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Oooo!  Mysterious! 

Congratulations Sinitrena!  A well deserved victory.

[Character]

These votes are always fun in two-horse races. 

Character: I genuinely liked Sinitrena's Miss Kendra Andrews.  She was quiet, yes, not speaking up to her dad or to her prof.  But certainly not deferential: she knows what she knows and won't be persuaded otherwise.

Plot: I like Sinitrena for this category.  At first I was thinking, "oh no, not a monster under the bed story," but by midway I was thinking, "OMG it's Ghostbusters with shadows!"  I agree that some rewriting to build in more suspense as Kendra stumbles closer to her discovery would make the story better, but as a plot concept I thought it was brilliant.

Writing Style: For sure Sinitrena.  The portrayal of little Kendra biting the ear of her teddy spoke volumes, as did Teddy's difficulty breathing.  The language describing the dance of the shadows was evocative but not overdone.

Atmosphere: And once more I'm voting for Sinitrena.  Primarily she deserves the award for creating a story that better suits the topic of a world within a world than I did.  But also some of her mind-pictures were thoroughly absorbing, such as the freedom of the shadows under the mirror-ball.

[@ Ess2s2:]

Ooo!  Extended voting deadline! 

@ Ess2s2: You might want to edit the subject of your original post so that "voting" appears in the subject line visible in the forum (so people know to come and vote).  They might not come anyway, but.... couldn't hurt to advertise.

Oh there's a good chance I'll claim 3rd place this time, even with only two entries.   

[A Little Crazy]

A Little Crazy

   â€œDamned cancerous blob!” Dr. Bazaar shouted,  blasting it with his pen-sized micro ray.  The blob looked down at the tiny wound in its abdomen, or would have if it had had eyes or an abdomen.  It then might have blinked twice at the realization that the micro-ray had had vanishingly little impact on its health (or lack thereof, given that it was in fact a cancerous cell).  The blob then straightened, smacking the micro-ray from Dr. Bazaar's hand with its... well, it wasn't quite an appendage.  Just a more purposeful bit of blobbiness that temporarily protruded from the rest of the blob.  It then growled (or at least its inside juices gurgled menacingly) as it preparing to charge with the rest of its brethren towards total victory.

   â€œBack inside the Dimini-Pod!” cried Dr. Hasenpfeffer, knowing a lost cause when he had seen one unfold again and again and again.  Quickly the team dove into the safety of the shrinking vehicle that had brought them so deep into Mrs. Dr. Bellerophon's cancerous rectum.  And not a moment too soon, for they were immediately besieged by a horde of cancer cells, rocking the the Dimini-Pod back and forth like a pack of demented zombies, or possibly like bloated student protesters at a G7 meeting.

   Dr. Bellerophon stared into space, his gaze deadened by the fruitlessness of their efforts.  The deep creases in his brow told the story of a ragged sea-cliff pounded by one-too-many crushing waves.  “And now we know for certain that there is no hope left in the world,” he muttered, collapsing exhaustedly against the rocking wall of the pod.

   â€œBlast it, Jim!” Dr. Bazaar cried, always the annoyingly insufferable optimist.  “We're not going down without a thirty-seventh fight!”  He stared at his companions one by one as he inspired them with his fiery belief in the unbelievable.  “Dr. Hasenpfeffer!” he shouted, making the timid little white-haired man jump.  “What gave you the strength to overcome your claustragoraphobia to help the wife of a dear friend?!”

   â€œYou tasered me!” the old man sobbed.  “I never wanted to come in the first place!”

   â€œAnd you, Captain Todd!” Dr. Bazaar continued, undaunted.  “What possessed you to believe that this mission could be successful?!”

   â€œI told you we were all doomed the moment I met you,” the aging gentleman of fortune retorted.  “I've been stranded in this lady's rectum since my own shrinking pod crash-landed here twenty-three years ago.  There is no escape!”

   â€œAnd you, Morty the White, strangely sentient white blood cell whom we just met on the field of battle, what say you of our current predicament!?”

   The white blood cell spoke through the robotic tones of the Dimini-Pod's GPS system that had been cunningly repurposed by Dr. Bazaar into a thought-translation interpreting device: “Get bent you old quack!”

   â€œYou see!  Darkest before the dawn!” Dr. Bazaar stated triumphantly.  “Surely our fortunes have reached their lowest ebb.  It now stands to reason that one of us shall shortly be possessed of the inspiration that shall both save Mrs. Dr. Bellerophon from her terminal stage 4 rectal cancer and restore us victorious to the world of regular-sizedness!” Dr. Bazaar rubbed his hands together, wicked eastern-European eyebrows twitching with excitement.  “Stand ye attentively, my brave companions, for lightning is about to strike among us!” 

   â€œYou see, the thing is with these cleverly crafted shrinking-machines,” Captain Todd began, “Is that you scientist types are all so eager to test them out once you've got them working, without ever giving a moment's thought to the much more daunting problem of re-enlargening.  Give me a blanket to cram into a drinking cup, for example, and I can harness the power of science to squeeze the empty spaces from between its matter.  But ask me to spread the same blanket over a football field and all I can think of is to run it over with the lawnmower.  I tell you, gentlemen, the situation is quite hopeless.”

