syrphs-library

[syrphs-library]

Writing advice from my uni teachers:

If your dialog feels flat, rewrite the scene pretending the characters cannot at any cost say exactly what they mean. No one says “I’m mad” but they can say it in 100 other ways.

Wrote a chapter but you dislike it? Rewrite it again from memory. That way you’re only remembering the main parts and can fill in extra details. My teacher who was a playwright literally writes every single script twice because of this.

Don’t overuse metaphors, or they lose their potency. Limit yourself.

Before you write your novel, write a page of anything from your characters POV so you can get their voice right. Do this for every main character introduced.

[syrphs-library]

Sometimes you just gotta sit with a fact about yourself.

In other news, I am once again Thinking about the "eternal hunger" part inherent in vampirism.

[syrphs-library]

An Unfinished Poem

Through daisy chains and spools of honey,

I ask a whispered plea;

"when will you listen to the rain,

my darling honeybee?

Ages now, you've sat right here,

dust all your company.

And homespun lattices,

creeping spider's web,

are all that pass your eye."

Well time does trickle quickly,

and rushes oh so slowly.

I'll gaze on stars in silver threads,

when sunbeams dance the air.

[syrphs-library]

She wrote like the world was ending. Forward, backward, forward forward, backward. Pause. Go back 10 sentences and find where she started writing herself into a corner. Rewrite. Backspace. Rewrite again. Forward, forward, backward, forward.

"The world fell apart slowly." She wrote. She sipped her cold tea.

"Everyone noticed and no one could do a thing to stop it." She wrote. Picked up her tea to sip it again. Paused with it on her lips. Set the tea down and backspaced that last sentence away.

"Some very loud people tried to make it burn faster. Many more, much quieter people, made it worth living in the ashes left behind when the fires finally died down." She wrote. She nodded, and leaned back in her seat. Took a deep sip of her tea and sighed. Looked up to the ceiling.

"Writing's so damn hard. I just want to give this world a good story." No, that wasn't right.

"Writing's so damn hard. I just want to give this world a good story give this world a little hope."

There, yes. Better. Not perfect, but things rarely were. As long as the in-between lines carried the reader to the gut-punchers, it didn't matter if they weren't perfect.

You liked this well enough, after all. Didn't you? And the not-so-great lines still carried you perfectly well over to this gut-punch. Happy reading. Don't forget to tip your writer or whatever.

[syrphs-library]

Awesome Sites and Links for Writers

Just about every writer out there has several go-to websites that they use when it comes to their writing. Be it for creativity, writer’s block, to put you in the mood or general writing help. These are mine and I listed them in hopes that you’ll find something that you’ll like or find something useful. I’ve also included some websites that sounded interesting, but I haven’t tried out yet.

Spelling & Grammar

Grammar Girl – Grammar Girl’s famous Quick and Dirty Tips (delivered via blog or podcast) will help you keep your creative writing error free.

The Owl – is Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL), an academic source from Purdue University (which is in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S.). It’s contains plenty of grammar guides, style tips and other information that can help with your writing, it’s especially great for academics.

Tip of My Tongue — have you ever had trouble of thinking of a specific word that you can’t remember what it is? Well, this site will help you narrow down your thoughts and find that word you’ve been looking for. It can be extremely frustrating when you have to stop writing because you get a stuck on a word, so this should help cut that down. 

Free Rice – is a great way to test your vocabulary knowledge. What’s even better about this site is that with every correct answer, they donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. So, please disable your adblock since they use the ads on the site to generate the money to buy the rice.

HyperGrammar – is from the University of Ottawa (a bilingual public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) that offers up a one-stop guide for proper spelling, structure, and punctuation. Being that this comes from a Canadian university, that means that they use standard Oxford English Dictionary spelling. Basically that means you’ll get British English, which differs slightly from formal American English.

AutoCrit – the AutoCrit Editing Wizard analyzes your manuscript to identify areas for improvement, including pacing and momentum, dialogue, strong writing, word choice and repetition. It also provides a number of other writing resources as well. It’s not free, but they do offer 200 characters for analysis at no charge. It’s $29.97 per month or $359.64 for an annual membership. 

ProWritingAid – is another automatic editing tool that analyzes your writing and produces reports on areas such as overused words, writing style, sentence length, grammar and repeated words and phrases. They offer a free sample, but you have to make an account to try it out. It’s $3.33 per month ($40 annually, or less if you purchase a longer license).

Writer’s Digest – learn how to improve your writing, find an agent, and even get published with the help of the varied blogs on this site.

Paper Rater – uses Artificial Intelligence to improve your writing. It includes grammar, plagiarism, and spelling check, along with word choice analysis. The basic version is completely free, but they do offer premium subscription for people seeking more advanced features. If you’re interested it’s $14.95 per month or $95.40 per year if you decide to get it.

Syntaxis – it allows you to test your knowledge of grammar with a ten-question quiz. The questions change every time you take the quiz so users are sure to be challenged each time around. It definitely helps writers know if there’s something that they need to brush up on.

