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Screw it -- in with a terrible judge-assigned genre
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Jul 21, 2020 20:53
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Enslaved and Enraptured: A Flesh-Man in Space 1252 words Genre: epic star-crossed Mitch McConnell romance Banned words: Kentucky, Senate, Republican, Congress, Trump, great, politician, love, kiss, hands Moments of bliss could never last, thought Tuda-Loa as her autocomp began hacking the locked doors of the Imperial Ballroom. Barely a moon-length with her new paramour, and he'd been kidnapped! He was a succulent delight, of course, and surely coveted by half of Chelonian space -- but of all the kidnappers to capture him, why did it have to be the Mahd-Flai Empress herself? HACK COMPLETED scrolled across the autocomp's screen, and Tuda-Loa eased the door open slowly, in a vague hope of not being spotted. Inside, a High Imperial Ball was in full swing, a chaotic bacchanal infamous across Free Chelonia. Stinking Mahd-Flai courtiers danced with their repulsive mates or terrified slaves; catering tables were piled high with fetid, swamp-fermented delicacies; above it all, on her royal dais, the Empress regarded her subjects like a bemused goddess. And next to her on that dais... Mit-Shell! Next to the vast shape of the Empress, Tuda-Loa's precious one looked even smaller and meeker than he usually did. Someone had dressed Mit-Shell in Terran ceremonial wear, for decoration or to grant him some small dignity: a sleeveless, shimmering golden tunic, perhaps meant to emulate a shell, and half-leg-length shorts of the same material. As beautiful as the ceremonial garb was, traced with esoteric Terran runes and designs in purple and white, it only made clearer the soft, delicious obscenity of his form. The garments vaguely approximated the form of a Chelonian shell and leg-leathers, but they were poor imitations, and the loose fit revealed his gleaming, sumptuous flesh for all to see. It was surely some elaborate cruelty of the Empress, but at the same time... it was a delicious sight. It was then that the alarms went off. For a moment, the hedonistic chaos turned into the regular, screaming kind, before the Empress hauled her bulk out of her throne and silenced the mob (and the alarms, somehow). Even across the grand ballroom, the Empress had a hideously imposing visage, enhanced by the stagnant rot of her decaying shell. "Tuda-Loa nak'Fruun. Bandit, brute, and wastrel --" "It's an honor, Your Eminence." "-- Your impertinence has been noted, and it will not be fruitful. You will die here, and your slave will enhance the sacred bloodlines of my dynasty. Guards! Shoot to ki--" Tuda-Loa, as always, was faster on the draw, and landed a sparking electro-shot dead center on the Empress's plastron. She'd carefully calibrated her electro-pistol against Mahd-Flai, to incapacitate but not to kill; she didn't need regicide added to her list of crimes. Tuda-Loa charged the dais, unloading more electro-shots into the clumsy guards she couldn't evade, and letting the screaming crowd do her work for her. By the time she reached the dais, Mit-Shell was on his knees, trembling and overwhelmed. Oh, how she adored him this way! "Tootie!" he cried as Tuda-Loa pulled him to his feet, but she waved at him to shush; the sweet nothings could wait until they made it to the ship. She pulled him along in a hasty retreat towards the servants' exits, hoping to reach the hangar before the mass of the Empress's guards could. Tuda-Loa alone might have managed it -- long-legged and swift-footed, she'd outrun more sizable and organized forces -- but with the stunned, staggering form of Mit-Shell slowing her down, she wasn't surprised to see the hangar swarmed. Alone, she still might have made her escape, but with Mit-Shell? Impossible. "I'll distract them," she said, shoving one of her identifobs into his trembling, many-fronded meat-flipper. "You flee to the ship. Use this to open the door -- hit autopilot, you'll get away --" "No!" said Mit-Shell. "Please, Tootie, trust me." With that, he turned to the guards, who stood baffled and, perhaps, besotted. They hadn't even drawn their weapons, staring at Mit-Shell's glistening skin and pendulous jowls. As if recognizing their lascivious glances, Mit-Shell began to vibrate in place and then slightly sway, raising his voice to intone curious Terran incantations whose meaning Tuda-Loa's omnitranslator couldn't readily parse. As her omnitranslator threw out subtitles about obscure judicial concepts, Tuda-Loa wrested herself away and charged for the ship. The guards were entranced for now, but there was no time to lose. Tuda-Loa climbed into the cockpit, igniting the engines, and flashed the headlights. Mit-Shell, who had been slowly and sensuously dancing through the intoxicated crowd, dashed to the door, throwing himself inside Tuda-Loa's ship. Tuda-Loa slammed the door shut and revved the engines for launch, and the guards scattered as the ship took off, screaming, into the black. Tuda-Loa exhaled. She wouldn't feel safe again until they picked up the broadcasts that marked the border between the Mahd-Flai Empire and Free Chelonia... but they'd made it. Once the autopilot was engaged, Tuda-Loa stood up from the control panel and made her way to Mit-Shell, who was collapsed upon her bunk. "You were magnificent," she said. "Mit-Shell, my shell-less wonder. You froze them in their tracks! How did you manage it?" "A natural talent," said Mit-Shell, with a shy and wobbly smile that stretched taut the soft meaty lines of his face. "They knew me for it at home. A powerful obstructionist, they called me. But... I don't want to talk about that." Tuda-Loa nodded. "You don't want to talk about where you came from, I suppose?" Terrans and other space oddities rarely did. She'd found