Tag: writing

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Um, h-hi…

So obviously I did not keep that fucking promise… (Please refer to “writing” tag to learn more of my shame)… However, I have been getting itches to write again. So funny how that seems to happen around the same time every year i.e. July – September! It’s almost like I cycle through creative moods that dictate my actions far beyond my actual logical desires.

For instance, I started making a text adventure game about 2 months ago? I am, of course, flubbing a bit atm, but I chock it up partially to having moved within the past 2 weeks.

Point is, I’m trying to get my grip on the massive steering wheel of my creativity and actually steer this massive fucking cruise ship back on track before I get caught up doing anything else. I’m trying to learn to channel myself into “the zone” which is a new term I learned just tonight for the state of mind I get into when I focus on communicating an idea efficiently instead of making something super “good.”

Thus, I have randomly assigned myself an idea to communicate, using a writing prompt. Instead of writing a “compelling story” with an “arc” or “characters” I literally just tried to communicate a thought about how humanity will never let things die. I have to tell you that here, because I doubt you’d get the point if you read it since it isn’t very good! It is short though. Like, super short.

#836 — what are your wildest dreams for your great grandchildren?

Kim’s parents couldn’t afford an elementary school transport tube. All of Kim’s friends could, and they told her so excitedly, but Kim didn’t care. They described to her the convenience of having one’s bed tipped into a plastic slide, with vacuum suction to carry them to the school locker room, where they would change out of their pajamas into a stout uniform. However, Kim came back at them with descriptions of the wind in her hair and the sun streaming though the trees. It was hard-earned wind, but Kim had no trouble justifying the extra effort.

Kim rode a bike to school. Her parents had gifted it her on her 11th birthday, as compensation for an unpleasant and unwanted move; for Kim, it was more than enough. She knew vaguely of the trouble it must have offset her parents to acquire it these days. In fact, her parents had payed for it with the entire inheritance of Kim’s great grandfather, an unsurprisingly meager amount given the man’s familially infamous career in the dying live theatre. The parents would rather have trashed the cash than honor the man’s legacy of hipsterdom, but it was worth it to see how happy the bike made Kim.

Kim, in fact, was much like her great grandfather. Such was it that she took pride in her bike. While the other kids allowed themselves to be caught up in the convenience of the moderne, it was exactly the bike’s inconvenience that made it attractive, worth it, even, to Kim.

Fried Raiden for Breakfast

A nlovely fanfic I started writing years ago. Then I lost it, but for some reason I couldn’t get it out of my head so I rewrote it last week.

SO basically in an effort to lube up my desire to write and make myself think significantly less highly of my writing, I will be doing weekly installments of this dumb as shit series of Metal Gear fanfictions. I think this is perfect because Metal Gear’s already dumb as shit and treating it with a stream-of-consciousness Khonjin House-esque wacky tonality will be the perfect way to shit out something every week, because it can be the worst shit ever, and I can leave it wherever I want or make an episode as short as I fuckin’ need if I can’t find the time to write one week. Anyway, the point is, it doesn’t matter how shitty it is I’m gonna be shitting it out once a week because that’s what I told myself I’d do and if I start slowing down instead of speeding up then I’ll fall right off the train and onto the train tracks and it’ll be so easy to just sit there on the train tracks instead of catching another train so take it away Raiden:

The Raiden phone buzzed, alerting him
that he must go to New Zealand for his new mission. Raiden checked
the time. Yup, it was still the year 2033. He’d been contently
fucking murdering people for 19 years. Making people stop living was
a heck of a living, but he reminded himself that he was doing it all
for his family, who happened to be living in New Zealand so he would
get to see them while he was there so that was really good.

He took a public flight and had his
knees cramped by the seat in front of him, so he stabbed his high
frequency blade through the back of the cushion to kill the person
sitting there and then chopped the seat up by its roots and kicked it
away. A flight attendant reminded him that murder wasn’t actually
legal. He excused himself by saying that he’d actually forgotten,
since he was really used to murdering people basically weekly, and
everyone found that understandable until he started arguing that
since they were also over international waters the rules shouldn’t
apply anyway. Considering there are no countries where murder isn’t
legal, it didn’t seem like a defensible argument, and perhaps even
weakened his original point. Raiden resisted the urge to murder them
for attacking his opinions, and therefore himself as a person.

