#boostingissharing — Public Fediverse posts
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#PennedPossibilities 1120: Saturday Word Edition: Share something from your WIP pertaining to the word “entertainment.”
Bolt is acting as the photographer for her friend Shugh as he interviews a male diva actor for a magazine similar to The New Yorker. Hers is a woman-centric society. The scene in this #excerpt hints that Bolt can be sexist as the actor being interviewed needles her.
Upstairs, Shugh hit it off with Morning Glory. Both men sought careers not often occupied by men. The actor-playwright became more animated as the magazine interview progressed, allowing me with my camera to fade into the background of the plush upper lounge of the theatre. By the time the long-legged delicate man started pacing as he told his life story, I had gleaned that his tale was glorified and larger-than life, like the man, his persona, his masks. His elegant pacing allowed me to move with my Flicka4, steadying myself using the back of a gilt divan, a bamboo formed-steel torchere lamp (one of pair), and then a black marble tea table to as I composed pictures of a celebrity, but a man, lost in thoughts about inflating the image he presented the world, finally dropping his actor's mask. I caught the sparkle in his eye. I caught flamboyant hands thrown wide, later framing his face as he sang a note. I caught an absentminded sneer aimed at an unnamed actress who'd worked to derail his entertainment career.
"I'm changing the way women perceive men," he declared. He sat abruptly on a hanger chair, one of those short shallow chairs built with a bench seat of a single plank of wood, finely finished glowing golden oak but uncushioned; it barely supported his thighs in deference to his hips, forcing the man to crouch. Also called a man's chair because a man looked really adorable hanging there when unclothed in a certain way. (It totally did Morning Glory.) That it made men shorter than any women in a room seemed like a plus, but then I was female. These days, especially in the city, I'd seen men leave a room in disgust if they saw one. Not Morning Glory! Probably furnished it here himself, stage managing, to spike the drama. Legs wide, crouching—his hands above his knees, framing his crotch—eyes narrowed and on me, his body language firmed up my perception of him.
Performatively male, sure of his good looks.
Aggressive.
Dominant.
He addressed Shugh still meeting my gaze. "Steamed Milk and Sugar—can I call you Milk? How does it feel working as her protégé? Do we live in progressive times?"
Hint, hint! I am a #gender #fiction #writer. If you think a hanger chair in this Basic Instincts scene is peculiar, realize that it is a male-oriented gender domination device analogous to what stiletto heels achieve physically with women in our society. Like many women today, Morning Glory is "owning" it (trying anyway) and changing the device's meaning.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory -
#PennedPossibilities 1120: Saturday Word Edition: Share something from your WIP pertaining to the word “entertainment.”
Bolt is acting as the photographer for her friend Shugh as he interviews a male diva actor for a magazine similar to The New Yorker. Hers is a woman-centric society. The scene in this #excerpt hints that Bolt can be sexist as the actor being interviewed needles her.
Upstairs, Shugh hit it off with Morning Glory. Both men sought careers not often occupied by men. The actor-playwright became more animated as the magazine interview progressed, allowing me with my camera to fade into the background of the plush upper lounge of the theatre. By the time the long-legged delicate man started pacing as he told his life story, I had gleaned that his tale was glorified and larger-than life, like the man, his persona, his masks. His elegant pacing allowed me to move with my Flicka4, steadying myself using the back of a gilt divan, a bamboo formed-steel torchere lamp (one of pair), and then a black marble tea table to as I composed pictures of a celebrity, but a man, lost in thoughts about inflating the image he presented the world, finally dropping his actor's mask. I caught the sparkle in his eye. I caught flamboyant hands thrown wide, later framing his face as he sang a note. I caught an absentminded sneer aimed at an unnamed actress who'd worked to derail his entertainment career.
"I'm changing the way women perceive men," he declared. He sat abruptly on a hanger chair, one of those short shallow chairs built with a bench seat of a single plank of wood, finely finished glowing golden oak but uncushioned; it barely supported his thighs in deference to his hips, forcing the man to crouch. Also called a man's chair because a man looked really adorable hanging there when unclothed in a certain way. (It totally did Morning Glory.) That it made men shorter than any women in a room seemed like a plus, but then I was female. These days, especially in the city, I'd seen men leave a room in disgust if they saw one. Not Morning Glory! Probably furnished it here himself, stage managing, to spike the drama. Legs wide, crouching—his hands above his knees, framing his crotch—eyes narrowed and on me, his body language firmed up my perception of him.
Performatively male, sure of his good looks.
Aggressive.
Dominant.
He addressed Shugh still meeting my gaze. "Steamed Milk and Sugar—can I call you Milk? How does it feel working as her protégé? Do we live in progressive times?"
Hint, hint! I am a #gender #fiction #writer. If you think a hanger chair in this Basic Instincts scene is peculiar, realize that it is a male-oriented gender domination device analogous to what stiletto heels achieve physically with women in our society. Like many women today, Morning Glory is "owning" it (trying anyway) and changing the device's meaning.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory -
#PennedPossibilities 1120: Saturday Word Edition: Share something from your WIP pertaining to the word “entertainment.”
Bolt is acting as the photographer for her friend Shugh as he interviews a male diva actor for a magazine similar to The New Yorker. Hers is a woman-centric society. The scene in this #excerpt hints that Bolt can be sexist as the actor being interviewed needles her.
Upstairs, Shugh hit it off with Morning Glory. Both men sought careers not often occupied by men. The actor-playwright became more animated as the magazine interview progressed, allowing me with my camera to fade into the background of the plush upper lounge of the theatre. By the time the long-legged delicate man started pacing as he told his life story, I had gleaned that his tale was glorified and larger-than life, like the man, his persona, his masks. His elegant pacing allowed me to move with my Flicka4, steadying myself using the back of a gilt divan, a bamboo formed-steel torchere lamp (one of pair), and then a black marble tea table to as I composed pictures of a celebrity, but a man, lost in thoughts about inflating the image he presented the world, finally dropping his actor's mask. I caught the sparkle in his eye. I caught flamboyant hands thrown wide, later framing his face as he sang a note. I caught an absentminded sneer aimed at an unnamed actress who'd worked to derail his entertainment career.
"I'm changing the way women perceive men," he declared. He sat abruptly on a hanger chair, one of those short shallow chairs built with a bench seat of a single plank of wood, finely finished glowing golden oak but uncushioned; it barely supported his thighs in deference to his hips, forcing the man to crouch. Also called a man's chair because a man looked really adorable hanging there when unclothed in a certain way. (It totally did Morning Glory.) That it made men shorter than any women in a room seemed like a plus, but then I was female. These days, especially in the city, I'd seen men leave a room in disgust if they saw one. Not Morning Glory! Probably furnished it here himself, stage managing, to spike the drama. Legs wide, crouching—his hands above his knees, framing his crotch—eyes narrowed and on me, his body language firmed up my perception of him.
Performatively male, sure of his good looks.
Aggressive.
Dominant.
He addressed Shugh still meeting my gaze. "Steamed Milk and Sugar—can I call you Milk? How does it feel working as her protégé? Do we live in progressive times?"
Hint, hint! I am a #gender #fiction #writer. If you think a hanger chair in this Basic Instincts scene is peculiar, realize that it is a male-oriented gender domination device analogous to what stiletto heels achieve physically with women in our society. Like many women today, Morning Glory is "owning" it (trying anyway) and changing the device's meaning.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory -
#PennedPossibilities 1120: Saturday Word Edition: Share something from your WIP pertaining to the word “entertainment.”
