Fortnightly Writing Competition - Revolution! (Results!)

[Sinitrena]

I was banking on the 4th not being over for another 26 hours here....  If that's not the case then I will need an extension.

Woops, that's actually me getting confused by time zones . You're right, it was two days when I posted, so you have slightly more than a day now. Stll, if that's not enough time, I'll be happy to extent the deadline.

[Sinitrena]

Technically, time is up, but because of the downtime of the forum, I'll leave it open for a few hours for some last minute entries.

[Baron]

This was actually done on Wednesday, but I haven't been able to get on to the forums until now.

A Tail of Two Species

   It was the beast of times, it was the worms of times.  Hundreds of years ago the Animal Kingdom had broken the shackles of tyranny, ushering in the golden age of the Animal Republic.  And with each passing year the lustre of the epoch seemed to glow more intensely as genuine progress was made in technology, social equality of the species, economic stability, and sanitation.  Now was an age of reason triumphant, and yet also an era of ignorance ascendant.  For the better things became by any objective measure, there seemed to be an ever growing reaction of those who yearned for the easy answers of a simpler time.  Thus, as the day of the Animal had just hit a new zenith, so too did the shadows begin to lengthen, foreboding the coming darkness.

   The Llama stole quickly through the alley, his hooves sheathed in soft slippers knitted from his own wool to soften the typical clop-clop of his gait on the hard paving.  He bit his cleft lip nervously, casting a glance behind him without even turning his head by virtue of his long-slitted pupils.  There fluttered on the alley wall a half-unstuck poster depicting their hated rival for the Herbivore Party's nomination: the garishly plumed Rooster.  His beak was contorted into a sneer befitting a formal property mogul, his claws sharpened to slash out against the bleating heart liberals who had supposedly brought the Republic to ruin, and his perky comb was coiffed in an unnatural feat of branding.  He was known as the Lion of Fence Street, although bafflingly he had carved out a gullible following from the ranks of the anti-Fence Street wing of the Party.  “Let my mighty crowing give voice to the meek and downtrodden!” read the poster.  The Llama silently dropped a dozen kibbles of poop in front of the poster, hitched up his toga, and slipped discretely into an unmarked doorway.

   The warehouse had been abandoned for some time and was beginning to crumble, so he picked his footing gingerly as he would on the mountain paths of his ancestors.  Nowadays folk usually just communicated by e-braying or Snout Book, but it was most unwise to attempt anything illegal on Virtual Spider Web.  The quasi-government controlled agencies like the CIJ or the FDI would sniff you out like a basset hound; that is, if the corporate-herds didn't sell you out first.  They were all in cahoots with the political-dominant complex, looking to get their own snouts deeper into the trough.  So if you wanted to truly express yourself freely, legally or otherwise, you had to do it the old-fashioned way: face to face, preferably in a creepy conspiratorial milieu.

   The Llama arrived at a door and knocked furtively.

   A small slot opened at eye level.  “What's the secret password?” a pair of yellow eyes demanded.

   â€œThe lion sleeps tonight,” the Llama replied.  The sound of metal latches followed and he was promptly admitted to the den of sedition.  He was happy to see that many of his friends were already in  attendance.  They lounged impatiently on abandoned office furniture, whispering quietly to each other. There was the Cow, representing the bovine wing of the Party.  She was dressed in tight pleather, a shock-value youth fad for her species ever since its recent invention.  A cigarette burning some grass or weed dangled carelessly from her hoof, sending mesmerizing tendrils of smoke to waft whimsically through the half-light cast by the boarded windows.  Llama welcomed the visual distraction, since it conveniently drew his gaze from the massive udder that was barely contained by her pleather garment.

     Also present was the Muskrat, representing rodents and other vermin.  He wore some tattered garments barely distinguishable from the outdated sofa material on which he sat, while his wet moustaches cascaded down his rat-like face like ferns in a glen.  Llama was grateful that this greasy hippy sat between him and the Cow, since his vermin-like ugliness would shield him from her feminine wiles.   

