I'm so ready for a new SWC. >: ) My cabin actually won last time, which was a huge shock! Here's to hoping we'll manage that again!

Some helpful links:

My thread of all threads: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/695070/
Main cabin: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/50665171/
Megathread: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/828439/
Main Horror cabin: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/
Horror word count cabin: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/50596342/
My sister (savebats') thread: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/828518/
My invite link: https://scratch.mit.edu/users/Starthorn/#comments-382953935

(Sidenote: YAYYYYY I'm finally in the same cabin as my sister! Sixth SWC in and it finally happened ha ha)

The set-up for each day will go something like this:

Day #: #ꄗ (reason) (# words in total, #ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: word #, ꄗ # )

Note that each day I will report this in the cabin and provide a link to the proof post! Since I write so much I feel that I must do this. Here's my comment in the word count studio where I attempted to explain this, ha ha: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/50596342/comments/#comments-297811225


For archival purposes, this was my signature from last SWC versus my new one:

-Starthorn / Star || (she/her)

Man, this library sure is dark… (SWC)

—

-Starthorn / Star || (she/her)

Currently stuck in a horrifying skyscraper…(SWC)

For my own use, here's the in-cabin currency chart:

ᴄᴀʙɪɴ ᴄᴜʀʀᴇɴᴄʏ - ᴋᴇʏs ꄗ
→ participate in a cabin activity: 3 ꄗ
→win a word war: 3 ꄗ
→complete a critiquitaire: 3 ꄗ
→complete a daily: 5 ꄗ
→achieve a goal on the goal project: 5 ꄗ
→join the writing competition: 8 ꄗ
→join the memory book cover competition: 8 ꄗ
→finish a weekly: 10 ꄗ
→reach your word goal (applicable once): 12 ꄗ

Here's the way these threads work for me. I make a new post for each day and count all my words up at the top so it's easy to find. If the thing I wrote is for an assignment or is otherwise personal/not fit for scratch, I will not post proof. However, I try my best not to write these sorts of things during SWC. (I don't join in other times of the year so that I don't have to skip providing proof for long essays and the like ha ha.)

My word goal for this month is currently 50k! There's gonna be a lot of writing <3

Day 1: 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) 3ꄗ (in-cabin activity) (2364 words in total, 8ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 2364 words, 8ꄗ )

Main Cabin Daily: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/50665171/comments/#comments-297811973
Happy July, and happy SWC!! It’s that time of the year filled with inside jokes, endless writing, and lots of memories to be made <3 To kick off the session, start by introducing yourself in the comments! Reconnect with people you haven’t talked to in a while, and meet someone new! We’re all so excited you’re here :D

Hi Scratch Writing Camp! I'm so happy to see you guys again, and I see that there's a lot of new faces! (In fact, I think the fact that there are so many people this year is really cool. After all, my first SWC season was in 2020 and, predictably, there were a LOT of people that year too. I guess I've never been too much of a talker in SWC, but I really enjoy this event and I look forward to it every year!

In fact, I intended to sign up to be a cabin leader/co-leader this season but given that I was in my final trimester of my first year of college when those signups came out, I was a tad too busy to even remember to look for the project! (Actually, I haven't even really been on Scratch in months. I only briefly returned in order to sign up to be a camper!) In any case, I'm still very happy to participate even as a regular scratcher this season.

This is actually my sixth SWC session, but it's the first that I've been sorted into the same cabin as my twin sister, so that'll be interesting! (My sister is @savebats, if you're curious. I'm sure she'll introduce herself relatively soon… if she hasn't already beaten me to the punch.) I'm in the Horror cabin this season, and I'm really looking forward to being in another story-leaning cabin. It looks like all the volunteers have already done such a good job with this session of SWC!

But I might as well introduce myself properly. So…. hi! My name is Starthorn, pronounced Star Thorn. (Yes, it was my warrior cat OC's name when I was in elementary school. Do you think someone stays on Scratch for nearly eight years WITHOUT being a nerd?) If you want, you can call me Star! My pronouns are she/her.

Honestly, I'm not sure what else I can say on top of all that rambling, so I think I'll leave it there. In summary: My name is Starthorn, I'm in Horror, and I'm really excited to go!

(355 words) (5ꄗ)

In-Cabin In-Character Introduction:
I just wanted to introduce myself, ha ha. I don't know much about the plot yet but I thought I might as well do I little non-interactive rp: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-297855840

(c!Star shivers as she looks around the dark interior of the skyscraper. The architecture here is somewhere between the gothic boarding school she'd just managed to leave and the sharp, straight lines of the metal ships she had lived on all those years ago in that old, inter-galactic nation of Sci-Fi. To say the least, she's accustomed to things like this. Still, she's not exactly looking forward to being trapped in another building.)

“How do I keep getting myself into these situations?” she groans to herself. (Even if the new faces here look as nice as any other, she's not a fan of the dripping condensation on the dark steel walls, or the empty looks in some of the other people's eyes. It looks like many people came in her looking for safety from the torrential rain outside. She wonders if any of them were at the old school, too. It would be hard to know, and maybe they wouldn't recognize her now even if she had known them.)

(Perhaps this place won't be as bad as the last few little nations she'd stumbled into, but the look of this skyscraper was giving her creeps. And what had they meant by ‘challenges and dangers’? That didn't sound good. Oh well, it seemed like she was going to be stuck here for a while. She might as well do this again.)

I also did a regular introduction, which I did not count for words:
https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-297855474

(Regular introduction just because.) Hi! I'm Starthorn, but you can call me Star if you want. I use she/her pronouns and I love reading and writing! I play two instruments (bassoon and flute, although I hate playing the flute) and I'm a history/German double major in college. I wanted to sign up to be a cabin co-leader this session but I forgor lol. In any case, looking forward to a great session!

(I suppose I write WAY too much during SWC for my own health, but it's all chill. For context I've been in 5 SWC's before this, starting in the July 2020 session and I've hit 100k more than once. You can look at my proof thread here if you're curious: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/828712/)

(230+N/A words)

In-Cabin Welcoming Activity:
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1191715467/
for our first activity, we'll be focusing on our cabin currency symbol… the key ꄗ. before we can get collecting keys, we've got to unlock this big one!!

your task is to find a fact about yourself. you are to talk to as many people in your cabin as you can find, and find people who share a fact in common with you! for example, if the prompt was “favorite animal”, and my favorite animal is a lion, i would need to find someone else with the same favorite animal.

there is no limit to how many pairs you can make, but once one group (MAX TWO PEOPLE) comments under this PROJECT with their partnership, prompt (what they found the similarity with), and what the answer to the prompt was, a spot on the color by number will be revealed! the same two people in a partnership can only answer ONE prompt (the people in the partnership can then find new people to bond with and continue filling in spots of the key).

There wasn't any writing for this, but here's the links to my comments:
https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-297864951: “Wellll…. is anyone else a twin here? :3 (Totally cheating the system but I think it still counts!)” -> https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1191715467/#comments-480133590 “I have NO idea if this counts because I don't really understand the prompt super well, but me and @savebats found a similarity as well! We are both twins, and our prompt could be ‘family’! ”

(N/A words) (3ꄗ)

(PART OF) Chapter 15 of You Might Find You’re Paying Back A Little Extra Too
This is part of chapter 15 of my Trials of Apollo/ToA longfic. Lots of angst and whatnot. This section is mostly Rachel and Apollo just talking.

Rachel padded out of Sally’s room an hour later, curly hair flattened on one side of her head. Once she spotted him, she wordlessly picked her way across the living room area and into the kitchen. She sat down on a stool next to him, and he could tell by her expression that the coming conversation wasn't exactly going to lift his spirits.

“I think I have bad news,” Rachel's eyes were trained on the sink, not looking up at him as she picked at a spot of paint on her tanktop.

Apollo nodded and waited for her to go on. She had been wanting to get something off her chest since even before they had left for the quest, and even now he felt his heart sinking. Whatever it was, he was sure it wasn’t going to make him feel better.

She still wasn't looking at him as she brushed a coil of hair behind her ear. “Remember how I said that I spoke with Delphi?”

Apollo vaguely recalled how she had summarized her side of events on the previous day. His heart sank faster.

Rachel's voice was flat against the gentle hum of the building's ventilation system when she spoke again. “She doesn't like my prospects, thinks I'm… losing it.”

It felt like he had swallowed a stone. The fear that he had seen in her green eyes, her lack of control over this prophecy, even the series of quests he had just been on as Lester- he should have added it all up sooner.

“Ah,” was all he managed, already stretched to his emotional limits from the Iris messages. His mind screamed that he had to say something better, comfort her somehow, but he felt frozen. /This too? On top of everything?/

Her sigh was shaky, “I guess me and Delphi aren't exactly in tip-top shape right now.”

“Neither am I,” Apollo murmured.

He had been worried that this would be what she was holding back. She certainly wasn't the only Pythia that he had watched slip like this, but the process didn't exactly get easier with time. It made sense that, with his powers weakened, Delphi might start to fall apart again- especially after going through Python only a few months before, but he didn't want to lose her.

Rachel finally looked at him, her jaw set like someone staring at a horrible diagnosis and somehow accepting that they had to face it. “I want to stay sane for this quest,” her voice was about as strong as it could be in such a situation, “you guys need me.”

It was true, he did need her… but she also needed him. Her power depended on his own strength, after all, and if he was weakened then she was put into a dangerous position.

If nothing else, they had to fight it.

“You're not going to go insane,” he tried to pour every ounce of his Truth into those words as he held steady eye contact, “I'm not losing you too.”

Somehow, Rachel managed to smile sadly. “You sound way too confident, Apollo, but it's nice to know you care.”

He /did/ care. He cared a lot, and he certainly couldn’t stand the wavering fear still evident in her eyes. Not knowing what else to do, Apollo wrapped her in a hug. She leaned into it with a sigh.

“I want you to stay sane in /general,”/ he squeezed her tight, and he meant it.

They definitely needed to say more and strategize, but for the time being, these things were enough.

(595 words)

AmeChu Ficlet (Movie Couple)
Hetalia, APH, HWS. Amechu (America x China) Mini oneshot from a prompt. (“Rivial's Wang Yao and Alfred Jones hated each other to pieces but when they are both forced to play a couple both on set and off set, they have to either fake it til they make it or risk losing everything.”)

I actually didn't use most of this prompt because I'm not the hugest fan of human AUs, but the actors part is still there!

First came the gossipy magazines, then the gossipy social media accounts, then the obsessive and clickbaiting video compilations. Honestly, America didn't mind. He had always been a bit of a sucker for attention, and if this was what was going to get him that, he didn't mind so much.

Sure, it might have been better for his sanity if neither of them had decided to pick up this gig in the first place, but the attention itself wasn't all that awful. (He had always liked playing characters, even if his acting range was essentially from Superman to Ironman. In any case, what was so wrong with often playing the same sort of character? He was the Hero, after all!)

So what if his new gig was making his pretend to be China's weird boyfriend? They had surely done worse things in the past, even to each other.

His character, a young Clark Kent sort of fellow who wore way too much athleisure (seriously, he hardly had to get ready for work at that point), was named John. He thought that was a fine enough name, although surely it wasn't as cool as his own.

China's character, an uptight businessman who was fed up with everyone around him, was named Daniel. America thought that was a fine enough name too, although he was paying a little more attention to the well-fitted suits and slick ponytails from the costuming department than anything from the script.

Taking these roles, America knew, wasn't exactly what either of their job descriptions was supposed to include. But hey, sometimes one got tired of politics and the government! (Actually, that was all the time.) Sometimes it was comforting to give up answering all those calls and simply do what he wanted to do, as if he wasn't immortal- as if he was just another regular actor. With how franchises were running these days, an immortal actor would surely be appreciated by the directors.

Plus, it wasn't like he /minded/ acting as China's (sorry, /Daniel's/) boyfriend. There was something fun about that little bit of rebellion, and a little online gossip that seemed to believe everything on screen was real wasn't going to deter his fun. In fact, he sort of liked the gossip. (Again, he /was/ an attention seeker. He was the United States of America, for crying out loud!)

China didn't seem to like all the online gossip, but America knew him well enough to read beyond that partial annoyance in his unnaturally golden eyes. There was a dark sparkle there too, and that light conveyed a similar sort of amusement that America knew was in his own- if one looked past the shine of his too-blue eyes as well.

What could he say? Nations thrived on attention. It wasn't like China had made it this long without feeding off gossip and nation-worship. America was no better, after all.

If anything, America was surprised that more nations didn't go out of their way to pick up acting gigs. Being in actor was exactly the sort of thing that made nations /glow./ They did it practically all the time in their regular lives anyway, and a little bit of a different character in exchange for more hungry eyes on them? More people watching, waiting for their next move? More people practically worshipping them? That was exactly the sort of trade that, in America's book at least, was well worth it.

Every time he saw his face on a trashy tabloid, he couldn't help but smile. He /lived/ on this stuff. A bit of relationship drama, stirred up by a fiction that no one could pick out from reality, was a perfect way to slap his mug on a few more wet newspapers. He was glad that their bosses seemed aggravated, that the world was surprised by this change of pace- this unexpected collaboration. This was the perfect rebellion: it drew eyes and judgement, it was a break from politics in all the ways that mattered, he got to be a movie hunk again, and it made his heart race.

The heart racing part hadn't exactly been the goal when they had started this little game, but he couldn't say he minded it.

Alfred stared at his phone, letting his mind wander. Nations weren't usually enemies in the same way that their literal political entities were. After living for a couple hundred (or a few thousand) years, one got a little tired of all the bloodshed. The problem was that humans, whose lives were already so finite, seemed truly bent on destroying the other beings who had managed to be born around the same time as them. Generation after generation, it didn't change.

But nations were a little less hostile to each other than the governments who tried to move them like puppets. Rivals? Often. But they weren't usually at each other's throats. (Usually.)

Maybe that was why so many gossipy viral hashtags online seemed to be revolving around the new movie. Maybe humans were fascinated by this little gig. Maybe these on-screen interactions were twisting their views of nationhood and the dynamics between those immortals in their midst that they couldn't help but whisper, couldn't help but stare. Rumors had always been a favorite of people, after all, and little rebellions like these were the perfect thing to stir this favorite pastime of their citizens.

In fact, why not take this rebellion to the next level? Why not make them think that it was /real?/

America opened his social page and started typing.

Sure, he was not John. China was not Daniel. They were not dating. But they were Alfred and Yao as much as they were their national titles, and who was to say that Alfred and Yao couldn't be dating? (They weren't, but that wasn't the point.) Maybe a little hint at that sort of thing wasn't too bad. Maybe it would be fun.

(Surely it would make more people stare, and wasn't that exactly what they had both always thrived on? Half-disgusted attention? Fanatic approval? That was what political entities were made of, after all.)

America clicked post.

Soon, he was sure the comments would come rushing in. Questions, ecstatic and horrified. Exclamations that they ‘knew it all along’ or that this too was a lie. Soon enough, he was sure he would get a message from his co-star as well. Would that be disgust, too? Or would China have a similar idea of conspiracy? A similar plot for rebellion?

America didn't know, but he didn't care. Movie stars burned bright, did they not? And for someone who couldn't die, it didn't matter if he crashed and burned too. Any press was good press, and a few little rumors flying around that two nations were dating when their bosses disapproved was nothing if not /press./

He turned his phone off and smiled up at the ceiling. There was a publicity event on the following Monday. No matter what happened, he was going to keep playing this character. And he hoped his co-star would too- well-fitted suits and all.

(1184 words)


(355+(230+N/A)+N/A+595+1184)

Day 2: 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) (2554 words in total, 5ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 4918 words, 13ꄗ )

Main Cabin Daily:
Welcome to the first point-earning daily of the session—today, we’re going to send each other a bit of extra motivation as we prepare for the session. Post a couple of your goals for the session in the comments here, choose someone else’s goals, and then write them a related motivational letter or note of at least 250 words. Upon successful delivery of your letter to its recipient, you’ll earn your cabin 150 points.

My letter to @cceaneyes: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/50665171/comments/#comments-297867122

All four of the goals you've set are really admirable. Challenging though they may be, I really believe that you can meet all of them!

Your goals work really well with each other, and I think that each one is accomplishable with the support of the other goals that surround it. After all, what better way to write a lot of words than to do many of the dailies and weeklies? So long as you manage to meet your goal of avoiding procrastination, you'll strive towards both of these other goals!

As for your wish to meet new people, I saw that there were a very large number of signups this session, and I'm sure that many of the rest of us are also looking to meet new people. With all the folks who are participating this session, this goal also works itself out so long as you stay on topic and continue to engage with the camp- which I'm sure you will. (I'm also looking forward to meeting new people, so I guess this letter itself could count somewhat towards your goal!)

Given that we're currently twinning with our word counts, I feel the need to say that I'm sure you can meet your goals, but that is coming from more than just sharing the 50k target. I think that as long as you keep on target and continue working towards your goals, this Scratch Writing Camp will work out very well!

Honestly, I wish you the best of luck this session and I hope you do really well. See you around, and it was nice meeting you!

My goals: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/50665171/comments/#comments-297867806

Firstly, I would like to reach my word goal before the end of the month and be able to raise it at least once (doing all of the dailies and weeklies is included in this.) I have written 100k words during SWC multiple times before, so this should be possible! Secondly, I am trying to complete at least 5 of the 19 unfinished fanfictions currently sitting around collecting dust on the page I write fanfiction on. Thirdly, I would like to rewrite my resume (which I sadly won't be able to provide proof for but it DESPERATELY needs to be reworked). Lastly, I would like to participate in the storyline of my cabin (Horror) until the end of the month! I adore cabins with storylines, and this one looks very promising so far.

(269+133 words) (5ꄗ)

AmeChu Ficlet (Kiss Your Pain Away)
Hetalia, APH, HWS. Nationverse. Angst/minor whump. AmeChu with Russia sorta looming in the background. Hurt!China, I guess. Prompt: “Yao has been brused severely and on the verge of dying due to an heated argument with Ivan and its up to Alfred to help him recover and fixed his broken fragile heart.” (Tbh I didn't use all of this one either.)

…And with that I've finished one of the 19 unfinished fics that I'm trying to work on this month! How exciting. : )

China hissed in pain, shifting his weight from one hip to the other as he leaned against the scratchy wallpaper.

He had dragged himself back to the hotel after the meeting, avoiding his boss and the other officials who had come because he knew they didn't think fistfights were all that tasteful. It wasn't like he really needed more people to be mad at him at the moment, so it was better to let them think that he went out for a drink or something after the meeting. After all, it wasn't so bad to let them assume that he had done something unprofessional rather than letting them know he had thrown the first punch and still gotten whooped. After all, that wasn't exactly a good omen for whatever war this might throw them into.

A few hundred years in the past, he could have won that fight with his eyes closed. (Of course, Russia had been a teen back then, but he hadn't been a pushover either. Neither of them were exactly at their prime at the moment, not compared to what they had once been at less. In that way, who would win had been a toss up. It was just that he was short and Russia was not.)

It wasn't fair.

He scoffed to himself. This was pathetic, wasn't it? He was the most experienced Nation still alive, with material history stretching back thousands of years. He had the second highest population in the world, along with the second highest GDP- and neither of the countries who beat him in those regards were personified in the man who he had scrabbled with today. With all that success, one would think that he would be able to win a simple fistfight, but apparently not.

Apparently his physical form still got in his way after all these years- and he wasn't even weak! He was just as athletic as any of the other nations, even more so than some of them. A loss like this wasn't just painful, it was flat-out /embarrassing./

This was why he couldn't stand World Meetings. There were too many people and the stress made everyone stop thinking properly. And because he was a big contender, he had a lot of arguing to do. That tended to get people mad at him… especially the other main players.

Of course it was true that Nations weren't their governments or their politicians, and of course it was true that they didn't usually support the wars those people got them into. (After all, what was a representation of a country worth if they didn't represent their people?) Still, personifications of their sort were often quick to get into arguments- too combatant for their own good, and too defensive for anybody else's. China supposed that immortality tended to do that to a person.

In any case, trade deals were impossible to set up when there were nearly two hundred incredibly self-centered people all sitting in the same room and arguing. Honestly, China didn't even know why they tried. (Sometimes he even yearned for the ancient times where they couldn't possibly get everyone in the same place at once- both because travel was so much more difficult and because there were more independent half-immortal representations in those days. He would say it was too bad so many of them had gotten wiped out when empires started to spread, except that he had been one of those very empires in the first place. Oops?)

Anyway, he had always been very good at securing tribute. Perhaps he had pushed a little too hard for deals that favored him today, but he had never really done anything different. He was bound to step on some toes when seeking maximum profits and usually he was absolutely fine with that, it was just that he really didn't like having a concussion so maybe it would have been nice to avoid a bit of that anger this time.

China shut his eyes against the bright lights of the hotel hallway. Everything hurt, but at least his head stopped pounding so much when he didn't have to keep staring at the nauseating pattern of the carpet under his dress shoes.

He was enjoying the partial darkness of the back of his eyelids when a voice spoke up from behind him.

“Yo China, you good man?”

Great. Exactly the headache-inducing voice he did not need to be hearing right now. He kept his eyes closed and pretended not to have heard. Maybe if America thought he was asleep, he would leave him alone. (Yeah, as /if/ China would fall asleep while standing up in a hotel hallway.)

“Oooh, /gnarly/ bruise you got there,” America sounded almost impressed, “You planning to tell your boss that you tripped and fell on your way up the stairs?”

“I don't want to talk to you right now,” China opened his eyes just enough to glare at the young Nation who was now standing in front of him, “How about you run back to whatever fast food restaurant you crawled out of?”

“Ouch, harsh!” America laughed, which China found more than a little aggravating, “Don't act like /I'm/ the one who punched you, I was just an innocent bystander! I would have stepped in if I knew you were going to lose,”

“Sure,” China pushed himself off the wall and elbowed America out of his way, “And I would have been even happier when I booked this hotel if I knew you were staying here too.”

America didn't seem to understand that he was being sarcastic and laughed. (Or maybe he did understand the sarcasm and simply thought that it was amusing. That seemed like exactly the sort of thing an annoying guy like him would do.) In fact, he was soon walking after him with a pep in his step even more annoying than his too-loud laugh.

“Can you not follow me?” China didn't feel like doing the polite thing and look at America as he spoke to him, choosing instead to grit his teeth and try to ignore the aching pain radiating from the various bruises on his upper body and head.

“Follow you?” America sounded incredulous, “My room is this way too!”

Just his luck. After the hot mess that had already been this day, he had to walk with America on the way to their hotel rooms. Knowing him, he would be attempting small-talk in roughly one… two… three-

“What'd you think of the meeting? Other than getting beat up, of course,” America sounded way too cheerful. China had half the mind to punch him too, but he generally tried not to pick fistfights with people who had super strength.

Voice flat, China kept his eyes straight forward. “I think you talked too much, as usual.”

America had the gall to laugh. China supposed that talking too much was sort of his brand at this point, so he probably didn't even think of it as an insult when someone pointed it out to him. He probably thought it was a /good/ thing. Young countries tended to have annoying habits like that a lot.

“Did you spot any new faces?” America asked, “I was mostly looking at my buddies, but my bro said we have record attendance this year,”

“I don't really care about new faces,” China knew he was being too blunt, but he was in far too much pain to care. “I keep outliving you guys anyway. If they're not good trade partners, I'm not going to give them special attention.”

