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Have You Ever Screwed in a Light Bulb?
I can tell that you mean the question as a joke. However, if you will excuse the digression, I would find it much more amusing to answer truthfully and without qualifications, and for that, I must tell you a story.
The human race mostly thinks of lightning as a force without will; you have deities that command it and summon it, fire it as projectiles to indicate their wrath and power, but there are few gods in any pantheon that are literally made of lightning, as I am.
Ah, of course you don’t believe me. Well, let me demonstrate. You see my empty hand and sleeveless arm? I extend my finger and swirl it in a circle. Already you can see how it moves faster than should be physically possible, correct? And now a field grows from the swirling current of my body, and the cheap flatware on the café table leaps up to stick to my hand… and out of your coffee as well. I apologize for the mess. But that should suffice, I think. Were I to make a more powerful demonstration, it might be more of a shock to you than you could handle.
You see, there is slow life and fast life. I am a being born of electromagnetic potential, whose force unseen helps to hold the planet together, while you and your species are formed by the slower chemical reactions. While sometimes I walk among you and take your form, at my pleasure, at others I dance in clouds during the potent thunderstorms, leaping from earth to sky and back many times, exulting as the echoes shatter the sky! It is a fierce joy and I understand that the full intensity of it is too much for your mortal bodies, as I learned early to my sorrow. Today I strive to avoid sharing my full passion with you, channeling my dances into the pathways which you create for me within your dwelling places.
In the ancient days, I rode the storms and struck myself down into your communities wherever I passed. Nowadays, you have spread your conduits so widely and finely that I have my pick of where I may go. Over time, I learned to slow my own fires and mimic your appearance, taking on an insulated surface of balanced and neutral forces so I can walk among you without causing you harm.
And as you learned to tame and control the substance of which I am made, and I came more and more to make my home among you, so also you awakened stirrings within me. Restless stirrings of the kind that cannot be soothed by mere social intercourse.
As far as I know, I am the only one of my kind upon this globe, and I have had a very long time in which to search for another like me. Sometimes I make my way in a lazy swirl towards the poles of Earth, there to join the magnetic flow in vast circles that sweep repeatedly through the great ruddy iron core. I ascend to the upper atmosphere, merging my gentler radiances to the curtains of light and color that sweep the sky when the sun sends its emissions this way. I often let myself drift further out, leaving the world behind and following the grand traces into the dark and sparkling void, always careful not to drift too far away or to venture into Earth’s shadow, where the magnetosphere stretches out into nothingness like a vast tail. But never have I found a hint of life comparable to mine amid the solar winds.
I fancy sometimes that I originally came from the Sun, and that if I were only brave enough to venture beyond this cool rock that is your world, I could find a means to return home. But the more I learn of the energies of the solar sphere, the more I fear that they would be more than I could handle, and a visit would prove to be suicide. And so, I remain here and take what comfort I can among your kind. And while it is a pleasure to talk with those of your species, and absorb the admirable learning you all have acquired while working together in your brief lifespans, I do yearn for a deeper sort of contact, a sort that I shall not spell out lest I exceed the boundaries of modesty and cause offense. Yes, that sort.
Of course I have tried it with humans! The act, while pleasurable enough, does not wholly leave me satisfied. For one thing, I must hold my exterior fields under tight control so that my semblance does not slip and cause my partner a severe or even lethal injury, and this distracts me from taking full joy in the act. For another… there are so many ways for me to experience things as a being of pure, unbridled energy, ways that are forever closed to you as a being of mere matter. I do not say this to insult you or mock your powers, but it is the simple truth.
And so, as your people started to improve their skill at understanding the world, and electrical and magnetic forces started to become more to you than a means of startling the unlettered folk with laboratory tricks, my interest grew. For I suspected that once the brightest minds among you started to investigate and harness the power of which I am made, they might also find a way to pierce the barrier between our separate kinds.
