ABadChoiceOfWords

There might be a flip side to this (though I won't pretend it makes everything better): I find myself looking longer a larger works, pondering the stories in the details more and longer than I used to.

We've long had a cleaner word for 'PhD-level expert': intern.

Or, if we don't want to use too many for stylistic reasons, we can just use en-dashes.

A wonderful flight alimation by the incredibly talented Kemelvor. Thank you once again for this incredible piece <3

I did not want holes in my arms.  Snuggles did not want to go to the vet.

Neither of us walked away happy.

#vss #writer #amwriting #writingcommunity

Worship our flag, our leader, our law.  In this world of men, their power begs awe.
Those who do not: apostates.
Those who cannot: heathens.
Those who will not: heretics.
Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers: flush them out, hunt them down—they are un-like us, and must be made gone.

#vss #amwriting

Our boardrooms fill of liars; our prisons, of those who told truths.

Which do you teach your children to be?

#vss #writer

"Hydras can't keep secrets.  Terrible liars."

That wasn't quite true.  They're excellent liars—maybe the best.  But, with that many heads, they never agree on 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 lie to tell, let alone 𝘩𝘰𝘸.

#vss #writer #amwriting #writingcommunity

When I was young, I knew not who I was—so I became what others told me to be.

When I came older, in bits I grasped what I was—I kept this to myself, for I knew not how to tell.

Now I am what I am, a teller of tales—and by practice, in pieces, I can almost tell my own.

#vss #writingcommunity

She took me in.  I owed her.  Spent years paying it back.  And then we’d a good thing going, so we kept on and on and on.  Don’t know who owes who, now, but it still feels like me.  And that’s fine.  I wanna pay her back again and again, and keep owing her as long as I live.

#vss #writer #amwriting

What you've been taught is damnable lie.
Know now the truth: cheesecake is pie.

#vss #writer #amwriting #writingcommunity #poem #poetry

There's not one trick or even two
But in my time I've found a few
A dash of rhyme, of rhythm, of beat
To move their lips, their minds, their feet
By simple words, they sing the best
And dance far fairer than the rest
For with one short and pithy phrase
Your passage rings their ears for days

#poetry

They were traitors, to a new call of treason.  Their girl screams—by axe-stroke, orphaned.  Spared, yet not as mercy; each dusk she screams again at the end of the butcher’s revelry.

This night, a careless skewer in reach.  His neck spills as prey.  Her first, not last.

#vss #writer #amwriting

"Your world is ending," spoke the beast.

It was no prophecy, but a telling of truth.  Such poison days could not go on.

We prayed to gods—ours we knew and more we did not.  Some even prayed to that beast, monstrous as it was.  But it gave us no salvation, same as all the rest.

#vss #amwriting

I scream into the void and no one hears me, and it is enough.
I scream into the void and some souls hear me, and it is nearly enough.
I scream into the void and countless hear me, and it is never enough.

#vss #writer

They report less to the State, but more to the News.  They cry progress; they cry decay.  They beg—more guns, more bullets!

And the morticians—more tongs to pry those bullets from the poor, the broken, the different.  A city on a hill that shines of blood.

#vss #writer #amwriting #writingcommunity

Oop, didn't get one, either.

More operatively, which is 'it'? Is the arm manned; is the man armed? Both?

Now, I've always just done this to make my links cuter.

The whole thing is just that slick, screaming experience Doom wishes it could be. Only fault I can find is how fast it's over.

This morning they found three more holes. Smashed headstones, same as. Also same, none remember what those read.

Vicar held prayer midday. Rain. Dozen showed. Some left flowers.

Will speak with him this evening, see what he’ll tell a worried soul. Darker clouds come. Rough winds.

Love,
A.

[POST VOID] was sooo gooood

Tech, or pronouns?

Turn it into an energy system! People love energy systems! And then they can buy little energy refills for a few bucks, if they're feeling extra posty~

Have a relative who gets harassed for having implants, to keep from getting harassed for not having breasts. Fuck cancer, but especially fuck everyone who throws a tantrum over someone else's 𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘴.

There's also the pitfall of serving authorial interpretation to the audience, especially when it runs contrary to what the audience sees. Or, worse, serving authorial interpretation entirely in the place of story.

From what I've seen, it's a matter of exploration. Does the world bend to make true what the author wants? Or does the narrative follow the natural shape of the laid-down geography to one of its few possible—if not inevitable—ends?

Boycott is an ancient form of protest, and more important now for all the forms in which money buys clout. It also, on the front of fiction, takes nigh-no effort to not-consume this particular thing. And when richer, less trend-chasing alternatives lurk just below—why settle for surface same-old?

It's almost as if people are messy things full of contradictions, where impulses can override even our most strongly-held beliefs when the temptation (or anger, or fear) is great enough; and that, as in stories, what a person does means a hell of a lot more than what they simply say.

On top of the talking-down, it also halts the story to do so.