America's laugh was just as tinny and loud as usual, /“That/ we can agree on!”

Somehow, being stingy and self-interested was more aggravating when America did it than when he did it himself. Perhaps that was because that sort of behavior was what America was known for at this point- deceptively friendly in person, but always expecting a check in return. Again, the younger Nations were annoying like that. (Although the habit clearly didn't die out with age, if China himself was to be any example.)

He could practically feel the smile on America's face, judgmental, too-proud. He probably thought he was better just because he hadn't gotten in a fight and embarrassed himself in front of half the word today. How silly was that?

They had only walked past a few more doors when China's anger boiled over again. He stopped in his tracks and turned around, glaring into America's annoyingly blue eyes. “I feel like you're laughing at me.”

America raised an eyebrow curiously, “Um, I didn't even say anything?”

China ignored the fact that he had spoken (and the fact that what he said was a blatant lie), “Couldn't you just go away? Like, walk by and leave me alone?”

“Dude, you didn't even have to start walking,” America's mouth quirked into a smile, “I'm just going to my room!”

Groaning, China turned around and started walking again. This wasn't worth fighting over. “Well, you're annoying me,” he grumbled (knowing full well he sounded just like the old man that everyone loved to refer to him as), “And I don't even have any pain meds because I forgot them at home. The headache you're giving me isn't really helping!”

“I have pain meds,” America had to jog to catch up with him, “Do you want some?”

China shot him a withering look.

“No, seriously!” America stared down at him with those /annoyingly/ bright eyes, and the fact that he was really three hundred years old didn't make him look any less than an inexperienced college first-year, “I'll give you some if you want, no need to let everything stay all inflamed and get even worse!”

“I'm not so sure that's how bruises work,” China grumbled.

America shrugged, “Still!”

Awfully enough, as they walked past the next few doors in silence, China did find himself thinking about it. Would it be so bad if he accepted some Ibuprofen from America? They were colleagues, and relatively close. It wasn't like they were on the worst terms ever, that was proven by the fact that America hadn't jeered at him or anything like that after Russia had stormed off. Even if America was aggravating and his government was even worse, there was really no reason not to accept a little bit of help. (Well, no reason other than his ego- although that was already bruised enough.)

When America lifted his finger in the air and turned to the side, apparently realizing he was at his door, China realized he was out of time to mull it over.

“Fine,” he said, stopping both of them in their tracks.

America looked at him in surprise, and China almost regretted accepting his help before another wave of pain came up from one of the worse bruises on his back.

“Really?” America sounded pleasantly surprised, “I didn't think you'd really-”

“Yeah yeah,” China cut him off, “Don't make me regret accepting.”

He let America lead him into the hotel room anyway, only half-listening as America rambled about the mess (surely not helping by dropping his back on a random chair and kicking off his shoes into two corners of the entryway). He hadn't really indented to come in, but he wasn't going to leave without the medication. (He really was in a lot of pain, and he wasn't looking forward to the pack of cookies he had left for dinner. Too bad that he hadn't wanted to attempt sneaking straight out the door next to his boss in order to go buy something better to eat. If America had some meds for him, maybe he could at least go to bed hungry rather than staying awake hungry.)

And then America popped his head out of the bathroom (where he had been rummaging around for his first aid kit for the past few minutes). “Hey,” he spoke like he had just realized something, “Do you want dinner? I was planning on ordering something anyway, maybe we could find a two-for-one deal?”

China probably should have turned him down immediately, but for some reason he found himself hesitating. Sure, America was annoying and his voice was way too loud, but… for some reason China no longer really cared. He had deflated a bit from the pompousness in the hallway (his brain apparently deciding to stop fighting now that he was surrounded by warm lights and a carpet), and somehow didn't have the heart to decline.

He told himself that he was just hungry, and that he wasn't accepting because some part of his subconscious knew that America was trying to be nice to him on purpose and was happy about it.

“Fine,” he shifted his weight, flicking his eyes to the ground, “Just don't order fried ice cream or anything like that.”

America had the gall to laugh. China didn't have the heart to scowl.

(2152 words)

((269+133)+2152)

Day 3: 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) (1368 words in total, 5ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 6285words, 18ꄗ )

Main Cabin Daily:
Welcome to another SWClassic! It's time for the beloved three-word stories! For this daily, post three words of the beginning of a story in the comments of the main cabin, or continue what another SWCer's story by replying with only three words! Any words you write for this daily will count towards your word count goal! Have fun, it's chaos ensured!

First thread: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/50665171/comments/#comments-297934844

@Starthorn: She was flying
@Alfalfa78: because she believed
@indigo—: in the sky
@skyblssxm-unwriittcn: THERE WAS FREEDOM
@Starthorn: so she smiled,
@hanandonly: and she waved
@Starthorn: at the birds.

Second thread: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/50665171/comments/#comments-297934939

@1lMaM: the wind laughs
@Cat_Lover4132: at the sun
@BwnnyRxbbit: As I turned
@1lMaM: to face it
@BwnnyRxbbit: reality had struck
@theawesomemarbler: I don't know
@Starthorn: true warmth anymore.

omg those are such good poems???? I'm not even including anything that happens after my comments in those ones because they are literally perfect poems where they stand rn

Third thread: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/50665171/comments/#comments-297936195

@-Teddyyy-: Eternal death is
@Starthorn: a bit disappointing.

Fourth thread: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/50665171/comments/#comments-297936296

@Maciplayz-: And she said
@FireBlood23: let them eat
@dreamysolitude: cake because everyone
@Starthorn: can't afford bread.
@dreamysolitude: It's so sad
@Starthorn: that history lied.

Fifth thread: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/50665171/comments/#comments-297936641

@Starthorn: “Is that necessary?”
@Miss-Mash-Mash: I asked quietly.
@Starthorn: She only smiled.
@PixelDucko: I just couldn't
@Starthorn: believe this cruelty!
it was crazy
the way she
could be so
terribly, /willfully/ contrary.
I sighed and
shut my eyes.

It wouldn't let me type all of this one out and I actually cried trying to figure out what was wrong with it (I still don't know) Anyway ha ha day is actually ruined (this also had to do with many other things) and I feel awful right now. Not exactly stable atm

(9+3+3+6+18 words) (5ꄗ)

Whumpmas In July 1 - Part onePrompt: “I'm sorry”
Serafina Series (a conversation about the happenings of book 3 right after book 3), mild Braeden x Serafina, angst. (Except it doesn't actually get to any of that because I just really had to get some rest instead of finishing this on time lol.)

Serafina usually liked sleeping in the basement, safe and warm on the mattress next to her pa, but tonight it didn't feel as cozy as usual. It was terrible, but she just couldn't stop thinking about that night after she had first woken up in the grave and found her way home, when she had only been able to /remember/ the feeling of being close to him. When he hadn't been able to feel her at all.

She was usually a fairly straightforward sort of person (other than the whole transforming into a mountain lion buisness, of course). She hunted down rats to keep the mansion comfortable and only killed them when they were a threat to something beyond simple comfort. Rats who chewed through electrical wiring? They had to go. Rats who stole the souls of Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt's trusted guests? They /also/ had to go. And, of course, rats who tend their daughter after her to kill her also had to go. (She had only let the daughter off free because she wasn't a rat so much as a discomfort- well, that and the fact that her attempt to get rid of her in the first place had been unsucessful without her knowledge. Any rat who managed to survive a trap like that was probably worthy of keeping alive.)

But Serafina wasn't convinced that she had /forgiven/ Rowena. Spared her and befriended her? Yes, of course she had. The girl was a powerful ally and, maybe more importatantly, both of them were plenty lonely without keeping the rat's hatred alive. Still, Serafina hadn't been all to kind with the whole prospect of being dead.

She didn't want to wake her pa up, but somehow her thoughts kept slipping back into that trancendent space where nothing and everything had been real at once. Of course Serafina knew logically that this was all in her head, but she couldn't stop her heart from racing, her eyes from aching. She was terrified that the universe would reclaim her- perhaps finally noticing the oversight that had let the Angel protect her in the first place. What if it dragged her back? What if she never got to say goodbye?

Still, she couldn't wake her pa. He didn't know the half of it- she couldn't tell him what was really hurting her. (Obviously, he cared about her, but he was even more straightforward than she was. The moment she started talking about spirits and coming back from the dead, he would try to change the subject. It wasn't his fault either, he just didn't want to see his little girl close to all the dangers of the woods that he had brought her out of.)

But Serafina needed to go to /someone./ Her chest felt tight and breathing was far too difficult- almost as if she was being compressed into water dropplets crashing down through the rapids once again. (Naturally, that comparission didn't do very much to make her feel better.)

As silently as she could without shifting into her panther form, Serafina stood up from her place on the mattress. In the darkness (as clear as day from her perspective), his sleeping expression was so peaceful. Serafina hoped with every fiber of her being that he was having a very pleasent dream about tanning leather and copper wires or whatever else piqued his fancy. Even if she wished him good dreams, though, Serafina could feel the hairs on the back of her neck standing up.

It wasn't another rat- she had spent the last few nights prowling anyway. No, what she was afraid of was trapped within her own mind: the memory of all that weightlessness, the slowly returning memories from her feral panther half when her soul had been severed. Every part of that was her, but it was unnerving to think that at least two parts of her were not concious in the same way as the ‘rest’ (in the same was as what everyone else saw her as).

Everyone else besides Braeden, anyway.

Serafina gazed at the door, envisioning the silent walk up the stairs and through the grand corridors of the mansion. She had entertained the idea of going to another friend- maybe even running of into the woods to see if Waysa was around anyway- but she knew where she had to go now.

There was only one person in this entire estate who /really/ knew her. Even if it was late, she knew he wouldn't mind her company. The thought of a nice discussion with him, maybe a hug as well (so she felt more solid), sounded so good that Serafina forgot how scared she had just been.

And then the fear caught up with her again as she reached the top of the starecase.

All of a sudden, she remembered the feeling of dirt filling her lungs- of loose soil crushing her endlessly into the earth around her. That terrible feeling that meant something was wrong- that meant she wasn't nearly as solid as she thought. (Of course she could suffocate in the earth even when she was already dead. Given what else had happened in her life so far, that little detail really did seem like the cherry on top of the universe's sense of humor.)

Serafina gasped and staggered, making so much noise with just that simple breath that she knew any nearby rats were already skittering away. It wasn't like she was on a hunting patrol or anything like that, but Serafina doubted that she would have been able to bring herself to care even if she /had/ been. After all, her mind was spinning. It feel like all the walls were closeing in on her- with the very fibers that made up the fancy wallpaper stretching out to try to bond with her hair. It felt like her body was becoming air, and for a moment she imagined that the sensation of her feet against the cool, solid ground was simply another half-forgotten memory.

Even though this was a fear she could not outrun, Serafina found herself racing away from the dark staircase as fast as she could. Eyes bugged out as she sprinted, Serafina traced the way to Braeden's room in record time with nothing more with her memory. (At least she knew she remembered that, and at least it was /supposed/ to be a memory.)

She had never been the type of child to sniff or cry or really make any sort of deal out of anything, but for some reason this anxiety had been catching up with her over the past few days. Maybe the end of all the excitment had meant that her mind finally got a chance to catch up with her body- both literally /and/ metaphorically. Maybe she shouldn't have gone so long without a proper job (it made her feel useless, which made her think back to when she had first tried to reach out and touch Braeden's arm and only succeeded in making him feel worse about her death).

Whatever the case, this fear was somehow worse than that old terror from the man in the Black Cloak. She didn't know it it rivaled her feal of Rowena's father (alright, perhaps it was not /quite/ enough for that) but it was bad nonetheless.

/For a girl who likes running through the brambels after strange noises in the dark woods, I sure can be spooked eaisly,/ Serafina barely registered these thoughts before they were replaced by yet another wave of fear.

By waiting to talk about that, had she somehow made it even worse?

Whatever the case, Serafina skidded to a stop when she realized she was already at the correct room. (And /yes,/ she /did/ have the carving on the door and all the little unique details in the wood floor outside his room. She was a good friend like that- even when she was halfway to falling apart completely herself.)

(1329 words)

((9+3+3+6+18)+1329)

Day 4: 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) 3ꄗ (word war) 3ꄗ (in-cabin activity) (654 words in total, 11ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 6939words, 29ꄗ )

Main Cabin Daily:
Get your keyboards and pencils ready—it’s time for word wars, where you can take on a new opponent each day! Check out the project now for more information: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1194557054 No points can be earned from this daily, but completing a word war will boost your cabin from now until the end of the session.

My first war with @penguin-vibes: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1194557054/#comments-480555058
Their call: “script // 70-80 wpm // 5 min // no prompt // optional proof!”

—–Unedited text:
On his way to the court, he decided that this whole thing was a mess. Everything that he had done in the last few weeks probably wasn't going to help with this case, not to mention the fact that he hardly had any proof. How was he supposed to prove that he was innocent if his lawyer was going to be no help? )Not to mention the fact that this ‘court’ could hardly be called that in the first place. After all, what sort of judge sat on a boulder in the midle of the woods and stared at you with his holes for eyes instead of actually listening to the evidence? What sort of jury was eaiting excitedly in their seats for the taste of blood?)

In any case, he didn't think his prospects were looking very good. At least his mother would get some of the money after he died- if they didn't take everything he owned when theyw on.

He had never been particularly fond of the Forest Born, but this wasn't helping very much.

If he survived, maybe he could finally explain why they had always scared him. Or maybe this wouldn't help anyway. Maybe he would jsut want to run away and never come back. Maybe he didn't want to think about this even now, and he ahdn't wanted to when eh was supposed to be preparing either. That was why he hadn't finished anything before his court date, anyway.

It was true, he was scared.

Everyone would be, in his shoes. No one wanted to be torn apart because of a fake accusation. (Why would he even want to steal the fairy prince's crown? He had no use for their magic- it didn't work on him anyway. Too bad that their claws worked on him just fine.)

He thought, somehow, that some of this was because they didn't like him. That his ability to withstand magic was seen as a threat.

Of course, it /could/ be a threat, btu he wasn't going to use his inability to fly or wahtnot as a weapon. From his perspective, this was as much a weakness to him as it was a win for them. They could fly (as mentioned before), they could heal themselves. He was stuck on the ground and had to use normal, old bandages. So what if he couldn't be affected by their beams

—–Edited out typos:
On his way to the court, he decided that this whole thing was a mess. Everything that he had done in the last few weeks probably wasn't going to help with this case, not to mention the fact that he hardly had any proof. How was he supposed to prove that he was innocent if his lawyer was going to be no help?) Not to mention the fact that this ‘court’ could hardly be called that in the first place. After all, what sort of judge sat on a boulder in the middle of the woods and stared at you with his holes for eyes instead of actually listening to the evidence? What sort of jury was waiting excitedly in their seats for the taste of blood?)

In any case, he didn't think his prospects were looking very good. At least his mother would get some of the money after he died- if they didn't take everything he owned when they won.

He had never been particularly fond of the Forest Born, but this wasn't helping very much.

If he survived, maybe he could finally explain why they had always scared him. Or maybe this wouldn't help anyway. Maybe he would just want to run away and never come back. Maybe he didn't want to think about this even now, and he hadn't wanted to when he was supposed to be preparing either. That was why he hadn't finished anything before his court date, anyway.

It was true, he was scared.

Everyone would be, in his shoes. No one wanted to be torn apart because of a fake accusation. (Why would he even want to steal the fairy prince's crown? He had no use for their magic- it didn't work on him anyway. Too bad that their claws worked on him just fine.)

He thought, somehow, that some of this was because they didn't like him. That his ability to withstand magic was seen as a threat.

Of course, it /could/ be a threat, but he wasn't going to use his inability to fly or whatnot as a weapon. From his perspective, this was as much a weakness to him as it was a win for them. They could fly (as mentioned before), they could heal themselves. He was stuck on the ground and had to use normal, old bandages. So what if he couldn't be affected by their beams

(400 words)

My second war with @penguin-vibes: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1194557054/#comments-480515389
Their call: “Script || 75 || 3 minutes || I'd prefer one, but you can pick! || None required ^^”
The prompt I chose was@dolphin786's prompt: "Maybe jumping of the cliff was a bad idea…

—–Unedited text:
That was the only thought that ran through her head.
Not thoughts of her faily, not thoughts of her life. Not even the wish th fly (or the excitement of falling) that had been so normal before.

No, it was just a vauge, separated sort of regret. She ahd never been able to fly, why ahd her mind thought that this would be an escape? Just because she was getting chased by someone who wanted to kill her didn't meant that jumping off a cliff was better. Wouldn't that kill her too?

At least it meant that they wouldnt' win. If she fell, then they couldn't rbign her back to the boss. How would they prove that they had gotten her? That was right, they couldn't. So in the end, she would still win. Her allies would still win.

Sort of.

Still, it hadn't been the ebst idea she'd ever had. Not nearly. She'd had some pretty awful plans in her life, but this one probably took the cake.

If she hadn't felt like her stomach was in her throat and her brain was trying to leave through her ears, she would have sighed nonchalantly. Too bad fear came eventually.

Was she supposed to fall for this long? The cliff couldn't possibly have been that high.

But she kept falling.

Alright, this was getting suspicious. Why was she falling for so long? *(Or was it all in her head? Had she already hit the water? Was it already over?) She didn't know.

But she

—–Edited out the typos:
That was the only thought that ran through her head.

Not thoughts of her family, not thoughts of her life. Not even the wish to fly (or the excitement of falling) that had been so normal before.

No, it was just a vague, separated sort of regret. She had never been able to fly, why had her mind thought that this would be an escape? Just because she was getting chased by someone who wanted to kill her didn't mean that jumping off a cliff was better. Wouldn't that kill her too?

At least it meant that they wouldn't win. If she fell, then they couldn't bring her back to the boss. How would they prove that they had gotten her? That was right, they couldn't. So in the end, she would still win. Her allies would still win.

Sort of.

Still, it hadn't been the best idea she'd ever had. Not nearly. She'd had some pretty awful plans in her life, but this one probably took the cake.

If she hadn't felt like her stomach was in her throat and her brain was trying to leave through her ears, she would have sighed nonchalantly. Too bad fear came eventually.

Was she supposed to fall for this long? The cliff couldn't possibly have been that high.

But she kept falling.

Alright, this was getting suspicious. Why was she falling for so long? (Or was it all in her head? Had she already hit the water? Was it already over?) She didn't know.

But she

My first call: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1194557054/#comments-480552511
My call: horror || usually 70-75ish wpg || 3 minutes? || @dolphin786's prompt: “Maybe jumping of the cliff was a bad idea…” || I will provide proof, would prefer if the person I'm warring does too but you don't have to :)
And then: Actually, I'll change this so it's no prompt. :)

jk y'all, this one went nowhere this day. Check in tomorrow for that!

(400+254 words) (5+3ꄗ)

In-Cabin Activity (again): https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1191715467/
Same one as above! I actually tried a few days ago again but got nothing. Today, we have this interaction:

https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-297999696
@metanoiaaa: do you prefer sunrise or sunset! if we agree we'll use that as our prompt
@Starthorn: I like sunset because I love fireflies! How about you?

Then: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1191715467/#comments-480909156
@Starthorn: Me and you (@metanoiaaa) both perfer sunset over sunrise!

Also this: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298061073
@Starthorn: Anyone else have any ideas for the in-cabin activity? :3 I want to meet more people!
@Starthorn: Does anyone else play a musical instrument? (throwing something random out there lol)
@pepper-and-a-pencil: i play alto sax :0 and i mess around on the ukulele and keyboard sometimes eheheh
@Starthorn: That's so awesome! I play bassoon and flute

(N/A words) (3ꄗ)

((400+254)+N/A)

Day 5: 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) (306 words in total, 5ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 7245 words, 34ꄗ)

Main Cabin Daily:
The gooey marshmallow melts, slowly disappearing on the tip of your tongue as your teeth crunch on something else at the back of your mouth. ”It's Cocacola!“ someone yells from the crowd. You holler back, ”No! It's Lucky Charms!“ Welcome to another awesome daily — today you'll be writing about a preexisting product, but you’re not allowed to use the name of the product anywhere in your writing! It can be any product from food to shoes, but make sure it's 300 words to gain 150 points (and an additional 50 for sharing) and when you're done, share it in the main cabin and see if anyone can guess what you were writing about.

Sturdy and solid, it leans over my living room. Tall and imposing, the top rim is lined with little rubber figures from the dentist's office. They sit like a tiny crown of children's toys upon it's mighty head.

Too bad it's so old that the connection points to the wall are coming out and I fear, with a layer of genuine worry, that someday it will break free and crush one of us.

The shadow it casts is long over the carpet, and to sit there (even enjoying the contents it holds) makes one feel like something is looming behind- watching and waiting to strike. It does not have eyes, of course, but surely it holds enough “eyes” in it's many layered arms to watch an unsuspecting patron anyway.

It's wood is stained dark, and it's shelves look solid at a first glace. (Peer too long and notice the stack of baby books holding up one of the shelves. Peer even longer and notice the stuffed animal snake cushioning the load of a stack of history books on top of the record of all of Percy Jackson's travels (along with, of course, those pesky Trials of Apollo).

Still, even if it is unstable when one looks too close, it's an important figure in the living room. Anything that almost reaches the ceiling would be, especially one that agrees to hold so many of our treasured collection of books. (We don't blame it for the fact that it does not hold enough weight to lift the heavy SAT preparation books and the various textbooks which now lay at it's feet. It has worked hard enough, and we are too afraid to test our luck.)

There is no brand to be spoken of, no name that we know, but it does it's work well, just don't sit below.

(306 words) (5ꄗ)

daily #5

mystery product
315/300

Alright! My daily! I don’t have a specific brand in mind. <3

My product is an extremely common household necessity, one that you (hopefully) use multiple times every day. It’s been around for a very long time—since many thousands of years ago, in fact! It comes in a variety of different forms, but you’ll likely initially think of rubbing it onto your hands. For proper use, of course, you’ll then need to rinse it away with water.
From a young age, children are taught to use this product effectively, instructed to thoroughly scrub between their fingers, and get under their fingernails. This product is essential for day-to-day cleanliness, and is used to rid your hands of dirt, germs, and other grime. To do this, its molecules are both hydrophilic (attracts water) and hydrophobic (repels water). While its hydrophilic parts will cling to the water, its hydrophobic parts will instead stick to any gunk on your hands. This product can also strip your skin of its natural oils, so it’s a good idea to use lotion afterwards to ensure that your hands don’t dry out.
This product is often scented, with practically infinite possibilities in terms of scent and color. Ranging from milky white coconut, tranquil purple lavender, or perhaps something seasonal such as spruce or cinnamon. Many people even enjoy making homemade versions.
There are two main types of this product. The first is solid, often referred to as a bar. The second is a liquid lather, and found in a bottle with a pump. It can be either thicker and more gel-like, or foamy.
It also has a few more specialized varieties, including one for the entire body used when bathing or showering. There’s also a version specifically used for dish-washing. It’s more heavy-duty, and better at getting rid of grease.

Well, I don’t think I can make it much more obvious than that!