Bolt is acting as the photographer for her friend Shugh as he interviews a male diva actor for a magazine similar to The New Yorker. Hers is a woman-centric society. The scene in this #excerpt hints that Bolt can be sexist as the actor being interviewed needles her.
Upstairs, Shugh hit it off with Morning Glory. Both men sought careers not often occupied by men. The actor-playwright became more animated as the magazine interview progressed, allowing me with my camera to fade into the background of the plush upper lounge of the theatre. By the time the long-legged delicate man started pacing as he told his life story, I had gleaned that his tale was glorified and larger-than life, like the man, his persona, his masks. His elegant pacing allowed me to move with my Flicka4, steadying myself using the back of a gilt divan, a bamboo formed-steel torchere lamp (one of pair), and then a black marble tea table to as I composed pictures of a celebrity, but a man, lost in thoughts about inflating the image he presented the world, finally dropping his actor's mask. I caught the sparkle in his eye. I caught flamboyant hands thrown wide, later framing his face as he sang a note. I caught an absentminded sneer aimed at an unnamed actress who'd worked to derail his entertainment career.
"I'm changing the way women perceive men," he declared. He sat abruptly on a hanger chair, one of those short shallow chairs built with a bench seat of a single plank of wood, finely finished glowing golden oak but uncushioned; it barely supported his thighs in deference to his hips, forcing the man to crouch. Also called a man's chair because a man looked really adorable hanging there when unclothed in a certain way. (It totally did Morning Glory.) That it made men shorter than any women in a room seemed like a plus, but then I was female. These days, especially in the city, I'd seen men leave a room in disgust if they saw one. Not Morning Glory! Probably furnished it here himself, stage managing, to spike the drama. Legs wide, crouching—his hands above his knees, framing his crotch—eyes narrowed and on me, his body language firmed up my perception of him.
Performatively male, sure of his good looks.
Aggressive.
Dominant.
He addressed Shugh still meeting my gaze. "Steamed Milk and Sugar—can I call you Milk? How does it feel working as her protégé? Do we live in progressive times?"
Hint, hint! I am a #gender #fiction #writer. If you think a hanger chair in this Basic Instincts scene is peculiar, realize that it is a male-oriented gender domination device analogous to what stiletto heels achieve physically with women in our society. Like many women today, Morning Glory is "owning" it (trying anyway) and changing the device's meaning.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory -
#PennedPossibilities 1120: Saturday Word Edition: Share something from your WIP pertaining to the word “entertainment.”
Bolt is acting as the photographer for her friend Shugh as he interviews a male diva actor for a magazine similar to The New Yorker. Hers is a woman-centric society. The scene in this #excerpt hints that Bolt can be sexist as the actor being interviewed needles her.
Upstairs, Shugh hit it off with Morning Glory. Both men sought careers not often occupied by men. The actor-playwright became more animated as the magazine interview progressed, allowing me with my camera to fade into the background of the plush upper lounge of the theatre. By the time the long-legged delicate man started pacing as he told his life story, I had gleaned that his tale was glorified and larger-than life, like the man, his persona, his masks. His elegant pacing allowed me to move with my Flicka4, steadying myself using the back of a gilt divan, a bamboo formed-steel torchere lamp (one of pair), and then a black marble tea table to as I composed pictures of a celebrity, but a man, lost in thoughts about inflating the image he presented the world, finally dropping his actor's mask. I caught the sparkle in his eye. I caught flamboyant hands thrown wide, later framing his face as he sang a note. I caught an absentminded sneer aimed at an unnamed actress who'd worked to derail his entertainment career.
"I'm changing the way women perceive men," he declared. He sat abruptly on a hanger chair, one of those short shallow chairs built with a bench seat of a single plank of wood, finely finished glowing golden oak but uncushioned; it barely supported his thighs in deference to his hips, forcing the man to crouch. Also called a man's chair because a man looked really adorable hanging there when unclothed in a certain way. (It totally did Morning Glory.) That it made men shorter than any women in a room seemed like a plus, but then I was female. These days, especially in the city, I'd seen men leave a room in disgust if they saw one. Not Morning Glory! Probably furnished it here himself, stage managing, to spike the drama. Legs wide, crouching—his hands above his knees, framing his crotch—eyes narrowed and on me, his body language firmed up my perception of him.
Performatively male, sure of his good looks.
Aggressive.
Dominant.
He addressed Shugh still meeting my gaze. "Steamed Milk and Sugar—can I call you Milk? How does it feel working as her protégé? Do we live in progressive times?"
Hint, hint! I am a #gender #fiction #writer. If you think a hanger chair in this Basic Instincts scene is peculiar, realize that it is a male-oriented gender domination device analogous to what stiletto heels achieve physically with women in our society. Like many women today, Morning Glory is "owning" it (trying anyway) and changing the device's meaning.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory -
RE: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/112497915608418589
#PennedPossibilities 1119: MC POV: How did you learn your most valuable skill? Who taught you, and why is it so important?
[I will keep Bolt SFW, promise! Tl;dr tootfic follows, nevertheless.—RS]
A surprising number of my skills are self-taught. I must be a genius, even if'n I've done a lot of stupid things. My most valuable skill is flying, naturally being as I'm a day angel, but flight kindergarten failed me epically. Everybody fledged but me by 3. Despite the incentive of being picked on by all the girls in school (boys knew better), it took being shoved off a cliff at 10 before I flew, and then but for Mom and Uncle teaching me to land, I taught myself everything else. Turned out live'n in the world 3D is—My Stars!— flapping awesome, not at all frightening as I'd wound up myself into thinking. Flew into my share of lamp posts, but still, flap'n it! Spending more time a-wing than walking, I became an athlete, captaining the flight and field team, learning stunt flying, flight dance, and tandem. None of it more valuable than walking and running for the flightless in the long run, except, I guess, tandem.
They teach you never to fly close to anybody. I remember distancing from flight kindergarten. It was reiterated by every PE teacher there after. Knock it into your head, they do. A "primary feather length at wing tip; your height above." Feather fields will tangle if'n you're too close. You'll lose lift, they say, maybe crash, but that never made sense to me having learnt to fly late.
I experimented with all sort of crazy, consider'n that I skated out of most of the knocking of "flight stuff into my head" for the seven years everybody else was flying and I wasn't. I dove hard into precision flying, which meant warping my flight feathers hard, sometimes twisting the up and down fields to push away from or get sucked toward things like cliff walls or between tree trunks in a dense forest. Called decompensating. Dangerous? For you, unadventurous noob, maybe! I finally could get a finger length close to things—close enough to suck your hair and feathers against bark, rockface, and occasional stupid people who do their deer in the lantern light imitation seeing you, they think, flying into them—so why not boys? (Girls thought me a masculine muscle nerd! Their loss.)
While I found victims volunteers to fly near me in middle school, it was that first semester in high school that I perfected my awareness of my wings in space, and theirs, close up, and got boys to understand what I'd learnt. It helped that in high school, finally, the boys were less shy (especially the seniors) and dangling flying with us touching really helped incentivize them. Me, too, actually. I got better. They got better, caught the tandem fever, though we got chewed out by Coach when she saw, before she stopped noticing since we didn't kill ourselves. Our team morale soared. We started winning. I became captain of an otherwise male team. I got my string of ponies (stallions only).
