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Earthquake Season Object: chinese seismograph 1,402 words There wasn’t space in the lab for Ivy’s reconstructed Chinese seismograph. The lab was full of things that actually worked, modern seismographs, accelerographs, and geophones, and Ivy knew, as soon as she moved the heavy golden replica into the lab, that she’d attract the contempt of every legitimate scientist that worked there. It wasn’t her fault that her thesis advisor had been so enamoured of her work, though. “The craft, Ivy!” she’d gushed. “I knew your mind was sharp, but I didn’t know you had the artistic gift,” she said, tracing her finger around the teeth of the golden dragons. “Thank you,” Ivy said, her voice low. “But you know what matters is what’s inside.” “Ah, well,” her advisor said, “if you could get the outside with such detail, I know you’ve got the inside with that same kind of fastidious craft. I know -- how about we put this in the seismology lab? See what it can manage to pick up?” Ivy knew better. Yes, she’d gotten the outside shiny, smooth, and detail-to-detail with the other replicas, but when it came to working out how the innards should work, she’d failed time after time. She’d rigged up a system of levers that would create a facsimile of responsiveness -- if there was a big enough earthquake, the levers would definitely tip, and at least one of the dragons would drop the telltale spheres in their mouths -- but it wasn’t accurate. She’d known it’d be a challenge to figure out how the ancient device worked. She’d just hoped she wouldn’t have to do it under the watchful eye of serious scientists, so much more legitimate than the diminutive history of science student. And they were merciless. Once Ivy’s advisor left, the geologists rounded on her. Jordan, a dude with a wispy beard and a beer belly, said -- not to her, but to the room at large -- “So I guess we’re a dumping ground for toys now.” The others laughed uncomfortably. Ivy tried to ignore him. She was used to dudes like Jordan mocking what she was doing, and anyway, she didn’t have time to waste digging through departmental politics. She had to figure out how, precisely, Zhang Heng had gotten the thing to detect quakes, and not, say, the belch of a nearby geologist. Which was exactly what triggered the eastern-facing sphere to drop out of the dragon’s mouth. “What the gently caress is this thing?” Jordan said. “No, really, I want to know.” He picked up the dropped sphere. “Can I have that back, please?” Ivy said. He tossed the sphere to another geologist, who started, fumbled for the thing, and managed a near catch. The geologist rolled his eyes, and tossed the thing back to Jordan. “They slashed our funding,” the other geologist said, in what might have been an apology. “But clearly we have lots of funding for people to make big gold vases and put them in the geology lab, with all of the expensive equipment,” Jordan said, rounding on the Chinese seismograph. He knelt down and peered at the head of the dragon. “If you’re concerned about the equipment, why are you throwing things in the lab?” Ivy asked. Jordan ignored her, but he reached out to touch the head of the dragon. And then the thing snapped out and bit him on the hand. Jordan screamed. No one else saw anything -- but Ivy looked, in horror, confusion, and satisfaction as Jordan dropped the sphere. As Jordan rushed back over to his belongings, Ivy quietly picked up the sphere and placed it delicately back in the dragon’s mouth. It was just still metal to her. But goodness, the thing had gotten Jordan bad. A trail of blood spatter followed Jordan all the way back to his station, where he’d wrapped his hand in scrap paper and had started peering at Ivy. Concealing her smirk, she hoped that the incident had chastened the others, and she resolved to get back to work, removing the cover of the seismograph. Everything had changed. The amalgam of wooden levers, rubber bands, and duct tape she’d last left it was had fused into a silently spinning central wooden