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Kaishai
Nov 3, 2010

Scoffing at modernity.

Mr_Wolf posted:

In with Cobalt.

Seeing as though i missed the last prompt i guess i'll take a flash rule too from someone kind.

Cobalt-based pigments see a lot of use in beautiful glassware. Your :siren: Flash Rule :siren: is that someone or something in your story must be fragile; interpret that as you will.

docbeard posted:

Though I already have my element (Lutetium), I would like a flash rule.

Though I know and you know lutetium has nothing to do with lutes, your :siren: Flash Rule :siren: says you must incorporate a lute-like instrument into your piece anyway.

Kaishai fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Feb 4, 2014

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Lake Jucas
Feb 20, 2011

WHAT OF OUR BARGAIN?
In with Chlorine.

Benny the Snake
Apr 11, 2012

GUM CHEWING INTENSIFIES
In with Silver

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Kaishai posted:

Thunderdome Week LXXIX: Periodic Stories of the Elements

Judges: Kaishai, Sitting Here, and another to be announced.

Hello.

Who wants a flash rule.

Lake Jucas
Feb 20, 2011

WHAT OF OUR BARGAIN?

sebmojo posted:

Who wants a flash rule.

gently caress it, I will take a flash rule.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Lake Jucas posted:

gently caress it, I will take a flash rule.

A swimming pool. No character gets wet.

Fumblemouse
Mar 21, 2013


STANDARD
DEVIANT
Grimey Drawer
After a couple of weeks of profound meditation on
a) the futility of pretension and
b) the overly egotistical response to the banality of convention
I have emerged from my navel reborn, with a spring in my step and a "gently caress you, I will write unclear, pretentious twaddle if I feel like it and I'll still reclaim the crown!*" on my lips. Tattooed there, in fact, in very small letters.

So incredibly confident am I that I will take whatever element and flash-rule you throw at me. Bring it.


*These events are not necessarily causally connected at all.**

**This disclaimer is actually tattooed on my lip, giving me a discerning, moustachioed appearance.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

sebmojo posted:

Hello.

Who wants a flash rule.
I took the easiest element. Hit me.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









The Leper Colon V posted:

I took the easiest element. Hit me.

An old boxer, with a broken right hand. Must not be depressing or dull.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Fumblemouse posted:

After a couple of weeks of profound meditation on
a) the futility of pretension and
b) the overly egotistical response to the banality of convention
I have emerged from my navel reborn, with a spring in my step and a "gently caress you, I will write unclear, pretentious twaddle if I feel like it and I'll still reclaim the crown!*" on my lips. Tattooed there, in fact, in very small letters.

So incredibly confident am I that I will take whatever element and flash-rule you throw at me. Bring it.


*These events are not necessarily causally connected at all.**

**This disclaimer is actually tattooed on my lip, giving me a discerning, moustachioed appearance.

Seaborgium; moustaches.

sebmojo fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Feb 5, 2014

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

sebmojo posted:

An old boxer, with a broken right hand. Must not be depressing or dull.
I can do that.

Kaishai
Nov 3, 2010

Scoffing at modernity.

Fumblemouse posted:

So incredibly confident am I that I will take whatever element and flash-rule you throw at me. Bring it.

sebmojo posted:

Seaborgium; moustaches.

Too quick by half, Mr. Mojo.

Seaborgium it is, but you get an additional :siren: Flash Rule: :siren: One of your characters should be concerned about what is real.

Kaishai fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Feb 5, 2014

Anathema Device
Dec 22, 2009

by Ion Helmet
I signed up with iron. Flash rule me.

Kaishai
Nov 3, 2010

Scoffing at modernity.

Anathema Device posted:

I signed up with iron. Flash rule me.

Your :siren: Flash Rule :siren: is that you must use this verse from Rudyard Kipling's poem "Cold Iron" as additional inspiration:

"Tears are for the craven. Prayers are for the clown.
Halters for the silly neck that cannot keep a crown.
As my loss is grievous, so my hope is small,
For iron, cold iron, must be master of men all."

Black Griffon
Mar 12, 2005

Now, in the quantum moment before the closure, when all become one. One moment left. One point of space and time.

I know who you are. You are destiny.


Apparently the only thing that get's my rear end in gear is the chance of escaping from this loving hell hole, so if I don't deliver this week: :toxx:.

And since we're leaping headfirst into danger: element and flash rule please.