Good times.
Valuable? Actually, valuable?
Well, a dozen years and lots of stupid decisions later, I have a friend, Blue, who is a praetorian training to protect Rainy Days. We encountered her in the sky, and I ended up flying stunts around the guy with her mirroring and challenging my agility, pushing me harder, apparently to test my limits, and to piss me off. I'm too competitive for my own good! She correctly figured out it was me who taught Blue flying tandem; it was the definitive skill that got him a job that was very unlikely for a guy to get.
Rainy Days praised me. She's far better at tandem techniques than me. Still. The Director of Home and the Nine Outer worlds praised me. My Stars!!!
Valuable? Flap yes!
Yet. Even considering when she left with Blue, the stress of me stupidly challenging the most important woman ever shot me out of the sky. I nearly crashed trying to land, then puked so hard, I thought some of my liver came up.
I still would challenge her again, given the chance. [Big words, Bolt! Read the quoted story for the second round. —RS]
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory -
RE: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/112497915608418589
#PennedPossibilities 1119: MC POV: How did you learn your most valuable skill? Who taught you, and why is it so important?
[I will keep Bolt SFW, promise! Tl;dr tootfic follows, nevertheless.—RS]
A surprising number of my skills are self-taught. I must be a genius, even if'n I've done a lot of stupid things. My most valuable skill is flying, naturally being as I'm a day angel, but flight kindergarten failed me epically. Everybody fledged but me by 3. Despite the incentive of being picked on by all the girls in school (boys knew better), it took being shoved off a cliff at 10 before I flew, and then but for Mom and Uncle teaching me to land, I taught myself everything else. Turned out live'n in the world 3D is—My Stars!— flapping awesome, not at all frightening as I'd wound up myself into thinking. Flew into my share of lamp posts, but still, flap'n it! Spending more time a-wing than walking, I became an athlete, captaining the flight and field team, learning stunt flying, flight dance, and tandem. None of it more valuable than walking and running for the flightless in the long run, except, I guess, tandem.
They teach you never to fly close to anybody. I remember distancing from flight kindergarten. It was reiterated by every PE teacher there after. Knock it into your head, they do. A "primary feather length at wing tip; your height above." Feather fields will tangle if'n you're too close. You'll lose lift, they say, maybe crash, but that never made sense to me having learnt to fly late.
I experimented with all sort of crazy, consider'n that I skated out of most of the knocking of "flight stuff into my head" for the seven years everybody else was flying and I wasn't. I dove hard into precision flying, which meant warping my flight feathers hard, sometimes twisting the up and down fields to push away from or get sucked toward things like cliff walls or between tree trunks in a dense forest. Called decompensating. Dangerous? For you, unadventurous noob, maybe! I finally could get a finger length close to things—close enough to suck your hair and feathers against bark, rockface, and occasional stupid people who do their deer in the lantern light imitation seeing you, they think, flying into them—so why not boys? (Girls thought me a masculine muscle nerd! Their loss.)
While I found victims volunteers to fly near me in middle school, it was that first semester in high school that I perfected my awareness of my wings in space, and theirs, close up, and got boys to understand what I'd learnt. It helped that in high school, finally, the boys were less shy (especially the seniors) and dangling flying with us touching really helped incentivize them. Me, too, actually. I got better. They got better, caught the tandem fever, though we got chewed out by Coach when she saw, before she stopped noticing since we didn't kill ourselves. Our team morale soared. We started winning. I became captain of an otherwise male team. I got my string of ponies (stallions only).
Good times.
Valuable? Actually, valuable?
Well, a dozen years and lots of stupid decisions later, I have a friend, Blue, who is a praetorian training to protect Rainy Days. We encountered her in the sky, and I ended up flying stunts around the guy with her mirroring and challenging my agility, pushing me harder, apparently to test my limits, and to piss me off. I'm too competitive for my own good! She correctly figured out it was me who taught Blue flying tandem; it was the definitive skill that got him a job that was very unlikely for a guy to get.
Rainy Days praised me. She's far better at tandem techniques than me. Still. The Director of Home and the Nine Outer worlds praised me. My Stars!!!
Valuable? Flap yes!
Yet. Even considering when she left with Blue, the stress of me stupidly challenging the most important woman ever shot me out of the sky. I nearly crashed trying to land, then puked so hard, I thought some of my liver came up.
I still would challenge her again, given the chance. [Big words, Bolt! Read the quoted story for the second round. —RS]
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory -
RE: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/112497915608418589
#PennedPossibilities 1119: MC POV: How did you learn your most valuable skill? Who taught you, and why is it so important?
[I will keep Bolt SFW, promise! Tl;dr tootfic follows, nevertheless.—RS]
A surprising number of my skills are self-taught. I must be a genius, even if'n I've done a lot of stupid things. My most valuable skill is flying, naturally being as I'm a day angel, but flight kindergarten failed me epically. Everybody fledged but me by 3. Despite the incentive of being picked on by all the girls in school (boys knew better), it took being shoved off a cliff at 10 before I flew, and then but for Mom and Uncle teaching me to land, I taught myself everything else. Turned out live'n in the world 3D is—My Stars!— flapping awesome, not at all frightening as I'd wound up myself into thinking. Flew into my share of lamp posts, but still, flap'n it! Spending more time a-wing than walking, I became an athlete, captaining the flight and field team, learning stunt flying, flight dance, and tandem. None of it more valuable than walking and running for the flightless in the long run, except, I guess, tandem.
They teach you never to fly close to anybody. I remember distancing from flight kindergarten. It was reiterated by every PE teacher there after. Knock it into your head, they do. A "primary feather length at wing tip; your height above." Feather fields will tangle if'n you're too close. You'll lose lift, they say, maybe crash, but that never made sense to me having learnt to fly late.
I experimented with all sort of crazy, consider'n that I skated out of most of the knocking of "flight stuff into my head" for the seven years everybody else was flying and I wasn't. I dove hard into precision flying, which meant warping my flight feathers hard, sometimes twisting the up and down fields to push away from or get sucked toward things like cliff walls or between tree trunks in a dense forest. Called decompensating. Dangerous? For you, unadventurous noob, maybe! I finally could get a finger length close to things—close enough to suck your hair and feathers against bark, rockface, and occasional stupid people who do their deer in the lantern light imitation seeing you, they think, flying into them—so why not boys? (Girls thought me a masculine muscle nerd! Their loss.)
While I found victims volunteers to fly near me in middle school, it was that first semester in high school that I perfected my awareness of my wings in space, and theirs, close up, and got boys to understand what I'd learnt. It helped that in high school, finally, the boys were less shy (especially the seniors) and dangling flying with us touching really helped incentivize them. Me, too, actually. I got better. They got better, caught the tandem fever, though we got chewed out by Coach when she saw, before she stopped noticing since we didn't kill ourselves. Our team morale soared. We started winning. I became captain of an otherwise male team. I got my string of ponies (stallions only).
Good times.
Valuable? Actually, valuable?
Well, a dozen years and lots of stupid decisions later, I have a friend, Blue, who is a praetorian training to protect Rainy Days. We encountered her in the sky, and I ended up flying stunts around the guy with her mirroring and challenging my agility, pushing me harder, apparently to test my limits, and to piss me off. I'm too competitive for my own good! She correctly figured out it was me who taught Blue flying tandem; it was the definitive skill that got him a job that was very unlikely for a guy to get.
