caffeinewitchcraft
Caffeine and Magix
They/she, 29, lazy writer. Here's to sigils in coffee creamer and half read books about magic. I write short stories about subverting destiny and being funnier than the bad guy.
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things to ask yourself when designing a female character:
how much blood is she covered in
are her eyes filled with madness
can she rip things to shreds with her fingernails
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snuggling w my vampire lover……we getting Closeferatu
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"Because," you explain patiently, "there is a non-zero probability that Hero Force sends a hero with mind control powers after me one day. I've trained myself to resist most brainwashing for at least 12 seconds - just enough time to press that button."
"You trained yourself to resist mind control?" your newest minion asks in awe.
"Every villain does," you scoff. "As it is, 12 seconds is barely enough time."
"Every villain tries," your favorite minion says. He laughs every time you call him your minion which is, frankly, insulting, but he's so damn effective you can't bring yourself to care. "None except your boss over there."
You swivel in you chair to frown at him. He's leaning against the invention in question - a fairly standard freeze ray, though this one dependent on time manipulation rather than ice - and he isn't in uniform again. He's supposed to be wearing the subdued purple or maroon office attire you provide all your minions. Instead he's wearing clothing very similar to yours - leather and kevlar.
"Your boss too," you say.
"Are you still on that?" he asks.
"How can I resist brainwashing?" your newest minion asks.
"By being a freak," he says before you can answer.
You throw a wrench at his head.
Your workers always ask “Why do you put a self destruct button on your inventions?” Tired of their questioning, you decide to explain why it’s perfectly rational.
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It’s that typical story all over again: you are a princess. You get kidnapped, some random guy saves you, and then your father gets you married to him. No. Not this Time. You have watched a million versions of the same random guy beat a demon and become your husband even though you don’t love him, so this time, you kill the demon. You kill your father, the king. It doesn’t matter to you… After all, he’s only a program in the video game that is your life.
You will stop at nothing to break this game.
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You were once the demon king. “Defeated” by the hero, you went into hiding to pursue a simpler life. Today the “hero” has appeared, threatening you family to pay tribute, not realizing who you actually are. Today you show them what happens when you have something worth fighting to protect.
#self reblog#im writing a new story for friday#and i have lost the ability to write anything under 5k#let's try to fix that before I lose my mind
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it's always so fascinating and heartbreaking when a character in a story is simultaneously idolized and abused. a chosen prophet destined for martyrdom. a child prodigy forced to grow up too fast. a powerful warrior raised as nothing but a weapon. there's just something so uniquely messed up about singing someone's praises whilst destroying them.
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The reason most people are bad at offering cogent criticisms of other people's work is because they're evaluating those works on the basis of The Thing They Would Make, not The Thing You Would Make. Indeed, a great many people don't understand that those are different things, interpreting The Thing You Would Make as a defective or incomplete version of The Thing They Would Make.
This gulf of understanding is not an impassable one. Learning to correctly identify the author's creative goals with respect to a particular work, and to formulate criticism in terms of how best to achieve those goals, is a skill which can be cultivated. In its proper place, it can be a hugely valuable skill – there's a reason many authors will tell you that a good editor is worth their weight in gold.
Unfortunately, developing this skill will not make you any less prone to being a hater. Learning how to correctly identify other people's creative goals simply means that you'll graduate from picking at specific choices to saying: "I understand this work's goals, and those goals fucking suck. I hate everything that this chooses to be."
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99% of all murders committed by women in ancient greek plays are completely justified
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Hmmm. It says here on that map, that about three miles back, we died of starvation
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A regular came in a few evenings ago. A young mom with her daughter who often comes in the morning. She also often treats the baristas badly, but that’s a different story.
She came in at an unusual time with her daughter on her hip. The little girl looked sick to me - puffy eyes and a red nose and a tight, unhappy pinch to her mouth.
The mom ordered her sweets. Sensing something was wrong, I tried to stay upbeat and to engage the little girl but neither mom or daughter were interested. I turned to collect their order.
“See? Daddy made you sad but mommy makes it better, right?”
My mouth soured and my hands paused in making their drinks. The revulsion was physical, a hollowing in my stomach that sounded like a vacuum in my ears. A ghostly hand settled against the back of my neck and stole the heat from my veins.
Im an adult now. The justifications came to mind a microsecond behind the horror and tried to overwhelm it. Mom is tired, mom just wants little girl to feel better, daddy also made mommy sad. Sometimes the big lessons are learned on other days, sometimes it’s okay to make the day better with sweets, sometimes you don’t have the strength to fight the battles you’re supposed to fight—
I handed out the pastry.
