Brandishing their clarinets, the terrorizers were advancing, their faces contorted into expressions of the utmost hatred. Mafalda strung her bow and Arvid drew his cutlass. Just then the god of middle brass, borne on the back of a giant bald eagle, soared down from the heavens. Matthew landed with an earth shaking thud in front of his disciples; “join me” said he, as two more eagles landed thunderously on either side of him. With a faint pop, the heroes’ weapons were replaced with French horns, and it became clear to them. They mounted their steeds backwards.
The terrorizers had amassed at the other end of the battlefield, chanting “woodwindhuakbar” in their high womanly voices. The mighty avian beasts kicked off the ground, flying towards the enemy with such speed that one might have thought they had been loosed from Ullr’s bow, and as the three old friends began to play Ride of the Valkyries, stentorian waves of sound poured from their bells and vaporized the pagan army.
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Hey, thundereagle!
So, as a bassoonist, I totally understand the band jokes that were popped into the piece from here to there! It gave me a good laugh.
I'll just talk about what this made me feel. For a moment as I was reading, it totally sucked me in, and I was ripping through the lines with my eyes with enthusiasm, and it was powerful, humorous, and I was smiling - then whatdowehavehereBAM.
I really can't find a way better than that to describe this. I'm not saying that it was bad. I understand that it was meant to be written like how you wrote it. I'm saying that it was powerful, and I'll probably remember it for a long time.
Just one nitpick; “join me” Said he,
the 'said' should not be in caps.
Thanks for sharing your writing with YWS!
Keep on writing, Mephis
Thanks!
I have never been a big fan of flash fiction, so keep that in mind. Not everyone's going to be. Just as not everyone's going to be a fan of short stories, or novels, or anything. However, the disadvantage of flash fiction is that it has very little history behind it, and comparatively fewer fans and dedicated writers. You might want to work on increasing your range of media/genre/length if you haven't already. Now that that's over and done with, let's get down to business.
Inasmuch as it is possible in a flash fiction, I feel that the story would have done better if no clues as to what is actually happening is put at the beginning. It would have worked better if I thought that it is going to be a fantasy battle. The surprise would have been purer after that, and I would be a little more amazed.
I assume that's what you're going for, because of the unorthodoxed plot. As a result, I find myself wondering what is actually going on. Why would Mafalda and Arvid draw their weapons to threaten people with clarinets?
Other than that, grammar's a bit out of place here and there. There are some capital letters that should have been there. But it's not that bad. There's but a few, which made what errors there are stand out. It's made worse by the brevity of your piece, because normally a few mistakes in a short story or a novel would have been swallowed up.
Now onto the better parts of your flash fiction. I like the lore you managed to put in such a short piece. From references to fantasy world building, it's there and it's refreshing. The rather original (even if nonsensical) plot is just as refreshing. It frees the mind. If you plan to write a longer piece based on this, however, it needs to be tamed with some conventions of writing. A semblance of a coherent plot and story, at least, though I'd welcome mystery and wonderment, just not too much to the point of it becoming chaotic.
I guess that's all I got. I hope things work out for you in the writing world. Dark Raven out.
Thanks man, I just wrote it down and published it... and as for the clarinets, its supposed to be a band joke...
Well, that's good to know. I guess I'll know what joke to tell when I'm in a band
But it seems like only a tiny select group would know about it. You'd have to find some way to make it a little more obvious for the rest of us.
Oh I meant marching band.... typically there is a rivalry between woodwind players and brass players
Hi Thundereagle!
So, this is very interesting as a piece. I understand that you've thrown it in humour for the second part of the story but man, you have a handle on action here. Right up until the bit about popping weapons, I was solidly into the story and I felt what was happening really well. I'm going to hope that you also start working on action stories, or mythical stories, that are more serious than what we have here because I really like the pacing and the action scenes.
You stop capitalising things midway through - once you start the humour - and you might want to fix that in later drafts. I'm also wondering why you chose 'akbar' as part of the chant, because Akbar is a real person and it just feels really odd. If you're going to use made up words, you really have to maintain the made-up aspect! At least, you probably should if you're going to use them consistently.
I think it works as a piece of flash fiction, you don't need to expand this unless you want to play more with the story itself. I don't think you should be expanding on the humour element personally, but that might be because I'm awful about humour. You obviously write fun things and that is awesome to see on the site, who doesn't need some more humour?! (Other than me, I'm a grump).
I enjoyed reading this, thanks for posting!
- Pen.
Thanks man, I'll have to go back through and fix the capitalization. and I was trying to have sound like allahu ackbar but instead of "god is greater" woodwind is greater
This story is really cool! It's a breath of fresh air from the usual stuff we get on here. Though this is not a review, I think you should've substituted another word for "laser" like ray or something less future leaning, it takes away from the mythical agenda.
Yeah I see what you are saying, thanks man