Lizard’s Collected Writings

Sideblog for collecting writing I like and writing I post. Main: @excavatinglizard

[slowlikehoney1996]

If your lover lives in Hong Kong and cannot get to Chicago, it will be necessary for you to go to Hong Kong. Perhaps you will spend your life there, and never see Chicago again. And you will, I assure you, as long as space and time divide you from anyone you love, discover a great deal about shipping routes, airlines, earthquake, famine, disease, and war. And you will always know what time it is in Hong Kong, for you love someone who lives there. And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time and, furthermore, to win.

James Baldwin, Nothing Personal

[charl0ttan]

dog i gotta move like yesterday

[mervynbunter]

Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)

[paper-wounds]

“If I Am Killed For Simply Living” — Althea Davis

[havingapoemwithyou]

Dinosaur by Richard Siken

[oedipalrivalry]

[firstfullmoon]

Natalie Shapero, “Stoop,” in Popular Longing

[maxkuilman]

Is it you fighting? Are you holding the sword or are you the weapon? Is your blood really yours?

[passion-of-l0vers]

me: hey guys do u wanna hang out or smth

my monk roommate who has taken up a religious vow of silence and has left it unclear on what religion he’s actually following and won’t tell me when i ask because of the aforementioned vow of silence:

my other roommate that is a corpse we tried to steal the wallet of once to pay the rent but has since materialized in the center of our living room and won’t go away no matter how many times we throw it in the dumpster but at least it pays rent on time:

the collection of china dolls that wander around the apartment and stare wordlessly at me with their glass eyes until i get migraines and don’t even pay rent:

me: okay. i’ll probably turn on a movie or whatever. dracula 1931 okay with u guys?

monk roommate: 👎

me: cmon dude we’ve watched la la land every night for the past week can’t we watch something else

monk roommate: 🖕

me: jesus whatever i’m going back to my room, watch whatever you want

china doll: 👁️👁️

me: fuuuuuck you dude. what the hell.

[excavatinglizard]

Would people read a story about an immortal lady knight on a crumbling giant space habitat who regularly dies in gruesome ways and has a deep hangup over a princess from two thousand years ago and also maybe has a weird little storyteller following her around (haven't decided on that yet)

[phervert]

liner notes from tallahasse by the mountain goats

[hiveswap]

big fan of when you peel back all layers of a character and at the bottom of it there's love

[hiveswap]

why are they doing this? because they loved someone so much it caused the plot to happen. Grief counts btw

[hiveswap]

ESPECIALLY a big fan of when this isn't enough to make them a good person

[bethfuller]

the last signal tower left standing.

prints / follow me on insta

[blueberry-shortbread]

CW: gore

@excavatinglizard your motivation was successful, this is scene one of the space thriller/detective short story now in the works.

--

[havingapoemwithyou]

Scientific method by James Tadd Adcox

[excavatinglizard]

What are your favourite noir/detective tropes? Please please tell me your thoughts

[blueberry-shortbread]

LOVE it when you start off with an established detective who gets a random co-detective/sidekick they don't really want/weren't prepared for. Bonus points if one of them isn't human/is a weird magical freak.

Some examples of this are the caves of steel series from Asimov (human detective and robot assistant he doesn't want) (pretty sure Asimov's sentient robots are what Detroit: become human ripped off) and rivers of london (main character becomes the apprentice of an ancient wizard cop).

I also personally enjoy seeing bits of worldbuilding that subtly suggest the detective's life is in shambles. They keep weird hours, the only food they consume is coffee, they're late to every interrogation, etc.

[scribblinglizard]

Even in dreams I get it wrong

I step up between your legs,

kiss chaste. Mouth soft-closed.

Ball cracks on bat, wild heat of the sun

echoing through the stadium,

ocean-hush of the crowd screaming.

Feel the buzz in our bones of

every blade of grass,

cyclic vicious humanity.

I step back.

And then I walk away.