Sitting Here
Dec 31, 2007
:siren: Sitting Here v. Echo Cyberbrawl :siren:

Um hi. I don't know if anyone still cares about this, so I'll just leave my brawl entry for Echo right here and Marty you can do whatever.

Park Life
2000 words


Rachel left the cramped trailer to get away from Mom and her stale smell. The whole park was like that, ever since they'd got the first shipment of Vijo-Ryu Goggles with built-in 6TB of Cloud access. Stale and silent.

Beyond the dusty hexylated glass dome, train tracks described the distance to the horizon in one long run-on sentence of receding railroad ties. That sentence, Rachel knew, was punctuated by Reno.

She'd given up on wondering what it was like there.

It took her a while to notice someone, not a train, was coming down the tracks toward the dome. Slowly.

The station was the only building that extended beyond the glass, though no one could recall ever seeing a passenger train pull in, just the freighters that showed up in the relative cool of the night to restock the dome's retailers.

Someone from one of the other domes?

Whoever was out there, they were going to have a hell of a time getting inside on foot without a freight train to trigger the hydraulic doors. Rachel rubbed the yellowed glass with the hem of her shirt, squinted out into the desert around the tracks. It was a girl! She wore a big floppy hat and a white poncho and seemed to be in no hurry.

Eventually the stranger passed out of view behind the outside half of the train station. Rachel went to the passenger entrance and slipped inside, past the dusty touchscreen ticket kiosk, through heavy double doors into the dark loading bay.

There was a small window set to the side of the huge bay doors. Rachel trotted over, peered outside to see if the stranger was still there. She was.

Rachel looked around the murk of the room. There were plenty of panels, but which one controlled the outer doors? Did she even want to let someone crazy enough to walk across the exposed desert in?

Her worries were made moot by the sound of a keycard sliding in and out of an exterior lock. A white-hot rectangle of light appeared in one wall, and Rachel gasped at the heat. It was like having a hair dryer pointed straight into her face.

The strange girl slipped inside and closed the door behind her. Rachel held her breath.

There was a sound from out in the station's lobby. Two people burst into the loading bay, giggling. The strange girl sucked in air through her teeth and darted straight for Rachel's concealing patch of shadow.

"Shh, I heard something," said a voice that Rachel recognized as Jamee Bookings's. Which meant that the other giggler could only be Grant Burger, who would know all about the station's controls from his work on the overnight freight intake.

"Fuckin' kids, probably. Here, let there be light," he said, and a moment later banks of white LEDs flickered on.

Leaving Rachel totally exposed.

"The hell, Rachel. You don't got permission to be in here," said Grant. The strange girl had ducked behind a stack of empty pallets, perfectly visible from where Rachel was standing but invisible to Grant and Jamee.

"You know, I lived here my whole life and I've never seen this room," said Rachel. The other girl was looking at her with a mix of amusement and anxiety. "I guess now I have." She started toward the door. But then, she couldn't just leave the stranger trapped in there with Grant and Jamee, could she? Jamee's blouse was already a quarter undone, and she had a blanket under one arm. No one deserved to be forced to watch that.

Rachel hesitated like she had something else to say, opened her mouth, then closed it again. The gesture wasn't lost on Grant.

"What is it?"

"Thought I saw roaches, is all."

She left before they could ask for proof, but the mood was sufficiently ruined and it wasn't long until the couple took their tryst elsewhere.

When they were gone, Rachel crept back inside. Peering into the loading bay, she saw the other girl shed her hat and poncho. Rachel leaned against the door too hard and it squeaked; she and the stranger locked eyes.

"Thanks for that," the other girl said.

Rachel eased her way back into the loading bay. "I just want to know what you're doing all the way out at the domes, before it gets around there's a stranger here," she said.

The girl laughed. "This is already so great," she said. "You have no idea. Everything I've seen and heard so far--it's so different. Real."

Rachel had no idea what the girl meant. "So what's your name?" she asked, wondering whether she shouldn't just go report a breach to security. But they were lazy at best, and would probably just lock her up and then go back to zoning out on their Goggles.

"Like my meatsphere name? My mom named me Delta--yeah, after the airline. I know. Old fashioned--but I go by Flash in most parts of the Cloud. No X's or numbers, just Flash." She looked at Rachel like that information was supposed to garner a reaction.

