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Nice work.  And waaaaaay ahead of schedule, too.  Impressive!

Solution: Number of times the first three letters in poster's name appears in the post. (Didn't check back that far, but works for recent ones).

A walk squirrels into a ...never mind.

[Best Character]

Petty Deity



It's almost hard to conceive these days, with several of the largest global religions now obsessed with a single deity with vast, immeasurable, almost laughably paradoxical powers, that way way waaaaaay back in time there was more of a continuum of the divine.  At the top there were indeed fairly powerful gods, but even they had to fear their sons or enemies, lest they be overthrown.  But beneath them there were a range of lesser gods, and even quasi- or semi-divine beings, blending at the bottom into the upper echelons of mortal society.  It is somewhere down towards the bottom of this continuum that I want our authors to focus this time.  Taking the Romans as an example: they had thousands of these petty gods, each looking after very tiny and specific elements of life.  Fontis (or The Fons, as he was sometimes known) was in charge of only wells and springs.  That's it: no other duties listed.  Lateranus (not a way of saying goodbye to someone you don't like) confined his powers to ovens.  Lacturnus put the sap in plants.  Serritor was in charge of holes and ditches.  And Cloacina has the honour of presiding over the main sewer pipes (but presumably even lesser deities were responsible for the feeder lines).  This got me to thinking: what if there were petty deities for all the minor contrivances of modern civilization?  Gods of light bulbs, or toothbrushes, or dryer lint, or nose piercings, or insoles, or oversized belt-buckles, or nail clippers, or the microscopic little ball at the end of pens, or the little nests of hair that accumulate in shower drains, or... well, you get the idea.  What would their eternal lives be like?  What would be their struggles, their envies, their rivalries or their distractions?  What would it be like emotionally to be divine and immortal, but at the same time pretty insignificant in the big scheme of things? 

You have two weeks to explore these themes or parallel ones of your own devising.  Voting may or may not be along the lines of the following:

Best Character: Probably your divine creation, but maybe some mortal he/she is tormenting perhaps?
Best Plot: Someone tries to resolve some sort of conflict in a gripping or entertaining way.
Best Tone: Can you bring the reader to some understanding of what it feels like to be omnipotently minor?
Best Background World: Is the setting more than just a blackened stage with a sole spot-light?
Best Style: Encouraging the composition of memorable turns of phrase, or bold new ways of combining words.
Most Substantive: The reader actually takes away something meaningful from their short time with your words.

Deadline will be Monday November 23rd at 11:59 pm Hawaiian time.  I look forward to lots of marvellously petty entries.  Have fun and get writing!

Thanks everyone for the votes.  I cringed a little when Ponch didn't win, especially after he mentioned the shelf-full of John Carpenter DVDs.  I only ever saw John Carpenter's Vampires and Escape From LA as a kid (in retrospect, the only video store in town was into really cheesy movies....), but like the other contributors I read up on a bunch of JC's other movies and actually ended up watching The Thing based on a review I read about it.  So I guess my eyes have been opened to something new, and that's probably somehow made me into a better, broader person.  But Ponch's piece had something that mine didn't: PASSION.  You could read it in between his dangling participles, that here was an author that had deep and powerful feelings about Mr. Carpenter and his work.  Sure I read the rules first before writing, but that only resulted in a technical victory.  I think Ponch's piece was more than a sum of its parts that we categorically voted on: it was gripping, emotional, and stirringly well-written, and in my opinion deserved to beat mine, which was just a bunch of goofy tropes from various movies mashed together in a semi-coherent manner.

But it seems you can't talk sense into good judges these days, so I humbly accept the crown, barely, again, and will have the next competition up in a jiffy.  Stay tuned for the next exciting instalment of...

The Fortnightly Writing Competition!

[Best Use of Vowels]

....this competition could use a few more votes.

Oh very well.  If it'll bring closure.

