Slave To The Vines (unfinished)[]
< There once was a wine. A wonderful wine. A wine that's flavor was so incredible, so addictive, that it became something of a drug to any who tried it. People would go bankrupt just trying to get more. Eventually the wealthy of the town had to intervene. The townsfolk would rob the stores, the store owners would kick them out. They would rob the banks, the tellers would carry guns. Eventually, there was only one choice left, they would steal from the vineyard...
...But there was a legend about the little town, of a hag who owned the old vineyard. no one had ever seen her, and as a result the stories about her became more convoluted by the minute. Though a few key details always stayed the same. a bloated, disgusting being, warts covering her beach-ball figure. Twelve to fifteen feet tall. These stories were insane, but when something is said enough times, It is incredible how deep something can be imbedded in the human psyche.
After a while, disappearances began to happen on a regular basis. And soon the townsfolk realized that the disappearances always happened in the summer, when the famous wine was produced. so they marched to the vineyard with torches and pitchforks, and set out to find the missing children.
...Then they found the secret to the wine...
Every single barrel had a name engraved into it, and they soon realized that they were the names of the dead children, they opened the box, and found that the kids were rotting inside, flakes of rotten flesh mixing with the wine as they decomposed. The wine had driven the people insane, and they became cannibals. the townsfolk turned around to find more bodies, and they were alive...
...but no one in their right mind could say they looked like it...
They became husks, skin and bone, sunken eyes, mouths to large, and hands too wide. They ate the intruders, and their screams echoed through the little town. And no one has lived there since...
Thats what they say anyway, I've been squatting in the outskirts of the vineyard, and nothing creepy has happened at all. Was that a pair of glowing eyes in the distance? Probably my eyes playing tricks on me. Thanks for reading this weeks blog, and I hope to see you in the next instalment! >
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MakRalston (talk) 00:00, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[]
Hey RAZOR,
I enjoyed readin' your work for the contest, and now I'm back in black and ready to discuss Slave to the Vines...which was me in middle school (that's a pre-tik-tok joke I'm so sorry).
For starters, I really love the premise--the whole "wine" thing being really interesting. I think the set up is pretty good, but that being said I think you could really expand on it, as I felt the same with Medical Waste.
Did you know wine used to be held in animal skins? It was a way to age wine and give it a better flavor? Perhaps the wine has been...marinating...and that's why it's so addictive. I also love the witch-type woman, but it appears that her inclusion is rather brief. Perhaps a character interacting with her would flesh her out a bit better (pun intended).
I also think the intro could explain this town a bit more...where is it? Is that important? Who lives there? Are parents letting their children sip the wine (under a spell?) or are people fighting over it Purge-style? There's a lot of potential, here!
One final note, I do think the last paragraph could be dropped. Making it a fourth wall break doesn't really add anything to this narrative.
Overall, I'm excited to see what you do with this one! Keep it going, RAZOR!
William See (talk) 06:59, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[]
There's a few typos I noticed, some punctuation discrepancies as well. Give it another read through to find them. There's also a sentence which has a sort of non-sequiter, which is a conclusion that doesn't really fit the initial thought ("but when something is said enough times, It is incredible how deep something can be imbedded in the human psyche" <<< I'd rework this to make more sense). I'd also nix the (...) during the reveal portion, it isn't really needed.
Not a bad idea at all, like Mak pointed out, establishing some further details about the village and building up the hype around the wine and the disappearances could ramp up the tension. Good luck.
ZuggyWuggy (talk) 01:53, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[]
So, you took the idea of tainted wine and made into something of a nonsensical violent gorefest.
Nothing wrong with cannibalism in a story, but thing is, nothing about this makes any sense. Drinking wine mixed with decomposing bodies is not a nice thing to bear witness too, obviously, but it's a bit of a cliched cop-out to just write it off as "they all went insane" as your reason for the cannibalism.
"Thats what they say anyway, I've been squatting in the outskirts of the vineyard, and nothing creepy has happened at all. Was that a pair of glowing eyes in the distance? Probably my eyes playing tricks on me. Thanks for reading this weeks blog, and I hope to see you in the next instalment!"
Spelling errors notwithstanding, if you're writing a story in the form of a blog post, you make it clear from the beginning that it's a blog post. It seems as if you've just shoehorned in the blog as a last minute idea rather than having it exist from the outset. It's also extremely cliched to do the whole "nothing creepy has happened yet, I surrrreee hope nothing creepy happens haha!!"
The idea of wine being tainted by deceased children is a decent concept, but the plot is paper thin and needs looking at, perhaps you could involve some sort of occult practice to give the wine drinkers a reason to become cannibals? Perhaps the infusion of the bodies with the wine was a part of a ritual, and drinking the wine causes you to fall under the influence of whoever performed the ritual?
These are all baseline ideas that you could develop. Things need explaining a lot more than they have been.
Hope this helps, you do have a good initial premise on your hands.