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#PennedPossibilities 1122: SC POV: Do you have a favorite meal? Who makes it for you?
[Okay, is it possible for me to NOT turn these things into little stories? Apparently, not! Here the devil-girl, an SC in the current WIP, gets to talk about her insanely rigorous academic training as a child. —RS]
Appreciating cuisines was always part of my upbringing—before I ran away. Generally, I'll eat anything; the months I lived homeless, I even dumpster dove. I had to approach food like my other studies—like maths, warcraft, and defensive martial arts—learning how food was grown and prepared, how to identify the ingredients once cooked including origins of wines and vegetables to judge their quality, plating, kitchen techniques… Of course, I got tested! Writing essays always makes the diner better enjoy the meal. Am I right?
Attempts to teach me to cook turned out disastrous. I nearly burnt down a wing of the mansion. Twice. Not intentionally! Really! The rumor that I poisoned my tutor is overblown. Nevertheless, after the incident, said tutor wisely decided that a woman who hosts state dinners really doesn't necessarily need to know how to cook said meals. Okay, I'll admit it: cooking was my worst subject, beating out boring history.
I rarely got to appreciate a whole meal, except when I practiced hosting. Even then, I was too busy to take more than a bite of each plate or a sip of each soup or wine whilst keeping up witty pithy conversations with guests two and three times my age. (Yes, I had a tutor in witty conversation; glad you asked! I even had to write after action reports on the hidden agendas each practice guest was told to be bringing up subliminally or indirectly.)
Ended up preferring to grab a loaf of bread stuffed with cold butter, before rushing off to my next training or practice.
Eating for me was another academic, like everything else in my life, including sleeping—I learned and practiced lucid dreaming, naturally. Mealtime became a blur of textures, scents, and mouth feels that required thought and evaluation. So… No favorites, but you guessed that. I do know good food when I see, smell, and taste it. I even appreciate and will seek it out, but I have… let's call it a "refueling mentality."
I don't really care.
Except…
Practicing my defensive arts at twelve years old, I'd sometimes sneak into the servants' wing when they slept. On one sortie, I discovered butter pumpkin bread. Gingerbread scents with the depth of luscious nutty real-churned cow butter, vegatably with a coarse chewy crumb, not very sweet, caramelized and crusty short of starting to burn. I could discuss the temperature related changes to each ingredient to explain how it fit together to make a synergistic whole, but I'll instead admit that I would not understand my physical reaction until years later when I had sex.
Ate the whole loaf.
I could barely keep from thinking about it the following days when my tutors started downgrading me, and until my guardian gave me the talk about being distracted.
I finally snuck over again, hoping no mouse traps were set to catch a rodent thief. Found a loaf on the main table under glass. Each subsequent stealthy sortie to servant's quarters, I'd always find a loaf hidden. In some cabinet, sometimes in an oven or a cast iron pot—until I realized why and confessed to folk I had raided. Their simple "cuisine," I liked it. I began sharing random meals with them midafternoon, when I could finagle a free unsupervised study period—until my guardian realized why my interest in cuisine class waned more than usual. He put a kibosh on it.
No servant was permanently fired because, well, I started setting things on fire, saying I could fire things, too.
Still, the only food I'd call a favorite isn't really a meal. To this day, it is still that butter pumpkin bread. My nose will pull me into a shop before I'll even realize it is one of the rare rustic bakeries that bake it.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory -
#PennedPossibilities 1122: SC POV: Do you have a favorite meal? Who makes it for you?
[Okay, is it possible for me to NOT turn these things into little stories? Apparently, not! Here the devil-girl, an SC in the current WIP, gets to talk about her insanely rigorous academic training as a child. —RS]
Appreciating cuisines was always part of my upbringing—before I ran away. Generally, I'll eat anything; the months I lived homeless, I even dumpster dove. I had to approach food like my other studies—like maths, warcraft, and defensive martial arts—learning how food was grown and prepared, how to identify the ingredients once cooked including origins of wines and vegetables to judge their quality, plating, kitchen techniques… Of course, I got tested! Writing essays always makes the diner better enjoy the meal. Am I right?
Attempts to teach me to cook turned out disastrous. I nearly burnt down a wing of the mansion. Twice. Not intentionally! Really! The rumor that I poisoned my tutor is overblown. Nevertheless, after the incident, said tutor wisely decided that a woman who hosts state dinners really doesn't necessarily need to know how to cook said meals. Okay, I'll admit it: cooking was my worst subject, beating out boring history.
