#block tales builder man

[alexsorsis]

I side quested a little too hard

[horror-beeings-artandwriting]

PLEEEEEEASE DROP ANY BUILDERMAN X MASC READER HCS YOU HAVE I AM STARVING I HAVE NOTHIIIING /silly

DW POOKIE I SHALL GIVE U FOOD!!!

Prompt: headcanons

Pronouns: He/Him reader

Character: Builderman(Blocktales)

Note: sorry if this is short, idk how to write him to well yet!

Builderman I’d like to think it’s a really good boyfriend! Yeah sure! He can’t really cook, and he comes home covered in mystery dust and oddly colored stains…along side the random burn marks on his arms because he wanted to test out a creators new obby… Okay he’s a little dumb.. but that’s okay! He loves to talk to you about the new creations he’s seen, about how he can’t wait until they go public, talking about how he’ll take you! He carves little bits and pieces of wood to make you things! He also knows how to sew so, he’s your personal tailor now! (This is cuz all the og cosmetics were made by Roblox-) He’s very overprotective when it comes to you, you’re his boyfriend! No one can treat you poorly on his watch! Otherwise…(insert picture of builderman smacking someone with the banhammer here) When he first goes missing, you obviously panicking trying to to call his friends. Shedletsky, mayor thaniyel, basically anyone and everyone who you can think of… But…nothing comes up. Shedletsky tells you he’s been kidnapped! So you go off and find the ice dagger taking out a king in your wake to find your love. Then the venomshank were thaniyels own son turned against him…and then for a few months nothing…but then. Shedletsky called you about some form of lead? Maybe…maybe go check it out… It won’t end badly right? I mean. You got the ice dagger, the venomshank. The ghost walker should be easy! Nothing can go wrong. Right?

Wow what happened there idk, anyways hope you enjoyed!!!

[izzydreams3]

I am using copium to help myself not lose my sanity

That demo was not for the weak (I am the weak)

[lunadrawzz]

Builder man (hatred) from block tales(Roblox) fan art!!:3 (spoiler for demo 3)

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Incoming animation meme soon!!(most likely in a few mins or hour(s) after this post

Btw i would probably stop posting pressure arts and stuff soon but thanks everyone who supported me and made a lot of my other socials blow up!! :D

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[insects1]

horrible hyperfixation on block tales but its such a cool game and the lore is so good :D

i made a player guy, uh, i don't know, I tried to make it close to how i would imagine player to look like (same with builder man), but uh ya! That's all. Maybe I'll mess around with them or draw other block tales characters at some point!

[sirwow]

I need to get out my bleeding heart for minecraft because man this game basically created the foundation and growth of my brain however rocky and I need to tell the world because I said so.

This game is a canvas. Not a empty one mind you but a canvas nonetheless. The one presented to all to begin being a world in which they’re left to learn and discover and build or destroy all on their own. Or maybe with a friend, or many. Someone’s first experience with Minecraft likely isn’t picking it up randomly but rather being told tales by others of what they weaved with the canvas they were given.

Weather that person was as quaint to just add a few additions to the canvas; a small wooden house situated inside a cool looking cave with some silly story about a creeper and a fire. Or if this person was someone you don’t really know but they put themselves out there to show their work to the world. A completely blank canvas with only one block? Why not? A downright ridiculous looking building with the sole goal of getting melons? Sure.

These stories and art is what makes this game so special. Something so stupid and mundane like a bunch of 1 block jumps with a goofy voice over and sound effects can still be such a great and beautiful thing with heart and care. We can’t understand every work but damnit I have respect for every last aspect and one. The depths of this game truly allowing everyone have some place, from leisure to mastery. I can not mention everyone but I will cover the broad strokes and their wonders.

Firstly to the builders of Minecraft. You are the forefront and most clear of your art. It is art within the most literal sense of the word, weather it is a building with intricate detail in every crevice and corner thought out meticulously. Or those of the larger then ourselves works. Organic mythical works of dragons, people, animals and more. Builds only made to be viewed once at one angle akin to a real painting. The recreations or creations of yours dreams and hopes. Or even just the humble home and village to create a story of as you survive. Creative, builders tools, survival, challenge play throughs. You’re all artists.

