Messages

Clearly a little bit tooooooooo cryptic.

Hint:

Spoiler

Plagued (5): What was a typical vector for this specific disease?

Sailor (6): Bit of word play.... What does a sailor do that defines him in the popular imagination?

[close]

:-) I won't admit to the nudity....

That's not a denial either.

Curse you and your ubiquitous lesser-known words, Baron. Would it hurt to simply say 'ageing'?

Unequivocally. 

I was going to ask jwalt render a 3D version of himself, playing a hand-pumped harmonium !

So... jwalt is some sort of septuagenarian nudist?   The plot ever thickens....

I have found inspiration!  (Ahead of schedule too, I might add ).  Stay tuned....

It's high time that you render a 3D version of yourself too!  You can sit on my left side and playing

So.... jwalt is actually some sort of frisky rug?  Curiouser and curiouser....

Has Dennise always had that bald spot and enviable bikini line?

Also, I know things are getting pretty crowded on stage, but if Ponch is going to sit down he might as well do it on a milking stool. 

Plagued sailor (11) (2 words)

Spoiler

A commercial could be an advertisement, or an "ad" for short, while an endeavour could be a "venture", so.... ADVENTURE!

[close]

Awesome!  With that long trench coat, bass guitar, and Swedish flag undershirt I look like a tough-as-nails rocker.  Now all I need is some flames coming from my guitar and I will be UNSTOPPABLE!   

I reluctantly agree that Ponch should be promoted moved to drums (or at least a xylophone), if only because I believe this band needs the sultry crooning of Tabata on vocals.

Miguel and Adeel are both right.  But Adeel stuck to the word count, so he's slightly more correct.

A cup to steal for (3)

Hang on.  I've always wondered about these crazy cryptic clue thingies, so now is the moment of the post-mortem dissection to see if I can figure out what the Willie Beamish just happened here.  So what's with the preposition "for" in the clue?  Why would anyone steal for a cup?  Is it some sort of oath-bond that makes me do it, or is it for love?  What's my motivation?  Is the cup a legal accomplice?  Or is it just some inanimate object that is completely oblivious to the fact that it has become the beneficiary of my kleptomania?   I get that a cup could also be a mug, and that informally a "mug" might refer to a low level criminal (although more correctly the slang refers to a person's face, ie a "mug shot").  Mug also means to rob, as in a mugging, but even then the cup would be an active party to the crime, not the reason for doing it.  So "A stealing cup" I'd get, but "A cup to steal for" doesn't work for me, unless someone can explain.

In the mean time....  A sticky interface (3)

It's a bit tedious going through that big list so here's a list of past themes that I've been compiling:

2014 August (7)           Absurdist Pulp Noir
2014 July (3)      Monumental Memories
2014 June (3)      Mutate
2014 June (9)      Fictional Game Review
2014 May (2)      That's an Actual Place?
2014 April (2)      Business of Yore
2014 March (4)           Not by Blue Cup of Tea
2014 February    (3)   Odd Couple
2014 February    (8)   In the Beginning (first chapter/paragraph + back of book blurb)
2014 January   (4)   When Art is Conceived
2013 December (4)   Happiness
2013 November (8)   Continuation Story Game
2013 November (4)   Broken Promises
2013 October   (5)   Haunted House
2013 September (4)   Suddenly (fictional devices suddenly have to deal with the real world rules)
2013 September (5)   Coercion
2013 August (4)           Rashomon Style (telling a story from multiple perspectives)
2013 July (5)      Robbie Burns
2013 June (5)      TV Tropes
2013 June (6)      Impossible Escape
2013 May (4)      Castaway!
2013 April (6)      iRobot
2013 April (5)      Invading Aliens!
2013 March (2)           Leprechaun
2013 March (6)           Dark Moon
2013 February    (4)   FanFiction
2013 January (2)   New Leaf
2012 December (2)   Happy Holidays
2012 November (2)   What if?
2012 October (9)   Spooky
2012 August (1)           That's Criminal!
2012 July (1)      The Beach
2012 June (3)      Riddle Me This
2012 May (4)      One Sentence Poems
2012 April (2)      Purple (overly extravagant language)
2012 April (3)      Extras (short piece featuring a pre-existing minor or supporting character)
2012 March (2)           Mythopoeia
2012 February    (2)   CENSORED!
2012 January   (3)   Road Trip!
2012 January   (7)   Text Adventure
2011 December (3)   Mad Scientist Edition
2011 November (2)   Catch Phrases
2011 October   (3)   Ghost Writing Spook-tacular
2011 October (2)   You Choose
2011 September (7)   Coffee Time!
2011 August (5)           Drabble/Mini Saga (stories of either exactly 100 or 50 words)

Sorry for the weird formatting, it doesn't copy & paste well.  The numbers in brackets are the number of submissions, so you can see what was popular. 

