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Happy Mother's Day to the Thunderdome mothers...we have mothers on the 'dome, right? 
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May 11, 2015 00:05
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| # ¿ Jul 20, 2025 04:45 |
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Untitled Opening (465 words) Inspired from “The Hare and the Pineapple” by Daniel Back in the olden days, way before us humans were around, the animals talked. Why did they stop? I have no earthly idea, you should try asking one yourself. One day, in the forest, Watermelon rolled up next to Rabbit. "Hello," it introduced itself. Rabbit jumped so high in the air, she almost cracked her skull on the branches of the tree. "Good Lord! A talking watermelon!" She exclaimed. "But if you can talk, why can't I?" Watermelon asked. "Because I am an animal, and not a plant!" The rest of the animals in the forest took notice. "I just wanted to acquaint myself," Watermelon said as it rolled itself into an unfriendly-looking ape. "This watermelon is unnatural," Ape said. "We should kill it!" Raven cawed as the rest of the animals shouted in agreement. Watermelon tried rolling away, but it was completely surrounded by very unfriendly animals. "Chop him up!" They shouted "Pass him around!" They cried. "Let us feast upon his sweet, sweet flesh!" They demanded. "Silence!" A loud roar boomed through the trees, causing each of the animals present to cower. From the leafy depths stepped out King Lion. "What is this madness?" He demanded as everyone present immediately genuflected. Everyone except Watermelon, of course. Produce like Watermelon weren't exactly kept privy to such social customs. "My Lord," rabbit squeaked, "this, abomination dared address itself to me," she gestured towards the watermelon. "Why would you take such offense?" King Lion asked, his eyebrow raised. "M-my Lord," Rabbit said, doing her best to contain her disbelief and exasperation, "the watermelon spoke to me--watermelons shouldn't talk." "And yet it does speak, isn't that right?" King Lion asked Watermelon. "Y-yes, my Lord," Watermelon said. "How dare you address our king!" Owl screeched, igniting the mob of animals to cry for its execution again. King Lion let out a mighty roar and the forest fell silent once more. "This is curious," he said while stroking his mane thoughtfully. "Your mere presence seems to incite my subjects into riot. You must understand that I will not stand for this." Watermelon dared not speak. "Do you understand?" King Lion asked. "Yes, my Lord," it quietly responded. King Lion grinned from ear-to-ear. "I know exactly how we'll settle this." *** All the animals and Watermelon met at the tallest hill in the forest. Rabbit and watermelon stood next to each other at the very point of the hill. "First one to reach the bottom wins," King Lion said. "My Lord, if I should lose?" Watermelon asked. King Lion said noting and cackled instead. "That watermelon, it has something in it's wings," Owl said sagely. Raven stared at him. "Owl, are you high again?" "That's beside the point!" Owl shrieked. "Ready?" Lion said and raised his paw in the air. With apologies to Daniel Benny the Snake fucked around with this message at 23:47 on May 13, 2015 |
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May 13, 2015 21:53
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Um, I probably should've said this earlier, I'm in.
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May 13, 2015 21:55
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Kellsterik posted:it's pinkwater! pinkwater!!!
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May 13, 2015 23:47
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crabrock posted:Benny. You have been told before that editing your entry is a DQ worthy action.
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May 15, 2015 05:01
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angel opportunity posted:*cheers from the stands for retard death* Sitting Here posted:he's got the mind of a child!! Martello posted:nice
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May 16, 2015 04:36
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angel opportunity posted:so are you comparing yourself to the dimwitted dumbass guy who can't do anything properly?
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May 16, 2015 04:39
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angel opportunity posted:hello teacher, please see below my submission for this week's TD
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May 16, 2015 20:11
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Bad Seafood posted:Benny if you are not going to post constructively please hold off until the interprompt, thanks.
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May 16, 2015 20:19
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Thranguy posted:Full on loss first time out, I guess nowhere to go but up. huh? 
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May 19, 2015 07:45
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Broenheim posted:oh my god shut up nobody cares Overwined posted:No need to get bitchy just because you're all constipated 
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May 20, 2015 21:15
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In
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May 21, 2015 21:57
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Thanks to Entenzahn for my crit. Newspaper reporter I ain't.
