8FOLD/HCC: Mighty Medley # 12, December 2014, by Messrs. Alambre, Brenton, Perron & Russell

[Tom Russell]

On Wednesday, December 3, 2014 11:02:05 PM UTC-5, Andrew Perron wrote:
> On 12/2/2014 9:58 PM, Tom Russell wrote:
> <snip>
> > This installment of monthly goodness has a sort of accidental theme
> > for four of our five stories. See if you can suss it out.
> 
> Interesting.

Admittedly, it's only unintentional for three of the stories. But once I saw that Wil, Saxon, and yourself all ended your stories with the same basic phrase, I couldn't resist using it in one of mine. ;-D
 
> > AND ALSO: THE SOLUTION TO LAST MONTH'S "Froggy Problem"
> >
> > The esteemed Mr. Perron provided the correct solution.
> 
> Wooohoo!

So much win
 
> > Silke and Adams found a doctor, and hurried Hank to his table. They
> > explained about Peake, and how the knife passed through Hank's
> > invulnerable skin without ever touching it, and how it sliced up his
> > innards while it was white-hot. The doctor gave Hank some whisky for
> > the pain. Weren't much else he could do.
> >     "Afraid I'm not long for this world, boys," said Hank.
> 
> ;.;
> 
> >     Hank laughed; laughing hurt. "I don't want you to watch me die.
> > Wasting time. Celine's out there, and she needs saving. Do me that
> > kindness, will you? And tell her... hell, you know what to tell her, I
> > guess."
> 
> ;.; ;.; ;.;

The wife had the same reaction, despite the fact that, really, we've only known Hank for three or four pages.

> >     The cloak falls out of my hand. The ghost moves away, into the fog,
> > and is gone.
> 
> Oh nooooooooooo
> 
> Seriously, the one-page format was *perfect* for this. <3

Wil is perfect for the one-page format. And I mean that in a good way-- he's also perfect for longer formats. I'm just saying that he's really good at these short, clever, punchy pieces-- as are you, sir.
 
> >     As the man ate he wondered - not for the first time - if the
> > reduced levels of ambient magic would cause the ravening hordes of
> > zombies in eastern Europe to become dormant.
> 
> That'd be nice. o.ov As always with Saxon's stuff, I love-love-*love* the 
> worldbuilding.

There's a reason I head-hunted him pretty aggressively for Eightfold. :-D
 
> >     One night a few years back-- one of those long nights following an
> > argument, where they talked in strained, quiet, aching whispers--
> > Julie had said, "I know you but you don't know me. After all these
> > years, it feels like you still don't know me. And sometimes I wonder
> > if you ever will."
> 
> Awwwwwwww ;.;

<snip>

> Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

<snip>
 
> AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

This was a tricky one-- not just because I struggled with the length and ended up bending the one-page rule a bit. (Which I've done before, though not for my own story.) But it's always difficult to know when I'm writing something that will elicit "AWWWW" and when it will go all wobbly and overly-sentimental. I tried to leaven it with some humor but, as you've mentioned before, sometimes I have difficulty marrying the humor to "raw human emotion" (though even the happiest marriages are always difficult, and a lot of work). I'm glad that, at least for one of my more discriminating readers, I got the "AWWWWW" and not a bunch of eye-rolling.
 
> >     He knows what to get her then, but he also knows when to give it to
> > her: there's dumb and then there's Dumb. Offering a divorce on their
> > actual anniversary falls into the latter.
> 
> ...MAX.

I know, right?

> >     She sighs, a little sharply, and then starts to read it again. "You
> > know, you're right," she says as she gets half-way down the page.
> > "This has been a pretty bad year. And you have done some monumentally
> > dumb things, on account of your chronic dumbness. But this? This is
> > the dumbest thing you've ever done. In your entire life. In fact, I'm
> > going to pretend that reincarnation is a real thing, just so that I
> > can go on record saying this is the dumbest thing you've done in /any/
> > of your lives. That's how dumb this is.
> 
> JULIE YOU ARE ENTIRELY CORRECT

::nods::

You mentioned once before that one thing you liked about the Max-Julie dynamic is that he's not just some goofball and she's not just some killjoy-- I think a big part of what avoids that trap, if I do avoid it, is that Julie is almost always right, as wives often are.

==Tom