The plane touched down and Raiden
sprinted to Rose’s house in a couple minutes. He kicked the front
door off its hinges and shouted “RRRRRROOOOOOSSSEE????” From the
kitchen, he heard a counter-shout, “No blood on the carpet!” He
took mild offense that she would just assume he had blood on him, but
he did have to swipe his sword outside the front door and paint the
sidewalk and hedges with some chunky blood, so he didn’t utter a
retort. Wait! That’s the only greeting he got??

“Rose, I- I’m home!” Stammered
Raiden, attempting to catch a verbal consolation prize.

-To Be Continued

The End of the Road/Hitting the Road

Week #7

Just a quick little thing I wrote. OH WAIT IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN POSTED A WEEK AGO BUT I’M A FRAUD WHO’S CLEARYL LOSING INTEREST IN THIS BLOG JUST LIKE I SAID I WOULD. OH FUCK, NO, I WAS ENJOYING THIS FOR A BIT. HAVING CREATIVE STUFF ONLINE BESIDES VIDEOS FELT REALLY GOOD.

My comeback will be in the month of November. In the meantime, take two posts as penance.

I spent the first 10 years of my life
in the state of Iowa. The same house was my home those 10 years, and
the same backyard to that house was my best friend’s backyard. We
literally shared the same backyard. We could walk out our back doors
and walk across a stretch of grass to see each other. This may even
be why we were such good friends, after all, our personalities
didn’t mesh.

In retrospect, that boy, Mike, was not
my type. He was into all the trappings of adulthood and manhood and
the gangsta hood, where I was very much content to stay a child
forever. I was a kid who wouldn’t play in the mud because it was
gross, he was the opposite. In elementary school, I played Mario, he
played Call of Duty.

However, as much evidence as there is
to the contrary, I will never doubt that our friendship was genuine.
Because when the day came for my 10 years in Iowa to end, when I
learned I’d have to spent my 11th year in Georgia, Mike was the one
who cried. Not I, the effeminate one, but he, who’s father was the
face of stoicism. I could tell he would have preferred not to show
that kind of weakness, which made it all the more honest that he
would anyway.

first fanifc

Heyo here’s fanfiction I wrote last year I guess Don’t Read It

So I show up on a bus in Beach city and
get off and I’m hungry so I go get a pizza at the fish pizza place. I
walk in and Ronaldo is on his latop bloggin about keping tBeach City
weuird. I compliment his blog as a huge fan and point out that he’s
getting pizza on his keyboard. We establsich good rapport by this,
and I sit down and order my pizza.

Outside, throught the glass doors and
windows I see Lapis Lazuli land. She’s the hottest ever, and I turn
to Ronaldo to make eye contact. He’s as excited as me, and asks if I
want to see some fanart he drew of Lapis. I say yeah I look at fanart
of Lapis all the time. So he turns his laptops toward me and show me
the fanart.

In it, Lapis is crying a river, she is
hugging Japser, and she has blue nail paint. I am repulsed at this
ruination of my waifu, an d proceed to don my opinion pants.

I state that there’s nothing
particularly wrong with the anatomy, but the coloration makes her
look too intense and removes the cuteness from her. He says he didn’t
want her to look so cute, and I say he’s a heckin moron.

I roll with it, pointing out that her
nail polish is uncomfortable and doesn’t fit the charaacter. He says
we don’t actually know enoughtabout the character to say that
she’dnever wear nail polish and I say he’s right but I hate the nail
polish and wouldn’t want any waifus to wear it. If she wore stuff
like that I’d feel uncomfortable and not want to hold her hand as
much.

Ronaldo retorts this by scrolling to
the next piece of fanart. Lapis is waering high heels, earrings, and
has a shoulder tatto o visible under her roughly torn blue dress.

All purity is gone from this world and
I feel the urge to vomit. The red lipstick he’s drawn on her makes me
wanna never kiss her for sure. no thanks. And the high heels what
even. Can you imagine flying around with those big old things
throwing off your balance.?

Lapis kicks the glass door from the
outside in, and shatters it, then channels the water in the laptop
molecule4s to make the laptoip explode. She gives me a deadpan thumbs
up and reminds me that my seemingly contrarian opinions about
fasshion are at least coming from an honest place, and that as long
as I can communicate that to real girls they won’t hold it against
me, even though it comes across very prejudiced against those who
fall out of line with my picky tastes.

