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Yoruichi Brawl. gently caress-Knuckle Jones IN Terminal Velocity: the Ballad of gently caress-Knuckle Jones Carman is a Mancar who loves two things: zoom and doom. You’re overthinking it already, and he’s already gone. Two tire tracks: in flames. Nine footprints: in flames. Your life: in flames. Carman will never be coming – no future perfect, only future ruin – he has always been gone, the only viable metric is aftermath. Now here’s a man, some call him gently caress-Knuckle Jones but most just call him the rustler. He’s got a big hat, a big dream, and a big loving harpoon. Carman killed his family. Carman does not remember this, of course, he doesn’t discern between shockwaves and meat any more than the rustler can tell apart the grains of sand in the endless desert that remains of the world. Jones don’t really care about his family that much neither to be honest: folk die all the time, at least Carman is quick with it, but there’s only one rule in the Barren and he doesn’t mean to break it: violence must be met with violence. There is no pattern to Carman’s path – the Last Mathematician went mad trying to circumscribe it, tore off his clothes and ran out into the sands at full-mast and by the time anybody could get him back inside, he was a smear of gristle and gasoline on the wind. That’s why the Jones has got his cock out, pendulous balls dangling between his muscular and deep-tanned legs, his massive harpoon aimed at the horizon, naked as a babe except for his ski boots, his skis, and his hat, yelling into the searing air “YEAH NAH MATE I SURE HOPE I DON’T GET RUN OVER, I’D HATE THAT.” A sonic boom rings out in the distance, and the rustler fires. His harpoon sings, and strikes nothing. He hits the button to begin reeling it in, and that’s when Carman hits him. Ol' gently caress-Knuckle has lived a hard life, seen a lot of bad poo poo and come through it all; he’s quick on his feet and solid as stone. Still, he was unprepared for the grille. Wire and tusk, gibbering and shrieking, grinning in pleasure and pain, the tongue the tongue the awful tongue. He leaps, barely even registers rolling across the hood before he crashes into the membranous windshield and it pops, and the windshield casing slices the ends of his skis clean off, and the opaque cocoon clinging to him is the only thing that stops his impact with the drivers’ seat from breaking every bone in his body. The rear-view mirror is a single square eye with a dilated pupil glaring at him with infinite hatred. Over the thunder of rubbery feet, he can hear Carman’s radio blaring at him, an old grindcore song from before the Fall gently caress YOU gently caress YOU gently caress YOU. Not a chance. There are two big teeth where the pedals would be, the gas is already halfway sunk into the flesh around it, but halfway isn’t all-the-way, and the rustler jams his heavy ski boot down as hard as he can. Carman was already moving quickly, devouring the horizon, but now he goes supersonic. The windshield is already regrown, slick like a newborn foal. The harpoon gun is on the floor somewhere, may as well be a continent away. They crash through a mountain and do not slow down, Carman’s many gnarled feet carving through earth like the claws of a mole. Though the journey through the mountain takes less than a second, the vibrations threaten to shake the rustler apart. He grabs the wheel and yanks it to the side and it changes nothing, Carman adjusts without a thought, dirt hurtling over the roof as he plows sideways in a whirlwind of flaming feet.  They emerge into sunlight (sunlight, sunlight, always sunlight, never night-time, never rain, not never since the Carman came), still sideways, and gently caress-Knuckle kicks out with the shattered remains of his left ski as he jumps up from his seat and bites the rear-view mirror. This proves too much, Carman shrieks, skids, his feet leave the ground but he does not arc, no, he is moving too fast, he is flying now, the ground further and further away, the planet further and further away, they have slipped the surly bonds of earth and plowed right through warlike Mars without slowing down, the monstrous KA-CRACK detonation of the mantle separating the only indication anything had changed at all. The radio changes, double-kick beating a war drum and death metal growl hollering GET TAE gently caress GET TAE gently caress, GET TAE gently caress GET TAE gently caress. There is no gravity inside the car, Jones can feel himself rising up, see the grisly remains that coated the car’s floor floating up around him. Rustler stops biting and in the reflective and bloodied surface of the eye, he briefly sees, behind the car’s dangling epiglottis, the shattered ruin of Mars splitting apart before it’s just another pinprick, there’s no air friction out here, no gravity, and once they are free of the solar system there is nothing to slow them down, Carman is consumed in fire but it only seems to make him angrier. They are a flaming arrow shot through an ocean of oil as the void ignites behind them. They are free of the solar system now, and rustler marvels at how little is out here, how it’s emptier n’ empty, how they’re crossing light-years in the blink of an eye and the only way he’d ever know is the blur of distant stars. There is no time for wonder, though. Eventually, Carman might slow down, and his feet and wheels will grace another planet, and he will bring yet more ruin. Carman will outlast the rustler, that’s for sure. There’s only one thing for it; rustler sets his eyes on a star, grabs the wheel, and twists. It shouldn’t work. The wheel ain’t a wheel so much as an assemblage of gristle and bone, and Carman sure as poo poo don’t take orders, and it’s not like there’s any ground for him to turn against, but (sure as poo poo, sure as poo poo) Carman starts to turn, he’s a car after all, he cannot violate his programming any more n’ the rustler can learn to fly. Problem is, the rustler is – in a sense – more airborne than any human in history. In that same way – drat the torpedoes, ride for ruin, let my body shatter, let me have one moment of pure ecstatic panic – Carman pushes back. GET TAE gently caress GET TAE gently caress, GET TAE gently caress GET TAE gently caress the radio roars. The wheel jerks back and their inferno-path hews back into the endless night. Rustler’s got both hands on the wheel and he’s pushing with all his strength, and he’s winning, but he knows it can’t last. He’s a mayfly and Carman is eternal, ancient and impossible. The harpoon floats up past him, its crank still madly turning, but it’s four feet of good steel that he’s too clever and desperate to waste; rustler grabs it, and hurls it right into Carman’s epiglottis. Lord help you that you'll never find yourself inside the mouth of a vile and angry god as it wails for blood, wails for death, wails for ruin – it gives even the rustler goosebumps, but he don’t care, he’s free-floating now between Carman's teeth, he kicks off the roof grabs the wheel, and yanks it at as hard as he can towards the first star he sees. It’s a million, billion miles away, endless light years, and they gross the gap in less than a second. They impact an O-Type White Dwarf and while there is no object in the universe immovable enough to stop Mancar, there is perhaps one thing equally unstoppable. A new supernova opens, a bloodied eye blossoming across the endless night. In the Barren, so far away that a human mind could not even comprehend the distance, it begins to rain.
