House or Tree?
DISCUSSION -- April 2016 300-word Writing Challenge (#21)
- Thread starter Ursa major
- Start date
House or Tree?
Wait a minute....
They are also carrying coconuts. They must be African swallows helping the coconut migrate.
If they're ravens or crows then watch out for them starting a coconut farm and undercutting the cocnut export business by handling their own transport. I'm not entirely joking, I've just read this article on corvid intelligence: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160426101527.htm
it looks like this post should be in the July 2013 300 word discussion thread.
Laden or unladen?
johnnyjet
Western PA High Tech Country Boy
Tough decision. Lots of excellent and unique entries.
Long List, Short List and **** Favorites ****:
Beautiful and Faceless - Ashleyne. B. Watts
What Goes Around Comes Around – farntfar
THE VARIANT ADVENTURES OF BONY - B - Jo Zebedee
**** Tiny Bones – Juliana ****
Fossils - Victoria Silverwolf
Late Return – Ihe
Story Time – ratsy
**** Patience – Shyrka ****
A Murder - Robert MacKay
Letter Home from Merlyn's Mage School - The Judge
Missing Stock – Phyrebrat
Easy Choices – LittleStar
Unwanted Baggage - DG Jones
**** The Bone Forest - Venusian Broon ****
Museum at the End of the Universe – TitaniumTi
Extreme Measures - Ursa major
Trolled – StilLearning
Long List, Short List and **** Favorites ****:
Beautiful and Faceless - Ashleyne. B. Watts
What Goes Around Comes Around – farntfar
THE VARIANT ADVENTURES OF BONY - B - Jo Zebedee
**** Tiny Bones – Juliana ****
Fossils - Victoria Silverwolf
Late Return – Ihe
Story Time – ratsy
**** Patience – Shyrka ****
A Murder - Robert MacKay
Letter Home from Merlyn's Mage School - The Judge
Missing Stock – Phyrebrat
Easy Choices – LittleStar
Unwanted Baggage - DG Jones
**** The Bone Forest - Venusian Broon ****
Museum at the End of the Universe – TitaniumTi
Extreme Measures - Ursa major
Trolled – StilLearning
johnnyjet
Western PA High Tech Country Boy
Thanks for the listings by Victoria Silverwolf, Wruter, Vaz and Venusian Broon. And a special thanks to Rafellin and Luiglin for the surprising votes! Especially nice considering how tough the competition is.
Thank you very much JJ and Luiglin for the votes. 
Shyrka
Friend of Ulysses
- Joined
- Jan 11, 2016
- Messages
- 842
Thank you for all the lovely shortlistings, kind comments and thank you especially to @Vaz, @Glen & @johnnyjet for the delicious votes. One more and I'll have equalled my previous best!
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2006
- Messages
- 6,381
Ladies and Gentlemen of the SFF Chronicles, the votes are in from the Perpetual republic of Tim - not sure what planet he is on, mind you.
A shortlist:
Juliana
Victoria
Ihe
Wruter
Special Mentions:
TJ - loved the voice the piece, the spelling and the font.
SB - I think it impossible to for a month to go by without some form of appreciation for Mr. Beast and his off the wall kookish-ness.
Mr. Orange - Made me laugh. Nuff said.
Votes:
Shyrka
Phyrebrat
DG
A shortlist:
Juliana
Victoria
Ihe
Wruter
Special Mentions:
TJ - loved the voice the piece, the spelling and the font.
SB - I think it impossible to for a month to go by without some form of appreciation for Mr. Beast and his off the wall kookish-ness.
Mr. Orange - Made me laugh. Nuff said.
Votes:
Shyrka
Phyrebrat
DG
Cathbad
Level 30 Geek Master
Oops! Didn't mean to go Ninja... my votes were for Perp Man, Phyrebrat, and StillLearning. In the Running: Victoria, Shyrka, and Glen.
Great stories this month, as usual, gang. Here's my Top Ten. Cue the Pearl & Dean music!
