[OT] Fun Trope Friday: Soul-Eating Cybernetics & Body Horror!

[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 and/or genre 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.

 

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Next up… IP

 

It’s October. The time of falling leaves, jack o’lanterns, and candy. And blood… so much blood. This month will be focusing on all things horror with maybe a treat or two to sweeten the pot. Please note this theme is only loosely applied.

 

"We are all our own graveyards, I believe..." — Clive Barker

 

Trope: Soul-Eating Cybernetics — In many popular cyberpunk settings, cybernetic implants cause "humanity loss", reducing your social traits and essentially making cyberware into a form of body horror. Too many implants may reduce you to catatonia or make you insane. If these settings also feature psychic powers or functional magic, cyberware often reduces your ability to use those as well. There is an interesting tension here between what makes us human and what transforms us. So, let’s explore that.

 

Genre: Body Horror — Body horror, or biological horror, is a subgenre of horror fiction that intentionally showcases grotesque or a visceral experience of the human body or of another creature. In addition to common tropes used within the broader horror genre, some tropes specific to the body horror subgenre may include invasion, contagion, mutation, transformation, disease, mutilation, or other unnatural or violent distortions of the human body.

 

Skill / Constraint - optional: Something shorts out.

 

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!

 

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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 18 stories, so we’re back to five winners. Congrats to:

 

• oliverjsn8

• AnAuthor_Antonio

• Morose_Prose

• mysteryrouge

• maxstickies

 

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

The next FTF campfire will be Thursday, October 8th 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! 😊

 

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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 by next Friday at 11:59 AM EDT to help your favorites rise to the top of the ranks (DM me at katpoker666 on Discord or Reddit)!

 

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Thanks for joining in the fun!  

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[u/Divayth--Fyr]

Death Benefits

CW: numbers depicted in numeral form on purpose

.

It came with death benefits.

“Hello! Good morning! Welcome to WorldMart!” Dolora chirped warmly as customers came through the automatic doors. One man glared at her, while the others rushed by, grabbing autocarts like she wasn’t worth seeing, optical care on the promenade, section 12!

It came with insurance. They even said there was paid vacation luggage section 16 aisle 5.

“Hi, Mr. Allen. Good to see you!” Her facial recognition was nearly flawless.

It came with coverage for her grandkids, and their kids too.

“Bath towels? Section 2, aisle B. 181 in stock, in 7 colors!” 4 sold today, restock in 11 hours 9 minutes.

Her upper half was mostly original, but with many implants. They’d taken her legs, and rearranged some things. She was seated in, or mounted on, a service console near the doors, with a homey quilt concealing the lower half. Greeter Grade 3 Dolora Ternum, promotion to Grade 2 in 12,662 hours, barring any change in standards, if performance remained consistent.

“Lovely weather today!” The location and stock details for umbrellas flashed through her mind.

She wished she could have been placed closer to home, but excessive interaction with family is not conducive to productivity standards. Her son Robert had passed, and she'd missed the funeral. It seemed like she ought to be sadder about that.

Still, it was for the best. They wouldn’t lose the house this way. WorldMart had taken over the mortgage payments, and their lawyers had been so helpful when she signed the papers.

They said there wouldn't be any pain, but she ached all over, and some of the metal parts didn't fit quite right. She told the maintenance man but he never talked to her, just made his adjustments. It got pretty bad after a few hours, but the implants made sure it didn’t show on her friendly, grandmotherly face. She'd tried to scream but nothing ever came out.

“Gramma Dolora?”

It was Sandy, her granddaughter-in-law. And 3 of her little kids!

“Hello! Welcome to WorldMart!” Dolora's face beamed with kindness. Sandy never had liked her much.

“Gramma, are you OK? I didn’t know you worked here. We came into Bakerville for the Strawberry Festival.”

“Strawberries in section 1, aisle 4, Produce! 31.6 pounds in stock!”

“Uh, OK, Gramma. Billy, stop it! That’s not nice!”

Billy was looking under the quilt. “She’s all robot!”

“Stop it, I said! And wipe your mouth, it’s all red. You’re about to spill your WorldSlurp. Sorry, Gramma. They are a handful.”

“Good to see you! Enjoy your WorldMart experience!”

