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InterNutter

Indie writer seeks audience with an audience. Paying customers welcome. [pronouns: ze/hir] Daily free stories happen because it is an excellent counter to Writers' Block.

Burpengary East http://www.cmweller.com 12157 posts

Challenge #01742-D281: Certain Signs of Doom

When a human is running scared, drop everything and run away with them. -- Anon Guest

Humans get many jobs, all across the outskirts of the Galactic Alliance. In the Fringe Territories, laws are enforced based entirely on how useful they are to follow. As civilisation creeps in, the humans creep out before they become the tolerated exception. That's the thing about fringes and frontiers. There's always more of them.

Here on the edge, overlooking a large and ancient Sargasso, is Bodgy Kludge Station. And the humans have lots of jobs there. Not just in disarming the more dangerous wrecks, or making peace treaties with the unbelievably huge spiders[1] that lived in assorted wreck-conglomerates through the system.

Humans also served as 'canaries'.

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Making my mind up

I think I'm going to get some Steam Powered Apparel. The conversion to USD and postage fees ought to take care of one shirt. So of course I'm getting the one with the band logo on it.

I'm going to be making time to produce a print version of _Amity Incident. I should have enough time to do that if I can focus enough to get my daily work out of the way.

Which is a challenge for me, I get it.

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Challenge #01741-D280: When Next You Stop

High Magics: Fuck you and fuck the piece of reality you were standing on -- RecklessPrudence

Ever after, even in the depths of his self-exile, he would remember the first time that the elf used his name. He'd been travelling with the show for months, and knew everyone. And everyone knew him. Except the elf. It was difficult to tell whether they were male or female and they deliberately exploited that to unnerve people.

They were between towns, camping temporarily along the

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For today, we diet

The hardest thing about going back onto a diet is the diet-buster leftovers. Sitting there. Being tempting with all their sugary goodness. Or badness. Depending on your point of view.

I'm planning to fast for a little while. Good old salty broth should set me right over a few days.

The hardest part is going to be staying away from those temptations until next weekend.

Today, all going well, there should be another progress video for the cover art up on my

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Challenge #01740-D279: Too Close an Encounter

It seemed like I might have dodged a bullet. Now all I had to do was avoid all the rest. -- RecklessPrudence

To be honest, I didn't know I'd blundered into a land war until the moon behind me went up into shrapnel. I'd dodged one bullet by accident. Well. Missile. Now I had to dodge the shrapnel from an exploding moon. Getting away from the big boom helped my chances a lot.

And then I saw the fleet. They had a

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I love/hate my brain

For the first time in months, I woke up without the feeling of being ineffectually throttled by a golf ball. Turns out I was worried about the carb feast causing a ton of problems for me. It didn't.

And today, I'm finishing off said carb feast with a few things I missed, yesterday, and taking Mayhem to see Kingsmen: The Golden Circle and Chaos out to browse costume potential in the immediate area. Because Chaos is just too young to watch a

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Challenge #01739-D278: A Lesson For All

(At an AI's sudden assimilation of a tech base and IMMEDIATE commencement of combinatorial synthesis): Fuckin' bullshit, man.

(In response): Hey if they're going to leave tech specs out where the sufficiently advanced AI can get a hold of them, it's their own fault. -- RecklessPrudence

They called the AI Amoeba, for her abilities, but she preferred Amy. It was her job as part of the combat process to take over enemy facilities and seize all intel and hardware. She liked her

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Apologies and PLNs

First up, I forgot to publish yesterday's free story teaser. Whoops. Y'all knew about it from Facebook, Tumblr, Medium, Twitter, and Pillowfort anyhow. Right?

Well. Not Pillowfort, because it's still in Beta and I have zero followers. If you're on there, please follow me. Soon as it's properly released, I'll add the link over on my site menu.

I got a bad review for Comes Around. I missed the mark in big ways, according to them. Their opinion. And face it, what

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Challenge #01738-D277: Relative Sanity

(someone who is damn-near invulnerable and also has naturally-occurring venom that, in practice, works on almost all potential venomees pretty much like they had gotten mildly intoxicated, to someone who only seems to see them as a weapon and expects them to act accordingly): "Yes, I could drug people who aren't a threat to me, but I could also talk to them. Like a sane person." -- RecklessPrudence

People got entirely the wrong impression about V'lex. It was the whole alien invader

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Welp...

Once more a shiny idea has waved its butt seductively in my direction. The good news is that all my $5 Patreons will be seeing it next week. At least, that's how I assume the Patreon stuff works.

Yes, folks, I have started writing some The Adventure Zone fanfic. Including my headcannon about what Taako looked like before the Animus Bell adventure.

I'm already having huge amounts of fun with it, so my $1 Patrons are in for a treat.

Today, however,

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Challenge #01737-D276: Welcome to My Dungeon

"Would you let me decide already. Are you my eldritch patron from beyond the stars or are you my DM?"

"Kinda both." -- RecklessPrudence

The people around the table erupted in laughter. Karel giggled a little bit herself. "Yeah, I'm playing all the fucking gods in this game, and the big bad terrifying threat, so... yeah. I better get some respect from you assholes."

"And mountain dew," added Ferni.

"Well, duh. Of course mountain dew. That's what runs my magnificent brain and

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How the heck?

We went sideways without ever meaning to go sideways. Just... things went agley without anyone being aware that they were going agley in the first place and that's how they went... agley-er... than normal.

But at least I have PLNs. I'm going to hide the chocolate cake and stick to the healthier stuff. And we're making Crack Slaw tonight. I'm going to tone down the ingredients a lot so we don't end up having to balance fucktons of vegetables. And if I

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Challenge #01736-D275: Children Are...

“Are you a parent, by any chance?”

“Nah, but years of observation have given me all the tricks I’ll ever need and the resolute determination that hell no, I don’t want to deal with my own little terrors.” [Name] shuddered. “Kids are great. When they aren’t mine, that is.” -- RecklessPrudence

In days of yore, the oldest daughter was always considered a prize of a wife. She was already accustomed to looking after everyone else, and doing a majority

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Happy birthday to meee...

I'm now officially forty-five years young, dear readers. Today I have to deal with a dental appointment for Miss Chaos, and cleaning, because scheduling mess-ups yesterday. And the Instant, and the release of this year's All Hallow's Read story. And the regular stuff.

Master Mayhem has joined the musical 'band' I'm calling Ellipsis Addiction. We'll never tour, because it's just like... us having an argument over what sounds good. We'll keep going as long as it's fun, I guess.

If we do

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Challenge #01735-D274: Necessary Advancements

Magic is the science you don't know yet. The science you already know is engineering. -- RecklessPrudence

The nature of magic is one of constant debate. Any sufficiently advanced technology can be indistinguishable from magic. Any sufficiently analysed magic can be treated like science. But, overall, anything that can not fit into the rules of science can be called magic.

Conjuring is always a good one. Making things, even temporarily, from thin air defies the laws of thermodynamics. Levitation defies the laws

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