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NeoGAF Creative Writing Challenge #146 - "Rite of Passage"

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C

Charade

Member
Ourobolus said:
I was kidding :)
Click to expand...

Aargh, you got me :)

----------------------

Also, as a heads-up, I am going to be busy the morning of the 28th and (most likely) the morning of July 1st (moving stuff). Which of course, are the two most important dates for this challenge!

So I was wondering if any of you guys would be willing to take over for compiling the entries and the votes on those two dates if I'm not around? Luckily, I should still have time to vote in between!
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
Charade said:
Aargh, you got me :)

----------------------

Also, as a heads-up, I am going to be busy the morning of the 28th and (most likely) the morning of July 1st (moving stuff). Which of course, are the two most important dates for this challenge!

So I was wondering if any of you guys would be willing to take over for compiling the entries and the votes on those two dates if I'm not around? Luckily, I should still have time to vote in between!
Click to expand...

It's not necessarily incumbent on the OP to do it. Someone will pick up the slack.
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
Charade said:
Well you can start with mine.

It involves a forum member and the lengths he goes to claim the username that is rightfully his.
Click to expand...

Vengeance is a Dish Best Served With a Side of Tortilla Chips. But Then the Restaurant Charges You Like Three Bucks For a Tiny Bowl of Sour Cream. That’s How They Get You.

A bead of sweat traced a path down the side of Nicholas’s face as he sat at the restaurant table and stared at the stranger across the way who had sat down at his table uninvited. He kept his hands face down on the surface, afraid that even the slightest of movements might provoke reaction.

“What’s the matter?” the stranger asked in a mocking voice. “Is the salsa too hot for you?” With his right hand, the stranger dipped a chip into the small stoneware bowl full of the spicy condiment and before popping it into his mouth. His left hand remained out of sight below the table. Nicholas did not need to see the gun to know the threat that hand carried.

“What do you want?” Nicholas asked. The words caught in his throat as he spoke, his mouth felt full of cotton. Nicholas had no idea who this other man was, with his head full of luscious, flowing locks that absolutely refused to be hindered by things such as a family history of male pattern baldness and the physique of a Greco-Roman god.

“It’s quite simple,” the man intoned with a smirk. “You have something that I want.”

The two men were interrupted by the arrival of a buxom latina waitress wearing a black apron over her white blouse. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you gentlemen,” she said as she slipped a piece of paper onto the table in front of the stranger. “You’re not my table, but I thought…” She held her pinky and thumb up to her head in the pantomime of speaking on a telephone and mouthed, “Call me” to the stranger.

The stranger picked up the slip of paper, and gave a smile and a wink to the waitress. “Sure thing, darling.”

The waitress giggled and blushed as she hurried away from the table. “You’re picking up women while threatening me?” Nicholas asked in disbelief.

The stranger gave a shrug of indifference. “Don’t blame me, I learned a long time ago that it’s just easier to sleep with them than to fight them off because they never stop trying, you know?” The stranger looked Nicholas up and down. “Well, maybe you don’t know.”

“You said I had something you want,” Nicholas said, trying to steer the subject back to the topic at hand. “What is it?”

“Nicholas, do you know how popular your name is?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Your name, Nicholas. Do you know how popular it is?”

Another sweat bead crawled down Nicholas’s face along the same track carved by its earlier brother, because fuck Jeff Goldblum’s demonstration of chaos theory with the drops of water and shit in Jurassic Park. Man doesn’t know shit about mathematics. “No,” Nicholas replied.

“Well then allow me to enlighten you!” the stranger beamed. “Up until the early 2,000’s, Nicholas was consistently in the top ten of boys’ names used in the US. For every million births, there were tens of thousands of people named Nicholas. People like you. People like me.”

Nicholas nodded slowly, though he still did not actually understand what this Other Nicholas was getting at. “I don’t understand what that has to do with me,” he said. “I didn’t get to pick my name.”

Other Nicholas shook his head and clucked his tongue. “No, you didn’t get to pick your given name, that’s true. Most people aren’t afforded such an opportunity. I suppose I could have legally changed my name to something else if I had felt like it, but I’ve been ‘Nicholas’ all my life and I’ve grown kind of used to it, you know?”

