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rataltouille · 4 years

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BONFIRE, BONFIRE!: A COLLECTION OF FLASH FICTION + POETRY

so i’ve decided to compile all twenty [these will be split into two so that the post isn’t super long] of the writing pieces i’ve done for my random celebration into one post so that it’s easier to read / access share!! you can also find it here, all put into one work, on wattpad, because i feel nostalgic about that website and decided to just post it!!

NOTE: i know that this shouldn't need to be said, but these 20 pieces belong to me so please don’t copy/repurpose it for your writing!! i plan on using these somewhere in my own writing and either way they’re stuff i’ve written so don’t use them!!

1. cooking + destructive + purple from @andiwriteunderthemoon [also i kind of cheated with this prompt and asked my sis @dreamscanbenightmarestoo for ideas and so the base idea’s from her!!]

I didn’t mean to set my house on fire, alright?

Let me set the scene: I’m sitting in my room, watching the infomercials that blur together, and suddenly there’s a bright purple flash on the glitching screen: /grapes/. They’re shiny, plump, and oh? A recipe for fine wine? Don’t mind if I do. So I pop into my kitchen and cut the grapes, dice them up, finally using the knife after years of not cooking— /mother, are you proud of me now?/— and stick the soft, luminescent fluid into a glass bottle. Following each step of the recipe.

The recipe didn’t mention an explosion.

Destruction rained around my house like a meteor shower. The bubbles from the fluid, frisking up at contact with metal, swam across my shoes and into the living room. It touched the TV, which still flashed the recipe, which I was still cursing at. And then, you know, it burnt up. The couch scorched first, I think. So that was fun. I later realised that I’d used my reserve of petroleum, which I’d put in my kitchen cabinet, instead of vinegar. I think I’ve got to move back in with my mother again.

2. running + quiet + sky blue from @kryskakikomi [i have no idea what this is i drafted this in a fever dream state]

Summer crawled up his skin like a worm. He was seated at his dining table, crosswording his way through the sticky morning, when it struck him that the humidity was new. He’d been caught in summer before, of course, but this year was different. His parents had whisked away to their hometown, and he still didn’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to go. He loved their home— he could have been running on beach sand and waves could have cruised over his feet, and his face would reflect sky blue under palm trees. Instead he sat doodling and scratching at cement walls in a quiet that nagged at his ears, grappling his flesh like a fishing hook, reeling him in. Boredom, him sister told him, before she also left for someone’s home. What would you know? he whispered once the door latched from the outside. Maybe /she’d/ like to sit on the same wooden chair, all the pink paint worn out, and scratch out squares of empty text until the pen poked through the other hand. He scoffed. At least he knew the number of scars on the wood; he could hold that over her when his parents returned.

3. hallucinate + hazy + violet from @chloeswords [i wanted to write something dreamy and ethereal but everytime i look at your url i’m reminded of church mud and indirectly my religious trauma so here we are 🤡]

We hold the book in our arms and chant for God. We don’t know what he looks like. They say that he’s sharp, never pixelating or blurring or showing through, like a hazy image would. No, children, our family says, he will come clothed in gold and velvet— the colour a deep and rich crimson, or chartreuse. And of course, he weaves a violet into his hair. Because he is just that humble. Just that gentle. Loving.

We’ve almost understood now. Pray, clasp our palms together into a transient equinox, and pray. Maybe he will shine down on us. Maybe we will speak so loud and chant so long that our lips will chap. Maybe we’ll simply hallucinate him to salve our bones. Our family says, he will bless you. And so he will.

4. halcyon + pluviophile + beige from anon [i was yearning for cats i am a cat person i love cats]

I remember my life before I moved to London,

Those halcyon days that I spent scooping up cat litter and brushing warm fur,

Being a mother to beige and white and black little felines.

They keep better company than humans.

Now I’m a self-proclaimed businesswoman, artist, influencer, pluviophile,

Even when I’ve barely stepped foot outside during the rain,

[But it needs to be said that when it rains in London, it pours].

I think I’d like to open a cat cafe;

I’m rich enough to pull it off.

5. sing + vulnerable + olive green from @occiidens [this was actually super fun to write because it’s a break from the typically unhinged stories i gravitate towards]

You watch from the highest hill of your town, hand wrapped around the serrated wood of a red oak tree. The bark pokes into your flesh, drawing blood that shouldn’t have been taken from you. You scowl. Just another thing that lives to cause you pain.

Three storeys down is a young man, short and smiling and lovely. He has dark skin and darker hair, walking with the stride of a deer, and he’s smiling; the joy reflects onto your face, even though you can’t hear him. He wears a cotton shirt, the olive green stark against the fire-blue sky. You call out, sing his name, three times in a row.

When he finally looks up, squinting as you silhouette under the sun, the smile widens. A wave. You’re suddenly overcome with embarrassment. Your palm digs into the bark until the wound is freshly dug again, the skin supple and vulnerable. You want to wave, but your hands would look so awkward, and the blood wouldn't help. So you turn on your heel and run— why are you so awkward?— and the grass around you is brighter. This is now a tomorrow issue, you conclude. You’re still smiling.

6. dislocate + ostentatious + blood red from @oasis-of-you [this got really unhinged really fast. TW: body horror]

If you take a turn at Finn Avenue,

Rogue your way down a blood red river,

[It’s not actual blood, do not worry. The colour’s a pigment and it’s saturated enough to give you the texture, the touch, the taste of blood, but I repeat, it isn’t true blood. You might think that it’s ostentatious of us to make you cross a river like that, but you’ll understand why.]

And if can stick your fingers inside the fluid,

You’ll find a bone.

Don’t pull it out fully! Only observe.

[This is a real bone, most likely animal. We may be ominous, but we don’t hurt humans. Not yet.]

So what do you do now? You want passage into a better world.

You came here because you saw the brochure, the flyer,

Radiant Idyll, home for love, but you also saw the jutting anatomy that leads to the city. The pictures were rather clear.

Why do you look so surprised? We’ve put this on the brochure— don’t you ever read the fine print?— to avoid this exact situation. That you would cross a body, a skeleton, pooled over in a fluid that we don’t name, but it’s probably alive.

It’s watching you right now.

So what do you do now?

Hurry up, unhinge your arm, dislocate the elbow, drop it into the blood, forgive me, false blood, and pay for your passage.

Oh! Excellent; that’s record time. We do hope you enjoy your stay!

1. @noteaboy [i’ve interpreted your url as ”note, a boy”]

There’s an orange tree. It’s spring, and there’s an orange tree, and it brims with fruit and citrus perfume. Point your lens flare downwards, and note, a boy. A young man, perhaps, because he combs his hair, uptight and firm, and he wears a tie. A long suit. He doesn’t look up, because his hand holds a book. /He/ holds the book, not the hands— tenderness doesn’t translate through anatomy, I’ve taught you this before. He’s waiting for someone. There’s only the rustle of leaves. He drops the book onto the lap of the tree, crushing the apple that had fallen down. Orange, not apple. Take note better. You only have one chance to get this right.

2. @eatingjupiter [your url is so beautiful omg]

The goddess had said this before she died: you need to watch over him. He needs your sentry to survive. The goddess’ words weren’t heeded. Little baby Jupiter tottered on lava as him parents small-talked with their kingdom. Well, it must have been small talk, because nothing seemed to happen afterwards other than his mother’s face collapsing in agony, anger, annoyance. He knew not to touch them then. He’d fly off into the sun one day, but if his hands were but and charred, he wouldn’t survive even a third of the journey.

The prophecy was simple: the firstborn to the kingdom will metamorph into a celestial, purify themselves so that only stardust remains. Live in the sky forever. The astrologers were baffled; you don’t just become a star. They should have heeded the goddess.

