Contest October-November Short Story Contest, Reading and Voting Thread (Votes close December 7th)

I miss your reviews... they were excellent and helped me a lot.

 

There, Lustria-Online. Did I ever tell you about the time I entered a piece in the October-November 2022 Short Story Contest?

 

(Scalenex pulls the rug out from under Scolenex sending him flying into the chair across from him)


The contest had a solid theme but it appeared that entry numbers were dropping relative to previous contests. There was worry we wouldn't hit or usual minimum of five, let alone allow multiple votes.


The forumites called out to me for help.

I was in the middle of some real life things and Scarterra projects but I accepted the call for aid, sense of duty don't know.


Unfortunately I was imprisoned by a case of writer's block.


(Cut to a scene with Scalenex stuck in an actual giant block).


Then I remembered I had two unused jokes left over from my last wildly successful Skink Chief McBragg piece. The gag about McBragg channeling magic threw a Slann and the gag about using his feathered head dress to make wings.


The contest theme was named characters and no character name is bigger than that of McBragg.


Using my tremendous writing strength, I broke out of my writer's block.


(Scalenex hulk smashes the block that tried to trap him)


But McBragg, being so modest, he would not to stand alone as the only name in the piece. I decided to make the generic Slann from my first idea into Mazdamundi.


I also figured Mazdamundi and McBragg needed a named villain. But which villain? I remembered I had made the greatest Tactica Index ever seen before or since and using this resource selected, not one but five Chaos Warrior heroes.


I watched a few Commander McBragg episodes and thus inspired, opted to throw in a banana peel gag and then came up with a few original McBragg-esque ideas.

 

The contest deadline loomed and my unfinished tasks were piling up and I had cravings to watch other random videos on the Internet, not just McBragg.


Thinking quickly, I heroically decided not to do my chores and punt them to next week. In lieu of making my own dinner like an adult, I ordered a pizza to free up time for writing (highly unusual, I am a fine cook don't you know).

I intermittently switched back and forth between furiously fast writing and random cartoon breaks and submitted the edited piece to myself at 11:59, one minute before the deadline.


It had seemed that the previous few days of my frantic writing was so creatively powerful that it impressed the muses in Olympus who at of gratitude for the infusion of creativity I sent their way, led the muses to inspire some other last minute entrants on Lustria-Online pushing the total entry pool to seven entries.


(Cut to scene of Scalenex posting all seven stories to Lustria-Online to a vast cheering crowd).

 

(Taps imaginary pipe.)

"Quite"

 

We don't find ourselves on L-O at the exact same time very often and don't like to waste the opportunity.

 

Scalenex creates some Reviews

Story 1, Hear My Words and Kneel: I liked this piece a lot. This reminded me of the start of this video. It had good characterization and humor. @Killer Angel wrote a good piece, but he shouldn't try fishing for @NIGHTBRINGER's vote so hard. 1) Nightbringer has moved out of his Settra phase and into a Chaos Dwarf phase. 2) this piece didn't technically have Settra in it.

I couldn't vote for it. The action was a bit low for my tastes. A short story needs conflict and resolution. I suppose Nekaph had a little bit of internal struggle and it is perfectly fine to make a short story based on a Man vs. Self conflict, but I don't think it carried the piece. In about an hour speech, he only spent two minutes doubting himself, if that. If anything the biggest conflict was the Saurus passing the time while Nekaph finished his speech.

Story Two, The World of Skink Chief McBragg: The Siege of Hexoatl: So I described my writing process above with Scolenex and every word I wrote was true. I had two unused jokes from the last time I wrote about McBragg and stretched this out to a story to pad the contest numbers. I'm reasonably pleased with the jokes. I was pleased with myself that every single one of McBragg's counters against the Chaos Warrior leaders was non-lethal. That way no one can say "If you're story is true, why are the Chaos characters still here?" It also fit with the G rated violence of the original cartoon.

I didn't think I'd win, but I'm surprised I got in last with one vote. My last McBragg got two votes. Maybe the obscure parody got stale by this point.

I feel like my biggest failing was I broke the formula. I've watched every Commander McBragg cartoon at least twice. They use a standard formula. My first Skink Chief McBragg story fit the cartoon's formula perfectly. My second Skink Chief McBragg deviated from the tried and true formula. They are all about 2 and a half minutes and I drug this out quite a bit longer. The cartoons generally only have McBragg do one or two blatantly impossible things and in this story he did six or seven. The cartoons generally have McBragg's audience reluctant at first but then dragged into the story despite himself and in this case, his audience dogged him the whole time. I don't think any of these things helped.



Story Three, Everyone is Here!: I liked this piece a lot, good job @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl I don't know a lot of 40K lore but I didn't need to for this story to land. It had good action and a very clever and funny twist ending.

I couldn't vote for it. The action was intense but it dragged on a little long for my tastes and it slowed down the pacing too much for me to vote for it. I cannot think of any particular scene to cut, I think this maybe could have done with one or two characters edited out. I'm not sure which, but I think in this case less is more.

Story 4, captured in stone: @Imrahil did a fine job. If I had three votes, not two, I would have given this my third vote. I liked the imagery and I liked the funny twist ending. Of course dice are the greatest threat to the Slann.

I cannot think of anything big to change. Maybe it could have used more character voice. I don't think this story would have been negatively impacted if the character of Chakax was subbed out for almost any Skink or Saurus character.

Story 5, the Biggest Baddest Lizard: Never meet your heroes, you might find out they hug anathema! This was easy to vote for it. Well done @Paradoxical Pacifism, I shouldn't be too surprised your piece had some sort of unorthodox pacifism in it (though not necessarily paradoxical) It had good pacing, good characterization, clever twists, and a heart warming ending. I cannot really poke a hole in this story. You also get brownie points for using the word "anathema" in a story because I set that precedent and I'm easy to flatter.

Okay, maybe one small hole. I would have liked a dash more exposition. What circumstances drew Nakai, skaven, and Beastmen to the same place at the same time?

Story 6, A Debate: I don't know if @Y'ttar Scaletail is a soccer/football fan but this felt like European sport's fans arguing about the GOAT. Maybe a little bit of Superman versus Goku. It felt real and relatable.

I liked it but I couldn't vote for it. This piece didn't really have enough resolution and structure for my taste.

Story 7, The Deliver of Itza: This won out for my second vote. Not too surprising, as TD4's writing style resonates with me often. It was well paced telling a lot of story with a small amount of words. It was delicious ambiguous and vague encapsulating both respect and veneration with people going to a worship service by rote and being bored with it. I'm still not sure if Lord Kroak was crying a tear of sadness or joy and the ambiguity is enjoyable for me.

 

I'm happy you liked the piece, but it saddens me you think i was fishing a vote.
I wrote a piece on Nekaph because TK is my second mostly beloved army and i even have a self-made model of Nekaph.
I perfectly know @NIGHTBRINGER is into CD phase, infact i taunted him that there was no piece centered around CD... and when he came out with his name research on Settra, i pointed out that there was indeed a piece on TK but centered around the herald, not Settra (just to make things clear, for the chance he wanted to give a vote to Settra).