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[JIMBOB!]

WE HAVE OUR WINNERS!

1st place with a whopping 7 votes goes to


JIMBOB!

We have a tie between anian and akatosh (akatosh 'came in second' for dualnames, but that wont be counted as a vote). My random number generator has selected:


AKATOSH!

and last, but not least, in 3rd, we have:


ANIAN!

And the participation award goes to:


CALIN!
OLIWERKO!
ZETSAIKA!
ATELIER!
DUALNAMES!
WHAM!

I hope everyone had fun writing! I pass my torch onto Jimbob! You can start the next Fortnightly Writing Contest whenever you please, and I look forward to writing for it!

Keeping the voting open for one more day in case anyone else wants to throw in a vote.

Alas, the competition has come to a close. Such wonderful entries everyone!

Voting commences: NOW!

The 4th has begun (at least where I'm at  ). The competition will close at midnight tonight (CST time), so about 23 hours from now. Wondering whether you should do an entry or not? DON'T WAIT! DO IT NOW! One of those prizes could WILL be yours! 

Wow, amazing stories so far guys! We have 6 (almost 5) days remaining, so LET'S BRING IN SOME MORE ENTRIES! 

I'm more than likely gonna enter this, just need to find a time to record the track. 

Glad everyone liked the subject! I'm stoked for the stories! 

[Afterlife!]

This time around, our subject is: Afterlife! Hooray!

Similar (but not entirely) to this months MAGS,  the challenge is to write a short story (or poem!) involving in some way or another, life after death. It could be the main character that's in the afterlife, or it could be another character communicating from the afterlife, or just something afterlife related! You choose!

A few things to think about:

• What/where is afterlife? Is it hell? Is it limbo? Is it a magical land of candy canes?
• How did your character get there? Or has he always been there?
• Is it friendly there? Is it hostile? Is it spooky?

What are the answers to these questions? Will they even be answered? You decide!

PRIZES FOR ALL

1st place!


2nd place!


3rd place!


Participation award!

All entries should be in by the 4th of February. Voting will determine the winner, and all ties will be broken by a random number generator (your name will be assigned a number then the generator will decide your fate).

Have fun and good luck!

I should have the next competition up by tonight or tomorrow. 

Thanks for all the votes, fellas. 

So, correct me if I'm wrong (I'm new to this), I just post the competition when I get the idea?

It may be too late, but if you revoke your decision and extend it a little further I'll get a song in! I've been meaning to record a song for this and have been away from my equipment, but tomorrow I got a free day so I can make one.

[Idea]

Idea - loominous
Atmosphere - loominous
Design - Mordalles
Composition - Mordalles
Technique - Mordalles

Mordalles did an incredible job with his, gorgeous yet enigmatic. Loominous, however, won me over with his feel/style/atmosphere. Great job to the both of you.  

(Also, Dualnames, yours is probably my runner up to loominous when it comes to atmosphere. You did pretty great as well  )

It's amazing how just lighting alone can get me excited for a game, but oh well, it works! 

Can't wait to see/hear more!

poltergeist.

Great story, and the ending was just awesome. 

When you think of the word 'superhero', what do you picture? Do you picture a man (sometimes woman) hopping around in colorful capes and costumes fighting crime, gaining the adoration of all who witness their good deeds? Very well, but what you don't realize is that they're all doing it very, very wrong. You see, faffing about in their little disguises and getting all that publicity is what will eventually become their undoing, whether it be have all their loved ones murdered or just have very bad things done to them. These sad endings are always because of their thick ego that's on display to the public eye. Someone will find out who they are, someone will find their true weakness, and someone will use that weakness to ruin them. They fail, and everyone involved gets either killed or raped (or both) because of their mistake of not doing their deeds incognito. I wish I could have thought of this before I got my powers, but I guess you live and learn.

Sorry, my mind loses track easily, I'll cut that rant off short. So, what does that make me then? Well, first off, I'm Arnst. That's pretty much it. Not 'ARNST THE INCREDIBLE' or anything, just Arnst. Even before my powers, that was just it. Might as well change it to 'Average', because that's what I am. Well, excluding the aforementioned powers, but really they don't make me any less 'Arnst' that I already am. Enough about that, now to the more interesting bit. My powers. Probably one of the more grim powers out there, but I make people explode. Cool, right? Not really, because I can only make 1 person explode, because of a little accident. I was young. It was right after I got a letter in the mail, explaining to me that I have been chosen as an experiment blah blah blah. Basically they just did something to me at birth with out telling my parents as part of some experiment. I couldn't believe that I got powers, this is something that every kid dreamed of! But, it was just a letter, how could I have believed it's real? The skeptic in me turned on and I simply disposed of it, thinking nothing of it.

