloved fist punched the sky and pointed at the retreating car. Hipler howled, “You’ll pay for this, Brobi-wan Kenobi!” ### Safely cruising at ten-thousand feet, Brobi-wan folded away the controls and ducked back into the passenger compartment. Duke was nursing his wounds in the DeLorean’s champagne jacuzzi. “Comfortable?” The robed man sat on a cushion, popped a pull tab and shotgunned beer. “More comfortable than Robot Lenin.” Duke massaged his pecs. “We’re his only hope. Can you take us to the frat-house? Dr. Freedom will know what to do. She’s a Brodes scholar.” “No, Duke. We cannot fight Hipler as two, or even three.” The Jedi brorrior pointed out the window at the blasted jungle beneath them. “Even now they advance on Bromerica. An army, Duke. We cannot stand alone.” Duke sat up straight. “A bro asks for help no sooner than he asks for directions.” “That may be sooner than you’d expect, Duke.” Duke climbed from the champagne and toweled himself off. “Who are you, anyway? Some kind of angel from the heavens, coming to help a brother out?” The Jedi chucked. “You could say that. Hipler calls me Brobi-wan, but, to you, my name is Fred.” An explosion rocked the DeLorean and the car pitched earthwards. The Jedi leapt for the controls. “poo poo, we’re hit!” Duke pushed his face against the window. Trees had given way to warehouses and concrete. The industrial jungle sprawled beneath them. “Fred, you can’t land here. This is Amazon territory!” “No time to divert, two more missiles incoming. Bail out, Duke!” The men grabbed parachutes, raised gull-wing doors and jumped into the yonder. Behind them, Maverick missiles obliterated the flying car in an orange-on-blue conflagration of fire and flying metal. They landed in the rubble of a warehouse and shrugged off their chutes. A dozen women in logo-emblazoned polo shirts encircled them, spears leveled. Duke and Fred Kenobi drew themselves up to their full height, arms crossed. “Well, Duke, my friend Mark said the chief idea of happiness is to fight.” “And my friend Lenin said history moves in zig-zags.” Duke lowered his arms. “Ladies, we were just fighting the Nazis, on the beaches. They advance on your streets.” A woman stepped forward. “We admit only those who seek deliverance.” “The only thing I want to deliver is a boot to Hipler’s face.” “Good. Make him squeal like a pig.” The amazons lowered their spears and led the men through a maze of warehouses. Boxes stacked upon boxes, dozens of women dashing to and fro with packages and weapons in hand. In the center of it all, atop a cardboard throne, sat the Amazon Queen. She glared at them. “Guncock.” “Michelle.” Duke crossed his muscled arms. “So you built this empire.” The queen swept her hands open. “You rejected commerce for brocialism, Duke. This wealth could have been yours.” Duke sneered and turned on his heel. “Come on, Fred. We’ll get nothing from these mercenaries.” Spears poked his abs. He raised his hands. “Patience, Duke.” Fred approached the throne. “Queen, we are no threat to you. What advances is a storm cloud of hatred which prostitutes taste on an altar of irony. Should Hipler overrun Bromerica, he will not stop until even your fair city is beneath his boot.” He licked his lips. “Besides, if Duke’s men fall, who else will buy your stock of Nickelback albums?” “Wisdom.” The queen swept a hand. A holographic map sprang from the floor. “But we must fight either in Bromerica or in my city. Someone will suffer.” “Ah,” said Fred. He pointed to a patch of desert between the two. “Here, a stretch of blasted hills and desert claimed by both of you. We can crush them on this disputed levant.” The queen smiled at Fred. “Intriguing.” “We’ll go over the details in private.” Brobi-wan grinned at Duke. “Duke, Hipler has a weakness - the great Bromerican classics. Marshal your boombox saints. At dawn, we will meet you in the Brolan Heights.” ### Bros rolled monster-wheeled sound systems atop the hills, slipped CDs into drives, and cranked the volume to eleven. There’s No Business like Bro Business echoed across the unfruited plain. Opposite them, the Nazindie horde deployed an acoustic guitar half a mile long, hoisted a bloodstained golden triangle and strummed. On both sides men fell, ears spurting geysers of blood. The rest charged forth and met in melee. “I don’t like this, Duke.” Doctor Freedom gazed