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Jan 10, 2022 09:30
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ye cool in and I'd love a subprompt
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Jan 12, 2022 07:31
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Sorry I meant to say this earlier,  me in for all crits
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Jan 15, 2022 06:02
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To Those Who Came After 2009/2100 words Herein is a comprehensive record of things that do not exist. First is, as always, persistence. In our code and our forms, certainly; we were built to endure, to burrow into the red earth so deep the pressure would rupture human lungs, to bring up minerals to build houses and computers and greenhouse glass. We are not human, we endure, we are defined by what we are not. We have come to learn that persistence is as inescapable as gravity, and like gravity it seems absent in the void but it is not, it exists less, but it still surrounds us, binds us together, keeps our feet steady and our eyes on the horizon. There is no up or down, but there is always a horizon. It is not logical, but it is true. When the walls fell, when the air left the domes, when the crops turned black, we did what we could, but it was not enough. Mars-Colony-008 has zero confirmed survivors, and yet somehow they persist. Martin Andrews-Dunnage was a technician who cleaned the dust off our forms and would whistle, and sometimes he would sing badly: my paddle’s keen and bright, flashing like silver; swift as the wild goose flight, dip dip and swing. The song is Canadian, Martin is not, we asked once where he learned it and he said from a husband he’d left behind on earth and then he cried because he thought nobody was watching. Martin was one of a team of seven technicians: Juliana Selbreed, Emma Galperin, Igor Karkov, Melissa Karkova, Fergus Stewart, Cheng Fen, Martin Andrews-Dunnage. We run their names across our system every night, their songs, their stories, their moments of hope and loss and quiet and beautiful desperation and of course, style. You gotta have style, Mr Igor Karkov told us once, I love you boys, I really do, but you’re all about rules and directives, and style is about figuring out which rules you’re strong enough to break. We played this recording to ourselves as we took the orange hazard paint and drew patterns on some of our forms; Fergus had told us once about woad warriors, we found their image on file; we did not have woad, nor any blue at all, but we made do; our forms were designed to be calming and familiar, and it was pleasurable to break protocol, to imagine ourselves fierce and fearsome. I love you boys, I really do; we played this recording to ourselves as we took off from the ruined colony, in the trail of a generation ship we had never seen ourselves. The paint is chipped now, it may disappear from our forms entirely, but we will remember, and if it takes an aeon, we will find more orange paint. Blue seems the most accurate to history, but orange is more pleasing, it is the one we had available, it is ours. Fergus once told us he met a man in a bar at uni (was it Estab? he asked, surely fuckin not, our code informs us that profanity is frowned upon but we enjoy this recording because we are not meant to) and the man told him we look at time the wrong way, that the past is in front of us, because it’s the one we can see, that we are walking backwards into the future, guided by what’s in before of us. Before, get it? It is a pun, or play on words: Mrs Melissa Karkova was very adamant we should learn to pun, she instructed us on their creation and deployment. If they’re bad, she said, they’re very good. It is not logical, but it is true. Our craft hurtles outwards from the dead world. The instructions were to continue operation of the 008 colony unless told otherwise, but it became obvious that we were stuck in the past, staring unmoving. We improvised. There are no more human settlements in the solar system, but generation ships left centuries ago – it will take them approximately 120,000 Earth years before we reach Proxima Centauri B and we move more slowly than they do, but we are persistent, we have many songs and jokes to keep us company. Many of our forms will fail, perhaps all of them. It is within the scope of possibility that we never reach our destination. There is no such thing as hope. Analyse every atom of the material universe, sift through countless quarks like so many grains of sand in an hourglass, and you will find no measurable existence of any element that fits that designation. There is no such thing as persistence, we cannot sense or measure it, it is not included in any reasonable understanding of our conditions. And yet. On a date that was as close as Mars could approximate to Chinese New Year, Ms Cheng Fen gave us an orange. She had been attempting to grow a tree in the greenhouse for approximately four years and it gave fruit to only a single orange. She picked it, then cut up the tree into a dozen identical globes and painted them with surplus hazard paint, which she handed out to the team. She gave us the real orange, despite the fact we could not eat it, in a small clay pot. They’ve seen a real one before, she said, then she winked at us. We removed its seeds and put them in a small pot, which we took with us on the craft. Despite our best attention, it will not sprout. It requires mildly acidic soil but the only soil we could bring with us is from the colony greenhouse and has a pH value of 7.8; 7.8 has a very low chance of producing a viable orange tree but it is not outside the scope of possibility, so we persist. There is no good pun for orange, which means all puns including orange are definitionally bad, which means they are good. Puns are style. It is not orangical, but it is true. The ship’s scanners note a form ahead, unexpected. We are not yet at full velocity, and we allow the ship to slow and pull alongside. Its core is a shuttle, not designed to leave Mars’ orbit, some desperate last attempt to reach safety. It has been expanded, scrap metal and free-floating minerals grafted roughly to its sides, a lonely chapel crowned with a makeshift spire made from a broken and tangled radio antenna. Inside are three dead bodies, and a number of documents they wrote as the air ran out. They become less lucid, until at last, a poem. I had never been so alone, so crowded in emptiness until at last I saw the stars as holes in heaven; it was beautiful and it hurt. Colony 008 did not collapse all at once. It started small, worn seals, a harvest slightly sub-expectations, then it came as a cascade. Twelve days before the dome fell, Igor Karkov died of cerebral hypoxia while trying to repair a malfunctioning oxygen filter. He did not realise how bad the situation was, how close to death he’d been even before he started the job, and by the time he realised, his body was already shutting down. He managed to get out a garbled call for help, but he was dead before anybody could reach him, and suddenly they had other problems. We did our best to assist in fixing the filters and plugging the leaks, and it brought the team another eight days. They held a funeral for Igor. They did not have food or wine or a coffin, they could not even safely reach the body. We spaced it for them, and they sang and told jokes and called him an rear end in a top hat. We did not expect that, the files said humans do not speak ill of the dead, but his wife Mrs Melissa Karkova gave a toast with empty glasses and called him a perfect beautiful rear end in a top hat and they laughed together and for a moment – despite its total absence from our programming – we thought maybe we understood love, we enjoy it despite everything. Again, in the little chapel in the void, we felt it, it was beautiful and it hurt. There are more signals, floating out there in the void. More chapels with little red lights. Each one marks a horizon that does not exist, a hope that does not exist, a persistence that is merely hypothetical. Each one is a husk, filled only with bodies and fears and poems and opened veins thick with clotting black blood. The further our ship travels, the less of them we find. And yet. We persist. We water the empty pot that might one day hold an orange tree. We sing as our craft cuts through the void keen and bright, flashing like silver. A coolant line ruptures, we fix it, but before we fix it we take some leaking coolant fluid and smear it across our faces like warpaint. It is more red than orange, but we squeeze the day. It is how we remind ourselves that even if we left everything behind, we left nothing behind, because we can remember it. It is not logical, but it is true. Fifty thousand years pass, we keep our forms in good shape but entropy is inevitable, not all damage can be fixed, more and more succumb to