Nier Automata Analysis

I finished Nier: Automata’s Ending E this past week, at which point the game instantly became one of my favorites of all time. I can’t be sure, but the entire game suddenly seemed structured, brilliantly, around the player’s choice in this segment, which completely justified the problems I’d had with the story up to that point. Here’s a very brief piece I wrote about it, which I thought was worth sharing:

The first 2 playthroughs of Nier: Automata set up a world with meaningfulness everywhere. Machines talk about their interests/hobbies, what keeps them going in life, and who they care about.

Then the 3rd playthrough serves to tear that all down in one fell swoop. Every “meaningful” thing you might have cared about is killed or driven to madness (I.E. the two main characters). In the end, nothing mattered and everyone dies. And if it had really ended there, it would have been outright nihilistic. But it doesn’t end there. Everything actually hinges on Ending E.

After being presented with so much definitive evidence in Routes C/D that things were meaningless, the game literally asks you if you care enough about what you’ve seen to fight anyway. Because ultimately, caring about things and fighting for them is the meaning of life. As long as we have each other, and we care enough about each other to make sacrifices for each other, then the hardships of the world are worth attempting to conquer, even knowing that they will never be conquered. That’s proven by the poetic savior of other players, who literally had to sacrifice something they cared about deeply, their invested playtime, in order to save strangers going through the same existensial crisis. It’s one of the most powerful moments I’ve ever experienced in a video game, the only one that’s ever made me cry, and it’s a fucking minimalist shmup segment.

Cat Lady

Week #4

Lucy is a character I want to detail in a variety of stories, many of which will feature her friend Britt. I’m not confident I have their character’s nailed down, which is why I need to do so. They’re somewhat important.

This story is the first, and it might be a standout. After a full night of racking my brain for ideas, I slammed these thousand words down in an hour. So it’s coming from a rather visceral place that you can probably read into. I haven’t edited it, and I likely won’t? because of course I need to be willing to crap this stuff out and never look back. So here’s to that. *clinks licorice tea glass against monitor, spiliing tea on my keyboard*

When
Lucy was a kid, her neighbors asked her to catsit for 2 weeks while
they were out town. Every day when she came home from school, even
though she had homework to get to, she would go straight into the
living room to pet the cat. Her mom would seize the opportunity to
ask her how her day went, and she would give a brief summary before
bringing up her homework and excusing herself. For the first week
this was the case. But finals were next week, and she needed to make
use of all the time available to her, so over the weekend, Lucy
locked herself in her room to study.

The
goings were rough, and the word problems were tough, but Lucy
carefully staved off distractions. She put her phone on silent and
her laptop on airplane mode, and even then she found herself
rereading sentences until they stuck. But she was as in the zone as
she could be, and that’s what counted.

Then
her mom called up to remind her about the cat. The call ripped her
from her state of zen. She realized there were responsibilities at
conflict here. But her work took greater precedence, so she called
back down to her mother and said she couldn’t come at the moment. Her
mom’s cry of “awww,” was cut off by Lucy closing the door. She
resumed her study. It took her about an hour to reenter her zen
state, but once she had things went swimmingly. She finished
reviewing her Geography flash cards at 8:00 PM, but she still had 3
subjects to go that Saturday evening.

And
her mom called up to remind her about the cat. It needed it’s food
and water changed, not to mention some attention. This frustrated
Lucy greatly, but she knew it was getting late, and she was better
off finishing that chore before continuing into the night. She ran
down the stairs to the living room and grabbed the bowls from the
corner. Her mom greeted her with delight, thanking her for being
responsible. Lucy silently cleaned and refilled the bowls in the
kitchen, then brought them back for the cat. Her mom said, “I think
you’d better give him some pets before you run back off again. He
misses you.”

Lucy
stared at her, then at the cat, who was already busy chowing down his
food. “Wish I could mom, but I gotta get back to work.” She
headed back upstairs, somewhat abject, and got to getting back to
work.

THE
NEXT DAY, SUNDAY MORNING

Lucy
woke with her face in a textbook, and her mom poking her shoulder.
“Hey you,” she remarked, “The cat’s downstairs if you want a
good wake-up from him…”

Lucy
blinked at her, half-processing. “That- That was a plenty good
*yawn* wake-up right there, mom. I gotta find where I left off.”
Lucy had intended to pull an all-nighter. She’d lost a lot of ground
overnight, and she wasn’t even sure how much yet. That made her
grouchy enough as is, not to mention the uncomfortable, unsatisfying
desk-sleep she’d gotten.