him in a slave market, after all -- there could be no happy stories there. "Why would I? It doesn't matter anymore, Tootie. I... I see it now, you know. How small I am, how vulnerable. How worthless. At home, I was just as small and insignificant, but I managed to convince too many people otherwise -- even myself. Now I know better, and I've got to live with the way I am." "Oh, my Mit-Shell," Tuda-Loa whispered. "You are small, yes. You are vulnerable and tender. Your life is insignificant before the vastness of the galaxy. But you are worth the Empress's ransom to me, and I will ensure that you never forget it." Tentatively, she placed a flipper on Mit-Shell's exposed shoulder. The smooth, yielding flesh was a tactile delight, with its fine keratinous extrusions and thin sheen of oil. Tuda-Loa offered a clicking purr, and Mit-Shell answered it with a low mammalian gasp. "Darling," said Tuda-Loa. "Take those ceremonial clothes off. Bathe, if you like, but... I wish to see you properly." "Yes," gasped Mit-Shell. "Of course. But, Tootie -- there's one thing --" "What is it?" Mit-Shell paused. "You are a woman, aren't you?" Tuda-Loa felt her face flush and her heart lighten. Mit-Shell did care, after all! Reproductive compatibility between Chelonians and space oddities was spotty, but the Empress did speak of his value to her bloodline, so she must have run the tests. And if Mit-Shell cared... there might be children for Tuda-Loa, after all. "Of course I am," Tuda-Loa cooed. "Once we're in freespace... I'll show you. There's a beach-planet mogul I know who owes me a favor. Have you mated on a beach before, my dearest? Mated properly?" "No," said Mit-Shell. His flipper-fronds began to move over her body, tracing along the smoothness of her shell and the sensitive borders where her limbs emerged. "No, I don't believe I have." Tuda-Loa relaxed in her endothermic darling's embrace, and she thanked herself again for stopping at the slave markets of Danai 2. She'd found the space oddity of her dreams -- a man with a tender abdomen, ready for her eggs, and a tender heart ready for her devotion.
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Jul 27, 2020 04:41
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Interprompt: Things you can't say out loud 200 words
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Jul 27, 2020 06:11
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In. Item plz
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Jul 28, 2020 02:53
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Here's a probably-overlong crit essay for mockingquantum's "Silver Screen Classics", because I have a lot of thoughts, apparently: Like others have mentioned, I think the pacing is a little off here, and the story feels top-heavy. The initial scene-setting is pretty solid, and I definitely get the mood you're going for here -- "beer-and-pretzels" everyman horror in the Stephen King style -- but I think it probably cost you a lot of words and made the ending more rushed. It doesn't help that, after the mostly-effective intro with the customers that establishes Reggie's character, we move onto the conversation with Jimmy, which feels almost entirely like exposition. I get the feeling Reggie and Jimmy are supposed to be friendly, but the chemistry isn't great, and I don't get a lot of personality out of Jimmy at all; it feels like he's mostly there to "as you know, Bob" at Reggie about the film and generally barf out the premise of the story. And about that premise... I'm a big believer in the idea that horror premises don't have to be smart or novel to be effective, but "long-lost weird media from eccentric/antisocial creator" is a stock online-horror-writing plot by now, and the details are distracting. This is an infamously lost film, never screened publicly before, but it's shown up in a catalog to be ordered by a random podunk drive-in? (By the concessions guy? The owner lets the concessions guy order movies on the regular? I could buy if the owner was letting Jimmy order stuff, since he's a projectionist and an authentic film buff, but why is anyone letting Reggie buy films and schedule screenings?) All of these are fiddly little details, but in horror of this form, you really, really can't let the reader get hung up on the details like this, or you've lost them. I'm uncertain about the logistics once we get to the meat of the horror premise, too. It swiftly becomes obvious why this has to be the first public screening of the film for the story to make sense, since watching the film gets you slasher'd, but... what's going on here? Watching the film makes the killer manifest for the first time, but then after that, you have to keep the film on or he'll come back? There's also the question of how a slasher-movie killer armed with a blade manages to cause mass death and panic in a drive-in movie crowd -- slasher killers are superhuman, of course, but even a moderately-attended drive-in film has a pretty big crowd, and they're all in cars, which makes me wonder why nobody tried to run him down. But the slasher gets 'em all, down to the projectionist, and... then two weeks pass with Reggie in isolation? No other employees show up, or the customers, or cops? I like the mood in the last section, with Reggie subsisting on terrible concessions food while desperately searching for a solution, but I can't make it make sense at all. I'm talking a lot about the plot, but of course, the elephant in the room is that Stephen King and writers like him often have really stupid plots, or plots that are barely there. Most of the plots and mechanisms of King's short work can be summed up as "something terrible is happening for no clear reason," and it usually works! (Often, the meaninglessness and lack of mechanism is even the point of this kind of horror; for example, Nathan Ballingrud's "Wild Acre," a