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This week we all lose. The winner is a displaced fisherman lost on an island off of Venezuala, who will receive word of his victory via message in a bottle.
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Mar 5, 2013 00:29
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V for Vegas posted:A week in the life of a thunderdomer (Congrats Oxx. I missed your story when I was reading the entries this week, and I still don't know what magical realism is, but I like the writing.)
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Mar 5, 2013 05:51
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I like this, I'm in.
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Mar 6, 2013 03:55
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Erik Shawn-Bohner posted:Week XXX: The Reckoning, Pt. 1 I am so close. SO close to writing story about an auto-erotic asphyxiation fetishist who attends a dinner party for people with abnormally small esophagi. Written in the style of Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. I hope you choke.
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Mar 7, 2013 01:37
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Systran, I will try to elaborate on the somewhat broad points Bohner made in his critique with my own thoughts. systran posted:Leaving Fog City (1,225 Words) Ok, let me stop you right here. I was nodding along thinking that this was pretty serviceable dialog, and I appreciated that your characters weren't just talking in empty space, and that your setting wasn't Averageville, USA. Except that, other than providing some background and cultural insight for the characters, it doesn't play much into the story. I feel like you could've started the story at the monkeys, had the girls chit-chat obliviously while watching them. It would set up Liyan's sudden feeling of pity a little better. Either way, your characters spend a good amount of time chatting and wandering their way toward the actual story. quote:Inside the shop, the traffic’s drone and smog were replaced by the churning of a waterfall and crisp mountain air. Liyan smelled flowers and earth--pine and dew. She lost track of Jinfei and approached the waterfall.This is a bit confusing and I can't tell if it's because Magical Realism or wonky description. Mountains? A waterfall? How big is this shop? Only now, watching the water empty into the stream below, did she feel pity for the monkeys. So this wasn't awful and blah blah blah. You could really benefit from reading your work out loud to yourself, I think. Framing your dialog like "So-and-so walked up and said, "blah blah blah"" isn't technically wrong I guess, but it irked me when I noticed it for the 3rd time. Prompt-wise, if I didn't know that it was supposed to be magical realism, I wouldn't have even guessed that's what you were aiming for. As a piece of writing it's not bad, and bears coming back to. But it seems as though you got too caught up in the realism of your setting and skimped on the magical part. Her whole feeling one with nature trip, for example, could just be from some psychoactive quality in the tea. I think that you have a few bad habits with regard to sentence structure and a passive voice, so basically the best thing you can do is keep posting here and in the Fiction Farm. We'll help you see your blind spots.
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Mar 7, 2013 03:20
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 The Magician's Apprentice 995 words Raspiro took the center ring, and the crowd went wild. Julian flung another shovelful of dung into the bin. Fragments of the performance drifted out to the elephant pens, where he labored ankle deep in straw and manure. "Ladies and gentleman, tonight is your night. When you leave this tent, your world will have changed beyond your wildest reckoning. Your very self will be a stranger to you..." Julian knew the monologue by heart. Everyone who travelled with the circus did. His shovel bit through the heaps of offal like a blade, with such force that his old calluses were torn open to weep puss. "...but ours is not a voyage into the mystical, and any perception of the paranormal is simply a product of your imagination. When you are in this tent, you are scientists. The phenomena you are about to witness will test your grip on reality, but rest assured: It is all just an illusion." There came a prickle, the feeling of an invisible hand just barely touching the little hairs at the nape of his neck. "Celest," Julian said without turning. "Shouldn't you be inside taking notes?" "You and I both know the show well enough to perform it ourselves now, I think," she said, and Julian felt the warmth of her hand, flesh this time, on his arm. He shrugged her off and stalked to the far side of the enclosure. The murmur of the crowd rose and fell like waves inside the big tent, every man, woman and child cooing in daft rapture of The Great Raspiro. "Julian." The simple sound of his name, innocent and breathy. "No." He grunted the word through gritted teeth. "I know what you're doing here." "What am I doing?" Her voice was closer, almost at his ear. "You come here, you wait until I'm rear end-deep in poo poo. And then you try to use your goddamn soothsayer voice tricks on me, tricks that he taught you." "You've been avoiding me. I had no choice." Julian laughed despairingly and turned around then, regretting it as soon as he saw her. Even in the muck, her boots and the hem of her gown were pristine white. When he met her eyes, though, there was no glamour that could conceal the tarnish of the circus on her soul. "I don't usually keep company with people that look at me like I'm a trained monkey. And I know how folks look at trained monkeys, believe me." "Julian," she said plaintively. "You could out-think anyone in that audience. You could go be a scientist, or a politician, or--" "I'm not going to cheat by inventing the television thirty years ahead of schedule. You knew drat well what could happen when you let me follow you here, and you know I'm going to be mucking pens and stables until I die." "You now imagine that you are of one mind and one soul, each and every one of you transcending your physical form to become one. Deep in this meditative state, imagine that self, that whole, flowing into the ring, filling it with your essence..." The magician's voice echoed. Celest shivered and looked toward the big tent. "I don't like this part, you know. He makes me practice it on the smaller crowds, and it just feels wrong. I'm not a total monster yet." Even Julian could feel it, like a fishhook in the center of his forehead. Raspiro reeled in the audience, and took from them whatever it was that the circus needed to carry on for another week or month or day. Souls, maybe. Dreams. Julian didn't like to speculate. "You're not a monster yet," he said. "But you're not the woman I married, either. Here--I want you to look at something." Julian reached into his shirt and produced a small velvet bag, ornately embroidered, that hung from the chain around his neck. It appeared large enough to hold little more than a pocket watch or perfume bottle. The bag was Julian's one concession to magic; like a rabbit from a hat, he pulled a cellphone from an impossible space. "You brought a phone back with you?" Celest's serene air of composure flickered. "Raspiro forbade us anything like that. Emphatically." "'Forbade,'" Julian spat. "You don't even talk like you anymore. Look." He shoved the device into her hands. "If you can remember how to use it. I've pulled up a photo, maybe you'll recall being in it." Celest stared down at the picture on the screen, her face cast in pale, unnatural blue light. Two people smiled back at her, a man and a woman. Julian looked ten years younger, and Celest.... "You were Amanda Meyers. You loved cats and sketch comedy. You wore skinny jeans and band T-shirts. You were my beautiful, funny wife. No charms. No glamours. Just you." Julian was shaking. "And now you're his. And we can't go back. We'll never go to another rock show. There were so many things. So many things." What Celest would have said, Julian never knew. From the big tent came a thunderous applause, and the audience began to file out into the night. Some went to waiting carriages, others in dreamy-eyed throngs on foot. They murmured to each other in reverent tones, and why not? Raspiro was an exceptional man, capable of exceptional things. "I should go," Celest said quietly. Julian snatched the phone back. "No doubt," he said. "I'm sure your presence is required elsewhere." "Yes," she whispered. "He's sorted out that I wasn't watching tonight, I think." Goosebumps stood out on her skin. "Well go, then. I've got a lot of poo poo to muck through, if you hadn't noticed." She turned and went, not fast enough to conceal how her face crumpled as she left him. It was only later, when he fell exhausted onto his cot, that Julian remembered the mud that had spattered her gown as she fled to Raspiro.