   â€œBah!  We scientists trade in the currency of hope and audacity!” Dr. Bazaar countered.  “Why, as long as we draw breath miraculously and inexplicably from the anaerobic recesses of Mrs. Dr. Bellerophon's anal cavity, I tell you there is hope!  We shall overcome, mark my words!  Science is nothing if not miraculous!”

   â€œI tried, Nancy,” Dr. Bellerophon lamented.  “I tried and I failed you.  I had your fate in my hands and I....”

   â€œWell I'm only her proctologist,” Dr. Hasenpfeffer grumbled.  “But fat lot of good I'm going to do her from in here.”

   Morty the White's robotic interpreter voice chimed in: “hubris is best served cold with a side of irony.”

   â€œTouché, my friend!” Captain Todd said, clapping the white blood cell on what might pass as its shoulder.

   â€œIn my hands....” Dr. Bellerophon repeated, his voice lurching from dejectedness to problem-gambler-ness.  “We shrunk down to put our hands directly on the problem.  But the problem is still too big for us to handle at this scale.” Now Dr. Bellerophon's eyes took on a glaze so demented that it could only be genius or insanity.  “What if we use the last shot of charge in the Dimini-Pod's battery to jump down another order of magnitude?”

   Dr. Bazaar's eyes lit up as well, although in his case the jury had quickly reached a verdict on his motivating animus.  “Of course!  We'll attack the cancer at the atomic level!  Brilliant!”

   â€œRidiculous,” Dr. Hasenpfeffer scoffed.  “We already set the dial to minimum to get down to this scale.  And even if we could shrink further, we can't very well exist as ourselves at the scale of mere atoms.  Why not just eat the shit off the outside of the pod and die of cholera if we're bent on suicide anyway?”

   â€œNo, Hank!” Dr. Bellerophon countered.  “No, it will work!  Whole suns can be crushed to fit into the singularity of a black hole: we could easily cram ourselves into a space vastly larger.  And I believe the shrunken Dimini-Pod has the capability to now shrink us further.  We're going bat-shit crazy on that fucking cancer, boys.  It's Inception time!”

   â€œBut... what the hell are we going to do at the atomic level?!?” Dr. Hasenpfeffer said with exasperation.  “Destabilize a fraction of the polar covalent bonds in several molecules amongst billions within a single cancerous cell?  Tell them how insane this idea is, Captain Todd!”

   â€œHey, in for a penny, in for a pound, I always say,” the Captain responded.

   â€œLet's haul ass to Lollapalooza,” Morty the White intoned.

   â€œDon't worry, Hank,” Dr. Bellerophon soothed.  “If my calculations are correct, we're going subatomic on our next jump.  At that scale we can mess with the space-time continuum, setting this cancer to move backwards through time, thereby undoing it completely.  And in that topsy-turvy world of paradoxical logic I believe we'll be just one jump away from shrinking ourselves back to regular size!”

   â€œWhat!?!” Dr. Hasenpfeffer choked on his own disbelief.  “That's crazy talk!  You've gone mad with desperation, Jim!” 

   â€œHave I, Hank!?  Didn't you ever want to meet a quark or a charm?  This is your chance!”  The light in Dr. Bellerophon's eyes burned now with the deranged intensity of a sport's fan's at a betting shop.

   â€œIt's true,” Dr. Bazaar stated, nodding in agreement over the top of his calculator.  “I predict the subatomic world will be populated by beings appearing to us as rainbow unicorns!”

   â€œNooooooo!” screamed Dr. Hasenpfeffer, but his voice was swallowed as the Dimini-Pod shrank into the sub-atomic abyss.

OK, I've got an idea.  I just gotta carve out a bit of time to shoehorn some words into it. 

[1) Runner Up Succeeds to the Throne]

Thanks, Sini!

So it's been ten days since the comp ended....  Has anyone been in contact with Ess2s2?  I'm not advocating revolution (yet), but maybe now would be a good time to update the FWC constitution in terms of what to do if the winner can't fulfill their duties within a set time-frame.  Fourteen days after a victory is declared has a nice sense of symmetry in my mind, but I might be persuaded by my fellow conspirators writing buddies. 

As for who sets the theme....  We can (*ahem*) usually rely on a runner up to step up with a theme, although that won't strictly always be the case, and it draws from our small pool of participants.  So here's a list of ideas by number to discuss:

1) Runner Up Succeeds to the Throne: As explained above, the person with the second most votes sets the next topic.  Drawbacks include some competitions where there is a tie for second or only one entrant.  On the positive side there will be someone to run the competition; most other options involve relying on participants running it collectively.

2) Opposite Rules!: We just automatically do the opposite of what we just did, even if it's vague or silly.  On the positive front there will always be an opposite to what came before, even though it might get weird.  In the negative column we already choose opposite topics sometimes, which means we might repeat.

3) Random Topic Generation: The internet can just throw together two words for us and we'll just have to use our writing prowess to handle it.  Drawback: it might be nonsensical.

4) Open Topic: This can easily be abused by people submitting works that have already been completed and polished, and it's not terribly inspiring.  But it has the advantage of being easy.

5) Appeal to Higher Powers: We get like a Mod or ex-writer who still hangs around (Ponch?) to run the comp for us.  Drawback: it might take a while to decide on who, and it also depends on their willingness to do it.