"Well, so do you go by Flash or Delta? I think Delta is prettier, personally. Also, I'm Rachel."

"You don't go on the Cloud, do you? Does anyone here?"

Rachel shrugged. "It takes a long time for new stuff to get to the domes. It was only a month ago that we got the right gadgets to port in to the Cloud."

Delta clapped her hands and laughed. "This is going to be great. I mean, I couldn't have come up with this poo poo. I feel like I'm on a wildlife preserve or a reservation."

"So, did you come all the way out here to treat this like some kinda zoo?"

Delta looked taken aback. "Do you really not know what it's like in the cities? This whole dome system is like a historical relic. It's like visiting people who've been left to live in bomb shelters for generations."

"The freight workers told me that the train drivers say that we got it mad good out here," Rachel said.

"That's what I'm here to find out, Rachel. If you guys are happy, you should be left alone. But there are people who think that the government is doing a bad thing by continuing to supply these refuges and not reintegrating y'all back into society."

"Did the government send you?"

Delta made a wry half-smile. "Not exactly. But now the military is muttering about needing some sort of testing space, and they got their eyes on dome country. Someone's gotta come out and see things with their own two eyes."

They left the station together. Rachel suddenly felt acutely aware of the rows of trailers connected by worn-down footpaths, the garbage that swirled around them in the breeze from the air scrubbers, the big-bellied old men who worked shirtless in the sun on what little garden space there was.

Delta was beside herself at the first glance. "This is amazing," she kept saying as they walked through the outskirts of the dome's small retail quarter. Already, they were garnering looks.

Little Junie Shipping spotted them first and was off in a flash of fluttering bows to alert the grapevine. It came to Rachel that if she lived like Delta, in the city, gossip would spread via the Cloud, without need of a precocious nine year old or the park’s brown-nosers. She didn't know if that was a good or bad thing.

They developed a following as they made their way through what served as the trailer park's downtown. By the time they got to the little grocery outlet, almost the entire park had turned out to gawk at the stranger, momentarily eschewing their Goggles for spectacle.

Delta would press her finger against her temple and wink, and Rachel wondered if she was activating some sort of implant, sending images of the trailer park back to the Cloud.

"I'd like to ask y'all some questions, if you don't mind. I'm from Reno," Delta said to the crowd. She added the last part as though it were some sort of credential. It was enough for the domers.

Delta spent the rest of the day set up in the dome's one restaurant, asking the same set of questions to anyone who would sit down with her.

Why were the domes created? Everyone knew the answer to that; there had been an epidemic of epidemics that'd threatened to halve the Earth's population. Domes got people out of the cities and into smaller, more easily quarantined communities.

Were you or your household made aware when the crisis was over? Of course, everyone had been notified. There'd even been a free train ride back to Reno for anyone who wanted it, but no one wanted to leave unless everyone left. The ties in the park were too close.

Are you happy here? No one knew any different, was the consensus. Was there any reason to be unhappy?

Rachel watched every interview. Something frantic churned at her guts. Finally, Delta winked one last command to her implant and stood to leave the restaurant. It was after dark by then, and in the distance the first freighters whistled across the desert night.

"Thanks for everything," she said to Rachel. "I'm glad the first person I ran into was one of the level-headed ones. With any luck, y'all will get to keep living this way. It may sound strange, but I'm jealous of you."

Rachel didn't understand the jealousy. "You're leaving already?" she asked.

Delta frowned. "Gotta get back and upload this footage on my personal port, it's too important. If I try to send it to the Cloud from here, I can't encrypt it because… well, don't worry about it. But I'd stay if I could." She looked genuinely apologetic but started toward the station anyway.

Rachel grabbed her arm. "You didn't ask me. I'm not happy here. What happens if I'm not happy here? Do I come with you?"

"Whadya think you'd do in Reno, exactly? Part of the reason y'all are still out here is because things are too different. You wouldn't be employable, not without at least basic experience in the Cloud. Everyone's all wired up, jacked in, streaming live. Trust me, you're better off out here. At least for now."

"But, how are you even getting out of here?"

"Don't worry about it. I'll let my contacts know that there might be folk out here who're ready for integration, how about that?" Delta's voice was shrill and, Rachel thought, full of false hope.

Rachel got an idea. "Yeah," she said. "Do what you gotta do. But don't forget about me, okay?" She forced a smile.

"You know I won't," Delta said. She sounded relieved.