   Next there was the Chimp, representing primates, and the Flamingo representing birds.  The Chimp lounged lazily on the back of a second couch, his designer dress-shirt and expensive glasses betraying him as a champagne socialist.  The Flamingo was a union apparatchik, currently nattering on about how the brotherhood must resist the machinations of the powerful by always doing exactly what the union bosses told them.

   â€œWhere's the Snake?” the Llama asked, noting the absence of his slithering compatriot.

   â€œHe has cold feet,” the Muskrat spat snidely, despite the reptile's lack of appendages of any temperature.

   â€œThis is not business for the timid,” the Chimp interjected in his over-pompus Massachewsit accent.  “The less he knows from now on the better.”

   â€œNo decision has been made yet,” the Flamingo pointed out.

   â€œThat is what we are here to do,” the Cow said with an air of finality.  “Tonight, one way or the other, we must decide our course of action.”  For emphasis she uncrossed and then recrossed her hind legs, the sound of tight pleather straining at its purpose drawing Llama's attention reluctantly to the smooth tautness of her hind shank.

   â€œSo be it,” he said, trying to get his mind of the gravity-defying curve of that perky udder.  How it heaved gently with the Cow's breath, its two barely concealed teats dancing hypnotically like the pupils of a viper.  “Th-then let nothing delay us further,” he recovered.  “We have already resolved that the Rooster must be stopped.  His omnivorous charisma and fascist arrogance have made him a lightning rod for the disenchanted and the gullible.”

   â€œThey feed on his lies of nostalgic virtue, like the past was any less messy than the present,” the Chimp bemoaned.  “As if he could turn back the clock if he tried: the consulate is not an all-powerful office-”

   â€œHe means to subsume the venerated office,” the Flamingo stated flatly, “By turning the whole government into a reality TV circus of huckster populism.  He will denigrate our institutions and erode our precious freedoms, all in the name of rekindling a lost glory that never was.  I say we kill him.”

   â€œWait, wait, wait,” said the Musktrat.  “I agree with everything that has been said so far, and indeed this wannabe-king must be stopped, but couldn't we just derail his campaign somehow?”

   â€œThat will never work,” explained the Chimp petulantly.  “His campaign is derail-proof.  No matter how stupid or insipid or just plain wrong his bluster, it only seems to inflate the bubble of his popularity further.  Remember when he demeaned that swan's question due to her gender before riding her like a lemur on a bronco?  Everyone thought his campaign was dead before the feathers hit the floor, and yet he bounced back with even more support for telling it like it is.”

   â€œAnd any external set-back is always blamed on the conspiracy of the elites,” added the Flamingo, “driving the downtrodden to greater depths of rage and further inflating his polling numbers.”

   â€œWe need to stop that cock from straddling us like one of his dung hills,” the Cow declared, her udder nodding in agreement.  Her analogy did not transmit to the Llama as intended.  “I vote with the Flamingo: we kill him.”

   â€œAgreed,” seconded the Chimp.  There was a long drawn-out silence as the three shifted their gazes between the Llama and the Muskrat.  The Muskrat squirmed at the idea of violence, while the Llama squirmed at the thought of that udder bursting from its pleather prison with the help of his dextrous cleft-lips....

   â€œUh....yeah,” he struggled.  “I'm in.”

   â€œBut the system's not supposed to work like that, man!” protested the Muskrat indignantly.  “What ever happened to civil-society and debating the issues on their merits?  This slope is as slippery as an otters mud-bank.  Who's to say that we aren't next?  Is that the kind of country you want to live in?”

   â€œIs the Rooster's vision what you want to live in?” retorted the Flamingo.  “Where migratory species are excluded due to the colour of their fur or feathers?  Where the death penalty is reinstated for low-trophic prey animals?  Where inter-species mating is recriminalized?” The Llama swallowed hard, while the Flamingo continued: “Where our foreign policy is dictated by the puff and swagger of a fence-post potentate with his toe on the trigger of our mooclear arsenal?!?”

