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Geckobrawl Bug Catcher (403 words) I twisted the insect net in my hand and pushed my way through the dense brush ahead. I’d seen the butterfly flutter ahead of me in a stray beam of sunlight twisting through the canopy. One sure foot after another, that was the key. I needed that butterfly. It technically shouldn’t exist in this forest. Pale opal steaks lanced through its butter yellow wings, an enigma among collectors and scientists. I didn’t have much time before they were all gone, no one had ever found the caterpillar, or seen the adult lay eggs. We collectors like to call it the Yellow Lady in our private circles. The glade is quiet apart from the rustling of small animals and the call of birds, I can smell the warmth and wet wood of the forest, that slightly acidic tinge the earth adds to the air. I take a step and I see something ahead on the trunk of a willow tree. It opens it’s wings. It’s the Yellow Lady, finally. I take a step towards the tree the butterfly rests on and it doesn’t move. I take another step and it flutters its wings, it doesn’t move. One more step. And it flashes into the sky a streak of light moving fast through the forest. I give chase, I’m running, dodging trees, trying to keep my eyes on the creature as it darts in and out of the dark green foliage. My only hope is that it doesn’t fly up. I burst out of the tree line into a tall grassy thicket. The soil is soft and I try not to slow down as the mud captures my boots in its grip. I sprint through the thicket and swing my net, the butterfly swerves and I swing again. Another miss. The butterfly gained a foot and I lunged forward net outstretched. I swung down and over the butterfly right into the ground. I had the little beast. I twisted the net shut and stuck my hand into the hole and slipped the butterflies wings gently between my two forefingers. Streaks of opalescence embedded in pale yellow. I sighed and let it go. It righted itself and made a bead over the canopy of the forest and out towards the coast. I breathed in the living forest around me and turned back the way I’d come. It wasn’t about the butterfly, it was about the chase. HiddenGecko fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Jan 12, 2013 |
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# ? Feb 15, 2025 23:00 |
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HiddenGecko posted:Geckobrawl On the one hand, I hate butterflies because they creep me the gently caress out. On the other, Iorel only has like 40 minutes to post something.
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I hope he remembered we're in the midst of a slap fight. ![]()
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THUNDERBRAWL - Toan vs. Seafood Wanted to refine this a little more but the next three hours just got busy. Consider it a handicap since I guess I initiated this. Weeding (100 words) It’s her cooking I miss the most. Taste of homegrown vegetables, peas and carrots. She kept a garden out back, nothing serious. Couple weeks ago her tomatoes bloomed. That is what they do, right? Bloom? God but they were beautiful. Planted last spring, ripe and red. Didn’t pick ‘em. Couldn’t. Just…looked from the window whenever I passed. Sometimes a minute, maybe more. They rotted, eventually. In a week. Took me a week till the stench of the flies and the neighbors finally got to me. Even as I picked them, bruised and broken, I still wished I hadn't.
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iroelbrawl Anamnesis I don’t know if it ever happened to you, dreaming about people whose companionship is so charming you feel like you’ve known them all your life. And then waking up and realizing you haven’t the slightest idea of who they were. It often happened to me, especially when I was a child. Back then I clung to the memory of those people because I was sure there must have been some meaning behind them. Despite my efforts, I forgot them, one after another, with the same ease one forgets any dream. Except for one. Well, almost. You see, I just remember her hands, her voice and the place where I met her, a place where I had been before. So I went back there, to Nova Scotia. When I woke up at the Castle Rock Country Inn it was late in the morning and dark outside. The saturnine sky loomed over the brilliant fiery colors of the beech forest springing up as the backdrop to a plumbean lake. The whole house felt empty. Cars were parked outside and a boat moved slowly in the distance as if the lake were really made of lead, but you couldn’t hear a thing except the slow rustle of leaves. I went downstairs hoping to find breakfast -- I was starving, I never eat on planes -- only to find that the meal had already been served. The feeling was so different from when I visited with my parents: back then it was spring and even the air was as light and luminous as were the days, or my mother’s laughter. I remembered my father playing Satie on the piano after our morning walks and wondered how I could have forgotten that. I approached the woman behind the reception desk, who was aging by the hour. I asked her how long she’d been working in this place and whether there were any girls working here ten years ago. I watched her hands as she fiddled with a keychain and didn’t answer my questions. She asked me where I’m from and what my profession is and all those questions you really don’t want to answer because they seem to be all you ever talk about. Noticing my lack of interest, she asked me if I wanted something to drink, or maybe to tour the house and maybe see the other rooms, even the other guests’ empty rooms. I decided to kill the time until lunch by taking a walk in the woods just outside the inn. I was relieved to be surrounded by the tall and slim trees. When you are used to living in the city you forget how vast and lonely the horizon can be and how vertigo can catch up to you with your first glimpse of the reunion line between sky and earth. Trodding on a carpet of red leaves, I picked up rocks one after another and lifted each one at arm’s length, hoping it would shine, but no sunrays pierced through the canopy. I wanted them to shine as they had so many years ago while I was breaking them with a little pickaxe. Their golden sparkling reassured me of their value, which I was trying to grasp by breaking them into smaller and smaller pieces, so that I could leave the dull gray parts behind. One time my mother intercepted my hand to show me that there was no need to break the rock because on its surface it bore the imprint of a fossilized leaf. I looked back to re-examine some of the rocks I had just thrown away to see if they had any fossils, but I had no pickaxe with which to split them. I walked towards the pier from which you can view the whole panorama of the basin. The shoreline lifted itself well above the water in the distance. Its walls, steep and black, a repository of millions of years of geologic memory and a testament of the perennial action of the water, were mocking me. As my memory faded day after day, and I struggled to maintain the ever so distant memories of what I held dear, nature was posing in front of me, mocking me with its silence. Nature is in its glory indifferent to us men, and our passing ages, and yet the faithful and secret chronicler of our every event. Unable, then, to recall the reason for my trip, I thought that after this long walk, I might as well have lunch and then sex with that woman. Iroel fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Jan 12, 2013 |
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I'm in, gonna write me a satirical poem about death. The person after me, the poor dear, must ![]() ![]()
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God, Hidden Gecko, Iorel post your wordcounts, you amateurs.
