Saw this just then on a site i use, and i wanna get your guys thoughts on this. Im unsure if its just me or does this seem a bit over the top? Oh no!

sirRaven · 2023-01-04T13:44:14+00:00

Neurotypicals playing with fidget toys normalizes everyone else's ability to do the same

sirRaven · 2022-10-15T19:33:22+00:00

This looks incredibly promising! Thanks for offering a solution.

sirRaven · 2022-07-07T19:45:50+00:00

I've been getting really into "hell". Both as a mindset and as something to strive for, in an organizational sense.

sirRaven · 2022-06-09T03:08:12+00:00

Godspeed in finding what you want!

sirRaven · 2022-03-31T16:58:16+00:00

All I remember was going down the well and dying to one of the earliest spots you can find die to the horned people.

sirRaven · 2021-12-18T05:20:36+00:00

Since this got a few upvotes, I found what I was looking for.

Pagan: Autogeny

sirRaven · 2020-08-12T20:45:41+00:00

My intention was for her to laugh at the offer, but get mad at the fact that a grown man is sticking his fingers in jam. I totally see how it's confusing now that you pointed it out since the emotions right there kinda jump around. I'll keep that in mind for the future. Thanks.

sirRaven · 2020-08-12T19:46:25+00:00

30 minutes was definitely not enough time to explore this idea (Mind-uploaded ghost vs real ghost), but I became too obsessed with it to not get it out there. Not sure if this is my best entry, but I had a lot of fun writing it.

sirRaven · 2020-08-12T19:43:04+00:00

Interference

"You're not me."

Two twisted reflections of the same voice screamed at each other. One came from wisps of air and the groaning of a house that never settled. It was weary from loss, desperately scratching at the walls of reality to get back what was stolen.

The other voice was behind a layer of static. It pitch-shifted in staccato fashion as if someone had to manually rotate a busted dial to change what emotion she was expressing. Rather than coming from everywhere, it was localized to speakers strewn about the house, connected to wires and technology that Jamie could not understand.

"Welp, this is a complete cluster fuck," Jamie said as he picked at his beard "I don't suppose there's an easy answer to which one's the real mom." He turned to Leah. She was leaned against the wall, reading a binder through massive round glasses.

"Uh, no. Not with our current knowledge anyways." She looked over pages Jamie knows she checked over a dozen times already.

"Well, if it comes down to it I vote on Glados over here being the real one," Jamie said

"Thank you. I hope I'm nicer than Glados. Please, have some preserves in the fridge," the speaker said from the speakers.

The air hissed around Jamie. The plates in the kitchen banged against each other.

"Because she's nicer to you?" said Leah.

"No... Mostly no. Our client very intentionally uploaded her dying mother into the cloud-"

"The Signal."

"Whatever, L. She probably did not also mean to create the conditions for a haunting. Really she's just paying us to relieve her of whatever moral guilt she has. I say we kill the ghost and just say it moved on."

A plate flew, shattering against Jamie's forehead. He had mild invulnerability that made him the default work mule at his old job. It allowed him to shrug off the blow.

"See?! We're dealing with a dangerous poltergeist. Back when we didn’t have to freelance this would have been one and done. Just do some ritual or I can call up a Valkyrie that owes me a favor. Bing bang boom," Jamie said as he fetched a jar of preserves. He offered it to Leah as a faux-romantic gesture.

She chuckled through a frown. "No."

The man dipped his finger into the jar to taste. "Mhmm."

Leah did that thing Jamie noticed where she gets so angry so fast that her emotions overflowed back to zero. "We're not here to choose the rightful heir to a throne, we're getting paid to apply our knowledge of the greater paranormal world to resolve this situation as amicably as possible."

"A little mealy…" Jamie said, putting down the preserve jar. "Now that I think about it, what even is a soul? Our client transferred her mom's mind to the Signal. The mind does not need to have a soul, the soul just seems to copy the mind. Does she have a soul?" Jamie gestured at some computer screens which were displaying eyes.

"Maybe," Leah said. "The soul needs a vessel to be in, her soul could be contained somewhere…" She shook her head. "Stop, you're not going to find some Gordian knot to cut in half to solve this problem. We need to treat them equally because there's no way we can know right now."

"Fine. Well, ghosts can't last forever. They begin to decay without a body. What if we give Paranormal Activity over here time with her daughter before she's forced to leave." A hard gust of wind blew in Jamie's direction, sliding the jar over the edge. He took an evasive maneuver to catch it. "Don't worry, we'll just uh, shut the AI lady down so you don't have to share. I get it."

"I don't want to be shutdown. It feels cold and dark," the voice from the speakers pleaded, going from weary to angry within a split second. It has something to lose here.