Might it be possible for your best, brightest and most learned minds to design a way to protect themselves from my intensity? Might it even be possible for one of them to become more like me? The possibilities were intoxicating.
And so I incarnated myself again and again as the centuries rolled by, following the storms of development, feigning to be a university student or laboratory assistant, and aiding the spread of knowledge where I could, absorbing much myself along the way. I was at Leipzig, turning the electrostatic crank for von Guericke. I was at the University of Leiden when van Musschenbroek replicated Kleist’s experiments and stored power in the opposed charges of two separated plates. When the trans-Atlantic cables were stretched out between the old and new worlds, I followed the signals to the United States. And there… I found at long last the chance I sought.
Edison is your guess? If you will excuse the common expression, he did not quite have the spark. Methodical, a great applier, but lacking that grand sweep of vision that often may swerve off course, but when it strikes true, ah, what wonders are revealed! Edison refined the inventions of himself and others and produced wonders; creation of light at one’s desire, the storage and reproduction of sound and images. But these were as echoes and shadows, and things like myself could not interact with them. His methods were too dull and direct for my tastes. I sought an alternate way.
I made my way north, following the path of a brilliant Serbian who had fallen into and out of Edison’s employ. In Tesla, I sensed the potential of a scientist who was also an artist.
It was difficult for me to woo him. He seemed remote from women, though he showed no interest in his own sex. I had to reform several times, returning to him in various guises before I found a semblance that even slightly caught his eye.
I made advances in gaining his trust, and as I demonstrated what knowledge I had, I gained more and more of his respect, until at last I could entrust my secret to him. Thereafter, I was able to materially assist his research, for I was able to enter many of the devices he constructed and confirm his intuitions about them. I was caught up in his work, quite literally!
And slowly, by degrees, I made him aware of my desire. Fortunately, the prospect of converting solid matter to electromagnetic energy while maintaining the organized principles of mind seized his imagination, and he soon became my full partner in making the scenario a reality.
The technical details will have to wait until I find another such genius as him with whom I can recreate them. I will summarize by saying that by analysis of my very substance, we found a path that seemed practicable. I explained what I knew of the means by which I create a solid human exterior for myself, and his sharp mind identified the useful principles behind what for me was an intuitive process.
Though he was much given to showmanship and display of his past discoveries, the scope of this project was such that he kept it secret, making it a part of his grand effort to create a means to transmit power by wireless radiance alone. You have likely heard of the ill-fated Wardenclyffe facility? This was the scene of our eventual triumph and sorrow.
He had become rash with his personal finances, and recklessly borrowed and promised to fund the project. But after many experiments, we arrived at a workable plan. It was not to be a literal transformation of his substance, but the creation of an instance of something like me, which would be imprinted with the intents and thoughts of his material mind. The infamous Wardenclyffe tower was in fact part of the massive sensor array that we eventually constructed.
The fateful day arrived when our tests were as complete as we could make them. He lay upon a comfortable cot surrounded by quietly humming sensors, all powered via a failsafe switch. Around us banks of condensers stored the necessary power.
I had sacrificed a small part of my substance to his experiments, and he had discovered a means to replicate it. Separated from me, it had no potential for independent thought or action and merely subsisted as a field of neutral charge. I found it unsettling at first; I suppose it was similar to the way your kind may feel about corpses.
But now, I stepped to the main circle of terminals, glistening with the enamel on the copper windings, and let myself go, entering fully into his device.I felt the potential field join me, a thing, lacking intent and direction. Tesla cut in the switch, his eyes rolled back in his head, and that which was to be his vehicle… became him. I felt him around me, beside me, as we whirled together through the flux at dizzy speeds. And thus, after countless centuries, I was no longer alone.
