The Pen Is Mightier Than The Sword discussion

Rules (Read First)
Apply to Judge

And....the moment you've all been waiting for......THE PROMPT!
Imagine you are floating in space, looking down at the earth from above. Write what you feel.
Ideas:
Write about the world as you see it.
Adress a world problem
Express how size is relative.
Basically, write about ANYTHING! It's super open to interpretation! But remember the prom as you write and et it influence your work :D

Fill this out:


Name:
Title: (Optional)
Story, Poem or link:

Name: Numey
Title: Earth, not the same now
Story, Poem or link:

Where the darkness feels welcoming
And the blue seems home,
There comes a time when we escape
Run away from our ground into things not known to all.
So one day in June,
I left for the place of beauty,
The space, the emptiness, the lone.
Not alone, but with my friend
Who happens to be a griffin, Zinn..
We soar the skies...we can still breathe,
We fly high...still we love the feel,
We're going away, but we know we have to come back,
Go back to the 'Blue Jewel'...
Go back to the abyss of Life,
Looking like a marble from up here,
Hanging in the place of dread
But Earth is not alone in kin...
Shining like a knight is the sun
Giving light, erasing darkness is the ball of fire,
Being the hope at night on land, the moon,
The whitish sphere that reflects the light,
That smiles a lot than be a circle at night
Seeing it from here makes me feel happy...
But that's not the end...of family,
More planets and stars prevail the black,
Seem so far, are yet so closely bound
They form pictures, like a child of creation...
They're twinkling, moving... living,
The beauty of words and worlds alike
Can be seen with us, Zinn and I
Will never forget to thanks the Creator the day we die..
The day we'll join the million twinkles,
The day the tears of our loved shed,
The day we stop breathing,
The day we stop dreaming,
The day we leave Earth, the troubles, the life
That day...might not even be 'day'
Might have the moon look upon us,
Not the warmth of the solar spectacle...
...with that last thought, we descend back,
Zinn's wings feel the drag,
Feel the wind, the air
We know, we do care
We love our planet even in crisis
The destruction out and within
Will not cease our dearness
To the planet that was our gift...
Down on the ground, no more the heat,
But the coldness of humanity...
Earth, not the same home now...
Earth, just is a home...to live.

It's a story and poem in one I guess... :)

Thanks :) It's something I just made up (:

CAN'T BREATHE!
Drowning in space but gravity, or lack of, finds me floating futilely, desperately, until finally...GASP! Hey, not bad, the air up here's cleaner & cooler & crisper than Earth's. It smells...sorry, spaced out a little there...I think the air might be a lot thinner up here too. I can't really smell anything right now but once my stomach starts rumbling, I remember the earthy smells of freshly brewed coffee & bacon so I slide down my silver thread waaaaaaaaaaaaay back to Earth. I'm hungry.

Name: Fang
Title: Out of this World
Story, Poem or link: Once, there was this young king and he dreamed of seeing the universe. His dream did come true... He had the opportunity of being a space traveler and in fact, that king was I.
So one clear dusk in summer of 2020, my space ship blast off. The countdown seemed like forever and I seemed ageless...but once I passed the atmosphere and stratosphere, the setting sun didn't set anymore, It had no horizon to dip into. The sky was not blue anymore, nor was the 'air' breathable and nor did I stand, I was in zero gravity. For minutes I was in awe, then I went back to my personal business, my job here was so secret that I didn't realize I was the only human who knew it. I, King Fang was a human, called into space to meet Vampaliens, a race of blood sucking vampires from Saturn. Just like their planet, they were relatively better looking than us Earthlings. My job was to have a peaceful treaty with them, I was the only ruler who knew they existed and they fed on my people. I had to stop them.
So I had our meeting on the Moon. They were to arrive there 23 hours after my landing. So I had plenty of time to see my kingdom from far away. My land looked blue, complementing my favorite color and my eyes. The sun looked bright and "see-able" and looked like my ambitions, shining and infallible! My next thoughts were about my family and I wondered what they would be doing, I let my thoughts flow...and fell asleep.
I woke when the alarm went off, reporting the arrival of King RedWar. I met his magnificent self, feeling quite unsure how wonderful I myself looked to him, not to mention how tasty...then I signed the parchment. His people would never feed on my race again, and so I descend back to my land, back to my family, back to my people, back to ruling, back to my room to have some good night sleep..
And now, the dream of that young king is over 'cause he woke up by the lick of his cat RedMoon.. ^^

great entries guys! I'm out this month coz of NaNo, but you've got a bunch of great pieces to pick from already!! :D

Was that for me, Charlie? ^^

Ohh....

