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| Fall to Pieces [R] + Ofer Winda Fiþerum [Upon the Wind's Wings] (Short story); Ficlet + real writing double feature! | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 25 2009, 11:47 PM (824 Views) | |
| AzureHorizon | Dec 25 2009, 11:47 PM Post #1 |
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Kish Fic Laureate
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A/N: This was sorta cobbled together. I took the idea of the 'country fair' sort of setting and modified it for another wintry piece. I'm also copypasting my retrospective short story of '09 along with this, so read that too. Comments on both would be nice, but I don't expect this to get super popular (my works fall under the radar ;_;). Fall to Pieces I shot my love today. Would you cry for me? I lost my head again. Would you lie for me? The Soundgarden song blared in Oliver's ears as he walked down the walkway underneath the portico that connected two parts of the KAD frat house. Close your eyes, and bow your head. I need a little sympathy. 'Cuz fear is strong, and love's for everyone who isn't me. Kill the earth, kill yourself and kill everything you love. And if you live, you can fall to pieces, and suffer with my ghosts... The song was depressing as hell, but the lyrics were undeniably deep and poetic, and he couldn't help but mull them over as he enjoyed the brief time outside he would get today. Last night was rough, a bit too rough. It wasn't the sex with Kyle, no... it was the alcohol. Jesus fuck, the alcohol. He had probably downed a whole fifth of jagermeister on his own. How he was coherent enough to bend Kyle over and give it to him good and hard was beyond anything he could imagine. Kyle knew that Oliver had gone overboard, as Oliver awoke in the middle of the night expelling every single piece of food and stomach acid that coagulated at the bottom of his gut, the vomit liquid fire and the relief bittersweet. After he had puked, Oliver passed out faster than a horse hit with a tranquilizer dart, and didn't wake up until late afternoon. The bitter January chill meant that being outside was a luxury awarded to those who didn't sleep away hangovers. Kyle had avoided him that day. Maybe Oliver had done something to offend him, he wasn't sure. Maybe the sex was too rough, or maybe he was afraid Oliver was gonna kill himself with too much drinking. That was enough to make him think twice... because no matter how much he told Kyle he loved him, the demons that haunted him were too strong to be chased away by the arrows of adoration he held for that dark-haired, pre-med student. So he thought of a way to reconcile all of that. The lake cabin was not an option, as the ice skating escapade and the all-week-long sex session cemented the fact that they loved each other more than anything else would. Don't fall back on that, Oliver. It's not a catch-all-save-your-ass-from-Kyle's-quiet-fury sorta thing. Oliver's second option was to take Kyle to the winter festival, which was far outside of Llanview but far enough away that no one in the frat house would consider going there... and maybe he'd find the urge to be open with their relationship. If he could get over that constricting fear, that is. My parents won't be there, so... what am I so afraid of? As he debated with himself, he noticed Kyle walking his way. There was a coldness to his expression, which was slowly receding as he noticed Oliver's splotched face (all the blood vessels burst from the puking... he kinda looked like an overripe fruit). A constant reminder for Oliver that going that far led to some pretty devastating consequences, and a sign for Kyle to back off from whatever anger he was gonna throw at Oliver. "Ya feelin' ok, Fish?" He asked, his eyes wandering down to the ground, trying to play the worst game of hide and seek. "Yeah... my stomach's still... ugh. Knots, man. I haven't been able to eat anything today. I've been drinkin' as much water as I can, though. The headache is driving me crazy, still." "Why'd you drink so much, Ollie?" He asked, stepping closer. He looked around, and noticing that no one was outside at the moment, allowed himself to briefly touch Oliver's cheek, caressing the flesh with soft, careful strokes. "My parents... they... well, I didn't say anything 'cuz I didn't wanna ruin last night. I wanted to have fun and stuff, but... they called before we went out and interrogated me about why I haven't found a girl yet and I... all I could do was keep thinking of you. I almost flat out said that I was dating my 'friend' Kyle Lewis and that no girl does it for me." "Wow... ya know, ya coulda told me that. I do appreciate the gesture, though. Sorry I been avoidin' you... I just don't want ya dyin' on me n' all. Ya gotta hold back, if not for them... then for me..." He said the last part looking straight down, kicking the ground idly with his right foot. Oliver was the one to reach over and comfort his boyfriend (secrets are still true, aren't they? A title is a title regardless if it's public, right? These were the excuses that ran through Oliver's mind every time he decided to use this word), bringing him closer, eventually wrapping his arms around Kyle in a strong hug. To anyone