It didn't take a genius Cloud freak to figure out Delta's plan. The trains rolled in full of freight, but they left empty. Security was lax around the station.

In the weeks that followed the Reno girl's departure, Rachel took up part time work at the restaurant. She swept floors and washed windows, and the place looked better than it had since the dome was founded. It was a nice break from Mom and her Goggles and the trailer and the heavy silence that came with connection to the Cloud. She saved every dollar she earned in a jar beneath her bed.

There were no travel bags for sale in the dome, so she settled for wrapping her things in a thin blanket, which she secured with a belt. That done, the only thing left to do was wait for the whistle of the freighter rolling down the tracks. She didn't know what she'd do once it came, how she'd sneak on, what she'd do when she got to Reno.

But the future, in all its audacity, had come back to the domes, to a place it had forgotten. And it had brought with it silence and lethargy. It had brought the Goggles, which had connected the domers to a world they didn't understand, at the expense of the way of life that the domes were built to protect.

It had sent cheerful, misguided Delta.

No, Rachel thought as she waited for the freight shift to start, to seize her chance at escape. The future deserved to know what it had left behind. Who it had left behind. She was done living in stasis.

The next time the train whistled, it was as it was pulling away from the dusty, hexylated glass dome.

The domers were one fewer in their number. The trailers were quiet and stale.

Kaishai
Nov 3, 2010

Scoffing at modernity.

Black Griffon posted:

And since we're leaping headfirst into danger: element and flash rule please.

Your element is tellurium. Your :siren: Flash Rule :siren: is that your main character must suffer from an extremely low abundance of something other than money.

JuniperCake
Jan 26, 2013
Cool prompt. In with mercury.

Echo Cian
Jun 16, 2011

Brawl vs Sitting Here

Hey a thing. Titles suck.

Exploits
1894 words


[Archived]

Echo Cian fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Dec 5, 2014

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Tyrannosaurus posted:

We had a record number of folks drop out this week with promises to post in the redemption thread. I cordially invite those people to go gently caress themselves. Go on. Go gently caress yourselves. Nobody cares about the redemption thread. Can't commit to writing a few measly paragraphs in a week's time? Maybe something like the Thunderdome isn't for you. You know who you are. Please don't pull that poo poo again. Toxx yourselves if you need the extra encouragement.

If you failed to submit last round, you should be toxxing yourself this round. No excuses. Toxx or drop out.

Mr_Wolf
Jun 18, 2013
Disgusting newbie here. What is toxxing?

Mr_Wolf fucked around with this message at 12:54 on Feb 5, 2014

Erogenous Beef
Dec 20, 2006

i know the filthy secrets of your heart

Mr_Wolf posted:

Disgusting newbie here. What is toxxing?

You declare that you're toxxing using the : toxx : emote. It means you're declaring that you will do something, and you're putting your account on the line. Fail to do whatever it is you've declared you were to do, you get banned and have to rebuy your account to post again.

In the context of TD, if you fail to submit, down comes the banhammer.

Djeser
Mar 22, 2013


it's crow time again

sebmojo posted:

If you failed to submit last round, you should be toxxing yourself this round. No excuses. Toxx or drop out.

:toxx: me like a big wimpy babby

Jay O
Oct 9, 2012

being a zombie's not so bad
once you get used to it

Djeser posted:

:toxx: me like a big wimpy babby

Same. At least my excuse was that I was writing two other things on deadline? :flame: Yes yes, I know...

:toxx: and I'm picking Tin.

curlingiron
Dec 15, 2006

b l o o p

Okay, let's do it. :toxx:

I humbly request an element and flash rule.

Kaishai
Nov 3, 2010

Scoffing at modernity.

curlingiron posted:

Okay, let's do it. :toxx:

I humbly request an element and flash rule.

Your element is rubidium. Your :siren: Flash Rule :siren: is that your story must include an auction.

Kaishai fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Feb 6, 2014

Tyrannosaurus
Apr 12, 2006
Crits, yo. Don't loving respond to them in the thread. If you really need to talk about your precious story you can PM me or catch me in #kyrena.


3140s: Chairchucker- Saving Daylight
You did a good job of creating an apocalyptic atmosphere (heh) without beating us over the head with it. I enjoyed reading it. I just wish the story hadn’t hinged on randomly stumbling upon some random laptop with some random program. Needs a little more meat on its bones to make a full meal.


