You take a nap at an odd hour in the evening. You wake up in the middle of the night. A blanket has been placed on top of you. You smile, before realizing you live alone.
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roma★
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祝日 / Permanent Vacation
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Janaina Medeiros

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shark vs the universe
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dirt enthusiast
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Peter Solarz
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I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
Not today Justin
will byers stan first human second

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@sendicard
You take a nap at an odd hour in the evening. You wake up in the middle of the night. A blanket has been placed on top of you. You smile, before realizing you live alone.
A lord takes a fancy to a peasant girl and kidnaps her for his own. Little does he know that she’s a trained assassin who has been preparing to take his life for years.
How to Bury a Gentile
I wrote a short vaguely historical vaguely spooky ghost story about Jews and burial rites and I have to justify it existing so here it is.
“Are you the leader of the Jews?”
There was no good that ever came from that question. Rabbi Jacob stood in the doorway, one hand on the knob and the other on the frame, ready to yank it closed at a moment’s notice.
“Well, not all of the Jews.”
The man at the door made a frustrated little grunt. He was clad almost completely in dark grey clothing that seemed to fade into the shadows of the darkened street behind him. The collar of his coat was pulled up so high that it was impossible to make out more than a pair of sharp grey eyes beneath the brim of his hat, and the cloak he wore over the top of it concealed most of his body. There could be any number of guns, knives, or angry mobs hidden under there.
“But the ones in this town, yes? You are their priest, you lead prayers and weddings and so on?” the man said impatiently.
“Rabbi. Yes. I’m the rabbi, that’s correct.” Jacob said, stiffening his posture and assuming the most neutral expression he could manage. Being completely ignorant didn’t exclude someone from being completely dangerous–if anything, that heightened the risk. “What can I do for you?”
“Rabbi,” the man repeated, as if to seal it into his memory properly. One gloved hand squeezed the pommel of his walking stick. “And you preside over the funerals of your people, and perform the rites to send them to the next world?”
“Yyyyyes?” Jacob shifted his weight to his back foot, poised to slam the door in his face. This sounded unpleasantly like an opening for a death threat.
“To any of them, regardless of the sins they carried in life?” An eagerness entered the man’s voice.
“Of course. Though sin as a Jewish concept differs from the Christian…mm. Yes, of course.” The scholars of old might have debated the nature of the evil in men’s souls until the crack of dawn but Jacob had no intention of doing so at half-past midnight with a complete stranger.
The shadowed man took a half step forward and Jacob leaned back to maintain the distance between him. “What about a gentile?” the man pressed. “Would you tend to his corpse too?”
“Huh?”
“There is a man needing to be buried tonight who requires absolution. He is not a Jew, but a Jew’s prayers may be close enough for what is needed.”
“Um. It’s not usually a request I get.” Jacob tried to keep his voice calm and soothing. There was some kind of entrapment lingering in the conversation, he just knew it. That or a giant box of crazy that had managed to dress itself stylishly. Gentiles asking Jews intrusive but urgent questions never turned out well for their target–a day-long case of irritation was the best outcome the target could hope for.
The man’s hands pressed together as he completed the full step forward, making Jacob back up into the doorframe. Desperation was in his tone and Jacob was forced back over the threshold just to stay out of his grip “All I need is someone to accompany me to the cemetery to consecrate the body and pray for its soul. Barely an hour of your time. I cannot pay you with anything but my gratitude, but you will have it eternally.”
“And you came to me?”
The man sighed. Even the top hat seemed to slouch slightly as his body slumped. “I have asked every holy man in the city, Catholic and Protestant alike, and they have refused to come to the cemetery,“ he bemoaned. "The last one told me to visit you. Likely a ploy to make me leave faster, but you are all I have left.”
“What did this man do, that so many people refused him? Who was he?”
The man at the door hesitated. The sharp eyes vanished as his eyelids slid down, and then appeared a few moments later.