Jupiter was sixteen when he expanded and collapsed all at once. He still lives, they say, and the astrologers /were/ right, in a way: people just don’t become stars. They become almost empty space. Nobody knows if his hands were burnt when they left earth’s orbit forever.

3. @laughtracksonata [your name gave me slight horror vibes idk why!!]

Hahaha. The Horror Movie (don’t ask me for a name, I’m not good with those), with its cymbal crashing and plastic sounds, it’s so loud and scary that it hurts, father. Please turn it off.

Father doesn't listen. I shiver on the couch. The screen flickers like radio static and reflects off our wide eyes. What kind of a home is this anyway? I don’t want to fucking listen to a laugh track or a horror VHS tape or watch the bass crescendo as the serial killer jumpscares the watcher. I don’t think that having hour pupils glued to the same blood-splattered movie, with the same recording looping in his eardrums will help him. He laughs along, sometimes. It’s scary. Father needs a new hobby.

PART TWO COMING SOON!!

anyway this got REALLY long so i’m posting the third prompt group, the one based on songs, as a second part in some time. i hope you enjoy this, and PLEASE do boost!! i spent a lot of time writing these pieces and am pretty proud of them :’)

general taglist: @lovingyou-is @guulabjamuns @andiwriteunderthemoon @coffeeandcalligraphy @melonmilk @silentlylostwriter @charles-joseph-writes @eklavvya @eowynandfaramir @bitterwitchwrites @laughtracksonata @whatwordsdidnttouch @indeliblewrites @thenataliawrites @summersguilt @illimani-gibberish @sarahkelsiwrites @writing-in-delirium @shaelinwrites @sienna-writes @chewingthescenery @jennawritesstories @chloeswords @aelenko @keira-is-writing @cherylinanika @infinitely-empty-pages @jmtwrites @august-iswriting @freedelusionbanana @beetleblue88 @mistercaleb @iwannawritepls @hanwatchingmovies @mortallynuttyqueen @idratherliveinnarnia @maisulli @thegreyboywrites @ahowlinwolf @ravens-and-rivers @oasis-of-you @yanittawrites @chazza-writes-sometimes @skyfirewrites @lovebenders @treybriggsthewriter @themidnxghtwriter @ash-karter @queen-devasena @a-procrastination-addict @gaymityblight @beyondthebracken @madmaxst26 @adielwrites @moonpixxel @hollow-knight-dnd @keep-looking-here @overlap @ashleygarciawrites @ryns-ramblings @wordsbynathan @novaemlynlewis @sophiewritingstuff @howdy-writes @occiidens @nsanelyawkward @viawrites-andacts

#writeblr #am writing #flash fiction #poetry #wtwcommunity #ofcolourtracking #crabappletracking #anyway part two probably in a couple days #i still have to start writing them 🤡✌️#bonfire bonfire

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donewithcapitalistfrayers · 3 years

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imperialism is based not just on the endless accumulation of profit but also the polarized accumulation of use values & control over world labor, resources etc. to control such things you need to prevent others from making claims on them. To make claims on resources including labor shares of value you need political stability, in our historical moment, stable state structures, absence of warfare, political organization to achieve all the above, and hope as part and parcel of building organization. US wars on southwest Asia and the Arab region are not “senseless” or “irrational” (unfortunately frequent buzzwords of people stirring up confusion) but make a great deal of sense from those interested in ensuring that those poor people and world poor people cannot make such claims.

How are stock markets and labor shares of value (outside that great demon bugbear morass of authoritarian imperialism China) doing in the last 20-30 years of ‘irrational’ war? The former, shooting to the stars the latter, hitting the dust. This is the empirical documentation of success in US geopolitical management AKA imperialism and class struggle against the majority of the world, including besieging and Phoenix programs against remaining armed communists & state experiments with building hope and national production.

Lest I forget what has the storied “counter hegemonic apparatus” been doing during this halcyon moment? You have Alex de Jong smearing a Maoist movement facing murder, Jeff Webber pronouncing the death of the pink tide and inveighing against the Bolivian ‘regime.’ Then you have your Charles Posts writing damp letters about how there is no transfer of value south-north on a world scale, your Salar Mohandesi erasing imperialism as a practice of value transfer and reducing it to inter-state conflict.

The aggregate effect is that for better or worse academics are often reviled in activist circles and actual party organizations, but more importantly rather than the massive potentially beautiful bloom of radicalized intellectuals being engaged with the south’s struggles ...

There is widespread sneering or a petrified cool to frozen blase ironic distance, but whose net effect is to prevent this social layer (yes me us!) from helping to boost the legitimacy of these struggles on a wide scale in the north and also in the south. Such legitimacy in turn is a shield against the direct political repression going on in third world countrysides. It’s absence leads to the ongoing murder and dislocation and assassination of the cadres of Philippines Communists or Venezuelan peasant activists. It is really irrelevant if this is the actual intent of the first world demonization campaigns, it is the political effect. The upshot is that these anti/systemic struggles get more besieged deformed eventually wiped out, become objects of some study 49 years later.

The US will wreck a country like Afghanistan not simply to seize the resources it has, but just to stop a global rival - or the Afghans themselves - from using them to develop. And furthermore simply to crush the morale of the working class on a world scale, to instill hopelessness and defeat, to erase internationalism as political practice and orienting pole.

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sasorikigai · 5 years

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@replicantarkivs gets modern Hanzo.

💥|| The pain never really stopped; for Hanzo buried it deep in his bones, but it settled comfortably behind the depth of his brooding, melancholic gaze and made itself at home. Melancholy is supposed to be the most poetic emotion and he guesses it’s as true as any other notion. Even when he serves as the harbinger of justice upon those that wrong others, regardless of degree and severity, but he does often get stuck in moral quandaries, ensnared within the trap of a criminal poet brain; for he too, had been a criminal born out of visceral anger, frantic sorrow, withering remorse and shame. Being the worst manifestation of humanity that never refrained to deceive and maim and kill even when it was unnecessary as he would harbor money, notoriousness and power without an ounce of virtue.

Now, the makeup of Hanzo Hasashi beats with honesty, loyalty, unyielding brevity and persistence. The once grotesque descriptions of the Syndicate’s hitman now slaying the evil’s beasts within the wretched world. The lifetime of opportunity would be only extended to a few; to those that are well-deserved and worthy of its honor. As everything about him would swell and fill with blazing darkness, splintered light and bloodstained glory; such savagery and menace of the world embedded within his fierce gaze consuming like waves gone wild. That’s all he will ever be, with all the wrecks that he had compiled. Even when his flesh had been ripped and blood splattered - stains old and new - and claw marks scattered the walls like morbid decorations. Even when Commander Hasashi would not feel powerful, apex in his form, he is still capable of throwing echoes of his previous form; as if his motions were already choreographed and unconscious.

How the projectiles of the bullet barely misses them by an inch; aimed for their head, of course, it could as easily strike the heart and blow clear through their souls of both him and the one whom he is protecting. Quite the marksmanship the assailant had, but he can quick draw the damned glock in less than a second flat and land two fatal shots, right in the head and just the center of the collar, well placed to paralyze anyone who fucking dared to cross the bulwark aegis of his herculean form. “Stay vigilant and be alert, everything will turn out right. The world is fucking built on that.” Something about the urgent whisper of his words creating a space of deeper darkness beyond the overarching veil of gloom. “As long as you stay behind me at all times to weather the storm together, to get out of here relatively intact and alive.” There is smoke in his eyes, from the flames of his heart. And with all the fire inside, he is going to burn himself tonight and execute the one who dared to challenge his prowess.