Redstoners. Though siblings of builders, your work lays in numbers, timing, mechanical works. Fixing issues you created for yourself when trying to achieve a goal. It may just be making the fastest door, or the largest and you’d still manage to break so many boundaries with time. Or it is those beyond my personal comprehension. You make machines capable of manipulating the behavior of the game itself by going through the cracks found over the decade of redstone. As much as it is wizardry to myself I wish someday to learn this as well if I ever choose to go down such a path. However as of now my eyes are set on another unexpected and undermined path that is next.

PVP. One much loathed by those outside it and I am guilty of such for almost a decade but as now Iv become knee deep in the waters of it myself I also see how it’s an art. Maybe more in the martial sense as obvious but it’s still very impressive what I see and understand in it now. The functions beyond “swing sword good”; a much deeper phycological game aspect to it then seen outside and understanding the intricacies of mechanics you generally give little thought to playing normally. Just how much health does each weapon do- crit or not. How fast can a crossbow reload, watch your sprint or you might just lose. On and on. Iv gained a lot of respect for it.

Parkour. Get your parkour civilization jokes out of the way- this is probably the MOST fundamental part of the game and I find it downright magical what can be done with it. I realize I’m saying that a lot but it’s 1 am shh. Anywho it’s got all its ins and outs. The ice parkour, neos, fences, drip leaf, combined redstone and timing, trapdoors and more. I’m missing about 50 here but that just goes to show how deep it is.

Off of parkour comes our good friend Speedrunning!!! Dedication and time in its most raw. Triangulation for college? Wrong! Block game. It’s a mental load to take on and the aspect of random chance and taking everything on your shoulders is persistence and patience.

And the best part of all of this? They all come together in their own ways for hundreds nay thousands of ways to play. All without touching on the deep deep well that is servers. Skyblock players, pvpers, ice boaters, niche specialists games (Cops v Crims, Bedwars, party games, tower defense, MMORPGs, one in the quiver for my old chums out there, ect) you all have my undying interest and respect in the details and depths of what you love.

So now you have the little canvas before you. Make what you wish no matter how bad. No one will create something identical to what you choose and it’s your story to paint- no matter how lame, small, boring, bad, or ugly you might claim it to be. I want it to still be made and for you to explore whatever depths you choose. Weather that be the simple literal ones, finding a neat cave or what have you, or finding a passion buried under the rubble.

And me? I guess I’ll keep doing my thing of watching and learning about all the silly little corners this game has and mastering what I can even if that takes another decade to do. The universe loves me and it loves you too, go and create.

[cjpeg]

Hi. Heard you like requests! I think it'd be neat if you drew Builderman... :] any flavor. TR:UD, Block Tales, whatever. Ok, have a nice day!

i love drawing builder man HLELO !!!!!!! / send me moire guys

[stargazingezekiel]

builder man from block tales vs miku who would win based on their lore

Builder as in hatred or builder builder

Because if builder builder, builder would win probably- Like bro created ALL of roblox so..?

For miku, i don't know much lore but she would be able to beat hatred builder totally

[onenightbreak]

characters and skins from today’s tales from the smp stream! under the cut because Long:

tubbo: robin, orphan child. was the doctor in the first round, jester in the second. lore is that his mother died when he was young then his father went to fight in the red eyed village wars, so robin learnt first aid to help. (my sweet boy please-)

george: miles memeington. didn’t have lore i think? [edit: apparently was a steak connoisseur? what,] died in the first round immediately, possibly a villager in the second round?

bbh: jimmy the (self declared) mayor. murderer in the first round, got caught immediately, uncertain the second round. two skins because his first character went to the chopping block for murder, was still the mayor both times.

quackity: helga. fuckin iconic is what she is. the wife of jimmy supposedly, but this is disputed by him. goes around the village giving “dunderhead” to all the village men, to the distaste of most. villager both times i think?

