Oh here I go again. I'm savebats, I like to write, and Scratch Writing Camp is the one for me. This time I'm in Horror. (https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/studios/33414874/)
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Here are the links to my old Scratch Writing Camp attempts. (I really love this event)
https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/discuss/topic/639162/
https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/discuss/topic/614334/
https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/discuss/topic/527913/

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My sister's threads this year!
https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/discuss/topic/695296/
https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/discuss/topic/695067/

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Personal intro for my cabin:

Hello fellow horror people! I'm Bats (she/her), and I really like to write! I also greatly enjoy concert band and pep band (where I play flute), animating, and other activities such as video games, reading, and ice hockey!

I'm in EST and have been in three SWC sessions, one of which was in November while the rest were in July. I super love horror and whump and angst, but I'm scared to post it on scratch so who knows what you'll see from me.

Happy writing everyone!

Main Cabin Daily #1:

“Welcome, everyone, to the July 2023 Megasession of SWC!

We’re so excited to have you here – so get out your sunhats, ice lollies and inflatable flamingo pool floaties, because the day we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived. We hope everyone – hosts, leaders, and campers alike – have a magical time this July!

For every day of the month, we (the daily team!) will have a unique activity for you to complete. And today, it’s creative ice cream flavours day! Our first challenge is for you to introduce yourself in the main cabin comments – by describing yourself as an ice cream sundae. What flavours make up your character? -

We can’t wait to hear from you all! Get writing, everyone ;D”

I’ve never had an ice cream sundae, so I can’t really make myself into one of those, but I’ve had ice cream! So, if I were an ice cream flavor, I think I would be something funky, like maybe pistachio. (This has nothing to do with me really liking pistachio ice cream, obviously, shhhh…) It’s a nice, bright, green color, but it’s an acquired taste. I’d like to think that the media (art, animation, and writing) that I create has a bit of an acquired taste.

But still, despite being an acquired taste, pistachio ice cream is quite popular! To the point that if you read that one Curious George book about Ice Cream Sundaes (which I grew up on, despite never having an ice cream sundae), I think that pistachio ice cream is one of the options! I don’t, however, know if I would like an ice cream sundae, so not being one seems good, because I like to think that I like myself, to be honest.

I also quite enjoy mint ice cream, and chocolate, (but like, specific regional variants of them, I don’t know how to explain it without giving away where I live), but those sound even more cursed as a sundae, for some reason, and I’d rather not be outright disliked.

So, all things considered, I am a pistachio ice cream with nothing special going on.

Main Cabin Daily #2:
Description: “Somewhere in the deep recesses of your mind, regurgitate five random words into the comment section. Now, gobble down somebody else's five random words and write 300 words using those delicious words as a prompt to earn 200 points! Sharing the daily you wrote with those scrumptious vomitted words will allow you to slurp up an extra 50 points.”

Words: 1,287
(Btw, the yesterday's daily was 231 words, I just forgot to write that in the thingy.)

The words I gave: “Creature,” “Path,” “Fight,” “Bike,” “Fire,”
The words I got (from @Starthorn), : Pull, copper, follow, flight, nightfall

My writing:

Gold quietly padded down the path by the lake, his golden eyes dulled to a copper by the half moon that sat above him. He was glad it was past nightfall, even though many people considered the dark parts of the day to be the most dangerous. Contrary to popular belief, Gold knew how to hold his own against wild pokemon just as much as he did against a puzzle of a new egg or an evil team. (Even though, sometimes, even he found it hard to muscle his confidence to the surface.)

He reached the edge of the lake and looked out across it. If he had wanted to, he could have surfed out onto it, or even used his multiple flighted pokemon to cross high above the currently calm waters. The Lake of Rage may have looked still now, but Gold knew better. He remembered those waves before, back when the threat of the Mask of Ice was still looming on the horizon. But even though that was long past, and there hadn’t been any reports of Magikarp experimentation here in at least a few months, he couldn’t help but feel a bit nervous near the edge of the water.

Calm as it was, collecting moonlight to throw back at the sky around it, Gold remembered how cold it could be. He remembered the feeling of ice cracking under him. He remembered the sudden aching impossibility of flight as he plunged into the icy water. He shivered quietly and gently pulled his Pokedex from his pocket.

He stared at the dark screen, feeling himself calm down slightly. Gold liked to think that he was strong enough to follow the rules and expectations of the other dexholders and professors, but he knew that he was anything but a regular dexholder. He knew he wasn’t like them, and he knew with equal certainty that they knew it too. So, when he held the thing that bound him to the job, he always felt a bit better, like, you did it! Stop worrying, you’re here!

Unfortunately, that calming feeling didn’t always mean he believed himself when he told himself that.

He stayed that way for a while, staring at the machine in front of him and listening to the quiet lapping of the waves against the shore and the distant sounds of the wild Hoothoots and Noctowls in the trees. Eventually though, he felt a pull to look back at the water, and even though Gold was anything but obedient, he found himself looking up.

Immediately, the air was sucked from his chest as if he had been punched in the stomach. (And believe him, he had plenty of experience with that.) He stared up at the sky, his mouth open and body frozen as he recognized the Pokemon that floated there. He had seen it before, of course, but that didn’t change how utterly gorgeous it looked under the moon. Silver feathers shining and held close to the muscular body underneath, wings spread wide as if it liked showing off while in flight, and dark patches of blue that only gave the illusion of night.

Gold knew, logically, that this Pokemon was both dangerous and not usually found away from the ocean, but in the moment, all he could think of was how beautiful it was. A long tail that was completely unlike anything he’d ever seen on another birdlike Pokemon, wings that looked a bit more like arms than wings if you were too far away to see the feathers, and intelligent eyes that were looking right at him.

Gold stood shakily, regaining his breath in a series of pathetic sounding gasps. Lugia. Lugia was there. Was it just hanging out or something?

What was it doing showing itself to him?

But as he looked on, the legendary Pokemon spiraled towards the sky, flashes of moonlight making its feathers the very same silver as the reflection on the waves. Without thinking, Gold yanked out a Pokeball, tossing it down in an explosion of dusty feathers and annoyed chirping. This was why he always kept a flying Pokemon with him.

“Togebo!” He yelped, pointing upward somewhat unnecessarily, as the Togekisses’ half asleep annoyance had disappeared into awe as the huge creature above them. “After that Lugia!”

Thankfully Togebo was feeling nice enough to let Gold hop onto his back, even though it wasted precious seconds of what it clearly saw as one upping the Legendary Pokemon, though it was not nice enough to let him get into a comfortable position before taking off. Gold held tight, stuffing his Pokedex back into his pocket as the air quickly thinned around him. He grit his teeth into a smile, if a Lugia was letting him follow it, then it wanted to see him.

Sure, Gold had seen many legendary and mythical pokemon before, including Lugia, and he was sure that most every dexholder had a similar experience or two… or three, or four, or however many the universe had decided to bless them with. Heck, even that one from Kanto, whom he had never met (Ash, was it?) had been personally blessed with multiple visits from Lugia, which Gold found unfair, considering it was from his region. But now he had his chance!

He and Togebo shot through a cloud layer, closing in on the Lugia with every second. It was huge, and up close he could even see the feathers that hugged tightly to its body. The feathers on its body and tail reminded him of the feathers of a Piplup, which he had seen once when somebody mixed up the eggs at the daycare (long story), which he guessed was because it spent so much time under the sea. However, the look of its wings was completely different. They were covered with what looked much more like flight feathers, if warped into an odd shape by the strangely arm-like look of the creature’s wings, and Gold couldn’t help but see how they shined just the same color as the eyes of his very own rival.

Silver and Gold.

Gold knew that he had been named for the golden shade of his eyes, but ever since his destiny had been intertwined with Ho-Oh, he had wondered if it had anything to do with that weird fate stuff that the Hoenn dexholders were constantly complaining about. Similarly, with the shine of Lugia in his vision, Gold wondered if fate had bound Silver to a Pokemon.

He gulped, if that was true, then what did this interaction mean for him? But thankfully for his heart (and not as thankfully for his now shaking hands), Lugia suddenly paused in the air, turning to look at the pair that had followed it with intelligent eyes. They seemed to see everything and nothing, and Gold could almost hear the crashing of waves in the strong wing beats of the ocean Pokemon. Gold stared back, and he could tell that Togebo was definitely also including itself in the staring contest.

But as he stared, Gold’s fear melted away. He felt calm, maybe even at peace. It was as if, for once, he wouldn’t have needed his Pokedex to prove himself one like the others. He felt true in who he was, convinced of his strength and of his importance to the others and to every evil he had ever fought, hated, or nearly sacrificed himself to end. He was just as good as the others, as he was in some ways better and in some ways worse. But the knowledge didn’t hurt him, and he barely even processed it as Lugia turned and flew towards the sea.

He was him, and that was okay.

Words: 1,466

Just finishing up a chapter of a Pokespe fic I called “Of Heros and Trees,”

Still he paused for a moment, and it was almost as if his pain had spread through the rest of them, even Pika, who had not stopped eating since he could get his grubby claws on the food, looked up.

Ruby took in a deep breath and then closed his eyes. “Sapphire is…” he looked sad, as if he wasn’t sure if that ‘is’ should be a ‘was,’ “she’s my friend,” his voice was shaky, and Red immediately guessed that ‘friend’ wasn’t even half of it.

“Did something happen to her?” Green asked. Her voice was so gentle, so unlike the person Red had just begun to get used to, that his head swiveled to look at her.

Ruby nodded, “Yes,” he said, clearly trying to put on a brave face, “she went off to check through the forest, you know, to make sure the local plants are stuff aren’t struggling-” his face was even more pale than it had been before, “-and she hasn’t come back.”

Red looked at Yellow, and then back at Ruby. “Well,” he said slowly, “When did you last see her?”

Ruby shook his head, “A few weeks ago,” he said. He paused again and Red sucked in a worried breath. Ruby glanced back at Norman (which Red had learned was the name of Ruby’s father), “my dad thinks she knew too much and got kidnapped, but I don’t… I don’t want to believe that.”

“My mom is missing,” Red said abruptly, as if that was going to help at all, “We’re pretty sure she got kidnapped too.”

Yellow nodded, putting a comforting hand on Ruby’s shoulder as she said, “We could work on a plan to try to find her, we’re on this journey to try to find Red’s mom, and helping Sapphire sounds really important too,” Ruby looked at her for a second, as if trying to sense any joke in her tone, and when he didn’t, he allowed a small smile.

“That would be nice,” he admitted, “If I didn’t have to stay back and help with this place…”

He didn’t have to finish the sentence, Red could clearly tell that he would give anything to help Sapphire. In fact, the pain and determination radiating from him was so powerful that Red found himself caring about the fate of this girl he had met almost as much as his mother’s. …almost.

“It would be helpful if we knew more about the king,” said Green, thoughtfully, “I know a lot, but I want to be able to check my knowledge with someone else’s information.”

Yellow nodded, “I know a lot about dragons, but I don’t know enough about the king’s dragons, if you know anything about that, I’d like to hear it,”

“Ladies, ladies,” said Ruby, sounding much more like he had when Red had first seen him, clearly the idea of helping Sapphire was cheering him up quickly, “One at a time! I don’t know everything,” Green rolled her eyes playfully, relieved that they were getting somewhere, and Ruby smirked, “I do know some stuff about the king though.”

The next few hours were a blur, but Red put every bit of his focus into committing the information to mind. Stories of the king and his armies, of scientists with too much power and too few morals, an arranged marriage between a noble families’ daughter and the king’s son, and the horrific accounts of the treatment of hunting birds and dragons by the soldiers that had escaped the armies of the king.

The king.

Giovanni.

Red didn’t know why, but even the very mention of the name put a shiver through him, and he found himself fighting memories from earlier in his life. Stories that his mother had whispered to him, so long as every window and door was shut tight. Stories that he had once repeated, but had instantly regretted when he saw the questioning looks on the neighbor’s faces.

Yes, Giovanni was the king, and his armies of birds and dragons and dogs, all backed up with a huge staff of scientists only set to ‘improve’ the genetics and strengths of such creatures. It was why that dragon back in the cave, apparently called a Rhyhorn, had been able to use a technique like ‘flash.’ It was why the wild birds that Ruby and Sapphire had found in the forest had been able to use the powers of wind dragons, despite being otherwise normal ravens. It was why some dragons had unlimited fire, or were able to use teleporting powers to teleport more than just themselves.

There was drama too, though whenever the group spoke about that sort of thing it was sort of like a break. (Even if the drama they talked about had to do with arranged marriage and death as much as the more serious sides of the conversation did.) However, when Ruby joked about the prince’s upcoming marriage, Red noticed Green stiffening, almost as if she was offended for the prince that none of them should have known.

Actually, now that Red noticed that, he also noticed that Green was acting pretty odd in general. Instead of bragging, or holding her knowledge above him, she just listened, occasionally adding something to a conversation about experimentation in an uncharacteristically quiet voice. Of course, there was nothing wrong with being lost in thought, that’s what Red was doing, but it was kind of obvious when someone so strong and clear in her patterns (clear enough that Red had noticed them after only a day and a half) was acting a bit off.

Yellow was also acting a bit different than normal, but with her at least Red could place her worry. He’d seen this same expression on her when Kitty had gotten lost in the market for a couple of hours (long story), she was deep in thought because she wanted to make things better. Green seemed to be lost more in a memory than a plan.

