Meh.  Ten pages for a tired punchline.  This one was not for me.

All of the rituals with the six-foot giants(?) were too drawn out.  A page or two could have been cleaved from this without losing much of the story.

What I actually did enjoy was enthusiastic Eldon sightseeing with his tortured family.

There is a better story in that, I think.

Not a bad tale..

Ending on a wet dream... I saw it coming    oh yeah I went there

pretty good descriptions/actions and the giants dialogue was spot on for 6 foot giants

Good job entering

Mark

The Simpsons joke should have set me up for this one, not to mention the title Cape “Disappointment”

It started okay, yes, the family’s problem was a little dull but the characters had some charm about them. Then those six-foot giants (Really!? Six-foot) entered and this one went downhill fast for me.

You named one “Giant 1” in the dialogue so it was obvious a second was coming and then he cuts Ben and withdrawals enough blood to draw symbols on the naked chick’s back and front, but this kid is hardly concerned about being cut or anything.

And then… oh, does it matter because it was all (SPOILER) a dream! I will admit to getting a laugh from it and I really hope this was put in because you didn’t have time to finish with the deadline looming.

Otherwise, not much to add. Writing was decent enough, a little overwritten at times but maybe that’s preference on my part.

Congrats on completing the OWC.

Steve

I was kind of getting into the idea of a new breed of people coming cause we're too violent.  Kind of a good sattire.

But, of course it's all ruined because of the 'it's all a dream ending'.  I laughed at it, but I don't think for the right reasons.  Maybe you might have saved it by having the father come into the room right after that, talking about going to the cheese factory, so we see it more as a premonition than a dream.

But maybe not.

All in all, not bad, and I was getting into it, but the ending went flat.

Still a lot of effort put into it.  I could tell that.

- Mark

A pretty interesting story.  One I did enjoy for the most part.  Not much to comment on except for your ending.  I personally don't like when stories end up being just a dream.  Don't know why but it always feels like a slap in the face for me.

This particular ending was pretty funny though and Dreamscale did bring up the possibility that they may be characters from his video game?  I think that could tie things up nicely.

Great job.

Johnny

So the consensus here seems to be that this was a generally serious effort with a punch line for an ending. I’m not so sure.

First off the opening was humorous to begin with (cheese factory?), and after the giants appeared the nonchalant way Ben took in all of the mythology seemed funny to me.

I’m also not so sure the ending was just tacked on. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but from those 6 foot tall giants (adults can seem so tall when you’re young) to the more subliminal, the whole story/dream seemed to have threads of male growing pains running through it.

So as a serious entry this doesn’t fit the bill. But as a comedic bit this could work with a little ‘punching up’. And apologies to the author if I’m way off on this.

Congrats on the OWC submission.

I think the ending would have been better if I had actually pitched a tent. Lol! I chuckled, didn't see it coming.

Interesting story, but I thought the way the characters interacted with each other was a bit cheesecake.  The giants descriptions were confusing, but I enjoyed their dialogue.  Should have given them names, it would have added some depth.

Good effort!

Johnny

Well, part of this was autobiographical. In high school and college, my parents would drag me on vacation with them for three weeks to the Washington coast. We'd spend five days at Long Beach (which is 5-10 mins from where marnieml's Unhooked took place).

In Long Beach, there's a real Jake the Alligator Man at a real Marsh's Museum. Originally, I thought that Jake would be part of the hyas tyee: maybe he was one of them and was underdeveloped or something. I also thought that maybe he was their pet or he was part of an Island of Dr. Moreau-type of experiment gone wrong.



Also, the gray whale skeleton is real. I sort of wanted that to factor into things, too, by saying that the hyas tyee had killed it or scavenged its flesh once it was buried in the sand on the beach.



Finally, for the last "this is a real thing!" segment: the cheese factory. There's a real cheese factory, located in Tillamook, Oregon...about 30-45 south of Long Beach. It's got lots of cheese samples, a nice cafe, and a really good ice cream parlor. They make some of the best cheese ever.



The Pacific Northwest parameter really inspired me. Several ideas came to mind all at once. The concept of the hyas tyee (Chinook people who'd become one with nature) was always there, but I had differing ideas for what they did in their forest sanctuary. (At first, they were seven-feet-tall, but I changed it to six feet for some arbitrary and stupid reason at the last minute.) Also, wanted to pull in the history of the area, since it's known as the Graveyard of the Pacific, due to the rough waters along the coast. The mouth of the Columbia River's claimed a lot of souls throughout the years. Between that and the weather, you've got an amazing recipe for good ghost stories.

In an early version, Ben saw several people in old clothing walking in a trance in the fog. He still followed them into the woods, where he'd discover the hyas tyee were using them either as a renewable food source or workers or something else. I thought maybe the HT would be scavengers who fed off all the death in the area and that's how they came to dwell there. I also started thinking that since they were one with nature, they might want to renew the planet and get rid of everything inferior and broken. So they start grabbing animals and people, performing spells and Native American magic on them so that they'll be ready to start this new genesis. So I ran with that idea for a little bit, turning Ben and Cori into Adam and Eve 2.0.

Around supper time on the due date, I thought I could wrap up the story and still get it in by the deadline, but it'd be close. Then it hit me: Ben's having a weird wet dream. I had the same reaction a lot of you did: I laughed out loud, but then hated myself for it. But it still seemed ingenious for some reason. Over dinner, I mulled it over a little bit and realized that with the vacation and the bored kids and the sexy dreams, I had a story about kids' obsession with instant gratification.

At the beginning, the kid hates the finer things (vacation, spending time with family, experiencing nature and cheese factories, etc.). The dad gripes at him for it, but he doesn't listen and just whines about video games. Then, he sees a pretty girl, follows her, is put through hell, but still is seduced by her. At the climax, he's given a choice: give into her or save his family and the rest of humanity. When he wakes up, we see the choice he made. While it was funny, it was kinda sad too. Kids would rather go for the instant gratification these days than self-discipline, virtue, patience, enlightenment, etc. In the dream, he made a discovery about the hyas tyee killing off the old humanity to make room for the new one. However, when he woke up, he could've also made a discovery that could've altered humanity's future by discovering the rewards of delayed gratification and self-discipline, thus bettering it. He didn't make that discovery, so he's altering it by continuing its degradation.

It may not hold water perfectly, but I'm happy I was able to be that deep with a OWC.  It was an experiment more than anything.