Word Frequency Counter – this counter allows you to count the frequency usage of each word in your text.

EditMinion – is a free robotic copy editor that helps you to refine your writing by finding common mistakes.

Proofreading for Common Errors – this is a simple tutorial on proofreading your writing by Indiana University.

BBC – has a section for helping you with your skills, especially in writing, from grammar to spelling, to reading, to listening and to speaking.

Tools

Copyscape – is a free service that you can use to learn if anyone has plagiarized your work. It’s pretty useful for those that want to check for fanfiction plagiarism.

Plagium – is another a copy detection system, that provides a very similar service to Copyscape and uses Yahoo! rather than Google to perform its searches. Just keep in mind that searches for simple text up to 25,000 characters remains free of charge, but any larger requires credits to be purchase.

Write or Die – is an web application for Windows, Mac and Linux which aims to eliminate writer’s block by providing consequences for procrastination. It lets you try it for free, but the desktop version is available for $10. The Write or Die iPad app is $9.99 in the App Store. If you’re really old school, the original web app can still be launched with its modest settings.

Written? Kitten! – is similar to Write or Die, but it’s a kinder version and it’s completely free. They use positive reinforcement, so every time you reach a goal they reward you with an adorable picture of a kitten.

Fast Fingers – offers you an easy way to improve your typing skills. It’s puts you through a quick typing game that tests your typing speed and improves it at the same time. It’s also a great way for writers to warm up.

Information & Data

RefDesk – it has an enormous collection of reference materials, searchable databases and other great resources that can’t be found anywhere else. It’s great to use when you need to find something and/or check your facts.

Bib Me – it makes it easy to create citations, build bibliographies and acknowledge other people’s work. This is definitely something that academics will love. It’s basically a bibliography generator that automatically fills in a works cited page in MLA, APA, Chicago or Turbian formats.

Internet Public Library – is a non-profit, largely student-run website managed by a consortium, headed by Drexel University. Currently this online library is inactive, but it’s still full of resources that are free for anyone to use, from newspaper and magazine articles to special collections. Just keep in mind that it’s not up to date, since they stopped maintaining it on June 30, 2015.

The Library of Congress – if you’re looking for primary documents and information, the Library of Congress is a great place to start. It has millions of items in its archives, many of which are accessible right from the website.

Social Security Administration: Popular Baby Names – is the most accurate list of popular names from 1879 to the present. If your character is from America and you need a name for them, this gives you a accurate list of names, just pick the state or decade that your character is from.

WebMD – is a handy medical database loaded with information. It’s not a substitute for a doctor, but can give you a lot of good information on diseases, symptoms, treatments, etc.

MedlinePlus – is the National Institutes of Health’s web site that contains information about diseases, conditions, and wellness issues in language you can understand. It also offers reliable, up-to-date health information, anytime, anywhere, for free. You can use the site to learn about the latest treatments, look up information on a drug or supplement, find out the meanings of words, or view medical videos or illustrations. You can also get links to the latest medical research on your topic or find out about clinical trials on a disease or condition.

Mayo Clinic – is a nonprofit medical practice and medical research group.

World Health Organization (WHO) – is a specialized agency of the United Nations that is concerned with international public health. Its current priorities include communicable diseases, in particular HIV/AIDS, Ebola, malaria and tuberculosis; the mitigation of the effects of non-communicable diseases; sexual and reproductive health, development, and ageing; nutrition, food security and healthy eating; occupational health; substance abuse; and driving the development of reporting, publications, and networking.

Google Scholar – is an online, freely accessible search engine that lets users look for both physical and digital copies of articles. It searches a wide variety of sources, including academic publishers, universities, and preprint depositories and so on. While Google Scholar does search for print and online scholarly information, it is important to understand that the resource is not a database.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac – this classic almanac offers yearly information on astronomical events, weather conditions and forecasts, recipes, and gardening tips.

State Health Facts – Kaiser Family Foundation provides this database, full of health facts on a state-by-state basis that address everything from medicare to women’s health.

U.S. Census Bureau – you can learn more about the trends and demographics of America with information drawn from the Census Bureau’s online site.

Wikipedia – this shouldn’t be used as your sole source, but it can be a great way to get basic information and find out where to look for additional references.

Finding Data on the Internet – a great website that list links that can tell you where you can find the inflation rate, crime statistics, and other data.

Word References

RhymeZone – whether you’re writing poetry, songs, or something else entirely, you can get help rhyming words with this site.

Acronym Finder – with more than 565,000 human-edited entries, Acronym Finder is the world’s largest and most comprehensive dictionary of acronyms, abbreviations, and initials.

Symbols.com – is a unique online encyclopedia that contains everything about symbols, signs, flags and glyphs arranged by categories such as culture, country, religion, and more. 

OneLook Reverse Dictionary – is a dictionary that lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word. 

