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They Stood Against the Sky · Original Short Story ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 2000–8000
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Elder Wisdom Looms
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#1 · 3
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I can't read runes too well at all. I think it says 'bæum' or 'beum'? The photo itself is nice. It fits the prompt well.
#2 · 2
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Ooo, cool!

I honestly didn't notice the runes until Roseluck pointed them out. I'm not sure if I like the picture more or less now that I've seen them.

Still, I like this one a lot either way.
#3 · 1
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Good photography. The angle and cropping has been well done. The runes are hard to see. I wouldn’t recommend making them ultra-blatant, but a tiny bit more contrast or brightness would make them less likely to be missed entirely.
#4 · 1
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I, also, had failed to notice the runes.

I'm also not 100% sure there isn't a person standing in front of the tree, in shadow.

The choice of black and white for the photograph really adds to the feeling of... whatever that is. I can't pin it down, honestly.

I like this one.
#5 · 3
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I'll admit, I'm a sucker for this vaguely supernatural shit.

Nothing is happening in the image, but you get the impression that something is very wrong with this... statue? The use of black-and-white adds to the eeriness, which, granted, one could argue using B&W to add a little spookiness is cheap, but I usually like it unless the image itself is too creepypasta-y.

Some spooky shit, like it.
#6 · 3
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When I saw this pic in the gallery preview, I thought it was a created image (eg, digital painting) of some sort of cthonic tower. Now that I see it in full view, it looks like it's a carefully composed photograph of the remains of a tree. I'm not sure which version I like better.
#7 · 1
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A nice, creepy, moody photo. Works even without the runes. Nails the prompt. Well done.
#8 · 3
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Thanks everyone for commenting! This is the first time I've contributed to an art round, and also the first time I did photo editing for artistic purposes (only been doing insurance fraud until now... just kidding).

Found this tree while taking a walk through my local nature reserve. It stood out like a sore thumb, the only dead thing in sight and towering like a single pillar in a sea for weeds and reed. I took a photo with my smartphone, cropped it in irfanview, isolated tree, background vegetation, and sky in photoshop and fiddled around with saturation, contrast, and brightness until I was satisfied.

Then I thought: Hmm... this is a bit low effort. Also, another layer of meaning would be nice so people with an eye for detail get rewarded. Normal letters didn't sit right with me, because round shapes would disturb the grain of the tree and stick out too much... so Elder Futhark it was. Of course, it'd need to be in the appropriate language, so it'd have to be in Old High German.

Then it struck me: I'd already decided on a very cryptic way to put some message in this black and white picture, and I had no idea what it was gonna be. I remembered Bad Horse saying in a blogpost that one major problem in modern literary writing was people trying to be cryptic without good reason, muddying the trivial instead of tackling issues that demand a more subtle approach. Wasn't I doing something similar?

At first, I felt like a prick. Then, I chuckled, and slapped the word "tree", the most obvious thing I could think of, in Elder Futhark and Old High German on this thing and called it wisdom in the title to make fun of it. A sort of meta joke, I guess?

Nobody picked up on it, and that's probably for the better. It might have killed the mood of the piece, and that certainly seemed to have an effect on people. I'm not sorry I used the runes, though, because they play a role in 3 of the associated stories, and at least for No Sun Sought, No Saex Stone Scarred, I think they were a vital part of the inspiration.

I must say, this has been a very enjoyable experience. I'm glad I could contribute something that inspired people to write, and seeing elements of it emerge in stories is even a bit of a thrill. I can't draw to save my life to be honest, but if I can take a photo of something that fits a prompt and do artsy stuff with it in the future, I'll be sure to take part again. I'll be looking forward to future art rounds.