Then one night, we were having the obligatory family dinner. Grandma was over, and she was just talking. I swear her brain was so focused on talking that it didn't have any reserve power to let her blink. It was painful. I kept trying to eat my food really fast so I can excuse my self, but the food was the visual equivalent of diarrhea , so it was either let my ears bleed or vomit. As my mind began to wander, the memory of the letter began to return to me. Now, when you're in a situation like I was at that age, you don't think very clearly.  Of course I thought the chance of that letter telling the truth was less that 0%, but I was a kid, a very curious kid. It was terrible of me to think like that, but my grandmother just wouldn't shut up.

Unfortunately, the letter was correct. Also unfortunate was how easy it is to use it. If you think about it just the right amount, and you're picking grandmothers nose out of your soup.  When I was a kid, I played all the violent video games and watched all the R rated movies, and I don't think any amount of that can prepare you for someone exploding all over you. There was no fire, or dust, or smoke. Just red. A lot of red. To be honest it was the most red my eyes have ever witnessed. Probably goes the same for my parents too. That moment was the first (and unfortunately not the last) time I have ever seen people react to someone spontaneously exploding, and believe me, they lose their shit.

So after that traumatizing event, I received another letter in the mail. The company angrily informed me that I had breached contract and was to be limited of my power. I was 12, so all that contract information on the first letter was a foreign language to me. They acknowledged that since I (and most of the other test subjects) were of an age where logic is impaired, they would limit my powers until I did good with them. Essentially, this means that I have one more chance not to screw up. I guess this means that I have to blow up the right person? I find the logic of this situation skewed.

--

So lets fast forward to yesterday. Years past and I never found a use for my power, so I just forgot about it and kept living my severely normal life. Up until yesterday, at least. I was just walking down the city street, sipping on my uncomfortably hot coffee, heading back to my apartment. Since I live in NYC, you see homeless people all the time. No one ever messes with them, it's kind of their job to just sit there and beg. In my time in this city, I've never seen anyone mess with them, until yesterday. I was getting pretty close to my apartment, when I heard what seemed to be a confrontation in one of the alleys. I probably should have just ran to my apartment and forget about it, but no. Stupid.

I turned into the alleyway to see a pugnacious young man and one of the homeless folk. The guy was beating up on him, yelling at the homeless man to give him all of his money (his shouting interspersed with expletives). It was a miserable sight, seeing someone helpless and in need having the life kicked out of them by someone who's probably the opposite. All the ire that built within me made me wish I could do something about it. Then I remembered.

“No, you idiot. Just forget about it”, one half of my brain said.

“Come on! This is your chance! BLOW HIM SKY HIGH”, the other half yelled.

The two halves then proceeded to have a nasty fist fight in my head, causing a headache. I couldn't take it anymore. It's either now or never. I'm going to send this guy to hell in pieces.

Then I did something stupid. Really stupid.

“Hey jerkoff!”, I yelled.

They both turned to look at me. “Shit”, both halves of my brain said in unison. Way to go, Arnst.

Everything was suddenly a blur. It was either now or never, and I already blew my cover. The man withdrew his shank. Seeing the weapon brought a daze of confusion over me, everything began to spin. I closed my eyes and thought as hard as I could. I remember the last thing the hoodlum said to me.

“Jerkoff huh?! YOU'RE GONNA REGRET SAYING TH--”

--

My eyes darted through the anger filled letter, informing me that my powers are officially removed and I had failed the experiment. I threw it away quickly, too embarrassed tor read it thoroughly. I slumped down into my couch and sighed. As much as I tried to convince my self that accidents happen, it still wasn't enough. You know, in retrospect, what I did could be a good deed after all. I mean, the guys probably never going to harass anyone ever again. Having a homeless man explode all over you is probably enough to shock you into insanity.

[organic]

I'm going to support what anian said, but I'm going to rephrase it.


This could be a really great gem.  But yes the percussion is slightly distracting.   I think if it were slightly more organic feeling, it would make all the difference in the world.   It feels a bit mechanical, a bit too symmetric, and pronounced as previously stated.

I'm not going to make suggestions how to change it, just go for organic.  Go for loose.  The tone of the melody and the atmosphere were otherwise perfect.

I agree 100%. However, I can't really achieve an organic feeling from computers, which is why I really need to put a band together and record this. 

Thanks for the input!

Unfortunately Guitar Pro has no ability to use brushes (much to my dismay when I began laying down the drums for the first time) and only has one snare tone (and generally just one drumset). Also, yes, the part at 0:28 is weird. It didn't occur to me on the first few listens, but after I listened closely to the drums they were most certainly doing something odd.

And yes, it does help. Thanks 

Hey, first post.

Anyway, I don't get much critique on my work other than the general 'Good!' from friends/family, and never a 'It's good but you could have...' if you see what I mean, so I figured this would be a nice place to post it to get some good honest critiques. To the piece, it was an idea I had for a while and then made this concept in Guitar Pro (so it's not a real recording, just a computer generated. It sounds kind of close though) just to hear it outside of my head. So yeah, the link:


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