6) Pre-approved List of Topics: We decide on a list of topics to draw from and default to the top one on the list if none is set.  It'd be a bit of work coming up with them, and then we'd have to avoid those topics in case there was a need for them later....  Although we could use former competitions as a mine for topics, and decide on a simple algorithm for choosing which (subtract 10 years from today's date, for example).  There's the drawback of repeating, but as long as the source theme was set far enough back in time I don't see why we couldn't have another crack at it.

7) Haggle it Out Amongst Ourselves: To the death! 

8) Frankenstein Topic: Everyone who's interested submits one word in *hide* tags within three days, and then the competition theme is those words strung together.  It might get silly, but on the plus side it would also be a challenge.

9) Word Count Topic: We could just default to a challenging short word-length as a topic, like 100 words or whatever.  It has the advantage of being popular, although often lacks something in the plot and character development side of things.

10) No Topic: Kind of like no trump at the end of a card game.  If you actually write about anything you've broken the rules! 

Select your three favorites (or add your own ideas) and we'll see if we can come up with some consensus.

Most competitions should be easy enough to sort by thread title.  Every writing competition would have "Fortnightly Writing Competition" or "FWC" in the title, for example. 

Honestly, I was just going to post my raw list of themes from the last decade with how many participants each theme generated, but probably a more useful list would be hyperlinked to the actual competitions so that people could do their own research.  Of course, they could just use the search feature or scroll through the old comp boards like I did....

I just tried to post an updated list of the FWC topics over the past decade to help people who haven't been around for that long, but it kept getting cut off at 45 lines.  I was aware of a character limit to posts, but have never encountered a line limit before (and certainly not one so short - many of my story submissions exceed it).  Maybe there's a better way to post it so that it can be dynamically updated and available at all times?

OK.   

...but I just noticed the title of the MAGS December competition thread is "Create Your Own Christmas", only the quote marks are the same weird character codes that were in my story.  Surely the author typed the thread title directly into the forums instead of cut and pasting from another source?

I'm guessing it's “Word style” quotation marks specifically that were affected in this case?  Rather than plain text "s?

I cut & paste from Open Office.  The funny thing is I always use the same word processor to write and always cut & paste into the forums and do a bit of proofreading & editing there.  So I'm not sure why it got corrupted this time but not at any point in the last eight years that I've been writing for the FWC.  Anyway, thanks for looking into it!

Hi!  Strange issue with this post in the Fortnightly Writing Competition Thread.

All the quotation marks have been changed to “ or some iteration thereof.  I didn't think anything of it when it was first reported, thinking it must have happened when I copied and pasted the story over from my word processor.  I was pretty sure I had proofread in the forums, but maybe I was tired and didn't follow my regular habit.  But then another competitor posted that the story was fine when it was first posted and then got corrupted later.  This reminds me that I have in fact noticed similar corruptions of some of Sinitrena's writing competition submissions (but I can't remember how far back in the past that was).  I am therefore pretty sure this is a glitch in the forums, albeit a rare one.

Honestly, I'm not sure this is important enough to pursue, but I'm reporting it in case it's related to broader issues.   

Is it me or the forum: All quotation marks are a mess of code in Baron's story, making it a bit difficult to read.

Hey, you're right!  It must be something to do with the forums, since I always do my proofreading in the forum preview window....

I guess that partly explains my lack of success with the voters this time around. 

[Edit:]

While I was pretty proud of my effort this time around (except for the ending), I concede that Ess2s2 produced the better world and the better story.  Congratulations, Ess2s2! 

Broader topics like "Loss" or "Growth" or "War" might be the way to go to get a lot more people writing.

Edit: A nice topic for Mandle next time might be Losing Growth Wars.... 

[Character:]

Nice stories guys.  My votes might come across as a little one-sided, but Mandle I want you to know that I still love you as a person. 

Character: I'm going with Ess2s2 for Johnson.  We never meet the guy, but he has this Merlin-like enabling ability that just makes the story come alive.  I thought Varran was a bit too much the reed in the wind, not really standing out as having a particularly strong character.  Mandle's narrator was equally undeveloped, although his idiosyncrasies made up for it to some degree.

Plot: Definitely Ess2s2 on this one.  It had everything a good steampunk story needs: wacky tech, distopian atmosphere, mystery, action, foreign antagonists....    Mandle's story had a lot of potential, but I found it was too short to really get invested in the plot.

Writing Style: Both stories had some great descriptive language, but I have to give my vote to Ess2s2 again, just for the sheer volume of great writing.  The attention to detail in the components of the steam technology was excellent, as were other word-choices that evoked a parallel but alien era: "powderworks" for fireworks, "'motive" for automobile, "viaspeak" for something resembling a telephone....  Some phrases were truly fantastic, especially pertaining to the viaspeak network, with its pipes "resonating with the ghosts of other conversations ...all in a muted symphony of man living out his days." 

Atmosphere: I don't like to vote clean sweeps, especially as Mandle's story had a lot of merit, but I have to give this vote to Ess2s2 as well.  He was at his best in writing the exploration of Johnson's ransacked house, building in some great descriptions of imagined inventions along with some ominous suspense, but the whole run-down world, patched up and barely holding together was fantastic.  Part of me wondered what they did with all the salt precipitating out of the ocean water as it vaporized in the boilers, but that's a pretty minor issue.    Kudos to Mandle too for his quasi-mechanical orphan-rearing techniques (especially the much-feared electric shock cane at school).

