coffeeisalaxative

[coffeeisalaxative]

Salvete, Gaius Iuli'us Caesar sum et pilorum album quam nivem habeo et aureos, sed interdum virides lauros et imperium Romanum construxi et eius eram quasi primus Caesar (sic merui nomen meum) et multi indicant mihi me Marcus Crassus similem esse (si non scitis Marcus Crassus, vobis opus est pecunia). Brutus non est filius meus quod est bonum nam ET TU, MI FILI???!?. Iamia sum sed dentes albos et rectos habeo. Pallidam cutem habeo. Etiam, maga sum magicum ludum, nomine Pigverruca, visitans quod desinam (ego sum MMCXIV), veni, vidi, vici. Classicus sum (si vos id non suspexistis) et multas togas emptas in Basilica Iulia habeo. Ratio amo et bellum Gallicum gero. Veluti, hodie omnia Gallia occupata. Omnia Gallia? Certe! Non est vicus parvus inter Aquarium, Babaorum, Laudanum et Brevisbonum. Ambulabam foris Pigverruca. Ninxit et pluvit et Gallia divisa erat in partes tres, quod me fecit felix. Marcus Porcius Cato me observavit. Digitum medium illo monstravi.

[coffeeisalaxative]

Someone hacked the tornado siren… (Unmute !)

[coffeeisalaxative]

Reblogging for that last one.

types of writing sessions

got on computer, looked at document, was like “fuck this shit” and got off

wrote like 150 words that consist of bloating the existing useless conversation or scene even more

wrote SO MANY WORDS but it was because you were so desperate to escape the Bad Part

wrote SO MANY WORDS but it was because you were so desperate to get closer to the Good Part

got on your document, ran into research issue, spent like an hour on Wikipedia, ah shit

the somewhat satisfying “fixing everything I hated about the scene I wrote the day before” session

decent amount of progress that took like 3x longer than it should have because you were repeatedly distracted

In The Zone and completely absorbed, just BLAZING through a few thousand words, probably close to the ending, probably listening to playlist

Not actually a writing session, just listening to playlist

the session where you write like a paragraph, suddenly realize the unfixability of your current plot predicament, and cry

that weird session where you don’t have much time and you’re super tired and you write like a page but you reread it the next morning and holy shit these words came from the fingers of god why is it so good

that session that is purely just navigating the boring shit of getting from one scene to the next and it sucks but you leave off on the cusp of something interesting and it feels good

the satisfyingly exhausting session where you write the Good Part and you’re confident it came out pretty well and you’re full of thoughts and stuff about where things are going next but you need to let them rest

get on computer, write exactly one sentence, get off computer. Now you can say you wrote today

[coffeeisalaxative]

Num Num Cat TikTok Chain

[coffeeisalaxative]

For the last decade or so, I’ve been routinely attending a ride-on lawnmower race. I’ve always wanted to participate, but the high cost of used mowers is better spent on more practical vehicles, like literally anything else. Sometimes, though, the universe sends you a message. And in my case, that message came in the form of an awkward leg of a huge trade-in scam.

Picture, if you will, the humble redneck. They await the approach of big, fast domestic mowers. John Deeres, Cub Cadets, even weird modified Chinese stuff they looted from Aliexpress. There is jubilance, but that soon comes to an awkward hush. An unfamiliar engine note approaches.

My International 1480 combine harvester, all ten tons of it, is barrelling down the highway at a clip somewhere between “tepid” and “jaunty.” Even though I have shown up for a race, I am sandbagging a little bit, making sure that the bets get settled against my vehicle before I show them the might of a fully operational monster such as mine.

Technically, there is no violation. I had looked at the rulebook from every angle in the previous year: it has the correct number of wheels, the proper agricultural intent, and with precise work on the tiller, it can even (poorly) mow a suburban lawn. Is it modified? Oh yes, yes indeed, but I see the nitrous bottles poking out from the rows of Kubotas at the starting line.

And when I leave the starting line, it is a thing of beauty. At least for a few milliseconds. It seems that the wizards at International Harvester simply did not comprehend of a situation in which the frame of their combine would be launched into the air by means of one thousand eight hundred foot-pounds of supercharger-bolstered torque. I had erroneously believed that the loose soil of the rural community would let the wheels dip in, but now I am facing directly into the sky, having twelve o’ clocked hard on my wheelie, shooting flames from my exhaust and whirling vertical blades of death towards the grandstand.

It’s not about whether you win or lose. Sometimes it’s about how many pages you add to the rulebook.

[coffeeisalaxative]

My collection of clothing references for writing. 

[coffeeisalaxative]

which one of u was going to tell me that tea tastes different if u put it in hot water?

[coffeeisalaxative]

This is killing me

[coffeeisalaxative]

Ye

Finally finished the big old sci-fi thing! On to newer (and please, for the love of everything, less convoluted) stories! 80k or less, mark my words.

[coffeeisalaxative]

when that minor character you weren’t planning on doing anything with turns out to be one of the best characters you've ever created

[coffeeisalaxative]

As Above

https://vocal.media/fiction/as-above-xflimq0wpt

Short Story/OC - Horror? Word Count: 723

Excerpt: The lake was above the ice, and Zoe soared. Wing-spread arms beat strong from her shoulders, and her legs, schooling currents about, above, below, spun free. Her toes like talons grasped for the dark aloft but only knocked against the flooded shells of her boots. In her ears the rippling bass sung tenor, sluggishly wed to her spinning upstrokes, downstrokes, her unfettered silence.