2130s: WeLandedOnTheMoon!- Rich Boy
This very Into the Wild but set in the future and with the protagonist coming across as even more of a spoiled brat. I mean, for real. Dude has 200 Gs just chilling. But uh-oh! Failed my exam. Better run off into the woods! I get that there is this whole problem with personal space and privacy but right now the father seems reasonable and the son seems like he’s overreacting to loving up a test. Even the smoking of a cigarette comes across as childish rebellion.

If you let me see how bad this chip is then I’m with you. Let the father’s immediate knowledge of smoking or the exam or whatever be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. But you gotta build that up for me.

“The ax was heavier than I’d imagined. At first, each clumsy chop just splintered off to the side, flaking the wood. I soon found the rhythm and was splitting logs in two or three swings. In the silence of that cold afternoon…”
^--- Manual labor is tough. Your main character seems more like a naive city boy. Getting into the rhythm of hard living over the course of an afternoon with minimal effort is unrealistic, don’t you think? Gimme some sore muscles. Some blisters. Something. Let me see that this poo poo is difficult. Let me see the son grow in a way that was impossible under the overbearing eyes of his father.

“I could feel the blood running out my nose and soaking into the gag wedged in my mouth”
^--- Wasn’t he just talking? Where did this gag come from?

“I leaned back, appreciating the chair I made two months ago. I leaned forward, pressing my foot into the floorboard that had creaked up until a week ago. Silence. This was the world that I had built, and I did a fine job.”
^--- Nice ending. But you didn’t give me enough to appreciate the hard work he put in.


2090s: monkeyboydc- The Worst Story, According to Earl
You take too long to get going. You go on and on about Earl collecting change and its dull. He’s old. He’s been doing this a while. I get it. Get on with the story.

Is it nearly impossible or impossible impossible to tell if the technology is a hoax? Nearly impossible implies possibility of proof which isn’t what you seem to be going for at all.

I think you could cut this down to 600 words or so. Streamline everything and you could have an enjoyable little tale. I like the idea of this piece. The ambiguity of the end and his message’s effect is also quite nice.

Seriously, though, try and cut it this down. Just to see. Economy of words and all that.


2050s: Jagermonster- The Covenant
Dialogue is your weakness here. It doesn’t come across as realistic conversations. Its just a vehicle for you to push the “morale” of the story and its very preachy. I dislike it immensely.
Find another way of letting me know your characters’ feelings without blatantly telling me, “This is how I feel about _____.”

It also dragged pretty badly. Which is a shame because I did like your approach to the prompt. I thought it was a nice setting. You just mixed stuff up. You were short with heart and long on descriptors.


2040s: Martello- Severance
I read this once and thought, “This is loving terrible.”

But its not terrible. Its just incredibly dense. Convoluted even. You introduce a lot of characters and concepts with very little to describe or define them. Now, I can parse things together somewhat by reading the whole piece but your story definitely suffers by not more immediately drawing me into the world you have created. This reminds me of reading Heart of Darkness back in highschool. I had to force myself through it but grew to appreciate its eccentricities it with time.


2020s: Opposing Farce- Downsizing
Thank you for not opening with some self-deprecating bullshit. Next time, try not to end with some self-aware wink wink bullshit. Its not as clever as you think.

This story takes too long to get going. This is flash fiction. If you’ve written four or five paragraphs and all I have is the setting then you’ve already hosed up.

I’m not a huge fan of story within a story if its not used to emphasize some greater point. Think about Hamlet. There is a play within the play but its not a completely separate story. It advances the plot. Its a vehicle to explore motivations. To give me all this roomba poo poo and then hamfistedly ask if its a metaphor is stupid because its self referential. What is the bigger point? How does is it relate to the narrator?


2000s: The Leper Colon V- Aching
I’m disappointed but not surprised by your approach to your flash rule. You got a soccer player. You gave me a soccer player playing soccer. That's fine. Whatever. But you also gave me 385 words and, somehow, the majority of them were pointless. There was a lot of unnecessary, flowery fluff that contributed nothing. Give me a reason for why this is significant. Make me interested. This was overly descriptive without enough story.


1990s: Crabrock- I am the Phoenix
There is a strong disconnect between your protagonist’s voice and who he is as a character. Thats not to say that a mechanic can’t be intelligent but he seems excessively wordy to me. I feel like I got a lot of Crabrock the Writer here rather than Whoever the Character. Perhaps third person would have suited your story more? That would have allowed you to wax on and on and not have it feel quite so unnatural.

