Being homeless was better than living in the house I grew up.

I was free, and roamed the world as I saw fit, and most shelters were cleaner. You have no idea how sad of a statement that is if you've never been.

I was alone mostly as a child, and covered in fleas, and lived in filth. I couldn't leave either, and just had to suffer. Was beat daily for being sick.

Begging for help, and nobody would so I stopped talking entirely.

I will never stop speaking now.

#WordWeavers 03/14/25 - Antagonist POV: Do you want to be perceived as "good."

Fenrir: It's only important for my crew to see me as competent and reliable. I don't care if anyone thinks I'm morally "good" or not.

Corvus: What do you mean "perceived"? I AM a good guy. Why's everyone always so quick to call me a villain?! I make one little mistake and everyone turns on me! It's not fair! No one ever tries to see the real me! They always want to judge!

Today on Transliterated: Two birds have a chat about language.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/chapter/2126616

Sentinel, a 100-word SF drabble for the Friday Fictioneers challenge.
#Writing #WritingCommunity

https://ghlearner.wordpress.com/2025/03/14/sentinel-friday-fictioneers-flash-fiction/

On Sunday, 3/16, @saposcat will be our featured creator for our 'Talk To Me Day', an effort to get more engagement by featuring writers and other creative people and giving everyone interested the opportunity to ask them questions. And you will get replies, not immediately but throughout the day.

You can read more about what it's about
here: https://write.as/scribesandmakers/about

and here: https://indieauthors.social/@saposcat/114160221421777884

#PennedPossibilities 613 — How do you feel about the world or universe you’ve created within your WIP? Are you satisfied with it thus far?

Remember. You asked...

How do I feel about the world itself? Like I stepped in a cesspool up to my knees!

Most nations are theocracies, with oligarchs ascendant fighting one another. It's a full extrapolation of post Jan 20th 2025, stabilized with the needle at religio-fascist, by those who preferred stable to bat-shit crazy, and taken 50 to 150 years into the future. (I haven't decided the timeline, yet.) The initials E.M. in EM Mars Colonizations Corp stand for what you think it does, complete with very cute silvery Heinlein spaceships misnomered as Starships. The main character is shanghaied to Mars as a colonist (one added to a population of 10,000) on the last ship making the passage as EM goes bankrupt. All her life, May Ri struggled not to be completely nothing, destined by her gender to barely have agency, valued mostly because she could bare sons. Now she must master living on Mars, with its corporate frontier rules.

There's a reason Mars Needed Women (the title), but the story I'm telling has "Need" in the past tense. Men die disproportionately more often than the women in Mars Space, and when the corporate power structure begins to crumble, May Ri has to fight harder for survival. She, however, isn't interested in keeping the status quo. Neither is all her sister colonists, nor all the first generation (nisei) Martians who have all been raised by only their mothers.

I'm really satisfied with how the story I'm writing works within this universe. It's feminist to the core. It questions gender roles. It tars patriarchy as ruining the lives of women AND men.

It's coming together, gonzo pantser style. Just wrote the 14th installment of 31. I've 8 of the remaining 17 planned. The reader should be starting to see that May Ri is as ruthless as those in power (the men, of course), but with a female twist. She hates being used, but she likes men (finds them fun) and wishes they'd quit with the power-dominance-shit. She hates seeing other women being hurt, and she's the type of person, given the chance, ceases opportunities and makes solutions. When she has four daughters to protect against the Earthers, it becomes very real.

I'm posting all installments on Mastodon thru the month of March on a single thread. To keep up with the story, follow this hashtag: #RSMarsNeededWomen.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory

#WordWeavers 14/3: Antagonist POV: Do you want to be perceived as “good?”
Perriad: Perceived by whom?
In any case, I stand for nothing more or less than the interests of the Guild of Dawnsingers. If the Guild holds to its historic purpose, there is no higher good than that. No right-thinking person can disagree.
#books #writing #writersofmastodon

#WritersCoffeeClub 14/3: What new themes are you currently exploring?
Honestly, if I thought too much about “themes”, I’m pretty sure I would struggle a lot more to just tell the story.
Of course there’s stuff going on; slavery, women’s rights, the potential for a new industrial revolution that might rerun what wrecked the world once before. And people care about these things. They’re the background of their lives; but it’s their lives I’m writing about.
#books #writing #writersofmastodon

#ScribesAndMakers 3/14. When writing dialogue, do you include everything from hello to goodbye or stick to what's essential?

I don't include anything boring but what counts as boring depends on circumstances.

Or put it another way, sometimes "Hello" is essential.

"We’re about to drown in a sea of pedestrian takes. An explosion of noise that will drown out any signal. Goodbye to finding original human insights or authentic connections under that pile of cruft."
https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest

weaponised grump
sour shells loaded for bleh
a seamed face frown-stitched
squinting taking aim
stubborn or persistent
depending

stone and ash
a cold water wash
and skinned knuckles

black stones cairned
raised voice polyester tented
or a hard kicking horse
how you wiped the table
washed the windows
even when you couldn't

#SmallPoems #Poetry #Writing #MastoPrompt 13 March 2025 - ornery