'>>23354712
Yuki gripped the caribiner rail above her with all her strength, her hips swaying side to side and her knees buckling as she struggled to keep her composure.
Having been occupied, and seated, for several hours, she had not noticed the growing pressure in her bladder until getting to her feet again, and now she found herself again in dire straits, but this time without even the relative privacy of the medbay. Though her UTI had been improving steadily thanks to Nursey's daily dose of super science medicine (thanks, doc), her bladder was now overfull thanks to her her insatiable, feverish thirst, and she was trapped in place and maglocked to the floor, with the eyes of her unit upon her as she shook her hips back and forth in a bizarrely sensual loop as insistent trickles of urine started down her thighs into her space suit despite all her best efforts.
Her suit comms crackled to life. It was Nursey.
"Come on, Sato, it's alright. Give it up, stand ready."
Yuki hung her head and surrendered to her painful and humiliating ordeal, feeling the eyes on her although her accident was hidden by her protective suit - due to her own stubbornness, as she now realized. The urine puddled in her magboots and her privates felt like they were on fire from the burning agony. Her knees buckled and she hung limply by her carabiner until her bladder was empty, then sheepishly re-assumed a ready stance and trained her laspistol on the obscured portal, avoiding any potential eye contact with her team.
The grinding continued, seemingly making some slow progress, and the team remained braced for decompression, but the promised disaster was not forthcoming, and after some time, the sparks ceased.
Still they remained ready, fearing some final blow was about to undermine the portal, but Sarge soon spoke over all comms, informing them simply that the trappers had arrived, the replicants were neutralized, and to commence what repairs could be arranged within their power budget, as they would proceed to Magellan on aux impulse, but with the security of heavy trapper escort.

>>23355716
Yeah, I know what you mean, it's like a growing undertone of fatalism/behavioral sink/destiny, you mean? Dune (the first one) really leans into this theme to the point of Paul's prescience taking the form of simultaneously striving to avoid a warlord's destiny and temperament, but eventually realizing it willingly rather than succumbing to it, even as he philosophically sees other possible destinies slipping away from him, in a combination of the male navigator intuition of likely outcomes, whatever it's called in the book, and the female bene gesserit training yielding advanced cultural intuition that ends up cementing him to the Fremen cause more than his own personal circumstances otherwise would have. I don't know a term for it either.';

'>>23357385
>it's like a growing undertone of fatalism/behavioral sink/destiny, you mean?
Sorta. What matters is not the specific theme used (like fatalism), but rather the fact a theme is introduced early on, in a very gentle way, and as the story goes on the theme oscillates back into the fore like a spiral and grows more and more intense until the climax of the story. The events of the story should feed directly into the theme, and if done correctly the moment of climax will be so powerful that the theme briefly obtains a sort of "universal power". The classic example is obviously Oedipus Rex, since it's fatalism like you mention, and there are hints early on that one's destiny cannot be escaped. Hamlet does this too. Personally I was never a big fan of how its handled in these two works.

What actually inspired my post is a documentary from 20 years ago. It's called The Great Happiness Space and depicts the host club phenomenon in Japan. Even if you don't care about the subject, its writing is absolutely brilliant. I recommend you watch it blind but if you want to know what's so good about it then:
Like most Western documentaries on Asia, it starts out pretty quirky and light-hearted. Initially, the mood of the film is "Wow what an exotic and silly thing!" But as the documentary continues the silly and fun scenes gently fade away and get replaced with oddly somber scenes. At first you think, "Oh that's weird. There's a sad side to this, but it'll probably go back to normal soon". And so it does. The bleak scenes fade away and things become relatively normal again...

...Until they come back. Digging deeper into the topic becomes like exposing a nerve, it just keeps getting worse, and you realize this whole thing is a tragedy of unreal proportions. Beyond a certain point the film is unable to soften the blows anymore and so the final 10 or so minutes is just falling off a cliff, a spiral into pure heartbreak. In the final scene you hit the bottom, and it's pure, pitch black despair.

It's very similar to The Sun Also Rises, honestly.';

'>>23358206
Thanks for the spoilers, I will actually watch it blind when I have the time if I can find it easily, in order to get a better idea of what you mean.