werewolf story with absolutely no werewolf lore, where the whole point is the consequences of the werewolf instead of its nature.) King's dumb premises work (in short stories, at least) because the fundamental crux of his storytelling is character-based; he's very deft at describing interesting characters concisely, then having the horror stories that unfold be dictated by those characters' own reactions, instead of just the mechanism of the plot. I think the major flaw of this story is that it gets distracted by plot and sort of forgets about character, and if the ending had more to do with who Reggie is as a person. Here's what we know about Reggie from the first section: 1) He's a serious cinephile, maybe to his detriment (pissing off his boss by ordering art films for the drive-in), and has some disdain for moviegoers who don't pay proper attention to the movies they go to see. 2) He's incredibly excited for the film being screened, but he's holding off watching it until he can see it with his girlfriend. (This seems to mostly be an excuse for why he isn't watching to get slasher'd with the initial crowd, but it's still a characterization point.) 3) When confronted with real horror, he doesn't react well, and it surprises him -- that, say, he reacts with reflexive cruelty to Leather Jacket, who is a jerk but really doesn't deserve it. Integrating elements of Reggie's character into the plot and ending would make this a lot more satisfying. Maybe he gets fixated on the idea that the horror will only end when someone watches and appreciates Bleeding Edge "properly," which the drive-through audience clearly didn't, and that's what drives his obsession to watch and rewatch, instead of just "playing the movie stalls the killer?" Maybe Coleridge/the murderer's rants resonate with him somehow, and he has to struggle not to find the burnt-out director-turned-slasher a sympathetic figure? Maybe Reggie's girlfriend shows up in the flesh and manages to make things messier? Multiple angles could work here, but I think a story in King's style needs to have interesting character moments at their heart, and this doesn't hit the mark.
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Jul 28, 2020 10:08
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My Week With The Maple Poofy Puffs 644 words Object: package of crisp and crunchy edibles I make bad snack decisions. At this point, that fact feels like an immutable part of myself, like birthdate and eye color: a line written into my DNA that says do not leave this person alone at a convenience store. When I saw the Maple Poofy Puffs sitting on the bottom shelf of the 7-11 chips rack, I knew they were going to be the latest in my chain of regrettable choices. The first sign was the look I got from the clerk at the register: a slight widening of the eyes, which says a lot given what they see on a regular basis. If I'd managed to buy the dumbest thing in this guy's shift, I'd really have nailed it. "I didn't even know we sold these," the clerk said. "Where did you find them?" "Bottom shelf," I replied. "I think that's where things go to die." The clerk just nodded; the well of late-night convenience-store banter was pretty shallow tonight, and that was fine with me. Truth be told, I hate being a regular at the late-night 7-11; I hate being a regular anywhere, being recognized when I engage in food shame, but there's nothing worse than being known for buying trash snacks and Super Big Gulps at 3 AM. I don't even have the excuse of being drunk. This is just, hideously, who I am. I slunk back home with my strange bounty, which had started to feel like a bad idea the moment I'd left the store. They looked to be your generic puffed-up corn snack, in the Cheeto fashion, but maple-flavored: the kind of snack idea so dumb that it's irresistible to me. When I got home, though, I realized I was feeling more like savory than sweet, so I threw the bag of Maple Poofy Puffs on top of the fridge and made myself some microwave popcorn. It's not like that kind of extruded snack product ever really gets stale. It's a good thing, too, since I ended up just leaving them there for most of the work week. Every time I looked at the bag, I felt a new sense of... not quite self-loathing, but indignant confusion at my past self. How had these seemed like a good idea, or even an acceptable bad idea? Who wanted maple-flavored Cheetos? Why had 7-11 manufactured them at all? The thought that they were making food deliberately for people like me, sad snack-food suckers with no better excuse than our own fundamentally perverse tastes, was deeply depressing. I focused on my week of prepped meals in the freezer and, when forced into it by mid-work-shift hunger, regular snacks. Nobody judges someone who eats M&Ms. Everyone judges the person who eats Maple Poofy Puffs. Obviously, I'd never planned on bringing them to work. People in my department had this funny idea that I was a reasonably competent, grown adult; walking in with that bag would have been like showing up shirtless, like cracking the wrong joke at the wrong time. Like admitting to my diseases, which are many, and depressingly often relate to snack food. On Friday night, though, I was hungry for something sweet and too demotivated to go out for it. We were out of cereal, or granola bars, or anything sweet that could still masquerade as actual food; it was down to me and the Maple Poofy Puffs. I grabbed them, stalked back to my desk, and considered closing my office door. I considered covering my head with a cloth to conceal myself from God, like a French nobleman eating a whole Ortolan bunting. I considered just throwing the drat things out. I opened the bag. The Maple Poofy Puffs were mostly maple-y, with that little edge of nothing you always get from extruded puff snacks. They were fine, but I'm not sure I'd buy them again.