Am I playing some sort of ...oil can?

[La Victime!]

La Victime!

[Best Character:]

So be it....
     I want to say, before I vote, that the submissions for this round were all of top-most quality.  I'm not saying they were just of "high" quality, which I usually do (because it's usually true!).  No, this time they were all of top quality: each and every story is good enough to win.  It's unfortunate that we could only scrape together 4 voters to decide this: your work deserves wider dissemination.  Maybe if we got AGS A-Listers to theatrically read your submissions so that people could listen to them after they get their podcast fix....  But I digress!  To the voting:
   
Best Character: Is it the stubborn Mygar or the defiant Alrick?  The clinical Gregor or the squelching Zarly?  The self-righteous Michelle Webster or the unnamed survivor of San Diego?  For me the broken-spirited nameless character in TheTelephone's story really felt authentic to the situation.  Even though his soul is slowly being leached away, his deadpan narrative and unflinching reflections make him stand out above the others in my mind.

Best Plot: In terms of the most exciting story, I have to give it to kconan.  There was a build up with character and situation development, then action, twists, and finally resolution, all written in a tight, digestible and entertaining fashion.

Best Homosphere: Apparently I've misappropriated the word "homosphere", which actually refers to an atmospheric layer.....  Anyway, you know what I meant.  I'm going to cast two votes here, for Durinde and monkey424.  Durinde's village surrounded by wilderness is what I would consider a design ideal for any enclosure that purports to show people in their "natural" habitat.  The ghostly "frightful beasts" and lonely snowscapes added to the atmosphere.  But humans are, somewhat regrettably, domesticated creatures.  So probably a more plausible habitat, especially if you wanted to have the humans on display (and not just camera) would be monkey424's junk strewn apartment. 

Best Word Choice/Style: Wow, were there ever some good turns of phrases this time....  I think I'm going to have to split my vote again.  One vote for monkey424 for how humanity "descended into chaotic stupidity", becoming about as "thick and inspiring as scruffosaurus shit."  And one vote for TheTelephone for the enclosure's "other-worldly stink of latex and burnt hair", the "mixing and matching" of coin-hiding orifices, and the rather disturbing prospect of being awakened by someone "digging through my butt".

Best Use of Theme: Two votes again.  I think Sinitrena does a very good job exploring the motives and attitudes of all people involved in the display of humans: the entrepreneur, the self-righteous protesters who know better for everyone, and those actually being displayed.  It was a very thought-provoking piece.  I also think TheTelephone did an amazingly dismal job of exploring the dehumanizing effect of being put on display, where your goals and aspirations shrink to the limits of what is possible in a tiny, finite domain.  To be fair monkey424 and kconan also explored the theme of how people would deal with being cooped up in tight confines or with limited resources (through the use of hedonism and violence respectively), but TheTelephone's insight that the experience would be more dehumanizing than anything else for me makes his work stand out above the rest.

So....  that means with 8 votes our winner is TheTelephone for a truly disturbing piece about the human display pen.  His reward is the truly awesome "Anthrosphere" golden trophy, and of course the coveted "Halowe'eny" theme for the next competition.  Congratulations TheTelephone!

There is a two-way tie for second place, with 7 votes each.  Congratulations to Durinde and kconan for some very solid pieces.  Your reward is of course the silver "Anthrosphere" trophy -display it proudly!  I look forward to competing with you two next month!

But I'm not done: there is also a tie for third place with 5 votes each!  Congratulations to monkey424 and Sinitrena for some very creative and thought-provoking writing.  Your bronze "Anthrosphere" trophy has a limited warranty so display it quickly before it implodes.

So everybody wins!   I look forward to reading a lot more from everyone.  Keep up the good work, and see you next time!

[extend voting for another day]

Ooooo, that's close.  That's real close.  Tie for 1-2, with the pack not far back at all.  I'm going to extend voting for another day to see if we can snare a couple more opinions, after which if there is still a tie I will have to exercise my constitutional right.


