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Tidying up
The reticle rested on the woman’s forehead as his fingers hovered over the button. A statuesque, asian lady, she looked innocuous enough, but then, the best of them always did. The briefcase was a dead giveaway, though the dump truck was out of place.
“Grandpa, stop!”
Neither the voice behind him nor the patter of approaching footsteps made the wizened figure so much as blink as he kept his eyes glued to the monitor. “Don't worry, Emily. I'm not going to take out the mailbox. Damn salesmen never learn.”
“She's not selling anything! I invited her here.”
Wade frowned and looked away from the monitor. “Are you sure? She looks like a salesman. You know, when I gave you authorization to let people in, I meant for crushes and groupies, not salesmen.”
“I already said - She's not a salesperson,” Emily sputtered, color creeping into her cheeks. “Or a groupie. She's a world renowned anti-hoarding expert.”
Wade crossed his arms. “Hoarding? I'm not hoarding! I'm well-prepared!”
“You can barely turn around in here.”
“Well, excuse me for living in an underground bunker.”
Emily gave him a look. “That's part of the whole problem. If you'd just live in a house like someone normal, then clutter wouldn't be such of an issue.”
“What about my suit, then? Is drywall going to keep it safe against another horde of mutant goons?”
Emily ignored him to glance at the screen, where the woman had just turned to leave. Nudging him aside, she reached for the microphone.
“Sorry about the wait, Maggie.”
The woman looked around, her eyes widening. “Emily, is that you? I was starting to think I was in the wrong place.”
“No, you’re fine, just stay there. I’ll be right up.”
Emily hurried up the stairs, with Wade muttering afterwards.
“Anti-hoarding. This is a terrible idea.”
“You agreed to it.”
“I didn't think you were serious.”
“You should only keep the things that bring you joy.”
“You've said that several times now,” Wade huffed.
“Is it any less true?”
He shuffled his feet. “Look, I'll admit that you were right about the tupperware.”
“No two lids matched.”
Wade ignored the smirk in Emily's voice as he plowed on. “And the carpet samples. I'll even admit that I might have held onto more used magazines than strictly necessary.”
“Even if they were repairable, you could shoot for hours and not run dry.”
“Since when is that a bad thing? But no, I'm getting distracted. That's not the point. The point is the Vault!” he exploded, gesturing wildly back around them. “This is ridiculous!”
“Oh?” Emily pursed her lips. “What's so ridiculous about paring down things you never use?” She pointed to a gnarled staff leaning up against the wall. Its delicate circuitry was almost hidden beneath a layer of dust. “What about that? Have you ever used it?”
“The sibilant staff of Saboria? Of course not! That's an ancient artifact!”
“So, does it bring you joy?”
“That's not the question.”
“But you've never used it.”
“The Saborians are long gone. The staff is irreplaceable.”
“It looks like it could've been replaced by a cardboard cutout, for all the good it's done you. This one?”
“The potion nullifies magic flight.”
“But you defeated Lord Dodax, and it's undrank.”
“Well, I kept waiting for the right moment, and then we'd suddenly won.”
“So what use is it to you, then? How many of these have you actually used?”
Wade gestured to a rifle at one end.
“It's covered in dust like the rest.”
“The bullets were all Dwarven forged - there's only one left.”
The last item clattered onto the tottering heaps in the back of the truck, the door slammed and the truck finally sped away down the wooded lane.
“I can't believe you let her take all that.”
“We've been over this.”
The dust settled to reveal something lying in the road.
“I'll be damned. That's a mask and wig.” Wade threw back his head and laughed. “That was the Trickster, wasn't it?”
Emily's own gaze was locked on her shoes. “I'm so foolish. What do we do now?”
“She may have tricked us, but what she said wasn't completely wrong. All I ever needed was my sword and my resolve. And now I have you to help.”
“If you'll still have me.”
Wade grinned, turning back to the stairs. “Of course I will. Now, come on - it's nice and roomy down there, so we'll have an easy time planning.”
“Grandpa, stop!”
Neither the voice behind him nor the patter of approaching footsteps made the wizened figure so much as blink as he kept his eyes glued to the monitor. “Don't worry, Emily. I'm not going to take out the mailbox. Damn salesmen never learn.”
“She's not selling anything! I invited her here.”
Wade frowned and looked away from the monitor. “Are you sure? She looks like a salesman. You know, when I gave you authorization to let people in, I meant for crushes and groupies, not salesmen.”
“I already said - She's not a salesperson,” Emily sputtered, color creeping into her cheeks. “Or a groupie. She's a world renowned anti-hoarding expert.”
Wade crossed his arms. “Hoarding? I'm not hoarding! I'm well-prepared!”
“You can barely turn around in here.”
“Well, excuse me for living in an underground bunker.”
Emily gave him a look. “That's part of the whole problem. If you'd just live in a house like someone normal, then clutter wouldn't be such of an issue.”