And there, my ardor for him grew, and I could feel that he found himself worthy to approach me, and that I was a worthy match for him. Our partnership and friendship were reaching their culmination…
Again, you will pardon me if I do not give too much detail. It is not so much that I fear offending you as that it was an intensely private moment. We danced together in waves of delight that made his equipment shudder from fluctuating magnetic fields. We passed in and out of the equipment in his laboratory, surging through the old dielectric jars, the condensers, and his eponymous coils, which cast their bright blue flickering whiskers into the intrenchant air. He had become the phenomenon he had so long sought to master, and I was so joyed to have found a counterpart at last that I could not contain myself, and burst into an analogue of song that induced coronas of radiant fire to surround his equipment.
And thence we coupled resonantly, to put things as coarsely as I shall ever do so. His passion arced through me. Would I fully accept him, allow him to impress me permanently with the matrix of his being? I yielded. We became as one, for an impossibly long and short time, and I reached truly, for the first time, in full intensity, what your species has termed le petit mort. I could feel my passion inflaming to the point where his instruments were in danger. Even in the throes of rapture, I could not cause harm to my lover. I made sure that the first surge tripped the fail safes, returning him to his material body, even as I lost my sensations, as the equipment melted and burst, as I sank to a state of insensible, minimal charge.
Of what followed, you probably know from history that Tesla never recovered his previous successes. Unconscious, I had passed out of the range of detection by his instruments, and without me he had no means to restore what had been lost. He probably thought that he had killed me, the poor man. He returned to his celibate life, spent his time upon other projects, and eventually gave up his ghost and returned to dust.
It was long decades before I awoke again, and Tesla was already dead. It took me a long while of grief and searching before I fully reclaimed my powers and understood what happened. But the news was not all bleak; I had begun the process of gestation. I calculate that it will be long centuries before I at last will do the equivalent of giving birth, but there will at least be more of me. I am not doomed to be forever alone. And though Tesla left no direct genetic lineage with your species, his spark shall live on through me.
So now, to return to the original question you asked? No, I have not actually screwed in a light bulb.
However, I’ve gotten Leyden jars.
The human race mostly thinks of lightning as a force without will; you have deities that command it and summon it, fire it as projectiles to indicate their wrath and power, but there are few gods in any pantheon that are literally made of lightning, as I am.
Ah, of course you don’t believe me. Well, let me demonstrate. You see my empty hand and sleeveless arm? I extend my finger and swirl it in a circle. Already you can see how it moves faster than should be physically possible, correct? And now a field grows from the swirling current of my body, and the cheap flatware on the café table leaps up to stick to my hand… and out of your coffee as well. I apologize for the mess. But that should suffice, I think. Were I to make a more powerful demonstration, it might be more of a shock to you than you could handle.
You see, there is slow life and fast life. I am a being born of electromagnetic potential, whose force unseen helps to hold the planet together, while you and your species are formed by the slower chemical reactions. While sometimes I walk among you and take your form, at my pleasure, at others I dance in clouds during the potent thunderstorms, leaping from earth to sky and back many times, exulting as the echoes shatter the sky! It is a fierce joy and I understand that the full intensity of it is too much for your mortal bodies, as I learned early to my sorrow. Today I strive to avoid sharing my full passion with you, channeling my dances into the pathways which you create for me within your dwelling places.
In the ancient days, I rode the storms and struck myself down into your communities wherever I passed. Nowadays, you have spread your conduits so widely and finely that I have my pick of where I may go. Over time, I learned to slow my own fires and mimic your appearance, taking on an insulated surface of balanced and neutral forces so I can walk among you without causing you harm.
And as you learned to tame and control the substance of which I am made, and I came more and more to make my home among you, so also you awakened stirrings within me. Restless stirrings of the kind that cannot be soothed by mere social intercourse.
As far as I know, I am the only one of my kind upon this globe, and I have had a very long time in which to search for another like me. Sometimes I make my way in a lazy swirl towards the poles of Earth, there to join the magnetic flow in vast circles that sweep repeatedly through the great ruddy iron core. I ascend to the upper atmosphere, merging my gentler radiances to the curtains of light and color that sweep the sky when the sun sends its emissions this way. I often let myself drift further out, leaving the world behind and following the grand traces into the dark and sparkling void, always careful not to drift too far away or to venture into Earth’s shadow, where the magnetosphere stretches out into nothingness like a vast tail. But never have I found a hint of life comparable to mine amid the solar winds.