“Must you ask?” he said quietly. “Is it not enough that it is a corpse which can do no man harm any longer, and you will lose nothing but a half-night of sleep?”
The inside of Jacob’s head was ringing with warning bells like the frantic clanging of gongs announcing a fire. He swallowed and tried to ignore them.
“You say he wasn’t Jewish?”
“He was not…much of anything. He felt God had no interest in him, and returned a lack of interest in kind. Perhaps if he had been more attentive he wouldn’t lie in a pauper’s grave…or perhaps he would have not changed a whit.” The man’s voice was bitter and the sharp eyes briefly looked away from Jacob, to Jacob’s deep relief.
“Who was this man, to you?” he asked.
“Close. I would prefer to say no more. Please, rabbi. It must be done, and it must be tonight.”
Seminary did not prepare me for this, Jacob thought, and then thought again. There is absolutely something in the Talmud about this and I’ve just forgotten it, because I’m an idiot and I’m half asleep and there is a goy on my doorstep asking me to go out to the cemetery with him at midnight to bury a man whose name he won’t tell me.
“Look, I’ll need someone to help dig the grave.”
“Of course.”
“And a coffin. A plain pine box. And I’ll need to get my supplies from the–”
“But you’ll do it?” said the man excitedly, standing up even taller. “And do it tonight, before the cock crows?”
Jacob held up his hands to keep the man from getting even further into his personal space. “Fine. Yes. Give me half an hour and a lazy rooster.”
The cloak almost seem to inflate as the man gasped for joy. He grabbed Jacob’s hands and shook both with enthusiasm, sending Jacob stumbling. “Thank God for you, my good rabbit! Whatever God there is, thank God for you!”
The man ran off into the shadowed streets and was out of sight almost immediately.
Jacob’s hands slowly fell back to his side as he mumbled, “Rabbi,” to the darkness.
My wife is going to kill me if whatever’s at the cemetery doesn’t.
Keep reading
You are a REMARKABLE writer and I hope I get to read a book you publish one day! Your wind story is excellent and I would want to request more pages immediately if I read it in a query.
!!! This is such an amazing compliment :D Especially since I am considering querying this year. Thank you!
But... But you have a book. I bought it. It was amazing.
It improved my overall mood for like two weeks and I've based several of my 'never see the light of day' oneshots off it.
Link this poor soul your literature!
hey @badjokesbyjeff and @writing-prompt-s how in the genuine fuck do you two have fan mail options
That’s dope. That means I have fans?
I doubt it
At least we’re in the same boat
True
Suck it up. This is how Tumblr works. You don’t get to decide. Hell does.
Some of the best writing advice I ever got was if you’re stuck on a scene or a line, the problem is actually about 10 lines back and that’s saved me from writer’s block so many times.
I feel like I need an elaborate explanation
Often times, I find myself stuck on what a character should say next or what should happen in a scene to connect A to B or so on. When this happens, I fall into the trap of writing and rewriting the same few lines over and over, and becoming more and more dissatisfied every time until I give up.
But problem is almost never actually whatever line I’m trying to write at the moment; the issue is the stuff leading up to the line. Maybe there are structural issues with the set up, maybe I wrote a bit of dialogue that was out of character leading to a discussion that doesn’t make sense, maybe I’m missing a vital piece of exposition or expositing too much. It could be a lot of things, but the important part of the advice is to look back and be willing to consider changes to something earlier in the work (even if you’re really attached to like a piece of dialogue or a particular sentence or something) instead of trying to find a way to force out a scene that’s not working.
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining!
This is really helpful!
Woah! I never thought about that! Thanks!
I one hundred percent agree with this! Sometimes, when I have really bad writer’s block, I’ll take an hour break and then sit back down to read the entire work over again.
Whenever I start feeling irritated/confused, I put a notation by that section and keep reading. I mark where the rough patch starts and where it ends. Sometimes the parts after the rough patches are good, sometimes they’re not. Little rough patches are fine, but big ones will need to be addressed in the second edit!
