Halloween square

There was a shifting in the air as the calendar silently changed from October 30th to October 31st, marking the day of Halloween. The ground shook ever so slightly, but only for a moment, so those who were still awake either didn't notice, or thought it was merely in their minds. And across the world, as each clock struck midnight, empty parking lots gave way to enormous collections of tents, rising from the ground, each covering their own collections of candies, toys, and halloween themed games, hosts at the ready to entertain when morning came and the throngs of guests would arrive.

And that they did. As the sun rose, slowly at first but quicker with time, people came out to the show. They dressed in their halloween costumes, they brought their candy bags and pails, and throughout the day they laughed and they danced and they trick-or-treated at the various stands, collecting candy and toys and playing the games, having the times of their lives. Some came to prepare for nightfall, knowing their houses would be stalked by the children out on the hunt for candy, and knowing too that the stands would have plenty on sale for the last minute shoppers. Wave upon wave of participants flowed in and out of the lots, and the Halloween spirit overcame them all.

But not once did anyone question where the Halloween squares had come from. Not once did they question why they came and were ready on Halloween day, without anyone having ever seen them being built in the days before, or how they disappeared without a trace come November dawn. Not once did a single soul ask how no one had ever met any of the hosts or entertainers outside of these squares. Even the cynical, the riley, the most unenthusiastic of people were swept up in their fun, and forgot just for a day to ask.

And on November 1st, as the sun rose and children all over the world held onto their heads as the sugar rush wore off and they were dragged back to school with their skulls pounding, the world forgot that the Halloween squares had ever been there in the first place. They forgot about the candy and the games. They forgot about the strangers who were their to entertain. When they looked at their massive hauls of candy, all they remembered were the nighttime treks around their neighborhoods, trick-or-treating from door to door, and they remembered what massive hauls they had had, whether they had had them or not.

And the ghosts and the ghouls crept back under the earth, waiting for their chance to rise again, and be apart of the world again, if only for a moment. To smile and to laugh and to spread cheer. To feel alive. Even if Halloween square was anything but.

Free Write 10

I had an idea for what I wanted to write today, but honestly, I'm just exhausted. I didn't exactly have a good night last night, or a good morning to follow it, and it just kinda hit me pretty hard. I'm feeling better now, though admittedly only partially, but it just kinda made me feel... bleh today. I don't really have a better way of describing it. I tried to make myself feel better by playing some games, watching some videos, stuff like that. It... sort of worked? But I kinda forgot about writing during that time, and the thing that I wanted to write today will require some thought, and I don't have the energy to do that right now. But it's ok. It'll probably be more appropriate for tomorrow anyway.

I only today remembered that I needed to sign up for Nanowrimo this year. It's not that I forgot about Nano, or that I didn't want to do it this year. I just kind of forgot that signing up for it was a necessary step in the process. I'm not as crazy excited about it this year as I have been in years past, but I know what story I want to write, and I'm curious to see where it goes. Nano's always an exciting, busy time for me, and the work schedule that I have right now should hopefully be pretty good for working on the novel. I don't know how well the story's going to come out, but I know that I am more than capable of making it work between Nano, the blog, and having a job. I already did it last year, after all, even if it was pretty close in the end.

I was looking around at Nano stuff today after I signed up for it, and I was reminded about their annual Night of Writing Dangerously. It takes place about an hour or two away from me, and I'd really love to be able to go to it one year. It's pretty expensive to get into, but they apparently have an interesting set up for that - it's not necessarily supposed to be you buying a ticket, but rather getting people to donate money to Nano through your name until you reach the amount of the ticket. I think that's pretty cool, though I wouldn't exactly know how to convince people they should donate in that matter.

But the event is a noir themed dinner party centered entirely around writing. You go, you eat dinner, you get drinks, you get some free writing goodies, and you write. You write and you write and you write for six hours, surrounded by other writers doing the same thing. And you can help each other, and you can get to know each other's stories, and you can share with each other that kind of thing that makes you so passionate that you would spend six hours and three hundred dollars on doing. I think that's incredible, and it sounds like so much fun. I'd love to get there one day. Not this year, unfortunately. I'll be out of the country at the time, and even if I wasn't, it takes place during a black out period for asking for days off at work, so I couldn't very well guarantee that I'd be able to go.

Maybe next year, though. Definitely one day.

Feet

Rick tugged the heavy boot off of his foot, feeling an intense sense of relief as he felt the fresh coolness that he knew would be only amplified the moment he removed his sock as well. The air on his bare skin was incredible - and he was used to the smell enough that it didn't bother him. He had been on the trail for days, having hiked well over one hundred miles, and his feet were tired, sweaty, and swollen. Any chance to remove the constrictive boots and socks was a welcome change of pace.

The river beside the trail wasn't particularly deep, but the water was moving quickly and was frigid cold to the touch. It was made by melting ice water from further up the mountain rushing down the crevices until it reached where he was standing. It wasn't particularly clean - you couldn't just drink from it - but putting his feet in that icy water, Rick couldn't have asked for anything more. With his foot having swelled as much as it had, this was exactly what he needed. The coldness would help to reduce the swelling, and the rush of the water would give him a feeling of weightlessness that was a huge relief after having his entire weight on them for so long.

He'd been dealing with his feet for years. He'd been diagnosed with neuroma nearly fifteen years prior, which frequently caused pain and swelling in his foot, but he had done his best to never let it stop him from doing the things that he loved. He still hiked frequently, he still worked a job that required him to be standing nearly all day, and he still went dancing with his wife every couple of months. The pain was a near constant - so much so that he barely even noticed it anymore. From time to time people would ask him about it, after he had been hiking for a while usually, and he'd think about it and become conscious of his foot. "Yep, still hurts," he'd say. And then he'd move on.

People would try to give him advice. They'd tell him all sorts of things, and they usually contradicted with one another. No one really knew what they were talking about, he found. A few did, of course - but those few usually told him to do the things that felt better, which was what he was doing anyway, but it was nice to have someone corroborate with him from time to time. He frequently heard not to do exactly what he was doing now, for one reason or another. Usually something to do with how the icy water would rub against him or some other made up bullshit. They seemed to ignore the part where ice was what you applied to swelling to help it. And he wasn't an idiot - he always made sure to get his feet dry before covering them up again. Wet socks were a surefire path to problems.

It was an hour before he stood up again, pulling his boots back on. It was nice to get a chance to relax. But he had places to be.

Obsession

I've been playing a lot of Dark Souls over the last year, having gotten into the series after playing Bloodborne, and while there's not a lot of story to the games, what is there follows a consistent and constant theme throughout the games. While you travel from world to world, fighting your way through endless hordes of monsters well beyond your capacity to fight and slowly but surely overcoming them and using the souls and blood of your fallen enemies to become ever stronger, you are told repeatedly about a far off goal that no one has ever been able to reach, or be able to move past after reaching it. But we are not like our predecessors. We, as the player, as the hero of our story, push ever onward past where those before us have failed, past the impossibilities of the fight we face, until we are set upon by a choice that ultimately is the deciding factor for our journey.

It's not much of a story. A good frameworking for one, but not much of an actual story. But what it is is remarkably reflective of how the fans of Dark Souls play the games. They don't let the difficulty of the games stop them. They die to the same enemy over and over and over again, and each time they learn a little more until they can destroy that enemy. Some of them will go back again and continue to fight and to learn until they can crush that enemy in the palm of their hands without ever being touched. A rare few will go so far as to learn the entire game in this fashion.

The player and their character are both driven by the same force, which connects them - obsession. The player is obsessed with conquering the game, famous for its rampant difficulty, so that they can say that they are a member of the elite. The character, and everyone in the game's world, are obsessed with continuing. They don't want to die along with their world, and want to push it forward so that their story may continue. They want to be a moving force, rather than to sit idly by as they and everything that they have ever known is wiped away. Both are obsessed with their forward momentum, to the point where anything that pushes them back becomes nothing more than another obstacle to overcome.