dowel, connected by some strange material to the dragon heads jutting out in all eight cardinal directions of the seismograph. And the whole thing felt warm to the touch, buzzing with a kind of alchemical hum. Ivy felt a sense of wonder, of course. But she also felt cheated -- that the seismograph had taken away the satisfaction of solving the puzzle. Unless the solution had always been frat-boy geologist blood; in which case, her admiration of Zhang Heng’s second-century craft deepened even more. But what could she do now? And more importantly, how could she document this? Then Jordan dropped to the ground, seizing, and in that instant, all of the equipment in the room burst into activity. Ivy’s seismograph dropped its sphere facing Jordan, but the modern seismographs drew amplified waveforms. The apologetic geologist hung next to Jordan, drawing his phone from his pocket, but most of the others ran to their equipment to record what had just started happening. And below her feet, Ivy could feel a very faint shaking of the earth, in rhythm to the twitching of Jordan’s body. Jordan’s friend was fumbling with their phone, but the others in the lab were stationed at their instruments, taking a stream of notes. Ivy steadied herself against the Chinese seismograph, which started to visibly vibrate. And as Jordan’s friend shouted “Medical!” into the phone, Jordan’s seizing grew more violent, and, peeking over at a nearby geologist’s workstation, she could see the amplitude waves of the other seismographs growing higher and higher. “All right,” Ivy murmured to the seismograph, “that’s enough.” She looked the guilty bronze dragon in the eye. “You’ve had your fun, and yeah, it was delicious, but--” The lights cut out, draping the room in darkness. Above them, a ceiling beam started to creak. Beams from four or five different flashlights cut across the room, illuminating a few stark scenes: Jordan, biting deep into his lip, jerking wildly back and forth; a few geologists in a huddle, comparing notes and sending furtive glances at Ivy; and the seismograph itself, beginning to spin on an unknown axis, the dragons dropping their spheres one by one. “Are you going to do something?” one of the geologists called to Ivy, with a crisp crack of panic in his voice. “I don’t know what I can do,” Ivy said. “This wasn’t something I was anticipating, you know.” “Well, you’re not just going to stand there while the lab collapses on our heads, are you?” She was supposed to lobotomize the seismograph, wasn’t she? That’d be the heroic thing -- scooping out the innards, hoping that the effort would quell its aftereffects, would counteract the venom it had shot through Jordan’s veins. And she’d have blundered out of the disaster the same way she blundered in. It’s just what they’d expect of her. Most of the time, it’s what she expected of herself. But then she’d never understand what had happened, she’d just be a passive observer in the wake of the thing she’d rebuilt. She stuck her hand between the teeth of the bronze dragon and placed the other hand on the seismograph’s body. “Ready when you are,” she said. The puncture came, but although she was anticipating the stab, Ivy barely noticed it in the flood of sensation. It was as if all of the straight lines of her body had become curled; as if her muscles, her bones, her spine were curled like scissors to a ribbon, and as if she’d grown seven more bodies to accommodate the new complexity of feeling. Somewhere she could hear screaming, rumbling, crashing, but mostly she could hear a low hum, like the sound of a singing bowl. When she opened her eyes, there was nothing but darkness, but she could see beyond the blackness; somewhere, a bright pair of eyes met hers. It occurred to her that a thick piece of rebar was sticking out of her chest, which Ivy noticed with a kind of abstract resignation. There was so much to notice in the darkness of the wrecked lab -- the static in her fading bodies, the depth of hate in Jordan’s penetrating glare, and the warm, everlasting love of the seismograph.
