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autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
:siren: HOW TO RECEIVE CRITIQUES, A THUNDERDOME GUIDE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBqTng4c2iU&t=135s

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autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe

Martello posted:

farts forever an ever amen

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
these some really effeminate and limp-wristed burns here, bro. we're asking for insults not your lovely life story fyi

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe

leekster posted:

I'll also crit the first three people who ask for one.

You should prob start by critting your own piece, champ chump

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
Doing a line by line of your own story is pretty dumb! So I'll do a line by line of yours if you get my next one, you dingus

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
THUNDERDOME IS DUMB AND LAME

(I am in)

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
:siren: CRITS :siren:

Schneiderheim, “New Habits”: Starts off with a lot of garbage exposition and dialogue, then keeps going. I see what you’re maybe trying to do, introduce us to weak characters that turn out to be superhuman, but at your halfway point all we’ve learned is a bunch jargon and some half-baked ideas about that one guy’s past. The whole time I read the story the characters just seemed like British upper-crust twinks. Nothing happens except for men reminiscing about other men. The story veers dangerously close to fanfic, since if I wasn’t accosted by god awful superhero bullshit day in and day out I wouldn’t have the faintest loving clue what you’re talking about.

Cacto, “The Will”: I’m sure there are grammatical errors and what have you, but I’m not the sperg to consult on that. I sort of have a love/hate relationship with this prose. On the one hand you’ve got this Victorian period piece thing going on which you pull off quite well, but then you shoehorn elements that really don’t fit: A/C and television. It sort of ruins the immersion, but the piece is tongue-in-cheek enough to handle that if this work is part of a larger fictive universe. The biggest failing of this story is the almost Deus-Ex ending. You could have turned this into a sort of whodunnit, but there’s absolutely not enough character development to even try and pin the blame on someone.

Nethilia, “Out of my life”: Wow, a strong contender. I don’t understand one part, though. You seem to introduce a whole host of characters that never get explained. The husband walks into the room with “five guys” but who they are and what they’re doing remains a mystery! The only real issue I have with this is that you use the word “backseat” (which I’m surprised is actually a word and not two!) twice in the same sentence. You managed to write characters compelling enough to make me read the whole story and actually care about the ending.

Sledghammer, “Two Bullets”: A somewhat competent story about two bloodthirsty cops. Seriously, what police force on earth is going to let a cop keep the bullet casings he used to shoot a guy? Who the gently caress is going to shoot a guy and then be chipper about the same day? These cops, apparently. Also, a rookie named Ramirez? Really? I personally found the “then” and “now” breaks infuriating, but at least they managed to tell a story. No new ground broken anywhere here.

Fumblemous, “Football and Fireworks”: pretty good, but the whole time I read it I was sure the girl was a ghost and that this story would have a bittersweet ending. Turns out that nope, it’s just some fantasy bullshit and you go off on a tangent about adventures and a gate or something.

Sittinghere, “Touch and go and touch again”: I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’m not sure if there IS anything to feel about this. A series of overly florid discordant images strung along on some quasi-religious mythos. Too many pretty words, too many abrupt transitions and you actually, honestly loving managed to cram the word whimsical in there. WE ALREADY KNOW IT’S WHIMSICAL WE loving READ IT DIDN’T WE????

LOU BEGA’s etc, “Penny Puncher”: It starts. With sentences. Too short. Holy gently caress though, are you SERIOUSLY sidestepping the chance at opening with a boxing match and instead writing a few lovely words about pennies and mats? Jeeeesus. Surprisingly little action in a story about MMA, and with the title I was really hoping that Sayid would be bested by trickery, like, say, a roll of pennies concealed in a fist or something. But this story pulls no punches (get it? GET IT?) and winds up flat on its back (GET IT!?)

Walamor, “Decisions”: You’re lucky there are worse entries, but this is some serious horse poo poo. It doesn’t really meet the prompt; we have NO IDEA who these fuckers are or what they used to do. Maybe if you’d actually used more words like you were supposed to there’d be something to critique. Actually, who am I kidding. It would be another few hundred words of absolutely nothing loving happening.

Anomalous Blowout, “When you need it most”: I don’t think this would have won in another week, but your prose was tight and you did tell a story. I wasn’t totally satisfied with the depth, though. The arc is fairly shallow, the story doesn’t build as much as it ends. You show us two vignettes to establish a precedent then the story resolves on the third. A solid system and you gave us a decent ending, but I still want more, dammit.

Docbeard, “Good night miss Miller”: Spies and a confusing ending

Ironic twist: Some sort of confusing rehash of telltale heart or something like that. There’s too little character development and far too much focus on the lump in the floor. I didn’t come here to read about lumps, dammit.

jonked, “ The Pearl”: A very strong start to the story, I love breakfast fic! You lose points for not involving buttermilk or maple syrup, though. It’s a decent story with an awful ending and bizarre tense shifts. I don’t know what the gently caress happened! I sort of care, but the wife is some kind of weirdo caricature of a woman, barely even human. It was getting pretty intense up until he found the pearl, but then instead of some kind of tragic ending or some sort of coming to God moment you decided to give us margaritas and INTRODUCE CHARACTERS IN THE LAST loving ACT.

Kurona bright, “stump talk”: Way, way too many characters. Confusing relationships. Some of them aren’t even needed in the story. You spend a lot of words describing two guys kissing when it’s not important to the plot. I’m guessing the “twist” here was supposed to be that Andrew is her brother, and not (as the reader is supposed to assume) her boyfriend? I got the vibe that maybe she was using one of the two guys as a beard and vice versa and the brother thing was supposed to be a twist? Either way, nothing loving happens.

Crabrock, “waves”: I devoured this story in the hopes it would be about dicks, but what I got in the end was a sort of sadness. I liked the reference you made to light's beam/wave duality, but I fear it was lost on other domers (because they are not as smart as us, you see). Actually, I'm not sure how I feel about all that exposition right at the end and with those final facts in mind, what sort of friendship was there? It seems ShittyBecky was just a burden SmartBecky.

Benny the Snake, “the Christmas truce”: Is this supposed to be historical fiction? It really seems like you’re gunning for the ww1 Christmas truce, but it doesn’t make the least bit of sense. Charlie Brown came a long time after that war ended, the uniforms weren’t just green and brown and I’m like, 80% sure it wasn’t a civil war. More to the point, you waste a TON of words just copy/pasting bible verses. What the gently caress? OH wait, okay, I got to the end and welp, you done hosed up. There’s not enough pointers here to tell us this was an alternate universe or set in some distant future. You could have set this during the civil war by simply replacing the uniform colours and the word “airstrike” with “artillery barrage”. You didn’t bother trying to establish the setting or the characters, and what's worse you didn't even give us a plot! You did, however, have those bible verses. Maybe God will have mercy on you, because the judges won’t.

Tyrannosaurus, “teeth and time”: Hits the prompt, but it didn’t blow my balls out of my pants. If you’re gonna wave your dick around and only use 700 words they better be loving poetic. It’s a vignette, and I’m not sure if you should even expand the story as is, or if it should be relinquished as a passing thought in some sort of delightful magical surfer universe.

Bad Ideas Good, “charolette”: You misspell the name in the title and you don’t even bother to try and make the snake sound like he’s hissing. You should definitely take this to the farm. It shows some promise as there are glimpses of a narrative voice and a few humorous touches. There are problems that kill this story, though. First off, you’re like the THIRD loving PERSON TO START THEIR STORY WITH BREAKFAST. Second, your scene breaks are brutal. Third, the middle part might actually be a story and is the only part worth reading, but you ditch it. Fourth, the beginning and end are confusing because of the surreal aspects. The actions aren’t clear and the setting is bizarre, mainly the part about 50 witnesses.  


Alright, I know some of you aren't up there, but that's because I'm gonna do line by lines. Also, some of you that are up there are also getting line by lines, but I got too excited when I was writing crits so I guess y'all get two??!?!

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe

Screaming Idiot posted:

Like Old Times

Prompt: Old acquaintances

Words: 1300


Markie ran down the sidewalk, naked, blood flowing from a bullet wound on his side, cigarette dangling from his lip. One hand held a cheap pistol, the other held a phone. :frogsiren: I know I'm always pushing for action in the openers, but this is almost cheesy and over done as a hook. Besides, you had a much better place to start your story, but we'll expand on that later.

"Where the gently caress are you? Do you have the poo poo or not?" Duane's voice sounded tinny over the phone.

"It's in my pocket." Markie looked over his shoulder to see if his pursuers followed. They hadn't. Markie wasn't lying -- it was in his jeans back at the flophouse. "Duane, think you can send a van down? Got some guys on my rear end and I'm bleedin' pretty fuckin' bad here."

"Bleeding...? Jesus Markie, you didn't-" :frog: pretty good until this point

"I fuckin' did! Get me a van! I'm near 32nd, just past Geno's Pizzeria! Tell whoever you send to come loaded just in case!" Markie was thankful he took the good stuff -- his side barely hurt, though the blood loss made him woozy. :frog:misleading, the "good stuff" was left at the house, was it not?

Christ, what'd Andy think if he saw me? Markie paused to catch his breath and take a puff of his cigarette, looking over his aviator shades. Fuckin' unbelievable. My own fuckin' girlfriend sells me out to Eddy. Fuckin' Judas-oval office got what she deserved. :frog: I see you have a theme in your story. That theme happens to be WHO THE gently caress IS ANDY

Duane sighed over the phone. "I'll send Chuck-"

Markie yelled into the phone. "Not loving Chuck! There's a reason we call him 'Chucklefuck Chuck' and it ain't 'cuz he's funny! Send Ortiz, Duane! Send loving Ortiz!" Wish you could send Andy.