around, it would look like two bros hugging it out, bromance-style, but to them, it was love that couldn't be expressed without hesitance, comfort that couldn't be given without the pall of secrecy. "I'm sorry, Kyle... I'm so sorry." Kyle said nothing, instead breaking free from the hug to tug on Oliver's shirt, dragging him towards their dorms. "Kyle, I dunno if I can... my head's poundin' so hard." "Shut up. Just shut up." --- The dorm door flew open, clothes were thrown off, bodies enmeshed in one another. No matter how much of a headache Oliver had, that disappeared as soon as Kyle's mouth found his, his tongue finding new frontiers and new contours in Oliver's mouth that it had never found before. This act was out of pure lust and desire, transformed from anger and sadness. Kyle was using this sex as a catalyst to fix whatever blemish Oliver had put on their wooden bridge of a relationship. Even though neither said anything, both could feel that their relationship was rotting, the supports starting to give way. The cold, icy waters of separation awaiting their downfall. The river anticipating the event of the logs falling down, being carried away, thrown off a waterfall and never seen again. A love that could fall to pieces at any moment. But at this moment, with both men standing at full attention, groins shoved into each other with roughness and passion and this furtive love? The future angst could stay at bay for a while. For now, Oliver was on his knees with his mouth completely wrapped around Kyle's manhood, going to town on his crotch with vigor and horniness, Kyle bucking into his mouth roughly. Kyle's first orgasm was not gonna be the last of this little session. ------- The next day, both of them were relatively on the same page. Kyle grinned more than ever seeing Oliver, though, and made sure to stick by him as much as he could when he wasn't in class. During classes, even, both of them texted each other, their fingers click-clattering on the numberpads, distracting them from their professors, distracting other students. Their renewed interest in one another was distracting them from, well... everything. So Oliver figured this was the perfect time to ask Kyle out on this little jaunt out away from Llanview. "Hey, Kyle... can I ask you somethin'?" "Sure Oliver. What d'ya want?" The two of them lay next to each other on Oliver's bed. Their third roommate was out of town for the weekend, conveniently enough. The room quickly began to reek of sex, but neither of them cared. Oliver played with one of Kyle's nipples a little while asking the question, making Kyle smirk and giggle a little. "Um... do you wanna go with me to the winter festival? It's a few miles outside Llanview, and we can take the bus there. I've always wanted to go, and I figured I'd go with you, because I love you and all..." "Really? Well... I do got some work to do, big test comin' Monday, but... what the hell, let's do it!" Oliver smiled warmly at Kyle, before moving in for a prolonged kiss. -------- Slight blizzard conditions settled upon the area as their bus reached the front gates of the festival. As they excited, a strong gust of snow blew in their faces, covering both of their faces in small specks of white. Kyle was the first to go perverted about it. He looked straight at Oliver's face before speaking, a chuckle brimming forth before he spoke. "Kinda looks like that one time I..." "Shut it, Kyle! You didn't tell me you were gonna..." "I kinda liked seeing you all covered." Oliver wasn't gonna admit the same, but he smiled devilishly back at Kyle, who took that as agreement. He inwardly kicked himself for becoming so damn perverse because of this beautiful guy he had fallen head over heels for. He shook his head, laughing a little as Kyle lightly shoved him. He ended up losing his balance, falling over into a giant snowpack. "Man, this is gettin' off to a great start, eh Fish?" He said, guffawing. Yeah, so great. The two walked in cadence towards one of the first attractions, a small gun range that was covered over by a thick tarp. Oliver nudged Kyle and pointed at one of the prizes, a teddy bear that had the words "I Love You" inscribed in its chest. Kyle smiled at him. "Ya gonna win that for me, officer?" He asked, his lip pushing outward in his best impersonation of an innocent child's face. "... Maybe." "C'mooooon! You gotta!" He relinquished his guard. Kyle wasn't worth putting up walls for. Walking over to the carny, Oliver gave him ten bucks. "Gonna try your luck? Alright. Gotta hit ten ducks in a row and you can choose any of the bears over there. Got a girly-friend you gonna win one for?" He asked, a thick, slightly-redneck voice adding an amusing tone to his voice. "Y-... you could say that." Picking up the gun, he went to work, practicing his aiming skills. His father had taken him to the gun range millions of times before, prepping Oliver from the age of twelve how to fire a gun properly. This was different, though. He wasn't shooting bullets to kill, to wound, to maim. He was shooting bullets for love, for friendship, for Kyle. Thinking of his parents wasn't gonna help, here. Oliver fired his first five rounds in succession, hitting each duck square in the middle. Visions of his dad were starting