writing

Most of media is liberal or downright fash, IE multiple literal races in fantasy, pacifism at all costs, individualism like superheroes, etc. There was a Kim Jong Un quote floating around about how all art should tie back to the revolution, which I agree with, even in a roundabout way, but almost all the media I've been bathed in has been reactionary af.

What are some pitfalls to avoid, so I don't accidentally draw what amounts to a swastika? Is there a 7 basic plots for commies? I've already read some anarchist and vaguely socialist fiction (have not found anything ML) but some recommendations would be nice as well.

I'm writing a nonfiction with a focus on history and have one chapter lacking in length. Of course I am working on expanding it, but I fear it might not be quite enough to fix the gap (currently it's a 40-page gap).

Through my research work in college and article writing, I noticed that sacred attention is given to the symmetry of parts and sections. Also most nonfiction material I've read has been quite consistent in distributing the book over chapters more or less equal in size.

I'm aware that I don't need a perfectly equal division, but how much discrepancy is tolerable?

Can’t get final draft 11 to work as it’s on an old Mac laptop and I’m using a windows PC. Are there any safe pirated copies of final draft I can use or are there better alternative to FD for PC?

First chapter and introduction to the series here

Quick notes: I researched the fuck out of this series. Also, this chapter could be called: what would it be like if I got teleported back to Byzantium?

CHAPTER 2: Hey, Alexios

The ocean was glimmering on the game board, the sun glinting on millions of waves below. Torres spotted little ships—were they galleys?—with just one white sail each, but lots of oars rising and falling all together like wings beating foam from the surf. Lurking in the depths were sea monsters which could have swallowed these ships whole.

Closer to shore, fishermen in rowboats were throwing rope nets into the waves. Farmers—and almost everyone was a farmer—either worked their fields or hauled their harvest on horse-drawn carriages. In the dark forests and the arid wastelands bandits and monsters hid in the shadows of trees and caves.

The capital—Konstantinopolis—was built on a peninsula, and looked like a jumble of red rooftops and golden domes guarded on all sides by massive walls. Three-masted galleys glided into enormous harbors alongside white marble porticoes. The city’s centerpiece, however, was the enormous hippodrome—like an oval-shaped Colosseum—surrounded by gigantic churches. Half the city at the peninsula’s tip was a garden filled with flowers. Wide paved roads packed with people led to gigantic squares decorated with golden statues blazing in the sun. Remarkably, the markets murmured, the carriages rumbled, the horse hooves clopped, and construction workers pounded their hammers. A rhythmical wooden rattling came from churches and monasteries, as did the unearthly singing of eunuch choirs. Even stranger, the reek of cinnamon and incense made Torres cough and turn away.

When he turned back, he was drenched in sweat, and standing in a bright field of ripe grain. The sun was burning him. His muscles and bones ached, and a heavy wooden scythe was in his thick calloused hands. He wore a belted linen tunic which itched his skin. On top of all this, he was thirsty, and his dry tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

Wiping the stinging sweat from his eyes, he looked around. Grain fields extended for miles in every direction, interrupted here and there by dirt paths, but otherwise ending only in mountains and forests. Many people worked these fields together—scything the grain with their swooping, ringing, gleaming blades. An older man was shouting at him nearby.

What the…? Torres thought.

The man lowered his scythe and approached Torres while continuing to shout in a vaguely European language. He was white-haired, short, and sturdy. Although the man was technically white, he was deeply tanned, presumably from working these fields all his life. His tunic was the same coarse material as Torres’s, but it was dyed blue, and worn out.

“What are you doing?” the man yelled. “Come on! What’s the matter with you?”

Torres was shocked that he understood, and that the foreign words sounded so natural. He pointed to himself and raised his eyebrows.

“Are you talking to me?” Torres said—also shocked that his tongue, lips, jaw, and throat formed these words in the other man’s language.

“Who else would I be talking to?” the man yelled. “Do you see anyone else who’s stopped working? Now come on! Get to it!”

Torres looked down at the heavy scythe in his hands. The wooden pole that was connected to the rusted blade was so splintered that the sight alone could have given him tetanus. Glancing at the old man—who watched him with a frustrated expression—Torres shrugged.

“I’m sorry,” Torres said. “I have no idea what I’m doing here.”

“What do you mean?” the man said. “Is this some kind of joke? Look!” With his own scythe, he gestured behind Torres.

Torres glanced back. A long line of golden grain had been mowed behind him—and presumably by him. Someone in the distance was tying it into bales.

“Now come on,” the man said. “This is too much. Get back to work. It isn’t funny. Do you need a drink of water or something?”

“Look,” Torres said. “I know this may sound strange—but can you show me how to do this? How to scythe grain?”

The man rolled his eyes. “Alright, I’ll play along, but you’d better cut this out soon, or else I’m going to cut you.”

Standing behind Torres, the man tossed his own scythe into the field, then lifted Torres’s arms and swung them back and forth.

“Really complicated, I know,” the man said. He reeked of sweat. “Just keep doing that until you drop dead from exhaustion! Give us this day our daily bread, boy!”

Torres stepped forward and scythed the grain. The muscles in his chest, back, and arms burned and his spine strained after just one swing. At the same time, the scythe made a ringing-whooshing sound as the grain fell. Torres shook his head at how satisfying it was. Scything came much more easily than he would have thought, considering the fact that he had never done this before. It was like muscle memory.

“See?” The man clapped his back so hard Torres winced. “You’re a natural! That’s what comes from doing this practically your whole life. Good boy. Keep it up.”

Before Torres could speak, the man returned to his part of the grain field.

For a few minutes Torres continued scything grain. Just as he was about to ask the man where he could get some water—and perhaps where he was—a mysterious voice spoke in his consciousness.

Your Farming Skill has increased to Level 4/10, the voice said. You are now an Apprentice Farmer. Continue farming if you want to level up to Intermediate.

Torres laughed. He kept scything, though, and noticed that doing so was even easier than before, and that he could cut even more grain.

I’m grinding inside a game, he thought. Does that make that other guy an NPC?

By farming alone your XP will increase slowly, the voice said. Farm with other farmers if you want to improve more rapidly.

Hang on, Torres thought. Are you like a robot or do you have a personality?

I have a personality.

Uh, okay then. What is it that you want?

I want you to entertain me.

That’s weird. Why is that, exactly?

It’s boring being a god.

Is that what you are, then? A god?

More or less.

So what if I refuse to entertain you?

The choice is yours.

Torres looked around while he continued to scythe. Though the sun was blinding with heat, the sky was bluer than he’d ever seen it—so blue he could drown in its depths. Somehow it even seemed more real than Pemetic High—a memory that was growing more vague. At the same time, he was slowly gaining (or regaining?) memories of living in this place. Scything grain became more natural with each passing moment.

So this is a game, he thought. Still, have to wonder how many lives I have, or what happens when I die.

You have only one life, said the voice in his mind. It was also somehow not a voice but almost more like a feeling.

Just one life. That’s way too hard.

Check the underside of your right arm.

Glancing at the man who had just yelled at him, Torres looked where the voice had indicated. A Greek-looking letter B was carved into his skin.