"Alright, keep your pants on!" Markie heard Duane turn away from the phone to talk to someone nearby. "They're on the way. Look for Ortiz's van. I'm out." :frog: WHO THE gently caress IS ANDY

Duane hung up, and Markie ducked into an alley to crouch behind a garbage can to hide from Eddy's thugs and any prying eyes. He was thankful the streets were deserted -- a man wearing nothing but a pair of aviator shades and a bullet wound wasn't the weirdest thing to walk the streets at night, but it was up there. :frog: I'm tired. So tired. Why do thugs always end up in alleyways behind garbage cans? Where, outside of Clicheville, USA do you even FIND garbage cans in alleyways at regular intervals. Wouldn't the cops know to look there by now?

"Julie," Markie muttered, flipping through her pictures on his phone. "Why'd you have to do that to me? You know Eddy. Selling me out wasn't gonna make him forget the money you owed. Was it worth it, Jules? Was it worth a fuckin' hole in the head?"

Andy, what do I do now? Christ. Duane's gonna be pissed that I ran out without the poo poo. Maybe Eddy's boys got it? Jesus, I hope not. :frog: WHO THE gently caress IS ANDY

Markie sat, arms draped over his knees, barely feeling his nuts resting on the cold, wet pavement or the wound in his side. He shivered though, feeling the chill in the air for the first time since he was flushed out. He ran a hand over the wound and winced, though less at the pain and more at the sensation of the open wound against his fingers. Just grazed, thank god. Had enough fuckin' bullets pulled outta me.

Markie leaned around the garbage can and sighed as he saw Duane's van pull up. His phone vibrated.

Ortiz's voice came from the phone. "You see us? We followed the blood on the sidewalk."

"Yeah, I see you. You got some first aid poo poo with you? My side's startin' to hurt. Also," Markie winced, "you got some extra clothes? I'm, ah, underdressed for the weather." He got out from behind the garbage can and raised his arms, revealing his nudity to the large Guatemalan behind the wheel of the van.

"Markie, what-oh, madre de dios!" Ortiz threw his phone aside and opened the window to his van. "Get in here!"

Markie opened the door to the windowless van and jumped in, shutting the door behind him.:frog:Could have just left this close the door line out and used it to explain WHO THE gently caress ANDY IS He breathed a sigh of relief at the warmth, but groaned at Ortiz's glare.

"Put it out." Ortiz gestured to the "No Smoking" sticker on the windshield. Markie knew better than to argue with the terse bodybuilder, so he wet a finger, pinched out the cherry, put it behind his ear.

"Can't wait to hear the explanation for this," grinned an emaciated man with a patchy mustache and broken, dirty teeth. "So how'd you gently caress up this time?"

"Shut the gently caress up, Chucklefuck." Markie grabbed an old blanket from the behind the seat and wrapped up. "You got anything on you for pain?"

Chuck looked to Ortiz, who nodded, then grabbed an unmarked bottle from the glove box. He handed two pills to Markie.

"I'd give you more, but Duane wants you straight. He wants to know what happened." Chuck gave a sympathetic shrug, then another rotten-toothed grin. "Same here, actually."

"Not much to it." Markie dry-swallowed the pills. "You know I owe money to Eddy, yeah? My idiot girlfriend ratted me out." :frog: I thought our man Markie Mark owed money to Eddy? Why is it his girlfriend? Why would ratting out her boyfriend settle a debt? This doesn't make any sense and I don't particularly enjoy this primer in Cliche Criminal Names and Stereotypes 101

Chuck smirked. "Yeah? Then what?"

"Julie and I was loving when Eddy's boys kicked in the door. She barely had time to get her mouth off my cock when they plugged her between the eyes. Another got my side-" :frog: Why would they shoot her first? The physics of this don't make sense in any way. They would have to shoot through his spine or shoot her in the neck or temple to accomplish the actions you described. If they were really after him then they wouldn't waste time pushing him away, would they? also WHO THE gently caress IS ANDY

"Better not get blood on my seat," Ortiz interrupted.

"-and I grabbed my phone and my gun and skipped out." Markie closed his eyes and lay his head back on the seat. "God, I'm tired." :frog:just how bad are these crooks? Did Markie Mark leave through a window? Did they carry a single musket and were forced to reload after shooting Julie? So many unanswered questions

"That's blood loss for you." Chuck made a sound like a snorting weasel. "Shame about Julie; bitch had nice tits. Now she's suckin' cock in hell."

Ortiz's massive, scarred fist crashed against the side of Chuck's face. "She's dead, Chucklefuck. Have respect." :frog: This action also doesn't make any sense. How would he punch Chuck? I'm guessing Chuck is sitting in the back of the van. A work van (a "windowless van") only has two seats. Ortiz is in one, and directly across from him in the passenger's side sits Markie Mark. How the gently caress is Ortiz going to clock the Chuckler if that guy's sitting in the back? He turned to Markie and shook his head. "You got the poo poo? You told Duane you had it."

"No, I said it was in my pocket. Which is in my room." Markie closed his eyes and shivered in the blanket. "Jesus, I'm freezing. Can you drive me back to my place so I can get it?"

"Not a good idea." Ortiz started the van, and they took off.:frog:I can't believe these guys would just SIT THERE this whole time. Can't they talk and drive? Or would that be altogether too much action? That's a problem I keep seeing here. All the action here happens in the past or is implied. All we get left with is talking and sitting. "Let's get you to Duane. We'll get you some clothes and look at your side, then he needs to talk to you."

Markie yawned. "Wonderful. I'm gonna sleep on the way there."

The drive was short, and Markie was rudely awakened by a smack to the head. He wrenched open an eye to see a pair of Duane's men grab him by the arms and yank him into a run-down trailer. The men threw him to the floor.

Duane turned away from his dinner and scowled at Markie. "So you really did it. You hosed me again."

Markie got to his knees, holding his side. The bleeding stopped, but the pills did little to stop the pain. "Wasn't my fault-"

"Ortiz told me on the way up here. I told you to come straight to me you stupid gently caress! Not to stop at your place for a blowjob!" Duane stabbed his fork into his potatoes and spat. "Guess what, fucknut? I had a couple other guys look over your room, and they told me the loving cops are there! Do I need to tell you what this means?" :frog: You could have told us what Markie Mark was doing, or trying to do earlier. You could have started with a cocksuckin' shootout instead of a naked blood-stroll. But you didn't, instead we wait until now to find out what's going on. Good job, dickweasel.

Markie swallowed and paled. He shook his head.

Duane's fury melted away as quickly as it'd come, leaving a fatherly expression. "But hey, it's okay. Sure, you lost me some expensive product..."

There was the sound of a toilet flushing, and out of the bathroom walked a familiar face. :frog:A FUCKIN FACE STEPPED OUT OF THE BATHROOM!?! JESUS gently caress WHAT'S GOING ON

"Andy, my boy," Duane said, gesturing to Markie. "I believe I have Eddy's package for you. Unwrapped, I'm afraid." :frog:Are we talking about dicks? Because it sounds like we're talking about dicks. There better not be any forcible sodomy after this line. I'M loving WARNING YOU

Andy grinned as he pointed a gun to Markie's:frogsiren:WHO :frog: THE :frogsiren: gently caress :frog: IS ANDY head and winked. "Heya, partner. Shame things turned out like this, but I warned you way back when I left for Eddy."

"You see, Markie," Duane said as Andy hauled Markie to his feet, "Eddy's willing to cover the cost of my lost product... and then some. And he even sent Andy to collect you."

"Let's go for a ride, partner." Andy smiled, gun unwavering. "Like old times." WHAT OLD TIMES? YOU DIDN'T EXPLAIN ANY OF THIS, THIS IS BULLSHIT AND YOU'RE AN rear end in a top hat

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
Post that godawful story in the farm, S.I. TD has enough bad fic as is.

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe

Sitting Here posted:

Touch and Go and Touch Again
wc1297

The more I think about this piece, the less I like it. The amount of florid-bordering-purple prose is infuriating. It's like you tried to hide the fact your embryonic plot with pretty imagery and scene breaks.

Nasatya and Dasra first met in the eternal gardens on Brahma's chest, where the trees and flowers gently rise and fall with the eldest god’s deep, slumbering breaths.

They met again on Earth, as Woman-Like-Deer-Path and Tusk-Cutter-Man in the last glacial period. Their lives moved at the beautifully brutal pace of the paleolithic, sweating together on the hunt and between the bed furs.

They met again as Hephaistion and Alexander of Macedonia.

They met again in December of 1914, as Niles York--British infantry--and Anselm Krause--a German Sergeant--during a football game in no man’s land. When the call was given to go back to the trenches, York slipped a pack of cigarettes into Krause’s jacket pocket. Neither saw each other again that time; neither survived 1916. some of this imagery becomes confusing later, I mean, are the souls supposed to be together as husband and wife, or are these two souls simply doomed to meet each other at random, forever?

-

“In 1967, Nasatya was called Susie Sometimes.Is this a reference to The Cure? She was twenty-two years old and lived deep in the heart of Zeitgeist, America, working at a nicotine-stained watering hole. Dasra, known then as Jack Dallas, would stumble in every night with his malcontent and electrified posse of post-beat, post-Kennedy poets, and they would thump their chests and exhale stanzas like smoke. Once, Jack leapt up onto a tabletop and started reading an excerpt from Story of the Eye, stomping over table after table, spilling drinks until his worn leather boots were slick with beer and liquor.

“...The horror and despair at so much bloody flesh, nauseating in part, and in part very beautiful, was fairly equivalent to our usual impression upon seeing one another,” Jack read in a voice like narrow thunder. As he finished and sank silently into his chair, the bar erupted with hoots and hollers and stomps. Susie Sometimes clapped fast and fervent. Jack noticed. When Susie bent over his table to gather the spilled glasses, Jack put a gentle hand on her wrist--” :siren: here, take note, your prose is wonderful. It's florid and full of action and it should be like this all the time

“And then they sped off to Makeout Peak in Jack’s T-bird and vowed to go steady forever,” said Paris, and further silenced Helena with a kiss. Helena rolled away to the other side of the tousled bed, holding her notebook to her chest.