ponk: jack the potato farmer. villager first round, murderer second round. just farms potatoes man, he doesn’t know how to murder !

corpse: unnamed catboy. was the investigator first round, probably a villager the second. blind, father figure to robin. [edit: @/the-scuttled-jamboree added that he referred to cornelius as his partner the night he died, and lived together both rounds] excuted at the start of the second round, sending robin into mute grief. (MY FUCKIN BOY-)

lazar: a builder named bob. bob the builder, if you will. jester the first round, murderer the second. don’t think he had lore. [edit: @/the-scuttled-jamboree added that he ‘spent a night’ with helga both rounds and was haunted by her voice after her death. helga also called bob ‘shrimpy’ a lot, so they weren’t on the best terms?]

dream: cornelius. murderer the first round, died first the second. was excuted at the end of the first round, then was killed by the murderers. also didn’t change his skin, apparently it’s just a green body suit.

extra lore!

-this story takes place 100s of years in the past, according to karl’s exposition -the world of the smp has always been shit for orphans :pensive: -also furries have always existed in the smp, as shown by catboy corpse -“the red eyed village wars” are a thing that exist apparently. this is Not elaborated on at all but lore pog?

[zero-cycle]

Legacies

The Players have never had a particularly good memory.

Oh, they remember the Builders just fine.Their gigantic castles and worlds are right there, after all, unable to be overlooked. Who hasn’t heard of Grian’s mansion, forever doomed to be unfinished? Or Etho’s cave, the oldest building in all of MInecraft who’s owner still lives? Who hasn’t been told of the beauty of Rivendell, Mezelea or the Ocean Empire and their rulers?

Hermitcraft’s worlds are tourist attractions, spaces for hundreds of people to live later. The Empires have their own population, their citizens telling the tales of their kind rulers and architects. Even the people from the Esempee talk about their benevolent king Eret and how much they built for them.

Similar to them are the Redstoners, their contributions consisting of new machines and farms or entertainment. Their names are whispered among the knowledgeable when they build doors or iron farms or have to time one of their contraptions.

Fighters do not have the benefit of giant monuments to their names but neither do they have trouble being remembered. The marks they leave aren’t a new creative use of blocks or a roof for Players to stay under. Instead, their legacies are the smell of explosions and blood in the air. They were the first to discover how to make end crystals and they started to warp the code around them, all just to give them a small advantage.

Their stories are about the bloody paths they carved through peaceful and war-torn servers. They win tournaments and are crowned with bloody laurels. Everybody in all of MInecraft fears Technoblade. Most Players will never willingly step foot on the battleground called “2b2t” and that for good reasons. The deadly trio of George, Sapnap and Dream is a legend among all fighter communities.

The Parkourers are similar to them. Only their laurels are less blood-soaked because the void kills cleanly and quickly. They tell stories about gods instead. Even though they never mention names, green is their color of luck and prosperity.

The Players don’t remember the people in the shadows.

The Runners are notorious for…well, mostly for being non-notorious. They keep to the shadows, always there but never in the spotlight. They win tourneys and take the crowns home with no fanfare. They fight but they’re not cruel or gloating, instead preferring to leave as fast as they came. Their buildings are often small, practical and they’re fast but not particularly creative with them. They hit jumps only the best parkourers can but never join competitions, they can do advanced redstone yet understand none of it and they’re good at everything but rarely shine with excellence.

The Players don’t remember them.

But the worlds do.

The Players in the big servers like Hypixel might have never heard of Feinberg but the non-player habitants of the wider worlds know different. There’s thousands of blocks he’s placed, hundreds of villagers he’s traded with but that doesn’t matter to a tiny plains biome on an even smaller world. The only thing that matters to the beehive that lives there is the flowers Feinberg carefully cultivated for them. the roof cover he built for them that keeps them safe from every thunder and wind.