[Glade Runner]

Glade Runner

   Birchday, the 12th of Drizzlember.  Another hard day on the beat.  Of course they're all hard days.  Our culture dictates that.  But most of us get to tinker the endless hours away blissfully absorbed  in mechanical challenges.  Not us in the Civil Patrol Guard, though.  Someone's gotta keep order on the mean streets while the rest of society does its thing.  No one ever said being a beaver was easy, but I tell you us grunts in the CPG have it rougher than most.

   Let's start with the long hard days that pile up like a log jam in the spring thaw.  You'd think a challenge like that would be appealing to my folk.  Endless toil as the inbox overflows like a poorly designed dike.  But we're not labouring or crafting away happily here.  This is ugly work that we do.  We're not built to hunt criminals down like carnivores, or shoot up rabies zombies, or grind out long slow hours of idle surveillance.  It kind of gnaws at you, like the slow scrape of incisors on hardwood, this marriage of busy working hours with unnatural activity.  Its enough to make some CPG guys eventually snap like twigs in a windstorm.

   Take old Gunderbrook, former detective inspector for the eighth precinct.  He just went crazier than a star-nosed mole at a dirt party.  Now he's tethered to a tattler bird on a make-work line down in the crazy dam, tailed bound up front-wise like a diaper in case he starts losing his shit again.  Those doctor nuts down there probably have him on a busy regimen of dogwood pills and sage injections, interspersed with some old-fashioned quality time in the paddle-whacking chair to try and bore some sense back into him.  It's a sad story, I know, but it gets sadder.  Guess who had to take his place?

   Now the deputy chief is staring me down in his office, a dowel of flavoured poplar poking out the side of his squidgy pinched face.  I can't tell if he's angry or trying to take a shit on his fancy maple swivel chair.  The wooden pressure pipe along the wall rattles before an oak canister shoots out.  The deputy chief removes the birch-bark message, continues to frown or press his bowel movement, before returning to the file on his desk.

   "We don't have a name," he barks at me.  "Only a pseudonym: The Seep Master."

   "Undermining the dam of society?" I guess.

   "Something like that," the deputy chief sneers.  "He's running some kind of social deviance ring called White Mist down in the Alder Slum.  We got whispers and suspected collaborators, but everyone's too scared to talk.  Gunderbrook had a list of names in his notes," he pushes a piece of birch-bark over to me, "but didn't communicate any new leads before he fell off the water trolley."

   I look down at the list, squinting at the cramped writing in the pale light of the office's glow-worm lamp.  There are eight names, and the top seven are scratched out.  "So you want me to track down one Amelia Tricklebright, and through her the Seep Master?" I ask.

   "I want you to bring 'em in," the deputy chief growls.  "Question if you can, but get them off the street.  Article Seven applies, so no notes except the standard paperwork.  If they run, you are authorized to use lethal force.  Understand?"

   "Yes sir," I reply, tucking the birch-bark into my coat.

   "Gunderbrook brought in the seventh name on the list three days ago, right before he snapped," the deputy chief tells me as I turn to leave.  "Goes by the name of Smacktail.  He's still down in holding.  A real piece of work.  Start with questioning him, then find the others.  And Sawstorm?"

   "Yeah?" I ask, turning back from leaving.

   "Be careful what you believe on this one.  This kinda thing can mess with your head."

      *   *   *   *   *

   "Detective Sawstorm?" the bullfrog asks, eyeing me up and down.

   "That's what it says," I tell him, taking back my new badge.  There was still sawdust in the small "e" holes where the carvers had chewed in the word detective.

   "Who'd you piss off to get a crummy job like that?" the frog asked, eyes blinking separately.

   "My fourth form hydraulics teacher," I replied.  The frog buzzes me through the main gate down in holding, waving me to follow.  We walk down a long hallway with flickering lightning bug lamps strung along the ceiling.

   "Has the suspect said anything?" I ask.

   "Prisoner 14-8034.  One Augustus Smacktail.  Doesn't say much, except with his claws.  Here's the file," the bullfrog says.

   "Great," I mutter, following the bullfrog into the interrogation room.  There's a great fat blob of beaver tied to the room's only chair, one leg nothing but a wooden peg below the knee, a reed-weft sack over his head.  "Smacktail?" I ask by way of introduction, shaking the room's glow-worm lamp to shine the maximum intensity of light on the prisoner.

   "Who's there?" he asks with a tough slum accent, the head sack shifting to search for the source of my voice.  I rip the sack off to reveal a grizzled old blob of a face, white in the whiskers, and a missing eye in the middle of one vicious looking scar across his face.  "Ah.  New detective, eh?  What happened to the old guy?  Blunderbrook?"

   "I'm taking over the case," I say.  "Now tell me about White Mist."

   "I want a law-owl," he says, his bottom lip seeming to not quite shut right.  "I know my rights."

   "You don't, actually," I reply.  "You're an Article Seven prisoner.  Do you know what that means?"

   "I'm special?" the fat old beaver asks, chuckling.

   "It means forest law doesn't apply.  This is an internal beaver matter.  That means the old law is invoked.  You're an old beaver, Mr. Smacktail.  You should be familiar with the old law?"

