|
Fuckit, in
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2022 13:31
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 00:33 |
|
|
I could use an editor pass. I'm at 1679 words but I don't know what to cut. Is asking for a volunteer contrary to the letter and/or spirit of the thread?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2022 14:11
|
|
|
Barista 1500 words I’m getting better at this, I thought wryly. Two weeks into this gig and I was finally starting to get the hang of the things Shirley had rattled through on the first day. Beans go in here. Milk down here in the fridge. This is a portafilter. I had fumbled my way through the first hundred tries, with no small number of customers giving me a quizzical glare upon receiving their orders, picking up their to-go cups and peeling back the plastic caps that I’d snapped in place like rugs over carpet stains. Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t… okay, fine, look. Just don’t freeze in your tracks and turn back to me with that …that little wrinkle in your eyebrows. I’m trying my best here! But those looks were coming infrequently now. I was starting to be able to meet customers’ gazes; if they smiled winningly at me, doing their part for the amicable commercial transactions with which they were used to starting their own workdays, I was now capable of returning the favor without feeling as though it was all a rote part of the script. I actually felt like smiling. Even Shirley had noticed. Two or three orders ago she’d finished packaging up a bagel sandwich fresh from the toaster oven and turned to me with a look downward at my cup, then back up to lock eyes with a brief flash of toothy white in the dark and somehow forbidding expanse of her braid-framed face. I’d managed to pour a passable, if rudimentary, round white heart in the middle of Craig’s cappuccino. “I’d drink that,” she’d said, and then disappeared, off to the other end of the bar. I’d handed the cup over sightlessly, replaying the past minute obsessively to my inner hectoring cricket, but with a smile that I’d really meant. I hadn’t even put a lid on top to hide my shame. Why am I so afraid of her? We’d probably be friends if she weren’t writing my hours, I thought. I wonder if it’s even really possible to be friends with your boss? And now I found myself moving my hands almost automatically, mechanically, as though I were brushing my teeth or tying my shoes, so independent of thought that if I stumbled it was easier to just start over. There was no salvaging some of these mudras once you’d messed them up. But those times were rare. I now began to try enjoy the movements for their own sake, to let the fundamentals fade to the background, and I found my mind focusing on the pour. Trent, said the ticket. I thought I’d seen him ordering, though he wasn’t immediately visible across the counter. I remembered a tall, thin guy, blonde spikes like a rooster’s crest above a point-nosed and smirking face. Blue Oxford shirt, cuffs rolled back. Some kind of hedge fund guy maybe—there was a building full of those on this block—or maybe, like, a crypto bro. I wrinkled my lip as I pulled the shot, swirling milk foam with the other hand. The pitcher’s contents surged up around the wand in silky waves. If I sloshed a little too enthusiastically, it might spill over the edge, and the wastage was way less of a worry than that one of those well-dressed … professionals across the counter was watching, never missing the slightest drip or fumble, and would give me the ol’ eyebrow crinkle. I fixated on my imaginary Trent, contempt mixed with determination. Here we go now. My hands steadied as I gripped the cup and the pitcher opposite, and began a slow rocking motion to build up a small standing wave in the espresso. I had to know what I had in mind before I started, as I had learned painfully. I’d spent days thinking I could just wing it—begun pouring the milk just expecting a shape to form on its own. All that it had gotten me was a parade of muddy pools of shapelessly blended brown and white, crowned with unruly bubbles, which I was all too happy to hide beneath plastic carapaces. It was the dine-ins that I really dreaded; with their big ceramic mugs there was no hiding a mistake, so I’d had to learn to place them anonymously on the counter and retreat to the shelter of the machine and my queue of tickets, there to hide my face from the looks of reproach from the customer, or—worse—from Shirley. But now I knew what I was doing. I started a slow, thin trickle of white into the gently swirling coffee, and for the first few seconds it disappeared untraceably into the brown, the liquid level rising. But then abruptly a pool of white spread from the stream of the pour, and the wave action caught it, sloshing it to one side and enveloping it with a melting line of brown. The white stream broke through its razor-sharp wall and made a fresh pool, only to be caught up in another wavefront and off to the side, and again, and again. With five folded ovals of white now layered together like the steel in a katana, and with only a skiff of milk left in the pitcher, I redirected the stream backwards toward the far edge and through the center of the white leaves, dragging a coffee-brown spear with it as I pierced them. Whisking my pitcher hand away I retreated a step. A five-lobed flower, nearly perfectly centered. Pretty abstract, not the work of a coffee Michelangelo, but it looked cool. This time my smile had nothing inward about it; my cricket had nothing to say. Even before I called out “Trent!”, the spiky tall man was full in my field of vision, and I was ready for him. I handed over the hot cup