Contest July-August 2016 Short Story Contest Voting Thread

You got me there.

 

And we race towards the finish line as the clock ticks down, will there be any last minute votes to upset the crown?

Wow, i'm rusty...

 

So, I didn't get a magical eight last minute votes to make me top rat hound. I blame Eshin.

 

Aye...I really didn't like what End Times did to Apophas and the TK as a whole...

But yes, I should have figured you'd have been behind that one.

 

So about 10 minutes to go, still need 5 votes for first place, I remain optimistic!

 

Comgrats to @thedarkfourth Brilliant story! Well deserved win!

 

Thanks for being nice, guys. Not sure it was deserved but very chuffed nevertheless. I'm a bit sad that we seem to have fewer voters than previous comps - hopefully it's just a combination of it being summer (hey, has anyone seen @Slanputin?) and everyone's attention being diverted to Golden Serpent. (grrrr. hate those incredibly talented bastards). But I'm thrilled that the quality of everyone's work continues to be epic.

So the story of this story is that I was travelling for most of June and July, but managed to get a few days of downtime right at the end of July. I scraped together an entry much quicker than I usually do for these comps, and submitted just hours before the deadline. The worst bit is I left thinking of title til last, giving myself no time - hence the dreadful title. I love the fact that this hastily thrown-together thing seems much more popular than my previous entries that took weeks of careful planning and drafting. Reminds me of my university days: essays I thought were the worst or most rushed would always get the best marks.

Because it was rushed, the story is a hodgepodge of ideas I’d been mulling for L-O. For ages I’ve wanted to have a story entirely set in the rain, because I think rain is an under-appreciated element of rainforest life. And the first line, “make your choice”, but referring to something inconsequential, is an idea I’ve had for ages. Combine that with inspiration from the greatest movie of all time, Emperor’s New Groove, and also the greatest fantasy novel series of all time bar none, Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching, this is kind of what came out.

I thought the critiques of this story were great. Especially the varying responses to the skink spawning scene. I stand by what I said in my own critique, which is that it’s unnecessary, but others were totally right to point out the reasons I wrote it in the first place (give a sense of the site’s importance for Myol, inject some spirituality/mysticism etc). Also the art from Essmir and Bob is superb! I especially love Bob's lightning-illuminated llama, it makes me incredibly happy!

I don’t want to do a big exploration of the themes and such cos I did that last time and I immediately felt very stupid for doing so… it completely defeats the point if you tell everything after carefully showing it in the story itself.

But I will comment on one interesting point. Several people mentioned the use of gender. I was very curious as to what the reaction would be. I was actually a little worried it would make people like it less! Basically it came from a long-simmering sense that Warhammer, and especially Lustria, is a ridiculously sexist place for storytelling, because it’s only really men who live there. But then I thought, hold on a sec, couldn’t Lustria really be a gender equality utopia* - there are no genders there at all! Lizards are spawned. People only use male pronouns because that’s our sexist convention. Scalanex already pointed this out, but lizards are just are validly described as “she” as “he”, although probably the most accurate would be “it”. So I thought I’d do an experiment of just going with “she” in all cases, but otherwise keeping everything exactly the same. I literally went through and changed each pronoun after finishing it. Very revealing that people started talking about “maternal instincts” and such…

For me this experiment was a satisfying success and I’d like to encourage any other L-O writers who’d like to see a bit more gender equality to use feminine pronouns too (seriously, please, otherwise my entry will be super obvious in every competition). I have a new story I’ve been working on that I will post shortly that also uses feminine pronouns. And I’m considering doing some sequels to Myol’s llama world (llamaverse?) because people seemed to like it. (if others want to jump in on it, feel free!)

*No. Only masculine-associated qualities are rewarded in Lustria

 

Nonsense, you got one of my vote-things. Exceptional writing, sir!

And for the record, it was A Story of the Stars. Beret wearing assassins have been sent to hunt Scalenex down...

Jokes (if you want to believe that...heheheheh) aside, it was fun to take the piss with writing this piece and to be fair I expected to come dead last because of that very marmite ending.

 

You'll never prove anything!

And the reason for no cryptic author guesses this time is that I had no idea and no chance. Y'ttar does a story with no rats, TDF does one with what could be argued to be pacing issues. That's cheating.

I knew two identities (my own and one I proofread), and Essmir's I was 50% sure of. The others?. There is certainly no differentiating L-O authors by idea and story quality.

I look forward to seeing these in phase three threads to find out more of what was going on within the authors' minds.

 

I had a Skaven in a star constellation, a lack of action, and an overuse of stars/light emitting objects. I thought mine was very obvious.

