# Literary Maneuvers January 2023: A Magnificent Failure (3 Viewers)



## Harper J. Cole (Dec 31, 2022)

*Literary Maneuvers January 2022*​A Magnificent Failure​


​Introduction
The new year brings new ideas and new stories. Let's start 2023 by failing magnificently...

650 words max., deadline 23:59 GMT / 18:59 EST, Saturday, 14 January
If you win, you'll get a badge pinned to your profile, plus the chance to enter our Feb 2024 *Grand Fiction Challenge*, which carries cash prizes.

Judging

Our judges include* Vranger*,* Ibb*, *piperofyork*,* S J Ward* and *SueC*. If you'd like to volunteer, please let me know via PM or in the Coffee Shop. If you wish to know more about scoring, take a look at the NEW JUDGING GUIDE which also includes a template to use for your scoring. Please use this template for consistency.

Additional

All entries that wish to retain their first rights should post in the LM WORKSHOP THREAD.

*All anonymous entries will be PMed to myself and please note in the PM whether you want your entry posted in the workshop.*

Please check out our Rules and Policies for extra details on the LM contests.

Everyone is welcome to participate, including judges. A judge's entry will receive a review by their fellow judges, but it will not receive a score, though some judges are happy to let you know their score for you privately. Please refrain from 'like'-ing or 'lol'-ing an entry until the scores are posted.

Judges: If you could send the scores no later than* January 31st,* it will ensure a timely release of results. Much later than that and I will have to post with what I have. Again, please see the Judging Guidelines if you have questions. Following the suggested formatting will be much appreciated, too.


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## BadHouses (Jan 7, 2023)

*A Magnificent Failure (263)*

"Y'know Governor, it's refreshing to hear you say so. I think even our people are touched by luxury because so few of them speak frankly about their own station, particularly about its distinctness and heredity. 

We must conduct ourselves acknowledging the underclass is genuinely a half-brained mass coasting along on the coat-tails of civilization, trading their pain and squalor for jobs to feed their wives and future labourers.

They live below ancient g-loaded survival cutoffs, but with the cornucopia provided by our toil, the unfit thrive nonetheless, stripped of the spark that makes being human incredible.  They are cursed to live, I regert to say. 

I tell you I've gone law, business, politics. How could any of them cope with the stress of any, let alone all?  Christ, they're here, at a re-election rally. Have you ever been anywhere other than on stage at a rally? Of course not, that's retarded. 

In times past we aristocrats outbred the peasantry. Civilization has made this impossible through industry. You can either be a do-gooder and waste your days trying to improve them, or enjoy your station because their genes make that an impossibility. 

There was an era when they could really raise a ruckus, like a French Revolution.  They still possessed the diluted guts of their forefathers, and were fewer, though that came with tremendous costs; consider again the French Revolution. 

And I'll tell you this for--my God! You, who's been waiting patiently to an end in the conversation, what the hell do you want, boy?"

"Hot mic, Mr. President, sir."


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## Harper J. Cole (Monday at 7:10 PM)

Too Holy
_by Anon_

The tower was impossible not to be awed by. It was several times higher than any other magnificent structure in the splendid capital of this glorious realm.

Unlike all the other towers, this one didn't have a name. When you said "the tower" without adding anything, everyone knew what you were talking about.

Currently two men wearing expensive clothes and hats were in a somewhat heated dispute at the edge of the central square.

"What you're saying, Ghidush, is bordering on sacrilege," thundered Trufash, a man in his late thirties with dark brown eyes and sideburns. "The tower is the symbol of our country's might that is admired across the world."

Ghidush, a somewhat younger man with a mustache and gray eyes was unimpressed. "I have said it before and will continue to say it: the tower is an appalling testimony to the infinitude of human stupidity. Imagine the amount of resources wasted just because one mad king wanted to study the sky! Besides, it makes me sick to think that the construction was continued for forty years after the tyrant's death. How much misery could have been avoided, had all that work been put to good use?"

"The tower isn't exactly useless. The light on top of it guides the seafarers and has undoubtedly saved many lives."

"Please, Trufash! You know a much lower lighthouse would serve the purpose just as well, and all that firewood wouldn't need to be carried to such insane height all the time."