   â€œFine..... fine,” the Muskrat sighed, his idealism pulped like an invertebrate in a stampede.  “But how do we do it?  Who's gonna stick their long fuzzy neck out and be the first to thrust the dagger?”

   â€œWe need a champion,” the Cow lowed seductively.  “A beast of conviction and untrammelled passion.  Someone with a deft touch, but a rugged stamina for the ....undertaking.”  She cast the barest hint of a wink in the Llama's direction, and then a seam on her bodice audibly burst, snapping him temporarily out of the dangerously weird places his mind had been wandering.

   â€œOh shit...” thought the Llama.
   

[Sinitrena]

As I thought, a last minute entry

But now time is up and we have two participants:

Danvzare
Baron A Tail of Two Species


We vote in categories:

Character: the most believable/captivating/magnetic/unique character
Setting: the most vivid background world, or most gripping atmosphere
Plot: the best organized, coherent and well-executed story with appropriate pacing, climax, etc.
Word Choice: the technical art of combining words in a memorable way
Revolution: The revolution you would support or try to supress

You have one vote per category and voting ends 10th May.

[kconan]

Character: Baron for the Llama
Setting: Baron
Plot: Baron
Word Choice: Baron
Revolution: Danvzare (I would support giving up on it like NY resolutions)

[Baron]

As always I will exercise my democratic right with extreme relish:

Character: I'm going to go with Danvzare's Will here.  I liked his everyman quality of dreaming big and then giving up almost immediately.

Setting: I think Danvzare's depiction of New York City was pretty vivid.  Sure, it was never actually mentioned as the setting, but you can almost taste the lead-tinged exhaust clouds of early 1980's New York City in the narrow street canyons between his blocks of words.

Plot: Easily Danvzare again.  His story is like a suspense-thriller novel that's been made into a roller coaster that's been made into a virtual memory implant à  la Total Recall.  A simple misunderstanding sparks a wild-fire of self-destructive anti-establishmentarianism that just as quickly runs out of dry timber and fizzles in the damp fog of a New Year's Day hangover.  You really want to pull for the main protagonist who seems to have grasped what is wrong with society and is willing to sacrifice life and limb to fight for change, but only after the brutal reality of the those sacrifices is juxtaposed with the comfy expedient of sleeping in the next day is the reader confronted with the disturbing truth that it is actually he, and folk of his ilk, that manifest the true rot that is decaying society from within.  That's some deep shit.

Word Choice: Gotta be Danvzare.  The clever transposing of "revolution" and "resolution" is the beating heart of the peice.

Revolution: I'm voting for Danvzare, but not because I necessarily support Will's revolution.  I think his grandiose scheme was probably doomed to failure from the outset, so he probably made a rational decision by abandoning it.  But it's that give-up-before-you-start attitude that, collectively, makes people want to start revolutions in the first place, because no one seems to be doing anything to help.  I think there's something to be said for just going with your gut and charging on regardless: it's messy and it's failure prone, but god-dammit it's real.  Not like the false charms and potemkin façades of our current stilted, ossified, and decadent public sphere.    

[JudasFm]

Character: Baron for the Cow. Not sure why but something about that stuck in my mind. Maybe because it made me think of Toonstruck
Setting: This was a really hard one but I'm going to have to go with Danvzare. I wanted to vote for Baron, but there were too many oddities and things that were never fully explained; I found I was spending more time trying to work out minor things than actually reading the story.
Plot: Danvzare
Word Choice: Danvzare Baron's was also good, but it used far too many odd verbs (spat, interjected, stated, pointed out, seconded etc) when a simple said would have worked much better. There was also some redundancy (“Where's the Snake?” the Llama asked, noting the absence of his slithering compatriot. The crossed out part really isn't necessary; it's obvious to the reader that the Llama has noticed that the Snake isn't there, otherwise why would he bother asking where he was?)
Revolution: Baron's. It was a clever idea

