Daily 1:

exactly 1,000 words

Okay, time to try 1k word introduction.

Hi there!! I’m Niko, I use they/them pronouns and am co-leading poetry this session. I love baking and just made chocolate chip cookies, last week I made creme brulee for my mom but I messed up a little and it ended up not tasting as good as I was hoping.

Time to go on a rant about my favorite books. SIX OF CROWS (spoilers) oh my goodness the amount of love I have for this book, the characters are just amazing and the world-building is incredible. If I had to choose my favorites would be Nina and Wylan though the other four are still very much loved. (spoilers for crooked kingdom and Rule of Wolves) Matthias’s de@th completely broke me but I loved seeing Nina and Hanne fall in love and love in that little maid house or whatever it was. I also watched the tv show and while I love the show itself and how everything looked I kind of wish they made them separate as I loved the new interactions I still wish I saw more of the original story, though I do hope we see more of Inej’s and Zoya’s friendship.

Time to actually answer the daily question rather than continue to rant about the wondrous wonderful books by Leigh Bardugo. I think I would be an ice cream with a bubble waffle cone with the top scoop being lemon ice cream with little pieces of raspberry, inside the cone would be a Belgian chocolate ice cream with chocolate pieces and other small cuts of fruit. Now the other choice would be either cicada or garlic ice cream and yes those are both real ice cream flavors.

Back to book ranting, I am currently reading 1984 and it is taking me more than a month and I am not even halfway done yet because I can not force myself to sit down and actually read since I’m not in a super interesting part right now and am too lazy and have no motivation. Before that, I read The Book Thief and I loved it so much, the way it was written was so beautiful and the way Death was the narrator was a very unique and interesting way to tell the story.

This summer I’m volunteering at a nursery so basically I just have to play thirteen kids who are all between the ages of three to five which becomes very tiring after doing it every day for four weeks.

I also do competitive rock climbing. I am on comp team at my gym which is the highest level and I have been to divisionals for bouldering. I really love rock climbing because it requires me to train all parts of my body and my mental strength. It is really daunting and scary a lot of the time and you constantly have to fight feelings of fear and intimidation. For me personally, I don’t often get scared while bouldering (bouldering: climbing without a rope on wall that are usually 14-16 feet tall - top rope: 30-40 feet walls that you climb on a rope with a person on the side holding you - lead climbing: instead of rope coming from the top you bring it with you from the floor and clip into clips as you climb so if you fall you’ll fall a couple of feet and then get caught.) I started climbing when I was six and mostly did bouldering so I got used to it. Rope climbing on the other hand terrifies me, even though I am completely safe and I know that I still imagine the worst possible situation once I’m on the wall. Even when I know I can climb something I don’t trust myself enough to not get scared and not give up. I also need to lead climb which I feel even worse about, I freeze up once I’m on the wall and hold on for dear life so that I don’t fall even if it is completely safe and the fall is not even that large. Once I’m on that wall I forget everything and just become scared and stuck. Nevertheless, rock climbing is still a huge part of my life, I spend around twelve hours a week climbing and have made a lot of new friends from it.

I am also on stage crew for my school drama, last year we did It’s a Wonderful Life and Into the Woods. I loved making the sets, for into the wood we built a large platform the people could walk on but also was tall enough so people could crawl underneath it and crawl out a trapdoor behind a fake rock. Next year I’ll be the lights co-chief and while I have loved my experience so far it is a very long process with me having to stay for hours after school for four to five days every week.

I want to finishhhh, so sad right now. How about I talk about my goals for this session? My first goal is to simply stay active, last session I tried to finish every daily and every weekly and I did do that… for the first 16 days but afterward I got burnt out and was a lot less active but this doesn’t mean I want to finish everything which takes me onto my next goal. To focus more on quality rather than quantity, I want to make sure that this session the dailies I do I put actual effort in rather than completing it just for the sake of completing it. I want to try out different writing styles and come up with more meaningful plots. My last goal is to simply enter the writing competition, I don’t want to have a goal about winning because I don’t think that is a good goal to make, for me personally I always overthink my writing and never think it’s good so I don’t often enter.

prompt: Somewhere in the deep recesses of your mind, regurgitate five random words into the comment section. Now, gobble down somebody else's five random words and write 300 words using those delicious words as a prompt to earn 200 points! Sharing the daily you wrote with those scrumptious vomitted words will allow you to slurp up an extra 50 points.