Cool ^^

Liz
"The Musings of an Inorganic Substance on Life, Travel, and Weird Little Organisms (Translated for Humans)"
Story:

Being a piece of space debris can be a real drag.

Sure, you get to see the universe. And don’t get me wrong, there’s some pretty awesome stuff out there. Some of the smaller galaxies are pretty cool. Willman 1 was nice and cozy.

My favorite thing, though, is the nebulas. Big clouds of dust and debris, swimming together for years and years and years…until they aren’t nebulas anymore. They’re stars. Nebulas are where planets, solar systems, galaxies are born. Like most child-producing creatures, they’re incredible.

But you know what’s between Willman 1, those nebulas, and everything else? Space. And I don’t mean in a Final Frontier kind of way. I mean space. It’s nothing but big empty gaps of nothing for light-years upon light-years.

You get bored.

Right now, I’m floating through some backwoods solar system. It’s not that different from most solar systems. There’s a smallish sun in the middle, leading its planets around in endless circles (Well, not endless, I suppose…). You’ve got your jovian planets farther out, big and gassy, lots of moons sucked into orbit due to the dense gravity. There’s this one right near a run-of-the-mill asteroid belt. It’s huge. Somebody had too much space junk growing up, and it was this guy. For a moment, my entire view consists of the surface of this planet: violent, swirling oranges and browns. Pretty from up here, but the atmosphere must be hell. And it’s got a storm on it the size of some of the planets I just passed.

Beyond the asteroid belt, you get your terrestrial planets. What’s strange about these guys is that, strictly speaking, terrestrials shouldn’t have moons. One of them—the one closer to the asteroid belt—has two. The other one—the one I’m near right now—has one.

Some pieces of space debris figure space debris is mostly not alive. “Life” is a term that supposedly distinguishes organic matter from inorganic matter. Reproducing, eating, evolving…that’s life, they say.

Hogwash. I’m inorganic, and I do plenty of living. I cognate with the best of them! I’m not saying I’m a genius or anything, but I do just fine without any reproductive organs to speak of. Who are they to try and define life, anyway? Like anyone can! I’ve been floating around this universe for a long time, and I couldn’t tell you the first thing about life. Organic matter…pfft.

This planet has organic matter. I can see it, running around down there on that little blue planet. “Living.” Some of it’s just surviving. Killing and trying not to be killed long enough to have a bunch of fat, squishy babies.

Then some of them are just being weird.

Some of them are too busy to worry about something as silly as surviving. I watched them leaving their homes at the same time every day, leaving some other place to feed themselves, going back to their home, going out for another feeding, every minute claimed and catalogued away. And the things they build, the things they walk in and talk into and sleep on and swim in and fly in (They’re not prone to flight, it seems. Their arms are way too…well, unwing-like. So they built something to fly for them.)! They had molded rock and metal into strange, symmetrical shapes. Some of them reminded me of nebulas, their smooth curves and large buttresses, the way they glittered in the darkness…

I thought that these organic things were pretty clever.

Then I saw the way they killed each other.

I don’t have a problem with killing. It’s a natural part of the universe. I’ve been around, and I can tell you that cold-blooded, ruthless killing is the most natural thing anywhere. But killing isn’t surviving for these organisms. Some of them do it for fun, or for revenge, or for reasons that don’t seem to be very reasonable. They do it individually, compelled by urges that I can’t understand. And sometimes, they kill loads of each other. But nothing tries to kill them. What kind of animal lives at the top of the food chain and tries to kill itself off?

I don’t have a problem with killing. But this just seems silly. Laughable. You never see inorganic matter acting so…unpredictably.