I rarely got to appreciate a whole meal, except when I practiced hosting. Even then, I was too busy to take more than a bite of each plate or a sip of each soup or wine whilst keeping up witty pithy conversations with guests two and three times my age. (Yes, I had a tutor in witty conversation; glad you asked! I even had to write after action reports on the hidden agendas each practice guest was told to be bringing up subliminally or indirectly.)
Ended up preferring to grab a loaf of bread stuffed with cold butter, before rushing off to my next training or practice.
Eating for me was another academic, like everything else in my life, including sleeping—I learned and practiced lucid dreaming, naturally. Mealtime became a blur of textures, scents, and mouth feels that required thought and evaluation. So… No favorites, but you guessed that. I do know good food when I see, smell, and taste it. I even appreciate and will seek it out, but I have… let's call it a "refueling mentality."
I don't really care.
Except…
Practicing my defensive arts at twelve years old, I'd sometimes sneak into the servants' wing when they slept. On one sortie, I discovered butter pumpkin bread. Gingerbread scents with the depth of luscious nutty real-churned cow butter, vegatably with a coarse chewy crumb, not very sweet, caramelized and crusty short of starting to burn. I could discuss the temperature related changes to each ingredient to explain how it fit together to make a synergistic whole, but I'll instead admit that I would not understand my physical reaction until years later when I had sex.
Ate the whole loaf.
I could barely keep from thinking about it the following days when my tutors started downgrading me, and until my guardian gave me the talk about being distracted.
I finally snuck over again, hoping no mouse traps were set to catch a rodent thief. Found a loaf on the main table under glass. Each subsequent stealthy sortie to servant's quarters, I'd always find a loaf hidden. In some cabinet, sometimes in an oven or a cast iron pot—until I realized why and confessed to folk I had raided. Their simple "cuisine," I liked it. I began sharing random meals with them midafternoon, when I could finagle a free unsupervised study period—until my guardian realized why my interest in cuisine class waned more than usual. He put a kibosh on it.
No servant was permanently fired because, well, I started setting things on fire, saying I could fire things, too.
Still, the only food I'd call a favorite isn't really a meal. To this day, it is still that butter pumpkin bread. My nose will pull me into a shop before I'll even realize it is one of the rare rustic bakeries that bake it.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory -
#PennedPossibilities 1122: SC POV: Do you have a favorite meal? Who makes it for you?
[Okay, is it possible for me to NOT turn these things into little stories? Apparently, not! Here the devil-girl, an SC in the current WIP, gets to talk about her insanely rigorous academic training as a child. —RS]
Appreciating cuisines was always part of my upbringing—before I ran away. Generally, I'll eat anything; the months I lived homeless, I even dumpster dove. I had to approach food like my other studies—like maths, warcraft, and defensive martial arts—learning how food was grown and prepared, how to identify the ingredients once cooked including origins of wines and vegetables to judge their quality, plating, kitchen techniques… Of course, I got tested! Writing essays always makes the diner better enjoy the meal. Am I right?
Attempts to teach me to cook turned out disastrous. I nearly burnt down a wing of the mansion. Twice. Not intentionally! Really! The rumor that I poisoned my tutor is overblown. Nevertheless, after the incident, said tutor wisely decided that a woman who hosts state dinners really doesn't necessarily need to know how to cook said meals. Okay, I'll admit it: cooking was my worst subject, beating out boring history.
I rarely got to appreciate a whole meal, except when I practiced hosting. Even then, I was too busy to take more than a bite of each plate or a sip of each soup or wine whilst keeping up witty pithy conversations with guests two and three times my age. (Yes, I had a tutor in witty conversation; glad you asked! I even had to write after action reports on the hidden agendas each practice guest was told to be bringing up subliminally or indirectly.)
Ended up preferring to grab a loaf of bread stuffed with cold butter, before rushing off to my next training or practice.
Eating for me was another academic, like everything else in my life, including sleeping—I learned and practiced lucid dreaming, naturally. Mealtime became a blur of textures, scents, and mouth feels that required thought and evaluation. So… No favorites, but you guessed that. I do know good food when I see, smell, and taste it. I even appreciate and will seek it out, but I have… let's call it a "refueling mentality."
I don't really care.