@Perpetual Man – Dare To Write? – as Goethe said, it is the job of the poet to capture the specific, but reflect the universal. Sometimes a piece can be well-written and admirable for its mood or technique, but it really needs to be understood in its proper context to reveal the full depth of its construction and meaning. I suspect there is a strong autobiographical vein running through this piece, capturing the personal pain of the author, but reflecting the universal difficulty of the creative process and the power of the mundane to hold one back. A difficult, self-reflexive piece which talks about the writer’s own struggle and ironically results in one of the best, richest pieces submitted by Perp for a long time.
@Juliana – Tiny Bones – darkness within and without takes root, grows and thrives in this story, from the grey rain and damp, dead soil to the broken souls of the protagonists. This bleak vision of grizzled survivors of the demographic tree turned upside-down, with the crippled and dying forced to spend their days burying their young and waiting for death. A society sick both literally and figuratively is punctured by the yearning of one mother to hold her child’s bones once more. The image of a mother digging to resurrect the child, (a classical symbol of Future) that will surely kill those who remain, is symbolism of the most powerful order.
@Victoria Silverwolf – Fossils – another tale of reincarnation, but tonally very different, and very wry. There’s something about this story that smacks of the opportunism that marks the survival of the fittest species. George, the cuckolded fool, still manages to make a financial profit on the markets, but he’s been outmoded; Amber shacks up with a literal embodiment of caveman masculinity. We’re all fossils in waiting.
@Shyrka – Patience – I love a piece in which the characters play a long-game. Revenge is a dish well-earned in this tale of a slave with a clockwork memory. Simple yet effective, and with a killer reveal at the end. A highly macabre delight.
@Luiglin – First of the Line. A quick glance at the poll tells me this hasn’t received any votes yet. I’m shocked. A truly original interpretation on the image, with the skeletal parrot kept in ol’ Deadbeard’s ribcage. I mean, talk about a dead man’s chest! Yo ho! The Dark Lord lends himself to the longer format, which bodes for well for the other long form pieces you’ve got cooking. I have to admit, I was LOL-ing all over the shop when I read through. That pleading “don’t” at the end carries all the grim inevitability of a Greek tragedy. Echoes Pratchett almost too well, being clever, farcical, and highly British. Absolutely brilliant.
@Cascade – Transcript… - A fine month for comedy, this. The inversely-proportional relationship between the towers of self-aggrandising bloviation and the insignificant positions of their bureaucratic owners was never captured so well as in this splendidly-written piece of rhetoric which deliciously captures the tiny grandiose of the jobsworth.
@Wruter – Bird Girl – a weird, attractive mash-up of sexual cannibalism, dimorphism and fluidity sits at the heart of this story, but the interesting thing about this story is the utilization of the gaze of the character. The figure of prospective parent (and especially mother) in the classical psychoanalytic sense views the child as a threat to their own identity and freedom. In this interpretation the traditional gaze of the male (shown by the classic first line of the guy talking about his gal – “her name was Sassa”) is subverted through the male being victimized and having his identity stolen through the female’s biogenetic disposition. It’s the male who changes – experiencing the fear and sickness of bodily change, but with the twist that it is his own self who is stealing his identity. At the end I’m reminded a little of the climax of 1984. The fear and terror recedes because his self has unalterably changed into something else. Disturbing and oddly beautiful.
@mosaix – A Spot of Bother – just a brilliantly written potboiler. A fast-paced thriller with the inevitable drip-drip-drip justice dispensed by something foul and unnatural. It’s something when the protagonist shifts from being a bit of a toerag into sympathetic victim within 300 words, but this manages it.
@reiver33 – Nevermore – reiver goes all Poe-faced in this fabulously high-concept sci-fi piece that feels like a set-up for a vengeance piece from the position of his new, avian identity. Something like, oh I don’t know… The Crow? Once again the story focuses on gazes, as Decker’s self is transmuted into the Raven so he literally watches himself die, after which he gives flight to fight another day. It’s brilliantly written, as usual, and there are enough tidbits to suggest a well-built word lying outside the confines of this dusty little room. The basis for something longer, I’d reckon.