How he yearns to see through the night-vision glasses, as the frequencies of the human warmth would resolve into a gentle harmonious resonance as shapes formulate amidst the inky darkness. His heart forces blood, lungs forcing breath; Hanzo frowns, hunched over in his pain as the rushing surge of adrenaline causes his brain and mind and soul to act in hypervigilance. “Do you know how to handle a firearm?” With his left dislocated shoulder, even when he handles the pain and swallow the guilt of fucking things up, the halcyon sun of his mind will elicit the ring of hope, as he would cause his emotions jump from the lowest to the highest in no time. How his skin whispers flames of perspiration, a sky of ash crumbling softly as stars seem to say his name with the burning question of love. For his thoughts are inevitable, changing every moment of the day and night and his heart is steady just like earth. The blood and bones of his aching rattles through the hollow of the nothing, but his breath, Kuai Liang’s breath against the nape of his neck, and the quieted nimbleness of his footsteps, shifting in the rapid dance of mortality. 💥||

#✗ the ineffable testimony of spawned hellfire (scorpion)#✗ ugly syllables of conjured vindictive crimson (modern au)#(lemme know if you need anything changed!)#replicantarkivs

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theworldbrewery · 5 years

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A playlist for my current party: 4 idiots + their honorary cult grandma, four with new names and one with someone else’s--god I love them. they requested a playlist breakdown so i’ve placed it under a cut for brevity. I’m always soft for making fan content for the campaigns I’m in tbh.

Alice: an elf-turned half-orc after a reincarnate spell went awry, her wild magic caused her marriage to fall apart when she accidentally burned down her home. She’s looking for control over the magic that is ruining her life.

Remmy: a man of many names, Remmy is an aasimar cleric with more secrets than even the other party members are aware of. He’s untrusting and full of fear, but the party gets him to open up--against his better judgment.

Gadao: an earth genasi from an isolated monastery, he’s looking for an identity of his own after realizing he may not be an incarnation of an ancestral spirit after all. Looking for his place in the world, the party’s fast-paced life contrasts with his steady nature.

Leap: an elderly tiefling ranger, she grew up in a cult of pain and left it only by good fortune. Her taste for adventure--and a need for closure--keep her on the road, though she looks forward to seeing her family again.

Blue: an aarakocra bard, Blue awoke with no memory and promptly joined a shady merchant vessel as a good-luck musician. They’re always down to fight, curious, and ready to hoard as many items as they can get their hands on.

Anger | Sleeping at Last

I love the way this song opens, the energy it has. Favorite lyrics are “it all spills out/reckless but honest words leave my mouth,” which maybe speaks to my love of intra-party conflict… but I also have a soft spot for “and suddenly I’m someone that prays/last-minute man of faith” given the campaign’s attention to the divine. I’ve really loved leaning into that. It feels like this song has threads that connect to every character.

Hellfire | Barns Courtney

God, I love the chorus to this song. I feel that in this party, Leap and Remmy have the strongest links in these lyrics, between Leap’s simmering fury at her cult and Remmy’s...everything. There’s a period of the song that isn’t quite an instrumental, but has sort of mangled lyrics/rap, and though I can’t quite make it out, one bit sounds like “roll the dice” -- a fun nod to D&D as a whole and the risk-takers among the party.

Blood I Bled | The Staves

My favorite lyric here is “raise your banners and ride to war/throwing ‘round your name.” This song feels like a challenge to the world, suitable for a group of adventurers just forming a party. The singers and songwriters mention the song as one of “no, I won’t take this bullshit,” and that strong message really speaks to the PCs.

Hustler | Zayde Wølf

Hustler is all about coming out on top, and y’all are “turning up the heat” all the time. “Looking at the city like I already own it” feels like a foreshadowing moment to me; one day, when you all are level 10, 15, 20, you might reach an unmatchable power, if you live long enough to see it.

Homemade Dynamite | Lorde

I chose this song for the absolute clusterfuck D&D parties can be. “Don’t know you super well/but I think that you might be the same as me/Behave abnormally” encapsulates something really funny about party members getting to know each other and start to trust each other, even when the rule might still be “I’ll give you my best side, tell you all my best lies,” and your secrets and private problems haven’t yet come to light.

Nervous | X Ambassadors

The chorus of foreboding in “cause what comes up must come down” is, how do I put this? Iconique. I think this song especially fits Leap and Alice, both of whom are aware of how quickly things can go awry but put a cheerful face on their own worries. Even when nothing’s wrong (“and I can’t complain, it’s amazing”) they know things could go south quickly.

An Act of Kindness | Bastille

This song best fits Leap and Gadao’s relationship, especially when they met. “Oh I got a feeling this will shake me down/Oh I’m kind of hoping this will turn me round” seems to speak directly to Gadao pulling Leap away from the cult and giving her the opportunity to be better than she was. On another level, the party’s bonds are born from acts of kindness and friendship--Remmy buying lorebooks for Alice, Leap making tea, Gadao stepping in to defend the party from the mimic.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World | Lorde

Despite the name, this has something for everyone, I think. “Turn your back on Mother Nature” suits Alice’s vendetta against the Forest Father, “Help me make the most of freedom/and of pleasure” fits Blue’s brand of hedonism, “It’s my own remorse” echoes Leap’s regrets. Gadao alone doesn’t quite fit in here...unless… >:)

Kicks | Barns Courtney

This is a Blue song! “I’ll show you how to live for free” the artist sings, and Blue’s freewheeling lifestyle seeking “kicks” matches this energy really well. If Blue is “a wild one” “singing in the midnight street,” they’re getting their kicks with this party for sure. Blue lives without being tied down, theoretically limitless.

Hail to the Victor | Thirty Seconds to Mars

This song is about Leap, no question. “Another life, another love/another kill, another drug” fits into Leap’s two lives, one in the cult and one out of it. And in this new mission against Babylon Lionel, she’s seeking a revenge of her own, though it’s one against her childhood more than her actual enemy.

I’m a Wanted Man | Royal Deluxe

Remmy “would kill again to keep from doing time,” without a doubt, so this one’s for him. Constantly warning he’s trouble for his friends, saying that “you should never ever trust my kind” isn’t too far off. Like Remmy, this song is edgy, but with a hesitant moment of emo-ness that makes the performance of darkness something a little more genuine.

Big God | Florence and the Machine

Alice is not a faithful woman, but she’s unfortunately entangled in some religious nonsense she hates. At the same time, I feel lyrics like “you’ll always be my favorite ghost” refer best to Alice’s fraught relationship with her wife. My favorite line here is “Sometimes I think it’s getting better/and then it gets much worse,” which is essentially Alice’s experience of her wild magic. Deep down, she might even be drawn to the magic’s chaos, but she can’t help but resent what it’s taking away from her.

Wisdom, Justice, and Love | Linkin Park

This one’s for Gadao. It starts off so peaceful and hopeful, the instrumentals overlaid with a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. But as he starts to list the evils of the world, King’s voice, so steady and confident, is warped. Gadao’s own faith experience becomes warped by the power games of the people around him, and even as he’s seeking “wisdom, justice, and love,” he can’t escape the effects of materialism and violence around him.

Icarus | Bastille

Some folks live steady lives, but not these people. Adventurer’s lives tend to burn bright, hot, and short. From Leap’s perspective, most of the party is made of kids who don’t know the world yet. Are they “digging their own grave,” “too close to the sun?” Despite their ride-or-die commitments, Leap can see all of you risking yourselves--and for what? Who do you want to be, at the end of it all? A wife and mason? A sage and monk? Or do you want greater things than that?

Losing My Religion | Dia Frampton

I can hear so much of Remmy’s opinions in this song, saying “I’m choosing my confessions, trying to keep an eye on you” but realizing, over and over again: “Oh no, I’ve said too much.” As he tries to keep up his own facades, Gadao and Leap’s own faith collides with the beliefs of a cult leader and Alice struggles with a religion she doesn’t care for at all.