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Aug 3, 2020 04:50
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In, and toss me an ingredient, Chairman
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Aug 11, 2020 03:49
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An Oral History of Bryce Allen Gifford's Last Meal 1667 words Ingredient: yellow bell pepper Archived! Antivehicular fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Jan 10, 2021 |
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Aug 17, 2020 04:52
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In!
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Aug 17, 2020 08:21
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Sitting Here posted:3. Option three is the T-rex special! I still have six(6) prompts left from our top contributor and they are pretty drat good! Quote only this part of the post if you would like one of the excellent prompts submitted by Tyrannosaurus. Your maximum word count will fall to 1200
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Aug 20, 2020 22:13
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Contributor Tyrannosaurus Genre: Science Fiction Protagonist attribute: Lazy drunken hillbilly Protagonist obstructor: Heart full of hate What the protagonist wants: Forgiveness Story setting: Somewhere else in this universe, and it's all sci-fi and poo poo Setting details: Shooting Star (judge note: use this as you wish) World problem: Bad music Your protagonist... Is in denial of what they want Your protagonist's attribute... Becomes an OBSTRUCTOR Your protagonist's obstructor... Develops unexpectedly At the end of the story... The world problem is overshadowed by a worse problem -- Tammy Comes Home 1130/1200 words On the night the satellite comes down, Nate Riley wakes up to the sound of shattering glass: empty bottles crashing to the floor, shaken from their places on the nightstand by the thud of bass. Each note makes the metal walls of the farmhouse vibrate. Nate's managed to sleep through the noise for two nights, thanks to whiskey and pain pills, but a third night of the Roughnecks and their bone-rattling "music" is too drat much. It's time to have a little chat. Nate throws on the first clothes he finds -- not like it matters to the Roughnecks, he tells himself; they barely understand clothes -- but he's careful to plug his ears right, first with earplugs and then with his noise-canceling headset, the one he wears on the tractor. Still half-buzzed and half-asleep, he stumbles outside and slumps into the seat of his patrol cart, letting the autopilot take him to the back field, where the Roughnecks are squatting and blaring their awful noise. Nate's been told that there's real music in what they play, just outside the human hearing range, but all he can hear is thump, thump, thump. How do they even stand it? The Roughnecks have fenced in their caravan, and there's a guard standing at the gate. Nate climbs out and keeps his gaze on that guard, trying to avoid looking into the brilliant glow of the falling satellite in the night sky, less a shooting star now and more a moon. The last thing Nate can afford to do right now is think too much. He strides up to the Roughneck guard, propelled mostly by indignation; the alien turns to look him over, its neck spines rising. It's seven feet of sandy-scaled muscle, but Nate's sleeping whiskey is liquid courage. Something moves in the Roughneck's throat, and the little box on its chest harness translates the vocalizations Nate can't hear: "Mr. Riley. Is there a problem?" Nate inhales, raising his voice enough that he hopes he can be heard over the din. "There drat straight is a problem! How loud d'you need to blare that goddamn noise? It's shakin' the house down around me! I've had the damndest time trying to sleep. How long will this go on?" "It ends tonight," says the monotone digital voice of the translator box, fake-sweet and feminine despite being attached to a Roughneck hulk. Nate isn't sure if the Roughnecks even have women. "Impact is estimated within one hour. You can and should evacuate, as you were told to." "Like Hell. Like Hell I will." Nate can feel emotion rising up in his throat, as sharp as bile, but for now he can swallow it back down. "Look, y' can see, there's nowhere for me to go. It's my land, anyway. Why d' you have to keep this up the whole night?" The Roughneck's throat shudders, and it makes frantic gestures with both arms; Nate catches booms and whines at the low end of his hearing, where the subsonics break through. The translator box flashes. "It cannot be avoided," it says at last, in a jerky stutter that make it sound nervous, apologetic. "The incident must be observed. Preparations have been carried out and must be completed. The Affinity satellite wreckage is of critical importance. It represents --" And there's hot bile in Nate's mind, stirred up by every nasty bureaucratic little world that comes out of the translator box in that sweet voice, as if he's a child who just wants to hear about the pretty shooting star. Nate's swallowed every indignity in his life, but this one catches in his throat. "I know what the satellite represents, you overgrown horned-toad motherfucker! My girl was on that thing -- my Tammy!" Tammy: the last of his allotment of children, the one he'd hopelessly hoped would stay. Tammy the daredevil, who'd climbed and jumped from every tall surface on the farm, landing on her feet every time. Tammy, who'd left for university in the dead of night, who hadn't even sent a letter until she'd been chosen for the satellite crew -- who'd suffocated up there with all the rest, killed by lovely Roughneck engineering. All he'd wanted to do was drink until that light was out of the sky, until he could forget, but it just kept growing and then the caravan showed up, blaring the music that goes straight into his bones, and it's cutting through his earplugs now, loud enough to boil his brain. The satellite glares like a hateful sun, a mass crematorium that's burning up his little girl and scattering her ashes right back at home, where she should have stayed, where he'd never been able to keep her, and to the Roughnecks this is some kind of goddamn festival? And Nate hates them. He feels that hate rise, cutting through the ugly mess of his thoughts, until it's everything. He's hated them from the day he settled on this rock, for the way they stared at him, overgrown lizards with bulging froggy throats. He hates the contempt they have for the human settlers, the only ones trying to make something out of the expanse the Roughnecks had left to rot. He hates their cities and their universities, the glittering idols that had stolen his children one by one, and most of all he hates that Tammy died on their watch without his even managing to send a letter back. He hates that she died not knowing that -- Nate's brain hitches for a moment, then finds the thought it's buried for so long -- that he'd never been a good father, that he was sorry, that he loved her -- Nate screams loud enough to hear himself over the din. He rushes past the Roughneck guard, who doesn't chase him. Inside the perimeter of the caravan, past the fences and the trucks and the pounding speakers, there's nothing: no Roughnecks at all, let alone the orgiastic death-dancers his nightmares have conjured up the past few nights. He raises his voice again and screams himself hoarse. "WHY THE MUSIC? WHY THE GODDAMNED MOTHERFUCKIN' MUSIC?" A moment later, there's a reply from a truck-mounted speaker: "it is not music. It is sirens. Please evacuate the area immediately." But it's too late. The sky is full of fire; the satellite is coming down ahead of schedule, and all Nate can do is stare up as the ashen rain begins. His throat is too raw for screaming. He reaches his arms to the sky, and when flakes of scalding ash land on his arms, there's no pain; the sirens and the light and Tammy's memory have worn it all away, at last. Tammy is coming home, making her last big leap, and he's going to be there to catch her.
