[OT] Fun Trope Friday: Problem with Fighting Death & Western!

[u/katpoker666]

Welcome to Fun Trope Friday, our feature that mashes up tropes and genres!

How’s it work? Glad you asked. :)

 

• Every week we will have a new spotlight trope.

• Each week, there will be a new genre assigned to write a story about the trope.

• You can then either use or subvert the trope in a 750-word max story or poem (unless otherwise specified).

• To qualify for ranking, you will need to provide ONE actionable feedback. More are welcome of course!

 

Three winners will be selected each week based on votes, so remember to read your fellow authors’ works and DM me your votes for the top three.

 

---

Next up… IP

 

April showers bring… paradoxes? Yea, not a clear lead in for this one, but paradoxes are all kinds of fun, so let’s explore some this month! Please note this theme is only loosely applied.

 

"The fear of death follows from the fear of life." – Mark Twain

 

Trope: The Problem with Fighting Death — ...is that even if you win, you'll still eventually lose. As nemeses go, you can do worse than be Enemies with Death. The Grim Reaper isn't unbeatable, he can be whipped into submission by a sufficiently cunning Guile Hero with The Plan or a sufficiently tough Action Hero with a good enough weapon or a nice game of Chess.

There's just one small problem: these cosmic entities usually play a pretty important role in the universe and afterlife

 

Genre: Western — Yeehaaaa!!! We’re off to the Wild West again! The Western is a genre of fiction typically set in the American frontier between the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the closing of the frontier in 1890. The genre is commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States, particularly the Southwestern United States, as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada.

 

Skill / Constraint - optional: Includes a zombie of some form or meaning.

 

So, have at it. Lean into the trope heavily or spin it on its head. The choice is yours!

 

Have a great idea for a future topic to discuss or just want to give feedback? FTF is a fun feature, so it’s all about what you want—so please let me know! Please share in the comments or DM me on Discord or Reddit!

 

---

Last Week’s Winners

PLEASE remember to give feedback—this affects your ranking. PLEASE also remember to DM me your votes for the top five stories via Discord or Reddit—both katpoker666. This is a change from the top three of the past. In weeks where we get over 15 stories, we will do a top five ranking. Weeks with less than 15 stories will show only our top three winners. If you have any questions, please DM me as well.

Some fabulous stories this week and great crit at campfire and on the post! We had 5 stories, so we’re back to three winners. Congrats to:

 

• tiredraccoon11

• IdyllForest

• MaxStickies

 

---

Want to read your words aloud? Join the upcoming FTF Campfire

The next FTF campfire will be Thursday, April 9th from 6-8pm ET. It will be in the Discord Main Voice Lounge. Click on the events tab and mark ‘Interested’ to be kept up to date. No signup or prep needed and you don’t have to have written anything! So join in the fun—and shenanigans! 😊

 

---

Ground rules:

• Stories must incorporate both the trope and the genre
• Leave one story or poem between 100 and 750 words as a top-level comment unless otherwise specified. Use wordcounter.net to check your word count.
• Deadline: 11:59 PM EDT next Thursday. Please note stories submitted after the 6:00 PM EST campfire start may not be critted.
• No stories that have been written for another prompt or feature here on WP—please note after consultation with some of our delightful writers, new serials are now welcomed here
• No previously written content
• Any stories not meeting these rules will be disqualified from rankings
• Does your story not fit the Fun Trope Friday rules? You can post your story as a [PI] with your work when the FTF post is 3 days old!
• Please keep crit about the stories. Any crit deemed too distracting may be deleted. This is a time to focus on our wonderful authors.
• Vote to help your favorites rise to the top of the ranks (DM me at katpoker666 on Discord or Reddit)!

 

---

Thanks for joining in the fun!  

---

[u/Divayth--Fyr]

Hell or Breakfast

.

The narrow streets of Cheyenne were deserted, silent. The End Times were come, sure as anything, with the dead rising.

Gus Winton huddled in the barber shop, peeking now and then out the broken window. He had a rifle, but didn’t know what good it would do. Bullets didn’t seem to stop the dead ones.