Start a War | Klergy and Valerie Broussard

Like Hail to the Victor, this song is all about Leap’s conflict with the cult of Loviatar and the Mother of Martyrs. Even though the Loviatar cult might be gone, the spirit lives on. My favorite line for Leap here is “bang, shots fired/pain is what you desire,” for the decision to challenge Babs to a one-on-one fight. But is it Babs who is starting this war, or Leap?

Friction | Imagine Dragons

This one kind of gives me Gadao vibes with the lyrics “when you’ve made it/won’t you tell me what to do?” After all that pressure to fulfill the expectations of other people, he has to get out of the middle and move on, maybe even become someone new. Key line is “why can’t you let go/like a bird in the snow/this is no place to build your home,” reminding Gadao that he doesn’t have a place in this world. Not yet.

Transcendental Youth | the mountain goats

“Sing, sing for ourselves alone,” sings John Darnielle, and maybe that’s what makes this feel so much like Blue. Maybe it’s the lyric, “cedar smudge our headbands/and take to the skies/soar ever upwards,” calling to Blue’s dislocation from time and place, flying away from their problems. Blue doesn’t remember their childhood, and has no idea how old they are. Even if they did know, their lifespan is short. They live every day like the halcyon days of youth, footloose and fancy-free indeed.

Champion | Barns Courtney

I swear this is the last Barns Courtney song. But this song is the resilience of coming through fights and perils and dangers. My favorite lyric is “Oh, Lord, save my soul/take my pain and turn it into gold” which, incidentally, is exactly what happens when you level up. The party’s struggles translate to strength, to influence, to skill, and even riches.

In the Woods Somewhere | Hozier

On the one hand, this could be about any combat in the dark woods at night (*cough*, Remmy killing that dragonborn, *cough*). But more importantly, this song is about Alice. She struggles with a power she doesn’t understand, with something’s eyes on her that she can’t fight. The best she can do is run from the danger and try to survive it. Whatever eyes are watching her now, Alice better take care. Favorite line? “I clutched my life/and wished it kept/my dearest love/I’m not done yet.”

Natural | Imagine Dragons

Natural tells the party one way of surviving. The line “you gotta be so cold/to make it in this world” suits Remmy’s outlook so well, the one he pushes at the rest of the party. The line “rather be the hunter than the prey” speaks well to Blue’s tactics--preferring to act from above. Alice and Leap know better than anyone that “nothing ever comes without a consequence or cost,” and Gadao may be the only one ‘holding the line’ against a harder heart. Another song with bits and pieces associated with everyone.

Dead Hearts | Stars

There isn’t a specific lyric here that jumps out at me, no line that tells me who this song is for. This is the song for the ones who die--those who have, and who will. We might not be there yet, but this is a song for acknowledging the sacrifice of your friends and allies. The knowledge that you knew them once, and in some ways, their ghost stays with you. Or maybe they’re revived, or reincarnated, but there’s always something a little different.

The Projectionist | Sleeping at Last

Eventually the session ends, and the story closes, and the lights come up. “We’re leaving our shadows behind us now/we’re leaving, we’re leaving it all behind for now,” Ryan O’Neill sings. We’re putting on costumes, telling a story for each other, and maybe the game ends every time, but maybe it makes us brave. I’d like to think so.

The lyrics to all these songs can be found at Genius.com. Thanks xx

#dnd #d&d #Dungeons and Dragons

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jaynsandy · 2 years

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How well do you remember your childhood? That idyllic time of skinned knees, free summers, sleepovers, neighborhood games, and friends who were learning what it meant to be human right alongside you. Remember back when all you really owned were dreams?

A recent exchange with one of my Facebook friends reminded me, kind of forcefully, of that time. A simple exchange really. It had to do with James Doohan (Mr Scott in the original Star Trek) getting wounded after landing at Juno Beach on D-Day. This friend of mine is a self professed WWII and original Star Trek series nut. I'm not surprised, he was that way back when we first met in grade school.

I started thinking about how we had very similar outlooks as we were growing up. We liked the same board games, liked to dream up new games, and tried to figure out how to write an adventure game using BASIC. We ran from an incredibly accurate rock throwing classmate, "practiced" karate on a neighbor's almost life size doll (sorry about the dislocated arm), saw "Tora, Tora, Tora!" and "The Hindenburg" at the Cinedome (a few times), and made sure to watch Star Trek whenever it came on. Then there came a point where (to paraphrase my favorite group) I began to sell my dreams for small desires. We drifted apart because he didn't sell his dreams and (I'd like to believe) stayed true to who he is.

So I think about all that and I wonder about the distinction between friends and real friends. What does it mean to follow your dreams when they change as you change? How much of who I was, back then, remains now? I'm thinking about this as I lay looking at the trees around our campsite and it occurs to me that the answers, so to speak, are in front of me.

As trees grow they add girth as they add height. You can see that some years are harder than others by how thin (in relation to average) the tree rings are. But, at the center of the tree, is that initial sapling. That first sprout, reaching for the light and space to grow, forms the core of the tree.

Thinking about that perspective feels right and true. Learning what it means to be human is, in effect, the pruning of initial growth. If you believe in causation like I do you have to admit that the friends of your youth have a huge affect on who you'll eventually become.

I have, at my core, the dreams and predilections learned back in the halcyon days of my childhood. We all do, in one way or another, and maybe, just maybe, that's what retirement is all about. Remember what it felt like back when your dreams were all you really owned?

#full time rv #rv life #retirement

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abakersquest · 7 years

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CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN – A HARSHER FLAME

Vaporous mist arose from every surface of the ice cavern as an atmospheric tide of heat bloomed from the Halcyon Knight. Her seemingly placid gaze lazily slid from one opponent to the next as each of them silently planned an opening gambit.

“Good,” she finally said in a calm voice. “Not a one of you flinched or even took that threat seriously. I’d honestly hate to find out any of you were cowardly without the Flarebearer around.”

They didn’t dare take eyes off the tigress, not even to look at one another for some clue to a joint strike. She moved with confidence, and her narrow golden eyes seemed to drill into each of them as she continued to slowly turn in place.

“Careful now,” she chided. “You really should be paying less attention to my face.”

Hyla was the first to turn her eyes downward just as mystic fires began to dance on the back of the knight’s leg. From there came an explosion of noise and a flash of light as a jet of flame shot from the back of her ankle. The force of the focused burst launched her leg into a sweeping kick that left an infernal wake which quickly raced out in a circle around its creator. As Hyla raised her arms to try and defend herself, she was already off her feet being dragged by her shoulders out of the mouth of the cave.

Confusion quickly fell away as the concentrated wave of mystical fire raced past her eyes. She followed the shimmering crescent as it barely skimmed the back of Gan, who’d grabbed her in an instant and dragged her to safety before she even realized it.

The lightning quick kestrel both grunted and recoiled from the intense heat, forcing them both down into the thankfully soft snow. Hyla quickly shook off the rough landing and turned her notice to Gan, seeing him hurriedly flop onto his back and sigh with relief as the snow made short work of the dangerous heat thereupon.

“Just missed,” he managed to say. “If that hit, we’d’ve been cooked alive…”

When she took a breath to respond, Gan sprang to his feet. “The Captain and Argus are still in there! I couldn’t see if they dodged it or not! Come on!”

“Gan wait!” she called out as he took one bold step forward, slipped on the snow, and firmly introduced his beak to the terrain below.

He said something muffled yet clearly frustrated as Hyla finally got back on her feet. Snow and ash had some commonality, so while it was uncomfortable to spread her toes out onto the frigid mass, it improved her traction just as she’d hoped. “Gan,” she said calmly as she moved to help him stand. “They’re alright; I can still sense them in the cave. Now, there’s no point of us rushing back in there without a plan, so let’s take what time we have to-”

A jagged ice tower to the left of them exploded as a massive cannonball treated it like the finish line of a race. Both quickly turned their eyes toward the oncoming fortress, a rolling disaster headed straight for them and the Aspect of Air beyond.