>>23357385
"Alright. Med bay open...uhh. One second." Nursey stepped the bedpan, long since shaken from its perch on the table beside the door by the many C-Beams, reached out for the towel still barely hanging from the table, quickly dropped it in the puddle on realizing it was rather damp, and went to get some more from a cupboard, fumbling with her still-cramping hands.
Yuki removed her helmet and shrank back into the corridor.
"Sorry, everyone."
The other crewmates looked away awkwardly, embarrassed for her, aside from Griggs.
"Come off it, Sato." He guffawed blithely, still hoarse. "You've been ill, nothing you've done wrong. You must know how it was for us, just leaving you out there and nothing we could do about it. If not for our good friend Fugbenis here, we'd have had a black trip back to Magellan. No one blames you a bit, it's just a mercy you've pulled through at all."
The tripodi disengaged its situational camoflauge and stepped forward from the wall is had set itself against. Yuki, who had quite forgotten about its presence since the depressurization orders were called, startled a bit and blushed deeply, somehow far more embarrassed to have her humiliation witnessed and dispassionately analyzed by this outsider in a more complex setting. The tripodi, though, spoke with surprisingly apt social diplomacy given its limited sample data.
"Indeed. There is no more need for worries. We have all come preserved, if not unscathed, through a very difficult time, thanks at last to your Magellan Trappers, but with no small credit to all aboard. Forgive my ignorance of your structures, but I do not know what damage this portal has sustained. Given the extent of damage to this vessel, would it be too much overreach of custom to request permission to weld over it? I know my presence is imposition already, pray take no offense."
"Of course, and careless of us all not to tend to it sooner." croaked Griggs. "Anonson, you're all right, son?"
"Right as rain." Anonson grinned, his old jovial tone already returning.
"Bring our guest a hull plate or two, and while you're at it, can you to take over for me in situating some accomodations for him? That craft's no longer habitable - it's the least we can do."
"Right away, quartermaster. Lucky we kept a few extra hulls in the supply closet."
"Anonson, please set our guest up in my quarters." Wrygraves chimed in. "It's not ideal, but the main deck is best - our hatches are ill-designed for tripodi, and besides, there's plenty of room. You can just move my desk up near the door, and put together some dividers in the back. If that's suitable, of course."
Fugbenis bowed mildly. "Your hospitality humbles me."
"Alright. In, in." Nursey beckoned from the medbay door, and Griggs and Wrygraves followed her in.
Yuki hesitated, shooting Nursey a pleading look.';

'>>23358423
As the lieutenant and quartermaster struck up a conversation in sick bay, and Anonson took the tripodi to the janitor's closet for some welding kit, Yuki took the opportunity to make her case to Nursey.
"It bled some but it's just a small cut. And I'm really getting better. Please, I'll be back by the time you're done with them. I just need to go below...change, clean up."
Nursey shrugged unhappily. "Just take your time down the hatch. Up, too."
Nursey ducked back into the med bay and began tending to Griggs, leaving Jane and Yuki awkwardly standing together.
"Well. I'm sure I'm overdue for seeing that aux thrust doesn't crap out on us. You hang in there." Jane ducked out in her usual abrupt way, heading back to the engine room.
"Going below, Sarge."
"Copy." He called back from the bridge.
Yuki waddled disconsolately into the port antechamber, piss sloshing about up to her ankles in her mercifully airtight magboots, cycled the hatch, and very gingerly began to descend the rungs to the lower deck. Her boots were unusually heavy, with little in the way of actual tread, and it was the first real physical exertion she had had since her long moonside crawl and subsequent illness, and by the time she found herself back in her familiar home turf of the ship's kitchen, she was all but exhausted.
Finding at last the privacy of the below-decks toilet, she locked the door behind her and shuffled over to the sink, heaving a long sigh of pent-up mortification and running her hands over her face and her fingers through her disheveled hair several times over, hating to see herself in the mirror. She stooped and splashed water onto her face several times, then shuffled back over to the toilet to begin unlocking and unzipping her spacesuit.
In front of it now, a sudden urge and stinging of her urethra struck her and she quickly crossed her legs, pivoting on her heels and lowering herself over the toilet while pulling her spacesuit down around her. Legs still crossed and thighs pressed tight against one another, the last remaining contents of her bladder trickled and tinkled down through the seat of her uniform and into the bowl.
Half points?, she thought. At least the burning and stinging was more tolerable now, if still quite painful.
She pushed the little foot rug away from the toilet, towards the door, and unzipped her spacesuit further, maneuvering her submerged feet uncomfortably until one after the other they finally popped free. Her bare, saturated feet slid precariously on the tiles as she stood up, but she managed to balance well enough as she went about detaching the suit from the magboots. To her dismay, a good quantity of pee dripped out from the legs as soon as they were separated; she threw the suit on the tile for now, and carefully lifted each heavy boot to empty it, cringing all the while.
She grabbed a towel out of the cupboard, mopped up the floor piss as well as she could with her feet, dried them, and threw the towel over the suit.';

