User blog:ChristianWallis/I Read These Pastas, You Won't Believe What Happened Next! (no.5)

Whew there’s been a lot of submissions. I’m proud to say I’ve damn near scanned them all since November 4th (and was furious to realise I’d missed the chance to post a happy Doomsday post on the 10th but maybe I’ll remember next year) and have put together a longer than usual list to cover most of November. Unfortunately chunks of December and the last bit of November are going to have to be added sometime next week because I’m only human and there’s just been loads of new stories since my last blog post.

So let’s start with posts from notable users because I’m a sycophant (these are from all over the damn place).

Jenna from JohnathanNash. Short, effective and emotional. Maybe this counts as a feelspasta? I don’t know; I don’t like to think of the word ‘feelspasta’ too much because it unsettles me in the same fashion as other words like ‘moist’ and ‘low fat’. Either way I think John’s made a superb contribution here and considering that it’s not too long you should give it a quick read and drop a comment letting him know how handsome I am good it is.

Bubbles from Anarchic Operations – haven’t seen too much of this guy around lately. I presume it’s because he’s too busy fighting off whatever monstrous creation was seasonally belched out of the Australian desert. Either way this is a cool little micropasta that’s well constructed, and has a hospital setting. It’s a neat exploration of a novel method of killing we don’t see in pastas all that often.

Redundant Red from Jay ten – we got a rare post from Jay here and for those of you weary of him ever since Ned and Verner, you can be pleased to know this isn’t a NSFW pasta. Rather it’s an interesting, assumption-challenging, short tale (I’d guess <2000 words but I’m not a calculator so don’t hold me to that) with great imagery and Jay’s usual dry sense of humour. I really liked it.

Twitching and Convulsing by MrDupin – What an awesome story this is. I love micropastas like this and I was particularly endeared to it because it reminded me of the V/H/S wraparound segment (I love anthology horror films). Visceral, full of powerful imagery, and legitimately frightening.

Nirvana Lost (Parts one and two) by KillaHawke – I struggle with poetry but I know enough to know what I like, and I like KillaHawke’s latest entries. While I’m here I’ll mention another recent entry of his called Tighty Whities which I read and enjoyed along with another one of his called The Maiden and the Lost Villagers; he’s certainly been busy!

Then we have Fleshgait from Empy! I’m gonna have to be honest and say I haven’t had the chance to read this in full but Empy is always putting out superb stuff and he does so in a sneaky manner so I thought I’d bring attention to it and highlight this story. I’ll be finding the time to review this soon enough (because with a name like Fleshgait you can damn well bet it’s on my list) but until then, I still owe Mike and a few others reviews.

On a similar note ShadowSwimmer77 has been continuing his origin series so you may want to check his user page to read those recent submissions!

Now I’ll be looking at submissions from other users who aren’t quite so regular.

Stonehenge – Derpy’s third story, and it’s set in the stone age but unlike Far Cry Primal it’s not a colossal disappointment. It’s got effective descriptions and an interesting plot, and it also introduced me to the verb ‘to nock’ which means to fit an arrow onto a bowstring ready to fire; who fuckin’ knew such a word even existed!? Either way, I enjoyed this. It drew me in, and kept me interested.

Cold Storage by DoctorBleed – This suffered massively from tense changes at first and truth is it still has some weird wording. But I’m willing to ignore these fatal flaws simply because of the clever and original plot. It bypasses cannibalism (which is one of my least favourite plot lines) and aims for a different take on “desperate situations call for desperate measures”. It’s voice is reasonable consistent in character and tone and the scene are well set.

Love Doll and Its Sweet Serenade by A. S. Afterlife – This user submitted something like seven stories in a single night. Unfortunately this method of posting really hampers your ability to get read or receive feedback. Nonetheless they really took off with Love Doll where they embraced a little bit of magic realism with healthy doses of body/psychological horror to make something worth reading. I like surrealism in horror I feel like this story is more reflective of a psychological setting than a grounded one and I embraced that and enjoyed it.

Strawberry Syrup Is to Die For by G.M Danielson – Grant is a published author; he's very shy about that fact so you may not have noticed. Either way, he is legitimately good, and it’d be silly not to mention the successes of this story. It’s interesting, weird, and well written. If you’re looking for a story with prose that’s on the higher end of the quality scale it’s this story by here.

Cross-Section of a Living Man by Levi Salvos – when I posted my own entry to the last cliché competition I felt pretty confident, and then I read Levi’s entry. It’s not an exaggeration to say I literally exploded with envy and left behind a puff of glitter and confetti. So here we are, at another entry and it has to be one of my favourite pastas of all time. I love Kafka, I love surrealism, I love body horror, I love… weirdness. I love it all. Give it a go, it’s not even very long.