Theme: A smelly defining moment in history.
Description: When and where did the largest dumps in human history take place? Who delivered them?
A big curvy viking girl after too much reindeer and spoiled cheese in days long gone, or a perfumed high standing lady back in ancient Egypt?
Today, in some restaurant bathroom in New York, back in 1509 in the quaters of a blocked Chinese princess or in ancient Rome.
The setting can in short be anywhere, anytime.
Rule: Story must be set in a historical period, can be told from any perspective (past tense, present, etc).
Deadline: March 5th I've pushed the date back, as it's obvious no one is gonna be ready on time.
March 24th (Unless more time is needed.
I would say perhaps once this contest is concluded, we should change it to XVI since we pretty have skipped that one. Of course, perhaps after we finish this one, we could go back and try to wrap up the ones that were missed.
I see my suggestion prevailed, against fierce competition 8)
Very well, for my contribution I choose the Ottoman empire, around the mid 1500s.
I thik Jimmy is doing something with the pre-roman mediterranean area, so these two "locations" are now nicked I guess. Hoping for many contestants ^-^
I don't think I'll be entering my epic in the contest. In its rewritten form, it's going to be a fantasy with no ties to the real world, past or present. It probably won't be finished by the deadline, anyway.
Bottom line: I don't have claim to any locations or time periods anymore.
Fair enough. Anyone else plan on participating?
I really really want to, like I said I think this theme is brilliant, but I don't have an idea yet. :( If I think of anything, which hopefully I will, I'll post it here so that we don't end up reusing the same time periods.
Toasty: I probably won't participate, but I've had some ideas. Feel free to use any of these. Obviously I won't be offended if you want to change some details. These are just loose suggestions.
The Minoan Empire was an interesting place. Upper-class women were expected to go topless. They boasted massive, many-roomed palaces, one of which may have inspired the mythical Labyrinth. The Palace of Knossos on Crete, the largest Minoan palace yet discovered by archeologists, had a flush toilet adjoining the queen's huge washroom, the earliest example of this convenience known. The Empire fell after one of its key islands was destroyed by a massive (volcanic?) explosion, and a tradition arose later saying that the ancient people of Crete had an extra eye on the back of their heads. And that's not even getting into the Minoans' weird snake cult and bull games. I think this civilization could make for a very interesting story. For our purposes, the toilet could have been invented because one of the queens took such foul dumps that her husband had a team of engineers strive to find a way to dispose of her waste. When the toilet is unveiled and she learns the reason it was built, she resents the device and tries to prove it's useless by hopelessly clogging it up, resulting in history's biggest dump.
Greco-Roman mythology holds that the progenitor of the Ionian Empire was Io, a Nymph (a kind of demigoddess usually depicted as a nude, slender, fine-featured human) who was raped by a thick fog that was actually Zeus (!) and turned into a cow by Zeus' jealous wife. She was stuck in cow form and tormented for a long time before she got her Nymph form back, found a new home, had Zeus' baby, and became the mother of the Ionian people. Now, suppose when she was finally transformed back into a Nymph, her digestive system didn't change for some reason, and she was, at least briefly, a Nymph who ate grass and produced cow pies. That could result in history's biggest dump.
Then, like I mentioned before, there could be a female Pharaoh who claims she doesn't poop because she's a god. Trying to keep up her divine image, she holds it in for too long, and when it finally comes out it's the biggest dump in history.
Moving forward, I think it would be fun to write a '50s B movie parody. You know, the kind of movies where a teen couple in a car encounter an alien that turns out to be threatening on a massive scale. Then the teenage guy saves the world with the help of one or more lab-coated scientists, while his girlfriend doesn't do anything except look pretty, act submissive, scream every time she sees or thinks she sees the alien, and stupidly get herself in trouble. Only in a Nyou parody the alien threat would be a parasite or pathogen that transforms the goody-goody poodle-skirt-wearing '50s teen girl into a salivating werewolf-like monster who wreaks havoc before being returned to normal. Only the people she ate in monster form have to go somewhere, so her body can't go all the way back to normal until she clears her alien-augmented abdomen of a few hundred pounds of bone-studded manure. That taboo-breaking movement would be the biggest dump in history.
Those are nice ideas. As I've picked my setting I might as well throw out others I considered to the benefit of the hopefully soon other participants.
- A European doctor travels to ancient China, maybe in the company of Marco Polo?