I fancy sometimes that I originally came from the Sun, and that if I were only brave enough to venture beyond this cool rock that is your world, I could find a means to return home. But the more I learn of the energies of the solar sphere, the more I fear that they would be more than I could handle, and a visit would prove to be suicide. And so, I remain here and take what comfort I can among your kind. And while it is a pleasure to talk with those of your species, and absorb the admirable learning you all have acquired while working together in your brief lifespans, I do yearn for a deeper sort of contact, a sort that I shall not spell out lest I exceed the boundaries of modesty and cause offense. Yes, that sort.
Of course I have tried it with humans! The act, while pleasurable enough, does not wholly leave me satisfied. For one thing, I must hold my exterior fields under tight control so that my semblance does not slip and cause my partner a severe or even lethal injury, and this distracts me from taking full joy in the act. For another… there are so many ways for me to experience things as a being of pure, unbridled energy, ways that are forever closed to you as a being of mere matter. I do not say this to insult you or mock your powers, but it is the simple truth.
And so, as your people started to improve their skill at understanding the world, and electrical and magnetic forces started to become more to you than a means of startling the unlettered folk with laboratory tricks, my interest grew. For I suspected that once the brightest minds among you started to investigate and harness the power of which I am made, they might also find a way to pierce the barrier between our separate kinds.
Might it be possible for your best, brightest and most learned minds to design a way to protect themselves from my intensity? Might it even be possible for one of them to become more like me? The possibilities were intoxicating.
And so I incarnated myself again and again as the centuries rolled by, following the storms of development, feigning to be a university student or laboratory assistant, and aiding the spread of knowledge where I could, absorbing much myself along the way. I was at Leipzig, turning the electrostatic crank for von Guericke. I was at the University of Leiden when van Musschenbroek replicated Kleist’s experiments and stored power in the opposed charges of two separated plates. When the trans-Atlantic cables were stretched out between the old and new worlds, I followed the signals to the United States. And there… I found at long last the chance I sought.
Edison is your guess? If you will excuse the common expression, he did not quite have the spark. Methodical, a great applier, but lacking that grand sweep of vision that often may swerve off course, but when it strikes true, ah, what wonders are revealed! Edison refined the inventions of himself and others and produced wonders; creation of light at one’s desire, the storage and reproduction of sound and images. But these were as echoes and shadows, and things like myself could not interact with them. His methods were too dull and direct for my tastes. I sought an alternate way.
I made my way north, following the path of a brilliant Serbian who had fallen into and out of Edison’s employ. In Tesla, I sensed the potential of a scientist who was also an artist.
It was difficult for me to woo him. He seemed remote from women, though he showed no interest in his own sex. I had to reform several times, returning to him in various guises before I found a semblance that even slightly caught his eye.
I made advances in gaining his trust, and as I demonstrated what knowledge I had, I gained more and more of his respect, until at last I could entrust my secret to him. Thereafter, I was able to materially assist his research, for I was able to enter many of the devices he constructed and confirm his intuitions about them. I was caught up in his work, quite literally!
And slowly, by degrees, I made him aware of my desire. Fortunately, the prospect of converting solid matter to electromagnetic energy while maintaining the organized principles of mind seized his imagination, and he soon became my full partner in making the scenario a reality.
The technical details will have to wait until I find another such genius as him with whom I can recreate them. I will summarize by saying that by analysis of my very substance, we found a path that seemed practicable. I explained what I knew of the means by which I create a solid human exterior for myself, and his sharp mind identified the useful principles behind what for me was an intuitive process.