through bronoculars at the carnage. “It’s almost dawn. Hipler’s winning. These amazons better deliver.” Duke grimaced at his watch. “Goddamn mercenaries. Fred, where are they?” Brobi-wan looked at the lightening sky. A storm brewed on the horizon. “Strange. They should be here. I have a Prime subscription.” The sun rose over the battlefield. The Nazis knew the dustbowl dance well and pushed the bros back up onto their own hill. An amp fed back and exploded, silencing the bros’ support. Duke grabbed a microphone. “Bro, bro, bro your boat…” It was no use. The brocialist ranks broke and ran. Wind whipped up dust, blotting out the lines and a typhoon blew in overhead. A dapper bro in a suit and round glasses shoved Duke aside. “Man, I love you like a brother, but you’ve no ear for the standards. You need to stand beside us and guide us, not sing.” Duke gave Irving Brolin a thumbs-up and handed over the mic. The composer took a deep breath. A chorus of bikini-clad babes sprung up behind him. They sang. “God Bless Bromerica, land that I love!” The torrent of patriotism halted the Nazi stormtroopers. They crouched, clutching stylish helmets. “Duke, they’re here!” Brobi-wan pointed at the sky. From above, spandex-clad women parachuted out of the raging storm. They landed and shot wrist-mounted glue-guns at the Nazis, ensnaring them in sticky nets. In moments, the Nazi army was mired in paste. A uniformed woman strode up to Duke and saluted, ring and middle finger retracted, the others held straight. “Amazon Web Services, reporting for duty.” “You took your sweet time,” said Doctor Freedom. “Sorry ma’am.” She pointed at the storm overhead. “We had to deploy from the cloud.” “Don’t count me out yet, Herr Guncock!” Hipler strode up the hill with an electromagnet against Robot Lenin’s metal head and shoved the metal man to his knees before Duke. “Make them throw down their weapons, or I fry your friend here.” “Disarmament is the ideal of brocialism,” said Robot Lenin. “A fine plan. Now act!” Hipler pressed the magnet against Lenin’s skull. Duke nodded at Doctor Freedom and she nodded at the men. Guns dropped to the sand. Microphones were silenced. Irving Brolin sneered at Hipler. “What would you know of taste?” “More than you, old man.” Hipler raised a pistol with his other hand and shot the composer. “Fear not, Duke. You will adapt to the new National Brocialist order.” He raised his arms, electricity crackling from fingertips. “When you recognize the importance of conserving the sound, with the acoustic free from intermixture with synth—” Fred slipped behind Hipler and grabbed his wrists. “Duke, now!” Duke pivoted and slammed his boot into Hipler’s jaw. The Nazi leader vanished in a blue burst of tachyons, but no orange, much to Michael Bay’s displeasure. “Nice work, Fred. You’ve been a real guardian angel.” “I try.” Friedrich ‘Brobi-Wan’ Engels lowered his hood. “I must report back to the council. Stretch DeLoreans don’t come cheap these days.” #### Five years from Tuesday, a man in tight pants stood beside a body half-buried in sand. A black scarf flapped in the wind, a pair of shattered glasses lay nearby. The ragged man knelt and poured water on Hipler’s lips. “I’ve been waiting for you, friend.” Hipler spluttered and drank. “You’re here because of him, aren’t you?” asked Chad. “He kicked you.” “Yes.” Hipler’s fists balled. “It was Duke. Gun… Gunc—“ Rage tented his pants. “Ock!”
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Dec 8, 2013 23:22
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God Over Djinn posted:Judges: Me and some other people who have hopefully done more than three Thunderdomes. Oh god please help me I hate myself enough to be terribly judgmental about bad stories.
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Dec 10, 2013 10:29
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The Leper Colon V posted:I can't think of a way to do this without being really ham-handed and kind of insulting. You haven't read much Thunderdome, have you? Nubile Hillock posted:I'm in with Canuckian Backwoods Hickese God Over Djinn posted:Their dialect/language background cannot be the same as your own. (That's cheating!) 
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Dec 11, 2013 10:50
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sebmojo posted:who wants a brawl Bring it.
