Idol week 17 - Negative Reverse

[tonithegreat]

Ben wasn’t in the mood to listen to anyone’s crap anymore. He was tired of his dad, absolutely sick of his mom, and one hundred percent through with his younger twin sisters. If he had to hear his mom tell them all that they should be thankful that they lived in a nice big three bedroom house one more time he was going to scream. No house was big

Comments

[bleodswean]

A virus story! I think you’ve really captured some of the understandable frustrations of a teenager who has to Stay Home. Great setup and strong visuals! I could see every scene!

[tonithegreat]

Thank you! Not enough time to polish much this week- I am not in the enjoying-slowing-down demographic for this plague. Maybe I’ll get there before it’s over, but full telework days and two fifth graders to get set with distance learning does not equal a slowdown.

[adoptedwriter]

Beautifully detailed in all the right places.

[tonithegreat]

Thanks! Everyone wrote so beautifully this week.

[roina_arwen]

Nicely fleshed out. It’s interesting how “dangerous” has sort of taken on a new meaning these days.

[tonithegreat]

So many different types of danger! So little time to write. Thank you kindly!

[halfshellvenus]

blabbing to parents and authorities about dangerous old men under bridges, right?”
There's never a way for a question like that not to sound suspiciously creepy. As in, "Why are you brining that up? Do you have an ax there next to you?" o_O

The stir-craziness here is what so many of us feel right now, especially parents stuck in the house with bored children. The more people, the harder that gets!

[tonithegreat]

Indeed, vagrants under bridges are tough characters to flesh out uncreepily, particularly when the POV character is a teen. Part of my inspiration for this was the fact that our police did bust up a vagrant squat near the city pool I’m always at for swim practice and it made me wonder where that put all those people now that we’re in the middle of this mess. But, yeah, I didn’t actually manage to get into that piece of things much. And then add in the inherent creepitude of the use of the negative reverse. . . I’m actually super impressed with anyone who managed to take this topic to happy vibe-land. And a few people did!

[banana_galaxy]

So much detail and feeling in this story. Great use of tension, too.

[tonithegreat]

Thank you. Sometimes tension is a lot easier to throw out there than it is to resolve.