A Neo-classical Painting, Showing A Thrall Revolutionary Soldier With Spoils.

A neo-classical painting, showing a thrall revolutionary soldier with spoils.

During the Great Thrall Revolt of 592 AX, many aristocrats were killed or forced to flee their homes. Their possessions were seized by thrall freedom fighters, who took reparations for their years of servitude however they saw fit. The food and booze eventually ran out, but for a period of some weeks thralls ate better than humans anywhere in the Empire, and lived in luxury.

Some of the raided land was later ceded back to the Savic Empire during the peace accord, but thralls helped themselves to anything they liked on the way out. When the mages returned to their homes they found them stripped of valuables, and the buildings themselves burned or defaced with the sign of the coiled snake.

Thrall artisans later reworked the metal of looted silverware. For a while it was fashionable for thrall soldiers to wear trophy necklaces, strung with sigil jewellery from as many different mage clans as possible. Some included teeth and bones from the mages themselves.

You can see more about the world of The Loyal Ones here: https://theloyalones.com/ or in the tag

my dad–also a writer–came to visit, and i mentioned that the best thing to come out of the layoff is that i’m writing again. he asked what i was writing about, and i said what i always do: “oh, just fanfic,” which is code for “let’s not look at this too deeply because i’m basically just making action figures kiss in text form” and “this awkward follow-up question is exactly why i don’t call myself a writer in public.”

he said, “you have to stop doing that.”

“i know, i know,” because it’s even more embarrassing to be embarrassed about writing fanfic, considering how many posts i’ve reblogged in its defense.

but i misunderstood his original question: “fanfic is just the genre. i asked what you’re writing about.” 

i did the conversational equivalent of a spinning wheel cursor for at least a minute. i started peeling back the setting and the characters, the fic challenge and the specific episode the story jumps off from, and it was one of those slow-dawning light bulb moments. “i’m writing about loneliness, and who we are in the absence of purpose.”

as, i imagine, are a lot of people right now, who probably also don’t realize they’re writing an existential diary in the guise of getting television characters to fuck. 

“that’s what you’re writing. the rest is just how you get there, and how you get it out into the world. was richard iii really about richard the third? would shakespeare have gotten as many people to see it if it wasn’t a story they knew?”

so, my friends: what are you writing about?

droplets

Every year a bobcat mama gives birth to a litter of kittens on my roof. I set up a camera this time around. 

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