Except…
Practicing my defensive arts at twelve years old, I'd sometimes sneak into the servants' wing when they slept. On one sortie, I discovered butter pumpkin bread. Gingerbread scents with the depth of luscious nutty real-churned cow butter, vegatably with a coarse chewy crumb, not very sweet, caramelized and crusty short of starting to burn. I could discuss the temperature related changes to each ingredient to explain how it fit together to make a synergistic whole, but I'll instead admit that I would not understand my physical reaction until years later when I had sex.
Ate the whole loaf.
I could barely keep from thinking about it the following days when my tutors started downgrading me, and until my guardian gave me the talk about being distracted.
I finally snuck over again, hoping no mouse traps were set to catch a rodent thief. Found a loaf on the main table under glass. Each subsequent stealthy sortie to servant's quarters, I'd always find a loaf hidden. In some cabinet, sometimes in an oven or a cast iron pot—until I realized why and confessed to folk I had raided. Their simple "cuisine," I liked it. I began sharing random meals with them midafternoon, when I could finagle a free unsupervised study period—until my guardian realized why my interest in cuisine class waned more than usual. He put a kibosh on it.
No servant was permanently fired because, well, I started setting things on fire, saying I could fire things, too.
Still, the only food I'd call a favorite isn't really a meal. To this day, it is still that butter pumpkin bread. My nose will pull me into a shop before I'll even realize it is one of the rare rustic bakeries that bake it.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory -
#PennedPossibilities 1122: SC POV: Do you have a favorite meal? Who makes it for you?
[Okay, is it possible for me to NOT turn these things into little stories? Apparently, not! Here the devil-girl, an SC in the current WIP, gets to talk about her insanely rigorous academic training as a child. —RS]
Appreciating cuisines was always part of my upbringing—before I ran away. Generally, I'll eat anything; the months I lived homeless, I even dumpster dove. I had to approach food like my other studies—like maths, warcraft, and defensive martial arts—learning how food was grown and prepared, how to identify the ingredients once cooked including origins of wines and vegetables to judge their quality, plating, kitchen techniques… Of course, I got tested! Writing essays always makes the diner better enjoy the meal. Am I right?
Attempts to teach me to cook turned out disastrous. I nearly burnt down a wing of the mansion. Twice. Not intentionally! Really! The rumor that I poisoned my tutor is overblown. Nevertheless, after the incident, said tutor wisely decided that a woman who hosts state dinners really doesn't necessarily need to know how to cook said meals. Okay, I'll admit it: cooking was my worst subject, beating out boring history.
I rarely got to appreciate a whole meal, except when I practiced hosting. Even then, I was too busy to take more than a bite of each plate or a sip of each soup or wine whilst keeping up witty pithy conversations with guests two and three times my age. (Yes, I had a tutor in witty conversation; glad you asked! I even had to write after action reports on the hidden agendas each practice guest was told to be bringing up subliminally or indirectly.)
Ended up preferring to grab a loaf of bread stuffed with cold butter, before rushing off to my next training or practice.
Eating for me was another academic, like everything else in my life, including sleeping—I learned and practiced lucid dreaming, naturally. Mealtime became a blur of textures, scents, and mouth feels that required thought and evaluation. So… No favorites, but you guessed that. I do know good food when I see, smell, and taste it. I even appreciate and will seek it out, but I have… let's call it a "refueling mentality."
I don't really care.
Except…
Practicing my defensive arts at twelve years old, I'd sometimes sneak into the servants' wing when they slept. On one sortie, I discovered butter pumpkin bread. Gingerbread scents with the depth of luscious nutty real-churned cow butter, vegatably with a coarse chewy crumb, not very sweet, caramelized and crusty short of starting to burn. I could discuss the temperature related changes to each ingredient to explain how it fit together to make a synergistic whole, but I'll instead admit that I would not understand my physical reaction until years later when I had sex.
Ate the whole loaf.
I could barely keep from thinking about it the following days when my tutors started downgrading me, and until my guardian gave me the talk about being distracted.
I finally snuck over again, hoping no mouse traps were set to catch a rodent thief. Found a loaf on the main table under glass. Each subsequent stealthy sortie to servant's quarters, I'd always find a loaf hidden. In some cabinet, sometimes in an oven or a cast iron pot—until I realized why and confessed to folk I had raided. Their simple "cuisine," I liked it. I began sharing random meals with them midafternoon, when I could finagle a free unsupervised study period—until my guardian realized why my interest in cuisine class waned more than usual. He put a kibosh on it.