And this obsession is what connects audience with world. It whats immerses you into the game, even without a real story to speak of, and makes you feel prideful every time you surpass something and make it to a new area. That sharable, relatable obsession. It's an important point to remember as a writer, because you don't have to make a plotless video game to apply that. It is always applicable. Making your character obsessed with what they are doing will draw in the reader, because they will want to know what comes next just as much as the character does.

Selling

I've been working retail for over a year now, at two different stores, and I've proven myself quite terrible at actually selling product. I have a pretty bad memory to begin with, so I'm not always good at even helping customers find what it is they're looking for, but at my current job the store is small enough that I don't have too much trouble with that, as long as they're not looking for a very specific item. Even then, I can usually get them close enough to it that they find it before I do.

However, when people are asking me what kinds of things I would recommend if they are doing x thing or having y problem, I really have nothing to provide them. I don't know very much about different products, and I can only really sympathize. Even things that I have been specifically trained in, I have difficulty explaining to a customer and really convincing them of why they should get one thing over another. Granted, part of that is because people will get an idea set in their head, and I frequently have to tell them otherwise, and they don't want to listen to that. But I also can't really sell something that I wouldn't buy - and I don't really buy anything.

Currently I work at an outdoor retailer, which I love, and I've actually received quite a bit of training for my job. I can pretty easily recognize people's problems and what they need to solve them. But the problem is that I don't know which product to recommend in order to solve those problems. I can explain to them what to look for and what they're trying to accomplish, but I can't actually hand them an item and say "Here, this is what you need." But that's exactly what they're looking to me for - I'm literally in the position of expert as far as they're concerned, and I'm supposed to be the expert, but I am not in the slightest. And because of that, I've literally had customers ask me if there was someone else who actually had some answers for them. And I can't be mad at them for asking that, because they are completely in the right to do so, and I would do the same if I were them.

But I want to learn how to be better about all of that. Both because I enjoy this job, and because some day down the line, I'm going to be in a position where I need to be able to sell my own writing, and I don't feel confident that I could do that right now. I don't feel as though I could convince someone to buy anything, much less something that I created. I want to be able to. I want to be able to hand it to them and say "Buy this because." But I'm just not in that position yet.

Practice makes perfect, I guess. Should probably actually try some of the products at work. But man, that shit's expensive.

Music

I think I've mentioned it before, but I'm a big fan of country music - partially because I like the sound, but mainly because I feel that it tends to tell stories in its music more than other genres, which, surprise surprise, is a big boon to me. I mean, you could argue that all music tells a story, and you wouldn't be incorrect. But I feel like most of the time, most songs are about a single instant or scenario, while country music tends to be more of a scene or overarching plot, if that makes any sense. Lots of other genres are also trying to be a bit more creative with their stories, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but country is very straightforward. It doesn't want you to have to dig around to really get the meaning.

Let me use two songs that I enjoy as examples. One by The Beatles, and one by Blake Shelton.

In The Beatles song Norwegian Wood, there is definitely a story being told. One of a boy and a girl getting involved, going back to her place, drinking and talking, and eventually him staying the night. But what exactly happens the following morning gets pretty strange, and it's something in the song that most people don't really seem to recognize. If you follow the words of the song, it seems pretty clear to me that, having been ditched by the girl in the morning, the guy burns her house down.

And I say all of this, and it seems pretty straightforward, but I'd be willing to bet that not many people who have heard that song have connected those dots together. It's just a dude having a one night stand as far as most are concerned. And I was certainly among that crowd for a long time, until I started really trying to sing along with it. And when I pay attention to the words, well... A lot of Beatles songs start to get weird when you pay attention to the lyrics.

Blake Shelton, on the other hand, wrote a song called Austin. A similar idea, with the girl ditching the guy, only rather than be bitter, the guy puts his heart on the line. A year after leaving, the girl attempts on several occasions to call the man she left behind, and each time is greeted by an answering machine which lists out the possible reasons that he is away from the phone, before stating that if she is calling, he still loves her. And seeing his devotion to her makes her realize what a mistake she has made, and when the two are finally reunited, she teases him by imitating his answering machine, ending with the admission that she still loves him too.

And there's never any question throughout the song that that's what is happening.It is a very straightforward story, with a heart melting message that I'm not afraid to admit I get teary eyed over.

I like both of these songs, admittedly for different reasons. But I think it's pretty clear why, from the perspective of wanting to hear a musical story, I'm more inclined towards the latter.

Black cat

The herb shop in the middle of downtown didn't get very many visitors - it maintained a sense of traditional medicine in a world of ever advancing technologies, which many mocked it for - but the low cost of its supplies and a healthy supply of regulars kept it in business. The only real expense its owners had made towards advertising their store was the fine marble statue of an eastern dragon in front of the shop. It was a beautiful black marble, finely chiseled and incredibly smooth to the touch. They encouraged their guests to touch the dragon, to stroke its nose and run their hands along its mane, for good luck. They cleaned and polished the stone daily, and few of their customers actually touched the stone for luck, so after ten years, it continued to look as immaculate as the day they had bought it.

If there was anyone who was a particular fan of the dragon, though, it was the owner's cat. A black burmese, who was a large fan of disappearing into other black objects in the warm sun and generally being lazy. Though he was hard to spot, he could often be found somewhere along the dragon's body, curled up in a ball and sleeping or lazily watching the humans walk by. He didn't much need affection, which is why he spent so much of his time hiding - he knew at the end of the day, he could walk back inside and his masters would have food ready for him.

On that particular day, he was surprisingly visible, laying on the very top of the dragon's head, curled up in a ball with his head buried in his own lap. It was a hot summer day, but there weren't many people mulling about in the streets. It was a strange day, that brought so few people down the streets, for while not many went into the shop, many still passed by it, barely deigning to give it a second glance. It was this strangeness that encouraged the cat to rest out in the open.

Around midday the cat awoke and stretched out, letting out a small meow as it did so. At the same moment, the dragon statue blinked its stone eyes, adjusting its vision to the light. It had been some time since it had really tried to see, but the mewl had awoken it from its nap.

Mask

Their collection was an odd one to put it mildly, though it was somehow appropriate given the collection of people that had brought it together. Jeremiah was a high school senior who was mostly just trying to skate by - his grades were mostly average, he had enough friends to not be bored in class, and he'd never really committed himself to a sport or club at all. He went to class, he did his work, and he went home. Samantha was one his classmates, though they hadn't really talked much before then. Samantha was the classic shy girl on campus, who tried not to speak up and silently got flying colors on all of her tests. Though she would never have admitted it, she had always watched Jeremiah from a distance, and even just being in the same room as him had her heart ready to beat out of her chest.

The other two, however, were where things got strange. Manda was the PR agent of a clothing company, and was highly talkative because of it. She was unafraid to get up in someone's face and start a conversation, and you could almost swear that she was constantly on a sugar high. She was bubbly, she was excitable, and she was way too good at her job. And Rolland was a sixty year old man with a family. He was retired, his children had families of their own, and his wife had passed away several years ago. He spent most of his days fishing or reading, living off of the retirement funds that he had accumulated in his time working as a computer repairman in the early days of the technology.

They stood in a circle around the table, four masks sitting in the center that they had brought with them to this meeting of sorts. It had been an accident that had brought them together. A complete crossroads, and it had been the intense paleness and bloodshot eyes that had linked them together. This wasn't your average kind of tired or sick. It wasn't often that you saw someone walking around, looking like they were already dead.

So they had talked. And they talked about their dreams. And they talked about their masks. And that's what had prompted them to bring them all together, into one space, to see if there were any kinds of similarities between them, other than their abrupt appearance and the shivers that they sent down the four's spines.

But they all looked vastly different, and they weren't even made of the same materials. Jeremiah's was stone and basic, Samantha's was paper and in the shape of an owl, Manda's was an exact gold replica of her own face, and Rolland's... They weren't even sure what the material was, but it certainly didn't look like anything that they had ever seen before.

