Mastodawn

#PhantasticsPrompts 2025.24.03.: What kind of fantasy creatures do you particularly like and why?

Um, dragons? Cut my teeth on Dragon Riders of Pern (not Tolkien, never Tolkien). But, right, cliché, a trope. So. I write this fantasy story and a secondary character is? You guessed it, a dragon. Hackneyed? Well, when the Red Dragon is shows up it has the flu. A fever means it's warm blooded. It walks on rear legs and wings, so a wyvern? It breathes fire so when it sneezes that's a problem. It's furry, pretty ugly, too. Well, maybe a giant bat? People don't know the difference; still a dragon. But it eats an orchard when hungry, so… a fruit bat?

I have a bit of fun with this.

They show up in an SF story, but that's a different prompt.

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist 13h ago

#PennedPossibilities 966 — SC POV: When was the last time you got lost?

Most of my characters, who aren't antagonists, I would ask this to have wings. Kind of hard for a day angel or a night angel to get lost when they can easily get a bird's eye view. So, I'll ask Shugh, short for Steamed Milk and Sugar. He's a real saint. (I won't explain the pun; you'd have to read the story.)

[Shugh:] As a college trained journalist, I moved to Home City to find work at one of the newspapers or magazines published there—but I was a man trying to become a reporter in a field dominated by women. I performed plenty of menial labor for years, but kept showing up in newsrooms willing to take even a janitorial position.

One day, a night angel in the elevator mistook me for a gofer. She handed me coin and sent me to fetch her ramen and tea at a place she'd heard was amazing. Of course, that meant finding the right building with a day angel food court on the roof. She'd given me directions and a restaurant name, but apparently I hadn't gotten the directions right. Since I don't have wings (I'm neither a day nor a night angel), that meant climbing dozens of flights of stairs in a dozen old buildings lacking elevators until I found it. Two hours later.

Well, it did smell amazing. Spicy. Lots of garlic.

When I returned looking beyond wilted, only to have my empty stomach growl loudly, the dark woman with velvety black wings took pity on me. She never admitted it, but I think she'd hazed the new man in the office, not realizing I wasn't even hired. She did listen to my sad story, and shared the ramen in their lunch room with curious women coworkers sometime walking by to ogle me. I'm not very masculine and intentionally a little plump, always dressing as genderless as I could to blend amongst the other women, never looking competitive or that I might go aggro. I could do this! I'd always felt more at home amongst the women in school than with other guys, and had learned well how to be accepted.

Turned out she was the layout editor at Around the City. She couldn't hire me, but she knew the woman in charge of photography at the newspaper two floors above in the same building.

Long story short, I now share an apartment with Night On Fire, and her bed—well, she insisted—and I now also work at that newspaper two floors above as a (too junior to get an assignment so he's a gofer and in the typing pool) reporter. Despite being male, I've gotten my foot in the door. I took the name Steamed Milk and Sugar in further effort to fit in, biding my time to jump on a story that will prove my worth despite my gender.

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist 14h ago

@Priyajsridhar

#Writephant 2026.0326 — Ok Day Questions 1-4 Answered En Masse

Our theme, since it is OK Day, is being ok and okay! Who feels ready to talk about both?

Sure, I'll give it a go! Sorry. Late. Gathering tax document. Good excuse, huh? 🤪

Our first question, as always, is how are you doing? What is bringing you joy?

Writing. Been making progress both adding story and revising the WIP. Getting "incomplete" completed.

A1. To you, what does it mean to be okay? Or ok?

Able to think clearly, not hurting or ill, not being down on myself, energy to do stuff.

A2. Are okay and ok the same? Or different? Why?

No, they are different. Literally, 4 letters vs 2. As far as meaning, they are the same. Usage-wise, "okay" is more formal. For use in SF literature, either are ok [pun intended], but if the story is making a point about language, or the language is not actually English, "ok" is not okay because "ok" is literally the sound of the letter O and the letter K transcribed; if those sounds aren't available in the language being spoken… Enough said. In my WIP, I use "all right" instead, and in fantasy I'd definitely use "okay" instead of "ok" to escape sounding too colloquial. Better yet, I'd use "all right." Of course, it is never ok to use both spellings of ok and okay in the same work, unless you're discussing diction and semantics. Like now. I consider consistency a virtue.