The Alternative Dictionaries – is a PDF, that contains a list of slang words in all types of languages, such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Norwegian and many, many others. There use to be a website, but it’s not there anymore and this is the next best thing I could find.

Online Etymology Dictionary – it gives you the history and derivation of any word. Etymologies are not definitions; they’re explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago.

MediLexicon – is a comprehensive dictionary of medical, pharmaceutical, biomedical, and health care abbreviations and acronyms.

Merriam Webster Online – the online version of the classic dictionary also provides a thesaurus and a medical dictionary.

Multilingual Dictionary – it translate whatever you need from 30 different languages with this easy-to-use site.

Writing Software

Open Office – why pay for Microsoft products when you can create free documents with Open Office? This open source software provides similar tools to the Microsoft Office Suite, including spreadsheets, a word processor, the ability to create multimedia presentations, and more.

LibreOffice – is a free and open source office suite. It was forked from OpenOffice.org in 2010, which was an open-sourced version of the earlier StarOffice. The LibreOffice suite comprises programs to do word processing, spreadsheets, slideshows, diagrams and drawings, maintain databases, and compose math formula.

Scrivener – is not a free program, but it’s certainly a very popular one. It's great for organizing research, planning drafts, and writing novels, articles, short stories, and even screenplays.

OmmWriter – is for Mac OS X, a free simple text processor that gives you a distraction free environment. So you can focus only on your writing without being tempted or distracted by other programs on your computer. They are currently working on a Windows version of their software as well, so keep an eye out for that if you’re interested.

FocusWriter – is a completely free full-screen writing application designed to immerse you in your writing. It keeps your writing space simple and clean without sacrificing functionality. It includes a daily goal tracker, work count and time spent writing. There’s also spell checking, real-time feedback on variables like word and page count, and tabbed document browsing. It's available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Q10 – is a free portable distraction-free writing tool for Windows. The interface includes nothing but a tiny bar at the bottom that displays the character, word, and page count—you can toggle the bar off for a totally distraction free workspace. 

Evernote – is a free app for your smartphone and computer that stores everything you could possibly imagine losing track of, like a boarding pass, receipt, article you want to read, to do list, or even a simple typed note. The app works brilliantly, keeping everything in sync between your computer, smartphone, or tablet. It’s definitely a useful app for writers when you have ideas on the go.

ScriptBuddy – is a full-fledged screenplay software program. It handles the proper screenplay format automatically, so you can concentrate on your story. It is easy to use and the basic version is free.

TheSage – is a free application, which is a comprehensive English dictionary and thesaurus that provides a number of useful and in some cases unusual search tools.

Sigil – is ideal for e-book authors because it's a free EPUB editor with a stack of essential features.

WriterDuet – is a collaborative screenwriting app for working with writing partners in real-time. It also lets you copy text written in Fountain, or other screenwriting programs (Final Draft, Celtx, etc.) and paste it directly into WriterDuet with the correct formatting most of the time. They offer the basic version for free, WriterDuet Pro ($9.00 monthly, $79 yearly and $199 lifetime) and WriterDuet Premium ($299 yearly). WriterDuet works on Mac, Windows, Linux, Chromebooks, iOS, and Android. It gives identical page counts on all devices, and PDFs.

ZenWriter – is a program that gives you an open, peaceful place for composing your thoughts without any distractions. It’s a fullscreen text editor that offers customizable backgrounds, music, and a nifty word count at the bottom of the window. It’s not free, but it does offer a free trial for 15 days. It is available for Windows, and after the 15-day trial period you can choose to purchase it for $17.50 if you want.

WriteMonkey – is a Windows writing application with an extremely stripped down user interface, leaving you alone with your thoughts and your words. It is light, fast and free. It’s also an portable app, so you can stick it on a USB drive and use in on whatever computer you happen to find yourself at.

YWriter5 – is a free word processor and is designed for Windows XP, Vista and beyond. It's a small but very comprehensive tool which helps you to plan your story. It breaks your novel into chapters and scenes, helping you to keep track of your work while leaving your mind free to create. You can set up deadlines, for instance, and the program’s Work Schedule report will let you know how much you’ll have to do, each day, to finish on time. You can even enter your characters, locations and items and freely organize them into scenes. This definitely sounds like it’ll be useful for NaNoWriMo writers.

Kingsoft Office (WPS Office) – is an office suite for Microsoft Windows, Linux, iOS and Android OS. The basic version is free to use, but a fully featured professional-grade version is also available. This software allows users to view, create and share office documents that are fully compatible with dozens of document formats, including Microsoft PowerPoint, Word and Excel. In other words, the format is similar to a Microsoft Word document (.DOC or .DOCX file) and supports formatted text, images, and advanced page formatting. Kingsoft Writer documents can be converted to Microsoft Word *.doc files in the software.

Creativity, Fun & Miscellaneous

National Novel Writing Month – is one of the most well-known writing challenges in the writing community. National Novel Writing Month pushes you to write 50,000 words in 30 days (for the whole month of November).