There was still much to learn.

Dance of death

Maria swept across the field with a sense of grace that was rare in times of war. While she wore full plate mail on her upper body, she wore a flowing silk dress beneath. Oftentimes the men could see their enemies striking low at her ankles, and in the moment they did, she was off of the ground, her sword slicing through their necks and letting their heads drop to the ground as she moved onto the next opponent. She was faster than anyone on the field could keep up with, far more agile than any of the fully pated men, and she was deceptively strong. Her blade danced as though it were no tool or weapon, but merely an extension of her body.

There were rumors that she was magic. That the things that she did on the field were beyond the capacities of a normal human being, and that she was either not from this world, or magic. But there were some who had grown up with her, and had known her, and they were sure that she was human - so magic seemed the more likely of the two options. Ever since she had gotten her hands on that blade of her, with its razor sharp edge and its strange blood red runic designs at its base, she had been death waiting on the field of battle.

Her movements were like that of a dance, moving from partner to partner across the floor, gracing each with her presence before moving onto the next. She permitted them to dip her, and spin her, and plant a small kiss, but she gave no partner her time, only stopping briefly for a step or two. She knew where she was in the dance at all times, carefully keeping beat with the song of clashing steel and painful screams. She made sure only to dance with those who did not already have a partner - to steal one from another, after all, would be excessively rude.

But in truth, Maria had very little to do with her dance of death. It was the blade itself which was leading her, speaking to her mind and telling her what was to come. If only the men in her army knew just how true their theories were - it was not Maria that was magic, but the blade itself. It had a mind of its own, and its magic allowed it to see the intentions of those around them. It could see how every enemy would attack before they had done so, and with Maria's quick thinking and feet, the two were a powerhouse in the field. They mowed down enemies like blades of grass in a field. They were inseparable, and together, they were unstoppable.

Help

"You'd be surprised just how many of us there are."

Jeremiah's head whipped around to see an old man standing behind them, his face paler than Jeremiah thought humanly possible, a long white beard, and a scar over a blinded left eye. He had clearly seen some shit, and made it through for a very long time. His clothes, on the other hand, were immaculate - a well fitted suit, with all the matching accessories, including the golden chain of a pocketwatch stretched across his chest. The look in his remaining eye was wise beyond his age - but despite it all, he approached the group with a smile.

"Who are you?" Manda asked, stepping forward. "And what do you want from us?"

The old man merely smiled more. "You're not the only ones stuck in the game's hell, you know. You were never at any point the only one in the game, and at no point in the future will you ever be the only one in the game. No matter how many come and go, there will always be others who are stuck in the game. And for that, you should be grateful."

"What the hell are you even talking about?" Manda asked again. "Do you really think you can just barge in here and start spouting nonsense at us, and we're going to look up to you like some kind of miraculous savior?" It was Jeremiah, Manda, Samantha, and Rolland gathered in Rolland's garage, which had been locked - at least as far as he was aware. And yet this man had simply walked in without any of them noticing.

"Don't pretend like you're unfamiliar with the game. I can see it on your faces. You've all been there. You've all died, and yet you all stand here, and if I'm not mistaken, you were discussing the repercussions, possibilities, and what to do next. Don't even confirm it, I already know. I've seen it a hundred times before. But let me tell you what will happen next. Either you will listen to me, or you will go home with your plans, and you will go to sleep and find yourselves in the game again, and it will have all been for naught. And you will wake up, if at all, even more unsure of what is happening and what to do."

The group was quiet. They waited for Manda - she had self appointed herself the leader - but she didn't know what to say. Instead, Samantha, who was the quietest and most afraid of them all, was the one who stepped forward. "But how do you know?"

The man nodded, as though that were the question he was waiting for. "Because I have elected to stay behind and play the game for a century, in order to help people like you."

Of death

I had a dream a couple nights ago that really inspired me - as happens from time to time - that I've been thinking about a lot. I really want to make it into a full on story, but I'm gonna have to give it some time for me to figure out how exactly I want to go about doing that. Yesterday's blog post was actually my first attempt at doing that, and while I don't think it worked very well, it is helping me figure out how exactly I want to go about it. I'm debating about whether or not I want to use this idea for my Nano story this year, so if you see a lot of posts in the coming few days that seem to follow a singular story idea, that would be why.

Unlike Wings, which I used for last year's Nano and also came from a dream, this dream actually had a lot of substance to it. To put it shortly, the concept is that when you die, you enter a nightmare-esque game that only a select few amount of people are actually able to escape from, and in escaping enable the ability to really play and win the game. While the rest of the world forgets that they have died when they escape the game, they have not, and are intensely aware of the fact that they do not belong in the world. Every night when they go back to sleep, they return to the game, and the only way to escape the nightmare and actually be able to have a second chance at life is to win the game, rather than escape it. However, in order to win, they have to find a partner who is also one of these select few and, using the masks that they obtain by entering the game for the first time, enter each other's games and beat them for the other person simultaneously. Each person's game is based on their deepest fears, their personal histories, and their weakest moments.

If it sounds like there's no clear explanation of why the game exists, what its punishments are, and what exactly makes people want to escape or win... Well yeah, that's a good question. I'm not entirely sure. That's something that I need to play around with and figure out. In fact, the real goal may not be to be given a second chance at life, but to actually be allowed to continue on into the afterlife. The game may make their continued "life" a living hell. I'm not entirely sure.

But I love the idea. I love the concept of being trapped in a game after death, and needing to work together with a partner, putting your entire existence in their hands, even if they are originally a complete stranger. And when I put it like that, it sounds incredibly like one of my favorite games, The World Ends With You. Which, in a way, I suppose it is kind of inspired by, though how that got into my dreams I have no idea. Though I have a feeling the plot and the pushing forces will be massively different. I don't intend for their to be monsters for them to fight, or actual figures that are in control of the games. I intend the games to be the "villain" so to speak.

I'm excited to have a real story I want to be working on again, though. And what good timing for it.

Death game

Hank woke in a cold sweat, his muscles exhausted from thrashing in his sleep. His heart was pounding out of his chest, and his head felt like it was ready to split. He tried to grab his face to feel his forehead where it hurt the most, but his hand his a thick stone form that was laying on top of him, crushing his face. It took both hands to be able to lift it off and throw it aside.

He looked around his room, trying to see if there was any evidence as to where the stone slab had come from, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary. His room was exactly as he had remembered it being when he went to bed. Without anywhere else to turn, he looked at the stone that had been resting on his face, rubbing his face to feel the roughness that it had caused. It was really more of a mask. A basic one at that, but it had been carved to have a mouth and eyes, and it had simple been resting on his face - there was no kind of strap that had been holding it on his face, and yet in his sleep it had remained perfectly in place, or else he would have suffocated underneath it.

The thought of someone entering his room and placing a stone mask over his face was making him uncomfortable, so he got out of bed and made his way to the bathroom. Without the stone weighing him down, though it had only been in his sleep, he felt lighter, like he didn't have to push quite so hard on the ground in order to move around. He tried to think if maybe he had done something the night before, but the details were hazy. Which only served to confuse him more. He didn't remember drinking, and even if he had, he had never gotten black out drunk before. He didn't even drink that much.

Looking in the mirror, though, he looked surprisingly pale, and his eyes were sunken into his face. It was hard to tell if it was because of the nightmares, or the stone mask. He was starving, thirsty, and in desperate need of a bath. But it felt as though at every turn, he found himself thinking about those dreams and that mask. Again and again, his mind returned to that. The thought of what demons he had faced in the darkness, and the weight he had felt.

And when he entered the living room, he was only faced with more questions, as he found the massive pool of blood that was left in the middle of the floor, a knife discarded to the side. The scene of murder was evident, though whose it was was an unknown. But the stains physically hurt him. They made him hurt in his chest, in his throat, in his eyes. He felt like he was burning.

