this is my thread to post writing throughout swc!

SWC Daily-Word Soup

This isn't the greatest writing, didn't really have time to edit but whatever

Words I claimed:
google, brother, little, generate, prince


“I’m telling you, if your brother could be found by a Google search, you’d have found him a long time ago” Daphne said, ever sensible. I knew she was trying to be realistic and I knew that on some level she felt like she was protecting me from getting my hopes up but it still bothered me. She was my best friend, but even she didn’t totally understand me. Clinging to little pieces of hope like the notifications that Google would generate about extraordinary ten year olds was the thing that kept me going, especially these days when life seemed to be a dull, uneventful sea of gray. It hurt to see other people moving on with their lives while I was still stuck in the past, in the days before my brother was kidnapped.
My thoughts were interrupted by Daphne’s voice, a tone I couldn’t quite read.
“What’s that?” I turned my head towards my screen, my eyes desperately scanning the list of stories until Daphne pointed at the title.
Ten Year Old ‘Chess Genius’ Adopted By Norwegian Prince Can’t Remember His Own Name
I stared at the words, trying to calm myself down. It definitely wasn’t him, it was all the way in Norway. Probably not him. It couldn’t be. Should I even want it to be? My head was flooded with thoughts coming a mile a minute, each scarier than the last. Would he even remember me? How do we know if it’s him? What if he does remember and he knows that it’s all my fault. I felt like my thoughts were volatile and my head could explode at any minute.
A gentle shake from Daphne brought me out of it all. “Breathe in and breathe out,” she whispered “That’s all you have to do now, we’ll figure it all out later” I took a big breath in and then out. That’s all I had to do. In and out. In and out.
In
and
out.

Prompt, Day 4
It's been a few days since SWC started - hope you got the chance to get to know your cabin and give Starr lots of cookies ;D Imagine a character (either one of your own creation, or from a story you like) in your cabin. Would they get along with your cabinmates, or would a messy mango fight ensue? How might their personality react in that environment? Write at least 250 words for 100 points, and share your writing for an extra 50 points.


i made a new OC just for this lol. did i name her betty because I couldn’t think of anything and that song was playing…maaaaybe. no relation to betty from the song though, just couldn’t think of a name.

399 words, 150 points

I hear the door to our cabin pushed open, followed by a gust of wind from outside. I look up to see Alia standing in the doorway, panting with a huge grin on her face. I’m pretty sure she’s coming from the main cabin which is quite a walk from our secluded cabin tucked away deep in the woods.
“Did you see the paper posted in the main cabin? We’re in first! Y’all are so amazing”
The previously calm cabin erupts into an excited celebration. I bury my face under my covers. After only a few seconds a camper I think is named Claire rips my blanket off and says “C’mon Betty join in!”.
I know she means well, but I can’t help but begin to feel my body fill with rage. I take a deep, calming breath, ready to forgive her but then she grabs the pillow from under my head. That’s the last straw.
“GIVE IT BACK” I yell, sending the cabin into stunned silence. The girl stands there, a shocked look on her face. She mumbles an apology and I instantly feel bad. “Sorry guys, I’m just kind of tired” I tell them. I know it isn’t enough and everyone is still staring at me so I ask them if they want breakfast. I’m answered by several hesitant nods so I make my way towards the small wood burning stove. Cooking always feels easier than using my words so I hope I can convey my apology this way. As I listen to my cabin mates chatter about landmarks and vacations I slip into the familiar rhythm of cooking. Even though I’ve never cooked here before I feel as comfortable as I would in my own kitchen, something about the way the cooking ingredients and spell ingredients are neatly lined up on the shelves like a darker cottagecore Pinterest page. Time flies, and before I know it I’m plating the food, adding little sprigs of herbs and lavender so everything looks perfect. I walk over to the table where they’re still chatting and I begin to silently distribute the food. The girl I yelled at is the first to address me.
“Betty this is so good, how did I not know you could cook like this?” she says. I smile and sit down at the table, not feeling like an outsider for the first time all week.