No servant was permanently fired because, well, I started setting things on fire, saying I could fire things, too.
Still, the only food I'd call a favorite isn't really a meal. To this day, it is still that butter pumpkin bread. My nose will pull me into a shop before I'll even realize it is one of the rare rustic bakeries that bake it.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory -
#PennedPossibilities 1122: SC POV: Do you have a favorite meal? Who makes it for you?
[Okay, is it possible for me to NOT turn these things into little stories? Apparently, not! Here the devil-girl, an SC in the current WIP, gets to talk about her insanely rigorous academic training as a child. —RS]
Appreciating cuisines was always part of my upbringing—before I ran away. Generally, I'll eat anything; the months I lived homeless, I even dumpster dove. I had to approach food like my other studies—like maths, warcraft, and defensive martial arts—learning how food was grown and prepared, how to identify the ingredients once cooked including origins of wines and vegetables to judge their quality, plating, kitchen techniques… Of course, I got tested! Writing essays always makes the diner better enjoy the meal. Am I right?
Attempts to teach me to cook turned out disastrous. I nearly burnt down a wing of the mansion. Twice. Not intentionally! Really! The rumor that I poisoned my tutor is overblown. Nevertheless, after the incident, said tutor wisely decided that a woman who hosts state dinners really doesn't necessarily need to know how to cook said meals. Okay, I'll admit it: cooking was my worst subject, beating out boring history.
I rarely got to appreciate a whole meal, except when I practiced hosting. Even then, I was too busy to take more than a bite of each plate or a sip of each soup or wine whilst keeping up witty pithy conversations with guests two and three times my age. (Yes, I had a tutor in witty conversation; glad you asked! I even had to write after action reports on the hidden agendas each practice guest was told to be bringing up subliminally or indirectly.)
Ended up preferring to grab a loaf of bread stuffed with cold butter, before rushing off to my next training or practice.
Eating for me was another academic, like everything else in my life, including sleeping—I learned and practiced lucid dreaming, naturally. Mealtime became a blur of textures, scents, and mouth feels that required thought and evaluation. So… No favorites, but you guessed that. I do know good food when I see, smell, and taste it. I even appreciate and will seek it out, but I have… let's call it a "refueling mentality."
I don't really care.
Except…
Practicing my defensive arts at twelve years old, I'd sometimes sneak into the servants' wing when they slept. On one sortie, I discovered butter pumpkin bread. Gingerbread scents with the depth of luscious nutty real-churned cow butter, vegatably with a coarse chewy crumb, not very sweet, caramelized and crusty short of starting to burn. I could discuss the temperature related changes to each ingredient to explain how it fit together to make a synergistic whole, but I'll instead admit that I would not understand my physical reaction until years later when I had sex.
Ate the whole loaf.
I could barely keep from thinking about it the following days when my tutors started downgrading me, and until my guardian gave me the talk about being distracted.
I finally snuck over again, hoping no mouse traps were set to catch a rodent thief. Found a loaf on the main table under glass. Each subsequent stealthy sortie to servant's quarters, I'd always find a loaf hidden. In some cabinet, sometimes in an oven or a cast iron pot—until I realized why and confessed to folk I had raided. Their simple "cuisine," I liked it. I began sharing random meals with them midafternoon, when I could finagle a free unsupervised study period—until my guardian realized why my interest in cuisine class waned more than usual. He put a kibosh on it.
No servant was permanently fired because, well, I started setting things on fire, saying I could fire things, too.
Still, the only food I'd call a favorite isn't really a meal. To this day, it is still that butter pumpkin bread. My nose will pull me into a shop before I'll even realize it is one of the rare rustic bakeries that bake it.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory -
#WordWeavers 2026.09.07 — Describe a moment when one of your characters realizes they’ve made a terrible mistake.
The character thinks someone had keeled over in their living room, but when she kneels beside him, her knees end up in something sticky. She had already picked up and is holding a knife she thought errantly dropped.
That's not the moment.
Someone shows up to escort her away, saying she works for something called "the syndicate" like this character does (news to her), with constable whistles *scree-screeing * in the distance.
That's not the moment.
As they calmly "stroll" blocks from the incident at a determined pace, the character notices as second escort with a camera. Looking at the first, she sees blood spattered on her face and chest.
That is the moment of realization.
[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 -
#WordWeavers 2026.09.07 — Describe a moment when one of your characters realizes they’ve made a terrible mistake.