And their mating rituals! Just look at them! Call me old fashioned, but giving each other plant genitalia just seems like an unnecessary step. Then they watch each other eat for a while, go to another place, drink for a while…then they’re just ridiculous. I don’t even know; stumbling around each other, endless (Well, hopefully not endless…) noise in the background, practically falling over each other. Then they stumble to the female’s home, but after all that fuss, fail to procreate. This process needs to be repeated two or three times before the female will even consider having sexual intercourse. Weird, weird, weird…

I decide that maybe these organic things aren’t so clever after all.

Awesome, Liz! Very cute & clever & I had to chuckle at your use of "plant genitalia", maybe because it's just that I like the word "genitalia" ^_~

Thanks! And there's no shame in liking "genitalia." ;)

Name: SteinFussel
Title: The World As I Know It
Link: http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/3...

short. just something that came to my mind.

Name: Just Joe
Title: The Earth as I See it
Poem:

Blue
Green
White.

These are the colors I see as I float up here.
Here in my abyss.
My escape.

Pain
Suffering
War

These are the flaws I see as I float up here.
This is my escape from the world below.
The sphere at my finger tips.

Hurricanes
Tidal waves
Tornadoes.

These are the natural disasters I see as I float up here.
Away from the grenade.
Ready to explode at any moment.

Love
Family
Passion.

This is what I remember as I float up here.
What I need.
What I want.

Slowly pulled back
To the earth I once drifted above.

D@mn auto correct :/ there fixed.

Just Joe wrote: "Name: Just Joe
Title: The Earth as I See it
Poem:

Blue
Green
White.

These are the colors I see as I float up here.
Here in my abyss.
My escape.

Pain
Suffering
War

These are the flaws I see as ..."

totally just technical but "title waves" should be "tidal waves" (we call them tsunamis here in hawaii, unless you were going for a literary ironic twist :) otherwise, nice poetry (i'm usually not big on poems cuz they tend to be too abstract & over my head but yours was very easy to read & understand, so thank you!

Hahaha thanks for that, I couldn't remember how to spell it! I knew there was a d but auto correct wouldn't cut me any slack! Lol thanks ^_^

Name: Harry Styles. Just kidding. It's Sarah!
Title: Blue and Green


Blue and green.

That is all I see now. I float almost weightlessly above the earth. I look down at. Nowhere to go, nothing to do. It is a lonesome task, just watching over the blue and green marble below me, but it is peaceful.

Over time, I have memorized the shade of the deep blue of the oceans and seas who's tides roll and tumble against the shore. My mind speaks the brilliant green color of the land where the people walk. I know every detail, every inch, by heart.

I sing to myself,

Blue and green,
Blue and green,
I watch the world below.

Blue and green,
Blue and green,
Where the wind does blow.

Blue and green,
Blue and green,
I watch the world below.

Name: Sakura
Title: Now I Can Rest



Dreamily I float along
This place I'm in is crystal clear
Quite a change from Earth's deep song
Here, it's happy. There, it's fear.

My wings are made of silken strands
My hands can brush the Milky Way
My eyes can take in everything
There is no night, there is no day

Who am I? Why am I here?
These questions that I know so clear
"I am.. I am..." I start to say
And then it all just slips away

Maybe this is earth after all
You see, I cannot seem to fall
No one is holding me down now
No one, no one, no one, no one...




I hear voices... where do they come from? Where?
Like I'm underwater and they're up there

"Little girl, wake up!"
"Her heart's stopped!!"
"What's wrong with her?!"
"CALL THE COPS!!!"

I'm drifting away
I'm floating
D
O
W
N
D
O
W
N
D
O
W
N


Dreamily I float along
This place I'm in is beautiful
I can hear the shouts and the cries die
Now I'm resting
Now I'm resting
Now I can rest



Good night

wow, Sakura, that is amazing! :)

I wrote something! I'm not enetering, but I'd like to show it off, if you don't mind!

