Garo
Boy Wonder
The New Zelda Dungeon Writing Community Competition
Round 2 - June 2013
Round 2 - June 2013
Welcome to Round 2 of the revamped Writing Competition! Every month, writers are invited to write a short story using at least three of a set of ten parameters. At the end of the month, Zelda Dungeon users can vote on their favorite story for the month, and the winner will receive an award for their postbit as well as bragging rights and eternal pride! With prizes like that, you can't afford NOT to enter!
Last round, we had five great entries into the competition. You voted, and the winner of the first round is: Cfrock! Cfrock will receive an award that will be displayed in the box under his username, and his entry will be reposted below in the Hall of Fame, which collects winning entries from past rounds together. Congratulations Cfrock, and congratulations everybody who entered - though only one of you could take home the prize, all of you deserve congrats for entering the competition at all!
Now, on to round 2. Below you will find the official rules for the competition, guidelines for submitting your story, and the list of the parameters for this round of competition. The deadline for submissions is Sunday, June 23rd. Make sure that you've followed the guidelines below and submitted your story before that date if you want it to be included in this month's competition. Good luck, have fun, and get writing!
Rules:
1. The competition is open to any and all members of Zelda Dungeon.
2. Any and all stories submitted to the competition MUST be written between the first of the month and the deadline for the round. Entries written outside this boundary are not eligible.
3. All stories MUST use at least THREE parameters. Writers may feel free to use more or less as they so desire, but they must use NO LESS THAN three in their story.
4. Adult content is not permitted in this competition. If you have concerns about the level on content in your story, you may feel free to message the host, GaroXicon, with your concerns and he will do his best to address them and provide feedback solely on the permissibly of the content. If you submit a story with inappropriate content, as determined by the host, you will be disqualified from the round and your story will not be entered.
6. Parameter suggestions are bound by the same content guidelines as the stories.
2. Any and all stories submitted to the competition MUST be written between the first of the month and the deadline for the round. Entries written outside this boundary are not eligible.
3. All stories MUST use at least THREE parameters. Writers may feel free to use more or less as they so desire, but they must use NO LESS THAN three in their story.
4. Adult content is not permitted in this competition. If you have concerns about the level on content in your story, you may feel free to message the host, GaroXicon, with your concerns and he will do his best to address them and provide feedback solely on the permissibly of the content. If you submit a story with inappropriate content, as determined by the host, you will be disqualified from the round and your story will not be entered.
4A. Swearing is permissible, with the understanding that the forum's word filters will not be subverted. Any attempts to bypass the swear filter on the site will not be entered into competition.
5. Once the voting round has begun, writers are welcome to vote in the polls, but may NOT vote for themselves. Spread the love!6. Parameter suggestions are bound by the same content guidelines as the stories.
Guidelines for Submitting Your Story:
1. Write your story in an external word processor such as Microsoft Word, Notepad, Pages, or Google Docs.
2. Once you have finished your story, format it using the forum BBCode markup.
3. Once you have formatted the story to your satisfaction, copy and paste the RAW POST DATA - INCLUDING the BBCode tags - and wrap them within NOPARSE tags. This means that you place a [noparse][noparse][/noparse] tag at the front of the story, and then a [noparse][/noparse][/noparse] tag at the end of your story. This will preserve all the BBCode tags, ensuring that your formatting makes it into the post at the end of the month.
4. Copy everything and place it in a message to GaroXicon (you can send him a private message by clicking this link and selecting "Send Private Message" beneath the avatar on the left).
5. At the bottom of the message, outside of the NOPARSE tags, indicate which parameters you have used in your entry.
6. Press Send!
2. Once you have finished your story, format it using the forum BBCode markup.
3. Once you have formatted the story to your satisfaction, copy and paste the RAW POST DATA - INCLUDING the BBCode tags - and wrap them within NOPARSE tags. This means that you place a [noparse][noparse][/noparse] tag at the front of the story, and then a [noparse][/noparse][/noparse] tag at the end of your story. This will preserve all the BBCode tags, ensuring that your formatting makes it into the post at the end of the month.
4. Copy everything and place it in a message to GaroXicon (you can send him a private message by clicking this link and selecting "Send Private Message" beneath the avatar on the left).