Day 6: 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) (1608 words in total, 5ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 8853 words, 39ꄗ)

Main Cabin Daily:
Have you ever read a book and wished that you had come up with the same idea first? Well, today is your chance to pretend you did! For 100 points (and an additional 50 for sharing your work), write a 150+ word spoof on a famous book. For example, write an excerpt from “The Thirst Activities” or summarize the first book of the “Barry Otter” series.
(basically like a parody of the original wok for those confused. it doesn’t *have* to be famous or extraordinarily popular, just something you enjoy!)

I just HAD to do a Percy Jackson parody (with a little bit of a dig at the show in the process-)

Peter Johnson never wanted to be part god.

He had always wanted a normal, safe, happy life away from all the dangers that such parentage would definitely bring him. Unfortunately, it didn't look like he was going to have a choice.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hoped that there weren't too many other people in his situation- or at least, they hadn't worked out that they were, yet. It wasn't that he would mind having more people in his life who understood what all this was like, but there was a sort of ticking sense of ‘danger!’ in the back of his mind. Somehow he knew that things were going to get a lot worse for him, and it wasn't like his life had ever been exactly normal. He didn't want anyone else to be put in a similar situation.

The way that he had found out was so stupid, that it was annoying. It had been a school trip to the public library- stuck in the mythology section as usual- when his best friend, Nancy Blobfish, had caved.

“Look,” she had said, picking at the peanut butter still stuck in her red hair after the school bully, Rgover had thrown it at her, “I can't keep this from you any longer.”

Then she had told him outright that his father was Zeus. Really, he should have known. Curly blond hair, blue eyes… he looked exactly like he had always expected Zeus- sorry, his father- to look. Not that he was happy about it!

(257 words) (5ꄗ)

Finishing Whumpmas In July 1 Prompt: “I'm sorry”
Serafina Series (a conversation about the happenings of book 3 right after book 3), mild Braeden x Serafina, angst.

But as she put her hand against the wood of the door to knock, the world seemed to disappear from under her feet. It seemed that running away from her problems wasn't enough when she could still slip away into memories just when safety was within reach.

She felt like she was in the grave again, buried in a cheap wooden coffin. Her lungs were only bringing in tiny amounts of air, and everything was dark- totally and completely dark. She felt her breathing quicken even though she knew she was going to run out of air. It was cramped, and her blood-soaked dress felt itchy against her skin.

Serafina could almost feel the pressure of the soil piled above her, loose for now but not for much longer. She might be able to dig her way out, but surely it would crush down and suffocate her before she could make it to the top. As soon as those scratchy boards were broken, she would only have a few seconds to struggle to air. (Not that she had much of a choice with the air running out in her coffin as well.)

It was as silent as it was dark. Had she been abandoned here? Did they even know she was missing? She had no idea how she had gotten here, so maybe they didn't know… but that didn't feel right. /Someone/ had to know. /Someone/ had to have brought her here, buried her. But why would they all have left her alone like this- trapped, terrified, and unable to claw her way out?

Serafina was gasping for breath, but when she felt her hands against cool, /smooth/ wooden boards, her brain jogged.

Wait. Smooth?

A crack melted into her vision, and soon the darkness of the coffin disappeared. Her mind was still spinning, soul feeling half separated from her body once more, and she really /was/ panting, but suddenly she remembered where she was. The mansion, in the hallway outside of Braeden's room. She was home. She was safe. (Or she should have been.)

Serafina realized that there were tears stinging the corners of her dry eyes. Although she wasn't much of a crier, there was something particularly painful and terrifying about being buried alive that was enough to make just about anybody want to sob. It was then that she realized she was on her hands and knees on the ground, head pressed against the door to Braeden's room with her hair falling loosely around her shoulders. Her whole body was shaking.

Then another wave of fear took her: what if the memory came back? She didn't want to go back!

Serafina cried out, and the exclamation felt like another part of herself was breaking. She was usually so silent, making noise felt wrong, especially this sound- mewling like a kitten who had gotten lost. Still, she couldn't help herself.

“Braeden?” she gasped, and in the silence of the hallway even her little cry sounded far too noisy. (Even then, she doubted most of the folks sleeping in these rooms would hear her. They were tucked safely under layers of downy blankets, with fires crackling merrily in their personal hearths. Surely, they would leave her out here again, abandoned in the darkness and the cold. Surely it would be just like before, when Braeden had buried her.)

Perhaps she was wrong to go to him for help, maybe she should have stayed with her pa. Even if she couldn't tell him what was wrong, she could have just burrowed into his warm chest and pretended that she was a kit again- tiny in her pa's hand. Tiny and safe. But she knew that she could never explain to him what was wrong, and she knew that he would be worried. She hadn't wanted to worry him.

Still, maybe worrying him wouldn't be as bad as being stuck out in the darkness again- separated from Braedan by a layer of wood just like before. Separated from the realm of the living, daytime creatures just as she always had been.

Her vision started to go spotty. She backed up a few feet involuntarily, crawling backwards on her hands and knees like she could outrun the memories. She whimpered and hated herself for it, but it wasn't like she could help it. Her brain was starting to tunnel back to /then,/ stuck on the silence and the darkness and the cold. It was just like-

And then the lock clicked dully, and the door opened.

“Sera?” Braeden whispered. He was staring blindly into the darkness a few feet over her head, his brown hair mussed as he peaked around the door and looked from side to side apprehensively.

She almost sobbed for real that time but managed to hold herself back as she shuffled onto her hands and knees. The memory had disappeared to the edges of her consciousness as she got to her feet. “I'm here Braeden,”

He jumped as she appeared out of the darkness, but the moment his eyes made out her expression in the darkness, concern replaced the apprehension on his face. “You woke me up, did something bad happen?” he started to creep out of his room, his whispering too loud in the silence of the hallway. How someone this loud could be woken by her tiny cry on the other side of a thick door she didn't know, but she didn't particularly care at the moment.

As a response, Serafina crossed the distance between them and abruptly pushed her forehead into the crook of his neck, whimpering again as she squeezed her eyes shut.

Braeden sucked air in through his teeth. His quivering whisper sounded worried, “Serafina?”

“I wanna go inside,” she mumbled, pressing her forearms against his chest as he wrapped his arms around her back tentatively.

“Oh- okay,” he sounded confused, but let her push him back inside his room anyway.

As soon as they were inside, she pulled herself out from his arms and let him shut the door behind them.

Just as she had thought, there was a small fire crackling in the fireplace. She had slept on the floor there before, curled up like any other tiny animal. Now, the fire lit them both with an eerie, warm light (but anything was better than the complete darkness of that coffin).

Braeden turned back to her, and she realized that she didn't know what to say. He still looked worried, eyes tracing her hollow expression and the hands squeezing tight into the hem of her dress.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

She stared at the ground, suddenly unable to speak or move. All she could think of was the old terror that she had been abandoned- that maybe Braeden had left her there in the graveyard without wanting to come back. That maybe it had been his fault. (Of course none of those things were true, but for a limited time there she really had been scared of those possibilities. That in itself reminded her of the impermanence of it all. She shivered.)

“Sera…” Braeden reached out, but stopped his hand before it reached hers. She felt herself swallow. They were still separated. Somehow, none of this felt real- none of the /life/ in her veins. She knew he had thought about that too.

For some reason, she felt compelled to push her arms forward so that their hands touched.

“…I keep thinking about the coffin,” she muttered at last.

He seemed to deflate in front of her, and this time he really did reach forward to hold her hands. Soon they were standing fight in front of each other, foreheads together. Her eyes rolled closed, head lolling down, but it was exactly what she wanted.

“You're back now,” he sounded almost wounded, “I won't let something like that happen again.”

She knew he couldn't keep that promise.

“I'm so sorry,” he murmured, and she felt her heart tighten. She let him hug her, and at least the burn of tears in her eyes felt nothing like the cold dampness of the grave.

(1351 words)

(257+1351)

Day 7: 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) 3ꄗ (word war) (863 words in total, 8ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 9716 words, 47ꄗ)

Main Cabin Daily:
Hello everyone!! Some of you might know, but today is Global Forgiveness Day!! So for this daily, it's your job to forgive someone. Pick an infamous villain from any story, and write 350 words where their actions are forgiven, and what happens to them when they receive the forgiveness. Remember, grudges are just unnecessary pain held against all people involved. You can get 200 points for this daily and an additional 150 points for sharing proof.

I guess it's probably time to forgive Lysander…. but is it really? (Professor Sycamore angst, I guess! Pokemon Games/Anime/Manga- all three are referenced. Angsty PerfectWorldShipping, post Lysander dying.)

Something about being apart made it harder to remember why they had even been angry at each other in the first place. Something about knowing that it was all already over made things so much worse.

He had never wanted this to happen- not even as their relationship soured and he started to see through the cracks in all that charity work, not even as their rivalry turned into true dislike, not even when Team Flare's world ending goal was revealed. Lysander just… hadn't been someone that needed to die. That had never been a requirement in the idea of a ‘saved’ world.

Incarcerated? Sure. But not /dead./

Maybe other people would disagree, argue that once some tried to end the world as they knew it, they weren't redeemable. And maybe those people were right.

But he had known Lysander /far/ before they were known as the Professor of the Kalos region and the boss of Team Flare. Maybe those old memories made it hard to accept the ‘truth’ of the evil that other people saw, but Sycamore hoped it wasn't just that. He hoped there really had been some good left, in the end. He hoped that the good that he saw wasn't just his imagination, and that there could have been a chance to bring Lysander back to his side if things had gone differently.

Sycamore had suffered along with his region. He had been dangled from that ticking time bomb his rival had constructed, nearly fallen to his death. But those sorts of things weren't what hurt the most.

What hurt the most was that he really had forgiven him in the end, and it was still too late. Lysander was buried somewhere under all that rubble, or blown to smithereens in that final red light, or maybe stuck stuck on those sharp rocks he had fallen on in his last moments. Those last few minutes had been strange, as the end of the world loomed nearer and nearer. Had Sycamore been there? Had he been watching from far away? Somehow he wasn't sure, it was like several possibilities had overlapped as the world started to fragment.

But the world did not end, no. The only thing that ended there was the chance to pull Lysander back to him.

However it /had/ happened, it was too late. No matter what Sycamore did, he couldn't bring his rival back. As the world celebrated another avoided ending (only a few years after the fellow in the faraway Sinnoh region had tried something similar), Sycamore was torn between relief and sorrow.

Was he supposed to be glad that it was over? Was he supposed to cheer for the ending of all that violence? (And was it really over if it had ended like that?) Sycamore didn't know. He didn't want to celebrate, he wanted to go back in time and fix everything.

Of course he shouldn't have wanted to bring back the man who had tried to restart the world, but he did. And it was selfish, oh so selfish.

He could only hope that somewhere, wherever the body was, the spirit knew that it was forgiven. Silently, behind all the loud celebration that he was dead, there was the sorrowful forgiveness of one who had never wanted this. Forlorn and tiny, a voice against the current, the child that he had once been cried for the friend that was now lost forever. And Sycamore's voice /was/ the minority, but he prayed that it could still stand strong- no matter how quiet.

He hoped that it was enough. That somehow this forgiveness could make everything better, even though it was already too late.

(613 words) (5ꄗ)

Word War with @taylorsversion–:
Original call: horror || usually 70-75ish wpg || 3 minutes? || @dolphin786's prompt: “Maybe jumping of the cliff was a bad idea…” || I will provide proof, would prefer if the person I'm warring does too but you don't have to :) (https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1194557054/#comments-480552511)

—-Unedited text:
Luckily, his wings opened before the wind started to tear hsi feathers out of his flesh. Still, it didn't feel like flgith was going to be much of a possibility. As it was, he was careering towards the Earth at speeds he had previously been unfamiliar with.

His skin hurt, and as he rolled and tumbled through the sky, he realized taht he probably should have learned how to fly before he trusted his wigns to carry him. Of course he had needed to jump, but some part of him was still wishing that he was still in the helicopter above. He hadn't meant to fall, he had meant to fly!

And yet he had jumped, and now every moment that he had ever been afraid of heights was running through his head. He remembered when he was youbnger, after his mother had died, and he was too afriad to go and take flying lessons. He had been supposed to learn when he was still young, but it was too late now.

A scream was ripped out of his lungs as the freezing air stung his face, sticking his eyes closed and makuing it hard to tell what was up and what was down. All he felt was the dropping sensatuion in his stomach, and it felt like his feathers were getting torn out now. He needed to fly, but how was he supposed to do that when he had no idea how to iopen his wings all the way?

—-Typos edited out:
Luckily, his wings opened before the wind started to tear his feathers out of his flesh. Still, it didn't feel like flight was going to be much of a possibility. As it was, he was careening towards the Earth at speeds he had previously been unfamiliar with.

His skin hurt, and as he rolled and tumbled through the sky, he realized that he probably should have learned how to fly before he trusted his wings to carry him. Of course he had needed to jump, but some part of him was still wishing that he was still in the helicopter above. He hadn't meant to fall, he had meant to fly!

And yet he had jumped, and now every moment that he had ever been afraid of heights was running through his head. He remembered when he was younger, after his mother had died, and he was too afraid to go and take flying lessons. He had been supposed to learn when he was still young, but it was too late now.

A scream was ripped out of his lungs as the freezing air stung his face, sticking his eyes closed and making it hard to tell what was up and what was down. All he felt was the dropping sensation in his stomach, and it felt like his feathers were getting torn out now. He needed to fly, but how was he supposed to do that when he had no idea how to open his wings the right way?

(250 words) (3ꄗ)

(613+250)

Day 8: 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) 3ꄗ (in-cabin activity) -7ꄗ (the mad libs activity) 10ꄗ (weekly) (3142 words in total, 1 ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 12858 words, 48ꄗ)

Main Cabin Daily:
For this daily, it's your job to omit an ABC’s sign in your writing. Your story has to contain a minimum of 300 words and no words in your story can contain said symbol that you pick. And this sounds hard, but it's worth it for 250 points!! And, you gain an additional 100 points for sharing. Now, if you look back upon this daily, you’ll spy not any “e’s.”

The letter I chose was “X” and I wrote about X. Because I think that will be a proper challenge. Is this a bad idea??? Yes.

Even at the very beginnings of his memory, those old ones where everything was foggy and strange (but somehow warm and like home despite themselves), he couldn't properly remember being the cheerful one. He had been a battler for sure, a bit of a dedicated of at that, but even that dedication hadn't made him ‘happy’ or anything like that. Still, something told him that he wasn't the same child he had once been.

Shauna had always been smiles and laughter- she was no different now. Trevor was shy back then, but smart too. In that way, he hadn't really changed either. Tierno had been confident and playful, dedicated to entertaining others. He was still like that, even after all that had happened. Those three had always known what they wanted to be, somehow always seen what they would become.

And Y was not so different from them. She had always known she wanted to fly, and she had always been boisterous and proud- but only in good ways. She had never wanted to crawl around on the ground, unable to catch the wind with those wings on her suit. And nothing had really changed there, either.

He supposed that he was the only one who had regressed.

It wasn't a pleasant thought- realizing that he had changed. For someone who hated the idea of time, and of things shifting, the fact that he was different now than he had once been was… unsettling, to say the least. (Especially when the difference was the /way/ that it was.)

He vaguely recalled those early days, back when he had been the battler of the group. That wasn't the same boy he was now, was it? That was before his parents had left, before everything had changed. That was before the reporters, before the /tabloids./

Sometimes, he still found it strange that his sponsor was the legendary who represented Life. How had he, the one who seemed to hate the very idea of waking up the day after, ended up with that god?

But at the same time, he knew it had made the right choice.

He was not one to give up, even though he desperately felt like he should. Even if he went through phased where he stayed in his room for days on end, even if he forgot to eat, even if he would sometimes rather sleep… if he was the only one who changed, maybe Life had made the right choice.

After all, what was living if not changing? No matter how much he hated it, things would never be the same again. No matter how hard he fought, the current of time couldn't be stopped. If he was the only one who seemed to recognize that fact, maybe Life knew what it was talking about. Maybe it knew that things would never get better for him.

Maybe it chose him, the one who struggled through his days, because it liked the fact that he had to fight. Maybe it chose him because he had already been torn apart and put back together again. Maybe Life was fond of a pessimist, of one who was realistic, of one who was somehow in love with and terrified of Death (or at least with who Death had chosen to sponsor).

But it had never called him by his name, had it? (And he had never called it by it's.) If things were so impersonal, perhaps it really hadn't picked him for any particular reason. Maybe it had been a random choice, the whims of a god who needed a savior.

Somehow, he didn't care either way.

After all, he was sponsored by Constant Changes in their own rights (through that deity that he still wouldn't call by name). Who would he be if not one who had no choice but to roll with the punches? (No matter how much he always wanted to hide.)

He had regressed, that was true. He was not as confident as he once was, as trusting in the future. But he was also different than before. Even if he had gotten worse, didn't that also mean that he had grown somehow?

It wasn't much comfort, but it was all he had.

(706 words) (5ꄗ)

In-Cabin Goal-Setting: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1194997783/#comments-481169535
ach “round” of goals lasts about 5 days. in each round, please set one goal related to swc (example: complete 4 dailies), and one personal goal (example: spend 20 mins a day practicing my instrument). after you've set a swc goal and a personal goal, you can also set up to 3 other goals of your choice for the round <3 if you succeed in your goals by the end of the round, you can claim 5 keys in your wcg for each goal you acheive.

SWC goal: Write at least 1500 words each day for the rest of this round of goals || Personal Goal: Finish the first chapter of my novel || Additional goal: Finish my resume omg

Now that you've read my goals, here I am to argue my case.

In the case of the first goal, I am not as concerned as it might seem like I should be. Even though writing 1500 words seems like a rather high amount to aim for considering my track record for the past few days, I hope that my time of being unable to write properly (or as I called it in the word counting studio, “chronically unable to lock in”) is coming to an end. After all, most of the days that I was struggling to write a lot were due to a surprise trip to meet my family (which included driving for almost 4 hours and a lot of cleaning a house). As long as something like that doesn't happen again, I should be flying free to write!

…Not that I even have a choice when it comes to the writing-a-lot goal, given that I still have the weekly to do!

As for my second goal, I do really want to work on my novel again. The reason why I haven't put in work for my novel is two-fold. For one, I don't like writing original writing for SWC that I intend to publish. I fear that doing so would connect me as a real person to my internet persona if I do so, and that's not a very pleasant thought. If that wasn't enough, I do have a second reason, which is that I have started writing my novel in a notebook. (Which sounds like an odd and not very smart decision, except for the fact that I want to be able to write without access to my computer.) Anyway, as one might imagine, word counting things out of notebooks is rather annoying. I have done it before (several times), but it doesn't really get any easier.

As for the third goal, I just really need to finish my resume. There's not anything else to it, I just really need to.

Now that I've explained myself, I feel much better about including a record of this in my proof thread. I am very excited to hopefully meet all three of these goals!

(366 words) *I only counted the explanations I provided here! Not the general comment.

In-Cabin Activity: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1191974843/#comments-481236331
in order to finish the mad libs story and learn about the monsters you must defeat, you have to cash in some of your currency in order to buy words to fill in the blanks. each type of word costs a different price, see below to find out the words' value!

I'm going to cash in 4 of my ꄗ's to buy the nouns “feather”, “pokeball”, “textbook”, and “hospital”. I will also cash in 3 more ꄗ's to by the animal “sparrow hawk”. (As long as I can buy multiple at once!)

(N/A words) (3ꄗ) (-7ꄗ)

Weekly: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/695082/?page=3#post-8617933
I will separate the weekly into different quote boxes here, but with any luck it will all be in this post! Also note that I went a little weird with how I did these sections, choosing to describe the character's flaws/etc in the form of prose rather than just lists!

—-Part 1: Creating A Flawed Character (written by @dreamysolitude/)
Characters aren't realistic or relatable without their own flaws, and sometimes these weaknesses end up creating a more intriguing story. To begin this weekly, figure out an idea of your character's flaws–their negative traits that might drive them to make poor decisions. Summarize the flaws you've come up with in at least 150 words to complete your first part!

The first flaw that Mitsumi knew about herself was the she thought about her flaws too much. The Professor had told her time and time again that she had to stop worrying about what had happened in the past (and how it had changed her) so that she could heal, but she didn't seem able to.

The simple truth of the matter was that she /had/ been changed- and quite a lot, actually. In that way, most of these flaws were due to no fault of her own. (That should have made her feel at least a little better, but it didn't.)

She knew she sometimes froze up in situations that required battling, not because she couldn't win but because she was afraid to show the fact that she wouldn't lose. She knew that she threw the battles she entered, preferring to act incompetent and weak rather than showing the truth of what Team Galactic had made her. She knew that she had been changed.

It wasn't like Mitsumi remembered a time before Galactic, but it was evident nonetheless that Cyrus had made her what he wanted. That was another flaw, this time truly not her fault.

She was built to be a war machine of flesh and blood. Maybe there would never be a day when she could really be trusted- by her friends or by herself. (And maybe there would never be a day when she would stop doubting their friendship in the first place.)

—-Part 2: Outlining How The Character Will Develop (written by @essayist)
Howdy doodle writers!! I hope you're enjoying the weekly so far. For the next part, you will outline how your character will grow and change throughout the story. First, go to this workshop(https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/456251/?page=1#post-4589244) about character development by @Chromesthesia. Continue by thinking about who your character is at the beginning—what are their strengths, weaknesses, fears, and goals? Then, consider what experiences or events will challenge them. How will they react to these challenges? Will they succeed, fail, or struggle along the way? By the end of the story, your character should be different in some way—maybe even more flawed ;D Enjoy crafting your character, and ensure that you write at least 200 words to move on to the next part!

Mitsumi couldn't remember what she had been like before Team Galactic had taken her. That was to be expected, given how young she had been when it all had happened, but it still aggravated her. The fact that she had never had another family (at least not one that she remembered) was always in the corners of her mind, and even now she found herself frustrated by the fact that she didn't even know who she would have been if none of that ever happened.

She knew she was strong- an unbelievably powerful battler. She knew that she was calculating and smart, almost too much for her own good. But those were traits that she had gotten from Cyrus, and she didn't want to keep them if they were his. (She didn't want /anything/ if it was his.)

And yes, she was scared of him- or at least the concept that he represented. She was afraid of what he had made her into, even though she had never known anything else. She was afraid of those she loved turning against her when they found out the truth. (Wasn't it selfish to make friends in the first place, knowing what she was? Surely they would hate her for her attempts at friendship just as much as for the monster that she was.)

But she couldn't help it- she wanted friends. She wanted to be close to others. She wanted to be her own person.

There were so many things that she wanted, but she doubted any of them were achievable. The Professor had given her this job because he felt bad for her, not because they were close. She wasn't friends with any of the other people who worked here, and she certainly didn't have enough savings to move into a city and meet new people. (That even besides the fact that she was too afraid of herself to get close to others- too afraid of what she might do to them, what they might think of her.)

So maybe she was weak in those ways. She was weak because she couldn't stand up to her own fears, she was weak because she would rather give up a fight than show the world that she was strong. She was weak because she was too scared of the alternative, and even that thought put a pit in her stomach to admit.

Maybe it would have been better to stay with Team Galactic after all- never have to worry about any of these things because she would never have to be her own person.