She said again, “Daddy made you cry and mommy made it better.”
The little girl looked into her pastry bag and didn’t look up.
No, i wanted to say. No, mommy didnt make it better. Mommy is part of the problem, mommy is saying your feelings are only worth a cake pop and a juice, mommy is siding with daddy who made you cry so hard that you look like a child left in the cold.
“Would you like a sticker?” I asked. She did and she took one and I took too much comfort in the fragile return of her smile before leaving the cafe.
I should have said more. I’m sorry you’re sad. I see that you’re sad. It matters that you’re sad.
Did I become part of this terrible lesson by joining in? Here’s a pastry, here’s a sticker, see? Didn’t we make it all better?
I closed the cafe.
#customer service#caffeine chatter#seeing only a moment into another’s life#only a fraction of context and a single sentence plagued me
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You can breathe. That's the first thing you notice which seems ridiculous considering the transformation your friend just went through. The air is sweet and warm like the kitchen after your babysitter pulled your birthday cake out of the oven. Every inhale is smooth and your lungs don't rattle on the exhale. For the first time, you can hear the pounding of your heart over your own breathing.
"You okay?" you ask. You shield your eyes from the noon sun to better see her up in the tree. "Are you part cat?"
"No," Kai hisses. Her eyes are completely black and glittering like a stinkbug exoskeleton. The round face all of your classmates have is gone and she seems older with her high cheekbones and sharp nose. She's shaking so hard that the plastic beads of the necklace you gave her chatter against the ones of the necklace she lied about giving to you. "I'm not a cat."
You look doubtfully back at the swings. She seemed part cat with the way she yowled and leapt off them, twisting in the air as if her tail caught fire. You were too busy breathing to see her bounce into the tree, but it happened too fast to be human. The way she's hugging her entire body to the big branch she's on reminds you of a wet cat in particular.
"I need my mom," she says.
You fill your new, powerful lungs to shout, but before you can Mrs. Dillard appears next to you.
"Are you part cat?" you ask her before you can think better of it. The Dillards live across the street from the park, so Mrs. Dillard had relented and let Kai come play with you before she had her coffee. There's nobody else at the park this early so you would've noticed her coming up to you before which means she got out of the house and across the street between your friend yowling and now.
"No, dear," Mrs. Dillard says. She pushes up the long sleeves of her turtleneck sweater and holds her arms up. "Come down from there, darling, come here. What have you gotten into?"
With a cry your friend flings herself out of the tree and into her mother's arms. "I know I shouldn't have," she sobs, "But I wanted--it was-- Dad said how and I wanted to keep her forever--"
You can't make sense of what she's trying to say, but it's clear her mother does. There's a curl of envy in your stomach when Mrs. Dillard sighs and cradles your friend to her like one would do a much smaller child, shushing and crooning to her until her cries begin to quiet. You rub the back of your hand. The last time your mother touched you wasn't anywhere near as nice.
"I did say it is too soon for name-taking," Mrs. Dillard says into Kai's hair. She frowns and bites her lip. "But it still shouldn't have been so much..." Her eyes find you. Like your friend, they've gone all black without a trace of white. You feel as if those eyes can see through you and you fight not to shiver under her careful study. "Ah."
"Ah?" you echo. A phantom ringing in your ears makes you wince. Your mother's voice gets shrill when you forget your manners. "I mean, pardon me, Mrs. Dillard?"
"Your name," Mrs. Dillard says. "Is it--"
"My name," your friend mutters. "I took it so it's mine."
"Not for long," Mrs. Dillard says firmly.
"But--"
"Dear," Mrs. Dillard says to you, "Your name. Can you tell me about it?"
You're defensive. "Tem? My babysitter gave it to me--"
"Not that one." Mrs. Dillard's voice is gentle. "Not your nickname. You aren't in trouble, dear. I just need to know the name you gave my daughter. I think it may have been a little more than she expected."
"I'll grow into it," you say out of reflex. That's what your mother is always saying, even when you complain about all the syllables and how nobody can make all the right sounds for it. Even you still get it wrong sometimes. "It's a family name and I'm the first one they've been able to give it to in over four hundred years, Mom said."
You make yourself stop talking. Mom says a lot more than that, but you don't want the Dillards to know. Mrs. Dillard may not let her daughter play with you anymore if she knew about all the things your mom says you'll do in the future. The terrible and mean things she says you'll have to do to win back your family's power.