“Do you think Sapphire ran into some of the king’s soldiers doing something weird in the forest?” Yellow was asking, her voice kept calm and comforting, despite hiding an ocean of worry under it. “We haven't figured out what happened to Red’s mom, but if it was something like that, it could make a pattern that we could try to check out.”

Ruby paused to think about this for a moment, red eyes tilted up to the ceiling, as if studying the beams there was going to give him the answer like reading a memory, but then he shook his head. “I mean,” he said, “maybe, but it seems more likely that they realized that she knew too much about what they were doing, and then they took her.”

Another patron walked by the table, looking at them curiously. Green, thinking quickly, laughed. “I didn’t know the author thought that far ahead!” she said, “If I had written the book, I would have just done it in public if that was all it needed!”

Catching on, Yellow added a joke about ‘stupid authors and their stupid stories,’ and the person wandered away. Once they were gone, Ruby nodded to Green, continuing in a whisper when he said, “But we loved her, just because she got taken in the forest doesn’t mean she saw anything suspicious there, maybe that was just the most convenient way to do it.”

Red couldn’t help but wonder if, when Ruby said ‘we,’ he actually meant he had loved Sapphire, but a sudden expression of alarm on Green’s face shocked him out of his musing. Without even looking, he knew that her eyes were on the door, or rather, who had just come through it. Dred pooled in his gut, and he knew immediately that something was seriously wrong.

“Well,” Green said, her voice somewhat high-pitched as she abruptly stood (and yanked Yellow up with her), “This was a great breakfast, but how about you take us to our room now?”

Red turned in his chair, and he felt the familiar beat of his heart skip when he saw who stood on the other side of the room. A group of the king’s soldiers, all decked out in armor and holding hunting dragons on their shoulders. They were led by a guy about Yellow’s age, with black hair that covered half his face and piercing golden eyes that swept across the eating area as if he was looking for something. He stood and pulled Pika into his arms.

Ruby yelped and jumped to his feet, “Of course!” he said, quickly ushering the group out of the room and down the hall, “Allow me!”

Character descriptions and part of a first chapter for a Pokemon DPA superhero AU that's been floating around in my head for four years.
Words: 1,633

Character descriptions:

Jun (Angel) - “Hero” Allied with ‘Shadow.’ He’s too free to work with the Interpol. He has wings (he can hide them away, which is how he isn’t recognized in civilian form.) His super suit is not very armored to let him fly easier. Suit and color scheme are both bright and flashy, like his hair and feathers. His mask is a classic superhero mask. In his own apartment he tends to have his wings out because he lives alone (though he does actually check that he’s alone for real) and it’s more comfortable. He’s in love with Mitsumi and on good terms with Hareta. He hangs out with them decently. He doesn’t like Koya. He doesn’t know anyone’s identity, and nearly no one even suspects him.

Koya (Shadow) - “Hero” Allied with ‘Angel’ + cooperates with the international police. His superpower is invisibility, but he’s better known for being insanely smart. His suit is sort of designed after a dark fox (ft. bulletproof vest and mask that goes from forehead to tip of nose but goes up to let his ears fully free) and he’s a “fan favorite,” ‘cus he gets stuff done really well and he’s super clever. He’s irritable and lives alone as a civilian on the “quiet side” of the city. He’s constantly thinking of stuff and trying to figure out identities of villains who he doesn’t know yet. He has two pet dogs (Absol, big and white with a black face, ear, and tail, and Growlithe, basically just a growlithe.) ‘Penguin’s’ friend powers do not work on him. His identity is not known by anyone.

Hareta (Penguin) - “Villain” Allied with ‘Palkia,’ though all he wants are friends and peace. His powers are: jump boost, heightened strength and speed, and an uncanny ability to get anyone on his side. His suit is based on a penguin because he likes them, not for any power reason. (Though you could argue there’s the “deceptive” nature of their patterns.) His mask covers from forehead to the tip of his nose and cuts down to his jaw on the sides. His hair is also down in villain form. He’s just some guy in normal life, and is under zero suspicion (due to the friend thing. He’s not manipulating them btw, he does really mean it.) His love interest is Koya, he’s friends with Jun and hangs out with Mitsumi both as a Supervillan and a civilian.

Mitsumi (Palkia) - “Villain” Allied with ‘Penguin,’ She was once a member of Team Galactic, now plans to rule the city by her own evil plans. She has telekinesis, but is mostly dangerous because she’s a real sweet talker. She genuinely cares about Hareta though. Her suit is practically colored for a villain in a city and includes a full face mask and a hood. In civilian life she lives with Hareta and likes to take care of the house by moving stuff with her mind as practice and ‘cus it’s easier. She’s suspicious of Jun’s identity and leads him on for that reason.

Mars (Mesprit) - “Villain” Allied with Team Galactic. Her power is to read the emotions and memories of those that she makes eye contact with. She’s actually really nice when you get to know her, but Cyrus makes her evil, and to fight her it’s better to close your eyes than let her manipulate what you feel. Her civilian form is not known.

Jupiter (Azelf) - “Villain” Allied with Team Galactic. Her power is to bring willpower to her allies. Unfortunately for her allies, she likes to work alone. Her civilian form is not known.

Saturn (Uxie) - “Villain” Allied with Team Galactic. His power is that of great knowledge, so he mostly works on machinery. His civilian form is not known, but he’s not just a regular guy.

Cyrus (Arceus) - “Villain” Leader of Team Galactic. His power is to pause time (got it after an explosion of the red chain, which also gave Mitsumi her telekinesis, which is otherwise known as the ability to control space.) He refused to be anything but God though, so B2 took the Diagla name, even though it doesn’t make sense. He is too overconfident to use his power much much, and he has to sort of choose to freeze people, so ‘Shadow’s’ invisibility might get him by if he did. His “civilian” form does not exist, they are the very same.

Charon (Giratina)- “Villain” Leader of Team Galactic. He has no power, but is so unapologetically evil that it doesn’t matter. Hareta’s friend powers might work on him, but he would never try. He wants to take over Team Galactic for money, but he already runs a huge business as a “civilian.” His identity is known. He is too powerful to get in trouble.

B2 (Formerly Dialga) - Villain turned outspoken against Team Galactic. B2 was once a member of Team Galactic (*in au were only the people listed here), and got out around the same time as Mitsumi, but rather than continuing to pursue villainy, he chose to become a model and an outspoken force against villainy. His power is shapeshifting, but only one person can see the changes at a time. He doesn’t use it much these days.

Kaisei (???) - Allied with nobody and hangs out a bit too much with Team Galactic. Nobody knows his power. *He can open the rift between the real world and the distortion world.* Koya wants to capture him, Mitsumi doesn’t trust him, Charon wants to find out more about him (he’s hiding something BIG), the other team galactic guys don’t like him much, Cyrus sees him as below him, B2 kinda feels bad for him, and Hareta doesn’t really think about him. (If they met he would be happy though.) He doesn’t really have a civilian or a hero/villian form, he’s there one minute, and then gone the next.

Mitsumi ran silently down the alleyway, her boots not making a sound on the dusty path below her. Tonight had been a success, and she smiled as she acknowledged the fact that she was certainly a better supervillain without that stupid “Team Galactic,” to drag her back. Of course, she knew that already, and had since the very second that they had parted ways all those months ago. (It was also a bonus for her self confidence that she, unlike that other escapee, had actually held strong in her beliefs and tactics against the city.)

Crouching behind a dumpster where she had stored her civilian clothes, Mitsumi used a blast of focus to make sure that the single window that looked out into the alleyway was covered by a curtain. Once she was sure of that, she let her hood fall, allowing her long green hair to spring forth from its hiding place. As it did, she found herself smiling once more. Even though she had been blessed with one of the rarest and most recognizable hair colors in the world, her identity had still not been found.

…Well, she didn't think it had been, as long as that Shadow Hero had truly been thrown off in the chase. Immediately, Mitsumi was glad that her full face mask was still on, as she stood abruptly, throwing dust from the ground into the air in a blast of telekinetic power. Thankfully, once the dust had settled onto whatever stood there, there was no invisible silhouette glowing back at her; she had, however, accidentally totally blasted Hareta. (Or Penguin, as he had finally decided to call himself.)

“I’m sorry!” she yelped, slapping a hand to her still mask covered mouth as Hareta hacked and spluttered. (Even with all of his superhuman strength and speed, it seemed that a cloud of dust right up the nose could still affect him.)

“Wow Mitsumi!” he coughed, and then, when she cringed at the mention of her real name, he quickly corrected, “Uh, Palkia, I mean, that was a good shot!”

She sighed and climbed out from behind the dumpster, removing her mask and slipping it into her backpack carefully. “Thanks Penguin,” she said, cheering up considerably when she got within the range of his powers, “I appreciate the compliment.”

She gave him a small salute, and when he grinned back, she simply had to smile. (Even though the sight of his black and white costume now so thoroughly covered with dust made her heart ache for a future laundry bill.)

“You ready to head home soon?” she asked, pulling a sundress that she had stored in her bag over the bodysuit that she had chosen for her ‘supervillain’ activities. It was, of course, improved from a regular bodysuit into something much better for a fight, but under the sundress it just looked like a stylish black shirt and leggings.

Hareta gave her a quick thumbs up and began to dismantle his outfit. First ripping off his mask (which showed a funny line between the half of his face that had been exposed to her telekinetic dust storm and the half that had not, making it look like he’d gotten a pale triangle spray painted from his jaw to the underside of his nose), and then staring work on his hair. For supervillain activities, he had chosen to keep his hair free, but he had picked this time of all times to keep it combed. Mitsumi didn’t quite understand that, but she just waited while he ruffled it up once more.

“Hoodie?” he asked, holding out a hand that Mitsumi quickly deposited his civilian clothes into. Today they were a blue hoodie and a red scarf, which she thought looked pretty atrocious with his black and white pants and DIY combat boots, but she didn’t say anything while he put them on.

In Cabin Daily #3:
Description: “analog horror is an inspiration for this cabin, and a large feature of it is old technology (camcorders/video tapers) from the 80s, 90s and 2000s. in twenty years, what would analog horror based on modern tech?”
Words: 556

As an artist, my first instinct of horror is anything related to artificial intelligence, but that’s already an unrelated genre of horror, and not at all analog. In the case of analog horror, I feel that a good example of what may exist would be the use of glitching in recordings, but, like, the ones that you can’t tell are funny or kinda creepy. (Like the screen randomly flipping, a frame flashing out and in, and nonsense like that.) Personally, analog horror kind of calms me down, since I grew up on VHS, but since what I’m describing doesn’t seem all that scary to me, I think I might be heading in the right direction for the horror genre I’m working on.

Another idea for future analog horror would be just as the genre is to us now, virtually unchanged video aesthetics that just got a little outdated and a smidge damaged. Someone using the “live photo” feature (which I’m half sure doesn’t actually exist) instead of a normal one and then something silly happens in the background. Someone’s microphone glitching out, causing their voice to sound just a bit incorrect, stuff like that. A Youtube video that was ‘recovered’ from being deleted or something and, I dunno, it’s weird to the people in the future looking back on it.

Truthfully, I hardly know anything about this genre, which was probably clear from my answers to this question, but I do think that (so far) what I have described is pretty close to a ‘future’ version of the topic. That is about to change. I think that this is the genre all of those ‘creepy’ ROM hacks come from, so one of those but with a game from now. Like, an android recording of a Playstation 4 or whatever or, like, a Let’s Play of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet but the glitches keep getting less and less funny and more and more concerning. (If you care about that kind of thing.)

All in all, I tend to find the analog horror calming at best and lowkey offensive at worst, but that’s probably because some of the (now deceased) family members that I’m close to had a lot to do with old computers and tapes and all that, so it feels mean to me? I don’t know, that’s probably a me problem, but it’s for that reason that I think that a future version of the genre would be something very similar, just in the shoes of the video devices and video sharing sites that we are used to. Heck, maybe something like a simple scratch project could one day be found scary, once people defile its memory with nonsense and over the top effects and stories.

…

Wowie I’m getting too worked up about stuff that doesn’t matter. I must clarify that I frankly don’t care if you like analog horror, it’s just that it is absolutely not for me. At the very least I like it more than the “playground horror” stuff, which also feels rude to me, but I STILL don’t care if you like that! I like some pretty wild things myself, and I don’t mean to talk down, I’m just more of a slasher gal myself.

…I also don’t get scared by fake stuff easily, so maybe that’s another me problem. Hmm.

Main Cabin Daily #4: “When creating the cabin lineup for this session, we sadly had to say goodbye to two of our regular cabins: Fanfiction (Fan-Fi) and Bizarro Fiction (Bi-Fi). As an homage to them, we'll be focusing on those genres today! — First, comment at least one idea for a bi-fi twist - for example, “”inanimate objects are able to speak.“” Then, take a look at this excellent workshop on character voice in fanfiction by Fae (@-faerylights) from July 2022: https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/projects/701390524 — Pick a “chunk” of your favorite piece of existing media (it can be anything, as long as there's a plotline!) and consider the pacing and flow, how the ideas was connected. With that in mind, choose two of the bi-fi prompts from the comments here and incorporate them into a rewrite of your “chunk” of the original media. Your bizarro fanfiction should be at least 400 words for 400 points! Sharing your creation will earn you an additional 100 points.”