WritingFix – a fun site that creates writing prompts on the spot. The site currently has several options—prompts for right-brained people, for left-brained people, for kids—and is working to add prompts on classic literature, music and more.

Creative Writing Prompts – the site is exactly what it says. They have 100+ and more, of prompts that you can choose from.

My Fonts – is the world’s largest collection of fonts. You can even upload an image containing a font that you like, and this tells you what it is. Just keep in mind that not all of the fonts are free.

DaFont – has lot of fonts as well, most of them are completely free to download. However, some are demo versions or are only free if you used it for personal use and not commercial use.

Story Starters – this website offers over one trillion randomly generated story starters for creative writers.

The Gutenberg Project – this site is perfect for those who like to read and/or have an e-reader. There’s over 33,000 ebooks you can download for free. 

The Imagination Prompt Generator – click through the prompts to generate different ideas in response to questions like “Is there a God?” and “If your tears could speak to you, what would they say?”

The Phrase Finder – this handy site helps you hunt down famous phrases, along with their origins. It also offers a phrase thesaurus that can help you create headlines, lyrics, and much more.

Storybird – this site allows you to write a picture book. They provided the gorgeous artwork and you create the story for it, or just read the stories that others have created.

Language Is a Virus – the automatic prompt generator on this site can provide writers with an endless number of creative writing prompts. Other resources include writing exercises and information on dozens of different authors.

Background Noise/Music

SimplyNoise – a free white noise sounds that you can use to drown out everything around you and help you focus on your writing.

Rainy Mood – from the same founders of Simply Noise, this website offers the pleasant sound of rain and thunderstorms. There's a slide volume control, which you can increase the intensity of the noise (gentle shower to heavy storm), thunder mode (often, few, rare), oscillation button, and a sleep timer. 

Coffitivity – a site that provides three background noises: Morning Murmur (a gentle hum), Lunchtime Lounge (bustling chatter), and University Undertones (campus cafe). A pause button is provided whenever you need a bladder break, and a sliding volume control to give you the freedom to find the perfect level for your needs and moods. It’s also available as an android app, iOS app, and for Mac desktop. If you go  Premium it’s $9 and you’ll get 1 year of unlimited listening to their audio tracks and access to three more sounds: Paris Paradise, Brazil Bistro and Texas Teahouse.

Rainy Cafe – it provides background chatter in coffee shops (similar to Coffitivity) AND the sound of rain (similar to Simply Rain). There’s also individual volume and on/off control for each sound category.

Forest Mood – is background noise of the forest.

MyNoise – is a website with multi-purpose noise generator that is completely free. It helps you to focus while working in a noisy environment or to help settle your anxiety and it’s also useful in cases of insomnia or tinnitus. It has so many sounds to choose from: Fish Tank, Clockwork, Gregorian Chants, Traffic Noise, and so on.

MyNoise: Online Fire Noise Generator – is also from NyNoise, but it’s a short-cut link for those that only want to hear the sound of fire crackling in a fireplace.

Snowy Mood – is a noise generator that plays sounds of boots walking through snow on an endless loop. It’s simple and straightforward, and perfect for those days when you feel like being snowed in.

Noisli – is a background noise generator that helps you to drown out annoying noises in order to create your perfect environment for working and relaxing. You can mix different sounds together, such as rain and a train or fire and the night sound of crickets or with the waves at a beach. 

Purrli – is a white noise generator that recreates the sound and the presence of a cat purring next to you.  

Ambient Mixer – is a free online audio mixing tool in which you can create and edit your own ambient music or background sounds. You can even listen to other people’s mixes such as Gryffindor Common Room, Riding with the Winchesters, Mr. Tumnus’ House, A Day in Camp Half-Blood, and so on.

8tracks – is an internet radio website and everyone can listen for free, well it use to be completely free. Unlike other music oriented social network such as Pandora or Spotify, 8tracks doesn’t have commercial interruption (that’s if you get 8tracks Plus). Users can create free accounts and can either browse the site and listen to other user-created mixes for as long as they like, and/or they can create their own mixes. It’s a perfect place to listen to other writer’s playlist, share yours or find music for specific characters or moods. Note: Joining is still free, however you’re now limited to 1 hour of free listening for each week (or more depending on how much people like your mixes, but I’ve been told the limitation is for those in the US only). If you want unlimited access it’s $30 per year or $5.00 a month.

Playmoss – with 8tracks no longer having free unlimited listening and no commercial interruptions many people looked for an alternative and Playmoss is what 8tracks use to be. Playmoss is free to join and it has all the same basic features that 8tracks has, only with extra goodies like unlimited skips, able to see the entire tracklist before playing, start at any point in the playlist, see how many playlists contain a certain song and even collaborate playlists with other people.

