It feels strange to be plugging something I've created, but here goes. Many years ago, I began posting a set of messy stories on another site. When I was finally about to post the finale, the site died. Years later I tried again somewhere else. That site died too. You may be spotting a pattern here.

Leaving the series unfinished has been gnawing at the back of my mind for a good portion of my life, so - at the risk of cursing the UMD - I've recently been adding them to the Stories section at a rate of around 1 chapter a week. Having held off on making a post until I was confident that I'd finally be able to finish this time, at long last I'm in the home stretch.

The series itself is fairly... unique. The basic pitch is as follows:

1. Take all-time classic movie Aliens. Add some Battle Royale, a dash of The Thing, and a few other cinematic influences.
2. Replace all peril with mess.
3. Replace the xenomorphs and other monsters with underemployed drama students wielding slime sprayers.
4. Replace the colonial marines with women in bikinis.
5. Turn the whole thing into a low-budget charity fundraiser where contestants try to battle their way through a theme park full of messy hazards.
6. Come up with placeholder names Splatter Dome and Gunge Ghouls. Intend to replace them with something better. Fail to do so.
7. ????
8. Profit!

Contestants who find themselves with no prospect of escape are eliminated from the game, so the group is whittled down as the series progresses and nobody is ever entirely safe. There are also a few twists along the way, which I won't spoil here.

I shudder to think of the countless hours I've spent writing, rewriting and editing these stories. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're any good, mind you, but if I've failed then at least it wasn't for lack of trying.

Since these stories are long and involved, I wouldn't want to waste anybody's time on something they're unlikely to enjoy, so here are a few reasons why you might want to avoid them:
* While the series features lots of beautiful women wearing very little, everything stays PG rated.
* The overall tone is light-hearted. Some characters are more competitive or nervous than others, but nobody emerges from this series having had a bad time. If you exclusively prefer humiliation-themed stories, the Splatter Dome might not be to your liking.
* Seriously, this series is looong. Several chapters exceed 10k words, and in total the series runs to the length of a small novel.

If you're undecided, you can check out a teaser here:
https://umd.net/stories/the-splatter-dome-teaser

Alternatively, if you want to jump to the first messy scenes you can go straight to the prologue:
https://umd.net/stories/the-splatter-dome-prologue--the-outpost

It can be hard to find specific stories on the UMD once they fall off the first page, but you should be able to see the full list of chapters by clicking on the 'Blogs' link beneath my username. If all goes to plan, I'll continue posting one chapter each weekend, finishing in early May.

I suspect that the potential audience for long-form PG-rated WAM fiction is going to be a niche within a niche within a niche, but if you feel like giving them a try, I hope you enjoy them. Feedback is always welcome, and please shout if you spot any mistakes.

What a nice surprise! I fondly remember reading this on some website years ago, likely long defunct now, and I haven't come across anything else since that strikes the same tone.

Looking forward to a re-read, thank you!

Thanks! It's nice to hear that there are people who still remember these stories. I hope you enjoy the ending.

I'm also really excited for this! There are a few story series that have stood out over the years but Splatter Dome was one of the more ambitious. I remember reading each chapter years ago as it was updated and then the site died without the finale being posted. I'd never thought we'd actually get to see the end, so looking forward to reading it!

Glad you liked them! I just hope the finale lives up to expectations. It was a tricky one to try and edit, as it ended up running to around triple the length of a regular chapter. If all goes to plan, the finale will be posted in three weeks time, with an epilogue (which also got a bit out of hand) on the weekend after.

Wow! These are awesome! Really good storytelling. Thanks for putting it on the "main" page, I was not even aware of the stories section, will have to check it out more often.

Thanks, Nolo. I was a bit wary of mentioning it on the main page, but I'm glad it's reached some people who might not have found the series otherwise. Yeah, the stories section on the UMD is a bit hard to find, and all the entries are kind of jumbled into one big pile, but (hopefully) the site isn't likely to implode any time soon. After what happened with my previous attempts at posting this series, it seemed like the best choice.

Hidden away though it is, there can sometimes be some low-stakes drama in the stories section. Not long after I began loading this series, I was a bit disheartened to find that a bunch of them had received 1-star reviews, all within in the space of a few minutes. As it turned out, though, there was another writer who'd been using a sockpuppet account to systematically downvote many other writers over a long period of time.

Just to add a brief note of congratulations, even from someone with slightly different WAM fiction tastes.

As a fellow writer who has also gone down their own rabbitholes of niche within a niche within a niche in his time (and so continue ad infinitum in true Russian doll style), the sheer scale of your work is impressive even aside of any of its other merits. Seeing the tale out, despite the challenges of IRL, perhaps limited engagement, imploding sites, downvoting trolls/pillocks, good for you!

I hope that you and your regular readers enjoy the finale (and devising what next...?).

My earlier reply was sent after reading one chapter... I'm now at number 7, and this is a masterpiece. As in, I'm forcing myself to not just read them all because I don't want it to end. The mess is so beautifully described without being repetitive, the underlying emotions are dealt with so well, and the characters and plotting make this so much more than just an excuse to get beautiful women messy (even though that's what it is!)

I've never read anything like this! Massive kudos to you. I've also discovered that reading it visually and then using Reader View/Listen To Page in Safari to make it into an audiobook is a great way to extend it.

I wonder if anyone would ever be able to round up a few voice actresses and make it into a full audio experience?

I remembered it from during one of your first publishing attempts, and always wondered what happened. I was glad to see when it appeared again, and have been thoroughly enjoying it. I wish I wrote anywhere as near as well. I look forward to the finale.

Wow! Thanks for all the kind words.

messwriter and messydice: It's great to hear from other writers. I have nothing but admiration for your stories, not to mention the effort and creativity you put into them. Are you working on anything at the moment?

nolo: It's great to hear that you're enjoying the series so far. I hope you don't burn out on them by powering through them so quickly, as there are some chapters where I really should've tried harder to trim down the word count. I'd never thought about using the 'Read Aloud' feature before. The voices available on my current browser don't sound very convincing, but I hear that the ones on Safari sound pretty natural, so I'll have to give that a try.

Also, I love the idea of having actresses reading out these stories! I can't see it happening, unfortunately (though in the unlikely event that someone knows, or is, an aspiring voice actress who'd be fine with narrating WAM fiction, please let me know).

Interestingly, back when I first tried to post these stories, there was a point where I posed a question to the readers and asked them to message me if they wanted to provide an answer. I was surprised to find that almost half of the people who contacted me were women. The sample size wasn't very large, obviously, but it does make me wonder whether more women read WAM stories than we might think.

I always have ideas rattling around and working on them. Getting them into a readable story is the tricky bit.

Been trying to find these for years, thanks so much for sharing them again. A few of the setups really stuck in my memory.

No problem at all, it's great to hear that something I wrote has been remembered after all this time. I can't guarantee that the ending will be worth the wait, but it'll be good to finally complete something that I began drafting in 2008.