The twists I gave: “Bi-fi twist! Everyone suddenly gets wings! (Btw, if anyone writes something for this, I would love to read it!)” and “Another Bi-fi twist! :0 Characters share injuries!” (https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/studios/33415323/comments/#comments-228019660 and https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/studios/33415323/comments/#comments-228020133)

The twists I took: “Bi-Fi Twist once again, the main character decides to float for no reason, they just, defy gravity.“ (by @Alfalfa78. https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/studios/33415323/comments/#comments-228019745 ) and “Bi-fi twist: The characters and their surroundings are made out of crocheted yarn.” (by @pages-of-ink. https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/studios/33415323/comments/#comments-228020334 ) and “Bi-fi twist: Each time the main character earns money, it makes a noise like in a video game, but it doesn't do this for anybody else.“ by (@Starthorn. https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/studios/33415323/comments/#comments-228020512 )

(Note: Okay, maybe none of this is a twist for anyone who knows Kirby, but here’s my first actual Kirby’s Epic Yarn fanfiction! It’s kinda bad, but have you ever tried to do a Kirby’s Epic Yarn cannon rewrite? What is even happening in this game?!?! Also, I did three bi-fi twists because I wasn’t sure if I did the first one correctly…?)

Words: 2,055

Even before Kirby reached the ground, he had already realized that that weird sorcerer had brought him somewhere new. As he shot by them, Kirby saw that the clouds in the sky seemed to be edged in stitching, like they were a part of some comforting quilt, and in the very distance he swore he could see a shadow that suggested the edge of the world. However, things started to actually get weird when he looked down.

Kirby was used to seeing Dream Land from above, thanks to his small flying escapades, but the world that he looked down to see was not Dream Land. Trees that, even from this high up, were definitely made of fabric (maybe felt?), small patches of cardboard laid out on a world made of crocheted yarn, creatures that were nothing but yarn outlines (like that sorcerer had been), and buildings that somehow looked 2d, even from his position so high above.

Kirby yelped, suddenly met with a scary thought. If those creatures were made out of yarn, was he? He looked down at his paws, but where there were supposed to be stubby pink blobs, he instead found an outline of thick pink yarn, wavering in the wind that he fell through. In a slight panic, he suddenly found himself wondering if this new body would treat falling from this high up very well, since he was now very aware that the wind blew right through his body. He tried to take flight, but he knew it would be useless even before trying, yarn was just… not meant for flying the way an inflatable pink creature was.

The quilted ground was coming up to meet him now, and Kirby flailed in the air in an attempt to slow himself down. It was twenty Waddle Dees away, eighteen Waddle Dees away, fourteen- In a last ditch effort, Kirby squeezed his eyes shut and put all of his effort into doing something, anything, that would slow him down.

Suddenly, his body warped, becoming something that he would have later sworn was a parachute, and his fall jerked to a halt. He opened his eyes as he began to fall, now much more gently, towards the ground. Up close though, he could have sworn that the grass seemed almost like it had in Dream Land. Bright, fuzzy, and dotted with inviting flowers. It was almost like what he had seen on the fall down had been some sort of high altitude induced hallucination or something.

But when his feet actually touched down on the ground, he was once again sure that this world, wherever he was, was most definitely made out of fabric. ‘This grass feels funny,’ he thought, ‘it feels like… pants!’

First his entire body being made out of yarn, and now grass that felt like fuzzy pants. What was going on?! Where had that sorcerer taken him? Before he could really begin to brainstorm however, he heard the sound of someone screaming.

He whipped around to find the source of the screaming, Kirby always looked out for people in danger, especially if they sounded as terrified and helpless as the person he heard now. To his shock, he saw another person, this one made out of blue yarn, being chased by some sort of yarn monster. The monster had a sharp pipe cleaner horn on its head, which it was using to chase the poor blue yarn boy around and around.

“Somebody help me!” The body cried again, now only a little ways away from the monster.

Thinking fast, Kirby immediately tried to swallow it up, which would be how he would have dealt with it back in Dream Land, but it didn’t work. Like it had in the fall, the air went right through his body! In fact, the force of it was so strong that he nearly fell over backwards. The monster, on the other hand, did not move at all.

He struggled to regain his balance, but he had no idea what to do. Could he do what he had in the air? To turn into what he needed in the moment? A parachute didn’t seem right, but maybe something else? Something to take the boy away, something fast…

A car!

In a flash, Kirby’s body had morphed into the familiar, if slightly mushy, shape of a car. He ran (or drove?) to the boy, pulling up alongside him as the yarn and pipe cleaner monster inched ever closer. He tried to gesture to hop on, but his wheels stayed firmly planted on the ground. He, however, had no time to worry about how insane that thought sounded (this day was really not going the way he had expected it to), and instead got a bit closer.

Thankfully, when Kirby beeped in frustration, the blue yarn boy seemed to understand, hopping onto the top of Car Kirby and holding tight. Kirby sped up, urging his new wheels to spin ever faster as he shot towards a castle on the horizon. The blue yarn boy, still screaming, held tight to his roof as the two of them left the monster in their dust.

Kirby passed through the gates to the castle, and was finally forced out of his car form when he ran face first into a wall. (Which seemed to be made out of some very sturdy crocheted yarn.) He made a sound that was a cross between a yelp and a beep as he morphed back into a shape more close to his normal body (though it was still made of yarn), and another when the blue yarn boy collapsed on top of him.

They lay there for a moment, both panting from the chase, before the blue yarn boy stumbled to his orange feet. Kirby stayed laying down for a little bit longer. (Who could blame him? The brick floor below him felt as soft and comfy as any bed from Dream Land, and though it was not yet lunch time, he had already gone through an eensy bit more craziness than he had planned on for the week.)

When he did finally stand, however, the blue yarn boy was smiling at him. A crown that Kirby had not noticed until now crooked on his head.

“Thank you for saving me!” he said, holding out a blue paw for a shake that Kirby quickly reciprocated, “I would’ve been flocking without you!”

Kirby nodded, smiling at the blue yarn boy, though, as always, he didn’t say anything baring a simple hum in greeting. Thankfully, the boy didn’t seem to care much about that, which Kirby appreciated, instead moving on to introduce himself.

“I’m Prince Fluff,” the blue boy, who was apparently a blue prince, smiled again, nodding at the castle walls around them, “that Uniclod was pretty brave for trying to attack me so close to the castle,” he said casually, allowing Kirby to commit the name of the monster to mind, “I’m really glad you were there, I panicked too much to try to morph, myself.”

Kirby nodded, and followed after Prince Fluff as he began to walk down the corridor of the castle. They passed by large pieces of embroidery that depicted trees, planets, and worlds that Kirby had never seen before. (One of which was covered in a cake so massive that he didn’t know if even he would have been able to eat it in one sitting. His mouth started to water.)

“If you don’t mind me asking,” began Prince Fluff casually, looking back with a smile (though Kirby was not quite over the fact that he could literally look right through the guy), “what’s your name?”

Now this was one word Kirby could actually use. “Kirby!” he said happily, pointing to himself for extra effect just in case Prince Fluff hadn’t understood at first. Thankfully though, he seemed to have gotten it.

Prince Fluff grinned again, “Nice name!” He said, “I think you’d make a great knight with a name like that,” he spread his paws all the way out to the sides, “Knight Kirby… Sounds cool right?”

Kirby giggled and nodded, he did think that that sounded pretty nice.

“Or maybe even Prince Kirby,” Prince Fluff mused to himself. Though it was quiet enough that Kirby wasn’t sure if he was meant to have heard it or not. Before he was truly able to dwell on it though, the two of them had emerged from the hallway onto a balcony overlooking the most beautiful garden Kirby had ever seen. Sure, it was a bit lacking in food, and it did have quite a few monsters wandering through it, but it was shining with sparkling thread and reflective fabric and popsicle sticks and water made of blue yarn that fired from gorges fountains up into the sky.

Kirby stared out at it, his mouth open in shock as he took in the sight. It was gorgeous and completely unlike anything back in Dream Land. Once he was done being surprised though, he turned to Prince Fluff, wondering ‘What’s this place called?’

“You like it?” Asked Prince Fluff, looking pleased with himself when Kirby nodded vigorously, “I call it Fountain Gardens, due to, you know, all the fountains.” He gestured at a particular line of them, which was currently at work sending a yarn Waddle Dee into a floating patch of stuffing and fabric that Kirby quickly realized were low hanging clouds.

“Unfortunately,” he continued, sounding slightly annoyed, “we’ve been having a lot of problems with monsters lately, so it’s not currently open to the public, since not everyone can morph like we can.”

Without further elaboration, he leaped over the balcony’s edge, morphing into a small yarn bird and fluttering down to the nearest pathway. Kirby stared after him for a moment, but quickly followed when Prince Fluff waved him down. Kirby, however, stuck to his trusty parachute form, which he figured was probably easier for a beginner than an entire bird.

“Nice!” Prince Fluff said, once Kirby had landed, “Want to take a little walk through? I thought you could help me with the monsters in case I freeze up again.” He laughed, and held out a paw for Kirby to hold. Kirby nodded and once again shook paws with a smile.

“What are you waiting for then?” Prince Fluff said, looking very excited as he spoke, “Let’s get moving!”

In sync, the two of them morphed, leaving twin clouds of dust behind their wheels as Car Kirby and Car Prince Fluff sped down the pathway. They leaped over yarn ponds full of shining beads and weaved between pom pom hedges and pipe cleaner fences. When Kirby jumped through one of the fountains (narrowly missing being rocketed into the sky), he felt a rush of beads fall down on him. He had expected them to hurt, but instead he just heard a weird sound, like the sound of coins being dropped into a cash register. He skidded to a stop, morphing back into his normal form in order to look for the beads, however, they seemed to have disappeared.

Prince Fluff parked next to him, jumping back into his normal form with a laugh that sounded oddly like a beep for the first half of it. “Those are yours now!” he laughed, reaching out to another clump of the things to demonstrate their disappearing trick. (When Prince Fluff did it though, they did not make a sound.)

Kirby felt his outline knit together slightly, that was kinda weird, but it was really cool too! He stood for a second longer, watching as Prince Fluff laughed and picked up another clump of beads. They disappeared just as the others had, and Kirby laughed. He ran to a large star shaped bead, which was spinning slightly and glinting from behind a patch. When he grabbed it, not only did it sparkle warmly and make a coin sound, but he also heard his head full of the sound of cheering.

Kirby chirped happily and rushed back to Prince Fluff, his red feet hitting the glue frozen felt with nice pat pat pat sounds. Even if this day was completely unlike any he’d ever experienced before, he was now more excited than ever to continue it. He was just having so much fun!

Main Cabin Daily #5: Quick, look to your left! The first object you see will be the topic of your daily. Imagine what would happen if you put it into a smoothie—what would it look like? What strange powers would it give you? Write 200 words to earn 200 points, and share your smoothie in the comments for an additional 50 points.

Note: For some reason I always have way too much fun with these smoothie ones. I dunno why.

Words: 818

For extra fun, I had my sister lead me into a random room in the house and leave me to spin around with my eyes closed for a little while. Once I had been thoroughly disoriented, I stopped, opened my eyes, and looked to the left. Immediately my eyes land on it, a full length mirror, which is leaning against the wall instead of attached to anything for some reason. Perfect! I think, this way I won’t even have to detach it from the wall or some door to put into my soon to be delicious smoothie! (Disclaimer, do NOT eat glass, EVER.)

Well, now that I have my first ingredient, I guess for fun I have to decide on my other ingredients! You know, just to make this more fun. When I did the spin thing again, however, the first thing my eyes landed on was a swimsuit, and I was suddenly very glad I chose the first room first because I don’t want to have to argue eating a swimsuit. Much too chewy. Doesn’t fit the crunch of the mirror smoothie that I’m going for one bit. So, instead, I’m deciding on the classics.

This Scratch Writing Camp’s smoothie, to be sold in bulk in just a few short days, will be compose of an entire full length mirror, the Shark Wars series by EJ Altback (because someone else needs to understand how wonderful they are in some way), and my sister’s old hockey bag that our cat peed in. (Don’t worry, those parts can be cut off to leave just the good bits open for smoothie land. “Don’t waste a scrap of a hockey bag, so long as it’s good enough for eating,” is what I always say.)

I would have added more to the smoothie, for example a Mega Bloks Pokeball or half of a broken brush, but I find that these would have messed up the specific flavor pallet I was going for, though they may yet be destined for a smoothie next year. However, that is not the only reason I chose my particular smoothie ingredients. No no, this year I have heard that some combinations may be able to give me powers! (A broken brush and a Mega Bloks Pokeball are simply not pristine enough to bestow such powers, they would need to be much more pure, a brush that actually stays together and a pokeball that really opens, perhaps?)

But now that you see why, in the realm of powers, I did not add two ingredients, let’s see my arguments for why the others are necessary! To start off, the mirror is the most important ingredient for this specific smoothie, as it holds the base power that we wish to bestow upon ourselves. We wish to be like a mirror, always changing, always the same, sometimes invisible, and sometimes blatantly obvious. This smoothie will let us become that, but not without the help of our other ingredients.

As we all well know, the powers of a mirror would be useless without being deliberate about them. (Who wants to be starkly obvious when you did something wrong? Who wants to be invisible in a situation where you need help?) So, in order to counter this very easy mistake, I have decided on the hockey bag that my cat peed in. Why? Because he was very deliberate about peeing in the bag of course! It was no mistake, and I feel that this item (if a bit disgusting), will help us be deliberate about our new mirror powers. But don’t worry! It’s been airing outside for at least four months. (Since hockey season baby!!!) I'm sure it’s fine.