in a paper holder with a napkin and gestured with a sidelong nod toward the lids. “Here y’are.” And he grinned sharkily back at me, glancing briefly into the cup, the smile unwavering. He turned away without a word, and I watched him go, defying one of Shirley’s earliest pieces of advice, daring him to stop. And he didn’t. Silence wafted from my left. It was a strange feeling—the morning rush was abating, and there were no orders stacked up. An admonishment from a spectral Shirley to clean my equipment rang in my ears, and I returned to the machine for the tenth time that morning. A wipe down of the wand, a release of steam to clean the inner surfaces, turn to the sink to rinse the pitcher—and when I reemerged it was with a rising sense of elation that there was an honest-to-God break in store. I scanned the floor and the few patrons sitting at tables. Nobody in line. But— There was someone at the pickup end. Someone I thought I remembered. A hunched figure, all shoulders, a thick neck and a t-shirt topped by black hair and a goatee, all aimed straight at me. Craig. Oh no, my cricket chattered. He doesn’t like it. I hosed it up. I hurried to meet him. The counter was a poor shield against any assault. I stiffened, putting my hands on either side of the near edge, then quickly whipping them away. Shouldn’t show weakness. Project confidence. I could feel Shirley’s eyes on me. “Hi, sir?” I chirped. “Anything the matter?” His goatee spread open. I noticed his dangling cup was empty. “Hey, so… yeah. Um…” he fumbled. This didn’t sound like a complaint. I raised my eyebrows, promptingly. He took a breath. “So… I couldn’t help but notice,” he said, each sentence fragment bursting out in a rush, “You put, you know…” He jiggled his hand with the empty cup in it. “A heart?” His grin now combined with eyes that struggled to meet mine, under plaintive brows. “You know,” he continued. “So. Like… I’m Craig. Uh, but you know that. Of course you know that. What’s, uh… what’s yours?” My smile must have been frozen in a rictus, and now I mentally begged for help. “Oh, uh… yeah. I’m Beth. It’s… good to meet you. Craig.” I stuck out a hand, as professionally as I could. He bobbed at the knees, taking it gingerly. “So when do you, you know. Get off?” I admitted to myself that I admired his chutzpah, if not his… anything else. This was what I needed, all right. “Hi sir, can I help with anything?” It was Shirley, at my side, having materialized from the ether. Her jaw was set, her eyes level. Craig pulled his hand back, took a step from the counter. “Uh, no, I mean… no, that’s all right.” He backed off further, then hustled for the door, hunching back into a lope like a hunted animal. Shirley watched him until the door closed, then glanced sidelong at me. “Yeah, that’s the real job.” It was muttered to herself as much as to me. And she was gone.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2022 18:13
|
|
|
Thunderdome Week 518: Unfettered Hubris Aaahh, there is only one lesson to take from this: that the world lies at my feet to be ordered to my capricious whim. It is in that spirit that I wish to see, in 1000 words or less, the birth of a new religion. I can think of no better way to flaunt my new power at no risk to myself, and no way this can go wrong. Signup deadline: 9AM UTC-4 (EDT), Saturday the 9th Submission deadline: 9AM UTC-4 (EDT), Monday the 11th Review Panel: Me rohan The Cut of Your Jib False Prophets: Ceighk Thranguy MockingQuantum PhantomMuzzles Bad Seafood Chernobyl Princess (might judge instead) Copernic Chili hard counter Data Graham fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Jul 9, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Jul 5, 2022 13:09
|
|
|
Signups closed
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2022 14:17
|
|
|
I believe that's everyone. Submissions closed
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2022 13:49
|
|
|
Week 418 Results A surfeit of new religions from which to choose! An embarrassment of riches. Were I a new-come being looking for a higher power to justify my own existence, we've got some mighty fine contenders here. First though, the judges did think that Glass Case by Copernic was comparatively weak enough to merit a Loss. A jargon-heavy muddle that didn't do enough character development or establishing work to make it worth the struggle, especially for readers not familiar with the opaque tech world in which the characters live. There was a steady and dramatic increase in the quality of stories as the week went on though, and we could not help but give HM status to three of them: Kindness by Chernobyl Princess, an imaginative and evocative piece from the POV of gods seeking acolytes; The Second Coming by Ceighk, which impressed us with fast-paced and vivid action but left a little confusion as to characterization; and The Arrival by Bad Seafood, which we all thought was intricate and elegant, full of great imagery and symbology, but perhaps a bit of a stylistic overreach in some ways. (On a personal note I wanted to say I really appreciated Fragments from the book of Danhune by hard counter, as it's right up my alley; but despite its depth of detail and research and the pervasiveness of the device it didn't make a strong enough case for an HM.) But none of us had trouble agreeing on the delightful Zed's Testament by Thranguy for our WIN. An immersive idiomatic narrative voice delivers a vision of a world just a side-street down from our own, a world with welcome little morsels of discovery and wonder around every dingy turn. It's a world whose revealed deities are just the kind that need and deserve a few followers in these trying times. All hail!