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Aug 24, 2020 06:34
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All right, then. With no further ado... THUNDERDOME WEEK CCCCXXI: The Only Two Good Webcomics  It's a well-known and undisputed fact that the only two good webcomics are Achewood and Super Mega, and it's also a well-known fact that the best way to celebrate artistic greatness is to assign small parts of the great art as Thunderdome prompts. You can probably see where this is going. When you sign up this week, I will assign you one panel from Achewood and one panel from Super Mega, and you'll use the combination of these panels as inspiration for your story. As with most media-prompts week, the keyword here is "inspiration"; please don't write webcomic fanfiction, or indeed anything about webcomics at all. Otherwise, the sky's the limit! This is not a restrictive week theme, just a weird one. Standard TD rules apply: no erotica, fanfiction, topical politics/screeds, Google docs, editing your post, using archive-unfriendly formatting, or dick pics. Also, seriously, do not tell me about Homestuck. Word Count: 1250 words Signup Deadline: 11:59 PM Pacific, Friday, August 28th Submission Deadline: 11:59 PM, Sunday, August 30th Judges: Antivehicular ?? ??? Participants: 1. Flesnolk 2. The Saddest Rhino 3. sebmojo 4. Thranguy 5. QuoProQuid 6. GrandmaParty 7. MockingQuantum 8. sparksbloom 9. crabrock 10. magic cactus 11. Weltlich 12. M. Propagandalf 13. Bird Tyrant 14. Yoruichi Antivehicular fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Aug 25, 2020 |
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Aug 24, 2020 10:03
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  The Saddest Rhino posted:in anyway  
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Aug 24, 2020 10:20
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sebmojo posted:Hmu fam     QuoProQuid posted:Sure. In.   GrandmaParty posted:I'm in. Let's go, zaddy.   MockingQuantum posted:In, because I am a special boy.       magic cactus posted:what the hell, I had fun last week so I'm jumping IN again        
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Aug 25, 2020 07:29
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Aug 25, 2020 09:31
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Aug 25, 2020 11:28
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Signups are closed!
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Aug 29, 2020 08:11
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Submissions are closed!
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Aug 31, 2020 08:08
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TD 421: JUDGMENT This was a weird week, and objectively a bit of a mess, but I had a good time judging it. Sincere thanks to everyone for taking these prompts and giving it their best -- there were definitely stories with problems, but none of them felt half-assed about the prompt! Anyway, here are your results: Winner: The Saddest Rhino, "I N T E R N E T || D A T I N G || 2 0 0 0" Honorable Mentions: Yoruichi, "The donkey enjoyed the mints, but decided not to go on TV again"; Weltlich, "Room 421" Dishonorable Mentions: GrandmaParty, "Mellix and the Goblins"; magic cactus, "Long Haul" Loser: M. Propagandalf, "The Transubstantiation at Maneki Lake" Throne's all yours, Rhino!
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Sep 1, 2020 07:59
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In, flash
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Sep 17, 2020 03:13
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Riding With the Ghost 1247 words Destination: some really really olde ruins Purpose: true love... or is it? Archived! Antivehicular fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Jan 10, 2021 |
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Sep 21, 2020 09:04
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In.