I hear a car beeping and then I see it:
That car beeping, followed by an endless chorus of angry drivers impatient to get to work. A steaming, smelly city of clanking machines and unhappy people. Further out, a whole forest destroyed in oily aggression, world in anger and chaos of destruction.. Earth spinning wildly, fast, so fast, but unfelt. Earth flying around the sun, journey millions of miles, only 365 days to complete. Our solar system swirling madly around the milky way, to get sucked in or crash into the next galaxy over. Galaxies flung out from the center. The bang from nothing to something, to make this universe, darkness to light, a flash so bright our eyes haven’t yet adjusted. And we are just a tiny blue brown splotch that popped up, life living on constant edge of destruction, a colony that lived in the face of swirling chaos of infinite space, but there we are, with all our faults, but we exist.

And again I see it.

The miracle of existence, endless beautiful space. A trillion trillion stars, a million billion planets, teeming with life undiscovered. Our gently swirling spiral, afloat amidst bright nebulae. Our solar system, symmetrical and constant. Earth, hundreds and thousands of acres of unspoiled beauty. Infinite colors, the deepest greens, the bluest blues, a dusty brown, a fluffy white. And colors my human eyes cannot see. The color of hope. The color of love. The colors of all that is beautiful echoed in the minds of billions.

I do not hear that car beeping. Instead, I see a fluffy cloud that changes its shape as it passes a midday moon. It’s quiet.

Hey Charlie and Caitlyn awesome writing :)

Hmmm... looks like I have tough competition ;D

Name: Andrea G.
Title: Don't Look Back
Story

There are many things people think about when they close their eyes. They think about good, evil, right, wrong, the past or the future. It is very easy to get lost in the deep waters of our thoughts. But once in a while, when everything around us seems to disappear and we open ourselves to the vast world of our minds, a miracle happens. A miracle is a brief moment in which time stops and something extraordinary occurs.

Being an astronaut is not what everyone thinks it is. I constantly have to prove myself that being in space is worth all of the infinite tests I have to pass in order to stop for a moment and watch Earth from above. But as I watch the planet rotate slowly and unaware of society's day-to-day struggle, I feel that a miracle is about to happen, so I close my eyes and pray for it to come.
When I open my eyes again, I cannot see the Earth anymore. I'm not in my suit, there is no one around me, everything is quiet and cold, I don't feel the need to breathe, and my heart sinks. I've lost everything.
I desperately try to move in the thick, oppressing, space that surrounds me, but to no avail. I try to push harder, but my legs and arms only move a fraction of an inch, and I get exhausted minute by minute. In a strange moment of understanding, I suddenly stop struggling, and simply think about everything I lost.
I lost my dear wife, my children, my parents, my friends. I lost everything that was precious to me. Unexpectedly, I realize my life was just as any other's. While I was up there watching how small and pathetic the world seemed from above, I didn't comprehend the importance of that place. It is our home. It was our home, but not anymore.
Is it a good or a bad thing to have everything go away? There is so much evil around. Nobody really cares about the unfortunate, the poor, the sick or the lost ones. Nobody cries for the lonely boy who lost an arm. Nobody cares for the old lady who was rejected and forgotten by her family. Nobody cares for the starving children. Nobody...
While I'm having dark thoughts, a blinding light shines from a distance. It is a star; a star that pushes away the darkness and relieves the insanity, which was threatening to control me. In that exact moment, I understand a simple thing: It doesn't matter how great darkness can be, it is for these miracle stars that we live for.
I recall everything warm and joyful from my past. I think about my daughter's beautiful smile, the infectious laugh my wife had, the terrible jokes of my son, the ridiculous things I did with my friends, the fresh smell of spring, and the things I planned to do, but never did.
I begin to feel a strong determination build up inside of me. I just needed to believe in life, and to trust goodness still exists on Earth. So I close my eyes and believe with all the strength I can find in my heart.
All of a sudden, my lungs expand, I feel a strong force release me, and I open my eyes. The most wonderful thing my eyes have seen appears before me. It wasn't Earth, it wasn't my spacesuit, it wasn't my fellow astronauts. It was life.
After I lost everything, I won what was more important: faith in humankind.
I know what I'll do when I get back home. I will get off this suit, walk towards my house, open the door, and appreciate everything I took for granted before.
Happiness envelops me and I laugh to myself. And to think this happened inside my head. Space makes people crazy, but at least I'm a happy lunatic.