"Family names," Mrs. Dillard sighs. She puts your friend down. "Kai, listen to me. Enough tears, I know it hurts, but you're going to be fine. We'll get you sorted. This is an important lesson. Do you remember what I said about family names?"
"That they carry power," Kai says. She scrubs at her eyes. "That the really good ones are like taking a hundred names at once."
"Good," Mrs. Dillard croons. She crouches so that she's at eye level with Kai and takes both her hands in one of her own. "That's exactly right. You're still too little for a name like that, Kai. That's why it hurts."
"I feel like I'm going to explode." Kai presses a hand to her chest. "Here."
"That's where new power sits. One day, you'll be able to break down names and make them part of you," Mrs. Dillard says. "That's what Dad meant. You can take someone's name and consume it, but that doesn't always mean they stay with you. People aren't their names, Kai. Not unless they choose to be."
"Oh," Kai says in understanding. She sniffles and raises her face for the first time since she came down from the tree. Her regular human face is sliding back into place, her cheeks rounding out and her eyes shrinking. "I didn't know that."
You don't understand. You want to ask, but your mouth is dry and your palms itch. It seems like they've forgotten you entirely which isn't fair because they're talking about your name. Or, rather, Kai's name now.
"Tem is your friend," Mrs. Dillard says. "You didn't need to take her name. That wasn't very nice. I wouldn't be surprised if Tem doesn't want to be friends anymore."
Kai's eyes flash black as they fly to you. "You don't want to be my friend anymore?"
"No!" Then, when Kai's eyes fill with tears, you stutter. "No, I meant, that's not-- Not no I don't want to be friends with you, I mean no I don't meant that! I want to be friends still!"
"Really?"
You find yourself nodding too fast, buoyed by the hope in Kai's voice. "I never even liked my name anyway, you can keep it!"
Kai's eyes widen but before she can say anything, her mother cuts in.
"I don't think that's the best idea," Mrs. Dillard says. Her voice is light but her brow is furrowed. She smiles tightly at you. "Your name is too...heavy, Tem. At least for now. Kai is going to have to ask you to take it back."
"Take it back?" you ask. A familiar tightness starts in your chest. "I have to take it back?"
Mrs. Dillard is still smiling, but there's tension in her shoulders that wasn't there before. "It's your name to carry, Tem. Your parents would be sad to know you gave it away."
"I can do that?" you ask hopefully. "Give it away? I don't like my name, Mrs. Dillard. If I can give it away, I want to do that."
"You...could," Mrs. Dillard bites out. Her smile is breaking off of her face and Kai makes a sound of protest when her grip turns crushing. She breathes in deeply through her nose and turns to Kai. "Kai, you won't feel better if you don't ask Tem to take her name back. Ask."
"Okay, Mom," Kai says. She tries to pull away from her mother's hands, but Mrs. Dillard won't let go. Kai pulls again and Mrs. Dillard releases her with obvious reluctance. Your friend sniffles as she shuffles towards you. She extends one hand in the same gesture she'd asked for your name in the first place. "Take your name back, Tem."
No. The word nearly flies out of your mouth, shooting up from deep inside you. You don't want your name back. It's heavy, your name, and you know now why it's easier to breathe without it. The pressure of your family is gone and you can't imagine willingly struggling for breath ever again.
Mrs. Dillard sees the indecision on your face.
"You must say please when you're asking for a favor," Mrs. Dillard murmurs. Her eyes are like black glass when she looks at you. She talks to Kai and stares at you with her obsidian eyes. "Tem's your friend. You need to ask nicely."
Kai frowns. "But Dad says never to say--"
"This time you need to," Mrs. Dillard says. She's watching you like your mother does sometimes. As if she's expecting something else to claw out of your skin at any moment. "And you need to mean it."
Kai's lips tremble and she half turns away from you. "But, Mom--"
"Now, Kai."
Kai hugs herself as she once again faces you. She can't meet your eyes. "P-please. Please take your name back, Tem." The word please seems to cost Kai something. She loses the color in her face and her fingers tremble. Each word is measured. "I--I want to be friends. Your name is too much for me. So please take it back."
You hesitate. Is it awful that you hesitate? Kai is your friend. You know the pain of your name, know it better now that you ever have before in your life. You can see the chains each letter wraps around you, how the consonants and vowels pin you to your family's legacy like a bug. Without it, you can leave. You're only ten, but you know you could survive on your own, no, more than survive. You can thrive, you can be great--
"Tem."