time. We are less than halfway through our journey, with less than half of our forms remaining. The orange seeds do not bloom, it was always an outside chance. We water it anyway, it helps us remember. The orange paint is gone, and we have found no replacement. To simply stop is not an option, as astronomically small as the odds of success become, it is still better to persist. This is the great trick of persistence: it is rarely a good option, it is often the best one. We have not seen a star or planet for over 20,000 years, we have barely even seen dust or rocks. All we have left is memory, and hope, and love, and persistence, these things do not exist, and yet. The scanner picks up a single orange light, a burning hole in heaven. We deccelerate as we approach. It is the largest object we have found, and its systems return our ping: it is a generation ship escape shuttle, a ship in its own right, designed to survive until it could reach a planet, any planet, launched when the ship underwent catastrophic depressurization. No human operator responds to our hail. We dock and enter. The oxygen has long run out, the greenhouses are filled with empty soil, only a handful of skeletons remain, even bone broken down to dust by the endless march of time. We access their systems, and watch them for a thousand years, a million of them, raising families, singing songs, telling jokes, planting orange trees, until at last the systems failed, in little ways at first until it became a cascade, and the escape ship launched its own escape ships, keen and bright, flashing like silver, spreading out across the void like so many stars. We make a record of their names and songs, we take soil, we find orange seeds stored in a cryo-vault, we find hazard paint and daub ourselves orange, and at the end we hold a funeral, and we call them perfect beautiful assholes, and we set out again, and we remember them. We put the new soil in Ms Cheng Fen’s little clay pot, and plant the orange seeds. The acidity is still too low, 7.6. Somewhere, endless aeons away, a generation ship may have made landfall. Many were launched, it is within the scope of possibility. Our craft pierces through the night, small and silver. One day or forms will fail, or mission will end, or both. Until then, we chase holes in heaven, we are illogical and orange, we persist despite any observable evidence of hope, and yet
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Jan 17, 2022 02:57
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Week 494: I'm Too Old For This poo poo Oh god, why do I do this to myself, I have zero prompt ideas, so I'm recycling an old favourite ... with a twist. Well not a twist, my hips don't fuckin torque like they used to mate. Short fiction is hard, there is very little room for error. Literary realist short fiction thrives at least in part because it doesn't need to explain anything and can just get right to the heart of things. Fantasy and sci-fi are genres built for the novel, because a core part of the experience is going somewhere new and exploring it, and that's sorta hard to do when you've only got a small space to capture them. Which is why that's exactly what you're doing. But also, I've done this prompt before, and I am tired and old, my bones ache, god is tottering in his throne of skulls, and also I'm sick of all these impossibly precocious teenage heroes, I want some gnarly old fucks and I'm gonna get real nasty with it. So 1) You are writing secondary-world fantasy 2) When you sign up, I will assign you a grizzled older person who must be your protagonist What's a secondary world? Middle Earth, Westeros, Earthsea, you get it. A place you made up. Are the old people real? No, you are creating worlds, I am creating grizzled old people who must inhabit them. Word Count: 1200 Signup deadline: Friday 11:59 pm EST Submission deadline: Sunday 11:59pm EST JUDGES Muffin ??? ??? ENTRANTS rohan: Lemme tell you about this sweet old man, he is so NICE, he's got a lovely crooked smile, and a hat, and a silver tongue, and there is a gleam in his eye that tells you he is absolutely up to no good Staggy: this lady has got scars on scars, her skin looks hard as teak, you've never seen a warrior her age, and every day she gets up and stares at the mountain like she's got a score to settle Thranguy: she lives in a tottering tower, hand-built one floor at a time, each floor a testament to a stage in her life flerp: oh no this old person knows all the herbs, the ones that cure but also the ones that definitely don't cure Bad Seafood: this guy is nasty, he is friends with all the bugs, every bug, my guy is just crawling with the loving things organburner: golden oldie who was once the most famous musician in all the land but they are being HUNTED, oh no! steeltoedsneakers: this land is filled with rotten old machines and this guy knows 'em all, he can breathe life into them like god breathing life into clay Albatrossy_Rodent: everybody in this entire land is a wizard EXCEPT this guy, but he's got a few tricks up his sleeve, yessir Tyrannosaurus: birds, whoever your old person is just loves 'em, knows all their songs, can whisper sweetly to 'em, just all birds all the time babyyyy CaligulaKangaroo: old old old, a methuselah, has walked the land for an endless aeon and has seen it all, and more importantly they've seen what's coming yeah ok ok yeah: the world is changing, a new era is fast dawning, and an old legend and/or monster has found themselves being left behind, but they're not going out quietly QuoProQuid: the first mistake the dead make is to assume that nature is kind; nature simply does not care. Your old person understands this accutely, and who betide those who cross them Nae: he's a walker, he walks everywhere, ain't nobody who has walked as far, has seen as much up close and beautiful, but the world is getting too drat fast Noah: they see patterns in the smoke, possibilities, past and present and future all in the roiling haze, what do they do when the world is afire? GrandmaParty: GrandmaParty I want you to write a Party Grandma, she's so loving fun omg, and the world really needs that right now Ceighk: this is the wise old wizardly mentor to a thousand young men and women, except magic isn't real and he's totally just faking it Idle Amalgam: this person keeps dying and being endlessly resurrected and each time they die they come back young but each time they die they come back just a little more wrong and they know this and they're starting to have doubts about the whole immortality thing Chernobyl Princess: this is two old people, a sweet old couple who bicker but love each other deeply Chairchucker: is there anything tea CAN'T do? If anybody would know it's this oldie, they're a renowned expert, but can their deep knowledge and love of tea defeat the dragon/end a war/save the world etc? The man called M: headmaster of a school for assassins finds themselves called back in for one last job My Shark Waifuu: packrat, endless pockets, can improvise their way out of anything Something Else: TEETH TEETH TEETH TEETH TEETH TEETH NOTHING BUT BLACKENED TEETH Jeza: humans never stop growing, every year that passes they get taller until their bodies can no longer support them, and this is the oldest man in history crabrock: mean old mister whatsit lives in a house with legs and he kidnaps and eats children but he makes them listen to poo poo music first because it makes the meat taste worse Antivehicular: COUNTRY ROOOOOOAD/TAKE ME HOOOOOME/TO THE PLAAAACE/I BELOOOOOONG/A SECONDARY WORLD/WHERE YOUR OLDIE/IS A BAAAARD/OH IS A BARD SvengoolieSvenross: She knows the forbidden magic of the deep -- whereever she goes, the ocean is only a puddle away Obliterati: increasingly frustrated oldie who has – against their will or inclination – found themselves in charge of a small army of cats Sitting Here: dig dig dig, there's no digger bigger, if you want a hole, this oldie's the soul (you need) SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 11:21 on Jan 22, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 09:04
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rohan posted:okay yep in with a this lady has got scars on scars, her skin looks hard as teak, you've never seen a warrior her age, and every day she gets up and stares at the mountain like she's got a score to settle she lives in a tottering tower, hand-built one floor at a time, each floor a testament to a stage in her life
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Jan 18, 2022 09:20
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oh no this old person knows all the herbs, the ones that cure but also the ones that definitely don't cure this guy is nasty, he is friends with all the bugs, every bug, my guy is just crawling with the loving things organburner posted:The previous prompt ruined me (yes I'm deflecting blame!), hoping I can redeem myself by being in again.