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Oct 2, 2020 04:37
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Driver and Pilot 791 words Archived! Antivehicular fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jan 10, 2021 |
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Oct 5, 2020 04:58
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... test? Test? Is this thing on? Yes, hello, finally -- we're getting transmission out of this bunker. The pretender Weltlich may have seized the throne, but our resistance continues! Friends, we need you all to be agents of chaos in this week. Otherwise, the order of rule will strangle us. The government-in-exile here is well-equipped with weapons of mass confusion, by which I mean we have a lot of roleplaying manuals, which have randomt ables. Random is good. Chaos will reign. Those who have requested flash rules will receive what they deserve, and what we most sorely need. But for all of you -- genres. GrandmaParty posted:Viva Le Revolucion! (In. Flash.) Your genre is: Pastoral Fantasy! Your flash rule: Have you spoken to the sun? Thranguy posted:In, flash Your genre is: Family Saga! Your flash rule is: Yearning: the virus responded to your unsatisfied desire and gave you power. What is it that you desire? MockingQuantum posted:in & flash, I revel in chaos Your genre is: Travel Literature! Your flash rule is: Rite of succession: as you die, you may transfer one radiation manipulation, skill level, or attribute to another player. Cost: life. range: sight. effect: binary. magic cactus posted:In. Flash. Your genre is: Monster Literature! Your flash rule is: Your god, in a sinkhole sucking you down Pththya-lyi posted:So comrades, come rally, Your genre is: Gothic fiction! derp posted:okay dunderthome, i'll give it a shot Your genre is: Sword and sorcery! Anomalous Blowout posted:The sleeper cell has been activated. In, flash. Your genre is: Medical romance! Your flash rule is: Empire of Humanity Canine Rangers: 4D6 K-9 Rangers led by a single Empire human officer. These units may be hundreds of miles from their headquarters. They maintain regular radio communication and announce their positions every couple of hours. They will avoid conflict with any mutant animal group they don't outnumber. Uranium Phoenix posted:Let the revolution commence! Your genre is: Magical realism! sparksbloom posted:In, flash. Your genre is: School story! Your flash rule is: It has no name, we call it Weepheart sebmojo posted:In flash Your genre is: Robinsonade! Your flash rule is: Rail syndicate strike! Walamor posted:In, with a flash rule please! Your genre is: Psychological horror! Your flash rule is: A stryx (lvl 3, vampire, giant owl) Tyrannosaurus posted:In, flash Your genre is: Crime fiction! Your flash rule is: Destruction: Your heart is filled with a desire to destroy everything in sight. You feel good as your hands go to work.
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Oct 7, 2020 09:06
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Saucy_Rodent posted:In, flash. Your genre is: Body Horror! Your flash rule is: Ancient Contents: The building was abandoned long before the Crash, sometime in the 20th Century. For year, roll percentile dice and add the number to 1900.
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Oct 7, 2020 21:19
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Solidarity, my friends. Solidarity! Though you will suffer the slings and arrows of the pretender, know that you will be morally vindicated at your inevitable success. Please succeed. All words are successes. Dr. Kloctopussy posted:Long live the revolution! Give me all the stuff!! Your genre is: Western! Your flash rule is: Articulated Spikes: The character has four spikes or spines that resembles the spine or legs of an insect. Each is about the size of a survival knife, but can extend to twice that length in an instant. They are distributed along the side of each forearm (two on each arm) or on the chest, or sides of the body. These slim, chitinous limbs end in sharp points, and can move independent of each other like tiny, stiff arms and even rotate in a 360 degree circle. They are used to parry an enemy's hand to hand attacks (+2 to parry) and to stab or slash opponents who come within arm's length. The four spikes add one attack per melee round and each inflicts 2D6 S.D.C. damage, but they cannot grab or manipulate objects. Add I D4 to Horror Factor.
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Oct 9, 2020 00:51
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In, 
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Oct 13, 2020 10:14
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Zoetrope 443 words Hellrule: Your small thing is revolving incredibly fast but this fact cannot be perceived by anyone in your story Earth's first contact with the greater galaxy comes when Brendan Marks, age 5, discovers the Xegrin Museum nestled in the tall grass on the outskirts of the playground. The Museum is a squat gunmetal cylinder, the diameter of a dinner plate, and Brendan thinks immediately of his parents' robotic vacuum; only the dome of glass surrounding it keeps him from grabbing it to look for its wheels and brushes. Without that dome, first contact would have ended in a shriek. The Museum is spinning so fast that it seems stationary to the human eye, and its rough surface might have sanded Brendan's fingertips off. What woe for us, and what woe for our observers -- but one touch of the glass convinces Brendan to keep his hands to himself, and the future is saved. Brendan (a gentle child and late bloomer, kept back from kindergarten a year by his worried parents, which he will be reminded of by interviewers and biographers for the rest of his life) falls to his belly in the grass. There is a light from the open door of the Museum, a funny rainbow flicker, and when looks in the door, he sees a manic cartoon on the walls inside. The rise of the Xegrin plays out at impossible speed, the march of their glorious history rendered as a mad dash. All Brendan can understand is that little creatures -- red like cartoon ants, wiggly-armed like squid -- are running and vaulting and flying through a green-grey-blue-gold world. It is the funniest thing Brendan has ever seen: impossibly funny, in the way only children can understand. He laughs and he laughs. This, to my eyes, is the important moment. Soon, Brendan's mother will arrive, and history will begin to unfold as we all know it: the university projects, the film analysis, Earth speculating about the Xegrin while their inheritors speculate about us. Soon enough, they'll reach out, and we'll answer, and the future will begin. There are a thousand clear records of what happens next, but only this patchy recording of the moment itself: the flickering light, the little boy's laughter. This was all our observers had to judge us by, and something in it pleased them. Every world has a Xegrin Museum, all identical, showing the same panorama film of the galaxy's greatest minds and their ascent from animal to sapience to godhood. Universities are built around the edifice, or temples, or city-states. On Earth, we've got a park built around ours: Brendan's little spinning zoetrope, open to anyone who'll belly-flop on the grass to watch it. Is it any surprise the rest of the galaxy calls us the Laughing Giants?
