Good morrow, players who’ve actually been playing up to this point. This week sees the triumphant return of the Grab Bag, necessitated by the fact that there were a lot of good ideas for the Create-a-Challenge.

Your job is to pick one of these challenges and do it, but to make it a truer team challenge, everyone on your team must attempt a different challenge.

Scores will be on the Netflix 1-5 scale, since judging these against each other would be a total apples/oranges thing. You’ll be judged against the parameters of the challenge you chose.

As always, the possibility of two eliminations is in place. Not that I’d look forward to another week of that (we’d match Survivor VIII’s record of nine non-sub eliminations to open the game) but at least it speeds the game up, eh? They’re due Sunday by 8pm Central.

And away you go…

David Larson, SPOILER ALERT!

“Siskel & Ebert”

1) Invent a movie — just a short summary, 50 words max.
2) Next, write a critic’s “thumb’s up” critique of the movie.
3) Lastly, write a second critic’s “thumb’s down” critique of the movie.

[K: 400 word limit across the three segments]

Leif Bierly, SPOILER ALERT!

I put a spell on you / because Hermione

In the spirit of nonsensical / kind-of-makes-sense spell names in the
Harry Potter books, come up with a new spell and put it into a scene
with any character from the Harry Potter universe of dweeby witches
and wizards. The only character that you must use is Hermione
Granger, who will appear in your scene somewhere to properly
demonstrate the usage of the new spell. This is most likely a comedic
type of thing, so points given for the cleverness of the spell’s name,
what silly magic it does, and how you can work Hogwarts’ resident
know-it-all witch Hermione into the scene.

200 words or less seems pretty fair.

Zack Sauvageau, nibbish and his Vogons

My challenge is fairly simple: write a 300 word inaguration address for yourself. You were freely and democratically elected the leader of the free world. The wrinkle is that the electorate does not know you aren’t a benevolent leader, but a power hungry tyrant set on making your regime a dictatorship. Let the nice people down lightly.

[K: lowered the word limit from 500 to 300. There are still a lot of you]

Will Young, I’m With Stupid

Each player must provide the dialogue for a comic strip or editorial cartoon in which all text has been removed. The judges will provide multiple comic strips and the players will choose which to complete (at the beginning of each entry, the player will designated whether submitting for A, B, or C). The judges should provide one strip for every four players still remaining in the game at the point in which the challenge is run.

The players do not have to create submissions based on the characters within the strip, but may instead create entirely new personalities and identities for the people/animals/etc. However, a player may also try to submit an entry in which the people/animals/etc. are in character, but should probably understand that the judges might have slightly higher standards based on preconceived notions of what the characters will say.

Additionally, if the judges wish, one or two words may be left from the original comic to guide the entries.

Obviously, the word count will be limited to what can conceivably fit in the dialogue or thought bubbles from the original comic strip. Scoring can be done either Netflix or a forced-curve scale depending upon the needs of the challenge at that point in the game.

Two examples have been attached to give a rough idea of how this challenge would look. Also, comics can be found easily at http://www.comics.com and “whitewashing” out the text can be accomplished even in MS Paint in just a few minutes.

Don Campbell, I’m With Stupid

Cool Story, Bro

Make up an anecdote about your personal past. The sort of thing you’d tell while drunk at a party to just one-up someone in the Cool Story competition that always exists at parties (even when it’s unintentional). The stories can be funny/sad/whatever. Bonus cred for believability. 150 word upper limit (because every good anecdote should be short, but have a decent amount of juicy details)

Peter Bruzek, nibbish and his Vogons

“Goodbye, Cruel World”

The world is ending – not in the metaphorical sense, but the very literal. The day and the hour are known, but there is no happy 11th hour ending to be had here. There is no ‘ark’ full of people, flying off to seed a new world, no bunkers where the elite of the world can hide out to ride out the storm. This is humanity’s final hour. Your task is to chronicle the time leading up to the moment where Homo Sapiens is extinguished.

Your story can be from any point of view you prefer, and can be set at any time you prefer, so long as the basics of the plot are not changed. Those basics are:

• Humanity will go extinct at some point in the foreseen future (as in the characters of the story know when this extinction will occur).

• There will be no survivors (human ones, anyway, if you want to leave the rest of the ecosystem alone, that’s your call).

Have fun at the apocalypse!

[K: 400 words here]

William Schuth, Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Season

In the style of the Los Angeles Times, or the local news in Los Angeles, something newsworthy has happened, but the story focuses on something beyond pointless. I (that’s spookymilk) once saw the news in LA start with a ten-minute segment that focused on a burning house that was threatening to spread, and the story was primarily focused on the fact that Jack Nicholson used to live there. Another friend of mine mentioned that in the LA Times, no matter how dark or serious the story, they often start with details about what the ‘characters’ in the story were wearing at the time. So, in the style of this fluff, write about something big, but focus on something vapid.

300 words.

—–

That’s seven, so we can roll with that. Dean, remind me of the Amazon thing when we do the strategy season.

Cheers, Submitters.