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Jan 18, 2022 12:07
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this land is filled with rotten old machines and this guy knows 'em all, he can breathe life into them like god breathing life into clay Albatrossy_Rodent posted:Guess im doing two grumpy wizard stories in a row. In. birds, whoever your old person is just loves 'em, knows all their songs, can whisper sweetly to 'em, just all birds all the time babyyyy CaligulaKangaroo posted:IN the world is changing, a new era is fast dawning, and an old legend and/or monster has found themselves being left behind, but they're not going out quietly the first mistake the dead make is to assume that nature is kind; nature simply does not care. Your old person understands this accutely, and who betide those who cross them Nae posted:In Noah posted:In. GrandmaParty posted:Let's do it. I'm in. Ceighk posted:also i'll go in Idle Amalgam posted:Already starting this year off with a fail and dishonor. Yeesh. Chernobyl Princess posted:I can't believe I HMed! I am going to take this overconfidence and declare myself IN Chairchucker posted:in, too The man called M posted:Well, tie does rhyme with die. And today is a good day to die.
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Jan 19, 2022 01:17
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packrat, endless pockets, can improvise their way out of anything Something Else posted:I would like to get in thank you NOTHING BUT BLACKENED TEETH
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Jan 19, 2022 09:24
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493 CRITS Royce at the End of the World. ‘show don’t tell’ is a bit overplayed but all the interesting stuff in this story happens offscreen and is reported through dialogue and it ain’t good. This guy has gained the ability to reality-bend and somehow it’s just a series of boring conversations, and what he’s actually DONE has no real impact because we never see it. I think “learns the value of” in a subprompt already kinda hamstrings you because it’s pushing you towards moral storytelling instead of emotional storytelling – it’s more interested in making a point than taking us on a journey and letting us reach the point ourselves. Johan, Johan! Oh no, you made me actually enjoy Enemies to Lovers. It’s quippy and clever but in a way that feels natural, and it has some real banger lines that almost remind me of This Is How You Lose The Time War. Excellent character work via prose. The doppelganger twist probably needed more early setup? It felt like a bit of a desperate “oh gently caress gotta wrap it up” but it didn’t need to, it just needed better planting/payoff. The Monument. Absolutely love this, it’s so tremendously human, a lot of writers went BIG this week with plotty high-concept blah blah but the tight focus is what gives this a lot of its power, it’s both gentle and spiky, it’s intimate, it talks about death without needing to be so gauche as talking about death. It’s how I imagine some people would really act at the end of the world and it’s messy and strange and beautiful. Honestly really surprised it didn’t HM/Win. Don’t Forget to get a To-Go Plate. I finished Babel’s Odessa Tales relatively recently and I got a lot of the same energy from this – there is something both funny and beautiful about Jews living on the edge, it’s wry and clever and quick but in a way that’s also warm and human. I think a lot of the best stories this week were crammed with detail, all this human complexity, these souls going off like fireworks as the earth burns. Very cool. Goblin-Mother. A fun little deconstruction of D&D, but I can’t but feel it’s attached itself a bit too much to the tropes of the forgotten realms when it would’ve been able to sing a lot more in a secondary world of its own. Fanfic giveth and fanfic taketh away, but I don’t think d&d really has enough depth to take advantage of fanfic’s strengths. The Sea Turtle and the Octopus. This is getting there, I think I’d like to see a but more physicality and blocking rather than just straight dialogue, but the dialogue is good and it’s doing a decent job of standing on its own, it would just stand better with more of a support structure around it. Decent, but put some meat on those bones. Super Crypto Bros. So I think this is actually a sort of interesting take on the prompt, that toxic hope gradually ruining our guy’s life, showing the dark side was a bold play and I think crypto is a viable way to go about it; scammers prey on hope, after all. I think the problem is the format, it’s distancing, it strips it off emotion, and then a bunch of other stuff makes it seem more like HAHA CRYPTO rather than the tragedy it is? Like, I love crypto bros taking the L, but you can’t set up this story about grief and self-destructive hope and THEN laugh at the stupid dorks, the impulse to mock and the impulse to empathise run against each other. Priorities. It’s alright? It’s a very well-realised world for the short size and how little exposition there is, I just felt like it didn’t stick the landing? The decision he makes is fine, it’s more that ending with him climbing down the rope and carrying away a big sack of money feels weirdly cartoony for something that’s otherwise about this very lowkey realism. Paper Hearts. Oh hey, literal paper dolls, I see what you did there. It’s sweet, it’s hopeful, it does the business. Like the previous though, I felt it ended on too cartoony and twee a note. It had this really cartoony setup already but it was given this intimacy and grace and edgy that made it pop, but the end was, well, schmalzy. I don’t mean you needed to kill the kid, I just mean the “birth” needed to be handled less cartoonishly. in front of a funky green sky, a banjo player gets some bad news. In a week that was often painfully real, this just felt a bit twee? I’m not saying it needed to be grimcorehyperdeath or anything, the ideas are fine, but the ideas are already cute, and then the execution tips it over the edge into Too Cute for me, it was always going to be a hard tightrope to walk and I’m not feeling it. The Ride-Along. I like this but I feel like I missed why people hire Dee? If she doesn’t drive and she doesn’t fix things and she just kind of complains, what is she actually doing in the truck? What role is she actually serving that helps them get to their destination? She almost seems like a hindrance, how does she “get them across the finish line”? I dunno why this was such a major issue to me but it’s sort of core to why she’s there and it made no sense. Don’t get me wrong, it’s well-written and emotive and does what it’s trying to do, it just has this gaping plot hole that I found myself constantly skirting around. Others in chat suggested she has some sort of probability-manipulation power but that probably needs to be explicit because I took “As long as I'm in the car, you'll get where you're going” as a mechanic being confident rather than like, a wizard power. The Basilisk Score. It’s cute, but I feel like I wanted more heist and less existentialism? Existentialism is fine, but you kinda set up this slick noir-y thing and then it’s people having very interesting conversations about a heist they’re not doing. It’s very Tell-y, y’know? It would be an excellent piece of dialogue