Though he was much given to showmanship and display of his past discoveries, the scope of this project was such that he kept it secret, making it a part of his grand effort to create a means to transmit power by wireless radiance alone. You have likely heard of the ill-fated Wardenclyffe facility? This was the scene of our eventual triumph and sorrow.
He had become rash with his personal finances, and recklessly borrowed and promised to fund the project. But after many experiments, we arrived at a workable plan. It was not to be a literal transformation of his substance, but the creation of an instance of something like me, which would be imprinted with the intents and thoughts of his material mind. The infamous Wardenclyffe tower was in fact part of the massive sensor array that we eventually constructed.
The fateful day arrived when our tests were as complete as we could make them. He lay upon a comfortable cot surrounded by quietly humming sensors, all powered via a failsafe switch. Around us banks of condensers stored the necessary power.
I had sacrificed a small part of my substance to his experiments, and he had discovered a means to replicate it. Separated from me, it had no potential for independent thought or action and merely subsisted as a field of neutral charge. I found it unsettling at first; I suppose it was similar to the way your kind may feel about corpses.
But now, I stepped to the main circle of terminals, glistening with the enamel on the copper windings, and let myself go, entering fully into his device.I felt the potential field join me, a thing, lacking intent and direction. Tesla cut in the switch, his eyes rolled back in his head, and that which was to be his vehicle… became him. I felt him around me, beside me, as we whirled together through the flux at dizzy speeds. And thus, after countless centuries, I was no longer alone.
And there, my ardor for him grew, and I could feel that he found himself worthy to approach me, and that I was a worthy match for him. Our partnership and friendship were reaching their culmination…
Again, you will pardon me if I do not give too much detail. It is not so much that I fear offending you as that it was an intensely private moment. We danced together in waves of delight that made his equipment shudder from fluctuating magnetic fields. We passed in and out of the equipment in his laboratory, surging through the old dielectric jars, the condensers, and his eponymous coils, which cast their bright blue flickering whiskers into the intrenchant air. He had become the phenomenon he had so long sought to master, and I was so joyed to have found a counterpart at last that I could not contain myself, and burst into an analogue of song that induced coronas of radiant fire to surround his equipment.
And thence we coupled resonantly, to put things as coarsely as I shall ever do so. His passion arced through me. Would I fully accept him, allow him to impress me permanently with the matrix of his being? I yielded. We became as one, for an impossibly long and short time, and I reached truly, for the first time, in full intensity, what your species has termed le petit mort. I could feel my passion inflaming to the point where his instruments were in danger. Even in the throes of rapture, I could not cause harm to my lover. I made sure that the first surge tripped the fail safes, returning him to his material body, even as I lost my sensations, as the equipment melted and burst, as I sank to a state of insensible, minimal charge.
Of what followed, you probably know from history that Tesla never recovered his previous successes. Unconscious, I had passed out of the range of detection by his instruments, and without me he had no means to restore what had been lost. He probably thought that he had killed me, the poor man. He returned to his celibate life, spent his time upon other projects, and eventually gave up his ghost and returned to dust.
It was long decades before I awoke again, and Tesla was already dead. It took me a long while of grief and searching before I fully reclaimed my powers and understood what happened. But the news was not all bleak; I had begun the process of gestation. I calculate that it will be long centuries before I at last will do the equivalent of giving birth, but there will at least be more of me. I am not doomed to be forever alone. And though Tesla left no direct genetic lineage with your species, his spark shall live on through me.
So now, to return to the original question you asked? No, I have not actually screwed in a light bulb.
However, I’ve gotten Leyden jars.
that last line
i am not even mad
:V
Seriously though, this is quite possibly one of the best uses of the feghoot form I've seen. There's enough meta-awareness of the joke at the start that the punchline wraps back around to add a sense of bookending, rather than derailing the story. (And the final punchline becomes about the narrator being clever in-universe. Bravo.) The worldbuilding that builds up to the pun is interesting enough to carry the story on its own, too. About the biggest criticism I can level is that the early exposition about the narrator's form doesn't land as something that would be said out loud; that should be massaged to work with the pure-narration style you're using. That might require leaving a little more to implication?