—-Part 3: Understanding Character Motivation (written by @Flowerelf371)
Now that you've figured out your characters' development, you'll focus on their motivations. A character's motivation is very important to make sure their decisions and what they do remain consistent and make sense for that character. Motivations can come from a character's past, things they care about, and goals. For example, in the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, one of Katniss' main motivations is to protect her sister, which leads to her volunteering for her sister and contributes to the reasoning behind many of her decisions in the rebellion to continue protecting her family. Now write 200 words explaining the motivation behind the character. Have fun!

But that wasn't true either, was it? Even when she had still be stuck in that awful organization, she had still had her own thoughts. They were forced away, yes, but they still existed. Maybe they had never managed to beat down her spirit completely, even after all those years, even after all that they had made her do.

Maybe she had made it through it those days because she really /had/ been her own person, somewhere buried deep under the machine that they had tried to shape her into. Maybe that was what she was still fighting for.

It was a silly thing to motivate her, but perhaps she had run away in the first place because some part of her wanted to protect that sense of Self which still burned within her. Maybe she had accepted this job instead of just wasting away because that person inside the shell of a Super Weapon still wanted to live. Maybe she wanted friends because it would preserve the last shreds of humanity that she had kept from before the brainwashing.

It still felt like it was a silly thing to motivate her, but somehow she knew it was the truth.

—-Part 4: Tying It All Together (written by @28thDimension)
Throughout this weekly, we've taken a closer look at what motivates our characters to take on what they do, as well as how they develop and change as their story progresses, responding to the world around them. So, what's next? We're glad you asked—now that you've created your (im)perfect (;D) character, it's time to tie it all together and place them in a tale of your very own. For the final part of this weekly, write a short story in a minimum of 450 words incorporating your flawed character, focusing on character development and their motives as we've explored throughout the past week. Best of luck!

- - -
A few months into her position as an assistant in Professor Rowan's lab, a new researcher from out of the region appeared. Her name was Daisy Oak, and even Mitsumi had learned enough about the world after escaping from Team Galactic to know that she belonged to a rather prestigious family.

Daisy was smart. /Very/ smart.

Although she wasn't as flashy as her two brothers (and she definitely wasn't in the news as much), she was a proper Pokemon Researcher. At the rate she was going, she might even replace her grandfather as the region's Professor when he eventually retired.

Daisy was here to work with not only Professor Rowan, but also the Berlitz family. Although Mitsumi wasn't entirely sure what her work in the Sinnoh region entailed, it sure sounded impressive. (Not just anybody could get a gig with the one of the richest families in the region, even if they did belong to a powerful family in their own right.)

She was pragmatic and logical, but also friendly. She sometimes invited the other researchers at the Lab out for drinks or for dinner, and she chatted kindly while at the same time finishing her work in record time and with formidable accuracy. How somehow could be both focused on work and able to make friends, Mitsumi wasn't sure.

Next to a person like that, maybe it made sense that Mitsumi felt intimidated.

And yet, even intimidated, she was curious. Something about this woman made her curious, and that curiosity made her want to get closer. (She tried to tell herself that it was her work-oriented brain wanting to get close to someone who might be an asset, but she had the creeping suspicion that what she really wanted was a friend. She had to tell herself that wasn't the case because trying to keep friends was one good way to immediately start worrying that she was going to hurt them- and that spiral of thoughts seemed to tear away at her Self more every time it happened.)

So long as she kept it in her head that Daisy was her coworker, made she could keep those fears at bay. But even while pretending away the fact that she was trying to make a friend, Mitsumi could not work up the courage to talk to Daisy first.

At least her hesitation didn't seem to matter all that much, because soon enough, she found herself chatting with her brunet coworker on the back porch of one of the buildings, enjoying the cool summer air of the Sinnoh region.

“It took me a while to get used to the temperatures here,” Daisy was smiling off into the forest across the lake, “But sometimes it's better to layer up than sweat through our climate down in Kanto,”

Mitsumi had never been to Kanto. She hadn't really had a choice between all the Team Galactic trouble and this gig at Professor Rowan's lab. (It wasn't like she had the funds to travel, either.)

“I've never been outside of Sinnoh,” she said simply, sipping the cup of cold tea Daisy had made her.

Daisy looked at her, a bit of surprise on her face. (Mitsumi was a bit shocked that she had admitted that, herself.)

“Really?” Daisy asked, sounding incredulous.

Mitsumi felt herself blush. “Not everyone has the funds to just pick up and leave…” she mumbled. /Or the time, if they happen to grow up as a Weapon in Team Galactic./

Daisy hummed, taking a sip of her own drink. She seemed to think about it for a moment, and then smiled vaguely at Mitsumi. “I just would have thought that you'd have gotten work in plenty of places. You're a great Researcher, you know.”

Her blush deepened, and she managed to mumble something along the lines of ‘I’m not /that/ great…' as Daisy giggled.

They chatted for a bit longer and by the time they needed to head back inside, Mitsumi felt a bit more comfortable talking. Somewhere in the discussion, a little bit of her fear had melted away. She was still vaguely scared of losing this connection, but somewhere between Daisy describing the time her grandmother Agatha had attempted very seriously to kill her twin brother and talking about when her best friend had joined Team Magma, Mitsumi realized that maybe a bit of Galactic wouldn't phase her.

“Here,” Daisy was passing a slip of paper across the table at her.

When Mitsumi picked it up and peaked at it, she raised an eyebrow. “Is this… your number?”

Daisy grinned, “It's my personal number, so that I can text you later!“

Mitsumi didn't know how she was supposed to respond to that. No one had ever given her their number before, at least not outside of work related scenarios. Something in her chest felt tight. Maybe she could keep a friend.

“We're going to get you out of Sinnoh yet, my friend,” Daisy was standing up with a smile on her face, “I'd love to show you my grandfather's lab! You said you have pokemon, right? Maybe we could even do a battle!”

Mitsumi felt a smile quirk onto her lips too. “I'd love to challenge you,” she said, and for once she meant it.

(247+431+200+878 words) (10ꄗ)

Part of Whumpmas In July 2 Prompt: Field Medicine
Percy Jackson book series, daughter of Apollo!Phoebe.

Phoebe didn't think about her parentage very much. She supposed that after such a long time of being with lady Artemis, her godly roots didn't really matter anyway. She felt much closer to her aunt anyway, which was what was to be expected after hanging out with her for a few thousand years.

(In fact, Phoebe thought about her godly parentage so much that it always surprised her to think of Artemis of her aunt. It was one of those, ‘huh, I guess that’s true' shower thoughts that made her brain hurt at this point.)

She hadn't really thought about the fact that her father was Apollo in the past couple decades, it just hadn't come up. Earlier on, Phoebe had occasionally wondered about him. He visited the Hunters from time to time, even camped with them sometimes, but they had never

He had been relatively young when she was born, only a few hundred or so. Had he suspected that they would all still be alive now? That the world would change so much and so quickly? And, if he had known about those things, had he known that they would still be fighting the same monsters even after everything had changed?

She guessed that he might have known. Wasn't one of his domains prophecy? The probably would make it easy to tell the future.

Phoebe was sort of glad that she hadn't received that power. She was happy enough to have archery and medicine- two things that had always been useful for hunters and probably always would be. With all the disasters that met the Hunters, it seemed likely that if she already knew everything horrible that would happen to her friends in the future, she would lose her mind.

But it still would have been nice to know she needed to bring a couple more rolls of bandages to this battle.

(314 words)

Failed Word War with no one :') :
My original call: Horror || 70-75 ish || 3 minutes || I'll be using a prompt (@primosaur's “I'd heard revenge was a dish best served cold, but the catering staff seemed to have other ideas.”) || I would prefer proof! I'll give it, in any case (https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1194557054/#comments-481175291)

This didn't end up going anywhere, but I wanted to note that I did try to do a call!

(N/A words)

(706+366+N/A+(247+431+200+878)+314+N/A)

Day 9: 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) 3ꄗ (in-cabin activity) -8ꄗ (the mad libs activity) 3ꄗ (word war) (2524 words in total, 3ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 15382 words, 51ꄗ)

Main Cabin Daily:
I’m sure many of us have listened to songs that portrayed a story, but what if we created a story portrayed by songs? If you’re thinking of things to do, let’s take a look at today’s daily! For this daily, you’ll be writing a story of 150 words from beginning to end using only lyrics from different songs! Lyrics from a certain song can only be used twice, so be sure to open up your playlists and find a way to make lyrics connect! This is worth 150 points with an extra 100 points for sharing.

I wanted this to be a proper challenge, so I decided to use only German lyrics from the band Tokio Hotel. :) That way I'm practicing a bit of German and I don't feel bad about counting other people's words as mine!

Hey Teufel komm raus, ich hab dich gesehen. Hey Devil come out, I saw you.
Du wirst für mich - immer heilig sein You'll always be holy to me.
Komm und rette mich, Ich verbrenne innerlich. Come and save me, I'm burning internally.
Ich glaube nicht das das, bald endet. I don't believe that that will end anytime soon.

Ich bin nich' ich wenn du nich' bei mir bist- I'm not myself when you're not by me-
Irgendwann laufen wir zusammen. we'll run somewhere together.

Lass uns laufen wenn die Dunkelheit kommt. Let's run when the darkness comes.

Wir sind durch die Stadt gerannt, We ran through the city,
Jetzt sind wir wieder hier… die ganze Welt da unten.now we're here again… the whole world down there.
Wilkommen in unser'm traum. Welcome to our dream.
Wenn du da bist hörst du auch noch was du denken sollst When you are there you can still hear what you should think.

Alle haben die gleiche Halluzinationen: Everyone has the same hallucination:
'n halber Mond versinkt vor mir a half moon sinks in front of me,
Die Lichter gehen aus. the lights go out.
Die ganzen Sterne fehlen im schwarzen Sonnensystem. All the stars go missing in the black solar system.
Wir ham uns totgeliebt, es bringt mich um, We have loved ourselves to death, it's killing me
weil unser Traum, in Trümmern liegt. because our dream is lying in ruins.

Wir bleiben immer, schreiben uns in die Ewigkeit. We will always stay, writing ourselves into the eternity.
Wenn nichts mehr geht Werd' ich ein engel sein - Für dich allein. When everything's over, I'll be an angel for you alone.
Ich geb mich jetzt für Dich auf. I now give myself up for you.

Bitte lass uns keine freunde bleiben. Please don't let us stay friends.

Lyrics from…
Beichte, Heilig, Rette Mich, Wir Sterben Niemals Aus, Ich Bin Nicht Ich, Durch Den Monsoon, Lass Uns Laufen, Übers Ende Der Welt, Die Letzte Tag, Lass Uns Hier Raus, Schrei, Theme Nr. 1 (Demo 2003), Durch Den Monsoon, Lass Uns Laufen, Sonnensystem, Totgeliebt, Totgeliebt, Wir Sterben Niemals Aus, Wenn Nichts Mehr Geht, Heilig, Freunde Bleiben

(152 words) (5ꄗ) *I only counted the words of my possibly terrible translation.

In-Cabin Activity: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1191974843/#comments-481342583
in order to finish the mad libs story and learn about the monsters you must defeat, you have to cash in some of your currency in order to buy words to fill in the blanks. each type of word costs a different price, see below to find out the words' value!

Okay, I'm going to cash in 8ꄗ's to buy the sounds “hgh!” and “skree!”

(N/A words) (3ꄗ) (-8ꄗ)

Word War with @Asianisawesome:
My original call from yesterday: Horror || 70-75 ish || 3 minutes || I'll be using a prompt (@primosaur's “I'd heard revenge was a dish best served cold, but the catering staff seemed to have other ideas.”) || I would prefer proof! I'll give it, in any case (https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1194557054/#comments-481175291)

—unedited text
“Don't worry about it,” Dia nodded, “I'll deal with it.”

Platinum didn't doubt his ability, but the fact that the other participants had been stealing their team's berry dishes was definetly worrying to her. She had been wondering how all the other teams had been doing so much better than them in this Performance, but now it made sense.

In the last section of the competition, she had spotted one of their oppenents looking through the food that they were just about the bring out to the judge's pokemon for the cooking segment of the round. She didn't blame the other trainers for thinking that her partner's cooking was the best possible thing they could give to the judges (of course they were right in that regard), but it did mean they were being cheated out of a potential win- and /that/ was upsetting!

If they couldn't get more points than the other teams this round, it was going to be over for them.

She wondered what Dia was going to do- how could he prevent the other teams from stealing some of their pokepuffs? It wasn't like they had proof to show the judges that there had been cheating!

The judge pokemon were all ice types. What could he even do there? And then she remembered that he had a bunch of fire berries.

Ah, so /that/ was the plsn!

—typos edited out:
“Don't worry about it,” Dia nodded, “I'll deal with it.”

Platinum didn't doubt his ability, but the fact that the other participants had been stealing their team's berry dishes was definitely worrying to her. She had been wondering how all the other teams had been doing so much better than them in this Performance, but now it made sense.

In the last section of the competition, she had spotted one of their opponents looking through the food that they were just about the bring out to the judge's pokemon for the cooking segment of the round. She didn't blame the other trainers for thinking that her partner's cooking was the best possible thing they could give to the judges (of course they were right in that regard), but it did mean they were being cheated out of a potential win- and /that/ was upsetting!

If they couldn't get more points than the other teams this round, it was going to be over for them.

She wondered what Dia was going to do- how could he prevent the other teams from stealing some of their pokepuffs? It wasn't like they had proof to show the judges that there had been cheating!

The judge pokemon were all ice types. What could he even do there? And then she remembered that he had a bunch of fire berries.

Ah, so /that/ was the plan!

(231 words) (3ꄗ) …Okay that was actually a really cool idea. I think I'm going to write it properly now!

Revege Best Served Hot! (Prologue)
(Pokemon Special/Pokespe/PKSP/Pokemon Adventures, pokemon performance fic, Platinum & Diamond.)

Platinum couldn't believe her eyes. Performances were supposed to be fun, weren't they? Even an event like this- an Extended Performance with far more rounds than a regular showing- was supposed to be a place where trainers could show off their and their pokemon's abilities through teamwork and with good sportsmanship. Why would someone ruin that spirit by doing something like /this?/

It was true that Platinum wasn't always the most skillful person when it came to social cues, and she /certainly/ didn't share the same ideas of what was ‘rude’ or not as most people. Even so, she knew enough about such things to be fully aware that in this instance, she likely wasn't wrong to feel decently annoyed and, to be honest, worried.

Not for the first time, she wished that these sorts of contests spent their money on better security rather than puffing up the paychecks of the Judges. If she really had seen what it /looked/ like she had, they had just been robbed.

Only minutes before her team's cart for this round of cooking was to be rolled out of the back hallway and presented to the Judges and their pokemon, she had gone backstage to retrieve the hat Diamond had accidentally left behind. Just as she was reaching over and picking it up off the shelf he had set it down on, an odd bit of movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. She turned and there, with the rustling of shifting fabric, she spotted one of their opponents digging through the extra Pokepuffs that Diamond had laid out on the bottom layer of the cart.

Really, she didn't get a good enough look the thief to determine their identity- but she was beyond certain that it was, in fact, a trainer from one of the other teams. The tablecloth was ruffled over their head as they crouched in front of the cart, and the nondescript outfit wasn't anything that she could easily identify. Still, their shape looked familiar enough (and average enough for a Performer) to represent any one of the other contestants who were to be walking out with her soon.

Worse yet, she wasn't fast enough to confront the thief. Before she could even make an attempt to rush down the hallway in their direction, the thief had heard her heel click on the floor and jumped. In a flash, they had turned and dipped into another hallway. From the terrible angle that she had at the other end of the hall, Platinum saw the Pokepuffs that they shoved into their bag just fine, but not their face.

She started down the hall in the direction the thief had run, but soon came to a stop. Hesitating between losing points for not showing and finding the culprit, and not being late but not knowing who had been messing with the Pokepuffs Diamond had worked so hard to make, Platinum tried to make a decision quickly. Her cart was in line to be the first to go out, and she had to be on stage very soon. Besides, by the sound of that person's footsteps, she wasn't going to catch up with them in time to make out who they were or ask what they had been doing going through her and Diamond's cart. Still, she felt her heart beating fast in her chest- throat tight as she wrestled with the decision.

At last, Platinum had to accept that the only real option was to let them go. If some of their Pokepuffs had already been stolen (and who knew /what/ the thief was planning to do with them), her team probably couldn't withstand docked points for sloppy presentation. They had already been doing worse in the cooking sections than either she or Diamond had anticipated, and she surely didn't want being late to go on stage to be the thing that killed their points this round. Growling, she turned around and rushed back out the door, only composing herself behind the curtain briefly before pushing them aside and striding forth.

The crystalline stage lights burned her eyes as she came into their range, the crowd cheering as her heels clicked on the shiny wooden boards under her feet. She was popular with these types and that popularity meant she was a threat to the other teams. Maybe they were trying to sabotage her in order to get more points for themselves?

Her dress flowed dramatically about her as she hurried to her teammate's side, and she hoped that the shifting white fabric added just enough drama for the audience to think that she was only keeping up her mysterious character instead of looking closer and seeing the worry in her eyes. Her emotions were boiling inside her like fire, but she managed to keep her face relatively flat as she came to a stop next to Diamond.

“Dia,” she kept her eyes forward, her expression pliant and blank so that no one would think anything was wrong (especially not the other teams who were just now coming out from behind the curtain. Any one of them might have been the person who had taken their extras, and somehow she felt like she shouldn't let on that she was aware of the theft.)

“Yeah?” he blinked up at her, and he must have seen through her calm guise because his expression quirked into a frown almost instantly.

She watched their cart roll out automatically just as planned. No one else could tell, but she was certain that under the ruffled table cloth, some of the treats that they had added in case the pokemon needed a second taste were missing. Her eyes locked on the fabric on the side she thought the thief had reached through. Had they replaced the extras with something awful or simply stolen them?

“Don't make it obvious that I told you, but I saw one of our opponents take some of the extras you baked.” Platinum had molded her expression into a small, pleasant smile as the judges introduced their teams Pokepuffs, eyes still looking straight forward. She kept her voice down (suddenly very glad that they weren't mic-ed up for this part of the presentation) as she added a quick, “I didn't see who it was.”

Diamond's eyes widened, immediately looking around them with a mixture of confusion and distrust on his face. It seemed that he had already forgotten the fact that she told him not to make it obvious that she had let on what she had seen. With any luck, no one would notice the betrayal in his expression and simply chalk it up to nerves, but she still cringed.

He started to open his mouth to say something but she cut him off before he could speak, that same fake smile still plastered on her face.

“We'll talk about it after this round. Get ready to present!”

Her voice was commanding, almost too calm (it seemed the way she had been socialized still allowed her to stay disturbingly calm in these sorts of situations, even after years of being among the general public).

Not one to argue- and especially not with her- Diamond nodded and seemed to steel himself.

Then, just after she carefully put the hat she had retrieved back on his head (earning a few cooing ‘aww’s from the crowd as she did so- like this too was part of the act), the judges looked up at them expectantly. It seemed that it was already time for them to walk forward and properly present their Pokepuffs. Platinum heard her mic turn on with a click and she put her hand on Diamond's shoulder, trying to feel as confident as she was sure she looked.

The crowd erupted into cheers as they strode forward, greeting them as the fan-favorite contestants that they had become over the past few years. The bright lights made her heart quicken behind her bedazzled bodice, and the excitement of the fans partially buried the fear in her stomach. Still, as they took their places before the Judges and their ice-type pokemon, she knew that at least one of the teams who were clapping politely behind them wasn't as friendly as they appeared.

Platinum didn't doubt that Diamond's cooking would pull through this round, but as she came to a stop in front of the judges, she felt her nerves return with a tingly fire.

With practiced ease, she dipped her head to the Judges. The dainty buckles on her shoes glinted in the colorful lights dancing across the stage. She would not have to say much in this presentation, it was really Diamond who did the baking. Even so, she was sure to keep her mind sharp and voice ready to respond if a question was asked of her. Their team could not afford to lose any points if they were indeed being sabotaged.

Because she did not have proof of the theft, she had no option but to smile as she raised her head once more.

A little competition was exactly what she liked, but cheating was not something she would ever support. Even if they didn't win this competition, Platinum swore to herself that she would right things.

(1548 words)

More of Whumpmas In July 2 Prompt: Field Medicine
Percy Jackson book series, daughter of Apollo!Phoebe.

“Just breathe,” Phoebe's voice was strong and steady, and she was glad that she had already had enough experience with this kind of disaster to stay calm even as that demigod son of Poseidon exploded into a hurricane.

She was glad to have him on her side, even if he was a boy. After all, there was only so much an army of nature spirits could go against a Titan.

The girl she was treating was one of the new applicants that Thalia had managed to secure, and that much was obvious by the terror in her expression. Even though this girl had gotten knocked out of the tree she had perched in, she was much better off than the sisters who really /had/ fallen around them. This girl had fought bravely alongside all the other Hunters, but there hadn't been enough time to train these new recruits before the battle broke out and she certainly didn't have enough experience to know her way around a battlefield.

And even if she was better off than some of their comrades, the girl was bleeding badly from a bad break in her leg.

As soon as their enemies started to back off, Phoebe slung her bow on her back and raced towards this new recruit. In the chaos of the moment, she couldn't remember her name. Far too many girls had been brought to their side only to be swept down recently, and it was getting rather difficult to keep track of all of them. There were other injured Hunters around, and many suffering dryads and satyrs to boot, but this girl was bleeding so profusely that Phoebe knew she wouldn't have much time left if a healer didn't step in.

“Keep breathing,” she found herself saying as she reached numbly into her pack for her thermos of moonwater. She would do everything in her power to make sure as many of her sisters made it out of this battle as possible. Somehow, they would stop Kronos' rise. Somehow, some of them would make it out alive.

(345 words)

Another Word War with @criminal-intent:
My original call: Horror || 70-75 wpm || 3 minutes || I'll use @ChueyTheCat's “NO! NO! NO! DO NOT SET IT ON FIRE!” but you can do whatever! || I prefer proof and will provide it. https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1194557054/#comments-481381146

I realized part way through this that I didn't end up doing the prompt properly so I guess ignore that </3

—Unedited text:
She had never much liked the idea of fire./

It was too hot, to dangerous, and definetly too unpredicatble. One would have thought that danger should have come before predictability, but in her head it did not. There was just something about not being able to tell which way a given event would go that gave her the creeps.

Something about that was unpleasent, and everything about fire was unrepdictable. Therefore, everytyhing about it was unpleasent!

It probably didn't help that she was a fan of cold temperatures, as well. Surley it didn't help to feel like you were melting.

Some people loved being warm. Not her. It felt like she was boiling every time she was near a fire, and there definetly wasn't anything pleasent about that.

She didn't even like hot dogs or marshmellos or any of those things. It just hurt too much to try to cook something over the fire. (Feeling like the skinw as peeling off your face as you tried to make your food? No thank you!) The one thing she gave a pass too was apples, and that was because they simply tasted better than anything else that could be typically cooked over a campfire.

But even if she liked hot apples more than she probably shoudl have, she still didn't like the fires they were cooked over. What if the trees set on fire? What if they forgot the bucket of water to put them out> It was all bad.

—Edited out the typos:
She had never much liked the idea of fire.

It was too hot, to dangerous, and definitely too unpredictable. One would have thought that danger should have come before predictability, but in her head it did not. There was just something about not being able to tell which way a given event would go that gave her the creeps.

Something about that was unpleasant, and everything about fire was unpredictable. Therefore, everything about it was unpleasant!