'>>23358477
Looking down at her soaked uniform, she strongly considered stripping bottomless before heading to her room to avoid some further mess, but decided it against it just on the off chance someone did have reason to be on the lower deck. She knelt and sat down on the now fairly wet towel, soaking her crotch against it until it was no longer dripping, and made a run for her room, straight into Anonson who had just exited his own and was heading for the hatch on the far side of the kitchen.
"Yuki, I didn't - uh, Sato, I didn't see you there, I..."
She stepped back, flustered, realizing she had left a wet patch on his pantleg from the collision.
"My mistake, I just, uh, I..." she gesticulated desperately with her hands, "Well, I g-guess at this rate you'll just be getting used to seeing me like this. Uh."
"I, uh...no, I um...I thought, in medbay...it's not...I needed..." Anonson stammered incompetently, holding up a toolkit from his room.
"W-well, I've gotta...ch-change..." she breathlessly slipped past him and scampered off to her room, ears burning, still breathless from the shock and her various exertions.
Locking her door, she immediately peeled off her bottoms and spandex delicates, leaving them on the floor. The top, too, was wet around the hem, and worse for perspiration, so she removed that as well. Now ready to dry herself, she groaned in irritation realizing she had forgotten to bring another towel from the bathroom.
Past caring, she thoroughly dried her thighs, behind, and pussy with her uniform shirt, tousling her bush vigorously as she went. She flopped down on her bed, worn out, figuring she was dry enough. What an infuriating, uncomfortable return trip this had turned out to be. She dried between her legs again, working the shirt more vigorously, then stopped a moment.
Am I horny?, it occurred to her. It HAD been a while, between everything going on.
Nursey likely wouldn't be ready for her for a while, and while she was very eager for a hot shower and sure everyone else was as hungry as she was, it could all wait.
So Private Sato granted herself several minutes of personal leave in her bunk, and rose to redress herself feeling somewhat rejuvenated already.
She grabbed some biscuits and a treasured bottle of champagne from the barracks larder on her way back to the main deck, laying them out on the common area table to tide the troops over until she found time to prepare a proper meal.
Medbay door was closed, and looking in she window she found Nursey busy tending to Wrygraves' burns. Nearly to the main deck restroom, this time more prepared and knowing where her towel was at least, she bumped into Jane, who was returning to her quarters, her hands and forearms smudged in engine grease.
"Sato."
"Be out of your way in a minute here. Just need a quick...shower."
"Right, all yours. It's cribbage tonight, if you're up for it."
Yuki smiled, surprised at the suddenly friendly demeanor. "Sure. I'll make fajitas."';

'>>23358536
The shower was heavenly. Yuki finally got the blue sand out of her scalp, and every various corner and crevice Nursey may have missed during her illness. She made certain the shower was spotless, dried herself thoroughly, and once she had donned her new uniform, she began to feel like herself once more.
Medbay was ready for her and Nursey was looking much better. Patching her cut didn't take long, and Nursey had her lying down in the midst of a full medical scan when she remembered something.
"Nursey. I need to run below deck again. Can this wait?"
"Oh no you don't, we're halfway into this already. Whatever you're doing can wait a bit, instead."
"Nursey, I left my spacesuit down in the bathroom. I didn't get a chance to clean it, please, I don't want Anonson to find it."
"Well, he IS the janitor, you know."
Yuki sighed exasperatedly.
"This is getting ridiculous, though. I don't want to be the piss cleanup lady."
Nursey rolled her eyes.
"Fine. Just stay here while the machine finishes."
"You don't have to, Nursey."
"I'll be back in a few minutes. Lie still."
Nursey headed below deck into the bathroom to find Anonson had already gotten out a mop and was scrubbing the inside of Sato's spacesuit clean in the sink, humming quietly to himself.
"Anonson." He jumped slightly.
"Didn't see you come in."
"Because you weren't in here. I did this."
"You did...? Ah, right. You did this. Yes. You'll be done soon."
Nursey loitered around in the kitchen while Anonson dried out the suit with a shop vac, took it and hung it up in Yuki's room, spent a few minutes looking over the autowelded internal cargo bay door, and then, judging that to be long enough for a hasty cleaning, returned to the main deck to reassure Yuki and wrap up the bioscans.
Now off meds and cleared to leave medbay, Yuki returned to normal duty and got together dinner as promised, and the whole crew enjoyed their first largely normal evening aboard since the xenomoon burned.';

'In the middle of the desert three brothers arrived in their sports bikes in an isolated bar. On front of it, only a worn pick up truck. Getting out of the bikes none of them took their helmets out. The one in a black race suit with orange details picked up a wrench from his bike. The one in the white and green race suit picked up a car battery. The final one, in yellow, picked up a flare gun. They entered the dusty bar. The sun lit the room pretty well, which looked as an old western bar. Empty, but with one exception, a kid sitting on top of the bar counter opposite to the entrance. His feet dangling.

