Hey! It looks like you're new here. You might want to check out the introduction.

The Last Thing · Original Minific ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 400–750
Show rules for this event
#1 ·
·
In!
#2 · 1
·
I am in.
#3 ·
·
Not sure I’ll be able to enter this round.
Birthday party of my mother…
#4 · 1
· on The Grand Parade · >>GroaningGreyAgony
A few little hiccups here and there that probably speak mostly to submitting close to the deadline. The imagery here is good, but I'm not sure I get what the message is. It does seem to be an ecological allegory, but then I guess bees were an odd choice for the first float, unless they're treated as a bellwether. The cats and dogs could easily be indicative of extinction or hunting/poaching, though again, dogs and cats are kind of an odd choice for that. The last two floats do jive. Maybe I've got those wrong and it's just entropy in general. I'm also lost as to the meaning of the silver streaks at the end. Only a few manage to get away, perhaps the ones who were able to get off planet and colonize elsewhere? Not much is made of those, so I'm kind of scratching my head at why there's this small but undeveloped subversion of the overall hopeless tone.
#5 · 2
· on The Pearl
Your first sentence is so busy that I don't know which piece of it should be my focus. It's fine to have a first sentence accomplish multiple things, like establish a setting and being to characterize someone, but you still need to make it clear what the reader's takeaway should be before even getting to the second sentence.

That's a pretty weak ending, and the story doesn't do much to try making a point out of it. It's always a risky decision to show how things turn out up front, because then that can disarm the tension of how to get there. It depends on the story, but all the tension here is in the fight itself, which lasts most of the story, and we already know he gets through unscathed. Then he can't get the prize he was after, but he dismisses that without much more than a shrug and finds something of value anyway. It's sure set up like I'm supposed to get some meaning out of that, but I'm not sure what, and the boy doesn't seem to learn anything from it either. It feels more like a pure slice of life scene than a story.
#6 ·
· on The Grand Parade · >>GroaningGreyAgony
...of Lifeless Packaging?
#7 ·
· on Pain Sculpture
From late nights spent writing the same paragraph over and over!
#8 ·
· on The Grand Parade
>>Pascoite, >>Heavy_Mole

The Grand Parade

Thanks for the gold and the kind comments!

This round took place upon the exact date of Tampa Pride and I had to try to make both events work. I compromised by deciding to write about a parade and taking some inspiration from the passing floats I saw that day. I wrote the intro paragraph before I left and turned my hasty notes into fictional floats later that evening, making everything take a darker turn ala Naked Lunch, showing what's really at the end of the spoon as Humanity relentlessly feasts on its home planet, with the hint towards a Dark Singularity at the end. Or at least, that's what I tried to do.

See you next time!