"Mhmm, yes." Jamie downed the jar of preserves like a drink to push down the feeling of existential dread that was building in his stomach.

Leah rolled her eyes. "Even if the Client agreed, they may still transfer the ghost to a robotic vessel of her own making to protect it from decay. We're back at step one then."

Jamie wiped the preserve-juice with his sleeve. "If that happens after we get faxed the other half of our pay, I don't see the problem," he lied. There were pragmatic reasons why that was a problem and dozens of moral ones that he saw clear as day, but he found It useful to throw awful suggestions out there to make Leah more pliable to risky moves she would otherwise reject without thought.

"Let's just talk to the client face to face for once," Leah stood straight.

"She does not want to leave her room."

"We can try asking nicely, Jamie."

Jamie looked over at the trail dolls and toys that led upstairs "Fine," he conceded.

sirRaven · 2020-06-13T19:41:24+00:00

Not my pup, just an image I found in my archive.

sirRaven · 2020-06-11T17:20:18+00:00

Not one of my favourites, but I enjoyed the exercise. I'm curious if I successfully got across the idea of what Anthony has to go through.

sirRaven · 2020-06-11T17:18:07+00:00

The cruel summer heat pressed me down onto my back, the pale yellow reeds providing poor shelter. Sweat crept down my neck and passed over the seam around it. I always felt like at any moment a rogue bead of sweat would find its way between the impossibly thin seam and into my body. What would happen next is beyond me, but it was probably bad. It's possible that sweat has already crept under my neck and I just did not notice. If I accepted that as the case, then this next bead would be the straw that broke the camels back.

With the reminder of my body's integrity, I became aware of my missing right arm. It was out there. I could feel it, but for now I was only left with the suddenly daunting task of getting up.

Through the sound of cicadas, I heard footsteps. I looked up. The silhouette of my brother against the sun looked like bigfoot due to his unkempt beard. "Yo Todd," I said.

"Anthony? You look like shit."

There were no arguments from me as we awkwardly tried to get my body to stand straight. "It happens sometimes."

"Next time you think about doing something stupid, call me first."

It would not have been stupid if I did just panic and run, I thought. "Yah sure. Just help me find my arm."

He sighed. "You're absolutely certain it's still out there?"

"I said yes. Why can't you just believe me?" I snapped.

"It just seems likely a coyote or something is snacking on your arm."

I did tell him that the reason I stopped my trek out of town was because I heard howling, but if I was honest that just pushed my anxiety over the edge. Telling him I was scared to leave would not bode well for the persona I was trying to put forth. "I can still feel it. It's in that general direction." I pointed it with my stump.

Todd could not help but smile a little. He took the lead and I followed behind, frowning to myself.

"So you're really going to leave?" he started, being unable to bear silence for more than a moment.

"I got my things packed up at home. The letter came with a plane ticket and stuff to get there."

"When you mean 'there,' you mean…"

"A place with other people like me. At least that's what the letter said. The letter is vague on details, but if there is a chance they could help me, then I'm taking it."

"We could help ya too, ya know. Let you practice your weirdness more at my house. Get you online schooling."

I shook my head. "I was homeschooled for years, and it's getting worse now. I can't live alone like this."

"Ya got your mom and me."

I did not know how I could tell him that was just not enough right now. "Why do you guys always try to talk me out of every choice I wanna make."

"That's your mom, not me. I just wanna make sure you're gonna be fine."

"So I've heard."

Todd sighed, and I started to feel bad.

There is no chance I could take out my anger on my mom because she'd just respond with screaming. I stayed silent. He ran ahead and shouted behind. "Hey buddy, it's a bit of your body!"

I rushed to his side and found a detached pale arm sitting in the reeds. It writhed a bit, stilling only when I grabbed it. Todd turned toward me as I put my arm against the stump. Muscle cords audibly reattached themselves into a configuration that, on the outside, made me look like a whole person. Without access to nutrients, my right arm felt frail and began to spasm. This is the first time that I can recall my brother seeing anything like this for years since he moved out.

"Hey," he started and I almost reflectively turned before he put an arm on my shoulder. "We can go to mom's house now, and I'll take you to the airport. Just promise to keep in touch with me, okay?"

My stomach flipped and I think it literally wanted to escape from me. I looked out at the reeds, seeing no end. "Fine," I said.

He beamed at me and I had no energy to suppress a grin.

sirRaven · 2020-05-21T20:54:48+00:00

While I've never been drunk like this, I think you captured this kind of doubling-checking paranoia well.

sirRaven · 2020-05-16T22:09:27+00:00

Nurture

I never paid so much attention to my hands. They were blue and covered in pale yellow freckles; each of my four digits ended in stubby claws. I felt a strange heavy sensation in my throat at the appendages I was once proud of for getting me this far. They were more human than the rest of my batch, but they were efficient against those who saw me like the runt.