But all of this would be for naught without the Shark Wars series by EJ Altbacker. You see, I had thought it would be common knowledge that to bestow a power upon someone, you need a little touch of creativity to have it work. If there is anything about Shark Wars that I’m sure all readers can relate to, it is that certain plot details are, ah, creative to say the least. (Don’t worry, Shark Wars, I love you forever.) The plan is that, once the books are completely blended up, we will add them to the mix of the other ingredients, which will then start the magic. That isn’t how smoothies are normally made, but because this item is for the continuation of the magic, rather than for flavor (though I hope they taste like seaweed salad, because yum), I feel that it will be more appropriate to figure that the flavor is covered first.

So, once the result is revealed in a few days, I will set about selling this to the rest of you scratch writing camp folks. What do you think of my tag line? “A good smoothie always needs broken glass and trace amounts of cat pee.” Good right?

Part of a short Shark Wars oneshot. Don't worry about it lol.
AU background: This is an AU where Sandy works in a ‘flower’ shop that sells greenie ‘bouquets’ and stuff like that. It takes place before she has Riprap and Ebbie.

Notes: Sandy has the night shift because apparently Nurse sharks are nocturnal?? Aw! Also, if my seaweed growing patterns are wrong don’t get mad at me. XD I’m not a marine biologist and do not live near the ocean.

Words: 705

Her jaw dropped and the bouquet floated slowly and dramatically to the sandy floor. He was the shark she’d imagined! (At least, in the looks department.) He was a nurse shark like her, with smooth scales, a powerful looking tail, shiny eyes, and the cutest barbels she’d ever seen. She hadn’t noticed him when he’d placed the order, since it had been passed to her from her coworker, but now it was clear that she wouldn’t be able to treat him with such indifference anymore. (She wasn’t even sure she would be able to pick up the bouquet again, she was suddenly so flustered.)

“Um,” she stammered, deciding to give it her best shot, “Sorry!” She pushed her nose under the bundle, pushing it higher in the water and towards the customer. “Didn’t mean to drop that,” she laughed awkwardly, and her eyes darted between the bouquet and her coworker, “I trust it’s to your liking?”

The customer laughed a good natured laugh, and Sandy’s gills fluttered slightly as she choked in a gasp of water. Before Sandy could say anything else, her coworker nodded at her. “I already took care of payment,” she said, and then added, with an ultra annoying smirk, “I’ll let you take care of the rest.” In a flourish of bubbles, she turned tail and swam for the back exit, which Sandy absolutely did not appreciate.

Once the spectacle was over, the customer nodded, gently picking up the bouquet in his jaws and giving Sandy a pleasant wave of a fin. Sandy felt like doing an actual barrel roll when she saw that, but was able to restrain herself for long enough to nod in thanks for the compliment.

But instead of leaving the shop, as she had been expecting, the customer just awkwardly floated towards a side wall. Sandy felt like she was going to explode, but she swore that it wasn’t just her imagination that the pretty nurse shark before her seemed to be acting a bit nervous. Did he want to ask her something?

“Did you want anything else sir?” she stuttered, swimming over the counter in what she hoped was a natural looking gesture, “Another bouquet perhaps?”

He hesitated, but then let the greenie fall when he opened his jaws to speak. “No thank you miss,” he said, causing the unmistakable feeling of flying fish fins fluttering in her gut, “but you are quite talented, you know.”

Sandy blushed. “Thank you,” she said, still fighting a losing battle to act nonchalant and not like she was going crazy, “that’s very appreciated from, ah…” She paused, and probably blushed even harder, but her embarrassment was saved as the customer interrupted.

“What’s your name?” He asked abruptly, his tail flickering nervously behind him.

Sandy opened and closed her mouth a few times, just like the little guppy fish that Gray had always shown so much interest in chasing, “I’m Sandy!” she finally squeaked out, “What’s yours?”

“I’m Coral,” he said, awkwardly swimming forward in order to rub flanks with her.

Though it was very much an awkward gesture, Sandy had hardly finished short circuiting by the time he had pulled away and begun to talk again. “I live over by the sunken land shark boat,” he continued, digging his snout under the fallen bouquet to pick it up once more, “you can be drop by for breakfast tomorrow, if you want,”

Sandy’s mouth dropped open, but she did her best to cover her shock with a playful quip. “Well Coral,” she said, trying not to shriek with joy, “As long as my bouquet isn’t on the menu, I might just do that.”

He laughed, and even though his mouth was full of greenie, he managed out a muffled, “I might just have to change my plans then,” before he slipped out the door.

Sandy might have floated there for the rest of the night, but it seemed that as soon as Coral was gone, Sandy’s coworker materialized behind her, laughing. But Sandy didn’t care! She had a very fun breakfast ahead of her, and she was not going to let anything get her down, even friendly teasing for the entire remaining duration of her shift.

In Cabin Daily #5: Water is everywhere, and you can smell the chlorine and taste it at the back of your throat each time you take a breath. — Try writing the most detailed description you can of a setting you can, while using only senses you wouldn’t usually write much about, such as smell.
Words: 1,290
Note: I’m scared of Rock Tunnel (from Pokemon), and so I made this.

In all honesty? Blue was freaking out. He had waltzed into Rock Tunnel without so much as a thought beyond, ‘Oh! My Chameleon will let me see in the dark, it’s got a flaming tail!’ He hadn’t been wrong then, in fact, it had worked for a while, but he now had to admit that it hadn’t been anywhere near in depth enough as a safety net to warrant actually going into the cave without a real plan.

He felt along a dark wall, trying to keep his breathing to a minimum as his eyes searched for any source of light in the cave. But no, it was completely dark. After his Charmelon had been knocked out in a bad battle against a wild Onix, Blue knew that he had to keep it in its Pokeball. It was too large for him to carry over such uneven ground, and he had even begun to wonder if it had even been a good idea to draw that much attention to himself back when it wasn’t passed out, but now there was no chance of it being safe.

Blue may be overconfident at times, and he knew that he never minded a good chance to show off, but if there was one thing that he wasn’t, it was stupid. Here, in these terrifyingly silent caves, Blue knew he wasn’t safe. Monsters and Pokemon alike lurked in the darkness (if the distant pleading of some poor Picknicker girl he had heard earlier was to be trusted), and even with all of his battle training, Blue knew when to keep quiet. So long as they were smart, anyone in the caves knew not to talk.

He kept his hand firmly on the wall, even when a stream of freezing cold cave water crossed over his finger tips, almost digging a yelp out of him. But Blue bit his tongue, leaning against the wall next to the water, knowing not to make even another hit of a human sound. He was not ready for a battle, and he knew that the Onix in these caves were hungry. He closed his eyes, though it made no difference to his vision, and did his best to calm down. How had he not noticed that the water stream was there? It was quite loud when he was listening properly, which was something he should have been doing this whole down.

Slowly and silently, Blue slid down the rocky wall, coming to rest on a muddy piece of stone which he then gripped tight to. In the moment, it felt like his whole life was dependent on that one rock, which he was very glad was not yet another Geodude. He sat still and listened, letting his entire body relax as he searched for every single hint to his location in the caves. Similarly, he put focus into smelling, opening his mouth slightly to taste the dusty air as if that would help him the same way it would have helped his Pokemon.

Down the path he had come, he could hear a trainer stumbling along, but the lack of light from them didn’t give him enough information to know if he should go any closer. As they passed him, he wondered how many people he had passed by in the darkness, and then immediately pressed his back closer to the cold stone behind him. That was a horrifying thought. How easy would it be for him to jump at them? How easy would it be for him to grab one of their Pokeballs, or their bag, or to do even worse? The thought was terrifying, and Blue was almost glad when they passed by him, though their terrified breathing made him feel bad for not reaching out to help.

He continued to listen, tuning out the trainer’s footsteps and instead listening in on other parts of the cave. Somewhere, he could hear the echoes of a Pokemon battle, including taunts from both trainers that were a bit more rude than they probably would have been if the two trainers could see each other. Above him, Blue heard a group of Zubats flying past, but if their echolocation caught onto him, they didn’t seem to care. Across the room he was in, Blue heard the telltale dragging of an Onix moving about, and he reached for a Pokeball in a panic.

Before he could do anything, however, a flash of light suddenly illuminated the whole cave. It was too bright to do anything but blind him, but it was gone as soon as it had come, but Blue had the sudden and terrifying realization that he absolutely, no doubt about it, had to get out of this cave.

Now.

Because what he saw in the middle of that room, in the middle of the other trainer’s electric attack, was more than enough to convince him to never ever come back. It had to have been an accident, it couldn’t have been on purpose. There was no way he walked right by something like that without… smelling it.

The scent of dust and rocks and the occasional poison pokemon in the air must have hidden it. But how? How could you hide the smell of rot and iron with something as simple, yet oppressive, as the natural scents of an environment like this? Cold water. Slimy mud. Horrible dust. Possessions left behind by trainers less fortunate than he. All of it spurred him on as he bolted for the exit.

He used every sense, his eyes open to the pure blackness that once again his the horror he had stumbled into, his nose searching for a whiff of clean air, his ears open to hazards and to the sounds of trainers and Pokemon that yelped as his pounding feet and screaming heart told them all to go anywhere but that room he had found himself in. He didn’t bother to feel though the darkness, tripping over rocks and boulders meant nothing to him now.

He couldn’t imagine feeling those dark walls again. Splattered with water, mud, poison, and other things as they were. Those craggy rocks that made the vague image of a brown cave, rough yet well traveled by generations of native Pokemon and rock type trainers. The dusty scent on the air that seemed to carry the flavor of rot, choked Blue as he sprinted through the darkness. It was like he had become one with the cave. He could feel the walls when they narrowed, he was catching onto scents on a weak breeze that came from what he could only pray was the way out.

What he had seen must have sent his senses into overdrive, because the echoes of his feet seemed to pound directly against his brain, rather than against the rocks they formed themselves on. Rocks that transitioned into mud, into dusty sand, into a pool of water, into a large boulder that he managed to leap over in an effort to get away. To get anywhere but here. Anywhere but this dark cave where venomous creatures flew overhead, where creeps lurked in the corners, where any second you could be a wild Pokemon’s dinner if you weren’t alert enough.

But Blue was alert, and when the glow of sight began to return to his eyes, he knew he was getting closer. And before he could believe it, the wind suddenly on his skin, the shriek of a girl who was just entering the tunnel as he shoved past her, and the sudden and breathtaking view of the Lavender Town as he stumbled into the blinding light of safety. (Or, at least, the safety of the safest a Pokemon trainer could ever be.)

Main Cabin Daily 6/7: For many authors, listening to their favourite songs is an important part of the creative writing process. But have you ever tried to write your very own song? If the answer is no, then there’s never been a better time to start! And since this is a bi-daily, you’ll have two days to complete the following task. —- Begin by reading this workshop on songwriting by daily team member and songwriter @-Alocasia: https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/discuss/post/6722906. Then, in at least 300 words, write the lyrics to your very own original song (including chorus repeats). You will receive 400 points for confirming you did the bi-daily, with an extra 100 points up for grabs if you share your writing!
Words: 302

Link to me badly singing: https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/projects/872808635/

Star shining bright in the middle of the night,
Oh star in the midnight sky,
Star shining bright in the middle of the night,
Make me a wish tonight!
Make me a wish tonight.

Shooting star! (Shooting star!)
How could you fade away?
Shooting star! (Shooting star!)
How could you fade away?

Sun shining bright in the middle of tonight,
Oh sun in the daylit sky,
Sun shining bright in the middle of the tonight,
Bright through the clouds today!
Bright through the clouds today.

Shooting star! (Shooting star!)
How could you fade away?
Shooting star! (Shooting star!)
How could you fade away…?

Moon floating light in the middle of the night.
Oh moon in the midnight sky,
Moon floating light in the middle of the night,
Make me a wish tonight!
Make me a wish tonight.

Die Sonne scheint hell, auch doch der mond
Regen oder schnee oder wind
Die Sonne scheint hell, auch doch der mond
Machen wir ein Lied zusammen!
Machen wir ein Lied zusammen.

Regen fällt! (Regen fällt!)
Gehen wir zusammen ins Wald?
Regen fällt! (Regen fällt!)
Gehen wir zusammen ins Wald?

Together we run through the trees of a forest
Over streams and a blinding moon.
Together we run through the trees of a forest
Zusammen oder getrennt
Now we wish forever.

Star shining bright in the middle of the night,
Oh star in the midnight sky,
Star shining bright in the middle of the night,
Make me a wish tonight!
Make me a wish tonight.

Shooting star! (Shooting star!)
Why did you fade away?
Shooting star! (Shooting star!)
Why did you fade away?

The sun shines above, with it comes the moon.
Oh sky crashing down apart.
The sun shines above, with it comes the moon.
Oh sky crashing down apart.

Why did you fade away?

Part of a self indulgent Pokeani x Pokespe fic I speed wrote for a Cabin War. It is not edited. It is two AM. What am I doing.
Words: 1,543

Ash looked up, jumping in surprise when he heard the slam of the door opening, and again when he realized who was behind it. “Gary!” he yelped, hurrying to stuff his Pokedex in his pocket and get his feet off the table, “I didn't expect you to show up!”