Her
mother frowned at her. “Alright, well don’t deprive yourself of
sleep and snuggles just for this.” She left Lucy alone, thank god.

Lucy
buckled down. She cracked open boxes of cereal to eat raw, as
substitutes for meals. She peed in the crappy, tiny upstairs bathroom
instead of the one downstairs she usually used. And she focused all
her efforts on staying in the zen zone of her room.

But
her mom called up to remind her about the cat. Lucy snapped to look
at the clock, it was somehow 6 PM. Her mom called “Hey sweetie, I
think the cat wants some love!”

“Love!?
It wants, love??” She shouted back.

“Yeah,
is that too much to ask?” Coerced her mother.

“Yeah!!!
Right now it is!”

“Well
that’s too bad! Come down hear and show him some attention.”

Lucy’s
eyes widened in frustration. She closed her laptop, snatched it up,
and stormed down the stairs with it under her arm. As she entered the
living room, her mother once again greeted her with delight. Lucy
once again said nothing. She looked around the room for the cat, and
found it cowering underneath the pedals of the exercise bike. She
dropped her laptop on the couch, went over to the cat, and sat
criss-cross applesauce next to it, facing away from her mom. The cat
slinked away.

Her
mother spoke up. “Boy a real grumpus, aren’t we?”

Lucy’s
mouth tightened. “Yeah. Now’s not a good time for this, I think.”

“What?
Of course it is. Here, if you turn around you can watch TV with me
while you pet him.”

Lucy
turned around and saw the Big Bang Theory was on. That was the last
straw.

“Mom,
I’m busy!”

“Oh
come on, you’re always busy. I’ve seen you all of five minutes
today.”

Lucy
stared at her mom, overcome with the feeling that she was being
extremely selfish. She decided to get up and leave. As if reading her
mind, her mom asked her if she could perform a favor. Lucy asked
what. She said the neighbors were posting online about missing their
precious cat.

“…And?”
said Lucy.

“Can
you take a picture of him, for me to send them?”

“Why
can’t you take a picture mom?” she asked

“Well,
you’re better with technology…”

Lucy
stared at her mom, sitting on the couch with iPad outstretched in a
trap. She looked back at the cat and realized he’d escaped to the
opposite corner of the room. He was in the jumpy sort of mood that
would make this job very difficult. She got up, took the iPad, and
set about trying to take a picture of him. The light was low, and the
iPad’s camera sucked, so her mom rephrased that goal to a good
picture of him.

After
a while of giving angling advice from the peanut gallery, which made
Lucy fume, her mother got up to help corral him into a good spot in
the center of the room. Their combined efforts were enough to get
some acceptable products, ready for shipping to the lonely set of
parents who’d missed their fur-baby. But it took a half-hour which
felt to Lucy like an epoch.

She
passed the iPad back to her mom, who admitted she could go upstairs
now. Lucy rebutted “I’d go upstairs anyway, thanks. I told
you I was busy mom!”

“Well,
thanks for sacrificing your precious
time.” thanked her mother.

King of the Jungle

Week #3

Already missed the Sunday night deadline because am dumb.

Anyway this was inspired by a writing prompt, but I used it more as a jumping off point for a weird idea. Turned into a hearty short story with some sort-of character arcs and a twist ending? It’s not very good!

I was in a killer mood. Freelance work
was a rough enough business, but today had been a real bitch, since
I’d been cut outta another deal by the same anonymous shithead as
usual. Shit like that was bog standard in this industry, but after
awhile you started to get extra sick of it. The world really is
against you, kids, and it’s on you to work against it. The only
people you can count on are the ones right next to you, your pack.
Friends who’ll show up at a funeral they got nothing to do with just
to comfort you when you need ‘em. For me, that was Leo, and today, he
needed me. Whether I was in the mood for it or not didn’t matter, I
could bite a bullet for a friend. I walked down the city blocks to
his apartment, and there he was waiting outside.

“What up you motherfucker!” I
shouted.

“Lionell! Hey, watch your language,
people are just getting to bed.” He embraced me in a big muscly
hug.

“Yeah, and the fuckin’ crimelords
are just getting up. Why the hell’d you want to talk to me so late?”

He frowned, “Just had to talk, I
really appreciate it.” Then he set off walking down the sidewalk.
“But if there is a crime, I might have to ditch you.” He added. I
followed.