The capital beta symbol distinguishes main characters from NPCs, the voice said. NPCs do not have them.

Yeah, I can see that, Torres thought. Guess this game has a pretty minimalistic interface. Can you give me my stats in a character sheet or something?

**Certainly. Just a moment.

Character class: Fighter

Intermediate Farmer (4/10)

Educated Novice (3/10)

Apprentice Athlete (4/10)

Apprentice Brawler (4/10)**

You have other skills and sub-skills, but these are the most important at the moment. Each skill will grow or atrophy depending on how often you successfully use it, but lower-level skills are easier to cultivate than higher-level ones. For example, if you kill a mosquito with your bare hands, you will gain only a small amount of XP for your mêlée combat ability (a sub-skill of your Apprentice Brawler skill). On the other hand, if you manage to kill a giant monster with your bare hands, you will gain a great deal more XP for your mêlée combat ability—particularly if that sub-skill is already low to begin with. Success also depends upon dice-rolls; higher skill levels increase the likelihood that your dice-rolls will succeed. All of your actions (and inactions) will likewise influence your personality—

Okay, okay, I think I got it. I’ve played plenty of RPGs before. What happens if I die here?

You will die in the “real” world, the voice said. The old world. The world from which you came.

Torres’s heart plunged. He started shaking as the reality of the situation sank in.

Come on, he thought. None of this is real. Let me out of here.

You must defeat the emperor, the voice said. And destroy the empire.

What? No. I want to go home.

Silence from the voice.

You said I had a choice.

Indeed. Your choice is to play along—or die.

“Shit.” Torres clutched his head. He felt dizzy, and almost fainted, but managed to stay standing.

My family, my friends, my entire life, he thought. All gone.

For now. But not to worry. You’ll find a new life here.

Until I defeat the emperor and destroy the empire. Then I can escape.

Right.

“Defeat the emperor,” he said to himself. “Okay then. Where would this emperor happen to be?”

Turn a little to the right.

Torres followed the voice’s instructions. There’s no screen interface with this game, he thought.

No. And skill points are allocated automatically based on the actions you take. It’s all very unobtrusive. There’s no menus to navigate.

I want to be able to customize more.

Too bad. It’s more realistic this way.

Torres tried to reason with the voice in his head. Listen. Gamers don’t like realism. We’re trying to escape the real world, not live in it. If we liked the real world, we wouldn’t be gamers. We like things to be a certain way—

Turn a little more. There. The emperor lies in that direction.

Torres had stopped turning. He sighed. Alright. How far is he?

305.4 kilometers.

Damn. What am I doing all the way out here?

**Your name is Alexios. Your character class is fighter. You belong to a family of Roman farmers living in the town of Leandros. Recently, many towns and cities in this region have joined the uprising which is spreading across the land in response to Emperor Nikephoros II’s usurpation of the imperial throne. ** Boucher had mentioned the emperor—although that conversation felt like it had taken place a lifetime ago.

Why does everyone hate this Nikephoros guy so much?

**The previous emperor, Anastasios III, introduced a number of popular reforms at the expense of the ruling class. He was executed by Nikephoros, a rival general. ** The old man glanced at Torres—maybe he’d noticed the lack of ringing sounds coming from his direction—so Torres got back to scything. He worked for a few more minutes—not nearly long enough to gain much XP—until he was dying of thirst. He was about to ask the old man where the well was, but then Torres remembered its location, except the memories did not belong to him. They belonged to this Alexios character.

Make sure not to take too long getting your drink, the voice said.

Damn, this reminds me of school.

If you waste too much time, your reputation with the people around you will decline. Loners don’t last long in a world as dangerous as this one.

Alright, alright, Torres thought. Look, I’m a gamer. I get it.

He jogged to the well—which was a hole walled with stone extending down into the earth—and pulled up a heavy wooden bucket which had been left hanging on a rope in the depths. Torres—or Alexios, whoever he was—drank the sweet water until his stomach ached. Then he returned to work.

As he scythed, he looked at the old man, and remembered that he was his uncle—Alexios’s uncle—and named Eugenios.

My uncle, Torres thought. Where’s my dad?

He died of plague before you were born.

You mean like the Bubonic Plague? Torres thought.

Romanía was struck by the plague many times throughout history, the voice said.

Romanía? He remembered someone saying something about this back in that classroom.

Historians from your time call this place Byzantium, but its actual inhabitants call it Romanía.

Oh. The more you know.

I’m here to help you anytime.

Unless I want to leave.

Right.

Do you have a name, by the way?

I don’t need one.

As the sun declined to the west, Eugenios brought a wooden cart pulled by a horse named Bukephalos which he had retrieved from the nearby town of Leandros. Together Eugenios and Torres piled the cart with bales of hay. Torres had leveled up to Intermediate Farmer in the mean time. This meant that he could work harder and faster while feeling less fatigued, but he also felt a kind of joy in his accomplishment. Eugenios remarked on his improved ability and asked once again why Torres had been acting so strangely earlier.

“I was just a little out of it I guess,” Torres said. “Speaking of which, could you tell me what year it is?”

“Hey, Alexios, come on, I told you to stop messing with me!” Eugenios said.

“Alexios,” Torres said. “Right. That’s my name.”

“This isn’t funny. You have me concerned. If you’re going to keep acting like you’ve been hit on the head, maybe we should go see Father Sergios.”

“I swear I’m not messing with you,” Torres said. “Can you please tell me the year?”

“Why? Why would anyone want to know that?”

“I’m just curious,” Torres said. “I forgot.”

“A lot of strange questions coming from you today. Are you sure you didn’t hit your head or get sunstroke or something?”

“Who knows? Maybe I did.” He wondered if Pemetic High had been the dream, and this place was reality.

No, he thought. I’m in a game. Like, the most realistic MMO ever. I’m a fighter. A warrior. Does that mean my intellect stats are low? Maybe that’s why I feel so confused. But that’s what happens, I guess, when you get teleported into someone else’s body. This is so strange. And if I’m in Alexios’s body…what happened to whoever was in here before? Where’s Alexios? Did his soul just disappear?

It’s inside you, the voice said. **As time passes, Alexios will become you, and you will become Alexios. ** I don’t like the sound of that.

**It’s no different from becoming yourself in the world you came from. A new environment means a new personality. ** Eugenios was eyeing him skeptically. “If I tell you the year, will you stop acting like this?”

“I’ll do my best,” Torres said.

“It’s still only the first year of Nikephoros’s reign. Everyone knows that. And before, Anastasios was emperor nine years. He was crowned when you were eight or so, after Basil the—”

“But do you know, like, the specific year,” Torres said. “Like, how long has it been since Jesus died?”

“A long time since we lost Our Lord.” Eugenios crossed himself and glanced at the sky. “Many centuries. But if you want to know how long exactly, you’ll have to ask Father Sergios, and he might not even know. You’d have to head to the City—which is where you want to go anyway.”

Just as Torres was about to ask—seemingly for the twentieth time—what Eugenios was talking about, he remembered. Alexios had wanted to go to the city—the City—Konstantinopolis. The capital. There he could study to become a scholar and a philosopher. This was also the reason he had yet to get married. Alexios actually hated farming, which might have been part of the reason why Eugenios didn’t think it so strange that he was bad at it.