Rainy Days praised me. She's far better at tandem techniques than me. Still. The Director of Home and the Nine Outer worlds praised me. My Stars!!!
Valuable? Flap yes!
Yet. Even considering when she left with Blue, the stress of me stupidly challenging the most important woman ever shot me out of the sky. I nearly crashed trying to land, then puked so hard, I thought some of my liver came up.
I still would challenge her again, given the chance. [Big words, Bolt! Read the quoted story for the second round. —RS]
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory -
RE: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/112497915608418589
#PennedPossibilities 1119: MC POV: How did you learn your most valuable skill? Who taught you, and why is it so important?
[I will keep Bolt SFW, promise! Tl;dr tootfic follows, nevertheless.—RS]
A surprising number of my skills are self-taught. I must be a genius, even if'n I've done a lot of stupid things. My most valuable skill is flying, naturally being as I'm a day angel, but flight kindergarten failed me epically. Everybody fledged but me by 3. Despite the incentive of being picked on by all the girls in school (boys knew better), it took being shoved off a cliff at 10 before I flew, and then but for Mom and Uncle teaching me to land, I taught myself everything else. Turned out live'n in the world 3D is—My Stars!— flapping awesome, not at all frightening as I'd wound up myself into thinking. Flew into my share of lamp posts, but still, flap'n it! Spending more time a-wing than walking, I became an athlete, captaining the flight and field team, learning stunt flying, flight dance, and tandem. None of it more valuable than walking and running for the flightless in the long run, except, I guess, tandem.
They teach you never to fly close to anybody. I remember distancing from flight kindergarten. It was reiterated by every PE teacher there after. Knock it into your head, they do. A "primary feather length at wing tip; your height above." Feather fields will tangle if'n you're too close. You'll lose lift, they say, maybe crash, but that never made sense to me having learnt to fly late.
I experimented with all sort of crazy, consider'n that I skated out of most of the knocking of "flight stuff into my head" for the seven years everybody else was flying and I wasn't. I dove hard into precision flying, which meant warping my flight feathers hard, sometimes twisting the up and down fields to push away from or get sucked toward things like cliff walls or between tree trunks in a dense forest. Called decompensating. Dangerous? For you, unadventurous noob, maybe! I finally could get a finger length close to things—close enough to suck your hair and feathers against bark, rockface, and occasional stupid people who do their deer in the lantern light imitation seeing you, they think, flying into them—so why not boys? (Girls thought me a masculine muscle nerd! Their loss.)
While I found victims volunteers to fly near me in middle school, it was that first semester in high school that I perfected my awareness of my wings in space, and theirs, close up, and got boys to understand what I'd learnt. It helped that in high school, finally, the boys were less shy (especially the seniors) and dangling flying with us touching really helped incentivize them. Me, too, actually. I got better. They got better, caught the tandem fever, though we got chewed out by Coach when she saw, before she stopped noticing since we didn't kill ourselves. Our team morale soared. We started winning. I became captain of an otherwise male team. I got my string of ponies (stallions only).
Good times.
Valuable? Actually, valuable?
Well, a dozen years and lots of stupid decisions later, I have a friend, Blue, who is a praetorian training to protect Rainy Days. We encountered her in the sky, and I ended up flying stunts around the guy with her mirroring and challenging my agility, pushing me harder, apparently to test my limits, and to piss me off. I'm too competitive for my own good! She correctly figured out it was me who taught Blue flying tandem; it was the definitive skill that got him a job that was very unlikely for a guy to get.
Rainy Days praised me. She's far better at tandem techniques than me. Still. The Director of Home and the Nine Outer worlds praised me. My Stars!!!
Valuable? Flap yes!
Yet. Even considering when she left with Blue, the stress of me stupidly challenging the most important woman ever shot me out of the sky. I nearly crashed trying to land, then puked so hard, I thought some of my liver came up.
I still would challenge her again, given the chance. [Big words, Bolt! Read the quoted story for the second round. —RS]
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory -
RE: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/112497915608418589
#PennedPossibilities 1119: MC POV: How did you learn your most valuable skill? Who taught you, and why is it so important?
[I will keep Bolt SFW, promise! Tl;dr tootfic follows, nevertheless.—RS]
A surprising number of my skills are self-taught. I must be a genius, even if'n I've done a lot of stupid things. My most valuable skill is flying, naturally being as I'm a day angel, but flight kindergarten failed me epically. Everybody fledged but me by 3. Despite the incentive of being picked on by all the girls in school (boys knew better), it took being shoved off a cliff at 10 before I flew, and then but for Mom and Uncle teaching me to land, I taught myself everything else. Turned out live'n in the world 3D is—My Stars!— flapping awesome, not at all frightening as I'd wound up myself into thinking. Flew into my share of lamp posts, but still, flap'n it! Spending more time a-wing than walking, I became an athlete, captaining the flight and field team, learning stunt flying, flight dance, and tandem. None of it more valuable than walking and running for the flightless in the long run, except, I guess, tandem.
They teach you never to fly close to anybody. I remember distancing from flight kindergarten. It was reiterated by every PE teacher there after. Knock it into your head, they do. A "primary feather length at wing tip; your height above." Feather fields will tangle if'n you're too close. You'll lose lift, they say, maybe crash, but that never made sense to me having learnt to fly late.
I experimented with all sort of crazy, consider'n that I skated out of most of the knocking of "flight stuff into my head" for the seven years everybody else was flying and I wasn't. I dove hard into precision flying, which meant warping my flight feathers hard, sometimes twisting the up and down fields to push away from or get sucked toward things like cliff walls or between tree trunks in a dense forest. Called decompensating. Dangerous? For you, unadventurous noob, maybe! I finally could get a finger length close to things—close enough to suck your hair and feathers against bark, rockface, and occasional stupid people who do their deer in the lantern light imitation seeing you, they think, flying into them—so why not boys? (Girls thought me a masculine muscle nerd! Their loss.)
While I found victims volunteers to fly near me in middle school, it was that first semester in high school that I perfected my awareness of my wings in space, and theirs, close up, and got boys to understand what I'd learnt. It helped that in high school, finally, the boys were less shy (especially the seniors) and dangling flying with us touching really helped incentivize them. Me, too, actually. I got better. They got better, caught the tandem fever, though we got chewed out by Coach when she saw, before she stopped noticing since we didn't kill ourselves. Our team morale soared. We started winning. I became captain of an otherwise male team. I got my string of ponies (stallions only).
Good times.
Valuable? Actually, valuable?
Well, a dozen years and lots of stupid decisions later, I have a friend, Blue, who is a praetorian training to protect Rainy Days. We encountered her in the sky, and I ended up flying stunts around the guy with her mirroring and challenging my agility, pushing me harder, apparently to test my limits, and to piss me off. I'm too competitive for my own good! She correctly figured out it was me who taught Blue flying tandem; it was the definitive skill that got him a job that was very unlikely for a guy to get.
Rainy Days praised me. She's far better at tandem techniques than me. Still. The Director of Home and the Nine Outer worlds praised me. My Stars!!!
Valuable? Flap yes!
Yet. Even considering when she left with Blue, the stress of me stupidly challenging the most important woman ever shot me out of the sky. I nearly crashed trying to land, then puked so hard, I thought some of my liver came up.