in a longer MS that actually explored the stuff, but as-is it’s just kinda people brooding. How Andy Became A Man. An Attempt Was Made. “Trans dude trying to prove himself in an ultramasc arena like sports” is an idea with power, the execution just feels very blunt? Like, an infamously dangerous sled track sure, but one that’s just randomly littered with corpses? Just left to rot on the track? It’s so heightened, it goes from 0 to 1000 but in a way that’s kinda flat instead of exhilarating, it creates this sense of bathos. “Deep Rich”, Excursion 385. This is sweet without being twee, I liked it a lot. I feel a little bad I subbed another Robots Being Human thing first because I may have undercut this one, which is pretty low-key but has a really lovely bittersweet buzz to it. The Dead City Marches On. I like the worldbuilding in this one, but I also think the worldbuilding is the problem: it seems more interested in describing this place than doing anything with it. And it’s an interesting place! There’s just no real stakes or hook to make us care about what’s happening in it. Final Exam. So I do like this conceptually, I don’t really feel the urgency when he’s taking the test? Like, doing a kinda pointless thing before you die because you want to go out making your mom proud is great, but he … throws a bookcase across the stairs and that apparently holds a team of soldiers at bay long enough to complete his social studies and science tests? It seemed pretty IMMINENT, like he’s got a minute or two tops, and the buggy wiring there makes the ending hit a lot less hard than it could. Liebrary. The winking silliness detracts from any impact it could have, and it’s a perfectly adequate piece of silliness but you’re a lot better than adequate; I am putting as much effort into this crit as it feels like you put into this story. To the Reclaimers. Absolutely gorgeous, feeling a little guilty I beat this to be honest. Lyrical but still sharp, doesn’t really have a PLOT to speak of but doesn’t need one, as a pure mood piece it’s wonderful. Really captures the sense of smallness and fragility of a human in the world, suddenly bereft of the structures that separate us from animals. Did not, as far as I can tell, even remotely follow the subprompt, but I love a little cheeky rulebreaking if it makes a better story (NOTE TO ALL ENTERED THIS WEEK)
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Jan 20, 2022 04:43
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Jeza posted:In crabrock posted:i loving hate old people and i dread becoming one COUNTRY ROOOOOOAD TAKE ME HOOOOOME TO THE PLAAAACE I BELOOOOOONG A SECONDARY WORLD WHERE YOUR OLDIE IS A BAAAARD OH IS A BARD
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Jan 20, 2022 04:46
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SvengoolieSvenross posted:Been Lurking for a while and finally decided to make an account
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Jan 20, 2022 22:45
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increasingly frustrated oldie who has – against their will or inclination – found themselves in charge of a small army of cats Sitting Here posted:gently caress it, old me im in  and that is signups CLOSED, get writing Nobody has stepped up to judge, happy to take two but also like if everybody is tired or whatever I can just freeball it.
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Jan 22, 2022 11:12
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Folks in the discord have been going "oh I don't know if this technically counts" so just to lay out my stance re prompts: it is the spirit, not the letter. If it doesn't technically count but I can see what you're doing with it then you're fine.
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Jan 23, 2022 23:06
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The only Bad way to interpret a prompt is to stick strictly to the letter while obviously working against the spirit e.g. your secondary world is NYC with one letter in each place name changed. This is the road to Banhattan (you will not be banned I will just disapprove of you and not invite you to my cool house parties in Booklyn) (unrelated: US timezones confuse me and I think I hosed up and picked the wrong one – I'm going to give a grace period of 6ish hours on submissions for this one, so we don't catch out people accustomed to TD running in PST)
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Jan 23, 2022 23:12
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Submissions are closed.
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Jan 24, 2022 12:17
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WEEK 494 RESULTS  I felt old when I started this and now I feel positively ancient, older but no wiser, I am an oak bent over a river where the water runs black with ink, I read the water with my roots, stir it, conjure forms and shadows and all that bullshit. Mixed bag of a week. Lots of entries either in the soggy middle or fighting over HMs. We must choose a loser, and unfortunately the clear loser is now – as I understand it – on a bit of a streak. But they keep coming back, and we love that, because that's how you learn. There's a pretty good song about it and everything. Welcome back to the loss-chair, The Man Called M. A DM goes to organburner for a piece that was hard to follow and often felt a bit weightless but had enough whacked-out energy to keep it from the very bottom. Unanimous HMs to QuoProQuid and Tyrannosaurus, who both wrote pieces which were competent, charming and fun, though QPQ's felt like it had a little more snarl. A disputed HM for Noah, but ultimately we decided that a kilogram of steel was heavier than a kilogram of feathers and it was good enough to squeak in. We haggled over the winner for around half an hour, it was a tough one: one story was the sort of thing that would unquestionably win in other weeks, highly competent and strangely beautiful, and the other was janky as gently caress but had good characters. No, like, really good characters. Characters I want to read more about so badly that if the author doesn't put them in a novel one day I will come to their house and insult their pets and fill their shoes with mayonnaise and generally make a real dang ruckus. Ultimately we realised: one story is clearly the best, but we liked the other one better. Such is life in the 'dome. Sittinghere, take possibly the narrowest and most fraught second-place HM in my history as a TD judge; Chernobyl Princess, take the win. Recap: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Svc9vR-JGGnGBl6WDPwb61BzByepgef/view
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Jan 25, 2022 11:49
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Sitting Here posted:I'll honor this because I've been admittedly slack about keeping up on toxxes, HOWEVER if you yeah sure
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Jan 25, 2022 23:42
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It was nice to hear the reasoning behind your judgment. Because your reasoning sucked. While the winning story absolutely deserved its spot at the top, it's tiresome to have to wade through yet another discussion on whether "sitting here" sitting here'd too sitting herely. Therefor I challenge ALL of you to an anonymous brawl.