to blur his vision, but he pushed them out. Fuck you, dad. Not today. In his anger, he aimed at the next five ducks' heads, blowing them clean off. Angry, but content that he had managed to get all ten duck heads, he set the gun down roughly and picked out the teddy bear. Kyle gave him a big smile, which receded a little when he saw the look on Oliver's face. "Yo, what happened, bud?" "Nothin'... just... my dad was in my head again. He took me to the shooting range a lot." "Well... thank you for this." He said, calmly taking the bear out of Oliver's hands. "You're welcome, Kyle. Look at that bear whenever I piss you off, okay? Please?" "Jus' lookin' at you is enough, Ollie." He replied, a slight smile playing along Kyle's face. Omniscient Narrator Interjection: That bear is gonna get torn to shreds after Oliver fucks their relationship over. Anyway, back to the story. The festival turned out to not be as great as it could have been, regardless of how many attractions they had put up. Many were shut down from the now two feet of snow that covered the ground. The festival coordinators had not expected such blizzard-like conditions, and so they forced everyone out of the park within a couple hours. Kyle and Oliver got on the very last bus leaving the place, content as ever. "I had a lot of fun today, Oliver." "Yeah... me too. I'm sorry that I fuck things up so much. There's a lot I still gotta get over." "Just... don't let yourself fall to pieces ag'in, okay?" "I have you picking me back up, don't I?" "As long as I'm around, yeah Oliver... you do." (And now for something completely different!) Ofer Winda Fiþerum [Upon the Wind's Wings] The year has come and gone, the times have lain waste to memories and given birth to new ones, cutting swathes of dreams out of the minds of young people, bursting open flowers in bloom in others. Does time ever stop and wonder at the destruction it causes? Does it ever give two shits or a fuck if we live or if we die? Nope. Because it continues on and on, ceaseless and unyielding. It does not bend to the will of one man or many, to one planet or several, to one universe or multiple. Time exists only because we want it to. It only exists because if it didn't, we would have chaos. This is a love letter to a world that has given me hardship and pain. A soliloquy and a requiem for solace and tranquility. A solitary voice cutting through the tar pit it's stuck in, finding fresh air, only to find that it is in a closed-off room, and no one can hear it. I. Origins Fate is a funny little thing; the things that you never expect to happen do, and the things you want to happen, don't. I wish I could attribute that to something else besides that omniscient force. I wish I could call it God or Buddha or Allah or Zoroaster or Zeus or Woden. But I can't. And as the black piano plays blues while I write this piece, I still can't. I want to give up my struggles and my hardships and blame a higher being for my woes, or beg and pray to the higher being to suddenly make them go away, but I refuse to. A natural urge in me prevents me from doing that very thing that so many in my family and a few of my friends wish I would do. It's not me, it never was. Dad taught me that... he taught me a lot of things, but more on that later. This year was both an ending and a beginning; it was an alpha and omega and a first and last. The conclusion of my second year at college, the end of two 'important' friendships that I had put a lot of effort into fostering, and the end of one of the most revelatory years at school I've ever had. Epiphanies, or revelations, or whatever synonym you want to abuse here, are not unique, nor are they particularly rare; I'd go so far as to say they are common, multitudinous in nature. Epiphanies are not necessarily those grand moments where you figure out something that couldn't have possibly been and now is, nor is it a moment where the puzzles of the universe just quaintly fit into place. An epiphany is an errant thought you've never had before. It's a thought you were going to have – sooner, later, or even never, but was brought upon by some other inertia – and then had, at the 'right' moment or the 'right' time. Right in the mind of you, a few seconds late in the mind of another. I'm embellishing a little; what exactly was my epiphany? You're probably wondering if that will be answered anytime soon. Let me ramble a little first, please. When I was younger, I desperately craved the notion of being a cartographer. A strange future career choice, out of all the potential firemen and astronauts and rock stars that became the standard choice amongst my other, juvenile friends. I was absolutely infatuated with maps. Who knew the world could be defined by just a simple, topographical map? I could look on that map and find everywhere I ever needed to go. Of course, this was on a scale of hundreds of miles – thousands, sometimes – and so it was more of a general sense of direction, not precise. In those days, I wished life was like a map, where you knew all the roads to take, the shortcuts to get to and past any given situation. The towns on the map would become encounters, the roads becoming the paths of fate itself. You'd know when the river's coming up, hey look, it's