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May 24, 2015 06:25
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Man in the Machine (1545 words) With a surgeon's precision, I use a tiny screwdriver to adjust my patient’s bionic arm. "Just hold on, Troy, I'm almost done." "Whatever you say, Doc.” Once I finish, Troy moves his fingers before flexing his arm. “There. You'll be making touchdown passes in no time." "Thanks, Doc," he says and starts rotating his arm from the shoulder before making practice passes. Keep it up, you prick--see where it gets you in a few years when New Athens University bleeds you dry because all you’re good for is passing a football. Me? I had to invent modern bionics before I was accepted, let alone get my scholarship! I head out to the break room to grab my lunch. Inside a few of my coworkers are gawking slack-jawed at the TV like a tribe of neanderthals around a fire. I see him with his cape flapping in the wind as he catches a falling plane like a fly ball. “Hey Jason, didn’t you use to fight him?” One of them asks. Please don’t do this. “How’d it feel to get your rear end beat by him regularly?” Calm down, Jason. Just grab your lunch and-- “You know, for someone who’s supposedly a genius, fighting The Sentinel was really retarded.” They all laugh as I leave--I lost my appetite. Bitter? You’d be too, if you were reduced to this after having an entire city by the balls. *** Right before I step into home, I see a red blur out of the corner of my eye. "Hello, Jason," he says. I don't turn around. "Saw you on the news, never thought you'd actually have time for me." "Jason-" "Shut the gently caress up," I tell him and turn around. "You have no right or authority to be my probation officer, and gently caress what the judge said--this is cruel and unusual punishment and you know it!" “Jason-” “And what about Diana!” I shout at him and get right up in his face. “You could’ve saved her! You could’ve…” "Are you finished?" He asks patronizingly. I take a deep breath cover my mouth, and nod. Here we go. “Twenty years. Twenty long years of assuming the identity of ‘Daedalus’. Twenty long years of us fighting. Twenty years of holding a grudge. Jason, I can’t be everywhere at once. I’m sorry that I couldn’t save her, but do you really think this is what she wants?” If you only knew, fucker. “You’re right. I might not have any official right to be your probation officer, yet not one officer in the whole NAPD was willing. After you were brought to justice the last time, I knew rehabilitation and not punishment was for the best. That’s why you still have a position at Ex Machina, Jason. " I look away. I can't stand looking at his eyes, I want to gouge them out. “If you won’t do it for yourself or do it for Diana, then do it for your daughter,” he says and takes off in a blur. The door opens behind me and there stands my daughter. "Dad, are you okay?" Ariana, my little maze-runner. I can't lie to her, so I say nothing. She wraps her arms around me. "I know Dad," she says. "I know." *** I head up to the roof the next day at work. Ex Machina Inc. is the nation's largest distributor, manufacturer, and servicer of bionics, producing replacements for every conceivable body part. I'll give you two guesses who developed the proprietary software and hardware. I reach the roof, trip the fire alarm and grab my phone to call Ariana. "Dad?" She asks. "Project Icarus," I tell her. "It's time." "Okay," she says excitedly. I don't call Ariana my little maze-runner for nothing--she's my intel gatherer and partner-in-crime. Underneath my home is a small tech cave where she's situating herself. "Executing phase one now." Phase one is a little killswitch I put into each and every bionic manufactured by Ex Machina within a big enough radius to cover New Athens. Within a few seconds, chaos ensues--cars crash, people scream, I can even hear a plane or two fall from the sky. "Executing phase two," I hear her. "ETA 60 seconds." A blue suit of bionic armor flies in the sky and lands behind me--Talos, Mark V. "Are you sure about this?" Her voice crackles from inside the suit. "I've been waiting for this for a long time," I say and get inside. “Let’s get Talos warmed up.” "Heads-up-display,” her voice crackles. A HUD appears through the eyes of Talos. "Check." "Sensitivity." I flex my fingers and the armor flexes. "Check." "Integrity 100%?" I check the HUD. "Check." "Dad?" "Yeah, honey?" "I