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The Weekly is a community project in the form of a series of micro-fiction contests, inspired by the discontinued Community Writing Competitions on Halo Waypoint. Each week, users can challenge themselves to write a short prose response to a prompt chosen at the start of the week by the competition's judge. At the week's end, the judge selects a winner to receive a shiny new Weekly Winner eraicon on their entry's page, and the entry will then be displayed on Recent Changes for the next week for all to easily see and read.

The project was conceived in response to a long-standing downturn in prose writing on the site, in hopes of encouraging more prose by presenting a painless, easily-attainable length as a target instead of a hopelessly-long novel length. The ideas the writers incorporate to hone their craft under such constraints might then become the seeds for events their own characters go through, or even be worked into whole other long stories.

How To Participate

At the beginning of each week, a new prompt will be posted on this page, for users to write in response to. Working with in the length and topic restraints (which could have to do with the theme, or subject, or writing style like "only dialogue"), users then write their response and create a new page on which to post it. Remember to include a Writer Template ("{{Writer|your username}}") at the top and categorize it "The Weekly" ("[[Category:The Weekly]]") at the bottom. A paragraph at the top can be added to introduce the piece and context for it without going towards the word count, so long as there's a horizontal line ("----") between to make set them apart distinctly. Unless specified otherwise, the word length is 1000 words, and the maximum stories you can submit per entry is two. It is frowned upon to use two entries to create a longer entry, as each should be a stand-alone piece.

Then, simply add a link to your entry's page in the scrollbox for the appropriate week for it to be counted. The judge (LegendOfElTopo, currently) will then read the entries, between the following Monday-Wednesday depending on availability, and pick a winner for the week. Bear in mind, the judge's decision may be based on subjective judgements, but good spelling, grammar, and punctuation go a long way towards impressing by presenting a professional and easy-to-read appearance. Winners will then be given a unique Weekly Winner eraicon and displayed on the Recent Changes page.

Current Judge Notes

  • Feel free to suggest prompts and topics for future weeks - ping me in the Discord if you do.
  • If posted after the end date, I'll still read and review your work, it just excludes you from the standings for winning the weekly (although in some cases I may shift things to allow for more competition). Yes, this means...
  • ...all previous weekly prompts (including those before I took over) can be written for and I'll give them a look, just bear in mind that it'll be a lower priority than more recent things. That being said...
  • ...I won't be accepting works written beforehand, or in general submissions not written specifically for the Weekly and then added to it afterwards.


Weekly Challenges

Week 157: Everything old...

Prompt: You know, they say hindsight is 2020. I have waited approximately four months to make that joke. Feel free to throw tomatoes at me on the Discord. Anyway, going back through bits and pieces of the previous year while reading up for my The Weekly 2019 Highlights, there was a lot of stuff that could've been made a lot better with some more time, some more work, some more polish - so I'm going to give you the opportunity to do so here. This first week's prompt is to give people another 2 weeks (ish) to re-edit, re-write, or even fully re-imagine a Weekly entry they've done previously and weren't satisfied with - or, at least, would like another stab at. Multiple entries are both permitted and welcome! Just so long as you, y'know, say which stories you're re-doing. Word limit is not fixed, but try to stay within +/-10% of the original.

