Awards & Contests The First RPF Drabble Extravaganza! CONCLUDED - Come Congratulate The Winners!

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Welcome, one and all, to ...

The First RPF Drabble Extravaganza!

30 days, 30 prompts, 100 words.

Sick and tired of long posts? I know I am. Now, don't get me wrong, long posts can be a thing of beauty: it's great to login first thing in the morning, a cup of coffee in hand, and read all the lovely updates that have come in over the night. But sometimes you just don't have time. Sometimes it's been a long day and you just wanna play, but oh god there are five novel-length posts to get through and your brain explodes.

This Drabble Extravaganza is for those times.

Every day for the next 30 days, I will post a prompt. This prompt can be anything: a word, a phrase, a sentence, a picture. Your task is simply to write 100 words on that prompt and post it in this thread. At the end of the day I will pick a winner, and post the next prompt, and the next day will begin anew. After 30 days, the person with the most wins will get one (1) week of colours. Depending on how many take part, there may be prizes for 2nd and 3rd place too. I will also give out fun (temporary) titles to participants who make me laugh, sad titles to those who make me cry, and so on so forth.

That's it. Simple, eh?

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[u][b]Possibly Frequently Asked Questions[/b][/u]

[i]1. Do I have to participate every day?[/i]
No, you don't. Just write one in whenever you feel like it.

[i]2. Who is eligible to play?[/i]
Anyone! Just write 100 words on the day's prompt, post it, and you're in!

[i]3. How strictly is this 100-word thing enforced?[/i]
Hmm. Not very strictly. I can and will disregard entries that are too long, but I'm cool with it if you go over by one or two words. Five is still alright. Ten is pushing your luck. Conversely, your entry will be greatly admired if you manage to hit 100 words on the dot (but admiration will not necessarily translate into a win, so don't put [i]too[/i] much effort into that).

[i]4. Is this a Star Wars drabble contest? Non Star Wars? What?[/i]
Anything goes. I'd prefer it if entries were from the POV of a character of yours - this is a [i]RPF[/i] contest, after all, and that would make it a fun exercise - but feel free to write whatever comes to mind.

[i]5. 100 words is too short! My drabble makes no sense without another 500 words of context![/i]
If you feel like I'm unlikely to fully grasp the intricacy and beauty of your drabble entry without reams of supporting material ... well, actually, feel free to link to a CS/thread/story, and I'll read it and keep it in mind while judging if I can. But I make no promises on that front. All drabbles should be self-contained little stories if at all possible.

[i]6. I'd like to play but I don't want colours / already have colours / don't want a title.[/i]
That's okay, play anyway! We can work something out. Maybe a gold star? [color=darkgoldenrod]★[/color]

[i]7. I dispute your judgement! This entry should have won and not that entry![/i]
All decisions made by the judge (that is, me) are final and non-negotiable. This is because changing my mind in cases like these feels too much like giving someone a cookie and then snatching it away before they can eat it, and I hate that. I promise to be as fair as humanly possible, and I am happy to discuss my decisions and/or explain myself if they're unclear, but I will not be changing my mind unless flagrant TOS-breaking shenanigans were involved in the making of a winning entry.

[i]8. I have a different question...[/i]
Ask! Feel free to PM/IM me, or ask in this thread (others probably want to know the answer, too, after all).

[hr]
[b]And The First Prompt Is:[/b]

[blockquote]#01: I have a bad feeling about this.[/blockquote]
(Did you expect anything less than that iconic line? ;))

Remember, 100 words, and you have until approximately this time tomorrow to write 'em. I will then pick a winner and post the next prompt, and so on so forth for the next 30 days.

[b]Go![/b]

 

Could things get any worse? Well, that?s an interesting question. Let?s see:

1. She had just been beat up by a Whipid and a Chadra-Fan.
2. She had narrowly escaped being killed by said non-Humans.
3. She was in an immense amount of pain.
4. She had almost been beaten up by more thugs.
5. A random stranger had taken her aboard his ship.
6. She still didn?t know what species this stranger was.
7. She had no idea where the ship was headed.

Yeah, Liesl Bridehead, had she been conscious, would have had a bad feeling about all this.

 

Rufus Jameson
Somewhere in a Nepal Monastery

One bullet left in the final battle of good and evil. And even worse. He had run out of Pall Mall. Had been cheap imitates anywhere, that tasted like goose-crap. Steps. He rasied his gun to the door and waited. It slammed open and HE entered. He did not look like expected. But it was him. ?Took your time, hm?? Rufus asked. The man coughed. ?I hoped you would already be dead, to be truthful??