“I’m an idiot, aren’t I?” she said to the wall.

Paris scooted over, molded herself against Helena’s back. “You really wrote all that ‘cause of me?” she asked.

“You,” Helena said.

Paris waited. The afternoon light crept across the dingy room, making dust motes and cassette tape cases sparkle briefly.

“You make me feel like I remember things that never happened.”

“Am I your muse?” Paris said, her lips brushing against Helena’s ear.

Helena rolled over so they were eye to eye, nose to nose. Their breath was a singular thing, heavy and damp. “You’re more like a map home.” maybe I'm just dumb, but I have no idea what happens here, it's too meta for me and possibly too ambitious for the scope of this work

-

Nasatya spotted Dasra by the green water at the Banganga Tank. The Mumbai skyline was a glass and gunmetal contradiction to the contemplative stone steps and placid waters in the foreground. Nasatya let her sandals clack on the steps as she approached Dasra. He didn’t look up from his tablet. :siren:here you're starting to go heavy on the ~so beautiful~

“It’s uncommon to see a young man come to such an old place,” said Nasatya.

“It’s a place to be away from my wife and stay out of trouble,” replied Dasra. His finger swiped lazily across the screen. Nasatya sat down several feet away.

“Have we met before?”

At that, Dasra looked up. Their eyes met. Nasatya breathed deep and felt the wordless rush of memories flow between them, as cutting and powerful as an underground river. It was the experience of catching up to a memory of the future, of tracing a wave’s path all the way back to the first shore it ever kissed. :siren: here again

Dasra frowned and went back to his tablet. “Sorry, don’t think so.”

:frog: This frog is a marker
Nasatya flinched like she’d been slapped. A stony cold crept down from her cheeks to her neck, and black spots swarmed at the corners of her eyes. “Are, are you sure?” she breathed. She’d watched him for weeks. She knew him. He was hers, and she was his. :siren: you know it

“Are you going to faint?” He’d set the tablet down and was watching her with distant concern.

“I don’t know,” she said, leaning back against the step above her. The sky spun slowly on its axis overhead.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Dasra said. He was closer now. His arms were around her. He let Nasatya rest her head against his chest.

“Would your wife consider this trouble?” Nasatya murmured against the solid heat of his body.

Dasra stiffened, but didn’t push her away. After a long moment he said, “some think marital bliss is being together forever, never apart. You know wildflowers?”

Nasatya nodded.

“Well,” Dasra said, “try growing wildflowers if you’re always trampling down the soil. You’ll have a sad, barren garden. But let the soil stay loose, let it soak in the rain and the air, and your garden will surprise you.”

He gently detached himself from Nasatya. When their eyes met again, the alternating current of shared memory was still there, but subdued to a trickle.

“I leave my wife in the afternoon so she can surprise me when I come home in the evening. And she’s happy to see me after I’ve been gone, I think.”

Nasatya lowered her head. “It was my mistake,” she said. :frog: THIS FROG IS ANOTHER MARKER Check the words between the frogs. You spend so many words saying so little. This is my least favourite part of the story. They talk about the guy's wife or something, but these characters (in this timeline) are so fresh and new it's hard to care or feel anything for them. There's not enough of a thread to feel what the girl is feeling (whatever her name is now). We're simply supposed to go "oh no!" because you told us to

When Dasra had gone, Nasatya sat for a long time by the Tank. Soon, night fell and hazy city light made the sky an inscrutable black blanket.

“Aah,” Nasatya moaned, her eyes closed. He was hers! She knew it the way her lungs knew air from water. She was his. He knew it, but was in denial.

The water in the Banganga Tank was black as the sky. She almost didn’t see the disturbance on its surface. Curious, she crouched down on the lowest step at water’s edge. :siren: so many descriptive words in these past few sentences but they do nothing for me. NOTHING

Enough, someone whispered in her ear from a thousand light years away.

Tears of relief poured from her eyes and fell into the growing whirlpool forming in the Tank. “My map home,” she whispered before springing headfirst into the churning water. :siren: This is where I got really irritated. I want you to get to the point FASTER and not string me along goddammit

-

Natasha opened her eyes, found David already awake and watching her. The nanite and oxygen-laden isolation fluid drained away, leaving them slick and naked and still entwined in the dream tank. aw hell NAW, really? this is so meta it hurts :catdrugs:

Soft light and soft voices from beyond the plexiglass. The heaviness of her true body. The lingering sense of psychic overlap with David. Her mind processed these things at a snail’s pace, but David’s eyes were sharp and true and real, and they held her attention like a parent comforting a child after a nightmare. :siren: more overly descriptive sentences trying to get me to care. It's like this whole work hinges on this one goddamn thing - the idea that I'm going to just take the feelings as they are fed to me , but if I miss that cue then the whole thing falls apart

The tank’s lid swished open. Soft towels descended from above, gently patting the pair dry. Any remaining nanites would, of course, have been remotely deactivated at the end of the sim, harmless as sand.

Natasha let soft-spoken caretakers help her up out of the tank and into a robe. She looked through the floor-to-ceiling windows, which afforded a penthouse view of the city beyond: whimsical towers with staggered floors and private forests for every household; the whole metropolis pulsing and thinking, alive with nanites. Nothing forbidden to anyone, no food or delicacy or entertainment out of reach.

In a word, paradise. The flying gently caress is a nanite? Why are we in the future? What part is a dream? You're lucky we didn't DQ this for Total Recall fanfic

She looked back across the room, saw David accepting water from the caretakers. Already, her heart hurt to be near him again. She savored the feeling, the multitude of emotions. Romantic longing was a flavor she thought had left her palate when youth left her body.

David caught her watching him. Knowing passed between them, a private signal on a private frequency.

-

The garden on Brahma’s chest rises and falls; leaves flutter with his breath. Nasatya and Dasra duck mischieviously through the trees, an endless game of touch-and-go. Their laughter rises like incense to Brahma’s ears, and the eldest god smiles in his sleep. The imagery here is totally discordant and I don't understand it at all. It's in chronological order, yeah, but it's sandwiched between some religious stuff and the whole deal just makes my head hurt.

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe

docbeard posted:

Good Night, Miss Mason
1,207 Words


A mobile phone sat on Amanda Byerly’s kitchen table. It wasn’t hers. It had arrived with the mail this morning, in an unlabeled, sealed manila envelope. The footage from her front porch camera hadn’t given her any answers about its arrival. The phone worked, but had no call history, no stored numbers, no clues about its origins or purpose. Or so she had thought until she opened the back and found a scrap of paper nestled up against the battery. It read, in blocky print, “MM. 13:00.” This opening is pretty indicative of the story as a whole. Stuff "happens" but it's so boring no one cares. There are hints of a deeper, cooler past but those are glossed over. How, exactly, are we supposed to be swept away when you're telling us about someone sitting down and WAITING

She sat and stared at the phone. She didn’t care for mysteries, not any more. oooh foreshadowing...if you're retardedShe no longer had room in her life for whatever the Agency, if this was the Agency, intended to drag her into. She decided to make the call as directed, if only to explain to them in precise detail her interpretation of the word “retired”. so many words wasted on wishy-washy bullshit statements that serve no real goddamn purpose. Is it the agency? isn't it? I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT BUTTER

It was one o’clock on the dot. TWO PARAGRAPHS to get to this. TWO. Seriously. Should have STARTED here instead of leading us here. It's like grandma trying to blueball you. I'M NOT TEMPTED, PUT YOUR SHIRT BACK ON Tuesday in an even-numbered month told her which number to dial, and she took it on faith that the number hadn’t changed in the last twenty years. She heard it ring three times, heard the click of someone answering. “Good morning, Miss Mason.” She closed her eyes. Her heart pounded and she felt a little dizzy. His voice. It wasn’t possible. “Good morning, Miss Mason,” a bit hesitant this time, a bit unsure. Repeating the code phrase was a breach of protocol. She’d have taken his head off once upon a time for that. Once upon a time before he died. should have turned the previous three paragraphs into one solid opener, keeping most of this one

She took a sip of water before saying, “Good morning, Mister Miller.” . :siren: Now *this* is actually some okay foreshadowing that I didn't notice till my second pass, so kudos, I guess

*

The drive from her home in Charlottesville to the mountains of West Virginia took her four hours, and she knew from experience that mobile phone coverage ended about two hours into the trip. She didn’t have a phone on her, not hers, not the new one. If he was right, if she’d interpreted the barely-remembered signs and countersigns correctly, if she was being observed, she wasn’t about to make it easy to follow her. Instead of telling us this textbook spy poo poo, you could have shown us, maybe led us on a chase. Y'know, keep us interested. But nope!That was also why she was in this car, purchased an hour ago for cash, that stunk of cigarette smoke and shook more than she liked when she exceeded fifty miles per hour rather than her own. again, could have maybe opened with her buying a car, acting all weird about it, then put the phone call thing in a flashback. Iunno, anything other than this kind of bullshit exposition

She pulled off to the side of the road a mile past the sign for Lost River, Unincorporated, and followed a path into the forest. In her prime, she could have made the hike in about half an hour, but it took her longer today, and she was breathing hard and coughing a little when she reached the clearing. The old stump she remembered so well was gone, but she had no trouble finding a place to sit. She waited, shivering. It was chilly. That wasn’t why. so something finally happens and it's boring as gently caress

“Amanda,” he said just as she was about to turn toward a rustling of leaves. He’d put on a little weight, and his hair was completely gray, not just his temples, and his glasses were thicker. She closed her eyes and saw him as she’d last seen him, slumped in her arms, her hands sticky with the blood she was trying to hold inside his body. She opened her eyes. He was still there. He smiled, and it was a fragile smile, not like him at all. oh wow geriatric spies, how amazing!!!

“Henry,” she named the wonder before her. “How-”

“Ssh,” he said. He sat down beside her, and looked out into the trees. Her hand reached for his, and he didn’t pull away. He felt real, solid, warm. “It would take far too long to explain the details, and we haven’t the time.” His accent had all but disappeared. “Did you bring a car?”