Start Date: January 1st 2020

End Date: January 12th 2020


Truth be told, I kinda disagree with the feedback for the original piece - the opening is quick, sharp, and a punchy introduction to everything, but the ending doesn't feel particularly rushed, it just ended up shorter since there's not much to write from Michael's perspective. What with the whole grabby-stabby-ded thing. Whoops, spoilers.
Here, though, I think flipping things around definitely makes the end stronger. In Sasha's eyes there's much more going on, and getting into her head brought with it the brief moments of the "fight" into better view. It also does a lot of a better job capturing the helplessness of the situation, both with them being split up and towards the end. I freely admit I was particularly fond of the repetition around the end of the original, but on the flip side getting to see Michael fading out is even stronger.
The fight itself is definitely stronger - the tweaks aren't huge, but breaking up longer sentences and the wording changes do make it noticably quicker and snappier - and trimming off the framing intro section lets the story flow better as it comes in. That being said, the added dialogue in the standoff - while bringing in a new angle talking about their kid - feels a tad wooden, the last couple of lines in particular. I also feel like the last few shots from Kate, to finish the job rather than leave Dmitri to bleed out - added another nice bit of colour to their interactions and characters, and a sense of finality compared to simply waking up to find him dead. Then again, word count...
Straight off the bat, I have to say that the bartender's framing sections added a lot more fun to it than I expected reading the first time around, especially considering the rest of the subject matter. The dilemmas of the baker's dozen working to break away from the dichotomy of serving "evil rebels or evil UNSC" is a nice bit of colour of the post-war chaos, especially given how awful the circumstances of their creation were.
On the flip-side, however, I have to say the sheer number of ex-Epis you're working with makes it real hard to concentrate and keep track of each character and the flow of what's going on. While only a couple of them ever have the floor at any given time - and that's a lot more preferable to having everyone try to be talking at the same time - it still leaves them feeling a little underdeveloped, given the constraints of the word count we're working with here. There's very much a feel that it's going around the circle, with everyone awaiting their turns to get a line or two in, before Kennedy continues her TED Talk. Again, though, that's largely unavoidable with the sheer number of characters you're working with here. Definitely more than two friends, methinks.
Actually, this was not what I expected at all, especially given the previous ideas of slipspace spoopiness that we've been spitballing about. Other than the deal with Roberts, the levity of this takes it in completely the opposite direction, with some excellently entertaining characters, even if the set-pieces are a little corny at times. Tara definitely earns more than a few grins, as do the hopelessly new lackeys that don't even get names. This, plus the unorthodox maintenance techniques, the exasperated Captain bantering with her about how important (and expensive!!!) the drive is, and their prospects of getting around without it? Plenty of fun, all-round.
And the duct-tape-or-else-the-warp-consumes-you. That's pretty neat too.
In seriousness, though, I definitely felt like this was more cohesive than the original version, especially with more context/flavour to the intro, and the formatting distinguishing the radio chatter from everything else. I still regret screwing myself over by realising that the prompt was asking for over-the-top CoDness, rather than general tacticool, but having this come out of it was pretty neat anyways. And hey, more Kalis @ Earth lore.


Month 3: ...is new again.

Prompt: Another thing that came up in the 2019 highlights is the number of returning names; and while it's great to see regulars working their magic on a weekly basis, it's also nice to see some new faces make an appearance. This month's project is for a more experienced writer to pair up with someone new to HF - or at least Weeklies - and help them work on an entry. Any of the previous year's prompts are free to use (although again, please specify which one you're writing for when you enter). If you're stuck for ideas, here's some of my personal favourites:

For ease of writing and reviewing, we're looking at a maximum of 2000 words (although entries below that are both permitted and welcome!)

Start Date: January 1st 2020

End Date: February 1st 2020

I really, really rather enjoyed this. While I don't want try and split the piece between the two of you too much, I can definitely see Silver's fingerprints all over this, especially in the focus and description on specific details - the Grunt's tank buckling and boiling, the dying Brute's thrashing. The interactions between each team member definitely felt more natural than they have in the past; while I know pushing for PERUN to be more fleshed out in that regard has been a big thing recently, this definitely flows better. The jabs between them going back and forth are lovely, and dialogue between the fights still felt snappy and quick, with character showing through between the lines and through wording, mannerisms, actions, rather than more mundane description. What I definitely would say was a bit off was the story's overall pacing - which is odd given that individual tales from the two of you tend to not have that as big of an issue. I feel the whole thing came to an end a little too quickly and abruptly; their fighting exit was crammed into a hundred words or so, whereas the opening scene of their entrance was around quadruple that. While watching Bodark dismantle the grunt lance(s?) before even being formally introduced was deliciously badass, it does seem like the tail end of the piece suffered for it - and it could have been trimmed a bit without having a major impact (unlike, say, the Brute fight). As always, a win-by-default is a win-by-default, but this is still a very solid piece.



Week 158: Tall Tales

Prompt: "The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact." The Orion arm is a big place, and there's plenty of room for hearsay and stories to spread purely via word-of-mouth. For this week, I'm asking for a 1000-word piece centred around one of these - an urban myth, a rumour based on truth (or not!) twisted and distorted beyond recognition by an interstellar game of Chinese whispers. Maybe from a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend who heard that the Covenant eat people, or a conspiracy theorist on Chatternet talking about where the brains for Smart AIs come from, or grunts chattering about how Demons simply come back when killed. Go wild.

