throwthisoneintrash

throwthisoneintrash t1_j5fdzic wrote

Reply to comment by rainbow--penguin in [CW] Smash 'Em Up Sunday: Bildungsroman by Cody_Fox23

Rainbow!

I am so used to your gorgeous, flowing words that when I read something by you that is more direct, it hits me like an avalanche.

This feels so honest and truthful. The clear steps in the character’s journey are filled with subtle tells from them, revealing the layers of emotion beneath the circumstances.

I loved this and was amazed at how well it brought me into a new perspective and helped me feel what this character was experiencing.

A+, as always. Thank you for your words!

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throwthisoneintrash t1_j5dnurc wrote

Reply to [CW] Smash 'Em Up Sunday: Bildungsroman by Cody_Fox23

#The Measurement of Time

WC 312

The world moves so quickly. I find myself reaching out time and time again for another to share my journey, but they all slip away in an instant.

Of course, I have my siblings. I feel them dance. I hear their groaning, shifting words as they sing slowly and deeply. The song of a thousand mountains echoing through the valleys they overshadow.

My own voice is still weak, I fear I will misqueme them and so I look for lesser companions.

Animals are no use. They scamper around so hastily, that before I can track one of their short lives, I find out it has come to an end.

Trees are better. One particular oak grew on my sun-drenched slopes, drinking in the light and enjoying the shelter I provide. Its leaves twinkle in the summer light, their smiles shone brightly for a season before floating away to nothing.

The oak looked old before I really had time to consider it fully. They all age so quickly.

I’m left with a reflection in a lake below me. It’s me, but not really me. It mimics my moment, it copies the dance of the rocks that I continue to dance though the animals are gone, and the trees too.

All of that organic growth must have puffed away in the fires that warmed my slopes for a few thousand brief years. It all happens so fast. The lake is gone now too.

Maturity is what my siblings call it. Living through an extinction or two builds character. But I wonder.

I look into the sky. It’s clearer now, without the atmosphere, and I think about the stars. They move so slowly.

And I wonder.

who am I

am i the tree to them

am i brief and inconsequential to them

why do i feel so small

what is the reason for it all

r/TheTrashReceptacle

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throwthisoneintrash t1_j4f3esb wrote

Reply to [CW] Smash 'Em Up Sunday: Temporal Fiction by Cody_Fox23

#Speedy Cheetah Time Travel Services

WC 369

Congratulations! You have won a Speedy Cheetah vacation trip to Ancient Egypt!

Fasten your safety belts and get ready for the ride of your life! Our comfortable, first-class excursion will bring you to the end of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom and the reign of Mentuhotep IV.

Archeologists have questioned this period for years, and now you are able to possess first hand knowledge and experiences you shouldn’t have were it not for the wonder of String Tunneling.

Our patented time travel process brings you into the action, while avoiding any messy grandfather paradoxes or causal loops that you might get with the other guys. As soon as you begin your journey with us, your trip becomes one of many outcomes.

Start your day with our costume department and sip wine while they outfit you to naturally blend into the eleventh dynasty. Then move on to our exclusive translation team as they install hidden translators to make your experience second to none!

Finally, enter the portal with confidence, knowing our triple-tested, internationally-certified, award-winning time-travel pod is designed with your comfort and safety in mind.

You’ll land at a predetermined location, carefully mapped out by our logistics team. A ground team will be there to greet you and bring you into the Pharaoh's presence. Please bow at that point.

The immunization team will have already prepared you with the ability to feast on anything you find before you at the Pharaoh’s feast. Enjoy the entertainment!

We hope your trip exceeds all of your expectations and we look forward to serving you in the future, or the past!

Disclaimer:

Speedy Cheetah is not responsible for any discomfort, injury, allergy, death, beatings, floggings, sicknesses, enslavement, torture, or foul smells you may encounter on your journey. Travelers agree to avoid disrupting the timeline with any form of anachronism or knowledge transmitted from them to an individual from the past. Speedy Cheetah does not warrant the traveler against unexpected events including, but not limited to, grandfather paradoxes, causal loops, or interference in the timeline by our competitors. Travelers assume all risk and agree to settle all disputes with Speedy Cheetah via a foot race. We sincerely hope you enjoy your trip.

Speedy Cheetah: There is time enough to last.

r/TheTrashReceptacle

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throwthisoneintrash t1_j25x18f wrote

Reply to [CW] Smash 'Em Up Sunday: Ska by Cody_Fox23

#Ska’s Letter

WC 416

Dear Mr. World,

You brought me here, and for that I’m grateful. I learned from the best how to speak and how to act. You taught me that life could be so easy if I just follow the rules.

But, you know, fuck your rules.

I was told by you to get an education, a job, a life. But it wasn’t what I wanted, it was just some carbon copy of what everyone else was doing. I let myself get dragged along through the drudgery of mundane things.

The other day, I left work at seven o’clock at night. The streetlights were on and I stood under one of them, letting the rain hit me like the ever-present annoyances that make up my whole life. Then some guy walked by and took a trumpet out of its case and started playing, just like that, in the rain.