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Mar 11, 2013 05:10
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Speedy judgement and fast dirty crits? I'm almost starting to enjoy the feeling of stockholm syndrome I get for this thread. Good prompt, good crits, would abase myself before these judges again etc etc etc. Now gimme dat prompt. Seriously though, this was a story I really liked writing and I'll probably go back and add to what I've written here. But then I noticed that I have a growing backlog of short stories from the Thunderdome, and the bigger it gets, the harder it is to go back and add to/edit the ones I think are salvageable. We need to have some sort of Thunderdome mandatory re-write week for lazy bastards like me.
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Mar 12, 2013 17:50
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I'm in.
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Mar 12, 2013 22:10
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Humor me as I indulge in something that we in the Northwest like to ignore and pretend isn't a thing, in proper Seattle fashion. Bury Me With Emeralds 966 words Through my open window came the haunting whistle of a passing train. Then another. Then another. "Yes, I know, you're a train. You're all trains, who the gently caress cares?" I stood up and slammed the window shut. In the time it took me to walk from my computer and back, I'd received two notifications about photos I'd uploaded, an invitation to a local artist's opening, and four increasingly plaintive messages from Julia: I just feel like I have to drag you out anytime we go somewhere. Really makes everything feel one sided, you know? You there? I saw that you were typing for a sec. Whatever Dan. Either you care or you don't. Then she'd signed off. I flopped down into my chair and began crafting a scathing reply for her to find when she signed on again, then thought better of it. If getting her to gently caress off was as simple as ignoring her for a minute, it was better to keep quiet and let all the breakup business take care of itself. I flipped idly between webpages. No updates on the social feed. Nothing happening on the photostream. Click. Click. Refresh. Click. Julia. I stared into empty space, realized I was imagining her; Julia and her great cleavage. Julia, bare arms taut as she shot elk with a plastic riffle at the bar. The way her makeup flaked over her acne scars, even though I told her she looked better without... I shook it off and reached for my pack of cigarettes. Empty. And because there were no cigarettes, by god I needed a loving cigarette. I'd have a smoke, get some air, I told myself. Get Julia out of my head. Outside, the crows and gulls were louder than I could ever remember, wheeling and soaring in a great cloud over the city. A few people had paused on the sidewalk to marvel at the sight. "There's so many, you ever seen anything like that?" an old man said to me over the shrieking din of the birds. I shook my head. "But this is why god invented headphones, right?" "You'd do yourself good to look at somethin' else than your cellphone," the old man said as I walked away. My earbuds were already halfway in. Out of ten gigabytes of stored music, my phone seemed stuck on the endless tracks of shoegaze bullshit that Julia had insisted I download after we'd screwed to My Bloody Valentine a couple times. I flipped through songs, not knowing what I wanted except that it couldn't remind me of her. Flip. Flip. Flip back. Listz's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, an artifact left over from a hot pianist I'd tried to impress once. The song started and I set off toward the smoke shop. The sun was setting beyond downtown Seattle, the Olympic mountains a haloed wall on the far side the Puget sound. The beginning of Liszt's Rhapsody was stately and sublime, and the thousands of birds above swirled in great formations that moved in time with the arpeggios and cascading musical phrases. Halfway to the shop, I passed through a ball field that afforded a panoramic view of downtown. I could just pick out Elliot Bay by the little slices of glittering sea between skyscrapers. More birds flocked overhead, pigeons and sparrows joining the gulls and crows. They were almost beautiful, I thought. When you couldn't hear them. A grey and white cat bolted in front of me-- --then heaving, shaking earth. The ground surged up to meet me, or was I falling down? Over and over, undulating waves of grass. Here the hiss of an underground pipe, there the groan of a collapsing apartment building, and over it all the screams of man and birds alike crescendoed into a terrible death knell. The rhapsody reached its friska --one of my earbuds was still in--growing louder and louder, dissonant harmonies racing toward a towering climax while skyscrapers collapsed into a slurry of mud and silt. I pushed myself onto hands and knees, only to be slammed back down again as the earth rippled and shook, pliant as fabric. There was nothing for it but to curl into the fetal position and wait to live or die. Some twenty seconds went by before the worst of the earthquake passed. Twenty seconds to wipe the skyline clean, to turn the bay into a swamp of twisted steel and broken concrete. Liszt's Rhapsody came to an end. I pushed myself to my feet, pulled the one headphone out of my ear, and looked out at the fading afterimage of the city. The Columbia Center had toppled, a jagged black corpse that stretched nearly halfway across Elliot Bay, and was sinking fast. Of the old Smith tower, there was nothing. Reflex made me pull out my phone to take a picture. Then I looked at the top of the screen; no bars. I almost laughed. Who the hell would I send a picture to? Most of the people who mattered had lived or work downtown. They'd never text again, never rate another photo on the internet, most likely would never be exhumed from the bay. My heart skipped a beat, then, as I thought of Julia. Julia and her annoying terrier. Julia, who couldn't change a lightbulb and breath at the same time. Julia crushed under debris. Julia running from looters. I looked north, past the tapering stub of the Space Needle, to Queen Anne hill. I'd walked across town and climbed that hill every day when I first met Julia, because she was afraid of buses and hated my apartment, and I was getting laid. Guess you dragged me out of the house after all, I thought, and set out north, over the bones of the Emerald City. ------ This is Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, if anyone doesn't know wtf I was going for there.