Like Polo, he gets close to the imperial family (Emperor at Polo's time was Kublai Khan, grandson of the more famous Genghis) and it tuns out that one of the emperor's concubines/daughters/relatives who is quite tall and well developed had by chance/accident eaten poisoned food meant for the emperor.
The poison was designed by some disgruntled taoist sage to kill the emperor specifically and instantly, but since its another person of another sex ingested it, the effects are unintentional and weird, resulting in both insatiable appetite and epic constipation. The European doctor is asked to assist the imperial doctors finding a remedy, and eventually their success results in a very relieved and embarrassed woman, and the largest dump in history.
- A female viking refuses to go while accompanying her father the thane on a raid from Norway to England, holding it from they embark, through the week on sea, during the visit to Britain and keeps clenching as they sail home. Unprecedented defilement of the family outhouse follows.
- In early 1700 North America, a European colonist living as a trapper is traveling through woodlands as he hidden observes a shapely young female native american woman hang her rotund behind off a fallen tree trunk and take the biggest, loudest dump in history, dwarfing the buffalo piles he saw on the plains.
A day or so later, he visits the local tribe to trade, and is introduced to the daughter of the chief who turns out to be the same woman. Fittingly, he thinks, her name is "Scares Bears", "Windy Pass", Blowing Leaves" or something similarly clever.
Like I had been afraid of, I'm not going to have an entry for the contest. :(
Basically, my job can get a lot busier in the winter and I've spent most of the last few months either working or too tired to do anything. I should be around here more this spring and summer when things slow down.
The other thing is, I have the idea and the time period, but I can't seem to write it. I may have been thinking so much in terms of fan fiction for so long that I can't write original characters anymore (not that I was ever any good at it before, now that I remember. :-[)
The story wasn't going to be anything interesting anyway as far as plot, but I had planned on having a tough cowgirl in leather pants share a two-seater outhouse, cheek to cheek, with a dancer from the saloon. :kawaii: I'll keep all the ideas I had for this in the back of my mind and you may see some of them show up in something else I write someday.
I had thought if I said I was going to try this, I would have made more time to work on it but it just didn't happen. I really hope we do get to see some entries for this contest. It's probably too late now, but if someone wants to do an Old West setting, go ahead. :P
Gonna have to ask for a delay on this.. I have to leave for abroad soon, so won't have time to finish it to the 5th :'(
But since I'm the only participant that wont be a problem, right 8)
I think I can have something done by the new deadline...
I've written a giant historical dump, and I can come up with some flimsy plot to go with it, if that's what's needed to get us two entries for this contest.
How's it coming, guys?
My entry probably only needs one sitting to complete, but I don't think I'll have a good chance to do that until at least Thursday.
My draft is pretty much done 8)
so what's the status on this contest?
I dunno, has anyone got their stories ready? or bout ready?
Oh good... Duce isn't dead. Hurray! ;D
Bah, I was thinking about writing an entry for this contest, but a few weeks ago my keyboard broke, meaning I now have to painstakingly type everything letter by letter with the onscreen keyboard. So, no stories from me until this keyboard is fixed/replaced.
Phew...typing just that took like seven minutes!
I was going to write an entry for this contest as well (and finish Schizophrenia) but my laptop of 5 years decided it was going to finally leave this sinful earth in a blaze of spectacular glory. As if that wasn't enough, the location of my backups has erupted in a similar fashion. I am now reduced to writing on the laptop that is now a shadow of its former self.
Actually, that's more a reason why Schizo is gone gone gone than the reason for my not participating this time. I'll probably elaborate later this week in my own updates thread.
My laptop finally died. My entry is saved to a flash disc, but to finish and post it I'd have to borrow my mother's computer, so yeah...
I'll get back to participating here once I can afford a new computer.
Geez... what is *UP* with laptops dying around here? What, is this site the laptop graveyard or something? ???
Hey, to be fair, my laptop works perfectly...
...except for the keyboard.
Damn, why did I have to go and leave it next to the sink while I was doing dishes... :'(
I'm not trying to be annoying, but didn't Yarr say his draft was almost done a month ago? I can't wait for him and orpheum to post more of thier work. ;D
Hey, is this contest still going? I somehow wanna do a short efro fic about a prehistoric woman layin' some cable. Not much plot is needed (premise considering), but what do you guys say?