“Warriors!” Illica’s voice called to them from the mouth of the cave. “I shall help your friends inside; Jinra will assist you in destroying the ship!”

Gan looked to Hyla, “That’s… That’s the dragon’s name, right?”

A roar that was more detonation than animal cry shook the air for miles as the great serpentine beast rose like a geyser of scales and fury from the ice cavern.

“Yes, Gan.” Hyla finally said, finding it slightly harder to breathe at the mere sight of the great beast. “Illica… How exactly do we…” Hyla’s voice trailed off as she turned back toward the strange snow fox, or rather, to where she once stood.

“I think we just follow it,” Gan said, a mixture of awe and fear in his voice as his eyes followed the dragon’s course across the sky toward the approaching warship. He flinched as exploding shells filled the sky with blossoms of fire and noise above them, just missing their massive target. “But uh... Maybe not too close?”

“No,” Hyla said plainly. “Argus said the last one was powered by a big furnace on the inside. So, we go in, destroy the furnace, and that should stop it dead. There’s just one thing we have to do first.”

Gan shimmied uncomfortably, feeling like a coiled spring as he looked away from the firefight to Hyla. When he met her eyes, he flinched ever so slightly.

“Gan,” her voice was calm despite the volume it needed to overcome the explosions above and gusting winds below. “I know I can trust you. Without thinking twice you put yourself in harm’s way to save me just now… But you need to know, you can trust me too.”

She could feel it wash over him, the strange unknown sensation she’d felt as they walked into the cave before. His eyes tried to look past her and his hands clenched into fist for a second or two. She could see him struggle and fumble to say something as an argument took place at the forefront of his mind.

She decided planting the seed of an idea was enough for now; the nascent notion that she’d fight as hard as he would for her. She turned away and faced the task at hand, her mystically aided senses giving her a clear view of the oncoming mechanical danger. A multitude of cannons on the warship’s side pivoted skyward as the dragon above dodged shot after shot. It soon closed the gap and crashed violently against the ship’s prodigious armor to seemingly little effect. With a breath to steady herself and erase the distractions of her surroundings, Hyla dragged open the curtain of the world and forged a Dark Vault.

Now, for anyone else, passing through these inky black portals is an instant event. For those gifted enough to make them however, there is something else. It’s best described as a feeling of a truly greater force far beyond anything they could make sense of, moving about an infinite space that isn’t so much “dark” as it is “full of potential.” Tetsudin would often describe it to her as the moment before you turn on the light in your bedroom, the anticipation of something familiar amidst unfamiliar shadows.

But this time, this time she turned away from the path she’d carved in the endless twilight. Despite all her training and concentration, a radiant force in the immeasurable distance turned her attention toward it. This momentary distraction, this sight of something that demanded it be seen threw her off their landing. What should’ve been an exit onto a well chosen perch amidst the ruined remains of the rear starboard prop’s assembly was, instead, the open air before it.

The momentum of their steps found no floor on the other end of the Dark Vault. Instead, the pair tumbled helplessly through the frigid air before Gan flared out his wings and straightened himself out.

Driven by inborn instinct, he summoned a curtain of ion excited air and bounded off it like a springboard toward the retreating sound of Hyla’s surprised shout. Every Orni’Hulan is born to catch their young should they fall in their efforts to fly, and even at a young age they have the strength and natural skill to do just that. He knew if he simply caught her, whatever limb he grabbed would dislocate. He knew that if he tried to change her momentum too suddenly, both of them would come out with broken bones. He rushed down to match her speed, hooked his legs around her and, with all his might and prowess, put a curve to both their trajectories that just barely saw them skirt the icy ground below.

With some effort to fight the turbulent wind surrounding the rolling fortress, Gan managed to find them a perch lower than they’d originally aimed. He put Hyla down as gently as he could before landing himself and helping her up. “What happened? Why did we miss?”

“There… When we were crossing I felt this… I don’t know what it was but it was massive…” She closed her eyes and tried to visualize it, to put forth more than just an oncoming rush of sensation to describe whatever it was she’d seen, but nothing took shape. A sigh rolled out of her throat. “This probably isn’t helping our little trust issue, is it?”

When she looked to Gan again, the great mess of feathers on the top his head rose as did the strange mixture of emotions and thoughts she’d tried to ignore. She did her best to give him a smile to try and calm him down, “It’s alright, we just-”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you!” He shouted, and then clamped his beak shut. She could hear him grumble and the talons on his toes rake the metal flooring beneath them. Finally he screwed his eyes shut and continued at the same volume. “I do trust you! Really! I just…” he quieted himself as the next words came. “Argus said I shouldn’t apologize… That I should just show you I’m sorry, but… I… I really wanted to say it, that I’m sorry for how I treated you.”

A genuine smile crossed her face and she rested her hand on his shoulder. To her it’d been nothing more than a few sour looks and an air of somewhat overdone caution, both absolutely minor slights she could easily understand. To the young kestrel just entering into the wider world, it felt like some incredible insult to a friend. What else could she have said but, “Apology accepted.”

Gan’s spirits and shoulders rose in time with one another and the shine of confidence in his eyes sparkled without reservation.

“Now, let’s see if we can’t take the heart out of this metal monster.”

“Right!” Gan looked around at the ruined structure the Prominence Cannon had left for them to traverse, hoping to see something that looked like a way in. The damaged metal ahead of him exploded outward as a forked black blade tore a hole through it. The imposing mass of a hulking Black Rock Knight soon followed, wrenching through the metal hull as if it were little more than thick paper.

Gan may have had the reflexes to dodge the stone titan’s sudden emergence, but nowhere near enough to put his knives between an oncoming sword swipe and Hyla. With Storm Magic aiding his perception, he could only watch as the deadly blade closed in on her while she crossed her arms over her chest. He stared on in stark surprise as it passed through her without a drop of blood and rammed into the ruined support strut just off to her side.

And yet, despite the acceleration of his sight, he blinked only once and saw that, in that partial second where his eyes closed, Hyla and the offending knight had changed places. The boost in speed ebbed away and a line appeared in the stony figure’s midsection where Hyla had once been.

The slowed tone of her voice reached his ears with a single magically intoned word, “Imposition.”

When it tried to turn, the upper body of the Black Rock Knight slid right off. It tumbled downward, leaving its legs alone on the platform. They took a few blind steps, collided with some previously melted beam, and fell down after its better half.

Before he could even find the words to question the events that unfolded, Hyla spoke. “I don’t like that it knew exactly where we were. Come on, let’s go before more of them can pin us in.”

Gan shook off any lingering curiosity and nodded, quickly making his way through the torn opening. Hyla moved to follow, turning back toward the ice cavern where she could still sense signs of Argus and Blackeye. Thankful for that much, she didn’t think to question why she couldn’t suss out any sense of Illica.

---

Moments ago, Blackeye had barely managed to command the ice at his side to rush across the open air as water and block the oncoming burst of compressed mystic fire. Just past the resulting steam he caught sight of Gan’s tail feathers rushing out the cave’s opening. He did his best not to let the satisfaction he felt at the boy’s performance show on his face. Pride in the doings of the young came so easily with old age.

“You’re right to feel proud, Captain Cofresi. For such a young flyer, he’s certainly got talent. My ‘Drake Smile’ is quite hard to dodge.”

He couldn’t help the annoyed grunt at the even keeled speech of the Halcyon Knight standing before him. He didn’t need the empathic sense Fire Mages possessed to know it wasn’t a statement fueled by brash overconfidence.