He spent the day cleaning the blood, feeling sick and in pain throughout. He needed it gone, though. He washed the knife as well, before discarding it. The longer he spent on the task, the worse he felt. There was something in the back of his mind.

He knew the truth, as much as he hated to admit it. He knew. He was dead.

So why wasn't he?

Vessel

Jeremiah slipped into the building unnoticed, not having bothered to switch into any black tactical gear, or equip himself with a gun or knife, or anything of the sort. He knew that anyone else in his shoes would have been extremely tactical about their approach, well prepared for any possibility or obstacle that he might come across. Jeremiah was not that kind of person. He was unconcerned with the danger that he was putting himself into. Truth be told, as far as he was concerned, there wasn't much danger at all.

The alarm system was still fully activated, and he could see the small red dots along the lines which were where the invisible laser detection system was emanating from. They were tucked away in corners, and he could only see them because he had years of experience with them. He had set off quite a number of them in the past before he had really learned how to get around them. He slunk around them, observing where the lines were coming from and what their trajectory was in order to predict where they would be, so that he could avoid setting them off.

He moved fairly quickly and smoothly down the hallway, checking all of the doors. Most of them were locked, of course, and clearly set with alarms. But nine times out of ten, there was one idiotic staff member who forgot to lock their door, and from there Jeremiah would be able to find his way into the rest of the departments. Even without finding a set of keys inside, he could examine the lock of the door itself, learning how it was locked and where the alarm was connected to it. Then he would be able to pick the other locks until he could actually find a pair of keys. Sure, he could pick every lock - but keys just made life easier.

What he couldn't account for, though, were guards. Technology he could predict, but people he could not. So when an older security guard came around the corner, Jeremiah froze. The two stared at each other, unmoving, both not quite sure of what to do. Slowly, the guard pulled out his gun and pointed it at Jeremiah. "What are you doing here, boy?" he asked, trying not to show how much he was shaking. "How did you get in here?"

"Come on, old man, let's put the gun away and stay calm. Why don't you just turn around and pretend-"

The bullet hit Jeremiah squarely between the eyes, and his body crumpled to the ground. The guard was shaking - he had never actually pulled the trigger before. But there was something about the boy that made him do it. Something in how empty his eyes were.

And then Jeremiah stood back up, the hole still fresh and bleeding between his eyes. "How...?" the guard breathed.

"I'm just a vessel," Jeremiah replied calmly. "One more chance to turn and walk away. Forget you ever saw me. No one would believe you anyway."

Free Write 9

Been a while.

I've been thinking a lot about my money recently. After years of sticking to consoles, I've finally caved in and gotten a gaming PC, primarily for the purpose of playing Overwatch, though there are other games I would like to play. At the same time, however, I have recently gotten a new job at a place where I am currently not making a ton of money, just because I do not have as many hours as I did previously, but where I am surrounded by very nice things that I would like that are fairly expensive. And being surrounded by them and needing to be able to sell them, I have been learning more and more about them - primarily about clothes at the moment. I have learned how to better fit shoes onto my feet, which has led me to realizing I am in desperate need of some new well fit shoes, and my rain jacket that I have been using for years recently fell apart on me. I have also in recent months been considering fashion in ways I never have before, and the casual clothing available to me is very nice, though also very expensive.

At the same time, I would very much like to be able to move out of my dad's house and be able to rent an apartment with a friend of mine, which is another huge money commitment that I can't really afford. I mean, technically I probably can, but it would cut a heavy hole into my paychecks, and I rather like being able to save up my money. Between holiday presents, having a girlfriend, and being a gamer, there are a lot of things that I would like to be able to save my money for, both in the near future and the distant. And part of the reason I want to be able to save money is so that when needs such as new shoes or a new jacket arise, I can afford to do that kind of thing. But I don't really like spending money on myself. I would be much happier to spend it on just about anyone else, in fact.

I still do, of course. Mostly to buy myself video games, because I feel like the number of hours I put into each game can be compared to how much I spent on it, which makes it a lot easier to feel justified in a purchase. After all, when you're effectively spending half a dollar per hour of entertainment, you're getting a pretty good deal - much better than going to a movie theater.

Doesn't make it much easier to tell myself the thirteen hundred dollar computer in my room is worth the money, though, even if I know in the long run it will more than run its course in value. Or the two hundred dollar shoes or jacket I'm looking at.

Chained

Henry was forced onto his knees by a foot planted squarely in the center of his spine, pain already coursing through his body, threatening the corners of his vision. He could feel the knife grazing against his skin as they sliced his shirt open, not even pretending to try and keep from cutting him in the process. He wouldn't have expected them to. They didn't give a shit about him or his life at the point. It was only a matter of moments after his shirt had been stripped away from him that the whip was lashing against his flesh, the ragged bits of steel embedded into the end digging into him and tearing his back apart.

It was hard to say how long the flogging went on for, especially seeing as he blacked out at some point during it. He woke up chained in a dank cellar chamber, held in place by both his wrists and his ankles, the chains just long enough to allow him to lay on the floor with his hands by his sides. His head felt like it was buried in mud. The pain in his body was a dull throbbing now, which confused him. The last he remembered, each blow was tearing through him like a hot knife through butter, Now the pain was dulled and nearly gone.

But the instant that he tried to move, the pain was back, running through his body like wildfire, paralyzing him and threatening to drive his entire body out of his control. He must have been laying on the ground for hours that the pain had dulled down as much as it had.

But the true concern hadn't come yet. Henry had no choice but to settle down and wait out the pain, knowing that in time his skin was evolve to resolve itself, at which point he may have been capable of doing something in order to escape. But that was when he saw the massive numbers of snakes beginning to slither their way into his cell. He couldn't tell what kind of snakes they were, but knowing the luck that he had been having, he had no reason to doubt the possibility that their fangs were laced with poison.

He cried out in pain as he was unable to stop them from biting at him all over. Every part of him was on fire. There was doubt in his mind that he had been poisoned. And by so many snakes, it wasn't very likely that he would be able to survive long.

The only question was how long, and how bad it would hurt until then.

Hair styling

I don't usually talk very much about things I'm actually doing in my life - I've done it a few times, but I generally try to refrain from it, just because I want to focus more on writing. But especially as of late, I have been trying to think in general more about myself and my life than I have previously, changing a lot of small things about myself that perhaps other people take for granted or never really think about. In particular, the one that I have spent a lot of time on recently has been my hair.

I always kept my hair short, which is not an uncommon thing for dudes, and I was always happy with it. My main concern has always only been that my hair stays out of my eyes, because the way that it obstructs my vision drives me up the wall - especially back when I was heavily involved in martial arts, when putting on a sparring helmet would push my hair down into my eyes. But as I got out of martial arts, and became more independent, I got lazier with getting my hair cut, and over time I realized that while the visual obstruction irritated me, I actually preferred the way I looked with long hair, rather than the short hair that I had worn my entire life.

My personal appearance was never something I have been particularly concerned with in my life, but when you have a girlfriend, you kind of want to pay more attention to that. And based off of a random question about hairstyles, I got to thinking about my own. I knew that I liked the way I looked better with longer hair. I knew my girlfriend preferred me having longer hair, too. And I had seen some cool looking guys with longer hair, and they had... ponytails. So I decided that that was what I wanted to try. After all, a ponytail would be able to pull the hair that fell into my face back and hold it out of my face so I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore.

But growing out your hair that long takes a long time. Longer than I had originally given it credit for. And there's a very long period of time in there where the hair is more than long enough to make me frustrate, but nowhere near long enough for me to do anything about it. It doesn't help that I'm also not a fan of wearing hats. So I started looking around, trying to find solutions. I tried headbands, buffs, pomade, and beanies. I didn't really like that way any of it worked or looked, but if it kept some hair out of my face for a while, I went ahead and did it.