love you. Mom loves you, too." I stop for a moment. Before I can go sentimental, an alarm sounds. “He’s coming in fast," she tells me. He's already here--his piercing blue eyes seeing right through my armor. "Jason, we don't have to-" I fly right into him and grab him.. Right before he knows what hit him, I flip ourselves in mid-flight and plow him down through Ex Machina. "You-self-righteous-fascist-mother-fucker!" I shout at the top of my lungs while punctuating each syllable slamming my fist into his punchable face as we break through each floor of the building until we finally reach the ground floor. A crowd of my former coworkers surrounds us, gawking as though I just assaulted their collective grandmother. "Leave," I snarl through the helmet as they scatter. Sentinel brings himself up. He's fast, sure, but I don't have to out-maneuver him, I just have to out-think him. Just as he winds up to charge me, I step aside, grab his cape, and buckle down. The idiot actually attaches it to his neck--I hear him choking as I fling him over my shoulders and slam into the earth as hard as I can. The ground shakes as I leave a crater in the asphalt. "Stay the gently caress down," I tell him and slam my heel into his ribs. Like an angry rattlesnake, his arm snaps out and before I know it, my back hurts like hell and I’m about six inches into the asphalt. Sentinel picks me up by the Achilles heel and holds me in the air. I smile and drop my right wrist, spraying acid in his face. “Activate taser gauntlets,” I tell Ariana. “Gauntlets charged at maximum,” her voice crackles. While Sentinel covers his face in pain, I vault myself up, and clap my hands around his head. I smell hair and skin burning but I don’t let go until he does. Once he does, I ram him out of the building and into the streets of New Athens. Bionics are a wonderful thing, but they can only do so much. Sure I'm relentlessly wailing away on super-bitch, but my age catches up with me and my arms get tired. That's all the time he needs to grab me by the neck with both hands and squeeze. “Dad!” I hear Ariana shout I as feel the bones in my throat snapping. I raise my right arm and he grabs it and pins it. "Sucker," I gasp and drop my left wrist, revealing a pair of barrels. I see an "Oh, gently caress" flash in his eyes before I blast him in his smug face with a pair of shotgun shells the size of anti-tank rounds. He roars in pain like as he covers his wounded face. "Right wrist, now!" Ariana shouts. I hold my right palm out and wickedly-long needle extends from my wrist. I grab Sentinel, pull him back, and jam the needle straight into his heart. He roars and smacks me aside. “Wha-what did you-” "Think of it as a long, overdue detox," I tell him. The same "Oh, gently caress" look returns before I wind up and smash him in the face. "See, genius runs in my family. And all the while, I had my little helper running through all sorts of mazes until she found out the truth about you and the little experiments done on you." I can practically see my daughter smile as I grip my hands together and slam them down on the top of his skull. I follow-up by kicking him in the jaw--his face is now nothing but exposed flesh and blood. "And all those years, I've done more than nurse a grudge. I've been preparing for this." "Do it, Dad," I hear Ariana say in my ear. "For mom." I grip his head. "Mercy," he begs. "This is for Diana," I say and twist as he shrieks in pain. With a sickening snap, I rip his head clean off his shoulders. I roar at the top of my lungs in pure rage and bloodlust with his head held high in the air. I notice an audience gathering of shocked and terrified onlookers, some of them with useless bionic limbs. Saying nothing, I drop Sentinel’s severed head and smash it underfoot as the air fills with the traumatized screams of civilians. With nobody daring to challenge me, I callously scrape the gore off my foot and take off. "I'm proud of you, Dad," I hear Ariana say. "She's proud of you, too." "I know honey," I say, tears rolling down my face, "I know."
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May 25, 2015 04:12
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Something to be said about Shakespeare and fate but I don't have a snappy quote ready  IN
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May 26, 2015 05:36
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Thanks to both Blue Squares and Martello for the crits.