5. At the bottom of the message, outside of the NOPARSE tags, indicate which parameters you have used in your entry.
6. Press Send!
Parameters for Round 2:
1. Include a character named Elizabeth Mareen in your story. (Submitted by TSter the Great!)
2. A character must be involved in or present during a bank robbery. (Submitted by TSter the Great!)
3. A character must celebrate a birthday or anniversary. (Submitted by TSter the Great!)
4. A character must roll out of bed and onto the floor. (Submitted by TSter the Great!)
5. A character must put on sunglasses after making a pun.
6. A character must be chased by dogs.
7. Your story must take place in a city called Coast City.
8. A character must be offered a choice between two objects that are identical, except that one is blue and one is red.
9. It must be storming at some point during your story.
10. Your story must feature a car crash.
2. A character must be involved in or present during a bank robbery. (Submitted by TSter the Great!)
3. A character must celebrate a birthday or anniversary. (Submitted by TSter the Great!)
4. A character must roll out of bed and onto the floor. (Submitted by TSter the Great!)
5. A character must put on sunglasses after making a pun.
6. A character must be chased by dogs.
7. Your story must take place in a city called Coast City.
8. A character must be offered a choice between two objects that are identical, except that one is blue and one is red.
9. It must be storming at some point during your story.
10. Your story must feature a car crash.
Hall of Fame:
This section collects winning entries from past rounds of the new competition; enter as often as you can, and one day your piece will be in this hallowed hall as well!
Round 1 Winner - Cfrock:
Round 1 Winner - Cfrock:
Unhappy Landings
The fall wasn’t bad. In all honesty the fall was quite pleasant. It was good to get the weight off of one’s feet, for however brief a time. Relaxing, in a way, and the rush of air provided a pleasant cooling breeze.
No, the fall itself wasn’t bad. It was the landing that was bad. Landing is the part of falling that no one likes. If we didn’t have to deal with landing then everyone would enjoy a good fall from time to time.
Robert Kane landed at the bottom of the pit with a very loud ‘Buggerit!’ He landed on his back, causing a cloud of dust and stale air to whip around him. His head snapped back and was spared from being split open on the stone floor by something soft. A pillow? In a pit like this?
Robert lay on his back for a few minutes while he waited for the pain to subside and had a good think about his new surroundings. Smooth, high walls, a nice cosy beige colour to everything, obligatory rat bones along the edges; he’d been in better places.
He’d been in better pits, as a matter of fact. This one didn’t have any spikes along the bottom nor did it have a ravenous beast of eldritch origins. There wasn’t even a steady drip for sending people mad. These Dark Lords you got today, honestly.
Robert sat up slowly and gave his back a rub. He’d live. He might bruise a bit but there’d be nothing worth worrying about as a result of his fall. He stood up and ran his hand over the wall of the circular pit. As he thought, it was completely smooth. Perfectly so, actually. Was this… marble? In a Dread Pit of Doom?! Surely this was some kind of joke. The floor must be about to open up again and drop him into the real pit. No one uses marble in these things.
Robert let out a sigh. That was the way of the world these days. That bloody fool Hero, Nanoc the Mighty, was to blame for it all. He’d swooped in one day, all tall and golden haired and rippled with muscles, declared a one-man War on Evil and then rushed off to go win it.
One by one the most famous Dark Lords in the world had been cleaved in two by a bronze battle-axe three times as big as a normal man. Nanoc wasn’t, what you’d call, a traditionalist. You were never actually supposed to kill the Villain. If every Hero went around killing Villains then there’d be no Villains left to cause trouble. And if there were no more Villains how did you know you were a Hero?
A Hero without any Villains was like… like… a sandwich with no bread. It just didn’t make any sense! Nanoc had gone and gotten rid of all of the Villains and so put every Hero out of a job. Well, after that the other Hero’s had agreed that “forcing hard-working men and women out of work” was an act of supreme Villainy and had joined together to vanquish such Evil.
After Nanoc had been killed, the Hero’s, like poor Robert, had sat back and waited for new Villains to pop up and start wreaking havoc. The problem was that none of these new Villains had been apprentices to the old ones, so they had no clue what they were doing.
That’s what led to things like spike-less and monster-less pits made out of sodding marble. With pillows! Robert had just remembered his head landing on something soft.
He whipped around and looked for the pillow. There it was, right on the floor, exactly where he expected it to be. Good.
He walked over and picked it up and gave it a good stern look. It was square and very well stuffed. It was a deep red and was adorned with a golden trim around the edges. Besides being in a pit like this there was nothing remarkable about it at all.
‘You’re welcome. Honestly, bloody cheek of some people.’
Nothing remarkable except that it could
talk.
This was new. The lack of all the usual nastiness could possibly be excused in light of this development. A talking pillow, how queer. Robert was eager to know more.
‘I’m Daniel,’ said the pillow. ‘Indifferent to meet you.’
‘Yo—, Ind— What?’ Robert was perplexed to say the least.
‘Well, to say it’d be a pleasure would be a lie and I’m not one who thinks relationships should be built on lies.’
Robert was lost for words. He desperately searched for some in his addled mind.
‘What are you?!’ he shouted, perhaps louder than was strictly necessary.