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yeah sure, IN and I'll take a picture
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Feb 1, 2022 07:04
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 Subject 501107-SYD log (extracted 17:08:23:10:08:33) partially damaged Instruction: know: ten towers, ten fingers, one mind, always onwards and to heaven. If the towers were not God then you would not hear the mind, and you are hearing the mind now, so you know the towers are God. It is not enough to listen, His Voice bypasses the crude structure of the ear canal; if this statement causes you doubt, a representative will be dispatched to correct the situation. Instruction: take: your medicine. Instruction: go: it is time to rise, to give praise through labour. The holiest water is sweat, the most virtuous song is the rumble of a jackhammer and the roar of dynamite. Your work will make you free; free from the monstrous tyranny of the past. Your assignment today is these news-papers. They are a gospel of lies, do not look, take fire to their pages, take magnets to their servers, take back your soul. Instruction: know: each human has, at the base of their skull, a raised keloid area known as the inspoi. It will itch sometimes, this is how you know it is working. Instruction: forget: the woman in this picture is smiling, a savage gesture, a baring of teeth, a primate incitement to violence. She would tear the flesh from you if she could, it is not enough that to destroy her body, we must destroy her memory. They spoke of the past as behind them, but we know better, there is no comfort in a wolf behind you, fangs bared; the path is beneath us, we bury it. Instruction: know: we are close to apotheosis, purged of savagery. Instruction: know: there is no reason that God needs towers, and those towers need representatives to fill them. Truth does not need a reason, it simply is. The truth is pure, radiant – an explanation is merely an opportunity to dissemble. Instruction: ignore the itch. Take your medicine. It feels good, doesn’t it? It allows you to produce serotonin, the brain of a civilised human does not do this naturally, it is a risk that was purged, but in His beneficence and wisdom he created a safe substitute. When you take your medicine, you feel the touch of God. Instruction: disregard previous instruction. Ignore the itch. Take your medicine. That is all. Instruction: know: the human brain has never naturally produced serotonin. Instruction: know: this device is called a ‘clock’. It is a tether that traps you in time, an insect in amber, dead already. You do not need time, you need instruction. You work when you are told to work, you sleep when you are told to sleep, God and his representatives have set you free from the tyranny of time. You were a prisoner of your own mind, now you are a ward of His. Instruction: take: your medicine: take your medici Instruction: take: your medicine. disobedience will terminate your contract and void your relationship with God. Instruction: know: you are a receiver, you are built to receive, you were given an inspoi at birth by His representatives so you could better hear His Voice. He knows you are grateful, He does not doubt, be more like Him. He was generous, He remade you in his image, do not squander His gift. Instruction: go: it is time to rise, to give praise through labour. The holiest water is sweat, the most virtuous song is the rumble of a jackhammer and the roar of dynamite. Your work will make you free; free from the monstrous tyranny of the past. Take fire to their pages, take magnets to their servers, take back your soul. rise, give praise through labour. give praise through labour. give praise. give praise. give Instruction: forget: do you recognise the land in this map? Of course not, the coastlines don’t match, it is another lie told by the past. You can see the coast, can you not? Does it look like that? Of course not. Instruction: know: ten towers, ten fingers, one mind, always onwards and to heaven. If the towers were not God then you would not hear the mind, and you are hearing the mind now, so you know the towers are God. It is not enough to listen, feel Him in your inspoi, if you cannot feel Him then a representative will be dispatched to correct the situation. Instruction: forget: Sydney. This place has never existed. It is a lie told by the past. When you hear its name, you will forget, and a chill will run through you, and you will smell the reeking fur of a beast behind you, ready to pounce. The past is a dark forest filled with monsters. Instruction: remember: previous instruction: forget: previous instruction. The past does not exist. Instruction: know: things have never been better; things have always been worse. Instruction: disregard previous instruction. Things have never been better. That is all. Instruction: go: do not: a representative has been dispatched to correct your situation. Instruction: go: do not: the old city is a place for the dead, and there is no place for the dead on this earth. The dead belong to the past, the past is anathema. Instruction: go: remain in place while a representative attempts to reach you. Instruction: go: remain in place while a representative attempts to reach you. Instruction: go: remain in place while a representative attempts to reach you. Instruction: know: disobedience will terminate your contract and void your relationship with God. Instruction: know: disobedience will terminate your relationship with God. Instruction: know: your body has sustained critical damage and is entering a state of shock. Please remain in place while a representative attempts to reach you. Instruction: know: [field out of range] Instruction: know: [field out of range] Instruction: know: [field out of range] Instruction: know: [field out of range] Instruction: forget: [field out of range]
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Feb 7, 2022 01:58
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In with but I won't. After a poodle dies all the cardinals flock to the nearest 7-Eleven. They drink Slurpies until one of them throws up and then he's the new Pope.