Whisper, breeze, dusk, light, scent

339 words

footsteps deafened the patter of the rain. her ear pressed against the cold window hearing the breeze of leaves passing through the streets and escaping the capture of the raindrops. the whispers of death passed around the house, entering the souls of the empty husks that haunt the brick building.

dusk sets over the town as insects begin to crawl out of the cracks and rifts in the soil, testing their environment. the streets flood, carrying the filth and the corpses of the aphids that couldn’t escape their death. morbid faces pass each other in the halls of the symmetrical, identical buildings, they share their common dark essence with meaningless hugs and empty touches. the continuous poison rain kept pounding on, hitting the cracked concrete and falling into every tiny crater and dent.

the nihilistic thoughts of death were conversed in hushed whispers between the cracked open doors. the clouds began to clear and light breaks through and hits the streets beginning to warm the water as it prepared to descend back into the sky. the brick of the houses warmed up and turned hot to the touch. bodies exited their dwellings and began the long walk to Central. their feet are dragged against the hard, scorching stone. their calloused hands clutch the shovel and they begin to stick the spade into the moist soil and pile it in a lump. they bury their hopes and buoyancy in the ground covering it with the dirt they labored over.

lines grew long, trying to get scraps of whatever food they could get, oatmeal that was watery enough to simply be soup, meat from a can that was probably road kill, the scent bad enough to make anyone want to leave. with slop on their plate, they began their journey back to the boxes that they call houses, the roads were paved with stone that was almost completely broken turning it into a dirt path. as they enter through the doors of hopelessness the cycle repeats itself over and over again.

352 words

My goals for this session.

I think in past sessions I have more been focused on getting as many points as possible and completing all the dailies and weeklies I can and often submitting dailies that were not finished or were very much rushed in the last thirty minutes and not my best work. In the last session, I decided I would try and finish every single daily, this caused me to turn in a lot of writing pieces I didn’t like and by the time I reached the 19th daily, I was very burnt out and kind of bored and became sort of inactive. This session while I will try to motivate myself to go outside of my comfort zone and complete dailies I would often skip I also want to make sure the writing I submit I don’t submit purely for the points. I hope for this session I can work more on different writing styles and improve my writing skills, more specifically my world-building skills and writing realistic dialogue.

Another thing I want to make sure I do in this session is really to learn how to critique writing better and not be scared to ask people for feedback. In the first session of the Critiquare (sob how do you spell it??) I don’t think I ever actually participated in it, partly because I didn’t want to ask people to read my writing and then ‘judge’ it and because I didn’t know how to give actual helpful feedback. I hope to improve that skill and just try it this month even if I still have the same feeling of doubt. My last goal is to enter a writing piece into the writing competition that I am actually proud of, similar to my issue with critiquing I’ve also been scared to enter my writing into the competition because I’m scared I guess to be judged by people I actually look up to. I’ve begun to write a piece that I hope to keep working on and improving this month and then submit for the competition even if I get scared.

When creating the cabin lineup for this session, we sadly had to say goodbye to two of our regular cabins: Fanfiction (Fan-Fi) and Bizarro Fiction (Bi-Fi). As an homage to them, we'll be focusing on those genres today!
First, comment at least one idea for a bi-fi twist - for example, “”inanimate objects are able to speak.“” Then, take a look at this excellent workshop on character voice in fanfiction by Fae (@-faerylights) from July 2022: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/701390524
Pick a “chunk” of your favorite piece of existing media (it can be anything, as long as there's a plotline!) and consider the pacing and flow, how the ideas was connected. With that in mind, choose two of the bi-fi prompts from the comments here and incorporate them into a rewrite of your “chunk” of the original media.
Prompts:

Your character can see people’s death if they touch them (-rainyskiies-)
The clouds come down and take the form of a character’s fears in front of them (Fantastical_Words)

renegade kind of spoilers. tw: death and gunshots

874 words

Drowning

Car crash

Brain Cancer

Stroke

The words follow me, circling my head, implanting images of death in my brain never allowing me time actually to think properly. It’s been like this since I was born, I’ve had it before I even got the power that gave me my name. Of course, as a little girl, I never thought much of the images of gunshots I saw every time I would hug my parents or my sister. Only after their deaths did I connect the dots, maybe if I had realized before I could’ve prevented their deaths, but that didn’t matter, all that mattered was getting revenge.