I also found that I had to start taking care of my hair differently, because the length of my hair changed how it was affected by grease and sweat. I had to really start paying attention to it, which was a very bizarre experience for me. But thanks to that, I now have hair that's getting close enough to be put into a ponytail - I can do it, and I have started doing so, but it's still not long enough to actually keep my hair completely out of my face - as well as being softer than it ever has, which is nice for when I'm with my girlfriend and she decides to run her fingers through it, which I thoroughly enjoy. It's been a pretty weird experience, but I'm enjoying where it's getting me. Even if my parents disagree.

Companionship

Mavis and Jeriah rode quietly out of town in the dark of the night, well accustomed to riding in the dark, and trusting fully in their horses abilities to navigate. It was well passed the so-called witching hour, and even the drunks had gone home and fallen asleep in their drunken stupors. Even if their absence didn't go unnoticed, there would not be a soul in town who knew in which direction they had gone. Mavis rode a bit in front, his horse being the leader between the two, though they certainly considered themselves to be equals.

"It will be a few days before we reach the next town," Jeriah called out. "Should have more than enough food to make the journey. Both us and the horses." Mavis nodded in response. He had never been much of one for words, so their conversations were always one-sided, though Jeriah didn't mind much. She knew he was listening, and she knew what every small movement he made in response meant. They had been traveling and working together for nearly two decades, and they had found great success in their partnership.

Mavis had found Jeriah in the streets, trying to be a pickpocket with her big mouth as a distraction, but it kept too much focus on her. But Mavis was a silent and calculating man, and he could see what it was she was trying to take, and took it for his own. But Jeriah was quick in both tongue and step, and caught him before he got away. They went back and forth a number of times before finding themselves in bed together that night. They had been working together ever since.

"Clothes are getting pretty worn out, though. May have to consider getting some replacements soon. I mean, I don't mind us wearing nothing but threads, you know, but that'll bring a good amount of unwanted attention to us when we're hanging around town. And the more attention we have on ourselves, the harder it will be to get anything done." She could see the way he was telling her how obvious her words were. "I mean, yeah, obviously, I'm just saying. It's probably best to get them in the next town than the following. Taking you on the dirt tears a lot of holes, you know? And I plan on doing just that quite a bit."

The chuckle she heard was one of the few sounds he ever made, and she couldn't fully explain just how much she loved that noise. She was pretty sure he just lusted for her. But she had fallen for him completely. His laugh ran under her skin like lightning. She always wanted more.

Librarian

Darryl felt the slow and steady shifting under his seat, the gentle back and forth rocking as his mounted library proceeded forward. He had never considered himself a particularly smart person, so much as he had a good memory. He traveled with an ever growing collection of books, all of which he had read, was in the process of reading, or was going to read. Everything from fiction to autobiographies and textbooks - and from them he had gathered a massive wealth of knowledge. Still, he wouldn't call himself smart - just well informed.

And it was thanks to that wealth of information that he had been able to tame the dinosaur upon whose back he now rode, a home for his library built and mounted onto the back of the massive creature, held in place by a series of levers and pulleys, strategically placed to keep it upright and level upon the dinosaur's back. Darryl had been able to recognize the creature as an Argentinosaurus, making it herbivorous and fairly calm. With some work, a lot of edible plants, and even more patience, he had been able to convince the massive beast to allow him to ride it, and build his library atop it. And that project had taken him even longer than taming the Argentinosaurus. But now that all of that work was out of the way and completed, it had proven well worth the blood, sweat, and tears.

Along with the library, he had constructed a riding and steering platform, from which he could comfortably sit, lead his mount, and most importantly, read. He was always reading. His library contained more books than he could likely read in his lifetime at this point, and yet he continued to add more to his collection. Many of the books he recovered were in poor condition, and he cared for them carefully, reconstructing them to the best of his ability and giving them a home in which they could remain safe.

It had been many centuries since the end of civilization. There was little evidence left of the old world - the world which he read about, where men were kings, and animals were hunted for sport rather than necessity. Sometimes it was difficult to tell how much of his stories were really true. There were some that were clearly labeled as fact, and yet the stories held within them were so fantastical that he could hardly believe them.

After all, he was riding a dinosaur at this very moment. How could they possibly have gone extinct?

Cage

Carrin sat in his cage, his knees crossed and his hands in his lap, his clothing having been stripped away when he had been imprisoned. It had been well over two years since his original imprisonment - they kept him fed, though just enough to stay alive, and his cage was just barely large enough for him to stand up straight or lay down fully on the cold concrete. His hair had grown longer than it had ever been before, reaching well down his back, and he had no way of wearing it up to stay out of his way. It ran over and partially covered the many tattoos he had covering his skin - about half of which he had received by choice.

His time in the cage was split between two activities - exercising and resting. He had always been a strong man, but the constant exercise he put himself through in order to pass the time had made him powerful. His muscles bulged against his skin, tight thanks to the lack of food. There was not an ounce of fat remaining on his body. If the bars of his cage had been made of anything softer than the hard iron that they were, he may have been able to break free by now.

It was the dead of night when Sirrain slipped her way into the dank room that held Carrin's cage. His eyes were wide opened and, despite the darkness, tracked her every movement as she entered. He had been expecting her. She came to see him once a month, sneaking him some food and always offering to break him free, which he always declined. It had never been stated why he was imprisoned. Never said what crime he had broken. And yet he elected to wait and see what they would do with him. He was a curious and patient man.

Sirrain slid down against the bars, sitting conversationally with him as she tossed a loaf of bread and half a cooked fish into the cage. He took the food and ate it slowly, carefully, eliminating any trace crumbs from either of them so as to not be caught having been fed. Sirrain watched him, unashamed of letting her eyes wash over his naked body. She had long ago admitted of her lust for him, and he had conceded his own for her.

She sat watching him, dressed in a skin tight black stealth suit, its cleavage cut roughly far deeper to reach her navel, making it so that as she sat her breasts were fully exposed to him. She knew he wanted her as much as she wanted him, but he was much better at controlling his eyes. But she liked to tease him.

"How much longer?" she asked.

He swallowed his bite of bread slowly and looked at her. "I do not know," he replied.

"You can't stay in here forever."

"It will be difficult for you if I did."

"I should slip in there with you for a night."

"I would prefer a softer cushioning."

The casualness of the conversation heated her up. He didn't know how true her words were. "Please don't stay in there forever."

He looked at her again between a bite of food. "I will not," he said. "But I will first learn why I am here."

Overpowered

Matthias slipped his sword back into its sheath on his hip as he watched the foe before him simply fall apart, having been cut so cleanly and thoroughly through both flesh and bone that they had died instantaneously. Something had happened to him overnight that he couldn't quite explain, but the feeling that it gave him was exhilarating. He lived in a world where the strong were the most valuable, for monsters attacked regularly and frequently in mass numbers, and the ability to protect one's town was vital. He had always wanted to be a hero who went out into the world and protected everyone, maybe even going so far as to find the source of the monsters and putting an end to them once and for all. But he had been weak - barely able to stop a single monster, no matter how hard he trained or how much he learned.

But this morning had been different. He had woken up feeling invigorated, like he could do it - he could take on the world. The way he had gripped his sword had felt strange in a good way. It felt confident. He had never felt confident before. And when he had gone into his yard to practice, his movements were sharper, faster, stronger. He felt the way so many of the greater warriors looked. And when the monsters had come to invade, he stood valiantly beside those warriors. They looked at him, worried, knowing how Matthias had been only the day before, but they had said nothing. Perhaps they could feel the confidence coming off of him as well. And when he fought...

There wasn't a monster that could stand in his way. Every fur and scale cladded figure that approached was cut down like wheat before a farmer's sickle. Matthias movements were quicker, smoother. It was as though his blade were communicating with him, becoming a part of him, letting it know how it wanted to be moved, but also letting him move it. It was out of its sheath for only a moment before the beast was dead, and Matthias was sliding it gently back into its home. He had seen others fight like this. He had never thought he would be among them.