@Ursa major – Extreme Measures – there’s something about the puzzle that sits at the centre of this story that drew me in and forced me to sit down and really think about it. The use of : Rod, pole, perch, hand, grain are all medieval or imperial units of measurement (get the title: Extreme Measures…), as is the name of the detective / witch (Stone). It’s ironic that the MC is being subjected to an Inquisition, when I feel he was being guided Inquisitorially towards the persecution of the witch Stone through some sort of higher (Imperial) power which even he didn’t understand. It’s not perfect, as the word count perhaps necessitated the omission of a couple of extra clues, but it’s not completely… unfathomable – indeed, it’s bursting with ideas, and is a very clever piece of writing.
Some top stuff in there, then. But the DG3 went to:
Perp
Luiglin
reiver33
@Perpetual Man – Dare To Write? – as Goethe said, it is the job of the poet to capture the specific, but reflect the universal. Sometimes a piece can be well-written and admirable for its mood or technique, but it really needs to be understood in its proper context to reveal the full depth of its construction and meaning. I suspect there is a strong autobiographical vein running through this piece, capturing the personal pain of the author, but reflecting the universal difficulty of the creative process and the power of the mundane to hold one back. A difficult, self-reflexive piece which talks about the writer’s own struggle and ironically results in one of the best, richest pieces submitted by Perp for a long time.
@Juliana – Tiny Bones – darkness within and without takes root, grows and thrives in this story, from the grey rain and damp, dead soil to the broken souls of the protagonists. This bleak vision of grizzled survivors of the demographic tree turned upside-down, with the crippled and dying forced to spend their days burying their young and waiting for death. A society sick both literally and figuratively is punctured by the yearning of one mother to hold her child’s bones once more. The image of a mother digging to resurrect the child, (a classical symbol of Future) that will surely kill those who remain, is symbolism of the most powerful order.
@Victoria Silverwolf – Fossils – another tale of reincarnation, but tonally very different, and very wry. There’s something about this story that smacks of the opportunism that marks the survival of the fittest species. George, the cuckolded fool, still manages to make a financial profit on the markets, but he’s been outmoded; Amber shacks up with a literal embodiment of caveman masculinity. We’re all fossils in waiting.
@Shyrka – Patience – I love a piece in which the characters play a long-game. Revenge is a dish well-earned in this tale of a slave with a clockwork memory. Simple yet effective, and with a killer reveal at the end. A highly macabre delight.
@Luiglin – First of the Line. A quick glance at the poll tells me this hasn’t received any votes yet. I’m shocked. A truly original interpretation on the image, with the skeletal parrot kept in ol’ Deadbeard’s ribcage. I mean, talk about a dead man’s chest! Yo ho! The Dark Lord lends himself to the longer format, which bodes for well for the other long form pieces you’ve got cooking. I have to admit, I was LOL-ing all over the shop when I read through. That pleading “don’t” at the end carries all the grim inevitability of a Greek tragedy. Echoes Pratchett almost too well, being clever, farcical, and highly British. Absolutely brilliant.
@Cascade – Transcript… - A fine month for comedy, this. The inversely-proportional relationship between the towers of self-aggrandising bloviation and the insignificant positions of their bureaucratic owners was never captured so well as in this splendidly-written piece of rhetoric which deliciously captures the tiny grandiose of the jobsworth.
@Wruter – Bird Girl – a weird, attractive mash-up of sexual cannibalism, dimorphism and fluidity sits at the heart of this story, but the interesting thing about this story is the utilization of the gaze of the character. The figure of prospective parent (and especially mother) in the classical psychoanalytic sense views the child as a threat to their own identity and freedom. In this interpretation the traditional gaze of the male (shown by the classic first line of the guy talking about his gal – “her name was Sassa”) is subverted through the male being victimized and having his identity stolen through the female’s biogenetic disposition. It’s the male who changes – experiencing the fear and sickness of bodily change, but with the twist that it is his own self who is stealing his identity. At the end I’m reminded a little of the climax of 1984. The fear and terror recedes because his self has unalterably changed into something else. Disturbing and oddly beautiful.