Start Date: January 6th 2020

End Date: January 19th 2020

This was a very interesting read, and not what I expected given the setup in the first third or so, too. ONI simply sitting down for a calm little interview rather than pulling some Sneaky (And Quite Certainly Illegal) Spy Shit [TM] is a bit of a surprise in itself, and either outwardly giving the theory some credit (or at least appearing to) wasn't expected too. It's a very cool snapshot into life still going on during the war, crackpot conventions included, and the two characters seem just as smart and measured as their backgrounds would entail. On the flip side... I'm not quite so sure where it's attempting to go. "Justin"'s codename being UTOPIAN, the penguins, the talk of possible origins being in Covenant space or already glassed, and a bunch of other stuff seem to be offering dots to join up for some bigger picture being hinted at, but I'm not sure I get it (or if there is one at all). In line with Justin - I want to believe, too, but I'm not quite there yet - and the occasional odd spot, such as his astonished gasp turning into contemplative humming, detract from things a little bit too. If there's something that I've completely missed, then please let me know, but as it stands - while well-written, it's over double the wordcount and still doesn't seem to have a solid direction it's aiming for.
Goddamn. God. Damn. This is excellent. This hooked me far more than I expected it to, and only got better on further readings. While I've picked up your character interactions and dialogue as a bit of a weak spot sometimes in previous stories and weekly entries, stripping that away and simply leaving description, events, internal thoughts and most of all action plays firmly to your strengths. Your pacing and building up of tension is impeccable, and the imagery of an Elite fleeing and being hunted through his ship, his home turf, doesn't let up for a moment. It's hard to imagine anything being able to comfortably take on hunters in hand-to-hand (hand-to-shield? fist-to-worm?) combat and come out on top without sounding overpowered or plotbreaking, but the visceral descriptions and Rohen's own disbelief - and horror - at watching it happen makes it work and work well. Of course, the sheer terror at "wait hold on, nothing human should be able to fight that fast or that hard" is already well-worn territory with Spartans, but I think writing this around Ballistas keeps itself apart from that. The feats here - Brutes being shredded, Hunters being stopped mid-charge and simply having a fistful of worms torn out of them - are another step further beyond what even the vaunted Demons would be able to do. Overall, the tale works as a compelling case as to what differentiates the Ballistas from their squishy organic competition - and, while it's skirting the edge of the prompt topic, I'd call this your best piece to date, too.
So. Your orientation seminar is being filmed by the guys who kill you if you quit your job. Interesting. And understandably very unnerving from the perspective of watching them get to work on the shiny brand new S-IVs involved, no less - a feeling that filters through to the reader very well. The description, the dialogue, the whole set-up works well introducing them and hinting at what they're there for without actually spelling it out (although I feel like, if that was the goal, then STOLEN GAUNTLET could've been alluded to a little more lightly) - and framing it within the setting of them all being very new to the world of Spartan-y Stuff [TM]. The actions surrounding the two Spartans, however, do end up feeling a little exaggerated, even for the context - going from sneaking up and light mutters to pointing fingers, spitting out words, then back to whispers again. It's confusingly ambiguous about whether they're outright arguing this out or trying to disguise it as idle chatter while watching the watchers - the ending seems to tilt it towards the latter, but also seems to fall a little flat in terms of resolving what was set up or leading on to anything else.


Week 159: Fixed Prompts #2

Prompt: Another batch of fixed prompts, given the interest in them on announcement and in the weekly last month. For those who weren't around or didn't partake, these weeklies work off a set of prompt phrases or lines, free of context (for you to fill in). In other words, the kind of jumping-off point that you'd find on other hubs for writing prompts, rather the usual weeklies based on a broader theme or plot that you have to write within. Once again, 1000 words as your limit. Once again, Silver, using all more prompts does not grant you more wordcount.

  • "Sometimes I think this war ain't so bad, you know."
  • "How was I supposed to know I'd never (expletive?) see you again?"
  • "The stars are pretty tonight." (bonus: "Prettier than-?" "Yeah.")
  • "You think I need a gun for this?"