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Thunderbrawl LIST EDITION: Bad “My List Comes with Pictures” Seafood vs. toa “My List Comes in White”noradian Prompt: “rotten food” Being Human (100 words) Grazia and Domenico looked at the block of cheese they just dropped. It had split into many chunks. Translucent maggots wriggled out from the cheese, sploshing in pale yellow liquid. The maggots jumped around Grazia’s feet. Although they didn’t reach him, he fell backwards. His right hand landed on a piece of cheese and squished it. Grazia stared at the cheese on his hand. He squeezed it. “This is a very soft cheese.” He began to drool. “Grazia, don’t,” Domenico said. “The cheese’s rotten!” Grazia bit it. “Still good.” A maggot landed on his face. He chewed. If I have 50 more words I can add stereotypical Italian phrases like “Cor blimey”, “감사합니다” or “Will this have dicks?”
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I haven't gotten home all day (i'm still out after having been to work) so i did the edits on the phone. I'm not sure about the final word count. It should be around 750.
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Iroel posted:I haven't gotten home all day (i'm still out after having been to work) so i did the edits on the phone. I'm not sure about the final word count. It should be around 750. 762, you buttlord ![]() However, I will reserve my judgement until the morning, because I am drinking right now and don't want to read words.
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i'm in. and gently caress all if i'm 37 minutes late. if someone else comes in late and is allowed: their poem must have an anthem quality and use at least 2 made up words
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Sign ups are closed. Letting in Twinkle Cave 'cause he's a superdude. You have 47 hours to complete your submissions. May God have mercy on your souls.
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And while we've got top people looking into whether or not Benagain ever really existed, let's bring everybody up to speed. SurreptitiousMuffin - Submitted Must contain a guitar, a tunnel, and a juicer. If poem contains rhymes they may only be internal because English let's you finagle out of that sort of thing. Noah - Submitted Poem must be a sestina. Capntastic - Submitted Poem must be in iambic pentameter. Hidden Gecko - Submitted Poem must be in limericks. Budgieinspector - Submitted Every third line must contain an enjambment. Swaziloo - Submitted Must contain the words "Mouth-friend" and "Frigorific." Poem must be nautical in theme and feature zero birds. Canadian Surf Club - Submitted Must contain one line that is also a palindrome. V for Vegas - Submitted Must begin and end with the same word. Toanoradian - Submitted Poem must be in free verse with short lines divided into syntactical unit stanzas of 4 to 8 because V for Vegas hates you unintentionally. Sitting Here - Submitted Must contain a geologist. Fanky Malloons - Submitted Cannot use the word "Death." Supermikhail - Submitted Must contain a non-Western funeral rite. STONE OF MADNESS - SUBMITTED MUST CONTAIN THIS RADICAL PICTURE DRAWN BY SUPERMIKHAIL THAT I'M TOTALLY NOT GOING TO LINK BECAUSE YOU ALEADY DID. Blackfrost - Submitted Must contain an acrostic spelling out ONLY DEATH IS REAL. ![]() Symptomless Coma - Submitted Poem must be in haiku. Etherwind - Submitted Poem must be in epic poetry. Zack_Gochuck - Submitted Poem must rhyme but can never use the same rhyme twice. Areyoucontagious - Submitted Poem must be a ballad, no shortchanging. Monkeyboydc - Submitted Poem must be in iambic pentameter because Areyou is lazy. Poem must be a concrete poem must be a concrete poem must be. Poem must be upbeat and optimistic. Your Sledgehammer - Submitted Poem must be from the perspective of a dying man. Prolonged Priapism - Submitted Poem must be satirical. Twinkle Cave - Submitted Poem must be at least 5% nonsense words Twinkle Cave made up. After submissions have closed, each of you will be given one of these fine people (or Muffin) to crit. Your crit will neither positively nor negatively affect your chances of winning but is generally a nice thing to do anyway since the judges tend to be brief. How much sympathy you will be given for having to critique poetry will directly correlate with how much of a bastard you were with your flash rule. Happy hunting. Bad Seafood fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Jan 14, 2013 |
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Bad Seafood posted:SurreptitiousMuffin - Submitted
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Noted and edited. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go off and wonder how I landed guest judging poetry week twice.