Rufus laughed out. ?Thought so.? He said with a dry cough. And pulled Rufus the trigger.

Tag: Xany


Xan Edit: can't use that word, sorry.

 

His apprehension was well founded ? as it turned out, Marty Sleg was surrounded by hipsters. And no, I?m not referring to those lovable beatnik types who enjoy jazz, I?m referring to the more modern, meaningless use of the phrase, the one that conjures up dark images of rich kids who enjoy ?ironic? Bohemian styles and think PBR is good. I mean, have they actually tried PBR? Because good is an incredibly poor adjective for it.

That was when a shout came out from the mob that made Marty?s blood run cold:

?Poser!? came the cry, and then they attacked.

 

OOC: Are we allowed OOC in this? If not, shout me down. If so, let me just say that PBR sentiment rang oh-so true. I was shocked two weeks ago when I heard this guy walk up to the bar and actually order two PBRs. I almost wanted to turn to him and say, ?I don?t care if you?re getting them for women at your table who you are trying to woo?a real friend talks a friend out of PBR.?

 

[OOCs and general commentary are allowed; let the trash-talking commence! Though I'd recommend clearly marking your drabble entries (like Draco) and/or commentary posts (like Trieste), so I don't mix up the two. ]

 

?Mr and Mrs Lotus,? began the doctor, ?Brahma is experiencing a fairly severe case of panzoic lacrimation. He cries animals, to put it in layman?s terms. It?s the sort of spontaneous, uncontrolled creation we see in most deities at his age. Really quite treatable. I have the injection in my desk??

He reached into a drawer, and pulled out a needle. He leaned towards Brahma, who recoiled. At the corner of the boy?s eye, a golden speck glinted.

?Oh dear,? said the doctor, backing away slightly. ?Is that...?

The speck had become a trail. A paw, a tail.

A mane.

 

"I am sorry, but I seriously am afraid I won´t." I said to the police officer. The man was looking around nervous. Raging people were tearing apart the city around us. Hamburg was a goner and that officer wanted to escape. "Damned. Give me your bike!" He yelled at me and pointed a gun to my face. "No way man." I answered. I was young. Stupid.

Wouldn´t get much older. The officer stared at me. A last time. And there they were. Tears.

Finger. Trigger. Click. Bang.

Hated to sound like Harrison Ford, but I had a bad feeling about this.

 

A wonderful start to our little contest! You guys are making it really difficult for me.

I love the SotS-ness of Draco and Fins' entries (always great to see more of that universe); the lovely incongruity of Wing's (a young god visiting a doctor is like something out of Sandman); the ironic tongue-in-cheek realism of Ramza's (hipters calling someone else a poser.. ); Trieste's depiction of a really really bad day (I especially like the format- lists are an uncommon choice for drabbles but it worked really well there) ... I think, though, Winged_Jedi wins this round for invoking a real sense of apprehension, which is to my mind what the line I have a bad feeling about this is about. What happens when a god spontaneously creates a lion? I don't know, but nothing good ...

Special kudos to Draco for hitting the 100-word mark exactly! (According to Word Count Tool, which by the way is what I'm using to count all your words.)

---

[b]Scoreboard:[/b]
Winged_Jedi: 1

[hr]
[b]And The Next Prompt Is:[/b]
[blockquote]#02: Burn, baby, burn![/blockquote]

 

ooc: I used a very advanced translator for my post, actually. Wanted to try it. Wrote in German, translated into English. Posted without further reading. Worked fine, until the last sentence.

And pulled Rufus the trigger.

Even I can do better when it comes to grammar in English. Okay, goodbye you translator. Burn Baby, Burn. Got ideas, at least.

 

Really, there's only one character I could use for this

---

"Let me tell you about cold."

The battle dialogue was really unnecessary- just intimidation tactics on Skadi's part. She liked to talk while she was working.

"Fire is fast. It eats its fill in a flash, then leaves- yes, it's impressive, but it's gone all too soon."

One more bandit fell and the last staggered backwards, sincerely regretting his decision to rob the 'defenseless old lady'.

"But cold?" [i]Winterfall[/i] blazed sliver in the moonlight, then darkened with blood. "Cold is slow. Relentless. And cold [i]burns[/i]."

 

"Combustion is one of the most fascinating natural phenomena in existence," Humphrey explained. "Oxidation, a seemingly mundane chemical process, occurs at an incredibly rapid and highly exothermic rate. The end result is nothing short of pure beauty.?