A3. We always ask how you are doing on Mondays; how are you doing in general? Would you say you’re okay?

Today, pretty okay. I'm ever so slightly mind fogged, which is okay. Starting to feel yesterday's workout. Psychologically, I'm more okay than average since I realized something important recently. Stretching and exercise multiple times a week is important to my general health, since I'm in my late 60s, and whilst doing it I used to also listen to my phone reading back my recent chapters. Because I'd be tempted to stop an exercise to correct errors as I heard them, an hour of stretching and exercise could easily stretch to three with the interruptions. So I stopped listening. Buzz! Wrong answer! I realized I felt progressively divorced from my stories, worried whether what I wrote was any good. Yesterday, I decided I really wanted to listen. Wow, those last two iffy spicy chapters turned out more perfect than I could have hoped. Instant high. Sometimes intuition is…

Wait for it…

More than okay? 😋

A4. Excluding a million dollars before taxes and not having systematic hate affecting our lives, what positive change would help you be more than okay?

I'm getting things done that I had been putting off. ("Don't wanna" sound familiar?) I'm getting more writing done, and completing the current project and beta read edit done would be good. These require discipline and I'm working on that. Okay?

But, I sense, that's not the question here. The question is more of a wish-it-were-true…

I really want my spouse's structural health to be better so we can go traveling again. That'd be a real boost.

Self-promo time!

No publications, per se, so I'll highlight these posts I'm very proud of.

Discussion of the Odyssey and how it relates to story telling by a bard at the inn in your fantasy story: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/116275516114434935

Understanding the word "Indoctrination": https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/116275099039503403

An amazing picture I took: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/116270102419678635

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist (@[email protected])

@[email protected] Thank you. I studied folklore and mythology at university and the story came up a lot. I did have to look up the details. The Odyssey is an example of epic poetry that could be chunked down so that the facts of the story, the plot, and the characters could be memorized such that a bard could use formulas to generate the poetry for the retelling the story to an audience, maybe with musical accompaniment. It was a living. If you ask then wasn't the story different at each retelling? Yes. *The poetry was.* The Odyssey we consider canon now is essentially a snapshot taken of a living oral tradition that existed solely in the minds of generations of live storytellers. Like a bear mounted in a natural history museum, the Odyssey in print is now equally as dead and immutable as that bear. #fantasy #writers should take heed and provide that level of verisimilitude when depicting a night at the inn. #writer #author #writingCommunity #WritersOfMastodon #RSessay

Eldritch Café

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist 1d ago

#PennedPossibilities 965 — What is your MC’s reaction when someone close to them is sick or injured? How do they behave? (Minor spoilers.)

Bolt, my day angel MC, has demonstrated that she will step up and do something a lot in the current story, if I include "sympathetic to" in the "close to them" category. It's one case where her not thinking through what could go wrong works in her favor to make her seem slightly heroic instead of somewhat cowardly. In one case, she rushes a guy via the metro to Health Services because he won't let her fly him there. This is despite the fact that she's a shadow citizen. Because she's in the mob, she's ditched her government ID—she can't even collect basic income—but it's better than being arrested for her crimes. Even so, she risks it to get him cared for. She manages to wiggle out of having to ID herself at the clinic, and sees that he is mended. He still leaves town. Being beat up by her coworker in the mob turns out to have been the straw that broke the camel's back.

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist 1d ago

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.03.22 —How do you organise your notes? (No notes?)

Poorly. Slap-dash.

Taking notes uses the time I might be writing. I see being thorough as an opportunity for procrastination. Like doing research ahead of need.

To answer the question: Scrivener lets me paste webpages into a research folder. I have a Kindle Scribe I sometimes use to write thoughts into at times when it would be inconvenient to write, like 3 AM in bed. When I was a programmer, I used OneNote to write down important things I'd discovered so when I forgot them I might find them, but programming didn't suffer a time issue analogous to the one I find when writing.

I should fix this.

I won't, though. I know myself.

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist 1d ago

#WordWeavers 2026.03.22 —Is there a subject that’s represented poorly in media that you’d like to cover in your work?

Indoctrination.

I am a gender fiction writer well aware that gender roles are indoctrinated into every one of us. Even myself. I struggle. Daily. However, the word indoctrination is practically never explained or used properly. I'm taking the word "poorly" in this question as meaning both "rarely done" as well as "without proper understanding."