Gary smirked, sliding the door shut behind himself as he made his way further into the room. “It's my house, Ashy boy, I should be asking you why you're here, not the other way ‘round.” He made his way to the counter and plopped a full looking bag down on it, and began messing with a lab coat which wound its way around his body.

Ash gulped. He wasn’t going to focus on that. “Hey,” he said, pointing at Gary for extra effect as he spoke, “I'm a dex holder you know, Blue can invite me over for a meeting if he wants too.”

Gary laughed, pulling off his coat to reveal his regular old purple sweatshirt underneath, “Of course!” he said in such a way that Ash couldn't quite tell if he was being snarky or friendly, “What would we do without our dexholder, eh?”

Ash rolled his eyes. That had definitely been snarky, but he was going to ignore it. “What are you doing back in Kanto, anyway,” he asked, standing up causally and padding over to Gary, “I thought you were researching in Sinnoh!”

“Oh I was,” Gary respondeed, turning to look at Ash as he leaned against the counter, a regular old smirk on his face, “But I came back to visit, a guy needs to see his rival every once and a while, eh?”

“And his older brother,” A new voice commented, and Ash whipped around to watch as Blue made his way back down the hallway. (It had been quite ironic that he had walked away the very second his brother had made his way into the house.) “Glad to see you still have a key, Gary,”

Gary laughed and spun said key on his finger, before tossing it into the air letting it fall into his waiting hand once more. Still had some Pokemon trainer tricks in him, it seemed. “Almost used the lab key though,” he said, walking up to his brother and shaking hands, “I just came by to say hello, you know? How's it going with Red?”

Blue cringed slightly, and Ash titled his head. What did *that* mean? “What's going on with Red?” he asked, trying to sound innocent and confused as both Oak brothers turned to look at him, “I haven't heard you say anything Blue!”

Blue wrinkled up his nose, “It's bad enough you're the first one here,” he muttered, “and even worse that I chose to host this meeting so I'd have to deal with you.”

“Yeah!” Gary commented, “I was wondering where everyone else was,” he poked Blue in the side with an elbow, smirking in that so very Gary way of his, “I even wondered if you were perhaps trying to steal my rival! But I know you're too loyal to Red to ever do something like that,”

Both Ash and Blue flushed red. Any Pokemon trainer began to know the connotations of being “rivals,” after traveling as a trainer for long enough, and Ash and Blue definitely qualified for that. Thankfully for Ash, Blue was quick with his responses to such accusations. “No,” he said calmly, despite still clearly recovering from Gary's joke, “I brought him here for a dexholder meeting, but nobody else has made it here yet,”

Ash nodded. What Blue said was true. This was meant to be a dexholder meeting, but something was clearly holding the others up, and since Blue had gone off to the phone but returned with no answers beyond banter, Ash guessed that he might be here with just the Oak brothers for a little while. …great.

“Ooh,” laughed Gary, plopping down in the chair Ash had been sitting in and kicking his feet up on the table the very same way Ash had, “How long are we gonna be here without them?”

Blue shrugged, looking rather annoyed once more. “Red just called and told me he had a challenger battle on the edge of Viridian,” He said it like that explained the time frame they were looking at perfectly, even though it totally didn't, and moved on without paying Gary's teasing any mind, “Yellow got caught up with wrangling some invasive Pokemon, she might not be able to make it at all, and Green hasn't answered any of my calls since yesterday.”

He frowned, “Which probably means she got a little too wrapped up in a Pokemon battle and smashed her communicator, so we're looking at her probably being pretty late.”

Gary raised his eyebrows, and Ash slid into an empty chair next to him, looking intently at Blue as he did so. “Wow,” Gary finally said, “You really do have friends! I was honestly starting to think you were just in it for the money!”

Blue rolled his eyes, but didn't respond further. There was a small silence.

“Anyway!” Gary said loudly, lifting his feet from the table and stomping them into the ground, “I was thinking we could do a little gossiping, you know, as brothers and rival,” he gave Ash a knowing glance, even though he didn't know what Gary was talking about in the slightest. Gossip? Really? With Blue?The idea was so outlandish that he almost laughed aloud. What a sight that would be, Blue Oak, the Trainer, the sort-of leader of the Kanto dexholder (so long as Red wasn't in a challenging mood that day), a gossip? He couldn't even wrap his mind around it.

Blue, similarly, didn't seem to quite wrap his head around it either. “Gossip?” he asked hesitantly, looking annoyed once more, “Gary, we're supposed to be working here, I don't have time for this type of thing,”

“Well, you've only got half of your people here!” Gary pointed out, “Besides, how can you expect to get anything done if you're working with Ash! He's such a loser!”

“Hey!” Ash yelped, smacking Gary lightly on the shoulder, “That's not true!” He stuck his nose in the air and smirked, “I'm Alola champ you know, I'm anything but a loser,”

“And yet,” Blue observed, “I distinctly remember you losing against Red last training meeting, did that not count to your total score or something?”

Ash blew a strand of hair out of his face as he attempted to recover from a sudden blush across his face. “Yeah well, that doesn't count! You lost to him in the league, so you're no better than me anyhow,”

Blue's eyes flashed dangerously, and Gary's snickering became a background music to the trio as Blue flexed a Pokeball in his hand. “Do you want to test that theory?” he smirked, “I guarantee you would be nothing against me,”

Ash laughed, but something in the back of his mind told him that Blue was anything but exaggerating. Even with his Alola win under his belt, Ash knew that he wasn't at the same level as Blue, Red, or maybe even Green. (Though, no offense to Yellow, he had to admit that he was probably better than at least one of the other Kanto dexholders, at least in a regular battle.) “Oh sure,” he said, sounding overly confident even to himself, “You'll see,”

“Oh please,” snickered Gary, leaning forward in his chair to rest his chin on his folded hands, “He could wipe the floor with you! He's beat me near every time we've fought, and since we all agree that I'm better than you, that means that Blue is completely beyond your level,”

Ash snorted, though Blue nodded in agreement. “Gary,” Ash said, “you are not better than me, and besides, don't you think all of that time as a researcher may have made you a little bit out of practice?”

Now it was Gary's turn to blush and Blue's turn to snort out laughter. “Well, maybe-,” as Gary stumbled over his comeback, Ash laughed. When he'd headed over to the Oak household that morning, he would have never expected this to be the direction he found the “meeting” going, but he was absolutely not going to complain. Something about joking around with your rival and your senior dexholder was quickly becoming a very fun activity for him.

“Anyway!” Gary stopped himself in the middle of his own sentence, his face positively tamato berry red now, “I think we’re escaping the true purpose of this conversation, which was to bug my brother about Red,”

“It was?” Ash asked, pointing at Gary in mock confusion as he added, “I thought it was to make fun of you, seeing as it’s so fun to do,”

At the same time that Ash spoke, Blue shook his head, though he was nice enough to wait until after Ash had finished to say his own piece. “Nope,” he said, “We’re supposed to be working, as I said earlier, and besides, what’s between me and Red is none of your business,”

“Oh yes,” Gary said, “But as your brother and your brother’s rival we have the authority to want to know,”

I seriously really need to go to sleep but I'm gonna add this much to the word ward. (A little tiny bit more of my DPA Superhero AU.
Words: 494

“Thanks for not throwing me under the bus back there,” he said suddenly, finishing off the removal of his disguise just in time to grin at her, “Even if you threw dust at me the second we got back to safety,”

For a moment, Mitsumi couldn’t seem to remember what he was referring to, but then the image of yellow wings flashed in her vision and she cringed. Angel. One of the two main superheros that held this city. Oh yes. She had been happy for a reason when she had been thinking about how happy she had been that his mission had been a success, that, of course, being that it almost hadn’t been.

“I’m really sorry I couldn’t get there sooner,” she said apologetically as the two of them began the long trek back to their apartment, “I didn’t realize he was on top of you, if I’d known…”

“Nah,” said Hareta, laughing as he kicked a pebble down the sidewalk, “It’s alright, all he got himself was a kick, he didn’t even get my mask off,”

“That’s good,” Mistumi said, “But that is all he would have needed to find your identity, you know that, right?”
Hareta seemed to think about that for a second, but when he spoke again Mitsumi immediately knew he hadn’t been. “I wonder how Jun’s taking it,” he said quietly, “He really likes that guy, you know, I bet he won’t be happy when he hears he messed up again,”

Mitsumi bristled, but she brushed her worries away as she changed topics. “What do you want for dinner tonight?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips and smiling when she saw Hareta being to seriously ponder. It was very like him, to care about nothing more than how a friend would feel when it came to his identity not being found, and then to completely push everything aside when food was mentioned.

“I could go for a sandwich,” he said, beginning to skip a little bit in excitement, though he (thankfully) didn’t try climbing up a lamppost or using his powers to jump high or something stupid like that, she was a bit too tired to deal with that kind of thing at the moment, “or a salad, or some steak, or a few rice balls,” He sprung into a sudden cartwheel, and Mitsumi smacked a hand to her face. So much for not doing anything stupid.

“Oh really?” she said, “Where do you propose we get all of that?”

He thought about that too, and Mitsumi smiled when he finally shrugged. “I dunno,” he admitted, “Thought maybe we had some at home,”

“Some of all of it?” she asked, putting her hand on his shoulder in an effort to keep him from doing another cartwheel, “Of just some of one or two things?”

He shrugged again and giggled, “Either works, I'm just hungry."

Mitsumi nodded in agreement. “Big battle,” she commented, “I’m hungry too.”

FINISHING THE CABIN WAR. SOME ORIGINALSHIPPING.
Words: 106

Red had always been the most beautiful person Blue thought he'd ever seen. With shining black hair that went down to his shoulders in the back and fluffed out in front of his eyes in the front, he was almost like some sort of old romance protagonist. But the eyes ruined the image. Bright red irises, brighter than blood, shiner than gemstone, and sharp with well tuned battle instincts Pairing his eyes and hair with his skin, however, Red began to look positively vampiric.

It was a good thing Blue found that attractive, for whatever reason, because it did add quite a bit to the look.

A little more of that Ash+Gary+Blue thing I was writing, but I have to leave, like, right now, so I can't do any more for the cabin war sorry.
Words: 834

Blue didn’t look very happy about that, but Ash leaned forward in anticipation anyway. “Yeah!” he said, mentally flashing through all of the events he would qualify as ‘suspicious’ during previous dexholder meetings, championship battles, and world ending disasters, “the people deserve to know, Blue!”

“Not you too,” Blue groaned, covering his face with an arm and sliding a little lower in his chair, “I already told you, it’s none of your business,”

“So something is going on!” Gary smirked, seemingly completely recovered from his previous embarrassment. He leaned over to Ash and whispered, “He wouldn’t say something like that unless I was right,” though he clearly intended Blue to hear him, if the flashing of his eyes were any indication to his true intentions.

Blue shook his head, though his ears were flushed pink. “If there’s something going on, it’s none of your business Gary, and much less Ash’s!”

“Hey!” yelped Ash, banging his fist on his chest a few times, “I’m a dexholder too! We can’t keep secrets from each other, how am I gonna trust you if I don’t even know if you’re dating anyone?”

Blue rolled his eyes and Gary shrugged, tilting his head to the side and closing his eyes, “He’s got a point, Blue,” he said, “How will he be able to trust you without knowing if you’re dating Red? If you hid that kind of thing, what other things could you be hiding?”

“Well,” said Blue, looking weirdly relieved, “We’re not dating, if that’s what you wanted to know,”

Ash raised an eyebrow, “Really?” he asked, “What’s going on then?”

Blue grimaced, and Ash and Gary leaned forward as one. Their breathing held back in anticipation. But Blue just shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said finally, sounding more truthful than he had all meeting, “I don’t think he knows either,”

Gary and Ash both glanced at each other, and then looked away quickly. Gary tried to cover it with a harumph, but Ash couldn’t help but feel like the two of them had related a little too much to Blue’s words. Unfortunately for the rivals, Blue definitely did not buy Gary’s messily put together cover, and was soon smirking the very same way Ash and Gary had been not even minutes before.

“Oh Gary,” said Blue, putting on a tone of voice that Ash thought was a little too similar to Green’s teasing tone, “you’re in no place to be teasing me about Red if you can’t even look your own rival in the eyes,”

Ash felt his face flush red, which probably didn’t help his case when he yelped, “There’s nothing weird about that! We just haven't seen each other for a while,”

Blue raised an eyebrow, ever intelligent, that one. “That proves nothing either way, which makes me think I might be onto something,”

Gary and Ash both shook their heads furiously, but Blue’s green eyes flashed with a look Ash had never seen in them before. He wondered if this was the sort of guy Blue used to be, back before he’d learned from Red how to not be supremely irritating. He had been acting quite unlike the strong and well calculated trainer that Ash had come to know, but he had assumed that was because he was getting teased about Red, now Ash wondered if being near Gary was what was causing him to revert back into his original form. Ash scoffed, this was why only children were better.

Blue crossed his legs and crossed his arms over his chest, “Fine then,” he laughed snarkily, which Ash definitely recognized from Gary, “If you don’t want to admit it, you don’t have to, but that’s just because I’m a lot more reasonable and mature than either of you, and know when to stop,”

“Completely untrue!” Gary said, standing up so suddenly that his chair nearly tipped over, “Any Charizard trainer I’ve ever known is anything but reasonable!”

Now both Blue and Ash yelled out. “Hey!” Ash said, “It’s a part of my personality!”