right there, honey take a left, we're going alongside it, not across it. There, we found it, the rock, perfect, I can sit on it now and ponder what life really means. Wouldn't it be great if life came with a Rand McNally atlas? The humorous part about writing this is that I keep wondering if there should be a limit to how many words I put on this screen or how long this little creative non-fiction piece should drag on, my non-sequiturs and rants filling up line after line. You could call it a journal piece but my journal's back in Oregon for now and I'd rather write this here anyways. So back to the word count limit! The bastard and bane of writers who like to write with restriction. I see that little wall and I want to barrel headlong into it, but being able to curtail your flowery prose into a bite-size Twix is harder than all get out. It's a piece of shit, honestly, and I dislike it, but I'll be damned if it doesn't narrow my ideas from the universal scale down to the size of an apple. Just enough to bite into, savor, and then go on your way. So what was that “beginning”, then? The beginning of something... different. A whole new take on a life that seemed to be going nowhere. A downward spiral with a potential dream floating just above the surface but all I felt like doing was letting the water suck me down further. The thick, gooey miasma of college life that is filled with partying and getting drunk and getting high and wishing there was nothing more to life than just that. No... I found a purpose, the beginning of something new. I found a reason to live this fucking life. II. Bildungsroman You learn a lot from death. A simple sentence, probably coulda thrown a few more genitive nouns and present-tense verbs and really jazzed it up with a subordinate conjunction or some shit. But I thought it was unnecessary. You find that a lot of things are unnecessary when real stuff happens. When you're faced with a dying father on a hospital bed, clinging to a life that was not his own, but a machine's; a mechanical life that supported flesh that was dying. I've written about this before, but it all comes back from time to time. I'd see his name pop up on Facebook, and I'd remember that I continuously wished I knew his password so I could delete his name from the Internet. Give him a proper send-off not from the physical realm but the virtual. Make it so people couldn't search for him on the web anymore. Make it so no one but me and my family would ever know his name, or talk about him in hushed, sorrowful tones. I want that luxury for me. I want that luxury for my family, as well. The blaring sax from some quiet, smooth jazz does little to quell the pain. It's not a go-to salve. It's not an ointment from the gods – no, it's not even Aphrodite's tears, to soothe Aeneas' pitiful struggle to found Rome. Unlike the characters of Homeric and Vergilian epic, there are no gods to come down and heal each wound we receive. We are not blessed, nor are we godlike, nor are we shepherds of our people. We are just people. People being people in a world defined by people. So these wounds are deep and they don't have a simple fix. Time, it is said oftenly, heals all wounds... but then a cynic came along and said that even still, the wounds leave scars. I can't say I've hit the point in my life where my solitary wound has become a scar, but I long for that day. I long for the day I can wake up in the morning and not think about my dad being dead, even if I can never truly stop thinking about it. You don't just up and move on from such a thing. Ultimately, it's a catch-22 if I ever knew one. I want to be able to walk around this world with my head held up high, and my aspirations even higher, but alas that is not for me. Not now. Not for a long time. My advice to those who know of my situation is that life is but a flicker of a candle. Condense all your worries, all your problems, all your sins and all your graces into that one rapid fire moment. See them all just bleed away? See them disappear and unburden themselves? Let's expand that further. Let's take that over several days. Each day is but one slight rotation of that candle, preparing itself to flicker. The breath of kismet is about to make that candle break its unending and powerful flame for one moment, and that's life. That's all, folks. I can give that advice, but I can't easily take it, as you'll see here: Wake up. New day. Gotta eat something. Open computer. Check Facebook. Any notifications? Why yes, many. So-and-so commented on their status that I liked? Awesome, read it. I got tagged in a bunch of photos from a party I barely remember? Euphoric. Someone accepted my friend request? I've reached paradise. Close computer, start the day. Go to work, go to class, help out family. Pick your time-waster of the day, because Facebook is always there. Return to Facebook. Cool, more notifications. Didn't I have something I needed to do? Nah, that's fine, there's friends to talk to on chat. What am I doing? Why do I do this? Why am I so utterly drawn to the nature of fucking social networking? Of all the things in my life? I could be nursing and feeding the passions, praying to the Muses for something to write or do, but they're not always there. A song lulls me