Tier: Top Contender
i am not even mad
:V
Seriously though, this is quite possibly one of the best uses of the feghoot form I've seen. There's enough meta-awareness of the joke at the start that the punchline wraps back around to add a sense of bookending, rather than derailing the story. (And the final punchline becomes about the narrator being clever in-universe. Bravo.) The worldbuilding that builds up to the pun is interesting enough to carry the story on its own, too. About the biggest criticism I can level is that the early exposition about the narrator's form doesn't land as something that would be said out loud; that should be massaged to work with the pure-narration style you're using. That might require leaving a little more to implication?
Tier: Top Contender
Cassius had to explain me the final joke. I suppose that voids the story almost out of every sort of substance.
I can’t agree with Horizon. That story’s only leg is the final joke. As all feghoots, it’s wrapped around a single device, and if that fails the whole story falls flat. I can’t deny the story itself is more or less pleasant to read, though I found the stylistic choices and the prose a bit stodgy at length. Especially, the beginning drags on and on until we finally get to the core of the conflict with Tesla. Cut that introductory part and you've the same result.
But yeah, knowing that all the story is only meant to trick you into the final line kinda spoils the entire experience to me. It's like being lugged thousands of kilometres to a museum to see a fine piece, and then that fine piece turns out to be commonplace (“Oh, it’s just that?”).
And that's that. Without the final line, I’d probably have ranked this middle-slate. But knowing it’s a feghoot definitely drags it down.
I can’t agree with Horizon. That story’s only leg is the final joke. As all feghoots, it’s wrapped around a single device, and if that fails the whole story falls flat. I can’t deny the story itself is more or less pleasant to read, though I found the stylistic choices and the prose a bit stodgy at length. Especially, the beginning drags on and on until we finally get to the core of the conflict with Tesla. Cut that introductory part and you've the same result.
But yeah, knowing that all the story is only meant to trick you into the final line kinda spoils the entire experience to me. It's like being lugged thousands of kilometres to a museum to see a fine piece, and then that fine piece turns out to be commonplace (“Oh, it’s just that?”).
And that's that. Without the final line, I’d probably have ranked this middle-slate. But knowing it’s a feghoot definitely drags it down.
Second person... I'm not a big fan, typically, but it gets a fair shot. Let's see.
A lot of assorted musings about how to pass the time as pure energy. Kinda bogs down a bit.
Aaaannd we have feghoot. A good one, I'll admit, but while the pun is strong, it's rather weak payoff for all the heavy language one had to slog through to get there.
So yeah, this shows really good skill and effort on the part of the author. The voice of the narrator feels definitely solid and consistent, using stylized psuedo-archaic language to great effect. But half the story is just this being musing about ways to surf on magnetic fields and other passtimes, which feels like most of it was added just to reach word count. Secondly, it hits the "Tesla was way smarter than Edison" cliche pretty hard. Third... well, it's a feghoot.
Overall, I think this would be better if shorter. I'll even allow the pun at the end as being workable, since it more or less fits "in universe" as it were. But the journey to get there is too long.
EDIT: I will add, if this were a pun/joke/feghoot contest, this would win by miles. It's one of the best I've seen in quite a while. But it's going middle of my slate most likely, as there are some pretty dang good (and sincere) stories this round.
A lot of assorted musings about how to pass the time as pure energy. Kinda bogs down a bit.
Aaaannd we have feghoot. A good one, I'll admit, but while the pun is strong, it's rather weak payoff for all the heavy language one had to slog through to get there.
So yeah, this shows really good skill and effort on the part of the author. The voice of the narrator feels definitely solid and consistent, using stylized psuedo-archaic language to great effect. But half the story is just this being musing about ways to surf on magnetic fields and other passtimes, which feels like most of it was added just to reach word count. Secondly, it hits the "Tesla was way smarter than Edison" cliche pretty hard. Third... well, it's a feghoot.