Unwillingly you focus back on Mrs. Dillard. She doesn't look like your mother now. Her face is soft and worried, gaze flitting between you and Kai like a humming bird. She bites her lip. "Tem. There are other ways to get rid of your name. We can help you with that. But Kai needs you to take it back. Just for now."
You tremble. "I..."
"It's hurting her, Tem," Mrs. Dillard says. She nods towards Kai. "Look. See how pale she is? How she's holding her stomach? I know the burden of an unwanted name. Can I ask you to help Kai and have you carry it for a little longer?"
No. You don't want to. You don't want to, you don't want to, you don't want to--
Kai whimpers.
"Yes," you blurt out. Everything snaps back into clear focus. You didn't even realize how the world had gone blurry. You can see the way MRs. Dillard is hovering over Kai protectively. You can see the way Kai sways in pain. You can see the syllables of your name beating in the pulse at her neck. You don't want it, but you don't want Kai to have it either. Not when it hurts. "Yes, I'll take it back."
"Thank you," Mrs. Dillard breathes. Her eyes flutter shut. "Thank you, thank you, thank you--"
"Not supposed to say thank you," Kai says so faintly it sounds like wings.
"Tell Tem thank you," Mrs. Dillard says.
"I will when she takes it back," Kai says.
"Kai, apologize--"
You don't mind if Kai's voice is mean. You know why. You can be mean to on days when your name is wrapped around your neck. You stick out your hand and wait.
Kai's eyes flash. She reaches out to clasp her palm to yours. She opens her mouth, closes it, swallows, and says, "I'm Kai."
Your voice is clear. "I'm Clytemnestra," you say.
Kai shivers and shakes, falling back against her mother. Your name slithers into place across your collarbones like a yoke.
"I'm Clytemnestra," you say again. You look at Mrs. Dillard. "But I don't want to be."
Mrs. Dillard cradles Kai to her. "You don't have to be," she says fiercely. "You are not beholden to your name." She holds out one arm. "Come here, Tem."
You've never done this before. Your body knows what to do. You fall into Mrs. Dillard's embrace next to Kai and let her warmth close around you. Her words echo in your head.
You don't have to be.
For the first time in your life, you begin to hope.
A young fey creature just tricked you into giving them your name. They are now writhing on the ground in agony begging you to take it back. You have no idea what’s going on.
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“what if the house was haunted” what if the house WASNT haunted. what if your continual presence there is what corrupts. what if you are what haunts this house
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One of my earliest memories is of being at the mall in the late 90s and seeing a person with a blue mohawk. They seemed like an adult to me (probably 15 or 16) and they had on a black jean jacket and studs. They had mustard on their fingers and the paper from a pretzel clutched in their hand.
Now let's look at points of view:
An older person at the time probably called them a delinquent. They were at the mall doing nothing but being an eyesore.
A bully at school may have called them a weirdo. Why did they spend so long on their hair? Didn't they know they looked like a freak?
A parent might have seen them and been exasperated. Why did they insist on ruining their perfectly beautiful face with piercings and makeup and hair dye?
I'm sure they heard all those points of views. People probably told them all the time how they were standing out or how they weren't doing the right thing. Maybe a week after I saw them, they dyed their hair back to a normal color. Maybe they finally put on the nice button up their parents bought them. Maybe they felt that expressing themself was no longer worth the negative stares or the snide comments.
But maybe they didn't. Because maybe
Maybe their friends complimented how their mohawk stayed up so long this time, did they use glue?
Maybe another teen in the street asked where they got their jean jacket and complimented one of the band patches sewn onto it.
Or
Maybe they heard a little kid urgently whisper to their sister, "Wow! They're AWESOME!" and saw that kid committing their hair to memory, their black jeans, the mustard stain on their fingertips, the way the light caught on their studs.
So how does this relate to writing?
Writing is important. Your point of view is important (sharing it even moreso). The stories you want to tell are important. Even the most mundane story (like seeing a person in the mall in the 90s) will be meaningful to somebody somewhere.
(it certainly was and is incredibly important to me)
Execution and technical ability are skills and skills take practice. You have time to practice, but only if you keep telling stories.
If you had a friend whose writing you ADORED who struggled with the same self-deprecating view of their writing as you do ("it's not deep enough" or fear of rejection or thinking it was cringey, etc), what would you tell them to reassure them their writing is amazing?
