My DD Guidelines | DA Lit: A Retrospective | LIT me explain u a thing: Jan - June 2015 | CRLiterature

What is the best compliment you've ever received?

The Eyes of OthersI am in the middle of sketching a nebula when I realize I have lost the signal.
My system log informs me this occurred over ten cycles ago. I shake my head and resume sketching. Nothing for it. I must have become engrossed in my work again and simply lost track of the time. This is not unusual. Besides, this is also not the first time that I have lost the signal. Based on previous incidents, there is a high probability that it will return.
I run a system scan in the background while my digits reacquaint themselves with the stylus. I watch the colors begin to bloom once more across my tablet screen – white space bleeding with starlight.
Every atom of my being enjoys this. I was made to paint the universe as I explore its vastness. My function is not to simply curate or catalog beauty – it is to crystallize it on the canvas.
While I have had many cycles to hone my technical abilities, I am not a mere camera – a machine that replicates flawless images. At my core, I am a Back in Time“… The world as you know it is about to end…”
A voice resounded in my ears, an echo of the past. Waking up from what felt like a deep slumber, I realized that my head felt strange. As though I had been at some other place all along, and had only now came to be at where I am. Opening my eyes slowly, I was momentarily blinded by the shining, blazing and warm thing up yonder, and raised my hands to shield my eyes.
What was it? It was not the sun, for sure. Wait. What was the sun? An image entered my mind. Bright, fiery and hot… Just as I begin to perceive a giant ball of fire, a different image assaulted my senses.
Screams of different pitches came from every direction, escalating into a flurried, frantic tempo. The smell of gunpower and smoke was thick in the air. What appeared to be black rain fell unceasingly from the sky, and there were bodies and blood everywhere. Within the pandemonium, a hastening thump, thump joined the cries and :thumb553422440:

Bonus Features:

:thumb535684563: In Dark WaterWhen the drought came, we found the bones. I guess that explained why we saw her so many times. She was buried in the basement the whole time.
Solan Presbyterian Church sat at the edge of the old wetland. We weren't supposed to be in there, so that's where we went. It sank a little deeper each August when the rains came in. Water in the basement was black and deep. It smelled like garden mulch and roadkill, and more than once we saw old black water moccasins swimming just under the surface.
They were summer Sundays and Saturdays, when Mom worked a double shift at the nursing home, and Jim Bolin's Grandma played Bridge with the Ladies' Aid Society. I'd wake up to the sound of Sandy slamming the front door and an engine revving, her boyfriend waiting not so patiently.
I didn't care anyway.
We met at the crossroads if we were going. Usually it was just Jim and me, but sometimes, Sarah's mom was busy at the store. Sometimes she didn't hear the screen door bang and the front porch creak. Ji The CortexThe whispers were deafening, their feathery voices chafing her mind like sandpaper. “Without us, you are nothing. You have no one” they repeated, intermittent cackles causing tears to erupt from bloodshot eyes and fingers to clutch at freshly clawed skin.
“Please, just leave. Just leave or I’ll make you.”
“Hahaha good luck with that, child. We see everything and know all. You can’t simply flip a switch to eliminate our presence”
“I can try” she said and closed her eyes.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Years of academia and social anxiety had led Petra to join The Fellowship in her first doctoral year at college. It was a think tank of brilliant minds coming together to work towards global inter-connected consciousness, and it had looked promising.
That is, until people started disappearing, their offices cleaned out and no mention was made of them bar “We A Drop Of Your Blood, PleaseIt's been a year since they found their "humanity", and I made a small fortune off of it.
"I barely escaped it myself. The curtain must have malfunctioned, or I'd have been cut in half."
I press a button, refill his glass; a few weeks ago, a robot would have done that. "I have no trouble believing that. How many are we talking about?"
It seems incredible now, but we loved robots. In a technologically-advanced society, where method and practicality were everything, the idea behind them embodied the essence of the future man. Maybe we underestimated how much they actuallty were like men, though... "Hey, get it together. How. Many." I ask again, a bit pissed off as I stare into my client's sleep-deprived eyes.
Robots were the only measure we had left in our scrambling to save the planet after we pushed it past the point of no return; and thank "god" the referendum on robots didn't end up like the one to fund NASA's space exploration, I thought at first. I don't even kno