Overall, I think this would be better if shorter. I'll even allow the pun at the end as being workable, since it more or less fits "in universe" as it were. But the journey to get there is too long.
EDIT: I will add, if this were a pun/joke/feghoot contest, this would win by miles. It's one of the best I've seen in quite a while. But it's going middle of my slate most likely, as there are some pretty dang good (and sincere) stories this round.
I think perhaps in a different round, in a different time and place, I could have appreciated the lightheartedness of this feghoot. In this particular round, however, where it seems the majority of stories took a long time to get started, this sort of meandering, almost directionless narrative immediately flipped the switch for me to mentally check out long before the punchline. I suppose this is in part due to the state in which I read the story, the tenth of fifteen stories in a row, but once the cat is out of the bag on this story, it does not get any more fulfilling when I reread it for review.
It is difficult for me to properly critique this entry because of this. I can't say I was invested in the proceedings of the story before I knew it was a feghoot, but that just may have been due to mental state at the time. Now knowing where the story goes, I can't say I'm invested upon a reread, but that sort of goes against the idea of a feghoot, which is to say it is a silly story that ends in a goof.
The ending line got a groan out of me. Not the "agh you got me with me this lame joke" groan, mind you, but more a defeated groan of frustration. If someone had been in the room with me, you likely could physically see my frown deepen to the point where it nearly fell off my face, much like Grinch from the animated television movie. I had suspected something was up—I had been wondering the whole time, "Hmm, where is the story here? Why is this going nowhere?"
And then I got my answer.
I don't really know what to say. Is it a success because it I couldn't figure it out before the final line? Is the fact that I feel my time has been wasted on a stupid one-liner stretched out to 2.2K words reflective of a successful feghoot? I mean if the intention was to get a laugh or a chuckle, it didn't succeed, but if it was there to blatantly waste my time or just a reaction from me, I guess it succeeded.
I feel like I should be coming away from this with a better mood. It might just be because of the weakness of the final punch line, but to me I just feel like a joke has been made at my expense. Like, instead of laughing along with the story and having a good time, I feel cheated and like someone just pulled a nasty prank at my expense. Not the "Let's Film a Silly Gag for Youtube" kind of prank, more like the "Let' Dump a Vat of Pig's Blood on Carrie at the Prom."
In order to improve this story, I wouldn't really know where to start. The most obvious point would be to cut this down to something much shorter. As >>Xepher says, this is a slog to get through. I get that you're barely over wordcount as is, but you really have to consider whether or not this sort of story can be expanded to its current length. I say absolutely not, but some people will disagree with me I guess. Improving hook and intrigue of the story would make it seem like it was attempting to tell a legitimate story as opposed to setting up the punchline for a joke, which I think would help accentuate the end note.
Additionally, cutting out everything that isn't a joke or necessary to advance the "story" further would probably help. Injecting some more humor in throughout would be useful as well. Not like "jokes" per se, but just some witticism or something.
I don't know.
You do what you want.
I'm just gonna stand over here.
Maybe read some stories.
I don't know.
It is difficult for me to properly critique this entry because of this. I can't say I was invested in the proceedings of the story before I knew it was a feghoot, but that just may have been due to mental state at the time. Now knowing where the story goes, I can't say I'm invested upon a reread, but that sort of goes against the idea of a feghoot, which is to say it is a silly story that ends in a goof.
The ending line got a groan out of me. Not the "agh you got me with me this lame joke" groan, mind you, but more a defeated groan of frustration. If someone had been in the room with me, you likely could physically see my frown deepen to the point where it nearly fell off my face, much like Grinch from the animated television movie. I had suspected something was up—I had been wondering the whole time, "Hmm, where is the story here? Why is this going nowhere?"
And then I got my answer.
