Dismal Circus Review

OT: Shameless Plug by Scapegrace on 2019-08-23 05:01:00 UTC Reply

I play Blood Bowl. I love Blood Bowl. But I've never thought about a Blood Bowl team as a medium for storytelling before. As such, I did an Experimental Literature all over the carpet, and it's a real pig to get the stains out. Here's the result! Read the team bio first, then click on the player names in order. You don't have to understand Blood Bowl lore or anything because I don't either. =]

Uncle C and the Useless Circus is available for your reading pleasure here. I hope it is to your collective satisfaction, and welcome any comments and feedback in the thread.

Enjoy. =]

Dismal Circus Review by Larfen J. Stocke, esq. on 2019-08-31 15:41:00 UTC Reply

I love Uncle Chuckles! The second he swept into town and rattled to a stop next to the local creek, releasing a strange stench like a wolf dissolving in acid and slowly turning that creek a deep gooey brown over the course of the day, I knew it was going to be a wonderful time!
Things really kicked up a notch when one of those uncles just started weeping during juggling and wouldn't stop - - by the first stone tossed by one of the local kids I was totally sold!

Unrelated to this, and I might've said it already on Discord, but this is a bloody fantastic kinda short story written in a real weird medium. You've got a real way, Scape, with filth and decrepitness. It feels wretched in the best kinda way, bloody beauty.

I hope Uncle Chuckles comes again soon! But maybe after our creek has gotten a little better and the stench and embedded tear stains have worn away a little.

And Uncle Chuckles loves you! by Scapegrace on 2019-09-01 01:20:00 UTC Reply

On a more serious note - I said it in the Discord, but my writing style for this short story project thing was heavily inspired by your work, especially Mound Duty (and the rest of Shift Twentieth, also know as The Best Spinoff I Will Fight You On This). A lot of my eye for the weird comes from Pratchett and Tom Holt and Robert Rankin - the usual suspects - but your work here really inspired me to find the beauty in people who have very rundown and ugly surroundings.

But yeah.

Shift Twentieth is Best Spinoff.

What... hast thou wrought? by Huinesoron on 2019-08-30 14:31:00 UTC Reply

I mean, I know what you wroughted (wright? wrooten?), I read both it and the discussion here.

But still.

What.

hS

Clowns. =] (nm) by Scapegrace on 2019-08-30 21:11:00 UTC Reply

I have no idea what I just read, but it made me laugh! by Neshomeh on 2019-08-24 03:16:00 UTC Reply

I feel kinda bad about laughing? But, eh, it's not like Chaos clone clowns are real people anyway, amirite? {; P

(I love the Shameless Plug strip, too. ^_^ )

~Neshomeh

Hey, don't feel bad! by Scapegrace on 2019-08-26 01:48:00 UTC Reply

The point of clowns is to make people laugh, right? In this, Uncle Chuckles is doing his job as a clown. Just because he's been cursed with eternal failure doesn't mean he can't be funny doing it, right?

But wait, does that mean he's actually succeeding? {= D (nm) by Neshomeh on 2019-08-26 16:55:00 UTC Reply

Oh, he's failing HARD as a Blood Bowl player. by Scapegrace on 2019-08-26 17:49:00 UTC Reply

I have seen more copies of Uncle Chuckles rendered little more than shattered husks than I care to remember. But it's still funny. Just in a slightly different way.

Thoughts (that might be spoilers) by Tomash on 2019-08-23 18:28:00 UTC Reply

Well that was an unexpected twist.

I'd been wanting to give Chuckles a hug throughout pretty much the entirety of the player descriptions (you did a very good job of making him someone who needs a hug - and some food - and so on). And hen the bit at the end where this is apparently all Chaos BS wasn't something I expected but it does make sense.

Anyhow, that was interesting and good (and very experimental).

- Tomash

The Chaos stuff is all in Uncle Chuckles's mind. by Neo New Skater on 2019-09-01 01:20:00 UTC Reply

He's suffered so much that he's starting to think that it's gotta be supernatural, when really? It's just us. Us humans. Every time...

...but does it have to be?

And then I actually read Scape's post. by Neo New Skater on 2019-09-01 01:22:00 UTC Reply

Silly me.

Thanks, Tomash! by Scapegrace on 2019-08-24 00:25:00 UTC Reply

Yeah, the idea hit me when I finally got round to reading the lore for Blood Bowl itself. Originally, the Blood Bowl world was very much akin to the Warhammer Fantasy world - lots of war and fighting and so forth. One day some dwarves stumbled across the tomb of an ancient forgotten chaos god called Nuffle whose texts sent the dwarf scholars trying to decipher them completely round the twist. You will note that Nuffle is one possible way of pronouncing NFL. This is deliberate.

Eventually, the now totally dribblingly insane dwarves produced a viable rulebook, which was useful because the orcs were attacking outside. They agreed to solve the battle through the use of a game, and thus the game spread out across the Old World, raising Nuffle to prominence and lowering the standing of the other Chaos gods.

In this story, part of Nuffle's madness infected the travelling circuses and other forms of entertainment that might threaten the dominion of Blood Bowl over the hearts and minds of the masses. One of them tried to game the system by forming a Circus of Blood Bowl... and this drew the gaze of Nuffle. The leader of the circus, an old-school clown called Uncle Chuckles, was cursed to forever fail, forever be a source of ridicule for daring to try and cheat a god.

So he made the best of it.

And thus Uncle Chuckles' Dismal Circus was born.

(Uncle C and the Useless Circus is a spinoff franchise that does a lot more touring. =] )

Oops... Disregard my other post here. by Neo New Skater on 2019-09-01 01:21:00 UTC Reply

I hadn't yet read this post. Sorry for the oversight! My bad!