   The fat prisoner swallows visibly, but then straightens in the chair.  "You Paddy Runners don't scare me," he spat.  "You think you can use your old laws to keep the old order running?  But I've spent my life working on old machines.  You can plug in new cogs to replace the old ones, but sooner or later the whole thing's gonna break down.  You ain't nothing but a new cog in a system of rot."

   "Is that so?" I ask absently, leafing through the file.  "It says here you're a pneumatic engineer.  Sounds like a lot of hot air to me."

   "Laugh all you want," he grumbled.  "Pneumatics runs the world now, don't it?  The old flumes are leaking, and the waterwheels split.  Now everything's going to air pressure.  What do you think pulled the spider-silk rope in the elevator that brought you down here?  Or turns the paddle-wheel in your water trolleys?  Even beaver society can drag itself out of the old ways if it's convenient enough."

   "I don't think that much about it," I say.  "And I don't think you're very happy with pneumatics, either.  Isn't that right, Smacktail?  I think you've moved on to something else.  Something bigger and better.  What do you say about that?"

   Smacktail gets really quiet all of a sudden, like I hit a nerve or something.  "Where's Tricklebright?" I ask.  "Where's the Seep Master?  Where's White Mist hanging out these days?  Huh?"  I give him a little poke to get the words flowing, but the grizzled old beaver won't budge.

   "You know how pneumatics work, don't ya?" he asks at length, glaring at me like a caged weasel.  "You plunge white water down a shaft into an air-tight chamber.  The water flows out the exhaust pipe, but the air floats up to get caught in the chamber.  More water tumbles in trapping more bubbles, squeezing them into an ever smaller space, cranking up the pressure.  We tap the top of that chamber to drive our kit, but sometimes there's too much pressure and too much air.  The pressure bubble creeps down to the level of the water exhaust pipe until suddenly the pressure is vented, and KAPOW!  You get a blowout.  You don't want to be on the other end of that pipe when the pressure blows.  Now we the people, we're the bubbles, and you society enforcers are the water that just keeps pressing and pressing and pressing us down.  But someday soon the pressure is going to cause a  blowout, and I hope you're around to feel the spray, Detective."

   It's then that I notice a strange patch on Smacktail's right arm.  At first it looked like another scar, but this one was much wider, and the skin within bubbled like otter vomit.  "Hey Smacktail," I ask impulsively, "you been playing with fire?"

   "I want my LAW-OWL!" was all he would say after that.

      *   *   *   *   *

   Now I'm down on the streets of the Alder Slum.  Flagstone paving keeps the street from turning to mud under the feet of a hundred species of riffraff, but here and there it's been pulled up for the convenience of a wildcat mosquito breeder or flower presser.  The buildings are all beaver built dam-towers between six and eight storeys high, so old the wood is black with age and the buildings sagging against each other.  The old power flumes run between the buildings and over the street, criss-crossing at various levels, some dripping but most derelict between the web of newfangled pneumatic hose.  Foreign music and musky smells float through the streets like mist on an autumn morning.  I am not afraid as long as I keep one hand on the pneumatic dart pistol tucked into my coat pocket.

   Smacktail might not have revealed any specifics about White Mist, but he told me enough.  Disenchanted anti-socials bent on bringing down the Beaverwealth, as far as I could reckon.  CPG command likes to keep the specifics on this sort of thing quiet so as not to give people ideas, but what cop hadn't heard rumours of fire-dabblers and worse?  My plan now was to wander through the crowded streets and watering holes of the Alder Slum like a snow-bird tourist, looking for interesting scars.

   Part of me wondered what I would do if I did find an incriminating patch of skin.  I've been on the force for fifteen years now, and I'm as good as any at towing the line.  But I'm not going to say that I like it.  If I'd been born on the other side of the moose-crap mound it could easily be me sitting in Smacktail's chair.  Pneumatics was a big deal when I was a kid: it brought down the old waterworks monopoly that used to run this town.  I remember the protests, the clashes in the streets, the fear and anger unleashed like a hungry water snake.  Society got a big shake up, but I don't know if that event did me any favours.  Could another roll of the dice make me any worse off?

   But the sad fact was that it could.  Smacktail might bluster on about a brave new world after the great revolution, but he was for all his gruffness just a doe-eyed idealist.  He might have beat me in a fourth form hydraulics test, but he obviously never studied hard in material history.  Where would society be without the CPG and its overarching governing apparatus?  Not whizzing around in water trolleys or up elevators, eating delicate imported barks and wetland roots.  No, we'd be back to marking out 2 acre territories with urine-soaked mud mounds, clawing each other's eyes out for the right to scratch out a pittance from the land.  Beaverkind was stronger in a larger society, but that society had to be governed to stay cohesive.  Subversive elements were therefore our collective enemy.  Well, probably.

   My internal debate was interrupted by a young beaverling strutting down the street, shaved to the skin like a bald rat except for a shock of dyed fur on the top of her head, nine-tenths naked except for a dozen piercings and a road map of tattoos carpeting her body.  "Looking for a good time, honey cakes?" she asked, revealing the wad of spruce gum she was chewing.

   "Where does a fellah go for a hot party around here?" I ask, trying to casually scope out the skin texture under all of her tattoos.  Nature's womb, she was showing a lot of skin!