Neither have they heard of Silverr, tirelessly working day to day to get better with no thoughts about recognition. Twitch Rivals might have brought him notoriety, might have made some Players aware of him but the villagers on a far away world don’t even know tournaments like that exist. They only know about the polite young man who must have spent days cutting down wood for them. It supplies the village with enough firewood to survive the winter for several years.

Most people don’t know about K4yfour. They are strange, quite unlike normal Players. Nobody would think of them as particularly influential either. They’re wrong, of course. Their tactics have saved a hundred runners and a thousand worlds and even more lives. It’s not an accomplishment they can display on the wall like trophies but it’s visible in every Runner that still runs, in every world they save.

Others might look at Couriway like a hero for his PvP skills but the worlds know better. There are a thousand of them out there that nobody else would have rescued. Nobody else would have even attempted. But Couriway has not earned his crown with blood on his hands and so he goes, steadily, and saves the world, over and over and over.

And the Universe smiles down on a tiny server, tucked at the edges of MInecraft, where mismatched buildings stand next to each other, where scattered blocks ruin the landscape of the nether, where laughter fills the air and plans to do the impossible are made.

They will not be remembered, but they don’t care. They are happy, here at the edge of the universe, far away from any competition or recognition.

They are home.

[alexsorsis]

Builber bam

[horror-beeings-artandwriting]

Blocktales doodles

[coro-sg]

yapping about the Madoka magica x block tales au I accidentally created

the real builder man is mami

the cruel king is sayaka

Tutorial terry is Kyoko sakura

The griefer/brad is nagisa and the plant is Charlotte

Hatred is kyubey (both first disguise as a friendly fella but turns out they lied to everyone)

I know it was mentioned that Kyoko was Madoka but i remembered too late and just put player as madoka

Okay but all the character line ups are pretty sick. considering the sayaka lore though,, ouh, sorry king

[leam1983]

Placing D&D's Failures In-Context

TL;DR: it isn't because Tolkien and Lewis followed in the footsteps of Chaucer and Snorri Sturlesson that you also need to play out stories involving clean-cut Good and Evil forces.

Y'ain't writing a Narnia redux, so go nuts and do workshop that trusting, gentlemanly and wise Beholder with a wee little top hat. It's your game, and yours alone.

I might be a Marketing-related writer by trade, I still primarily identify as a world-builder. As such, I have to credit Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder and other similar roleplaying avenues for helping me come up with my interest in specificity.

I've noticed a few people making note of the inconstant delivery of lore in D&D as of the 5th Edition, and especially of certain bad stereotypes that are being bandied about. I'm not looking to excuse them, so much as to make sure any other theory or lore-crafters understand why some concepts are so deliberately slapdash or offensive.

As with a lot of other things, it all goes back to Tolkien and Lewis, and to the myths and legends they themselves drew from.

You have to remember that The Lord of the Rings and Narnia are both serving as in-fiction national epics of a sort, the storied tale of the Good Guys thwarting the Bad Guys in your usual bout of identity-forging on a national level. You're effectively looking at Middle-Earth justifying its own existence, and at Narnia effectively setting up its main antagonist as someone who's not so much as deserving of nuance.

Nuance isn't foundational, after all. It isn't Biblical. It doesn't inform an etiological project for a greater Society. For the same reason, reading old Natural Science encyclopedias dating back to the late seventeen-hundreds would show us an outdated view of what constitutes an optimal ecosystem. Poke around for old news briefs dating back to the werewolf panic in France (yes, this is a thing) and you'll find no mention whatsoever of what primarily caused said panic, which was a combination of superstition, ergotism and excessive hunting of the local deer population. Wolves won't naturally attack humans, but a starving wolf who's had nothing to eat for days on end might be desperate enough to think otherwise.

Once Gygax realized there'd be more potential in his pen-and-paper jousting model if he freed it from the constraints of History, he felt the need to evoke that specific feel of classic Fantasy. The need to classify distaff character classes as protagonists likely initially edged them towards the Good side of the prototypical Alignment system, while fishing for antagonists obviously called for the opposite approach.