@mosaix – A Spot of Bother – just a brilliantly written potboiler. A fast-paced thriller with the inevitable drip-drip-drip justice dispensed by something foul and unnatural. It’s something when the protagonist shifts from being a bit of a toerag into sympathetic victim within 300 words, but this manages it.
@reiver33 – Nevermore – reiver goes all Poe-faced in this fabulously high-concept sci-fi piece that feels like a set-up for a vengeance piece from the position of his new, avian identity. Something like, oh I don’t know… The Crow?
Once again the story focuses on gazes, as Decker’s self is transmuted into the Raven so he literally watches himself die, after which he gives flight to fight another day. It’s brilliantly written, as usual, and there are enough tidbits to suggest a well-built word lying outside the confines of this dusty little room. The basis for something longer, I’d reckon.@Ursa major – Extreme Measures – there’s something about the puzzle that sits at the centre of this story that drew me in and forced me to sit down and really think about it. The use of : Rod, pole, perch, hand, grain are all medieval or imperial units of measurement (get the title: Extreme Measures…), as is the name of the detective / witch (Stone). It’s ironic that the MC is being subjected to an Inquisition, when I feel he was being guided Inquisitorially towards the persecution of the witch Stone through some sort of higher (Imperial) power which even he didn’t understand. It’s not perfect, as the word count perhaps necessitated the omission of a couple of extra clues, but it’s not completely… unfathomable – indeed, it’s bursting with ideas, and is a very clever piece of writing.
Some top stuff in there, then. But the DG3 went to:
Perp
Luiglin
reiver33
Ooh, a vote from Jo, thanks! And thanks Perp and DG for the listing, and DG – I loved the comments.
Ihe
Forum Revolutionary
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2015
- Messages
- 1,119
Shortlist: Perp, Juliana, Luiglin, Shyrka, Wruter, TitaniumTi
Votes: Phyrebrat, DG Jones, StilLearning
Overall great quality, but I did notice more grammar/spelling mistakes than in previous months. Must be getting better at this editing thing.
Votes: Phyrebrat, DG Jones, StilLearning
Overall great quality, but I did notice more grammar/spelling mistakes than in previous months. Must be getting better at this editing thing.
Luiglin
Getting worse one day at a time
Apologies for the ninja vote but as part of my day job I have to work the night on UK elections. So this year I finished at 4:30am on Friday morning and was logging back into work at 7:30am. My brain is only just catching up and I haven't a clue where my body is.
@Juliana nothing better than a post apocalyptic personal tale. The drama is often in the small things rather than the world outside.
@The Judge how can you not enjoy a tale from a kid who has clearly failed his SPAG test - Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar, slightly ironic I find to make up a nonsensical word to cover spelling and grammar and my own daughter is just about to do her UK SATS. The eye here though is in the subtle comic detail.
@johnnyjet hard to explain why I choose this one except that I just enjoyed the read, pure and simple.
Thanks for the mentions and double thanks for the great post vote review @DG Jones that is worth far more than the click of a radio button on the poll page
@Juliana nothing better than a post apocalyptic personal tale. The drama is often in the small things rather than the world outside.
@The Judge how can you not enjoy a tale from a kid who has clearly failed his SPAG test - Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar, slightly ironic I find to make up a nonsensical word to cover spelling and grammar and my own daughter is just about to do her UK SATS. The eye here though is in the subtle comic detail.
@johnnyjet hard to explain why I choose this one except that I just enjoyed the read, pure and simple.
Thanks for the mentions and double thanks for the great post vote review @DG Jones that is worth far more than the click of a radio button on the poll page
Thanks for the shortlisting Ihe, and for the vote and lovely comment Luiglin.
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