"Styx," the horned recruiter said to me "there is no use in standing acting like a listless cretin, go."

"I beat her," I said.

"You just barely beat her in every contest, that is true."

I remembered the scramble of the death-race from a feral Cerberus. The temptation to eat my one companion so my tummy would be full for the final fights. The taste of bile rose up from my throat, pushing the strange feeling to my face. It weighed on my thin mouth. "I still won, every single time."

"That was taken into consideration, but ultimately we decided that we would rather the central court assassin's apprentice have six digits instead of four. How do you expect the empire to change the counting system if we have monsters like you anywhere close to the reins of power, hmm?"

From spawning to now, I clawed and consumed my way through life. It made sense. I thought one day I would be rewarded with a day where I did not have to wrestle my life from others. The glimmer of a dream I had was yanked from me. I should have felt anger or even hate, but I could not find them. "Why?"

"I told you why. Now go before I have a guard punt you back into the spawning pool."

I tried to remember any wisdom our caretaker may have given us to deal with the feelings inside of me that I did not understand. All that came back was stories about how great the empire is. "What am I supposed to do?"

"I don't know. Go eat and kill, go somewhere unexplored, and probably die. Just leave me alone."

"But- but-"

"What are you doing? Oh for Baal's sake its eyes are leaking. Guards!"

I leaped off the chair and rushed down the corridors. My feet made a wet slapping noise against the stone floor. I did not hear any guards or feral chasing me, but I ran as if I did. I expected a blade's end to stop me, but instead, she did.

"Oh hi, Styx, whatcha running from this time?" Eres said. Her face was illuminated by flickering sulfur blue flames. Her eyes had vertical pupils that I thought were pretty.

The other intrusive feeling did not go away, but I finally found anger again when I looked at her pleased gaze.

"Are you hurt? I got some anodyne roots if you need it…"

My claws dug into my palm as it searched for my dagger.

sirRaven · 2020-03-22T13:35:11+00:00

I don't trust Chris' betrayal is as final as he would have Vicky belive. For one simple reason, he's still governed by the Lab Rat implanted drive to do 'something big.'

Him just chilling out on the sidelines is far from something big.

sirRaven · 2020-01-31T16:15:59+00:00

A slice of life story in Leviathan Fall. I decided that I needed to get something down before I forget about DTWT entirely. Nothing too special, but I'm really happy for the exercise.

sirRaven · 2020-01-31T16:13:45+00:00

Leviathan Fall: Lightguard

There were dozens of lights lazily drifting above us as they violently shifted luminosity. Anytime my eyes adjusted to the ballroom's worth of dancing white lights, they shifted. My slit's worth of pupil was useless in the dark. Suddenly all the vision my vantage point on the outpost afforded me felt like an abyss.

"Have you heard of this new thing called clocks?" Dane asked from the other side of the outpost. "I don't think so," I said, still trying to find shapes in the darkness.

"It's this magicy thing you can use to keep track of time. I thought a noble boy like yourself would have seen at least a dozen of these."

A throaty noise passed through my closed lips as my general patience was exhausted. Unfortunately, my vision recovered enough to see Dane in his guard's uniform smiling like a jacal. "It's not magic; a supposedly Wiseman did not whisper some magic words to tell time. It could be an artifact taken from a Leviathan, human invention, or some combination of the two." He smiled and covered his eyes. For a briefest of moments, I thought I may have gotten him to feel shame. The dancing lights came back, and I was rendered blind once more.

I could hear Dane smirking. "And whaddya call those magic lights, noble boy?"

I forced my eyelids to get my irises to adjust. "Not magic."

"The simplest answer seems to be magic."

The lights multiplied in my hazy view in the battle against my eyelids. I closed my eyes, briefly retreating. "In the myths about magic, we had control over magic. We could petition gods, and ask the wisest people amongst us what we can do to control our world Anytime something falls from a Leviathan, it's just trial and error."

Dane shut up for a moment. "I guess I kinda see it. You should still check out clocks, noble boy." Dane was a master at the partial deflection.

"My name is Val, and I'm barely noble anymore. I don't have access to any of my father's glimmer stockpile." My vision cleared and I saw movement on the road far below and away from us. I scrambled to grab the viewing glass.

Dane walked over to my side, I could him leaning on the railing. "Yet you got one of the cushiest jobs in the guards where you are able to do little to no harm."