“Naaahhh,” I said, trying to
preemptively lighten the mood, “If anyone pulls a gun, they’re
gonna have to go through the Kings of the Jungle. We’ve made it five
years here together, and whatever you’re going through is somethin’
temporary.”

“Actually, it kinda is the
fact that we’ve been here for five years. Five whole years, and I’ve
been doing the same darn thing the whole time.”

“Mhm, poor guy got a steady job.”
I rolled my eyes.

“Well, you make it sound silly, but
yeah, it’s kinda too steady. I feel like I haven’t changed at all
in the past 5 years. And y’know, when nothing changes, you feel
staleness hanging in the air. Everywhere. It sucks. But- it’s just a
feeling right? You shouldn’t give feelings like that any credit.
Because, you’re still technically doing the right thing, right? So
what if you plateaued, as long as you plateaued somewhere good…”
Leo paused for me.

“Uhhh…” I
muttered.

“I guess, it’s
just like, when you get this far along from the original reason you
started, it’s impossible not to doubt it? It’s just natural that you
phase in and out of passion for what you’re doing. But you gotta try
not to think about it, because if you think too hard you’ll let the
self-doubt in. You have to just, take it on good faith that your
original reason for starting out was good, and is still good.”

“Holy shit.
You’re an athlete not a fucking starving artist.”

He said
apologetically, “I know! I’m well off, this is a stupid problem!
Like I said, I’m trying not to give these ideas any credit. But the
truth is, I’ve had this on my mind for years.”

“Really? Managed
to keep it a secret from me. How many?”

“Maybe two. Not
one of those things you can pin down. But, I’ve been telling myself
it’s not a problem for a long time. I’m telling you about it
now ’cause I think that was unhealthy.

“No, I’m glad
you told me. But I’m not sure what you want now…” I questioned.

“Me neither.”

I
looked him over. Weakness was unlike Leo. I’d never seen myself in
him like this. Ever since we moved to the city together, he’d been
successful, confident. He’d handled things so much better. I’d
learned that the world was an impenetrable current of misfortune, so
when I saw weakness, I saw an opportunity to take advantage of it.
But this was my friend, my pack, and when I saw weakness in him, I
knew I had to protect him like he’d protected me.

“Plateaued,
huh?” I asked, straightening my speech a little, “I- I see what
you mean, but I think you’ve got the wrong perspective. You still
gotta strive for
self-improvement, even if you don’t achieve it. Because otherwise
you’re not actually plateauing, you’re just slowly
losing altitude. Uh… It’s like sharpening an axe every time you use
it. You don’t just do it so you can have the sharpest axe in the
world, you do it so your axe, at least, doesn’t get duller.”

Leo
smiled coolly. “That’s… a good point. But, I still feel like,
uh… I think my physical axe is plenty sharp, I think I’ve kept it
in good condition. Like, my skills, I mean. They’re top notch, I make
sure of it. But again, it’s a mental thing… I think my mental
axe is dull… And I have no
clue how to sharpen it.”

That
really threw me for a loop. “I- I see what you mean… Wow man,
when you put it like that I really feel you. I don’t think I was
giving you enough
credit. I figured you were blowing this whole ‘mid-life crisis’ thing
outta proportion, ’cause I’ve always figured you for kind of a
meathead. Bein’ an athlete seems as simple as you can get to me, but
what you’re describing is a lot like what I been feeling. I guess…
Well, you’re not alone.”

He
smiled again. “Yeah, that’s a comfort. Bettin’ a lot of people go
through this… But I’m still not sure how to get
through it. I really have to shake this, for other people’s sake, not
just mine.”

“Okay, we gotta
find you your grinding stone! Backin’ up here, time for a little
armchair psychiatry… Uh, you mentioned your ‘original reason’ a
couple times earlier. What’s up with that, seems pretty important
here?”

“Well, I can’t
really talk about it…”

“Okay, I know
you can’t talk about behind-the-scenes business-y shit. …But how
did that make you feel?” I said, holding out a pen like a
microphone. “The ‘origin’ thing, not the stupid secrecy thing.”

He stopped
walking. We’d made it seven blocks. It was properly dark now, the
lamp-posts were coming on. There were no cars on the street and no
other people on the sidewalk. The only thing nearby was a shitty old
phone booth that hadn’t worked for a decade. Leo stared at it.