I still would challenge her again, given the chance. [Big words, Bolt! Read the quoted story for the second round. —RS]
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory -
#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.05 — ~From a purely aesthetic standpoint, what is your favorite color of ice cream?
Flamboyant. Pictured, one take on unicorn ice cream. Ask my friends, I have a thing for unicorns.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion -
Found on Tumblr. Text in image follows.
Every company in 2026: "oh god we spent so much money on AI. We need you to use it. Please dear god we need you to use it. Please use it and become addicted to it and need it in your life. Our entire 10 year business model requires you to be an AI addict and you're NOT DOING IT!!! We're gonna put it front and center. We're moving the buttons around so you accidentally click it and use it so you might realise it's there! Please we're begging you! If we can't get you addicted to AI then we can't charge you for it and it will have all been for nothing!!! You're just being SO UNREASONABLE RIGHT NOW!!! If you don't use it then we fired our workers, tanked our company direction, poisoned several thousand people's water, and more importantly spent our investors money FOR NOTHING!!!"
Me, deep diving into every setting on every application on every device: can I turn this annoying thing off or do I need to learn to ignore it...
The companies: "WHY ARE YOU BEING SUCH A BITCH!!!"
-
Found on Tumblr. Text in image follows.
Every company in 2026: "oh god we spent so much money on AI. We need you to use it. Please dear god we need you to use it. Please use it and become addicted to it and need it in your life. Our entire 10 year business model requires you to be an AI addict and you're NOT DOING IT!!! We're gonna put it front and center. We're moving the buttons around so you accidentally click it and use it so you might realise it's there! Please we're begging you! If we can't get you addicted to AI then we can't charge you for it and it will have all been for nothing!!! You're just being SO UNREASONABLE RIGHT NOW!!! If you don't use it then we fired our workers, tanked our company direction, poisoned several thousand people's water, and more importantly spent our investors money FOR NOTHING!!!"
Me, deep diving into every setting on every application on every device: can I turn this annoying thing off or do I need to learn to ignore it...
The companies: "WHY ARE YOU BEING SUCH A BITCH!!!"
-
Found on Tumblr. Text in image follows.
Every company in 2026: "oh god we spent so much money on AI. We need you to use it. Please dear god we need you to use it. Please use it and become addicted to it and need it in your life. Our entire 10 year business model requires you to be an AI addict and you're NOT DOING IT!!! We're gonna put it front and center. We're moving the buttons around so you accidentally click it and use it so you might realise it's there! Please we're begging you! If we can't get you addicted to AI then we can't charge you for it and it will have all been for nothing!!! You're just being SO UNREASONABLE RIGHT NOW!!! If you don't use it then we fired our workers, tanked our company direction, poisoned several thousand people's water, and more importantly spent our investors money FOR NOTHING!!!"
Me, deep diving into every setting on every application on every device: can I turn this annoying thing off or do I need to learn to ignore it...
The companies: "WHY ARE YOU BEING SUCH A BITCH!!!"
-
Found on Tumblr. Text in image follows.
Every company in 2026: "oh god we spent so much money on AI. We need you to use it. Please dear god we need you to use it. Please use it and become addicted to it and need it in your life. Our entire 10 year business model requires you to be an AI addict and you're NOT DOING IT!!! We're gonna put it front and center. We're moving the buttons around so you accidentally click it and use it so you might realise it's there! Please we're begging you! If we can't get you addicted to AI then we can't charge you for it and it will have all been for nothing!!! You're just being SO UNREASONABLE RIGHT NOW!!! If you don't use it then we fired our workers, tanked our company direction, poisoned several thousand people's water, and more importantly spent our investors money FOR NOTHING!!!"
Me, deep diving into every setting on every application on every device: can I turn this annoying thing off or do I need to learn to ignore it...
The companies: "WHY ARE YOU BEING SUCH A BITCH!!!"
-
Found on Tumblr. Text in image follows.
Every company in 2026: "oh god we spent so much money on AI. We need you to use it. Please dear god we need you to use it. Please use it and become addicted to it and need it in your life. Our entire 10 year business model requires you to be an AI addict and you're NOT DOING IT!!! We're gonna put it front and center. We're moving the buttons around so you accidentally click it and use it so you might realise it's there! Please we're begging you! If we can't get you addicted to AI then we can't charge you for it and it will have all been for nothing!!! You're just being SO UNREASONABLE RIGHT NOW!!! If you don't use it then we fired our workers, tanked our company direction, poisoned several thousand people's water, and more importantly spent our investors money FOR NOTHING!!!"
Me, deep diving into every setting on every application on every device: can I turn this annoying thing off or do I need to learn to ignore it...
The companies: "WHY ARE YOU BEING SUCH A BITCH!!!"
-
US citizens prepare to #VOTE.
The point is that Trump is cornered, and that is when he is most likely to do illegal and desperate things. So, if ever there's a time to fear some sort of extreme measure, like trying to declare martial law on Election Day, this would be it. One of us, namely (Z), does not think that this administration has the brains or the balls to pull that off. The other of us, namely (V), is not so sure. At this point, though, all that anyone can do is be vigilant, and to make sure to vote, and to vote in the way that is least subject to interference. For example, if you are able to vote early in person, that is the best bet. If you don't want to chance crowds and ICEmen on Election Day, get an absentee ballot and put it in a drop box or personally bring it to an authorized drop-off location. These avoid any attempts by the USPS to disenfranchise voters. And tell everyone you know to do likewise. (Z)
I'm doing so.
Quoted from this article by a pair of history and voting academics on the Electoral-Vote blog. Read the article, please.
-
US citizens prepare to #VOTE.
The point is that Trump is cornered, and that is when he is most likely to do illegal and desperate things. So, if ever there's a time to fear some sort of extreme measure, like trying to declare martial law on Election Day, this would be it. One of us, namely (Z), does not think that this administration has the brains or the balls to pull that off. The other of us, namely (V), is not so sure. At this point, though, all that anyone can do is be vigilant, and to make sure to vote, and to vote in the way that is least subject to interference. For example, if you are able to vote early in person, that is the best bet. If you don't want to chance crowds and ICEmen on Election Day, get an absentee ballot and put it in a drop box or personally bring it to an authorized drop-off location. These avoid any attempts by the USPS to disenfranchise voters. And tell everyone you know to do likewise. (Z)
I'm doing so.
Quoted from this article by a pair of history and voting academics on the Electoral-Vote blog. Read the article, please.
-
US citizens prepare to #VOTE.
The point is that Trump is cornered, and that is when he is most likely to do illegal and desperate things. So, if ever there's a time to fear some sort of extreme measure, like trying to declare martial law on Election Day, this would be it. One of us, namely (Z), does not think that this administration has the brains or the balls to pull that off. The other of us, namely (V), is not so sure. At this point, though, all that anyone can do is be vigilant, and to make sure to vote, and to vote in the way that is least subject to interference. For example, if you are able to vote early in person, that is the best bet. If you don't want to chance crowds and ICEmen on Election Day, get an absentee ballot and put it in a drop box or personally bring it to an authorized drop-off location. These avoid any attempts by the USPS to disenfranchise voters. And tell everyone you know to do likewise. (Z)
I'm doing so.
Quoted from this article by a pair of history and voting academics on the Electoral-Vote blog. Read the article, please.
