Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

>>Monokeras

“Is this doomed to bomb?”

I’ll be thankful if it does not!

Beanis, Help Us! It’s Raining Men, Oh The Humanity, It’s Raining Men – Dead Men! Do, Tell Tales – Not ‘If’, But ‘When.’ A Failed Experiment? Don’t Give Up.

The Smoking Tigers’ End of the World Isn’t So Bad After All. The Devil Who Framed Roger Dodger (?) Wears a Suit and Tie Through the Red Strawberry Snow Mountains. Thy Flesh Consumed All of These (Re)Union Voices Inside of my Head. First World Problems! It’s the Latest Thing . . . (This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.)

What? No Way Out? An Empire of Keys + A Stitch in Time = Glass Masquerade Escape Artists

>>GroaningGreyAgony

Nice, as always. Especially the ray of hope at the end.

Here is a Man, Neither Fish nor Fowl, Who Stood Up. Born to Be Wild? You Can’t Do That. Now What? Fractured Fairy Tales, A New & Improved Magic System!

A Copious Amount of Alcohol: Tragedy Tomorrow, Comedy Tonight! Five More Minutes, Crash and Burn. Buck the rules, write ponies! I Hold You Responsible for My Failure to Communicate.

The Blights Within Us, Liminal Spaces After Dark Behind Closed Doors. Heroic Propaganda: All Roads Lead to Home.

Message in a Bottle, A Haunting Song Out of the Darkest Storm Dungeon – The Concept of Motherhood in a Spacetime Vacuum, Going Down, Among the Clouds, With the Ship At the End of An Endless Road.

She Should Be Walking By Now.


I'm no GroaningGreyAgony, but I figured I would try.

So, this prompt inspired me to begin working on an idea that I have had for a while now, which is nice.

Not so nice is that the story, while started, will not be finished for this round.

Ah, well. So it goes.

As a matter of getting it down in public, however, I wish to say that I intend to write reviews for every story submitted this round. (My visual art reviewing skills are sub-par, but I will try to make an effort.) I've been extremely negligent on that front for the past several original rounds, both mini and regular-sized, and I wish to make up for that. So, if I fail in that regard, the rest of you are encouraged to channel your inner Chad, knock my books to the ground, and shove me in a locker. Or something.

Hope everyone has a good day, and I look forward to reading what y'all got.

>>Shadowed_Song

I like your spirit.

>>Posh

Gesundheit.

An appropriate song.

Also:
>>GroaningGreyAgony
I would guess that there are surely, maybe, possibly some clearly disreputable and lecherous folken in these parts who would, ah, appreciate the challenge of putting in some sort of "twincest" into their long-way-down works. And a few more who would look on such hybrids with relish.

Y'know. Hypothetically, of course.

Also also:
>>GroaningGreyAgony
I wish to thank you for crafting these prompt poems during the original rounds. I always enjoy seeing them, and they have become one of my favorite things about these threads. So, again, thank you.

. . . Ugh.

I really like my story idea. I really do not like the resulting story I wrote.

Eh, frell it. At least I submitted something.

Good night, and good luck.

"One Shot," huh?

Alrighty. I can do something with that.

Good luck, everybody!

>>Monokeras

Careful, now. That sort of humor can make some folken a bit cross.

My warmest congratulations to the usual suspects this round's medalists: horizon, MrNumbers, and Cold in Gardez. Some fine work, all around. To all of you, I say: Urrah!

I would also like to give a more minor Urrah! to All_Art_Is_Quite_Useless, whose very first story in the Writeoffs managed to land a spot in the finals. Good job!

All that said, I would like to proffer a small apology to the group at large. Despite reading all of the entries here, I did not write a single review this round. This is in large part due to life events (a combination of work and packing up my apartment for a move this coming weekend), coupled with the fact that most criticisms I could make were largely covered by the other reviews. Still, I am sorry for not being a bit more useful here, and I shall endeavor to be more vocal in the next round in which I participate (likely the next original mini-fic round).

Lastly, I will write a retrospective on "Skyward," both to discuss the story's background, and, more importantly, to engage with some of its reviews and criticisms. However, it won't be happening until after this coming weekend. So, for those who care, stay tuned!

Again, my congratulations to the medalists, and I'm sending out some general positive waves to all the other participants, reviewers, and sundry passers-by. I hope y'all had an instructive and illuminating time.

By the thinnest skin of my teeth, I got something in. Only one story, but at least there is one.

Urrah!

>>All_Art_Is_Quite_Useless
I wish you a very warm welcome, and I hope you enjoy yourself here.

>>Fenton
My apologies for not saying so earlier, but I appreciate your kind words.. I hope that you enjoy yourself, as well.

Now, off to work.

Have a grand Monday, everyone.