Best Use of Vowels: Sinitrena
Horniest Avatar: Ponch
Best Use of Fonts: WHAM
Best Female Actor: Ponch
Best Dangling Participle: Ponch
Best Use of Non-Conventional Adverbs: WHAM
Best Unwritten Sub-Text: Sinitrena
Best Use of Dramatic Pauses: WHAM
Best Contortion of Metaphors: Ponch
Best Sentence Structure: WHAM
Best Character Names: Sinitrena
Best Novel Voting Categories: Baron

Wow.  We were always pretty loose on deadlines due to the theoretical possibility that someone from Hawaii might enter the competition, but I never thought it would actually happen.

Ah, the annual toddler-herding death march through black of night and freezing rain for misbehaviour-inducing sugar globs.  By gar, it's been a while.

If only there were a way to order a poster-sized and coloured reproduction of Ghost's picture above to console me in my hour of woe.... 

Best Writing Style:

Wow, burn on the rest of us for not measuring up....

Was Anas' last score including the quote, or not?

Kumpel and Tell don't mime in fall.

[Best Protagonist:]

Best Protagonist: This is tough, but I gotta give it to Ponch for the nameless female reincarnation of one of the old conquerors.  Not a very rounded character, obviously, but she's got that old-testament wrath of the ancients thing going that really turns my crank.

Best Plot: I think Sinitrena easily deserves to win this category, since her piece had a discernible arc (the others were just the start of something that was obviously much broader).

Best Dialog: Must be WHAM by default, since he actually had dialog.  Well, at least people spoke out loud....

Best Atmosphere: I think I have to go with WHAM again.  His writing has a way of drawing me into the story....  I don't know if it's like a butterfly to nectar or like a moth to a flame, but it's compelling whatever it is.

Best Writing Style: Going with Ponch here for some great descriptive writing.  I think my favourite line was "the delicate shells of the woman's cartoonishly externalized ears", but there was many a clever turn of phrase to choose from.

8

8

8

WHAT?!?  I could have procrastinated yesterday?!?   Dammit, P, we gotta coordinate better next time.

[Edit:]

I'm half done.  Hopefully get it in before midnight.  Although your "two days left" post yesterday tempts me to procrastinate....

Edit:

Escape from the Things

   â€œDamn!” shouted Jazz as the snowplow-fitted garbage-truck smashed through the store front.  Out-dated women's clothing flew into the wind-shield like a floral-printed snow storm before the truck came to an abrupt stop against a brick wall in the house-wares section.  The successive crashes of store shelves dominoing echoed ominously through the store.

   â€œDamn!” Jazz shouted again.  “God damn, Snide!  That noise ain't just enough to wake the dead;  it's like giving 'em three cups of coffee and an injection of pixie-stick dust right in the god-damn heart!”

   The man named Snide just turned off the ignition casually, applied the parking brake, and picked up his shot-gun from the floor between the seats.  “Good,” he said flatly.  “I don't like slackers who sleep in all day.” 

   With that Snide pushed his door open, emerging into a dimly lit cavern of dust and debris.  Jazz did likewise after grabbing his Clairtone 7985 Super Jumbo Ghetto Blaster in one hand and his baseball bat in the other.  He already had his chrome-plated heat holstered in the back of his pants and a bowie-knife sheathed at his hip, but the ghetto blaster was his main weapon.  If the freakin' harpies zeroed in on his heartbeat he'd use the beat-box to distract them while he ran like a little school girl who'd peed her panties. 

   Snide and Jazz met at the back of the garbage-truck, the occasional crash and smash of falling debris still echoing through the remains of the store.  “Man, they heard that in Akron!” Jazz lamented.  “They'll be swarming us any moment.”

   Snide just sneered in the eerie gloom and flipped the compressor switch into reverse.  The back of the truck opened up to reveal a man and a woman gasping for breath and flailing to escape their steel-and-garbage tomb.

   â€œSnide, you son of bitch!” the man shouted, stumbling out of the truck first.  He would have fallen flat on his face if Jazz hadn't caught him.  “If we make it out of this alive, I'm going to kill you for that!”

