THIS CITY IS A BITCH

This week in the CITY:

The Gourd is grown. The Gourd is grown!

Citizens are invited to gather around Gourd Square to celebrate the final growth stage of the glorious Gourd and mourn the loss of those who once called Hemlock Square their home.

Citizens are invited to bring their best carving knife to the Gourd to carve festive wishes into its flesh.

Citizens are invited to beware of slime-covered hands that look like their own, reaching out from crooked jack-o-lantern grins.

Citizens are invited to have a wonderful time! :)

Weekly Writing Prompt: Growth. How has your character grown?

This week in the CITY:

Every single citizen gets an Amber Alert on their cellphone, radio, TV, telegraph sounder, Sega Genesis, gramophone, and palm pilot at once. It is the highest possible alert from the Mayor. It reads:

Weekly Writing Prompt: Transformation. Write about a change to your character: mental, emotional, physical.

This week in the CITY:

Breaking News: Gourds.

Scientists and social media personalities have come together to collab on the first ever, never before eaten, edible gourd. It is reported to have a “licorice-glue” taste and “blood-clot”-like consistency, and, if successfully grown out of its chrysalis state, will be roughly two miles in diameter and have a density roughly half the mass of the closest known black hole, Sagittarius A. 

There is an Instagramable pop-up available for social media personalities with over 0.666 followers to take pictures with the writhing, oozing, incomprehensible, dreadful, ghastly, revolting, photogenic fruit. 

If you live close to Gourd Square --Previously known as Hemlock Square--, you are almost certainly already under inescapable danger. 

Happy autumn!

Weekly Writing Prompt:

Autumnal. Write a prose piece with as many autumn-y touches as you can handle.

This week in the CITY: 

“It’s just a dream,” your parents might have told you when you were a child and woke up in a cold sweat in the night; convinced that whatever had been lurking behind your closed eyes was here to swallow you up for good. “It’s all in your head.” 

Not anymore. 

You bring whatever nightmares you dream this week back with you into The City. 

The Mayor’s Office issues a general public bulletin after an entire street of Beacon Boulevard is sunk beneath a sudden, colossal hand. 

 BE ADVISED THAT THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN SUBJECTIVITY AND REALITY IS PARTICULARLY THIN THIS WEEK, it notes. 

 SWEET DREAMS! 

 Weekly Writing Prompt: 

Dream a little dream of me. Write a prose piece centered around this lyric. 

This week in the CITY:

The Birds melt into slick and oily puddles where they stand. The City streets become a cracked vein of black gold. 

At first, the pools reflect only the buzzing neon signs and sin-stained faces that stare down at them.

Then they begin to reflect more. 

Some of the things they show you are true. Some of them are not. Some of them are your worst thoughts, dredged from your subconscious and twisted into new and awful life. Some of them are things you want, so desperately, that you are tempted to reach through, into the dark, to feel them in your hands for just a moment. 

 You would be wise not to. Those who have given into the allure of the glossy water often stare back from the other side, mouths open as they beg you to pull them back out.

Weekly Writing Prompt:

Show, don’t tell. Pick your favorite quality in your character (positive or negative) and show it in action. You cannot tell us what the quality is. 

This week in the CITY:

A flock of birds has arrived in the City - or perhaps they’ve always been here, and only decided now to coalesce. 

You’ll hear them by their chattering first - the chirps and squawks and screams and whispers. You won’t see them until they decide to move.

The tree you were walking past on the street will seem to dissolve into a flurry of feathers, claws, and beaks, and once they leave, you realize there was never a tree there in the first place. 

Next it happens with a dump truck. 

Then an entire series of electrical wires. 

Then a building.

What’s next?

Weekly Writing Prompt:

Birds of a feather flock together - What does this phrase mean to your character?

This week in the CITY:

It’s Back to School season! Students flood back into public school buildings like water to be contained for the remaining months of the year. 

More important are the sales that every storefront is offering.

You Need a College-ruled Notebook. You Need a 3-ring Binder. You Need a Sharpened No. 2 pencil. 

Don’t walk out of the stores without them.

Weekly Writing Prompt:

Education. What is your character’s opinion on school?

This week in the CITY:

City Residents are advised not to approach the beach. A large dorsal fin at least five feet high was spotted out in the water. 

You hear whispers: A dorsal fin ten feet high was spotted out in the water.

You hear whispers: A dorsal fin fifteen feet high was spotted out in the water.

You hear whispers:  A dorsal fin twenty feet high was spotted out in the water.

A tooth washes up on the beach and makes the front page of the papers. Nobody’s sure what size it is.

Weekly Writing Prompt:

Rumors. 