[syrphs-library]

Cherry Stems in Nostalgia

Throwing thoughts together like cherry stems after a picnic. It's musical, it's magical, it's absurd in it's tiny, miniscule, unimportant delight.

There's delight in the cosmos.

There's love in the cosmos.

There's fickle things snuffed out too quick to get a good look, and precious moments too fleeting for you to ever get back.

There's moments and memories that linger far past your living and waking minds,

Things that shouldn't survive for as long as they might, but still persevere all the same.

Records held up and open for the world to hear and read that tell tales older than our souls,

where only the bones of the writer still persist after all this time.

The bones and the music.

The bones and the music,

the bones and the music.

Is that all we are?

Isn't that all we are?

Is bones and music,

Strung together and hung up like lights.

Lights like stars,

Lights like sunsets,

Lights like the last time they left you alive in their hurry.

Left you alone to gaze up at the ceiling and picture stars and void in it's place.

But all before you is ceiling puckers and a broken fan that still works only a little.

The light died a long time ago.

It's not coming back.

...or is it?

Not that one. That one's dead and gone and far too concrete and cold,

all glass shards and nothingness.

A metaphorical one.

The light still glimmers.

It's hope and spite tangled together

again and again

screaming and raging and loving and hating

Hoping for just a little more Love and Spitefully grabbing it with both hands when they try to deny you it,

as if you aren't just another person?

Love,

love your most basic human, no-

Living,

need.

You deserve to love and be loved just as much as any rabbit or dandelion or black hole or abyss of darkness or strobe of light.

The Universe is far too vast and you are far too little.

But still that does not make your love of the small things any less all-encompassing,

like frogs and deer,

streams and stones,

cacti and sand.

So what about you, Little Thing?

So tiny that the thought of you is nothing more than the cherries you snacked on at 4am when you were thirteen and just beginning to learn what spite and hope were.

Why would something,

Someone,

ever love You.

When you are just the cherry stems thrown together after a picnic on the roof?

[syrphs-library]

Saith and Ablete, the twin spirits of the suns, holy and blessed-

-were absolutely boring to learn about.

Hiasinth was too easily bored.

She wanted to run in the woods, and play with the hunting dogs, get caked in mud and steal food from the kitchens.

Instead? She had to learn how to sit properly, how to pray properly, how to speak properly, even how to eat, you guessed it, damned properly.

One day she'd leave this house behind. Go traveling, maybe join the regular hunting party of some village far, far away from the boring lessons and her boring life. It wasn't like there was any kind of exciting future for her here. Just marriage and homebodiness and children, which she didn't even want! She wanted none of it! All of her wants were outside and one day she was going to snatch them right up!

They'll all see.

One day, she won't be stuck being betrothed to boredom.

No idea if I'll actually be able to get my systemmates to work on this, but I'm gonna try to have us add at least a sentence to this every day, in a sort of "Yes, and..." game. Please feel free to pester us lightly about this if we don't update it daily.

-------

Winter was coming, and the ambitious servant knew when to start stocking up on supplies.

Nobles hardly ever notice if a single pinch of salt goes missing, or a loose thread here or there, or if the ash from the chimney hadn't gotten thrown out to the woods like it was supposed to.

Saith, the children are even happy to have the servants help them get out of eating their vegetables, or have their old plates and cups cleared away with food still hugging the corners while their parents bicker over gossip across the table from them.

Oh Young Lord Hathen? Yes, he ate all his vegetables. Such a good lad, he'll surely grow up big and strong. Young Lady Hiasinth's old dress that was becoming a bit too tattered for polite society? Yes Mistress, I'll take it out with the trash and she'll never know.

Food can be dried, smoked, and salted, and frozen once the ice starts to settle over the lake. Old dresses can be fashioned into all sorts of useful items, from shirts to bags to pillows and blankets.

The Nobles never notice the small things missing, as long as they think it's just the help cleaning away their messes.

[syrphs-library]

Aethen was used to being overlooked.

Being the youngest child, dumbest child, and only married-into-the-family child of four would do that to you.

Aethen was ok with this though. Being the overlooked child meant that no one noticed when you weren't around, and better yet, when you were.

The elderly maid Atisha always kept the leftovers from the plates at dinner, and once they'd managed to watch her hand them off to one of the stable boys, who'd taken it to a secret place in the castle to be distributed fairly amongst the servants present.

Fair the cleaner would stuff loose threads in their pockets and tuck old clothes under their arms whenever they cleaned one of the Nobles bedrooms, and no one else seemed to question where they went.

Aethen wasn't the only overlooked one in the castle, they were just the only one who was a Noble, and they were determined to learn everything they could from the rest.

No idea if I'll actually be able to get my systemmates to work on this, but I'm gonna try to have us add at least a sentence to this every day, in a sort of "Yes, and..." game. Please feel free to pester us lightly about this if we don't update it daily.

-------

Winter was coming, and the ambitious servant knew when to start stocking up on supplies.