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May 28, 2015 04:27
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Tyrannosaurus posted:"A romp in the forest where everyone falls in love." The Willow and the Ribbon (700 words) I sit on the park bench checking the clock on my phone for the upteenth time. My text log reads like this: "meet me @ the bench in front of the library in 10 mins, come alone" That was at 10:30--it's now 10:45 and here I am, sitting in on a park bench in front of the campus library, worried like a motherfucker for my best friend. What happened? What's wrong with her? I hear steps behind me and I whip my head around. "Jane!" I shout and jump up. “What’s-” She shakes her head. Something’s wrong, but I don’t ask; I just nod and we sit on the bench. She inches as far away as she can from me, wrapping her arms around her shoulders, hiding her face from me, breathing silently. We sit there for what seems like forever until I break the silence. "Are you okay?" She turns around and stares at me. Her hazel eyes, once full of life and warmth, are now dead, bloodshot, and staring right through me. "Jane, what-" "Don't," she says quietly. "Okay." "You really want to help?" I nod. "You mean it?" I chew my bottom lip. "Jane, what's-" She grabs my hand and holds it in a vice-grip. I look into her eyes again--she's not looking through me, she's staring right into me. I see it now--something so primal and insatiable that I'd be scared if I didn't also see agony and regret in her. "Okay," I say simply as she leads me towards the grove. *** We're lying underneath a giant willow tree, its branches reaching down to the ground, our naked bodies drenched in sweat, our breathing alternating in a staccato beat. My whole body aches. My head hurts. My heart is palpitating. We haven't said a single word since. I don’t dare say anything. I don't want to ruin...whatever the gently caress this is. She gets up. Before she gets on top of me again, I stop her. "Wait." "What?" "Jane-" "Don't," she says. "What the gently caress is wrong with you?" I ask and get away from her. "What the gently caress is wrong with you?" She asks me with a bitter scowl on her face. "This is what you want, isn't it? Don't you dare lie to me, Johnny, I know you've always wanted to gently caress me." "Not like this," I shake my head and back away. "Jane, what the gently caress's gotten into you?" She glares at me before closing her eyes and walking towards me. "Okay," she says and loops her arms through mine, holding my head, "Listen to me very carefully, Johnny." "Okay," I say and carefully wrap myself around her. "This is the last time we'll ever see each other again." "Wha-" "Stop," she says, her eyes flashing. "There are two ways we can do this. One, I'll tell you and leave right now. Two, we'll spend the rest of the night together and you'll never know. What's it gonna be?" I think back to when we first met--how she stood up for me after everyone laughed at me in Shakespeare class for asking if Hamlet had an Oedipus complex. I think back to all the study sessions together. The gossiping, salacious texts we've traded surreptitiously. How much and for how long we've come to confide in each other. Just like that, she's handed me the end of the ribbon 'round her neck--now all I have to do is pull. Funny thing is, something inside me already knows what'll happen if I pull, that her head is gonna fall right off her shoulders. And when I look into her eyes, I see it--the sorrow, the pleading, the tears rolling down her face. Holding her face in my hands, I kiss her on the lips as deep as I can as we collapse into ourselves and fade away into the darkness. *** I wake up to the sound of nightingales singing. I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, my body aches. I look to the side and she's gone. I scramble for my phone but stop--I can't even bring myself to cry. I don't know what happened to her or us but it's gone now, never to return.
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May 31, 2015 03:16
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Tyrannosaurus posted:
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Jun 1, 2015 00:19
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newtestleper posted:For the record, the person who complained wasn't Fausty. Hit me up in irc if you actually care who it was. Which you shouldn't. Fine. Let's get it all out. It was me. I was the one who got a mod involved. And you wanna know why? It's because three judges are required per prompt. Every one of us who signed up went in blind but I was the only one who asked why there wasn't two other judges I'd be lying if I said this wasn't personal, but you know what T-Rex, how would I know if your decision to make me a dishonorable mention wasn't personal? How do I know that there isn't still any antagonism on your end towards me? Even after that brawl we settled? I don't but what I do know is that I poured a lot of heart and soul into a story which was incredibly unpleasant to write and did not need to be posted. But it did not deserve the DM. That's why I'm crying foul. Because this week should be null and void. Because you broke the rules. And all I have to go on is how you have an extra-special crit ready for me: Tyrannosaurus posted:Wait for my crit, darling. You know what, T-Rex? Keep it to yourself. You are no more qualified to judge anybody than I am. Newtesleper, you think you can say "I know who did it" and then scurry off where I can't go? You are a two-faced snake. To everyone else: call me a rat, call me a snitch, call me every last nasty name in the book. I don't care. Don't for a minute think that you, or anybody else, can break the rules. Because it's not about the rules, it's about us. It's about how we're supposed to be a community of writers and a competition but if one person breaks the rules, that completely destroys any confidence in what we have. I love the Thunderdome and I won't stand for this. I won't stand by and have our community turn into a prison gang. Either of you have a problem with me? Anybody have a problem with me? Good. You know where to find me, I'm going nowhere.
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Jun 3, 2015 02:58
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| # ¿ Jul 20, 2025 04:45 |
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Humboldt Squid posted:I don't want to ban anyone but benny it would a good idea to sit this round out so you can learn to chill.
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Jun 3, 2015 05:01
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