The tense conversation was interrupted once more by another waitress, equally as ravishing as the first, though more endowed in her posterior than her chest. “I’m sorry,” she began.

“Just leave it on the table,” Other Nicholas said, never taking his eyes off of Nicholas. “I’ll give you a call sometime this weekend.” The giggling waitress deposited her phone number on the table before departing in a fit of girlish giggles.

“Now where were we?” Other Nicholas said. “Ah yes, choosing our names.”

“I told you,” Nicholas said, “I never picked my name.”

“Ah, but you did Nicholas. You did, and that’s why we’re here tonight. Tell me, Nicholas, knowing that the world is filled to the brim with other people who share your name, what makes you think that you alone were entitled to register the username ‘Nicholas’ at a certain popular video game message board?”

“That’s what this is about?” Nicholas said in disbelief. “You’re upset over my username?”

“I should have been the one to claim it!” Other Nicholas shouted, his façade of calm collectedness slipping for just a moment to reveal the rage underneath. “You hardly ever post! I know, I checked your post history! I post all the time, I shouldn’t have to be the one that has to go by ‘Nicholas N’!”

“How did you even find me?” Nicholas asked. This was some extreme lengths to go through over a username.

The smirk of a man who is clearly the intellectual better of the other guy who has the same name spread across Other Nicholas’s face. “It was a simple matter, really. I just hacked the message board servers to obtain access to a mod account. From there, I was able to hack your IP address and find your location. Then I hacked the phone book to find your home address, and then I hacked out front of your apartment in my car so that I could hack you to discern your behavior and patterns. I subsequently hacked that you eat here at this restaurant every Thursday evening. Like clockwork.”

“Oh my god, stop saying hacked. You don’t even know what you’re talking about!” Nicholas said in exasperation.

“I am not bound by the rules and conventions of the language of inferior minds such as yours!” Other Nicholas boomed. A passing waitress stopped suddenly in surprise at his outburst. Other Nicholas shot her a wink and blew her a kiss, and she veritably melted into a puddle of longing for his unmitigated manliness.

“If you were doing all that hacking,” Nicholas said slowly and evenly, “why didn’t you just hack my account itself?”

“Oh, but I have!” Other Nicholas beamed. “No, I have other reasons for joining you tonight. Ah, speak of the devil!” he exclaimed as a waiter bearing a platter of food came alongside the table. “I hope you don’t mind, but I ordered for you. You like quesadillas, don’t you? I know that you do. I hacked all your favorite food preferences.”

Though it was probably hazardous for his health, Nicholas sighed loudly at Other Nicholas’s continued professions of hacking expertise as the waiter set a plate bearing a quesadilla before him, though he made no motion to eat it.

“You see, Nicholas, it’s not enough that I control the ‘Nicholas’ username. There was always the possibility that six months from now when you decide to make your semi-annual post, you would notice that you had lost control of the account. No, I needed… a more permanent solution.”

“You… you’re going to kill me?” Nicholas asked. “Over a username?”

“My dear Nicholas, I’m afraid I already have killed you. I’m afraid your quesadilla had a special side order of… deadly poison…”

Nicholas looked down in shock at his intact and untouched quesadilla. “But I haven’t eaten any of it.”

Other Nicholas blinked. “What?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, pretty sure,” Nicholas said, gesturing at his plate. “You probably shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Well… fuck,” Other Nicholas grumbled. “Well, eat up then. No sense in letting a poison quesadilla go to waste.”

“The fuck? No, I ain’t eating that shit, you just told me it’s fucking poison!”

“Nicholas,” sighed Other Nicholas, “be reasonable about this.”

“I’m pretty sure choosing to not eat the poison quesadilla is pretty fucking reasonable.”

“Alright, alright, let’s split the difference. How about this, I’ll hack your quesadilla—“

“Oh for fuck’s sake…”

“I’ll hack your quesadilla and remove the poison, alright? Here, watch.” Other Nicholas closed his eyes as he put two fingers to his temple and hummed a single note. “See? There. Quesadilla hacked, poison neutralized. Eat up.”