The rest sort of followed. If you're going after a Tolkien-esque propagandistic take on heroic deeds, then you don't need to give much nuance to orc, gnolls, trolls, goblins or what have you; you're entirely free to go as cartoonishly evil as you want. The apex of that approach was probably reached once the concept for Mind Flayers was pitched in 1977: when you're walking in H.P. Lovecraft's footsteps - as the man made it easy to misconstrue unknowable as being a synonym for evil - it's not exactly hard to start pitching the concept that some races are always Evil-aligned, no holds barred. That sort of talk unsurprisingly gives rise to purists.

Enter our contemporary era, wherein what isn't dissected or cancelled is revised for the good of Progressive gamers everywhere. You're a DM, you know the later editions pack resources for players wanting to play monsters, but D&D is so rigid in its presentation it might seem difficult to reason out of certain established canons.

What I do for my own campaigns is as follows.

I start by acting as if the Alignment system didn't exist. Githzerai, Aboleth, Bugbear, Illithid, whatever it is you're looking to play, it's just a stat block and a pretty picture. Then, I revisit the background info for your selected species and voluntarily ignore everything that involves agency-stripping "evil forces" shaping your character's native culture. Instead, you're born of a culture that is, as any decent Sociology teacher would tell you, the product of its environment.

Let's pick the Illithids. Canon-wise, they're extra-planar invaders long-since established in your setting of choice, to the point of usually forming a good chunk of your Underdark-esque setting's sociopolitical tensions. Having supposedly escaped annihilation, they're looking to rebuild at any cost and see all outsiders as tools to be put to use. This utilitarian concept goes so far as to inform how they reproduce, and also exposes a society where terminal sociopathy is the norm.

Okay. Let's break that down and keep only what I need to build upon or what I find interesting:

Extra-planar invaders? That's on-the-nose to the point of parody. Seeing as there's an element of survival involved, extra-planar refugees seems like a more cogent starting point. That angle gives me interesting societal hooks to play with, starting with various forms of PTSD, trauma, survivor's guilt, isolationism - or even more positive aspects, like the survivors seeing themselves as messengers warning the natives of a greater incoming threat, and deciding to arm both themselves and their new neighbours - at any cost. That gives the culture a large enough moral range to allow for both Good and Evil-aligned characters.

It doesn't make sense for shell-shocked survivors to effectively take over their new home. You're not looking at a civilization's worth of warriors, especially not with the Illithid - they're effectively betentacled bookworms that might be lucky if they had a few hardened soldiers left. Considering, they could either survive by ingratiating themselves with the local Drow or Dark Dwarf populations - as advisors, strategists, court scientists or sponsored researchers. Warriors in their ranks could make for an interesting spin on the concept of the wandering mercenary...

Ceremorphosis as a concept inspires no possibility for mutual exchange. Purists could argue that Flayers don't need to exchange what they can assimilate, but we're trying to avoid pejorative notions, here. Let's imagine, instead, that ceremorphosis is something they reserve for mutants derived out of the animal kingdom as a point of absolute bare necessity, and that they generally copulate in ways that are either closer to an actual cephalopod's or that follow the usual bipedal body plan. That implies some degree of sexual dimorphism that might go against the visual canons for Flayers, but the Internet's more than amply proved how much the community doesn't really mind that concept. If ceremorphosis has to be used, an easy workaround is to accept that the victim's original consciousness remains, but finds itself altered at the identitarian level. You'd die Bert the Barbarian and wake up still as Bert the Barbarian, except you'd feel a sense of distance from your former comrades and countrymen and would find it difficult not to imprint with your new "parents" or keepers.

Eating brains is an obvious issue. Let's stick with the Mother Nature-approved status of opportunistic carnivores, and leave the usefulness of learning through osmosis as a concept to the DM. If you really need to play up their intellectual capabilities, you can infer that Flayers have species-based total recall, which should make them fearsome or versatile enough in any context.