At the same time, Blue growled and slammed his fist down on the table, “I’m way more reasonable that you,”
Gary shrugged and laughed, though he stayed standing, “I dunno,” he said, “You’re the trainer here, I’m the one who matured enough to be a researcher.”

“That’s not even true!” Ash shouted, though he was laughing, “You don’t stop being a trainer just because you take up a researcher job! My friend Tracey, for example-,”

He was cut off when the door slammed open at the other end of the room. Blue jumped and instinctively pulled out a Pokeball, while Gary was so surprised that he sat down again. The people in the door, however, were not any sort of threat. (Though it would have honestly been less surprising to Ash if Jessie, James, and Meowth had invited themselves into the Oak family household, given that Blue had been so sure that their fellow Kanto dexholders weren't showing up.)

Weekly #1: https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/discuss/topic/695082/?page=1#post-7352794
“Grab your lucky pen. Fill up on mangoes and creativity juice. Welcome, SWC-ers new and old, to the first weekly of July 2023! —- This week, we’ll be diving into the genres of Illustrated Fiction and Literary Fiction, two new cabins this session. You’ll also learn about how effective storytellers can use theme and symbolism to make their message more powerful! :D —- This weekly starts on July 3rd at 12:01 a.m. UTC. Wait until then to start writing! —- Good luck, and we hope you enjoy the weekly! <33”
Total words: 3,677

Part 1: A literal interpretation of events from a silent comic/once upon a picture image (300+ words)

Note: I chose the first page of the comic “The Highest Depths,” by Ileana Surducan as what I would interpret literally.
Words: 640

First, I look at the first panel. (Of course I do.) A stormy cloud crosses the sky, and grassy fields sit below it. That's nice, it might be pretty close to fall in some place without any mountains and very few trees! Though places like that can feel pretty humid and muggy in my opinion, so maybe it's not actually close to fall? It is true, however, that the colors of the grass and stormy sky make it look either humid or slightly chilly, so either idea of a literal version of this scene seems plausible to me.

In the second panel, the camera moves to show an old man trudging across one of the grassy hills. The sky above him seems a bit brighter now, making me wonder if he's in a slightly different location, or if the nonexistent photographer had to spin around to get the gray clouds out of the way for a better shot of the man moving. He is dragging a heavy looking fishing net behind him, which is slung over one shoulder as he looks back at it. He wears a striped blue and white T-shirt, purple shorts, with what may be black leggings underneath. The outfit seems a bit strange, but I know that I'm not in any way someone to judge someone on their fashion sense. (Mine is bad enough.) More than that though, the panel makes me wonder if the sea is close by, or maybe a river or a stream? Looking back on it, the first panel did seem to have gaps in the land for where the man may be heading to fish.

The third panel zooms in on the man considerably, though what he's doing is a bit odd. Now he is throwing his net into the sky, and looking up at it as he does so. The grass around him now seems to blow in a breeze, and the clouds headed reflect some of the green from the grass. Looking at it literally, I cannot help but cringe at the smudges of color in the clouds. All of the panels seem to have been made, at least in part, with watercolor, and my experiences with watercolor bleeding into itself and ruining a drawing are far too numerous not to feel bad for the artist here. I know the feeling of irreversibly damaging a painting, crying a little bit, and then finishing it anyway because GOSH DANG IT, I can't just leave it unfinished! So, to me, this final panel shows a man throwing his net into a pond just off screen, which also happens to have had an unfortunate accident with the watercolors near the top of the page.

So, to set the scene, we are on a stormy little hill in a stormy little field, which, though creepily devoid of trees, seems very realistic. Perhaps we find ourselves in the midwest somewhere? However, we do not find the view off this side of the hill very attractive, though the three ponds that we can see from our vantage point admittedly look pretty nice, so we turn around. On a hill close to us, an old man wearing a rather strange outfit is dragging a net across the ground. He then throws it into the air, and we run forward in excitement to try and see if he catches anything in the pond it is about to land in. (Though his form while throwing was a bit off, that is explained when a blast of wind hits us.)

…

As you can see from my quick setting of the scene, these three panels are quite easy to interpret literally. It's a nice day if you like storm clouds and random abandoned fields in Montana, and an old man is about to go fishing! It's all very nice, really.

-

Part 2: A piece of original fiction or fanfiction, featuring the symbolic exchange of a food item (400+ words)

Words: 1,577
Cws: Crying, metal breakdown

X lay on his back on the ground, covering his eyes with an arm as he tried not to cry. After all of this time, after all of this pain and struggle and change to his life and to others and to the region, he still could not sit safe in his own skin. He curled in on himself and flopped onto his side as the back of his neck ached in an effort not to cry. If he started, would he stop in time to recover?

He knew that his friends were out there in the living room, patiently waiting for him to return to them, but he didn’t know if he could face them now. In the middle of their conversation, joking about what they would do now that the region was saved, telling stories of battles they had seen on TV, X had felt his heart begin to speed up. Maybe it was the mention of TV that got him here, or maybe it was the reminder of the not quite suppressed memories from the painful months of destruction they had all made it out of, but whatever it was, it didn’t feel good when he thought about it.

How could this have happened?

How could he still feel hurt?

He should feel better, he knew he wanted to, but he just couldn’t force the joy back into him, not when they’d all been through so much together. Actually, the fact that they’d been through it together might have made it worse, now that he thought about it. Why could they bounce back so quickly? Back to hair trimming and dancing and researching and flying, when he couldn’t even seem to get his feet back on the ground for the simplest of things a Pokemon Trainer could do?

Keep moving on, the trainer culture told him, keep fighting, keep training, keep running.

It was like a thunderbolt had gone off in his mind, and X was suddenly crying. Keep running, his mind chanted, keep crying.

X yelped in annoyance and forced himself to sit up. He knew that wasn’t right. He knew he shouldn’t be here. He needed his friends, he needed his Pokemon, and, as he suddenly had to admit to himself, he needed his parents. (Not that they ever seemed to need him, if every time their muted numbers had denied his calls he’d have been Celebi.)

He tried to stand, but found that his knees were shaking too badly to make it all the way up, so he just continued to sit. It was like he had suddenly been transported back to before the battles, before the destruction, and only a little after he had locked himself away. It had been hard at first, knowing that he should get up, knowing that he should see his friends, but over time, he’d gotten used to it.

Maybe part of the reason had been because his friends, no matter how little he reciprocated, had still cared about him. They’d still visited him most every day, still tried to break down his window when they landed on the windowsill after a long flight, and they still brought him food and water, no matter how little he ate and drank of it. It had become normal to him, but he would have been lying to say he ever liked it.

No.

He had never been happy then, so bogged down by the past and the future and his own crumbling mental state. Even gifts like a classic Kalosian Baguette or Castelia cones all the way from Unova had failed to make it better. The past had broken him, but the room and his not exactly voluntary isolation had certainly made it worse.

And now, as he sat shaking on the very same floor he was so used to crying on, X felt like he was in that very same downward spiral again. His thoughts contradicted each other, and it was all he could do not to scream and alert his friends downstairs of what was wrong. It was not safe here. He’d never been safer. He didn’t know what he was doing. This was the only way to keep himself safe. Everyone was looking at him. No one cared about his improvements.

X was totally freaking out now, but he didn’t know what to do about it, and he didn’t even know if, in the case that he did figure something out, he would be able to make himself act it out. He needed his friends, but how could he put this on their shoulders? They’d all been through so much, and he was not ready to be the next terror for them to have to brute force their way to fixing.

His breathing sped up and he dug his nails into his thighs in some attempt to bring himself back to reality. A little voice in his head, the same one that always spoke to him in times like this, was trying to get him to calm down. It reminded him that it would be okay, that it would get better, that people loved him, truly, if he just went out and looked for it. But that little voice was fading as shreds of any semblance of calm tore away from him.

He felt like Zygard, with all of its cells running off to who knows where the second the battle was over. Like an underground cavern that had just lost its mother diamond. Like a Spritzee in a rainstorm. Like a Chespin who had used up its pin missile. And the worst part of it? He didn’t even know why this was happening. Why now? Why in the middle of hanging out with his friends?

At some point in his crying, he must have made a sound, because it wasn’t long before there was a knock on his locked door. When had he locked it? In his broken state, he couldn’t seem to remember, but the vague shards of consciousness within him formed two words, muscle memory. It didn’t exactly make him feel better.

“X?” came a voice, “Do you want something to eat?”

X looked up with a jump, and his hands slammed against the floor as he tore them from his thighs. Y. That was who was on the other side of the door. The girl who had actually managed to break his window in an effort to see him once, the girl whose mother took him in to protect like an injured pokemon, the girl who he struggled to hide his feelings for.

“Um,” his voice came out pathetic, even as he did his best to sound normal, “Sure, just, uh, give me a second.”

Y gave him a hum in acknowledgement, but X barely heard her as he hurriedly wiped tears from his face. He couldn’t have her thinking it had been as bad as it was. He couldn’t do that to her. He stood quickly, unable to look at his reflection in the mirror. (In his remaining panic, it didn’t look like him, not at all.)

He reached for the doorknob, but froze before he could do more than unlock it.

He’d felt this before. That pull to leave, that pull to rejoin his friends, that pull to keep fighting. But here, in this dark room, X also knew the sounds of a voice telling him that it wasn’t necessary. That he was only safe here. That they would all stare if he left. That he couldn’t do anything to change his fate, so why even try?

His breathing quickened once more. He couldn’t leave. He couldn’t move. He could hardly even think. Oh why did he answer her? Oh why didn’t he just let her barge in herself, if she cared so bad?

“X?” Y asked again, “Do you want me to open the door?”

X made a strangled sound in response, and the door immediately slid open. Carefully, so as not to hit him, but quickly too, like she really did care about him. She tilted her head at him, watching as he cringed away from the bright lights of the hallway. She knew him. She must know what he was thinking. (The weird part being that X wasn’t so sure he could read his own thoughts at the moment, so molasses slow and quick attack fast as they were, so how she did it was entirely beyond him.)

“Here,” she said quietly, handing him a small plate, atop which sat a mini cupcake, “We made some, and thought you would like one.”

He took the plate with shaking hands. He wanted to say thank you. He wanted to run back into his room and lock the door again and never come out. He wanted to do something, but all he could manage was just to hold back the tears once more.

“It’s okay,” Y murmured. She looked up at him again, and he found himself wondering when he’d grown so tall. She reached out to hold his hand, whispering a quiet, “can I hug you?” before moving in for one on his shaking nod.

She held him, and he felt almost ready to collapse. The cupcake was forgotten in his hand, but both of them knew that it had never really mattered as itself. It was so much more than just a piece of food, and both Pokedex holders knew it as they cried together.

-

Part 3: A continued or extended scene from one of the examples in the Motif-tionary (400+ words)

Note: This was a request from @pokepower206 almost a whole year ago, and I thought this would be a good time to make it. (Link: https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/studios/31142122/comments/#comments-192275588 )
Motif chosen: The Lamppost, meaning discovery.
Words: 1,016

Sealand hummed as he skipped along the edge of his land, steel, concrete, and falling apart as it was, it was his home, and he loved it. The ocean lapped at the edges, and he laughed as a particularly large wave sent sea spray up into his eyes. Being the representation of the abandoned military base itself, he was used to the feeling of water on his skin, the feeling of wind in his hair, and, yes, the feeling of his body rusting and slowly falling apart. He loved being a micronation, but he would give everything to be a full nation, someone like England.

But Sealand didn’t hate England like he used too, he was past that. He had grown and (hopefully) improved himself since then, and now his admiration of the nation that he saw as his father rarely strayed from just that, admiration. Though, when he started getting irritated, the original feelings of jealousy did have a tendency to float back into his mind. He did his best to wave them away though, he didn’t need that.

Compared to a human, his life was going to be anything brief (so long as nothing bad happened) but compared to most nations, he would be gone like a piece of unattached seaweed in a tidal wave. So, holding onto those that he loved had become more important, and growing up had made him realize that he loved England. And no matter how much he had previously pretended not to, England, who Sealand knew now was his father, loved him too.

In fact, he had loved him so much that he (against the rules of the crown and the hatred of nationalists against someone like Sealand) had gifted Sealand a lamp post. Admittedly, when Sealand had first received the gift, he had been full of more questions than gratitude, but he was fairly sure he understood its purpose now. It didn’t really work out here, since neither he nor his few citizens knew how to work such a thing, but it meant a lot anyway.

He hadn’t really realized until a few weeks after deciding on a place to put it, but it was the first gift England had ever given him, especially after they fell into the proper dynamic that a father and a son should have. Then he had started discovering even more, well, after he had started crying, anyhow.

The first thing he realized, after the original realization, was that he and his micronation friends didn’t really have to be nations. Of course, he still felt the need to push forward to be accepted, but he blamed that more on his self esteem issues than an actual need to be a real nation. It was no longer something that proved his importance in the world, no, this lamp post, no matter how stupid of a gift it may seem to someone who wasn’t him or didn’t know his father, stood that he mattered to at least someone. In fact, he mattered enough for someone to illegally rip a lamp post out of a road somewhere and send it over to their son, someone who was sort of a traitor to the crown.

He mattered. If he could get his dad to change that random road for him as who he was, staying as himself was more important than changing to be something bigger. He was better than that, even if it took at least one of his fellow micronations a second or two to agree with him. Too bad their fathers hadn’t gifted them a lamp post with no explanation or real acknowledgement that it had happened.

