Mercedes posted:

PRIZES

If any of you disgusting turd samplers win a week or at least for some reason find yourself on the honorable mentions list, you can get a prize from my coffers: it includes games, books, audiobooks. The list keeps growing as I find stuff to add all the time.

If you win, contact me either with PMs or on IRC with what you want from my prize list.

Screaming Idiot posted:

Happy new year, everyone! May your stories have words in them!

Sitting Here posted:

happy newyear every one

Sitting Here posted:

this is america we don't have mums here sorry

except your mum, she comes over a lot

Sitting Here posted:

tbh i know mojo is pulling his punches with the thread sass

if he gets too cheeky he know's he'd have to back it up with his feeble fiction words

ha ha

Entenzahn posted:

Fumblemouse posted:

SUCKING GIGANTIC DONKEY COCKS

Screaming Idiot posted:

Can anybody write critiques on stories? I've received a lot of great feedback on my stuff, and I feel bad not contributing. I've read so many good stories in Thunderdome that could have been great were it not for some minor issues.

Nubile Hillock posted:

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

leekster posted:

One of my crits has been claimed by myself. There are two more. I go line by line, I'm not lazy with it.

Djeser posted:

Twist and me got beef. We got brawl-level beef.




Someone brawl-prompt us before we spill this beef all over TD

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

Fugu google

Screaming Idiot posted:

Yeah, I think I'll bone up a little more on my research before I try writing crime stuff again. I actually had a lot more planned, but a lack of experience or planning kept me from doing it. I think I might salvage the story sometime though, because the idea of a naked man running down the sidewalk with a bullet wound and a pair of aviator shades still makes me chuckle.


The Thunderdome will welcome your sacrifice -- it's no stranger to bloodshed, but how often do we throw our little sons and daughters into the pit in tribute?

Seriously, kudos for improving your writing while juggling being a parent/caretaker -- that shows dedication.

quote:

Feedback


Muters stood guard at the entrance to the Tower of Truth, a group of tall, slender soldiers in white garbs ESL awkwardness, you don't pluralise garb, gleaming stun rods pointed skywards in my head they are shaped like dildos. They frowned minor pov glitch; you're going from wide focus to narrow (since we'd need to be close to see them frowning) back to wide, not a huge issue tho into the moving mass of citizens below the stairs. Above them, a screen wall pierced the sky, using 'pierced the sky' for 'was very tall' is odd here, as a screen isn't pointy reading party propaganda to the city: ‘Harmony, prosperity, happiness.’

ok sci fi intro, a little rote but some nice quasi religious stylings and naming the scary future soldiers is always fun isn't it

Norah bit her lip. this kind of blocking is always tempting but it's cliché; write this then rewrite it, finding an interesting way to convey the same emotion Getting the dongle LOL up there wouldn’t be easy.

“I’m nervous too,” Derek said.

She started. blocking He’d come out of nowhere.

“Just remember not to get caught,” he said. “Not alive.”

Grave as he sounded, he would tense is weird? throw her a reassuring smile right now. She forced herself not to look. His green eyes burned themselves into her cheeks. (SFX: sizzling sounds)

“I’m not sure if you should be here,” she said. you do the clever foreshadowing of he's not really there very well throughout, to the point that i'd say it's the standout of the piece

“Let me help. Please.”

She stared at her feet.blocking It was a risky mission anyway. At least she wouldn’t die alone.

She nodded slowly.blocking “Time to blow the lid off,” she said.

Most people were aware of their implants as some phantom touch in the back of their heads, but she’d been trained to work with it by? I know, gently caress worldbuilding, but this is a place where some key details would make the over-sparse context a bit more interesting. She probed for the stamp-sized foreign body, sleek silicone like in boobies? i think you mean silicon? and fake synapses. She focused, immersed herself in the rhythmic tickle of its impulses. She remembered what she’d learned about the chip’s routines. She spoke to its neurons, felt for the seam in its clockwork logic. Held on to it. these are ok words, but they're a bit empty without the context that you're holding from us because you want your trick ending.

Derek moved when she did. haha nice

Norah held her breath as they left their cover. She wanted to dive back into hiding, and she grasped that thought, flooded her implant with this one desire and nothing else. She had to disappear. She had to blend in. She did blend in. She looked like a normal citizen.