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Dec 13, 2013 12:16
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Bitchtits McGee posted:okay Arf. Deadline when? One week from today (i.e. Friday)? edit: and thanks to systran for a pic of his corgi 
Erogenous Beef fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Dec 13, 2013 |
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Dec 13, 2013 13:26
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TD 71 Crits gently caress, right, well, I can be glad at least that most of you decided against going with the full-on writing-in-dialect device, because that poo poo makes me want to take a shovel to your face. Unfortunately, you mostly also avoided going with writing a story, where things happen and there is a narrative. We got a lot of "poo poo happened and then two people jabbered about it". gently caress's sake, people. And since the theme of this week is ridiculous accents, I will issue all verdicts via copy/pasted tweets from Fictional Detective Inspector Tam McGleish of the Strathclyde Police. With perhaps a slight bit of editing.  Helsing - The Lord of Skyguard Let’s talk about tone. See, when you spit out things like “the Lord of Skyguard”, I immediately start thinking “this guy wrote Skyrim fanfic” and process the rest accordingly, even if you shove "rifle" into the first sentence. Your setting is muddy and I have no idea why I should even give a gently caress. The real problem here is that you use the first half of your words watching a guy who's watching another guy through a rifle scope, without any context or character surrounding either. Your internal monologue reads like a bad Wikipedia entry, which is curious given that you were supposed to write in Scots. And then the rest of the story is in generic military patter, and I really don't know why I should be caring about Riflesights MacKiltsman or Radio Douchebag or Skyrim Skylord. There's no hook, no action, no internal conflict that we can see. Riflesights won't fire for a basically justified reason while Radio Doucebag yells at him. Great. Payoff? None. Verdict: By the way boys and girls, me and Helsing came tae an understanding. I understand he's a fuckin shitebag wae tiny mingin baws who can get tae gently caress, he understands ah'm no kiddin. Foutre - Nowhere Man and a Valley Girl Congratulations, you made me want to put a pencil through my eye in the first paragraph! Points for accuracy, then. Points off because I had to read it. On the up side, we get a lot of character coming through the dialogue, and the cliche of the image-obsessed teenager is darkened nicely by the suicide thing. Thing is, the characterization is so strong simply because you're spitting up a prototype like a wee one spitting up breast-milk after a feeding. For the character to become interesting, you need some nuance, which this story is largely lacking. I don’t like the dialogue-story framing device, entirely. You’re not using it to maximum effect, as your alternate character is basically just a prompt and a pill dispenser. You could've framed this as a vlog or some poo poo and it wouldn't've mattered. This is going to win largely because it's halfway comptent at characterization and has one little twist to make it vaguely interesting, the suicide angle, in a very weak week. Verdict: Ah’m sorry. It was unfair of me tae suggest the majority of Thunderdome folk are fuckin wanks. Every single one of them is. Including me. Bitchtits McGee - Bonny Brinna Remember where I said some oval office would go Full Trainspotting? You did. This is entirely incomprehensible. Exhuming the fetid corpse of your "story" from beneath the gibberish you shat out here, you APPARENTLY wrote about a fantasy universe where space ankylosaurs are hunted by deer-carrying Huntermen who try to brain them with pickaxes. It's either a brilliant setup for a twisted pulp or a half-baked piece of daftness. I can hardly tell which because you buried it beneath a bunch of dialect poo poo. Worse, your language doesn’t actually matter for the story. It doesn’t convey character, it doesn’t add flavor. You could’ve written this in plain English and it would’ve come across just the same. Better, probably. Anyway, language aside, this just seems to be a fantasy stuff-happens story. A guy goes and fights a beast in the woods. Don't really know or care why, nothing changes. Job done. Snore. Verdict: Dinny act the Billy Bigbaws when yir just a Sally Sadsacks. Nubile Hillock - Merry Bikesmas Sweet bike, son, but as a picture = 1000 words, you’re about 150 over wordcount with this story. Disqualified. Verdict: Stretch goals: Bike chains tae wrap aroon ma fists. Procuring a deid badger’s arse tae ram down his throat. Marigolds. Mercedes - Untitled Eh, I’m not too warm on this. We already know the grandfather got the shoes, so the stealing bit doesn’t do much and really just plays into the stereotype. The interesting parts of a stereotyped character are where they diverge from the stereotype - see my note on this to Foutre, above. What does Grandpa telling us this story have to