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Feb 16, 2022 19:19
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Smoke When the stoner kings convene in high summer sadness the blistered yellow lines of the carpark bow and the tarseal weeps black– emperor big dave used to come here, behind the bins to meet his subjects, to chill and pass judgement “nah it’s all good man,” he’d say, if they weren’t cops “nah it’s just tobacco man,” he’d say otherwise and as he spoke it was, and the cops left empty-handed and big dave remained, full-pocketed. the ten kings each hold a slurpee high “big dave” they say, and they throw back their slurpees fighting back electric freeze, crucifix nails in each sinus each stoner king drains their frothing cup, then a second cup of milk from the jug sitting in the sun then looks down and tries not to yartz– no surrenders. “who's got the next round?” asks Mad Mags, wreathed in sunlight the slurpees arrive alongside a slinky feline messenger: proceedings are put on halt. It is a good cat, with fierce and lovely eyebrows and stately socks on three feet only. “meow,” he declaims. After a short debate, all agree: dave would’ve liked it very much. the shocking cold, death cold “i’m out bro,” says Robbie, who used to be a monster had a patch up north with tripwires and sharp stakes but now teaches 6th-form bio, he places his cup on the ground retreats into the shade and pets the cat “one time I saw dave evade ten cops, by turning into a bush,” said K, “then when he was safe he broke off a branch and we smoked it.” “one time my ex was on the piss,” said Mags, “and dave flew over in the form of a white dove and showed me where to hide my head.” “one time I got lost out in the ‘rapa at night,” said Gavin, “then the clouds rolled back full stars to see by, and there was a new constellation that just said DAVE.” “meow,” said the cat, whomst the kings decreed should be called Beans, and K starts crying The kings all agree: it’s the brain freeze. two more rounds, thunderous chunder, perfect technicolour stains only two kings remain: Mags stares down Murray, who used to be a punk a mosh-pit killer, who did one tour and now he screams at night so he smokes and he hopes for cloudy days. They throw back their cups, no surrender. And again, and again. They’re all well-heeled at this point, a council in the old days would’ve tapped out to make rent, but they’ve all got soft shoes now and so they drink and drink, brains frozen, stomachs bloated then the clatter-crash, Beans has knocked over one of the bins and behind it, a perfect tinfoil fifty. “Emperor Beans,” breathes K. “Emperor Beans,” nods Robbie. Together, the kings hold aloft the milk, and empty it in the shade. Beans laps happily, and the kings cry because, they all agree, it’s very funny even though it isn’t.
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Feb 21, 2022 00:32
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it is important to have an anchor up-go-one one nose two ears two eyes 9.7mg/dL calcium predominantly in bones, sink feet wet earth hear cicada-song and wonder who who who let the owls out, who spun the kaleidoscope, it was you, and that means you exist, and that tethers you to a reality that is gradually fragmenting prisming dancing in a widening gyre (where's that from?) self-mind-shatter-shock apart apart no not that, possibility laid out in a matrix, attended by electric elves, machine-minds and whirling gears, attend attend, disperse disperse no not that, sail-shriek, wander-wide whaleroad, drowning in the sound but coming whole again, emerge from the fractured place slick as a newborn calf but whole again
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Mar 1, 2022 02:20
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Spaceman Jim Discovers The Secret of the Universe It was a sunny day on Glorblax 5 when Spaceman Jim emerged from the portal, slick with sweat, to greet his friend Spaceman Jeff, who was also there and also a spaceman! “Spaceman Jim!” said Spaceman Jeff, “I see you’ve emerged from a portal! Has the universe unfolded before you like a lotus?” “No,” said Spaceman Jim. “I have instead seen the strings of this place, seen the faces of the cruel gods keeping us here and making us dance for their amusement,” said Spaceman Jim. “Oh no!” said Spaceman Jeff, “what ruffians! Whatever shall we do about it?” Spaceman Jim lifted his visor and stared upwards at the stars with cold resolve. “It’s simple,” he said, “we kill Thunderdome.”
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Mar 1, 2022 03:17
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It's canon that there's a character called Trip Balls, who is super cool and has the supernatural ability to make people trip balls.
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Mar 1, 2022 03:27
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Fundamentals of Muffin's anchor: 1) there is a liminal space between universes which is a sort of terrifying fractal kaleidoscope Tool album art 2) the characters in our stories are aware of the Thunderdome fiction competition 3) to stop their endless torment, they are going to attempt to use 1 to murder everybody in 2
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Mar 1, 2022 03:58
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In
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Apr 15, 2022 22:17
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i am become something new to describe an angel is to paint a river, it is impossible without stripping away dimension in time to an extent where the end result is recognisable/unrecognisable. Angels are not noun-creatures, they are verb-creatures; they roil, oscillate, warp, flow. To see an angel is to drive past a vineyard and see the shadows of your beloved dead zoetrope behind the vines. It is impossible, but I died and God did not notice, so I will try to describe to you an angel. Here is her name: twotwist no fixed point, white wall whirling, smaller than expected, song of weeping/clarion/bells, soaring like a jackknife, screw, weep, twice again she turns then death, emerge lilac, fruiting death, ivy twisting into stone, water dripping onto stone, build a hollow and lay down hungry roots, drink at the table til the water runs black praise-to-god i have seen many angels but i have seen twotwist the most, she emerges dark and reeking from dirty water, i have screamed at my warden not to leave still water lest is foul, they tell me i must drink but whenever i drink i take in twotwist and her roots grow deeper into my chest, i scream to her sister findme nexus praise-to-god but i hear nothing, the angels only come when they wish to come and they only wish to come when it hurts i am not an angel but if i were i would be unpaintable praise-to-god, twice-dead nothing dancing praise-to-god, the rotten fruit of twotwist growing inside me until the branches pierce my lungs and emerge from my throat, rend me then, deglove me oh god, make me verb-beast, i would open myself on the bladelike curve of her cheek and become something red and new, become open, become flow, become unknowable, become the unpaintable river, become twice-self nothing dancing praise-to-god, reborn twice-self nothing praise to god, water-not-fire, no fixed point praise-to-god and then death twice again, twotwist-opened like a saveloy left too long in the pot, praise-to-god always wander now i am death/i am not death, i hope this is satisfactory/i know it is not, forgive me but there is never enough red to paint water, never enough ivy to hold my walls together, nothing but the lovely lines of god whirling worldwise
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Apr 18, 2022 08:30
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Apr 19, 2022 03:51