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Mar 18, 2013 01:59
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So here's a thing. I got this sweet av from kicking a lot of asses in the last incarnation of the Thunderdome thread. But now I'm suffering beneath the weight of my forums avatar's legacy due to constantly falling short of victory. So I'm putting the drat thing on the line. I want to brawl someone, and if I lose, I will buy myself whatever cruel/sophomoric avatar the victor wants. Or whatever. Anyway COME FIGHT ME YOU BASTARDS.
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Mar 20, 2013 02:57
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edit:Flash Rule, don't waste your words and my time by opening with masturbatory grandiloquence regarding the meteorological phenomena concurrent with your story. AKA don't open with boring weather descriptions, you guys LOVE your moody, atmospheric weather. Consider this a favor since you were inevitably going to waste 100 words on billowing clouds/howling wind/etc. If you hadn't noticed this is sort of my standing flash rule/pet peeve. Jeza posted:I'll take you on Sitting. SO IT SHALL BE Now we just need a prompt and a judge. I nominate anyone but Bohner. Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Mar 20, 2013 |
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Mar 20, 2013 15:54
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 Did you forget about our brawl, Jeza?I didn't! Prompt: A fable that either affirms or refutes this idea: "Noble blood is an accident of fortune; noble actions characterize the great." I chose to affirm. Max: 800 words My count: 795 Peacock and the Fungus Once, not long ago, there was a fine estate with a lush garden. And in that garden lived Peacock, who, the other animals agreed, was the most regal and colorful of all the creatures that dwelled within the estate walls. He spent his days resting in the shade of the coral tree, his attendant peahens grooming each of his long tail feathers, or strutting through the garden looking for anything that might give offense. One afternoon, a dove fluttered over to his patch of shade, breathless with excitement. "Peacock," it said. "You simply must come see, there's something new in the garden!" "Bah, you creatures and your idle fascinations," Peacock replied, but his curiosity was piqued. "What is this new thing?" "We were certain you would know, since you are the favored of the Caretaker," the smaller bird said. Peacock ruffled his iridescent feathers. "Of course," he said gruffly. "Now lead me to this oddity. I could use a diversion." Peacock couldn't be put upon to fly, of course, so by the time they arrived, there was a substantial crowd gathered around the newcomer. "What's all this, then?" Peacock demanded of a bird-of-paradise. "Oh, it's wonderful! It says it's here to help the garden. I don't know how, but it's a lovely thought, don't you think?" The bird said. "Help? Help?" Peacock shoved his way into the crowd, and in moments a path was cleared for him. They were huddled around a patch of dirt beneath an orchid tree, which Peacock marched straight toward. "You blathering pigeons, there's noth--" suddenly he saw it. Or them, rather. Three slender stalks with fleshy brown caps stuck insolently from the earth at his feet. "State your business here," Peacock said. "You--you--" "Mushroom," the mushrooms said. "I'm here to help the garden." "This garden doesn't need the help of a mud-dweller like you," Peacock said. "The Caretaker sees to all of our needs. And besides, you're quite ugly." "And I suppose the garden does need you?" Peacock drew himself up to glower down at Mushroom. "What is a crown without its jewel?" "A bit less heavy, I would think." "And what good are you, down there in the dirt?" Mushroom smiled mysteriously. "What good are you, strutting around pecking at doves?" "Insolence! I'll see every one of you plucked and crushed to a pulp. Hrumph!" And with that, Peacock stalked away, tittering peahens trailing behind. Over the coming days, Peacock made good on his threat. From sunrise to sunset, he scratched, pecked, plucked at Mushroom wherever he poked one of his caps out of the dirt. And yet for every cluster he destroyed, Peacock found three more lurking between tree roots or near piles of fertilizer. One night, the Caretaker hosted a great number of other caretakers in the garden. Everything was resplendent in decorative torchlight, and Peacock's feathers shimmered flickering orange. He strutted in his element, sure at last that Mushroom would see how the Caretaker prized Peacock above all for his beauty and grace. It was late in the evening and the caretakers were languid with drink, and so no one noticed the flames that leapt from torch to tree to tree until a full quarter of the garden was ablaze. Men screamed. Animals screamed. The doves took flight, only to find themselves caught in the very net that protected them from Hawk and Eagle, and soon that too caught fire. Peacock ran here and there, honking and crying, until errant cinder caught the tip of his long tail, and then the jewel of the garden was burning. Morning brought a soft rain that hissed where it fell on the night's last embers. Peacock pushed himself to his feet and shook ash from his feathers. The familiar weight on his backside was gone, tail burned down to his scraggly pink rump. But, he thought, surely Mushroom is dead and gone now. When he looked out over the smoking ruin of the garden, however, all he could see was mushrooms. "Not a very pretty crown jewel," Mushroom commented when he noticed Peacock was awake. "I suppose they'll prize you for your accomplishments, now?" "And what do you have now, but worthless ash?" Peacock retorted. "The true garden was always beneath your feet, in my domain. Now it sleeps, but in high time I'll wake it to begin again," Mushroom said. "Sorry you can't say the same of your feathers, though." Peacock ignored him and began to wail for the Caretaker, but the estate was dark and silent, its windows like eyeless sockets, and no one came or went. They say you can still see where the old manor was by the impressive trees that sprung up around it after the fire. As for Peacock? Well. They don't remember.