The implant accepted this reality, fed it back to her and updated the other implants, in the other brains, with the same information. It was real. Her strawberry-red jumpsuit turned into a white garb. Her backpack into a wrinkly hood. In the corner of her eye, Derek’s green figure transformed the same way.

As they passed the guards, the tips of their staffs didn’t hum, or glow.

The main hall was a cavern of marble walls, polished to perfection. Norah allowed herself to breathe again. It was important to keep calm inside. Government buildings were equipped with all kinds of sensors. They weren’t supposed to get excited. what, the sensors?

A group of people ha, people, i love those guys and gals left the elevator, and they got inside. The 54th floor was restricted. Derek held watch while her chip interfaced the controls, rerouting electrons at her command. The keys glowed in a soft red light. The elevator moved. is this para carrying its weight ent

“You’ve gotten quicker,” Derek said and she tried hard not to blush.

The cameras on the 54th floor glowed lime-green before they’d fully stepped out of the elevator, manipulated by Derek. Nora willed a silent red lance out of her hand into the Muter at the end of the hallway. The soldier’s chip registered impact, calculated that his host must have died and shut his brain off.

Derek fried the elevator’s circuit while working the surveillance systems. Norah stepped over the guard’s body into the A/V control room. this is all very rote and yes I've done my share of rote cyber heists but come now fellow u can do better

Inside, a slick white box hummed with energy. Norah pulled a crimson dongle LOL is it also shaped like a dick out of her pocket and stuck it in the port omg it totally is. She touched the box phwooarr. The video had begun to play (porn sax).

It was done. clean up time!

She turned to leave, and looked right into Derek’s eyes.

Lime-green. Pure. Alive. A kindness that made this soulless room feel home. His face was poetry. His smile was a warm cup of coffee in the morning.

“You’re kinda cool,” he said.

Her tongue stuck to her throat. Her heart began to race. these paras are actually pretty sweet

The alarm went off.

Together they ran down twisting hallways, through blazing sirens. Eyes were on her. Excited neutrons coursed up and down the building’s spine. Real doors slid close, forcing their paths.

There was a window. She jumped through, shattering glass.

She forced her implant to ignore the pain.

Her backpack popped open, and next to her Derek’s did the same, and together they glided down through the air, towards the next flat building. you're overdoing the short paras. think of each para as a brushstroke, with heavy bits, light bits, and the bits where your brush touches and leaves the paper.

The hard concrete roof was a blessing. She touched ground and dived behind an air duct, focusing yuck on her childhood and how she hid from monsters. Choppers flew by right over her head. She held her breath and waited. They didn’t turn around.

“Looks like we made it,” Derek said. He held out a hand.

Norah hesitated. blocking She grabbed it, and he pulled her up, closer. They looked at each other from minimal yuck distance. Their noses touched. Their breaths mixed.

She kissed him, and he kissed back. A firework of neurons raced through her brain as they embraced each other. She knew it could be over any second. She loved it. She hated it.

“I don’t… I don’t want you to go,” she finally said.

“I don’t have to,” he said.

“You do.”

“How do you mean?”

She squeezed his hand and took a step aside. His eyes wandered up to the screen and his smile faded as realization broke into his face. ewwwwww yuck is it an emotional burglar (poss ESL, this is a bad phrase)

On the Tower of Truth, a giant screen wall showed an interrogation room. Two Muters stood over a runner o for fucks sake stop being vague. They yelled questions and insults, prodded him with their staffs, shocking him, draining the color from his body. His green clothing was coated in blood. His body twitched. His screams echoed through the streets. Down below, cars stopped, pedestrians pointed and messages raced through the ether. yuck

Derek’s hand was gone.

The roof was just her, and her thoughts, alone with the video of Derek dying. It burned itself into her retinas, reminding the chip in her brain of the hard truth super purple times it's like saints row 5. Derek was dead, and his feedback yuck was gone, and it could never return.

She wanted to bury her head in her arms and cry. She wanted to jump off the drat building, follow Derek to wherever he’d gone.

Instead she sat down, and she watched the whole drat drat drat drat thing.

Alright, so this is a trick ending sort of dealie and as usual it skimps on the emotional impact by cutting key details to make sure the twist lands. But you add in other emotional details and do it reasonably well, so you just about get away with it. Against that the heist is terribly rote and rather dull and for once you could have actually used a bit more context to give the heist some more purpose. Also dongledildo, lol. I'd like to see this at twice the length without the surprise element, just to see how it works, take that as homework if you wish.