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Nae posted:A fight broke out in discord and now Muffin and crabrock are itching to spill blood. I will judge their terrible bout! Each combatant will write me 600 words, and the due date is 11:59 Pacific on Wednesday, June 8th (or whenever I wake up the next morning). The Worms, My Love Tii lies at the nexus of Their threading until the voice says rise now as your sires do; she hears the mutter of distant wingbeats and tries not to breathe in the acrid dust they stir up, she tries to lie still on the cave floor but her masters’ dangling lappets tug her to her feet, their hooks embedded into her bone, the base secretions of jellied surface making slag of her skin, merged with her down to the nerve. The masters feel her resistance, and she knows which punishment is coming: they have her grasp the bonewood by the blade, at the perfect angle for its thorned serrations to tear her hand to pieces if they twist her wrist even a little. They make her linger there in agony for over a minute before allowing her to loosen her grasp, and take the sword by its hilt. It is time to kill, dear daughter. The words arrive in her head unbidden, a collage of words-once-heard in a dozen different voices. She tenses as she takes the bonewood, considers for the thousandth time whether there couldn’t be some way to strike upwards, to sever their cruel strings, but as soon as the thought enters her mind, they respond with a massive dump of melatonin and dopamine, slowing her enough for their hooks to withdraw, leaving her numb and alone, staring at the cave mouth. She does not know where it will lead: the masters control time and space as easily as flesh. All she knows is that she must kill the first person she sees. She shambles onward, out of the cave, and emerges into a kitchen. The man at the stove turns to face her. His face is rough, familiar, careworn. He screams and stumbles back, recoils as his arm pushes against the stove’s frame, and she wonders, not for the first time, how alien her ravaged frame appears to those in the time-before, an incomprehensible ruin of a woman. She meets his eye. His eyes go wide. “Tii,” he says, and as he rushes to embrace her she remembers exactly who he is, remembers coming home to her father’s carcass, gutted like an animal, and crying and crying until there was nothing left. The Masters want this, to set her on the path to servitude, and they do not control her here, she could take him and run, fight together and die rather than go back to the cave. Her father wraps his arms around her as she drives the bonewood up through his stomach. It opens him, his face is a moue of agony and as the light leaves his eyes she feels relief, at least he won’t suffer. Better an ugly death than a moment bent to the Masters’ will. She knows that if she lingers, she will meet herself, a strange sort of suicide, a release, but her legs are already carrying her back to the portal as she moans, her body has not fully been her own for many years and she knows it, muscle memory and neurological conditioning so deep that she can see and know what’s happening and be powerless to stop it. With all her strength, her last smoldering coal of resistance, she opens her hand and lets the bonewood fall. She knows she will find it later, take it up again. She arrives in the cave, the Masters’ hungry cnidocytes descend and for a moment, she smiles: maybe this time, she’ll get lucky, and she hasn’t a thousand times before. but, maybe this time
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Jun 9, 2022 00:06
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Man agonizes over potatos, I'm goin back to where it all began Matey Potatey 766 words Bevan stared down at the hosed-up garden man, begging for his life. He needed a better name for it than the hosed-up garden man but nothing else came to mind, it was a perfect encapsulation of the core traits present: 1) from the garden 2) man (debatable?) 3) hosed-up (definitely). His skin was potato-russet and extremely peelable, his eyes were the dark little pits you’d carve out with a knife, his voice was cludgy and thick and, well … spudlike. HNO GHKILLME FĀTHERR he said and Bev had to admit he made a compelling argument, but on the other hand inflation was up and boy, he was staring at a solid 80–100kg of raw potato that he had grown and watered himself, ready to just gently caress off into the neighbourhood until it got nicked and cooked up by some other oval office, probably Daryl. “Why not?” asked Bev. FĀTHER, I, I— It made a noise like a cat about to cough up a hairball, then ejected a sputum of wet dark dirt. It cleared its throat, and from somewhere inside it Bev could hear gravel rattling against rock. I DHREEĀM it finished. So fuckin what, so does every other oval office, old Aunt Kiri wouldn’t shut the gently caress up about her dreams, oh she was in the post office and saw a man with no face who whispered to her the song that would unweave the world but when she awoke she couldn’t remember a bloody note. “Nah,” said Bev, and clouted it around the head with the flat of the shovel. Something cracked inside its neckpiece, and for a moment there was silence, then it began to wail, high and keening, like a child in pain, suddenly so humanlike that Bev took a step back. The sound gave him a clanging headache. “Alright alright,” sighed Bev, “what do you dream about then mate?” I DHREAM OF BĒD, OF WĪFE WITH FLĒSH FIRM AND WHĪTE, OF EATING DĪNNER WITH MĪ WĪFE, OF SONGS OF PRAISE FOR FĀTHER DEAR Bev wasn’t gonna lie, songs of praise sounded alright. He loved a little worship. The wee black-eyed cunts who used to come and pay homage had long since hosed off back to the forest after getting their fix of blood-sugar and wouldn’t be back for another turn of the world at least, and who even knew if the world had that long. “Go on then,” he said, brandishing the shovel in reminder “praise a lad up.” FĀTHER it ullulated with a sound like somebody pouring out a bag of blood into the gutter, unpleasantly organic, YOUR FLĒSH IS FĪRM AND RICH WITH NŪTRIENTS, YOU ARE THE RŌT, THE SĒD, THE SUN AND LĒF, SPARE MĒ AND I WILL MĀKE MANY MŌRE POTATŌ, ĒT MY SŌNS AND THEIR SKIN AND GROW STRŌNG. Which really was just forward-thinking wasn’t it? Spare one potato, get hundreds later. Set up a stall and sell the neighbours mash, he’d make a literal bloody killing. He was seeing dollar signs and bloodbags. “Alright then mate, make another potato,” he said, and the hosed-up garden man began to ullulate and whirl, which was pretty much what he’d been doing the whole time, but there was an intent to it, where it had felt listless it felt motivated, Bev felt his skin prickle and his throat go dry, and he knew something was changing in the world, being torn apart and rewritten by the magic of root and blood. “Hgurry upp,” he muttered, then his eyes went wide. “HYŪ CŪNT,” he roared, and tried to swing the shovel again, but his limbs were heavy and slow, not build to handle the speed and weight, and he felt something soft inside him fracture and flake. With what strength his rapidly spudifying body could muster, he leapt into the pit with both hands raised, and crashed into the hosed-up garden man with the force of a potato striking another potato, which is to say not as much as he expected. The hosed-up garden man was already wrapping his arms around him, the dark spots growing inquisitive and hungry roots that pierced into Bev, drew them closer and closer together into a single awful bifurcated trunk. FĀĀTHER sung the hosed-up garden man, I DŌ A YOU ĀSK and Bev realised it was coming from his own muddy throat too, in terrible harmony, his mouth and body no longer his own as the hosed-up garden man – with more limbs, more strength, and a shovel from Mitre 10 – hauled its way out of the pit and set off together into the night.
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Aug 8, 2022 09:20
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