It probably didn't help that she was a fan of cold temperatures, as well. Surely it didn't help to feel like you were melting.

Some people loved being warm. Not her. It felt like she was boiling every time she was near a fire, and there definitely wasn't anything pleasant about that.

She didn't even like hot dogs or marshmallows or any of those things. It just hurt too much to try to cook something over the fire. (Feeling like the skin was peeling off your face as you tried to make your food? No thank you!) The one thing she gave a pass too was apples, and that was because they simply tasted better than anything else that could be typically cooked over a campfire.

But even if she liked hot apples more than she probably should have, she still didn't like the fires they were cooked over. What if the trees set on fire? What if they forgot the bucket of water to put them out? It was all bad.

(248 words) (N/Aꄗ)

(152+N/A+231+1548+345+248)

Day 10: 3ꄗ (in-cabin activity) -3ꄗ (the mad libs activity) (1522 words in total, 0ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 16904 words, 51ꄗ)

The Main Cabin Daily was worth no points and it was the Critiquitaire (https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1196005993/) which I don't like entering, so I didn't do it.

In-Cabin Activity:
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1191974843/#comments-481545921

Hmm, for color, I'm gonna trade in 2ꄗ's for “indigo”! And 1 more ꄗ for a verb ending with “ing”- “flying”

(N/A words) (3ꄗ) (-3ꄗ)

Word War call:
My call: Horror || 70-78 ish || 3 mins || I don't mind, prompt or not :) || I prefer proof and will provide it but it doesn't really matter https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1194557054/#comments-481545530

Again, this didn't go anywhere but I wanted to mention it anyway.

(N/A words) (N/Aꄗ)

Finishing Whumpmas In July 2: Prompt: Field Medicine
Percy Jackson series, daughter of Apollo!Phoebe the Hunter.

(And still an anxious voice seemed to creep in the back of her head: you don’t know that. You never have before.)

There were plenty of other wars that the Hunters had participated in, although they had usually been a fixture in the background rather than a main force. Lady Artemis preferred not to put her Hunters in unnecessarily dangerous situations, and the hyper-masculine world of war generally counted as ‘unnecessarily dangerous’, but it wasn’t like they ignored conflicts of this sort when they came up. If something had the capability to truly disrupt the world, Artemis wasn’t one to cast a blind eye.

No, if something needed to be dealt with, the Hunters would deal with it.

Most of their scuffles involved big monsters that were busy terrorizing innocent mortals, but if they ran into another big issue they were well within their rights to step in if it seemed they could help. With the Lady otherwise occupied with that Force (which Phoebe still didn’t want to call by name), the Hunters were left with the difficult decision to work with the demigods from Camp Half Blood. (Fine, it was only difficult because the two groups had such a longstanding rivalry- but since the new Lieutenant was, well, new… it didn’t matter so much. Plus, with the threat of Titans rising, they kind of had to help.)

Phoebe didn’t want to think about what would happen if they failed. Not to the world, not to her, and not to them. If the gods were dead, what happened to the rest of creation?

Just brushing the surface of that nightmarish possibility put a pit in her stomach.

Dazed by the tingling sensation that came from that pit in her stomach, Phoebe tried to shake away those thoughts and helped her injured comrade swallow a few drops of moonwater. Making sure to check the girl’s pupils for signs of a concussion, Phoebe suppressed a shiver. The girl had fallen a very long way and a concussion certainly wasn't out of the question, even with the immortal constitution of a Hunter.

Even just by being near this girl, Phoebe would be slowly healing her. That was one of the benefits of her godly parentage, and one she had honestly been taking for granted for a long time. After living for so long, the powers she had inherited from her father were second nature- it sort of felt like she owned them for herself. That wasn’t entirely incorrect- as immortality through the Hunters meant that she technically had been blessed with partial godhood. At the same time, though, it was Artemis’ powers that she had gained from that blessing. This healing power belonged to her father, even if she had used it for thousands of years.

Still, her mind wandered. They would do what they could on the ground, but ultimately there was nothing they could do against the force the gods were against. If they failed, like Dionysus struck down into the mountains, the tiny demigods and Hunters would be squashed flat.

And there she was again, going back to those terrible possibilities. She tried to shake it away, replacing those rambling thoughts with others. It didn’t work.

What would happen if the gods lost their fight?

Obviously, Phoebe knew she was mostly worrying about her Lady. They had been together for so long at this point, fighting tooth and nail against the worst evils that mankind could cook up, that being without her was unimaginable. A world without Artemis was more than just a world without the Moon, or a world without the last wild parts of nature. A world without Artemis would be a world without her aunt. (Or was she her sister? It was hard to know. At this point those distinctions didn’t matter. Phoebe just knew that she would be lost without her.)

So of course most of the concern came from the idea of losing Artemis.

But there was more to it than that. After being a Hunter for so long, Phoebe was essentially an unofficial minor goddess. The only difference between her and the fading Hellenistic goddesses was that she wasn’t worshiped directly. (And to counter that point, wasn’t the simple fact of Huntership a technical way that she was worshiped?) It wasn’t like Phoebe wanted to be worshiped. She wasn’t one to step on any toes- she knew she didn’t have the same power that the average goddess did, let alone the Olympians.

The real point was that she knew them. She knew all of them.

Artemis didn’t often swing by Olympus and it was even rarer that she brought her Hunters with her, but there had been the occasional visits over the years. Being one of the oldest members of the group, Phoebe had visited multiple times- certainly more often than the average demigod.

She didn’t know Hera or any of the big three very well, but she was rather familiar with Hestia and Athena. Dionysus wasn’t a favorite of Artemis by any means, but given that he had power over the wild as well, her Hunters occasionally ran into him. Aphrodite made it a point to turn her nose at any Hunter she came across, but Phoebe had still had a stilted conversation or two with her. There had even been one time that Ares challenged the Hunters to a shooting competition (which hadn’t gone very well for him). Phoebe had spoken with Hermes too, and even had an awkward conversation with Demeter when the Hunters had to come to a meeting between their sponsor and the agriculture goddess back in the day (look, hunting and agriculture didn’t always get along very well).

Phoebe knew that most of those deities didn’t think much of her. She was born a mortal, after all- moral, demigod, same difference- but somehow she was worried anyway. With a threat like this, how could she not be?

And of course, there was one name she hadn’t mentioned yet.

Her father was an… interesting case. After so much time as one of Artemis’ galavanting ‘sisters’, Phoebe had a difficult time looking at Apollo as her parent. If anything, he was a weird older brother who occasionally crashed her camping trips.

But with a threat like the rise of Kronos, Phoebe had had a lot to consider recently. She was already a target because she was one of Artemis’ favorites and her godly parentage certainly didn’t help things. Then there came the other concern: if the gods were wiped out, she would certainly lose her immortality. Even if the Titans didn’t manage to kill her, Artemis’ would not be able to support her endless life anymore. And if Artemis’ death would mean being mortal again, would her father’s mean that she would no longer have her medicine?

She certainly hoped not.

Phoebe shook her head to clear it of those thoughts (they were just as distracting as they were frightening). She locked eyes with the girl under her, feeling a spark of pride when she saw that her jaw was set and her eyes were relatively focused. This girl was made to be a Hunter. With any luck, she would make it out of this war alive.

“I need to stop the bleeding,” Phoebe’s voice was direct and calm, even as their dying comrades cried out around them. For now, all that mattered with this moment in time, this little circle of blood-soaked grass.

The injured Hunter steeled herself, nodding curtly. It seemed that she knew that part of this treatment might hurt.

Phoebe reached into her bag again, looking for a shirt of something of the like which could be used to stop the bleeding. The moonwater already seemed to be doing its work, clearing some of the early signs of shock from her patient’s face. She could feed her some ambrosia in a few minutes or so, but loading up on such healing items wasn’t the safest plan. Even if going forward with more traditional medicine would hurt terribly, it was out of precaution, and both of them knew it.

Still, she found herself closing her eyes to focus. Hesitation was dangerous, especially with bloodloss, but with the moonwater in the girl’s system it wasn’t as dangerous to take a breath. Usually, with no magic in play, Phoebe would need to be racing. However, her nerves were through the roof and she knew that there was more magic in the air than that son of Poesidon’s hurricane. She could feel it radiating off of her, like the warm glow of a hearth back in the old days.

Even though she couldn’t send a prayer to Apollo or Artemis for fear of distracting them in the middle of an important battle, when Phoebe opened her eyes, she knew that this girl wouldn’t die on her.

(1522 words) *The extra words that are counted here are from edits I made to the previous parts in my Google Doc that I didn't feel like copying in.

(N/A+N/A+1522)

Day 11: 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) (200 words in total, 5ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 17104 words, 56ꄗ)

Main Cabin Daily:
You've probably already heard the (unofficial) SWC motto ‘life > SWC’. For today's daily, take a screen break, walk up to someone, and interact with them! Now, return to your device and write at least 200 words inspired by the interaction! Doing this daily will earn you 150 points, plus an extra 100 if you share proof! Happy writing!

My best friend's grandma drove me, my friend, and my sister to an art museum today. The trip took the whole day. This sort of ended up poetic?

The sun beats down from above, but the light only reaches us through the north facing windows across from you. We were just outside, and the meager air conditioning in here is just enough to lessen the burn of the outdoors.

I don't know you well, you're my best friend's grandmother. I like your gray hair, and your eyes. I think that's enough to know about a person.

We both kind of like art, at least, and that's something. There's a lot of art here, and you know so much about it that it's honestly kind of frightening. (How one can hold so much in their head about such a wide topic, I'll never know. I hope I can think as clearly as you when I'm your age. That would be a dream.)

Anyway, it's still warm in here. It smells like old dust and oil paint (I might be imagining that).

When you asked what type of art I liked I had to lie because you said you didn't think impressionism was real art. It's not like I like impressionism anyway, I just don't want to be wrong.

I still think you're cool. At least you drove me here.

(200 words) (5ꄗ)

*Note that I still wrote 1500 words today, but I put the rest of the stuff that I wrote today in the next comment because I like to keep all of Cabin Wars together!

Day 12: 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) 3ꄗ (word war) 3ꄗ (in-cabin activity) (11955 words in total, 11ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 29059 words, 67ꄗ)

Cabin Wars/Main Cabin Daily:
Get your frying pans and flaming mangoes ready, because it’s cabin wars time!! Today, your cabin will be completing writing wars and challenges from other cabins in order to keep your spot on the leaderboard (or go up a rank or two :0)! Work together to get loads of writing done, and have an extreme amount of fun in the process ;D
The complete list of rules, wars, and extra challenges for this session can be found here: https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/post/8629116/

@@Cat_Lover4132: Cabin Wars! At least three people in your cabin have to collaborate to create a short story of at least 700 words. You have 24 hours, or else lose 1000 points. (each cabin can only receive this war once)
Extra challenge: Hi Barbie! Are you up for a challenge? If so, attempt a fifty headed hydra (500 words in 5 minutes)! Every Barbie who attempts this monstrous challenge can claim 25 points for their cabin. Your attempt does not need to be successful in order to win these points! This applies for up to six campers (resulting in 150 points earned maximum.) https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298519396

I attempted the 50 headed hydra but it did NOT go well </3 Also word thread here: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298519970

The wind blew over her wings, hot and yet freezing at the same time. Her hair whipped behind her, the thrill of the chase hot in her stomach. She loved hunting even when it was a game, and perhaps that was to be expected of an osprey.

The ground raced by below, trees and houses and other buildings all disappearing in swift patterns as they flew low over the town, the rythm of it all hypnotizing in the corners of her vision. Her sister raced on ahead, the feathers of both of their wings ripping through the sky with the whistle of the fastest fliers.

Everything about this game was to die for, even the dry feeling of her lidded eyes as they were battered by the wind.

“I'll get you!” she called out ahead, even though she knew her sister couldn't possibly hear her over the sound of the air screaming by.

She had been laughing earlier, but now she was far too focused for any of those silly noises. (Not to mention the burn in her lungs- flying was hard work!)

Her sister turned a sharp corner, zipping closer to a mountainside and off and up into a bank of clouds. She struggled to make the turn herself, but after an awkward moment of squawking flapping, she managed to get her limbs back in order and rocketed after the smaller girl.

They were lucky to be good turners in this terrain- having longer wings or weaker ones would make this game rather complicated.

Chasing her sister, she rose through the layers of clouds at a speed so great that her face started to feel like it was peeling off. They were flying up at an angle, and with every successive few hundred feet, the ground disappeared farther and farther beneath the thin layers of fog and clouds.

Eventually they would break through to the top, where they would need to be careful not to rise too high for their own good.

Her sister laughed gleefully ahead of her, and the fact that she could hear her meant that she was close- even if she couldn't see through the clouds and the whipping wind.

*The rest of this war is here:
https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/topic/828518/?page=2#post-8630564
https://scratch.mit.edu/users/pepper-and-a-pencil/#comments-383765056

@BookHuggers2022: Cabin Wars! Write 4500 words as a cabin in the next 7 hours, or else lose 700 points. Extra challenge: Hi Barbie! Write 200 words with an upbeat and happy mood (much like Barbie as she wakes up every day)! Every Barbie who does this can claim 25 points for their cabin. This applies for up to six campers (resulting in 150 points max) -much love, apocalypicnic https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298522024

I did multiple things for this war. Firstly, I did the happy mood one for the extra 25 points, but I also did the word war with @Dawnflower29 in this time and counted it for this war! Also, word thread here: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298522214

(Chapter 2 of) Let's Keep This Between Us (It's Just Practice, After All)
Pokemon Anime/Pokeani, childhood, Ash Ketchum x Gary Oak, PalletShipping

As Ash meandered into the kitchen, he tried to keep his face completely normal and empty of the secret he and Gary had shook on down at the river.

After making and shaking on the agreement, Gary had run off into the woods to go find his sister and Ash had eventually decided to head home to maybe get a sandwich or something to drink, but now every step through his house reminded him of the agreement. His ears burned.

As long as his mom didn't figure out what was up, he should be flying free! However, he was a little unsure how well he could hide the weight of this secret from his mother.

They were on step three, and step three was hiding the fact that they were dating from their families. (Of course, they weren't /really/ dating. This was just practice for their pokemon journeys, when suitable girls were supposed to show up around every corner!)

But if it was just practice, why was his heart still racing from his little fall in the stream? Also, why did he feel caught somewhere between throwing up and jumping out and down with joy? Usually those reactions were mutually exclusive.

Ash decided to pointedly ignore the weird mixed feelings. He was pretty sure these were realistic things to be feeling when walking back home like this for the first time after becoming ‘official’, but it was still highly unpleasant (no matter how proud he was of this apparent method acting). Besides, his mom had always said that he wore his emotions on his face- he had to get everything under control so as not to spill the beans too quickly!

If he accidentally let on to her what was going on, they would have to move on to step four as soon as possible and since neither of them were exactly sure what step four /was,/ that was impossible at the moment. Therefore, it was doubly important that they kept up the act for as long as possible. So while Gary interrogated his older sister about what his parents had been like and how they had met in an attempt to figure out what step four was, Ash had nothing better to do than wait and resolutely continue to carry out step three.

When he came into the kitchen, he tried to keep his expression as plain and unbothered as possible. His mom was making herself a cup of tea at one counter, reading the newspaper as she stirred.

She didn't look up from the paper as he came in- which was probably good because he made a proper fool out of himself by slipping a little bit on the floor in his socks while trying to walk casually- but instead raised her cup in greeting.

“Look honey,” his mom's voice was as warm as usual, “Daisy's in the paper again!”

At the mention of Daisy, Ash's brain immediately skipped back to the very boy he was trying to act casual about and he felt his chest fill with an oddly warm feeling. (It seemed that the ritual of pushing each other in the water really had worked, these were weirdly realistic feelings!)

“Looks like she's Contest Champ for the fourth season in a row! Why, that girl is always doing something amazing…”

Ash wasn't really one for Contests, but he had to admit that Gary's sister was pretty cool. Even though she only had a few pokemon, she was still the oldest sibling of the Oak kids and Ash had to respect her as a pokemon trainer. (After all, when someone was eleven years old, they were practically an adult- at least in Ash's eyes. And the eyes of the law, in some cases.)

But anyway, it wasn't really Daisy that he was thinking about.

No, now he was wondering how Gary's conversation with his sister was going. Had he figured out what step four was yet? Had he accidentally spilled the beans?

“Cool,” Ash tried to play it cool.

His mom finally looked up from her paper with a distant smile on her face. “I never got into contests,” she looked out the window thoughtfully (good, that gave him more time to try to will the blush off of his cheeks), “Your father tried to get me to compete, but I think he just wanted me to stop defeating the gyms before him.”

Ash blinked. He had known his mom was a pokemon trainer when she was younger, but he hadn't ever gotten much information about her travels. He knew she had stopped before competing in the League, but he had never known why. (He was too scared to ask.) Also, she didn't tend to talk about his dad much, so the mention was a bit of a surprise.

“You beat the gyms faster than dad?” he found himself asking, slightly in awe of the concept.

Laughing, his mom stood up from her chair. She ruffled his hair playfully, “Sometimes for sure! But we were all competitive back then, weren't we?”

He hadn't been alive back then so he didn't know.

“Did you come in for lunch?” she asked, “I could fix a little something up for us, I'm getting hungry too.”

Ash nodded. His stomach hadn't actually started grumbling yet, but she knew him well- he was /always/ hungry.

She went over to the fridge and started pulling out cold sandwich toppings. He slowly shuffled over to help her. (He was a bit particular about how much mustard was spread on his sandwich- key word: a /lot-/ so he always had to do that step himself.)

As they worked on lunch, his mom started up some easy conversation. She hadn't seemed to notice that he was playing it a little /too/ cool to be normal yet, so Ash didn't try to change anything (even when his attempts to look casual made him miss the fact that he had already spread his mustard on the same piece of bread twice).

“Gary didn't want to come over for lunch today?” she asked.

He nearly dropped his knife, heart quickening in his chest. Had she figured out what they were doing yet? Was that why she had asked about him? Was it some strange attempt to check him?

Ash decided to play it safe, keeping his eyes locked on his bread as he finished spreading mustard on the second slice of bread. “He wasn't hungry,” he said simply.

She laughed, “Not at all? He usually loves my sandwiches!”

He shrugged, still waiting to see if she would say something about the bit of secret practice that the two were doing. Luckily, she didn't say anything about that and instead shifted the direction of the conversation.

“His dad was the same way, you know,” she sounded lost in thought, like thinking about Ash's dad had made her think about the rest of her friend group back then. “He liked the way I cooked, not that he'd ever have admitted it. He liked doing things on his own, that one.”

Ash thought about what he knew about Gary's dad.

He had had dark brown hair like Gary, but less red. He had had green eyes like his other children, Daisy and Blue. He had taken Squirtle as his starter and traveled all over the Kanto region- including the colonial holdings in the southern islands. He had been very young when he died, back when Ash and Gary were little- only two years old. Ash didn't know how. (He didn't think that was the best thing to try to ask about.) If Ash had ever met him, he didn't remember it.

But that wasn't actually everything he knew- /now/ Ash knew that Gary's dad and Gary's mom had met each other in the Orange Islands when both of them were working on that League, and that he had been pushed off of his Blastoise into the water by her. It was weird to think about them when they were young.

Even though it felt weird, though, he was still curious.

“What was his mom like?” Ash asked.

His mom paused, hands going still on the ball of lettuce she had been splitting into slices for a moment. The pause was brief, though, and soon she was smiling down at him with just a hint of sadness in her eyes.

“She was beautiful, and a great battler too. She was from the Orange Islands, you know, so we didn't grow up together. Still, she was a great friend once we met.”

She ruffled his hair again and didn't add anything else.

He decided that he probably shouldn't ask anything else about those two. His mom seemed to be a little too stuck in the past at the moment, and he didn't want her to get distracted in the middle of making the sandwiches. (There was some other reason too, something that he wasn't quite sure he understood yet. What was it that Daisy had called it in her big kid words and calm voice all those weeks in the past when they had been playing? Grief? He wasn't sure. Anyway, he felt like it wasn't something to play with.)

“Oh,” he said, and that was that.

They finished making the sandwiches and eventually shuffled over to the table to eat. He tried to go over everything he knew about Gary's mom as he set his plate down on the table with his stubby fingers.

She had been and Orange Islands Champion, but she had never gotten to compete in the Indigo League. She had dark eyes like Gary's and deep olive skin like Daisy and Blue, with medium brown hair like theirs as well. Gary looked more like his father than his mother, if the old photos were to be believed, but Ash supposed he could still see a bit of his friend's mother in those other sibling's faces.

Family was weird like that. He supposed that love passed on bits of who you were to your children and then you never really went away.

Woah, that was an oddly deep thought. Somehow he didn't know how he felt about it.

His mom talked about the garden as they ate and he didn't really mind the fact that she was doing all the talking. After all, his mind had started to loop back around to Gary after all that and he again wasn't sure if he could keep the secret if his mom noticed something was up. (Luckily, she seemed to be attributing his absentmindedness and silence to the conversation earlier and didn't say anything. Or at least he hoped that was what was going on, rather than her having already figured him out.)

After this meal, he could go back outside and find Gary. Then they could discuss the next step- that was, if Gary had managed to figure out what the next step /was./ If not, they were going to have to keep this up for longer than Ash had hoped. But even saying that wasn't quite right.

Ash didn't know why, but somehow he didn't mind keeping it a secret.

In the face of all the painful things in the world, it was nice to have something that felt so strangely warm to return to inside him. (He still didn't actually know why it felt so right and decided to chalk those feelings up to the ritual of being pushed in the water. Surely that was it. Surely this warmth was the same feeling that Gary's parents had had all those years ago, and maybe this was their own way of honoring them.)

Or maybe that was a silly thing to think.

In any case, by the time he was running out the door again to go find Gary and see if they had any new steps to work with, he was feeling warm and fuzzy inside again. He was full of sandwich and his thoughts were full of Gary, and wasn't that exactly the place he wanted to be?

(He didn't even realize that he had forgotten to ask his mom if she had pushed his dad into the water or asked what his name was first.)

Word war with @Dawnflower29:
My original cal: Horror || 70-78 ish || 3 mins || I don't mind, prompt or not :) || I prefer proof and will provide it but it doesn't really matter\
@Dawnflower29's call to mine: thriller :D || like 70-ish aha || 3 min sounds good ! :3 || would you mind doing the first prompt ? :o || i can get proof <3
Prompt: @AmazaEevee - I would tease them back, but it is their birthday, so I roll my eyes and grin instead.

—With no editing:
Birthdays had never been my strong suit. Ever since that long ago party where a strip of my hair caught fire in the birthday candle, the cakes at least had always given me a bit of a weird feeling in my stomach. (I supposed that anything that had once set you on fire would likely make you feel a little wary. There probably wasn't anything wrong with that.)

Still, I liked celebrating my friends.

I loved my friends after all, even if they were sometimes very strange people deel down (and even on the surface!)

This was one of those times, I thought. Any friend who liked to tease their friends for being afraid of candels was a bit strange at least in my opinion, but I didn't really mind it.

At this point, that silly fear was a joke for all of us- even me.

Besides, who was I to tease someone on their birthday? (Even if it was techncailly also my birthday. Twins were funny like that. Were? I mean, we're always funny, right?)