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Mar 23, 2013 04:18
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Jeza, you came back for me  Beef tell me if I need to tap into my booze and smokes fund to buy that av of shame Also did I hear Bohner around here, so help me god I'm gettin my varmint shooter Oh yeah judgement sometime today I guess.
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Mar 24, 2013 19:48
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Hooray I can keep my dignity. Thanks for the very fast judgement and crits, Beef. You are truly a credit to your species. Yeah re: dialog, normally I like sticking with plain old said, or better yet, let context and actions show who's speaking. I had this weird impulse with the voice of this story to get more colorful with it, good to know it didn't work. As for the rest, good points and I'm kicking myself for eating up my word count, which I think contributed to the weak ending. Also, I guess I was thinking more that the feathers wouldn't grow back because he was on fire, but w/e. There's a lot that should've been in there and a lot I could have done without. Anyway I'm leaving my terms open, if anyone wants to brawl and I lose, I'll buy me a lovely av of your choice. Once a week at most, and only if it doesn't take up space/waste time. Scuse me while I get back to slogging. Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Mar 24, 2013 |
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Mar 24, 2013 21:39
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Sorry about the delay in my crits guys, I'll have them sometime tomorrow morning. Got sidetracked by a rare sunny March day.
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Mar 26, 2013 08:15
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Have some crits, now featuring an arbitrary 1-10 scale. Noah-A Fine Day I'm going to disagree with my esteemed co-judge and say I wasn't a fan of the little kid voice. "The marching men", "the shouting men", "the man with no hair", and so on, got a little repetitive. I think people's first instinct when writing kids is to not let your character have the slightest idea of what's going on. I feel like if an invading army (?) is marching victoriously(?) through the streets, a child would at least know that they are soldiers. But it's also pretty vague as to what's going on, which dampens the reader's stake in the conflict. I did enjoy the trying-to-shoot-fire bit, cause what kid hasn't tried that? And you did convey some sense of rising tension. But it's just sort of floating there. 375 words is a pretty tight space to do much in, so there's that. I feel like just a little bit more information would have made it more solid, but as it is I gave it a 6/10. SpaceGodzilla-The Living I wanted to like this one more than I did. I thought the subject matter was a good way to come at the prompt, but then you kind of just told us how he feels. Everything that led up to this point in the story is vague exposition. You tell us straight up that this is "Ichiro's march toward death". The whole ending, where he arrives at the place of his suicide, is sterile and the language is overly wordy in places. "The path terminated at a depression replete with boulders and fallen trees", for example. Pretty much everything up to the last two sentences is remote and clinical. Then you said quote:Ichiro’s despair swelled as he recognized himself in the scene before him. He saw himself not in the skull’s smiling visage, but in the moss. and I was like drat Godzilla, I wish you'd said more poo poo like this earlier. So I give it a resentful 6/10 because you almost had something here. Erik Shawn-Bohner-This Land is Your Land Man I liked this, and if you had ended Cavanaugh's dialog at "We'll never get out" it might have clinched it for me. You had kind of a cool No Country For Old Men atmosphere going on, and the flashback as it is took me out of it. Kaishai already pointed out the weak spots I saw, ie the snake building and "Reggie shook the can at the attendant. Waves of putrid gasoline splashed the counter and onto the attendant." 8/10 HaitianDivorce-Starstuff Another story about a guy calmly walking to his pragmatically arranged suicide. Lets start at the beginning. There's some stars. Then a bunch of stuff about this guy's mom, before we even know where he is or why he's there. Eventually we ascertain that he and some others are on a ship that fled earth. There's this thing called the ethernet. There'r bits of sporadic exposition; we learn through his terse inner monologue that they essentially are living Logan's Run/Soylent Green in space. Then he walks to his demise, with so little fanfare that I was actually kind of surprised at the sudden revelation that he was about to die or whatever. I don't know what a nye is, but I'm assuming it has something to do with this ethernet thing, because you start talking about old family photos. Which he doesn't seem particularly attached to. So have a character meandering to their death, but since he doesn't care much for the people or the ship, there's no real tension. We're reading about the universes most bored guy absently shuffling off the mortal coil. 5/10 Fumblemouse-Hard computation I'm gonna say, 500 words is a rough limit to try to do what you're doing here. There's some world-building stuff happening, but like some of the other pieces this week, it's not the right information to make the reader care or to drive the conflict. You've got two loooong paragraphs of exposition and basically two sentences where anything happens, when you say: quote:It watched as the final human opened its eyes to see the stars in the night sky. It heard the screaming begin. And then you randomly switch to present tense, where the Machine goes back to its opaque tasks and everything goes back to how it was at the beginning of the story. All in all, there's little concrete imagery to grab onto, and much of the why and how of the story is unclear. Good effort, but focus on trying to tell a good human story before you branch out into weird abstract machine consciousness. 5/10 Nubile Hillock-Tallgrass There were a few problems with this. But in 300 words you also conveyed conflict, rising action, and then a resolution, of sorts. You pushed it, but I think you basically succeeded in fitting your concept within a really short space. That's why I ultimately agreed that you were the winner. That said, I could have done without a million proper nouns. And calling the scent/pheromone signals of the ants the Everbreath was a little bit of unnecessary garnish that stuck out to me. I would have enjoyed this more with simpler, more direct language rather than trying to come up with vague-sounding names for the things an ant might encounter. I won't try to repeat stuff Kashai already pointed out, but there were a few patches where the writing was unclear, like in the beginning when it's not entirely clear that the worker ant is the protagonist. That said, once she got going I found her a weirdly endearing character. Especially when she tries to bring the sweet back to her doomed colony. I thought it was an interesting way to interpret the prompt. 