"So you came back," said the kid. "Have you decided to join me after all?"

The yellow king walked closer to the kid. "We came to burn you down" He said.

The one in green approched his brother on the front. "We will make you suffer for what you did" He said.

The third keep quiet on the back, not moving an inch.

"You sure?" Said the kid, pointing at the black brother. "There is no coming back from it."

The more expressive brothers started to feel unease. Looking back and forth at the kid and their brother, holding the wrench on his right hand, lit from behind by the sun light coming from the open door. No response from youngest brother. Still stationary.

The kid's loud laugther startled the brothers ob the middle of the room. "You know what." The brother with the flare gun raised it, pointed at the kid and shoot. It hitted it at the its chest, falled on its lap and engulfed the still laughing kid in smoke.

The day became night. All around the bar, a blazing fire started. The brother in orange, now lit behind by flames in the night.

The brother in yellow was never found. The brother in white was found heavily burned on the side of the road by a passerby. The building was now in ashes. And the kid found naked sleeping in the truck was hugging the black and orange helmet.';

'>>23360653
Interesting. Do go on. Did the brother who accepted his offer get absorbed into a gestalt with the kid or something?';

'>>23357381
"You are the God Geophon, yes? The one whos sneeze shattered the mountains, no? So much for the wisest of gods... Why are you here? Do you reveal moral truths?
"Nay."
"Hmph. Suppose I offer you the testicles of three goats. Four from aging bulls. And two teats from camels—
"I seek no offerings."
"Then leave, O wise Geophon. Lest I show you what wasting my time means.
"So be it. [He turns and steps down the hall way.]
"Stop."
[Geophon turns once more and holds an amused stare.]
"Your actions—these are moral truths in themselves, are they not?"
"I reveal nothing sacred."
"Then explain why you are here. Surely a god has reason and logic and a firm grasp of time, not like those of tossed men—beasts whos strength exceeds our own.
"I am here to listen to your explanation, King Ieres, that even in the presence of a god, you remain commandeering.
"Your sneeze, Geophon, destroyed mountains. Your mere spit could fill oceans. A cough? Entire tectonics shift. Geophon, you hold the power of utter obliteration. If it were up to your lack of control of your own bodily functions, you would have annihilated me ages ago.
"So?
"So you must be a kind god."
"You are asleep, dreaming of false tales. King Ieres, what if I'm evil?
"Well, suppose you are kind. What is it must I fear? And if you are evil, I ask again, what is it must I fear?
"I reveal no moral truths."
"As you say... Yet I am learning from your words. Even now, I am learning that no action is still action.
"Even children come to realize what you have just realized. This is nothing new."
"Ahh. If there are children far wiser than me, then let me listen."
"I will say one thing, as I said before: you are, indeed, asleep. You are dreaming of me, of you, having this conversation."
"It matters not. If my dreams reveal wiser truths, then it matters not whether truths come from dreams! You have given me a great hint."
"Come then, let us walk in this dream of yours. Let us tend seeds. Let the world age a thousand years in a thousand seconds in this head of yours. And see what truths they reveal."';

'>>23360886
>didn't close quotations
damn what the fuck was i thinking? (i wasn't)';

'>>23357381
I like this format, anon. Freewrite and stream of thought pieces should have a place on this board. I, too, dislike how /wwoym/ has become a hugbox for r9k expats and general misogyny. I don't care if anons want to be misogynists, but stream of thought or flash fiction shouldn't be *only* about how women aren't kind to the author. Maybe this format will challenge the current /lit/ dynamic! Something to appreciate.';

'>>23361003
Thanks for the vote of confidence. Honestly, I have almost entirely avoided /lit/ since it was added and in general I think it is the very worst board on 4chan aside from the sexuality ones (and maybe 2020s /a/). But this time instead of trying to discuss literature with the il/lit/erates here I decided to just start writing purely whatever I felt like, which led me to make these threads. Be the change you want to see, I guess.
>>23360886
The rare double tsun couple, but it's "this was revealed to me in a dream", kek
>>23360893
Don't worry about it, it doesn't matter in this thread. Beyond simple grammar I typed anterior two or three times when I meant superior somewhere back in my posts.
You can always copypaste to notepad to fix it up after posting and rereading.';

'A few weeks ago, a new taste entered the back of my tongue -- the rancid taste of ash and cigarettes. I'd constantly hock up saliva and fold my tongue trying to gather all the spittle but it never went, so I bought a tongue scraper which worked. Then a few hours later the taste returned. There's a strange pleasure to using a tongue scraper which no one mentions, and I thought if I had to use one multiple times a day I really wouldn't mind. But before long I found the culprit: a bag of New Orleans blend coffee from under the shelf. I quit the coffee and things went back to normal. No rancid taste since.