She carefully adjusted her gauntlets as she spoke. “You should also feel proud yourself… It can’t be easy for such a seasoned fellow to forcefully turn ice back into water in less than a second. I can see why Vizier Bulfo finds you the second biggest threat of this little band of heroes.”

“I suppose we’re to presume the first is Wally then?” Argus said; the stock of the Thunderhead firmly braced to his shoulder, its flared barrel pointed squarely at the tigress.

“Don’t engage, Mister Cael.” Blackeye cautioned. “You might not know it from our friendly Flarebearer, but thems with fire like to chatter so’s to get in your head. Makes dealin’ with ‘em some pretty nasty business.”

“He’s right, you know,” she added smoothly.

Argus’ eyes narrowed. “I’ve fought my fair share of Fire Mages during the war, Captain. I can assure you, she won’t find me an easy mark.”

“Ooh, I do believe you offended your friend, Captain Cofresi…” Her smile was far too cheerful to be believed. “You did hear that bitter little undertone there, right?”

Blackeye was as still as a stony shoreline at low tide, he didn’t even blink.

She turned to Argus instead, and found him the equivalent of a notched arrow, ready to strike down prey.

“My,” she said with a slight giggle, scratching the back of one of her ears. “I might have picked the wrong dance partners.”

The first thing was the smell in the air. Past the stale smell of old ice, the brightstone in Argus’ weapon, and the subtle hint of char all Fire Mages bore. Blackeye’s mind called up the image of a paraffin lamp, and the lingering bittersweet smell as one replaces its fuel. Before a word could be spoken, and his vaunted sense of danger could warn him, the air around their bodies was filled pinpricks of free-floating light, each barely half an inch away.

“There now, those should even things out, and give us time to properly chat!” The tigress smiled brightly. “My name is Pan Diar, the Halcyon Knight of Fire. It’s a pleasure to make both your acquaintances.”

Blackeye huffed out his nostrils.

Argus rolled his eyes.

She sighed. “My but you two are as stoic as they come… I really would’ve been better off with that Orni’Hulan and Hyla Areo. Now she’d be fun to talk to, especially after finding out what happened to her old master.” She shrugged casually, “but that’s not the bed I made, so why complain about not getting to sleep in it. Instead, I’ll just get right to it and ask. Do either of you know where I could find the Aspect of Air?”

“S'pose it don’t do us any good to try and lie to a Fire Mage, eh Argus?” Blackeye commented.

“Quite so, captain. Shall you do the honors, or will I?”

“Well, you’re the scholarly fella here; she’d believe you over me.”

“Tut-tut, captain. You’re a proud and practiced explorer of the sea; your experience makes you the better choice.”

One of Pan’s ears twitched. “Well, it’s obvious to anyone with a brain you’re both stalling… But neither one of you can seem to agree on what you’re stalling fo-”

And then the Dragon roared.

Its mighty cry coupled with the shifting of its massive body created a maelstrom within the cave. The tiny dots of fire were blown away like so many embers, followed by both their master and would be victims. The three tumbled down a winding tunnel of glacial blue, before landing in a cave of glimmering crystals. Blackeye recognized the particularly luminous stones as the same kind he’d used to light his home. He would much rather have had that be a nice recollection, instead of a passing thought when his shoulder bashed through a particularly large one.

Argus barely managed to kick off another large crystal himself, instead rising too close to its sharp edged siblings in the cave’s ceiling. They tore bits of his clothes and scratched at his carapace, but worst of all cut a small gash in his ammunition bag. Several ampoules of his magical cultivations set to twirl in the air and leave his field of view before the winds died down, and he was harshly dropped into a patch of small glowing mushrooms.

“Mycena Cryphagia,” Argus groaned as he picked himself up. “The Crystal-Eater Mushroom. I should remember to collect a sample before I go.”

He turned to take in the surroundings of this new underground chamber to see Pan Diar, as a true credit to her genus, had landed squarely on her feet. Her fang filled smile was as unwelcome sight, as were the glimmering dots of light under her command. The flock of sparks quickly closed the gap between them. With no other choice, Argus leveled the Thunderhead and fired whatever was in the barrel with the singular mental imperative of defense. A sheet of ionized air blossomed from the barrel like a cast net, the small dots of light sticking to it readily.

Pan Diar’s mystically intoned voice carried easily across the crystalline cavern, “Wisp Swarm.”

The lights detonated.

The electrical net shattered.

The blast wave hit Argus full on, launching him helplessly toward a far wall. The air in his lungs harshly pushed out on impact, and his shaken senses turned the world into a painful smear all around him. He shook his head to try and clear away at least a fraction of the blur, silently grateful to have been born an Insicai; with a hardy exoskeleton that could take so much force and not give way. He knew however, that one more burst like that, even at a distance, would cause far more permanent damage.

He was also grateful for another gift of his biology, as his antenna twitched and felt the air move around what could only be an approaching Halcyon Knight. She said something he couldn’t hear over the muffled ringing in his head, prepared a witty remark regardless, and found something odd happened as he began to say it.

It was an unnatural sort of cold that moved around him at first, then for a singular moment felt as if it’d passed through him. Suddenly the wall at his back was simply gone and replaced by a strong hand with webbed fingers, keeping him from falling backward.

“-er Ca-”

A voice just barely rose above the bell resounding in his head, it sounded familiar.

“-On Mister Cael, ne… you to find your feet.”

He blinked, the voice was gruff yet not unwelcome. The world finally came back into focus and at his side stood Captain Blackeye. “Wh-… What… When did you…”

“Get your eyes front now that ya uncrossed ‘em. That’ll tell you.”

Argus could finally make out the razor focus of the Captain’s expression and followed the length of his gaze over to where he assumed he’d been standing just before now. Before him, the Halcyon Knight of Fire launched volley after volley of magical conflagrations at a seemingly amorphous fog. Amidst the concentration of otherworldly condensation he could just make out the slimmest view of Illica, the snow fox they’d met earlier before the knight attacked.

Now that he thought on it, he had no memory of her dodging the opening attack, or tumbling down the tunnel with them.

“Now this is entirely unfair!” Pan Diar shouted. “Why can’t I hit you?!”

“Why?” Illica teased, her approach toward the knight entirely unhindered. “I thought Fire Mages always had an answer to everything.”

The tigress shouted in frustration, fires beneath her feet exploding and launching her through the air. She fired off fireballs the entire way, each simply slipping by their target and splashing pointlessly against the cave floor. It didn’t make any sense, no magic she knew of could make someone so seemingly untouchable. Worst of all, her natural empathic gift felt nothing from this approaching oddity, while every other sense she had screamed, ‘Don’t let it touch you.’

She landed, then quickly sprang back to keep distance between the snow fox and herself. She forced the words Illica had spoken to grow louder in her mind, ‘fire mages had an answer to everything.’ The stripes in Pan’s fur made the furrow of her brow all the more prominent, a frustrated growl boiled up from her throat before she closed her eyes and stood up straight, the end of her tail impatiently tapping against the floor. “You know what? You’re right. I ignored it because it seemed kind of a silly idea at first, but seeing how this is turning out? It must be the best answer!”

Two winding serpents of flame slowly twisted their way from her shoulder and over the surface of her arm. Slowly, she held it up and pointed her flat palm toward the ceiling. The magical fires slid up toward her open hand and pooled there, creating a beacon of blazing light.

Blackeye smirked and whispered, “Now’s our chance, Cael. I know exactly what she’s about to do. You still able to lift that cannon of yours?”

Argus thumbed the hammer and turned the barrel of The Thunderhead, “Absolutely.”

The air around them began to bake and the light in Diar’s palm surged, her voice calling forth a familiar spell in a foreign voice, “DRAGON’S CALDERA!” She slammed the ethereal flames down against the floor of the cavern, creating an infernal tsunami in every direction around her.