He wondered if this had been how it was for all of them. If they had simply woken up one day ready to fight, or if they had trained long and hard like he had been trying to do until they were prepared for what this world had to throw at them. But the way they looked at him, with surprise and envy in their eyes, he could feel that this was different. He didn't know what had changed inside of him, but he hoped that it never went away. He was more powerful than he had ever felt before. Perhaps than anyone had ever felt before. This was more than he could have ever dreamed of.

Maybe it wouldn't just be a dream. Maybe he would save the world.

Orb

The red orb was smooth to the touch, easy to slide between his fingers, rolling around the edges of his skin and never dropping to the ground. The texture felt pleasant to the touch, like a soft kind of metal, just a little cool against his skin. It was something that he had stopped thinking about a long time ago. There was almost never a moment that the orb wasn't in the palm of his hand, or at least extremely close by. Only at night when he was sleeping, but the first thing he did when he awoke was to grope around until he felt it slipping into his hand.

It had become a comfort thing for him to have it - he felt naked if he wasn't carrying it around. Fortunately he didn't need to hold onto it in the palm of his hand on a constant basis. It was connected magically to his body, and could float as though it were attached by a short leash to his wrist. It was an invisible connection, and one could pass their hand between him and the orb without interruption. But trying to pull the two away from each other was like trying to tear a sheet of steel in two with your bare hands. But by will, he could let the orb fly away from him, so as to keep from being dragged by it in a fight.

And with that ability, the orb was not only his companion, but his weapon as well. His ability to manipulate it was immense - he could change its size, its shape, its material. He could throw it at his opponent, and in the blink of an eye as it flew between them it would go from that soft metallic orb into a razor sharp dagger that pierced through a person's chest and out their back before flying back to him through their brain, a soft ball once again as he caught it in his hand. It could be a blade or hammer for him to fight with in hand-to-hand combat. But its flying was its strength.

It didn't matter how far it flew away from his hand - he could control its exact trajectory and velocity. Its ability to change form and size on the fly meant that it was impossible to be blocked or trapped, short of being completely surrounded in thick concrete. But even then, with time, a dense enough material thrown against the walls with enough force would eventually be able to break through.

Its only limitation was that it couldn't be larger than he himself was, and it couldn't shrink to be less than a centimeter in diameter. It couldn't be made to be the size of an atom and pass through the molecular structure of something, and it couldn't be made to be so large as to completely shield him or completely destroy something in a single blow.

But it did enough for him. And it made him feel safe. And that was all that mattered.

Reboot

I think whenever someone hears that something they love is being rebooted, rather than continued or renewed, they instinctually flinch and hope for the best but expect the worst. I understand that entirely. We've all seen fantastic things be remade into something bland and terrible. In recent years, tons of old series have been getting rebooted, both in film and gaming, and I don't think a single one of those has gone by without criticism. Star Trek, Ghostbusters, Final Fantasy 7, and Devil May Cry are all within recent memory.

There are four kinds of people involved when it comes to reboots. There are the nostalgia bound fans of the original who are terrified that this new reboot will be the death of their franchise, taking the things about it that they once loved and twisting them into something bizarre and unappealing. There are people who never liked the original to begin with, and either want the new version to crash and burn, or surpass the original in every way, both options allowing them to rub it in the faces of those who liked the original. And there are the people whose first exposure to the franchise are the new reboot, which gives them a very different view on the series than anyone else involved.

All of these are fairly common, and are certainly the kind of people one hears about most while listening to the talk surrounding reboots. The fourth person on the other hand is very different. It doesn't matter how much exposure they've previously had to the series. They go into the reboot neutrally, just hoping that what they get will be worth their money, and will be happy to see that happen, regardless of how similar or different it may be to the source material.

I've personally been a part of all four of those groups, and I'm sure most people have, though I imagine many people have only been in two or three of those groups for one reason or another. Though I don't particularly enjoy Final Fantasy 7, I still worry that it's upcoming reboot will remove too much of what made the original game what it was. With the reboot of Devil May Cry, I hoped that the new game would be miles better than the original series that I hated, and was ecstatic when that proved to be true (at least for me), and frequently point out how much better it is than the original when the topic arises. I never really got into Star Trek before the new movies came out. And I really couldn't care one way or another about the new Ghostbusters movie.

But regardless of what stance you're taking, I think it's always important to remember something vital about reboots - they're called that for a reason. It's a new start. The point isn't for it to be perfectly in line with the older material. The point isn't for everything to line up. The point is to take that same concept, those same characters, and run them through a new gambit, and seeing how they react to different stimulus. And when doing that, you end up with something that has the same spirit, even if everything else is different.

Or at least that's how it should be. Doesn't always happen.

Vinyl

The cover was a little dusty, but when Jake pulled the vinyl record out of its protective case, it had been untouched since the day it had been put away. His uncle had just recently purchased a record player - though what had possessed him to do so in this age of CDs and digital media was beyond any of them - and truth be told, Jake was pretty excited to try a record out. He knew what they were obviously - he wasn't that young - but he had definitely been born well after they were out of style. CDs had already ben taking over cassette tapes when he was growing up - he'd never heard a record actually playing before, much less be the one to actually set it in motion.

He knew the basic concepts. You set the record in motion, and then you put the needle on the outside edge away from the ridges to keep the music from being damaged, and somehow those ridges would translate into music that played through the speakers. How exactly that worked he didn't admittedly understand, but he didn't really need to to actually play one. His uncle had had to point out to him, though, that there were different kinds of records, each of different sizes, and thus requiring different turning speeds, so it was important to make sure that the player was set to the right speed before he played the record. It wouldn't damage anything to play it at the wrong speed, but the music wouldn't sound right.

Everything about it felt so delicate as he put the surprisingly heavy vinyl record into the player and set it in motion, watching it turn for a few rotations before gingerly picking up the needle. He was desperately afraid of putting that down wrong. It seemed like such an easy mistake to make, and these records hadn't been in production for years. They weren't like CDs that could be produced by any idiot at home with a computer. Jake didn't even have the slightest clue how to go about recreating a vinyl record.

There was a slight scratching sound as he set the needle down, but his uncle reassured him that that was how it was supposed to sound. He watched the needle slowly slide inwards towards the ridges, and as it slipped between them, the music simply started. There was no fade in or fancy intro of any kind. There was just music, and a soft staticy background noise that came with the territory.

Jake couldn't quite explain why, but he liked the way the music sounded more here in this lower quality format than on any CD he had ever listened to. There was just something about it that made the music feel more... alive, somehow. Authentic maybe. He wasn't sure, but he liked it.

He spent the entire day playing his uncle's collection of records from beginning to end. The more he listened, the more he wished people still made records. He would have loved to get his own record player, and start his own vinyl collection of his favorite albums from his favorite bands.

Maybe he'd have to go learn how to make vinyl records after all.

Cutscenes

This post probably won't mean much to people who don't play video games, and people who do will already be all too familiar with this problem, but it's something I wanted to talk about anyway. The thing that's great about video games is that you control it. And I mean, obviously there's a pre-determined path for you to go down, with a certain order in mind, and other than speed and optional areas or side quests, every playthrough is going to look more or less the same - minus the affect of game breaking glitches. But you're still an active participant in all of it - save for the cutscenes.

During the cutscene, you're literally just watching a movie of what happens next. You have no input. You have no say. The rules of how the game is played when you are in control no longer apply so that the developer can show you the scene that they have in mind. And I mean, I'm not complaining. Most of the time, I love cutscenes. I love seeing what a badass my character is, or seeing how unbelievably powerful the foe they're up against really is. Sometimes that can be hard to portray through normal gameplay, and I completely understand, especially when you still want the game to be fair.

The problem arises in games like Final Fantasy 7, with the infamous Aeris' death scene. It's an emotionally charged scene - one of your main characters, who has thus far played a major role in pushing the story forward, has been violently murdered before your very eyes, and there is nothing you can do about it. She's gone. No save points can fix it. No potions can heal it. No reviving items can revive... wait a minute. You have items that can revive people from the dead. Hell, you probably have a lot of them. Why is she dead?