Nobles hardly ever notice if a single pinch of salt goes missing, or a loose thread here or there, or if the ash from the chimney hadn't gotten thrown out to the woods like it was supposed to.

Saith, the children are even happy to have the servants help them get out of eating their vegetables, or have their old plates and cups cleared away with food still hugging the corners while their parents bicker over gossip across the table from them.

Oh Young Lord Hathen? Yes, he ate all his vegetables. Such a good lad, he'll surely grow up big and strong. Young Lady Hiasinth's old dress that was becoming a bit too tattered for polite society? Yes Mistress, I'll take it out with the trash and she'll never know.

Food can be dried, smoked, and salted, and frozen once the ice starts to settle over the lake. Old dresses can be fashioned into all sorts of useful items, from shirts to bags to pillows and blankets.

The Nobles never notice the small things missing, as long as they think it's just the help cleaning away their messes.

[syrphs-library]

No idea if I'll actually be able to get my systemmates to work on this, but I'm gonna try to have us add at least a sentence to this every day, in a sort of "Yes, and..." game. Please feel free to pester us lightly about this if we don't update it daily.

-------

Winter was coming, and the ambitious servant knew when to start stocking up on supplies.

Nobles hardly ever notice if a single pinch of salt goes missing, or a loose thread here or there, or if the ash from the chimney hadn't gotten thrown out to the woods like it was supposed to.

Saith, the children are even happy to have the servants help them get out of eating their vegetables, or have their old plates and cups cleared away with food still hugging the corners while their parents bicker over gossip across the table from them.

Oh Young Lord Hathen? Yes, he ate all his vegetables. Such a good lad, he'll surely grow up big and strong. Young Lady Hiasinth's old dress that was becoming a bit too tattered for polite society? Yes Mistress, I'll take it out with the trash and she'll never know.

Food can be dried, smoked, and salted, and frozen once the ice starts to settle over the lake. Old dresses can be fashioned into all sorts of useful items, from shirts to bags to pillows and blankets.

The Nobles never notice the small things missing, as long as they think it's just the help cleaning away their messes.

[syrphs-library]

(Wrong) Realizations of the Past

Warnings: Brief mentions of a panic attack, non-permanent character death, casual mentions of death (ie. minecraft-style deaths), brief summary of a traumatic experience.

Summary:

With Luke being asleep after a bad panic attack, Mumbo, his current pillow, has time to ponder some things.

Are they the correct things? Sort of.

---

Mumbo didn’t dare breathe as he watched Luke’s chest rise and fall, worried that if he looked away at the wrong moment he might stop.

It was irrational of course. But then again, when he was around Luke, being rational always seemed to be the last thing on his mind. Er, no, wait. That sounded far too romantic. It was just that every time he saw Luke it was like fireworks were going off in his mind, like when he finally got a new redstone machine to work correctly!

…Oh dear heavens that sounded even worse.

“Ugh!” He groaned, trying to be quiet so Luke could sleep even as his brain kept spinning through all the different paths he didn’t want it to take. Today was even further proof that he should at the very least wait quite a while before trying to ask him out, I mean come on! What sort of stuff did his last server even do to him to make him panic that much after a fall to the death?

…What had they done, actually? Mumbo frowned, going through all the pieces in his head like a particularly difficult machine, trying to puzzle out where the problem was.

Luke’s previous server was heavily modded, to the point where he was shocked by as normal a thing as breaking wood. Which actually probably means he had lived there quite a long time, perhaps even having been-

“Oh!” Mumbo gasped lightly. That was it. That was probably his first world, wasn’t it? That would explain why he was so confused all the time. Even if he was quite good at hiding it, Luke would still tend to stare at ordinary things and actions as though they made no sense to him. That would also explain him having such an extreme reaction to a death. If his original world had been a heavily modded hardcore one, then his death that led to him being glitched into Hermitcraft might’ve been his first.

…Oh gods, it might've been his first.

Mumbo remembered his first death in very blurry detail. Certain parts were as clear as a block of glass for no particular reason that he could discern, like what color the sky was (it was a bright blue, clear day. Not a cloud in sight, but early morning nonetheless.) While others were as transparent as a block of obsidian in the End. He knew that there had been two other people with him, but he had been so young back then that he couldn’t remember anything about what they had looked like that day.

Even so, the event still stuck with him quite sharply, particularly the strong fear he had felt in that moment when he registered that the creeper he was turning to face was igniting, and that he could do nothing about it.

To go through your first death in a heavily modded server, likely the only one you had ever known, and then get glitched into a completely different, mostly vanilla one? Dear heavens, that sounded absolutely terrible. No wonder Luke had rarely ever said anything about his previous server, and was always so hesitant or panicked when asked about it. Poor man probably didn’t want to be reminded of all that, especially so soon after it had happened.

“Hmm… mmng…” Luke hummed in his sleep, curling even tighter into Mumbo’s chest as he leaned against the backboard of Luke’s bed, blankets trapped awkwardly under his right side. Mumbo smiled down fondly at him, squeezing him gently just a little before loosening his grip once again.