SadisTech posted:

A question for the judges: I submitted prior to having a way to get an accurate word count, and when I measured it after submission it was 177 words over. I know the policy is no edits post submission; in this instance, is your preference for me to leave it as is or make cuts to bring it in line with the count?

kurona_bright posted:

If it's not too much trouble, Djeser, I would like a crit.

Mercedes posted:

MERC-BRAWL 8: THE NU-UH IT AIN'T HAPPENIN'



You know what chafes my balls? Getting shot down. Not getting that job you were totes mcgotes qualified for. Getting the job you totes mcgotes wanted and then fired a week later for something completely out of your control. Four stalwart domers will write about rejection, but with a caveat. Someone gets kidnapped. Last week was fantastic and different so I will continue with tradition until it starts to suck. There will be two teams of two. Each team will write about one event while each person is writing from their perspective. I will judge based on order of posting, so keep that in mind.

Here is the prize list. As per usual, you have two weeks to write 2,500 words. January 14th 2359 is your deadline. If you sign up, you will be taking a

Who are my rejectees?

Entenzahn posted:

Pick me a prompt and make it snazzy.


CAN I PLEASE HAVE A FLASH ROOL KIND SIR

DreamingofRoses posted:

I'm IN, with a contingent on making an actually interesting story.

Also: asking for a prompt and flash rule.

Benny Profane posted:

Been lurking a while, making a play for the chalice.

Your bot is a miserable exercise in impoverished imitation. If it can cough up something that doesn't sound like a middle-school band of mouth-breathing virgins who just discovered Lovecraft, I'm in.

Maugrim posted:

Hey gently caress you I'll take my lumps but you don't diss the GrimBot

Just for that you're getting the first thing he spits out, rather than the product of skipping through two dozen nonsensical ones. Here:
Dreams Of Apocalyptic Parasite (930 word limit)

Oh that could have been worse.

Quidnose posted:

Sebmojo I signed up a while ago but can I have a flash rule that sounds fun and you're handsome

Your Sledgehammer posted:

Some pretty strong opinions for a first timer. Here's hoping you don't fall flat on your face. (Spoiler alert: You probably will. It's OK, though; you've got about 50 more tries in this thread to get it right.)

Also, you don't take flash rules, you are given them. Accept them with a smile on your face and/or a well-timed insult. This is Thunderdome, not the Unicorn Farts and Rainbows Hugbox for the Emotionally Challenged.

sebmojo posted:

Twisting in the Queef Wind with Djeser Brawl

The flood is coming; what is to be saved and what is to be lost?

Ironic Twist posted:

TWISTA VS. DJ ESCHER FLOOD BRAWL

Antumbra
639 words

We are a dying race, and we accept it. We live with our own death everyday. A lovely and poetically intriguing opener.

I’m standing at the mouth of the tunnel that leads into our sector questionably vague this early. you tend towards teh floaty and pinning that down with clear evocative images early on is probably a good idea, working as a sort of night watchman bland. One good thing the invaders vague did when they came, drove us below the surface of our planet, was help us evolve, become closer to ideal beings. this is a bland and flabby para

I can no longer see, hear, or speak. But I can discern that the mile-long tunnel in front of me contains no exhaled breath, no shifting skin. No threat whatsoever. whereas this is fine because of teh detail

Certainly not the invaders. They only exist in our shared thoughts, fables from generations ago, back when our race was still unafraid. Before we became shadows burnt onto walls. nice phrase

All at once, I feel a creeping dread, some chilling rake GEE WHILLICKERS SHAGGY IT'S A GGGGGHOST across my brain.

My form tightens, and the dread goes away, replaced by a familiar feeling, the feeling laughter would give you if it were something you could touch.

I feel her voice behind me: Anything else crawl up behind you tonight, Ayin?

Don’t scare me like that again, Cedilla, I send back.

Fear is my favorite emotion, Cedilla sends, her tones ricocheting through me and in me. It makes me feel human.

I send warmth back to her. This is how we communicate now. I know Cedilla more intimately than any human ever could. We hold each other in beds made of reassurance and comforting thoughts, press each other up against the walls of our own bodies, share sentiments that no imperfect tongue could produce with sound. you're sort of nailing the conversation here it's weird adn touching

I’m only on duty for a little longer, I send to her. I hate being on the outs.