In the mean time, something to keep you all salivating:

Hey,
    This one seems pretty simple on the face of it, so I'm asking in the beginners' forum.  I want to have my character speak when the inventory GUI is open, for example to describe an inventory item.  But when the GUI is up the game is necessarily paused (I know I can set it to not be paused, but I do want it paused for all other purposes), so although the text comes up (and the speech sound file plays), it doesn't disappear unless there is a mouse click.  I want the same speech behaviour as when the game is unpaused (ie speech disappears after a period based on its length or when an associated speech audio file is done playing).

1) Does anyone have any ideas?

2) Does anyone know if there is a game timer independent of whether the game is paused?  The conventional ones all freeze.

I'm using 3.3.0 and no modules. 

[The Good]

Not going to say which is which, or who is what.

So let's see.....  Mr. Mandarb is pretty righteous, so he must be The Good.  And I make no secret of my sinister villainy, so I must be The Bad.  So that leaves Ponch as....

....and it's way too easy to just judge someone and disregard them as just another jock, prep, bro, nerd, etc.

High school kids like easy, from classes to money to girls.   So of course they judge someone on the easiest criteria possible.  I remember not just the categories you mentioned, but also browners, chockos, skids, speds, narks, tweezocks, flirbs, and the dreaded klingons.  But I digress....

Anyways, what were you like in High School, and how have you changed? What have you learned by growing older? What did you used to take so, so seriously when you were younger that now just seems silly in retrospect?

While I was there, I considered high school to be prison.  You couldn't really trust people, you certainly couldn't trust the wardens, occasionally people got robbed or beat up, and the cold sterile walls and rule obsessed Gestapo slowly leached your soul away.  I actually kept a tally of the days until I would be released from The Institution.    So how does a rational being behave in such a situation?  I kept pretty quiet, kept to myself except for the occasional alliance of convenience, and worked my ass off to get out of that shit hole.  And in the end, they even let me out early for good behaviour -weren't they kind? 

Now I'm not saying I wouldn't have been a "loner" by disposition otherwise, but high school certainly helped to reinforce those character traits in me.  In retrospect the inmates, er, students were all just scared confused weirdos like me, but I still loathe what the system made us become to each other.  Of course, without the motivation of escaping such a dystopic pit of misery I probably wouldn't have become the hardened self-reliant radical libertarian that everyone has come to know and love these days , so like the military or finishing school I guess it functions as a necessary evil that makes a man out of you. Still, it'd be cool if they just stranded you on an island somewhere and told you that if you could figure out how to escape within four years they'd give you a diploma.    

[Durinde]

....and we're closed folks!

It gladdens me to state the obvious: once again there are many high quality entries to vote for!   Congratulations in advance to all entrants for getting your stories submitted by the deadline. 

But now we get down to the gritty business of choosing some winners: this is a competition, after all.  Maybe some freaky hippies over in the Rumpus Room will start some sort of Fortnightly Writing Love-In where we can all just chillax and write in sweet harmony, but down here on the Comps Board we play for keeps: somebody has to win the honour of choosing the Hallowe'en theme for the next Comp!   So, without further ado, let's get down to some voting.  First, our entrants, in order of submission:

Durinde: THE SOMETHING
kconan: Devolution in a Bottle*
monkey424: Planet of the Crêpes
Sinitrena: THE Spectacle of the Century!!!
TheTelephone: San Diego Still*

   *Editor improvised titles, for the sake of consistency

Voting will run from the instant of this post until three days hence, and will thus conclude on Friday Sept 26 whenever I can make it to a computer (not early....).  You may vote up to twice per category, so long as you feel that each writer really did outdo the rest in that area.  The categories are:

Best Character: You find one or several characters extra believable/captivating/magnetic/unique, etc.
Best Plot: The story arc was well-organized, coherent, and well-executed with appropriate pacing; basically the best story.
Best Homosphere: Combining our setting and atmosphere categories this time: who created the best humanarium environment or scenario?
Best Word Choice/Style: The technical art of combining words in clever or gripping ways.
Best Use of Theme: The moral of the story: who best explored the nature of humanity in close confines? (most thought provoking).

As always ties will be decided by the Vice President of America or me, depending on who's available.  Good luck!

Also..... there will be trophies!

BvB