Anyway, the partyy had been fun so far. We ate cake, we played uin the pool, we even went out and picked berries! All things considered, that's one fun brithday party. Even if my little sister did end up falling off the big yard in the backyard and scrapping her knee. (I mean our little sister. Oops!)

—Typos edited out:
Birthdays had never been my strong suit. Ever since that long ago party where a strip of my hair caught fire in the birthday candle, the cakes at least had always given me a bit of a weird feeling in my stomach. (I supposed that anything that had once set you on fire would likely make you feel a little wary. There probably wasn't anything wrong with that.)

Still, I liked celebrating my friends. I loved my friends after all, even if they were sometimes very strange people deep down (and even on the surface!)

This was one of those times, I thought. Any friend who liked to tease their friends for being afraid of candles was a bit strange at least in my opinion, but I didn't really mind it.

At this point, that silly fear was a joke for all of us- even me.

Besides, who was I to tease someone on their birthday? (Even if it was technically also my birthday. Twins were funny like that. Were? I mean, we're always funny, right?)

Anyway, the party had been fun so far. We ate cake, we played in the pool, we even went out and picked berries! All things considered, that's one fun birthday party. Even if my little sister did end up falling off the big yard in the backyard and scrapping her knee. (I mean our little sister. Oops!)

@-NightGlow-:
HI HORROR :D Cabin Wars! Write 2000 words as a cabin in the next 4 hours, or lose 1000 points. Extra challenge: Hi Barbie! Are you up for a challenge? If so, attempt a fifty headed hydra (500 words in 5 minutes)! Every Barbie who attempts this monstrous challenge can claim 25 points for their cabin. Your attempt does not need to be successful in order to win these points! This applies for up to six campers (resulting in 150 points earned maximum.) Sent at 3:54 UTC <3 https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298530450

I attempted the 50 headed hydra on the next chapter of that same pokeani fic and let's just say it didn't go awesome xD (I only got like 238 words oml that is abysmal. Although to my credit I kept misspelling every word under the sun) Also, see our word thread here: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298530635

(Chapter 3 of) Let's Keep This Between Us (It's Just Practice, After All)
Pokemon Anime/Pokeani, childhood, Ash Ketchum x Gary Oak, PalletShipping

Ash found Gary in the woods with Daisy, exactly where he had expected him to be.

The sun was warm on the back of his neck, but the leafy cover of the trees above him kept away any of the burn that he might have felt in the open fields of the town.

Daisy was playing with her pokemon in the middle of the clearing where she often practiced when she was in town. Although she was on her way to becoming a proper researcher (even though she was so young), she still entered contests from time to time and judging by the newspaper his mom had told him about at lunch, she wasn't doing too badly for herself with that either.

Again, Ash knew he needed to play it cool. Daisy wasn't as much of a danger as his mom or Professor Oak were- at least in terms of people they /really/ needed to keep the secret from- but she was still a person who wasn't in their little duo. She wasn't supposed to know, as long as they were really playing it one hundred percent safe and accurate.

“Hey Gary,” Ash said as he walked up, trying to keep his face as plain and resolute as possible.

Gary made a face at him as he came closer.

“Did you really eat lunch without me?” he put his hands on his hips.

Ash hadn't known that Gary wanted to eat lunch with him.

“I thought you didn't want lunch!” he protested, saying exactly what he was thinking. At least, it seemed, this little bit of ‘practice’ couldn't change how they acted around each other. (Or not in any major way, anyway.)

Gary opened his mouth as if to retort, but Daisy cut him off with a groan.

“If I wanted to listen to boys bickering I'd run off to Cerulean and go find Blue and Red,” she shook her head, “Can you guys not argue all the time?”

Ash knew that Daisy was only a few years older than him, but she had always seemed like an adult to him. She, unlike both of her brothers, was extremely reasonable and practical. Gary tended to show off rather than make good decisions, and Blue was even more impulsive than Ash was.

“Sorry Daisy,” Ash looked at the ground, kicking a twig with the corner of his shoe.

That was another thing about Daisy that made her seem like an adult- she just carried herself in a way that made it feel like everyone around her should be quiet and listen to what she was saying. It was no wonder that she was already aiming to be a smarty pants researcher. Ash was glad that Gary was normal enough to want to start animal fights like the rest of the regular children in Pallet Town- he hoped that it would stay that way forever.

And he didn't question why he hoped that, either, because he couldn't even imagine a world where he was not with Gary. Best friends in their hometown or the battling rivals they were going to become in a couple years, Ash didn't care. They weren't supposed to be apart.

Maybe that would work in their favor, too. They were hardly ever apart, so maybe they really /would/ be able to keep this secret. No one would suspect a thing!

“Anyway,” Gary rolled his eyes (clearly not impressed by Ash's show of respect for Daisy who, in his eyes, was just an annoying older sister), “She didn't help at all.”

“What? I told you everything I knew!” Daisy looked somewhat offended, her expression contorting into something far less adult-like and a lot more kid-like as she argued with her brother.

Gary rolled his eyes again (okay, now he was over-doing it). “Come on Ash, lets go somewhere else.”

Daisy glared at him as he started to drag Ash away from the clearing. “Don't get eaten by a Venasaur!”

“They're grass types!” Gary retorted over his shoulder, sassily.

“They still eat people!” she shouted after the duo, but Gary had already dragged Ash through the underbrush and deeper into the woods. Ash was pretty sure he remembered his mom telling him to be careful about wild Venasaur too, but he wanted to believe that Gary was right.

Kids weren't actually supposed to go into the woods around Pallet Town unsupervised, but no one really followed that rule anyway. Everyone worth their salt had to go in to at least /one/ of the wooded areas at some point to catch their first pokemon, and even though Ash had never gone even so far as Viridian, he had tramped through the closer woods on the south side of Professor Oak's lab a number of times. The territory of the lab didn't actually cover the whole area, but it reached pretty far in- almost to the cliff coast line that touched that ocean.

Gary had been dragging him through these woods since they were tiny children, back when Blue was still in Cianwood doing Arceus-knew-what and Daisy was just starting on her early-to-rise travels around the region. Those two had always been so ambitious.

Ash had always admired that about them, but his mom wouldn't let him go out on his own before he turned ten. He didn't really see why. Both of them had /clearly/ gotten their pokemon training careers going strong because of the fact that they had gone out early.

But whatever. At least Gary stayed behind with him.

They walked through the woods, Ash brushing off his jacket as Gary looked around for bug types that they might be able to bully off of a few trees and pretend to catch. Neither of them actually had pokeballs, but sometimes it was fun to pick up a few weak bug-types and pretend to battle properly. That was an activity that Ash's mom hadn't approved of, but it was just a regular thing for him and Gary now that they couldn't stop doing it.

It was almost /too/ regular.

“Gary,” Ash said suddenly.

Gary blinked at him, and Ash was again reminded of that photo of the Oak sibling's mother that he had seen years ago- where her eyes were perfectly dark and shiny, just like Gary's. Somehow, though, Gary's eyes were even prettier. (Ash hoped that was just the pushing-in-the-water ritual talking.)

“Yeah?” Gary asked back.

Ash fidgeted with the edge of his shirt again. (Why was he always doing that when he was alone with Gary these days? It was getting frustrating at this point.) “…So, are we still on step three?”

In the few seconds pause where neither of them spoke, Ash suddenly became suddenly scared that Gary had simply been pulling his leg back at the stream and he had taken him far too seriously. Or maybe Gary had forgotten! Either option was mortifying.

When Gary spoke he sounded mystified, but not like that.

“What? Of course we are!” he squinted at Ash curiously (even accusatorially), “Unless you told your mom?”

“No, no, nothing like that!” Ash waved his arms, “We're still on step three!”

Gary put his hands on his hips, “Yeah, we're still on step three.”

Ash put his hands on his hips too (it just seemed like the right thing to do). “Yeah, exactly.”

They were at a stalemate.

After an awkward pause, Ash finally gave in and took his hands off his hips. Still, he crossed his arms across his chest. “Okay, just wondering.”

They were another long pause.

At last, Gary shrugged and turned back to face the direction they had been going before. “Whatever, I guess we can keep going then.”

Ash didn't have anything better to do, so he followed him. They kept walking for a bit longer, with Gary occasionally pointing out random details in the feathers of the bird pokemon flying above them. (Sometimes he was so much like Daisy with the random pokemon facts that Ash got worried that he might suddenly run away and become a Researcher, but no. That would never happen. They were together forever, especially now.)

Eventually, Ash got up the courage to ask about step four again. It had been bothering him for at least a mile, especially because nothing about how they were acting around each other seemed any different than normal. (He was losing confidence, worried that they were somehow doing it wrong. If it was practice they didn't need to be perfect, but he still wanted to do it right. He wasn't sure why he wanted so badly to do it right- or why it was so hard imagining doing this with someone else.)

“Did you learn /anything/ about step four?” he asked at last.

Gary shrugged, whacking the random moss-covered walking stick he had picked up against a few trees as they passed between them. “Eh, not really. Daisy just kept talking about going to movie theaters and whatever, but that didn't sound like a step to me.”

Somehow, that jogged a memory in the back of Ash's mind. He remembered his mom, a long time ago, telling him something about his dad when the two of them were young. Had it been a movie theater or a classical theater with a stage and actors? He couldn't remember.

“No wait,” Ash was thinking hard, but his brain was refusing to cooperate, “I think she's right.”

Raising an eyebrow, Gary looked at him curiously, “How are we supposed to go to a movie theater while doing step three? Isn't step three continuous?”

That did stump him, Ash had to agree. Still, the movie theater thing felt right.

He hesitated, brow furrowing, “Maybe… maybe step three continues, but we do step four while we're doing it. Like, a bunch of step four?”

“We go to the theater multiple times?” Gary looked surprised.

“Maybe?” Ash shrugged. They were both a bit clueless, he realized.

Gary thought about it for a long moment, the leaves crunching under their feet as they walked, before finally shrugging again. “Sure,” he said, “I guess that makes sense.”

For some reason, that made Ash feel very happy. He liked to think that it was because he had made a good suggestion and not because he was excited about going to the movie theater /with Gary./ It wasn't like the movie theater wasn't already an exciting treat, but for some reason the prospect of sitting in the dark next to Gary and watching a movie sounded exceptionally fun.

“Cool,” Ash said, trying to sound chill again.

But they didn't want to turn around and head straight to the movie, even ignoring the fact that they would both have to scrape together a few dollars from their savings to buy two tickets. Even though seeing a movie sounded fun, for now what sounded better was something a little more like them- this same game that they had been playing for years.

Finally, Gary gasped out loud. “Look!” he said, pointing up with his mossy walking stick. It seemed he had spotted a tiny Weedle in the top branches of a nearby tree.

Ash followed his gaze. The pokemon was small enough that it's spines weren't fully developed- the perfect one to use for a mock battle. Creatures of that species at that stage couldn't really hurt a person, so they were exactly the ones that kids who were too young to be trainers sought out for their little games.

Then, with the official nature of step four long forgotten behind them already, the two boys dropped everything and raced towards the tree- eager the be the first one to climb to the top and grab this particular specimen for their game. And maybe, just maybe, this game was enough like them to count for step four anyway- even if it wasn't a movie theater with popcorn and dimmed lighting and plush seats. They were still together like this, weren't they? Maybe that was what counted, more than any movie ticket.

@BookHuggers2022: Cabin Wars! Write 4500 words as a cabin in the next 7 hours, or else lose 700 points. Extra challenge: Use three song titles (preferably from the Barbie Movie) in your writing! Every cabin member who does this can claim 25 points for their cabin! This applies for up to six campers (resulting in 150 points earned maximum.) https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298537701

I've never watched the Barbie Movie so I just used songs I knew. Sorry Barbie. (Songs I ended up using: no children by the mountain goats, Never Bloom Again by Waterparks, Violet! by Waterparks, Losing My Mind by Falling In Reverse, and Long Black Veil version by Mike Nesmith. I did some extras since they weren't Barbie lol) Also word counting thread here: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298537750

Whumpmas In July 3 (also counting towards the third Cabin War): Prompt: Burning
Trials of Apollo series, Frank Zhang, whump, FAKE character death! It doesn't actually happen he just thinks it does
Frank had known it was going to hurt before he even set in his mind what the plan was, let alone the fact that he was really going to go through with it.

He had known about this curse his entire life. His mother and his grandmother had instilled in him the fear of this branch burning, and he had to admit that he was scared. However there was more to it than that. There was more at stake than just his own life, more than just Camp Jupiter. If the emperors were rising, threatening to take control of Apollo's domains, the world was at War.

If the gods refuse to step in, he knew that he would have to do it himself. He supposed that it had never been any different.

If they needed a sacrifice, he would rather it be him than one of the Olympians. It would be a shame to die, but it would not be a death without honor. (Really the biggest complaint that he had was that he would be leaving Hazel behind. They had just gotten together, he didn't want to leave her alone. It wasn't that she wasn't capable or that she couldn't deal with things on her own, but he knew that they were supposed to be together. Or he had thought that they were supposed to be together, now he supposed that he was supposed to die.)

Frank wasn't fond of the underworld. He didn't really want to go there, but he supposed that he didn't have a choice.

With everything that he had learned about Roman history (which was a lot), there was one thing that he was sure of: they could not let any of these three emperors rise again. If he needed to sacrifice himself in order to prevent the second rise of Caligula, he would do it in a heartbeat. (He hoped it would only last a heartbeat, the burning anyway.)

The tunnel was primed and ready, he had warned Apollo to run. If something went wrong, that would be a fate worse than death. He could only hope that Apollo would listen to his warnings and not try to save him if he realized what was happening. (And if this didn't take out the emperor, he didn't know what would.)

The one-on-one fight was tough. He hadn't expected Apollo to offer himself up as well, but as soon as he started fighting Caligula he knew that it had been necessary. He wouldn't have been able to take both of them at once, at least not for long enough to get them into the tunnel where he needed them to be for the trap. Still he was scared for the god.

Maybe he shouldn't have been, maybe being scared for someone who was trying to help him wasn't doing any good for either of them. Maybe he wasn't supposed to feel scared for someone he was trying to save in this way, someone he was trying to sacrifice himself for. If it was Percy doing this he would have been aloof- refusing to his dying breath to admit what he was doing, to worry. But Frank was Frank, and he did worry.

The flame licked up the wood instantly, and he would have been happy for this except that it didn't seem to be working. Instead of his heart immediately stopping in his chest and dropping dead to the ground, igniting the cave around him as he fell, he felt the burning sensation over his entire body. When he looked down at himself it didn't look like he was on fire, or at least not that he was burning, but it sure felt like he was. Somehow it looked like his physical body was protected, and yet his nerves seemed to feel every square centimeter of the flames.

As was customary, he seemed to forget in his last moments that he'd been worried and that the sacrifice was necessary. It hurt more than anything he had ever felt in his life, more than anything he would ever feel again (and that would have been true even if he was going to survive this). His body seemed to be tearing apart with the sensation, skin overloaded with the pain to recognize anything other than it. He howled.

It was terrible, and he knew again why he had been so scared of fire.

He would die with no children, losing his mind in the agony of these final moments. When he got down to Hazel’s father, would he even have his sanity left in order to ‘meet the parents?’ He doubted it.

The world was turning harsh colors in his head-baked eyes: red, orange, violet! They were all too bright, but he couldn’t recognize them against the terrible burning over his entire body. The tunnel must have ignited by now, and with this agony he had half the mind to feel sorry for Caligula as well. No one deserved this, not even one of the most infamous emperor’s alive- not even if he had surely used this punishment on people at least once.

His vision seemed to be going out, the horrible agony of this moment seeming to last a hundred years. Frank had once thought that he would grow old with Hazel. It had been a silly thing to think, he knew that now. Demigods didn’t live that long, they were meant to be sacrifices for the eternal rat race of the gods.

Now, instead of those old images of growing old with Hazel, he could imagine her at a grave of his ashes- scattered around the collapsing tunnel. She was wearing a long black veil, her face hidden from him even in these last moments- these last thoughts. He thought that was rather cruel. Didn’t a sacrificial victim deserve to see his love one last time? (Especially because he had promised her that he would come back.)

But no. He would never bloom again- never again speak to his friends in the world of the living, never walk the streets of Camp Jupiter again. This was not the sort of death that he would be revived from, even though his body seemed to be refusing to burn properly. His skin looked intact, despite the agony. (And still he knew he must have been dying, it hurt too much to be faked.)

The stick finally burned up in his hands. His vision went black, falling into the swirling abyss. With that last image of Hazel in his mind’s eye and the terrible agony burned into his very soul.

A bit of my ToA fic out of necessity ha ha
As they walked through the park, Apollo spotted plenty of satyrs staring at them curiously. A few dryads ducked back into their trees when he came into view, in this ancient form. He tried not to look at them.

He was dimly aware that they were walking away from Greenwich Village, which was a bit of an unexpected thought. Even though it was a neighborhood he had frequented extensively in the mid 1960s, he was surprised that his mind was able to wander away to this topic. Still, he couldn’t stop his thoughts from drifting. The folk scene had been amazing in those days, and there were still concerts that he thought back to, swaying to music with the rest of the crowd- disguised as just another up and coming musician with bright eyes and big hopes for the future.

And there was, of course, that son of his- Peter Tork. He had been a great musician, no matter what the tabloids loved to whisper. It wasn't just anyone who could play his way out of an accidental deal with The Devil, even after said power has tried to drain him off his musical abilities.

Apollo tried to shake his mind off such topics. They had a job to do.

The trio stopped at the tennis center, where a few satyrs were playing a very awkward game, their fake feet clearly inhibiting their movements.

“Alright,” Rachel announced, looking directly at him, “We’re going to get Austin, but I think we need to figure out a little more than that. Also, me and Nico are still in the dark about how many kids you actually have. Were you planning on mentioning that soon?" Her tone was to the point, not accusatory, just about abrupt. Nico nodded sagely.

If he had still been in the human form from his Trials, Apollo surely would have blushed straight down to his toes. As it was, his face felt hot with ichor.

“Um,” he squeaked, “A lot?”

Nico’s raised eyebrow looked very unimpressed.

@teecee3: Cabin Wars! Write 4000 words as a cabin in the next 9 hours or lose 900 points. Extra challenge: Hi Barbie! Are you up for a challenge? If so, attempt a fifty headed hydra (500 words in 5 minutes)! Every Barbie who attempts this monstrous challenge can claim 25 points for their cabin. Your attempt does not need to be successful in order to win these points! This applies for up to six campers (resulting in 150 points earned maximum.) (sent 9:34 am UTC) https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298543664

Omg another 50 headed hydra. Fellas idk if I can keep doing this… (Although I did get pretty close this time! Almost 400 words- 377!). Also our word counting thread: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298543785

Whumpmas In July 4 (also counting towards the third Cabin War): Prompt: Dangerous
Pokemon DPA/Pokemon Diamond and Pearl Adventure. Mild Whump, Hareta. Mild injury but he's find don't worry
Hareta must have been told a hundred times that he should stop jumping between the trees a dozen feet off the ground. He also had probably been told to stop jumping between trees in general, without any height restriction. (He kind of wondered what the good old Professor would think of the fact that he was almost twenty feet up in the air this time.)

Honestly though, he couldn't help it! As much as he liked hanging out with people (and he really /did/ love those sorts of connections), he was also a fan of nature and the wild.

Well, that wasn't exactly the right way to put it.

What the truth was, was that he was completely dependent on nature. He needed it, /really/ needed it deep in his blood or something. It a connection like the sap in the trees and the beat of hummingbird wings in the air. He needed the wild and windswept breathlessness of the outdoors like /that,/ which had always been the case.

Of course, he had been raised with great contact with nature as well, but he thought there was more to the connection than that. That maybe, just maybe, everyone needed to go back to their roots from time to time. And in that case he happened to be closer to his than most people were, it seemed, and he was fine with that. (He thought it was fantastic, actually.)

There was something comforting in the wild of the outdoors, in the unpredictable danger that it held (and the unspeakable calm that he still felt among all of that chaos). There was something about it that he couldn't get anywhere else, at least not in any human-made structure or society. The chaos of it all was what kept bringing him back, a feeling like sifting through his soul and seeing that same layered, complicated, /dangerous/ image mirrored within him. That was all that there was to it, really.

He kept coming back because it made him feel at home and because he knew he needed it. He returned time and time again, despite all those warnings, because it felt like him and because he felt at home in that image of himself. (Knowing, in fact, that he was really in an image of it. That he was just another fly resting on a leaf, just another Pidgey soaring through the sky. Just another Zora pretending to feel ‘human’- whatever that meant.)

But he knew it was dangerous. Really, he did. (After all, that's why he kept coming back.)

The exhilaration of zipping through the trees, feeling the bark tear at his palms and the soles of his feet as he leapt wildly above it all. The short spikes of pain when he hit a trunk too hard or his hands slipped on a rough patch. He felt /alive./

It was a shame that feeling alive unfortunately had the notorious problem of ending up dead.

Somehow, all these musings came through Hareta's head in the millisecond after his hands missed the branch. By the time his back hit the next one, he had already considered Professor Rowan's perspective on the whole situation and decided that his adoptive ‘grandfather’ was still wrong, even if this did kill him or something equally horrible. By the time in was in freefall below the branches, he was already thinking the next thing that would undoubtably appear in his mind:

/Ouch./

It was a shame he tended to be right about these things.

The noise that left his lips as he hit the ground (even while twisting and trying to roll) was somewhere between a gasp and the hacking sounds of some sort of animal choking. In any case, even though it was mostly lost in the horribly dry smacking sound of his side hitting the rocky ground below, he was pretty sure the air getting knocked out of his lungs was one of the more sickening noises that he had let out recently.

There hadn't been enough time in his nearly singular second of freefall to prepare for a safe landing, so his roll was messy and uncoordinated. It still took some of the pressure off of hitting the ground (if he hadn't been able to act fast he might have cracked his skull open on the ground just like that), but he still felt pain erupt in the side that had struck the almost solid soil as he spun across the pine-needle covered ground.

When he came to a stop at the base of another huge tree, the branches still dancing in his vision like he wasn't falling, his breath still wasn't back. It hurt more than he was expecting. He had gotten the air knocked out of him before, several times in fact, but the sensation managed to surprise him every time with just how horrible it was.

His senses kicked into overdrive. He could smell the rot and tangy pine around him. His eyes, blown wide, seemed to hyperfocus on the swaying branches above, on the bird Pokémon still fleeing into the sky- startled by the smacking sound of him hitting the ground. His entire body was tingly, and naturally the pain was unbelievable.

Hareta could hardly think. Despite all of that information coming in, all he could register was the radiating, almost freezing pain of the side that had struck the ground and the burn of his empty lungs as he choked on nothing.

It was too quite as he hacked and gasped for breath, unable to move as he lay on his back on the forest floor. His vision was full of spots, dancing and white or black of red- he wasn't exactly sure. His throat felt like it had been turned inside out, and the empty feeling in his hands made him feel like there wasn't nearly enough oxygen getting to the rest of his body.

He knew from experience that there was nothing he could do except wait it out. That was a horrible thought in the moment, all of that musing from before gone from his head. All that was left of his thoughts were screaming cries of pain and panic as not nearly enough oxygen made it's way to his brain.