“No, I walked here from Charlottesville,” she said. The old sharpness felt comfortable. It made sense. He squeezed her hand. “Henry, you bled to death in my arms. Make the time.”

“We’ll have to walk and talk, then,” he said, standing and gently pulling her to her feet. “I don’t know how long we’ll be safe here.” She considered refusing to budge. Twenty years ago, she’d have done it. Today, she started to walk, leading him back to her car.

“They brought me back, Amanda,” he said about a minute into their hike. “They resuscitated me somehow. It required, I’m told, a massive blood transfusion, days of surgery, and God knows what else. It was three months before I could say more than my name, and a year before I could walk properly, but in time, I was, I suppose, as good as new. Possibly better.”

“And in all that time…” Amanda couldn’t finish the sentence. She could think of plenty of reasons he wouldn’t have contacted her, wouldn’t have been allowed to contact her. “What have you been doing?” she asked instead.

“Working for the Agency. As ever,” Henry said. “As you can imagine, they insisted on a return on their investment.” She started to cough, and he looked at her. “Do you need to rest?”

“I’ll be fine,” Amanda said, though she wanted nothing more than to sit down for about a day. Everything ached. She hadn’t realized what poor shape she was in. “So why are you here now? What on Earth are you thinking, Henry? Breaking cover to speak to someone from your past? Taking such ludicrous risks?” That’s not what she was angry about, but she let the anger flow along that familiar channel. “I know I taught you better than that!”

Henry laughed, with little mirth. “You did, of course,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter any more. I’m leaving the Agency, have left the Agency, and I wanted to say goodbye.” She felt his hand tremble. Hers was trembling too, and she felt dizzy. “The Agency isn’t what it was, Amanda. The world’s changed since our glory days. Not improved, I don’t think, but it’s changed, and the Agency feels they must change with it. They’ve become…well, I’m afraid they’ve become rather paranoid in their old age. And they’ve decided that…oh god…” His voice shook. “They’ve decided to permanently retire some of their former assets.” He put an arm around her waist just in time to prevent her from falling. “I had hoped I’d found you before…that we’d have more time…that…” The crux of the story is dialogue. Boring as poo poo dialogue about some nebulous past that's incredibly scarce on details. Seriously, watch a season of ANY spy show. Even Archer. Craft some kind of backstory. They could have been doing cool spy poo poo ANYWHERE in the world, you could have had her holding the dying guy while an underwater bunker exploded off the coast of Greece or something. ANYTHING. THE SKY WAS THE LIMIT BUT YOU CHOSE TO FEED US ZINC SUPPLEMENTS AND TAKE US TO BOCCI

“What was it?” Amanda asked. She wasn’t trying to walk any more. “Something in my food? My water?” She slumped in his arms, and closed her eyes. She needed to rest, just for a minute, just a minute.

“I don’t know, but your water supply would be my guess,” Water supply? This is like saying they poisoned the whole state to kill this lady. Did they? How'd the poison get in her water? Did Henry do it? WHO KNOWS Henry said. “It’s what I used for them.” She forced her eyes open, not sure she’d heard him correctly. “When I found out what they were planning, I, ah, may have acted a little rashly.” WHAT? it's killing me to find out what your diseased brain was trying to convey here. I'm sure there was something interesting here, but we'll never know!

She closed her eyes again. He was still an idiot. It was really him. “Rashly,” she repeated, though she wasn’t sure the word got out.

“You taught me well, Amanda, but I was something of a poor student,” she heard him say. “Good night, Miss Mason.” No hesitation. No uncertainty. Perfectly casual, like an ordinary conversation. All the hallmarks of a good code phrase. He’d learned something after all.

“Good night, Mister Miller.”

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe

leekster posted:

Injury Reserve
895 words
This story was so goddamn boring I didn't even read it until I did a line by line crit. It's impossible to read. It's horribly boring. It's so boring it wouldn't even put an insomniac to sleep.
Marcus pushed his cart down the aisle slowly as he looked for the powdered mustard for the holiday roast. It was the first time he had gone shopping since going off to college last fall. The usually noticeable yellow tin was nowhere to be found. Agitated he went down to the next aisle in hops it was with the cumin and other spices. As he came around the corner he bit someone hard with the cart. An oomph came from the man as he fell hard to the ground, a bag of chips tried to break his fall but were smashed to bits. "man shops for spices" is not a good opener, not unless you're a master of the craft and are writing about Holidays like in that one episode of This American Life. But that's not you, and no one cares enough about you to talk about your work, so don't write about holiday spices

“Oh poo poo. I’m so sorry,” Marcus offered his hand to the man.

“I thought once was enough Marc?” And the man swatted his hand. It took him awhile to get to his feet as he drugdragged, bro. Dragged. a lame leg underneath him. Marcus recognized the brace on his leg. Black metal with red leather straps that kept the knee in place.

“Oh Lou. I’m sorry man, I was off in my head. I didn’t hear anyone.” Marcus said with dread hanging off every word. this line is clunky, and you shouldn't need to tell us how Markus said it. The dialogue should carry that burden

“I wouldn’t think you’d mean to hit me. You’re an rear end in a top hat sure, but you’re not a sadist.” Lou grimaced as he tightened the straps on his knee. A breath came hot and quick when he was finished. did he jizz in his pants?

Marcus hunched over to pick up as much of the spilled produce as he could. He hoped that Lou would stagger away, but instead he slowly crouched down with his bad leg hung loosely to the side to help grab a two liter of soda. The thought to say he didn’t need help crossed Marcus’ mind though he knew better. Lou would sooner have his other leg shattered than have Marcus pity him. actions happening, but they are boring as all hell

Marcus unloaded what he had could grab in the cart and waited for Lou to drag himself back up again. Eventually his lame leg found its way back under him and he dropped the soda in the cart.

“Merry Christmas Marcus.” Lou said as he walked off. Whatever dignity he thought he had kept was slowly being drug behind him. who's dignity? what? also, dragged

A clerk came over to sweep up the mess of chips.

“What was that all about?” He asked. Expecting the answer as pay for the inconvenience they both created him.

“We used to be teammates.” Marcus said.

“Wait. Didn’t he say you hit him?” The clerk asked.

“He did.” Marcus turned to walk away from the clerk as he said this.

“Oh.” And with that the clerk swept the rest of the crumbs up as quick as he could, no longer interested in killing time with the customer who maimed his teammate. The dialogue moves at a snail's pace. I'm starting to see this sort of Small Town Americana thing emerge here, but the idea is so buried in clunky prose that it's near worthless.

Guilt stung Marcus as he went out to his car. As he loaded the groceries he looked down the road to see a shadow limping along. He hadn’t gotten very far in the ten minutes since he left. Marcus wondered how long he had left to go.

With a choke the engine came to life. Marcus steered the car down the road, slowly pulling up behind Lou.

“Hey Lou, where do you live?” Marcus hung his head and left arm when he asked. The December air flipped his black bangs over his head as he crawled ahead of Lou.

“Other side of town,” Lou added quickly. “But I don’t mind walking.”

“Hop in the car man. I can’t imagine the walking is good…” And Marcus winced as he caught himself. He cracked one eye up at Lou to see if he had by some miracle run away.

“gently caress you and Merry Christmas Marcus.” Lou said and quickend his pace. The only difference between his walk and his run was he nearly collapsed with each step in his effort to run.

“Merry Christmas Lou,” Marcus said and drove away slowly at first. A crash happened and his rear view mirror snapped off.this action is intensely clunky. Never, ever say "a crash happened" unless you're a local reporter at the scene of an accident most likely involving a Chinese Buffet and a polished SUV Dumbstruck at his mirror now hanging by wires from his care Marcus looked back at Lou.

“I still have a better arm than you ever did!” He grinned as he shouted this.

“Get your rear end in the car Lou.” Marcus said. It took a minutes but he didn’t want to ruin the moment by backing up to get him.

“Thanks for waiting Marc,” Lou rubbed his hands and put them in front of the mirror. “Sorry about the mirror.”

“Nothing some screws can’t fix.” Marcus said. The car sped ahead from the twinkling bits of broken mirror on the ground.

“Huh. They said the same about my knee,” Lou gave a poo poo eating grin as he tapped his knee proudly. “I don’t think they put enough in is the problem.”

Marcus sat in silence and let the joke hang there.

“So how’s my scholarship?” Lou asked.

Marcus pushed the car even faster. Main Street in his hometown never felt so long.

Lou kept quiet after that. Either satisfied with reminding Marcus of the damage he had done or hurt again by opening those wounds back up. Lou told Marcus when to turn for his house.

They idled there for a while. Neither of them knew what the proper goodbye to being locked into a car with someone you never wanted to see again was. Finally Marcus said.

“Merry Christmas Lou. I hope the new year goes well for you.” and offered his hand to shake.

“Sure Marc.”
Well, every line sucks. But yeah, I was right about my suspicions. Small town America sports story. You're missing a "plot" here. You'd have done well if you'd included a reason for Marcus to be there, maybe drop us into an idyllic holiday at his wife's parent's house (which would explain the fuss about the spices) and then slowly show us the life of guy who's knee he ruined. You could have used a lot less dialogue, a little more exposition and a lot more action. Seriously, though, there are a few Christmas episodes of This American Life which are probably exactly what the sort of feel you were aiming for and you should probably look into them.

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
Vacation 897 turds

Tires screeched and gravel peppered the plane’s aluminum skin. The pilot took off his headset and gestured at Daniel to do the same. Daniel winced, the roar of the ancient Yakolev’s motor was deafening.

“Welcome to Tuva!” the pilot yelled, flipping switches without even looking. The roar subsided, but Daniel’s suspicion of the Russian’s sarcasm did not. Endless grassy steppes, raging rivers and no electricity were not his idea of a vacation.