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2022 05:21
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 00:33 |
|
|
Week 518 crits My Heart Beats So That I Can Hardly Speak I like the imagery and ornamentation and the jarring back-and-forth between Ruth's viewpoint and the Father's, but I couldn't dismiss thoughts of Cloud Atlas and Severance and think this could have used a bit more depth as to what's going on in the premise. It's hinting at plenty of interesting details on both sides that could make this way more engrossing or involve the reader more emotionally in the monstrous nature of the bait-and-switch. Plus points for the economy of storytelling primarily through dialogue in the first few lines especially, where you get all the salient points by reading between the lines. Glass Case This has a lot of potential, and I think the main weakness is related to the strength -- namely being swamped in jargon which a reader who knows how it all works can feel pretty much at home in, but it also means we need more of it if anyone else isn't going to be totally lost. As it is I can barely keep my footing without rereading every paragraph as I go. But I really like how the characterization sneaks up on you; only in the final chunk do you start to get how much of a mad-scientist Clay is, how his seeming reasonableness has led through what he has rationalized as normal reactions to the destruction of civilization. I like how compact and stream-of-consciousness it is; I think my main complaint (and it's very instructive) is that the jargon is totally impenetrable to a non-techy reader and needs to be softened a bit. Also could use a copy-edit pass, "incredulous" should be "incredible" Verdancy Grammatical nitpick: several occasions where commas are used that should be semicolons. That aside, I like the buildup and the flow, and the gradual shift toward Grundorf as the conduit of body-snatcher "evil" (I'm seeing a theme in these stories which may be inherent in the prompt, that the POV character is kind of necessarily going to be a monster in the eyes of everyone else). I feel like the end is rushed however, which seems like a result of word constraints; there's an abruptness to the final line of dialogue that seems like it wants to be more shocking than it is, and the briefness of that sequence helps that feeling, but maybe a little more could have been cut earlier to give Grundorf's inner monologue more room to breathe. Follow the Light I'd say this needs an edit pass, and more indication of where it's going toward the end. Good concept (the small-scale nature of the "spiritual" aspect is a welcome changeup from the civilization-wide things most are going for), but at the end it seems like it's going in a whole new direction that is unclear, plus the editing issues are pretty apparent. The "Henry hugged Jason" paragraph in particular needs attention -- is the box collapsed or not? Also pay attention to tense agreement ("he [has] set it to detect pressure" etc). One other thing that stood out to me is that I'm not buying Jason as a 2nd-grader. His dialogue is too well developed. Kindness Holy poo poo, really good. Inventive, evocative, and I love the metaphors. The idea of the POV being an actual god feels really novel to me, not to mention the hints at a whole cosmology of deities that we see only in passing detail but get just enough of to feel like we see it clearly. Makes me want to extend the thinking and see how compatible this view would be to existing real-world religions. I suspect quite a lot. I especially appreciate the deftness of the "twist" -- the act of violence/betrayal being used as a simple landmark in the protagonist's lifecycle, matter-of-fact, horrific in its own way but kind of beautiful too in how well it works for the central characters. The imagery in those final scenes is just extremely vivid and seemingly obvious in retrospect too, which I think is a hallmark of success. If there's anything to critique about it, it's just mechanical stuff -- I think maybe a few of the references to "her" could stand clarifying as being about the girl and not the god itself. The Second Coming Excellent scene, action-packed, and creates a world for that action to live in without wasting any space. Good use of illustrative metaphors, like the waxworks figure and the smoke poured into resin. Lots of hinting at what is going on without being explicit about it, like not mentioning where the bullet is in the time-stop until it hits someone off-camera (lol). I felt like the skip in the action from the exit gap to vaulting over the wall of the cottage could have used a smoother transition, but the