Andrea wrote: "Name: Andrea G.
Title: Don't Look Back
Story

There are many things people think about when they close their eyes. They think about good, evil, right, wrong, the past or the future. It is very easy..."

Really good!

Does anyone mind if I delete some posts? (Not stories, but chatting and critiques)

Name: Satish
Title: None

The letter was on the table in front of him. He was askance. Anybody seeing him would have said he was in deep thought but his mind was blank. He was unable to start thinking. Thoughts are like coaches of train. They must start at some point and then take whatever line. He didnt know where to begin.
He took another puff of his cigaratte. What games fate play It had to be now after all these years of miserable routine.
But in a way it happened for good. Though he loathed his job it helped him get money to fulfill his familial responsibilities. His sister was married now. His father had paid all his debts. He had built a comfortable home. Even if he had got the offer earlier he couldnt have gone there overlooking the responsibilities on his shoulders. Now was the time. So what if he got married and had a son. They could understand. They could wait. When he would become successful they would be happier too.
He could already see himself walking in the streets of Paris. Visiting museums and art galleries. Drawing the parts of bodies of his muses under the guidance of his reknowned instructor. Maybe he could romance with some of them. He smiled at the thought. And after 2 years he could be working on his own leading the life of an artist. This was what he wanted all his life. And this could happen now. The only thing was his wife and son had to manage without and wait for him for 2 years. 2 whole years. Could they? Of course they could. They would understand. Yes they would. And what about him. Could he also live without them? Its only matter of 2 years but was he sure about it. He drew another long puff.
An alarm bell rung somewhere in the room. His heart skipped a beat. It always did at that sound. He pressed the butt of his cigaratte in the ashtray andraised himself with great effort. After turning off the alarm he picked his coat and went out. It was his night shift that day.

Name: Kate Camp
Title: Urine Dump
Story, 944 words:

One of the first things kids ask about being in space is what the toilets are like. They wanna know what happens to all that pee and poo when it comes out, since there’s no gravity to pull it down. They wanna know if it hits us in the ass. They even wanna know what we do with it all. Kids are funny like that. Everything comes back to pee and poo. Or farting.

Well, I gotta admit, it is one of my favorite questions to answer when I’m doing Q & A back home at the space center. We’ve come a long way when it comes to space toilets. You know at first they didn’t bother? They weren’t supposed to be up longer than 15 minutes. Blame it on Murphy’s Law, but the first manned space flight got delayed and Shepard had to piss himself. Let’s just say after that, the engineers started coming up with answers for when nature calls.

First, they came up with this contraption that slipped over your Johnson and vacuumed away the piss. Downside was it could be painful if you didn’t do it right and it had a tendency to malfunction and send a spray of urine out into the cabin to float around like a liquid yellow asteroid belt. Not something you wanna get hit with. And if you had to go number two, you taped a bag to your bum (shaving said bum before takeoff was genius) and, due to lack of gravitational pull, had to do the pulling yourself. Yep. Then you had to open a capsule of germicide into your bag and mush it around in there. A sensory experience better left unexperienced, if you ask me.

Needless to say, astronauts bowel cleanse and go on a low residue diet before launch—even now, when taking a dump in space isn’t such a pain in the ass. Now we have toilets with nice handholds and footholds and thigh clamps to anchor us down. We have a tiny toilet bowl that uses airflow to (gently!) suck away everything into the proper waste receptacles. Some toilets are even equipped with a camera, so you can make sure your hole lines up with the hole. No more manual sewage treatments, either. Poop gets vacuum dried into little bricks, nice and odor-causing-bacteria-free, sealed away in special baggies. The air used during this process gets filtered and recirculated through the cabin, sans smell. The space station even has a toilet that filters the urine into drinking water, so there’s no need to dispose of it. (Don’t worry; it’s better than the tap water back home.)