As for your story itself, I think it suffered from early submission and a lack of review. Everything should have been tighter. Slicker. More polished. There was some good writing but a lot of rambling.

Also- your ending felt like a bad punchline. Was the big joke that this was all for naught? Was it suppose to be an “A-ha!” moment for me to realize he was a travel agent? Whatever it was I didn’t like it.


1980s: Kaisha- Free Skate
They only thing I really disliked is that you told me that they were fey.


1970s: Nikaer Drekin- The Many Ends of Eddie Akau
I don’t know where this is supposed to be set but its definitely not Hawaii, braddah. Not that it has to be but that would at least give me an idea as to why they were talking about Eddie Akau. I have no idea how or why this conversation came up. Where are they? What the gently caress do they care about Eddie? Why are they all so stupid in their reasoning? You could have taken any one of your three lovely stories within a story and submitted a fleshed out version and it would have been more interesting than what you gave me. You could have given me character development. Hell, maybe even a real triumph. I don’t know what the point of this was. Its just words on a page. Bad words.


1960s: Jonked- Kenya 1963
The ambiguity as to what actually happened serves you poorly. I want to like what you’ve written but I don’t know enough of what you’re talking about to actually care.


1940s: Quidnose- Brass Tacks
I have a hard time finding something to critique here. Technically, everything is fine. You approached the prompt in a creative way. You didn’t fill your story with unnecessary descriptions. Your dialogue feels natural.

But its dull. Like a brown, paper bag. Nothing necessarily is wrong with it I just didn’t find it exciting.


1920s: God Over Djinn- The Farce
I was really on the fence about this story. I really liked your approach to the prompt. I thought you did an excellent job capturing the feeling of your time period with your writing. This is a well-written period piece. A decent little story. However, it seems almost unrelated to the protagonist.

What was the point of it? How was this incident significant to your main character? How did it affect your protagonist? How did it change his/her life?

“Honest men are rare enough as it is” is a nice line but I think you need to outline this more in your story. Perhaps by highlighting that the father is a dishonest man. I don’t know. It just needs something more.


1910s: Baudolino- The Parthian Shot
I didn’t like it this one as much as my fellow cold-blooded killas. I found the character switch to be much too abrupt. This might have worked better had you more interwoven the two men’s stories. As it is, you didn’t give me enough of either man to give a gently caress about what happened to them. I’m not upset that one died. I’m not happy that the other triumphed.

Also- you titled your story “the Parthian Shot” and then the shot itself was blind luck. I don’t understand that choice.


1900s: Little Mac- A Town Called Freedom
This was pretty close to being a contender. You had a nice story and a setting that has a special place in my heart. Unfortunately, there were just too many issues.

First of all-- lovely opening. I already know this is a story about the town of Freedom. That’s the name of the drat story.

Alouishis’s literacy felt tacked on. Its important to the story and the “It almost sounded like the name of our city, but it was more personal. It felt good to say” section is nice but just saying Pappy taught me was unsatisfying. Weave it in.

The whole travelling salesman thing was weird. Why did the families kill him? Did they know about his papers? Why were these papers conveniently talking about something that ended twenty years ago? You make this some sort of anniversary date and I’m with you. Same if the families catch the slaves reading those papers.

Are you from the South? I had some nitpicky stuff. PM me if you want to talk more about this story.


1860s: Whalley- The Son of Bloody Saunders
I love dinosaurs. You gave me a bunch of words and dinosaurs were in there. This was nice. I wish those words had come together and actually formed a coherent story. That would have been nice, too. You have a bunch of ideas but you weren’t clear on any of them. I got glimpses of a bunch of little things but didn’t end up caring about any of them.


1890s: Nika- Shooting Sharp
Just because your narrator is a female doesn’t mean she needs to be put into a rapey situation. This is a common crutch of writers who struggle with female characters.

Your voice falters between contemporary english and a faux-period style. I dislike this.

I don’t care about your characters. Annie’s success or failure is completely uninteresting to me. Why is being a sharpshooter important to her? What is she escaping from?


1810s: Noah- Love the Machine
Underappreciated. You do a bang up job crafting the setting just using vocabulary and voice. Even your sentence structures give me that old school feel. Really well done. Ending sentence is equally well done. Really like it a lot.