‘I’m a pillow,’ answered Daniel in a level tone. He was used to people responding to him like this.
‘Where is your voice coming from?’
‘Inside me. You don’t need a mouth to talk, you know.’
‘Yes you do! You’re not talking to me because… because… because pillows can’t talk, that’s why.’
‘Sorry to upset you mate, but the proof that you’re wrong is, well, it’s telling you you’re wrong.’
‘But how? Why?’
If Daniel had lips he’d be smiling. ‘Now you’re asking a real question. Funny story as it happens. I was one of your magic-wielding Heroes, you might have heard of me, Nilrem the Wise?’
Robert thought for a moment. ‘But you just said your name was Daniel.’
‘Well, after becoming a pillow I couldn’t exactly keep using my real name. That’d just be embarrassing. I only tell you ‘cause you’re a fellow Hero. Anyway, I came here to fight the Villain and all that and got dropped in here. I was never one for a rough landing so, as I fell, I used my magic to turn myself into a pillow. Soft, you know. Very clever it was. Only then it turns out that there’s a kind of magical drain or something down at the bottom here so I couldn’t change back.’
It was the classic tale, mused Robert. Man seeks Villain, Villain drops Man in pit, Man turns into pillow. He wiped a tear from his eye.
‘That’s awful,’ he said with a sniff. He patted Daniel on what he hoped had once been his back. ‘Don’t worry mate, I’ll get you out of here.’
‘I’d say thank you but I don’t really see how that’ll be accomplished.’
Neither did Robert, really. But there would be a way, he was sure of it.
‘You said you transformed as you fell?’
‘That I did.’
‘So it’s only at the bottom that you can’t use magic?’
‘Glad to be in the company of such a keen listener.’
‘Well then, if I throw you up in the air, you should get high enough to be out of this anti-magic field or whatever it is, right?’
‘Hey now, don’t you be getting any funny ideaAaargghhh!’
Robert, champion pillow tosser, tossed the pillow as high as he could. Daniel screamed on the way up and screamed on the way down as well. Robert caught him.
‘You’ve got to use your magic to change back, you fool!’ He tossed Daniel back into the air before there was a reply. The screaming started again but this time it was punctuated with a hearty POP! The red pillow with gold trim disappeared in a purple cloud and was replaced by a grown man in a red robe with gold trim. Funny that.
Robert tried to catch the falling Hero but misjudged things and Daniel hit the floor with his backside.
‘I guess that was a long time coming,’ he said in a strained voice. He stood up, nursing his sore rump. ‘So… What now then?’
That was a good question. Robert hated good question, there never seemed to be a good answer for them. The best he could manage was ‘Er…’
‘Well,’ said Daniel, clapping his hands together, ‘looks like we’re still trapped down here and now you don’t have anything comfortable to sit on.’
Maybe this Villain was better at Evil than Robert had first given him credit for. He really hated that.
The fall wasn’t bad. In all honesty the fall was quite pleasant. It was good to get the weight off of one’s feet, for however brief a time. Relaxing, in a way, and the rush of air provided a pleasant cooling breeze.
No, the fall itself wasn’t bad. It was the landing that was bad. Landing is the part of falling that no one likes. If we didn’t have to deal with landing then everyone would enjoy a good fall from time to time.
Robert Kane landed at the bottom of the pit with a very loud ‘Buggerit!’ He landed on his back, causing a cloud of dust and stale air to whip around him. His head snapped back and was spared from being split open on the stone floor by something soft. A pillow? In a pit like this?
Robert lay on his back for a few minutes while he waited for the pain to subside and had a good think about his new surroundings. Smooth, high walls, a nice cosy beige colour to everything, obligatory rat bones along the edges; he’d been in better places.
He’d been in better pits, as a matter of fact. This one didn’t have any spikes along the bottom nor did it have a ravenous beast of eldritch origins. There wasn’t even a steady drip for sending people mad. These Dark Lords you got today, honestly.
Robert sat up slowly and gave his back a rub. He’d live. He might bruise a bit but there’d be nothing worth worrying about as a result of his fall. He stood up and ran his hand over the wall of the circular pit. As he thought, it was completely smooth. Perfectly so, actually. Was this… marble? In a Dread Pit of Doom?! Surely this was some kind of joke. The floor must be about to open up again and drop him into the real pit. No one uses marble in these things.
Robert let out a sigh. That was the way of the world these days. That bloody fool Hero, Nanoc the Mighty, was to blame for it all. He’d swooped in one day, all tall and golden haired and rippled with muscles, declared a one-man War on Evil and then rushed off to go win it.
