The Daily Grind - Chapter 261
Okay, actually no new chapter next week while I
2023-12-09 10:24:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Argus posts
Sublife Crisis - Chapter 24
Still sick! Still got the proper two chaptres this week!
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Tense heartbeats pass as I face down my foe. Across the table from me, a creature that looks like some kind of aphotic castoff stares into my anima with a trio of red eyes. Though that’s maybe not especially impressive because I think we just sort of are oddly shaped anima in the between. Or something soul-adjacent. Motivation with temporary bodies. Something like that. 2023-12-08 10:21:40 +0000 UTC View Post
Sublife Crisis - Chapter 23
I am very sick, but still have this ready to go, so have a chapter!
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“Oh, that’s odd.” The words from Jules pull me up and out of the thick spark wine I am staring into, my wandering thoughts coalescing into something closer to an actual thinking person than I’ve been for a while.
I’ve spent the last subjective day, since I got knocked out of the game we were all playing early, alternating between trying to invent a new mixed drink, and staring at the d...
2023-12-06 05:32:47 +0000 UTC View PostShort Story - The Sword Of Light And Shadow
Named for a Magic card, and written for this writing prompt
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There's a certain vibe that you get from Heroes.
They do the good deeds. Help whoever they run across, improve the world, push back against the whims of fate to make things just a little nicer. Usually they glow, too? The glowing doesn...
2023-12-03 12:52:21 +0000 UTC View PostThe Daily Grind - Chapter 260
“It’s going to be okay. But it’s going to
2023-12-02 10:16:59 +0000 UTC View PostSublife Crisis - Chapter 22
“A little to the left!” I call up at Molly.
The little kobold is hanging in the air near the wall of Bastion’s that extends from where the bar ends, tail frantically wagging, wobbling in place as Jules holds her up from his own perch on the edge of the library’s railing. We all know that she can’t die if she falls, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt.
Right now she’s holding a loop of shaped wood, a ritual symbol from her last life that she ...
2023-11-29 08:43:46 +0000 UTC View PostThe Daily Grind - Chapter 259
“If the hope component is the affective driver of the ideal self, and the core identity is the personal context, then the dream or image of a desired future is the content of the ideal self. It is the picture of what is hoped to be.” -R. Boyatzis & K. Akrivou, The Ideal Self As The Driver Of Intentional Change-
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After a couple hours of relaxing and making casual conversation, James was starting to feel restless. It would be another ...
2023-11-25 21:47:37 +0000 UTC View PostSublife Crisis - Chapter 21
Going slower, but still going. Not quite sure how this story ends yet, exactly.
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Mark and I have dragged one of the small tables and a pair of the thin black chairs from the library out to the hallway that goes nowhere, and for once, we’re both going through our notifications from the between together.
Through the archway, there’s something halfway between a party and a funeral going on. I’ve walked more than a few people through their first second dea...
2023-11-24 10:16:27 +0000 UTC View PostThe Daily Grind - Chapter 258
“There’s no greys, only white that’s got gr
2023-11-18 06:41:58 +0000 UTC View PostSublife Crisis - Chapter 20
“Oh!” Mark exclaims in the middle of Ellin daintily trying to balance a notched piece of resin in the stylized shape of a leaf onto a similarly stylized branch. “I got to ride a motorcycle for the first time!”
It has taken him six loops around the table of us playing Vyrd’s Arbor to think of a positive element from his last life. Molly made it a requirement, something about how my own sorrowful infliction of memory had to be balanced out. Which really, ...
2023-11-14 23:10:13 +0000 UTC View PostThe Daily Grind - Chapter 257
“This is a BRAINVAULT Sigma-ACTIUM-X Cranial Dreadnought (Invictus Type). It is a fortress for your skull. Your skull is now a mighty bastion. You can break anything with your skull. The only limit is your spine. Relax... The lights will attract the enemy. Help them to relax as well... Your enemies do not have a skull fortress. Their skulls are like meadows. Play in the meadows. Gather the flowers from the meadows. Gather them with electrokinetic trauma. Smell the flowers. Isn't that ni...
2023-11-11 13:16:51 +0000 UTC View PostSublife Crisis - Chapter 19
I've been having a hard time keeping up on this, sorry everyone
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You’d think that by the fifth time someone came in, Molly would have gotten tired of turning her highly tuned kobold mutt body into a projectile weapon and testing the limits of the between’s safety measures. But no, partly because Molly is a boundless pit of enthusiasm, and partly because our bodies don’t tire here.
Our minds do, certainly. Emotional exhaustion, runaway thoughts, broken ...
2023-11-10 15:20:43 +0000 UTC View PostThe Daily Grind - Chapter 256
There might be a break next week, I dunno. Wri
2023-11-04 07:45:03 +0000 UTC View PostSublife Crisis - Chapter 18
“So, what did you spend your life doing?” I ask Six.
It’s fun to play games with small stories as wagers, teasing out memories and moments from our lives. It’s fun to sit around and make a production out of some of our proudest actions and harshest follies. The theater of it all, and the company, and the shared feeling of preserving within each other bits of lives that we’ll never get back, never see again, and never remember forever; it’s all a small islan...
2023-11-02 08:47:29 +0000 UTC View PostThe Daily Grind - Chapter 255
This time I'm gonna make sure you can all actua
2023-10-28 07:14:02 +0000 UTC View PostSublife Crisis - Chapter 17
Eyes that weren’t real until this moment, and really, still aren’t that real at all, open. My heart is beating like it wasn’t just created from nothing. My breath coming steadily, despite breathing being something of an affectation for the dead.