out of this small debacle: Call me, call me. Let me know it's alright. … Please won't you come, and ease my mind? Reasons... for me to find you. Peace of mind. If only it were so easy. If only I had that person to pull me out of my quagmire. Instead, more than ever, I've put up a shell that only Facebook and <insert message board here> can fix... and even they do nothing. They don't. At some point in my life, I'm going to shrug off these drugs. I'm gonna cut off the addiction and get a hold of my world. So maybe it's a good thing I've realized it now, rather than later. I'm still gonna be on Facebook a lot, I'm still gonna make some mistakes, but... I've got a compass. It's pointing in a direction, and I'm gonna take it. I'm gonna follow that path until it leads me to a fucking pot of gold. III. Eschatology That epiphany's still not quite been answered, even after all you've just read. So I return to that solemn sax because it speaks volumes to me now. It's the voice of winter. The voice of the cold and the pain and the solitude. The voice of a person who needs relief, who so desperately craves it... could I just have someone shoulder the burden for one day? That's all I ask. I'll do you a favor and briefly define 'eschatology', in my own words: The study of the end of days, or of the apocalypse. You'll find this word a lot in conjunction with Biblical texts, or Islamic texts, or any religion you've ever heard of that talks about the End of Days, the Rapture, the apocalypse, armageddon. Put into terms I can scoop out of a cereal bowl, the little alphabet characters aligning in just the right way (because the idiosyncrasies of the English language fascinate me just as much as it did Kurt Vonnegut), I begin to understand what the End of Days really means to me. Harkening back to that allusion to The Aeneid, I recall that during my readings of those epics of antiquity that we uncovered, in lecture, that the gods were nothing more than anthropomorphic representations of the mind, the psyche itself, who was also given the title of a goddess. Ares is the war-lust in men, the urge to fight and win kleos and everlasting timê in the eyes of his fellow man; Aphrodite is sex and lust and love, passions unrequited and then fulfilled; Hera is irrationality and casuistry/deception. And so on and so forth following the whole god damn papyrus parchment of deities. So, to me, even the modern gods of today are nothing more than representations of the human mind. There is the dichotomy of good and evil, God being the goodness in people, Satan being the tempter, the evil, the wrong. There are morals and there are sins, and thus we have the foundations of judgment and conflict. I can't ascribe my actions to a higher power because we created that higher power. You may disagree with me and that's just fine. You're you; I'm me. We're people, surrounded by people, in a world defined by people. The armageddon, if I were to dilute it into its simplest possible definition, is the destruction of the human mind. The title of this piece, in its Old English form, was part of a collection of questions and answers about the margins of the Bible; this particular phrase comes from a question asked about where God is in the heavens. The answer? “Upon the wind's wings.” You could view this piece as questioning and analyzing the very margins of life all around us, if you wanted. I have a lot of questions to ask, so I'll spare you the verbosity – brevity is the soul of wit, after all. I feel like we all wish we could sit there, on those wings of wind. We could all watch on as our lives fall apart in disarray and we could wonder how to stop the senseless destruction, but never really find an answer. We could remain blissfully ignorant. No, the answer to it all, no matter what question you have, comes from living. The answer comes from making the most out of the short, short life you will have. I heard it best from a friend, when he asked a TV writer what it takes to 'get into the business.' Her answer? 'Have experiences. Always have experiences. And write about them.' So that's what I'm doing right here. I'm writing to you, my wonderfully small pool of readers, about the world and the state of affairs of a friend or family member of yours who has lost his way but is now found; not by the light of prayer, or the honey and milk of Allah's blessings, but by the sheer force of humanism and goodwill. Altruism has become a staple moral that I live by – to give unto others without expecting anything in return. I try to follow that, as best I can. I once argued with a friend of mine about being righteous. He claims that you can only do so through God. I claim we can only do so from being human, and working towards the betterment of humanity. Am I wrong? Is he? Who cares. Live life how you want to, but always be cautious. Never let your guard down, not even for a millisecond, because when you do the existence you know throws a curveball at your heart and wrenches it free from its veins. You're left standing there watching it uselessly drain and beat away. You're left without the will to go on. But there is always hope. It's there. It's constant. It's... just beyond reach. Keep running towards it... Edited by AzureHorizon, Dec 26 2009, 02:01 AM.