The captain brought his harpoon down in the motion of a sweeping strike, a deluge of water forming a small barrier around himself and Argus. “NOW ARGUS, HOP ON!” Before the grasshopper could respond, Blackeye thrust his harpoon forward and called out, “SLIPSTREAM!” From the end of his bejeweled weapon a rushing bridge of water began to race toward the offending Halcyon Knight.

Without another thought, Argus sprang onto the water and raced along its length. As he lined up his shot, he could hear Blackeye strain and feel the watery path falter. He didn’t dare look back; he couldn’t miss this chance. Just as the aquatic construct beneath his feet began to fade away, he leapt for all he was worth, his momentum carrying him well past his target. Still in motion, he flipped over in the air; his legs extended for both balance and to cease his turn.

His antenna recoiled at the intense heat below them.

He held his breath to slow his heart and steady his aim.

Seconds turned into an infinity as a single opportunity presented itself.

Pan Diar barely turned in time to see the Thunderhead unleash its power, a massive hand made of clay, exploding out of its flared barrel. The earthen magic broke her concentration instantly and the fire below evaporated as Argus tucked his head and let the top of his shoulders roll onto the ground, followed by the rest of him. Not his tidiest landing, but certainly not a deadly one.

Picking himself up slowly, Argus saw Illica float down into view on a small cushion of fog, and Captain Blackeye moving closer, rubbing his shoulder.

“Damn,” he spoke with some stiffness. “That landing hurt me more than I thought, sorry about that, Mister Cael.”

Argus tried to stand up straight and present himself with propriety, and then very painfully curled in on the sudden throbbing ache in his torso. “Suppose… We’re both worse for wear… Captain.”

Both warriors quickly levied their weapons at the collapsed Knight as she loudly growled and set fire to her bindings. The clay baked and hardened around her body, turning an admittedly lovely shade of earthenware red.

Pan’s fire died down and she sighed, “I hate pottery…”

A few moments passed and Illica saw Argus and Blackeye share a curious glance before going back to watching the downed knight. “Are the two of you waiting for something?”

“Aye,” Blackeye said without looking up. “Usually these youngins pull a little vanishin’ act when they can’t fight no more.”

“What say you dear,” Argus cut in. “Has your tiresome toad of a leader finally abandoned one of you to the cause?”

The tigress was still for a few seconds before squirming under her rigid confines. “Nope,” her voice returned to a seemingly ineffable calm. “I’m just not done yet.”

Blackeye scoffed, “Darlin’ if you think for one second you’re gettin’ past the three of us to the Aspect, you got another thing comin’.”

“Very true, I’d never get past all three of you. In fact, with your experience and abilities, I’m completely outmatched. Also, since Vizier Bulfo hates sending out too many of us at a time, I can’t expect reinforcement. But see, I figured something out.” She squirmed around a bit more, managing to turn her gaze toward Illica. “You… You’re not really here… That’s why I couldn’t hit you or feel you even while you’re standing right in front of me. So I got to thinking, ‘If I can see you but not touch or sense you, what are you?’”

Pan Diar’s fist exploded through the baked clay, a Mobius Glass firmly clutched within. “You’re the wind.”

Argus tore the ground beneath his feet as he jumped toward Illica to push her out of the way, only to pass right through her and tumble to the ground. He could only watch as the entirety of her being became a narrow band of vapor, inhaled by the small magical artifact.

Blackeye thrust his harpoon as hard as he could, shattering through the hardened clay, just grazing the tigress as a Dark Vault opened beneath her.

Once she’d vanished, a victorious little titter from her hung in the air far longer than either of them would’ve liked.

Then something else came, something gradual but not beyond notice. The air felt wrong as they breathed, not thin, but still missing something they knew it should have needed.

Blackeye sighed. “Old Poda did tell us there’s more’n one way for’em to get what they need.”

Argus felt heavy as he stood back up. He looked to the half destroyed clay hand and said, “I never would’ve guessed it could take the shape of a person…”

“That’s the way of the world, Mister Cael. Always throwin’ you a rogue wave or a sudden squall.” There was a solid moment of loud rumbling above them. “And we ain’t in calm waters just yet.”

He made a small noise in agreement before looking around and seeing one of his small magic ampoules in the distance. “You go on ahead, Captain. I need to find my cultures; some of them fell out of my bag on our way down here.”

Blackeye nodded firmly then made his way toward the exit.

As Argus did his best to suppress feelings of dismay and failure for later review, he walked over to the small glass vial and tried focusing instead on feelings of pride that his glasswork held up as well as he’d hoped. Then he saw something just beyond it that made all of that go away.

The softly glowing patch of flowers, thriving in a place with no natural sunlight, would be enough to give him pause on their own. But what they’d grown around, what they came to cradle in the course of time, was clearly a very old skull. One that made Argus wish he was less observant, and less able to identify species and genus from bone structure alone.

The weight of emotion on his heart brought him down to one knee. He closed his eyes and bowed his head, recalling a soft prayer he’d heard once in his travels. Whatever Illica had been, a willful ghost or the power of a god using the visage of a dead traveler to defend itself, he knew in his heart she most assuredly deserved better.

He scooped up the vial, straightened himself as best he could, and let these revelations become fuel to the fire of his resolve.

<[Chapter 36]–[Index]–[Chapter 38]>

#A Baker's Quest #Writing

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wendyandcharles · 7 years

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ReadersGazette: The Halcyon Dislocation PeterKazmaier #SciFi #Fantasy https://t.co/FFOz7HkZ9A After a risky physi… https://t.co/Hs0ypq6Wp3

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johnjankovic1 · 8 years

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Inventing the Washington Consensus

US economic statecraft cossets MNCs from which its global hegemony is secured. The latter’s rapidity of innovation, notably placing greater currency in digital technology, in sheer scale for big-box stores, or in user friendliness altered irrevocably the composition of traditional sectors laterally related for instance between the Mp3 peer-to-peer sharing of Napster and the music industry, or e-commerce’s Ebay and Amazon against brick-and-mortar retailers, or Home Depot and Walmart versus local hardware sellers and grocers, or Apple’s iMac G3 vis-à-vis other personal computers and handheld devices. The magnitude of this corporate strategy enormously benefited the entrepreneurial freedom endemic to the American economy, its public image, and its propagation throughout the world economy, and, animating this febrile frenzy of original output, the economic orthodoxy characterizing this era coined in 1989 by scholar John Williamson became known as the Washington Consensus whose forerunner was neoliberalism doled out by Reaganomics. The paradigm, in effect, incarnated a handmaiden to multinationals, dismantling protectionism in short order to clear a path for the wave of foreign investment to follow. This liberalization, and that of the WTO and NAFTA eventuating in free trade, all of which begot the strengthening position of American firms, generated the economic interdependence which has continued to the present.

The wellspring of this doxa, not by happenstance, coincides with the GATT’s Uruguay Round and NAFTA, an era of strategic trade policies, and thus the author argues this logic’s formulation equally aligns with the federal government’s endeavour to act as a patron for multinationals. These firms, we argue, directly created the Washington Consensus principally composed of tax reform, lowered interest rates, liberalization of trade, investment, and finance, deregulation, privatization, and rollback of the public sector. The spread of the Washington Consensus to developing economies particularly serviced the interests of transnational firms, the IMF and World Bank, therefore, which attached unilateral conditionalities to its debt capital in an effort to avert loan defaults, agitated for the paradigm not for the federal government as much as for its prized breadwinner, as earlier mentioned this schizophrenic prototype of peacekeeper, soft power, and saboteur most heavily invested in the superpower’s GDP. Economic liberalism in adverting to opening capital markets, a prerequisite of structural adjustments for short and long-term finance decreed by these institutions, facilitated foreign ownership in developing countries of domestic firms which enabled the geyser of Americanization throughout the world economy, the unipolar order of the 1990s, and growth of dot-com firms whose building of market share expanded the knowledge economy into postindustrial nations.