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Oct 29, 2018 01:42
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In. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4yA8zM0ifY
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Oct 31, 2018 01:24
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The Civilians 549 words I send the dreams to you across the ash, and you wake from them bruised. You’ve been sustaining yourself in fits of self-sacrifice, you as the lonely, lost wanderer, stripped of the people and places you reference to remind you of who you’d like to be. You burst into church pantries with clusters of survivors, and although they offer you a place to stay, you take a can of beets, offer a solemn thanks, and you keep walking. You and I both know you’re not going anywhere. You have an Eden in mind, but it looks like no place on earth -- even before the war. I’ve found my people in what used to be a high school auditorium in what used to be Yellowknife, Canada, and here there’s enough food, and the planes only come every few weeks or so. So far, they’ve missed us, and as the ice gets thicker, I think they’ll stop trying. My sleeping bag is warm, I’m working my way through Sweet Valley High, reading the paperbacks with an illicit flashlight under the covers, and they fill me with a sense of aching nostalgia. I still have that little wallet-sized prom photo of the two of us. It struck me that it’d been fifteen years -- that any children conceived that night would have been dreaming of their own dances. You said once that you were a parody of an articulate person, that you had words for everything but the things you actually wanted to say. At the time, I thought those were the words for “I’d like to gently caress other girls,” but when I scry you now, your skin as grey as the waste, sleeping, in an act of daring, in a broken-roofed barn, I hear the apotheosis of the scream that started then -- the cawl from a wound that started within you. You are dreaming of sitting in the passenger seat during a nighttime car ride through a forest road, and even when you are awakened by a merciless dust storm that crawls up in your lungs and leaves you choking for what feels like hours, the dream doesn’t leave you. And so, without knowing why, you head north. In the high school library, I’ve secreted away a stash of batteries inside a dictionary. I know this is selfish. There is a woman here, not too much older than us, who’s been fiddling with pieces of radio equipment, who worries every day about how much time she has to build something that can reach our allies but not the occupying forces, and here I am, reading trashy teen novels, and gazing at a photograph of a you that no longer exists. But as the ice thickens, it’s what’s keeping me warm. And if you, on your trek into the Yukon, find yourself intercepted by one of the last waves of bombs, or if the deepening freeze stops your heart, and you never make it to the doors of this school, maybe that’s better for us both. At least that way, you’ll never know the disappointment that the call of destiny ends only in another human, another empty, brittle place. And then I’ll always have the possibility of you, which has always been so much more tangible than your skin.
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Nov 5, 2018 05:25
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Prompt: And then flashlights and explosions.
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Nov 5, 2018 05:29
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I'll judge!
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Nov 6, 2018 02:26
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In 
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Nov 13, 2018 02:05
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crits Guardian I like this. It kept my attention, I felt bad for the neglected protag dragon, and the prose is pretty good. I do wish there was a little more coherence to this, start-to-finish. The story turns on the suffering in this family, but the first few paragraphs don’t set this up, and in the end, the dragon feels like a sort of minor character in the events of the story. Sure, it captures the suffering-monster, but it doesn’t interact much with Alba or Marta, and it seems like an odd choice for the POV character here. Catalyst This is really hard to follow, mostly because of the unmarked POV shifts, but also because the action relies on sci-fi jargon for the blocking. Couple that with paper thin characters, a bizarre scheme (spend money on fuel and a rocket to send prisoners to Mars, where there’s no life support, instead of just killing the prisoners? ok, sure), and a scattering of bad proofing, and I’m officially Not A Fan of this one. I guess there’s atmosphere going for this story, but that atmosphere’s limited to “futuristic.” Also, not enough of a dragon for me, sorry. The Dragon Rings the Bell This is cute, but not charming enough for me to look past the lack of substance. I like the playful, Alice in Wonderland logic that animates the story, but without anything to cut through the zany sugar this whole thing just feels a little bit twee. There’s also a couple of proofing mistakes that make me suspect this whole thing was thrown together in a hurry, or that the whole point of this story was to write about things being different sizes. And on that front, there’s definitely some good ideas, some good sentences, but on the whole, this thing is just cotton candy. Wrapped Around Your Finger A little heavy on the detail sauce, a little light on the emotional sauce. I do like what we get that’s emotional here, but ultimately I wish there was more on the family’s grief, and less describing the proper handling of dragons. To be fair, I really do love the way you’ve portrayed the loving family, and it’s touching that Sasha has to say goodbye to the wild dragon that’s helped her deal with the grief, but it doesn’t click into place, maybe because we don’t have a great sense of Sasha’s bond with the animal. Still, this is pretty well-written, and it kept me interested all the way through. Daisy and the Drains This is amusing, with a feel-good ending and some of that Good Satirical Banter. I like the part where the theremin playing dragon ate the bad dudes. I mean, it’s silly and goofy and not very substantial, but it’s more coherent than all the other pieces this week, and I’d have been fine seeing this win.