His family was gone, his wife torn apart in front of his eyes by those horrible things. They were—they had been—people he knew. One had been his own daughter, Alice, empty-eyed and moaning, gore and gristle on her pale face.

Gus had terrible secrets and knew he wasn’t saved. He wanted to be, he begged in silent prayer for grace, but out there even Parson Miller stalked the dusty streets, feeding on living flesh. What hope was there for a sinful fool?

Lessons learned from a pious mother and stern father bubbled up, and he knew what was happening.

The Seventh Seal was surely broken. The moon would turn to blood and the earth would shake and tremble. Vengeance was come. Armageddon.

Oh, he was so thirsty. He touched the rough wood of the floor, rocking back and forth, his prayers too loud, his cries escaping.

The saloon stood right across the narrow, dusty street. He hadn't been inside in years. In drink he was a demon, and had done terrible, unrighteous things. In the throes of the flowing bowl he was cruel, immoral, and lascivious; scornful of God and men.

He'd fled the law to Cheyenne, where none knew him. There he'd met dear Betsy, his wife, who had set him on the straight and narrow, or tried to.

Now Judgement had come, and all he wanted was a taste. Just a drop, a sip.

He stood.

Stepping through the window, glass crunched beneath his shoes, and there was the Law. Sheriff Townsend stood outside the saloon, idly thrashing his dead arms and moaning at the wall, along with his two deputies.

At the sound of glass they turned, and for a wild moment Gus thought the men would draw their pistols. But no, they staggered closer, moaning mindless need. Gus lifted the rifle and put a round in each head, and the corpses flopped into the dust and stayed there.

Gus looked at the rifle in amazement. It had to be an Instrument of God to put those things down. Surely, it was the Will of the Lord God of Hosts that Gus Winton should have his spiritous liquor for breakfast.

More dead came out the swinging saloon doors. Righteous was his unholy wrath, and true his aim.

The sound of hooves and moaning came from up the street as Gus reloaded his Holy Rifle.

And he looked, and beheld a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed after. Hundreds, thousands of dead marched in ragged formation behind their master.

An immensely tall figure in a black robe, and sporting a fancy bone-white ten-gallon hat, dismounted. His grim army stopped, swaying in breathless silence.

Pulling a great curved scythe from a holster on his leather belt, Death turned his empty sockets on Gus Winton. A message appeared in Gus' mind without words: a beckoning.

“I won't go with you,” he replied.

Dark visions of eternity.

“I don't care about eventually. I'll have a drink first, come hell or high water." He pointed his blessed weapon. "And yea, Death and Hell delivered up the dead which were with them, and were cast into the lake of fire!. Begone, harbinger of sorrow! I cast you down!"

The Reaper tilted his head to one side, lowered his scythe, and waited, bony fingers tik-tak-tok on the grip-handle.

"This is the Holy Rifle of Cheyenne! It cast down the dead! Behold! But just you let me have a drink first, and I shall march into damnation at your side. That is my bargain. That I will do, though all the devils of Hell march against me.” Gus turned his back on the Reaper, and strode through the swinging doors.

Madly, impossibly, the bloated corpse of the bartender handed him a bottle and a glass.

A sense of curious amusement emanated from the cold mind of Death.

Gus Winton sat, watched with infinite, bemused patience by the Reaper, the Assassin Against Whom No Lock Will Hold, the Grave of All Hope, and verily he got roaring, rascally drunk.

Eventually, he staggered back out.

---

741 words. Zombies aplenty. Feedback welcome.

[u/tiredraccoon11 → u/Divayth--Fyr]

Hey Div! I was very intrigued and excited to see a western penned by the one and only, so I’ll start praising it without further preamble.

I like the direction you took with the prompt. Nothing super fancy or avant garde that would leave you struggling to explain everything with the word count, and it feels appropriately religious for the time and setting. The zombies are indeed very prominently featured, so extra bonus points there!

Gus as our POV hero is pretty strong. I enjoyed the nuance in his character, and you did a good job of balancing the pacing of the narration and the explanation of said nuance. He feels very much like an average schmuck elevated to the unlikely hero, and I’m a sucker for that trope.