?And,? Robert interjected, ?This is relevant because??

?I?m about to lower you into a vat of acid.?

?I?m aware of this. What does that have to do with combustion??

?Absolutely nothing.?

?Then why-??

?I just really like chemistry, okay?!?

?Then you?re aware that this vat is, in fact, full of water.?

?Ionized water.?

?Oh, great. Death by unusable solvent.?

?Worst kind there is.?

 

The song is an old favorite of mine and I feel good. Fully aware I am probably the only person in the room feeling that way. Bruised, bloody John is still tied to the chair and I dance around him, humming my tune.

The scent of gas is in the air. Smells. It´s all over him.

"Why?" John asks. The cold makes his breath a little fog machine.

"Getting cold, ya know." I laugh and the cigarette from my mouth falls down . The fuel had been waiting for it.
Screams. That´s all John adds to that beautiful song . . .

 

The apartment was burning. The smoke that filled my nose and mouth was insignificant compared to the fact that my ?honey-bunches-of-oats? was somewhere inside. I stumbled down the apartment hallway, and somewhere her screams reached my ears. We were watching the news, I can remember. Something about the quarantined Boston hospital. The world had been going bad.Then I could see her. She was trapped under a collapsed wall. She was on fire, the flames crawling up her clothing. And I thought something so bad that I was ashamed.

Burn baby burn.

And then I was on fire too.

 

Burn burn burn burn burn.

That's all that the negativity can ever do. It just eats away at your heart, at your soul, even, taking all that positivity and destroying it in the way only a fire can. It was beautiful to his eyes, the destruction one simple flame could cause. The destruction a few simple words could cause.

It was surprising that things would go to hell so quickly, in his mind.

lies, truth, morals, questions, doubts

All things that went out the window. All things that burned.

Burning was good, in his eyes, burning was pure. Fire was pure, fire was strong. Eliminate the weak, leave only the powerful to pick up the pieces.

That appealed to him.

power

That was very much appealing, oh yes. Creation via destruction, to eliminate the succinct and replace it with the sublime, the eternal.

strength

The lighter flicked on. He paused at the simple image of one powerful, eternal flame. Impressive.

"Burn, baby, burn."

 

I did wonder a bit about that Draco.

Anyway, another day, another prompt! I love what you guys have done with these; it's amazing how differently you've all managed to interpret it.

This time Fins is the one to hit 100 words exactly, with a nice ... if scary ... drabble from the POV of a psychotic arsonist that reminded me of LordT's Thomas. *shudder* Livi, always great to see badass Skadi in action! Cold burns, indeed. Brr. Spycoder, 99 words, always good to see another SotS-er, and nice work getting the prompt in there too. Ramza, with another amusing and quintessentially Ramza entry. Peng ... I like it, but that's way over 100 words.

It's another very tough decision for me... and I will state outright that Skadi is one of my favourite characters ... but ultimately I think the one who fulfilled the prompt the best was DarkLordoftheFins, and so we have our winner.

---

[b]Scoreboard:[/b]
Winged_Jedi: 1
DarkLordoftheFins: 1

[hr]
[b]And The Next Prompt Is:[/b]
[blockquote]#03: Space[/blockquote]

 

This is kind of addictive! Hope you don't mind, I used this prompt as a road test for my character in Sir_Draco's Mass Effect rpg. Seemed kind of apt.

---

There are rituals, when you leave. Old- the singing of sad songs and ancient prayers, and new- the implants and cybernetics that form an armour against the outside world. Then there is that terrible, exhilarating moment when the vista of space opens up before you for the very first time, vast and limitless, unconstrained by the safety of the Migrant Fleet. On a strange ship, you take your passage into a dark and dangerous ocean.

Overhead, the comm crackles with one last blessing.

"Kai'Thala nar Oran, leave us to sail black tides in search of glory. Be well. [i]Keelah se'lai[/i]."

 

?Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship ??

?Oy!? Harry shouted, ?You knock that off. You want to get sued??

?We?re not going to get sued,? Nathan replied, calmly. ?This is exempt under parody fair use.?

?Parody.?

?Yes.?

?Despite the fact that the shooting script originally said ?Star Trek? and the ?Trek? has been crossed off and replaced with ?Venture.??

?Yes.?

?And despite the fact that you crossed out ?Kirk? and wrote ?Dirk? for the captain?s name.?

?Yes.?

?And despite the fact that this is a drama.?

?Yes.?

Harry paused momentarily. ?Alright, back to filming.?