8/10 for concept, 7/10 for the writing. pug wearing a hat-Private Browsing This is hard to critique because I get what you're trying to do, but it didn't quite hit it. I'm left with too many questions about what's going on. I didn't pick this as my loser because it was an interesting attempt, but I wish the actual story had come through a bit better. On the bright side, I'm inspired to have some sort of unconventional fiction prompt one of these weeks. 4/10 Steriletom-The Sixth Republic The writing in this is decent enough, but nothing really happens. We don't even wonder for very long if this Entrepreneur is going to give anyone money, because the narrator straight up tells us he isn't going to. I like wallowing in the possible socio-economic dystopias in our future, too, but you sort of just riff on the idea rather than really showing us anything. Also: quote:He’s wearing a top hat perched above a bespoke morning suit with waistcoat and nervously fingers a cane top set with a heavy weight there needs to be a comma in there, but moreover describing a top hat perched over a suit is a clumsy way to say it. And bespoke? Why not just tailored? This sentence stuck out as wordy and awkward to me. As for prompt relevance, you certainly tell us about a nightmarish world brought about by the previous generation's short-sightedness. I just would have liked to have seen more of it. 6/10 Baggy_Brad-Aware I mostly liked this, though I thought it was unnecessary to tell us that your narrator was nervous multiple times. That seems kind of redundant because your character's actions already tell us that they're nervous. And this bit: quote:He thinks only of his now hunger. It feels weird for the character to describe their own experience as empathy when they don't even have a word for it yet. I understood what you were going for without being told, this kind of takes me out of the mindset of a primitive human. Also don't start so many sentences with I, it makes it feel like a laundry list of actions. 7/10 livethepostmetal-The Procession Meh Kaishai already ripped you a pretty good new one. I've never been a big fan of "while at a funeral, a character thinks back" stories so it's hard for me to give any other advice beyond advising that next time you should try to focus on showing us the story rather than telling it in flashback form. Beyond that, the father is so pointlessly awful that I'm having trouble even caring that he's dead. This daughter's final tear is cheesy and kind of odd, and at the end I had trouble figuring out if it was Gabriela or Maria crying. Either way, seems weird given that he was massively abusive toward both of them. But I'm not a psychologist. Anyway. Good try. 5/10 Cancer Cakes-Agnatic-Cerebratic Succession Oh Cancer Cakes. I'll just highlight my favorite bits: quote:“I always enjoy spending time with you, Grandma, the food is so good!” I'm with the queen in narrowing my eyes at this line. If you're going to challenge yourself to write dialog, try to put it to good use. This just sits there being cheesy. quote:Everyone knew he would rather be at a trendy restaurant with his friends, or killing Afghans with his army helicopter, than here with his family. So you're writing this caricature of the royal family, I get it, but at a point it just starts to feel cartoonish. quote:“Harry, my boy, I would like to pick your brain:..." FORESHADOWING which is good because so far the story has been mostly weak dinner conversation and soup-evisceration. Still, I laughed out loud when I got to quote:“The secret, is, of course -” But yeah, the dialog doesn't do much for me and the big reveal sort of just seems like a wacky non sequitur. Still, it was an amusing losing entry, which is better than some of the poo poo we've condemned to be branded by the losertar. 4/10 Erogenous Beef-Xlendi Writing was ok, but a few things bugged me. quote:Maybe it was too much cheap Victoria wine at my bachelor party, the wedding gifts towering over me in the foyer, or the centuries-old fish stench seeping from the floorboards, but I packed my bag by moonlight the second I got home I don't really get why those things equal him packing his bags, necessarily. We learn that his father is/was strict and that the narrator is unhappy with a fisherman's lot, but we don't really see what he's escaping except an imminent wedding to a woman we never learn anything about. This bit here: quote:Father’s boat bobbed in the marsa alongside many multicolored cousins, a row of drunk old men teetering on the moonlit water. Rusty outboard motors clung to their keels, mere infants to the grandfather wood of their hulls. There is way too much personification of these boats going on here. For a second I thought there were literally old men teetering over the water. But then I was like wait, old men don't have keels. Also "clung" is a weird way to describe a motor that is attached to a boat. Then the father ends up being a pretty cool dude after all, and boats his son over to the airport to go be a rock star or whatever. As it's written, it's not bad, but it misses the prompt. I would have cut the wedding out all together and focused on the relationship between father and son. Write the dad as someone who's resigned to his role because that's The Way It Is, and pressures his son to do the same because that's what his dad did. Then the moment where the narrator realizes his dad wasn't happy with his lot either would mean more, and it would have fit the prompt better. This got a 7/10 ------- I'll have the rest of he crits along shortly. edit: While you're waiting, you should look at these links someone helpfully posted in the fiction discussion thread: Crisco Kid posted:Links about plot and conflict: Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 18:18