I can find you anywhere, Cedilla sends back. You can’t hide fRoM mE—

Something is wrong. Her tones are beginning to waver, scatter.

All around me I can sense something new. My feelings and thoughts seem like they’re expanding, pressing against the sides of my form. At the far end of the tunnel, something is poking a hole into me, a small, irritating feeling that’s growing greater by the second.

I try to tell myself it’s someone I know, but my heart sinks bland, cliche as I know better.

WhAT’s haPPEnING—sends Cedilla.

Shadows quickly shrink into nothing on the tunnel walls as the light floods towards us. They’re a glowing swarm, messily devouring every crumb of darkness from the crevices lining the burrowed earth. I feel the sound of something burning, matter being scorched away into nothingness.

Time slows down as they speed up. I know I only have a few seconds.

Thoughts race through my head like a neverending stream of electric shocks this simile has a degree from teh university of being terrible. They’re here again. Finally. Finally here to wipe out the lot of us cliche. I should warn somebody. I should tell Cedilla to run. It won’t do any good, they’ll catch us. Maybe one of us can make it to the Sector and warn everyone. Maybe we have a chance to fight back. What weapons do we even have? How can we even defend ourselves? dunno dude, you're the authoer u tell me

I only have time to leave her with one thought.

CeDillA, gET dOWn, I send with all of my strength.

She hesitates, and I return the heavy dread she sent me. She recoils, hunches down without giving herself time to think.

I throw myself over her, drape my form around hers, and then they are upon us.

I’m staring directly into the sun and being eaten by it, eyes first. Pain washes over me as they advance, yet still I hold steady, shielding Cedilla from their force.

I am disintegrating. My thoughts are bursting out of me, washing over her like blood.

The light is starting to fade, and so am I.

I place the last bit of me against the base of her mind like a goodnight kiss: Tell them not to hide. okay, this last passage is beautiful and pays off the whole thing really well, but there's way too much flab and piffle for the story to work properly. Still, plenty of good words and phrases and the idea is clever.

quote:

Gardens
728 words

Ammur kept a cemetery garden behind his house. The stelae stood scattered but intentional, like the peaks on the horizon. this is a fine bit of Calvinoing, but i don't see how peaks are intentional. A forest grew between and around them, with irises and soft grasses in place of cedar trees. The air was always fresh like the banks of the river, the soil like loam. Each of the stelae told the story of one of Ammur’s ancestors and the minor glories that were the world to them. huh? this is like 90% of the way to an awesome opener, just needs some tweaking

The cemetery garden was there in the time of Ammur’s grandfather, who showed it to his father prob want a name here to reduce confusion. By the time Ammur’s father walked him through the garden as a young boy, the clay was chipped and worn and all that grew were the dry weeds that can thrive without water. His father remembered the stories the clay hadn’t kept, and told them to Ammur over and over. over and over is a bit weird tense-wise, which is important since you're telling quite a complicated sort of tale with it

As a boy, Ammur carried pails of water from the river to water the garden. As a young man, he found an apprenticeship with a stonecutter. As a man, he was stonecutter for the city’s king. In his spare time, he crafted new stelae for the cemetery garden, grander than the faded figures, in strong stone instead of clay. He continued to bring the water from the river. He found a wife, and soon, he would have a son.

The edict came from a distant king-of-kings: a dam was being built further down the river. It would bring regular water and an end to harsh floods to all the cities along its banks. The new lake would be named Ashnurrabispal in honor of the king, and it would flood the valley Ammur lived in. The king-of-kings was gracious, and each family in the valley was given one donkey to carry the load. fleet and elegant plotting

Ammur stood before the king-of-king’s official. “My family needs two donkeys,” he said.

“Do you have a special need?” the official asked. Ammur wanted to lie. It wasn’t a sense of honor that held him back, simply a lack of words. haha, this is a great line

“I have my ancestors’ stelae to carry,” he said.

“There aren’t enough donkeys for everyone to carry the dead,” the official told him.

Ammur returned with only one donkey. It was enough for his wife, heavy with his son, and for his tools, and for their beds and blankets and pots in a cart behind it. It was not enough for the stelae. He let his wife leave ahead of him.