His side burned. His shoulder felt like it had been hit with a battering ram. He had jammed his wrist under his hip in the fall and it felt hot all over now- his fingers too numb. The roll had made him smack into several rocks and, now as he lay still unable to do anything but gasp, he was feeling the sharp pains of the areas of his body that had whacked into things.

He must have hit his head on something because his ears were ringing and a spot just over the left one felt like molten metal. The opposite hip than the one that had hit the ground also burned, and his legs torso felt similarly battered. Even this pain, though, was dulled by the terror of not being able to breathe.

By the time his breath finally started to come back, his vision was too spotty to trust what he was seeing and the panic had risen to a crescendo in the back of his throat. Although it was a relief to breathe again and the panic disappearing was certainly good, it's absence left a hole in his stunned, still prone body that was quickly filled by the pain he was in.

“Agck,” Hareta choked, and this time it was on nothing other than the terrible sensations washing over him as his eyes squeezed shut almost involuntarily. Similarly involuntarily, he started to roll onto his side but this was a terrible idea- immediately he felt his nerves flare up in protest. He had rolled onto the side that hit through ground.

He cried out in pain and shifted away like he had been burned.

Although there was air back in his lungs, he still found himself gasping. It was easier to think without the panic of not having enough oxygen, but this pain wasn't much better.

Still, there was no one he could blame but himself. Practically everyone around him were constantly saying that he was being too reckless, too wild. These sorts of things were bound to happen if he kept acting the way that he always did, and here he was proving their point.

At least that made him angry enough to get a burst of energy, managing to open his eyes again as he groaned.

His pokemon were out frolicking as well, which was lucky because landing on his pokeballs would have broken both his hip and the containers themselves. Still, he was now realizing that he was deep in the woods, injured, and totally without backup.

“Get up, get up, get up, get up,” he repeated to himself, putting every ounce of his strength into trying to sit up. Every little movement felt like hot barbs were winding their way up his ribs. His wrist still felt like a sack of hot coals was resting on top of it, and that hand had not lost the numbness which he had attributed to not getting in enough air for his circulatory system.

But he needed to get up, or at least sit up with his back against a tree trunk.

That last goal, at the very least, he managed with an insurmountable effort and much yelping out in pain when he accidentally pressed down on the wrong wrist while trying to shift his weight. He felt so much like he was going to throw up as his head spun with the effort that he almost tried to clap a hand over his mouth. Luckily, he managed to withstand that horrible urge.

His whole body was tingling with pain, but he could feel the sharp ache of it in specific points now. That spot above his ear, for one, along with his right wrist and his entire right side. One of his knees had taken a harder hit than the other, but both of them felt like someone had decided they would make a great practice baseball for their new metal bat. Somehow he had even managed to hit his right shoulder blade on something. There were other things as well, but those were the main radiating things that he could identify at the moment.

Once he could think even a little bit again, knowing distantly that it was lucky he was so good at keeping his head when things like this happened, he recognized that that list was a tad too long for comfort. Combined with the burning still lingering in the base of his lungs and the ringing in his ears which still seemed to be refusing to leave, he was going to be one mess to patch up back at the lab.

…If he could even get back there, that was.

He shook the thought off. It wasn't' like he /hadn't/ survived far worse than this. A fall of this kind should have been a drop in the bucket- he had even managed to break his fall on the way down! (Kind of.) He didn't even seem to have broken anything this time! (Unless he counted his wrist. But everyone knew that was a fake joint anyway. Right?)

Well, Hareta knew that he would have to get back to the lab one way or another. Either he found his pokedex (which he really hoped hadn't been crushed) and called up Mitsumi or whistled for a nearby pokemon to send news or managed to get up and walk for himself, laying in the woods was /not/ going to fix him. Indeed, it would probably make everything worse.

Begrudgingly, Hareta had to admit that this was one area that nature could not beat civilization at. Although they both had plenty of danger (all different kinds, of course), nature didn't really do hospitals or doctors or healing very well. Hareta had never been big on any of those things, but after a fall like this he knew he was going to have to at /least/ down a potion and take some bed rest.

For now, though, he couldn't imagine even trying to get to his feet to whistle for some help, let alone /walk/ all the way back. For now, the best he could do was lean against the tree trunk, wince as he looked down at his twisted wrist, and try not to let the nausea-induced pain get so bad that he really threw up.

Well, at least he had gotten what he wanted: danger and all those things. Ugh.

(365+(2038+233)+2003+(1101+338)+2110) (5+3ꄗ)

More Cabin Wars after waking up again!

@ChueyTheCat: Cabin Wars! Write 4000 words as a cabin in the next 9 hours or lose 900 points. Extra challenge: Hi Barbie! Are you up for a challenge? If so, attempt a fifty headed hydra (500 words in 5 minutes)! Every Barbie who attempts this monstrous challenge can claim 25 points for their cabin. Your attempt does not need to be successful in order to win these points! This applies for up to six campers (resulting in 150 points earned maximum.) https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298562143

This 50 head hydra kinda went well! I got about 380 :D Also our counting thread: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298562577

(Part of) Another chapter of that PalletShipping thing
Pokeani, Ash x Gary, childhood, fluff

They raced all the way back to Main Street, leaving behind the Weedles that they had fake fought with. (After a little while of faking string shots by throwing twigs at each other themselves, the game started to get a bit tedious.)

The duo laughed as they ran, leaping over logs and dashing between the trees. Ash liked this game of chase, always pushing himself to run fast to catch up with Gary. They were both almost exactly as fast of runners as each other, though, so the only way to catch up if Gary was ahead of him was to cut through the underbrush and surprise him. Ash was proud that he only tripped over a few rocks in his attempts to get ahead. Gary had to make a pit-stop at his house to pick up some cash for both of them- which Ash promised to pay back later- and off they were again.

When they came into the busy section of town at last, after minutes of sprinting through agricultural fields and along the long winding roads of the outskirts of Pallet, Ash finally stopped his crazed sprint- hands on his knees as he panted and hacked. Gary stopped beside him, coughing and gasping for breath as well. As much fun as it was to run, Ash still wished that it was easier to breathe after finally coming to a stop. They were both decently active kids, but he had never been much of a runner- walking for hours on end was more his thing.

“Let’s do step four,” Gary announced, nodding towards the run-down theater at the end of Main Street. There were only a few buildings here, but it was the busiest part of town anyway.

Ash nodded, looking around warily to see if anyone had heard what Gary said (they needed to not spill the beans, after all). Luckily, no one paid them any mind. A few of Ash’s classmates were playing on the corner, and some older kids were trying to get a Nidorino to knock over a potted plant outside the doctor’s office. Some adults bustled around too, busy with their shopping trips to the one proper store in town. Most people went to Viridian City to shop, but with all the weird stuff going on with pokemon and chemicals in those woods right now, Professor Oak had blanket-advised everyone to be careful with the shortcuts.

“Stay on the main path,” he had said.

Ash thought that was silly. After all, the woods were supposed to be dangerous! That was where all the pokemon trainers went to practice!

In any case, he nodded and let Gary drag him down the sidewalk, past a group of giggling girls, and to the entrance to the movie theater. Ash had gone here with his mom before, and even with his mom and Gary, but they had never gone in alone without so much as letting their guardians know what they were doing. For some reason, he felt mighty nervous out of nowhere.

“Well, guess there’s nothing to do but go in now,” As Gary put his hands on his hips, Ash could see just a hint of apprehension in his expression. Maybe both of them were suddenly nervous.

For some reason, Ash felt a very strong urge to grab hold of Gary’s hand. He immediately felt very silly. They weren’t climbing across a tree trunk or trying to wade through a river- why would they need to hold hands? That was something people who were dating did!

And then he remembered that they were supposed to be practicing dating and he felt his face flush. Well, if it was what he was supposed to do then he didn’t have another option, did he?

Ash grabbed hold of Gary’s hand wordlessly. It felt different than all of the other many times that they had held hands, somehow. He didn’t know what part of this had changed, but something had.

Gary didn’t complain. They walked inside together.

Pokespe Wing AU ramblings
In my Pokespe Wing AU, Dex-Holders are the only people who are given wings. However, my definition of ”Dex-Holder“ is a lot more uh…. broad than it should be. This is partially because I add all sorts of other medias to Pokespe in my head (classic example of including Ash and the characters from Pokemon DPA) and partially because me and my sister have been talking about this AU for years and at the point it is it's own separate world that we share.

In this world, by the way, a “Dex-Holder” is not identified by the fact that they own a pokedex or the fact that they are the main cast of Pokemon Special, but by being claimed by BOTH Arceus and another mythical or a legendary (or, in a few special cases, a force beyond the gods).

In any case, a ‘generation’ of Dex-Holders includes all of the people in a certain group of ‘claimings’ by legendaries and mythicals (or outside forces). Each of these deities or forces claims one person per group, and sometimes those groups overlap in weird ways. “Gen 1” includes essentially all of the Pokespe Dex-Holders, as well as Ash, the Pokemon DPA main cast, and a lot of characters from other sidegames or mangas that may be happening at the same time. (Example, the two protagonists of Pokemon Go: named Dee and Fault by me and my sister.) “Gen 0” includes most of the game characters who we have allowed to stay as their own person in this AU (people like games!Red, gen1!Red, Leaf, Green… etc). After that there isn't much naming, but Professor Oak's generation surely has a few, and the Ancient Dex-Holders exist as well (Akari, Hero… etc). New Gen Dex-Holders are essentially the fankids and likely the protagonists from the new Legends game.

Anyway, there is overlapping between these generations. The best example of this, I think, is found in the case of Leon, Raihan, and Sonia. Although they are younger than the oldest “Gen 1” (or classic in-series) Dex-Holders, they are Gen 0. Weird, right?

(We're gonna pretend that I did that for lore reasons originally and not because I forgot how young Leon was.)

But I've gotten way ahead of myself. This AU is way too complicated to describe in a simple ramble, so I'm gonna leave that there. It definitely created more questions than it answered, but we'll roll with it.

Back to the Wing Au section of this specifically, I must confess that I don't think the Dex-Holders have always had their wings. I think that the Gen 1 Dex-Holders, True or Proxy (which I still haven't explained, oops), were the group that were finally able to tip the balance and break into the non-human realm for good.

See, Dex-Holders in this AU are not only part of the Wing AU, but also my sister's Better Powers AU. The magic that they have comes from the legendries, mythicals, or forces that are sponsoring/have claimed them. For all of time, people who belong to this double-claimed group have had these magical powers. However, the recent, in-series group of Dex-Holders is stronger than most have been before.

As a result of that, they are less human and more pokemon or deity than any generation before them. Due to this, they grow wings.

After the Gen 1 Dex-Holders' wings grow it, it's sort of like a dam opens up. Then, finally, other living Dex-Holders from the other gens may start to grow wings as well. (Depending on power levels and age, this may take longer for some than others.)

So, once Violet's wings finally grow in, Leaf and the others probably already have learned how to fly. The odd layering of the gens means that this new development also effects them in an odd order- and their non-human (and more magical) sides properly develop.

Eventually, every Dex-Holder who is still walking on earth will sprout wings of their own, but at the Current Point in AU this has not yet occurred. (For example, most of the fankids were not born with withs, although some of them were. Don't worry about it. Soon enough, once they are ‘of age’ these wings will come in for the others as well.)

Oh, that's another thing. For the rare people who /were/ born with wings, they can't make them disappear. Everyone else can sort of phase them in and out at will, but those who have always had them as part of their body cannot get rid of them. (This only really affects three or so characters and they're all OCs, but I thought I'd mention it anyway because it seemed sort of important.)

I doubt that added up at all to anyone who's out of the loop. (AKA: everyone but me and my sister.)

I love this AU with my whole heart and I simply cannot part with it. Perhaps another day I will gather the strength to explain more details of it (and here I remember again that I forgot to explain True and Proxy Dex-Holders. Darn it). For now, though, I think this is all the rambling I can cook up.

I apologize for the fact that this likely made zero sense at all. Trust me, I'm having a hard enough time making sense of it on my own.

@Squidy-IceCream: Cabin Wars! Write 4500 words as a cabin in the next 7 hours, or else lose 700 points. Extra challenge: Hi Barbie! Write 200 words with an upbeat and happy mood (much like Barbie as she wakes up every day)! Every Barbie who does this can claim 25 points for their cabin. This applies for up to six campers (resulting in 150 points max). https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298570814

Oh boy something other than a hydra to do! I did that :) Also, our word counting thread: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298570929
NOTE: me and @savebats elected to cut this war in half!

Magic Treehouse, sibling fluff, Jack and Annie, drabble
Annie raced on ahead, laughing mirthfully as she ducked between tree trunks and leapt over small streams. Jack chased not far behind her, his glasses bouncing on his nose and his pack slamming against his back. He felt himself laughing, too.

They had gone on a family vacation recently, and it was good to be back home. Here they were once more, where they were supposed to be- the Frog Creek woods. Would a new mission have come for them? Maybe they could take another trip to the past just for fun!

Jack didn't care either way.

He felt free as he raced after his little sister, heart warm and full in his chest as his lungs pumped in air. His sneakers pounded the ground in time with Annie's ahead, the dry leaves of fall sweeping up into the air in their wake.

It almost felt like he was flying.

These days, it didn't matter so much that he and his sister had time travel at their disposal- they never could seem to change anything about the past anyway. He loved learning new things, but at that second all he really wanted was to be in this moment forever.

Racing through the woods, young and free.

FINAL WAR FROM @ChueyTheCat: Cabin Wars! Write 3500 words as a cabin in the next 8 hours or lose 800 points. Extra challenge: Hi Barbie! Are you up for a challenge? If so, attempt a fifty headed hydra (500 words in 5 minutes)! Every Barbie who attempts this monstrous challenge can claim 25 points for their cabin. Your attempt does not need to be successful in order to win these points! This applies for up to six campers (resulting in 150 points earned maximum.) https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298579649

OMG we've almost made it! Also my final attempt at a 50 headed hydra for this day… and I STILL didn't make it ToT Also, our word counting thread here: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298579869

—-The fifty headed hydra attempt is in this btw. It was really bad, I got like 345 I think?????
Whumpmas In July 5: Prompt: breathless
Pokemon DPA, Jun, Tangrowth battle scene <3 <3 <3

Jun was pretty sure that if he had ever liked Tangrowth, this still would have been terrifying. To make things worse, though, they had always freaked him more than a little bit.

He wanted to chalk up his weakness to that fear, but he knew that it wasn’t the case. The Team Galactic Executive in front of him was far too powerful for comfort, her team beyond the level that even his Dragonite could deal with. He hadn’t known her name before, or at least not fully connected it to her face. Not like this, not up close. She was beautiful, but in a way that made him feel like prey being batted around before it was torn to shreds. If she was a cat, he was a mouse ready to be turned into lunch.

Jun didn’t want to think about the fact that he surely wasn’t the first trainer who had stood up to her. If he felt like this, how would a new trainer do? Someone with only a Starly? They wouldn’t stand a single chance.

He felt the hair standing up on the back of his neck, his whole body stiff with tension. ALl of his muscles were bunched up, ready to leap up if something happened. (And yet he knew that there was no way he would be able to move fast enough to escape if a single step in this battle went wrong.) Something about it was different.

Maybe it was the look in the woman’s eyes or maybe it was something else, but for once in his pokemon training career, the creeping fear in the back of his mind that he might lose really felt like it might be true.

Stop it, he tried to tell his mind, not here. Not now.

He couldn’t afford to be distracted by terror, especially not in this situation. Jupiter was too strong for him, and whatever she was doing to Mitsumi’s mind was frightening him so much that his body felt tingly all over- and not only from the frigid cold of these mountains.

Of course, realizing that this was one situation where he really couldn’t afford to fear failure (due to the fact that he had no idea what Jupiter would do to him if his entire team was knocked out) only made his nerves worse. It was no wonder then, with his nerves all out of wack and his team already half destroyed, that there would be a point in the battle where the fear of losing shifted into the horrified realization that he couldn’t win.

By the time that realization came, it was already too late.

Everything happened too fast. The Tangrowth reached forth with those terrible limbs and he knew as soon as they touched him that he was too weak to fight it. Jupiter turned Mitsumi to her side. (Or maybe those happened in a different order. He couldn't be sure, not with his head spinning with only one thought: I lost. I lost. I lost.)

The Tangrowth wrapped its many arms around him. They were solid muscle as it dragged him into the air, a scream ripping from his lips as Jupiter jeered from below. He must have left his stomach behind because it felt like the very bottom of it had dropped out. This thing could tear him limb from limb if it wanted, and there was Mitsumi below- blank, empty expression. She wasn’t going to save him.

She had gone over to them, and here he was to… what? Die?

His panicking thoughts were cut off as one of the arms circled his ribs, slithering at first and yet still overpowering- tossing him like a ragdoll for the moment. He gasped in surprise at the feeling of floating so high above the ground (even whipped up into the air as he was). His ribs expanded for a half second, and that moment of weightlessness was the last moment of freedom before he came down again and the muscles of the thing contracted. Before they crushed.

Jun didn’t scream exactly, but the gasping squeak that he let out as his lungs were squeezed too tighten under surely broken ribs was still loud… although not nearly loud enough to cover up the sound of his bones grinding into each other under his mangled flesh. His vision whited out, every warning light flashing in his mind’s eye (just like a car after a crash) as the insides of his ears burned- was it too loud or was the pressure of it all somehow making its way up to his head?

Jupiter was laughing like it was the funniest thing she had ever seen. He couldn’t make out Mitsumi’s face through the tears stinging his eyes, blown wide as they were and suddenly so sensitive to every point of light that struck them. His ears were ringing, even as the arm of the creature lessened its squeeze.

He gasped and that was the wrong decision. Breathing in made him feel like someone was stabbing him from all sides at once and he couldn’t help but cry out. It was the worst pain he had ever felt, and it didn’t help that the creature was still holding him, helpless, a dozen feet above the icy ground below.

Still, Mitsumi did nothing.

Jun tried to say something, but the Tangrowth suddenly constricted again- crushing him further. He choked, eyes bugging out as the white-hot agony flashed through his whole body. The pain was so intense that he almost didn’t notice one other detail: he couldn’t breathe.

Jun tried to suck in air, but his sides couldn’t expand under the crushing constriction of the Tangrowth. It raised him higher into the sky. Was it going to drop him? Was he going to break his legs when he hit the ground?

His lungs were burning, both because they were crushed and because he couldn’t get in enough air. If he kept going like this, Jun was sure he would run out of air even before the slowly tightening arms of the creature crushed him. He would lose his breath here, just like prey of the snakes he used to watch outside of his house.

He remembered how much they had thrashed. Was this on him if he couldn’t find the strength to even move a muscle? The prey in the grasps of those snakes always used to try to slip away, thrashing and biting and fighting.

Jun tried to bite a stray arm, but the Tangrowth didn’t even seem to notice. His teeth sank into the thick, rubbery skin of the thing and didn’t even make a dent. There wasn’t enough air getting in. He couldn’t even hyperventilate, let alone struggle. But if he wasn’t fighting back, was it less the fault of the Tangrowth and more the fault of the prey?

No no no no no, Jun repeated in his head, thoughts rambling in the agony of it all, don’t let me go out like this! This can’t be the way I die! Not me, not ever!

He had fought to become a good trainer and was careful with his team. How could a loss end this badly? How could a boy with a Dragonite go out, splattered across the snow from the pressure of a Constrict? (Especially while his friend watched from nearby, not so much as raising a finger to help him. She wasn’t even looking at him, not really.)

Jupiter was jeering again, but he couldn’t hear a single word of it. His ears felt full of hot wax, his hands had lost all circulation- cut off as the arms of the Tangrowth squeezed around his middle. His entire torso felt like it was being run over by a truck from all sides. If it squeezed any harder, he was afraid that he would split right in half and fall to the snow covered ground in pieces.

His vision started to dim, sparking only with the white hot pain of this attack as his only source of new light. It seemed that the sun had started to dim, too.

All he had wanted was to protect his region, he hadn’t wanted to be a sacrifice- not like this. This didn’t even help anyone (or at least no one but Jupiter, for her sick enjoyment and her terrible sense of humor). This would be in vain.

Just when he thought that he was going to pass out from lack of air, Jupiter raised her arm. With a crunching sound as the pressure was lessened, the Tangrowth suddenly dropped him. He was weightless for one moment, too blind with pain to even realize he had been let go, and then he hit the ground.

The snow provided some sort of cushion, but the shock of hitting it still shot through his broken ribs like a canon. He choked on his gasp, almost passing out from the pain. There had been no time to roll, especially without even realizing he was falling, he had hit it straight on. The air was not knocked out of him, but the agony made him somehow hold his breath anyway.

He must have cried out when he hit the ground. Jupiter seemed amused. His vision was spotty, too dark for all this snow.

The Tangrowth still towered over him. Its eyes were void of emotion, just an animal doing what it was told. Jun felt like he might be sick, but even raising his head shot pain down to his ribs. He didn’t want to know what retching would feel like.

He sucked in air at last, nearly sobbing by the sensation of his crackling ribs expanding. Everything was getting dark, his cheek burning cold against the snow. Feeling hadn’t properly returned to his fingers yet and he was still starting to lose his grip on the world.

To his horror, Jupiter finally took her eyes off of him. He would have thought that should be a relief, but he felt fear spike in the back of his skull anyway. As Jupiter turned around, beckoning for her pokemon and Mitsumi to follow him, his fear turned to terror.

They were going to leave him here for dead. All that and he would be just another body found buried in the snow come Spring. He couldn’t move, he could hardly breathe with his ribs broken like this.

He felt cold all over when Mitsumi finally turned around to follow Jupiter off into the snow. She was leaving him, too. In the end, the fact that they had been friends didn’t matter. Jupiter’s deal meant more to her than his life.

When she returned to Hareta (if she ever did), would she tell him what happened? Would she leave out what she had seen? Would she lie and say that she had tried to fight off Jupiter herself?

Jun knew she could have. Although he didn’t know why Mitsumi preferred not to battle, he knew that she was strong. It was hidden, but it wasn’t that hidden.

That strength had always been something he had secretly liked about her, but now the only thing that knowledge did was hurt. Mitsumi had been fully capable of rescuing him, of reducing Jupiter’s pokemon to spots of ash under melted snow. If she had put her mind to it, she could have destroyed the very pokemon that had bested him.

But she hadn’t.

For whatever reason, she didn’t care that he was on the ground like this. She didn’t even give him reassurance, let alone a healing item. She didn’t do anything.

“Mi-Mitsumi-!” he managed, but it hurt too much to say more. The world was starting to disappear from his vision as his panicked, tiny breaths seemed to snap his rips more.

The last thing he saw before his vision was swamped with the dark ink of unconsciousness was Mitsumi’s small, pitying smile as she looked over her shoulder at him.

It felt cruel.

((669+892)+206+2000) (N/A ꄗ)

Coloring In Activity:
Me and @silver-the-oneiric both like winter: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/37083474/comments/#comments-298549489

Here is the comment they put on the project: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1191715467/#comments-481745849

(N/A word) (3ꄗ)

((365+(2038+233)+2003+(1101+338)+2110)+(669+892)+206+2000)+N/A)

Day 13: 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) (1515 words in total, 5ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 30574 words, 72ꄗ)

Main Cabin Daily:
Oh no! Last night while the campers were sleeping, Smarlls the ibex’s stash of mangoes was stolen, and everyone here is a suspect. For today’s daily, write an alibi explaining why you’re innocent. Your defense must be at least 350 words, and you can collect 250 points (and an additional 100 for sharing) for your cabin.