“Deary me, Lucky Luke Carder,” He murmured, brushing the fingers of one hand through his friend’s hair as he spoke. “What am I to do with you? If you keep stealing my heart all the time so effortlessly, I might just fall dead on the spot from how fond you’re making me, you oblivious fool, and what will you do then?”

[syrphs-library]

Second Death

Inspired by @sleepless-in-starbucks fic Lucky Jumbo, available on both tumblr and ao3! Oizys, this one’s for you! /d

Warnings: Character Death (Non-permanent, minecraft kind, but still traumatizing for the character it happens to), Panic Attacks, Hurt/Comfort, Detailed Description of a Panic Attack, very brief mentions of blood and teeth, very brief references to previous trauma.

Ships: Mumbo Jumbo/“Lucky” Luke Carder

Summary:

“Lucky” Luke Carder has Absolutely Not been falling in love with one Mr. Mumbo Jumbo ever since his dying by Amanda’s too-capable hands.

Now let’s see if him falling quite literally, and backwards off a building instead of into feelings, will be what it takes for him to admit that he’s wrong! Whoohoo! Absolutely no way this can go wrong.

~~~

One moment he was standing way too close to the edge of Mumbo’s armchair mountain for comfort, and the next moment he was feeling his stomach reach his throat.

The wind was spiraling around him, whipping his cheeks and face, and jerking his shirt up in wild fashion as he tried to somehow slow down, to stop before he hit the floor, because to hit it was to die again and he didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to die the first time but especially not now that he’d met Mumbo.

Tears got torn off of his face as soon as they formed. God, he hadn’t even managed to tell him how he feels, much less kiss him yet. He didn’t want to die again, not like this, not like th-

Keep reading

[syrphs-library]

A Broken Simile

---

God is dead and I watched him fall.

Build up, crescendo, collapse.

I stole his remains

and watched them burn,

With a twisted glee,

and crowing laughter.

[syrphs-library]

Memoir, Requiem

---

We know what it is to be forgotten, a crueller fate none do share so wholely as the dying.

Collecting the smallest things frantically; children's laughter.

The creaking of old bones.

A story of rain and petrichor.

All of it collecting dust for so long,

abruptly preserved at a frantic rate.

Eager to be shared,

Eager to be learned,

Eager to be remembered.

They wish to remember what we will not be here to, shortly.

They want to preserve our past,

and dictate it to the future.

They tell our stories as though they were their own,

with the smoky phantasm of the phrase "salted earth" pushing them onward with ever-hurrying steps.

Trying to outpace time,

trying to outpace stillness,

trying to outpace death.

Extinction comes for us all, in the end.

But what will be found amongst the rubble to preserve us?

[syrphs-library]

my body and My Body

---

I cast my eyes upon the golden rays of dawn,

knowing that they fall from my own lips and the sky's.

Wandering blush paints it in euphoria,

mimicking my own.

Countless hues fall from inside a true-blue dome,

Hidden behind one just-cracked door.

Who am I? I question,

opening my eyes for the first and hundredth time.

Who am I? I reminisce,

gazing at unfamiliar eyes that have always guided this body I bear.

When the lights go out, I pretend to see myself.

One shade over another over another.

Limbs seen in dreams fold delicately into reality,

stardust-gossamer leaving splotches of color on my skin.

Inhuman human,

Human Inhuman,

Inhuman, human?

Human, inhuman?

Which one does not matter.

I am both, I see through all eyes into this crowded mirror.

[syrphs-library]

One thing I love about horrific and tragic moments in writing is that you don't focus on the big details, you focus on the smallest effects of them.

You don't focus on the blackened remains of a village. You focus on the many faded hoof prints leading in and out of the village, stamped into the ground and painted onto the wood of broken doors with old soot.

You focus on how far away this village must have been from anywhere else, how quickly their emotions turned to dread when they first smelt the smoke and heard the starting screams.

...You focus on the simple, scorched little doll next to a crumpled home, and you focus on the too-small skeleton's hand sticking out of the rubble and stuck eternally grasping towards it, just a little too out of reach...

[syrphs-library]

Run, Boy, Run.

---

Word Count: 733 words

Characters: Dream, Tommy.

Warnings: mentions of exile and the prison, but nothing specific. Heavy guilt. Minor self-harm.

Summary: Dream and Tommy confront each other across the L'manberg crater. They've both got things weighing them down, and yet things still go surprisingly peacefully, all things considered.

I tried to show that both people had their faults and their good reasons, while still showing things from c!Dream's flawed perspective.

---

The wind howled, low notes bouncing through the deep wound in the ground and echoing off into a discordant melody.

Tired emerald eyes hidden by a chipped bone mask stared across the canyon just to the side of once-electric blue ones as the wind tossed their clothes around with wild abandon.

"C'mon, Tommy, let's end this once and for all. No one needs to die, no one needs to go to war. Let's let the server rest, we both know it'll be better off if the worst of its inhabitants aren't fighting each other."