After that, he had suddenly realized another thing, though he supposed it probably should have come first, considering everything about the circumstances of the gift and the original treatment he had received from England. Which was, of course, that Sealand’s father had a very strange way of showing his appreciation for people he cared about. (I mean, really. Who in their right mind gives their sun a lamp post as a gift?!)

This silly lamp post, oversized and broken and out of place as it was, was something that Sealand truly loved, and it was something that meant a lot to him. It was appreciation, it was realization, it was family bonding, it had sort of actually been a part of England, if you thought about it. (That was another thing the lamp post had just made him realize! Very interesting, but also kind of weird!)

Sealand skidded to a halt, looking out over the sea to lock eyes with the distant shadow that he knew was the United Kingdom. His father was there. Sealand grinned and began to wave. His life had improved after receiving the gift, after becoming friends with the one that he now called ‘dad,’ but he thought it was especially nice that England did not make him choose between being a micronation and being his son.

The lamp post was a showing of that.

It was unexpected, it was unique, it inspired curiosity and fit England’s old seafaring personality so well. Really, if Sealand had received any other gift, it would have been weirder. A lamp post fit England. A lamp post fit Sealand. It fit the future and the life of a nation that Sealand had come to long.

That was another reason Sealand appreciated this particular gift so much, it was almost like proof that England believed in him. Even if Sealand no longer felt the need to be a nation, England’s gift showed him that he accepted whoever his son chose to be. A curious child, bent on being nothing but the best? He would be alright with that. An old fashioned British gentleman? That would be okay too. Someone who felt free at sea? With the brush of foam on their face and the wind in their hair? Well, a lamp post didn’t exactly suggest that, but with one in the middle of the ocean, it sort of did.

And Sealand wouldn’t have it any other way.

-

Part 4:Your rewritten Part 1, now featuring acknowledgement of the symbolism! (400+ words)
Note: If you didn’t know, the Horror cabin (which I’m in this SWC) is doing some ‘endless expanse’ style stuff, so as a homage to them, I attempted to dip into that a little bit.
Words: 444

The clouds flew, stormy across the gray sky. They shifted gently as they morphed, but they changed with the wind. In a way, they were like the old man. Lonely up there, in that unending expanse of blankness, but also so content with what and who they were. Even if everything around them was different, and every second they seemed to change to be something new, they were never alone. And the old man, surrounded by pools and lakes of reflective water, never felt alone in his grassland, even if it was, if you just looked, a very lonely looking place.

But how could he ever be alone with the fish? Those pools, that dotted this strange grassland as reflections into the freedom of the sky, were full of them. When he had first found himself here, the old man had gone about making a nice large fishing net. As expected, it had been made for fishing, but he soon found that touching those reflective pools felt even more strange when you were taking companions from them. Those fish were like him, in a way. They were stuck in this grassland, just like he was, with only the gentle waving of the grass and the quick passing of the clouds overhead to keep them company.

So, in time, the old man had looked to the sky as well. He had been young when he had come here, and without those fish he would not have made it to be old. (However, not in the way that you might originally think.) Since coming here, he had never once tasted a fish, and, quite honestly, had barely taken more than a sip from those glowing ponds.

No, the sky had taught him a better way to live, and his net had bridged that gap for him. So now, as he dragged his net through the grass after him, the fish cheered and spun in their little pools. They were happy for him, they always loved this particular show. The old man smiled too. It was finally time to feast on the light that fed him. (It was always best to wait for stormy days, so he could perfect his environment at the same time.)

He stood on the edge of the hill for a moment, looking over the endless expanse that was his prison. At first, he didn't like it, and he had cried and cried to be let home, but the magic of the place had changed that for him. And so, with a strong breeze at his back, and the singing of the clouds beckoning him to bring them down, he threw his net.

Main Cabin Daily #9: How many hours did you sleep the night before this daily was added? Today, our daily will have a bit of a twist—you must write 1200 words about your various characters’ sleep habits and the effects they have on them, but for every hour that you slept last night, you can subtract 100 words from the total (caps at ten hours for 200 words). For example, if you slept for nine hours, you'll only have to write 300 words. You'll earn 400 points from this daily.

Note: I have no clue how much I sleep, so I just wrote for however long this fic reached in the moment. Also this means a LOT MORE to me and @Starthorn, but you don’t need to worry about that. (:

Words: 1,003

Being a Pokemon trainer, Red could pretty easily say that his sleeping habits were a bit different than some people's. Sure, half of the population, those that were Pokemon trainers, like him, might understand him to a point, but the half of the population, those that had chosen the more sedentary way of life, they might not understand the same way.

Of course, Red wasn't an idiot, he knew that people besides those tied up in Pokemon battles could have sleep troubles too, but the point was that *his* sleep problems were because of his Pokemon trainer habits. Half of his days were spent walking, and the rest was split between battles, weighing his decisions, saving people, and doing *other* things that pokemon trainers tended to do went left to their own devices. It had gotten to the point where Red went hardly a day without getting a new bruise or scrape from his daily adventures, which wasn't exactly helpful for his sleeping habits either.

Right now, his newest injury was a bruise on his upper thigh, which had happened after he'd gotten thrown against a tree in a challenger battle. It had caused him significant trouble with walking through the day (as if his still sometimes weak ankles didn't do that enough by themselves), so he'd been spending even more time walking than resting or training than normal, in just a simple effort to cover as much ground as usual.

He was trying to enter the Indigo League again, as he did every year, but some pressure from his fellow dexholders had made him decide to do it the more official way, through challenging all of the gyms to get your space in the league, instead of using his “previously Champion” status to bypass the earlier parts of the event.

He knew he didn't have to rush his travels, and he knew that he didn't even have to be walking them (he had an Aerodactyl, after all), but it felt more natural that way, as if he was truly starting from the beginning. A beginning that he, as a dexholder, had never truly had.

He'd started with a dream, and then continued to race around the region under what were only sort of orders from the professor, fighting evil and getting seriously injured along the way. Of course, it was nearly impossible to find a single Pokemon trainer, good or not, who hadn't had at least *one* brush with a team like the Rockets. It was even harder to find a Pokemon trainer who hadn't nearly died (or at least gotten seriously injured) along their journey.

Truthfully, such statistics raised a few moral questions for some of the younger parents of the region, but Red didn't mind it all that much. If he looked at himself objectively, he didn't know who he would be without all that pain, all that blood loss, and, yes, all of those sleepless nights.

What kind of ”fighter“ would he be if he didn't have to fight to live? To fight just to get through the day? To fight just to fall asleep? Maybe it was a bit of an odd viewpoint, even among Pokemon trainers, but he knew it wasn't exactly uncommon among trainers on his level. Dexholders, Ace Trainers, Gym leaders, the Elite Four, people like them. Red knew for a *fact* that at least a couple of them thought the same way as him.

Blue, for example.

Blue was Red's rival (and quite honestly Red would be lying if he said that they weren't also a little bit more than that, though he didn't know what to make of that, exactly), but he was also the grandson of Professor Oak. You might have expected this status to have saved him from the sleep patterns that plagued high level trainers, but Red knew that it hadn't.

They'd spent too many nights (and days, for that matter) battling until the sun rose for either of them to ever assume anything but an ever so slightly unhealthy relationship with sleep from each other. They'd hurt each other too much to ever go back, too, though that wasn't exactly related to sleep. If they, as people broken by each other, could spend their days so truthfully to their habits as trainers, then there was no one Red could believe more when it came to their sleeping habits.

And there were more. Ash, who spent too much time traveling to perfect anything else, Green, who's spent so much of her life in danger that she couldn't trust her dreams any more, and though she was different, Yellow's inability to stay awake for more than a few hours wasn't exactly healthy either. Red knew that. He'd always known that.

But being Pokemon Trainers, it was expected from them. Maybe it was even encouraged, in a strange way.

If all the *good* trainers were doing it, why should the others find a healthy balance either? He knew those thoughts, he'd heard them echoed perfectly online, and he might have even remembered a time when he'd thought them himself, if his life hadn't started in the miserable way that it had.

But he now knew that it wasn't true. Just because he had won his first shot at the championship, or just because Blue had trainered a Rocket coded Porygon to his every command, didn't mean that they always made perfect decisions. It didn't make the bruises on their arms, or the scrapes on their knees, or the bashes to the head, or, yes, their unhealthy relationship with sleep, okay.

Red knew that.

He had always known that too.

But it was hard to right.

It was hard to fix something that had always been broken, and it was even harder to fix something that he didn't think could ever get better. His sleep schedule was an example, yes, but so was pretty much everything else.

He knew he should try.

He knew he should put in an effort.

But would he?

Finishing that stupid self indulgent Ash fic.
Words: 1,852

“What’s going on in here?” Green’s snicker reached Ash’s ears, “An argument?” She stepped through the door, and his quickly shrinking Wigglytuff followed after her, “And I’m missing it?”

“An argument?!” Yellow sounded alarmed as she followed Green. She must have dismounted Dody quickly, however, because her foot was still stuck in the stirrup until she was halfway through the door. (Dody followed her inside curiously, though Blue looked irritated about the dirt he was tracking onto the cleanly swept wood paneling.)

“Is everything alright?” Yellow asked, her hands twitching to a glow with her Viridian Forest magic as she frantically looked between the two Oaks and Ash, “Did anyone get hurt?”

“Nobody’s hurt,” sighed Blue, clicking his pokeball back into place and waving Yellow into her seat. (And since he didn’t invite Green to a chair, she, still snickering, hopped up onto the table as her seat.) “I take it Red’s not with you?”

“See!” Gary interrupted whatever Green had been about to say, pointing at Blue aggressively, “His tone!”

Blue glared at him and Ash did his best not to smile. He had heard Blue’s tone, and it had sounded weirdly full of longing. Strange, but normal among rival pairs, especially those that had been rivals for long enough that they were past both the enemies and friend stages, which Blue and Red seemed to be long past.

“We’ll be doing none of that,” Blue said, whipping out a folder that Ash knew contained data on Team Rocket and other such crime organizations throughout the region, invasive Pokemon, and things that the league needed fixing, “But since Red’s not here yet, you can stay if you want.”
Gary smiled mischievously, and Ash tried to ignore the weird way his heart sped up when he saw that expression on him. (He refused to remember that he and Gary were also past that point in a rivalry. It would be far too embarrassing to realize in the middle of a serious dexholder meeting, even if they never stayed serious for very long.)

“Oh Blue!” Yellow suddenly piped up, apologizing quickly when she realized she had interrupted him right before he was going to speak before continuing, “Red’s on his way, he just had to take a quick stop at my house for some healing items first.”

Blue’s face twitched slightly, but he nodded appreciatively, “Thank you Yellow,” he said, “That’s very nice of you to offer him that,”

Yellow nodded and smiled, and Ash noticed that her Pikachu, ChuChu, was winding around her feet like a cat. His own Pikachu seemed to have disappeared down a hall of the house somewhere, and he looked over his shoulder, suddenly worried. He sure hoped Team Rocket hadn’t randomly broken in and taken him while he was busy teasing Blue and Gary.

“Oh,” Blue said suddenly, now interpreting his own point as he remembered something, ”how's the invasive Pokemon project going, Yellow?“
Yellow frowned and leaned down to pick up ChuChu. ”I caught a few of the Johto species of Magicarp today, but I'm not making a big enough dent with just me working, does anyone want to help me?“ Blue looked around the table, and when no one immediately volunteered, his eyes caught on Gary.

”Gary!“ he said, sounding quite happy as he slapped a few papers into his hands, ”You like studying Pokemon, you'll love this job!“ Gary took the papers, but though he stuck his tongue out at Blue, Ash saw a distinct look of interest in his eyes. (Ash also found himself finding that oddly adorable, and he, though he always took jobs against small teams of Team Rocket, suddenly wished that it was him and Gary working on the invasive Pokemon problem, rather than Yellow and Gary.)

”Next!“ Blue said, looking very pleased that he had effectively switched the conversation from teasing each other to actual business, ”The League needs to make a regular sweep of Rock Tunnel, but their regular rock specialists are dealing with the landslide in League Town, so they asked for some of us to go,“ he held out a clump of papers to Ash, and he took them.

”I've never been in Rock Tunnel…?“ Ash offered, flipping between the pages and seeing warnings about danger from wild Pokemon and other evils, ”How am I supposed to sweep it?“

Blue rolled his eyes, ”I thought that, since you have a Pikachu on you main team, you could use Flash to light it up sufficiently, it's fairly straight forward so long as you can see,”

Green shook her head, “I'll take that one,” she said, stealing the pages right out of Ash's gloved hands, “I've got heat sensing goggles, and it's better not to draw attention to yourself in there anyway,”

Blue nodded, and though he looked slightly annoyed (clearly he had been trying to punish Ash and Gary for teasing him earlier), he seemed happy that he, at the very least, wasn't going to have to do that one. “It would be better if Red could do it,” he murmured absentmindedly, “since people trust him more,”

Green raised an eyebrow, and Gary looked up with even more interest than he had had while looking at the invasive species papers. (However, Yellow just continued to pet ChuChu, which was very like her.)

“Or maybe,” Gary said, looking very pleased to be back on a topic that he could twist into teasing his older brother with, “Maybe you just trust Red more,”

Blue scoffed, “No offense to Green, but I'm not one to easily trust a former thief,”

Green shrugged, “Guilty.“ Her Wigglytuft made a purring sound and lifted an inch into the air.