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Nov 13, 2018 02:10
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The Paper Cutter 1768 words I’d just returned from my lunch break when I tripped over the CEO’s severed head. Someone had left it right in front of my office. Later, I’d wonder what the hell had been so absorbing that I’d missed the trickling blood trail. My head had been fuzzy all day, tumbling with the kind of half-formed thoughts and unsprouted notions that usually come with hangovers, though I hadn’t been drinking. But once I tripped on the head, bruising my knee, I knew right away who it belonged to. You saw Parker Kemp’s head everywhere, from magazines to early morning talk shows, all beaming blue eyes and thick curls. The youngest self-made billionaire -- that was the tagline, though it always seemed like a couple of those qualifications were arguable. I’d met him a couple of times at company galas. He was big on hanging out with the Regular Joes, though you got a sense he wasn’t really listening. And now someone had gone all Robespierre on him, and left his head for me to deal with. The whole thing felt surreal, dreamlike, which is why I wasn’t screaming or curled up into a ball. You’d think a decapitation would trigger a surging rush of bracing adrenaline -- that’s what always happens in the movies, regular guys made heroes by unspeakable violence. I just felt like I was swimming through some sort of viscous liquid. In that moment, as I met Kemp’s cold, dumb, blue eyes, I was just wondering where I might find the rest of him. And then I heard the scream from down the hallway, and it hit me deep in the gut, nausea blooming as I recognized the head again. I followed the blood trail down to our copier room where -- Jesus Christ -- Kemp’s body was propped up on two stacks of chairs, arranged so his neck would be in perfect alignment with the paper cutter. Here, the blood was sticky and deep, spotted with pieces of gristle, and Tiana, the admin assistant, was throwing up into a broom closet. “Hey,” I said. “It’s all right.” “No,” she said, her voice watery and low, “there’s nothing-- nothing--” “Yeah, that was a dumb thing to say,” I said, and cleared my throat. The stench, both the iron smell of blood and the putrid smell of bowels, was setting me off guard, fraying the dreamlike suspension that was keeping me going. “I need to know what happened.” “Parker… he came down for his meeting with Shauna.” Shauna was the VP of Public Relations -- my boss, and the only person I knew at the company over age thirty-five. Kemp met with her every Friday. People said they were hooking up, but people here were gross as hell, so I didn’t put much stock in that. “And I thought it’d be fine… everyone was at lunch… if I just stepped out for a little, you know? And then, and then…” She gestured behind her, around her. “How does one person have so much blood?” “Where is she?” Tiana shrugged, a huge, expansive gesture. “Still in her office, I guess?” she said. “This isn’t a thing that happens.” I didn’t know what to say to that, but I knew I didn’t want to keep hanging around in the copier room with Kemp’s torso. “Come on,” I said, as I turned and walked the hallway to Shauna’s office, my shoes tracking bloody footprints as I went. But before I could make it to her office, the door to mine swung open, and Shauna stepped out, her hands up. The first thing I noticed were her immaculate clothes. I’d expected her to look like something out of a horror movie, but she was wearing a blue blouse and a pencil skirt, unruffled, certainly not soaked through with blood. “Oh,” she said. And yet -- one look at her, and I knew she’d chopped off Kemp’s head. “What are you doing in my office?” “Well, I’d like to know what you’ve been doing in your office,” she said, all put together again. Kemp’s head had rolled into a corner behind the open door; now it was facing up, looking at the fluorescent lights, eyes agog. I noticed now that there were three big gashes on his forehead. Maybe the blade had missed its mark the first time. Shauna was studying me, her arms crossed. Clearly I wasn’t noticing the right thing. I peered into the office -- right in the middle of things, my spare suit lay covered in blood. So that’s how it was going to be. “Not murdering Parker Kemp,” I said. “What about you?” “I’ve been in meetings all morning,” she said, voice breezy. “Tiana says you were in with Kemp for a lunch meeting. Tiana saw him go in with you. Come on, Shauna, what happened?” Shauna clasped her hands together and didn’t look at me. I turned around to see Tiana lurking in the distance, probably afraid to get too close. “Come on,” Shauna said. “My office, before the others get back.” --- “Why haven’t you called the police?” Shauna asked, when Tiana and I had crowded into her office. Shauna had taken her big red ergonomic chair; Tiana