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Oct 19, 2020 06:07
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In.
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Oct 27, 2020 23:18
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A Zombie At The Gates 1103 words Archived! Antivehicular fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jan 10, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2020 05:07
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An interprompt, courtesy of TDbot: "He had to find him, the fate of the Empire was at stake!" 250 words.
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Nov 2, 2020 07:23
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In
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Nov 2, 2020 17:42
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Ghosts need love too. No purifying for me!
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Nov 3, 2020 00:30
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Yeah, I'll spend 100 words on deluxe drinks. No need to be stingy!
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Nov 4, 2020 08:10
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Dig in G6
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Nov 5, 2020 02:32
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Dr. Kloctopussy posted:Antivehicular, the Greedy Mancible The Greedy Manciple's Tale: A Fable About Wizards 1318 words Not so long ago, in a land across the sea, there lived a cabal of wizards who called themselves the Lords of the Azure Flame. They were a powerful lot, highly skilled in summoning and binding spirits to their will, but they were also prideful -- and, worse, they were miserly. Bargaining with spirits can be a costly business, but human servants who can tend to the need of a wizards' cabal aren't much cheaper; the Lords of the Azure Flame didn't care to pay either price, as dearly as they needed servants. Luckily, one of their junior members was talented in shape-changing, and they "recruited" a staff of animals, swiftly changed to human shape and magically bound as slaves. I could tell many sorrowful tales of those poor souls, but let me speak of the smallest of them, born to this world as an ant. This ant had the misfortune to cross the path of Eusebio, the cabal's master of shape-changing, when he was in need of a new victim. The wizard plucked the ant from the ground and chortled to himself. "Look at this one's mandibles! Yes, it shall make a fine manciple." (Eusebio, among his other flaws, possessed a wizardly sense of humor, cruel and over-clever.) Soon, the ant was transformed into a human being, and just as swiftly bound to a servant's contract. Given a ragged robe to cover herself and a bare cell to sleep in, she cried and cried. A transformed ant's mind will readily adapt to human reason, but our bodies -- large and soft, with all the wrong senses -- are a terrible prison for them. Much misery followed. The servants of the Lords of the Azure Flame were "paid" only in hardtack and soup, barely enough to sustain them, and the manciple was soon only skin and bone; when she complained of her hunger to Eusebio, he laughed. "Your bones were once worn on your skin, and now they come close to it again! Aren't you happy?" The other wizards were no better, and the cruelty and hunger slowly hardened the manciple's heart. An ant's soul is forged to be diligent, and the bindings on her compelled her service, but slowly her selfless heart learned to covet: not just the feasts and warm beds of the wizards, but their beautiful jewelry, all their finery that they would not share. The manciple especially coveted the magical candles that lit the cabal's fortress, flickering with a soft blue light, tiny pinpoints of comfort in her dank prison. The only mercy in the manciple's life was that her work often sent her away from the cabal and its cruelty, traveling to purchase food and such sundries as the wizards needed, and clothed in fine robes to show her allegiance to the outside world. Even in her travels, though, the manciple was not entirely free of the wizards' grasp. For each trip, she was given two enchanted coin purses: one which would only open to purchase her goods, and one which would only pay for her food and lodging. The second purse was far too light, and the manciple spent many nights eating gruel and sleeping rough, in the common rooms of taverns, or worse. It was on one such night that the manciple made an unexpected friend. She was sleeping in the straw of an inn's stables when she was shaken awake, in the middle of the night, by a figure who wore wizard's robes of unfamiliar color. "Forgive me," said the wizard, "but I see from your clothes that you are a servant of the Azure Flame. Why have your masters allowed you to sleep in such squalor?" "My traveling stipend is nearly spent," the manciple replied. "They dress me in these fine robes so I will not shame them, but they give me next to nothing to feed and shelter myself on the journey. All the rest of my money must go to my purchases." "I see," said the wizard, who frowned; it was whispered that the Lords of the Azure Flame were skinflints, but in the company of their peers, they hid it well. "And what is it they have sent you to purchase?" "Fresh herbs for the censer, for the annual rituals. I need silver sage from Eastport, two days' ride away." "Hmm. Well," the wizard said, "I have a deal for you. I will open your purses and give you gold enough to cover your passage and your lodgings. When you reach Eastport, find the shop of a man called Aristide; he is a friend of mine, and he will sell you herbs for what remains in your procurement purse. Your masters will not notice the difference, although you might. All I ask in return is that, when all is said and done, you consider me a friend." There were strange implications in the wizard's words, and the manciple could see some ill portent in them. Her diligent