subsequent narration (like dancing over the guy wires) was all so vivid it felt like that was an intentional elision. Maybe could have used a little more of an elliptical reference to things like "the cult", like I doubt the protagonist would refer to it that way maybe? Generally speaking really good scene, but thinking about it maybe the ambiguity of where it leaves us is the most alarming piece — Tommy and the cult around him is clearly a real supernatural force that deserves its following, but not for the reasons or according to the rituals the cult members give it, i.e. they themselves don't understand what they have in Tommy. Not sure if that counts as a mark against this, because maybe extending this story to something bigger would fall apart at the edges. There's not much gray area here between 1000-word story and fully-realized novel. Fragments from the book of Danhune, 4th Verse (Revised English Edition) drat, I'm a sucker for stuff like this. I love how dense it is, and how easily it draws on relevant knowledge, and how it hints just barely but enough at the surrounding sorta-real-history that it fits into. Very poetic and ringing in its execution too; "We were too tired to live, yet too afraid to die" is a great line. If there's anything I would criticize it might be that the use of contractions seems jarring, like "would've"; I suspect these are the result of word-count paring-down, and there are of course no rules about how colloquially a hypothetical translator would render these passages, but it makes it ring somewhat untrue to me that the language dips so frequently between archaic narrative forms and modern grammatical convention. In fact since the gimmick is so pervasive and so careful in how it adheres to the ersatz "academic reconstruction" template, it almost makes me feel like there is a weakness in how vivid and how clearly told the story is, if that makes any sense. Like it should be more esoteric, more impenetrable, more ambiguous, like something someone would translate off a degraded wall of cuneiform. Calling it "fragments" suggests something more, well... fragmentary. Zed's Testament Lovely piece of narrative, excellent use of idiom and vocabulary. The party piece of course is the roundabout filling-in of the backstory of the group, how it sounds at first like they're a bunch of formulaic street toughs from a hard-boiled midcentury potboiler or something, but with the narrator's tats and Hopper's presentation stuff it's clear there's something very either alternate-universey or not-too-distant-futurey about it, and that's where the imagination really takes root. I want to know more about this world and how it looks now that people like this inhabit it. I can hardly find anything to criticize either; it's beautifully self-contained by nature of its title and framing as possibly the transcript of a dictated deposition of some kind. The supernatural element of it is only one piece of several and it kind of fades to the background and its greater significance to the world seems to be left deliberately vague—but calling this a "testament" and rendering it this way suggests there's other such stories accompanying it from other people, and more going on with the world as a result of encounters like this one. Nicely done. The Arrival It's hard to know what to make of this one. Really nice dreamlike narrative quality, with an unmoored feeling of time and place which fits nicely with the setting, and the texture is evocative and effective, both unsettling and peaceful at once. But ultimately I don't know what is actually going on, who the long man and Mir are, and I feel like I'm dumb for not getting it. I also sort of feel like there's a tendency in modern storytelling to give mundane-feeling dialogue to otherworldly characters, present-day colloquialisms in the mouths of gods, just because that was a joke at one poiint (in a literary tradition where we were used to mythic figures speaking lo-and-forsoothly) and now we just do it as a matter of course without even thinking about it. Of course the long man is a quirky old guy with an umbrella saying things like "very nice" while the universe is being created. This isn't a negative so much as an observation about possible influences. There's deliberately plenty being left unsaid because that's the nature of this piece, but ultimately I'm not sure what to take from it or how to feel. Is this our universe? Is Mir's inexperience to blame for our world's foibles? Should I read any commentary at all in this, or is it just an atmospheric existential musing? I guess I just want more.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2022 01:26
|
|