Finish the Story Contest - WEEK #37!
A contest with a pot of 5 STEEM + 5 @steembasicincome shares? You're in the right place!
175 @steembasicincome shares awarded till now, plus 22.558 SBD and 43 STEEM, through the contest in 36 weeks!
What do we have here? But, of course, today's yellow finned prize categories caught fresh for your discerning palates!
1st place: n. 5 STEEM
2nd place: n. 2 steembasicincome shares
popular vote: n. 2 steembasicincome share (remember to vote your favorite!)
Best comment to the stories: n. 1 steembasicincome share
Map of the Bananafish Realms from a priviledged squirrelish perspective!
Tell to a friend about the contest!
Join the Bananafish Realms discord chat for fresh updates and other amenities.
Vote, vote, vote your favourite story (and win 2 SBI)!
Use the #finishthestory tag.
Try to post your story the earliest possible and not at the last moment (or after the results! argh!)
Respect the dreadful 500 words limit! o_0
Help our contest & workshop to grow by giving it some visibility.
And now.. let's dive into today's story!
Lucid Dream
by @f3nix
There it was. An immense sphere, soaked in the amniotic liquid of the lucid dream. An embryo of edges, curves, dimensions, and impossible geometries. Static and fluid at the same time, iridescent, elusive and hypnotic in its eternal becoming.
There it was. After the struggle and the debris. There it was. Yoh's conscience.
Strung like pearls, millennia had relegated it to a mere legend, while Yoh raged freely on Earth. The existence of the conscience on a deep and subtle plane had been denied by the Master Demiurges, who originally created the source code. Their self-fulfilling prophecy had become inexorable, relegating Yoh's conscience first to the status of children's fable and then to nothingness. It had slept for a long, long time.
There, on board of the DDG-31/DD-936 Decatur, drifting in the outer space, Ethan had plenty of time for being instructed by the orbital station's A.I. about the possible effects on him of Yoh's conscience sudden epiphany.
It was not a God but it got close. This implied that the disintegration of the self, on all the planes of existence, was a more than spontaneous and probable event, as someone reached its proximity.
A sound of laborious ants interrupted Ethan’s astonished musings. The meta-viewer force fields were working around him incessantly, raising the programmed shields.
The mere sight of its unstable geometries would have been fatal for him. The neural system of his exoskeleton was crackling and working hard, at the edge of its computing power, to prevent the involuntary assimilation. Now he found himself immersed in a bath of waves that could have slipped him into oblivion instantly if he had not activated all the exoskeleton’s guard levels.
He felt like an infinitesimal dipteran, imprisoned in a dense amber atmosphere.
The Conscience's voices suddenly whipped Ethan's synapses like a thousand organ pipes in unison. He fell to his knees, eyes wide open and incredulous: no A.I. could ever have prepared him for this.
"I am. I happen. By dreaming, I have sung the creation of infinite worlds. Are you a Master?"
Ethan recorded the strange question, slowly taking courage. Standing up on his trembling legs, he pulled off his helmet and shouted:
"Conscience of Yoh, I am not a Master. I am the last of your creations, forgotten in your long sleep".
A deafening, golden silence.
As the most intimate essence of each cell began to evaporate through his cybernetic shell, Ethan frantically sought one last thought.
Let’s grow together!
With delegations, @bananafish VP will grow and consequently the upvotes given to every contest entry will be higher. @f3nix, @tristancarax, @theironfelix, @raj808, @brisby, @maverickinvictus, @cyemela, @marcoriccardi, @calluna, @oivas, @anixio, @ntowl are the names of the proud Bananafish Knights who already delegated a fraction of their SP to this project.
Following the voting trail is a way to make sure you always support the other participants to the Bananafish contests, automatically upvoting the posts (but not the comments) @bananafish upvotes. @foffelius, @steelochlaver, @f3nix, @marcoriccardi, @anixio, @gwilberiol, @brisby, @calluna, @ntowl, @dirge, @iamthegray, @seesladen, @theironfelix, @letalis-laetitia, @vdux are already in the trail.
If you’re interested, here you can find all the information needed.
Bananafish Tribe supports @anarchyhasnogods project called Collective Intelligence. Cheers to our yellow-finned buddies @theironfelix and @dirge who are moderators in the @co-in community together with me, @f3nix.
This is a promising model, which rewards quality based on a decentralised consensus protocol… what does it mean? You can submit worthy posts to the @co-in platform and hopefully this will result in some interesting upvotes for the author. Many submission to Mizu No Oto and Finish the Story contests have already received upvotes from Co-In.
Join in at Co-In site here!
https://collectiveintelligence.red/
Or join on Discord channel to interact with the community!
https://discord.gg/sx6dYxt
Join the fun! Here is how this contest works:
An unfinished fiction story or a script is posted.
You finish it with your own post or a comment in the comment section. A limit of 500 words is recommended.
WIN 5 STEEM + 5 @steembasicincome shares to the writers with the best endings and comments.
If you like this contest..SPREAD THE GOSPEL! We're grateful for your resteeming and word of mouth. Everything helps to grow together!
This post has been rated by the user-run curation platform CI! In this platform users are able to manually curate content. This is done regardless of Steem Power, for both rewards and vote size calculation.