”But is that it?“ Ash interjected, joining forces with Gary in a split second decision, “Or maybe you trust Red more because he's your rival?” He said it in a sing-songy voice, and Gary reached under the table to give him a mini low five.

Green looked delighted, ”We're teasing Blue?“ She asked, and, once Gary and Ash both vigorously nodded and Blue even more vigorously shook his head, she hopped off the table. ”Well, neither of you even know the half of it!“

She laughed, covering her mouth with the back of her hand in a way that was anything but delicate, ”Our little friend Blue here is totally in love with Red, based on everything that I see!“

Yellow's face twisted into a small grimace, but she nodded yes. ”Green,“ she muttered, ”I really don't think this is the time for this-,“

”Yellow is right!“ Blue said, his voice a slightly higher pitch than normal and his face a sudden bright red, ”We have to work on business! Not whatever it is you're trying to do to my reputation,“

”Oh come on Blue!“ Sighed Green, twirling in a little circle that brought her skirt up a little bit too high for Ash's comfort, ”I just smashed my communicator,-” Blue looked pleased that he had been right, “-and fell in the river on the way here, I need a little fun!”

“Yeah but-,” Blue tried to say, but he was interpreted as Gary stood and clapped his hands together.

“Green's right!” he said, “I came here to hang out with my brother and rival, and I need to have a little bit of innocent fun before I do the other things on my to do list,“ he gave Ash a pointed smirk, and Ash squinted back at him. Was he trying to be the next target of Green's teasing?

Thankfully though, Green seemed to be very focused on Blue's embarrassment, so she didn't even notice the odd eye contact before continuing her figurative rampage. ”Thank you Gary!“ she said, walking on high heels over to Blue and putting her hands on his shoulders, ”This is why I never got myself a true rival, imagine how hard it must make having a crush on them! When all they want to do is fight when you see each other,” she battled her eyelashes and Blue brushed her hand off his shoulder in favor of dropping his head into his hands again.

“I mean,” Green continued, giggling slightly along with Gary's snickering, “You know each other like the back of your own hands, and none of us know much about you, isn't that a sort of silly coincidence,”

Blue muttered something, and his eartips were bright red. Green laughed and waltzed back over to his spot on the table, plopping back down with a huge grin on her face.

A huge grin that only grew when the sound of the door unlocking reached her ears. ”And he's got a key to your house!“ (She brushed past the fact that her earlier entrance meant that she either also had a key, or had broken in… actually scratch that, she brushed over the fact that she had broken into Blue's house.)

Sure enough, Red poked his head through the door. His hair was a mess of sticks and leaves, and his face was covered in the sort of scrapes that any Pokemon trainer was used to, but his eyes lit up the second that he saw Blue. And, now that Blue had looked up to check who was entering his house, Ash could see that whatever was between them, it was mutual.

“Blue!” he said, ignoring the clearly awkward mood on the air as he walked up to his rival and hugged him, “How’ve you been buddy?”
Blue made a face, but he reciprocated the hug. “They’ve been teasing me about you,” he said matter of factly, “Can you tell them to stop please? Maybe they’ll listen if you do it.” He glared at Green, and then glared at Gary and Ash also. (Yellow, however, managed to escape his rage.)

Red laughed and straightened back up, “Come on guys,” he said, giving Green puppy dog eyes, “Blue’s too pathetic to be teasing him about someone as great as me,” (For some reason, he stuttered on pathetic, and Ash thought it sounded an awful lot like he’d been going to say “perfect” instead.)

Green began to laugh again, and Blue groaned loudly. “Red!” He said, “You’re not helping my case!”

“Sorry,” Red sighed, sliding into a seat between Yellow and Blue, “I tried my best,”

Blue growled at him, but Ash could clearly tell that he wasn’t really mad. Their dynamic reminded him of his own with Gary, and the comparison once again made him cringe. If this sort of thing made Green so convinced that Blue and Red were in love (and quite honestly, Ash couldn’t argue with that), he knew that that meant that he and Gary were next. Teasing Blue was quite fun, but Ash knew he never fared well under teasing about romance.

What was good about that for him was that it seemed to suggest that teasing Blue and Red were the next important steps in the meeting, and a single glance from Gary told him that he agreed. Ash smirked. This was going to be a very fun, and even less productive, meeting.

Main Cabin Daily #8: We have a never-before-seen variety of cabins this session—you might be spending your time doing anything from joining the revolution to navigating through tunnels on an alien planet to working at the circus, or so much more. Today, you'll get a chance to create your own storyline by writing a cabin intro! For inspiration, check out you own cabin's intro (the introduction to the storyline usually found at the top). Then, write a suspenseful introduction to a cabin with a genre of your choice (it doesn't have to be an existing cabin!) Your writing should be between 100 and 200 words, and you will earn 200 points for completing it. Sharing is required for this daily—we'd love to see what you create!

Genre chosen: Cookbook! My mom gave me this idea and I loved it.
Total Words: 707

Beginning bit words (Counting the title bit): 206

The Creative Cookbook Cabin! (Currency symbol: ℭ)

Ingredients, one scratch account, two tablespoons of creativity, and a full gallon of craziness. That’s all you need to put together a really good cabin idea. Of course, our cookbook will lead us through many more such recipes, and by the end you will be a full blown chef, even without knowing what you're doing! We hope you are as excited as we are when it comes to this, because we, your cabin leaders, spent a long time writing out all of your daily recipes for you! Unfortunately, someone seems to have stolen one of our old cookbooks! We hope you enjoy your time here, of course, but we hope you don't mind if we asked a little extra of you all.

Could you help us collect back the missing pages of our old cookbook? Don't worry, you don't have to go on some silly adventure, but it would be appreciated if you could do a few of our daily recipes (and those from the main cabin) to give us the inspiration to rewrite the book. Really, we don't mind that it was borrowed, we all love sharing here, eh?

We hope you enjoy your stay in our Creative Cookbook!

Words of this end bit: 501

I imagine that the allies of this cabin would be people such as Non Fiction, Realistic Fiction, Contemporary, and the cool “Self Help Book” cabin idea my mom also gave me. We would be siblings with Realistic Fiction, of course, because my first introduction to them had them obsessed with cookies and it just makes sense to me, but I never pay much attention to cabin relationships, so I dunno what that really means.

We could be against Adventure, Thriller, Horror, Science Fiction, and any other cabin that is the type to go on those “silly adventures” that our intro hinted at. Our neturals would be the sort of guys that you can’t imagine a cookbook fighting, if that makes any sense to anyone but me.

For an example of what the dailies would be like, they would have a nice variety, but be split up into four sections for the four weeks. The first section would be “starters and snacks,” and would include dailys like, “To get you STARTED, give us a nice intro!” and “Write about a character eating their favorite snack,” and “If you have a favorite snack, write about it!”

The next section would be “soup of the day,” and be like, “Pick your favorite soup and write a story inspired by it! Is it sweet? Salty?” and, “Alphabet soup day! Try to write a short story including at least one of every letter!”

The next week could be, “Main Courses,” and be like, “Imagine you are the main character of another cabin’s plotline, what do you do?” and “A character of your choosing missed dinner, and is now making their own perfect main course, what do they make?”

The final week would, of course, be deserts, and include stuff like, “Ice scream! Write a story with either a horror or humor twist!” and “Sprinkle on some new ideas by checking out and add them to a current work in progress!” The final daily would be, “The final recipe! Write whatever you think will make you happy! A final desert of freedom.”

The dailies would also be given numbers like a real cookbook, of course, and each one would give you one currency. The Main Cabin dailies would also be worth one currency, while the Weeklies would be worth more. (Or something like that, the cabin goal of total currency, which I just decided is called “inspiration” is not very high.)

The aesthetic of the cabin would be mostly brown (like an old book), with a picture showing a book opened to a page. The page is always headed with the cabin name and “Scratch Writing Camp of whatever year and month,” but the picture on the page changes depending on the week. On the first week, it shows a bowl of, like, celery in peanut butter, the second week is potato leek soup because I love it, the third week is a steak, and the final week is an ice cream sundae. Delicious!

First part of the second weekly so I can wordcount it right now. (Since I already had to post it on the forums.)

Your own workshop on a writing topic (500+ words) Everyone has knowledge to share with others, whether it be on plotting or writing without a plan; character development or character arcs. For the first part of our weekly, you get to write a workshop on a writing-related topic that interests you! — To get started, head over to the Idea Bank studio and post a workshop concept or two of your own, then choose someone else’s to write about. Do a bit of research on this topic, then write an informational workshop of at least 500 words about it. Once you’re finished, share your workshop in the sharing forum. — Be as creative as you like with this, we can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Topic chosen: Describing a location

Words: 1,203

To start, I’ll set the scene. I’m in english class, biting my nails off as I frantically look around the room. There are faded posters left from old students taped haphazardly around the walls, but neither they nor the loud chatter drifting in from the half open windows helps me to relax. (In fact, the sounds of those heading out to the track for gym class might even be stressing me out all the more.) It’s times like this that I wish I didn’t sit near the window, even though I get the best blast of air conditioning this way. I just really didn’t need the extra stress right now! When we’re about to share our original fiction pieces.

I grip the stapled pages tighter, and my foot begins to tap against the green and white speckles of the tiled floor. The teacher is giving out directions, and I can see her large computer monitor losing its glow as she shuts it and the large projector screen off. That means we’re about to get started. I sweat, and the sound of many red metal chairs scooting back grates on my mind just as much as they do on the floor. I wish I could just melt into the air conditioning vent, I would fit right in next to that stupid pencil that’s been stuck there all year, wouldn’t I?

The class continues in a blur of fluorescent lighting and muffled laughter. I read the stories placed in front of me, scribble distantly on blue and orange sticky notes (though I only have a purple pen today, for some reason), and try not to think about the fact that my story is getting passed around to the others as well. I am like the random quotes from the Great Gatsby, which are still on the board from last quarter, I’m like the murder mystery cards someone stuck to a cabinet with fruit and vegetable magnets, I’m like the sound of a student racing down the hall, late to class. I don’t know if I’m quite in the right place right now.

I certainly don’t feel like I am.

But when I get my story back from the others, I am shocked! All three of my group members (though the teacher, with a detailed demonstration at her tape and paper covered desk, had asked us to vary our feedback), had all complimented my descriptions. I did not believe it. How could that be true? I just, sorta, write like that, I guess.

…

As you can see, I’m using that intro as both an example and an introduction to me! I do not believe that I can write descriptions, but according to my classmates, I can. So, as it was the first thing I could think of, that’s what I’m going to do for this workshop.

To me, at least, the key is to imagine you are there. Imagine you are in a, I dunno, old fashioned prison. Sure, saying that already draws intrigue and gets an idea in your head of what the location looks like, but can you really see it? Can you really feel the emotions of the place? Now, instead, imagine that you are in a dark cell, where metal bars block half of your sight into the miniature sliver that is your contact with the outside world. The bench you huddle on is somehow both soggy and splintery, and the rats that chase each other across the floor on scrabbly claws are your only company as you hum a terrified tune. You smell nothing but the cold chill of fear and the suffocating odor of mildew, so you curl in on yourself, but it makes no change to the awful terror and bite of the prison air.

Not only can you get a better picture of exactly what I was going for there, the emotions are also more clear. Really think of what the location looks like before writing a description, and try to describe as much of it as you can across the story. You can keep some parts mysterious, come back to specific details that add to the emotions or plot, and change things over time to show the progression of the location.

Try it for yourself! Imagine you are in a flower field. What do you think of? What does it smell like? What color is the sky? Are you inside or outside? What kind of flowers can you identify? Is there anything that sticks out about the location? Any buildings, people, animals, or anything else odd for such a place?

Of course, when describing a location, you have to also take into account who is describing it. Is the narrator you? Is the narrator a dry history textbook? Is the narrator a character who is happy to be home? Is the narrator too busy freaking out to take in more than a specific standout detail and the vague drift of fog against the cracked ground?

Use your descriptions not only to build location and emotions, but also character and plot lines. If you want to, you can use separate motifs in different areas, or use echoes to a real place to drive home a specific point. Try it for yourself! Describe two areas that parallel each other, how do they compare? How do they contrast? How much can you hint at their backstories without directly saying them?

Maybe you choose to write about two crumbled castles, once at war, with the tattered remnants of old flags still flying in their towers. Maybe you described an ocean, now full of plastic, and the shining new corporation on the river which does all it can to hide its dark secret. Maybe you chose a fictional place that was inspired by something in real life, and its counterpart in the real world! One thing to remember while describing is that, really, there are no wrong answers.

You write what you want to write the same way an artist draws what they want to draw. They draw their locations and build up a world around that, while you build up a world and set to work describing it after. You can keep things consistent, like an ancient evergreen that sends its branches high enough to poke the tattered stormy sky, or change your subject as time goes on, like a tall woman who was once smaller than a basket of fish. Layers and layers, or just flat out reality. It can be as you want it to be, or it can be how your characters would see it. It’s the world, and you’re the creator, believe it.

Be creative! Be free! Have fun! That’s the key to a good description, to write what you want to write, even if it scares you out of your skin when you really start thinking about it.

So, in closing, I ask you, write one more thing. Whatever you want to. Whatever you want it to mean, but be sure that, while writing, you keep in mind your own style and flair of description. You are the creator, you are in charge, and, uh, try not to make any location changing spelling mistakes, okay?