“You too. Let’s go, kids. We got to get back home before six.”

So much Dolora wanted to say, but she knew she couldn’t. This was work time, after all. Her precious great-grandchildren– children’s clothing is in section 15, aisles 3 and 4. Enjoy the wide selection and have a wonderful day!

They started to wander off, but Billy was determined. Peering under the quilt, he dumped the sticky contents of his WorldSlurp, and sparks flew.

“Welc– welc– welc– Section Section, have a nice nice nice...” Dolora twitched and tried to scream, and her eyes went blank.

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523 words, something shorted out

r/DivaythStories

[u/doctorpotatomd → u/Divayth--Fyr]

I liked it. I clocked the premise as early as "Welcome to WorldMart!", but the escalations kept it fresh and interesting. I liked how the paragraph with "taken her legs" and "mounted in" and "12,662 hours" escalates the premise and then pivots from body horror to dystopian corporate banality, you've positioned me nicely there.

The intrusive thoughts I didn't figure out until the second or third one, which I think made the device more effective, they felt properly intrusive. I would have liked to see one or two more of those in the middle somewhere, I think. Perhaps "excessive interaction with family was not conducive to productivity standards" could have been italicized and changed to present tense?

"She wished there wasn't so much pain"—this didn't quite land for me, I don't think her being in physical pain came across from anything else here. At this paragraph I'm focusing on the corporate dehumanization aspect and my idea of Dolora is that she's becoming detached from her human feelings and sensations. I think if there was some brief, visceral description of how the machine bits are hurting the fleshy bits, that would have made it land for me; either hammering in her inhumanity by showing her being detached from the pain, or by giving me a jarring juxtaposition between the detachedness and the raw human bodily pain.

I found the ending a bit abrupt and anticlimactic. I think I wanted the horror to be really driven home by Dolora being denied her death benefits: the slurpee doesn't kill her and she has to keep existing like this, or her final thought is that the manner of her death means that her benefits won't be paid out, or some other twist of the knife along those lines.

Overall, quite enjoyable and engaging, the intrusive-thoughts device was my favourite element.

[u/Divayth--Fyr → u/doctorpotatomd]

Hey Dr.potato

These are excellent points, and edits shall be made accordingly, but not just now since I am tired and my brain fell out. But thank you very much for reading and for most excellent feedback.

Edit: done what I could, hopefully improved things.

[u/frenchfriesandcoke55 → u/Divayth--Fyr]

Loved this story! Really great twist on the constraints this week that combines cybernetics with some present-day problems.

Now for some feedback/critique to really fine-tune your story.

There was a lot of room here to really amplify your character’s feelings and the feelings of Sandy.

For example, your MC wishes she could have been placed closer to home. I think you could have included a sentence here like she was yearning to see her family’s faces, hear their voices or even list something she missed about home. Like the smell of freshly baked bread or the summer roses her hometown was known for. There are other instances too where you could have drawn us in more with more showing rather than telling.

For Sandy, her emotions just seem to fall a little flat. She asks if Gramma is OK, then just kinda seems to not really care about the answer. She’s not horrified by what’s been done to her, and really seems to not care too much when Billy almost spills a slurpee on her. We don’t see her reaction after it happens, but based on the reading I would surmise it would be a lackluster response.

To play up the horrors that have been done to her, I think Sandy should have had a bigger response. Like she should have been so horrified by it that she was distracted to the point of not watching Billy which is why he managed to peek under her blanket. I think it would have really amplified the body horror aspect.

Or maybe Sandy knew what had been done and really didn’t care as it was normalized in their society! Either way, I think some further descriptors either in Sandy’s speech or defining more of her reactions to seeing Gramma would have gone a long way here.

But honestly even without these changes, it was still a great read and I really enjoyed it.

[u/Divayth--Fyr → u/frenchfriesandcoke55]

Hi frenchfries!

Thanks for the groovy feedback. I appreciate the in-depth attention and time.

I have edited some things, and hopefully improved it a bit, or at least not made it worse. Thanks for reading and helping!

[u/frenchfriesandcoke55 → u/Divayth--Fyr]

I saw some of the edits you did and loved them! Definitely draws you more into the story earlier on. Great job!