The character thinks someone had keeled over in their living room, but when she kneels beside him, her knees end up in something sticky. She had already picked up and is holding a knife she thought errantly dropped.
That's not the moment.
Someone shows up to escort her away, saying she works for something called "the syndicate" like this character does (news to her), with constable whistles *scree-screeing * in the distance.
That's not the moment.
As they calmly "stroll" blocks from the incident at a determined pace, the character notices as second escort with a camera. Looking at the first, she sees blood spattered on her face and chest.
That is the moment of realization.
[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 -
#WordWeavers 2026.09.07 — Describe a moment when one of your characters realizes they’ve made a terrible mistake.
The character thinks someone had keeled over in their living room, but when she kneels beside him, her knees end up in something sticky. She had already picked up and is holding a knife she thought errantly dropped.
That's not the moment.
Someone shows up to escort her away, saying she works for something called "the syndicate" like this character does (news to her), with constable whistles *scree-screeing * in the distance.
That's not the moment.
As they calmly "stroll" blocks from the incident at a determined pace, the character notices as second escort with a camera. Looking at the first, she sees blood spattered on her face and chest.
That is the moment of realization.
[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 -
#WordWeavers 2026.09.07 — Describe a moment when one of your characters realizes they’ve made a terrible mistake.
The character thinks someone had keeled over in their living room, but when she kneels beside him, her knees end up in something sticky. She had already picked up and is holding a knife she thought errantly dropped.
That's not the moment.
Someone shows up to escort her away, saying she works for something called "the syndicate" like this character does (news to her), with constable whistles *scree-screeing * in the distance.
That's not the moment.
As they calmly "stroll" blocks from the incident at a determined pace, the character notices as second escort with a camera. Looking at the first, she sees blood spattered on her face and chest.
That is the moment of realization.
[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 -
#WordWeavers 2026.09.07 — Describe a moment when one of your characters realizes they’ve made a terrible mistake.
The character thinks someone had keeled over in their living room, but when she kneels beside him, her knees end up in something sticky. She had already picked up and is holding a knife she thought errantly dropped.
That's not the moment.
Someone shows up to escort her away, saying she works for something called "the syndicate" like this character does (news to her), with constable whistles *scree-screeing * in the distance.
That's not the moment.
As they calmly "stroll" blocks from the incident at a determined pace, the character notices as second escort with a camera. Looking at the first, she sees blood spattered on her face and chest.
That is the moment of realization.
[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 2026.09.07 — ~What 'character' (letter, number, symbol, punctuation, space) would make a great main character?
† (Dagger) would make a great MC name (or nickname) in an Executioner or Mack Bollan style macho vigilante novel. It's arguably unisex, so maybe a macha character in one of those?
Actually, an MC with that name may show up in the current WIP, Reluctant Courier (for the Mob), because in that world, people name themselves!
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.07 — ~What 'character' (letter, number, symbol, punctuation, space) would make a great main character?
† (Dagger) would make a great MC name (or nickname) in an Executioner or Mack Bollan style macho vigilante novel. It's arguably unisex, so maybe a macha character in one of those?
Actually, an MC with that name may show up in the current WIP, Reluctant Courier (for the Mob), because in that world, people name themselves!
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.07 — ~What 'character' (letter, number, symbol, punctuation, space) would make a great main character?
† (Dagger) would make a great MC name (or nickname) in an Executioner or Mack Bollan style macho vigilante novel. It's arguably unisex, so maybe a macha character in one of those?
Actually, an MC with that name may show up in the current WIP, Reluctant Courier (for the Mob), because in that world, people name themselves!
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.07 — ~What 'character' (letter, number, symbol, punctuation, space) would make a great main character?
† (Dagger) would make a great MC name (or nickname) in an Executioner or Mack Bollan style macho vigilante novel. It's arguably unisex, so maybe a macha character in one of those?
Actually, an MC with that name may show up in the current WIP, Reluctant Courier (for the Mob), because in that world, people name themselves!
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.07 — ~What 'character' (letter, number, symbol, punctuation, space) would make a great main character?
† (Dagger) would make a great MC name (or nickname) in an Executioner or Mack Bollan style macho vigilante novel. It's arguably unisex, so maybe a macha character in one of those?
Actually, an MC with that name may show up in the current WIP, Reluctant Courier (for the Mob), because in that world, people name themselves!