CW: drowning

[coffeeisalaxative]

Thief’s Box

https://vocal.media/fiction/thief-s-box

Short Story/OC - Speculative Fiction? Word Count: 1000

Excerpt: The walls are brick and slick with time. Light spins and sputters against his skin, yet the box seems unaffected. A pile of papers across the desk slumps at the toes of his boots. And the box. Tocks. Ticks. Waiting, lasting, shadowless. Its corners are glum brown pikes sticking gallant and sharp in the room; and Brett reaches out, and tocks, ticks, the box, touches.

[coffeeisalaxative]

Very controlled, put-together, cold characters losing it™️ is one of thee sexiest things in fiction

[coffeeisalaxative]

as much as i love vader getting to fuck palpatine over, as much as i think it's the best thing, and as much as i love AUs where everyone gets together to curbstomp the emperor, i always wanted to see an AU where palpatine dies unexpectedly from the complications of being a bitch just because:

palpatine never intended to die, in my mind, he just aimed to prolong his life through sith bullshit ad infinitum, so i don't think he ever officially established a successor or even a method of transitioning power. i think everyone collectively assumes vader is his heir, on account of vader being the only person with the horrendous job of actually having to talk to the emperor directly all the time. but there's not anything binding except for the fact that if darth vader wants the imperial throne, he can crush the litany of people who would like to stop him like bugs, and i think everyone would assume in turn that vader - a guy who is famous for his frothing at the mouth about the empire's Divine Vision For The Galaxy - would want the throne.

this is, categorically, false, because every single time he's thought about killing palpatine, he had someone else he wanted to hand the throne. this is an awkward situation in which everyone is waiting for vader to stake his claim on the throne in the immediate aftermath of palpatine's death, and vader's like [automated breath] i..... have...... rebels.... to kill......... but i think, as horrific at diplomacy as vader is, he's at least savvy enough to know that the second he corrects everyone and tries to cede the throne, the infighting as everyone makes a play for the throne would cause a ridiculous amount of unrest. so he can't just cede the throne, but he's next to incapable of being functional without serving His Imperial Majesty's Divine Vision, and he needs to choose a successor as fast as possible and then he can possibly consider finding a ditch to lay down in because his one last attachment to the mortal plane died.

i know it'd be more reasonable for vader to kick punt someone like tarkin at the throne, but consider that vader is, fundamentally, unreasonable. and at this point in time, he's also famous for being kind of a religious zealot, and he would absolutely choose this particular time of all the times to trust in the force. so he meditates, considers the sane options, but the force keeps lingering on senator leia organa from alderaan - and it's doing that because she's secretly his daughter, but he doesn't know that, and theoretically this is enough ahead of ANH that he doesn't even have an inclination that she's a rebel spy. but if the force wills it.

so leia, all of eighteen years old, is named empress by darth vader and he doesn't have the grace to tell her he's going to name her empress first, he just kind of goes in front of the imperial senate and does it. i think it would be utterly hilarious if vader handed the empire over to the rebels without knowing it, handed the empire over to his daughter without knowing it, and now leia has to figure out how to safely un-empire an empire while being empress without causing too much chaos.

which is not a job made easier by the wheezing war criminal who keeps kneeling in front of her and asking, "what is thy bidding, my master," because leia has unknowingly inherited the weirdest position in relation to vader anyone could have, and he's kind of relying on tradition to cope. i really just want you to imagine an ongoing bit where one of vader's cybernetic arms gets wrecked while he's suppressing a coup organized against the new empress, and he leaves it like that for weeks because palpatine always had to clear off significant changes like replacement prosthetics, and he keeps waiting for leia to do it. she finally snaps at him to just go and get it fixed, and vader's thrown into an array of distress because that is NOT how this works!!! his MASTER clears off his medical procedures, it ALWAYS works like that, and leia's confusion is bone-deep, because obviously that only makes sense to vader.

wouldn't vader notice the empire getting un-empired by the new secretly-a-rebel empress, you wonder. i would say that he probably wouldn't, because as horrific as palpatine was, he was also all of vader's will to live, up until the moment leia shows him a singular basic courtesy - like not being weirdly involved in the process of vader getting a new arm - and vader decides that he is going to froth at the mouth about Her Imperial Majesty's Divine Vision, instead, until she sees fit to grant him death.

i just think it would be really funny if leia had to deal with learning that vader, on top of being omnicidal and a war criminal, is also just really ridiculous as a person, and very annoying but in a sad way.

[coffeeisalaxative]

Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25595020/chapters/62119969

The Untamed Chapter 1/?

Lan Jingyi expected to spend his Junior year on grades and fitness and maybe studying for the cultivator's licensing exam. Ouyang Zizhen expected to spend his Junior year on romance and hero-worship and fleeting moments of class-induced panic. Unfortunately for their plans, they neglected to account for Wei Wuxian, recently resurrected and back from the dead after 1300 years. Now, it's up to them and the rest of the juniors to keep Wei Wuxian from doing... something. They aren't entirely sure what they're supposed to keep him from doing, but the continued survival of the world probably depends on it, so- Everything will be fine.

Updates on Wednesdays!

[coffeeisalaxative]

I haven’t seen A Dark Night get much love recently, so here’s a bit of quarantine-fueled not-gonna-study hissing pygmy pumas vs hissing Zuko a la chapter 2! @muffinlance thank you again for writing the Ba Sing Se AU I never knew I needed.