writingsfromspace

[writingsfromspace]

Writing Prompt #3798

"You wanna do something with all that anger?"

"We can't do anything without getting into trouble."

"So? Sometimes it's good to make trouble."

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I would love to see a fantasy novel where the lore that the reader / protagonist learns at first is not true

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In the late 1970s a glowing orb appeared in the sky. Every day at about 5:00 Greenwich standard time, the orb would go somewhere new, shoot out something similar to a laser, and kill one person. Every day, always at the same time, always exactly one person.

The person killed by the orb seemed completely random, with almost fifty years of studying it we've been able to find no rhythm or reason to who it kills. It kills the old, the young, the rich, the poor, the urban, the rural, anyone. Every human on earth seems to have an equal chance of being killed by the orb. It's a headline the few times someone of note is killed by the orb: Britain famously lost a Parliament member to the orb, Brazil to this day remains the only country where a head of state was killed by the orb while in office, there was a short lived sitcom in the 1990s called Freinds that ended halfway through its first season due to the orb killing one of the main actors on set. However, these are outliers, on any given day the person who dies via orb is very likely to be someone you never heard of. There are billions of people on earth, and only one is killed by the orb every day. In almost fifty years only a little over 18000 have died because of the orb, which is nothing in the face of the sheer amount of humans that exist.

When the orb first appeared people were horrified. Both the US and USSR thought it was a weapon from the other side. Almost every religion made some claim of it being proof of their beliefs, oftentimes claiming it was divine punishment. Atheists claimed it was proof no loving God could exist. People were so very apocalyptic and horrified by it, they thought of it as part of the end times, because when it was new that's really how it looked.

However, it's been long enough so that's changed. Most people have lived their entire lives in a world where the orb exists. The orb isn't that scary a concept. People know their odds of being killed by it are low and that it's not going to end the world or anything. The orb has become normal, and we've accepted that the orb is just something that kills people the same way cancer, or heart attacks, or natrual disasters, or car crashes kill people. In the nineteen eighties there were efforts to find a way to stop the orb, but it's since proven to be extremely difficult, and it's as distant and nebulous as finding a cure for cancer. When a community is struck by the orb you'll see that community in mourning, but it's not a global thing anymore.

So people grow up learning about the orb, as part of science, like anything else. A lot of gen z remembers learning about the orb from Magic School Bus. It's just something normal. There are a few people with an orb hyperfixation, and a few cults that give the orb importance but it's not most people's concern. The orb is how we first confirmed that interdimensional objects existed and are possible. A lot of people theorize dimensional studies wouldn't exist without it, meaning without the orb we might not have thermitizers or grand drives, we might not even have a moon base without the orb. Some have even rather tastelessly claimed that the orb has saved more lives at this point that its taken with all the knowledge it's given us.

Which is why I regret to inform you, that just last week, without warning, the orb killed two people in one day. And for the past seven days it's been killing two people instead of just one. Nobody knows why.

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when worldbuilding any pre-modern or ceremony-focused society it is EXTREMELY important to design the stupidest most impractical hat you can possibly imagine and assign it great cultural significance

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“I want you to do this with me for one month. One month. Write 10 observations a week and by the end of four weeks, you will have an answer. Because when someone writes about the rustic gutter and the water pouring through it onto the muddy grass, the real pours into the room. And it’s thrilling. We’re all enlivened by it. We don’t have to find more than the rustic gutter and the muddy grass and the pouring cold water.”

— Marie Howe, Boston University’s 2016 Theopoetics Conference  (via mothersofmyheart)

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Writing Prompt #3792

"I just miss the way things were. Everything is so difficult now!"

"Everyone used to wait on you hand and foot, and now you have to be your own man. Boo hoo."

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There are eraser shavings even as the world ends. Teenagers bent, head’s together, over their math homework as the lights go out. The gas station attendant dreams, even, of selling candy bars. Stands behind the counter after the gas runs out. Phone lines must be repaired. Potholes are annoying, even to those who are running. The poets do as poets do. As if we could expect anything less. We live small lives. We do our small parts. We make our small art. We feel. We love. We care. We care so much, there will be eraser shavings even as the zombies come. Even as the zombies come.