and I both got these wiry, boxy chairs that dug into my tailbone. “Because this doesn’t seem real,” I said. Shauna raised her eyebrows at Tiana, who shrugged. “Seems like it’s just a matter of time until everyone knows everything,” she said, still looking down. “That’s what you’d think,” Shauna said, “but I appreciate your discretion. It’s very important that everyone here knows everything exactly as it happened.” “What, that I killed Kemp?” I said. “During your meeting, I stormed in, dragged him under a paper cutter, and chopped his head off, then carried the head right in front of my office, dropped it, and changed clothes?” “Slow down,” Shauna said. “I killed Parker.” The fuzz in my head had grown to a roar. Tiana threw up her hands. “Then why did you lie about it in the hallway?” “Well, I wanted to know how he’d respond,” she said, pointing to me. “Not great, I’m afraid. Too defensive. What were you doing in your office?” “I… nothing. Work. Reports. Then I went to lunch. Why did you--” “Parker came in at 11:55. You were already gone then, right?” “I don’t remember. Why does this matter?” “Because it’s pretty unusual that you didn’t hear anything. We were talking pretty loudly, which you probably would have overheard. You would have definitely overheard when I hit him in the head with a three hole punch. If not the first time, then definitely the second, third, and fourth times.” “I didn’t hear any--” “Then great, you’d already left for lunch at 11:55. So when the police ask you when you left for lunch, that’s what you’re going to say, right?” “What--” “Right?” “Are you laying some sort of trap? Because I’m really confused right now.” “Jesus,” Tiana said. “Just say ‘right.’” Shauna smiled her best patronizing media smile. “Right, sure.” “And then you would have had to come back after quarter past one. Oh, no judgement,” she said, “just want to make sure the story’s accurate.” “Did you behead the CEO for PR purposes?” “I’m glad you understand,” Shauna said, smiling, this time, with a little more humanity. “Did you know that Parker loves -- loved -- true crime?” I did, actually. He brought it up in almost every interview, how he couldn’t get enough true crime podcasts, how, and this was a little weird, he was a little obsessed with murderers. I always thought this was eye-rollingly transparent, a way to pretend that he was a normal person, just like the kids today. To Shauna, I nodded. “Well, he knew however good his product was, it’d get eclipsed by competition and obsolescence. But a good true crime story? A billionaire murdered by his own employees? Parker thought that would be real immortality. We’d been planning it for months.” “This is the dumbest poo poo I’ve ever heard in my life,” I said. “You’re telling me that a twenty year old CEO said ‘please murder me, it’ll be fun,’ and you said ‘why not?’” “It’s what he wanted,” Shauna said. “I know it’s hard to believe. I told him he had so much left to achieve, but he said ‘that’s the brilliance of it -- that’s what everyone’s going to think.’” “And you said ‘good point?’” “No, I told him he needed help. I called the police on him once, tried to put him into protection. He denied everything. Said I was a crazy old lady. And he told me not to do it again. And then he started telling me to do it. Do it. Do it. He told me that I was too old to achieve any other kind of immortality -- why not become an inseparable part of his story? I started to dread the meetings. He would get up in my face. Start screaming at me: kill me, kill me, kill me, and if you tell anyone about this, they’ll think you’re crazy, so just kill me, it’s your only way out.” “And so you cracked.” Shauna held up her hands. “Yeah. I did. But he didn’t die, even after I hit him four times. He was still breathing. And I thought through my options. I could get him medical help, now that he was immobilized, but he was still there, in my mind’s eye, telling me do it do it do it, the bloodier the better, and then I thought--” “The paper cutter,” I said. “It’s what he’d like, right? And yes, I put on your clothes. I was trying to scare you off from calling the police, at least until we had a chance to chat, but I suppose that wasn’t necessary. But it’ll be a good part of the story. Probably they’ll arrest you first, until they find my DNA on the suit, find the meeting schedule -- which is why it’s very important that you be fluent with those times, because you don’t want to actually go down for this, right?” “Do you?” Tiana asked. I’d forgotten she was still in the room. Shauna cocked her head. “The story is already in motion. What I want…” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter anymore.” From the other side of the door came a shriek -- it’d taken a while for anyone else to come by. We only had a little while longer to work out the details, as Shauna unraveled them thread by thread.