Having been flamed off one or two other forums for less than I've written above, I want to add a little disclaimer: The above is meant only in the spirit of constructive criticism, not as any kind of personal attack, and is only my opinion

[Danvzare]

Character: Baron (How he wrote all of those different animals, it was just so convincing!)
Setting: Baron (What can I say, I loved the setting.)
Plot: Baron (The plot was simply superb, and that ending!)
Word Choice: Baron (I'm usually not too good when it comes down to who has the better word choice, but I think it was easy this time.)
Revolution: Baron (What can I say, it stuck to the theme perfectly.)

[Baron]

....used far too many odd verbs (spat, interjected, stated, pointed out, seconded etc) when a simple said would have worked much better.

Having been flamed off one or two other forums for less than I've written above, I want to add a little disclaimer: The above is meant only in the spirit of constructive criticism, not as any kind of personal attack, and is only my opinion

"No offence taken," decreed the Baron.

[Sinitrena]

Aaaaand done!

The results are in and they are incredibly close. Baron and Danvzare each recieved two points in all categories except for "character", where we endet up with a 3 to 1 lead by Baron. So, first of all, congratulations to both of you.

Baron wins with 11 votes, receiving broken chains in gold:

It is an ages old tradition to write fables to mask political commentary and while your story is not exactly a classical fable, it certainly takes elements from it by having all main characters at animals - certainy a trusted method. What I missed a bit was the, also ages old, connection between character traits and the animal that was chosen to fill a role. We get this with physical aspects (the description of the cow comes to mind, obviously) but less so with personality. Then again, llamas usually don't show up in fables, so there's no specific personallity connected to them. Still, I think following a classic structur in this aspect could have added an additional layer to the story. On the other hand, you won because of your characters, so there is nothing wrong with them.

Danvzare recieves 9 points and the broken chains in silver:

A very short story with an unexpecte idea and clever use of words and even a plot twist in the end. But why did you feel the need to explain the joke ("They both laughed because Bill had said revolution instead of resolution.")? Especially considering that you contradict this statement in the very next sentence? Even with this small deficit, this was a very enjoyable story.

Congratulations again to both of you.
Baron, you know the drill, start the next round!

[Danvzare]

A very short story with an unexpecte idea and clever use of words and even a plot twist in the end. But why did you feel the need to explain the joke ("They both laughed because Bill had said revolution instead of resolution.")? Especially considering that you contradict this statement in the very next sentence? Even with this small deficit, this was a very enjoyable story.

I'm glad you enjoyed it.
I think the reason for that small problem you described, is the result of me making it up on the fly with little to no prior thought or afterthought.
If I had given it more consideration, I would have no doubt written it better.

Congrats Baron on winning 1st place.

[Baron]

Thanks, Danvzare.

If I had given it more consideration, I would have no doubt written it better.

This is so very true, except when it isn't.  My story was originally a meeting of senators plotting to assassinate Caesar: Llama was named Brutus and the Chimp was Cassius; there wasn't even a Cow at that point.  But I got to second-guessing myself about whether the story was interesting to read, or whether it needed some old-school forbidden love to spice it up.   And then when the story became more about the ridiculous pomposity of the Rooster/Caesar (who was originally a lion) and the inner struggle of the Llama/Brutus to not allow himself to be controlled by his carnal desires, all the mouthful Latin names seemed too confusing and rather superfluous.  But of course by then you'd be wondering why these herbivores would act in such a blood-lustful way, which is kind of lost without the obvious parallels to the world's most famous assassination.  So ultimately over-considering things can be as fraught as under-considering things, but it's the thought that counts.

I'll try to get the next comp up as soon as inspiration strikes.