You tell your wife how glad you are to be a human and not a robot. She looks at you confusingly says, “What are you talking about? We’re all robots. Humans have been dead for years.”
For what seems like an eternity, you stay there, unmoving, frozen to the world. Does she…. But then, you notice that tiny move from her upper lip.
“Ahahah, great joke there, honey…”
Your wife keeps a serious face for about five more seconds, the five longest seconds of your life. Then she cracks up and points at you.
“Oh my god, Dave! You should have seen your face!”, she’s laughing so hard that tears are starting to stream down her face, also snot. Whomever said people looks their best when laughing, have obviously never seen someone truly amused.
“You got so white I though you were going to fahahahahah, to FAINT!” You can hardly believe it, but yes, this is your wife, litteraly kneeling on the floor, laughing like this is the best joke anyone has ever made. And okay, maybe, maaaaaaybe it’s a little bit funny.
Maybe you’re also starting to crack up, because you love nothing more about this woman, than her ability to find the fun in every little thing. So maybe, just maybe you’ll be joining her in a second, right there on the floor, the both of you mocking you on how reading so much science-fiction has definitely affected your brain.
You end up having a fantastic afternoon, hurting from laughing so much, and then a delicious evening, cooking together and feeding each other bites of whatever you’re making, inbetween kisses.
Nonetheless, when you go shower right before bed, you make absolutely sure the door is locked.
You raise your left arm and wave your right thumb under it. A small trap opens. You take the wire coming from it and plug it to your phone.
On a private, dedicated forum, you explain what happened that day, and how you felt, your reactions. You upload the data of everything you experienced.
Within minutes, you get dozens of responses, from other androids, from all over the world. Most are thankful for the experience, happy that you were able to share. Happy to learn more and more about the human behaviour.
None of you know exactly when the last of the humans will die, but you will do everything within your power to save everything that was good about them. This part of them will never be forgotten.
This is uplifting in a way I can’t comprehend. Meet Dave the sequal.
me to the demon in the corner of my room: ain’t u got shit to do
He’d been lurking about for days now, this shadow thing. It used to scare me, terrify me straight into insomnia. But it had just stood there the whole time. Now it seemed part of the furniture, if I’m being honest.
I started talking to it. Probably not my best idea, I’ll give you that, but it’s not like I had anyone else around. I would tell it about my day as I readied for bed. Jeff was a dick at the meeting this morning. Had the best hot dog off the best cart in the city for lunch. SIX reports due by Friday? Kellen must be trying to kill me. I even wished it good night. And it just stared, with its glowing red eyes.
One night, I had to stay late at the office. Really late. Remember those six reports? They turned into fifteen. And if I didn’t get them done for this major client, it was my head on the HR guillotine. So I stayed late. I ended up crashing on the sofa in the break room and woke up to more work on my desk. That was Thursday morning. I had to get this all done by Monday.
On Friday night, around ten, I decided to go home and get some real sleep before going back to the office to finish this insane task. And then I felt it. Something was here with me and it wasn’t the janitor.
I looked in the corner and there were those eyes again, surrounded by shadow. I sighed. I really didn’t have time for this, not here.
“Ain’t you got shit to do?” I snapped, walking to the break room for yet more coffee. So much for going home to sleep.
A growling sound, then a deep, rasping voice said, “I miss you.”
I stopped. “What do you mean, you miss me? Aren’t you a demon or something?”
“You didn’t come home. I’ve been worried. What are you doing here?”
We’d never conversed like this. It was almost comforting, like a friend would be.
“I’m working, man. I’ve got a big client coming on Monday and Kellen put all these damn reports on my desk and if I don’t get them done, I’m probably gonna get fired.” I ranted as I took off my tie and ran my fingers through my hair.
The demon paused, thinking. It moved slowly around the room, taking it all in.
“Do you want me to eat Kellen?” it suddenly asked.
I laughed, “No, don’t eat Kellen. It’s not really his fault.”
“Then what shall I do?”
I sighed and considered. What could a shadow demon do to help me?
“Do you know anything about graphic design and marketing?”
It paused its roaming. “I ate an artist’s soul, once.”
“Good enough. Just sit behind me and tell me what looks good.”
On Monday morning, the company landed the client, I got a raise, and arranged it so I could work from home two days a week. We moved to a bigger flat two months later. It makes cinnamon pancakes on Saturdays.
Oh hey– here’s a list ranked by Writing With Color’s most popular posts since opening in 2014 up till now, the start of 2017. Pulled together for the interest and usefulness for readers like you. Thank you.
Top 7 Popular Original Posts
Words for Skin Tone– This two part guide offers an array of words for describing skin color. Part I focuses on the problems with food descriptors. Part II provides alternatives. (68k+ Notes)
When you are writing a story and refer to a character by a physical trait, occupation, age, or any other attribute, rather than that character’s name, you are bringing the reader’s attention to that particular attribute. That can be used quite effectively to help your reader to focus on key details with just a few words. However, if the fact that the character is “the blond,” “the magician,” “the older woman,” etc. is not relevant to that moment in the story, this will only distract the reader from the purpose of the scene.