-
US citizens prepare to #VOTE.
The point is that Trump is cornered, and that is when he is most likely to do illegal and desperate things. So, if ever there's a time to fear some sort of extreme measure, like trying to declare martial law on Election Day, this would be it. One of us, namely (Z), does not think that this administration has the brains or the balls to pull that off. The other of us, namely (V), is not so sure. At this point, though, all that anyone can do is be vigilant, and to make sure to vote, and to vote in the way that is least subject to interference. For example, if you are able to vote early in person, that is the best bet. If you don't want to chance crowds and ICEmen on Election Day, get an absentee ballot and put it in a drop box or personally bring it to an authorized drop-off location. These avoid any attempts by the USPS to disenfranchise voters. And tell everyone you know to do likewise. (Z)
I'm doing so.
Quoted from this article by a pair of history and voting academics on the Electoral-Vote blog. Read the article, please.
-
US citizens prepare to #VOTE.
The point is that Trump is cornered, and that is when he is most likely to do illegal and desperate things. So, if ever there's a time to fear some sort of extreme measure, like trying to declare martial law on Election Day, this would be it. One of us, namely (Z), does not think that this administration has the brains or the balls to pull that off. The other of us, namely (V), is not so sure. At this point, though, all that anyone can do is be vigilant, and to make sure to vote, and to vote in the way that is least subject to interference. For example, if you are able to vote early in person, that is the best bet. If you don't want to chance crowds and ICEmen on Election Day, get an absentee ballot and put it in a drop box or personally bring it to an authorized drop-off location. These avoid any attempts by the USPS to disenfranchise voters. And tell everyone you know to do likewise. (Z)
I'm doing so.
Quoted from this article by a pair of history and voting academics on the Electoral-Vote blog. Read the article, please.
-
#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.04 — ~Reverse of last month's question: if e-books stopped being produced, how much would you miss them?
I have grown to like not filling shelves with dust collectors. A physical library isn't a status symbol for me anymore. I also like having my iPhone read books to me, which means ePub with or without DRM. Last, old eyes. I'd rather pinch to zoom instead of hold a magnifying glass or squint through bifocals.
I'd miss 'em.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion -
#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.04 — ~Reverse of last month's question: if e-books stopped being produced, how much would you miss them?
I have grown to like not filling shelves with dust collectors. A physical library isn't a status symbol for me anymore. I also like having my iPhone read books to me, which means ePub with or without DRM. Last, old eyes. I'd rather pinch to zoom instead of hold a magnifying glass or squint through bifocals.
I'd miss 'em.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion -
#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.04 — ~Reverse of last month's question: if e-books stopped being produced, how much would you miss them?
I have grown to like not filling shelves with dust collectors. A physical library isn't a status symbol for me anymore. I also like having my iPhone read books to me, which means ePub with or without DRM. Last, old eyes. I'd rather pinch to zoom instead of hold a magnifying glass or squint through bifocals.
I'd miss 'em.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion -
#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.04 — ~Reverse of last month's question: if e-books stopped being produced, how much would you miss them?
I have grown to like not filling shelves with dust collectors. A physical library isn't a status symbol for me anymore. I also like having my iPhone read books to me, which means ePub with or without DRM. Last, old eyes. I'd rather pinch to zoom instead of hold a magnifying glass or squint through bifocals.
I'd miss 'em.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion -
#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.04 — ~Reverse of last month's question: if e-books stopped being produced, how much would you miss them?
I have grown to like not filling shelves with dust collectors. A physical library isn't a status symbol for me anymore. I also like having my iPhone read books to me, which means ePub with or without DRM. Last, old eyes. I'd rather pinch to zoom instead of hold a magnifying glass or squint through bifocals.
I'd miss 'em.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion -
#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.03 — ˜Which ebook reader do you use?
I realize this has become a political question, but I hopped on the bandwagon over a decade ago. A Kindle. The corpses of previous generations litter the house, but the one that lives is a Scribe. Mostly, however, I enjoy books on my iPhone because I can have it read to me with the Alex voice. I try to buy ePubs when I can. I've already lost digital comics due to Dark Horse having shutdown their gen-1 service.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion -
#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.03 — ˜Which ebook reader do you use?
I realize this has become a political question, but I hopped on the bandwagon over a decade ago. A Kindle. The corpses of previous generations litter the house, but the one that lives is a Scribe. Mostly, however, I enjoy books on my iPhone because I can have it read to me with the Alex voice. I try to buy ePubs when I can. I've already lost digital comics due to Dark Horse having shutdown their gen-1 service.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion -
#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.03 — ˜Which ebook reader do you use?
I realize this has become a political question, but I hopped on the bandwagon over a decade ago. A Kindle. The corpses of previous generations litter the house, but the one that lives is a Scribe. Mostly, however, I enjoy books on my iPhone because I can have it read to me with the Alex voice. I try to buy ePubs when I can. I've already lost digital comics due to Dark Horse having shutdown their gen-1 service.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion -
#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.03 — ˜Which ebook reader do you use?
I realize this has become a political question, but I hopped on the bandwagon over a decade ago. A Kindle. The corpses of previous generations litter the house, but the one that lives is a Scribe. Mostly, however, I enjoy books on my iPhone because I can have it read to me with the Alex voice. I try to buy ePubs when I can. I've already lost digital comics due to Dark Horse having shutdown their gen-1 service.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion -
#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.03 — ˜Which ebook reader do you use?
I realize this has become a political question, but I hopped on the bandwagon over a decade ago. A Kindle. The corpses of previous generations litter the house, but the one that lives is a Scribe. Mostly, however, I enjoy books on my iPhone because I can have it read to me with the Alex voice. I try to buy ePubs when I can. I've already lost digital comics due to Dark Horse having shutdown their gen-1 service.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion -
#PennedPossibilities 1117. MC POV: If I looked in your fridge or pantry right now, what would I find?
[Bolt:] "A bag of crumbs." [She gives you a strange look, shakes her head, and walks away.]
Wait! Let me explain. Bolt discusses it in her narrative and rummages through her returnable muslin bag (they don't have plastic). She even gets nagged about it by a SC. Crumbs are day or days old food grocers or restaurants bag up and sell for cheap. Regulations ensure it's mostly balanced nutritionally.
The bag Bolt buys typically contains bruised or browning pomel or home tree fruit, beans, algal yeast paste (think Vegemite/Marmite), floof, and raw no-cook veg like carrots or cabbage. Because she's a day angel, the bags also contain seafood protein: dried squid—which Bolt 🎶adores🎵—and occasionally either shrimp crisps or dented or lost-label tinned fish.
Having persisted on this diet for a dodecade—augmented when she has the coin with fast food day angel style, often spicy fish and squid ramen—she's not entirely willing to stock her pantry with actual groceries she'd have to shop for. Crumbs can be eaten as is with water, or reconstituted by adding some water.
Quick. Simple.
She doesn't look forward to spending the extra coin from her photography sales then having to cook, too! Worse, her boarding house situation charges extra to use the kitchen. Bad enough there's no rain room (i.e., shower) and she has to pay to use the bathhouse down the street!
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#PennedPossibilities 1117. MC POV: If I looked in your fridge or pantry right now, what would I find?
[Bolt:] "A bag of crumbs." [She gives you a strange look, shakes her head, and walks away.]