Start Date: January 13th 2020

End Date: January 26th 2020

These two have been practically the only thing I've been able to keep track out of the torrent of words you've been writing out (and even then, only with limited success), but this - well, this is great. The tales so far have been building them further and further as far as characterisation and fleshing out goes, and watching the two of them grow into one another while their whole worlds fall apart around them is all being done excellently. Sure, taken in a vacuum some lines might sound soppy or melodramatic or any other number of things, but with context? With everything that's happened - or is still happening, for that matter - it just w o r k s . Impeccable scene-setting, slowly simmering angst, and a wordless confession that had been in stone long before this particular scene all come together to make a magnifi...
..okay, yeah, it's cute. It's soft. It's, I dare say, tear-jerking.
Alright, fine, you can have your thirty-words-over-hard-cap. Just this one time. Because win-by-default or not, it's a damn good piece.

Week 160: Case of the Sniffles

Prompt: Hey there everybody, LOMI here to drop in a new prompt! Been a minute since I've run one of these, but I'll keep it pretty simple: write about somebody being sick. Deadly new ONI bioweapon? Flood infection? Strange, exotic xeno-flu? Someone that can't take the common cold? It's all up to you. Just give me some sort of piece with a character of yours or someone they know dealing with some kind of sickness.

And since I'm old fashioned, 500 word limit, one entry per user. Feel free to submit if you're over the word count, just know it'll be weighed against you

Start Date: March 15th, 2020

End Date: March 22nd, 2020

Something about a Spartan knocked out with a cold is definitely amusing, so props for that. Between this and Colin's old piece about Corin Davis not getting his goddamn sandwich, it seems like it's Spartans lot in life to suffer with fairly mundane problems. I liked his very human reactions to the absurdity of it and the boring treatment Sam has to deal with. That said, I would have liked it a little better if you'd focused the Point of View entirely on Sam: the back at forth between him and Vilda was a little too long and dragging the focus onto her primarily for the last three paragraphs takes away from our experience with Sam's thoughts and sympathies. You only have 500 words, best to focus it on one person: a bit of internal dialogue probably would've helped. Also, remember to vary your words a bit; while not much, you have several phrases that echo each other a bit repetitiously, such as the mother comment or mentions of 'rest and hydrate'. Last note, your dialogue gets very confusing: line breaks and "X said" helps denote who's speaking, and would've been very helpful in these two's back-and-forth. I didn't even realize Vilda had started speaking on my first read.
Pretty good writing, as expected from the author of the endless-expanding Heaven & Earth. The banter dialogue between the two is pretty good, though I almost wish we got a bit more of either internal monologues from one of them or more body language descriptions for the encounter. That said, you packed a lot in here, even if it did go over the word count a bit - not a lot of fat to trim either, though the comment about Simon's loading speed might could've gone.
Oooh, a flash forward? Old Man Merlin, dying at the ripe old age of 16? Jokes aside, a pretty solid short piece. My only real complaints here are the two "info dump"-ish paragraphs at the beginning. The weapon details seem a bit unnecessary to the piece, and your introduction of the wasting disease feels like it could have been better integrated into how you showed me Merlin's condition than simply laying it out. Still, there's a nice cadence to the short and it focuses on the disease itself more than the others, and for that I award it the win this week.

Week 161: Lonely, I'm so lonely...

Prompt: Goddammit. Tide asks me (ElTopo) for a cozy weekly prompt, so I make one and disappear to give you a month and a half longer than you normally would get, for good measure, and only Silver puts it to work? I guess we're back to our regularly scheduled angst, in that case. This time: isolation. Being alone. Being kept away from others, by choice or by force. Someone forced to work on their own, either separated from their team or being the last survivor. A ship lost in deep space, crew ruminating on what would've happened if they had that drive coupling properly fixed last overhaul. A world cut off from communication - and maybe even travel - from everywhere else, struggling to cope and find a way to be self-sufficient.

Basically, if this and LOMI's prompts are anything to go by, we're going to be milking current events for prompt ideas as much as we can. Go figure. Back to my usual 1000 words, and bi-weekly cadence, for now.