“Well, it was…
like, a big… inspiration. I was all kinds of inspired.” He
paused, then sighed. “I disappointed someone. Like eh i- it was a
nightmare-level thing. I messed up and I was feeling like shit,”
His cursing caught me off guard, but he continued, “A lot like
right now, but way worse. The difference was, at the time, I
was able to… convert it all into this crazy intense determination.
That person was a perfect storm of inspiration, and I just acted on
it… Everything was crystal clear and, and, and perfect. It
was really like I just got handed the sharpest axe, d- mental axe I
mean. It- it didn’t seem like I’d ever have to sharpen it!”

“W- Wow! Bro
have you been, like, riding a high for 5 years?”

Leo sighed again.
“This is really hard to explain without actually explaining what
happened.”

“Well I think
I’m getting it. It sounds like you need another hit.”

“Okay, I don’t
like the drug analogy. It’s a littl-”

“Course ya don’t
ya boy scout. You get what I’m saying though. You just need to sniff
out a new source of inspiration.”

“It is not
that simple!”

“Why not!?”

Leo stammered.
“Because we’re- talking about… some complex shit here! This isn’t
the kind of inspiration you can just sniff out.”

“How is one type
of inspiration that different from the next?”

His mouth
tightened like a tight-rope as his teeth clenched in frustration. “D-
g- This is impossible to talk about! GAH.” He swung at a lamp-post
like he was going to hit it, then slowed down and hunched his head
against it.

“I don’t think
so. Inspiration is probably everywhere. It’s one of those ephemeral
kinda things. It’s also, as you have demonstrated, disposable. I wish
I could look for you buddy, but unless you let on a little more here,
this is the best I can do.”

Leo lifted his
head. He had a confused look, like two halves of his brain were
butting heads in an attempt to fuse. “Maybe they’re the same
thing.”

“…hhhhwhaat?”

“…You.
…Telling you everything… And fresh inspiration… They might be
the same thing!”

I was the confused
one now. Leo had this crazed look.

“Yeah! Forget
it. This might be perfect actually.”

“Uhhhh…”

“Shhhh… Okay,
no more confusion. Everything’s gonna make perfect sense. Gimme a
second.” He dashed into the phone booth, hastily taking off his
coat.

“Wh-” I
watched the phone booth rock and shake, and after a minute, Leo
emerged in-costume. “WHAT THE FUCK,” I screamed, “You’re
Leonidas?!?!”

Grinning from ear
to ear, Leo stepped forward proudly, “Yeah,” He held his hands up
in a gesture of confirmation. “Everything makes sense now right?

I was silent, but
my look confusion was verging on disgust. I grimaced and spat, “Did
you let someone die!? Is that what you meant by disappointed?
That you killed them?”

Leo recoiled, not
expecting such a fatal shot, “Okay, d- yeah.” The leap of logic
had put him off his desperate action, and in the delay he
rationalized, “That just makes sense I guess.”

“Was it a good
friend?”

“Yes! And the
important part is obviously that I took that to heart. It inspired me
to save others!”

With mouth still
arched in revulsion, I repeated, “…Myeah. What the fuck.”

“I don’t know,
what? This is not how I expected you to react!”

“Sorry, this is
just, a particularly big pill for me to swallow.”

“W- Should I not
have told you??? I was just trying to do what you told me. You
said inspiration was probably right in front of me, and I realized
you were right. I’ve been trying to live with this as a secret for
years, worrying that it might be unhealthy, but the solution was
right there! I don’t know, I was so desperate, I might have just done
something really selfish… ‘Another hit’ might have been the right
phrasing after all, ah Jesus.”

“No.” I looked
at him with determination. He looked up at me. “I’m glad you told
me this…”

He heaved a
massive sigh. “Ohhh, god, thank you.” He exhaled in satisfaction.

I shot him in the
heart with a gun. “…You motherfucker.” He fell over dead.

“Glad you got
your inspiration.” I smiled in disgust, standing over the lifeless
body. “Y- you thought you could just skip over the fact that the
‘good friend’ you killed was my SISTER? Like what, I wouldn’t
get it? Guess what. That fucking funeral was my inspiration too. I’M
THE FUCKING FANG!! I’ve been seeing your vigilante ass once a
week for years, right up to this morning, you piece of shit; been
trying to kill you just as long.” I thought of my sister, saw red,
and spat on his corpse.

