Ourobolus: The thought of keeping donuts in the fridge seems really odd to me. Maybe just because Ive never seen a box of donuts set out last long enough that I would have started to wonder about what I was supposed to do with the ones left over? Felt that the joke was kind of telegraphed from near the outset, and its difficult to sympathize with someones exasperation with advice that it would take one to three days to feel better when the next line acknowledges that its still the first day. By what authority would they be able to proclaim it to be bullshit if they cant even hack the first day?
Neeener: Is this really a thing that parents have threatened their kids with? Because it doesnt seem to be very effective or meaningful, just kinda
weird. I guess some people might just happen to have rope on hand if they went on camping trips a lot or were really into the BDSM scene? Ultimately this just seemed to be what some bored kids got up to while they were in time out. It never occurred to them to just untie themselves from the clearly ineffective rope job and just dangle off the edge of the bed to drop to the floor? Its not exactly hard to escape a bunk bed with no ladder. And in the end, a pair of siblings fight like siblings do, they have a parent yell at them like parents do, they stop fighting because deep down they love one another as siblings do, the mother questions her ability as a parent, and nothing is really resolved to any satisfaction.
Zeitgeister: Im not sure if this is just a comment on the thread in general, or a genuine sort of meta-entry : P I APOLOGIZE FOR NOTHING!
Nezumi: At first I was upset with the way this ended so abruptly when it had been going along at a nice comedic clip until then, but then I realized what it was you had set up. Well done on that front. Your core story here was well realized and hilarious, though it came across as needlessly filing the serial numbers off bible fan-fiction of all things. Lots of phrasings of expressions that are clearly rooted in the modern vernacular of our world, and the idea that he would retire to drink a substance called Earl Grey and eat chocolate chip cookies kind of makes it impossible for it to be any world other than our own. Would it have worked as a straight up tale about Captial G God? Who can say.
Mike M: Man, I tried to go without adjectives and stuff, but ultimately the red/green thing wound up being too important to me to make it the whole piece without ever being able to use adjectives. Thats the Mike M recipe for success with challenges: Create a shitty secondary objective to handicap everyone while you yourself ignore it! This one actually created a small debate with my writing group. One person thought it was more of a vignette than a story since there wasnt a clear conflict, one person liked it the way that it was, and another somehow made it through thinking this was the story of a crazy person wandering around cutting people up in a hospital. I tried to make it more clear that action was occurring simultaneously with the monologue, and I tried to play up what I perceived to be the Person vs. Self conflict. Anyone got any thoughts along those lines?
Dandy Crocodile: Damn, dude, I sure as shit hope this isnt autobiographical. In a lot of ways, I feel this follows the same trajectory of your last story in that we start off at the nadir and everything is a steady slope of things improving for the protagonist. Its great fodder for a motivational speech, but not a compelling story if there are never any setbacks to his continued progress to overcome. Even something as simple as a stumble while attempting to walk across the room and increased resolve as he hoists himself back into the walker frame on atrophied muscles or something would have given this more to hook onto.
mu cephei: Maybe I was just reading too fast, but I dont think I understand what the conclusion is? Heres this guy whos gotten violent with his wife at home, and hes reflecting on this fact while hes driving home in the rain and keeps opening his windows to help defog the windshield. I kept expecting the set up to be that he was going to get into a car wreck, but it didnt happen. At least not explicitly by my reading. Im also not sure if we were supposed to be sympathetic for a guy who hits his wife on occasion? Not that the premise of a domestic abuser struggling with the fact that he doesnt
want to be a wife beater isnt fertile ground for a good yarn, I just think its going to take a degree of exploration that were going to be hard-pressed to find in the confines of a 2K word short story where half of it is relating past events so we know what it is he even feels sad about.
Tangent: Even though I knew the elephants were going to start talking, it still seemed like a stumble when it actually did. Everything up until that point had been very naturalistic, and Harold had even had a few interactions with the elephants before there was any dialogue, which made the change to spoken dialogue a bit jarring. I also found it odd that the beginning of the story highlights the hardships circus elephants undergo with the bullhooks and other means of negative reinforcement to get them to behave, and yet Harold is eager to do a performance for the other elephants? While acknowledging that the yoga poses hurt his back in the same breath? I get that he was trying to connect on some meaningful level with them, but his circus tricks didnt ever seem like something hed want to willingly revisit in the hopes of impressing the other elephants. Kind of stands at odds with a closeness with his trainers too.
FlowersisBritish: You have all this setup and brewing conflict for what looks like it might be something out of A History of Violence where someone from the past comes around and starts making demands of a character, but then he just whips out a checkbook and buys him off? What? On the basis of what evidence? No fight or argument or anything? Whats to keep Serg from just coming back and demanding more money? Should I show up and tell this dude that his dad owed me a few grand? And hes been doing this all his life? If people have been coming and extorting money for years, what does it matter if he knows the guys name now? I imagine everyones been telling him what sort of guy his dad was when they came around trying to get their money out of him. And who the hell carries a checkbook around with them anymore?
Blargonaut: Kind of reminds me of that thread from a couple weeks back about the math/logic question off a test from Singapore where some girl told two guys half of the information they needed to know her birthday, and by a process of elimination figured it out. I didnt get that, and I dont get this either. Just
What? What are we talking about? Explain it to me like Im five.
Cyan: Is this the same setting/characters as the one where the girls had to steal a book from the library? Because it is thematically and structurally very similar, and having familiarity with that one allowed me to fill in the gaps with the unfinished portions of this one with relative ease.
Ashes: I feel like I missed something vital when the third section came around, because I never got the impression that the narrator had been violent with his brother, or that he had been drinking. I was left wondering if I was just inattentive, or if his mom was a little unhinged. But then the brother comes back all beat up looking, so now I dont know whos supposed to be unhinged, because frankly they all sound a little bit damaged.
Votes:
1. Nezumi
2. mu cephei
3. Tangent
Totally sabotaging my chances of winning by giving Nezumi the first place vote, I just know it.