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Nov 19, 2018 04:47
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Nov 20, 2018 01:39
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A Trophy 476 words Morgan sees a disquieting serenity in the man when he opens the basement door and reveals the huge aquarium, filled close to bursting with a bloated, gelatinous whale. He’d looked attractive enough on Tinder, in a just-came-out-of-the-cellophane sense: young, defined, nice hair. He’d even been bland enough at the bar, adept enough to meet her rhythm, keep her engaged. It’s that good-enough momentum that stops her from bolting, leads her instead down the steps after him, closer to the glass of the tank. The aquarium doesn’t give the whale any room to move, and at first, Morgan isn’t sure if it’s even alive, but sure enough she sees its flesh pulsing on the tank wall, the imprint of its suffering expanding, then contracting. Next to the aquarium is a twin bed, and although there’s a blossoming feeling of revulsion inside her stomach, she has to stifle a laugh. The guy hasn’t even bothered to make the bed, but clearly it’s the destination. The man has stopped talking. He leans against the tank, one hand against the glass, easily slouching, attempting to make eye contact. Morgan clears her throat. “What’s her name?” The man cracks his neck. “Never thought about it,” he says, then approaches Morgan, bending down for a kiss. She’s smacked with a wave of odor as he moves into her face, something like boiled seawater and garbage juice, and she jumps back, startled. “What do most people say,” Morgan asks, “when they see this?” She gestures behind her, and she feels small, aware of the weight of the animal, what must be thousands of gallons of water, the tension of the suffocating mammal against the tank’s glass. She’s stepping back, back toward the stairs, but her steps don’t seem to take her as far, and the stairs seem like they’re in retreat. “A lot of them are speechless,” he says, following her, taking long strides. “But I look in their eyes, and I know they’ve never seen anything like it.” He’s unbuttoning his shirt as he walks, as Morgan grips the railing of the stairwell. “They’re mesmerized.” And then, like a whip, his hand reaches out to the edge of the aquarium, and the glass starts to crack. Morgan runs up the stairs, not looking behind her, hearing the tap-tap-tap of the man’s pursuit, but when she gets to the top and closes the door, the noises stop. She sits on the floor, her back barricading the basement door, but the house is silent. She notices, for the first time, that the man’s walls are blank, no photographs or paintings or even an antique lamp. When she works up the courage, she opens the basement door again, and there’s no tank and no man. Not even the unmade twin bed: just a bare concrete floor, and, somewhere, a whiff of that sickened seasick smell.