   â€œHey,” Snide retorted in his husky rasp.  “I was promised a cushy appointment if I pulled this off!”

   â€œFirst I'm going to appoint you Assistant Deputy Secretary of Twisted-Metal Fuck-Ups, and then I'm gonna kill you!” the man fumed.

   â€œHang on now, Mr. President,” Jazz soothed.  “I know it weren't pretty, but Snide did save your life back there.  And that little nest of garbage was a pretty cushy place to be in case of a crash.”

   The woman finally managed to haul herself out of the back the garbage truck, seemingly lurched unsteadily to the side, but then threw a mean right-hand punch right at Snide's jaw.  He took it like a statue.

   â€œHarmony, darling!  Are you alright?” the president asked, his tone instantly softened.

   â€œDaddy I hate you!” the woman pouted.  “And I hate these smelly brawny men who think they're such hot shit, and I hate this scuzzy rust-belt hell-hole too!”  For a president's daughter, the inaptly-named Harmony sure didn't look the part.  She was wearing nothing but short-shorts and a sports-bra, spoke like a sailor on a drunken bender, and acted about a third of her 21 year age.

   â€œEveryone's fine, then,” Snide observed in a sarcastic tone, then turned to lead the group through the back of the store.

   â€œWhat's the plan, Snide?” Jazz called, bringing up the rear.

   Snide kicked open a fire-escape door, but didn't reply.  He cocked an ear to listen for a moment, then waved for the group to follow him into what turned out to be a darkened stairwell.  Snide moved quickly but cautiously up the steps.

   â€œWhy are we going up?” the president hollered brashly.  “The exit sign points down, you idiot!”

   A sudden shuffling sound echoed ominously up the stairwell, like the sound of feathers beating in a chicken coop.  Everyone froze.

   â€œMaybe you should defy the polls and go up for once,” Snide suggested.  Quickly the group followed him until they emerged into a parkade about four stories up.  The perpetual glowing twilight of post-apocalyptic Cleveland lay spread out around them.

   â€œMy god, what a shit hole,” Harmony sneered.  Snide scanned the sky from the open ventilation wall while Jazz secured the door.  “People used to live here?  On purpose?”

   â€œWell, I don't know about on purpose, but they sure used to live here,” the president told her.  “Back in the 1960s the river caught fire, but they stayed.  Back in the 2010s the sky caught fire, but they stayed.  Heck, when the harpy infestation took hold in the 2023 they still stayed.  Mostly 'cause of the wall we built to enforce the quarantine, but partly no doubt to an ill-omened affection for the place.”

   â€œIs it really true?” Harmony asked, turning to Snide.  “Did they really call this city the Anus of Ohio?”

    “Only the ones that liked it,” Snide told her, moving further down the open wall to survey the street below.  There was already a crowd of harpies congregating around the broken window of the store-front, no doubt with more inside already.

   â€œWe're trapped!” The president spat accusingly.  “We've been treed like foxes, and the hounds are braying around the trunk for blood.  You led us to this!”

   Snide grabbed the president by his collar and swung him out over the edge.  “No,” he said cruelly, waving at the destruction extending miles in every direction.  “You led us to this.”

   â€œDon't do it, Snide!” Jazz called. 

   â€œDo it!” Harmony shouted, egging him on.  She jumped up and down a bit so that her boobs bounced for hypnotic emphasis, but Snide pulled the president back into the parkade in disgust.

   â€œNow, the harpies can't just fly up here and get us,” Jazz explained.  “They're kinda like bats: they need to launch themselves from height to get airborne.  And they don't see so well, so they rely on their hearing to track down their prey.”

   â€œAnd we're the prey,” Harmony stated dramatically.

   â€œWell, us men are.  They'll skeletonize the flesh from our bodies in a matter of minutes.  You, they'll just bite to infect.  After several hours of intense pain that makes child-birth seem like a gentle fart you'll turn into one of them.  Wings will burst from your back, talons will grow from your fingers and toes, and your mind will melt until you're a slavish drone for their queen.”

