Dynamo – Part 1
BREAKING NEWS:
We didn’t elect an alleged sexual predator to the Senate. African American voters in Alabama: I owe you so much for the joy high I’ve been riding.
2017 has been one enormous, unending dumpster fire. On a personal, political, and fiscal level, I’ve never suffered such a series of losses and setbacks with no end in sight.
Then the Alabama election comes along, and I’m just wondering if there even is a bottom for our new political norms. The guy has credibly molested underage women, and he had the support of the President and the RNC. That’s… just… I couldn’t even.
But Alabama; Ruby Red Alabama, said enough was enough. I am floored. I am elated. Above all, I am grateful to all the Republicans who pushed back and said enough was enough. I am grateful to the Democrats who showed up from around the nation to spark this minor miracle. I needed this. I needed some pylon of sanity to cling to while I desperately try to tread water.
I hope it is a harbinger of things to come in 2018. I don’t hate Republicans or Conservatives or Christians. Some of my deepest, most lasting friendships are with people who are all three things as deeply as I am a Democratic Socialist. Yet 2017, and the Trump Presidency, have brought to the fore all the worst of all three things. More than anything, I just want us to heal the divides between us and start to work together again.
I love America. I’ve always loved what she could be at her best. Yet more and more, I’ve had to love America from a distance. There’s too many things that need fixing that those in power are actively tearing apart even faster than they were fraying. To find that maybe, just maybe, we can weather the storms and begin fixing the ship before it sinks is welcome indeed.
Okay, enough politics, on to writing.
I want to continue Pontifex. I really, really do.
However, as is usually the case, a new rabbit has appeared, and I wish to chase that however far down the rabbit hole I can go. Pontifex went deeper than they normally do, and I can assure you at some point in the not-so-distant future, that will become it’s own standalone universe.
For now, I have an idea which ended up being almost 12 minutes of verbal note taking. It too will probably see standalone work, but first and foremost I want to see what kind of story it is. So I’m going to spend some time hammering it out into a cohesive thing. I’d apologize for the abrupt change, but we all know I’m not actually sorry. This blog serves as a proving ground for ideas and doubles as writing practice for me three times a week. It also allows me the occasional vent, etc., but that’s the primary purpose of the thing.
That having been said, I do have news of a sort to share, and it’s that Patreon is no longer something I can pursue. They have made it blindingly obvious that they do not want ‘by your own bootstraps’ authors or artists, and that we do not fit into their profit margins. It’s not that they aren’t making enough money, it’s just that they could be making even more money, and that comes at the expense of supporting smaller authors. There used to be a way to obtain middle class writing fame, but like every other escalator upwards, they are being destroyed for nothing more or less than simple greed. It’s frustrating, but those are the times we live in. I’ll find a way to adapt, but that comes as a serious blow to my aspirations. It means the climb to full-fledged ‘able to pay all my bills’ authorship is that much further away. I don’t have to be a rock-star author, but I would like to be able to keep the lights on.
Onward with the writing!
Dynamo – Part 1
The walls of the trendy Neo-Palica cafe behind Agatha blew apart in spectacular fashion. The riot of colored metals and graphcrete artwork splintered as the impact of the explosion grabbed her out of her chair and flung her bodily to the floor almost twenty meters away from her spiced kayfa. Even the cutting edge sheathshield she had been wearing under her sundress hadn’t been enough to survive the full force of the explosion. Powdered graphcrete filled the air, but enough of the sheathshield had survived that she didn’t have to worry about it getting into her eyes or making her cough. She stood, vomiting as she got to the halfway stage. There was far too much blood in it for her comfort, but there wasn’t anything for it.
She gritted her teeth, blood showing in streaks across her grimacing visage, and pulled out the Mythic-III plasma cannon she had suspended in a pan-dimension sheath across her back. Her whole operation had clearly gone to shit, and someone was going to die for it. She grunted as the weapon finished re-materializing in her hands, and began a dead sprint across the floor of the cafe towards the smoking hole which would begin spewing forth shock troops at any moment. She smiled, blood running down her chin, and raised the cannon to firing position without even bothering to slow down.
To be continued….
Agathafully,
Justin
