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[The Other Side]

Welcome to the Fortnightly Writing Competition!  The rules are simple: write and post an original short-story based on the theme within two weeks, and then vote on the submissions to determine a winner.  This fortnight's exciting theme is:

The Other Side



What is out there, on the other side?  What exists so near at hand, and yet separated from us by such a seemingly flimsy barrier, such that there are hints of and whispers that flit just beyond our sight and hearing?  What would happen if someone were to stumble on a means of touching the other side, or seeing it, hearing it, dreaming it, or even walking it?  Is the other side just waiting for us to join with it, or is it something terrible that should be left in its own plane?  Perhaps the gateway is in some sacred place or ancient talisman, or simply a matter of seeing or believing what was really there all along?  Perhaps there are teachers out there who sound a little crazy at times, but can help you through the process if you could only set aside your preconceptions?  This fortnight you will have to open your mind to see what is truly out there beyond us.

This fortnight you must write about THE OTHER SIDE, but I leave that open to your interpretation.  Perhaps it is death, or heaven/hell, or a twisted reflection of our own reality, or a dystopian reality where AI's harvest your human brain energy while keeping you in a coma where you dream of putting in 50 hours of work a week because no one would ever want to escape THAT....  But I digress - the other side could mean the other side of an ocean, a galaxy, a fence, a social barrier or construct; heck, it could even mean the other end of the those 4 inch pipes that shoot your poop out of your house to god-knows-where.  Alls I'm saying is that you have to have this sense of otherness just beyond a character's grasp, that they engage with either tangentially or entirely.

Deadline for submissions is Thursday June 1 midnight Hawaii time.  Extensions - should they be sought - will be granted on the basis of alluding to something much more sinister than a deadline that may or may not be stalking you from the haze at the fringe of your peripheral vision.

Good luck to all participants! 

[Sacrifice]

'Tis the season!  Let's write about...

Sacrifice



Perhaps the most appealing aspect of Christianity is the idea that its messiah willingly sacrificed himself for the good of mankind.  Good christians are supposed to emulate this gesture to a small degree by giving up some trivial comforts during Lent in the run up to celebrating Easter.  But it is also Ramadan right now, where Muslims one-up their Christian buddies by giving up food and drink entirely during daylight hours.  In parts of the world animal sacrifice still occurs, with the idea that Providence will provide for those that give up what is valuable to them.

The history of sacrifice is perhaps even more fraught.  Ancient old world cultures sacrificed human beings to appease their gods, and ancient new world cultures weaponized sacrifice to do the same (and conveniently keep the neighbours in check).  Ancient Romans bizarrely believed that the future could be augured from the entrails of a sacrificed bird.  Kamikaze pilots in 1940s Japan would bring honour to their families with their self-sacrifice during World War 2.  Sacrifice can indeed be a bloody business.

But smaller sacrifices can be noble in their own right, and perhaps be more constructive.  Witness people sacrificing their own happiness to provide for a loved-one, or going without in the short-term in the pursuit of a long-term goal (a penny saved is a penny earned).  Love itself is a sacrifice of individuality.

This fortnight your submission must revolve around a sacrifice, big or small; noble or destructive; bloody or beautiful.  Deadline for submissions is Monday April 10 at midnight Hawaii time.  Good Luck to all participants!

[Feast with the Beast]

Now is the traditional period of holidays in western society, where people join with friends and family to eat a symbolic meal together.  And yet...  And yet those meals usually consist of both portions and personalities that are too large to rub together amicably for long.  Inevitably there is a monster lurking beneath the patina of toupees and makeup that makes other guests cringe.  But what if that person finally gets what's coming to them?  This is the plot set-up for....

Feast with the Beast


Your story is to revolve around a feast, be it holiday related or not.  At least one character must be jarringly, nay obnoxiously, nay incorrigibly rude or despicable, and in the end they must get their comeuppance at the hands of one of the victims around the table.  This might take the form of a gruesome murder or a farcical bit of slapstick, but it is intended to be a mystery who has done the deed.  Authors are encouraged to submit the solution to their story in hide tags at the end of their story. 

The deadline for submissions is tentatively slated for the end of the day Hawaii time on Saturday January 7, 2023.

Like the well-crafted stories I expect to read in two weeks' time, the voting criteria shall currently remain a mystery.

Good luck to all participants!

Hi.  I've been banging my head against the wall for a while now on this one without any progress, so maybe you guys can help me out.

I've written my own character.Talk extender function to replace character.Say in order to create speech bubbles.  I created a custom text window GUI, hijacked one of the Sierra speech-styles and relay the relevant string through a ghost character (called cGhost) who can be dynamically placed around the talking character's head.  So far so good.  But I can't wrap my head around how to adapt that function to incorporate variables.  I can't, for example, do something like this:

Code: ags

 cVillain.Talk ("I'm going to take all %d of your precious kittens.", kitten_count); 

because character.Talk only has two parameters (I hope I'm using that term correctly): function Talk (this Character*, String charsays).  So of course it doesn't understand the extra integer variable, because all I am giving it is a string.  Later on, after a lot of height, width, text length, character location variables, etc. etc., this line shows the speech in a nicely fitted bubble:

Code: ags

  cGhost.SayAt (this.x +sideoffset -GetViewportX (), charheight +bottomoffset -GetViewportY (), width, charsays); 

...but I can't put in dynamic variables like I could with character.Say.  My question is, how can I add an optional variable to a function, like in character.Says, so that I can build dynamic strings? 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.