“Oh, right,” Torres said. “I forgot.”

“Don’t ask me how that’s possible,” Eugenios said.

They brought the cart back to Leandros, which lay at the end of a long dirt path. The village houses here were walled with brick and roofed with orange tiles, and resembled a modern Mediterranean getaway. A major difference, of course, was all the animals—horses, mules, oxen, sheep, goats, cows, dogs, cats, chickens—running around, resting, or being led here and there by farmers, each of whom was as strong and sturdy as Eugenios, and similarly dressed in worn yet colorful tunics. The stench of animal feces was also powerful. Some people were shoveling dung into wooden carts for fertilizer. Children were all over the place, while people with white hair were rare.

Eugenios led Torres home. After working all day, he had noticed that his body here was taller and more muscular than at Pemetic High. He had yet to see any glass or mirrors, but when his reflection looked back at him from a bucket of water drawn from the town well, he was struck by his beauty. The pale, chubby, pasty, pimply, beady-eyed face from his old life was no more. Instead, the face in the wavering reflection—Alexios’s face—possessed enormous brown eyes, a long straight nose, sensuous lips, a powerful jaw, olive skin, and curly black hair. He was like an ancient mosaic, one which depicted someone strikingly handsome. Even his braces were gone, while his teeth looked to be in decent shape. This last fact in itself almost made him leap for joy.

“Hey, Alexios,” he whispered to himself.

Torres had also been eternally dateless. But who knew? This Alexios might even get a girlfriend. Looks weren’t everything, but they definitely mattered.

“Watch out for that reflection of yours, Narkissos!” Eugenios elbowed him. “Let’s get dinner.”

The sun was setting by the time they came home. Like the few dozen other houses in Leandros, it was built into a low hill. Aside from a small wooden barn where the cart and horse and other farm animals were kept, it consisted of a single dark musty room, itself lit by light from the doorway, a pair of windows which lacked glass, and the fire snapping in the hearth. Smoke escaped through a hole in the ceiling. Otherwise the interior was bare. There were no chairs. Three of the walls had stone couches raised up from the dirt floor, on which were placed animal skins. Torres was unable to understand what these couches were for, but through Alexios’s eyes he could see that they were for sitting and sleeping. At the room’s center was a large wooden chest serving as a table. A woman working at the hearth had roasted chunks of chicken on wooden skewers; these she placed on a single large clay plate on the table. There were also copious helpings of fresh pita bread, feta cheese, and even salad with olives and vinegar dressing. One big clay cup was filled with red wine.

Torres was ravenous, but before eating, everyone washed their faces and hands with soap using a clay ewer and basin, drying with linen towels. When Eudokia—Torres’s aunt—sat down, Eugenios made the sign of the cross over the food and murmured a prayer. He and Eudokia bowed their heads, and Torres joined them. When Eugenios finished praying, everyone tore into the food. Torres realized with his first bite that it was the most incredible meal he had ever experienced. He was hesitant, at first, to share the cup, but the wine inside was so delicious—refilled several times from a large flask—that he couldn’t resist. His two hosts ate with their hands. No cutlery was visible. They chewed open-mouthed, and burped without excusing themselves. Torres was shocked at first, but he was family. In more polite company his aunt and uncle would probably refrain from acting this way. At the same time, they wiped their mouths with their linen napkins before touching the communal cup and chastised Torres for failing to do so. As he got used to this style of dining, the voice in Torres’s mind announced that he had increased his charisma skill. At the moment, however, he was still an Apprentice (Level 4/10), which meant that he could be annoying even if he wasn’t totally repellent. The voice also told him that eating was replenishing his stamina, which had fallen to dangerously low levels after a long day of work.

When they had eaten every last morsel of food on the plate and drained the cup and flask, they ventured outside into the evening. Eudokia—who dressed and looked almost like a beardless version of Eugenios—washed the plate and cup at the well along with several village women, all of whom conversed. Nearby, a man was playing a folk song about some people called “akritai” on a lute, and people had gathered to listen and dance. Torres excused himself, however, and staggered home, since he was exhausted. Inside the house he collapsed on a couch, pulled an animal skin over himself, and passed out in the darkness lit by the fireplace embers, the orange light in the sky, and the blue buildings sinking into dusk.

Next chapter

Hexbear doesn't usually feature a lot of fiction, so I'm just going to post this and see where it goes. If people are into it, I'll keep posting here. If I don't get much of a response, I'll stop. I think in general people (meaning: me) would rather read novels on paper. I've published and self-published novels before, and I'm currently submitting this trilogy to publishers. One way or another it will be published and available on paper—it took me two years to write, and I want to at least be able to hold it in my hand—but at the moment it's just available electronically. The whole thing is available for free here, and anyone who wants an .epub should shoot me a message, and I'll give you a dropbox link for free. I'm not charging anything at the moment because I'm more interested in becoming better known as a writer of communist fiction.

The story: it's Jumanji in Byzantium. Four high schoolers stuck in detention get teleported to 11th century Byzantium. They change races, genders, and classes along the way, and are forced to take different positions in a slave uprising—some supporting it, others fighting it or caught in between. The jock becomes a general, the overachieving know-it-all becomes a rogue merchant, the activist becomes a rebellious princess, and the nerd becomes "the one." This is a gamelit novel, so in some parts it reads like a video game. It's also a fantasy novel which draws a lot of inspiration from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, as well as dialectical materialism. Additionally, it's a historical fictional novel that I spent so much time researching (I've been a little obsessed with Byzantium for decades). My goal was to show how exploited people in truly desperate circumstances can build a new society, but also to show how changes in environment and context can change some character traits in people while also intensifying others. And, of course, I wanted to write something fun.

So without further ado, if you're still reading, here's the first chapter (CW, the jock says a few racist, sexist, ableist things):

spoiler

BYZANTINE WARS

CHAPTER 1: THE GAME

Julian Torres was transported to another world on the most unremarkable day imaginable. He had just been sentenced to detention at Pemetic High on a bleak winter afternoon in Maine. According to Vice Principal Ross, some people had spray-painted graffiti on the maintenance shack by the baseball field, and Torres was the main suspect. Now he was slumping behind a desk in a dusty, forgotten classroom on the second floor. Miss Ross had even confiscated his phone.

This is totally unfair, Torres thought. She didn’t even have any evidence!

The school buses roared away from the campus, bringing hundreds of students past piles of snow and along dirty roads to their homes—to food, drink, and video games. Torres was a huge fan of Fourteen Nights, and wanted to get back to his bedroom so he could play. Instead, he was stuck here.

Several other students joined him. First came Austin Boucher, a tall muscular football player who threw himself into a seat at the back of the classroom.

“Are you in for the graffiti?” Torres said, turning around to face him.

“Don’t talk to me,” Boucher said.

Okay. Torres looked back ahead.

Next came Helena Lee, a small thin overachiever. She greeted Torres, sat nearby, and retrieved a calculus textbook from her backpack. Both she and Torres had the same AP Physics class, but she was one of the few students who understood the subject. It was unusual for Miss Ross to sentence a future valedictorian to detention like this.

