Discussion thread -- March 2017 75-word Writing Challenge

[mosaix]

Congratulations, DEO!

And a big thank you to everyone who voted for my story.

 

[Justin Swanton]

Gummy Bears!

 

[David Evil Overlord]

 

[David Evil Overlord]

Sam Sykes has done a short Viking saga with gummy bears on Twitter.

 

[Mr Orange]

congrats DEO and commiserations mosaix

thanks again to all those who mentioned my story.

my story came about because twerk was the first thing that came to mind when i wondered if i could change around the word "work". a new colony with earth immigrants dancing instead of working obviously followed.

as @Vaz intuited, the first speaker was originally meant to be from Yorkshire (in fact the colony was originally called New New (Planetary) York. but i realised that an attempt to make his/her accent properly Yorkshire would fail, so instead i just made it a mangled English accent.

the Amexicanadians* were originally just Americans but i didn't want to insult the Americans amongst us (y'all have enough problems right now), so i decided to unite the North American continent and insult 3 nations...

i wasn't expecting much as i forgot about it until the last night and then almost wrote a new story as i couldn't get this one to work.

* this simple name became a huge geopolitical event in this future setting (in my mind) as the failed United States were incorporated in a Northern American conglomerate with the Canadians in charge. The Canadians (being nice, as they are) let America have the first couple of letters of the new Republic to assuage the nationalists within and give them the illusion they might be in charge.

 

[Dave Barsby]

My story came about because someone at work annoyed me and I vaguely entertained the concept of braining him again and again. Which makes me sound like a psycho. Which is fair enough.

 

[nixie]

Congratulations DEO.

 

[Peter V]

Congratulations for a worthy win

 

[Cat's Cradle]

Congratulations DEO! And commiserations, mosaix. Very nice stories, both.

And @Heijan Xavier, no, sadly I did not detect the Hawthorne reference (I'm a rather unsophisticated reader), but I did think this was really nicely written, and I liked the sadness of it. And I loved this phrase: "a brume of dark ether". Well done!

 

[Vaz]

Congrats, DEO!

Well fought, Mosaix. Good entry.

Thanks again for the mentions, votes, and wonderful reviews.

 

[mosaix]

Regarding my entry. I had the last line - "When can you start?" - within minutes of seeing the theme. The title came along a couple of days later from listening to a play on the radio. The line "Mr Jones will see you now, sir." seemed to fit so well with my last line. Then it took a few days to find the lines in between.

I wasn't entirely satisfied with my last few lines of dialogue. Sometimes, when I'm writing my entries, they just flow and I'm happy with them almost straight away (then comes the editing down to 75 words of course), but this time I couldn't get it quite right. I'm surprised it got as far as it did, DEO's read a lot more smoothly.

 

[Andrew Lambert]

Well done, DEO

*

I'm taking mine to the improving thread.

Is there an improving thread - I need it if there is!!

 

[mosaix]

Well done, DEO

Is there an improving thread - I need it if there is!!

Improving our 75 Word Stories -- READ FIRST POST

 

[Perpetual Man]

I just thought I'd stick my head around the door.

My original vote went to Dave Barsby - there was something nice and neat, darkly humorous with an overlying edge of fun that just appealed to me.

When we moved to a tiebreak it was a lot harder, I found it really hard to separate mosaix from DEO, in the end the inclusion of superheroes swung it for this old comic reader.

Thanks to everyone who mentioned mine, it is always a wonderful show of appreciation.

But not quite so much as realising for the first time in an age I got a vote, so many thanks to Heijan Xavier

 

[chrispenycate]

*Chris' review is subject to change if all of a sudden I get an epiphany and really understand the poem." As the old hippy said "Deeeep Man, Deeeep."

"... Midas plagues enforce deprival ..."

Could be a reference to Ralph?

Interesting thought. But I would need some evidence.

I'm very sorry but this month's offering had nothing clever in it - I couldn't even maintain the interior rhymes. It was a mere refutal of the Fred Pohl 'Midas plague' story, which at one time just about all SF readers had met, so I assumed would be recognised - until later I discovered it had been written in 1953. Possibly even the earliest of the post scarcity tales.

 

[Shyrka]

Huge congrats to @David Evil Overlord - whilst it didn't make my shortlist originally, having re-read it for the tie-breaker I can see why it appealled to so many folks. As I mentioned previously, it was great to the see the fridge trope being kicked in the proverbials (I believe you're correct with the Green Lantern origin - Kyle Rayner Green Lantern, I believe - but don't quote me on that)

I can't really explain the inspiration for this month's story. I think I was mulling over what might constitute an unusual job and must have gotten onto things like the Grim Reaper (I believe Dead Like Me came to mind at one point, Terry Pratchett's Death too) and it fell out from there. Originally it was supposed to be the child's hopes and dreams that were being saved, but it didn't really work until it became, through re-working, about fate (the life they had yet to live, as it were). Originally I shied away from using it and went searching for other entries - partly because it doesn't, at least to my mind, strongly tie to the theme of 'work' - but my other attempts (one about a super-spy operator that was bored of the monotony of killing goons and one about a zombie mill worker) just felt flat by comparison. Eventually, I realised I'd fallen a bit too in love with the 'gossamer phantoms' line and it was inevitable that I'd have to submit it, despite its flaws (I was never happy with the last line - I must have iterated that about twenty times).

 

[Calliopenjo]

The inspiration for my story came from an old Disney cartoon, The Sword and the Stone. I let my imagination take over and went from there.

 

[Cathbad]

~Confusion sets in~

Seems the link to the April Challenge Discussion also takes me here?

 

[David Evil Overlord]

Oops!

 

[The Judge]

I've been away, so sorry for the belated congrats, DEO -- well done, indeed! Commiserations, mosaix, but that primrose lemon taffeta really does suit you!