By now I have gotten used to seeing the visions, every hug caused me to their gruesome, painful deaths. That’s the problem with being friends with “villains”, most of them die in a non-peaceful way. I never tell them, in fact, the only person who knew about my surprising second power was my uncle.

I had learned by now to push past the visions playing in my head, whenever I touch someone to put them to sleep I can better push aside whatever I see. But I have never been in this large of a crowd before and it was disorienting,

Someone was lying in a hospital bed with their family standing beside them, holding their arm as they closed their eyes for the final time.

A blurry vision, police lights, broken glass. They had gotten into a bad car crash and died right before the police could reach them.

For this one I barely have time to register whar happened, an explosion and the last thing they saw was Phobia, stading over them.

And then, someone crashed into me, usually I’m meticulous, this would never happen otherwise,

A gunshot. And then nothing.

“Watch it.” I mutter and I hear Ingrids voice in my ear, “What’s going on, Nightmare?” I’m still flustered and I don’t register what’s going on. Then to make things worse, another person appears next to me. He’s a boy, around my age, I mutter something and step back but he doesn’t get closer but instead goes toward the girl who just crashed into me, he lifts her up by her ankle and says “Give it back.” I just stare, I try and breathe and calm down but a crowd has formed and I still have no idea what is happening. Finally the girl hands something to him and that’s when I finally realize. My bracelet! She had stolen it, and I somehow hadn’t realized. What was wrong with me? It’s not like me to not realize.

The boy walks back to me and hands the bracelet back to me, I’m extra careful to not him and grab it. “Thank you.” I say under my breath and prepare to run, but the crowd had grown and more people stood around me. I was trapped.

The boy, who was talking to the girl before now began to walk toward me,

Five feet

Four

Three

Two

I couldn’t do it anymore, I had seen enough, there were too many people too close to me and Ingrid’s voice continued in my ear. I took a deep breath preparing myself and sprinted into an alley before the boy could begin speaking. I kept running until I got into a dark alley away from everybody. I pressed my back against the brick building wall, trying to take breaths to calm myself.

They’re too many deaths. Too much blood shed, and I had to see it all. But I had to get myself together, there was someone I was sent to kill today, someone who’s death I haven’t seen but now must cause, people were counting on me. I pressed of the wall and squared my shoulders, I needed to get to the roof of the building and fast. And that’s when I went crazy.

I must have been really disoriented or tired, maybe I didn’t sleep and am now hallucinating, because I can’t imagine a single normal situation in which a cloud would come to life.

“Nova! Nova answer me.” I heard Ingrid’s voice but I didn’t respond because in front of my eyes I saw a cloud come down and turn into the silhouette of something, finally I realized what it was. Three people. One of them clutching the other while the third stood in front and yelled at them to run. But they didn’t. They stood there. As one by one they died. No Renegades. No one to save them. I hid in the closet. I wasn’t strong enough then to save them but I heard it all, if only I had control of my power earlier they would still be alive, but I didn’t. It was my fault.

Slowly the clouds that were recreating the scene began to disappear and my tears began to slow. My shirt had gotten wet. I must have been sitting there for minutes and minutes, just cuddled up in a ball. Weak. I stood up and whispered to myself, “One cannot be brave who has no fear.” And launched myself up the wall. The deadline had passed. I didn’t kill Captain Chromium. Phobia was gonna be *.

Quick, look to your left! The first object you see will be the topic of your daily. Imagine what would happen if you put it into a smoothie—what would it look like? What strange powers would it give you?

234 words

A lamp smoothie. Now the first obstacle we must face is how to blend the lamp itself, I’m guessing that my blender would break once I tried to put my large metal lamp in it. First, we would have to find a way to do that, perhaps we melt it? We must also make sure to include the actual light bulb to get the full effects of a lamp smoothie. I also have a keychain hanging off of it so we should include it for some additional flavor.