Mature Content

Ghost writerI.
I was born when you were born, skin to skin –
embraced you like a long lost friend –
stayed –
with you, born with the brown skin
of an old woman, thin and translucent
to the touch, became a second skin
for you, a little taller, my feet stifled
underneath yours, became for you
a cradle against everywhere your skin
was.
II.
You know there is a ghost outside your skin,
leaning on your shoulder. Fingers on your ribs.
All your light is for it. It keeps your dark, too,
makes the you in earlier photographs
a darker-skinned, unknowable, silent body –
do any ghosts know their bodies?
Is this how the flame feels when the moth comes calling?
The ghost on your skin is like rain on a river,
foreign and not, to your body without abode.
Home has to be a body without skin –
III.
One day, the question slipped
from your cracked lips
and you asked your mother,
who was not born but became homeless,
how do you bear it, this dryness,
these waterless winds of foreign lands?
S The Golden QuillOnce upon a time, not long ago and in a land not too far away, there was a man, named Sam, who enjoyed writing. It wasn't his job, but he dreamed that one day, perhaps, he may create something, or really a few somethings, that people enjoyed enough to purchase. That perhaps one day, he could live off of earnings from his work. In the meantime, he worked at a job, and wrote in his spare time.
One day, Sam heard of a small shop, which catered specifically to writers. Everything they would need was sold there. His interest was piqued especially when he heard that it carried a valuable golden quill. A rumor existed, concerning the quill: that whatever was written by the quill, would be of such quality and perfection that the person who wrote it would become wealthy from the product.
Sam had been experiencing a dry spell with his creative efforts. If he could only get his hands on the quill, he could realize his dream of publishing and living from earnings. He would be able to spend more ti:thumb548537192: :thumb543732490: Not Like This    Thunder pounded through the clouds; fading echoes lingered beyond the initial clap. The skies opened, and rain poured, drenching everything. A reprieve was far from sight; the greyness was here to stay, much to the disdain of many.
     A long figure made its way, unseen, down a single pathway. His hat sat crooked on grey hairs while water rushed steadily off its brim. The coat draped over his shoulders, was not a safe haven from the wetness to which it had succumbed. No one was around to observe the sad and lonely man, something he was glad for at this moment.
    He shuffled along, bent and broken with sorrow. His heart, fallen from his chest, was heavy on his feet. Thoughts weighed on his mind; emotions, of the emotions he could feel, swirled in a chaotic knot of unfathomable pain. A day did not pass without the feeling of utter loss; the pain of a depression so deep, no light could be seen from its depths.
    Death stones loomed abo :thumb530069660:

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Send a Sonnet September 2015! It's BACK!
Send a Sonnet September is back! Let's give this a go, people!
Send a Sonnet September was created as a gateway drug for giving unconditionally. Why do we have to have days like Valentine's Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving (for you 'Mericans) where we save our celebrations for the people that we care about and not just give them love every day? Why do we need a certain day or occasion to say that you love someone? I don't get it and I feel that this challenge can help to bridge that thinking. So here we go.
Send a Sonnet September is a form challenge that focuses on other people. You get to choose a style of sonnet and send it/direct it towards someone that you like/care about/love/admire or just someone that you believe deserves some love.
The rules are simple.
Choose a sonnet and note us with your deviation.
Make sure that you link this journal in your artist's comments and also mention the person you are Women in Wardoughboycafe is running a super cool contest about Women In War and I've stepped on to help judge. You want to watch this journal(or her journal) keenly because the prize list is hella cool.
The subject is women in war. You don't see enough of this in military fiction at all, let alone on DA, so doughboycafe is running a contest for it. She wants realistic, historically accurate portrayals of women's contributions to war efforts, be they soldiers or pilots, camp followers, auxiliaries, or on the homefront. There are plenty of cool things to choose from, from female ambulance drivers in WWI, the Night Witches of WWII, Jean d'Arc herself if you want.

Go check out Women Warriors if you really want a list but be careful, it might be too kick ass and overwhelm you.
The point is, women were all over w


New username! By now you've probably realized I have retired IrrevocableFate. That was possibly one of the most difficult things I have ever done because I was, and still am, immensely attached to the username. It was something I came up with when I was 16, almost 17, and as such it has lots of history. I've been debating a username change for quite some time and after a little bit lot of pushing, tons of suggestions, and advice from various friends I decided upon HugQueen. IrrevocableFate will always hold a special place in my heart, but I feel that it does not represent myself or my ideals as it once did.

Now hugs, hugs I can always get behind.

I'd also like to say hello to anyone who has watched me in the past month. I don't know all of you so come say hello! Or even if you've been watching me for as long as say orphicfiddler or kiwi-damnation(RE:years and years and years) you should say hello too!