do with the surface story, about his grandson? You’ve basically given us a bunch of backstory. There’s no character arc, in either layer, and it’s not a particularly interesting backstory, so you don’t get a pass for that either. You have a few spots where Grandpa slips into plain old English, by the by. It’s jarring when his Ebonics are so thick elsewhere. Another non-story for the pile this week. Coffee time. Verdict: If you are in Scotland, remember the most polite and formal way to open a conversation is “Listen cunto” Obliterati - The Matter of the Succession You literally opened with a tell sentence. Great. "my wizened aunt ejaculated.” Do I need to point out all the many reasons why you should NEVER EVER DO THIS AGAIN? This actually started out somewhat promising. We have a mystery, a letter penned in the recipient’s own hand. Then, between the second and third scenes, it all falls apart. Who the hell is who in which scene? I thought it was all from the POV of Lord Bletchley, but the increasingly frantic mails from Robin, and the Aunt’s dialogue in scene 2, make me think that Bletchley and Robin are the same person.. or … something. This massive failure in clarity utterly destroys what could’ve been a neat little Victorian mystery. Instead, I don’t know who’s doing what or if this is supposed to be some kind of oddball portrait of a man going insane. Verdict: ah’v got a small but functional penis, it doesn’t need the attention Purple Prince - Whining Nigga please. Tyrannosaurus - Five Star So, you wrote this in standard English and back-translated it, didn’t you? You slipped in a few places. Also, your style makes it really hard to follow who’s saying what. When you have a single character performing actions and then saying stuff, keep it in the same paragraph. Both problems illustrated here: quote:“I’m worried if he leaves he won’t want to come back,” Kiha said softly. Seems way too grammatical given how you've written up until now. Who’s speaking in the third paragraph? Logically, it should be Kiha - you broke to a new paragraph, but then Kiha wouldn’t be asking about his own big worries, so it must be Abraham, right? You do this a lot and it makes the story irritating to read. Don’t do that. For tone and theme, you’re doing pretty well this week. A general father-worries-about-son, rural-versus-city tale transposed onto the Hawaiian natives. Most of my complaints are with your formatting, and that’s easily fixed. I would like it more if you bashed me less in the face with your moral. The big internal monologue right in the middle which is like HERE IS THE FATHER’S MENTAL CONFLICT PLEASE NOTICE ME is jarring and out of tone with the rest of the piece. Try to submerge that more into the dialogue and thoughts and actions expressed between the two old men. Generally, a competent anguish-of-the-father parenthood tale about a chick leaving the roost. I liked this best this week, better than Foutre's by a hair, but its paint-by-numbers nature keeps it from being a real standout winner. Foutre's gonna take it because it's less cliche, I'm betting. Verdict: And all the world is arsehole shaped, it’s just for me tae boot its face. Aye, gently caress this, ahm goin back tae bed.
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Dec 16, 2013 19:02
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Fumblemouse posted:I will write a better one within 24 hours. judge: step up Show me your cards, ace.
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Dec 19, 2013 12:13
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Fumblemouse posted:Oh gently caress - drawing room ---comedy! You are loving lucky I F5'd, because I was just about to lash furious judgment upon you. Resubmit at a 100 word penalty: your limit is 400. You have 22 hours.
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Dec 19, 2013 13:12
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sebmojo posted:Lawn Care There's the core of a decent joke in here. Needs some touch-ups for pacing and tone. Pemberly doesn't seem aristocratic enough, he just seems like a working chum to Willocks. We need a bit more characterization for the bride-to-be. Right now she's a blank slate. Further, we have no idea why Pemberly is avoiding marriage, and that tosses icewater on the tension. I either need more jokes to make me want to read further to see how the next joke plays out, or I need more plot and character to draw my interest along. Fumblemouse posted:Inheritance Not particularly humorous, but more intriguing than Mojo's thing. Your middle third is saggy and almost superfluous. You caught my interest, it almost guttered out over your dialogue, and then I had to untangle the meaning from the obfuscated final third. When I did, it was interesting. I want to know more, and that is a good thing to pull off. I give it to the Fumblemouse, by a whisker.
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Dec 20, 2013 14:03
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Also, BitchtitsMcGee, Sebs just got probated for being a , so we'll need to delay our brawl by 24 hours.