“Graffiti?” Torres said.

Lee looked at him. “When I get my phone back I’m going to have my dad complain to the school.”

“Daddy’s girl,” Boucher said.

Lee scowled at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be throwing footballs and giving yourself brain damage or something?”

“What?” Boucher looked around and crossed his eyes. “I don’t know. Where am I? Who am I?”

“Miss Ross must just be tossing random people in here to fill up her quota,” Torres said.

“It’s completely ridiculous,” Lee said.

The last to enter was Darius Jackson. He and Torres hung out at chess club and were taking a media studies class together. Jackson waltzed over to Torres, spun around, and sat beside him.

“She got you too, huh?” Jackson said. He spoke with a faint accent; his family had moved from Jamaica to Maine a few years ago.

Boucher glared at them. “Both of you shut up. This shit’s bad enough without listening to you losers flirt with each other.”

Jackson stood, but Torres pulled him down, shaking his head. “We’re already in enough trouble.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Boucher reclined in his seat and pulled his baseball cap over his eyes.

Lee sighed, retrieved a notebook from her backpack, and put on noise-canceling headphones. Within moments she had lost herself in calculus.

Such a know-it-all, Torres thought. But that’s her way of escaping this place. The three of us could take down Boucher and maybe even Miss Ross if we worked together, but we’re all caught up in our own little worlds.

Part of him wanted to ask Helena for her phone number. He had always admired how studious she was, and thought she was pretty. But Torres was insecure about his appearance—he was pudgy, unfashionable, and had braces and acne—and he got mediocre grades. Why would she be interested in him?

Jackson, meanwhile, had pulled a book called Wretched of the Earth from his backpack. He started reading.

“Nerd,” Torres whispered.

“A few more books and a few less video games would probably do you good, son,” Jackson answered, patting Torres’s back.

Torres rolled his eyes. “This is just like The Breakfast Club.”

“What’s The Breakfast Club?” Jackson said.

“It’s like a club,” Torres said. “Where you have breakfast.”

“Isn’t it some Tarantino movie where everyone kills each other in the end?”

“No, it’s a movie from the eighties about a bunch of kids trapped in detention.”

“Oh, okay. Yeah, this is kind of like that, I guess.”

Silence. Torres stared into space.

Jackson looked at him. “You’re just going to sit there?”

“I’m doing white lady yoga.” Torres raised his hands and held his middle fingers to his thumbs. “I’m meditating.”

Jackson laughed. “Meditating on what?”

“How this school needs a lawsuit or something for throwing random people in detention like this,” Torres said.

“That’s just more of your California dreaming,” Jackson said. “Forget it, Jake. It’s Maine.”

Jackson constantly made fun of Torres because he was from California, and thought Torres’s entire family was nuts for exchanging a lifetime of perfect weather for Maine’s bleak winters, muddy springs, and touristy summers. But in a way, Jackson was no better, since his family had left the green Caribbean paradise of Jamaica for the same thing. Jokes about ganja and reggae were inevitable in response, but Jackson had little interest in either.

Soon he was just as absorbed in his book as Helena was in hers. Torres got started on his Chinese homework. He was doing an independent study on the language, and loved how people still used these prehistoric symbols in the modern world. It was so fascinating how each word was a mix of sounds and ideas. Plus, if you screwed up the stroke order, your writing would be unreadable, so you needed to learn the way people thousands of years ago wrote and thought. The Chinese word for beautiful, for instance, was a man wearing a goat headdress, although to Torres the image looked like a centipede.

To each his own, he thought.

“Can’t even take a nap in this place,” Boucher said.

Pushing back his baseball cap, Boucher sprung up from his seat and wandered the classroom. For a minute he did pushups on the floor near Lee, clearly trying to impress her, but she ignored him. Torres watched out of the corner of his eye, and silently counted. Boucher finished at fifty pushups.

I can do maybe ten, Torres thought.

At the back of the classroom, Boucher tried to open a locked door labeled NO ENTRY.

“It’s locked for a reason,” Lee said.

Boucher glanced into the silent hallway for a moment, then returned to the closet door and—just as Lee was removing her headphones and telling him to stop—threw his weight onto the handle, busting it open.

Behind the door was absolute void.

“Jesus Christ, come on, man!” Torres said.

“Like a bull in a China shop,” Jackson said.

Boucher stepped back from the void, staring at it. Wind gusted through the windows and lifted the cobwebs tangled in the classroom’s corners.

“Creepy,” he said.

The closet seemed to absorb all the light in the world. Boucher stepped inside the dark, feeling the haze with his hands.

“Now’s our chance,” Jackson whispered to Torres. “Maybe we can push him in and lock the door.”

“He literally just broke the lock, dude,” Torres whispered back. “And he’s the size of a tank. A minute ago he did fifty pushups!”

“You don’t always have to be such a coward, Julian.”

Torres frowned. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously.”

“I’m a coward because I just want to get through the next hour without losing my teeth.”

“Don’t worry,” Jackson said. “Those braces of yours will protect you.”

“I’ve had them for two years,” Torres said. “I don’t want to get stuck with them for a second longer than I have to.”

“Nothing’s in here,” Boucher said from the closet.

“Great,” Helena said. “Now can you come back and close the door before all of us get in even more trouble?”

“Nope,” Boucher said.

Lee groaned. “Next time I’m asking Miss Ross if I can do detention in a classroom by myself.”

Jackson looked at her. “That might affect your permanent record. And then who knows? Harvard might not let you in.”

“At least I’m actually applying to colleges,” Lee said.

Jackson stared at her, unable to think of a comeback.

Torres pointed at Jackson. “Oh! She got you, dude!”

“I’m actually applying to lots of schools,” Jackson said to Torres. “Like the University of Kiss My Ass. It’s in Kiss My Ass, Florida. Ever heard of it?”

“The only thing any of us have heard of is your mom,” Torres said.

Jackson shook his head. “I still can’t believe people here talk like that. Where I’m from you’d get knifed for saying anything about people’s moms.”

“Well Toto, I don’t think we’re in Jamaica anymore,” Torres said.

“Yeah, you can say that again.” Jackson looked at the depressing linoleum classroom and the fluorescent lights that weren’t even turned on. Outside the windows it was already getting dark, even though it was barely past three in the afternoon.

Boucher, meanwhile, had been feeling along the closet’s edges. He withdrew a dusty wooden box. It resembled an ornate chess set.

“What’s this?” He showed the box to Lee. “Can you read this shit? It looks Chinese.”

“I’m Korean,” she said.

“From North Korea?”

Helena rolled her eyes. “I’ve never heard that joke before.”

“All Asians look the same to me,” Boucher said.

Helena tensed her muscles and glared at him. Jackson shook his head.

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Torres said.

Boucher shoved the box in his face. “Then you tell me what it says, genius.”

A word was carved into the box’s underside. The letters looked Greek to Torres, but he had never learned to read that language.

“It says ‘Byzantium,’” Jackson said. “But it’s written in English. The font is just kind of Greek-themed or something—”

“What’s Byzantium?” Boucher said.