Wait! Let me explain. Bolt discusses it in her narrative and rummages through her returnable muslin bag (they don't have plastic). She even gets nagged about it by a SC. Crumbs are day or days old food grocers or restaurants bag up and sell for cheap. Regulations ensure it's mostly balanced nutritionally.
The bag Bolt buys typically contains bruised or browning pomel or home tree fruit, beans, algal yeast paste (think Vegemite/Marmite), floof, and raw no-cook veg like carrots or cabbage. Because she's a day angel, the bags also contain seafood protein: dried squid—which Bolt 🎶adores🎵—and occasionally either shrimp crisps or dented or lost-label tinned fish.
Having persisted on this diet for a dodecade—augmented when she has the coin with fast food day angel style, often spicy fish and squid ramen—she's not entirely willing to stock her pantry with actual groceries she'd have to shop for. Crumbs can be eaten as is with water, or reconstituted by adding some water.
Quick. Simple.
She doesn't look forward to spending the extra coin from her photography sales then having to cook, too! Worse, her boarding house situation charges extra to use the kitchen. Bad enough there's no rain room (i.e., shower) and she has to pay to use the bathhouse down the street!
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#PennedPossibilities 1117. MC POV: If I looked in your fridge or pantry right now, what would I find?
[Bolt:] "A bag of crumbs." [She gives you a strange look, shakes her head, and walks away.]
Wait! Let me explain. Bolt discusses it in her narrative and rummages through her returnable muslin bag (they don't have plastic). She even gets nagged about it by a SC. Crumbs are day or days old food grocers or restaurants bag up and sell for cheap. Regulations ensure it's mostly balanced nutritionally.
The bag Bolt buys typically contains bruised or browning pomel or home tree fruit, beans, algal yeast paste (think Vegemite/Marmite), floof, and raw no-cook veg like carrots or cabbage. Because she's a day angel, the bags also contain seafood protein: dried squid—which Bolt 🎶adores🎵—and occasionally either shrimp crisps or dented or lost-label tinned fish.
Having persisted on this diet for a dodecade—augmented when she has the coin with fast food day angel style, often spicy fish and squid ramen—she's not entirely willing to stock her pantry with actual groceries she'd have to shop for. Crumbs can be eaten as is with water, or reconstituted by adding some water.
Quick. Simple.
She doesn't look forward to spending the extra coin from her photography sales then having to cook, too! Worse, her boarding house situation charges extra to use the kitchen. Bad enough there's no rain room (i.e., shower) and she has to pay to use the bathhouse down the street!
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#PennedPossibilities 1117. MC POV: If I looked in your fridge or pantry right now, what would I find?
[Bolt:] "A bag of crumbs." [She gives you a strange look, shakes her head, and walks away.]
Wait! Let me explain. Bolt discusses it in her narrative and rummages through her returnable muslin bag (they don't have plastic). She even gets nagged about it by a SC. Crumbs are day or days old food grocers or restaurants bag up and sell for cheap. Regulations ensure it's mostly balanced nutritionally.
The bag Bolt buys typically contains bruised or browning pomel or home tree fruit, beans, algal yeast paste (think Vegemite/Marmite), floof, and raw no-cook veg like carrots or cabbage. Because she's a day angel, the bags also contain seafood protein: dried squid—which Bolt 🎶adores🎵—and occasionally either shrimp crisps or dented or lost-label tinned fish.
Having persisted on this diet for a dodecade—augmented when she has the coin with fast food day angel style, often spicy fish and squid ramen—she's not entirely willing to stock her pantry with actual groceries she'd have to shop for. Crumbs can be eaten as is with water, or reconstituted by adding some water.
Quick. Simple.
She doesn't look forward to spending the extra coin from her photography sales then having to cook, too! Worse, her boarding house situation charges extra to use the kitchen. Bad enough there's no rain room (i.e., shower) and she has to pay to use the bathhouse down the street!
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#PennedPossibilities 1117. MC POV: If I looked in your fridge or pantry right now, what would I find?
[Bolt:] "A bag of crumbs." [She gives you a strange look, shakes her head, and walks away.]
Wait! Let me explain. Bolt discusses it in her narrative and rummages through her returnable muslin bag (they don't have plastic). She even gets nagged about it by a SC. Crumbs are day or days old food grocers or restaurants bag up and sell for cheap. Regulations ensure it's mostly balanced nutritionally.
The bag Bolt buys typically contains bruised or browning pomel or home tree fruit, beans, algal yeast paste (think Vegemite/Marmite), floof, and raw no-cook veg like carrots or cabbage. Because she's a day angel, the bags also contain seafood protein: dried squid—which Bolt 🎶adores🎵—and occasionally either shrimp crisps or dented or lost-label tinned fish.
Having persisted on this diet for a dodecade—augmented when she has the coin with fast food day angel style, often spicy fish and squid ramen—she's not entirely willing to stock her pantry with actual groceries she'd have to shop for. Crumbs can be eaten as is with water, or reconstituted by adding some water.
Quick. Simple.
She doesn't look forward to spending the extra coin from her photography sales then having to cook, too! Worse, her boarding house situation charges extra to use the kitchen. Bad enough there's no rain room (i.e., shower) and she has to pay to use the bathhouse down the street!
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#PennedPossibilities 1118: Name a catastrophic event that occurred in your world / universe.
[Some deep background, not necessarily yet canon. —RS]
Our civilization passed through the "singularity" and was (apparently) destroyed. With scant few people surviving a population bottleneck, with books and print long obsolete before the singularity, no readable technological information or history survived in the ruins. A character (a spoiler number of years later) in the series worked to destroy whatever archaeological clues existed, for reasons that are spoilers, through means that are spoilers, devastating major swaths of the planet (twice as it turns out, which is kind of spoilery) causing what is also spoilers, but she could do nothing about a planetary megastructure that remains a mystery millennia later. The multiple cataclysms and the fall of intermediate civilizations that followed is contributing to the decline in current days of the human population for reasons also spoilers such that humanity, even as an interstellar civilization, is likely to go extinct. And that's a catastrophe in the making!
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#PennedPossibilities 1118: Name a catastrophic event that occurred in your world / universe.
[Some deep background, not necessarily yet canon. —RS]
Our civilization passed through the "singularity" and was (apparently) destroyed. With scant few people surviving a population bottleneck, with books and print long obsolete before the singularity, no readable technological information or history survived in the ruins. A character (a spoiler number of years later) in the series worked to destroy whatever archaeological clues existed, for reasons that are spoilers, through means that are spoilers, devastating major swaths of the planet (twice as it turns out, which is kind of spoilery) causing what is also spoilers, but she could do nothing about a planetary megastructure that remains a mystery millennia later. The multiple cataclysms and the fall of intermediate civilizations that followed is contributing to the decline in current days of the human population for reasons also spoilers such that humanity, even as an interstellar civilization, is likely to go extinct. And that's a catastrophe in the making!
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#PennedPossibilities 1118: Name a catastrophic event that occurred in your world / universe.