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| rhombus | Dec 26 2009, 12:25 AM Post #2 |
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Let us frankly discuss the mad hot sex we're about to have.
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Gods damn, but I do love the way you write. Your imagery is just so crisp, clear, poetic, beautiful. Your metaphors are... stunning. It's late, and I've had some xmas "spirits" -- so I'll probably be back tomorrow with better words to type... Just know that you gots mad skills and you should write more acidic fluff, in and out of the fandom. Edited by rhombus, Dec 26 2009, 12:27 AM.
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| appleridge | Dec 26 2009, 12:29 AM Post #3 |
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Nice!!!! |
| smuchshypush | Dec 26 2009, 01:41 AM Post #4 |
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This might be my fave fic of yours yet, but I can’t even think about it right now because it was completely overshadowed by the brilliance of your personal essay. I fucking loved it. It made me wish I were smarter so I could comment on it with the eloquence it deserves. Can’t even single out one part that I liked the best, it was all so amazing. Gah, that sounds so vague and pat, but honestly, it was all wonderful. I dig your take on life, and I dig the way you say it. I’m sure I’ll read it again, and hopefully by then I’ll have figured out something intelligent to say about it, but until then: Damn. Just damn. You have a shit-ton of talent. Thank you so much for sharing it. |
| Popey | Dec 26 2009, 11:25 AM Post #5 |
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Nothing ever stays. Everything dies eventually.
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I totally agree! MEGATONS! So nice and flowy and so well written. Fine then, we can sell your books along with the dvd's out the back of the bus. Good? ;) {In all honesty, I loved it! Maybe you can start a This is not Kish Fanfic thread or something....} |
| rhombus | Dec 26 2009, 11:49 AM Post #6 |
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Let us frankly discuss the mad hot sex we're about to have.
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I kinda like that idea. People can just share their non-Kish writing. It may not be popular, but I know I'd like to read other people's non-Kish stuff. (And more of your stuff, A.H., because as has been mentioned, your stuff is powerful and moving.) Maybe I'm just missing the workshop environment from my undergrad days... |
| Popey | Dec 26 2009, 11:56 AM Post #7 |
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Nothing ever stays. Everything dies eventually.
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Yup yup. Sounds like a good idea to me. Maybe I will start.........then again maybe not. |
| AzureHorizon | Dec 26 2009, 12:12 PM Post #8 |
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Kish Fic Laureate
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if we do start a non-kish fanfic thread, let's start it in the new year |
| rhombus | Dec 26 2009, 12:15 PM Post #9 |
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Let us frankly discuss the mad hot sex we're about to have.
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Sounds like a plan. (I, myself, have not written anything non-Kish since... 2006... sooo, I'll either have to dust off the oldies, or force myself out of the Kish bubble.) |
| Popey | Dec 26 2009, 12:18 PM Post #10 |
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Nothing ever stays. Everything dies eventually.
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Good idea. (All I have is nonKish stuff.....but a lot was written a long time ago so I gots to spruce it up) |
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2:48 AM Jul 11