OOC: I agree with Livi. At first I was planning on just doing one or two of these, but it's so... not time consuming that at this rate I'll be doing a daily entry.

 

Right, fifteen metres.

Mitch feathered the brakes to slow the Touring Car, throwing a spray of dirt to the left as he steered in the required direction.

Sharp left hundred metres.

Rise in gradient, two hundred meters, then? space.

?Space?? The twi?lek queried the Last Bolt AI inhabiting his satnav.

The car felt weightless as it topped the rise, the road dropping away for a moment.

Space. Chasm, abyss, SPACE!

?Do I try to jump it, or brake??

The deal was, I tell you what?s coming, you decide what to do. But if it was me, I?d brake like a

 

"Space. Space is big. You wouldn't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is, I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen-"

A polite cough interrupted the speaker. "I'll- look, I'm going to stop you there. That's your first draft, is it?"

The speaker looked up from his page with a scared expression painted clumsily on his face. "Yes, why?"

"Ah. Yes, it's a bit-"

"You don't like it?"

The publisher coughed politely a second time. "No, I didn't say that. It's just that it's a bit...long-winded."

"But it's colloquial. That's what we want, right?"

The publisher sighed. "Well, yes, but...it's...ah..." His assistant spoke up. "Shorter, faster. Get to the point." The publisher nodded his agreement hurriedly, while keeping a warm grin on his face. He didn't like offending these artistic types. He'd heard Mr. Ix was something of a perfectionist when it came to the written word (Could do with some perfection in his spending habits, too,) and had to keep reminding himself that this was what made their books so popular: writers like Mr. Ix from Betelgeuse V. Or was it IV?

"Mr. Ix, please let me put it this way: we like your writing. We like it very much. But space is just so...I mean, how do you get the scale of it? How?" His assistant was nodding feverishly, his four arms working the datapad and holding a cup and saucer for his boss. The publisher smiled amicably. "Wouldn't you prefer something...more detailed? An intimate examination of-"

"Eccentrica Gallumbits?" asked Mr. Ix excitedly.

"-of a little planet far off in the Western Spiral Arm. Earth!"

There was a long silence. Finally, Mr. Ix spoke.

"What a dull name."

 

I'm glad you guys are enjoying it.

Seems like the day for doubles. Livi and Ramza both get kudos this round for getting 100 words exactly, and Ramza and Sithy both came in with amusingly humorous entries (poor Mitch!). And Peng, again, 100 words...

Anyway, today's winner is Livi-Wan for a touching snapshot of a Quarian embarking into space alone for the first time.

---

[b]Scoreboard:[/b]
Winged_Jedi: 1
DarkLordoftheFins: 1
Livi-Wan: 1

[hr]
[b]And The Next Prompt Is:[/b]
[blockquote]#04: Hat[/blockquote]

 

I swear the Inspector sold his soul when he went cyborg. He barely breathed while I spoke.

?Most of the castle is beyond restoration,? I told him. ?If we can even figure out the original architecture. We retrieved a relic from the largest hall. It?s voice-activated, but techs haven?t found any trace of AI yet. I noted down what it said?

Intruders playing with silly toys
I?ve seen the things you?ve done
I warn you now that woe betides
The Muggle who tries me on.?

?Well,? he said at last, fixing me with those snake eyes. ?Bring it to me.?

 

Hooray! *throws confetti* I'm pleased that you liked my drabble! And now for something completely different.

---

This was going to be awkward. Lief maneuvered around the hall as inconspicuously as he could, but it was no use. He still managed to catch the king's eye. Backed into a corner, there was nowhere to run as the king advanced. Who had put this lunatic on the throne anyway?

"Y-your majesty-" Lief stammered. It was going to be the lions for him for sure.

"Lief." The king had an even madder glint in his eye than normal. It matched his puce, orange and purple feathered headgear. "Tell me honestly.[i] Do you like my hat?[/i]"

 

Deserts had to be try and hot, but this one was bad. Even by a desert-rat´s standards.

?He´s gone.? Mike coughed and reloaded his rusty gun. ?Yeah.? Milton replied, leaning against the wall of the ruin and his gaze wandered through the sand.
?There´s always a next time.? He assured Mike. ?Always a next time.? And Milton pushed his hat into his face to have a nap.

Mike stared at the hat, as if he could make out his companions features under it.

The possibility of treachery between the two remained, unspoken and drowned in the awkward silence between friends.

 

OOC: Did my Space entry come to more or less than a 100 then? I did a word count before adding my markup, and Microsoft Works counted 100.