He blushed at the last thought, embarrassed and angry. The sound of dirt hitting her coffin drowned out the propeller. He remembered his last visit. She was mute, voice taken by cancer. She reached out for him – or maybe she didn’t. Memories and feelings converged.

The plane pulled up alongside a brick and tin shack stencilled with a hammer and sickle. Daniel grabbed his luggage and stepped out of the plane.

“You wait inside, bus be here soon. They say on radio they have trouble with tire. Is normal, here,” the pilot said, laughing.

The pilot wheeled out a barrel of fuel and filled his plane by hand, but Daniel didn’t notice. His company was in the final stages of designing the first market-ready portable computer. He let the project consume all of his thoughts; it was easier than actually thinking.

He sat Indian style in front of a metal box. After undoing a few clasps, a specially designed keyboard folded down exposing a tiny cathode ray tube. He flipped the power switch and the machine emitted a series of beeps. The readout displayed hexadecimal digits, Daniel stared in silence. This was his native tongue. The self diagnostic sequence checked off the systems. He held his breath, there was always an issue loading the volatile memory, something they hadn’t quite fixed. Everyone else suspected software, but Daniel was sure it had to do with the circuits. Too many things in too small a space. The moment the computer pulled more power the software went all wacky.

He brought it up at a meeting once, the other guys just laughed and pointed at data sheets. There wasn’t anything nearly powerful enough to mess with a chip, they’d said.

The hex readout slowed down, the computer was loading his custom software into memory. Daniel held his breath. The screen went dead. He slammed the computer shut and put it away.

An ancient bus pulled up and sputtered to a stop, empty save for the driver. Tuva Wilderness Group read the stencil, beneath Cyrillic he couldn’t discern. The driver greeted him in Russian, Daniel nodded in response. A stilted back and forth let Daniel know he’d be in for a long haul, six hours at the least, if Daniel’s shaky grasp of the language was to be trusted. He sat behind the drive and tried to relax.

The horizon didn’t seem to change, keeping track of time was impossible. Infinite hills punctuated with scraggly tundra brush and white water rivers. Sleep came softly, sneaking up on him between the chugging diesel and raging waters.

Arguments flashed by like a film reel. She always wanted him to take a break, he kept promising her a trip after the next project was done. Months slipped by, turning into years. Just a few more weeks was always his excuse. That was before the endless string of doctor’s visits.

Brain tumour. Malignant. Terminal. Words that would never again leave his vocabulary.

The smell of rubbing alcohol and latex had replaced her delicate cinnamon scents. Her eyes were sunken and bloodshot. He remembered the tears when her hair was falling out. She spoke to him then, that dream-self, though speaking would have been impossible.

“You have to promise,” she said. He nodded, reaching out for her hand. It was clammy and frail.

“There are two tickets in my night stand. I’ve been saving up. There’s a travel agent’s phone number, I want you to call it,” she said.

“Where am I going?” he asked.

“On vacation.”

Firelight flickered against his eyelids, jostling him into a place between wakefulness and sleep. A sound filled the bus, echoing off the steel. It wasn’t the motor, too quiet for that. A melody emerged from the pulsing tones, sounds that weren’t quite words drew pictures of wild horses in his head. He remembered the tape he’d promised to listen to but never did; the handwritten label had read throat singing.

One voice faded and another one took over. This one was louder, livelier. The song went on for what seemed like ages, conjuring images of frozen steppes and warriors by firelight. This voice too faded, and a third voice took over. This one was deeper, older. The song shifted from melody to melody, notes blurring together. Daniel saw a mighty river breaking up on rocks, saw an empire rise and fall. This voice faded into clapping. The men had a winner.

The singing started up again, all three voices at once. The notes converged and a fourth voice emerged, a sound that lived in the place where all sounds intersected, the same space occupied by Buddhist prayers and capacitors. Overtones.

Harmonics.

His circuits made sense now, the diagrams were all wrong. They hadn’t put the pieces at odd angles. Each stray charge amplified another, created a noise larger than the sum of its parts. He stepped off the bus and took a seat beside the fire.

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
Thanks for the crit! I was trying to show the similarity between vocal harmonic overtones and harmonic resonance. It's a really neato thing where mysticism and science meet up and hold hands.

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
okay after some deliberation I'm in. Prompt me, you shitloving turdhuffer!!

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
Agitated hunger of the kittens of grandiloquent infinity

The places you walk (950 words)

Daylight sent all but one of the rats scattering into the crevices of her cesspit dungeon. Crow leaned forward pulling the shackles taught until she was looking the creature dead in the eyes.

“Is Horace ready?” she said without speaking.

“Man. Forest. Horses.” The rat’s whiskers twitched.

She licked her canines. This rat was duller than most. She beckoned it closer, until its whiskers were touching her face. With one quick snap she had the rat in her mouth. She threw her head back and let the blood drip down her throat.

###

Horace sharpened his blade then strung and restrung his bow. Time creeped slowly here outside the city’s walls, in the shadow of the Majjistrum’s tower. Worries tarnished his thoughts like rust. There was a sense of dread, a terrible energy outside the city. He stared at the towering stone walls as the sun slid down over the horizon, wondering why she’d asked him to wait opposite the city gates.

###

Darkness enveloped the dungeon and a fierce energy pulsed through her veins. Vengeance. She heard men nearing the door they’d sealed shut so many moons ago.

“All this trouble to fish a corpse out of a cesspit, eh? Old man’s mad,” someone said, before an axe shattered the door. She feigned weakness and went limp in the shackles. The nightsoil farmers stepped aside, letting the prison guards through.

“If she ain’t dead yet, she will be soon,” one said unlocking the shackles. They half dragged, half carried her out of the dungeon.

They kicked her to her knees in front of the Majjistrum’s desk. She’d have felt fear before, fear and shame at her nakedness; instead she was calm and cold like the depths of a well. He rose and ambled towards her, holding a mirror to her face, smiling. She turned away from her reflection, knowing that’s what he wanted. She knew what she’d thrown away, how the skin hung off her bones now and her eyes were sunken and jaundiced.

“And to think…” he started, but trailed off. She’d have spat at him, before. Told him he’s hornier than a satyr and twice as ugly, but she waited. He beckoned for her to stand. She lifted herself slowly, steadying herself on his oaken desk.

“Now, my prodigal child, do you understand your crimes?”

She nodded.

“You’ve stolen from the Majji. Upon you we’ve imparted the greatest gifts – years of schooling, upbringing, the finest amenities we could provide.” He gestured wildly as he spoke, his purple cape shimmering in candlelight. “And yet…and yet, you’ve chosen to steal. What’s worse, you’ve chosen to eschew the morality we’ve attempted to instil! Quite a ruse, yes, quite a ruse! Usually we find the dangerous ones early, when they’re still young…”

“But what’s this?” he ran his hand along a set of rough stitches in her side, near her breast. “Those barbarians are butchers! They call this medicine?” He spat. “Serves you right!”

He turned, cape fluttering, and sat down at his desk, satisfied with his speech. He closed his eyes momentarily. With inhuman grace she tore the stitches open and whipped out the machination she’d carried under her skin. Her bony fingers clutched the blood-tarnished gold, finding all the right grooves.

Click.

A roar like thunder filled the Majjistrum’s office, his skull shattered by a sharpened steel point propelled by the barbarian’s black powder. She drank from the spurting vessels before collecting the larger pieces of skull. Wrapping his cape around her body she threw herself from the window, hitting the battlements with a crack of bone but feeling no pain.

###

Horace went pale, barely able to control the horses when the ghoul came crashing through the forest canopy. Black bile seeped from a deep wound in her side, her eyes flashed with an eerie energy. Bones cracked and snapped as she threw her battered body atop the saddle, the horse calmed. Its breath became shallow and rattling. Horace crossed himself.

“Ride!” the ghoul hissed.

###

The altar was set up just as she’d demanded. Kittens, freshly weaned, hung by their hind legs at each point of a pentacle. They mewled hungrily as she entered the sanctum. At the pentacle’s center lay the tome with its binding of human skin. She kneeled and grabbed the book. It radiated a warmth that she hadn’t felt in a long time. She pressed her palm flat against it and swore she felt a heartbeat.

Memories flooded back, her dying heart quickened its cadence. The taste of her lover’s breath and the unions they ought to have never formed, what was his name? The smell of those ancient books in the library she ought to have never found. The words that held such might that she was able to ply the Majjistrum’s mind, that first rush of power she’d felt. The escape, the mad dash through the forest and the fears she’d carried with her. Those nights spent contemplating death after the barbarians had found her, how they’d thrown dice for her. How with a flick of her fingers the dice did her bidding, how she poisoned the Headman’s body with arsenic and his mind with her words. He’d given up four men to the Majjistrum’s guards just so she could rot in a cesspit.

None of that mattered now. She lay the book down and opened it to the familiar spot. She rose, clutching a sharpened piece of the Majjistrum’s skull. She slit the kitten’s throats, one by one, and let the blood drip onto the pentacle points. She lay down and slit her wrists. The life seeped out of her body and the transformation was complete.

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
Muffin-san I unironically love you~

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
i loving love spaceships so me and my raging space-boner are IN

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
Thanks for the crit, leekster! The story takes place in Canada, however. We have forests *and* rangers too! I didn't actually mean to write "four by four" in a strange way, it's just in Canuck, a "four-by" denotes a vehicle with four wheel drive.


The twin suns rose over the spaceport, the needle-like control tower cast two sets of shadows. Alarms sounded somewhere inside the tower, men rushed to their posts. A giant cockroach-shaped vessel breached the mercury-laden clouds. It was coming in too fast. Rosa Flores activated the descent thrusters, flipping biomechanical switches in the stolen alien ship. The control tower hailed her, but the ship's bio-radio only emitted a series of whistles and bony clicks. She said to herself "I'm Rosa Flores, Paranormal Investigator from L.A. and I can land a ship!" <--- teaser for this upcoming week, just for you crabs

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
Mr. Crabrock? Umm...Mr. Crabrock? I know I didn't raise my hand b...but can my spaceship also be a bong??