Join in at our site here!
https://collectiveintelligence.red/
Or join us on discord to interact with the community!
https://discord.gg/sx6dYxt
This post was submitted for curation by: @theironfelix
This post was given a rating of: 0.0
This post was voted: 0%
Ontology! Fasten your seatbelts!
Made it, this was a tricky one but all the more fun
My attempt; Lucid Dream
And damn it, @theironfelix gave me a great idea for flipping the script after i'd already written this, but yeah, ended up leaving all my clean slate ideas by the wayside, and plumping for the obvious ending... I think...
I don't know about your other ideas, but I loved your so-called obvious ending ;-)
Here's my entry:
https://steemit.com/finishthestory/@cyemela/finish-the-fiction-story-contest-week-37-bananafish
Cyemela strikes once more!
Wait for meeeee!!!!
https://steemit.com/finishthestory/@michaias/finishthestory-week-37-the-end-of-the-beginning
Ayeeeeee! Just in time before the gates's closing 🤠
First I wanted to skip this round. But then I just began to write thinking: "oh well, why not? This time I won't do any research, no further thinking. Just do whatever my hands like to do and my mind provides me with... ."
That is the result, shaken loosley:
https://steemit.com/finishthestory/@erh.germany/finish-the-story-contest-lucid-dream
After reading, I can say that I'm glad you participated!
Oh, I'm amazed to find again Ethan, the lone astronaut (of both outer and inner space) and the "Decaf". I'm a bit confused, however... I tried to place this story in relation with Edition #29's "Metallic Kisses", but I had to give up, because I can't determine if this one is placed before or after, or in a sligthly alternative reality (my best take)...anyway there's my entry ;)
No, everyone.. don't ever do that! If ever they're connected..there are an amount of chapters between one episode and the other. I'd be sadistic to ask for a connection (and you masochist) 😜
So we can go completely off script with this one, and set it far far away from anything that has come before? Ohhhh now i have an idea!
It's always good to brush up on the good old principles of this contest 😉
In this contest I reward originality.
Trying to guess the author's idea of a second part is not considered a plus. This is not "guess my final".
The prompt is at the service of all of you and made to inspire you.
What I told Marco is that every edition aims to create a stand alone piece. I could never ask the participants to link one edition with another.. what about a newbie that comes here for the first time? And how could you give coherence and context in a 500 words format? This format aims to create short stand alone stories (but we can always play with names and referrals). Trying to connect a story with other ones is a difficoult and also worthless practice in a reward perspective.
You may take every direction suggested by your creativity as long as the final result is not forced. In other words, if any reader takes the two parts of the story, mine and the participant's, and reads them together, she/he should find the whole piece entertaining.
The main evaluation criteria remains the content (with it's hooks, twists, changes of perspective, and so on). I reward original content with the capability of engaging the reader and entertain through a well written short story.
This is a simple collaborative writing exercise with the outcome of a nice (very much curiable) story. Nothing more and nothing less 🙂
Having said this.. I hope that you'll have fun and if you decide that you want to participate just for fun, ignore all of the above, and let your pen ride.. then just do it!! As much as every other author, I'd also very much love to know if you liked my story. Cheers!
Oh noooo!! I have already posted it! I did go with dropping my mental preconceptions about this character, having written about him a few times before in the version I turned out. Ohhhhhhh, have I really been doing it wrong this whole time? I hadn't been trying to guess the original intention, but if it comes across like that what can I say. I feel like my writing needs a real overhaul, I am missing the mark on everything. Maybe I just need a break. I'm sorry, letting the nana team down again here! Will work on trying to be more original, engaging and entertaining for next time ;)
As always, your writing is incredible, I think I compared reading it to taking drugs in my post, it is immersive to read, and has an experiential aspect which really opens it up. In terms of something to finish, having to decode it to some degree, unpick a possible meaning, gives for a lot of freedom. For me, this one had some fixed weights I struggled to pull along, the outer space reference being the one that had bopped by first, considerably more original, idea on the head, but in terms of a contest, a challenge is a good thing. So even more points! ;)
Wahhh no panic!! I'm in a rush now.. forgive my short reply. Cal, you're one of the best writers here, I don't think you misunderstood the parameters so much 😁 Oh, thanks so much for your appreciation.. you made my day! In this idea there are elements of sci-fi and metaphisic .. I liked that blend. Have a great Sunday! ✌️
First blood!! I was almost forgetting!
I'm back! Here's my very late entry haha! This week was rough for me, but I'm glad I'm back to participate in this week's contest (even if I didn't make the cut xP). I was eager to write some scifi for quite some time now!
I'm very happy to see you back, young padawan!
Well ... spank my monkey. It's out.
Time to read other entries for this week.
https://steemit.com/finishthestory/@tristancarax/lucid-dream
Spank it! Happy that you made it Tris ✌️
Vote your favorite story here!
My vote is for @calluna. Each ending has strong eschatological connotations, but hers is the one that in my opinion has the strongest message of rebirth and palingenesis, and I feel the need to read positive messages (even when I write about negatives).
We also have to add a vote for you by @theironfelix and one to @erh.germany by @michaias
Calluna's wonderful ending (& new beginning) wins my favorite for this week. Props to Tristan for some trippy action (loved the beasts) and to Gwilberiol for the Ghostbusters reference (because that went through my mind when Yoh asked if Ethan was a Master).
My vote goes to @calluna.