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#PennedPossibilities 1121: What would your MC say their personal strengths are? Would other characters agree?
She'd say none. Were you to pry it out of Bolt, she'd tell you that she's deceitful, sneaky, cowardly, and twelve flavors of stupid.
Most of the other characters would disagree. They would say she's incredibly earnest, honest to a fault (despite working for the mob), and always speaks her mind. Moreover, she's dependable.
It's the qualities that have made Boss Mead and the mob lieutenants keep her around. She's very good at her job as a courier without ever sticking her nose where it doesn't belong. Rain Days, the Director of Home, was so impressed by her encounter with her, how she taught and then protected her praetorian friend Blue against her, that Rainy Days has her eye on Bolt as a possible student†. BTW, those last two are her big antagonists…
She's human, though. The truth is somewhere in between.
=~=~=~=~=
† It's an honor, but she breaks far more personal students than she graduates, and it's traveling through hell either way.[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#PennedPossibilities 1121: What would your MC say their personal strengths are? Would other characters agree?
She'd say none. Were you to pry it out of Bolt, she'd tell you that she's deceitful, sneaky, cowardly, and twelve flavors of stupid.
Most of the other characters would disagree. They would say she's incredibly earnest, honest to a fault (despite working for the mob), and always speaks her mind. Moreover, she's dependable.
It's the qualities that have made Boss Mead and the mob lieutenants keep her around. She's very good at her job as a courier without ever sticking her nose where it doesn't belong. Rain Days, the Director of Home, was so impressed by her encounter with her, how she taught and then protected her praetorian friend Blue against her, that Rainy Days has her eye on Bolt as a possible student†. BTW, those last two are her big antagonists…
She's human, though. The truth is somewhere in between.
=~=~=~=~=
† It's an honor, but she breaks far more personal students than she graduates, and it's traveling through hell either way.[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#PennedPossibilities 1121: What would your MC say their personal strengths are? Would other characters agree?
She'd say none. Were you to pry it out of Bolt, she'd tell you that she's deceitful, sneaky, cowardly, and twelve flavors of stupid.
Most of the other characters would disagree. They would say she's incredibly earnest, honest to a fault (despite working for the mob), and always speaks her mind. Moreover, she's dependable.
It's the qualities that have made Boss Mead and the mob lieutenants keep her around. She's very good at her job as a courier without ever sticking her nose where it doesn't belong. Rain Days, the Director of Home, was so impressed by her encounter with her, how she taught and then protected her praetorian friend Blue against her, that Rainy Days has her eye on Bolt as a possible student†. BTW, those last two are her big antagonists…
She's human, though. The truth is somewhere in between.
=~=~=~=~=
† It's an honor, but she breaks far more personal students than she graduates, and it's traveling through hell either way.[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#PennedPossibilities 1121: What would your MC say their personal strengths are? Would other characters agree?
She'd say none. Were you to pry it out of Bolt, she'd tell you that she's deceitful, sneaky, cowardly, and twelve flavors of stupid.
Most of the other characters would disagree. They would say she's incredibly earnest, honest to a fault (despite working for the mob), and always speaks her mind. Moreover, she's dependable.
It's the qualities that have made Boss Mead and the mob lieutenants keep her around. She's very good at her job as a courier without ever sticking her nose where it doesn't belong. Rain Days, the Director of Home, was so impressed by her encounter with her, how she taught and then protected her praetorian friend Blue against her, that Rainy Days has her eye on Bolt as a possible student†. BTW, those last two are her big antagonists…
She's human, though. The truth is somewhere in between.
=~=~=~=~=
† It's an honor, but she breaks far more personal students than she graduates, and it's traveling through hell either way.[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#PennedPossibilities 1121: What would your MC say their personal strengths are? Would other characters agree?
She'd say none. Were you to pry it out of Bolt, she'd tell you that she's deceitful, sneaky, cowardly, and twelve flavors of stupid.
Most of the other characters would disagree. They would say she's incredibly earnest, honest to a fault (despite working for the mob), and always speaks her mind. Moreover, she's dependable.
It's the qualities that have made Boss Mead and the mob lieutenants keep her around. She's very good at her job as a courier without ever sticking her nose where it doesn't belong. Rain Days, the Director of Home, was so impressed by her encounter with her, how she taught and then protected her praetorian friend Blue against her, that Rainy Days has her eye on Bolt as a possible student†. BTW, those last two are her big antagonists…
She's human, though. The truth is somewhere in between.
