flint-goes-crazy

[flint-goes-crazy]

thinking about ao3

I did some writing on ao3. check it out if you like Jayce and Viktor from Arcane, or The Good Place, or if you just want a laugh.

go crazy, have fun, or just ignore it and be better for it lol.

[flint-goes-crazy]

thinking about a lot of things: poetry, trees and remembrance

I tried writing a poem, but the tumblr column format didn't like me trying a shape poem, so it's a picture instead of just words.

I just want to take a moment and breathe in the world.

(please don't post this elsewhere)

[flint-goes-crazy]

thinking about what community means to me

No man is an island

You arrive three hours late, jetlagged and exhausted from carrying two full suitcases and two backpacks. The building needs a keycard and a passcode, neither of which you have. A guy your age passes by, asks if you are okay. He offers to carry some bags, gets them up the stairs without bumping anything, makes a phone call and gets you a temporary keycard to use until the office opens tomorrow. When you ask him why he helped, he tells you that he gets locked out a lot, and hates it every time. It’s my own personal nightmare, he says as you unpack, not being able to be home.   

He wishes you a good evening and walks away. It’s only the next day that you realise that you never asked his name.

There’s no I in team

While you are cooking something for dinner, you make a silly mistake and end up burning your hand on the pan. Two of your flatmates hear you shout and come in to see you crying over the red blistering mark across your palm. One of them grabs the pan and takes it off the heat, while the other gently guides you to the sink and runs cold water over the burn.

Ten minutes later, as you apply anti-bacterial cream to your hand, your flatmates knock on the door, with a plate of the dinner you were trying to make, now finished. They ask you if you’re feeling better, to tell them if it doesn’t seem to be healing properly and that they might have had a few spoonful’s of food before handing it over.  

Live and let live

Later that evening, you hear crying through the walls. It’s something about an ex or something about parents or something about money, but you try not to listen to it.

The next day, you ask if they are alright. They nod, smile and thank you for asking.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

You go for a walk to try and clear your head. Your friends come with you, and they expect nothing from you. You walk past trees where squirrels run after each other, barking all the way along the branches. One of them sees you, freezes and then runs away. As a group, you stumble over branches hidden by fallen leaves and kick away conkers like footballs.

This is what I’ve missed, says one friend to you. You ask what they mean.

I’ve missed all of you.

You start to start to realise what “you” means now. You is you and your friends, those who help you, those who you wish you had helped. All of them make you better, through your shared experiences, good and bad. We are all made of each other.

So when you are gone, you will be missed as though we had lost a part of ourselves.  

(Please don't repost this anywhere else)

[flint-goes-crazy]

taking a writing prompt and thinking about memories

…out here in the wild oats, amid the alien corn, I could have a moment of solace. To just stand there, watching the imperceivably slow growth of the stalks, was a privilege I could hold selfishly to myself. Time could only be told by the movement of the few wisps of cloud that swam across the sky, the shadow that stretched from my feet along the clearing, the drying tracks from my tears.

Behind me, the swish of footsteps kicking up fallen leaves came closer until my father was next to me and looking at the fields, trying to see what I was staring at. If he found it, he didn’t say.

“You broke the window then,” he said. Not asking.

“Yes,” I replied.

“I see.”

We watched the crops sway in the breeze. Wild oats. Corn. Clouds. Time.

“Why’d you do it?” he asked.

“I was angry.”

“Angry at what?”

“Myself.”

“Right.”

My father looked away from the rows of corn, at me. He put a hand on my shoulder, gently tried to turn me to face him, but I stayed still.  

“Please look at me, son,” he said. I could hear the pleading on the edge of his voice.

I turned my head round, found his eyes. I never did look much like my father. He was blond where I was brown. Short and stocky, while I was lanky and loped awkwardly everywhere I went. But we had the same green eyes. As I looked at him, I saw those eyes fill with tears, threatening to spill.