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Nov 26, 2018 03:40
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Week 330: Ray Gun Control This week, I want you to write something in the genre of fantasy or sci-fi, BUT I’m looking for a low-stakes conflict. Essentially, I’m looking for fantastical settings, worlds unlike our own, but I don’t want to see any action-adventure-pulp nonsense, I want you to write stories about robots and aliens having spats or a momma dragon that misses her recently nest-gone baby. Willing to take a pretty expansive view of what constitutes “fantasy or sci-fi,” but I will get mad at you if you gently caress up the “low-stakes conflict.” Here are some rules you should follow if you’d like to avoid a DQ:
* No worse-than-death situations of lost sanity, eternal life in pain, or whatever -- nothing cute to get around the previous rule. * Nothing about the fate of the world, or a large city, or that sort of thing. * No poetry, no fanfic, no erotica, no screeds, no Google Docs, no quote tags. Flash rules available on request, via Emily Dickinson. Word limit: 1,000 words Enter by: Saturday, December 1, 4:00 AM PT Submissions due: Monday, December 3, 4:00 AM PT Entrants: Djeser Thranguy Solitair SurreptitiousMuffin autism ZX spectrum Antivehicular Obliterati apophenium derp Saucy_Rodent Ottermotive Insanity Flesnolk QuidProQuid Tyrannosaurus Maigius Deltasquid Sitting Here Judges: sparksbloom steeltoedsneakers sebmojo sparksbloom fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Dec 3, 2018 |
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Nov 27, 2018 04:31
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Thranguy posted:In, and flash, sure. This was in the White of the Year-- That -- was in the Green -- Drifts were as difficult then to think As Daisies now to be seen -- Solitair posted:IN and flash please How many Flowers fail in Wood -- Or perish from the Hill -- Without the privilege to know That they are Beautiful -- Antivehicular posted:In, and I'll take a flash rule. It is an honorable Thought and makes One lift One's Hat As One met sudden Gentlefolk Upon a daily Street derp posted:i guess i better redeemIN myself. i'll take a prompt, too There came a Day at Summer's full, Entirely for me -- I thought that such were for the Saints Where Resurrections -- be -- Saucy_Rodent posted:In me, flash me A Route of Evanescence With a revolving Wheel -- A Resonance of Emerald -- A Rush of Cochineal --
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Nov 28, 2018 01:24
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Ottermotive Insanity posted:In flash The Lamp burns sure -- within -- Tho' Serfs -- supply the Oil -- It matters not the busy Wick -- At her phosphoric toil!
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Nov 28, 2018 13:06
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Flesnolk posted:In, flash, toxx, toxx to complete my crits for at least the last round I judged before Christmas. I know that's a lot of time to give myself for that but I am at the tail end of the semester. Experience is the Angled Road Preferred against the MInd By -- Paradox -- the MInd itself -- Presuming it to lead
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Nov 29, 2018 00:59
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Entries are closed! I’m still looking for third judge, though.
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Dec 1, 2018 12:47
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Submissions are closed.
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Dec 3, 2018 13:01
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week 330 results  HMs: "Vanity Fatigue" by Sitting Here, "Gnosis kai Khara" by Djeser DMs: "Lizat" by derp, "Edge of Gorrin" by apophenium Loss: "Crimes?" by Flesnolk Win: "The House on Lindworm Street" by Antivehicular Welcome back to the blood throne, Antivehicular. sparksbloom fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Dec 4, 2018 |
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Dec 4, 2018 13:18
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I think TD has done a lot to make me more aware of my strengths and weaknesses as a writer, and the crits I've gotten from here have been some of the most valuable feedback I've gotten from anywhere. I'd like to see not only more consistent, timely critting, but also a place where people can really stick their teeth into a couple of stories and figure out what makes them work. I've loved the podcast for that, especially when the hosts disagree on if a story is good or bad, or there's just a long discussion on why the story doesn't work and where it went wrong. Just hearing the good-faith attitude—the "this is pretty bad and silly, but I'm going to assume you've got interesting ideas and you did this for a reason" approach—inspires me to be a better critter myself. I've listened to some of the podcast segments on my worst stories several times, just because it's really valuable to hear how people are interpreting my decisions as a writer. It'd be nice to see some of that in the thread—or maybe a side thread, like Anormalous Blowout suggested. On the other hand, I also miss seeing the really eviscerating line crits that used to come up, so I'm not saying everything needs to get nicer and more academic. It's just cool to see people really deeply engaging with these very short stories! That's always been my favorite part of TD. Definitely wouldn't be in favor of more lenient time requirements. If I'm not feeling the prompt, I don't want to wait two weeks before I can enter again. I'd probably be more engaged with the community if we switched to a Discord. I just have a Chromebook and a phone, and it's easy to forget about IRC in a way that I wouldn't if I could stay logged in all the time. Also, in for this week. I'll take a map assignment!
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Dec 25, 2018 22:11
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 04:41 |
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I'd be up for the occasional off-format week where folks submit crits instead of stories. If someone grabbed the throne and wanted to do the prompt "write a crit," I'd be in for that week.
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Dec 26, 2018 01:07
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