The end-result is a basic framework that's compatible with the notion of a "good" Illithid, without the need for some hackneyed messianic framework like the Adversary being involved - and that allows the idea of Mind Flayers being individuals in their own right to take shape. If the Elder Brain matters that much, you can retool it to be less a gestalt than a pool of shared knowledge, accessible depending on the subject's proximity to it - sort of like your Illithid colony's own flesh-based Intranet.

Remember that D&D is only a massive collection of suggestions. You're the creator of your own stories, so if you're looking to follow the trials and tribulations of a Gnoll Bard from a setting where the hyenafolk coexist with your distaff Rangers across forests and fields, go for it!

More importantly, if purists tell you the Monster Manual says X or that Mordenkainen's says Y, tell them you're running your own campaign.

It's all that matters.

[acenancy]

Bruh id definitely want to hear some of your ghost stories

WOW. Okay, I did not expect people to actually want to hear these, but I’ve gotten a few asks requesting I share! Lol. So I guess for each ask I receive, I’ll tell a “real” Goodperson Family ghost story. I promise I have enough to tide you all over for...forever. These things are kind of a regular occurrence for us.

*For the sake of privacy, I’ll always change or shorten the names of people and places. None of my stories will be exaggerated though, except in the style of my writing (lol).*

I’ll start with the earliest story I can remember. Possibly even the wackiest: The Boulder Poltergeist.

In the 1950’s, my grandpa G and grandma V moved their family of 6 to Long Island. We’ll call the neighborhood they lived in (and continue to live in) Scaretown. Scaretown was still mostly woods and strawberry fields back then, but there was a little police station and an even smaller fire department too. Grandpa G was the Scaretown fire chief.

As the years went by, little developments began to spring up along the island. Families moved in, families settled. Scaretown remained small, though, so Grandpa G never saw anything but the occasional stove fire or cigarette mishap. Nothing crazy.

One development, however, was carved out of a section of the Scaretown Woods. Almost as soon as families began moving into it, the police station began receiving complaints about rocks being thrown at their houses. Rocks that were being thrown every day, at the same time of day. And the rocks being thrown weren’t small either. Not like pebbles. Not even cobble rocks.

BOULDERS were being thrown. Straight from the woods to the houses which were built along the wood’s edge. Crashing through windows, falling through roofs, causing serious property damage all around. SUPPOSEDLY.

Naturally, all sorts of tales of ghosts and curses began to fly around lil ol’ Scartown, and the people were getting concerned.

But Grandpa G wasn’t buying it.

As most of my family members are (odd, all things considered), Grandpa G was a practical man. Very much a no-bullshit sort. He thought the boulder stories were exaggerated, if not totally made up. Being the father of 4 genuinely god awful children himself, he assumed, if the rumors were true, that teenage vandals were the ones terrorizing the new people in town. Possibly even his own teenage vandals. So, to control his blood pressure, he didn’t pay the stories any mind.

The police, though, had been investigating the woods surrounding the new development, inspecting the damage done to the houses, etc. The wreckage to the homes was significant. It truly did look like flying boulders were crashing into them.

And, when the police arrived at the time the new homeowners said the boulders were being thrown, they claimed they saw them soaring through the air themselves.

Logic told the police this was not happening by one man’s strong arm and his pure force of will. The only possible way they could figure these builders were flying was by a catapult.

Which sounds insane.

But possibly not as insane as what happened whenever the police tried entering the woods and locating the source of the flying boulders themselves.

The deeper the police traveled into the woods and the closer they reached what they assumed was the point of launch, dirt would begin blowing violently at them, pebbles and twigs rising from the ground with a vicious wind and pelting them. Each time, their vision became obstructed so badly that they could not venture into the woods any farther. They would retreat, battered and bruised and confused.

They realized they needed backup if they wanted to get closer to this catapult. Preferably backup with gear and equipment meant to withstand harsh conditions.

So Scaretown’s small police force hit up the fire department.

Chief Grandpa G had to laugh. Again, he was not convinced by the tales that were being spun to him. Flying boulders? Walls of dirt and sticks running police out of the woods? To him, it sounded like the cops were simply failing to do their jobs and making up excuses. He gladly agreed to help them out, if only to prove how incompetent they were. So he rounded up his department and scrounged up fire gear for the entire police force too.