“What about my suit, then? Is drywall going to keep it safe against another horde of mutant goons?”
Emily ignored him to glance at the screen, where the woman had just turned to leave. Nudging him aside, she reached for the microphone.
“Sorry about the wait, Maggie.”
The woman looked around, her eyes widening. “Emily, is that you? I was starting to think I was in the wrong place.”
“No, you’re fine, just stay there. I’ll be right up.”
Emily hurried up the stairs, with Wade muttering afterwards.
“Anti-hoarding. This is a terrible idea.”
“You agreed to it.”
“I didn't think you were serious.”
“You should only keep the things that bring you joy.”
“You've said that several times now,” Wade huffed.
“Is it any less true?”
He shuffled his feet. “Look, I'll admit that you were right about the tupperware.”
“No two lids matched.”
Wade ignored the smirk in Emily's voice as he plowed on. “And the carpet samples. I'll even admit that I might have held onto more used magazines than strictly necessary.”
“Even if they were repairable, you could shoot for hours and not run dry.”
“Since when is that a bad thing? But no, I'm getting distracted. That's not the point. The point is the Vault!” he exploded, gesturing wildly back around them. “This is ridiculous!”
“Oh?” Emily pursed her lips. “What's so ridiculous about paring down things you never use?” She pointed to a gnarled staff leaning up against the wall. Its delicate circuitry was almost hidden beneath a layer of dust. “What about that? Have you ever used it?”
“The sibilant staff of Saboria? Of course not! That's an ancient artifact!”
“So, does it bring you joy?”
“That's not the question.”
“But you've never used it.”
“The Saborians are long gone. The staff is irreplaceable.”
“It looks like it could've been replaced by a cardboard cutout, for all the good it's done you. This one?”
“The potion nullifies magic flight.”
“But you defeated Lord Dodax, and it's undrank.”
“Well, I kept waiting for the right moment, and then we'd suddenly won.”
“So what use is it to you, then? How many of these have you actually used?”
Wade gestured to a rifle at one end.
“It's covered in dust like the rest.”
“The bullets were all Dwarven forged - there's only one left.”
The last item clattered onto the tottering heaps in the back of the truck, the door slammed and the truck finally sped away down the wooded lane.
“I can't believe you let her take all that.”
“We've been over this.”
The dust settled to reveal something lying in the road.
“I'll be damned. That's a mask and wig.” Wade threw back his head and laughed. “That was the Trickster, wasn't it?”
Emily's own gaze was locked on her shoes. “I'm so foolish. What do we do now?”
“She may have tricked us, but what she said wasn't completely wrong. All I ever needed was my sword and my resolve. And now I have you to help.”
“If you'll still have me.”
Wade grinned, turning back to the stairs. “Of course I will. Now, come on - it's nice and roomy down there, so we'll have an easy time planning.”
This story is a pastiche of different ideas that ultimately fail to gel together, not due the fact that the ideas are irreconcilable or ill-fit, but the ordering of the exposition. The primary issue with the exposition is that it fails to inform the reader of pertinent details of the story before they become relevant. Instead it chooses to inform the reader as it as happening, leaving me with a sense of befuddlement as new ideas of what the actual situation is begin to be added. First the audience thinks that we're dealing with a very strange case of a modern man who hates salesmen, who then is revealed to be a hoarder, then it's revealed that he's actually a fantasy adventurer type hoarder that I assume most exist in some modern setting, and then it's revealed that the hoarder expert is actually a mythical trickster, which I'm not exactly sure what that is in this context .
The setting is so nebulously defined at the beginning that all of these revelations of new information feel like they come straight out of the blue. Imagine if I told you a story about a man going to visit a monk, but halfway through the story, the man shoots a lightning bolt from his mustache, and I tell you that the man has been a wizard the whole time, and when you get to visit the monk, he's actually a dragon monk. Nobody in universe acts surprised when the monk is actually a dragon, and you get the feeling as the listener that I probably should have told you the monk was a dragon at the beginning of the story instead of when we meet the monk. You'd get confused and probably try to beat me with a club.
What I'm trying to get at is that the presentation of the information is what needs to be addressed here, and the author needs to get out these important details in the beginning, especially if they're trying to tell a story in a compacted form like a minific.
Anyways, this was a fun idea, but I think lacking in execution and polish.
The setting is so nebulously defined at the beginning that all of these revelations of new information feel like they come straight out of the blue. Imagine if I told you a story about a man going to visit a monk, but halfway through the story, the man shoots a lightning bolt from his mustache, and I tell you that the man has been a wizard the whole time, and when you get to visit the monk, he's actually a dragon monk. Nobody in universe acts surprised when the monk is actually a dragon, and you get the feeling as the listener that I probably should have told you the monk was a dragon at the beginning of the story instead of when we meet the monk. You'd get confused and probably try to beat me with a club.
What I'm trying to get at is that the presentation of the information is what needs to be addressed here, and the author needs to get out these important details in the beginning, especially if they're trying to tell a story in a compacted form like a minific.