For once, this body feels worse. The constant projected Elben fields of that last life’s world, along with doses of perfected chemical stimulants in every drink and ration bar, made feeling good a r...
2023-10-27 07:42:34 +0000 UTC View PostSublife Crisis - Chapter 16
“He hummed to me. It was so familiar, like an orchestra I heard from far away.” Jules pays what he owes for needing to buy back into our game of cards. “By the time I died I’d had enough time already to no longer be missing him. But I remember how he hummed, and how it made me feel like a child again. A real child.”
We play through another set. We don’t actually have chips or markers that are actually good for this, and until a few thousan...
2023-10-24 21:56:11 +0000 UTC View PostThe Daily Grind - Chapter 254
In rereading older chapters, I've been reminded that the inhabitor dog is actually also a golden retriever. I guess I just like that kind of dog. I'll fix that later
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“I grew up reading Redwall. The opening pages were full of lavish descriptions of playful merriment. I loved those pages. But they always gave way to chapters about war, pillaging, and slaughter. So let’s ask: what if the meadow gets to stay safe and happy this time? What if those opening pag...
2023-10-21 08:23:47 +0000 UTC View PostSublife Crisis - Chapter 15
I seriously said "Oh no, I'm late, I'll post in half an hour", and then sat at my computer, stared at it, couldn't figure out what I had sat down for, and then went to bed. Anyway, here's the chapter!
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“So we’re at the healer, right? And I’m sitting there, being creepy, because hurt kids who don’t cry are creepy.” Ellin is telling a story from her last life, and is slightly tipsy. I know this because she proclaimed it, shortly before...
2023-10-20 19:19:40 +0000 UTC View PostThe Daily Grind - Chapter 253
I don't think I like this chapter much, but I'm pretty sure the next one will be better.
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“When I looked at myself, I was somebody else” -Metric, Underline The Black-
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“I” Vadik said, voice rumbling as he watched the preparations, “am going to be fired for this.”
“Oh don’t be dramatic.” James said, standing next to him with a clipboard and double checking everything coming in. He didn’t actually need the...
2023-10-14 17:56:04 +0000 UTC View PostSublife Crisis - Chapter 14
After Six arrives and instantly starts fussing with the organization of the bar which I have apparently messed up in my time here, there’s only a few more to go. Mark is next through the door, all sculpted muscles and smiles as he sees us and lets his guard slip away. Then Ellin ambushes him with a kiss too, getting in early this time instead of at the end of their time together.
A risky play. Mark comes back from half his lives pining for a love lost. ...
2023-10-13 03:54:53 +0000 UTC View PostSublife Crisis - Chapter 13
Everyone has different things that they find themselves gravitating toward when they have free time in the between. Technically, all of our time is free time here; that’s one of the true blessings and curses of immortality. There is no structure to it, it’s devoid of real enforceable responsibility, and it’s all ours. But there’s a difference between the heartbeats we share with each other, and the ones that pass by when we’re alone.
In the past, I’ve spent...
2023-10-10 23:25:08 +0000 UTC View PostThe Daily Grind - Chapter 252
"Should any political party attempt to abol
2023-10-07 11:13:01 +0000 UTC View PostSublife Crisis - Chapter 12
Maybe a decade ago or so, my aunt got me to watch a movie called Defending Your Life. It has two very cool things in it: one, Rip Torn, and two, a very casual and kind version of an afterlife. I think it might have influenced me somewhat.
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“That’s where the money is, I’m telling you! I’ve got eight versions of [Inventory Expansion] and [Pocket Space] running, and it’s never served me wrong! Logistics...
2023-10-06 09:26:47 +0000 UTC View PostSublife Crisis - Chapter 11
I'm really thinking of just finishing this "book", posting all of it here, and then figuring out what to do with it on RR.
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In between life and death, there is nothing.
No where, no when, no who. I don’t know how long I am there because there is no me there, and no time for that lack of me to be there regardless.
I think it is a long time this go around anyway. Which makes it slightly bitter that I do not awake rested.
One instant, I ...
2023-10-04 09:50:57 +0000 UTC View PostThe Daily Grind - Chapter 251
“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” -Ursula K. LeGuin, Those Who Walk Away From Omelas-
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They teleported to a safehouse; one of many that Nate had apparently set up when he had a free day, which just made Ja...
2023-10-01 01:59:49 +0000 UTC View PostSublife Crisis - Chapter 10
Mark goes first.
His last life was exciting, romantic, insightful, and beautiful. Which, naturally, means he has the fewest heartbeats out of all of us.
There’s a few things that correlate actions to heartbeats, achievements or notifications to heartbeats, but there’s so many times I’ve seen exceptions that I don’t think it’s really reasonable to try to track and plan for ways to stick around longer. Killing things seems to work, usually, except when it reall...
2023-09-29 10:57:48 +0000 UTC View PostSublife Crisis - Chapter 9
“I don’t think they’re optimizers. Not the way you mean it, Luri.” Mark sighs as the five of us relax in the empty-again space of Bastion’s. We’re not anywhere in particular, or doing anything special, just lounging around and talking.
Rushing to try to compact as much time together as possible into our heartbeats just makes us resent it. We’ve tried before. It’s not worth it to us. We’ll feel like drunkenly sharing songs, or playing...
2023-09-27 05:07:41 +0000 UTC View Post