The sounds that came out of that horn, and the energy he had for life; it was the first time I saw real freedom. The expression of a life lived for oneself and not the patterns and programs dictated to them.

There, in that island under the streetlight, I realized that I’m all I’ve got. No one is gonna make changes in my life but me. I took my hat off and just soaked in the rain. I even shouted at it, and the guy just played along as if I had been singing lyrics to the song he was playing.

I liked it.

I liked challenging the authority of the status quo.

The systems in place, designed to take on the human condition and force it into a mold, they’re symptoms of your greed and desire for control.

Well, if you want to take on me, World, you know where to find me. I’ll be sitting on my desk, learning how to play the bass. Come by and check on me. I’ve decided to choose a path that never hurt anyone else, so I’m ditching the corporate ladder and jumping with my own parachute.

You probably don’t care. You’re probably indifferent to the whole thing. But I know for a fact that if you lose me, you lose a good thing. You lose the ability to look in a mirror and see your ugliness. You lose the edge and the drive that forces you to reflect on your pitiful constraints and the broken system you’ve built. Look at me, and see yourself.

Sincerely,

Ska Richards

Former Account Executive.

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throwthisoneintrash t1_itey05l wrote

Reply to [CW] Smash 'Em Up Sunday: Invasion by Cody_Fox23

#Misty Night

WC 794

Settled in the luxurious bedding prepared for her, Gloinda stretched across the bed to snuff her bedside candle. The caliginous mists swirled around outside, as if calling her into their blackness.

Instead of answering that call, she nestled under the covers. Her marriage to Egart the next day would demand her full attention and she needed rest before the hustle and bustle of preparations she would be obligated to go through.

As she glanced at the window, she felt a chill as a shadow flew into the air and seemed to land on the roof. Instinctively, she downed a vial of liquid kept in her night stand drawer, and then slipped off the covers to investigate.

Because of the tin, she was able to make out subtle footsteps on the roof above her. They crept closer to a skylight above her bed. Was nothing sacred? The night before her wedding, and someone had magically zipped up to the high roof of her family’s keep for an ambush.

A hand rested on the glass of the skylight and a mask peered down into the darkness of her bedroom. Gloinda hid behind an armoire, breathing slowly and quietly. The hand raised as if to knock.

To her shock, the hand breached the glass as if it were ash. Shards splattered around the room from the powerful blow. This was not mere human strength. That was tempered glass. Nor was the leap from above that of an ordinary man. The intruder pounced with the agility of a cat. They wore a cloak of streaming tassels that fluttered around their body like the night mists themselves.

Flying through the night sky, super-human strength, and when the intruder looked around the room, the darkness seemed to mean nothing to them. Gloinda knew what this was. It was a Mistborn assassin.

House politics were a game that everyone played in the Final Empire, but every now and then, it came to the point of war. Secret assassinations and covert plots were part of the ruthless life the nobility lived.

The assassin crept closer. They thought they had the element of surprise still, since only those who could burn tin would be able to see in the darkness. But Gloinda had her own set of surprises.

With a burst of enhanced strength, she burned pewter and threw the armoire at the intruder. The shocked assassin screamed and pushed on the metal fasteners in the furniture, causing it to divert its path in midair.

Gloinda pulled on some coins from a desk nearby, by using iron, and then used steel to push them at the intruder. They zipped through the air because of her magical ability to manipulate the metal. But then the intruder dodged them all. They were burning atium.

A Mistborn could swallow metal flakes and then access the power of individual metals to manipulate the world around them. Tin enhanced the senses, pewter gave one strength, steel pushed metal objects away from the Mistborn, and iron pulled on them. But the ultimate tool was atium. It allowed a Mistborn to see a few seconds into the future. It had allowed this assassin to dodge the deadly coins “pushed” at them while Gloinda was using steel. And it would allow this assassin to outmaneuver her easily.

“Mistborn too?” the assassin said.

“I saw right through you, Intruder.”

They smiled in reply. They wore a hood covering the majority of their face, but the mouth was free to taunt her.

“In the right situation ,we are all capable of the most terrible crimes, aren’t we, Gloinda?”

That voice. She recognized that voice.

“Egart?”

“You didn’t think my family would actually let me marry a filthy rat like you, did you?”

“But, why?”

“This is part of a trade agreement between our fathers. Now that my father has control of your family’s granaries, we no longer need to put up with this charade of a relationship.”

Gloinda let the sinking feeling drain all of the vitality out of her. If this was who she was proposed to, then what was the point of fighting on?

Yet something solidified in her. A resolve to fight back and not let this wicked man have his way.

She burned atium.

Suddenly, the world blurred into a myriad of possibilities. She saw him swipe with a glass dagger and she easily moved out of the way. He stepped back and realized that he was out of atium and she wasn’t.

It was her turn to smile.

By afternoon the next day, a message arrived declaring the wedding was off due to the disappearance of Egart. Gloinda sipped her tea, pondering the dangerous world she lived in. She had never really liked Egart all that much anyway.

r/TheTrashReceptacle

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