[Some deep background, not necessarily yet canon. —RS]
Our civilization passed through the "singularity" and was (apparently) destroyed. With scant few people surviving a population bottleneck, with books and print long obsolete before the singularity, no readable technological information or history survived in the ruins. A character (a spoiler number of years later) in the series worked to destroy whatever archaeological clues existed, for reasons that are spoilers, through means that are spoilers, devastating major swaths of the planet (twice as it turns out, which is kind of spoilery) causing what is also spoilers, but she could do nothing about a planetary megastructure that remains a mystery millennia later. The multiple cataclysms and the fall of intermediate civilizations that followed is contributing to the decline in current days of the human population for reasons also spoilers such that humanity, even as an interstellar civilization, is likely to go extinct. And that's a catastrophe in the making!
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#PennedPossibilities 1118: Name a catastrophic event that occurred in your world / universe.
[Some deep background, not necessarily yet canon. —RS]
Our civilization passed through the "singularity" and was (apparently) destroyed. With scant few people surviving a population bottleneck, with books and print long obsolete before the singularity, no readable technological information or history survived in the ruins. A character (a spoiler number of years later) in the series worked to destroy whatever archaeological clues existed, for reasons that are spoilers, through means that are spoilers, devastating major swaths of the planet (twice as it turns out, which is kind of spoilery) causing what is also spoilers, but she could do nothing about a planetary megastructure that remains a mystery millennia later. The multiple cataclysms and the fall of intermediate civilizations that followed is contributing to the decline in current days of the human population for reasons also spoilers such that humanity, even as an interstellar civilization, is likely to go extinct. And that's a catastrophe in the making!
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#PennedPossibilities 1118: Name a catastrophic event that occurred in your world / universe.
[Some deep background, not necessarily yet canon. —RS]
Our civilization passed through the "singularity" and was (apparently) destroyed. With scant few people surviving a population bottleneck, with books and print long obsolete before the singularity, no readable technological information or history survived in the ruins. A character (a spoiler number of years later) in the series worked to destroy whatever archaeological clues existed, for reasons that are spoilers, through means that are spoilers, devastating major swaths of the planet (twice as it turns out, which is kind of spoilery) causing what is also spoilers, but she could do nothing about a planetary megastructure that remains a mystery millennia later. The multiple cataclysms and the fall of intermediate civilizations that followed is contributing to the decline in current days of the human population for reasons also spoilers such that humanity, even as an interstellar civilization, is likely to go extinct. And that's a catastrophe in the making!
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#ScribesAndMakers 2025.05.21 /2 — Tell us one truth and two lies about your creative work
I told two lies about my photography, and here's the results, and the truth.
50% —I meticulously catalog and keyword my image captures.
This is false. I don't have the patience. When I do photo shoots, I download into a directory named with the date and the name of the photo shoot. If it's important, I will pick some favorites and process those into a WIP or a Final directory. That's about it.
50% — I rarely do any post-processing of images. The only way to become skilled is by capturing photos right in the first place.
Gah! This is absolutely false. Not only that, it's not professional, and moreover a recipe for missing the shot you really wanted. I take the National Geographic approach. I shoot the heck out of it, capturing hundreds and hundreds of pictures, then meticulously post process the few that I captured what I was trying to express.
83% — I use specialized and expensive camera for my creative work.
Most people thought this the lie. Nope. It's true.
I have a Canon R Mirrorless and a Canon 5D Mark III DSLR. Neither are "Professional," but a step down full-frame prosumer model. Add to this a 100-400 telephoto and an 85 portrait lens, plus a bunch of lesser but premium glass, and it's quite a specialized and expensive kit!
And. I rarely use it!
For the majority of my photography, I now use an iPhone Pro Max. Yes. Expensive. Not as good resolution-wise or auto-focus-wise, but for my purposes it captures shots I can't get with the Canon, especially low light and high contrast situations where in-camera processing works real miracles. HDR on tap. Yes, I shoot RAW. (Do it. It's worth it.) Night portraits capture the stars and the subject, hand-held! The flapping STARS!
I have a thing for stereoscopic wigglegrams. There is a built-in feature called Live Photos (Harry Potter photos). A sub-feature is Bounce. If I take a shot while moving the camera parallel to the ground a few centimeters, bounce creates a 3D illusion of depth. My Trees project uses this technique. I recently discovered the Long Exposure feature, which makes the water in coastal images misty while retaining the sharpness of the rocks and plants. Again, hand-held. No tripod required. Nice.
There are so many camera features and post-processing options on the iPhone, it's hard to find a reason to take out the heavy glass. Were I hired for a shoot, I'd would use the R and the iPhone.
But, wait, there's more!
I recently bought a Insta360 X5 that lets me take spherical 360º still photos. It has dual 210º fish eye lenses; the internal camera stitches to make 72 MP images that allow you to look in any and all directions after the fact.
No, there's no web player. AFAIK. You need their app to view that, but you can edit out slices, remove distortion, and create photo montages from the same capture. It is an action camera, meant for video capture, which I'm not into, but that's useful at times. I've done hyperlapses with it. There is something called Bullet Time (like the technique pioneered in The Matrix with dozens of cameras), but that's a future project. Early days for me. Took it on my recent vacation.Also expensive, though not as much as the Canon equipment. Definitely specialized.
The biggest annoyance is some editing features might be tied to paying for their cloud service, but I'm not sure, yet. So far, I've been able to export plenty of "flat" movies and photos. It may be where the web viewer is because it allows "sharing." Yep. Make money by selling something expensive and requiring a subscription. It's how our world works.
Two sample photos had further details in the #AltText.
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool
#gender #fiction #writer #author #photographer #photography #photos #canon #iphone #iphonephotography #insta360 #insta360x5
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#RSdiscussion -
@Snoro Your assertion in this post is in addition to what's in the article. However, even with industry, global and local, being responsible for 70% of emissions, it's our personal decision and everyone we can can convince to go along—not to use those goods and services (fossil fuel and #chatAI, for example) and instead buy local when available, eat seasonal foods only to save transport, and demand green—that changes those industries and drives change for the better. No climate solution is best, they all contribute, but personal solution is what everyone can do the help collectively and ultimately makes the difference.
#climatechange #climatecrisis #globalwarming #recycle #Author #Writer #WritersOfMastodon #WritingCommunity
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Snark, #AI, Executive Orders, and maybe schadenfreude? An #XO struck down a #Biden XO "...required developers of AI systems that pose risks to U.S. national security, the economy, public health or safety to conduct safety tests and share the results..." but...
When it comes to AI, the #Trump administration apparently does practice what it preaches, however. And that brings us to the second connection. With an additional 24 hours to examine the flurry of Trump XOs, the evidence is pretty clear that... substantial portions of them were written by AI. The problem here is that things like commas, indents, dashes, word choices, etc. matter an awful lot when it comes to figuring out what instructions are being given to the federal agencies. With these sorts of details, however, AI isn't great. So, it could be an adventure as federal employees try to parse the XOs. Maybe they can ask AI for help.
This is an example of why people that can actually write and use logic at the same time, like being able to walk and chew bubblegum, can be of use and are worth the money you pay them. Mind you, vagueness in laws, rules, or instructions are one of the ways that those laws, rules, or instructions get struck down by the courts.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2025/Items/Jan22-1.html
#uspol #genai #chatAI #Writer #Author #WritersOfMastodon #WritingCommunity
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The Jan 6 Report Volume [Trump] One is released. Grab your copy before history can be rewritten!
#uspol #USPolitics #Trump #Democracy #Felon #Insurrection #Insurrectionist #Writer #Author #WritersOfMastodon #WritingCommunity https://newrepublic.com/post/190190/jack-smith-trump-january-6-report