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Nubile I am in for this prompt. Now have the rest of my crits, featuring a little bit of Thunderdome theater: Will Styles-Metamorphosis  : You think you’re too good for mining coal? No-one gets out of Weaver, let alone some singing fairy like you.  : I'm gonna make it big someday, you'll see! :  : I'll...show them. I AM gonna gently caress off, I'm gonna gently caress off to New York! Oh, Tony award, here I come!Soon... (dad): Boy where in the durn hell do you think your goin: I'm gonna catch this bus to New York dad. You can't stop me. THIS IS MY LIFE.: corndammit son I already said you can't be Hannah Montana. :Her name is Miley Cyrus dad, and I know that now. I just...I just want to be me. The real me. : Now get on in the truck, there's food needs puttin' on the table. :  gently caress YOU DAD I'M NOT LIKE YOU i don't care about putting food on the table. When I think about doing the work you've done to support me all my life it makes me want to DIE. : :  : Well uh, you run along, then: Thanks dad, you won't regret this. I AM gonna be a star! *Breaks into the song Tomorrow from the musical Annie, whirls away to the bus*~fin Yeah, nothing terribly new or exciting here, unfortunately. Your plot flirts with the prompt, but the delivery is cliche. While I wouldn't consider this something to submit anywhere(unless you reworked it a whole lot), I think it would be a good piece to let someone tear apart in the Fiction Farm thread. 4/10 systran-Ex Cathedra Hmmm. I am intrigued by your progress. Definitely getting there. I thought that the transition from confronting the pope to "decades later" was abrupt. Why not just cut to the pope's execution and deliver his final words that way? Cutting way into the future so you can tell us about something that happened before that is weird. I don't have much else to say about this piece, but good job. 7/10 HiddenGecko-The Brine Vats I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I love anything gooey and fleshy, and you certainly conveyed something nightmarish. It's like some acid daydream or something. It's gross, and things happen, but it doesn't go anywhere because all we see is the nightmare out of context. I've said it a bunch of times now, but 500 words is a difficult word count for genre fiction, unless it's so abundantly clear what's going on that you need to do nil exposition. I feel like I would have dug the hell out of this as a longer piece. Also watch your present tense. It slipped here and there. 8/10 Sebmojo-Birdsong And here comes this guy, sliding in easy under 300 words. This is very zen. Probably the most subtly done take on the prompt this week. The emotions are sincere and the dialog is good. For some reason the moral-of-the-story feel of this line: quote:"But love... That is the thing that survives us. At least for a while. That is no small thing." Doesn't do it for me. I would have preferred something a little more profound than all you need is love. Ok that's not exactly what he said but w/e. Just my preference, though. anyway, 8/10 for the story but 2/10 for being my secret nemesis. Jeza-Conscience Round quote:A horrible thing is often just a composition of many simple things. The crack of a gavel, a short straw, a blindfold. Who said you had to run in any particular direction? Why does it mean anything when the judge brings the hammer down or you pull the shortest straw in the bunch? What's all this then? Who is speaking/thinking? Why are they addressing me in the second person? I assume these are thoughts that we're to attribute to Thomas in the next paragraph, but it reads like a weird introduction. Otherwise I like this piece. It moves along nicely, and I liked the descriptions of the colonel. It took me a minute to realize that they were executing someone rather than blaming Thomas for someone's death, but that might be my own reading comprehension. Anyway, not your best, not your worst, 7/10
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Mar 26, 2013 20:10
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systran posted:Sitting Here, I hate you so much for giving me Total Eclipse of the Heart. It took me from Tuesday until just now to even finish my rough draft. The song has also been stuck in my head all week. Weren't me ya mook
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Mar 29, 2013 16:44
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Black Griffon posted:I'm back in, shitheads. Griffon
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Mar 29, 2013 16:45
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systran posted:O... it was Jeza. I hate Jeza then. We all hate Jeza
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Mar 29, 2013 17:17
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John Cage 4'33" -------- .
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Mar 31, 2013 04:19
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Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Mar 31, 2013 |
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Mar 31, 2013 05:24
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FOR GLORIOUS CASCADIA. But yeah thanks for the feedback duder. Sometimes I really can't resist writing odes to my beloved region.
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Apr 1, 2013 19:45
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Fuckit I'm in. http://hrsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/davidc/6c_files/documents/mysteries/window.htm The Third-Floor Bedroom
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Apr 3, 2013 04:17
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Menage et brawl brb solo-brawling in the corner
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Apr 3, 2013 05:13
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sebmojo posted:Sorry what was that ms I will brawl anyone I couldn't quite hear you over the sound of you not brawling anyone I'll brawl anything with letters, I just was taking in the sweet triple brawl action thanks But I am not some petty wandering ronin, no, I am the shogun who sits in the topmost chamber of their pagoda with all their samurai between they and the door. Fools come to ME to fight. They are dispensed with just as easily. Anyway my av is still the standing wager if anyone is feeling masochistic.
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Apr 3, 2013 17:04
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Nubile Hillock posted:Somewhere in Seattle a girl sits alone in her room, typing. The door is closed; febreeze only partially masking the stale, sweaty odours. Blue light from her monitor scatters off the thumbtacks pinning her anime posters to the wall. Satisfied, she wipes her hands on her jeans. The cheeto-dust stain will be the day’s only lasting accomplishment. You almost had it but for the anime posters. And it's flamin' hot cheeto-dust if you wanna get technical. Bring it, seductive land-feature. Your words are but cheeto-dust in the wind.
