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Mario’s “super mushroom” trips come to an end – Writing Stream Recap

After the ten stream streak of the Rubbish to Published series, last stream finally marked us going back to our roots during the writing exercise section: random sentences.

Random sentences are a great way to give your creativity a workout. And thankfully we have a great source of them: the kanji poop book.

We’ve gotten some “crappy inspiration” from the poop book before, and it turned out great. This time, we opened up to a random page, getting the kanji for “tea” and three poop-themed sentences to choose from.

The chat voted on which of the three poop-sentences would start our story, and this is what we wrote: (bold sentence was our “random” sentence, “brown” is “tea-colored” in Japanese.)

I thought I was looking at a brown bun, but it was actually my poop. I’d just come out from the convenience store bathroom, and went to buy a lottery ticket from the clerk. Sitting in the glass-covered heating oven by the register, along with some hot dogs, packs of fries, and steamed buns, was unmistakably the same turd that had left my bowels just minutes ago.

“Um, excuse me?” I said to the clerk, pointing at the poop. “But… what is that doing there?”

The clerk was an old man, probably in his seventies, with messy gray stubble on his face and a stained white uniform struggling to stay buttoned around his chubby body.

“Oh, that?” he asked with a chuckle. “Didn’t you read the sign?”

He pointed behind me to the bathroom. I turned and only now saw the handwritten note taped to the door that I’d been in such a hurry to get through before that I hadn’t noticed. It read: “Paying customers only. Freeloaders will have their poop sold.”

I turned back to the clerk, my mouth open in shock. “Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious. You go through that door and poop without paying, and you’ve entered a legally binding contract, bud. I press a button back here, and instead of getting flushed out to the city sewers, your expensive excrement gets brought to me instead.”

“But why?” I asked. “That’s disgusting. No one’s going to buy it. And it’s stinking up all the other food you have in that heating oven!”

The clerk raised a hairy, gray eyebrow. “Oh yeah? How long’ve you been in the convenience store business, bud? Let me tell you, running one of these places ain’t easy like it used to be. All kids these days want is health foods and Uber deliveries. Barely any of ’em even commute to work anymore, just making garbage YouTube videos from their homes all day and getting’ paid for it.

“So to bring in the customers, I had to get creative. I set up an Instagram page and a Twitter, maybe you’ve heard of them? The Non-Paying Poop Page of Shame? The kids love ’em. Get a thousand likes on every post. Business has never been better, thanks to freeloaders who like to pay in their bowel movements, and the weirdos who want to come in and see the real things for themselves.”

I was at a loss for words. The bell above the door rang, and into the convenience store poured a group of reporters and cameramen.

“Excuse me, Mr. Feece!” one of the women with a microphone shouted. “Would you mind giving Channel Five an interview on your inspiration?”

The clerk smiled a toothy grin and cleared his throat. “Of course not. But, first things first, how are you folks all payin’?”

I’m very happy with how this story turned out. Thanks to chat’s suggestions, I think we churned out a real juicy one, complete with social commentary. I think the title “Crapitalism” would suit it well.

After that we moved on to today’s prompt, and chat voted for this one submitted by Prace_Ace: “Now that Mario is treated for mushroom addiction, he slowly starts to realize how badly he’s wanted by the police for mass murdering and animal cruelty.”

I was hoping chat would pick this one, and they didn’t fail me. It was a ton of fun coming up with the weird things that happen in Mario games, and figuring out what would actually be happening in our real world. Plus we also managed to somehow get a bit of a plot in there too!

You can read our story here.

If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 7:30pm-9:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).

And you missed the stream, you can still watch Rubbish to Published or the writing prompts on YouTube, or watch the full stream reruns until Twitch deletes them.

Hope to see you next time, friend!

Scott Wilson is the author of the novel Metl: The ANGEL Weapon, forthcoming November 2018.

Featured image: Deviantart/theST1NG

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