“The Eastern Roman Empire,” Jackson said. “Think Ancient Rome, but medieval, and located mostly in what we call Turkey today. Obviously.”

“No need to show off,” Torres said.

Jackson smiled at him. “There’s always a need to show off.”

Helena put on her headphones and returned to her textbook.

“Byzantium,” Boucher said. “Weird word. Never heard of it. Any of you nerds wanna play a round of Byzantium?”

Torres shook his head. “No.”

But the truth was, Torres was tempted; he just didn’t want to play with Boucher. Torres loved any kind of game, not just video games or chess. He also played poker so much that Jackson joked that he was going to move to Las Vegas and become a professional poker player after graduating high school.

“I don’t know why you think that’s so funny,” Torres had said. “Poker requires, like, real understanding of emotions. You really need to know how to read people.”

“All you need to know how to do is find more burgers and credit cards,” Jackson had answered.

Boucher opened the box. Inside was an old booklet made of parchment, or something like it. There were also four silver figurines. The first had a long thin sword. The second was riding an armored horse. The third raised her arms in some kind of Kung Fu pose. The fourth had drawn what looked like a clunky, old-fashioned flintlock pistol, the kind that fires one shot at a time.

Boucher shook his head. “Lame ass game.”

“It’s like medieval Monopoly,” Jackson said.

Opening the booklet, Boucher found a page near the front explaining the pieces.

“This one’s the general.” He picked up the horse and the rider. “Me, in other words. And this one’s the swordsman—of course.” He placed the man armed with a sword on Torres’s desk. “Here’s the princess. Perfect for you.” He gave the woman to Jackson. “And finally the rogue, whatever that is.” He gave the last piece to Helena, who was too busy scrawling abstruse symbols in her notebook to notice.

“Let’s play,” Boucher said. Without waiting for an answer, he pulled three desks together and gestured for Torres and Jackson to join him.

The two acquaintances glanced at each other, but remained in their seats.

“Get over here,” Boucher growled.

“Why should we?” Torres said.

“Because we can kill him.” Jackson got up and joined Boucher. “In the game, of course.”

Torres watched Jackson for a moment, then followed.

Apes together strong, he thought.

“‘It is a chaotic time for Byzantium,’” Boucher said in a dramatic voice, reading from the booklet.

“Check it out.” Jackson indicated Boucher. “He can read.”

“Shut up,” Boucher said. Then he continued. “‘A peasant uprising has spread across the land, and the emperor has dispatched armies to crush it. But some have organized to fight back. Among these is Princess Herakleia.’” He nodded to Jackson. “You, in other words.”

Jackson met his gaze without flinching. “Is that supposed to be an insult? You think it’s funny I’m a woman in the game?”

“Yeah,” Boucher said.

“Is it funny that your mom’s a woman?” Jackson said.

“Don’t talk about my mom,” Boucher said.

“See?” Torres said to Jackson. “Talking about people’s moms can actually be useful.”

“Let’s go, momma’s boy,” Jackson said to Boucher. “Let’s see how tough you are.”

“After the game,” Boucher said.

Jackson looked at Torres. “The reactionary is a paper tiger.”

“‘Returning from a journey to faraway lands,’” Boucher continued, reading from the booklet, “‘Princess Herakleia plans to teach the people’s armies new and mystical fighting techniques. Pursued by the Roman legions, she races home so she can free the people from slavery—and so that they, too, can save her.’ Sounds boring and political.”

“‘I don’t like politics in video games,’” Jackson said, imitating Boucher’s deep voice.

Boucher clutched his head and groaned. “Argh, what else am I going to do without my phone?”

“How do you play?” Torres snatched the booklet. “I’ve never heard of this game. It sounds like Dungeons and Dragons, but the character classes are a little different, and tabletop RPGs aren’t usually set in Byzantium.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” Jackson said. “Don’t they usually take place in like this fantasy version of Western Europe? With like this weird race reification thing going on with goblins and dwarves and elves? Or is the whole story just about squabbling nobles, grimdark ultraviolence, morally gray characters, and weird rape fantasies, and does it completely ignore everyone else?”

“Sounds right up my alley,” Boucher said.

“No one forced you to open that door,” Torres said. “Did you ever think that maybe it was locked for a reason? Do you ever think at all?”

Boucher lunged at Torres, who ducked out of the way.

“Look,” Torres said. “Do you want to play or don’t you?”

“I want to play,” Boucher said.

“Alright, then let me read,” Torres said.

“Let me read,” Jackson sang, suddenly playing air guitar. “Read in here!”

“Gameplay looks pretty standard,” Torres said. “Each character has different traits, strengths, and weaknesses. Dice rolls help determine a lot of what happens. The game isn’t perfectly historical. It’s like a historical fantasy, even if there’s some historical precedent for its ideas, like these longshoremen called Zealots who took over some city called Thessaloniki and made a workers’ republic for a few years in the fourteenth century. Only—this is weird.”

“What?” Jackson said.

“Usually there’s a dungeon master,” Torres said. “Someone to kind of guide the game along. It’s almost like a story we all tell together and play together. But there needs to be someone sort of outside the action and, like, kind of guiding everything.”

“So then how does the game work?” Jackson said.

Torres shrugged. “I don’t know. It just says don’t start unless you want to finish, and you win by beating the emperor and destroying the empire.”

Boucher flipped the game board over. The other side was a carved wooden fantasy-style map.

“It looks like modern Turkey,” Jackson said. “Back then I guess they called it Byzantium.”

“Actually, they called it Romanía,” Lee said, pulling off her headphones.

“Like the country in Eastern Europe?” Jackson said.

“Similar name, different thing,” Lee said.

“How do you know that?” Jackson said.

“You think Asians only know about math and martial arts? There’s a lot about me you don’t know.” Lee put her headphones back on.

Torres, Boucher, and Jackson looked at each other, then turned to the game board. The map was divided into provinces. These were connected by winding roads and dotted with cities labeled in that difficult Greek font. (Torres could make out the word “Konstantinopolis” for Istanbul.) A lot of detail was on the map, too. Islands sprinkled the seas, farmland checkered the coasts, and the interior was mountainous and dry—turning to a vast desert in the southeast, and an endless forest in the northwest. Strange animals were also present—ants the size of buses, Mongolian death worms, Chinese water dragons, Japanese skeletons as large as mountains, shapeshifting ghouls, and other creatures Torres had never seen.

“How do we start?” Boucher said.

“It says we have to roll the dice to see who goes first,” Torres said.

Boucher seized the dice, but winced. “Damn, they’re heavy.”

He handed the dice to Torres, who almost dropped them. Somehow each dice possessed the weight of a mountain. Rapidly he gave them to Jackson.

“Weird.” Jackson returned the dice to Boucher, who hefted them in his hand, his muscles straining.

“If you want to start,” Torres said, “you have to roll the dice.”

Trembling, Boucher lowered his hand and then dropped the dice onto the board. The rattle was thunderous, and made the chairs in the room tremble.

Helena Lee pulled off her headphones and glared at them. “Can you guys please do that more quietly?”