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Apr 4, 2013 22:38
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Hey judges, I noticed a lot of people are doing the 3rd floor window prompt. In the interest of diversity, can I change my prompt to The Harp? http://hrsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/davidc/6c_files/documents/mysteries/harp.htm
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Apr 4, 2013 23:14
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Prompt: The Harp Also a made up book, which I decided to adhere very loosely to. Fire Escape 898 words My dad never did own up to it, but I knew there was something. And with mom fresh in the ground next to him this past August, there was no one left to keep his secret. But on this particular day, I was more worried about the Lands Council. One month; that was how long I'd had to put the farm's affairs in order, auction off the cattle and harvest the last of the soybeans for sale. I got little more than chump change for both, but it was better than losing them to the land appropriation mandate. I shuffled through the legal papers one more time, waited for the councilmen to come knocking. Deed, tax records, crop yields. The Council would need to know exactly how much further they could stretch rations down on the front lines in the Dixon war. I'd be trundled off to Omaha, of course, with the other farmers' sons too useless for combat and too impotent to breed their own family of farmers. Someone had to package all that weaponized chlorine for the trenches. All hail glorious Agraria, I thought. That's when I heard the song. It was almost too soft for the ears, and if I hadn't been ruminating, I'd never have noticed it. But there it was, sweet and sad and all the more heartbreaking for the fact that it sounded so far away. I was moving toward the music before I was conscious of being on my feet, up the creaky old stairs, from room to room until I reached my mom's old walk-in closet. It somehow seemed smaller without all her dresses to fill it up; only the smell of shoe leather remained. Notes trickled down through the ceiling. It was coming from the attic, I was sure of it. I reached up, pulled on the frayed string and ducked aside as a ladder slid down from a trap door in the ceiling. The attic had been off-limits in dad's lifetime. Once, at age fourteen, when I was just newly tall enough to reach the string, he caught me by the belt loop before I could climb halfway up that ladder and yanked me down so hard that my backside was bruised for days from where I hit the floor. After his funeral, I had bolted straight for the attic door and his secrets. He wasn't all the way gone, I was sure of it. Part if him was still up there. Imagine my disappointment when I poked my head up over that dusty floor and found nothing. Nothing at all. No bootlegging operation, no anti-Agrarian propaganda, no nudie pictures on the walls. Just an empty room with a window and some cobwebs. Mom had called my name from below, gently told me there was nothing to find. But as boys will, I went up that ladder again and again to scowl skeptically at the empty, cob-webbed room. The ladder groaned under my weight as I climbed, and cobwebs tickled my face. I peered up over the floorboards, saw the same shadowy nothing that I remembered so well from boyhood. But the song! It was strong and pure, pouring from the space near that old cloudy window. I pushed myself up through the trap door and went to the window, tears running freely down my cheeks as note after note washed over me like heaven itself. But where was it coming from? I inspected the walls, ran my hands over every divot and even the floorboards around the window. It was kneeling there that the glint of metal caught my eye; a small catch worked into the underside of the windowsill. How had I never noticed it before? Heart pounding, I pressed up on the mechanism and the windowsill slid free on cleverly concealed runs in the surrounding frame. A book was wedged beneath, faded, leather-bound, along with a quill and a pot of ink. The book was mostly empty, half the pages torn out, and the rest were blank save two. I recognized my dad's chickenscratch on the first: Not all worlds are so ugly as this one. Use this wisely. On the next page was a simple drawing of an open window. Nothing beyond it, except...except. It couldn't be, but the music was drifting up through the drawing, along with the smell of lilac and loamy earth. And, peering down at the yellowed piece of paper, I could almost see a garden, feel the warm summer air of some fragrant oasis. The song came from a harp, notes one and the same with the burbling of a nearby brook. I could feel dad's hands in the music, in the rough, delicate way the notes fell over each other; and I thought, if I just listen, I'll see him. If I just keep listening. A sharp knock the front door brought me back to the cold attic, to the ache of my knees on the wooden floor. The councilmen, come to take what had been my dad's to fuel our noble war. I wondered what they would make of the book, decided to tuck it well underneath the rest of the things in my travel bag. Later, on the train to grey, smoky Omaha, I filled napkins with sketches of windows and doors. I'd be a long time in the city. Wouldn't do to waste ink.
