Camp Plot-a-Wanna: Color War!
CAMP PLOT-A-WANNA is a weekly 8-part series where Quirk Books staffers reimagine famous authors as pre-teens, stuck together at summer camp. Check out the rest of the posts here. It is also an entirely fictional place. Please don't have your parents drop you off at our offices with sleeping bags.
Memo
To: Camp Plot-A-Wanna Senior Counselors
From: Counselor Sappho
Come now, luxuriant Graces and beautiful-haired Muses.
As you know, this week at Camp Plot-a-Wanna, it was a war of the wits and words as campers went head to head in our traditional COLOR WAR. As the staff amanuensis, I have taken it upon myself to remit this record of Team Scarlet Letter vs. Team Black Beauty as they faced each other for glory, honor, and extra dessert at the dining hall!
Let the games BEGIN!
TEAM BLACK BEAUTY TEAM SCARLET LETTER
C. Bronte R. Bradbury V. Woolf H.P. Lovecraft
T. Geisel J. Tolkien E. Bronte J. Austen
L.F. Baum A. Rand A. Bronte G. Stein
A. Christie M. Shelly L. Carroll G. Chaucer
B. Potter R. Dahl J. Verne
Tug of Words
Pull! Pull! Each team grabs hold of an extra-long string of verbiage and yanks until someone bites the dust. Campers Verne and and Bradbury headed up their respective teams (though Camper Rand refused to participate, as such a team activity was not in her individual interest) and gave it a go.
Winner: Team Black Beauty
Arch-remark-er-y
One camper from each team does battle with bons mots and barbed remarks. After a protracted pit of pithiness, Camper Austen razor-tongued the competition to shreds.
Winner: Team Scarlet Letter
Capture the Sentence Fragment
Campers run, jump, and climb in search of one little piece of language. A piece that by itself is not a complete sentence. Camper Stein showed remarkable aptitude for locating untethered, almost nonsensical clauses, bringing her team victory in a landslide.
Winner: Team Scarlet Letter
Egg and Spoonerism Race
Hiss and lear! Campers compete to make the goofiest transpositions without dropping their precious egg. Although it seemed early on that Camper Geisel had a plaster man for success, Camper Carroll was off like a well-boiled icicle and soon dealt the opposition a blushing crow. Judges were moon sixed-up and unable to wronounce a pinner.
Winner: Tie
Plot Hole Filling
Fill in, pad out, and info-dump to get those gaping story gaps plugged! Campers A., C., and E. Brontë did their best to flesh out their stories with extended passages of smoldering yet static exposition, but in the end it was Camper Tolkien who piled up secondary characters, invented languages, and long, almost meaningless digressions into song to fill his plot hole first.
Winner: Team Black Beauty
Story Pitching
Ready, aim, fire! Armed with slingshots, campers do their best to sling their storylines as far as they could into the abyss. Though Camper Woolf started strong with a line drive, her subsequent shots hooked into the Stream of Consciousness and were disqualified, leaving a clear yellow brick road to victory for straight-shooting Camper Baum.
Winner: Team Black Beauty
Winner of Color War 2015: Team Black Beauty!
And they passed by the streams of Okeanos and the White Rock and past the Gates of the Sun and the District of Dreams. Counselors, please treat any and all members of the winning team to seconds of Turkish Delight at the feast tonight.