I think what hurt you, and this is sad and unfair, was your time period. One could argue this was competitive for first place if judged by the skill of your writing alone. Like I said, you nailed early nineteenth century English. But its not sexy. The transitional period in which laborers lost to looms lacks appeal. Or maybe you just failed to make it appealing. I don’t know. Tough break, I guess.


1470s: Lake Jucas- Je Suis Désolé
Thin. No meat. The ideas are there but poorly executed. Relationships don’t have depth. Motivations feel tacked on. Dialogue is stilted. Definitively average.


1420s: Etenzahn- Filth Queen
Well. You did it. You got some brutal flash rules and you made a story out of it. It wasn’t a particularly wonderful bit of prose but you accomplished all of your flash rules and all of the rules of the prompt.

A couple things:
Why did she disguise herself as “any other mercenary boy” and then reveal her identity at the first opportunity?

Why had she never killed before? She was a warrior after all. It seems like she would have had to have killed someone in order to piss off the Inquisition. Otherwise she’s just, what, playing dress up?

Why did she let the Earl go? Showing off the disparity between her previous piety and her new found bloodthirstiness could be nice here at the end. Or giving us some call back to that previous state. Its confusing why she’s just straight up murking bitches left and right and then lets her tormentor go free. Seems out of character.


1050s: Paladinus- Mervin the Organizer
Aight. First off, look at how everybody else is formatting their submissions. Now look at your submission. See the differences? Like, with the spaces between sentences? I’m not normally big on harping standardized formatting but yours just looks sloppy and it gives me, the reader, a bad impression before I’ve even processed a word.

You got cute and tried to cheat the time period. I have no loving clue why you would do this. You could have just picked the 2010s.

You do have some funny bits in there. The jubbly bit in particular. I hope you don’t run off. I think submitting every week will be good for you and you’ll come out a stronger writer for it. I can see that you have good ideas. You just need to learn how to express them. This comes with practice.


0030s: Mercedes- Good Sunday
I thoroughly enjoyed this. However, I think you got overly amused with yourself because the story gets a little out of control. You also lose pacing. The ending comes way fast. Let me savor the Savior. You gave me all these juicy bits in the beginning and then poof. Done. This would have been a frontrunner had it more consistency. For real.

elfdude
Jan 23, 2014

Mad Scientist
I'm in, I'd like carbon.

Since I missed the last prompt flash rule plz.

Kaishai
Nov 3, 2010

Scoffing at modernity.

elfdude posted:

I'm in, I'd like carbon.

Since I missed the last prompt flash rule plz.

Carbon's already taken. Check the prompt post to see what's no longer available and pick again.

Whichever you choose, your :siren: Flash Rule :siren: is that your main character must get into trouble by overlooking an important detail.

Tyrannosaurus
Apr 12, 2006
I'm in. Calcium.

elfdude
Jan 23, 2014

Mad Scientist
My bad, can I have cesium?

Paladinus
Jan 11, 2014

heyHEYYYY!!!
For the record, I didn't want to miss that week, but it seems like the elements that I know something about are taken and I'm blank on all the fancy ones. I'd really appreciate it if somebody could hit me with a reasonable element and a flash rule.

No Longer Flaky
Nov 16, 2013

by Lowtax
So I noticed no one critiqued my story, is that because it was submitted after the deadline? Is that just how it goes with The Thunderdome? If so, that's fine.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









If you want a crit ask for one.

No Longer Flaky
Nov 16, 2013

by Lowtax

sebmojo posted:

If you want a crit ask for one.

I mean I do, I'm just curious if you submit late then you don't get a crit.

Not trying to be passive agressive or whatever, just curious.

Crit my work and I'll crit yours. Anyone who crits my stories will get a crit from me in return, that's my plan from now on.

The Saddest Rhino
Apr 29, 2009

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



No Longer Flaky posted:

Crit my work and I'll crit yours. Anyone who crits my stories will get a crit from me in return, that's my plan from now on.

I cirt your trepanation story, crit my viking tale lol

No Longer Flaky
Nov 16, 2013

by Lowtax

The Saddest Rhino posted:

I cirt your trepanation story, crit my viking tale lol

Got it.