I also liked that you had Gus leave the safety and small, ridiculous hope of some kind of salvation from the barbershop for his more sinful, hedonistic ways. Among all the religious goings-on, there are some especially neat connotations there (interpretation left as an exercise for the reader of course).

A solid choice for the setting. Cheyenne grew rapidly and developed into a more urban hub far beyond its po-dunk peers on the frontier, so it makes sense for a zombie apocalypse to be especially devastating there.

Now for some admittedly nitpicky suggestions:

Maybe a little more description of the scenery? The Western genre especially is basically a shoe-in for what everything looks like, so not too much is missed with a barebones scene-setting, but Cheyenne for much of its life was a bit different from what I imagine many know the west to look like.

Overall, Gus Winton feels a bit detached from his setting. Aside from a few name drops and a brief mention of his family toward the beginning, there’s not much explanation of his connection to the community of Cheyenne, not even a job or motivation for being there. He also seems a bit impious to be able to quote verbatim passages from the Bible. Also, when he confronts death, Gus is reassured by the same religion that has condemned him? Maybe a tweak to his character is in order there.

This one is definitely a bit messier than I remember some of your other pieces being. I get that Gus is a bit frazzled by the whole zombies thing (understandably so) but especially after he’s left the barber shop and stares down Death, it might be good to switch to a less frantic and more steady style of narration to reflect his new resolve.

This is definitely a personal thing, but I would have maybe liked a suitably-Western twist to the appearance of death. There’s nothing particularly wrong with a more timeless interpretation that follows what is laid out in the Bible, I just feel it’s a missed opportunity for more flavor, seeing as how we’ve already departed fairly comfortably from convention.

Now for the actual nitpicks:

They were, they had been, people he knew.

This is a good and harrowing clarification, I’m a fan of the implications. That said, I'd put the interruption here in em dashes instead of commas, as if Gus is correcting himself.

but out there, Parson Miller stalked the dusty streets

I gather from context that this person is the ideal candidate for salvation, but what exactly did he do to earn it? Is he a priest, a pious churchgoer, or just a plain good person?

The Seventh Seal was surely broken, the moon would turn to blood and the earth would shake and tremble.

There should be a conjunction after the first comma here. The rest of the narration generally adheres to the Laws of Grammar, so this isn't necessarily wrong, just out of place for me.

Righteous was his unholy rage

"Wrath" I feel would be a more fitting noun here.

And he looked, and beheld a pale horse

Gus has already "looked" in the prior paragraph, and repeating it for emphasis didn't do much for me. Also a bit of missed opportunity for flavor here, as horses were pretty important for people in the West and maybe Gus can tell that of all the horses he has seen in his life, this is no ordinary horse.

An immensely tall figure in a black robe dismounted

I like that you physically put Gus and Death on even footing here. Some interesting connotations, although it feels tonally inconsistent with the following interaction (Death only indulging Gus for his own amusement).

Silent laughter like the closing of a crypt came to his mind.

This simile didn’t particularly work for me. I believe it’s meant to describe a sound, but I’m left unsure what that sound sounds like.

Eventually, he staggered back out.

Haha, very clever ending you cheeky Div! I feel like you could do something here to reinforce that this very... complicated individual has at last met his fate in the bar. Like drop his full name or use "shambled" instead of "staggered" or something.

Good words!

[u/Divayth--Fyr → u/tiredraccoon11]

Hey raccoon!

Well I have done what I could. I couldn't do a lot in terms of describing the general area, as it felt a bit contemplative for one facing zombies to notice the architecture and so on very much.

Tried to flesh out Gus a bit, as far as I could.

Parson is a title by the way, like Reverend and such.

Gave Death a holster and a ten gallon hat. Edited various blips and blops, tried to make it make sense. I wrote this fool thing at insane o'clock in the morning, when tired beyond reason, so I'm not surprised it's a bit messy. I wouldn't have been too surprised to find I had posted it in some random subreddit about knitting or something.

Anyhow, thanks for reading and helping!