The older man sighed in frustration. "The lighthouse is only a small part of the good the tower is doing. Look around you. So many people from other countries are coming here to admire this most amazing wonder of the world. Not only do they spend good money here, great many people hold this tower for sacred, which gives us strong protection from potential foreign invasions."

"Maybe so, but the immense costs and human suffering which the construction of the tower caused outweigh the rewards."

"You are forgetting that the suffering and misery you love to talk about is in the past. There isn't anything we can do about it now. But the revenue and reverence we are getting from the pilgrims on a daily basis is benefitting us right now."

Ghidush shook his head. "I'm aghast at the thought that all those people worship something so meaningless. I wish the tower would just disappear."

"Well, it looks like you refuse to see reason," Trufash snapped. "But I'm warning you – don't you dare disrespect the sacred symbol of our country and people in public!" He turned around and left quickly.

Late at night in bed, he said to his loving wife, Moala: "We are truly blessed to have the tower, aren't we?"

"Of course! It's a constant reminder of everything we love and cherish."

He smiled and kissed her fondly. "What does the tower symbolize to you?"

"Why, it looks like a gigantic penis."

Trufash thought he had misheard. "A what?" he exclaimed.

"What's the matter? Didn't you know that women worship the tower as the penis of Gaius, the god of Earth? Hundreds gather in the woods at the ceremonies in His honor. Sometimes it's thousands. And the sight of the tower inspires us every day."

It was fortunate that she couldn't see his face in the darkness, distorted with bewilderment and disgust.

"In my younger years, before I got married, I attended the rites whenever I could, to pray to Gaius together with the others," she went on. "I'm very happy I did."

When Trufash didn't reply, Moala reached under the sheets. "You're a lot like Him, you know," she said playfully.

"Please, honey," Trufash replied, similar to the god of Earth as he may have been. "I'm exhausted."

_Heaven preserve us!_ he thought before falling asleep. _We have to demolish the tower._


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## Louanne Learning (Tuesday at 1:39 PM)

*The Perils of Pantsing

(631 words)*

A certain excitement starts to build inside me as the new prompt for the flash fiction contest is posted. _A magnificent failure_—sparks thoughts. Failure is ubiquitous and we all know the lessons that come with it. Shouldn’t be too hard to get an idea. Figure out character and setting, and trust that a plot will unfold.

Begin with research. Chin in the palm of my hand, I scroll through my Quora feed. A post about aging lights up my imagination. I, a regular pantser, venture blindly into the ether and begin a story about a middle-aged man named Goober who eats bologna sandwiches and never realized his dream of being a locomotive engineer and then meets his older self in a park. No, scratch that. He meets his older self in a Curiosity Shoppe. But—what magic item does he find and what will the magic item do? I’m stumped. At around 300 words, Goober’s document is closed.

New idea needed. A webpage about medieval men-at-arms puts my fingers back on the keyboard. I begin a fairy tale about a handsome knight with flatulence who wakes up on the morning of the big joust with stage fright and disguised as a jester seeks to redeem himself in the medieval version of open-mic night by making duck sounds. But—what role for the princess? I get to about 360 words before I admit the plot is seriously flawed. In the bin it goes.

The endings are eluding me. Maybe I’ll have a drink. Lubricate those brain cells.

I begin a story about a neurosurgeon with gaunt cheeks who rewires the brains of unsuspecting patients, intending to make them brilliant, but instead they turn into zombies who become vegans who invent a better vegan bacon that reanimates their brains and the neurosurgeon is taken captive by cattle ranchers out for blood but medieval men-at-arms ride in and form an alliance with the zombie-vegans—

Way too complex. I’ll never keep this to under 650 words. The zombie story dies.

I waste a big stretch of time on social media. A post about the dancing plague of 1518 puts me back in the game.

I begin a story about a somnolent slacker who gets fired from his desk-job and then takes a position as a ferret-catcher on the Island of Killarney, and on a moonlit night, on the rocky shore, he meets a singing seal who transforms into a beautiful woman with Daddy issues and is an ancient Celtic queen who infects the populace with a dancing plague and the now wide-awake slacker, who has been dancing with the ferrets, is the only one who can save them, but he has to choose between seals and ferrets—

At 400 words, I get stuck. Do seals dance? Pacing the loop from one end of the house to the other and back again does not bring any answers and I abandon the story.