No one was paying attention to her. The board had come alive.

When I posted my first chapter, I got some good feedback and a lot to think about so I wanted to edit it and get some feedback on the second chapter, since it has a different tone. Here is a link to the edited first chapter. Thank you in advance.

edit: Thanks again for the feedback, I promise I won't post again until the story is done

Hello! I wrote a book and I wanted to share the first chapter and get feedback. I have considered trying the whole nine and trying to get published, but I have a visual disability so editing is very hard for me, and honestly I don't think it's what any publisher is looking for anyway. If I get a good response I'll post more.

It is morning, and the sky is frozen. I began my waiting when the cold came, and now I must go to where I can become wholly living. I leave the downward dark where many others hide. I will go to a meeting which will make me all alive. I am bringing all of me, beneath every eye that is above me, to where life will meet me and all of me will be made living.

It is morning, and the sky is melting. The eyes above me are fleeing, because they will not live. A tiny life is touching me. I am carrying all of me, and it is a dead walking. I have always come to this meeting. Life is coming to meet me, life is coming to make so much of me into living things. I see it bleeding from the line across all things where I cannot reach. Life is coming! Life is coming for me to meet it!

It is morning, and the sky is stained. The eyes above me are washed away, and I am trying. I am squeezing, I am pushing, and I am falling between efforts. It is all of it heavy, and I am carrying some of me. The meeting will be above me, and this morning I will reach it. Life is erupting to me. I have so little left from our last meeting. All of me wants to live, and none of me will be beneath the rest.

It is morning, and the sky is fire! I am wide atop a thing more dead than any other, because it will be most alive in our meeting. I have come to the meeting, and all of me is waiting! Life is rising over me, life is here, life is striking all of me!

It is morning, and the sky is bulging. Where I was folded, I open. Where I was tightened, I loosen. Where I was sinking, I rise, and all of me is lightened, all of me is living! Life has come to meet me, life has come for me to steal away what it always gives! Now I am alive, now all of me is life-hungry, and I take enough for all of me! All things that are not me are taking life also, because life has come to meet me here on the rock which sits upon the death that reaches to the line across all things. With life I can see the rock that is pale, upon dust that is red, upon the safe dark that is beneath it where the cold hides from life's coming. I open myself, my teeth touch the life from above, and I balance it all, and this is the meeting that I came to.

It is morning, and the sky is touching me, and it comes with me. Now I do not carry me, and all of me is pulling itself. Life has come into where I am opened, because I came to this meeting.

Morning is ending, and I leave this living rock, and I am alive again!

I know some of your nerds have way too many pens. Tell me about your favorites. Bonus points if they don't cost $200+, because that's silly.

I have a lamy safari medium nib that is very nice to use, but considering getting something else because they are fun, good for drawing and I'm switching back to paper for notes anyway. Any favorite inks?

So, I noticed a problem I have. I have ideas that always, in my head, appear as a vague shape or idea, but I can never get a concrete idea of how something would go. or look I can only detail pivotal moments, but I can never picture the hours in between each event.

I have Autism. Over the past year, I had been trying to write, but I could never effectively translate my ideas. Every time I get to the keyboard, it seems my flowing mind grinds to a halt. I have been working alone, so that doesn't help much. I am good at designing character designs in Heroforge, but not so good at putting them to writing, because I will need a constant concrete foundation for how something would look. And I have trouble coming up with how something would be without any kind of foundation or starting point

It was watching two episodes of The 2005 'The Snow Queen' anime today, that I realized that my creative forte was not in writing a book without a helping visual aid. However, I cannot make visual art either.

I had the idea of somehow making a visual novel format, where there is an emphasis on character dialogue and interactions. Is there some program or software where I can show a story in a visual novel format? That is, showing lots of still backgrounds and characters with lots of text?

Edit: External Aid! That's the concept I was looking for. I can't formulate something solely off the top of my head. Whether it's bouncing ideas by sharing with others, collaborating with others, or just having a picture of something, any kind of external stimuli or aid is something I always need to be able to have ideas at all.

From the article:

1. There are a lot of stories already out there, but there can never be too many of YOUR stories out there.

2. Being unique isn’t about telling a story that has never been told, it is about telling a story from a perspective people can both relate to and learn from.

3. No one writes like you write. You may have a style inspired by other writers and stories you love, but there is only one you, and only one voice through which the stories you write are told.

4. If you are thinking about giving up because of something someone else did or said (or didn’t say or didn’t do), take some time to consider your choice. No one technically has the right to tell you which dream you can and cannot follow, and anyone who tries is just not nice.

5. One bad day is not enough of a reason to give up. Not two bad days or two bad weeks or two bad years, either. Life is rough, and it’s tough to handle. But that does not mean you have to stop writing — or that, if you do, your hiatus has to last forever.

6. Just because multiple people aren’t constantly praising you for your work does not mean you aren’t doing good work. Much of the work you will do as a writer will go unnoticed by the masses. This is the way of things. Keep doing good work.

---

(More of the article in the link up-top.)

My thoughts:

Tbh, I might give my writing a backseat.

I'm doing too many things as it is and I want to do less and just focus on what I want to do (and not what I feel I have to do).

Plus, what I excel at so far will pay dividends down the road; I don't know if I'm ready to write a novel or not.

Poet, novelist, playwright, librettist, essayist, and translator, James Mercer Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902, to parents Caroline (Carrie) Mercer Langston, a school teacher, and James Nathaniel Hughes, an attorney. His parents separated before Langston was born and he spent his pre-adolescent years with his maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson Langston, in Lawrence, Kansas. Mary Langston was the second wife of Charles Henry Langston, a major black political activist in Kansas, and the sister-in-law of former U.S. Congressman John Mercer Langston. After his grandmother’s death, Caroline married Homer Clark, a steel mill worker in Lincoln, Illinois. The couple settled in Cleveland, Ohio with Langston and his younger brother, Gwyn.

Hughes was fiercely independent from an early age. When his mother and brother followed his stepfather who occasionally left the family in search of higher wages, Langston stayed in Cleveland to finish high school. He also had a volatile relationship with his attorney father who pursued work in Cuba and who by 1920 was general manager of an American company in Mexico. Langston Hughes joined his father in Mexico City briefly in 1919, moved back to Cleveland to complete high school, and then upon receiving his diploma in 1920, returned to Mexico City.

Rather than acquiesce to his domineering father’s demands that he pursue a degree in mining engineering, Langston moved to New York City, New York and enrolled in Columbia University. Hughes quit Columbia after a year and decided to acquire a more worldly education. In 1922, he began a two-year stint as a ship’s crewman, during which he traveled to, and spent considerable time in, western Africa, France, and Italy. He also briefly lived in the expatriate community in London, England before returning to the United States in November 1924 to live with his mother in Washington, D.C. In 1925, he became the personal assistant of historian Carter G. Woodson, the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

In 1926, Hughes he enrolled in Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) and earned a liberal arts degree in 1930. His classmates included Thurgood Marshall, a future U.S. Supreme Court justice. While there, he joined Omega Psi Phi Fraternity.