There aren't many anecdotes like this in stories which is a bit sad. I think writers must have a true love for life, not for what we would like it to be, but simply for what it is. We come into this world as children loving life, and slowly lose that bit-by-bit until we have but a small handful of treasures. Good art helps us reclaim that love of life. It shows us there is beauty in mediocrity, in dirt. Life persists in the quietest moments and burns on in the dark.';

'>>23359300
The rest of the trip back to Magellan passed quietly. Other than the occasional comms chatter with the trappers, the crew were hermetically sealed off from the rest of the galaxy for now, but that wasn't much different than regular space travel. No one was eager to risk breaching the internal cargo bay door and turning the ship into a spacewalk with repairs being so uncertain, so Wrygraves had no access to his inventory, but aside from that and the presence of Fugbenis in his quarters, not much had changed for the crew.
Yuki finally had a chance to hear the account of the battle from the perspective of the rest of the crew.
Early on, Fugbenis' craft, maglocked port, had taken heavy damage from the surprise attack, including its weapon systems going offline entirely. At first they had been occupied with fleeing, but once the main engine was struck and the assault continued, they needed a chance to get Fugbenis safely inside, but the port hatch was already damaged and they could not risk opening the airlock. Fugbenis resolved to ram the pursuing vessel as the only practical course, but Sarge was against it and engaged a hardware override to keep the port maglev at max and curtail a suicide mission. Nursey focused especially on splitting C-Beams aiming for Fugbenis' craft. Once Yuki woke up and ended up taking over piloting, the rest of the crew were busily spacewalking back and forth from the superior hatch over to Fugbenis' craft with Nursey watching over them, making various repairs, modification and reinforcements to it on the fly, passing each other supplies, and so on until eventually they had outfitted it with a sort of piercing cone to act as both weapon and crumple zone for a ramming attempt. Anonson and Jane also rode along for the joust, in order to rig up an explosive charge to sacrifice the cone to detach themselves again from the replicant ship. The plan was to slip past the line of fire and implant the spear through the enemy hull and into the sealed circuitry box behind the C-Beam generator, and Fugbenis managed to strike the exact called shot at significant velocity, immediately disabling the weapon.
This all went as well as could be expected, no doubt thanks largely to the tripodi's precision piloting, but the structural damage to the craft was intense, and it was just able to make a rough landing over the superior hatch, hence the need for the timed maglev engage they had previously set up with Yuki. The craft was cut into to evacuate the three inside, and despite some trouble getting Fugbenis down two decks through vertical human hatches, but in the end none of the three were injured despite the craft being totaled.
It made for a heroic tale, and one which doubtless would be widely mythologized back at Magellan, but Yuki couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy at the closeness between the rest of the crew while her own ordeals had been solitary and their aftermath only served to distance her from the rest of them.';

'I noticed a hole in my wall a couple of months ago. It's about as big as a chicken's egg, 1.73 meters from the floor. The hole is on the inside of the house, on a wall on the second floor. I flashed a light in and I saw nothing. I shoved a pencil in and accidentally let the go of it. I don't know where it went.
I pressed my ear against it and I heard nothing. Finally I armed myself with with courage and shoved a finger in. There was no change in temperature, no wind, no stillness. I moved around nothing and tried to touch the wall from the inside, instead, I felt my own hand when I flexed my finger, as if there were no barrier.
There is no echo when you scream into it. I placed in a long copper cable. It didn't fall, no wind moved it, there was no resistance from any surface or substance. The cable just kept going in somewhere, until I let go of it. Then it was gone forever.
I tried the same with a camera. The camera recorded pure black, and when I let of it, it was gone.
I began shoving trash inside. At the beginning I still felt as if the trash was going somewhere, pilling up. It ocurred to me that I could fit in piece by piece and entire human being and no one would ever find out.
I placed a poster on top of the hole. After several weeks it began wearing down the paper and finally made a hole through it. I've been observing it for years and luckily it hasn't grown an inch, but I need to regularly change whatever I hang in front of it.
I hung a framed painting of Jesus on the cross, it tore through his abdomen. I hung an iron eagle styled after the same that hung on the Reichstag in 1939. It rusted out. I hung on a high definition TV. It stopped working after a couple of weeks.
I nailed a rat to the wall. It's beginning to smell really bad, but I don't want to touch it yet.
I haven't told anyone about the hole.';