Heyla, everyone.

For a variety of reasons, it has been a long while since I last actively participated in this group. I've been reading some of the entries, and also submitting prompts. Mostly lurking. I want to stop pressing my face against the glass and actually do something this time around, however shaky it might turn out to be. I hope, at the least, to not waste anyone's time. A public statement of intent is something I want to make, to help ensure that it happens.

So:
I am going to write something for this round. If I can manage it, a couple of somethings.

May everyone who reads this have a weekend that is both restorative and fruitful.

Heyla, everyone. Great news!

. . . or not.

I've got nothing. I concede defeat. The ideas I had related to the prompt turned out stillborn, and the only other piece I made any headway on at all is (a.) not related, and (b.) much longer than 750 words. I really feel a twist ashamed to sit this one out, but, given how many other notable folken have also done so, I can at least count myself in august company.

To those of you who managed to finish and submit something already (and I mean anything at all, no matter how sucky you believe it to be), you have this particular internet stranger's congratulations on being able to wring fiction out of a turnip. I eagerly await the chance to taste the fruits of your labor.

For those who are still laboring to finish and submit, I wish you success with all the chambers of my heart.

Good night, and good luck.

Hmm.

Momma said there'd be prompts like this.
There'd be prompts like this, my momma said.

I do wonder about everyone kvetching about this, though. After all, enough of a majority voted for this prompt that it ultimately turned out to be the winner, so at least some of the folken around these parts have some semblance of an idea of what to do.

As for myself, well, it took a few hours of grumbling and grousing brainstorming, but I actually have some ideas. It is now time to see what can be done with them.

For everyone participating today, I wish you all an extra scoop of joyful inspiration and good vibrations, because, Christ on a fudge stripe, y'all are going to need it.

(If anyone out there wishes to send some of the same my way, I'll happily accept!)

So, to echo many others at this late juncture, the opening scene in this is excellent. It really could almost stand on its own as a full story. Which is not to say that the rest is an afterthought, mind, just that it lacks some of the vibrancy that made the opening really pop. I felt like I had gotten whomped over the head by the time the first scene break was hit.

I found this tidbit to be especially clever: Jonas drained his glass of wine, then made a face. “It sure isn’t the alcohol. Are you trying to poison us with this shit? Talk about cliché.” On the first readthrough, there is absolutely nothing there to suggest that the mention of poison is anything other than hyperbole. The second time around, though, comes the realization that Jonas is completely serious about asking his host if there was anything more in the glass than alcohol.

For the amount of time provided in which to finish this, the end result is excellent. More detail on the world in which this takes place would be welcome, but what is here is surely enough to whet one's appetite. I took from this story the idea that it is about a group of highly intelligent, deeply troubled people who gained access to something that they once believed would allow them to circumnavigate their lives in new and profound ways. Now, though, the thrill of circumnavigation is gone, and they are simply going around in circles, with revivification only providing them a new manner in which (to bootjack a Pink Floyd lyric) to fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.

This is stark and glitteringly cruel. Please, I would like some more.

Thank you, author, for writing this.

As others have noted, it would be for this story's best if there were more story in here.

I believe that the best way to accomplish this would be to either ramp up the intensity of the relationship between the two characters, or to telescope the amount of time in which this takes place (upping it from a day to, say, three days). I can readily believe that two people who have just met can make such an impulsive, life-altering decision in this short a period of time. What I cannot believe, as it stands, is how these two particular characters did this, beyond a trite "because the author made it so." There are hints at interesting directions that each of these characters could be taken, but they need both narrative space and emotional room to be allowed to take them, first.

I will give credit, however, for the sort of low-key audacity inherent in looking at a prompt like "The Killing Machine" and producing a slice-of-life romance tale in response. One that also manages to take a very subtle approach to the prompt, as well. The grind of lower-class life on the margins might lack the rah-rah-sis-boom-bah of clashing machinery and sundering flesh, but it can be (or, at the very least, feels) just as lethal, all the same. It is to this story's merit that it manages to approach that, however quietly.

Thank you, author, for writing this.

>>horizon
Bastly - A German freighter trying to sneak through a storm is, for no discernible reason, sunk by the ancient Egyptian goddess of cats.

Well, a meeting between a feline deity and a vessel traveling upon a vast body of water is bound to end poorly.

>>billymorph
Breastly - ... I got nothing.

This sounds like it would end a lot more happily for Paul and his crew. It reminds me of a line from The Hunt for Red October: "And when we are finished, the only sound they will hear is our laughter, whilst we sail to Havana, where the sun is warm, and so is the 'comradeship.'"

So, a belated retrospective on "Beastly."