C!Star stares in surprise at the ibex. This accusation has come out of left field. How was she supposed to have stolen something in the night? The previous day had been Cabin Wars!

She doesn't know what else to do, so she decides that's all she can say.

“Yesterday was Cabin Wars,” she tries to keep her voice from shaking. In all of her years and all of her travels, she had never before been blamed for a crime like this. After a night like the previous one, her brain hasn't even fully rebooted. “I was defending Horror.”

It was true. She had spent the entire expanse of the Wars in the Skyscraper with the rest of her people. (It wasn't like they could get out anyway.) Even though the monsters hadn't started to become a real problem yet, she was still running on lack of sleep. It felt unfair that Horror had to participate in these wars as well, even while dealing with so much on the home front. (Not to mention the fact that they were trapped in this place to start with! How were they supposed to war the others when they were hardly able to reach the computer systems? It wasn't like they could show up and give challenges in person!)

“Yes, it was Cabin Wars.” The ibex raises an eyebrow as if waiting for her to say more.

C!Star’s heart is in her throat. How the ibex even got into the building to question her, she wasn't sure. Maybe it could teleport.

“I spent the entire day here,” she manages not to sound like she's lying (which, of course, she isn't). “None of us can leave the building.”

That was true. None of them could leave, the doors simply wouldn't open for them.

The ibex still looks unimpressed. Star tries not to panic. Maybe there could be something else around here that she could use to prove her innocence (because if the simple fact that they were trapped here was not enough to convince the ibex she was worried that nothing would).

At last, she had an idea.

“Oh!” c!Star’s eyes brightened. She turned and started rummaging through her things. Sometimes keeping all of her writing paid off!

At last, she had gathered all of the papers she had scrawled on the previous day. A moment later she slammed them down on the table between herself and the ibex.

“There!” She suddenly felt breathless, but now it is in a good way. This proof was undeniable! “That's all I wrote yesterday. Do you think that I could steal something when I was doing that?”

It was bold, but she dared the ibex to say she was wrong. (Because how could this be ignored? It was physical proof!)

The ibex flipped through the pages for a while, face changing from distrust to surprise to acceptance. At last, it looked up at her and nodded. Then, it disappeared into thin air.

She blinked, not sure if she had imaged all that. At last, however, she gave up trying to make sense of it. With a sigh, she laid back down on the ground. Alright. Time to go to sleep again.

(536 words) (5ꄗ)

Resume:

I obviously can't provide proof of this but I rewrote part of my resume today with one of my friends. It's still not done but I tried

(979 words)

(536+979)

Day 14: 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) (1640 words in total, 5ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 32214 words, 77ꄗ)

Main Cabin Daily:
Uh oh I forgot to copy this

Back in those old days of Sci-Fi, c!Star used to spend a lot of time looking into the dark, glittering forever of space. It had been easy back then, of course.

When she was home on that ship, all she needed to do was look out for any port window, and there it was: /eternity./ It was as home to her as those washed-white walls. But all much as it was home to her, it was always shifting. Faraway planetary bodies stayed relatively consistent for a while, but everything around them changed.

It had been nice to come back every once and a while for that first camp of hers- back to this planet where space seemed consistent and stable. Even though she knew eternity was anything but that, it had always been a nice thought.

But those trips never went on for long. Space was her home, in all of it's chaos and ever changing nature.

Ever since coming down to land on this planet for good, things were different.

No matter where she went down here, with her feet on the ground like they were perhaps meant to be, the sky was the same. Sure, there were slight differences depending on season and nation, but it was the same stars. She liked the fact that she was named after them now, whereas before it had seemed too boring a name.

Here, everyone looked up at the same stars. They were an anchor throughout time, something that drew everyone together. That felt a lot better here and it had in space, and she let it feel that way. Sometimes things really were better from afar.

For years now, she had been looking up at the sky too, longing for her old home- or so she had thought. Was it that she wanted to go back or that she liked the view from here? Safe and tiny and somehow feeling so much bigger when it was all encased in a screen above her?

There were some constellations she liked better than others. Over time, she had learned their names (at least the names they were called down here).

Back in Myth, between the battles and all the confusion of constantly changing sides, she used to stare up at Orion. She asked him how he had done all this back when they thought he walked on the very planet. Of course, he never answered. Still, it felt nice to ask.

She liked to think that Orion was her friend.

While she struggled through the paint-soaked war that was her time in that old Fairytale country, he marched on above her, bow in hand and as ancient as anything else there. She liked to make up her own stories with him- on top of the new ones.

When she was in Gothic so recently, she used to look out the window after sneaking out of the safe room and search for him in the night sky. Without fail, he always raised her bow to her like before. If she closed her eyes, it almost felt like they were prancing though the battlefields like the old days. Even though she had to hide from all those ghosts, this one ghost in the night sky comforted her against the darkness.

But now there were no windows.

No matter how hard she tried, Star could not catch a glimpse of her friend outside.

As she camped on the floor of the basement, cold and smelling like the type of dusty mildew that accumulates in office buildings, she tried not to imagine that she had abandoned him. She couldn't go running with him now, couldn't go running at all.

Her only connection to the outside world was an old computer, and even that wasn't enough. She couldn't see the sky.

For the first time in her life, she was without the stars.

(647 words) (5ꄗ)


I wrote a list of and ranking off (+ notes on) all the books I've read in 2025 in my notebook, but I can't copy it here I haven't have access to my computer. I tried to count the words and I THINK it's almost 993 words? I've read a lot of books, lol
(993 words)

(647+993)

Day 15: 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) (350 words in total, 5ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 32564 words, 82ꄗ)

You cover your ears as Mazasa the polar bear roars at the top of his lungs, Smarlls snorting back at him. A cacophony of honks echoes from the sidelines, five mysterious geese joining the fight. It seems like all of SWC’s mascots are here, and all of them are fighting over who is the best! To settle the argument, write a 300 word persuasive essay or scene about who your favorite mascot is and why. This daily will earn your cabin 300 points, and another 150 if you share your writing.
If you don’t know much about SWC’s past mascots, ask in the comments! More experienced campers would definitely be willing to help out :)

When the judges look at c!Star, she feels her heart sink to her boots.

For the last few minutes, the judges have been going around to the various campers and asking. She had just managed to get online to turn in some of her writing when the screen suddenly changed to this video call. (Naturally, she couldn't go to the meeting while she was still trapped in the Skyscraper basement.)

“Um,” she tries to sound put together, but the truth is that she hardly knows who the mascots are. She's a writer, not a talker!

“Well,” she goes on after a moment, “All of Scratch Writing Camp's mascots are wonderful, with polar bear strength, flapping wings, and more.”

The judges don't look particularly impressed. She finds herself suddenly wanting to cower away from the screen and fade back into the darkness of this new home of hers. But she knows she can't. “For years they have presided as important figures in the community, helping campers and representing us,” she hesitates, but the flattery seems to have worked because now the mascots are all nodding thoughtfully.

Encouraged by this development, Star chooses to go on.

“It's a very difficult decision,” she tries to lock eyes with each of them in turn, but it's nearly impossible through the computer screen. “Each of you has already done so much for us, no?”

All of the mascots nod. As much as Star usually stays away from the various Main Cabins, she knows that they aren't simply nodding out of ego. Even if she doesn't know them well, she's aware that all of them are important to many of the other campers.

A calm seems to have come across the mascots.

But they asked who she thought was best, so unfortunately that calm must be broken. “It's a difficult decision,” she steels herself for chaos once more after the nice break of silence, “…But I like the geese.”

Immediately, chaos breaks out once more. She sighs. This is going to be one long meeting. All she wanted to do was turn in her words!

(350 words) (5ꄗ)

Day 16: 10ꄗ (weekly) 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) (2403 words in total, 15ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month:34967 words, 97ꄗ)

Weekly:
It's time for our second weekly! Created by our amazing weeklings Ris and Rockie, this week's activities focus on fairy tales! https://scratch.mit.edu/discuss/post/8627812/

Part 1: Comparing Fairy Tales From Different Cultures (written by Lora)
We're all used to the fairy tales we've grown up with, but has it ever occurred to you how they change as they travel across different countries? In the first part of this weekly, we'll be comparing our beloved fairy tales and how they change as they go across different cultures. Go to this project (https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1194946429/) about them to learn more. Make sure to write 200 words, and have fun! We can't wait to see what you come up with.

Cinderella's step sister's lose their eyes, the headless horseman chases a man through the woods, a girl is forced to weave solid gold lest she loose everything she loves, a prince is badly injured and the princess must heal him, Hansel and Gretel have to avoid being eaten alive. Stories like this are well known and have been throughout the ages. They are directed at children, but these disturbing details seem impossible to conflate with the young people who are supposed to hear them. But it is not truly impossible. Although fairytales are different all around the world, certain things do draw them together. Stories like this were made in order to protect children when times were not as easy. After all, the dangerous parts of the world were important to know.

To take two examples from Germany, the stories of Hansel and Gretel and that of Rapunzel may seem surprisingly dark to modern audiences. However, both stories teach children important lessons about a world that was out to get them.

Hansel and Gretel tells the tale of two children who were led into the woods and ran into horrible danger. Rapunzel tells the story of a girl who was kept away from the world, and punished by the cruel witch who had taken her from her family. Both stories tell hard truths. In each case, there is the acknowledgement that there are dangerous people in the world (and that people sometimes make decisions that hurt others).

Rapunzel's parents give her away to the witch to protect their own skins, and Hansel and Gretel must find a way to get away from a dangerous witch in the woods. In both cases, the protagonists must push forward and keep living despite the bad things in their lives. In the case of Hansel and Gretel, they must also use their creativity to escape. In fact, the protagonists also have to do bad things in order to save themselves.

In both cases, the wild of woods are a dangerous place. Hansel and Gretel get lost and run into very dangerous people. Rapunzel's prince is blinded on brambles. Rapunzel nearly dies in a desert. The natural world is not a safe space!

Although these stories are dark and seem to describe a dangerous world that doesn't appear to be appropriate for modern children, the simple fact is that the world was dangerous. For two children to run off into the woods, let alone trusting strangers on no basis, the worst outcomes possible weren't unheard of. The wild of the world outside was not the calm place that it is depicted as now, and children had to know to be careful. These stories were used as teaching tools for that exact purpose.

Part 2: Writing About An Object From A Fairy Tale (written by Sunny)
Now that you know all about fairy tales from across different cultures, we'll be zooming in towards an essential element in all enchanted stories - objects! Whether it's Cinderella's glass slippers, Aladdin's lamp, or the evil queen's magical mirror, these objects - enchanted or not - are all key ingredients to an exciting story. For the second part of this weekly, you'll be writing about an object from a fairy tale. This can be anything from a battle-worn sword to a rusty notebook, let your imagination run free! You'll need at least 200 words to complete this part.

I wrote about Serafina's black cloak : )

The cloak was as black as night, as deep as space itself. It shone like velvet, but somehow it looked like it was softer than that (but perhaps the tingling feeling in one's spine would still be felt if it was touched). The material flows softly and smoothly, heavy and yet weightless as it blows in a strong wind.

There is a hood over the top, and it hides just enough of the face that one can't seen who is wearing it. Something about that seems to radiate danger, even though the purpose of the cloak isn't clear. (It seems impossible to know what it could do just by looking at it, but the darkness it radiates seems to say ‘Danger!’)

The clasp is heavy and silver, the only inch of light in the whole piece, and yet somehow it appears much more malevolent than the rest of the cloak. From far away, it's impossible to see what the design looks like. Still, the sight of it is enough to make the hair on one's neck stand up.

It is beautiful, it is evil.

Somehow, just looking at it makes one feel like they are already loosing their soul to the darkness.

Part 3: Putting A Spin On A Fairy Tale (written by Surf)
Think back to something in a fairy tale that you’d change if given a chance. Maybe you’d alter the ending, setting, genre, genders, characters, or time period–for this part of the weekly, you can add any sort of twist to your retelling! Put a novel spin on a classic fairy tale, writing at least 400 for this part of the weekly.

Rapunzel lay on the back on her floor, staring up at the dark stone ceiling above them. The Prince lay on the floor beside her, his hands resting on his stomach as he stared up at the spiderwebs with her. Something about that silence felt comforting. Despite the sad sight of her prison, she felt a small smile flitter across her lips.

They had been hanging out a lot recently. With the Witch spending so much time in the woods looking for various potion ingredients, Rapunzel was stuck in the tower alone more often than not. (Not that she preferred it when the Witch was there. Even after all this time, Rapunzel still thought that the Witch wasn't sure what to do with her. She had told her long ago that Rapunzel had originally been the daughter of some other couple, that they had given her away just so they wouldn't be in danger. Rapunzel thought that behavior was mighty unsatisfactory. If she ever got out of here, she sure wouldn't try to find them.)

“Have you ever thought about leaving?” the Prince suddenly asked.

Rapunzel felt her smile widen just a tad. “I just was,” she turned her head to look at him, watching his blue eyes as they flickered over details in the ceiling she had long given up caring up, “How I wouldn't go back to my parents, even if I could find out who they were.”

She had no reason not to tell him the truth. He had told her long ago that he was a royal, but the royals had never meant much to her. It wasn't like the king even knew she was here. Why should she care about political things like that?

“You said not to, but I could tell my father that you're here,” he turned now to look at her, straight black hair falling over his shoulder as he searched her face.

Rapunzel's throat felt tight. She shook her head. It wasn't that she didn't want to be free, but the idea of being stuck in another tower somewhere…

“I don't want to live in a castle,” she whispered, the fear of it already gripping her heart, “and I don't even know what your father would think of me.”

He sat up, looking down at her worriedly. “Rapunzel,” he took her hands and she had to stop herself from blushing at the devotion in the movement, “Schatz, dear, we wouldn't have to live in a castle.”

She felt herself smiling as she let him bring her into a sitting position beside him. “Aren't you a prince?”

“Of course I am,” he whispered, eyes still locked on hers, “But I have brothers and uncles. I won't get to rule anyway, and I don't want to. I want to run away with you.”

That gave her a pause. He would run away with her?

“Where would we go?” she asked softly, her mind already running over the possibilities. She had never been outside of the tower but she had been told stories of the outside world by the Witch and her Prince. A nice town somewhere with a well in the middle of town, a market on warm summer days. Something like that sounded beautiful.

“We could go anywhere,” he whispered, “Anywhere you'd like.”

She hesitated. Of course she had thought about escaping before, but she'd never tried. It seemed impossible anyway. Her hair elevator went one way, even if she had two braids. It would be probably deadly to jump and even after all these years she had never gotten the courage to try.

“Whatever happens, we need to do it soon,” the Prince urged. “When is that witch getting back?”

Rapunzel stared at her feet, “Nightfall.”

She whispered it. He had to leave soon anyway, that was why he was asking this. After all that had happened, the bruises on her cheek from the Witch and all the rest, he was worried that she wouldn't last much longer. Could he really take her? Could they really run away?

Her Prince got to his feet, extending a hand down to her. “I'll teach you how to ride a horse,” he pulled her to her feet, “We'll figure out how to get down.”

Rapunzel found herself nodding. Somehow this didn't feel real. Those nightmares she had suffered didn't have to be real. He didn't have to go blind. She didn't have to be sent away to a desert town, suffering with two children. Maybe they could escape and never come back. Maybe it would be fine.

He set his jaw in a confident smile, pale skin contrasting with his black hair in the darkness of the room. “You deserve to see a sunset from the ground.”

Despite herself, Rapunzel found herself smiling. “Okay,” she let him lead her to the window. “I trust you.”

And she did.

Part 4: Creating Your Own Fairy Tale (written by Yume)
We hope you've been having fun exploring various elements of fairy tales so far, because it's time to put everything together! For the final part of this weekly, you'll be creating your own fairy tales! Write 500 words of a fairy tale of your own creation using what you've learnt in the previous parts - the possibilities are endless! We can't wait to see what you'll create!

I hate this. ToT I'm really bad at fairytales

Hilbert and Hilda liked the idea of the moon.

It was bright above them, always looking down with that smile. The Man In The Moon, that was what some people called him. Hilda liked to say that he was actually a girl, though. Hilbert didn't particularly care either way.

The idea was that they would try to jump. Hilbert was the highest jumper in the village and Hilda was the fastest swimmer. If he jumped high enough, she could hold on and power them through space by kicking her legs. Every night they snuck out of their house to give it a try.

They jumped over a tree first, just to see if it would work. It was a short tree, only ten feet tall. When Hilda's dress caught on the upper branches, they came crashing down in a pile. After that, they had to try harder.

The village they were leaving behind was not a home to either of them. Their parents had died of a sickness when they were young and now they lived with the tavern master and his wife. Hilbert thought they were nice enough. Hilda didn't like them.

The next night, they jumped over the long river and back. When the hem of Hilda's dress got wet, they had to dry it over a campfire before heading back. (If the mistress of the tavern saw that her skirt was wet, they would surely be in trouble.)

It was then that they realized that jumping over the smoke of the fire made them go higher. Without holding Hilda, Hilbert managed to fling himself all the way up to the stars. When he came back down, Hilda clapped her hands and laughed. If he could do that with only a small campfire, then what could a bigger fire do? Maybe she wouldn't enough have to kick her legs to get them through the water of the blue sky! Maybe they could just reach the moon on it's own.

“The Woman on The Moon said hello,” Hilbert said. She had been out collecting stardust when he ran into him and sent him back down. “She wants to meet you!”

After that, Hilda was double as excited to reach the moon as before. If the Woman In The Moon wanted to she her, then she needed to go up as soon as she could!

The next day, the two gathered as many branches as they could carry and made a massive fire. The two argued about how much to add. Hilda said that they didn't need too many branches and that they only needed enough to get them to the sky, then she could swim the rest of the way. Hilbert argued that he wanted to do that whole journey and they needed as much smoke as possible to propell him.

Hilda, not one to argue much, let him drag and entire tree into the fire. Once they were done, the smoke reached straight up to the stars. The two readied themselves and just as soon as Hilda was securely holding on to him, Hilbert winded up for a massive jump.

He sprung up, but the fire was too big. Instead of hitting the moon, they shot straight past into the blackness of space.

(457+202+814+545 words) (10ꄗ)

Main Cabin Daily:
Tired of the same old storylines? Take a common writing trope and put your own unique spin on it! Add surprising twists, new and fresh perspectives, and make that familiar idea your own. Write 250 words for 150 points, and earn an extra 100 for sharing your work. Good luck and happy writing!

High school stuff….

The cheerleader put her hands on her hips as she stood in front of the nerdy girl, the whole school gathered around.

They were in the hallway, every person in the school watching and waiting eagerly to see what would happen. There were the band kids in the back, the jocks, the goths, even the hippies (who usually sat in the back of the classroom just out of sight because the Raters didn't like them so much). A few nerdy kids stood in the back, waiting and worrying to see what their futures would be like. Depending how this went down, things could either get much better or much worse for them- though they weren't sure which outcome would come from which side.

“So,” the blonde girl started, popping her bright pink bubblegum as she raised one paperclip thin eyebrow, “When were you going to tell me you were going to steal my boyfriend?”

The nerd girl looks down at her unlaced shoes, glasses slipping down her nose. It wasn't that she was /trying/ to steal her boyfriend, it was just that all the jocks kept coming to her for some reason. She wasn't sure why. She wasn't the Writers.

The cheerleader clears her throat, “I'm waiting for an answer, nerd.”

Some of the crowd lets out a low ‘ooooh!’ at that. The nerd girl doesn't really think it was all that much of a good comeback. She hadn't even said anything! How could a retort to nothing at all be a comeback?

But she tried not to get mad. None of this was any of their faults anyway. This was their tenth year in highschool, and none of them looked any different than usual. It was always the same folks anyway, wasn't it? Always the same figures. The Writers liked to use them like dolls, always the same plots. Always the same romances, always the same rivalries.

The nerd girl would have liked it if she and the cheerleader girl could be friends, but they hadn't had a Plot like that in a long time. No, the Writers were all going back to the old days. Rivalries and the like. Always over the jocks.

She sighed. She wished she could get with one of the nerds again. They were always so much more fun.

(385 words) (5ꄗ)

((457+202+814+545)+385)

Day 17: 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) 5ꄗ (completing a goal) (847 words in total, 10ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 35814 words, 107ꄗ)

Main Cabin Daily:
For today’s daily, you’ll be choosing a classic novel and reimagining it in a contemporary setting. Experiment with how themes, characters, and conflicts from the original story would work in today’s world, while still keeping the central idea the same. Write 300 words for 200 points, and gain an extra 50 points for sharing.

I chose to reimagine Little Women! Mostly because I hate that book with a burning passion

When Meg came back from the doctor's office, still weak but with a smile on her face, Jo felt a little bit better about their prospects. She had been coughing something awful and her brow still looked like she had a fever, but if she was so positive then not everything could have been so horrible,

“It's scarlet fever,” Beth informed her sisters as she lay resting on the couch, the TV on low volume as she talked. She lay like a queen there, the others crowded around and listening intently.

Had it been a hundred years in the past, that would have been an awful thing to hear- almost a death sentence! Even now, it probably wasn't going to be the most fun. Luckily, Meg wasn't allergic to antibiotics.

“I just have to take some medication,” Beth shrugged, “She said I'll be right as rain in a few days.”

Her sisters were all relived, even slightly annoyed now that it was clear that she was going to be fine. She had waited a few days before going to the doctors and now it appeared that they had been so horribly worried over something not as bad as they had feared.

“You should have gone there earlier,” fretted Meg, “It could have gotten much worse if you didn't go to get treated…”

Jo found herself laughing, now out of relief more than anything. “Relax, Meg!” she let herself breathe, “She's gonna be fine. I think we worried ourselves for nothing!”

“Not nothing,” Meg shook her head, “God, you're still immature. We should take this seriously…”

The other sisters all looked at each other. Of course Meg was right, but somehow they all felt that Beth was going to be just fine. She had the doctor's support and her sister's support, not to mention the wonders of modern medicine! Everything was going to be just fine.

(315 words) (5ꄗ)

Finished my resume!!!

Obviously I can't provide proof of this lol, but I finally did it!!! AND I applied for a job! Yay! : D

(532 words) (5ꄗ *from the goals thing!)

(315+532)

Day 18: 5ꄗ (main cabin daily) (58 words in total, 5ꄗ in total)
(total for the whole month: 35872 words, 112ꄗ)

Main Cabin Daily:
“Huh. Roleplaying, what's that?”
Campers enter the main cabin, screaming and causing chaos, chanting the word ‘roleplay’ over and over again. But for some reason their saying it in third person…?
”What's happening?“ you ask around, scanning the room for someone who would know an answer.
That’s right, today is our traditional roleplaying day! Challenge yourself to type your messages in third person—while this won’t earn any points, it will count for words.

*c!Star's face appears on the screen. She is surrounded by smoke and flickering flames. You know enough about the current Cabins to realize she's stuck in the Horror Skyscraper, and it's burning down.* “Hello?” she asks, “Is anyone on the other side of this call?” *It appears she's gotten a computer to work enough for a videocall!* (https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/50665171/comments/#comments-298968323)


no one responded to me

(58 words) (5ꄗ)