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Apr 7, 2013 22:43
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Chairchucker posted:Oh, right. Thunderdome. I was going to write a story but instead I played Planescape: Torment all weekend, which was time well spent. Mary Sue spotted
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Apr 8, 2013 17:54
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I always envision plots that are a little too big for the word count. The premise is pretty simple: After his parents die, a young man finds his father's secret book, which allows the user to draw portals to other places. The ending is purely a consequence of me wasting precious words with world-building, but I imagined that the character might practice drawing portals on napkins because he was going to be in a dismal, dystopian version of Omaha for an extended period of time. My stories are pretty much always about escape from some bleak version of reality. I need a new thing to ruminate on. Thanks for the quick/excellent feedback, judges. but if i'm runner up again so help me god. LOL j/k I'm not kidding
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Apr 9, 2013 01:55
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Alright you bastards, the old loving guard is back in the judge's sanctum and we're doing something a little loving different this week. gently caress. As I look around the 'dome, I see mounds of wasted flesh, and those desiccated story corpses are starting to pile up. This prompt is going to require a slight amount of reading comprehension, try not to lose your poo poo: 1)Pick a PAST Thunderdome entry. It must not be one of your own. Entries are on a first come basis. Once someone has chosen a past story, no one else may choose that story You can choose entries from either Thunderdome thread. The link to the old one is in the OP. 2)REWRITE that story, entirely in your own words. The goal is to improve upon it. Don't feel compelled to rewrite the story scene-by-scene, but it should be similar enough that someone who read the previous story would recognize themes, characters, plot, etc. 3) There is no hard wordcount, however your rewrite must be NO MORE than 100 words over the original wordcount. 4)Please post a link to the story you're rewriting, along with the original wordcount. 5)BONUS poo poo OMG READ THIS: If someone, anyone WINS by rewriting an entry that was the loser of its week, I will personally buy you the avatar/custom title of your choice and you will be known for all eternity as a Cool Dude. I reserve the right to punish people similarly for loving up stories that won or were runner up. Choose wisely, choose boldly. Plus this: Martello posted:
Sign-up Deadline: Friday, April 12th at 11:59 PST (That will be early Saturday for many of you) Submissions Deadline: Sunday, April 14th at 8 PM PST Wordcount: No more than 100 words over the story's original wordcount, meaning the actual number of words the author used and not the max limit for that week. I.E. if the story was 747 words, you get 847. Judges: I'm forcefully electing SaddestRhino and Erogenous Beef to be my co-judges. BTW, before you ask, yes, only one person gets to rewrite Hard and Deep. Now go forth and disappoint. Fodder Nubile Hillock-Rural Rentboys by Baudolino Per Beef, must involve the Russian peasantry, either as they were prior to the October Revolution or as they are in the post-Soviet Ukraine.Capntastic-The Fourth Temptation by Baggy_Brad Magnificent7-Don't Bite the Eye the Feeds by Sitting Here MUST take place in either the Old West OR Sengoku-Era JapanCan'tDecideOnAName-S.O.S. by Voliun Must not use any dashes in this or any other piece written between now and May 9th and preferably, ever. Per this thread.Voliun-Untitled by Toanoradian Systran-It was all a (Teenage)Dream by Chairchucker Fumblemouse-Tagged for love by Capntastic. In a needlessly complicated but somewhat entertaining twist, Kaishai will be facing down Canadian Surf Club and Fanky in a rewrite-off over The End by JonasSalk. I guess in addition to general judgement, combatants will be judged against each other under pain of extra mockery. V for Vegas-The Drone of the Tower by Wrageowrapper Sebmojo-RIP my dog he died as such things do by Muffin SpaceGodzillaHank the Petulent Vibrator by Twinkle Cave Auraboks-Personal Conspiracy Theory by Omniphile. Good luck. CancerCakes-Suit on Suit by SaviourX Jeza- An ungodly amalgamation ofIn the Details by SaviourX and Walls by WHR 49.5 Martello-By special judge edict, you will be rewriting Synchronicity by HereticMIND. You may remember effortlessly defeating this piece in a thunderbrawl. Judges must be titilated or else. SterileTom-Nightmares by the dearly departed Etherwind, who is surely scowling down at all of us even now. Nikaer Drekin-Control Within by Bodnoirbabe, from the non-cis, exotic locale prompt. Bad-rear end motherfuckin' Seafood-HARD AND DEEP Noah-Blue and Pink by Jimson Jagermonster-Vambraces at Sea by Kris Kruel Crabrock-Yardwork by Sebmojo Black Griffon-Prowling of the Night Raider by Kangaroojunk JuniperCake-The Apocalypse of Peters by CancerCakes Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Apr 11, 2013 |
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Apr 9, 2013 04:58
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^magnificent7 posted:So wait. gently caress. How do I find out who won this most recent round? I'm on vacation. Ain't nobody got time to go read every loseringest story but I'm going to do one of them. Most room for improvement there. It's me. I won the round. Abase yourself and etc. If you ask me to explain this any more clearly I'm going to weep tears of frustration and wonder if I'm actually retarded and typing nonsense at you. What Rhino said. 
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Apr 9, 2013 05:27
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CantDecideOnAName posted:I have no idea what Voliun was trying to accomplish with last week's prompt but since I'm lazy I might as well give that one a try. OK I'm going to clarify, please at LEAST post the author AND the story title in your sign-up post. You MUST link to the original story in your actual submission, at the least. Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Apr 10, 2013 |
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Apr 9, 2013 05:39
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Updated the prompt post for now. Will make better later.
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Apr 9, 2013 08:44
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Get in Fanky or I'll ban you from the club house. Everyone else, I've updated the prompt post. After this post, y'all can find your own drat stories, though I reserve the right to do whatever the hell I want. Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Apr 9, 2013 |
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Apr 9, 2013 17:48
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magnificent7 posted:I'm in, taking Sitting Here's tale of horror following the photographer in times square. Don't Bite the Eye that Feeds I'm on to your fourth rear end in a top hat, actually. Chop chop.
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Apr 9, 2013 18:08
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Bad Seafood posted:Oh fine. I'm in. Mr. Seafood, the world wants to know, what are your final thoughts before embarking on this voyage of no return?
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Apr 9, 2013 18:19
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Voliun posted:You can take it if you wish. I'll just use this story by toanoradian.That is, if its possible to change it. Fine with me.
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Apr 9, 2013 18:46
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magnificent7 posted:Just to be sure - you DID write that story right? I found it this morning, copied, pasted, read it. And now? Can't find the drat thing. You know, I know the one you're talking about and I can't find it either. Flashrule: Magnificent7 must find my story I don't remember writing
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Apr 9, 2013 20:53
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