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
I had uh, important things come up so I couldn't finish...or even start my submission. I took a pic of what I did instead, though!

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
I'm in, with a :toxx: I guess...

My God shall be the blind God of Winter and failed harvests.

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe

Benny the Snake posted:

I'd love to use your God, NH, but there doesn't seem to be a name. What's your God's name?


Being blind he's always listening. Waiting for someone to speak his name so that he may turn towards them, open his ancient hands and blow plagues and poison seed across the land with his icy breath. His name has been purged from human history...mostly.

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
IdiotHellFucker69 669 words
In with Broenheim's Inanis

The blind and nameless God of winter and some other morose and morbid poo poo sat sulking in heaven or whatever the gently caress.

“Being blind loving blows. Who the gently caress wrote me like this? This doesn’t even make any sense. Vision never had anything to do with fertility, you moron,” he said.

The only other person that wanted to hang out with him was the Goddess of nothingness, Inanis, probably named after how inane her loving powers were. They didn’t really hang out by choice, though, it was more like they were stuck together because the other Gods were busy wearing vibrant colours and playing sports and loving.

“Why you always gotta be such a downer?” She asked from somewhere behind the blind God of Winter or whatever.

“Why do you always gotta talk to me from odd angles? You know I can’t loving see.”

“It’s because you always wander in front of my loving spinning wheel before you start sulking, you moron,” she said. “I mean, I don’t even know how to use this thing and I don’t remember ever having any wool or anything. I’m pretty sure it’s just a prop…and aren’t there supposed to be three fates with me or something? Whatever, gently caress it,” she said.

“Well, I sure would love to have a literate conversation with you but apparently no one’s given enough of a gently caress to bring Braille to Heaven or whatever,” the blind God said. “Plus, I wish I had a name. This is loving stupid. What’s the guy that wrote this doing?”

Inanis used her God-vision and telepathy to create a narrative that made sense.

The guy that wrote the story was sitting at his computer, logged in as IdiotHellFucker69 and masturbating furiously to transvestite pornography that could only be described as “off putting”.
Inanis used her fuckin awesome God Powers to discern that he was indeed an idiot loser hell fucker that lived in his mom’s basement and made up lovely excuses instead of putting in a legitimate effort. She delved into the deepest recesses of his atrophied mind and found reasons for not writing a good story like “I worked a few twelve hour shifts and didn’t have time”, “I’m very drunk and it’s only a quarter past noon”, “I was too tired to write a few hundred words every day” and “I am pretty much like a love child between Hemingway and that one loving guy from Fear and Loathing so anything I write will be awesome and will win at any contest”.

Inanis sighed and spun her empty wheel. Even though time had no meaning to a being as infinite as she was, she hoped his death would come swiftly and painfully.
Because writing the conversation between the Gods would be something that takes effort, I want you, the reader, to pretend that they read each other’s minds or maybe they just talked, I don’t know, but I’m going to keep using commas, okay?

“So, you mean he’s just some idiot jizzing all over his mom’s carpet?” The Blind God asked.

“Sure looks like it,” said Inanis. “Though I did see some fledgling idea about us and about winter in some feudal Slavic poo poo hole. I’m sure there was an idea about a witch and an only son and the crushing poverty brought on by feudalism. Though it was hard to see between what I’m pretty sure were transvestites flogging each other on his 42” monitor. Did you know earthly taxes paid for that? Can you imagine?”

The nameless God guy just sighed, sending an incredible chill over the idiot hell fucker’s home in a stinking bog of a flood plain. Snow fell and birds died, but the idiot hell fucker barely realized this as he was barricaded in his mom’s basement. He ate cheetos, farted and drank lovely whiskey while pretending to have autism so that he could get his mom to stop vacuuming so that he could better focus on the weirdo porn he was watching.

autism ZX spectrum fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Feb 22, 2015

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
I'm gonna edit my post to include that info. So don't DQ my story because I really feel like I have a winner this week. The timestamp for the edit should more or less match this post's.

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
i am in this week u scrubs, clench ur buttholes

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
dude cache cab you can't even write a compelling boast-post but you're bragging about some bullshit small town self pub where your application process involves the use of a glory hole?

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
Sorry, here is a list of my works

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
Wizard 1300 words

Thick clouds of ganja smoke hung near the ceiling of his one room basement apartment. Tendrils of Seattle sky clawed their way through the barred windows, settling on a ragged carpet, threadbare couch and a stolen spool of industrial cable. It was the best he could find in America on such short notice.

He tapped his pipe twice on the spool-come-coffee table. This pile of ash marked the fourth point in a pentagram. The clatter roused his friends. A great scratching and scurrying erupted in between the ancient lath and plaster. A few moments passed and a plump young vole scurried across the carpet, up the cable and over to the pipe. It stood on its hind legs, twitched its whiskers and left him a gift – a dry green nug sparkling with THC.

When this too was smoked he emptied the charred remains onto the final point and connected the points with a finger. “Ubi est meum denari” he spoke, softly, and a greasy pile of twenty dollar bills appeared on the table. Enough to cover the rent, anyway.

This place, it was always raining. Incessant drizzle mixed with car exhaust, splashing up out of too-deep puddles and slowing down the constantly clicking wheels of consumer driven capitalism. Maybe it had been a mistake coming to the New World? Maybe he was just getting old. A truck roared past and knocked him out of his reverie, just before the muddy tsunami knocked him off his feet.

A woman reached out and helped him up. They locked eyes, her smile faded. Not again…

“Holy. poo poo. Ten years! Ten years and not so much as a single phone call! Do you know how much child support you owe me? John’s almost eighteen now, you better pay up!”
He broke into a run. She shrieked behind him “Cops! Help! Anyone! He owes me money!”

Casting fortify he didn’t stop running until he was miles away. He swore at himself for smoking that cursed gypsy weed all those ages ago. Turns out the only thing more powerful than that Arab indica was Arab magic.

He spent the remainder of the day testing the power of his curse here. The barista broke down in tears showing him the tattoo of a dead bird she’d got when he’d divorced her. When he bought clothes at the mall hordes of women caused a minor riot when they tried to claw their way to him, each brandishing court summons or love letters or both.

At least in Europe there was a certain kind of politeness about things. Sure there were more heartfelt speeches and long walks along the beach, often at knife point, but it was the kind of thing one could, in retrospect, grow used to and even miss. Not here.

Maybe there was something more powerful then the curse here in America? Something so absolutely degenerate that no woman could ever admit to associating with it? He laid out the things he’d dug out of the dumpster on the way home. He inhaled and blew a lungful of smoke onto them, transmogrifying them into the summation of American Culture: a television with an internet connection.

The next weeks went by in a haze. He caught up on the century or so of pop culture he’d so arrogantly dismissed. Time dilation spells, cheeto spells, poopsock and mountain dew spells all crackled like lightning out of his bony fingertips. An entire culture’s worth of T.V. seeped into his ancient brain. Slowly a picture formed. Neon letters on white wife beaters, tanned skin and rippling muscle; giant trucks, protein shakes, cheap malt liquor. The word came from deep within and his lips spoke as if it was the first word they had ever uttered…

“bro”

Filled with a new confidence and padded out by buff-as-gently caress spells he ignored the rain that soaked his ALPHA MALE poo poo wifebeater and beaded off his shades. Sure, the megablunt and half liter of cough syrup might have added to his mental state, but he was sure it was mostly confidence.

He floated down the subway steps on a cloud of smoke, a homeless guy taking a dump looked up in awe. A flick of his bony wizard fingers and the poo poo was instantly turned into rainbows, sending the homeless guy flying in a foul smelling arc right onto the tracks. He landed with a thump and a sizzle.

“Watch that third rail, bro.”

Someone started screaming. He furiously cast a terror-to-opera spell but the panic was growing too fast. He was lost in his casting, in step with the bass beats coming from his rap-brand headphones. He didn’t notice the teeming mass of black rats that had picked the homeless guy’s bones clean. Having given up on converting the terror solely to opera he began casting other spells, somehow forgetting any memory erasure spells. Instead he cast spells like embaldment, hand-to-foot, mule’s head, pet rock mania, sweater-to-hoodie and moustache of bees.
Someone grabbed him from behind.

“Yeah that’s him! He owes me like ten grand!” A lady was yelling over a group of bewitched countertenors.

“That’s it bud, you’re coming with us,” one of the policeman said before punching him in the gut. Red cough syrup shot out of his mouth and splattered all over his Air Jordan’s and the world went black.

He woke in a cell with a splitting headache and only the faintest recollection of what happened the night before. He checked his pockets. The magic had worn off and his Bro gear had changed back into his wizard’s robe. Either way, they’d taken his weed. He sighed, not remembering how to cast a spell if he wasn’t high as balls when he did it.
He lay down on the concrete bed and tried to keep from thinking, finally realizing why most people only chug cough syrup once. There was a rattle at the door. He groaned. A guard slid a tray of food through a slot, but it only made him want to dry heave.

Whiskers brushed his cheek. “If you want the food, it’s yours,” he said. Before he’d even finished the sentence a great number of tiny feet scurried across the concrete and carried off everything the tray had to offer, leaving only tiny turds.

It may have been a week or a maybe just a day before they dragged him out of the cell. Without his life-giving vapours he was getting frail. The courtroom was oppressively bright. The prosecutor smiled when he saw him, knowing that he’d make history for being the first ever lawyer to win a divorce and child custody class action case. He was representing no less than seventy five women that day.

The wizard’s public defender stumbled into the court room, spilling the contents of his briefcase. Turns out he’d mostly brought hard candy. The judge was tired of waiting. He raised his gavel and struck it down thrice. The wizard swore he heard a rustling in the walls.