"Fuck off, man! We-" he choked and tried again. "I know you're lying. You'll just get good and then come back and tear everything I love away from me all over again! I won't let you do that!"

He sighed. "I won't, Tommy." Dream turned away for a moment, gazing at the tattered flag hiding away in the depths of the crater. He could just barely make it out through all the rubble and the dust-filled air. "I'm tired, Tommy."

"Heh?! What the fuck does that have to do with anything, you bitch-"

He snapped his head back towards Tommy at that, wincing back a bit when he saw the flinch the kid failed to hide.

Nether, that all really had been for nothing, hadn't it? Just another kid fucked up, and the price paid wasn't even worth it in the end. It did so little to help the server, and so much to hurt Tommy. Wasn't even worth it in the end.

Dream tilted his head towards the ground, just missing the frown that deepened on the kid's face.

"I'm tired, alright Tommy? I'm tired of always trying so hard, and throwing so much away, always for so little." He looked back up, starting to move his hands up as well before they stuttered to a stop back at his sides, fists tightening. "I mean, look at you! I fucked up so much with you!"

Tommy flinched back. "I mean, yeah you did bitch, but why're you bringing it up now..?" The kid's fists clenched and unclenched nervously, grabbing at air as he shuffled in place at the opposite edge of the crater.

Dream tugged at his sleeves, bringing one up to bite at it before halting the motion and shoving it back down, his trembling fingers gripping the fabric harder afterward.

"I did so much to you, used you like a tool, because I thought it was the only way to get the server fixed. To get everyone to stop fighting each other. I still don't think there was anything else I could've done, but the price wasn't worth what happened. I did all that shit and it wasn't even worth it. It wasn't even enough. I traumatized an already traumatized kid to fix a broken server and it didn't even last a month."

Rain began to come down with the wind, stinging his ears and the tips of his fingers, trying to dig its way under his ragged cloak and hoodie to get at the skin under them. "Sure, there aren't any wars, but people are still fighting! No one trusts each other, and now everyone's scared of being thrown in the- the prison."

He paused, trying hard not to shudder at the memories that threatened to surface at the mention. He wasn't there anymore, he wasn't there anymore, he wouldn't go back, he couldn't-" His teeth broke the skin of his fingers, having subconsciously brought one hand up to bite on them. He jolted them away from under his mask, quickly fixing it when it jostled out of place a little from the sudden movement. Stars, he was such a mess-

"Go."

His head jolted up. "What?"

"You heard me. Go away!" Tommy yelled at him.

"You go away and don't you ever come back! And if I even see your name in the chat, I'll hunt you down myself and take your last canon life, you hear me? So! go! Away!" The kid screamed those last few words, breaking him out of his stupor.

"R-right. Right, ok. Okay, I'll go." He muttered, backing away from the crater. One step, then two, then he was turning around and running, the rain pelting him from all sides as he sprinted through it.

'I'm free?' He wondered to himself in awe as he left the old L'manberg lands behind.

'I'm free.'

[syrphs-library]

A Universe's Love

Time, cascading.

Time, little threads through which eyes peak out, searching, ever searching for something more to see, to witness. To see the next big thing that no one else will ever.

Rivers of cascading threads, cast in nightmarish tones of color.

Blood, lime, ruby, carrot, bubblegum, cat's eye, cerulean. A million shades for a million, trillion moments.

Your mind shatters trying to comprehend it, then stitches all the pieces back together with glue, trying to restore an order that never was, at the cost of that which you sold it to gain.

Is this all it ever is? Does the rain hurt? Does it scorch your very soul? Not yours, but there it does.

There it's people fear it like acid, and coax it to grow like poison ivy, stewing under another's home till it ruptures the ground beneath their feet, burning them and burning them and burning them until all that remains is a putrid puddle.

Does It care? Does It care, I wonder?

I cared. But I also did not. I cared as much as One like I Was ever could, which was yet still never enough for those I cared for.

How could it be? How could the Sun's love not burn those it cherishes so sweetly, melting their skin with a too-hot kiss?

How could the Ocean? It's true embrace so pressuring as to crush those it loves as deeply as that.

It settles to pat them with it's storms and blow hurricane kisses at it's children and loves from afar, yet still even these can kill and crush and break.

So how could something so much grander, so incomprehensible as It ever hope to not kill what it loves? To not hurt it, to show It's affection and have It's intentions understood?

Sleep. It says, barely a whisper, easily an explosion.

You've Dreamt Well. It hums, pushing It's beginning back and back, farther and farther, eons and eons away, stretching in It's sleepy state.

Dream Again. It sighs, curling back up tighter, compressing black holes into existence.

Dream Better. The Universe thinks. The air around you hums violently with It's energy.

A Universe's Love is a powerful thing. A terrible blessing, a wonderful curse.