Remember that weekly activity requirements are one (1) in character post on your blog, and one writing piece of at least 250 words every two weeks. You may use the weekly happening or the weekly writing prompt to inspire your pieces, but that is not required if you have another idea you would prefer to write instead.

This week in the CITY:

For one week of the year, the ever-present fog and smog of the City parts, revealing uncomfortably clear skies. You must avert your gaze. 

The Sun is out. 

The air is oppressive, and every Citizen sweats the second they step outdoors, rivulets of water, blood, and ichor dripping down backs indiscriminately.

The Sun does not bring heat. It is simply present, never leaving the sky, even during the night. It hangs above your head, a constant reminder of your mortality and the futility of your own existence. 

Sometimes, you think it blinks. 

Weekly Writing Prompt:

Summertime - What are your character’s summertime rituals OR depict one of your character’s most treasured memories of summer.

Remember that weekly activity requirements are one (1) in character post on your blog, and one writing piece of at least 250 words every two weeks. You may use the weekly happening or the weekly writing prompt to inspire your pieces, but that is not required if you have another idea you would prefer to write instead.

This week in the CITY:

This week, every radio station is playing Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles, on loop.

Every time you pull up Spotify on your Gramophone, you will listen to Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles.

Every time you hear a street performer playing a song, it will be Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles.

Every time you hum out a tune or pluck out a song on guitar, it is Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles.

Here comes the Sun.

Weekly Writing Prompt:

Here Comes the Sun - Start your piece with any of the lyrics from Here Comes the Sun.

Remember that weekly activity requirements are one (1) in character post on your blog, and one writing piece of at least 250 words every two weeks. You may use the weekly happening or the weekly writing prompt to inspire your pieces, but that is not required if you have another idea you would prefer to write instead.

This week in THE CITY: 

It's time for the City Census. 

Questions will be posed to you by your fellow citizens; answering these questions is mandatory. The Mayor has helpfully put out a list so that you know which secret numbers you should utter to unlock which answers from your fellow citizens. 

Remember that the Census helps the City get valuable information about you and your communities so that you can best suit its needs. 

Information is Power. 

Power is Information. 

 Weekly Writing Prompt: 

Write a dialogue between two characters composed either entirely of questions, or without any questions. 

Remember that weekly activity requirements are one (1) in character post on your blog, and one writing piece of at least 250 words every two weeks. You may use the weekly happening or the weekly writing prompt to inspire your pieces, but that is not required if you have another idea you would prefer to write instead. 

Yes -- unless stated otherwise, applications are open year-round.

This week in THE CITY:

Messages, messages, whispered to you through the whistle of the wind from the subway grate; written on the inside of your eyelids; in the dregs of your coffee grounds when you pour them down the drain, even though everyone knows you’re supposed to throw them out.

Words sewn into the hem of your clothes, coded in the numbers station that your Spotify and record player inevitably turn to; grown into the curling roots of your dying houseplants and formed in the sentence fragments from flipping through your aging TV channels.

They come out of your landlord’s mouth when he comes to collect your monthly rent. They are tattooed on the fingers of your local grocer when she hands over your change. They drip in black mold down your ceiling.

They are insistent.

They must be read.

And, ever-present in you, pushing up against the back of your throat like a budding, blooming weed, sprouting out between your gritted teeth, scratched into your palms by your fingernails when you awake in the night: your own words, insistent.

They must be heard.  

It is Pen Pals For Life Week, a new City-wide initiative by the Mayor. Failure to participate will result in an often-fatal wellness check by the Librarians.  

Weekly Writing Prompt:

Standard weekly writing is suspended for Pen Pals for Life Week! Here are the RULES for this week’s event:

Every character must exchange correspondence with their ASSIGNED PEN PAL at least three times. The mods will send you your character’s assigned PEN PAL over Discord beginning MONDAY AFTERNOON. Let the mods know if you are available to participate! 

It is not mandatory for your character to reveal their identity to their PEN PAL. No names will be attached to your character’s correspondence.

The City Postal Service, at City Hall’s request, will not be delivering letters sent on standard pen and paper this week. 

Letters must be posted on the dash and tagged ‘offline’ and ‘pen pals week’. 

This week in THE CITY: 

There is something in the air.

Nobody knows what it is, but everybody is allergic to it. The City is filled with watery eyes and dripping noses; watery noses and dripping eyes. It’s hard to focus. 

Be careful how many times you sneeze. One means people say things about you behind your back. Two means people have forgotten there is anything to say about you at all. You wave and you raise your voice and you throw yourself on the floor and you beg for the recognition you so desire, but there is nothing there for you anymore. Three means someone’s in love! Four, well. 

It is in your best interest not to get to four. 

Weekly Writing Prompt: 

“Bless you!”