Into his spare cart, he hauled the stones, one by one. The village drained as he toiled, pouring into a long stream along the road, away from the banks of the river. Laden with the nineteen stones, leaving behind the flowers and grasses that could be regrown, he took the handles of the cart and began to pull.

The trail of people was shrinking into the distance as Ammur left the town. The wheels of the cart struggled against the ground. With every stone they shook, and every tremor burned his palms. The rising water came gently, but steadily. Muddy waves lapped at the side of the road. Ammur continued, despite the burning in his chest and hands and across his brow.

The thickening river mounted the road. Ammur’s feet splashed and sunk into the thirsty ground as it grew wet and thick. His cart’s wheels dug deep into the mud. He pulled harder, but the weight of the stones kept the wheels rooted in place. He leaned into the weight and twisted his heels as hard as he could. The axle bent under the strain and snapped. The water lapped at
Ammur’s heels as he let go of the cart. He stood in the rising water, looking at the carvings, the memories that had given him peace for so long. He gathered the memories and left the stones behind. that's fairly beautiful

In his new home, off of the banks of the new lake, Ammur saw his son born. And when his son was old enough to listen, he told him the stories of their ancestors and the minor glories that were the world to them. And he told his son of the cemetery garden, with stones like the mountains, scattered and deliberate, and its forest of irises and grasses and soft loam.

Ammur’s son began to bring pails of water from the shore of the lake, to soften the soil for planting irises. and you stick the landing. This is a good story, that needs another edit to really sing. The characters are all ciphers so the idea of the memories is a little juiceless; but that's an easy enough thing to fix. Strong work.

Judgment

I read these two and thought they were even, at first, which is an indication of how much I like Twist's turn of phrase and wonkily compelling ideas; but, really, it's a fairly easy win to Djeser for a richly crosshatched metaphor about memory that is full of good words and nails the prompt .

SadisTech posted:

Flash me, flash me hard

Benny the Snake posted:

Balls, I wanted to join your brawl Merc, but I was at work Room for one more? Or do I have to make room?

*opens switchblade*

Fanky Malloons posted:

(Semi) serious anthropological question: When you say monkey, are you including great apes, or only the lesser primates?

Capntastic posted:

Post links you ingrates.

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

Wait what the poo poo, really? Welp, I'm gonna be super late then. I thought we'd kinda standardized the submission deadline at this point. It's usually about 4-5 hours from now. No big (I was probably gonna take the disqual hit anyway this week) but it could be worth adding to the OP to stop this happening in future.




pre-emptive "shut up, sebmojo"

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

While I see what Mojo's getting at, he's also loving wrong. Earlier on the the 'dome's lifecycle I was a lot harsher and more arbitrary with deadlines because, well, I was dumb. I hosed up, and I apologised for it in the past, I changed what I was doing and moved on. If you track the last couple of times I've judged CC stuff, you'll notice I'm a lot more lenient and flexible about letting people in under the wire. I'm more lenient with entries in general, because the nastiness was creating a climate that discouraged people from writing and that's the exact opposite of what we want to do. I was wrong back then. You live and learn.

On the other hand, I'm regular hosed off at Mojo right now. Totally stepping out of kayfabe here, he's been a total oval office to me recently and I'm sick of it. We could sit here trading lovely little jabs and pulling at each others' pigtails all year, but all that's gonna do is turn an argument into a grudge. Let's get this out of the way in a storm of stories, so we can bury the hatchet on move on.

MOJO, I'M CALLING YOU OUT.



Brawl me, motherfucker. Three stories over three weeks. And just so you can't pussy out, I'm offering you a sweet little deal.

If you win, I'll toxx in every 'dome entry I write for the year of 2015. Everything. Brawls, weeklies, the works. I'll also toxx in that I'll enter a minimum of 10 stories during that same year.
If I win, you knock off this unwarranted "thread sheriff" bullshit and you apologise. Plus, I get one free flash rule on you, valid for one week only during the year of 2015.

Somebody screencap this poo poo. You got the better deal than I do here. Not that it matters, because I've beaten you two-for-two and I'm ready to take the hattrick.

SadisTech posted:

Is that a threat?

Screaming Idiot posted:

Not gonna lie, I loving love the idea of Luchasaurus Mex and I'm going to snag this story for future works.