When I get to the point where I’m in a rough patch that doesn’t end, I know I’ve found where I need to re-write. I go back to the start of that rough patch and copy everything from that point forward. I put the whole rough patch in a “graveyard” file (in case I need it later), then delete it from the main document.
Then I start writing again. It works 7/10 times!
You have been donating blood for the last couple of years. Unfortunately, you were forced to stop temporarily because of low blood pressure. A few months after your last donation a man with strangely sharp teeth stands in front of your door. He tells you that he would like to ask you a few questions, and asks you if he may enter your house.
It’s a hazy day out, so you decide to just stay at home, drink some wine, and relax in the cozy atmosphere of your apartment. Then, not even 5 minutes into your self declared “me day,” you hear a knock on your door. You go to open it and see a flustered, slightly grungy young man holding a bouquet of roses. “God,” he says, smiling a bit. “You’re as beautiful as the day I killed you.”
“ Todd… what the fuck!?”
He blinks, shocked.
“I thought you’d be happy to see me?!?”
“How do you even know where I live? We went on one date like… three years ago, and I moved… twice!!”
He hold the flowers forward, offering them in an attempt to pacify.
“Speaking of twice, how about a second date? What do ya say Louis?”
Is he serious.
“Last time I went out wth you you bit me in the fucking neck, said “welcome to the club” and then ran off, leaving me to pay the bill. No. Get your gay vampire romance somewhere else!”
“I gave you eternal life!”
“You took me to Olive Garden!”
“I brought candles! I made it romantic!”
“I can’t eat garlic bread anymore, Todd!”
Omg this is the best continuity to this prompt. Everyone else go home.
You are apparently the most powerful magical being of your time. But the thing is….you’re not. You spend the entire story trying to convince everyone that’s you’re not being humble, you’re genuinely not the person they’re looking for
the first time you tell someone that you’re not magic, they laugh. they tell you that you’re being humble. they act like announcing your utter lack of ability is modesty akin to a saint. they tell you that they’ll always believe.
‘don’t,’ you say. your hands are so empty. ‘don’t.’
they do.
—————————
the second time you say it, you say it over the crown of your best friend. he’s asking for a blessing on his way to the war. you’re so powerful, after all, a little magic on him isn’t anything you can’t afford to lose.
you whisper that, if you had any magic, it would all go into the golden strands brushing your lips. the sun catches on his shining hair.
he gives his hair away in chunks, that first month on the front lines. no one gets hurt. no one dies.
magic, they say. your hands shake when men bend at the knee to thank you for the small bits of blessing your best friend gave them.
you have not given them any part of what they carry.
———————————————————–
the third time you say it, it’s barely a whisper dropping from your numb lips. your best friend is gone, again, and your family is serving tea to the king’s knight, the highest ranking warrior in the land. he’s heard of you. he wants you by his side.
men are disappearing, he tells you, and not coming back. even if your magic is nothing more than words, they need it. they need it.
your family assures him it’s not words. it’s not words.
it’s power to change the world.
(the world is war. war doesn’t change.)
——————————–
the first time you feel magical is with the king’s knight, his hand in yours. he is looking at you like you’re the best parts of homecoming. he is looking at you like he loves you.
magic, you whisper into the lines darting across his palms. you’re magic.
‘no,’ he says, ‘darling, that’s you.’
you don’t correct him.
————————————-
(you have nightmares for a week. you don’t know why even he won’t believe you.)
(no one believes you.)
—————————————————————-
the fourth time you say it, you say it over your best friend’s grave. he’s been dead months while you’ve been playing wizard for the king’s knight. he’s been rotting in a cave on the front line, his own golden hair locked in his fists as if it could heal the blood sickness that took his life.
magic, they tell you, runs out on mortal flesh. not your fault. not your problem.