This happens a lot in rpgs in particular, which is unfortunate because they are the most story driven games. It's hard not to make fun of these things, because there's just such a disconnect between game and cutscene. Why should I be moved by her dying? She's my healer, with pathetically low hp and not very good attack or defense. She dies every other battle, and almost never gets experience from boss battles. The only thing that makes this any different is that I wasn't personally involved in. Which is problematic, because that's the whole point of playing the game in the first place.

The character deaths that really hit home are the ones that don't happen in a cutscene. The ones that you actively play a role in. To use another incredibly popular and overappreciated game, Undertale is the king of this. The only characters that die are done at your hand. If someone dies, it is entirely your fault. You could have saved them. You could have spared them. But you didn't. You cut them down in cold blood. There is only one exception to that rule, and it catches you so off guard because of the fact that the game is built in this specific way that it makes you angry at who actually was in control. Call it fanboyism all you want, that is the way that you make uncontrollable character death matter. It still happened in a cutscene. But the breaking of the game's rules was intentional - not blindly stupid.

Bear

Matthis stood over the training ring, watching his men go through their regiments, preparing for the guest teacher that was to arrive momentarily. Matthis had hand selected their guest for two reasons: firstly because he was an utter powerhouse and an unstoppable force in the field of battle, and secondly because he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that his men would not accept them as a teacher. There were deep seated roots of racism running rampant throughout his kingdom - personally, he had grown up as an adventurer of sorts, always going to the places he wasn't supposed to, and making lots of friends that he shouldn't have because of it. It had given him a different view of the world than many of those around him.

He could hear the gates opening in the distance, and knew that his guest had arrived. Clearly the men training had heard it as well, though their regular instructor cracked the whip to keep them moving. They should have been well disciplined and past being distracted by an expected sound in the distance - clearly they still had much to learn. Which only made this morning's lesson all the more important.

As their guest instructor came into sight, even the head instructor could not remain focused. A bipedal bear had entered their ranks - lean and large for a bear made him enormous and ripped for a human. He was dressed in heavy battle armor - the likes these men could only dream of lifting, much less wearing - with one hand dressed in a clawed gauntlet, and the other wielding a battle axe that could easily fell a hundred year old oak in a single powerful swing. Matthis could see the look of incredulity on their faces, unwilling to accept that a bear was to be their instructor.

The head instructor glanced to where Matthis was watching over, and the king nodded his head and gestured for him to continue. Though he could not hear it, Matthis could practically see the head instructor's anger as he introduced their guest. But the bear stood stoic, unshaken by his pupils anger. Matthis did not have to hear his invitation for them to step forward and strike at him if they did not believe he had any place before them. Matthis had instructed him to say as such. And every man advanced upon him, and in under five minutes, their guest had stricken them all down.

Matthis smiled as their guest began his actual lecture.The men were instructed, in their bruised and battered states, to stand tall and strong and move forward with even more difficult and complicated drills than they were accustomed to running. More specialized. More focused. Drills that would make them stronger, faster, more focused. Though Matthis had no doubt that they were unaware of just how much of an effect those drills would have.

But he did. He wondered what his men would think if they knew their king was already a graduate of this guest's teachings.

Bard

As someone who both loves telling stories and loves music, it may not come as much of a surprise that I love the concept of a bard. I have a friend who has been working on a massive series, taking place in a medieval world in which all of the characters are based on her real life friends. I am proud to say that, in her five book series, each of which follows a singular character until the last when everyone comes together, I am the subject of one book, in which I am a bard with the power of randomness. I don't remember if I've gone into that before, though I feel like I have, but suffice to say I love her rendition of me, and the fact that I am a bard in her story could not make me happier.

But as much as I love them, I've never been particularly good at writing a bard. There's something about trying to tell a story in rhyme that doesn't quite click in my head, and generally ends with the story becoming incredibly boring and childish. I mean, granted, that's not always necessarily a bad thing, but when it's the only way I can write them and I want to put them in more mature, serious scenarios, it doesn't work out too great.

Not being great at writing music in and of itself probably doesn't help. You need a pretty extensive knowledge of words that isn't quite the same as what you need for writing straight fiction. You need to know every possible synonym, every way you could rearrange the words, just so that you can line up the words in the proper places. You need to count the number of syllables in each line so that it sounds good to say. There needs to be a flow that's just a little bit different than the flow of a novel, because it's not just about the story, but the sound. And while I have more of an ear for that than some other people just from having been exposed to music for so long, I don't have enough of one to be able to figure out what exactly is wrong when I know that there is something wrong. It doesn't sound like much, but it's a pretty big distinction.

And of course, without any actual music, ideally you'd want the musical qualities of what a bard is saying to be able to translate through text alone, which sounds just about impossible. There are instances where it happens - we've all experienced it - but as far as I'm aware, there's no rule or explanation as to why this happens. It just kind of does. And I'm sure that that's something that varies from person to person, and there's no way to actually write something so that everyone who reads it really gets the idea.

I love the idea of bards. I love the idea of a traveling storyteller who knows the history of the world, can play and sing, and gets joy from spreading happiness to the masses. But good lord, if I could actually write one.

Over

Henry stumbled to the port side of the ship, his legs weak, and dropped hard to sit on an upturned barrel. The wood squeaked under him but, surprisingly, held true, and he took a sigh of relief at the fact that he hadn't ended up with a few dozen splinters in his ass. Granted, after what hell he and his crew had just been through, that wouldn't have amounted to a whole lot, but it would have been that final kick in the rear end to push him over the deep end. As it was, he needed to take a deep breath and evaluate where he was and what he was going to do next.

The ship had been utterly ravaged in the battle. There were holes all over the place - in the floors, the railings, the masts - and many of the supplies had been washed overboard, burned, or otherwise rendered unusable. There was no doubt in his mind, even as his ship continued to float, that he had lost the battle. In the distance, he could still see their opponent fading into the horizon, knowing that in their hull safely sat the treasure that the had worked so hard to track down and uncover. Enough wealth to last his entire crew a lifetime, and still leave some savings for their family and children when the men passed away. But it was gone now, and there wasn't a chance in the world of him getting that back.

It would take weeks - if not months - to recover from the damage done to the ship. Maybe if half his crew hadn't been slaughtered in the onslaught he might have had hope of rebuilding, but their blood painted the deck and the sails. For the men who remained, at least half of them would have to be fishing damn near constantly if they wanted to have any food to survive long enough to fix the boat and get to a port. Even if by some miracle they pulled that off, they'd barely have any money to pay for any food or drink.

He had almost forgotten about the sword in his hands until his grip finally failed and it tumbled to the ground with what felt like an ear splitting tang. He looked down at it to see just heavily it ran with blood. The sight made him look at his arm, which lead to his chest, which lead to his legs. He was covered in dozens of razor thin cuts all over, each a close blow that he had barely survived, and each bleeding in varying degrees. He'd have to get wrapped up before nightfall if he didn't want to die from blood loss in his sleep. That was only a few hours away.

He rested his face in his hands. He had been so close to being done. So close to never having to set foot on a ship again. So close to the end of a lifetime of pirating.

But it just didn't want him to be over it yet.

Tiny

Jessica wasn't sure what had just happened. She found herself quite suddenly surrounded in darkness, though all around her she felt something that felt remarkably like cotton thread. She could hear voices coming from beyond the darkness, but whatever it was that was surrounding her was too thick for her to really make out any of the words that they were saying. She pushed against it, and could feel that it was soft and pliable, but it was too heavy for her to move easily. In the dark, she felt her way around, trying to find where the material was thinner and lighter, so that she might be able to make her way to freedom.