The whole point of the Washington Consensus, making more favourable the business climate in developing and post-communist countries, and unseating the fashionable hostility to foreign investment in them, was for American multinationals to transplant operations abroad first by coercively fielding a legitimate vehicle into a nation via a quid pro quo of IMF and World Bank loans contingent on adopting consensus-inspired economic reforms (Moisés 2000:90), to then liberalize capital flows of incoming FDI, and finally to make widespread ideological tenets sourced in free market capitalism. The same policies propitious to the spurt of transnational firms would be hawked to countries beguiled by the possibilities of incoming investment. Though the macroeconomic wisdom of the 1980s and early 1990s in poor nations approved of protectionism, the mainstay of which included import, export, and foreign investment barriers, the end of Cold War heralded the advent of a new élan for the interests of transnational firms as a protest to economic central planning. For Mexico, the poster child of the paradigm and equally of foreign investment ascribed to NAFTA in 1994, and the world economy which became wedded to such policies by the newly inaugurated WTO in 1995, the Washington Consensus present in the two penetrated institution-building enough to cement American hegemony as the conduit through which MNCs initiated the startling pace of economic globalization in trade and finance.

Without investment American hegemony founders, predicated on sustainable economic growth any factor mobility is aided by flows of capital and if protectionism cannot be undone there can be no meaningful likelihood of new market access, reductions of production costs, nor socioeconomic convergence between rich and poor nations. An anathema to the American order, protectionism beleaguers the march of hegemony, so to redress this in the 1990s the Washington Consensus proved a useful method to prime the diffusion of foreign investment for transnational firms seeking new opportunity. The practicality of such statecraft especially for showcasing preponderant authority most memorably was seen during the 1997 Asian and 1998 Russian financial crises resulting from how dependent on investment the world economy grew based on policies initially developed for the proliferation of American firms.

Investment and IT production, bywords of and seedbeds for economic growth in the 1990s, profoundly entrenched an American ethos, modernizing production, trade, and finance, into the global economy from a sense of corporatocracy and corporatism peculiar to the country’s governance and policies during this halcyon period of capitalism. The globalization of business activity, renaissance of the market economy, enhanced mobility of assets disposed to create wealth, and increase of ‘take-off’ stages of development for poor nations all plotted the prosperity which followed. Transnational firms, though spatially diffused, tightly bonded production networks as holistic parts working in unison to generate profits as if truly emblematic of a microcosm for the international division of labour devoid of limits to territorial expansion. Sequential investments by American firms then ultimately established an ambiance of invincibility through diversification of exchange risk, economic uncertainty, and market contractions in virtue of how plastic they became shifting production from one site to another so quickly and readily (Kogut 1983; Buckley & Casson 1985). Coordinating these activities across several countries for the acquisition of capital goods, new markets, efficiencies, and assets, it galvanized investments evidenced by an increase of 218 percent in bullish markets which the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index demonstrated during the period.1

Corroborating the tripartite link between the Washington Consensus, American capitalism, and multinationals, the political economy of a world-city analysis computes the number of resident corporate headquarters in metropolises and, predicated on certain metrics, how the latter effects control over global production, marketing, and sales all of which support the pretension of decision-making epicentres in the US as a derivative of America’s Information Economy (Friedman & Wolff 1982). Patriarchs of this study in urbanization, Castells (1972) and Harvey (1973), sought to expound the way in which industrial capitalism modernizes cities to the point of becoming central nodes of change for world markets in capital, labour, and commodities. Accordingly, metropolitan areas serve as either headquarters, financial centres, or both as in the case of New York City, and if spatially organized, accommodate economies of agglomeration as in the case of the San Francisco Bay area when, occasioned by complementary industries, proximity conduces to efficiency and specialization than were if such interfirm activities dispersed (Goldstein & Gronberg 1984:92; Stigler 1951). These geographical locations, ideal for the coexistence of firms, spur productive efficiencies, scale economies, and other spillovers as the established scaffold of technologies and infrastructure reduce marginal costs and increase output.

The hierarchy of world cities articulates the interests of the world economy, steadily growing in size, population, and entrepreneurialism, especially in the US they prompt and sustain economic growth, economic interdependence, and global stability. Insofar as the density of MNCs speak to this power vested in urban centres, most prevalent in the form of spatial clusters or business ecosystems fit for competitive advantages over foreign rivals, situated in them was where, during the 1990s, the formative stages of the Washington Consensus coalesced into a function of American hegemony. Industries linked laterally or vertically share skills, innovations, and common inputs, where firms in Manhattan’s financial cluster govern global investments collectively, or firms in the Bay Area’s critical mass of software development mastermind internet startups, or firms in Hollywood’s incubator for motion pictures Americanize the world’s entertainment, such geographical concentrations generate the solvency with which the US capitalizes and spreads its exceptionalism to faraway places. As the nation deindustrialized, and regional clusters of manufacturing industries in East Central states approached their sunset, in tandem with this employment dislocation the take-off of capital-intensive multinationals elsewhere was a booster for the rise of the imperial economic order that finally gripped the world economy by the new millennium.

The Washington Consensus with technocratic support from elites of various cadres, including politicians, economists, bankers, investors, CEOs, and others similar of their ilk, became a heterodox paradigm of policy prescriptions which, at the time, confronted the pervasive statism of failed states arrested by the reality that such market interventions are susceptible to fostering market failures. Supply-side economics became a new lodestar to stir development, a schadenfreude pointed to central planners of post-communist states, this return of neoclassical standards in the discipline for investment, market, and trade liberalization, bywords for Reaganism and Thatcherism alike, propelled US dominance of big firms and their structures over macroeconomic policies the world over. Organizational sociologists term this omnipresence ‘coercive isomorphism’, the assimilation of American policies into another nation’s own, the carrot of which granted loans from the IMF and World Bank, the stick of which withheld such macroeconomic succour to economies in need (DiaMaggio & Powell 1983). Policy diffusion of this kind supersaturated intergovernmental institutions, IMF, World Bank, GATT, with the inveterate belief in free markets, if the world emulated American policies it was only because of conditions under which its transnational firms came to monopolize global value chains.

This linkage between the paradigm and MNCs, the reader might concur, may be grandiose, spurious, and presumptuous, the Consensus was after all a recommendation already popularized and fashionable in the postindustrial West. Is it not a leap in logic to presume the reconciliation and inextricability of the two? The Washington Consensus let loose a whirlwind of investment to and its flight from either developing or transitioning economies by which, in observance of catastrophic failures in the Mexican peso, Asian, and Russian financial crises, the ‘casino capitalism’ of financial multinationals generated lucrative rents while (Strange 1986), fomenting instability notwithstanding, the romanticism of neoliberal economics lasted as long as it did. In foreign exchange markets, bonds, government securities or shares, the laxity prescribed by the Beltway’s economic policies shored up its control abroad, jealous of this newfound growth the yoke of conservative policies carried with it a new stigma for peripheral economies, and speculation in markets, the bedfellow of which is the increase of moral hazard, enriched Americans in turn. The tradeoff for the federal government, at a loss of its authority once believed indivisible, was the degree to which the clout of its transnational firms could sway currencies, interest rates, or commodity prices inherent to their final accession to the high politics of foreign policy strengthening markets and weakening states.

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1 For the reader, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) compiles the value of traded stocks for America’s thirty largest companies, blue-chip multinationals for the most part, on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Specifically measuring the capitalization of firms, and indirectly the confidence of investors who trade securities, the bellwether index informs financial experts of contractions or expansions in markets, of bearish or bullish proclivities towards investment symptomatic of how generally the health of the US economy may be.

#Washington Consensus #Foreign Investment

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