‘but, i’m not,’ you say into your lover’s chain mail. ‘i’m not.’
‘darling,’ he says, ‘it’s not your fault you are.’
—————————————————
you scream the fifth time you say it. the sky is dark with clouds and lightning. there is blood on the ground in front of you. your sword is black with it, dripping with carnage and death.
the king’s knight lies at your feet. he died believing in magic.
he died believing in you.
you scream because dying with belief in your heart doesn’t change anything. you scream because, even with magic, this war was always going to end here for the both of you. with mud sinking into the creases of your armor and the people you care about dead. dead. dead.
you scream and the sky screams back, a roar of thunder and the shriek of metal against metal. no one dares get too close to you in your grief and rage. no one dares get so close to the one who’s calling chaos from the rioting storm above them.
i wish, you say. the world trembles around the words. the ground buckles. you extend your hands out over the battlefield and let the first drops of hot, hot rain pull at the blood staining your skin. i wish no one had ever heard of magic.
your ghosts, your lover and your best friend, howl. they beg you to stop. they beg you to see how very full your hands are. they are full, for once in your life. they are full with golden light, trembling with the heat of the world held in your palms.
you don’t care. you don’t care.
i wish for all the curses to just be words, you say. the rain begins to pound down, whisking the sound of your voice into the depths of the earth. the soldiers around you clap their hands to their ears as if to block you out. they’ve already let you in when they came to you for magic. i wish for all the blessings to just be prayers. i wish the only shine in the wind came from the lakes and the rivers and the oceans.
darling, your lover’s ghost whispers. don’t.
but, just like he once did, you refuse to hear the word.
there are arrows raining down on you now, flaming arrows. they know what you are. they know what you’re doing. you invite the tips into your flesh and speak your final, damning words.
i wish love was enough.
the world rocks, arrows and flames racing across the bloodied ground. men are screaming, scrambling away from the fissures that open under their feet. just as suddenly, it stops. the rain stops. the screaming stops. the earth stands still.
magic disappears.
the story ends here, you know it does. when love is enough, there isn’t a need for poisoned apples. the prince kisses you of his own volition, without prophecy, without compulsion, without magic.
with love enough, no one needs blessings on golden hair or cursed swords. they just need each other. only that.
so maybe you were magic after all. because the second magic disappears, so do you.
it’s okay though. your ghosts come with you.
Drunk caffeine is still caffeine.
One day I will write like this sober. That day is not today. Damn good job.
A demon cutie
absolutely nothing in a video game has set a tone as well as asgore smashing the mercy button at the start of his fight and thats just a fucking fact
Please elaborate. I want to hear more about what you think of this.
not to be serious about epic divorce man but like. the asgore fight is more or less the payoff of the advertised theme of undertale - “you don’t have to kill anyone”, and he does the most to challenge this theme, not just to the player but on a personal level, since the running motif of undertale’s monsters is that they don’t want to kill you either, but they have to or less they will never be free.
the scene beforehand, where small shock plays, is given additional context on replays and knowing how chara, flowey, asriel, and frisk all relate to each other - asgore is looking at someone who looks identical and acts identically to his child who, from his perspective, died of an illness that he could not prevent, and he has to kill them again
it is as equally “you cannot spare me” as it is “i cannot spare you”, which when juxtaposed against how asgore never uses attacks that are aimed at the player directly, creates the mood that is “neither of us want to be here but we have to be for there to be a future at all so someone needs to fucking die already” and its really fucking good
That fight hit me in the soul.
i learned things today on twitter dot com
A true warrior queen has risen
C h o s e n
@imfemalewarrior
I trust her.
-FemaleWarrior
I suppose this is going to be a pseudo art blog now
It’s been a year, huh.