“We both knew I wasn’t going to be around forever to help you through everything,” he said, putting his other hand on my shoulder. “I wish I could. So help me help you, okay?”

I nodded. We were both crying, but he pushes on anyway.

“It’s easy to be angry at this. To be honest, I- I am too. I don’t want to die, but it’s happening anyway- “

“I don’t want to you to go!” The words punched their way out of me. My stomach felt as though it was filled with broken glass.

“I know,” he said. “So here’s what we’re going to do. Look out there.”

He pointed back out towards the crops. A few birds flew over, landed on the scarecrows and pecked at their badly drawn faces.

“Later this year, all this is going to be gone too. Every oat, every ear of corn, stored away for later. As much as you and I enjoy watching these grow… well, they have their time.”

My father put his arm around me, took a breath. Wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

“So we shall collect our time. We can share as many moments like these as we can with each other, with our friends, our family. And then, when I’m gone, stored away in that head of yours will be all the memories of us.”

I nodded again. I didn’t trust my voice any more. My father seemed to be fine with my silence. And we watched the wild oats and the alien corn for a while longer.

(The writing prompt 'out here in the wild oats, amid the alien corn' is from Ursula LeGuin's essay The Carrier-Bag Theory of Fiction, do give it a read bc it's cool. Please don't steal this.)

[flint-goes-crazy]

thinking about the apocalypse

In the small shelter, an attempt at putting a kitchen together has mostly succeeded. A metal heating plate is harder to use than a gas hob, but open fire is too dangerous these days, especially now that Reece has installed hay insulation in the walls. The last thing we need is to turn the destruction of our home into a beacon that might reveal our location. It’s still worth it, though, as the few remaining meteorological instruments outside are predicting snow next July, and it’s not getting any warmer.

Since we managed to destroy half our planet, weather’s been quite weird.

There’s still high levels of danger of radioactive exposure above ground, as well as gangs and cults and God knows how many idiots running around with guns just looking for a fight. I sometimes wonder whether they’ve understood that the world’s ended already, that they’re fighting for a corpse of a planet.

Outside, Reece is talking to the leaders of two other communities, their voice friendly, but firm.

“…still needs work, but we can get through okay. Most of these rations just need water, heat or both. As long as we stick together, we can pool our resources, provide for our communities, just try and survive a little bit better..”

Surviving better. That’s been Reece’s idea since day one, when the nuclear weaponry of all major military forces around the world suddenly detonated. Each model of missile, bomb and explosive was designed to maximise casualties, killing far more after the initial bang and flash than during.

Some claimed it was a computer hack, that some young prodigy with something to prove had pressed the big red button with lines of code, slicing through the iron bones and steel skin of security systems surrounding launch codes. Others argued that the rich and powerful had left the Earth in search of a new world, crippling the people left behind so they couldn’t follow the rockets into the bright new future of humanity. A few even thought that God had lost a bet with the Devil, and had allowed hell on Earth to pay for the huge amount of debt only such divine beings could accumulate.

Personally, I thought it was a bad joke. The world ended with nuclear devastation, and it was trending on Instagram within minutes.

“Surviving better” from Reece means “We’re fucked, but let’s try and enjoy it.” Tonight, we’re going to try having a sit-down dinner with some neighbouring shelters. All the food has been placed in decontamination chambers weeks in advance for the meal, along with a few bottles of wine. Unless someone brings glasses, we’ll be passing the bottles around the table. We still have some decent cutlery and crockery from Reece’s mum and a tablecloth with some nice patterns on it.

I made the mistake of looking at the news yesterday. Now that I’ve seen how the world looks from a satellite, I’m trying not to think of half-eaten apples. Or charcoal.  

 Or hell.

(Please don't post this elsewhere)

[flint-goes-crazy]

Welcome!

here's my attempt at getting through life a little better than before. what better way to do that than by being that pretentious heckwit and writing about various things i happen to like?

still trying to figure out how the heck tumblr works, but i'm sure i'll figure it out.