I am getting desperate. But I will not give up!

I begin a story about a persistent ballerina in a red dress who scores as an ESTJ on the Myers Briggs personality test and must recover a stolen laptop with government secrets on it from a line-dancing fisherman who got first place in a strip poker tournament and ever since has been training bullmastiffs to wear fire-suits for recovery of children from burning buildings but the bad cops infiltrate the ballet organization and—

Argh! Where’s the failure in that? I forgot to work in a failure!

Ideas are easy; writing is hard. A good friend of mine said to me one day, “Writing is easy. You can write anything.”

Humph. I guess this exercise is proof that you cannot.

It’s hopeless. What a magnificent failure. I guess I won’t enter this time.


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## S J Ward (Wednesday at 8:29 AM)

*Launch day. (649 words)
*


One of the highlights of the year at the marina—we would be relaunching one of the Dunkirk little-ships after a major refit. She’d spent the last five years undercover, being stripped down to a shell before receiving a keel to mast-head rejuvenation. Today was the culmination of relentless graft by a team of expert boat-builders and shipwrights.

Delicately, I manoeuvred the Roodberg-trailer beneath the yacht inside the large tent. The crowds of well-wishers were already in attendance, watching and assessing. Using the levers from inside the cab of the JCB, I gently lifted the hydraulic side-pads of the trailer to kiss the hull. The nose of the trailer I raised next, until that too was just in contact with the keel. The radio squawked into life as my workmates checked the contacts and gave the okay for completing. Slowly, I operated three levers and the boat raised majestically from the ground, captured by the trailer.

Once we had her, I drove at a snails-crawl out of marquee and to the travel-hoist at the wet-dock—a huge radio-controlled, frame-work device, easily capable of lifting this huge yacht clear of the trailer and placing her into the water.

I jauntily exited the cab of the JCB and took up the controls of the hoist. The task… to drive the hoist over the yacht upon the trailer. The four huge hooks then lowered to a reachable height—two either side of the boat—strops are then connected from port-side to starboard hooks, beneath the keel and the stropped hooks are sent upwards remotely. The lift was good and smooth.

A film crew had arrived and bottles of champagne were readied. The owner of the boat climbed a ladder to get aboard, and I moved the hoist, complete with yacht and skipper, away from the trailer and over the water in the dock.

Steadily, I operated the controls and the boat lowered into the water. When the boat’s waterline felt the cold-water for the first time in years, I held the descent, allowing the owner to go below to check for leaks from the newly-planked and caulked sides. She was dry!

Simon, the skipper, appeared back on deck, a huge smile on his face and the party started. Corks flew and champagne-flutes filled. A cheer went up when someone on the shoreside piped… god-knows-what, on a bosun’s-whistle. The film crew filmed, a reporter reported. I stood proudly, looking down the length of the yacht, still loosely held by the strops and I was happy that I had played my part well on this momentous occasion.

The usual thing now, is to start the engine. Simon bled the stern-gland (essential) and then operated the key. The yacht’s new engine fired up as sweet as a nut.

“Let us go, Steve!” Simon shouted above the celebrations. I pushed forward all four levers on the remote-control, the strops and hooks lowered further into the water, releasing the boat. As soon as the strops couldn’t foul anything I thumbed an okay—it was time for him to reverse the yacht out of the dock and into the fairway.

Simon positioned the yacht’s morse-control into astern and hammered the revs to get clear. A huge cheer erupted. The reporter found a higher octave to scream out his excitement. “There she goes! Beautiful!” He cried!

Suddenly, something happened that I had absolutely no control over! The propellor and shaft, spinning wildly, abandoned the boat and torpedoed out across the fairway, on their own, before sinking. The uncontrolled boat decelerated and came to a halt beyond the fairway and in the river—slowly filling with water through the big hole left by the absent prop-shaft.

Simon’s face was a picture as the boat slowly sank. We knew it! He knew it! He hadn’t tightened the nut that held the shaft in place. The crowd hushed and everyone twiddled thumbs.


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## Ladyserpentine (Yesterday at 1:00 AM)

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## tonsonenotany (Today at 6:22 PM)

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