Start Date: March 23rd, 2020

End Date: April 5th, 2020


Wow, this is... wow. A change from your regular weekly pieces (with familiar flavours of The First from the Halloween special), and it's definitely unnerving. Sensory deprivation is a big fear to play with, and you've worked with it very well - in particular, jumping back and forth suddenly to the crumbs of sensory stimulation that the outside world is feeding Drake lends it a frantic vibe, a mixture of fear and resignation, that matches very well with the bleakness of a titanium-A shell and three inches of saltwater lapping around his ankles. It's another nice touch for him to fully understand the protocol that they're using, for him to be the very one who designed it - I'm sure there's a much wider context for this to fit in that's in another tale or article or on a drafting bench somewhere, but at least just looking at this entry it adds to the feeling of futility, of helplessness brought about by the isolation that wouldn't be as strong if it was just some captured insurgent or sympathiser rooted out from the UNSC's ranks.
As for the protocol outlined below - while it takes you firmly over word count and towards hard cap, I'm a sucker for technical writing, and good one at that. In this context it works very nicely, boiling down the torture into a short, cold, clinical addendum. And it hammers in that even Drake, knowing everything that they were doing and what it did, couldn't last the full three days. Effectiveness of procedure is deemed absolute indeed.


Week 162: Just Like Riding a Bike

Prompt: Getting back into the swing of things now that I have more time spare, so how about a prompt based on that? This week, I'm after a tale with someone picking up an old skill that they'd long neglected, a weapon they've gotten out of practice with, a vehicle they barely remember, or something similar. Whether it goes fantastically or horribly is entirely up to you - and whether they end up being shown up by those damned kids who are fluent with the same thing (or something better, even) is, too! 1000 words, once again.

Start Date: March 30rd, 2020

End Date: April 12th, 2020

  • Thin Grey Line by SilverLastname: I agree. Thirty-two credits - four moa burgers and some spare change - is indeed one hell of a ripoff for a greasy-spoon breakfast like that.
I'm one hell of a big fan of stories beginning in media res, possibly more than I really should be - and this one is no exception. The opening and scene-setting hit it right on the head, with Strider's calm and collected introduction feeling very cinematic. From there, however, I feel like it faltered a little - there is too much left out, and too much hinted-at-but-not-properly-explained, to feel entirely smooth. Some details eluded me and needed me to go over them again - the talk of bodies on the floor and the SOCOM made me think that he had shot up the place, so the talk of assault threw me off-balance; and the juggling of three separate unnamed parties (the officers, their backup arriving outside, and the ODSTs) did too, and I initially thought it he was claiming the officers arriving were to end up imprisoned for corruption.
Still, upon a second (and third) rereading the goings-on were much clearer... but beyond Strider being proved right, and the rather nice ending punchline, I still feel like it lacks a punch, a compelling hook. The reasons why he's right were covered well before that punchline, but the background to the squad - or Strider himself, for that matter - aren't. Most of all, I feel like this is a character introduction for Strider, in, say, the opening few minutes of a TV series pilot (although if word count was cutting out more juicy details, that's fair enough). I just have to say that this feels like a scene cut from a longer piece or a series, but isn't really as satisfying on its own as some of your other self-contained-but-part-of-something-bigger shorts.
  • DT 2020: Regulation Four DQ by Distant Tide: Showing up us Regular Humans [tm] for FUN and PROFIT!
For the setup, this was honestly a lot funner than I expected it to be. After opening with the regulation itself, the introduction catches just a little (probably unavoidable, I think, after a few reads) clumsiness, before breaking into the meat of the article - the whole circus of organizers, officials, and even the other competitors tripping over themselves trying to find out just how Linda's that good. The semi-farcical nature of the situation translates very well from the original forum post to this short, and is well-written enough to not feel too slapstick or comical - it keeps enough of an edge in reminding you that these are the top human sharpshooters that she's beating, and that she is doing so even pre-augmentation. The mention of other child prodigies being brought along for these trials, being good enough to compete (if not win) against the other marksmen also caught my eye, and while I would've enjoyed a bit of expansion on that it makes sense to still focus on the here and now of the "controversy".
It's short, fun, and even draws a little aww at the end at Linda still wondering what went wrong. Still, by all rights, it is straying rather far from the prompt... but it's firmly enjoyable enough to overlook that.

Week 163: Catch My Good Side

Prompt: LOMI here with a quick prompt for the week: show me your moves! Not yours, really, but your character's moves. Everyone deserves a moment to show off what they can really do, so I want to see you write one of your characters getting to showcase their very best skills - whether it be combat, stealth, diplomacy, cooking, whatever. Just capture them doing their best with that thing they're proud of. 500 words or less preferably, per the usual.