When the two departments arrived at the development, they stood at the edge of the woods, waiting for the exact time the boulders were supposed to start flying. There, Grandpa G got to see for himself that the rumors were true - but nothing like he was being told.

The boulders were gliding through the air. Slowly, in perfect arches, landing so softly that sometimes they would hit the side of a house and fall to the ground with only a thump. Most of the time, the boulders were not even causing any damage at all.

It was odd, Grandpa G had to admit. But he wasn’t a genius and he still wasn’t convinced it was the work of anything other than a crazy person and their catapult.

So, before the boulders could stop flying, he and the dual departments entered the woods together.

Things remained calm at first. They ventured into the woods, the only strange occurrence the one Grandpa G was now familiar with. Boulders soared above them like birds, silent and without any fanfare.

They walked deeper.

Eventually, just like the sheriff had told Grandpa G, dirt began to pick up from the ground, blowing straight into their faces and blocking their view of anything before them. Pebbles, too, were being thrown all around them, and twigs were whacking at their arms and legs, almost as though beating them away. Though this time, thanks to the fire department, their faces were shielded and bodies protected. They were able to continue onward.

But conditions worsened.

It reached a point where they were being blown backwards, falling to the ground, afraid that they would lose each other amongst the trees and the growing night.

They needed to stay together.

It didn’t take much convincing for both the police and fire departments to abandon their mission of finding the catapult. Cops and firemen joined hands, together forming a wide, though tenuous circle.

And things began to calm.

To their amazement, their circle appeared to push the flying debris into their center, containing it until there was a mini tornado swirling in the middle of them. Braving the forces of nature, they all began to move forward, still holding hands, until they were all one huddled mass.

The storm between them grew smaller and smaller as they moved, until it died right there at their feet.

But they were too scared to continue their search now. Like the brave, grown men they were, they all ran the fuck out of there instead.

The next day, at the time the boulders were usually scheduled to fly, the skies remained clear. No complaints were made by homeowners. No boulders came soaring from the woods.

And they never did after.

Grandpa G and a few other guys did search the woods again, but never found the catapult or the boulders they assumed were there. All they found was a clearing amongst the trees where they all held hands, and a pile of dirt, twigs, and tiny rocks piled in the middle.

Until the day he died, No Bull Grandpa G swore they encountered a poltergeist in those woods. Sometimes, though, I’m not so sure.

Can a poltergeist attach itself to you? Does one follow you and your entire family for the rest of your lives? Can one even curse you?

Or could it be something else?

Like I said, my whole family has enough ghost stories to rival R.L. Stine.

And they all started in the woods of Scaretown.

[an-unlikely-poet]

The quiet gave way to piercing voices, non stop, one sided and the mind drifts. It’s no wonder he thought, all these years later. Recessed in words of limited vocabulary. Like a carpenter who lent his tools never to be seen again. Made up on the spot, he threw squares where the circle should go. Turned screw drivers when the hatchet was to blunted on the skull. Measured with fingers and arms like the boat builders in the pacific before the flood. Ever so skewed he adjusts to the growing tide, adrift and the birds became slow moving dots against the blue and white backdrop. Calm again and the mind settles into another production. No directors here, a child like mind spins endless tales in grand resolutions. Be careful what you wish for lad, one take to say it all into the nothing. Into the void. Was that so bad? Was it better than the alternative? He didn’t know. He cared less. Another lie. Another diversion. Tactics of the wandering central figure. A made up protagonist in someone else’s great story. Who’s he did not know. Maybe a better story teller than he. In the darker parts of the mind, he was convinced of the antagonist. A road block to worthiness. He’ll get out of the way again and again. Recalibrate, reorganize. No charts. Just man made tools, sweat and blood. The sun rises here, sets over there. In between the head rests. But not the mind. Sometimes friend, sometimes foe. And so it goes. Until the words come again