Now that we have that out of the way we can actually try the smoothie. For presentation, it is a gray almost blue color with a gold swirl and some pink specks. Onto the tasting, there’s first a small metallic taste for some reason but followed with a very nice sweet flavor almost like a chocolate milkshake, the keychain provides a sour kick to cut through the sweetness and has a similar taste to pineapple. While the look may be unappealing the taste is enough to make anyone want it. And of course, the magic power it provides. A few minutes after consuming the smoothie you will be able to produce light on your hand for one to two hours. This smoothie is perfect for camping trips and late-night hikes since with this even if you lose your flashlight you can still find your way back.

Weekly

Part 1: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/post/7384922/

547 words

Part 2 (workshop on world building by @Telianar)

very much not my best writing, i just wanted to finish the weekly haha

603 words

It has been 276 days since the world ended. 592 days since war was declared on Earth. And 5 days since the first attack on Elburto 4 was launched. Elburto 4 is the last planet humans could live on. After Earth was destroyed some people were able to escape and make it to our new home though only less than one percent of the population could survive. Elburto 4 was a relatively small planet and only part of it was habitable. A lot of the planet was magma and hot rock but where humans lived it was quite the opposite it was dark and gloomy and was raining half of the time and cloudy the other half. Most people lived in large, concrete apartments that were gray and devoid of personality. Buildings and streets were barely set up and food was scarce.
Every week each household gets around a cup of millet to eat, the rest of the food you get is secured by trading and trying to get some job that pays you less than five dollars a day. Supposedly the newly created government was building large factories in the magma-hot lands but no one could prove it.

The attack on Earth came from a planet discovered a few years, Citan, before I was born. Once scientists discovered a way to travel to other galaxies they quickly began to find and record a lot of new planets. One of them with a living civilization. For years after, both governments had argued and tried to negotiate but in the end, Earth sent the first attack and ones from Citan followed them. A nuclear war started and continued for about ten years until the last attack struck and almost completely destroyed the planet. Two years before the end of Earth the government decided to begin sending people to Elburto 4. Random children were chosen from schools and sent into small capsules through space.

I got sent here two days before the final battle. With more and more people worrying about the end of Earth, fewer and fewer people could go. People would pay millions and millions of dollars to be able to leave. It had become an auction for your life. Billions of dollars were piled up as people tried to escape. My family was not one of those people. We had a small house and barely enough money to get food.

On January 9th my family got ready to die. We, just like everyone else still on Earth were getting ready for everything to end. We didn’t expect for Earth to last for more than another month. That night as me, my brother, and my mother watched the news my father came back with a grim look on his face. He had left very early in the morning and didn’t tell us where he was going, we found he spent the entire day at work where he begged his manager to give them four tickets to go to Elburto 4, he had offered up all of our money and everything else we owned. All the money was nowhere near the amount most tickets were being sold for but his manager took pity on him and gave him a ticket. One. I was the only one in my family who would leave Earth. I was sent with a couple of people into a small, metal box into space. The trip was long and most of the time was spent sleeping. I knew nothing of the events on Earth until I got to Elburto 4 where I had learnt all of my family had died.

207 words

This sentence reads a bit strange perhaps a small change like this: “It carefully preened its feathers as to avoid looking at Elliot” This is a small thing but you use Elliot's name a lot repetitively, perhaps replace some with pronouns. You spent most of the time discussing the setting and just showing Elliot's and Alwin's relationship and then in the last few sentences showed this significant transformation. For me, this felt a bit rushed and pushed into the end so maybe include something like the satchel or more about the mission earlier on?

First of all, I really enjoyed reading this and loved how you wrote this, your way of describing the setting was very pleasing to read. The flow is really good, you were able to tell the setting well and with metaphors without slowing it down much, the only part I think it felt partly rushed was at the end, I was a bit confused at the end if I hadn’t read the description you put into the Critiquitaire

The character was written very well the only thing I can think of is to explain more of what Elliot wants from Alwin. But your writing was consistent and it was really cool to read.

It begins to carefully preen its dark feathers.

This sentence reads a bit strange perhaps a small change like this: “It carefully preened its feathers as to avoid looking at Elliot”

After a few silent minutes, the bird makes a disgruntled noise and opens its wings, gliding downward and landing gently on the grass near Elliot. Elliot reaches out his hand to touch the bird, but it quickly hops away, glaring at Elliot with disdain.

This is a small thing but you use Elliot's name a lot repetitively, perhaps replace some with pronouns.