   "What turns your crank?" she asked, waving her hips a bit to give me a better view.

   "Heat," I tell her.  "I like it scorching like a summer day.  I'm also into rough scars and rougher ladies."  Hopefully I didn't go too far there, but the young beaver seemed unruffled by my request.  It was probably not the weirdest fetish she'd heard of this evening, I suppose.

   "You wanna talk to Wanda down in at the Gurgle Dock," she says.  "They like it hot enough to cook an egg down there."

   "Not the Gurgle Dock," I protest.  "Doesn't Amelia work down there?  I can't stand her."

   "You're older than you look," the young lady sassed me.  "Amelia's been at the Dime Pit for years."

   I thanked my unwitting informant and continued to wend my way through the crowded streets.  Past the Pelt Pot and the Toad Hopper, the Skunk & Funk and the Pheasant Plucker.  Down into the depths of the Alder Slum, where the buildings that weren't run down were vacant or half-collapsed.  Here the mammals were mangy and the amphibians plentiful.  Burly raccoons sparred with rabbit mushroom addicts, and drunken porcupines caroused with greased up skunks.  Here and there you'd see an opossum pulling some pouch tricks or an otter trying to deal illicit fermented fish.  And all of them were half-shaved like French poodles, and what fur remained was often dyed the gaudiest colours imaginable.

   There were beavers too, of course, but not your fine-upstanding-citizen types.  These beavers looked edgier than normal, draped with chains and piercings, their fur dyed and shaved like the rest.  These were the outcasts of society, the fourth form drop-outs, the lazy, the unbalanced, and the outright crazies.  Some were unemployed, but others were over-employed in the anti-social arts of crime or quackery.  If the Civil Patrol Guard was a valve on the pipe of society, this end of the slum was the leak that subverted it. 

   At last I stand in front of the Dime Pit, it's heavy wooden doors seemingly cobbled together from wood salvaged from the surrounding buildings.  As the door opens and closes with the coming and going of a clientèle as varied and grotesque as the imagination could conger,  I see an artificial mist seeping out, lit all colours of the rainbow by tinted lightning bug lamps.  The puddles in the street where the flagstones have been removed pulse with the vibrations of a heavy base line.  My hand tightens around the pneumatic dart gun in my pocket, then I enter.

   The Dime Pit I soon discover is a watering hole in name only.  Water mixed with pneumatics cloak a churning crowd in a surreal fog as they dance to the most industrial music I've ever heard.  Lights flash in such a way as to suspend reality every second, so that my progress through the crowd seems like just a series of semi-continuous sketches.  Bizarre caricatures of nature bound, dance, and grope each other in a trance-like state.  The whole place smells like a methane swamp mixed with... is that woodsmoke?  I try to peer through the pulsing haze, but the special effects have turned the room into a boundless world of ear-shattering unrealness.

   "Hey!  Watch it buddy!" A pile of spiky piercings attached to a fox gives me a shove before returning to make out with his plucked and tattooed goose girlfriend.  I try to reorient myself.  The street meat told me Amelia would be working here, whatever that entailed.  Maybe I should go ask at the bar? 

   Then I look up and see a most unnatural silhouette dancing above the crowd on a pedestal.  It moves sensually, entrancing the hundreds of admirers aping her every move.  But while they were parodies of natural animals this silhouette was a world beyond nature.  Her whole left arm was missing, replaced by a skeletal mechanical device.  The outline of tubes snake around it and into her shaved body implying that the mechanisms within were run from the pressure of her own blood.  Her shaved head was likewise half-enveloped in a device that was half-wood, half-shell, with enough blood tubes twisting out of it to suggest a wild shock of hair.  As I push my way closer through the crowd I can see that her head prosthetic had pieces that spun and pulsed, especially a lens that covered her right eye.  I now see that her face is painted like a doll's, only the sweat from dancing had caused the paint to run so that she resembled nothing less than a melting, half-skeletal demon.  Almost as an aftershock I notice that her right leg was in fact that of a duck, grafted onto her body with massive and seemingly permanent stitches.

   But even a few paces away I can not make out what I truly seek: burn marks under the rash of gyrating tattoos.  At that moment the creature flips over and begins to roll on her belly like a worm, to the great enjoyment of the crowd.  The impressive move is mooted a moment later as her face at the pedestal level is suddenly at the same level as mine, standing full-height above the floor.  I knew I stood out like a sore thumb in that exotic crowd, and the flash of recognition that instantly unites both the melted doll face and the bionic head prosthetic tells me I've been made.  "Amelia Tricklebright?!?" I shout, but she's already jumping to the next pedestal over, knocking off some kind of Siamese-fused ferret twins.  Looks like I found my gal.

   What happens next seems to play out slowly, like we were dancing underwater, but it might have just been a trick of the flashy lighting.  I draw my pneumatic dart gun and fire, but the bionic creature seems to flit faster than my darts every time the pulsing light blinks.  Madly I push through the crowd after her, but the dancing denizens shove back, suddenly aware of what is happening.  Desperately I grab at a pneumatic hose strung under the dance pedestals, ripping it free of its coupler and turning it on the crowd, which is suddenly doused in the hissing roar of a pressure breech.  They fall back, falling over each other, creating a writhing mass of panic and confusion, and I take the opportunity to clamber over them to the nearest patch of open floor. 