Start Date: April 5th, 2020

End Date: April 12th, 2020

Dancing and a ball are definitely not what I expected from an ONI event, but I suppose in a ceremonial sort of setting it might work. Definitely unexpected though, so thanks for surprising me. That said, I know the goal was under 500 words, but with just over 300 I feel like you needed to use more of them. Some of the early sentences could've used a few more words here and there - "They had spent the majority" or "Not wanting to say no", perhaps - but overall what you had is formatted and grammatically fine. What this story could've used was some more show, less tell: they start having a dance, a very visual thing, and I feel it needed some more description. You describe their reactions to the event, but you don't do a whole lot of description of the dancing.
Story telling is a bit of a meta choice, but it works nicely I think. Granted I don't know a lot about these Deltas - besides Andra, who doesn't get tormented here, which feels like a violation of the site's unspoken rules somehow - but I'd say you did a good job of demonstrating Zach's personality and how he's dealing with his own scars through the tale. You went a little long on word count, but cutting down would probably just boil down to some of the adjectives getting cut here and there. One problem I did have was I wasn't sure if everyone was Spartans or not - you say they're undercover, but every mentioned character appears to be a Spartan? Just a small note of uncertainty there.
Coming in at our longest entry for this prompt, you gave a really good action sequence that's for sure. The piece has a very nice flow and cadence to it, dragging you along as Corin falls face first into danger. You'd think it would be hard to showcase someone's unique style of experiencing gravity, but you do a good job of giving us a look at how Corin thinks about the situation that really works. I think my only complaint besides length is that your descriptive paragraphs tend to be big old blocks: it would probably help to break them down just a bit, punctuate and divide the thoughts a little more. At the end of the day, despite being a stickler for word counts, this strikes me as the entry deserving the win this week.
I have to say, I did not expect an AI going fishing when I'd written this prompt, nor did I expect it to be as enjoyable as it is. It's a simple and quaint little story, but it does its job admirably. Little details like the extra time it takes to walk there or how the video feed is terrible just go to show how much effort Samuel will put into going fishing for some peace. I will say it took me till the end of the story, though, to realize that Samuel was the AI, and not a human in the hospital using a dumb AI to control the robot; in the same vein I at first thought you were talking about a sentient robot, which would've brought out another set of questions. As nice as a story this is though, this was a request to see a character showcasing their best skills, so is this Samuel's best skill? Relaxing with fishing while civic duties run quietly on the back burner feels a bit more like enjoying a pasttime than showing off a skill. It's still a personal favorite regardless of how it fits the prompt.
So maybe it's just your preference, but I think it's parsed as "Troop Hog", not "TroopHog," but that's a small note. A fairly simple story overall, definitely showing off Bodark's skills but not doing much more than that. We're shown a lot of what happens as she deals with the vehicle piece by piece, but I think it would've been nice to have some internal monologue at points to break it up and add variety. We get her smirking or sighing a few times, but what are her thoughts while actually dealing with the engine or brakes or other parts. Overall though, not a bad piece at all.

Week 164: By Your Command

Prompt: For our 1000-word prompt, this week we're having a look at the bigger picture. I'd like a piece about those removed from the frontline action of combat - officers commanding troops or ships, politicians on the homefront, or handlers piecing together clues from their intel and their agents - who are still making their own moves, their machinations, their own finely laid plans and contingencies against what their counterparts might do. Whether it's 4D Chess or a Murphy's Law farce, however, is up to you.

Start Date: April 6th, 2020

End Date: April 19th, 2020

Another curveball from you - another one right at the edge of the prompt's boundaries - and one done well, nevertheless. This one opens strongly, with the contrast of the dawn and Morrison's morning smoke blending nicely into his indecisiveness about leaving, and eventually facing his wife. I have to say, though, I feel like the conflict between the two over his leaving is much more heartfelt in its actions than its words. Marci clinging to her husband, or the sadness in her eyes, or his mouth working to try and think of the right things to say; all of these work fantastically, yet the dialogue undermines things a little. Morrison's lines feel a little stilted, a little cliché about looking after his troops and fighting for what they have back home - although they may well be ringing true, or the best he can think of under the circumstances. Overall? Enjoyable - but the show feels far better than the tell, and the ties to the prompt are a little on the tenuous side to me.


Week 165: Hooked

Prompt: Maybe it's just a morning coffee. Maybe the occasional piece of stim-gum. Maybe it's a habit, a vice, a superstition, an addiction. This week I just want another short about something that one of your characters is hooked on, that they need to do in one way or another. An adrenaline junkie? A nail-biter? A Gamma Company S-III trapped behind enemy lines with a dwindling supply of smoothers? Up to you.