   â€œMight be an improvement,” Snide suggested, glancing once more into the street canyon below.

   â€œThey won't fly in here, though,” Jazz said comfortingly.  “It's too tight.  They need lots of room for those big wings.”  As if to spite Jazz there was suddenly a fluttering of wings just above them, sending them all diving for cover.  The mean bass tones of Con Funk Shun suddenly blared from the ghetto blaster in the middle of the pavement, but their 1970s funkadelic power was squandered.

   â€œHa!” pointed the president from under an abandoned SUV.  “It's nothing but a bunch of garbage eating pigeons.”  Indeed, a lonely pair of common pigeons merely cooed innocently from the rafters of the parking garage.

   Snide lowered his shotgun, but noticed his other arm was stuck tightly around Harmony's naked waist.  “Not scared of a bird now, are you?” she asked. 

   â€œNot a feathered one,” Snide replied.

   â€œWill someone turn off that god-damned racket before we attract a swarm of naked cannibalistic sexy flying banshees?” the president cursed, rising to his feet.

   They all turned to look at Jazz, who was sitting on the concrete guardrail at the edge of the parkade, seemingly about to slip outside despite the four-storey drop below him.  A thin rivulet of blood dripped slowly down from the edge of his mouth.  Snide raised his shotgun again, this time aiming it at his friend.

   â€œAre you crazy?!?” Harmony asked angrily, although she was caressing Snide's muscular torso while she was saying it.  “Maybe he just bit his tongue?”

   Suddenly a spine of talons burst through Jazz's chest, then parted to reveal a harpy's disturbingly sexy face peering through his chest cavity. 

   â€œSorry buddy,” Snide said, and pulled the trigger.  The blast from his shotgun went clean through Jazz and took off half the harpy's head on the other side.  There was a massive fluttering now, as a flock of harpies descended from the sky to perch on the ledge of the parkade.

   â€œThe music!” Snide shouted, reluctantly taking his hand off Harmony to cock his shotgun.

   The president bent over to turn it off, but Harmony kicked his backside so that he went head-first into the trunk of an adjacent car.  “We'll be back for you after we ....er.  Later Daddy!”  She kicked again and slammed the car trunk closed.  The muffled shouts inside were quickly drowned out by Con Funk Shun and the fluttering wails of the Harpy flock.

   â€œThis way!” Snide said coolly, pulling her down an aisle of poorly parked and abandoned cars.  He shot, reloaded, shot, and cocked again.  The whole flock seemed to be pouring in through open wall of the parkade, but once inside they had to walk blindly, and were confused by the different sound points of the shot-gun and the blaring ghetto blaster.  Snide retraced his steps to the stairwell and ripped open the door.  A strikingly beautiful looking harpy stood on the other side, wailed menacingly at them, and then took a swipe with her talons, snatching Harmony's purse from her grasp and causing the contents to spill down the stairwell.  Snipe levelled his gun at the harpy's buxom chest and pulled the trigger, causing it to fly backwards over the railing and plunge bloodily into the darkness below.

   After scanning the stairwell for signs of other harpies or a relatively clean patch of concrete for some quick hot sex, Snide stepped inside and tried his best to secure the door from the approaching flock.  Harmony meanwhile swore and fretfully bent to gather the contents of her spilled purse.  Snide turned to tell her to leave it, then noticed all the pain killers on the ground.

   â€œWhere do you hide a bite wearing so little?” he asked her, raising his gun.

   Harmony suddenly grew a set of talons and wings, and screamed wordlessly at him.

        "I guess I was right," Snide said snidely.  "It is an improvement."

What did the cannibal do after he dumped his girlfriend?

He wiped.

Whichever one it was, it certainly led me astray....

[Lacking sharp edges (10)]

{hide]
Shardlight ? (just based on your uber hint...)
[/spoiler]

Ah!  Illegal use of hide tags!

Spoiler

Yep, you got it.  Lacking sharp edges (10) = a shard is the very definition of sharp edges, while something that didn't have a lot of them would be shard-lite

[close]