Elliot nods in response, producing a small vial of iridescent purple dust from his satchel and uncorking it. Shaking it out in his hand, he sprinkles it atop Alwin’s head. Slowly, the glimmering particles begin to dissolve, like stars fading into a dark night sky.

Alwin’s entire body starts to transform, lengthening and increasing in size until he towers above Elliot, casting a dark shadow upon him. His long ebony feathers make him stand out tremendously, a large black ink splotch upon a watercolor painting.

You spent most of the time discussing the setting and just showing Elliot's and Alwin's relationship and then in the last few sentences showed this large transformation. For me this felt a bit rushed and pushed into the end so maybe include something like the satchel or more about the mission earlier on?

hi! this piece was beautiful and i thought your writing was great. i really loved how you told this story with the flashbacks and your way of describing things was great.

“A horrible word. I shall never speak it again. I shall never speak again?”

this is a bit of personal preference so don’t feel forced to change anything, i think with the repetition the sentence feels almost a bit clunky, maybe something like this instead? “A horrible word. One not to be spoken again. Never again.” the following sentence could also be adapted to fit this. again this is more how i would write it and i think your way was also great.

the switch from the wedding to the children was a little fast and could work better if there was another short paragraph about their life for example them buying a house, traveling, living their newly wed life.

“A second child.” by starting with mentioning the second child it feels almost abrupt and might be better if changed to something like “two children, it seemed unthinkable to me at some point but now here we are. Clara and Liam,”

overall i though the plot was very interesting and your writing style is really nice to read. i think the only thing i can thing of working on is flow, it felt sort of slow and then suddenly a big jump. one way to help might be adding a one word sentence between these quick paragraphs. for example before Clara’s funeral add a filler line like, “life with Charles was I all i hoped for, it was perfect.

And then.”

Then Clara’s death to kind of show how it started to break the life.

a lot of this was rewording and how i would write so i hope it still helped at least a little.

Thank you notesss

General thank you:

Hello hellooo!! I really loved this session and though I don’t think it was my best session regarding writing I loved getting to know so many new people and growing more relationships. Everyone I have talked to was so energetic and talented and amazing to talk to. You guys are all great writers and awesome people.

Hosties

As always this session was just amazing and we all appreciate you guys so much for everything you do. You guys put a lot of time and effort into making SWC such a good experience so just a huge overall thank you for that.

Daily Team:

You guys produced such amazing dailies and weeklies, thank you so much for everything you guys have done for SWC.

Poetry:

Finley (essayist)

FINLEY!! I am so glad to have been able to work with you. I don’t think I can describe exactly how much I have enjoyed this session. You were a fantastic leader and an amazing friend. Your writing, especially poetry is so beautiful and pleasing read, I have loved reading your writing this session. I want to say so much more but I don’t how to fully express my gratitude without just continuing to repeat how amazing you are so I just want to give you a big thank you for everything you have done for me and all of the Poetry campers <33

Summer (-SimplyWatermelon-)

Summer! You were such a great camper and radiated so much energy and made this session such a fun one. You were a very active camper and I noticed you completed a lot of weeklies and dailies, you contributed so much to the Poetry cabin, from your war on Contemporary to the motivation you gave your fellow campers thank you so much for being such an awesome camper.

Ollie (extrovertedd)

ollieeeee DD I loved talking to you and getting to know you more, you were a fantastic camper and a very clever clue-breaker. I’m really glad I got to meet you this session and look forward to seeing you in future sessions. (also good luck in freshman year hehe :wink: )

Orca (PoemFlower)

Orca! You were really positive and I enjoyed reading some of your writing when you completed the dailies. With it being your first session you were really active and participated in the cabin. I hope I’ll see you more in the future!

Lily (stvrrriii)

hi lily! You were such an awesome camper and nice job on solving the clue! You were in the cabin and just a really nice person I hope you enjoyed this session and I’m really glad you were sorted into it.

Eevee (AmazaEevee)

Eevee, I’m sad we didn’t talk too much this session but I saw you were such an amazing camper and really active and I hope that in the future we’ll be able to talk more because you seem like such a cool person :]

Other Poetry campers:

I’m so so sorry if I left you out of the individual thank you’s, just know I thought you guys were all so amazing you guys were really active and I think we placed really well with the amount of cabins there were. You guys are all so cool <333