The judge began reading out the charges, having to raise his voice over the growing groans and tremors in the courthouse walls. He glanced nervously at the deputy, who could only shrug. The room began vibrating slightly, a great wall of sound was descending on the court room, or would have been if humans could hear the frequencies. The floor underneath the jury box caved in, the walls began to crumble and a great roiling sea of rodents descended on the court room. There was no time to even scream before thousands of the tiny animals had eaten everyone’s tongues. Before long there was nothing left but gleaming skeletons and piles of mouse poo poo.

The wizard walked out the back doors, bowing as he left. The new world had been a mistake.

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe

Mrenda posted:

A Funeral for a Dog, A Young Murderer, and The Aged Bad Boy of Directing
1152 Words

alright, shitbag, here's your crit now that judgement is passed! buckle up, it's gonna be a hella ride

The garden was well lit,I don't like this already. It was well lit? How? Makes me think it's night time. Besides, easing us into an opening is a garbage tier way to start a story a sloped drive and a tricycle jammed under the bumper of a beat-up but relatively new Audi. how was it beat up? You could describe the damage. Rust? dents? mis matched panels? If you're gonna spin a whodunnit type thing, that would be useful info She stepped over another toy and trod I hate this word. Not only is it some upper class bullshittery it's passive. Garbage! on a dog turd, managing not to slip. A man called from the door, “Don’t drag that dog poo poo in here! The house is cleaned.” Sharma was covered in dirt. “Take off your shoes, put them here. Jesus. You’re early.”

She was late.

“The interview was arranged for seven.”

She was already flustered.

“Then you’re late.”

“Sorry... Are you ready? I’ll have my recorder.”

“Great, come out the back.” this dialogue is both useless and confusing. No attribution and worse it adds nothing to the story. The fact she's late to her meetings is never revisited again

There was a muddle of aromas as she walked through the house. This opening sentence is redundant, also it doesn't need to be here. Instead the one following should just tell us what aromas are present. Either way, it's ham fisted because why bring it up now? If the reporter's sense of smell is special or some poo poo you should have introduced it earlier...like at the dog turd. Musk, mud, and bleach from where the tiled floor was scrubbed to a shine. Something organic seeped through her sock when her foot pressed into the rug. Sharma brought the reporter to join another four people in the garden. His wife, twenty years his younger was there. Her eyes were glazed and red, smoke rising from the barbecue she stood over. A man with matted hair, a linen suit and a pockmarked face was building a pile of beer cans next to his deck chair. There was more dog poo poo out here and now both of the reporter’s socks were sodden.

Two men were chatting by a hole in the ground. One turned and raised a glass to the reporter knocking a bottle of wine into the hole. It sounded a heavy “clunk” against a rock This sentence with "it sounded a" is horrible. Passive voice, and also the bottle would have been smashed, probably. Sharma drove towards the man who had kicked the bottle and dropped in the gap in the earth.This is again redundant. We know there's a hole, we know the wine fell in. Re stating poo poo like this in flash fic is haraam

“You’re knocking good wine into a grave I spent the whole day digging!”

He tipped the dregs of the bottle into the grave.

“Only the good die young.” His head was bowed. He laughed, little cheer in it.

“And some are just too fast for you.”

“My boot was fast enough. Poisonous little prick. Kid should be locked up.” His face had turned from dry laughter, to anger, and then sadness in a moment.

His wife came over to the hole with a plate of burgers. Everyone was standing by it now. This is where things get weird. So someone died, okay, characters are acting kind of strange...and the all important burgers are busted out.

“I guess it’s time, honey.” She handed them the burgers. The reporter’s stomach growled at the sight of the greasy, red centred meat. She was vegetarian. No one's bitten into a burg yet, how they know it's red centered? Also, please cook your ground beef all the way through to prevent food borne illness. Thank you.

The man from the deck chair had filled some glasses with a thick, earth-brown liquor and passed them around. The reporter shuffled her recorder into her pocket and stood, stiff and awkward with a large glass of booze and a badly cooked burger in her hands. We've gotten this far into the story and NO ONE has a name. I know YOU can see your story in your own head and what these people are wearing and what's going on, but WE CAN'T. It's just a nebulous construct of "that man" "his wife" "the reporter" the whole thing is pretty dehumanizing and in a story with few characters it does you no favours.

“Pray, or think of Jesus or Buddha.” Sharma disappeared into the shed and re-emerged, cradling a lump covered in linen in his arms. His arms were held low, carrying a heavy weight. He stepped into the grave and lowered the lump of fresh, laundered towels to the ground.

“You loved burgers and cherry brandy more than me, my friend.” okay so I sort of get the burger thing now, but still. The dog is pivotal the story and he's only introduced like 2/3rds of the way through? With only a passing mention of the tensions between the dog and the neighbour's kid or whatever?

Sharma’s wife helped him out of the hole and handed him one of the burgers. He tossed it in on top of the body. He looked at all that were gathered and drank deeply from the glass of thick liquor. Everyone else drank. So did the reporter, the liquid drained down her throat like a clotting blood syrup. This was a really bad sentence.Sharma’s wife took a bite from the burger, "bit the burger"grease spilling down her chin and dropped what was left on top of the bodyneedless detail. The reporter closed her eyes and added her burger to the grave.

“Good for you.” Sharma nodded to the reporter.

“I loved the way he’d frighten the poo poo out of drivers.”

They all laughed.

“He had a talent. Perfect timing and athleticism beyond his training.”

“I taught him to beg.”

“Maybe he was reincarnated in the kid. He can dodge cars as good as the dog.”

“That poo poo is five, or four or something. My dog was eight. How old are they when they start tormenting animals?”

A moment’s respect. Again, this dialogue is confusing as gently caress. Plus the great reveal is so late into the story, and again you're only hinting at the real story instead of telling us what really happened. We don't want to see a bunch of stuffy fuckers standing around eating burgs near a grave, we wanna see the dog die and all that other poo poo that you're telling us about!

“Poe wouldn’t hurt anyone. He was scared of the squirrel out here. If he’d bitten that kid a few times instead of eating out of his ratty hands he’d still be alive.”

“He hurt a few cars. How many drivers tried to bill you for wing mirrors?”

“He had a hard head, just like me.”

“You’ve been known to poison yourself a few times too.”

“loving hell, Merv! Poe puked and shat his innards all over the house. Why the gently caress would you bring that up. He died. In pain.”

“Jem, he was just saying.” His wife held his arm.

“How many times did the cops try and make you pay for those mirrors?”

“They just wanted to say they called. No evidence, a dog running into a moving car? Nothing they can do.”

They listened to the wind rustling through the leaves. It was cold. Sharma turned to the reporter “How about a heartfelt introduction, A Man and his Dog, Taken From him in his Prime. ‘In Memory of Poe.’” His hands showing a big headline as he walked into the house. The reporter presumed to follow. Presumed to follow? What does that even MEAN? Plus, what the gently caress is the story here? Dog Funeral? Is this a loving senior's home bi-weekly 8.5x11 newsletter? "Ethel and Merv buried their dog scruffles. Refreshments Wednesday at the 3pm followed by shuffleboard" If you're trying to show us some sinister under current somewhere that the reporter has some sort of line on you're doing a terrible job

Her socks were soaked through. She thought of the scrubbed tiles and vomit soaked rug as she followed Sharma into the front room. Two leather chairs faced each other and the director was already sitting in one.Who's the director?! Christ don't introduce MORE characters! The reporter was just pulling out her recorder when there was a tap on the window. She looked up and a policewoman was beckoning for them to come outside.

“Mr. Sharma…”The reporter thought of all the stories she had heard about the greatest documentary maker in America. Oh my god why...WHY are you doing this to us? This is some first sentence kind of poo poo. This is what you should frame your story with. Nervous reporter on edge, nearing the house of her idol, some FamousFuckin'Guy. She's framing the shots on her walk up his driveway, just like she'd seen him do in his documentaries. Something like that anyway, I don't know. gently caress. Just not this

“JULES!” Sharma shouted before downing the rest of his beer and stuffing two unopened packs of cigarettes in his jacket pocket. He stood by the front door, gripping the latch until she came down the hall. Another knock, something solid, not a fist on the door.

“Call Watson and get him to sort my bail. We talked this afternoon.” He opened the front door. A policeman’s arm stretched inside and clutched onto his bicep.Terrible scene placing unless officer Stretch Armstrong was on duty, plus who the gently caress is Watson? Why do you keep doing this to meeee

“Hands out front or behind?” Sharma had his hands held out, wrists pressed together. The cop swung him around and pressed him to the wall. “Jermaine Sharma, you are under arrest for the assault…”

“See you tomorrow babe.”

“and attempted murder of a child. You have…”

“You’re making GBS threads me!” Who's saying this? The wife? The Guy? Did he beat the kid too hard? Did someone beat the kid and frame him? We will never know

The colour drained from Jules’ face. Sharma’s buddies made to intervene but a nightstick flashed in their direction kept them back. Three more officers stood in the driveway, a sergeant writing and two detectives, idling. A man wearing a white coverall was photographing Sharma’s car, hunkered down, flashgun firing repeatedly, with a measuring stick next to the tricycle under the Audi’s bumper. They hadn’t called the press. Anna Sofaer thought of her now brown and soaked through socks and the recorder in her hand.

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
OK you limp dicked baby retards I'm back to bring some stomping on your idiot faces until they fit neatly into a jar and all your stupid baby words are leaking out your idiot broken skulls

I guess I still gotta say in because reading between the lines would be too much for you poor pissbabies

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
in with a toxx I guess

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
I've got a new piece of technology to help me focus

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
Low Effort Bullshit from an idiot baby-man, 912 words

“The supply drone’s accelerating sir! It’s not responding to any frequencies!”

“Suits, now! Private, move the sector’s oxygen into holding!”

“Sir, there’s no-”

The drone tore through the station’s outer shell, thrusters igniting the streams of oxygen venting into space. She heard the sizzle of burning flesh as her shock-capsule slid out into the smoldering control room. She wasn’t conscious, not yet, but her body moved with animal grace. It would be a few minutes before the microchip would cede control back to her brain, well after her bloodstream was full of adrenaline analogues and synthetic endorphin. Until then she was on autopilot, one simple instruction controlling her every move: Kill.

