Writing Prompts

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A community dedicated to writing prompts!

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The dulcet notes of a music box roused the dreamer. They let out a low groan and stretched. A mirror of all mornings previous. Their room was a cocoon of darkness perfectly tailored to their tastes. They fumbled forward, slowly rising from the floor, and knocking aside a few items in the process. They traveled in the direction of "forward" until their outstretched hand bumped into a closet door, from which they retrieved a cup noodles container that was miraculously not crushed, and a plastic bottle of water. They pored the water into a mug that they hoped was clean enough to not make them sick, then lightly tossed the empty bottle to the side. They slid along the wall until they reached a corner and squatted, narrowly avoiding smashing their knee into a microwave on the floor. As their water heated, the faint glow lit the room enough for the figure to be both disgusted with their room and themself. "I'll clean it tomorrow", they half muttered to themself, but it was as empty of a promise as it was yesterday. At the sound of a chime, the room settled back into comfortable darkness.

After breakfast, they moved to their working corner. The now worker's room was divided into three sections: one corner was their sleeping corner, then there was their cooking corner, the next was their working corner, and lastly was their empty corner. Discounting all of the trash, there was no furniture, and to anyone who wasn't used to the smell, it reeked. They didn't mind it all that much though. Due to an old think pad they had purchased a long time ago, and their knack for IT (along with certifications they had acquired earlier in life) they were able to pay the rent of their one room apartment, and get groceries delivered to their door, so they never had any real reason to leave.

After clocking out, they returned to their sleeping corner and scrolled until they felt tired again. As they were perusing their media of choice, they came across a will you press the button meme, their favorite meme type. This time, the text stated: "Travel to a world with magic but be transported in your current body."

"Stupid", they absentmindedly mocked how uncreative this meme was, but added "but easy press". At the sound of verbal acknowledgement, neon blue outlines of boxes appeared encasing the body as if they were trapped inside of a voxel model of themself. At the bottom of the outline, the voxel encasing the top left portion of their foot flashed then vanished taking flesh with it. The pain was the worst they had ever felt in their life, and as their body spasmed and the outline mirrored, the next closest voxel to the missing one flashed. This time the pain pushed the now screamer to blackout.

A gentle warmth frustrated the dreamer rousing them from their pleasant dreams. They squinted their eyes open, and as was already apparent, they were outside. This was the first time they had seen sunlight in years. With a start, they remembered the now non existent pain and looked down, but every part of themself was accounted for. They were irritated by light and unfamiliarity, and now at the sound of their stomach rumbling, their irritation of unfamiliarity compounded.

//Note: My last post had more negative reception than any other I've posted before and no one left feedback as to why, so I'll assume it is because I talked about myself in the notes. I will try to avoid that from now on.

//Note: If this post doesn't fit in this community please let me know. I'm happy to take it down and not post this type of content here.

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Each tick slammed into the person but they knew that the sound would never end, at least it hadn't stopped since they could remember. They still couldn't filter out the sound and it had taken an effect on them. Their movements had become mechanical, and their speech almost robotic in cadence. And yet no one they confided in believed that the sound was real.

They counted each tick instead of sheep as they drifted uneasily to sleep. Though as the sun crested the mountains, and as they were roused from their sleep, they became violently nauseous. The frequency of ticks per minute had increased.

//Note: I haven't been able to write much recently due to school and working on writing both a game engine (I've been working on it for around two years and it finally is in a state I can make a game with it) and a game. But I will try to reserve time to work on writing more writing prompts. I have an idea for the next one, I just need to get to writing it :)

//Note: I apologize for the post formatting. I copy the text from neovim (which is what I use to write) into the post body and for some reason it doesn't word wrap within phtn.app

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Before opening their eyes, they felt around their face to see if they were still wearing sunglasses. They silently cursed as they weren't able to find what they were looking for. With nothing else to do they hesitantly opened their eyes, and were surprised to be greeted by a cool darkness.

There seemed to be a crowd gathered around them, but either due to what had caused them to pass out, or due to being overwhelmed, the noise was a distorted drone that didn't feel all that pleasant to be surrounded in. They sat up, the lightness of their body distracting them for an instant, then looked around. Faces smooshed and bunched together around them, but when they opened their mouth to ask the crowd to give them some space, the realized they couldn't speak.

A bit frightened, they looked down and realized they were looking at themself, or rather a cadaver of themself.

Ah, so I'm dead.

The thought didn't scare them as much as they thought it should, but it could be because they were still overwhelmed by the buzzing crowd.

Suddenly, their dark world lit up, as if a light switch had flipped on. They quickly shielded their eyes, and after a moment, decided to see what was making all the light.

Directly above them was a beautiful sphere that could only be described as perfect. And for some reason they knew that everything they ever wanted would be given to them if they went to the light. The pull was as strong as any bug towards a streetlight. And they felt their body slowly lift above the ground.

everything I ever wanted traced itself lazily around the inside of their head. But the closer they got the more they noticed the pain. Light — always — hurt.

A deep fear pulled the thoughts, as if unmasking them, causing the traveler to quickly flip around and start clawing towards the ground. Somewhere between a few minutes and a few hours passed, and then the light vanished.

//Note: As this is my first post in this community, please let me know if this type of writing prompt does not fit within this community. If it doesn't fit, I'll take it down.

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I have closed the lemmy.world community, and redirected it here.

Should benefit everyone :)

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From an AskLemmy question by @SVcross@lemmy.world

Link to Lemmy World Post

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Example:

Darren operated the mouse and keyboard, aware of them only as mundane extensions of himself, told his computer's web browser to establish a connection with the address called "Amazon." As if an online "marketplace" (powered by an ever evolving, manipulative artificial intelligence) bore any resemblance to the wilderness that used to cover the earth.

Especially when said stretch of wilderness was already a fraction of itself, eaten up for strip farming or land speculation by dozens of corporations driven by the same profit-seeking mindset that motivated Amazon itself: infinite growth.

Millions of microscopic lights flashed to show images of "products you might be interested in." Darren, like any other person, had to constantly relearn how to push past and ignore the suggestions. A subtle arms race between humans and the AI built by the rich to control the poor.