   Animals are running this way and that now, but I can still see my quarry scaling a ladder to a catwalk that is barely visible above the fog.  I aim my gun as I run and let loose several more darts, one of which sticks uselessly in her wooden bionic arm.  She turns briefly to glare in my direction, then continues her ascent.

   Now I'm on the ladder too, climbing as fast as my middle-aged limbs will allow considering I'm trying to carry a gun at the same time.  Suddenly someone grabs my leg from below, and I turn to see a shaved skunk with butterfly wings howling murderously up at me.  I lower the gun and pull the trigger, but I've spent my dart cartridge.  SMACK!  My tail strikes him upside the head and he falls to the ground, senseless.  But I've lost precious moments now, and can barely make out the silhouette of the bionic beaver racing down the catwalk above me. 

   Eventually I make it to the catwalk and reload.  Then I sprint down its length, clamber through a hole bored in the old dam-weave structure and emerge onto an old, dry flume that now serves as a rickety bridge across an alley to another, seemingly vacant old building.  As I approach I can hear what sounds like a blue jay's warning call, only much more shrill and industrial sounding.  I can't see any entrance that Amelia might have used, but I'm pretty sure I've found the hornet's nest anyway.  I throw myself at the nearest boarded up window  and burst through the rotting planks into the building.

   My first impression is that despite appearances I have crashed into another dance club because the vacant building is shaking with a heavy, mechanical beat.  But as my eyes adjust to the pale lighting I see that I have arrived on a wooden walkway over some kind of massive machine.  Great gears whirl and pistons smash, and I quickly realize that this machine is far too vast to be driven by the gauge of pneumatic hoses running through this part of town.  The smell of woodsmoke here is overwhelming, and the heat is particularly intense up where I am.  The machine unexpectedly shoots out an intense burst of scalding fog, and  I am reminded of the strange, bubbly burn-scar on Smacktail's arm.  And over all the din and noise there's that shrill warning caw, whistling repeatedly and echoing through the old building like a thunderous waterfall turned to air and forced repeatedly through a giant flute.

   A flit of movement down the walkway draws my attention.  It is an ancient looking beaver, leaning on a cane, wearing a top hat and one giant monocle.  Impulsively I shoot at him, but a shiny grate slams shut between us, causing the darts to bounce harmlessly away.  "Seep Master!" I shout, trying to determine the old beaver's identity, and he tips his hat at me as he begins to rise on an old elevator.  I race to the stairs next to the elevator shaft, but on the third step I crash through the rotten plank, nearly plunging to my death.  Carefully I start to climb again, but more slowly this time, testing the footing as I go.  As I climb the heat becomes unbearable, but the noise begins to recede somewhat, so that I can now hear shouting above me. 

   "It's so nice of you to finally join us, Detective Sawstorm."  The calm voice permeates everywhere despite the noise of the building, broadcast as if by a giant speaking horn.  I try to ascertain the direction that it comes from, but it seems to be coming from everywhere all at once.  How is that possible?  And how does he know my name?  I continue my slow and steady climb, and the voice continues it's calm monologue: "You are too late to stop us, you know.  Once the water is out of the dam there is no stopping the flood.  You may succeed in wrecking our prototype, but know-how is a disease for which you will find no cure.  Change is coming, Detective Sawstorm.  The age of steam is coming.  The revolution is coming for you, Sawstorm.  We.  Are.  Coming."   

   I emerge onto the top level of the building and quickly dive back into the stairwell, narrowly avoiding a pair of gun darts.  I lean out and loose a few of my own in the direction of the shots, but there is no target there, save for an open door.  I aim carefully at the door for when my aggressor pokes his head out again.  "Seep Master!"  I shout, trying to goad a response, but there is no sound or movement from the corridor.  Slowly I begin to creep towards the open door, gun ready, every nerve strained to sense the slightest indication of my foe.  But I reach the door without incident, discovering that it leads to another rickety staircase, this one leading to the roof.

   As I emerge onto the roof I see the Seep Master ensconced within a bizarre winged beast, half-bird, half-machine.  He waves his jaunty wave at me, and then the wings begin to flap.  I loose some darts at the biological part of the contraption, hoping somehow to stun them into aborting his escape, but suddenly the gun is knocked out of my hand by a plank of wood.  I spin to face my foe and narrowly avoid catching the plank right in the face by rolling left.  I look up to see the bionic wrath of Amelia standing over me, and over her shoulder the beastly contraption launching itself into the air, causing the building to lurch forebodingly.  Suddenly the roof gives way beneath me and I drop through three storeys of rotten timbers to dangle precariously over the great steam-driven machine.

   Amelia jumps down after me, plank still in hand, although why she didn't just use her mechanical wooden arm as a weapon I don't know.  Planks and timber begin to fall and crash, and I realize that we have only moments to make our escape before the whole building comes down on us.

   "What the hell are you doing?!?" I shout, trying to get a good grip on the beam that's creaking under my weight.  I grab at a second adjacent beam, but it snaps causing me to almost fall into the noisy, steam-belching abyss.  "We're both going to die in here!"

   "The revolution doesn't need any witnesses, Detective Sawstorm!" she shouts at me over the menacing din.  "At least not yet!" 