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Flash #3731

“Don’t you want to terrify? Fear means there are fewer to fight next time. Fear means lives are saved.”

“I see your reasoning and I take your point, but I would ask what of when fear causes there to be more to fight next time, as my terrifying reputation calls forth a terrified and disproportionate response? Or what of the innocents hurt and abandoned when fear puts rationality to fight? The poor choices made by those driven wild by fright? Fear is indeed a weapon, but as with all weapons indiscriminate application can have unintended and catastrophic consequences. Yes?”

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Oh my gosh. I just found this website that walks you though creating a believable society. It breaks each facet down into individual questions and makes it so simple! It seems really helpful for worldbuilding!

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“I don’t know if I should be concerned but your friend is…uh, glowing?”

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One of my favorite things about Reburial is definitely the mundanity that I gave the apocalypse. The worst has happened, the planet has changed irrevocably, life is more dangerous than ever. But people have lived through horrid things all throughout history without society crumbling into The Purge.

There are zombie hoarde advisory warnings on the radio. Water filtration systems deal with the pollen. People carry oral herbicides. Adaptability and caring for one another are quite literally what allowed the human species to spread all across the globe the way that no other species has (except perhaps rats, who famously go wherever we go).

I just think that the presence of a zombie plague meaning that everybody shoots each other with guns over the last twinkie is a wish fulfilment fantasy, and not any kind of pertinent analysis about human nature and What Would Really Happen.

There are many tropes from zombie movies that I take a very personal, petty axe to in Reburial, and the fact that the story is a story with zombies in it about abuse and slipping through the cracks and heartbreak, and not a story about zombies, is definitely top of the list.

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Looking for Writeblrs!

my dash is more dead than I would like, so I'm looking to find some more writeblrs to follow! What I would like to see more of:

25+ writers. I'll check out the blogs of writers who are younger but I would like to find more writers closer to my own age

Sci-fi and high fantasy are my favorite genres. bonus points if you blend them.

queer characters existing in spaces, romance not required.

I'm not the biggest fan of contemporary or historical lit

Engagement with other writeblrs is a big thing for me, I very much want to connect more with the community

Reblog and tell me about your wips! In the interest of wanting to build more engagement with blogs I follow, I'm not going to be checking out blogs that simply like this post without engaging with it in any other way.

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Cthulhu Mythos story set in contemporary times where the Necronomicon develops a huge fandom on Tumblr, complete with Abdul Alhazred RPF

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"Stuck in the timeloop as a punishment" is cool and all, but stuck in the timeloop voluntarily though? Oh, brother. Stuck in the timeloop cause you just can't move on. Stuck in the timeloop even if you know that it's not real and whatever should've happen already did. Stuck in the timeloop even if doesn't makes you happy. You just can't bear the thought of not being able to see them ever again. Stuck in the timeloop even if you know you should move on. Stuck in the timeloop even if you know they would want you to move on.

But maybe just a little while longer.

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marriage of convenience that slowly turns into a love marriage - but both of them believe is one sided is such a delicious trope

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Wip intro made on canva, through its resources, with images from the windswept picrew by Elena-illustration.

This is an old wip for which I decided to finally make an intro for. If you ever dabbled with mythology, you might notice some names are out of place, but that's because the fake pantheon all picked names from other deities, and even the kingdom being called Eden is part of the "scam".

And gods like Andromeda, Helena and Lysander - they travel and get new names as they go in an organic manner.

I read The Masque of the Red Death for the first time when I was like, 11, and it left a strong impression on me. This reteling is not "I can do it better, I can do it new", but it is me having a conversation with why and how I cannot forget this tale.

Tagging: @writeouswriter

[writingsfromspace]

big fan of stories that, while undoubtedly being about the power of friendship, acknowledge that the power of incredible violence is just as important

the love was there. the love changed everything. the crowbar helped also