Start Date: April 13th, 2020

End Date: April 26th, 2020

Okay, I might have been dumb and forgotten to actually put a wordcount on this week's one. So you're all exempt from it this time. Although honestly, this week's were really hard deciding between anyways.

I'm still the first to admit that I still know precious little about the history or backstories or lore of these two, and yet I still find every piece you submit with them to be incredibly compelling. Flickering from Merlin's sickly state to the ravaging dust-storms outside, before settling on Andra seeing her own scarred face in the reflection of it - your description of the here, the now, the moment, goes from strength to strength. Again, being able to hook me and keep me in the scene knowing so little about these two is excellent, especially when running in at barely half of the word count. That being said... I definitely feel this could've done with pushing that number a little higher. While the main body is very strongly written, I feel like the explanation of what's going on, the context of this little snippet, is kind of thin on the ground. Of course, if it's meant to slot in to a bigger work, or is a short interlude in a series, or something along those lines where I'm missing something then that's understandable - it's just that right now it takes a bit of re-reading to pick up hints as to what's going on, when just a bit more outright explanation of that would've made things easier to work with and get - and, with more exploration of their surroundings and situation of this quality, this could well have won.
While much more routine than the events depicted in the competing entry, I still enjoyed the mixture of sanctity and mundanity involved here. The "reverence, strength, honour" triangle is very fitting, even if the frantic grunts scurrying around occasionally detract from the gravitas of the situation, and the whole sequence feels very believable as something that would happen. But what I'd probably pin down as the gem I most enjoyed out of it is the brief moment of tension between Zona and the Minor sent as a messenger - the conflict-by-proxy between him and the shipmaster, one of them a warrior of honour and tradition and heritage, the other more used to vast machines of nanolaminate slinging plasma across the cold, unforgiving void. I think the melding of opposites throughout the piece - the sanctity of Zona's ritual and the violence it prepares for, the universality of the Covenant's faith still split by old lines of caste and aristocracy, the way the Swordmaster of deeply personal combat looks down on the Shipmaster's impatience, maybe even born of pragmatism.
Or maybe I'm just reading too much into this. I dunno.

Week 166: To Whom(st) It May Concern

Prompt: Something short and sweet this time - a story told through a message, up to 500 words in length. A letter home from the front - before or after treatment by the ONI censors? A correspondence from scientists researching forerunner artefacts? A fleet after-action report? (Yes, I know I've asked for this before, back in #148) A concerned memo about missed shipments from an already-glassed planet, before news of the war properly broke? Anything you like. In this case, the word count limit only applies to the main body of the message; any formal flavour text such as Waypoint addresses, secure encryption keys, "Dear Granny...", terminal-style logging on/IDs, or weird "Sent from my neural implant" signatures are all fair game and don't count towards your 500.