But where does it go if we aren’t drinking it? Out into space, of course. We make urine dumps. And I’m gonna tell you that it is the most beautiful sight in space. All that urine instantly freezes into millions of little ice crystals, an expanding hemisphere of sparklers. Then, when the sun hits it, and it vaporizes, it downright takes your breath away. Millions of sparkling crystals balloon out from the shuttle and flash like jewels in the sunset. I would’ve proposed to my wife by that sight, if I could have. And actually, once back in ‘09, the shuttle had such a large urine dump (from holding it for ten days while being docked at the space station) that you could actually see it from Earth. Stargazers all over were convinced they witnessed some rare astronomical phenomenon, when actually they were just watching 150 pounds of astronaut piss get vaporized in space.

So what are we doing up here, ejecting our bodily fluids into space? (And our poop—which floats like freeze-dried jetsam in its special little port-a-pot craft, to make its own shooting star when it burns up upon destructive re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. There’s another beautiful sight—shooting shit stars, but I digress.) If our piss instantly freezes and vaporizes out there, what does that say about the fragility of us? Up here, our blood flow slows and our bones thin and our muscles atrophy, and that’s within the belly of this hulk of metal and technology that we depend on to keep us alive up here. I don’t know, but the risk of death up here is worth the wonder of it. Give me osteoporosis and flabby glutes any day so that I can float inside the confines of this spacecraft, watching the beauty and magic of a urine dump with our Earth in the background. To be out on a spacewalk (with my handy-dandy MAG—that’s Maximum Absorption Garment, aka adult diaper—on), just floating in space solo, able to look down on our planet, with its vibrant blues and greens and swirling whites, is a feeling like no other. A feeling I can only describe as euphoric, almost out-of-body, ego-inflating and humbling at once.

But kids don’t ask me about that. They don’t ask me what it feels like to look down on our home or to see the distant galaxies or to see, up close, the luminescent surface of the cratered moon, like some corroded pearl. They want to know if my shit hits the fan. Literally. So I give them a little history lesson on the evolution of the space toilet, let them sit on one in the exhibit, flip on the vacuum and the camera (that gets a lot of giggles), and tell them about the urine dumps. Tell them that one of the most magnificent sights to see in space is the direct result of our presence up there, doing our biological best, excreting into the vast universe, the ultimate egomaniacs.

Okay, so who won?

Well seeing as November is over, I'll read through the entries again and talk to Charlie. Then we'll decide. It may take more than a couple of days, as the last classes of the semester are this week, and I have a few major end-of-semester assignments due.

Hey then when will we have the December context?? o.O Do we get a prompt? I think that would give us something to think and work on?

I'm not a judge & it may already be past the deadline but Kate's got my vote: crystallized urine in precious space equals PRICELESS!!!

Thanks Caitlyn. :) As Charlie said in the broadcast message we should have the results up sometime tomorrow (hopefully). I should have my essay finished by daylight, which will free me up to do other things.

THE RESULTS ARE IN!





And the winner is.....
Liz, with her great story "The Musings of an Inorganic Substance on Life, Travel, and Weird Little Organisms (Translated for Humans)"!

This was the hardest decision yet. So many great applications. It seemed terrible to cast aside the stories that came so close. Therefore, I am pleased to announce the second place entry, which goes to...


Kggelen and her story An escape from Reality!

Congrats Liz, and Kggelen!

Liz, you are honorary moderator for the month, and we'll be in contact!
Kggelen, soak in the praise :)

Thank you! And congrats to Kggelen, who is an excellent writer! :)

Kggelen wrote: "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!? SECOND PLACE!!!!!!! I WAS SO NOT EXPECTING THAT!!!!!!!! THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!!!!!! AND OF COURSE, CONGRATS LIZ!!!!!!!"

Yours was AWESOME!

Congrats Liz and Kggleen !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nice job Liz, and well done Kggelen. Also thanks to every one who entered. Your entries made Charlie and I really have to stop and think. There were some great stuff here. Keep up the good work.

Congrats guys! :)

Carrie wrote: "I'm not a judge & it may already be past the deadline but Kate's got my vote: crystallized urine in precious space equals PRICELESS!!!"

He, he! Thanks!

Congrats to the winners! That was fun.