Before anything else is written, I wish to give my thanks to everyone who took the time to read this. Special thanks are in order for >>Scramblers and Shadows, >>CoffeeMinion, >>Not_A_Hat, and >>Ratlab for taking the extra time to post what they thought of this piece, whether it be positive, negative, or indifferent.

One of the criticisms from the last story I submitted here (and it was an aspect that, I am ashamed to say, was something that never once occurred to me during its writing) was that, the way the story's ending was written, tended to sap it of any surprise for the reader. In other words, I had completely failed to consider the reader's perspective. As such, one of the major reasons I wrote this piece was to provide the reader with the necessary twist that the last one lacked. If the above response is indicative of the majority, then it appears that this go-around was successful. The main point of criticism now lies primarily with this story's ending. This is entirely fair, but, such being the case, I would like to ask both >>Scramblers and Shadows and >>Not_A_Hat just in what way, exactly, they would have liked to see this story come to an end. The only other possible conclusion I have thought of thus far has been ending the tale with a conversation between two members of the submarine's crew over what has just transpired. Perhaps, depending on how it is done and my skill at writing such a thing, that might bring about the added depth and resonance that was found lacking. But, obviously, I am open to suggestions. As a further note, specifically to S&S, was the criticism that the "introductory paragraph seems to be trying a wee bit too hard." Given that this is a charge that was levied at a few stories on here, I am legitimately curious: Trying too hard in what way?

Additionally, there was the criticism that the story needs "a second pass and some judicious pruning," which it absolutely does. Going into Sunday of the writing weekend, I had about 400-450 words actually written down. Due to some personal tsuris which had left me in a mental flat spin for most of Saturday, I was largely convinced that it would be better to just scuttle the whole thing and try again in the next original mini-fic round. However, I managed to rally at work on Sunday, and, after arriving home, put on some appropriate music and hopped to it. Most of this was written between 11 pm Sunday and 6 am Monday. From flat spin to afterburners a-go-go, oh yeah! While I am still reasonably happy with this piece, crude as it is, I fully concede that it needs additional work before it might possibly be sent out into the world at large, and, again, I thank everyone for helping point out some of my blind spots here.

A note on the historical background:

The Regenfels and her master Paul Braunwald are completely fictitious. There was a real German freighter, the Erlangen, which attempted to sail home from Australia at the start of World War II. Its tale inspired the 1948 novel The Sea Chase, which was adapted into a movie in 1955 starring (of all people) John Wayne as the German ship's captain. Despite the fictional nature of the incident described here, the story draws some heat from the fact that such a crime could have conceivably happened. Between the Imperial German Navy attacking hospital ships (the three such ships mentioned in the fake newspaper article (the Rewa, the Glenart Castle, and the Llandovery Castle) were all real, and in the latter two cases, survivors from both ships were machine-gunned in the water by the U-boats that sank them) and the British Royal Navy committing various acts of unpunished cruelty (such as during the Baralong incidents, the affair with the crew of the Zeppelin L.19, and the alleged attack on survivors from the submarine SM UB-110), the brutality of World War I was not just a land-locked occurrence. Regrettably, these incidents tend to be generally unremembered, along with much of the war at sea.

In closing, I would like to note that >>CoffeeMinion's comment is probably the nicest thing anyone has said to me about my writing in a long time. About ten years, to be precise. It might not provide much insight for improving, but it is a grand and glorious thing to hear, all the same. It helps provide the fuel for wanting to improve.

There needs to be more of a blending of the theoretical aspects that dominate the opening and the reporting of the future history. The dry descriptions of processes that led to the deaths of a great many people are quite well-done, and the tone of it is excellently on point. That said, the sections that are straight history tend to lack that, which, while not a deal-breaker, does make it feel somewhat unbalanced. Something like noting specific instances of "human infrastructure elimination" more commonly across the described wars (beyond just the one assassination of the Russian general, something along the lines of the radicals and their families who died over the course of the machine's evolution, and the subsequent political evolutions in the affected areas) would increase the story's impact.

While the passages of history can, I suppose, come off as dry to some readers, I personally had no problems with them. I have a well-developed inner amateur historian, and they appealed quite soundly to it, even if some description of events outside of a war would have been nice. The concept of decreasing human involvement in aerial warfare is something that has been talked about over the years (in both fiction and nonfiction), and this does a decent job of addressing what a possible future along those lines would look like.

Regarding the end, I must concur with both >>Oroboro's and >>Scramblers and Shadows's assessments. A more concrete conclusion to this "history paper" would have been better, especially given the amount of space to work with that has been left over. That said, I feel like an ending that focuses more on the author of the paper's cognitive dissonance ("This is the infallible machine that keeps the world secure and keeps me and my family safe from danger/This is the infallible machine that can kill both me and my whole family in the blink of an eye, and we would never know why") would succeed the most. I would not call what is currently here a bad ending, per se, but it is one that certainly needs some improvement.

