Marco Cardoni
Bio
I'm alright.
Stories (7/0)
LAUGH
DEAD ON SIX O’CLOCK. Sentries stand in two straight, parallel lines, sporting the logo of the Taurus government – the Blue Bull – over the place where their hearts should be. Rain chants and thunder claps. The weather’s pulsating, war-inspiring song provides the Sentries with the single-minded determination needed to complete their work. They snap to attention, saluting sharply to the Tauritsar. Black leather gloves reach for cold metal rifles.
By Marco Cardoni3 years ago in Fiction
Confession Corner: The Prom Heist
Forgive me Vocal readers, for I have sinned. Wait! Forgive me again, because there is something I must do in order to be worthy of your forgiveness. Yes, it pains me so, but I must first put my transgression, my crime, my utter shame into writing. I will not omit a single dreadful detail from the egregious episode for fear of damning my eternal, online soul. I have my reputation and the view counts on my subsequent articles to think about! After years of torment, carrying around a burden of guilt like the bloke with the chains around his neck from that Charles Dickens book (the one with The Muppets in it), it shall be a great relief to me to finally open up about this subject. I also hope that this article somehow finds its way to the person my friend and I wronged all those years ago because part of me feels like this magical, storybook scenario would bring a sense of closure and catharsis to everybody involved. The other part of me would probably just be grateful for the extra click on my article to be honest (free money and all that). So, without any further ado (not adieu), I shall relay my outrageous – but unfortunately very true – tale unto you all. This, my friends, is the story of The Prom Heist.
By Marco Cardoni3 years ago in Proof
Donald Trump and Dominic Cummings video games: Making Your Reality Come True in Dreams PS4
As Metro and countless other outlets have reported, a satirical game called ’30 Miles to Barnard Castle’ was recently released on Media Molecule’s creation tool and media platform Dreams on PlayStation 4. The user-created mini-game allows the player to control British political adviser Dominic Cummings as he drives from Durham to Barnard Castle to ‘test his eyesight’. Although it is quite a simplistic and short experience, it packs in a lot of comedic, satirical points. It entails avoiding obstacles on the road whilst coping with blurry vision and the wails of a nagging child in the back seat (because Cummings supposedly drove with his wife and child in the car, despite being disorientated by Covid-19). On the surface, this mini-game might seem like an insignificant and silly bit of fun, but it provides a glimpse into a potential future. A potential future where it is not just the ability to broadcast one’s opinion to others on social media that is democratised and available to all, but also the ability to realise these ideas in film or game form without the need for inaccessible, high-end equipment.
By Marco Cardoni4 years ago in Gamers
Gnome Comforts - A funny short story for lockdown life
About this Story When I was in primary school, my class used to receive homework that involved practising the words for our weekly spelling test by putting them into sentences. However, this was quite a dry task and my dad was getting sick of helping me do this. So, we decided to start making these sentences into stories that made sense as a whole, much to the delight of my teachers. But this was only impressive for so long and so the stories had to get more and more ambitious. This culminated in the story written below — which, as you may notice, contains a lot of spelling test words with silent ‘H’s and ‘G’s. However, I have improved as a writer since then, being as I am, a 22 year old English graduate as opposed to a 10 year old child. Thus, I have made a few tweaks here and there to make this an even better story.
By Marco Cardoni4 years ago in Families
The Last Person to Finish 'Stranger Things' Series 3 Speaks (Spoiler Review). Top Story - July 2019.
In an age where a new streaming service pops up out of nowhere sooner than you can fart twice, (nice, I just found a wild Disney+ up my arse!) it’s hard to find any media property that has enough cultural recognition, popularity, and pulling power—yeah, they’re basically all the same thing, but I was hoping you wouldn’t notice—to draw in enough people for a half decent "water cooler" conversation. However, the Duffer brothers’ smash hit Stranger Things has been a delight for me in that respect, even topping The Fantasy Show That Shall Not Be Named for viewership numbers and excitement levels amongst my little group of young adult peers. Nonetheless, the buzz for the Duffers’ show was not limited to just my friends. The official figures reveal that Stranger Things’ third series was Netflix’s most viewed "thing" ever within a four day time frame. This really begs the question: Why in the Upside-Down is this derivative, predictable, 80s nostalgia fest so Demodog-damn popular?
By Marco Cardoni5 years ago in Geeks
The X-Men Are in the MCU… But What About Magneto?
The news that Disney are finally acquiring 20th Century Fox has opened up possibilities that many of MCU fans thought they could only dream of. Properties such as the X-Men, X-Force, New Mutants, Wolverine, Deadpool, the Fantastic Four, the Silver Surfer, the Savage Land, the Starjammers and the Shi’ar are all coming home and could potentially interact with your favourite Avengers on screen. However, one character’s transition from the Fox-verse may be a tad problematic. I’m talking of course, about the X-Men’s greatest foe, the Master of Magnetism: Magneto.
By Marco Cardoni6 years ago in Geeks
The Best ‘Stewart Lee: Content Provider’ Review of All Time
When I first saw Stewart Lee's Content Provider at De Montfort Hall, Leicester in February, I had the ill-conceived and frankly deranged idea in my head that I could review it. In fact, I was so confident in my abilities that I spoke to the artist himself after the show and proclaimed my over-ambitious intentions to his face. "You'll definitely be getting a five star review from me on my university-paper-website-thing called The Demon Online," I burbled like a blithering buffoon, signing the imaginary contract in blood which meant that I actually had to write something and preferably a gut-bustingly hilarious, self-referential masterpiece of a review that was fit for publication in a student magazine. However, when I was drafting my ideas for the piece, I began to doubt my abilities. "What if Stewart Lee actually reads it?" I thought, "What if I try to be funny... and it's just not funny?" So, to accommodate for these anxieties, my first attempt came across as if it was written by a pathetic, sycophantic fan (the reasons why still elude me). The embarrassing evidence is exhibited below:
By Marco Cardoni7 years ago in Geeks