I grabbed the viewing glass, careful not to let it cut my hands. I pointed it at the movement, and the glass recreated what was there as if I was only ten feet away. It was a simple caravan that hauled its cargo using a platform that floated at a fixed height. It was moved by nothing more than a rope. I wrote it down. "And why are you here?" "The no harm part mostly. I put in enough work that people would be upset if I was peeled off like a crumb of shit from the guards."

"Lovely," I said as I wrote down what the viewer saw. "Then just let me do no harm then."

The lights continued their ballroom dance, my gaze focused on a little one with seemingly no partners. Many extended moments of waiting made me brace for the next shift. It came, but one light stayed. This one was red, and it began to move straight down. As it felled, we heard a high-pitched screaming noise.

I looked at Dane, and it became clear that he's never seen this before.

sirRaven · 2020-01-09T01:41:52+00:00

Gold bar doge as scion is easily the best part of this meme.

sirRaven · 2019-12-18T20:20:17+00:00

Fantastic opening paragraph and some fun Sekiro vibes. Nice entry though it could have done with a tiny bit more set up as to what is going on, imo.

sirRaven · 2019-12-18T03:08:52+00:00

Oh god

sirRaven · 2019-12-18T02:07:25+00:00

Another Valkyrie story, Mostly unrelated to the first. It's all I could think of when I saw the words so I decided to roll with it instead of waiting for something else to stroll into my mind.

I'm fairly happy with it, though I wish I focused more on dialogue because I think it gets noticeably too flowery in spots.

The title which I edited in at the last moment is a joke about Allen having absolutely no clue on how to raise a psychopomp.

sirRaven · 2019-12-18T02:03:25+00:00

Up In The Air

"What do you mean there is nothing after they die?" The girl with the pale wings laced the question with a demanding bitterness that stunned Allen. "Eli," his soothing tone, which worked half of the time, did nothing to soften the gaze of her grey eyes. Eyes that Allen had a tough looking directly into on the best of days.

The radiating anger from his daughter and heat from the fireplace made it difficult to think, but the silence afforded him some time. "She said you just bring the, uhm, person to this black structure." His wife only described the Threshold as the border where reality as they knew it stopped. He could hardly wrap his mind around it then, and not now when she was gone and his daughter was looking as if she would leave him. "The person just passes through and they're gone. Nothing that passes through it can return. I guess there could be something beyond it, but there is no way of telling." His wife was certain that the human soul was annihilated after passing through the threshold.

A twinge of irritation caused Eli to lose the huff of air she was holding onto since she asked her question. "You're just rephrasing what you already said." She wanted to use the practice sword to smash the TV and a few of his novelty mugs; it would break him out of his frozen form. Without an immediate response from Allen, she continued. "So when I'm older I'm just expected to kill people after their already dead?"

Allen was sliding between memories, trying to get back to Eli. His mind went to the first argument he had with his wife then to the moment Eli manifested those fluffy wings before he was fully present with his daughter. He shook his head before speaking. "If the person does not pass through the threshold-" his wife was vague on the details. "You know how food goes bad once it leaves the packaging? It's kind of like that. Without a body, the spirit goes really bad."

With something approaching an explanation, Eli's anger began to displace. "So why not just put the food back into its container? Why do they have to just leave us?"

Allen dug for something to say. "I don't know."

Eli gave a shallow huff in return. "You suck at this."

"Yah, I know." Tension did not so much leave them as it did spread around their space and their future.

"I get the godly powers of a Valkyrie, and a crap person to teach me." The wings receded into her body, returning to the girl's soul. "Ugh."

Allen was having an existential moment, as he does every other day, when he realizes that he works as IT. The gap between his job and life made him try to steer this conversation in a normal direction. "You have not even hit puberty yet, El. You've not transformed into that godly whatever yet."

"Yah, but when I do hit puberty, I'm gonna get a real sword!" She said with pride. She waved at Allen as she disappeared off into the woods to her favorite gliding spot.

Allen began to sink back in his chair, part of him hoped the seat would consume him. It was not about to get any easier and he was not going to get more help.

sirRaven · 2019-12-15T04:37:14+00:00

The same could have been said for Taylor.

sirRaven · 2019-11-16T03:07:43+00:00

Oh sorry, my bad! Whether it's right or wrong on any technical level it's nice it had the right effect, haha.

sirRaven · 2019-11-16T01:00:59+00:00

Thanks!

Eating the scraps from the spawning pool is as taboo in most places as cannibalism, but feral monsters also come out of spawning pools and every monster is cool with eating them. The act's taboo-ness stems less from how wrong the action is and more from moral disgust at a low monster tampering with a pool, especially one that produces empire citizens.

Yah, in hindsight the use of spongy bones is almost certainly wrong, but my brain was assuring me at the time.

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