Nicholas slid the plate over Other Nicholas’s side of the table. “You first,” he demanded.

“What, me? No, I couldn’t do that. I’m, ah… allergic to quesadillas.”

“Oh please.”

“You know what? I’ve still got a gun! Remember the gun?”

“What, you’re going to shoot me in front of everyone?”

“I’ll hack it so that no one even—“

“Stop saying you’re hacking everything!”

“And I told you that I’m not bound by the same rules that you are, you and your primitive concepts of what ‘hacking’ should mean and your quaint and outdated notions like that a story should have resolution and a proper ending!”
 
C

Charade

Member
Mike M said:
Vengeance is a Dish Best Served With a Side of Tortilla Chips. But Then the Restaurant Charges You Like Three Bucks For a Tiny Bowl of Sour Cream. That’s How They Get You.
Click to expand...

OH. MY. GOD. This was hilarious! I was cracking up the whole time.

So cool. I didn't think you were actually gonna write something, haha. I'm still grinning like an idiot.

Now to hack find that Mike...
 
A

ab.aeterno

Member
Mike M said:
Vengeance is a Dish Best Served With a Side of Tortilla Chips. But Then the Restaurant Charges You Like Three Bucks For a Tiny Bowl of Sour Cream. That’s How They Get You.
Click to expand...

1-i-give-up-gif.gif
 
H

Hyams

Member
Oh man, I had a wicked idea for this, and started on a first draft and everything. But then I found out my girlfriend cheated on me, and now I don't want to write any more.

Ah well. It's still a good idea. I will eventually get around to writing it, even if it's not in time for the deadline. So thank you muchly for the prompt.
 
C

Charade

Member
Hyams said:
Oh man, I had a wicked idea for this, and started on a first draft and everything. But then I found out my girlfriend cheated on me, and now I don't want to write any more.

Ah well. It's still a good idea. I will eventually get around to writing it, even if it's not in time for the deadline. So thank you muchly for the prompt.
Click to expand...

Oh wow, I'm sorry to hear that man. I hope things get better for you.

And don't worry about the challenge. Life come first! I'd be happy to provide feedback whenever you finish it. And who knows, maybe it'll fit for a future challenge.
 
T

ThLunarian

Member
The Red Idol usual password

1990 words. It ends a little abruptly because I was finding that in order to flesh out everything I wanted to, I'd need a lot more room. That's alright though; it's not really designed to be a self-contained story anyway. Thanks for taking the time to read it
 
S

show me your skeleton

Member
okay, first draft down. 2006 words and a big desire to change a chunk 3/4ths of the way through. sighhh!

EDIT: ha! forgot to take out the plot points from the word document, i'm sitting at a comfortable 1968 words. huzzah!
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
I haven't run up against the word limit much lately. I used to regularly go through my penultimate draft and cut out single words here and there to get it under the limit, but now I frequently have 100+ to spare.

Not sure what that means for me. Either that I'm breaking my word bloat habit, or just writing slightly less ambitious stories.
 
M

Mike M

Nick N
show me your skeleton said:
okay so i think i'm done:

'red throat'

wasn't able to do exactly what i wanted with it but i will expand upon it with time.
enjoy!

as an aside, how do you password protect dropbox links/files?
Click to expand...

The password is set when you create the PDF itself, but not every program lets you set one when you convert/save a file in PDF format.

I use PrimoPDF. Free and relatively painless to use.
 
O

Ourobolus

Banned
I'm not even going to be here starting tomorrow morning anyway. Backpacking in Banff for the week. I think I'll shelve this idea.

The story of a piece of cheese finally selected to be ingested by the master. This is his journey through digestion and ultimate horror at the end result. Poor Colby.
 
L

LaMagenta

Member
Here are my votes

#1 ThLunarian: The Red Idol
#2 Mike M: The Terrible Secret of Peppa Pig
#3 Show me your skeleton: red throat
 
T

ThLunarian

Member
#1) Charade "The Trial"
2) Cyan "Final Exam"
3) Mike M "Peppa Pig"

Edit: Wow is everyone on vacation this week or something? Last time I was in one of these threads there were like twice as many entries
 
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