Anyways, this was a fun idea, but I think lacking in execution and polish.
I'll be with the others on this one.
I liked the fact that it was a adventurer hoarder, meta comments on the fact that some players (I'm one of them) tend to keep everything, never selling to merchants. And keeping that information unknown was a good idea but for the rest, there is something new almost every paragraph and they doesn't add to each other very well.
My suggestion would be to focus more on the adventurer hoarder thing and play around it, instead of wandering with too many things.
I liked the fact that it was a adventurer hoarder, meta comments on the fact that some players (I'm one of them) tend to keep everything, never selling to merchants. And keeping that information unknown was a good idea but for the rest, there is something new almost every paragraph and they doesn't add to each other very well.
My suggestion would be to focus more on the adventurer hoarder thing and play around it, instead of wandering with too many things.
Too much too quickly, author; you introduce a problem in a hazily defined setting, feed the reader almost conflicting signals regarding it, quickly resolve it, and then pivot to a twist with little weight behind it. The comedic story of a hoarder would have been interesting. The comedic story of a thief who performs heists by assisting chronic hoarders would have been interesting. The comedic story of a modern-day hoarder with seemingly bizarre magical artifacts in his collection played completely straight would, again, have been interesting. Unfortunately, the story tried to do too many things at once, and ended up achieving none of them. In the future, try and distill your story down into a more coherent idea - especially for minific rounds - before you start writing it.
I’ve (unfortunately) to concur with what the others have said. You (deviously) set up a very modern backdrop: we almost imagine some cantankerous Swiss recluse living in his anti-nuclear bunker with his grand-daughter, targeting a young visitor with a laser beam or something. Then you endeavour to knock down all the pieces of that set-up, dragging us all the way to the opposite point. We don’t like to be drabbled by drabbles.
I mean, that piecemeal reveal does not add up, since it isn’t really relevant to the story’s core conflict, which is an old geezer refusing to let go of a lifetime hoard of trinkets despite her grand-daughter’s constant spurring. The guy’s background is ultimately irrelevant to the conflict, so you added a layer that acts not as a mind-boggler (as you maybe expected), but rather as a distraction.
Fair enough. Your characters are nice, not outstanding, but what transpires through your prose is sufficient to get a hold on what they ‘are’.
The end twist is amusing, but not flabbergasting, so it fells a bit flat, especially since the characters do not really react to it, but rather swallow it up passively. I feel you could’ve added an extra-twist at the end (e.g.: reveal that the characters are in fact living in the nacelle of a balloon, and the weight of the extra-clutter stymied it from taking off).
The short of it is that the idea is fair, but the executions trails. Tidy up your fic, and it should come out much shinier! :P
I mean, that piecemeal reveal does not add up, since it isn’t really relevant to the story’s core conflict, which is an old geezer refusing to let go of a lifetime hoard of trinkets despite her grand-daughter’s constant spurring. The guy’s background is ultimately irrelevant to the conflict, so you added a layer that acts not as a mind-boggler (as you maybe expected), but rather as a distraction.
Fair enough. Your characters are nice, not outstanding, but what transpires through your prose is sufficient to get a hold on what they ‘are’.
The end twist is amusing, but not flabbergasting, so it fells a bit flat, especially since the characters do not really react to it, but rather swallow it up passively. I feel you could’ve added an extra-twist at the end (e.g.: reveal that the characters are in fact living in the nacelle of a balloon, and the weight of the extra-clutter stymied it from taking off).
The short of it is that the idea is fair, but the executions trails. Tidy up your fic, and it should come out much shinier! :P
Same as everyone else here - too many twists. I spent the whole read confused and trying unsuccessfully to figure out what the setting was, let alone any of the specific details that get thrown around. As a result, I could never get hooked on the actual story.
I'm sure it made more sense in the author's head, and the basic structure seems like it would work if you already had a good grasp on the world involved. As it stands, though, the product is as cluttered and impenetrable as the bunker in the story.
Thanks for writing, though, and congrats on getting it in!
I'm sure it made more sense in the author's head, and the basic structure seems like it would work if you already had a good grasp on the world involved. As it stands, though, the product is as cluttered and impenetrable as the bunker in the story.
Thanks for writing, though, and congrats on getting it in!
This setting swerved way too hard, such that I am no longer quite sure what it actually is. When you're doing fantasy settings, especially in limited space, you need to hammer things down quickly. Continuously upsetting reader expectations forces them to reimagine the world multiple times, and frankly, that distracts and detracts from the experience.
That said, I do like the core idea here (though the conclusion is weird and doesn't quite gel, IMO). This would probably work a lot better if it laid all its cards on the table from the start: high fantasy hoarders. Roll from there!
That said, I do like the core idea here (though the conclusion is weird and doesn't quite gel, IMO). This would probably work a lot better if it laid all its cards on the table from the start: high fantasy hoarders. Roll from there!