So goood
if youve never physically been in the presence of like, a real live wolf, and you probably wont get the chance to, heres some stuff about them you should know
a wolf’s fur is so unbelievably thick that you can get like, your whole hand into it while petting. and then you can keep going
wolves are a lot bigger than you think they are. think about how big you think a wolf is then just like double that
they dont really smell like dog but they DO smell and youre not going to be able to figure out if its a good smell or not
a wolf really wants to lick the inside of your mouth. he will not stop trying to lick the inside of your mouth at any cost, and generally speaking you need to press your lips together kind of tightly when he approaches your face so that he doesnt worm his damn tongue in there to give you what he thinks is an appropriate greeting
a wolf doesnt really want to look at you while you pet him but he wants you to pet him. hes embarrassed
if a grown ass wolf decides to lay down on you, you just have to deal with it and thats your life now
young wolves, much like young dogs, are overwhelmingly goofy and stupid. a teenage wolf will see your very fragile, very human shoulder and go “i can probably step on that with my full weight” and then he will do it
letting a wolf eat out of your hand is actually not remotely frightening, and youll want to do it all day
Wolves can be jumpy when nervous (like any other animal really), so take things slow and remain cool. But when they jump, you can feel their power/strength and it’ll shake you to the core and maybe frighten you for a second. Just relax, you’re going to be fine.
people seem to have trouble understanding why i’m an anti-capitalist, so i’m going to try and put it into simple, real-life terms.
i work at a restaurant. i make $12 an hour, plus tips. minimum wage where i live is relatively high for my country - the national minimum wage is $7.25/hr, and has not been raised since 2009. before taxes, working full time, my yearly income is about $22,000 a year. ($25,000 if you count tips)
at my job, we sell various dishes, with an average price of about $10-$15. we get printouts every week detailing how much money we made that week; in one week, our restaurant makes about $30,000. (one of our other locations actually makes this much on a daily basis!)
i’m not going to go into details, but after the costs of production (payroll for employees, rent for the building, maintenance, and wholesale food purchasing) are accounted for, the restaurant makes an estimated profit of $20,000 per week.
this profit goes directly to the owner, who does not work at this location. the owner of my restaurant has actually been on vacation for a few months, but still profits from the restaurant, because they own it. i have met the owner exactly twice in my year of working here.
to put this into perspective, the owner of this restaurant earns in 2 days what they pay me in one year. and that’s just from this single location - the owner has several other restaurants, all of which make more money than the one i work at. this ends up resulting in the owner having an estimated net worth of tens of millions of dollars, even after accounting for the payroll for every single worker in their employ.
now, i have to ask you: does the owner of my restaurant deserve this income? did they earn it? did their labor result in this value being created?
the naive answer would be “yes”; the owner purchased the location and arranged for the raw ingredients to be delivered, did they not?
the actual answer is “no”. the owner may have used their initial capital to start the location, but the profit is a result of my labor, and the labor of my co-workers.
the owner purchases rice at a very low bulk price of about 25 cents a pound. i cook the rice, and within a few minutes, that pound of rice is suddenly worth about $30. the owner did not create this value, i did. the owner simply provided the initial capital investment required to start the process.
what needs to be understood here is that capitalists do not create value. they use the labor of their employees to create value, and then take the excess profit and keep it.
what needs to be understood is that capitalists accrue income by already HAVING money. the owner of my restaurant was only able to get this far because they started off, from the very beginning, with enough money to purchase a building, purchase food in bulk, and hire hundreds of employees.
that is to say: the rich get richer, and they do so by exploiting the labor of the poor.
the owner of my restaurant could afford to triple the income of every single person in their employee if they felt like it, but this would mean that they were generating less profit for themselves, so they do not.
the owner of my restaurant pays me the current minimum wage of my area, because to them, i am not a person. i am an investment. i am an asset. i am a means to create more money.
when you are paid minimum wage, the message your boss is sending you is this: “legally, if i could pay you less, i would.”
every capitalist on the planet exploits their workers for their own gain. every capitalist, even the small business owners, forces people to stay in poverty so that the capitalist can profit.
this should be in textbooks