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The description of the city is so excellent. Something about “the city itself is sweating” caught me and convinced me to keep reading. I love how Ferris is introduced and the hints we got about him and his past life. Really excellent writing with great examples of immersive description and subtle exposition (keep in mind I read this as a single piece)
This is amazing and I want a whole book 😭
The sky purples like a bruise as dusk falls in the city. The air is wet and sour, and the pavement smothering the ground is steaming with a sticky, sick heat, as if the city itself is sweating. The dark gray street is scorching, stinging Ferris's paws as he trots along a painted crosswalk. Even the lighter sidewalks offer no relief and there's not one plant around for him to escape into, not even a measly grass median, not here. It's lucky Ferris's destination looms, or else he might be forced to pant like a dog.
The apartment building in question stretches upward like an endless spire, ruining the smooth lines of the distant horizon. It's not the tallest building around, one of hundreds of its kind. Ferris is lucky to have his feline instincts, or he'd be forced to relearn how to read numbers to find it reliably and that kind of brain work is something he's glad to have left behind more than one life ago.
Ferris scampers up the fire escape, back and forth up along the side of the ugly building. The higher he climbs, the darker the sky gets, until finally the sun is all the way down. The change doesn't offer much relief from the heat, not surrounded so completely by brick and concrete and steaming metal, all clustered in close together. Nothing gets out of a city like this, not the heat and nothing else either. Every now and then something special will come along that can change, but even those never leave.
Ferris finally reaches the right floor, glad to be able to stop clanging around on the caged platforms of the fire escape that would be uncomfortable on his paws even if they were cool. There's an air conditioning unit in the window, rattling and dripping. It will prevent Ferris from being able to hear anything inside, but he leaps on top of it to settle in to watch what he can see instead. He doesn't quite read lips (more brain work), but there are a million other ways for a cat to tell what's going on in a room.
The lights aren't on, but of course that's no hindrance to Ferris. There are two people inside. One of them slouches in a battered blue armchair. She's the one who lives in this apartment, and the one Ferris is here for. She's willowy, long-limbed, and the arm dangling overside of the chair could probably reach the floor if she tried. Best if she doesn't try, because the fingers of that hand are holding a smoking cigarette (one of the very few things Ferris misses, from before). The other person lies on their back, their head between her feet, their dark skin and clothes melting the hard lines of their shape into something softer against the black carpet.
(The carpet was not black when she moved in, obviously, what apartment would come with black carpet? But the landlord has never asked or complained, and will not be withholding her deposit. Ferris wouldn't either, if he was him.)
Most of the rest of the decor is black too: black sheets on her bed, a black curtain over the closet door, a black bedside table with a black candle holder holding a black candle. The walls are still the off-white they were when she arrived (to the landlord's immense, shaky relief), and the only other thing that isn't black is the huge mirror over the head of the bed. It's broken, its countless shards held perilously inside their ornate frame by nothing but chance.
Ferris watches at the window for anything interesting to happen, effortlessly ignoring the fractured reflections in the mirror that seem to copy the movements in the room on a slight delay. His orders are to "keep an eye on her". Usually Ferris is a fan of such vague directions, because it means he can interpret them however he likes. But in this case, it's annoying. And tedious. And the other neighborhood cats won't accept delegation from him anymore after Nine tattled that he was delegating more than the average percentage of his duties. He wasn't just slacking, no matter what she says, he's just very important and he gets very important jobs that take up more of his very important energy than others. Like this one.
The two people in the room trade their cigarettes back and forth, hers wrapped in the white paper of commercial tobacco and theirs in the light brown of something homemade. They run their hand up the back of her leg periodically, and she rubs the heel of her foot down their side once or twice. They speak, but not often. The streetlight comes on after flickering a few false starts, casting a halved orange spotlight into the room and making the smoky air dance.
Absolutely nothing interesting happens whatsoever. But at least it doesn't rain.
When his haunches start to tingle, Ferris leaps down from the window unit. He winces at the metal grid under his paws, still tender from the hot pavement on the way here. Maybe it's cooled down a little bit by now, but Ferris isn't holding his breath. He'll head back home now, to his Mistress, and report his lovely findings of a whole lot of nothing. A whole lot more nothing. She's never disappointed about his blank reports, though. That's humans for you. Ferris remembers being like that sometimes, when he was one. He'd bet even the perfect Nine didn't make a lick of sense back in her human days.
Ferris yawns as he trots back along the painted crosswalk the way he came. When he gets home, it's right to sleep with him. His Mistress can wait for him to nap first before getting her report.
Especially since there's someone else to keep his eye on tomorrow.
© Calico Print 2016. Do not copy, repost, or redistribute.
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