“Thanks for the
pep talk though. It was just the inspiration I needed to get
back on the horse. Good reminder that the world is fucked, I can’t
trust anyone, and I should be taking advantage of everyone!” I
smiled cruelly. “Fuck, if even the ‘hero’ gets his inspiration from
the ‘friends’ he’s killed, I oughta be set for life.”

Can I critique my own work? This would work
better as a comic for sure. And even then it’d need serious reworking because the superhero thing comes way outta left field unless you’re paying attention to the wording of some of the dialogue, and the friend being a supervillain is almost nonsense even though that was the original crux of the idea. I’m sure a reread would improve one’s enjoyment, because there’s semi-clever foreshadowing, but as it stands it’s compelling enough to warrant one. Good practice navigating weird character arcs and dialogue, but I’m chucking this and moving on.

Declaration of Inconsistency

In the interest of keeping this blog and my own phase-shifting desire to write alive, I’m gonna post one thing a week here. I don’t give a shit. Maybe something I wrote in the past, but probably something I wrote that week, because you and I both know that I don’t have much of a backlog to work through. If I don’t feel like it, I’LL FEEL LIKE IT.

ONE POST A WEEK

ONE POST A WEEK

ONE POST A WEEK

I DON’T GIVE A SHIT

Sketch

Written sketch, 4 Aug 2017.

The boat dispensed globs of melted marshmallow and left behind trails of spiderwebs that took ages to fade. The water was absolute azure, like a deep pool of blueberry syrup. As it shifted, certain angles highlighted it with reflections of the sun and the land. The sun was beating wide, so that the air felt like heat soup, and the land was dry, rocky, and sun-bleached brown. Dotting the landscape which angled into the sea, the man could see loads of bushy green splashes of brush and trees. The boat he was on was passing parallel to the rocky shore of the island. As they passed along, the density of vegetation slowly increased, transitioning into density of civilization. Greater numbers of apartment complexes and parked boats gave way to the reveal of a harbor, which their boat gradually turned in the direction of.

8 Weeks of ∞.

Prompt: “You’re a teenager and it’s the last day of summer break. This is especially painful for you because, over the course of those summer months, you fell in love for the first time and that person is moving away (and breaking up with you). Write the scene where you say goodbye (500 words or fewer).”

In early June, the yearbooks dispersed, filled with names, notes, and sometimes paragraphs of sentimentality. I signed the five or six of the people I knew personally. Then Nicole’s. She was a girl I’d never spoken to, but had observed often wearing A-cut dresses and cute block-pattern sweaters. I assumed she had an eye for simplicity, and I uniquely appreciated that, I think.

I left her a simple message, “Your fashion sense rocks!” and passed it on. Fifteen minutes later, she approached me, struck by receiving a compliment devoid of outright flirtation. She said she appreciated it, since her friends always criticized her judgement in the fashion department. In fact, her friends were going on a beach trip for the first two weeks of summer, while she had to stay home and help her parents pack for their move in August.

I told her I was staying home for the summer too, and if she needed any company to let me know. She smiled appreciatively again, and asked for my yearbook to write her number in. I went home crapping my pants about how to handle the situation. Obviously she wasn’t staying in the area for long, so, perhaps my stakes were low? On the other hand, I didn’t want to ruin her handful of weeks alone with no friends!

It was a small window, so urgency got the better of my discomfort. In week 1, we went to get ice cream and talked about how the school year made us want to scream. In week 2, we went to the state fair multiple days in a row, and talked about the state’s unfairness in a recent local lawsuit against farmers. By week 3, her friends were back… but she said she preferred to go see the new movie I’d been selling her on all week. Slowly my discomfort turned to extreme comfort. Week 4, we went to the mall of all places, and talked about how fashion had truthfully been leading to class discrimination since the dawn of time.

By week 7, we were hanging out 7 days a week. It was less about the location at this point, and more about the talk. We never ran out of stuff to talk about, which was perfect; it kept my mind occupied all the time. I could never shake the feeling that if I stopped rolling with it, the combo would be broken; the temporary nature of our friendship would solidify.

Week 8 passed at ludicrous speed X ∞. The last week. Then the last day. School started tomorrow. She left today. It was like a dream that I doubted was worth convincing anyone was real. We said our goodbyes. It was all surreal enough that I kept mine to a short “Good luck.” But she looked at me and said, “Thanks for this summer,” and it stabbed me right in the heart. I realized instantly I wanted to keep understanding her… but a bear hug would have to do.