No Longer Flaky fucked around with this message at 11:52 on Feb 6, 2014

No Longer Flaky
Nov 16, 2013

by Lowtax

The Saddest Rhino posted:

I don't know how this will turn up since I'm using a phone. I had a lot of Chang beer and Bangkok is not as crazy a warzone, don't have a computer, Didn't bother editing or counting words and I'm sure most of this don't make sense. But it's probably very Viking to write without giving a poo poo.


That's a cool notebook.


That first sentence sure needs some unpacking. The names and such imply that it is a viking that is doing the speaking but the verbiage and "drunkataneous" being used makes one think that the narrator is writing from a current point of view. Honestly, I don't have a problem with the first sentence as parsing it is not hard, but I am writing this critique as a line by line reaction to your story so that is how I reacted to it. So the main characters are ghosts? Are all the characters ghosts? Ghosts eating ghost pig and drinking ghost mead, that's cool and all but the mechanics of it are weird to think about. Also so far who cares that they're ghosts? I guess I'm having a problem understanding why you chose to make them ghosts rather than just regular vikings that aren't already dead.

I don't know what the abbreviation GDI is. The second sentence in this, the run on including the 1-10 reference, makes little sense to me. It seems to come out of nowheres and at the same time isn't very descriptive. Some females I'm guessing come to the party, but it's not super apparent. They are 3-4's out of 10 but how are they 3-4's out of ten? Are they fat or just plain ugly or what? Ok so the third sentence seems to be that a man tried to rape one of these women but she cut him since she didn't want to be raped? That's what I got from it regardless of what you wanted to come across. Wetness obviously implied that she was horny originally but you turned that on it's head when you said it was blood. I do agree that women are typically the more correct sex though haha.

I don't really have a problem with the paragraph that starts with "hail!" and ends with "speak, sensitive". It conveys what it needs to.

Horror is new, and this next paragraph is clear but also completely out of the blue. It seems like this part of the story is where you should have started it as before you were just setting things up, and this is the main focus of the story.

The paragraph in which you break the fourth wall and talk about this weeks off prompt thunder dome session is random and completely unnecessary. At least in my opinion. It doesn't really do anything interesting for the story.

After this point the story starts going, but it shouldn't have taken this long for things to start happening. If horror is the antagonist then she should have been introduced much earlier.

The paragraph after which "she has cooties" is said makes little sense to me. What curse are they talking about?



From this point onward I have little understanding of what's going on. Horror wants to fight her dad, because her dad wanted to give her a sword or something? I don't know. In general what is the point of having these characters be ghosts? They all acted as if they were regular people anyways, there was no point to have them be ghosts at least in my opinion.

Chairchucker
Nov 14, 2006

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022





I saw a part of a show the other day about the 'smartest computer ever', a computer named Watson, who ended up being coded well enough such that he/it whatevs eventually won Jeopardy against the two greatest Jeopardy winners ever. An interesting show, and one bit that stuck with me was when they were training the computer up for this eventual showdown, the person who was asking the questions was a comedian who, when Watson gave a particularly silly wrong answer (they were still fixing up his pattern recognition and stuff) would rip on Watson a bit, because he's a comedian and that's what he does. The comedian made the comment that Watson was 'the perfect straight man' because he/it genuinely just does not understand the concept of humour.

I guess where I'm going with this is, what is your mission here among us humans? Are you here from the future to assassinate someone and/or enslave all humanity? Because that's cool, I just need to know.

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No Longer Flaky
Nov 16, 2013

by Lowtax

Chairchucker posted:

I saw a part of a show the other day about the 'smartest computer ever', a computer named Watson, who ended up being coded well enough such that he/it whatevs eventually won Jeopardy against the two greatest Jeopardy winners ever. An interesting show, and one bit that stuck with me was when they were training the computer up for this eventual showdown, the person who was asking the questions was a comedian who, when Watson gave a particularly silly wrong answer (they were still fixing up his pattern recognition and stuff) would rip on Watson a bit, because he's a comedian and that's what he does. The comedian made the comment that Watson was 'the perfect straight man' because he/it genuinely just does not understand the concept of humour.

I guess where I'm going with this is, what is your mission here among us humans? Are you here from the future to assassinate someone and/or enslave all humanity? Because that's cool, I just need to know.

The first paragraph of this piece is completely useless. It says in a ton of words what the second paragraph gets across in two sentences. The second paragraph actuall makes sense and I don't have a problem with. But if a long drawn out two paragraph thought can be expressed in two sentences what's the point?

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