Day 5, 325 words
Today, our daily focuses on an ex-cabin's genre from a few sessions ago—Mythology! Choose a creature, god, or other character from ancient mythology and write about them interacting with the modern world for at least 300 words—hopefully it won't make your hands too thor This daily will earn your cabin 300 points, plus an additional 100 for sharing.

this is kinda the beginning of something that could maybe become a full fledged story sometime, i also rly need to work on paragraph breaks

“I know who you are.” the man growls, lowering his voice in an attempt to sound intimidating. Athena only smiles “And?”
The man stutters, clearly taken aback by Athena’s response “Y-your secret isn’t safe” he says. Athena laughs, a pleasant, condescending chuckle and then says “Who put you up to this?”
“T-the woman, the weaver” he says, trembling in fear now.
“I’m afraid that’s not enough description” Athena says, her voice firmer and more serious than it was mere seconds before.
“She doesn’t let us know her name.” the man says. Athena nods, appearing satisfied with the answer and looks him dead in the eye. “You will leave here right now and never come back. You will never, ever work with the ‘weaver’ again. You will forget any of this happened. If you do any of this, your days will be numbered. You are lucky it is me and not a crueler god, do you understand?”
The man nods, turns around, and sprints out of the office not once looking back. Athena sits back down at her desk and turns to her laptop. She faced situations like this fairly often because she hadn’t chosen the most subtle way of life in the mortal world as the CEO of a multinational company quite literally named Wise Women, with financial backing from The Athena Corporation. Mortals were surprisingly quick to dismiss this as a love for the classics but every so often someone would catch on and she would have to deal with them. Still, this unsettled her because ‘the weaver’ sounded a little too much like Arachne. But that was impossible, Arachne was condemned to weaving for all eternity. Still, there was no such thing as impossible and this was a concerning coincidence at the very least. Athena mentally filed this possible threat away but soon her attention was taken by an email from a politician and she temporarily forgot about the incident.
The man didn’t.

Weekly!


Reflection, 143 words.

I spent almost thirty minutes sketching on my iPad while listening to music which is usually relaxing for me, this time I wasn’t feeling entirely relaxed. Sketching is usually fun and kind of carefree, but my relationship with art lately has been somewhat messed up and I’ve started to get frustrated when I can’t draw something exactly the way I want to or when what I do doesn’t turn out perfectly. I think that my art class in school (where there’s pressure because it’s my grade) and my habit of comparing my art to other people’s art are somewhat to blame for this and I really feel like I need to get past that and just work to get better instead of getting frustrated. Despite this, I still feel like I was relaxed most of the time and it was beneficial to me.

Consuming Media

This became more of an analysis than I intended but whatever, 220 words.

I listened to the lakes by Taylor Swift, paying really close attention to the lyrics which I found to be even more fascinating than I had previously realized. The song starts out with a fairly long instrumental introduction which has a vaguely wistful and melancholic feel to it, then around twenty seconds in, she begins singing “Is it romantic how my elegies eulogize me?”. This line is interesting in a lot of ways, not only does she use the similar sounding words “elegies” and “eulogize” to create a sort of euphonic effect, it also is interesting to think about and really sets the tone for the song. The background is full of what sounds like string instrument pizzicato, guitar, and a subtle cello melody which I found to be very calming. Throughout the song she touches on feelings of not belonging, not just with certain people, but with society in general, wanting to abandon everything and flee for “the lakes” with her lover which painted a really vivid picture in my head, and I really related to the feeling of wanting to escape everything. The poetic writing style, the mood, the “lakes where all the poets went to die”, and the line “what are my Wordsworth” all seem to allude to Romantic poetry which I thought was also really cool.