=~=~=~=~=
† It's an honor, but she breaks far more personal students than she graduates, and it's traveling through hell either way.[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#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. (Totally worked for Morning Glory; made me look.) 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. (Totally worked for Morning Glory; made me look.) 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. (Totally worked for Morning Glory; made me look.) 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. (Totally worked for Morning Glory; made me look.) 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. (Totally worked for Morning Glory; made me look.) 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 -
#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 -
#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 -
#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 -
#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 -
#EroticMusings 2026.08.30 — Week 66 (August 30 - September 5) Culture: How would your characters feel about the way eroticism is perceived in your own culture?
Sad? Appalled?
People in their culture might ask of us, "You potty train your children, you socialize them, you teach them to feed themselves, talk, and read, yet you don't teach them sex and contraception?"
They'd see this as a type of starvation. They would analyze it as a type of cruel deprivation practiced to guarantee knowledge of who fathered a child to inherit property patrilineally, resulting in a type of mental illness based on the transference of sexual cues from the innately human ones to objects (fetishes, as a noun) or behaviors that become what we'd label Palovian conditioning.
Not saying the characters don't have their own repression and transference going on; they are human, after all. Dramatic events change our focus, our memories, our sexual cues. In their society sex, having it, or expecting you've had it, is the norm for any gender—so long as it's consensual. Sex is taught in school. It appears in art, theatre, in regular magazines and newspapers often as self-help but also because it is fun, and sometimes in public (though depending where, it might be considered crass or demonstrative). It just is. Their "hang-ups" are uniquely theirs, but they'd be saddened by the way eroticism is perceived in our culture.
To be clear, the detail I've revealed is mostly peripheral to the stories in the series, but can be gleaned from reading them carefully. Mostly, the characters consider these things to be so prosaic and commonplace as to rarely comment on them. This is why Bolt, the MC of the current WIP, doesn't think it shameful or unseemly that she's taking photos of men and women (by implication, mostly nude) for a pin-up calendar, and many people (almost all of them women) are looking forward to buying it. These people celebrate the human body and their physicality. Their kinks lie elsewhere.
In any case, I feel this layer will add extra interest to the story to readers in our culture, to the extent they perceive it.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
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#EroticMusings 2026.08.23 —Week 65 (August 23-29) Studio: Is your creative space tidy or chaotic? Is that important, or just how it is?
It's KAOS!!!
That's a Get Smart reference†, the title of which show is a double-entendre, making twice as fun for a writer. It's also a reference to my interior mindscape. I do think the state of my mind (not so much my environment) is important for writing about people nobody can see living in places nobody ever heard of doing all sort of impossible or embarrassing things nobody tries that would be banned in many southern states by nobody that will ever be remembered for other than banning books. And. Doubtlessly. Poo-pooed by grandma… who is somebody, actually.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
† Get Smart is an American comedy television series (1965–1970) parodying the secret agent genre.[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
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#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion -
#EroticMusings 2026.08.16 — Week 64 (August 16-22) Craft: Share a work in progress that demonstrates something about the way you work, which might not be obvious from seeing the completed work. NOTE: Maybe TL;DR
Literally, I'm demonstrating something about how I work that might not be obvious seeing it completed. These four drafts of my 1st chapter (first few ¶s) demonstrates that I'm totally willing to rewrite where necessary. I'm going for a sense of "being there," while establishing something important about the MC: in her soul she is a capital-P Photographer. Since it's her photography that get this wayward jock protagonist in trouble (trouble from her POV), the rest of the important details (even the arguably erotic details) of the novel are built on that foundation.
Below is the beginning paragraphs of the novel, the first being the current keeper, the 4th draft, followed by the three I scrapped. Analyze away! Feel free to comment.
4th Draft — Focus on a empathetic broken MC and the novel's central mystery?
What the flap!
I found myself aiming my camera from my hip, approaching a spraying fountain, circling… apparently stalking the old man squatting on the edge. Bright orange-tinted direct dawn light angled down the street silhouetted him but for a leading crescent of illuminated wrinkles, boney knees, crooked nose, and wispy hair. The angle transformed prismatic whirling drops into scintillating sparkles, lens flare would grow into a smokey aura suggesting a distant fire.
I took a deep breath. I accepted what I didn't remember having been doing, the composition I seemed to have been planning. I let my body continue, wondering, once again, How'd I get here?