While in college, Hughes often returned to Harlem where he became a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes deeply believed that black art should represent the experiences and culture of the black “folk.” Images of rural and urban working-class African Americans filled his poetry and prose, and his writing celebrated blues and jazz culture. Some of his more famous works associated with the Harlem Renaissance include the collections of poems, The Weary Blues (1926) and Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927); the novel Not Without Laughter (1930); and the essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (1926).

Hughes was also politically engaged. During the 1930s, he wrote plays highlighting the injustice of the Scottsboro case and the imprisonment of the black Communist organizer, Angelo Herndon. In 1932, he was among a group of prominent black intellectuals who traveled to the Soviet Union to participate in an ultimately aborted film about black workers in the U.S. After realizing the film would not be made, Hughes decided to use the opportunity to travel across the Soviet Union to learn more about the world’s first Communist nation. During his travels, he spend a brief period in Turkmenistan (then part of the Soviet Union but now an independent nation) before traveling on to China and Japan. Between 1934 and 1935, Hughes lived in California, where he completed one novel and co-wrote the screenplay for the Hollywood film, Way Down South.

In 1937, Hughes spent several months in Spain during its civil war as a correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American and a supporter of the anti-fascist forces. Even though Hughes began to distance himself from the left after World War II, he was enveloped by the anti-communist hysteria of the Cold War era and testified before Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Subcommittee on Un-American Activities in 1953.

Hughes wrote sixteen books of poetry, twelve novels and short stories, and eight children’s books. His honors and awards included a Guggenheim Fellowship (1934), Rosenwald Fellowship (1941), the Ainsfield-Wolf Book Award (1954), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Spingarn Award (1960).

By the early 1940s, Hughes ceased his peripatetic lifestyle and settled permanently in Harlem. However, he continued to write and interact with fellow Harlem Renaissance writers, such as Arna Bontemps, as well as younger writers he sought to encourage like Alice Walker. Langston Hughes died in Harlem on May 22, 1967, at the age of 65. James Mercer Langston Hughes’ ashes are interred beneath a floor medallion in the foyer of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967)

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• ❤️Foundations of Leninism
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A well-done article. I never knew about this writer. More research should be done on him.

I should also check out his work sometime.

Yes, it's the Mormon dude. I know, I know.

But I was recommended this by a communist friend in PSL who said I needed it and highly recommended it and said that, according to contacts he knew, he's... err, had misgivings about the faith (not sure if I should say it here).

I'm going to start these now and see if I find them useful. Wish me luck. Just need the advice, is all.

When you read a good writer, it feels like they have everything lined up in their head, all the themes and plotlines and character arcs, and they're just spooling it out for you in a controlled way to keep you hooked. For me that's the part I can't seem to do, keeping everything in my head so I can spool it out in an organized way. I can come up with characters and themes and ideas, and I have a mature perspective on the world, and I can feel things, but the mechanics of actually fucking writing just seem to elude me.

Can practice fix this? Anyone with adhd experience this and get past it?

If dying was like floating
In the void
Void of all worries
Light as a feather
A murmur in the wind
Of good times gone by.

Gone with the years
Aged to dust
Dust blown into the wind
Scattered into nothingness
I wish I was dead sometimes.
It sounds easier than living
With the weight on my shoulders
Let me float
I’ll be alright.

The Tulpa War rages on, and in the ongoing dance of death, no one is safe.

The Olympians of Mars are immortal no more, falling one by one at the blood-soaked hands of the mysterious Reine Rouge. New champions arise on Earth and armies of Preta-haunted machines emerge like living nightmares to meet them.

The fires of revolution burn brightly as old allegiances are torn apart. Some fight for hate and vengeance while trampling over the ruins of the past. Others fight for love and redemption, striving for a future that might yet be.

Megan and Kitsune reunite amid the ashes. The final battle for life itself is about to begin.

Fans of the Gundam franchise, the Pacific Rim films, the Nier: Automata and Zone of the Enders video game serieses, or the Heavy Gear and Lancer RPG settings are cordially invited to the climactic conclusion of the Tulpa Trilogy.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BCQD4BZZ

As a personal message to anyone on Hexbear reading this, I have been looking forward to completing this trilogy for years, and without spoiling anything, I promise that there is a satisfying conclusion. No story should go without one.

Here are two links about the previous novels of the trilogy if you’re interested but new to the setting:

https://ulyssestuggy.com/

https://www.tulpatrilogy.com/

Full comic : https://i.redd.it/cjd72t46nl291.png

As you all know, I have been writing a novel and this is the writing community...

This video by Shaun is actually pretty inspiring. The idea that JKRowling went from zero to billionaire by writing a series that had so many stupid mistakes in it lifts quite a burden off my shoulders.

I've seen the Harry Potter movies, they're not bad, nor are they particularly amazing. Well, it is amazing that they actually got made and fully budgeted until the end. The Narnia series after the third movie had to abort to save the wallet of the producers, Pirates of the Caribbean made a deep dive into the bottom of the ocean of low quality, The Hobbit was bad in ways mere mortals are not qualified to explain. I'd have swapped the amount of production effort HP and PotC got to the last movie if I could.

The Harry Potter directors were smart enough to cut out some of JKR's weird shit. I didn't read past the third novel. I only watched the movies, and they did make a good job of toning down the worst parts of the bullying and slavery apologia. I can see where HP movie fans and HP theory readers can have very different understandings of how JKR talked about slavery.

There is probably a large Venn Diagram intersection of people who downplay the slavery and people who pretended to read the whole series to the end for some kind of clout.

As I write, I'm meticulously paranoid about details that don't mean something later in the story, or dig a hole that later becomes a plothole and gets forgotten instead of filled. In fact, I'm kind of worried that my paranoia could make the novel(s) incompletable.

Sherlock Is Garbage, And Here's Why - Hbomberguy[1:49:52] dabbles a bit on that with the recent BBC sherlock series. He notes a director who is apparently talented at building up, but is utterly incapable of actually building to a destination. I had already felt like Sherlock was off, and Hbomberguy just happened to release a damning video that precisely articulates why I liked individual episodes of Sherlock, but felt the series as a whole wasn't adding up. Because really, it literally was just kind of going nowhere, but with the aesthetics of about to get there. And Sherlock wasn't the first series the director ruined for Hbomberguy.

Game of Thrones is an interesting example. The guy's ending was clearly a shower thought, he built a world, he built several books. Maybe he built something so big he couldn't finish it. This could be me in 10 years (minus the financial success, statistically speaking).

I have to walk the tight rope between a story with no errors or accidental loose ends, but also a story that cleanly arrives with a satisfying destination.

Best of luck to everyone.

I said earlier that I was working on submitting my stories to different literature journals and today, I got a bite.

It's the first time I'll be getting a paid publication and that's really cool. I'm so glad I found this community that helped me feel confident enough to put my work out there.

I look forward to getting more of my work out there to corrupt the youth.

Holy shit, I think this is my most upbeared post. Thanks everybody! :sicko-wholesome:

Also, it's a sci-fi story about a future where body modifications are cheap and easy. I wanted to explore how even good technology can be bad in and inherently oppressive society.