Story, 670 words

Visiting the lakes was supposed to help her but somehow she still felt just as stuck as she had at home. She stared out the open window, marveling at the picturesque view as the cool breeze tickled her skin. The scene was so beautiful, so breathtaking, and here she was trying to recreate it with her vague muddy mix of watercolors on a paper. What was she even doing? This was pointless. A wave of frustration overcame her and she grabbed the paper and crumpled it up, tossing it into the ever growing pile of failure. Maybe it was the medium? She walked to the other side of the cabin to get her charcoals and sketchbook but before she could even make it across the room she stopped in her tracks, consumed in her own thoughts.
She was such a failure. She’d been staying here for an entire week and all she had to show for it was a pile of crumpled up papers. She thought back on every person who had ever complimented her art, on every A she’d gotten on a school art project, every time she’d felt that happy rush after completing a project. It was all for nothing. They were wrong. She wasn’t a visionary designer and painter, she was a pathetic, sad excuse for an artist. With that thought she began to rip up the pages of her sketchbook because none of them were good enough anyways. She would never be Van Gogh or Picasso so why even try. Rip. Rip. Shred. Rip.
Just then, her girlfriend Skye walked in. “Maggie what on earth are you doing?”
Maggie paused the shredding of her sketchbook and looked up, finally taking in the destruction she’d caused.
“I just can’t do it anymore” Maggie moaned
“Do what?,” Skye asked “Art? Life?”
“Everything,” said Maggie. “I don’t belong. Back home or anywhere.” Her world was falling apart. This was the one thing she could do, the thing that made her special and now she couldn’t even do it anymore. She ripped up another page.
“C’mon Maggie, this isn’t going to help anything,” her ever rational lover said. “Stop”
Maggie obeyed.
“Let’s pick up the pieces” Skye commanded, her calm voice remaining calm. She got down on her knees and began to help
Again, Maggie obeyed. As she began picking up the pieces she started to talk. “I just can’t make anything. Anything at all”
Skye started to talk but then Maggie cut her off. “You wouldn’t understand Skye, sometimes I feel like you’ve never done anything wrong in your life”
Skye’s face darkened and Maggie immediately knew she’d said something wrong. “I’m sorry” she mumbled.
“It’s okay,” Skye said, the hurt still evident in her voice “But can you not say that? Just because I look collected and in control now, even to you, doesn’t mean–”
“I’m sorry,” Maggie repeated “I’m really, really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, it was really insensitive and I wasn’t thinking.”
“I know you’re sorry,” Skye said “That’s why I forgave you, just don’t say it again. Now less about me, more about you. What’s going on with you and your art?”
“I don’t even know but nothing I make is good enough anymore” Maggie said
“Can I see?,” Skye asked. Without waiting for permission she took the crumpled watercolor off of the top of the stack and unfolded it. “Maggie, this is beautiful, what’re you talking about?”
“But it’s not right!” Maggie whined. There was no way to explain how imperfect and flawed the painting was.
“Can I tell you something my director had to tell me every day? It’s kind of cliche, but you can’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Make yourself make something and not quit. I’ll even paint with you. Will my failure make you feel better about yourself?”
Maggie laughed and they both stood up and walked to the table with her art supplies. “Let’s do this.” Maggie said, a determined grin set on her face.

Ahh super sorry! ^^ I though this was the mega thread <33

Daily! 118 words.
Glimmering hints of sunshine rained down through the gaps in the trees and the woman sat in her tent, patiently waiting. The sun dipped lower in the sky, the forest darkened, and still the woman waited. Soon it was entirely dark and the land was lit only by the glistening crescent moon but the woman was still there. Patience was always rewarded.
Two sunsets later it happened. The culmination of all her hours. She couldn’t believe it at first but as the black and white monster drew closer and closer she simply stared, in awe of its beauty. Its body was a fuzzy mash of black and white fur, with black circles around its eyes. It was beautiful.