Indoctrination means to be taught to accept something without evidence as unquestionably true.

What's represented poorly in the media is that those most guilty of indoctrination are those who employ it themselves and have themselves been indoctrinated, arguably unwittingly, but that doesn't stop them from being hypocritical. Use of any form of the word belief instead of "I am convinced," or "I understand," or "I deduced," goes hand in hand with indoctrination, as does ignoring contrary evidence even to the point of self-harm. Journalists, pundits, even educators misuse or misapprehend the meaning; I see it wielded as a political weapon daily to tear down public schools and higher education, but it also leads to wars, the oppression of women, and most the ills of the world. I am tempted here to point fingers and use the phrase, "Forgive them lord, they know not of what they speak," in complete irony with sarcastic miscapitalization.

Well… I guess I did.

Though indoctrination isn't a focus of my works, my characters often slam face first into the walls of their cultural indoctrination to bloody their noses, but sometimes end up searching for the door out.

Here is a great article defining the word, though it is heavy on definition and light on fixing problems: https://bigthink.com/mini-philosophy/the-philosophy-of-indoctrination-and-how-to-fix-it

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The philosophy of indoctrination and how to fix it

Indoctrination is not about intelligence or the belief itself. It's about seeing any alternative as an enemy or as a a test of faith.

Big Think

RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist 1d ago

#ScribesAndMakers 2026.03.22 —Create a micro-story in six words.

They hugged, kissed, and then sighed.

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist 1d ago

@davidtheeviloverlord

[A gender role reversal left a man] splutter[ing] incoherently for about thirty seconds.

[Uh, oh. Looks like I'm going TL;DR. —RS]

Excellent anecdote. When people act out gender roles, especially reinforced by prior peer pressure, they can make an ass out of themselves. Makes for great storytelling! We are part of a rigidly gendered culture and we rarely get to glimpse it from the outside. I try to provide glimpses like you did in my stories. Juxtaposition is the essence of gender fiction.

I see gender roles in our culture as existing to maintain a status quo of power tilted toward men, and not benevolently so. Like female gender roles, male gender roles define "acceptable" behavior for men, which arguably many times men don't wish to perform, but do so because they've been indoctrinated (taught by rote without evidence) that it is the right way to behave, or behaving so is simply the easier path to follow. Drifting downstream is easier, even if the better port recedes behind in the mist.

Don't get me wrong. Seeking power over others is a very human trait. People in power often don't starve, their children tend to survive to adulthood, and others get things done for them because power is attractive. Gender roles apportion that power. Regardless, gender roles oppress people and make tyrants of others. Conformance benefits those in power not the individual.

Shame is a tool of conformance that can be wielded by either sex. You witnessed that sword wielded, you struck it free from the man's hand, and sliced back. For a moment, who had power over whom changed. I wonder if he learned anything, but everyone's cultural context shifted… For at least 30 seconds.

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist 2d ago

#PennedPossibilities 964 — MC POV: What area of your life do you tend to enjoy in excess instead of moderation?

If I asked this to my MC, a day angel woman named Bolt, she would emphatically answer, "Men."

Had I written instead, "If I asked this to my MC, a day angel man named Blue, he would emphatically answer, 'Women,'"what would you have thought instead?

Be honest.

Reply if it's interesting.

I write gender fiction precisely to elicit these types of revelations about gender roles and how our society treats each gender differently and unfairly, as well as to tweak the reader's nose as to their own prejudices and preferences.

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist 2d ago

#WordWeavers 2026.03.21 —Where does your MC fall, on a scale of timid to recklessly brave?

Bolt is a courier for the mob. She does everything she can to not interact with clients because, apparently, killing the messenger is actually a thing. Who knew? Considering she was blackmailed into the job, she's very wary of interacting with coworkers. She volunteers for NOTHING. On a timid-to-reckless scale, she's a 3. She does have to show initiative to prevent capture. She can't just fold.

With her new friends in the WIP, she's a bit less timid. Maybe a 5, except once when she takes on her mob boss (or rather comes on to him) to save everybody from a massacre. That qualifies as a reckless 10. When it comes to men, especially sexy ones, she's a definite 7-8. She's gotta have some joy in her life. She likes candy.

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