This skit was written back in 2006 when I still aspired to be a sketch comedy writer. I've never shared it and forgot all about it until today. Thought maybe you guys might enjoy.

EXT. FRONT PORCH – NIGHTTIME

A single yellow-hued light illuminates the scene. In the center of frame, above a pathway and a couple of steps, is a door. A wicker wreath with a cartoonish bird holding a sign that reads “HOME SWEET HOME” hangs on the door. A bench swing is off on the right side of the porch

JOHN STOSSEL and SUSAN approach the door. Susan is leading the way but she is walking backwards, as if to guard the door.

JOHN STOSSEL

(incredulous) The word gratuity comes from the latin: gratuitus, which means voluntary. So, how is it that a “gratuity” was automatically factored into our bill?

John Stossel air-quotes the word “gratuity”.

SUSAN

(passively dismissive)

I don’t know, John. I guess that’s just their policy.

JOHN STOSSEL

(annoyed and incredulous)

But what’s voluntary about that?! Why not charge 10 dollars for egg foo young rather than 8 dollars and 95 cents and then pass that additional income on to their servers as a taxable wage? And what if I’m not SATISFIED with the service? How do I provide FEEDBACK to my waiter if he’s automatically ENTITLED to a full tip? I mean, c’mon! Give me a break!

SUSAN

(wearily)

Yes, John, I see your poi-

JOHN STOSSEL

(angerly)

There’s a word for what they’re doing. It’s called welfare!

Susan shoots John Stosssel a horrified look

SUSAN

(cautiously)

Listen, showing me the 20/20 studios was great. Taking me to visit your friend Hugh at the old folk’s home was really sweet, but it’s getting awfully late.

Susan looks at her watch.

SUSAN

I have to work in the morning, you know.

JOHN STOSSEL

That brings me to dating myth #6: It’s dangerous to invite a man in for a nightcap on the first date. Almost all the dating sites advise against letting a stranger into your home on the first date. They say, “You must be careful to avoid potentially dangerous situations because sexual predators often look and act just like normal men”. But is it true? Turns out, it doesn’t matter. One study shows that 90% of date rapists will rape their dates regardless of whether they are invited in or not.

Susan looks at John as if he’s sprouted devil horns. A couple beats go by.

SUSAN

It’s not that at all, John. I just need to get some sleep.

JOHN STOSSEL

How much sleep is enough sleep? Conventional wisdom would have you believe that 8 hours is mandatory. But where did that number originate?

SUSAN

(flatly)

John…

JOHN STOSSEL

Many sleep experts attribute its enduring popularity to the work schedules of our agrarian ancestors. Back in the days of dusk to dawn workdays, sleep patterns were largely determined by the sun.

SUSAN

(sternly)

John…

JOHN STOSSEL

Modern tests in sleep laboratories have shown that the natural circadian rhythm of humans averaged 25 hours without the benefit of triggers such as light or dark.

At the word “shown” Susan puts her head in her hand and begins to slowly walk toward the bench swing where she sits down and sighs deeply.

John walks over and sits beside Susan. He stares at her for several beats.

JOHN STOSSEL

(earnestly)

I’m sorry Susan. I feel like a fool.

SUSAN

You do?

JOHN STOSSEL

(tenderly)

I’ve just realized what you’re thinking.

SUSAN

(hopefully)

You have?

JOHN STOSSEL

(return to incredulous)

You’re thinking, why sleep with John Stossel? He looks like an Armenian Janitor. Who knows what STD’s he may, or may not, be carrying. Wouldn’t NOT sleeping with John Stossel make the most SENSE? That’s what you’d think, but you’d be wrong. SURPRISINGLY, women that slept with John Stossel are TWICE as likely to have graduated from college and FOUR TIMES as likely to go on to earn an advanced degree

Link to parent tweet

Text of the NYT Article:

By Timothy Aubry

Nov. 25, 2015

Less than a lifetime ago, reputable American writers would occasionally start fistfights, sleep in ditches and even espouse Communist doctrines. Such were the prerogatives and exigencies of the artist’s existence, until M.F.A. programs arrived to impose discipline and provide livelihoods. Whether the professionalization of creative writing has been good for American literature has set off a lot of elegantly worded soul-searching and well-mannered debate recently, much of it in response to Mark McGurl’s seminal study, “The Program Era.” What Eric ­Bennett’s “Workshops of Empire” contributes is an understanding of how Cold War politics helped to create the aesthetic standards that continue to rule over writing workshops today.

Sponsored by foundations dedicated to defeating Communism, creative-­writing programs during the postwar period taught aspiring authors certain rules of propriety. Good literature, students learned, contains “sensations, not doctrines; ­experiences, not dogmas; memories, not philosophies.” The goal, according to Bennett, was to discourage the abstract theorizing and systematic social critiques to which the radical literature of the 1930s had been prone, in favor of a focus on the personal, the concrete and the individual. While workshop administrators like Paul Engle and Wallace Stegner wanted to spread American values, they did not want to be caught imposing a particular ideology on their students, for fear of appearing to use the same tactics as the communists. Thus they presented their aesthetic principles as a non­political, universally valid means of cultivating writerly craft. The continued status of “show, don’t tell” as a self-evident truth, dutifully dispensed to anyone who ventures into a creative-­writing class, is one proof of their success.

Bennett’s argument is a persuasive reminder that certain seemingly timeless criteria of good writing are actually the product of historically bound political agendas, and it will be especially useful to anyone seeking to expand the repertoire of stylistic strategies taught within creative-writing programs. That said, some sections are better researched than others. His chapters on Stegner, Hemingway and Henry James lack the detailed ­institutional machinations that make his account of Engle’s career so compelling. Moreover, he uses the early history to support his claim that creative-writing programs continue to bolster a pro-­capitalist worldview today. But a chess move made to solve specific problems can serve unexpected purposes when the situation on the board has changed. Whether or not the aesthetic doctrines currently championed by writing workshops perform the same political function they once did, now that the very conflict responsible for their emergence has ended, is a question that requires further study.

Finally, despite Bennett’s misgivings about creative-writing workshops, his book is itself a convincing argument in their favor. A graduate of the Iowa M.F.A. program, Bennett has produced a literary history far more enjoyable than the typical academic monograph, for all the reasons one might guess. It features a winning protagonist, Engle, the ebullient poet-huckster and early director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, who, according to Bennett, “moved too quickly through the airports and boardroom offices to bother with the baggage of complex beliefs.” Here and elsewhere, Bennett never tells when he can show. The 1920s, under his scrutiny, consists not of trends, but of “racy advertisements, voting mothers, unruly daughters, smoking debutants, migrating Negroes, Marx, Marxists, Freud, Freudians and the unsettling monstrosity of canvasses and symphonies from Europe.” Wallace Stegner, he observes, “wrote at length about not sleeping with people.” Whether novelists and poets should make room in their work for the intellectual abstractions that prevail within academic scholarship, the academy would be better off if more of its members could attend to concrete particulars with the precision and wit that Bennett brings to his subject. Indeed, they might even benefit from taking a creative-writing class or two.

WORKSHOPS OF EMPIRE

Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing During the Cold War

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