She had been having fun at the bar with some of her girlfriends, having a few drinks, but nowhere near enough to really get drunk. It was still early in the night, after all, and she wanted to enjoy herself - not wake up in the morning with a headache and a guy she had never met before. That had happened one too many times already. She had learned to count her drinks. But it was possible that someone had managed to slip something into her drink - as the thought entered her mind, she only became more terrified. Had she been kidnapped? Had they done something to her? There didn't seem to be a lapse in her memory between the drinks and the darkness, but such a sudden transition seemed even less likely to have simply happened than for her to have blacked out.

As she poked around, she suddenly saw a hole of light ahead of her when she lifted up a flap of the unknown material. Her eyes had to adjust to the light, so she couldn't quite tell what was on the other end of it, but she ran towards it regardless. Even if something terrible were on the other end of that light, at least then she would know what she was up against. She wanted to believe that that was better than blindly fumbling around as she had been. It had to be.

But she was not prepared for the sight that awaited her on the other side of that light. As her eyes adjusted, she recognized the area she was in. It was the same bar that she had been in with her friends - but the proportions were wrong. Everything was monumentally larger than it had been before the darkness. And the air in the bar had been hot, and while there was still an aura of warmth, she felt oddly cool.

"Jessica!"

The voices of her friends all calling out her name was staggeringly loud, and as she covered her ears and turned her head down to try and mitigate it, she was made abruptly aware of the fact that she was stark naked. Her face flushed intensely, and she tried to cover herself, but there was no way to completely cover her shame. She had no idea what had happened, and there was too much going on at once.

And then she was being lifted through the air by her waist, and she looked up to see Rachel placing her in an open palm, looking at her with wide eyes. "How did you get so small?" Rachel breathed in wonder and confusion.

The past

Harold was hiking in the woods when it happened. It wasn't a terribly uncommon occurrence - for him at least - but it was something that after years and years of it happening, he still wasn't entirely sure how or why it happened. But, like magic, before his eyes the current world vanished, and it was replaced by an almost grainy view of the past. He could see events which had already transpired, sometimes hundred's of years in the past, though if he was unfamiliar with the events, it was near impossible to say when exactly the scene was taking place. They always were, however, in the space that he was standing.

The trees that he had been standing in were largely unchanged, though their trunks were thinner, and their bark younger and fresher grown. One man came rushing past him to stop a dozen feet in from of him, drenched in sweat, his breathing hard and uneven. Harold recognized the desperate, crazed look in his eyes as the man's head whipped from one side to the other. It was a look that he had seen on more than one occasion when the past appeared before his eyes. It was the look of someone desperate to stay alive.

It didn't take long for the pursuer to arrive on the scene, knuckles white around the dagger in his hand, looking much more energized than his target. The murderer - for there was no question to Harold that that was what he was about to witness - slowed to a stop as he found that his target was finally cornered, unable to escape. Even if he had known where was going, the man simply did not have the energy to make another escape. He was cornered. He was as good as dead.

Harold had no choice but to watch as this crazed murderer advanced forward, raising his blade, and his prey staggered backwards, not paying attention and tripping over his own feet, sealing his doom. He watched him be torn apart apart. He watched the blood spill, soiling the earth beneath him. And then, just before his vision came to an end, the murderer turned to look directly at Harold, making eye contact with him, and pointed the tip at him. "You're next."

And then Harold was back in the present, holding his chest, finding it hard to breath. He didn't understand how that man had seen him. That had never happened before, and people had looked him over dozens of times, unseeing.

But even then, why should he feel so afraid? The difference in the size of the trees suggested that it had been tens, if not hundreds of years since that had taken place. The chances of that murderer even still being alive were abysmal, and even then, surely he would have been caught. And even in the tiny chance that he had not, he would be looking for a much older man. Not the same Harold that he had witnessed.

That was assuming that Harold had even been seen. Which was ridiculous to believe. He wasn't being transported through time, he knew that. He was just seeing what had been. Nothing more. He was sure of it.

Amnesia

Amnesia is a pretty cliche way of writing a character and limiting their powers, but it's one that I'm particularly fond of. One of my favorite characters I've ever written was an amnesiac, and that combined with the fact that he wasn't actually human led to some hilarious moments where concepts of humanity and civilization simply eluded him. He knew shortly after his memories began that there was something strange and different about him, but while he was curious about that, he never really let that lack of knowledge get to him. He continued to act in the manner that came naturally to him, and he never wondered why he was the way he was - he just accepted that as truth and moved on with his life, letting knowledge come as it would, and asking questions when he needed to know.

I've played a lot of games - probably more than I've watched movies or read books - that use amnesia extensively as a plot point to hide a character's true nature or power. I've definitely seen instances where this is done extremely poorly, to the point where I simply couldn't handle to continue on with the game, regardless of how good the rest of the game was. That or games where the truth of the character's amnesia only being revealed at the end of the story, drastically changing the perception of the rest of a story in such a way that I was no longer happy with how the story had been going. I'm not afraid to point it out - Final Fantasy 8 is an excellent example of that particular instance. The truth about the characters' pasts, which wasn't even a question earlier on, ruined the relationships and motives of everyone involved for me.

I'd like to say that my writing of amnesia was handled better, but of course that's probably a pretty subjective topic. I can, however, tell you why I think that. That being that, when I write an amnesiac character, the relative truth behind it is revealed early on - just not to the character themselves. It is revealed through a third party to the reader in a side scene, somewhere within the first third of the story, so that the audience knows what is happening and is waiting to see how the character reacts and changes when they inevitably learn the truth, rather than waiting for that truth and having to process it with the sudden changes that come with learning that truth simultaneously. It paints how the character acts early on, giving context that perhaps they do not even understand themselves.

And that works for me. I really enjoy writing that kind of character, because it gives way to a lot of humor, as well as a lot of growth, and even both happening simultaneously. There's no need to have a comedy character to relieve dark scenes, because the growth that comes from those dark scenes can end up being the humor itself. It just gives a lot of opportunity, and I'd like to think that it can make even the most fantastical of characters more relatable. But I suppose most writers are probably thinking that. Even when they're writing something along the lines of, say, Final Fantasy 8.

Gryphon

Griff stood just in front of the princess's unconscious body, completely naked, his fists raised as he watched her assailant steady himself from the blow he had just taken. Griff watched the blade the man was holding wearily, knowing that it would strike out at him at any moment, knowing he needed to be ready to dodge its bite, for he had nothing to protect his skin from its sharp edge. The assailant eyed him back angrily, the hatred and bitterness evident in his eyes. "She was supposed to be mine!" he called out. "I was here first! I asked for her hand first, I gave her gifts first! But then you came along and ruined everything!"

"Maybe you should have tried to actually know her, rather than just throwing what little you had at her blindly," Griff replied coolly. He was the princess's personal bodyguard, and though it had been unintentional and he had not done much to court her, the two had ended up falling in love, prompting her to cut ties with the foreign princes who had for months been trying to woo her, much to her dismay. While most had reluctantly withdrawn and taken it for what it was, Dem had not been so wise or kind. He had hired assassins to try and kill Griff, and when that had failed, he had tried to assault the princess herself, so as to knock her out and take her away.

Prince Dem let out a roar of anger as he launched himself forward, knife flashing through the air, but Griff was no longer standing in that position. In an instant his body had transformed from that of a human to that of a gryphon, still large and powerful, but much shorter and longer in form. The knife flew over his head, cutting nothing but air, and Dem staggered as the weight threw him off balance, just enough for Griff to slam against him and send him sprawling away from the princess.

He launched after the prince, pouncing on top of him and dragging him across the floor. When Dem had regathered enough of his focus to strike back, Griff was once more a man, standing back where his hind legs had been as a gryphon, far away from the sting of Dem's blade. Dem didn't have the time to react before Griff's foot was being planted straight in his gut, knocking the air out of him completely.

Griff pulled back, knowing that the assailant would continue to be stunned for a good while more. As a shapeshifter, he was far stronger than any normal human. But in his human form, he was still much weaker than a gryphon. And lighter. So as he saw the assailant beginning to regain his composure, he leapt through the air, changing form once more as he soared, and crushed the prince under his massively heavy body.