If your only reason for referring to a character this way is to avoid using his or her name or a pronoun too much, don’t do it. You’re fixing a problem that actually isn’t one. Just go ahead and use the name or pronoun again. It’ll be good.
Someone finally spelled out the REASON for using epithets, and the reasons NOT to.
In addition to that:
If the character you are referring to in such a way is THE VIEWPOINT CHARACTER, likewise, don’t do it. I.e. if you’re writing in third person but the narration is through their eyes, or what is also called “third person deep POV”. If the narration is filtered through the character’s perception, then a very external, impersonal description will be jarring. It’s the same, and just as bad, as writing “My bright blue eyes returned his gaze” in first person.
Furthermore,
if the story is actually told through the eyes of one particular viewpoint character even though it’s in the third person, and in their voice, as is very often the case, then you shouldn’t refer to the characters in ways that character wouldn’t.
In other words, if the third-person narrator is Harry Potter, when Dumbledore appears, it says “Dumbledore appears”, not “Albus appears”. Bucky Barnes would think of Steve Rogers as “Steve”, where another character might think of him as “Cap”. Chekov might think of Kirk as “the captain”, but Bones thinks of him as “Jim”.
Now, there are real situations where you, I, or anybody might think of another person as “the other man”, “the taller man”, or “the doctor”: usually when you don’t know their names, like when there are two tap-dancers and a ballerina in a routine and one of the men lifts the ballerina and then she reaches out and grabs the other man’s hand; or when there was a group of people talking at the hospital and they all worked there, but the doctor was the one who told them what to do. These are all perfectly natural and normal. Similarly, sometimes I think of my GP as “the doctor” even though I know her name, or one of my coworkers as “the taller man” even though I know his. But I definitely never think of my long-term life partner as “the green-eyed woman” or one of my best friends as “the taller person” or anything like that. It’s not a sensible adjective for your brain to choose in that situation – it’s too impersonal for someone you’re so intimately acquainted with. Also, even if someone was having a one night stand or a drunken hookup with a stranger, they probably wouldn’t think of that person as “the other man”: you only think of ‘other’ when you’re distinguishing two things and you don’t have to go to any special effort to distinguish your partner from yourself to yourself.
I BET THAT IF TWO KIDS LIVED IN THOSE TWO HOUSES THAT THEY WOULD COME OUT ON THEIR ALMOST CONJOINING ROOFS OUTSIDE THEIR BEDROOM WINDOWS AND TALK AND BE BEST FRIENDS AND FALL IN LOVE.
I will not write fluff to that. I won’t. No.
LUCY I FOUND IT
But what if instead of two kids, it was, say, a kid and an old woman? And at first they just ignore each other and keep their blinds down and curtains shut, but then the kid climbs out onto the roof one spring morning to get a frisbee and she’s got the window open bc it’s so nice out and she tells him to cut that out, it’s not a jungle gym and maybe the kid shows off a bit and nearly falls, and the old woman catches his arm…. anyway, so sometimes they leave the windows open and the kid’ll show off his comic books or asks what rhymes with ‘beautiful’ (and it’s totally for homework shut up), and the old woman tells him about all the protests and marches she took part in, and asks him the name of that one cute pop star (it’s absolutely for her crossword now shush). And the old woman gives the kid relationship advice, and doesn’t tell when he tries a bit too much of his parents’ liquor cabinet one time, and the kid comes over and shows her how to use the smartphone her daughter bought for her, and doesn’t tell when she sneaks a cigarrette out of said daughter’s bag. And when the weather’s too bad to open the windows, they tape silly pictures or notes to the glass for the other to see (the kid makes sure to make his extra big so she doesn’t have to admit her eyeight isn’t what it used to be), and when it is nice the kid will sneak over and leave seashells on her windowsill, because the old woman said once she misses the sea, but she can’t travel like she used to. And one day he peeks in her window and sees her on the floor, and calls 911 and basically saves her life because she had a stroke and nobody would’ve known in time otherwise. And when she finally gets back from the hospital, just for a while because her daughter’s talking about a retirement home where she’ll have plenty of medical care and lots of friends her age, the kid comes through the window and then pulls another kid through the window who he introduces as his boyfriend, and says he wanted her to meet him. And she sniffs and interrogates the boyfriend in proper elderly relative fashion, and then declares him worthy of her boy– barely. And when she finally does have to go to that retirement home, the kid still comes to visit her, and always leaves seashells on the windowsill.
But honestly, why do writers think folks want unnecessary drama involved in their otps? Especially if they are together? I don’t want inside drama. I want them to conquer exterior drama together while communicating well.
My ability to proofread increases by 1000% after I hit “Submit”.
this is often because when you’ve submitted something (like fanfiction to ao3) it will be in a different font, size and framing than in your word processor. The text will look different in the new environment so your brain stops skipping what looks familiar (like a typo that has been there since the beginning).
So, tip: revise your work in a different font and size. I guarantee you’ll catch more typos and mistakes than otherwise.
For all my writers (ones I follow and the ones that thankfully follow me)
Plume de Lynx 