   Now she is standing directly above me, plank raised to finish the job.  She swings down, but another lurch in the unstable structure causes her to miss.  I grab instinctively for her arm, but come away instead with the dart that I had shot there back at the Dime Pit.  I lunge again, this time stabbing her duck foot with the dart, stapling her to the beam she is standing on.  The building lurches once again, causing the beam to break at one end.  She is now dangling beneath me by her stapled foot, even as the collapsing geometry of the building gives me a new footing of temporary security.

   "Grab my hand!" I shout.  She screams at me, though whether in pain or rage I cannot tell.  She leans up with all her dancer's abdominal strength, grasping at the dart that pins her.  I grab her mechanical hand just as the webbing in her duck foot tears, and now she is dangling by the wooden mechanical appendage.  I look into her eye, full of hate and scorn, and notice for the first time the bubbly-scar texture under her running face-paint.

   "Hold on!" I shout.

   "I'm not coming in!" she screams, flailing helplessly like a fish on a line.

   "It doesn't have to be this way!" I shout back.

   "It has always been this way!" she shouts back, suddenly more composed.  "And it always will be!"  She reaches up with her biological hand and cranks on her mechanical elbow joint.  Suddenly the mechanical arm is severed with a burst of blood shooting out of its tubing, and Amelia falls into the steamy, whining maelstrom below.  I have but moments to scratch and claw my way to the nearest window and dive out, just as the building collapses into a thunderous, smoking inferno. 

   As I cling to the rickety old flume dangling precariously into the void where the vacant building once stood, I am intensely aware of the bloody wooden stump in my hand and the gaping hole in my heart.

I'm having... an... idea! 

[@ Mandle I]

Sorry for being a bit late on closing up, folks.  I had wanted to draw up some trophies but I just can't find the time, so I'll wrap this up and add trophies when I can get around to it. 

First some feedback:

@ Mandle I: Your thought experiments are, um, slightly more extreme than most other people's.    I didn't quite agree with the mom's assessment of the situation.  She says she would gladly take a "swift bullet" to the head, but not the harvester.  Well.... that was kind of an option, wasn't it?  I mean, just run off and the guy would shoot you.  You're just relying on his sense of decency to let the unsacrificed person go anyway: would that really be a riskier strategy?  Also, a decent mother would never leave a child even for a few minutes in the back seat of a car in 40 degree heat, so she was already a bad mom and basically had it coming.    I agree with some of Sinitrena's critiques: where does the "example" person come from each time, and how is this related to Christmas themes?  Otherwise the story kinda makes you think, which was the point, and it was certainly a gripping tale.

@ Mandle II: Your dystopian Christmas carol makes me think that you should build a time machine and go back and write for Futurama.  It would be a perfect second verse to Santa's "slaying song". 

@ Sinitrena: I think I played an AGS game starring Fridol way back when.    I like the hints at the whole technical infrastructure that keeps Santa's operation going (data, treaties, seasonal labour imbalances),  without bogging the reader down in boring details.  The character contrast between Nikolaus and Ruprecht was unexpected and appreciated.  I like how Ruprecht's plan for sending the "bastard out into the frozen sea" parallels the inuit cultural tradition of letting an elder who has become a burden to the family take a long walk in the snow.  And the bits of description here and there at elf culture were sprinkled throughout in a way that made me want to keep reading on.  Finally, I liked how you actually crossed the themes of standard Christmas with German pre-Christmas and Russian revolutionary themes, thereby satisfying the topic. 

So on to the votes.  Sinitrena is our grand winner with 10 votes.  You'd get a gold trophy of something Christmas themed if I wasn't so fat and lazy from all the turkey I ate over the past two weeks.  I'd write more but the effort of typing is making my fingers sweat with sweet, sweet turkey juice.... 

That makes Mandle I our uncontested second place winner with 5 votes.  You too would receive a turkey at this point in the ceremony but.... turkey.

So that leaves Mandle II with turkey and turkey.  Mmmmmmm.  Turkey......

What?!  Oh yeah, so this means Sinitrena takes over as contest administrator for the next three weeks or so.  I look forward to her choice of theme, as long as it doesn't involve cardio workouts or liposuction.  Now, back to those turkey leftovers.... 

[Mandle I]

Well, I hope everyone has sobered up enough to enjoy a good read.  Happy 2020, by the way!  Now down to business: we have three spectacular seasonal submissions salivating for your assessment.  In order of submission we have:

Mandle I with And Scrooge Just Stood There
Mandle II with Bringing Hell
Sinitrena with Nuts!

For the sake of fairness please remember to distinguish between Mandle I and Mandle II when voting.     Any votes for Mandle not specifically designated as I or II will be automatically assigned to his least popular story, so don't mess this up! 

Categories for voting are as follows:

Best Character Interpretation: Which seasonal character was best brought to life?
Best Plot: Which plot arc gave you the biggest sense of satisfaction?
Best Crossover: A vote for pure creativity - who's seasonal-unseasonal medley was most inspired?
Best Writing: Turns of phrase, rhyming cadence, descriptive glory or mysterious minimalism - who done best put the words together all purdy-like?
Secret Voting Category: Best Magic Toy Sack, meaning which story keeps on giving and giving long after the others are depleted.

Voting will run from now through Saturday January 4, with votes to be tallied the next day.  Good luck to all entrants!