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Dec 20, 2013 17:12
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Beefmojo BrawlBitchtits McGee posted:okay Sebmojo got his posting privs back, and yet he's still hiding behind his mamma's(*) skirts. Fine. I'll go first. (*) A bottle of Johnny Walker. Dogs (750 words x-act) “Get outta here, Old Joe. Nobody here’s gonna buy you.” Ted pushed the muddy, bug-eyed dog away with his shoe. Joe tottered and flopped into the snow, panting, and heavy flakes whitened his shaggy coat. Ted retreated beneath the pet shop’s icicle-fanged roof, and lit a half-cigarette. Wind sheared water off the ice and extinguished the smoke. “You dawdling out here?” Roland trundled through the shop’s service door. Ted’s boss had the shape, complexion, and wardrobe of a dirty snowman. He squinted coal-chip eyes at Joe. “You again?” “I think someone’s feeding him.” Old Joe clambered to his feet, nosed Roland’s crotch and whined. The boss kneed the dog away. “Get, mutt. I don’t give handouts.” “Sorry to hear about Champion.” Ted slid the wet cig back into his barren wallet. “How’s Bobby taking it?” “Kid’s been bawling his eyes out.” Roland sighed. “drat dog was ancient. I’ll fix him up good on Christmas.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Your boy’s making a mess up front. Again.” Ted and Roland went back inside, waded through a sea of smelly, empty cages and emerged into the storefront. A few customers loitered on muddy linoleum, frowning over the last few yelping fleabags. A grimy boy pressed his nose against the glass of a puppy display and clutched a plastic truck with both hands. Ted whistled. “Harvey?” The boy turned, slalomed through the store and headbutted Ted in the gut. Harvey’s face was slush-streaked and smiling. “Daddy!” He held up the truck. “Look what I got.” Over the boy’s shoulder, Roland mimed Two Minutes and pointed at the door. Ted knelt. “She’s real nice, pal. Where’d you find it?” Harvey pointed to a plastic basket marked Galveston Community Center. Tin cans, secondhand shirts and cheap toys overflowed it. “Who are those for?” “Nobody.” “We talked about taking other kids’ stuff.” He ruffled his son’s oily hair. “Listen, I’m working late tonight. Go home. Maybe take a bath, hey?” Harvey wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “Santa doesn’t give presents to stinky boys.” Harvey pouted, then nodded. “Can I get a dollar for a soda?” Ted checked his pockets. Two food stamps. “I’ll get one for you later, buddy, how about that?” “Okay.” The boy dumped truck into bin, waved both hands at the puppies, and ran out into the incipient white Christmas. Ted painted a smile across his face and stepped behind the register. As he rang up sales, he watched Roland watching him work the till. Look away, drat it. He needed five seconds to pocket five bucks, just enough to keep up the Santa charade, but the boss held vigil all evening. At eleven, they counted the cash and dropped it into the safe. Roland put on his coat. “Listen, the boy can’t hang out here.” “He gets lonely these days. Hasn’t made friends since we moved.” “Yeah, that’s tough.” Roland offered a crocodile smile. Ted leaned against the counter, took a deep breath. “Listen, about my bonus. Can I get it tonight? I gotta buy presents.” “What’d I say about handouts?” Roland crossed his arms. “Payday’s in a week.” Ted’s eyes went to the puppy case. Roland snorted. “They’re two months’ pay to you.” He pushed a wadded-up dollar into Ted’s pocket. “Wouldn’t be right for a boy to wake up without presents, though. Merry loving Christmas.” He stomped out through the door. Ted kicked the safe like it was a money piñata, and he ground his teeth while cleaning the shop. Something whined. The last puppy pawed at its case and licked the greasy spot where Harvey’s nose had been pressed against the glass. Ted scooped the furball out. It snuggled into his shirt. A yellow ribbon was tied around its neck. The perfect gift, already wrapped. He carried it to the register, grabbed scissors and lifted its collar. Tags hung from the strap. A New Champion 4 U Bobby. Merry Xmas. DADDY. Ted placed Champion back in the tank. He changed out, locked up and leaned against the store. He relit his last half-cigarette. Maybe the dollar store would have a stuffed puppy. poo poo, if his old man had pulled that stunt, he’d’ve never forgiven the guy. He flicked his smoke into a snow-mound. It woofed. Old Joe stood, shook himself off, and nosed Ted’s knee. Ted patted him, and the dog licked his hand. Ted smiled. “C’mon boy. I know someone who’d love to meet you.”
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Dec 21, 2013 14:16
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 16:29 |
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Blade-dulling jungle Crotchbrambles hide my monkey I hate manscaping
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Dec 31, 2013 17:23
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