I knew the answer.
After another dreary day flying messages in sky blue for the boss, nothing worth the effort of memory. This, worth the effort, spurred me back to conscious awareness. Funny how gaps in memory didn't bother me all that much any more.
3rd Draft — Concision?
I felt the boom in my stomach.
Thumped, my heart skipped beats. Some daemon had tried something stupid, again, I thought, banking left for the white cooling stack roof a couple stories below me when the spacing between the city buildings let me hear screams, followed by tumbledown breaking glass. Yep, stupid stuff. Home City might be a daemon majority city, but that didn't mean horns were smart!
I shook my head and trimmed my wings to lose altitude toward West Palm. Photography required light. After a long day running messages for Boss Running Mead, I'd risen into the sky as the day shine rose bringing the unbearable heat of the season. I adored my camera, which I'd bought far too cheap to be legit. The rangefinder was great for street photography; people noticed the silver device, made their decision about me, it, and, when ignored, I captured scenes and faces without conflict, letting me later stare at frozen moments of normalcy this stupid day angel had thrown away in her ignorance.
2nd Draft — Visuals? Action?
I felt the boom in my stomach.
Thumped, my heart skipped beats. A daemon performing a misbegotten miracle, again, I thought, which meant people. Gathered. Shocked expressions. I clutched the grip of my camera. Absolute white buildings tilted left and rose ahead me as I banked and dove for a slot in the cityscape, flying through, feathers buzzing with speed. Block-sized limpet domes wizzed by. Convention tower high-rises rotated as did my horizon as I curved out of cement sound shadows. Screams echoed, but I heard the last tinkle of tumbledown breaking glass. Home City might be a daemon majority city, but that didn't stop a horn from stupidly mis-working miracle!
1st Draft — Show disaster; focus on a pejorative?
"Feather."
Click! went the shutter on my camera before I realized I'd caught a dark-skinned teenager with a broken leg, bleeding from other injuries. A constable and a grunting bystander horsed him onto a flatbed wagon—a makeshift ambulance. I blinked at the dark daemon's golden ram horns, then up at the five-story high apparition behind him. He'd stepped through what resembled a giant circular looking glass, but was a demonic field so incredibly and absolutely black that it reflected no light. Depthless, like a hole punched out reality, only the lightning bolts continuously circling and strobing and booming around its rim defined the knife edge between sanity and city, and accounted for the scent of electricity that stung my nose. Vehicles had collided where the apparition had blocked off a boulevard. A siren strapped to the chest of a day angel gliding down the street wailed.
How'd I get here—?
"Feather! You. With the camera!"
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
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#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
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#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory -
#EroticMusings 2026.08.10 —Week 63 (August 9-15) Setting: Do you create cultures, ethnicities, or even sentient species for your work? How do you go about it?
It shouldn't be surprising that I answer "yes" and "all of the above" since I write #sf and #sff stories. That they are spicy at times is important to the story, not an end in itself. That sex ends up being important is that, for most humans, it's important either personally or politically. I like making it a feature, with the above caveat, that readers will enjoy. That gives a clue as how I develop these things.
I generally want to point out gender inequities. In stories, as well as in photography, extremes in contrast often highlight specifics. I once created an alien species where the death of one gender was part of the natural life cycle, but humans marooned on the the planet quickly saw a technological solution, to save friends they'd met, unthinkable to the equally but differently technological sentients, disrupting every level of the alien and human societies. This singular detail let me address religious hypocrisy, morals, ethics, gender, overcomplicating sex, and violence against women. The story came together neatly, and it's another case where one of my stories inadvertently predicted something mostly below the radar at the time (1990s): artificial meat. Impossible Burger, anybody?
In a sense, what you want to show—act as a foil for what you want to say, or make possible to happen—gives clues to the culture or ethnicity you want to create. I wanted to depict a culture where patriarchy never existed. To a large extent, I made this work by making it impossible to inherit property, or power since it usually requires property. This implied family would be predicated primarily on who your mother is, and who her siblings were. In a pre-gene savvy world, it's a failsafe method that doesn't require one gender sequestering and oppressing the other. Doesn't create a utopia—humans don't work that way—but it does change perceptions, significance, and emotions tied up with gender, sex, and engaging in sex. Dramatically. Throws a monkey wrench into concepts tied to fidelity. Turns out culture and ethnicity write themselves when you posit something like this.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
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