Some technical quibbles:

1.) "CX-3 Vulture" - US military aircraft are officially designated under a system called the Tri-Service designation system, which was introduced in 1962 to unify the aircraft designations used by all branches of the military (which, to that time, had used separate systems). To take the MQ-1 Predator as an example, the M stands for multi-mission, and the Q denotes an unmanned aircraft. As it stands, your fictitious drone is not only an experimental cargo aircraft, it is also manned. Some tweaking would be in order.

2.) "third Iraq war" - I am going to assume that the first two Iraq wars referenced would be Operations DESERT STORM and IRAQI FREEDOM, respectively. That said, an Iraq war could also encompass the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980's, or the current conflict against ISIS/ISIL/INGSOC/NAMBLA/whatever else we call them today. Something a little more specific (such as the War of the Iraqi Dissolution, or the Saudi-Iraq War) would be useful.

3.) "Stanislav Sergej Kuznetsov" - In Russian naming systems, the middle name is a patronymic (meaning, in this case, your character is Stanislav, son of Sergej). However, such patronymics always use the suffixes -ovich, -evich and -ich, meaning your general's patronym ought to be Sergejevich.

Thank you, author, for writing this.

Heyla, everyone.

I have submitted a work for your consideration. I like this one a bit more than the last one I did. It is not great, perhaps, but I do legitimately believe it to be better. The prompt also yielded a second story idea that, while I have not done any work upon it yet, I wish to pursue at some point in the near future.

While I wish to say more, the sun is coming up over in my neck of the woods, and my brain is scrambled from pulling an all-nighter trying to get this thing done and looking good enough to present (it is, thankfully, my day off over here, so I can at least make up the sleep). So, to any of you lucky few still working to cross the finish line, I wish you the very best with every chamber of my heart, and to everyone else who has already submitted, I eagerly await the chance to taste the fruit of your labor.

Good night, and good luck.

P.S. Speaking of the last work that I did, I wish to take a moment to thank the users Ratlab, billymorph, Leo, Not_A_Hat, and The_Letter_J for both taking the time to read it, and taking the further time to comment upon it. It was an instructive experience, and I regret not having given thanks earlier. It is, perhaps, a little strange to say it here and now, but I would rather be odd at this present moment than continue to be rude for another moment longer.

The circular nature of this story works very well, with the roar of the past echoing and influencing the present, Both across the landscape, and within the central character's mind.

There were two bits that struck me as needing some minor retooling. The first is at the end of the second paragraph, "his dull eyes a paired twin to the empty stares of his trench-mates." The phrase "a paired twin" seems a twist too clunky here; it could easily be replaced with "his dull eyes mirroring the empty stares of his trench-mates," achieving the same effect in a smoother manner. Secondly, a comma splice would have been useful in the sentence, "Gentle inclines belied trenches and hill-sized slight depressions mortar-fire." I had to re-read the end of that sentence a couple of times before I knew what was being said there. Having it as "Gentle inclines belied trenches, and hill-sized slight depressions mortar-fire," would make it much clearer (and I would also suggest dropping the word "slight" there, as well).

Minor grammatical points aside, I found this to be an extremely solid meditation on the proximity between war and peace, as told from the perspective of a man who can no longer march along when the band plays Waltzing Matilda.

Thank you, author, for writing this.

After exiting this story, I am left with the feeling that this is a piece that's less about the pernicious and thorny realities of real life, and is instead meant to be read more as some sort of parable. What the lesson is supposed to be, though, I could not say. Time doesn't heal all wounds? Time has the possibility to heal all wounds, but life will intervene and render it all for naught? Something else? This uncertainty of purpose heavily blunts whatever impact the finale was supposed to impart.

The nameless protagonist came across as lacking much in the way of either agency or personality. The only real deviation from his robotic vigil over Mr. Rothwell is the one-sided conversation that takes place about 3/4's of the way through. While it provides the story with the closest thing it has to an emotional core, it was not enough to sway me into much appreciating the protagonist's plight. There needed to be something else there. Something more overtly emotional, more revealing about the relationship that exists between the protagonist and Rothwell (and, possibly, the rest of Rothwell's absent family).

Adding, for the fourth time, that the text of the prompt really ought to be excised from the piece. While the sentiment can be there (and is not particularly out-of-place), it needs to be in a more subtle form than what is currently here.

I will say that I quite enjoyed the opening description of the room in which Mr. Rothwell is maintained. Very tidy work there. It made envisioning this place easy to do, as well as doing a good job in juxtaposing its cold and technological nature with the attempts made by the protagonist to forge some tenuous, warm connection with his loved one.

Thank you, author, for writing this.