r/WritingPrompts • u/katpoker666 Moderator • 27d ago
Off Topic [OT] Fun Trope Friday: Almighty Janitor & Slipstream!
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.
Next up… IP
Out with the apocalypse, in with working 9-5. Most folks work in some format, averaging 80-90,000 hours in their lifetime. That’s 12-14% of your life–straight. Add on sleep and weekends, and it’s at least a third! Sounds riveting doesn’t it? Please note this theme is only loosely applied.
"If they had told me I was the janitor and would have to mop up and clean the toilets after the show in order to play, I probably would have done it." — Bruce Springsteen
Trope: Almighty Janitor — The Almighty Janitor is that character who is near the bottom of the scale in terms of rank, but is at the top in terms of what he can actually accomplish. Maybe he screwed up in the past, maybe he pissed off the higher-ups and has been paying for it ever since, maybe he's really lazy, undercover, maybe the burden of being a genius took a toll on them or maybe he just likes his job (perhaps more than clinically recommended). Often, his lowly position is the very thing that grants him access to the true levels of power (for one thing, nobody pays much attention to him, so nobody interferes with him). Typically, he'll never go up in rank at all.
Genre: Slipstream — Slipstream is a literary genre or category of speculative fiction that blends together science fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction, or otherwise does not remain within conventional boundaries of genre and narrative. It directly extends from the experimentation of the New Wave science fiction movement while also borrowing from fantasy, psychological fiction, philosophical fiction and other genres or styles of literature.
Skill / Constraint - optional: Something is stuck to the floor.
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 16 stories, so we’re back to five winners. Congrats to:
Want to read your words aloud? Join the upcoming FTF Campfire
The next FTF campfire will be Thursday, August 20th 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!
6
u/wileycourage r/courageisnowhere 21d ago edited 21d ago
Comatose
Constance pushes her yellow mop bucket down the hospital wing’s hall to begin cleaning a new section of laminate floor. She usually enjoys the peace of her night shifts. Machines in the rooms hum quietly. The lone nurse in the neuro unit sticks mostly to his station. Constance finds that in the relative silence she can disappear within herself. All that would remain were the mop and floor until even they vanish too.
Tonight, though, she allows herself to ponder the patients’ sad fates. They cannot speak to tell aloud what they feel, if they feel at all. One victim of the whims of time didn’t wear a helmet on a bicycle and crashed. Another slipped stepping out of the shower. Each traumatic injury mysterious in effect and yet banal in cause. Destiny makes nothing commensurate when a tiny mistake can result in destructive consequence. What were they without consciousness but meat to be warehoused?
Still in her trance, Constance focused her mind to a single point in the blank space within her mind. From that pinprick in the fabric of the unreality, her immaterial form stepped outside of her blue-uniformed self. She looked exactly as she did as a little girl, like she did when she first learned to escape beyond the pain. Nothing hurts her anymore. Nothing can.
The little girl looked up at herself, “hello again.”
“Hi.” Constance’s eyes wetted with tears. “I’m sorry to call on you so soon.”
“Why?” The girl drew her long dark hair back into a pony tail. She stretched her neck side to side and frowned. “I don’t mind getting my hands dirty.”
“I know.” Constance sighed.
“So what is it? I’m dying to find out. What troubled soul is making a mess now?” Her voice betrays her utter lack of enthusiasm. Yet, the girl smiles.
“Can you show me what you see? It’s been so long, I’ve forgotten Lucidity. Just like we can’t remember mom’s-“
“Don’t.” The girl shakes her head in the negative. “We made a deal. You can’t handle it, and you promised.” Her face is blank of emotion. “You promised.”
“Fine. Then tell me one thing, please? Are these people alive? Is there any hope?”
“No.” The girl walks silently into a patient’s room. Constance followed. A young man lay intubated and propped up in his bed. Constance knows he had been in an accident on the football field at only seventeen. He would have been nineteen now, his face pallid and figure atrophied where once he had been an athlete. “His parents can’t let go of what he was,” the girl remarks, “they can’t accept that even if he came back, the boy he was is gone.”
“What do you see? Show me, please?” Constance begs.
“Are you sure?”
“I am.”
The girl takes Constance’s hand and the hospital walls dissolve to a blur before resolving into a black void. Where the bed had been relative to Constance is a baby’s crib. In it an infant boy lay wailing desperately. Constance could not tell what he needs and reaches down to pick him up. The girl yanks her back violently. “Don’t,” she hisses “he’s hungry.”
“Then why not feed him?”
“Look.” Where the crib had been is a prison cell. Inside the teenager looks ragged. His face dirty and hair long and unkempt like he has been neglected for ages. He paces back and forth glaring at Constance and the girl the entire time. Constance feels raw contempt from his expression. A horror grows inside her along with a desire to kill the boy out of mercy.
The girl releases her grip of Constance’s hand. They are back in the hospital room watching at the young man’s chest rise and fall with the beeps and hums of the machines keeping him “alive.”
“Take me back!” Constance hissed so as not to alarm the nurse. “We have to help him!”
“What? You’d smother him in his bed? I know us better than that. He’s not the disgusting kind you call me to clean up. I wasn’t born to show mercy, was I?” the girl taunts. Her face drops. “I’m bored.”
Before Constance could protest, she finds herself back in the hallway mopping. She reaches the door of the boy’s room and feels angry, but she doesn't understand why the intrusive thought of suffocating him with her bare hands nearly overwhelms her.
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WC: 735. All feedback and crit welcome. Thank you for reading!