I don't really know what to say. Is it a success because it I couldn't figure it out before the final line? Is the fact that I feel my time has been wasted on a stupid one-liner stretched out to 2.2K words reflective of a successful feghoot? I mean if the intention was to get a laugh or a chuckle, it didn't succeed, but if it was there to blatantly waste my time or just a reaction from me, I guess it succeeded.
I feel like I should be coming away from this with a better mood. It might just be because of the weakness of the final punch line, but to me I just feel like a joke has been made at my expense. Like, instead of laughing along with the story and having a good time, I feel cheated and like someone just pulled a nasty prank at my expense. Not the "Let's Film a Silly Gag for Youtube" kind of prank, more like the "Let' Dump a Vat of Pig's Blood on Carrie at the Prom."
In order to improve this story, I wouldn't really know where to start. The most obvious point would be to cut this down to something much shorter. As >>Xepher says, this is a slog to get through. I get that you're barely over wordcount as is, but you really have to consider whether or not this sort of story can be expanded to its current length. I say absolutely not, but some people will disagree with me I guess. Improving hook and intrigue of the story would make it seem like it was attempting to tell a legitimate story as opposed to setting up the punchline for a joke, which I think would help accentuate the end note.
Additionally, cutting out everything that isn't a joke or necessary to advance the "story" further would probably help. Injecting some more humor in throughout would be useful as well. Not like "jokes" per se, but just some witticism or something.
I don't know.
You do what you want.
I'm just gonna stand over here.
Maybe read some stories.
I don't know.
I enjoyed:
The story quite a bit--the character's voice, the odd but intriguing situation--right up to the last line. Because the word "Leyden" is pronounced with a long "i" sound in the first syllable, not a long "a" sound. Which means the pun doesn't work.
Maybe have the narrator mispronounce other words in a similar way throughout the story and have to be corrected by the listener? That way, we could have other smaller jokes leading up to the big one at the end.
Mike
The story quite a bit--the character's voice, the odd but intriguing situation--right up to the last line. Because the word "Leyden" is pronounced with a long "i" sound in the first syllable, not a long "a" sound. Which means the pun doesn't work.
Maybe have the narrator mispronounce other words in a similar way throughout the story and have to be corrected by the listener? That way, we could have other smaller jokes leading up to the big one at the end.
Mike
Unfortunately I caught wind of this being a feghoot on accident, so I got kinda clued in to how this was going to end (they would never have been able to actually guess it - I didn't even know what a Leyden Jar was). Which... hoenstly kinda made the story a bit interminable, because I was mostly waiting for the punchline to arrive.
Ultimately, this sort of runs into the idea of the very interesting story narrated to you rather than experienced. Like, I'm interested in the story this elemental is telling, but I can't escape the feeling that I would much rather be reading that story than reading their account of it. You can sorta make this work sometimes with a sufficiently engaging narrator, but even that falls a bit flat here. The narrator is... fine. The voice is there and the tone reads, but I don't find myself particularly compelled by them.
And basically that is the heart of the problem. The punchline is immensely clever and entertaining, but everything else... just ends up feeling like it exists. It isn't bad, but it isn't particularly compelling either, and I really did find myself skimming a bit as I got further along. As is, I just really don't think this is a 2K story.
Ultimately, this sort of runs into the idea of the very interesting story narrated to you rather than experienced. Like, I'm interested in the story this elemental is telling, but I can't escape the feeling that I would much rather be reading that story than reading their account of it. You can sorta make this work sometimes with a sufficiently engaging narrator, but even that falls a bit flat here. The narrator is... fine. The voice is there and the tone reads, but I don't find myself particularly compelled by them.
And basically that is the heart of the problem. The punchline is immensely clever and entertaining, but everything else... just ends up feeling like it exists. It isn't bad, but it isn't particularly compelling either, and I really did find myself skimming a bit as I got further along. As is, I just really don't think this is a 2K story.