Start Date: April 20th, 2020

End Date: May 3rd, 2020

  • Tough Love by Kobold Lich: (On a note completely unrelated to the piece or feedback, I can't help but notice that the G is clipping through the V).
It's very nice to see a more personal, human story amongst the action and drama that's the norm for a lot of weeks, and this certainly takes it and runs with it. In particular, I do have to say - while the main body of the piece is what I'm looking at - the book, and especially the message scrawled in the pages, make it particularly touching. It does feel like I'm reading a plea directly from Luke to Waimarie, although I also have to say that it somewhat suffers a little because of that. A lot of if feels like it's built on background information and history between the two of them, and while a fair portion of that can be gleaned from context - the bombing, the condition of the two of them, and so forth - the deeper details are left unexplored. It definitely feels like an outsider looking inwards - although given the prompt, if it's intentional then that's absolutely understandable.
Oh man, I am a sucker for this kind of thing. I have a huge soft spot for formal/technical writing, procedures, anything that requires a fancy UNSC/ONI header and gratuitous overuse of fixed width typewriter fonts - and for anything involving contingencies, apocalypses, and other Bad Ends. And so... I really, really wanted to love this piece, but it just feels like it could've done with more polish. There's contradictions between the concept of "if you are reading this, we lost" letters of last resort, while the letter's contents are still discussiong who should be reading it and when - and "high-tonnage warships" or "several thousand or more" feels uncharacteristically unprofessional for ONI. Similarly, the actions for Loss of Earth are covered below the "above", and the wording of that whole segment feels a bit awkward - but I still really love the concept, and a lot of it is done really well done. The total collapse action list reads much better than the first half of the letter, and the extreme contrast between "2) Flee and find a new home, we Galactica now" vs "3) immediate prolonged and total orbital nuclear bombardment hits like a 5-ton sledgehammer made out of shivers - especially when it bears thinking about how different officers may react and what they would do in desperation, since I imagine there's a lot more variation between them than the handpicked submariners the RN writes their letters for. I want to stress again that this is a concept I am an incredibly big fan of, I just feel like the first half of this particular piece needed a bit longer in the oven.
I really wasn't sure how to approach this one, even after a couple of rereads. For sure, the opening was well-done - the excursion into the freezer, as well as the offhand reveal that his prize was a popsicle, was cleanly executed, and there's a certain satisfaction in the officer's idle musings while enjoying the stolen goods. And yet... the rest seems to stumble uncertainly from there. The note left on the box reads almost comically over-the-top, but only "almost" - the rest of the prose description doesn't really commit enough for it to work. Instead, the ranting and raving from a fellow professional officer just comes across as kind of daft, as does the sudden klaxon and corniness of the "THIS IS NOT A DRILL" immediately following. The twist of their pettiness and it evaporating in the face of a Covenant invasion would've been pretty amusing if it was done played straight, or if pushed into outright comedy, but the half-and-half approach stops the punchline from really working.
I also have to add that this piece unfortunately misses the prompt by quite a large margin - while shorts for other prompts having other forms of writing embedded in them have been done before and are perfectly fine, this week was explicitly asking for the message to be told through a story, rather than it simply being tacked on, as it kind of feels here.
While a journal entry skirts the edges of the box too, you did ask about it beforehand, and it's still the whole body of the work. It does feel like more like an internal monologue than properly trying to record or communicate something, but I feel like this works in its favour. The stream-of-consciousness style feels like uneasily tiptoeing around, yet inevitably towards, a confession - and I'm not sure if it's the one I expected, but it still caps off the entry nicely. Still, I have to offer some of the same critique as I did for Tough Love here - some of the events defining Sasha's character and confession here are only lightly covered, as is their impact; although in this case, there's still more than enough of a history to work with within the short word count.
This was quite difficult to come up with feedback for, truth be told. While it's certainly well-written as a call to arms, I didn't have much to form an opinion with narratively; although I did dig into the page for Kropotkin, which helped things somewhat, and between the two there's certainly more to work with here. This piece leaves more questions than answers - what really led up to this uprising, how effective really was this (and how crucial was this declaration in triggering it), and how much solidarity there really was. It plants a lot of seeds for further lines to be explored, especially in the immediate leadup and aftermath to the declaration - and if this was the intent, it does it very well, in spite of the lack of a direct hook.

Week 167: Coming To You Live

Prompt: Format Screw 2: Weekly Boogaloo! This week, I'm asking for the bane of everyone's middle-school English classes - a written news article. Again, within this scope, the format and content of said article is all up to you - whether it's an official ONI-sanitized propaganda piece, a small local story from a minor planetary journal with the Big Things [TM] of the orion arm as a backdrop, or a wildly untrue rumour picked up and amplified across every news service on Waypoint. It might be fun exploring how the varying times of slipspace travel make timely reporting frustrating or impossible - or even putting together a Xenonion-style satirical (or not!) report on, say, how the systematic destruction of human colonies is affecting the business world. Someone please do one of those. While there's a wide disparity in what you could write for this, word counts should aim for the 500-800 range or so.


Start Date: April 29th, 2020

End Date: May 10th, 2020

Week 168: The Road Not Travelled

Prompt: Based on an idea that came up while discussing RPGs on the community Discord server - this week I'm interested in two (or more, if you're feeling ambitious about how much you can squeeze into 800 words) alternate sets of results that diverged from a single choice, or decision, or event. Seeing both sides of a figurative what if is what I'm after - although you're welcome to specify a "canon ending" if you're planning on tying it in to other works - whether we're talking about the immediate results of either choice, or how it affects things much further down the line in a Butterfly-Effect-y way.

Start Date: May 4th, 2020

End Date: May 17th, 2020

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