Fortnightly Writing Competition: Brooding flash (Ended)

[KyriakosCH]

Ok, unless anyone has a story to post, I suppose you can now start voting
You vote for 1rst, 2nd, 3rd (seems we only have 3 stories, so everyone is a winner!)

[Baron]

I require voting deadlines.  Otherwise I procrastinate indefinitely.... 

[KyriakosCH]

Well, is the normal 1 week? I think it should be enough (?)
In that case, you can vote until October 23.

[Baron]

A week off, woot woot!    See ya next Thursday!   

[Sinitrena]

1: Mandle - I can't say I'm a fan of the nagging wife stereotype. It comes up often enough and more often than not as a way to validate abusive behaviour from the husband character, as one can also see here. It too often confirms the belief that women are lazy and should do all the chores in the house for their husbands, because the husband "brings the money home", even though women in this day and age also have jobs. Is this what is in your story? We don't get enough information about the wife to tell if she's a shrew or has valid concerns, but the narrative plays up the stereotype. Still, the story is written well enough, so you get first place from me.

2: Baron - You went for the same premiss as me, that the brooding is a bit more literal than Kyriakos probably had in mind. Your story took a bit of a weird turn in the middle and I'm kind of confused what is going on: the fox "comes out" as in, it was wearing the hen as a meat suit? Yeah, I liked the story well enough up until this point, then I just wasn't so sure any longer.

[KyriakosCH]

Well, I can't vote for the chicken stories, so Mandle it is for #1

[Sinitrena]

I don't think we have any Chechens in this competition. 

Okay, joking aside, it took me far too long to understand Kyriakos post. 

Also, I forgot to comment on Kyriakos' story. Even though it is not an offical entry, I usually write a few words for all stories here, so...

KyriakosCH: These are some interesting musings, but very much lacking context. I don't actually see any connection to the topic, other that someone is thinking about something, but thinking is not brooding. I also don't see a story. There's no plot, character, nothing at stake - it might be a concept, an idea. One could make a story out of this. So, a nice consept to work with but not very original or special. Maybe if you had used up the 500 words you were allowed...

[KyriakosCH]

Good enough for greek myth, but not for people in this forum 



Originally I thought your story was about some trailer trash, then identified it was a literal hen.
Like Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart, I also dislike chickens!

[Sinitrena]

Originally I thought your story was about some trailer trash, then identified it was a literal hen.

That's the whole point! You were supposed to figure it out with the line "The plump hen ruffled her feathers again and looked out at all the little chicks in the yard, now trying to count them up and find her own among the chaos, just to proof her roommate wrong." (If you figured it out earlier - Kudos!)

[Mandle]

1: Mandle - I can't say I'm a fan of the nagging wife stereotype. It comes up often enough and more often than not as a way to validate abusive behaviour from the husband character, as one can also see here. It too often confirms the belief that women are lazy and should do all the chores in the house for their husbands, because the husband "brings the money home", even though women in this day and age also have jobs. Is this what is in your story? We don't get enough information about the wife to tell if she's a shrew or has valid concerns, but the narrative plays up the stereotype. Still, the story is written well enough, so you get first place from me.

To be honest, it's just a comedy with no further comments on society. I set it back in the '50s to distance it enough from modern values so that it might be funny. I just found the final image of the main character cutting loose on the garden with the firehose to finally "water the garden" hilarious to me.

I always loved Stephen King's takes on apocalyptic suburban battles like in his books "The Regulators", "Needful Things", and "Tommyknockers", between small-minded people who suddenly find the power to fight back in unnecessarily over-the-top ways, and this was a bit of a tribute to that.

I think neither of my characters are to be taken as the heroes or victims. They are both idiots in their own ways.

[KyriakosCH]

Just noting that you have 30 something hours left to vote

[Baron]

1st = Mandle.  He had some good imagery: saving up complaints in an account and "spending" them on her poor husband, the scream of triumph that matched to wail of the siren.  And I got a kick out of the ending (not so much the petty destruction of the garden but the fact that the shallowly buried cat's bones came raining down in the very very end).  I felt that 50s vibe of people not making any effort to empathize with the struggles of others, as well as the building rage within Bobby which reminded me of the Honeymooners: "One of these days, Alice!".

2nd = Sinitrena.  Punny!  Something smelled a little ...fowl right from the first line, and you kept the poultry puns going the whole way through.  I'm torn when it comes to the voting, because I think you nailed the chicken characters pretty well (petty squabbling, not terribly intelligent, doomed to be taken advantage of).  But I feel, in the instance of chickens, that the brooding over gender inequality is a bit over the top.  I mean, your main character can't even count or keep track of her own children or sustain enough attention to defend her own eggs - this level of intelligence does not believably lend itself to analyzing gender power imbalances.  But then maybe I just secretly feel threatened by her growing empowerment.... 

[Mandle]

1st favorite: Baron... I felt entertained by the story and then thrown off balance when shit got real. 

2nd Favorite: Sinitrena... I guessed very early on that the characters were chickens and then got a bit disinterested because the "twist" element was already gone.

[KyriakosCH]

Ok, so all votes have been cast and here are the results:

1. Mandle
2. Baron (apparently? I mean due to Mandle's vote)
3. Sinitrina

I guess you now regretted making me contest organizer 

But here is your reward: 1 week vacation (for all three) in the Alex Jones militia-camp:



Made it myself, cause I'm talentedz.

[Sinitrena]

Congratulations, Mandle. I'm looking forward to the next (halloween?) round.

[Mandle]

Oh shit, I won?

WOOOOO!!! New round coming in a moment.