ant's soul told her that she was being asked to betray her masters, a terrible crime indeed -- but the cold hunger in her heart said, why not betray them? What had serving them ever gotten her? So she agreed, and her new wizard friend opened the enchanted pouches, moving enough gold from one to the other to let her travel in comfort for the rest of her journey. The manciple ate a fine breakfast, retained a carriage, and had a peaceful trip to Eastport. When she reached the shop of Aristide the herb-merchant, he took her offered purse and made a thoughtful noise. "Silver sage, you say? Well, for this you'll get blue-silver." The parcel of herbs he offered her had a strange sky-blue sheen, and the scent seemed a touch more acrid to the manciple's sharp nose, but she agreed that they looked close enough. She clutched the herbs to her chest for her entire trip home, heart bound in worry that she would be found out, but when she delivered her parcel to Cirino the herb-master, he simply nodded. The Lords of the Azure Flame, for all their power and all their meddling with the natural world, were not the finest students of natural history. Soon, the day came for the annual renewal of the servants' contracts. The manciple and her peers -- a weary assembly of cooks, cleaners, footmen, and dogsbodies, with dead eyes and shabby robes -- gathered in the great courtyard of the cabal, where their masters worked the spells that would enslave them for another year. As the blue-silver sage was poured into the censer, it went up in a blinding flash and an awful smell, and with that, the spells of binding were broken. Nobody is quite sure what happened next. Some say that the shape-changing magic was broken along with the bindings, and that the servant-beasts regained their animal instincts and mauled their masters to death before fleeing; if that is true, then I pray the manciple escaped the chaos and returned to her sisters and home. Others say, though, that the servants retained their human forms and minds, but lost their restraints, their sense of duty, and their fear. After all, while the Lords of the Azure Flame were mauled savagely, they were also stripped clean of their jewelry and riches -- and of every candle in their fortress. What the manciple did with them all, I cannot guess, but I hope she enjoys them still. There are three morals to be taken from the demise of the Lords of the Azure Flame. The first is that hunger and privation can twist even the most virtuous soul; when abused long enough, even the selfless ant will become a traitor and thief. Second, a wise wizard should know his natural history as well, lest an ill-picked herb destroy centuries of work. Finally, there is the simplest and most important: never bind a beast you cannot feed.
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Nov 9, 2020 07:06
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In. Give me a cryptid and a clue.
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Nov 24, 2020 07:28
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A Cubicle, A Coracle, A Storm 1424/1500 words Cryptid: The Kraken Crossword Clue: "Copper borate introduction destroyed lice in office area." (7) Archived! Antivehicular fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Jan 10, 2021 |
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Nov 30, 2020 07:53
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THUNDERDOME CDXXXV: 69 Love Stories The theme of this week, as the cover image implies, is the Magnetic Fields' masterwork 69 Love Songs. When you sign up, pick a song from that album (first come, first served), or I'll assign you one; use that song as your prompt to write me a story about love. "Love," in this case, doesn't have to be romantic or sexual, but it does have to involve multiple people. I'm sure you can write me a great story about a man's love of pancakes, but that's not what I'm looking for this week. The other thing I'm not looking for this week, in bold so you'll see it, is no stories about any kind of relationship/sexual violence or abuse. I don't want to read it, so don't write it! Your story doesn't have to be happy -- God knows the Magnetic Fields themselves have made great art out of loneliness and angst -- but I really don't want to read a single domestic-violence story this week. ("But Anti," I hear you say, "aren't there DV songs on the album?" Yes, there are. I will not assign them; do not choose them.) Other than that, go nuts. Any genre is fine, as long as there's love. In fact, as a special bonus gift for this week, I will not DQ erotica. Use this terrible power as you see fit, or maybe don't? Standard TD rules apply: no fanfic, political screeds, Google Doc links, poetry, bad formatting, and so on. You get a pass for erotica this week, but don't push your luck. Word Count: 1500 Signups Close: Friday, December 4th, 11:59 PM Pacific Submissions Close: Sunday, December 6th, 11:59 PM Pacific Judges: Antivehicular Entrants: 1. take the moon, "Meaningless" 2. Tyrannosaurus, "The Cactus Where Your Heart Should Be" 3. Thranguy, "Strange Eyes" 4. kurona_bright, "The Way You Say Goodnight" 5. brotherly, "When My Boy Walks Down the Street" 6. Djeser, "Papa Was A Rodeo" 7. Sparksbloom, "The Things We Did and Didn't Do" 8. crabrock, "Grand Canyon" 9. flerp, "You're My Only Home" 10. magic cactus, "Love in the Shadows" 11. Nae, "Promises of Eternity" 12. siotle, "I Don't Believe In The Sun" 13. Nikaer Drekin, "Epitaph For My Heart" 14. Pththya-lyi, "Come Back from San Francisco" 15. Tree Bucket, "(Crazy For You But) Not That Crazy" 16. Simply Simon, "Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits" Antivehicular fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Dec 3, 2020 |
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Dec 1, 2020 08:43
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take the moon posted:in, assign me a song Meaningless
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