Sirens blared, the station entered lockdown. The emergency bulkhead slid open. Crisis team headlamps cut through the smoke. The tiny chip at the base of her neck assessed the situation before the first beam of light even hit her. She thumbed a selector on her pistol and clicked off six shots in one fluid motion. The crisis team collapsed as a unit, jugular veins neatly severed by AP sabot rounds and blood filling their helmets. She took off running down the corridor

***

“As a doctor I’m supposed to tell you that this is a terrible idea.”

“I’m not paying you to lecture, no matter what your invoice says,” she answered, laying down on the operating table.

“Where do you even get a rig like this, it’s loving ancient. No one in their right mind uses a circulatory cooler anymore. You don’t even know if it
works. Do you even realize what “total neurological degeneration” or “stimulant psychosis” mean?”

“You seem a little wound up doc, and I’m not appreciating the guilt trip.”

“Guilt trip!? You find me God knows how, show up with this piece of kit and a bottomless cred chip and you’re surprised I’m wound up?”

“Heard you could do the work, doc. Heard you done it before. Kuiper belt, was it? Hostile repossession of an outpost that wasn’t paying its bills. They had you outfit the guys with rigs like these ones. Strictly off the books.”

He handed her a mask.

“Breathe in.”

Sweet bursts of warm scented air filled her lungs, the world got a little fuzzy.

“You’re never making it up there. Security is just too tight.”

“Everyone needs spare parts, doc…” She trailed off into a deep sleep.

*******
Her pistol was still warm when she came to. She’d just armed a shaped charged, suited bodies lay limp around her. Reams of information slipped through her mind: station diagrams, access codes, approach vectors. Everything was measured in microfragments, accelerated by the humming of her mechanical heart. Her actual heartbeats felt few and far between. The LCD readout quivered at 60hz, far too slow for her now. The first second ticked by, but she was already running. Delicate fractals formed in her vision as her brain filled each moment of consciousness with information that wasn’t there.

Two, three, four-hundred metres she counted off as she ran down curved corridor. The next airlock would lead to an access hatch, a maintenance tunnel to the AI cores housed at the toroid’s center. The door came into view. She stopped, unholstered the other pistol before the motion detector tripped. They were waiting on the other side. The door blew open, a machine gun roared to life. She ducked before the bullets left the barrel, kicking off into a backflip as the shaped charge severed the main power bus and dropped the station into zero-g. She raised both guns and fired, blowback sending her into a wall. She pushed off again, rounding the corner, looking for movement. Something flashed past her – that green jacket she knew too well. She turned to look.

Rounds tore through the air around her, one ripping through her suit and grazing the circulatory cooler. Warnings flashed across her HUD: system(s) compromised: internal temperature regulation.

“gently caress!” She emptied the clip in the direction the rounds came from, soft thuds letting her know she’d hit the mark.

“Keep it together Constance, you know this poo poo’s gonna make you loopy. That was too loving close.” Sweat dripped off her face and onto the visor, the suit’s tiny vent fan kicked into high gear.

Gliding she dropped the pistols and reached for the machine gun and fired a round. Inertia pinned her against the wall. She held the trigger down and shot the hinges off the access hatch. She was panting now, sweat pouring out of her every pore. Her teeth were clenched tight, vague pangs of pain reverberated somewhere far away.

“Tony! Hey Tony! Are you playing or what?”

Tony came to, another idiot story had taken hold of his imagination. The heat was unbearable.

“How come you guys don’t have A.C.?” he asked.”

“We do have A.C. you dipshit,” answered Tim. “It’s like the third time you’ve asked today you fat poo poo. You already ate all the popsicles too. It probably feels hot because you’re so loving fat you idiot. Now, are you gonna play Mario Kart or not?”

“Huh? Yeah I guess…”

“What’s wrong with you today, Tony?”

“I dunno Tim, I was just thinkin’ y’know like, what if we hung out at an abend er…abonded…abonened bunker? What if we like built bikes together n stuff? I could write lovely stories then and we wouldn’t have to spend all day playing Mario Kart.”

“Dude, you’re a fag”.

autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
I'm willing to do a few line-by-line crits if anyone's interested

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autism ZX spectrum
Feb 8, 2007

by Lowtax
Fun Shoe
Alright shitbags, here's the initial round of crits before I start doing some line-by-lines.

Cingulate: absolutely awful. You manage to use up all your words with confusing actions and completely fail to develop any characters. You try to give us some explanations for the dead bodies raining down but it’s all stupid. Too many commas, too much punctuation. Your entire first paragraph is about a character who has nothing to do with anything and he has THREE names. Why would you waste words like that?

Scridiot: Not bad. The action is well paced and there’s enough to keep the reader interested. We get a decent picture of the hive but a few more details about the universe would make a huge difference. Not great, either, and it's thoroughly middle of the pack because it's hampered by all this missing information and an idea that's not novel enough to be interesting in and of itself.

HopperUK: It’s like, too many commas, and a plot that’s, on rails. We’re sent plummeting towards the conclusions without time to eve raise our own suspicions. Instead of a whodunit, you drop us into some ideation about stained glass by a nun who sounds like she came out of that movie where Whoopie Goldberg got sent back to Ye Olden Times and was having none of it.

Chairchucker: Cars, ballet, matrix fights…I don’t know why this works but it does. Is “leant” actually a word? Microsoft seems to think so. That being said, the whole story riffs on the same joke and doesn't manage to keep the adrenaline rush of the first paragraph. It gets a tad tedious and dare I say boring later on.

J.A.B.C- ghost of regret: Well written, but I'm really not sure what's actually going on by the end of it.

Nikaer Drekin: you’re not doing yourself any favors by starting off with tea time then launching right into a huge, boring monologue. But no worries since you launch into a totally climactic ending scene of “native man jumps up a building”. Massive pacing issues, action sequences that were sort of boring. The entire wall climbing part felt video-gamey and not at all edge of my seat. You could have used the intro to show us the main character freeclimbing canyons or some poo poo, y'know?

Halbey- the hunt of poor bb codes: You introduce a lot of characters fairly late in the game. Hard to follow, not enough foreshadowing. If you had more expertly introduced your elements or focused on what was really not a bad father/son tale then you would have had my vote for HM. The images stuck with me, I really like the creepy as gently caress universe you’ve got but why would you drop it on us like that?

Epoch: a matron’s murderly monologue

WLOTM: This was a strong contender for winner and quite a good read. This might need revisiting in more words to elaborate the selfie's existence.

Jon joe: A tight read but not enough rising action to be a serious contender.

Thranguy Before you rest on your laurels please note we found that your protagonist's lack of agency in the second half of the story was a little bit of a let down.

Docbeard: NOT BAD

Morning bell: I don’t like this gimmick, I don’t like your mystery fog mechanic and I don’t like this story

World’s best author: GREAT STORY I SURE LIKED THE PART WITH THE MIND READER AND THE MEXICAN FOOD

Jonked: decent buddy cop space western, good enough to get my vote for HM. Anderson appears at many points in the story but nothing really tells us anything important about him. A lot of dialogue wasted on other stuff, also a love interest so paper thin you can cut yourself on it.

C7TY1: a one note joke that doesn’t play up on any of its strengths and succumbs to the many weaknesses in the story. lovely, unresolved plot. Absolutely no imagination and the fantasy elements were hamfisted and out of place, barely having anything to do with the story. Thank your lucky stars someone wrote a worse piece than you did because I wanted this to lose.

Broenheim: I noticed some kind of twist ending but I could barely be hosed to take note of the humour because the action sequences were such poo poo and the story didn’t have a leg to stand on. Most boring chase scene ever? I think so.
Meinberg: A writer posts and a turd floats. An ending is tacked on, words are arranged to woo the reader. A judge reads a story and weeps.

SlipUp: Pretty sure this violates the no Fanfic rule. Either way I liked Event Horizon better as a movie when Duke Guncock wasn’t starring in it and fighting monsters in a video game level.

Muffin: dece, but a tad light on supernatural maybe? 420 smoke ghosts everyday

Djeser: This would be an HM but the ending just fell the gently caress apart
Grizzled Patriarch: you almost had something here. Almost. No discernable moral makes this fall short of a fairy tale and decidedly not “punk”.

Obliterati: I don’t understand a loving word of this

Kurona_bright: what in the making GBS threads gently caress happened here, son?

Spectres of autism: you call this spooky? Forest nymph rehash of cthulu is supposed to make me feel uneasiness or fear? The fuckin’ leaf lady didn’t even make the kid kill a thing. What a crock. You were close though, the first part did make me feel slightly uncomfortable, but gently caress did you let us all down.

Fumblemouse: Hits the prompt but gently caress man, nothing really happens. Yeah the great thirst we get it.

Kaiju15: hits the prompt but it’s overly simplistic and doesn’t make up for it in entertainment

Ovaltine: Something happened here but I’ll be damned if I actually know what it is

Entenzahn: Why would you craft a tale only to introduce a whole bunch of characters in the last act? This is the mystery of the thunderdome. What starts off as a lone wolf out for revenge ends with the heroes seemingly outnumbering the villains.

Killer of Lawyers: pitiful

Thyrork: This was the most boring thing I’ve read all week. Nothing HAPPENS. I was almost going to let your self referential mention of “lol I’m so weird” slide at the beginning but you don’t have the chops to pull off this kind of humour WHEN NOTHING HAPPENS. Nothing funny, scary, strange…NOTHING. How do you write so many words that DON’T MEAN ANYTHING. You too should thank the heavens someone wrote something we liked less than this pile.

Bompacho: Well written, wasn't visceral enough to stick with me. Might have been a winner in another week.

Skwidmonster: This was pretty bad

Sebmojo: political figures do not an intrigue make

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