r/WritingPrompts • u/katpoker666 Moderator • 12d ago
Off Topic [OT] Fun Trope Friday: Soul-Eating Cybernetics & Body Horror!
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
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!
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:
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! 😊
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)!
Thanks for joining in the fun!
7
u/AnAuthor_Antonio 9d ago edited 6d ago
A patchwork of memories among the corrupted files told Deva she’d once had batteries but long ago they’d failed. So had Atuun’s.
Without batteries they had been doomed. But here in this room, they’d found a devil, struck a deal.
Now both stood guard here. Separated by a gap, a gash shorn a mile deep by a Phase Giant in the final war.
The sad tick-tick-tick of a blown gear set the tune for her melancholic mood. It was a constant companion earned from her poor choices; the mood had once assailed her in waves, abating from time to time allowing for moments of relief. Now she lived below the tide of it. Subsumed entirely.
Deva walked and at the end of the cord she stopped. Her lifeline, her jailer pulled tight; taut and straining Deva leaned forward against it. She felt the sinew and veins deep inside of herself threaten to snap and smelled the burning of electronics. Another step would be nice. Release. Relief. The window was right there and all the world beyond it.
The moon.
The blinking light of Atuun across the way. Hopefully.
Can I leave? She wondered.
She should like to unplug and to move into the moonlight. Deep inside the umber-weave of her skull somewhere amongst blinking microchips dotting the dead doughy tissue that was once her brain came an answer to her question. No.
Still, she tried. Routines ran and fought and the answer was as always. A unanimous no.
Life flowed through the cord in warm pulses. Long ago those pulses replaced her blood. A little boy with metal eyes and a girl with hair of glass and thoughts that floated on air had facilitated the transcendence.
Where was that duo now? Somewhere among the dirt and rust beyond the Living Alkaline Lake, most likely.
Were it not for invaders Deva may have forgotten blood. She may have forgotten her entire past. Atuun.
What would she be then?
Not bones and blood. Just a machine. A failed machine.
The bodies scattered about the small room bore little resemblance to the- to what Deva now was. The rotting ones were most similar.
Hunks of desiccated muscle fitting loosely around a central bit of frame.
Somewhere in the depths of the rotting bodies, small things moved about doing their business and the rotting corpse moved a little at their behest.
Deva thought that comparison apt.
There was no living flesh on or in Deva. Deva, like the rotting bodies, could not leave the room. All what truly lived was below the edifice, bugs in one and bugged programming in the other.
Deva and Atuun wanted to walk the wastes of world together forever. Now they were stuck. Slaves and sentries.
Deva searched her memories for Atunn’s face.
ERROR MISSING
That was all the response that Deva would get.
Someday that is all there would be.
On the wind the whispers of voices carried into Deva’s tomb. Deep inside of her dormant things came to life. Her arms became weapons, inhuman and hideous.
The voices drew closer.
Would they disturb Deva or Atuun? Deva wished Atuun so that she could hear their song. Deva felt guilt. Atuun never liked killing.
Deva whistled. It was the whistle of some animal she could not name. Some beast that no longer roamed this husk of a planet.
The voices came closer now.
Her servos whined and the cord pulsed hot.
Deva wanted to unplug. To move to Atuun.
Routines ran and fought and the answer was the same as always. No.
It was not unanimous. Something was shifting. Breaking.
The voices went away. Replaced by thumping scraping and slamming at the door.
Deva ran the routines again and again and again pushing the system to its limits.
The door opened and four silhouettes streamed in. Weapons grew from them as they moved in on her. They were not entirely human.
But they were not Deva either.
She did not choose her action; she was the action.
Loud and bloody. Broken bones. Crushed and snapped. Cleaved and cauterized. She ran the routines as she danced and they died.
When none drew breath, when none moved, she paused.
She ran the routines. There was no answer. There was no hot pulse. The cord tethered her no longer.
She felt her energy ebb. Deva moved to the window, into the moonlight and peered across the gap searching for Atuun.
In the darkness across the way a waning green light twinkled.
WC: 750 Constraint: Something shorts out. EDIT: Made a few changes based on the feedback from Killer_queenie. Thanks Queenie!