 

The Rat and The Serpent: a few after comp notes

Thank you. It started with the idea of multiple slann remembering the same hero, only each one remembered it slightly differently. What if they met? So I needed a hero, and chose one shrouded in his own mystery. And who better to fight a hero, then a bad copy of the hero? Super heroes and evil copies go together like peanut butter and evil imitation peanut butter.

Turns out the closest copy was a rat the whole time.

This probably could have benefited from a rewrite or two. The whole thing is out of order just trying to get the ideas in there. Will most likely get rewritten into a better format before reposting this.

More ideas than story this time, which in a big ideas contest would have been great, unfortunately for a short story contest, ot suffered a bit. Probably should have left the end more ambiguous or put in a sequel teaser at the very least.

Yep, basically took the original Tehenhuain story and changed the name to Two On One and made it rats instead of skinks. See, not so different after all!

I was actually thinking of retelling the grey-clad stranger story, in space for another challenge. Just a really great story.

In hindsight pacing was definitely way off. Needed a rewrite or three, but as always first draft sent to Scalenex. Could have worked it out a bit better without interruption of the pace.

Once again, sorry for sending you the first draft every time. Paragraphs are not something I have really paid attention to and should.

Good news, by setting it in AOS Not only do I qualify for the Scalenex Cup (Almost all well developed characters are killed off by an earth shattering kaboom by this point) but the Peter Jackson Cup as well! Not only did I destroy a major city, but hordes of Skaven cultists, and turned hordes of seraphon cultists into stardust.

 

< Fuse finally burns all the way to a cask of black powder. Soapbox explodes >

Dammit Scalenex, I thought you were going to preach for longer!

There is a somewhat related discussion in the Krytic's Crypt somewhere where 30-44 year old white Western men discuss why they think female stereotypes are used in fantasy, and expound on why they think Gurls Rock! and don't quite resolve anything. Here it is midway through page six.

As far as TDF's social experiment (switching pronouns and standing well clear) it just goes to show that readers can find meaning that the author never deliberately put there. Need proof? Read any discussion of @discomute 's recent work if you don't believe me.

Given that some great female authors have made their mark recently (@Hyperborean, @Tziruzitza and @Lady Tor'ti Llaz among others) it would be interesting to get any other perspectives.

 

Seeing as I am coming in on the butt end of it I will catch myself up on this before I can properly expound what we are talking about here. Because when I get started on fantasy trope discussion it can get...long. To put it nicely.

 

Well, as far as the whole gender thing goes, Skaven have it tough. To the point of Skaven fluff writers and denizens of the rpg section often bending the established lore to have female Skaven that aren't just oversized baby machines with the brain power of a yoghurt.

In fact, it was partly Felrix's nature as being a non-standard breeder-thing that was behind me dropping her from my entry in the compy before last. She's always been one of my favourite creations, but for whatever reason her original inclusion felt a bit too forced and almost borderline the stereotypes you get with fanfiction to me. I probably was in error in retrospect chickening out like that, especially given how surprisingly well she's gone down with the reader and writership of LO.

The UE's writerbase throught the years has had numerous female characters that have defied GW's lore: Rattsu's female Skaven puppeteering Skavenkind from the breeding dens, Morkskittar's Verminladies, Ratty Gnawtail's Felrix Brightfur and Brrx Wyrdeye, Sketch's plethora of female Skryre Engineers, ShuNian's Grey Seeress Nee, if the UE's search function was working again I could probably list more.

It's funny. Of late i've been finding my female characters far more fun to write...and yet i'm not so sure why. Neither Felrix, Brrx, Craa, nor Ar-thrid Alpha are defined by their gender, they're far more than that as characters. Felrix and Jiao Hun are two of my characters that have a fairly similar history and background. Both were 'modified' by Seer Ironfur and driven insane by it. Although Jiao Hun's insanity is very visable due to having his psyche shattered into multiple personalities, whereas Felrix adopted a fantasy of being a Western Gunslinger as a coping method to avoid having a breakdown from all of the mental trauma. Is it because she's a female that she favours fantasy as a shield against facing the horror of reality? I don't think so. Whizz-Bang, Mizzreek and Tekris Zimkus all purposely (or unknowningly) perceive their world how they want to in order to avoid reality (or at least with Mizzreek it's a by-product of his opium addiction for the agony in his twisted leg.)

I will admit, I did a double take when I saw the female lizzies in Darkfourth's piece, but I remained open minded and quickly found that it didn't upset the story and in fact felt right as a decision.