Constellation Daily

Once upon a time, in the days before the night sky was lit with glittering stars there lived a king and his loyal court magician. One night, after an evening of reckless partying, the king stumbled across the castle courtyard in the pitch dark, tripping over a ladle dropped on the ground by a careless cook. The next morning he asked the castle gardener to install torches along the sides of the castle so that this would never happen again and all was settled until the next week when he was taking a stroll in the woods and he tripped over a tree root. The king, being a particularly clumsy individual, knew that this would keep happening if he didn’t do something to stop it. The very next day he approached the court magician with a question.
“Would it be possible for you to install a torch,” he paused, reveling in the magician’s confusion “Not just for our castle, but for the entire world?”
The magician had no idea how he would do this, but one cannot simply say no to a king so he did the only thing he could.
“Yes of course your majesty” he mumbled.
Every day for the next several months the magician worked tirelessly, mixing ingredients and perfecting chants until one day he finally had what he needed. In his pot lay seven glistening and glowing orbs. One by one he threw them up into the black abyss forming the shape of the ladle that had started this all.
“I’ll call this the big dipper” he murmured to himself.

Word war, 5 minutes, 196 words. Yes I made it a literal heart because my stupid brain isn't going to write metaphorically under pressure. I'm dying inside seeing the grammar mistakes I made but whatever, can't change them now.

I tapped on his heart, but the glass didn't crack. I couldn't believe that the boy wasn't even really a boy, the person I'd spent the last year with, one of my very closest companions wasn't even human. I should've seen the signs, I should've known that androids have been becoming so realistic that they're practically indistinguishable from the living but it still feels insane to think about and the betrayal hurts even more. If I had paid more attention than maybe I could've known, and I could've stopped this from happening, protected him-er it in some way, because it shouldn't really matter. Android or not, he was still my best friend and now he's a pile of scraps all due to my recklessness. His glass heart was the only piece of him that was still intact and I knew that contained an androids vital parts, specifically its memory. I picked it up carefully and put it in my backpack, ensuring it was protected from my own knife and supplies in the other pocket. Maybe, just maybe if I could take his heart back to a big city android shop he could be put in a new body and I could have my best friend back.

Here's my part for the bidaily, it's not great, but it's done.

I stared at the sight before me, my jaw gaped open in awe of the entire landscape. There were large buildings covering the ocean floor, architecture that was reminiscent of the ancient Greeks or Romans coexisting with schools of tropical fish and merpeople going about their days as if this was completely normal. On the outskirts of the city the cobblestone streets were lined with shops that looked as if they’d been plucked from a coastal town and their signs were covered with barnacles and other corals. The glass windows in storefronts gleamed from the sun’s glistening rays which cut through the water like lasers, providing just enough light for the city. The city square was full of merpeople with glittering scales of every shade, many of whom were buying and selling items at what appeared to be a market. The booths were filled with food and handcrafted items piling up on tables and the merpeople dragged bulging bags along as they swished their tails and floated from stall to stall. And above it all was the very tower I stood on which overlooked everything. I stood completely isolated from it all, save the one lonely fish floating past me. The tower was made of thousands of bricks cleanly stacked upon one another and it was only a small part of the greater castle. From the balcony where I stood you could see every inch of the territory that these monarchs controlled. The entire place felt like a hallucination, a dreamscape of sorts, it was so unreal that I had to pinch myself several times just to make sure it wasn’t a product of my imagination. The strangest thing about it was that it was real.

this is the thingy i was looking for critique on

As the clock slowly ticked closer and closer to showtime the mix of nervous excitement and dread in the room dwindled to neutral calm, like the moments of peace before a storm. There had been tension and division between the people in the room for the last several weeks, but now there was a mutual understanding of what they had to do. For the next hour and a half, their feuds must be forgotten, their awkwardness abandoned, and their friendships ignored. For the next hour and a half they were no longer their crazy, weird, complicated selves, they were other people entirely. They listened to the casual chatter of the audience on the other side of the curtain, people for whom this was simply an ordinary event on an ordinary day, not the one culmination of their work for the past two months. The reality that they were really doing this finally rang for some as they heard the call for places and slowly made their way out onto the pitch black stage, dimly lit by the eerie glow-in-the-dark tape marking the stairs. There were whispered words of affirmation and final ‘break a leg’ messages, but within a few minutes the cast heard the audience chatter simmer down to murmured words, and then to silence as the house lights dimmed, the stage lights clicked on and the curtain began to slowly open.
It was happening.