One by one the most famous Dark Lords in the world had been cleaved in two by a bronze battle-axe three times as big as a normal man. Nanoc wasn’t, what you’d call, a traditionalist. You were never actually supposed to kill the Villain. If every Hero went around killing Villains then there’d be no Villains left to cause trouble. And if there were no more Villains how did you know you were a Hero?
A Hero without any Villains was like… like… a sandwich with no bread. It just didn’t make any sense! Nanoc had gone and gotten rid of all of the Villains and so put every Hero out of a job. Well, after that the other Hero’s had agreed that “forcing hard-working men and women out of work” was an act of supreme Villainy and had joined together to vanquish such Evil.
After Nanoc had been killed, the Hero’s, like poor Robert, had sat back and waited for new Villains to pop up and start wreaking havoc. The problem was that none of these new Villains had been apprentices to the old ones, so they had no clue what they were doing.
That’s what led to things like spike-less and monster-less pits made out of sodding marble. With pillows! Robert had just remembered his head landing on something soft.
He whipped around and looked for the pillow. There it was, right on the floor, exactly where he expected it to be. Good.
He walked over and picked it up and gave it a good stern look. It was square and very well stuffed. It was a deep red and was adorned with a golden trim around the edges. Besides being in a pit like this there was nothing remarkable about it at all.
‘You’re welcome. Honestly, bloody cheek of some people.’
Nothing remarkable except that it could
talk.
This was new. The lack of all the usual nastiness could possibly be excused in light of this development. A talking pillow, how queer. Robert was eager to know more.
‘I’m Daniel,’ said the pillow. ‘Indifferent to meet you.’
‘Yo—, Ind— What?’ Robert was perplexed to say the least.
‘Well, to say it’d be a pleasure would be a lie and I’m not one who thinks relationships should be built on lies.’
Robert was lost for words. He desperately searched for some in his addled mind.
‘What are you?!’ he shouted, perhaps louder than was strictly necessary.
‘I’m a pillow,’ answered Daniel in a level tone. He was used to people responding to him like this.
‘Where is your voice coming from?’
‘Inside me. You don’t need a mouth to talk, you know.’
‘Yes you do! You’re not talking to me because… because… because pillows can’t talk, that’s why.’
‘Sorry to upset you mate, but the proof that you’re wrong is, well, it’s telling you you’re wrong.’
‘But how? Why?’
If Daniel had lips he’d be smiling. ‘Now you’re asking a real question. Funny story as it happens. I was one of your magic-wielding Heroes, you might have heard of me, Nilrem the Wise?’
Robert thought for a moment. ‘But you just said your name was Daniel.’
‘Well, after becoming a pillow I couldn’t exactly keep using my real name. That’d just be embarrassing. I only tell you ‘cause you’re a fellow Hero. Anyway, I came here to fight the Villain and all that and got dropped in here. I was never one for a rough landing so, as I fell, I used my magic to turn myself into a pillow. Soft, you know. Very clever it was. Only then it turns out that there’s a kind of magical drain or something down at the bottom here so I couldn’t change back.’
It was the classic tale, mused Robert. Man seeks Villain, Villain drops Man in pit, Man turns into pillow. He wiped a tear from his eye.
‘That’s awful,’ he said with a sniff. He patted Daniel on what he hoped had once been his back. ‘Don’t worry mate, I’ll get you out of here.’
‘I’d say thank you but I don’t really see how that’ll be accomplished.’
Neither did Robert, really. But there would be a way, he was sure of it.
‘You said you transformed as you fell?’
‘That I did.’
‘So it’s only at the bottom that you can’t use magic?’
‘Glad to be in the company of such a keen listener.’
‘Well then, if I throw you up in the air, you should get high enough to be out of this anti-magic field or whatever it is, right?’
‘Hey now, don’t you be getting any funny ideaAaargghhh!’
Robert, champion pillow tosser, tossed the pillow as high as he could. Daniel screamed on the way up and screamed on the way down as well. Robert caught him.
‘You’ve got to use your magic to change back, you fool!’ He tossed Daniel back into the air before there was a reply. The screaming started again but this time it was punctuated with a hearty POP! The red pillow with gold trim disappeared in a purple cloud and was replaced by a grown man in a red robe with gold trim. Funny that.
Robert tried to catch the falling Hero but misjudged things and Daniel hit the floor with his backside.
‘I guess that was a long time coming,’ he said in a strained voice. He stood up, nursing his sore rump. ‘So… What now then?’
That was a good question. Robert hated good question, there never seemed to be a good answer for them. The best he could manage was ‘Er…’
‘Well,’ said Daniel, clapping his hands together, ‘looks like we’re still trapped down here and now you don’t have anything comfortable to sit on.’
Maybe this Villain was better at Evil than Robert had first given him credit for. He really hated that.