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FLASH RULE: Every third line must contain an enjambment.pre:Itlacoanotzalhuan (821 words) The arbors of Mictlan shine an oily blue beneath the ghost of the moon; an anthracite shimmer like the back of a crow’s wing. The stems bleed when cut, but the fruit must be harvested and the vines stripped. It is here in the sweet, black grapeflesh that we find the glass seeds, bitter and lethal, which the god’s blind miller grinds beneath an opal wheel into a fine flour of stars. You and I are the lord’s guests. We walk arm in arm from the daylight dream, as though we were old friends. You totter along on a crutch of hawthorn. I drag palm leaves behind us to make the path forget our passing. The hall has no door. It reeks of dust and jaguar piss. Faceless maids in tattooed peccary skins offer a cup of peppered chocolate, then lead us to a room tiled in turquoise. They stroke the gorge of an amethyst owl’s head. Its beak parts, sluicing green water, steaming, and strewn with orchid petals, into a crystal bath. Silently, they divest us of our rags. They hang your crutch on the owl’s talon; it grasps the offered prey. Naked, we sink back—- our tired, knotted bodies brining in perfumed emerald; sweat licking the road from our skin. You doze, and I study your rutted brow, the hollows beneath, the pinched and seamed ruination of years spent wanting. Your thicketed nostrils flare above slack lips and a flecked stream dribbles into the snowy scrub beneath your chin. I can see why the lord called you; your wheeze and rattle marks you as his. But I am still young enough to hunt, plow, and fight—-to sow as many sons as there are hours —-what claim has he on me? We dry and dress in maguey paper suits, following the maids to the master’s table—-a giant obsidian tortoise shell, overturned. The glassy slats of its belly suck the light from a ring of tallow candles wafting sooty smoke. We stand, listening for the approach of our hosts, but our only reward is the crackle of fatty hempen wicks. A shudder of the air marks their arrival. He is freshly-flayed, slick and resplendent in gold bracelets and a headdress of owl feathers. She, in her aspect as Queen of Bones, wears a gown of purple cornsilk and a beaded onyx sash. For the occasion, a delicate moonflower winks from each socket. You creak to your swollen knees. I follow, pressing my forehead to the tile. In a voice like an empty well, she bids us to rise. Servants bear rich savories for the feast: Rabbits stuffed with cactus and huitlacoche; troughs of acocil in lime; baked duck eggs rolled in chipotle and masa; cool tejocotes; stewed iguana; roasted tapir, rubbed with achiote, on a bed of boiled squash. I do not see who gives me the scorpion pipe, but I suck at its sting, and its venom is a lavish stormcloud in my lungs, driving lightning through my head. You pinch the corner from a tamale and grind it to the floor in honor of Tlaltecuhtli. Our host rolls his eyes. “Idiot!” I hiss. “These lands are beyond the earth; crumbs dropped here cannot ease her suffering!” You bow your withered head in shame. You cur, you wretch—have you no pride? You are a slug-trail pretending to be a man! Show your belly to the ditch-dogs, that they may roll you over and mount you from both ends like a spitted pig! Contempt wrings my guts. I eat without tasting. The lord speaks in a gristle whisper: You may find the next course more toothsome. Then before us, a terracotta morning glory—-red petals huge and folded tight. Masked servants gently peel them away, revealing a pyramid of black glass. Brilliant spirals, brighter than any jewel, rotate lazily within. Perhaps your friend might break the bread? “He is no friend of mine,” I say. “I found him squatting beneath a hawthorn tree, lashing together a crutch from a green bough, and I took pity on him.” Oh? You think him a stranger? Perhaps, but he knows you well. You are the new nation; he is the crumbling ruin. Your scars are scattered jungle trails; his are wide and twisting roads, branching byways, forgotten and faded. But your maps match. In the longest of your possible lives, it is his face you wear when your heart finally forgets how to beat. I give you the meat of my mills, risen in the living fire of the sun, cooled in the space between worlds. If you hate your companion, eat. You will die young and strong, never knowing the indignities of age. If you are brave, though, pass the plate to him. Call him friend. Forgive his infirmities. Rest the crust on his gray gums. He will become as starlight; a burning pulse in the freezing void. Now... choose.
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Aright, list is finalized, meis I'm pretty sure I hosed up your prompt initially so I'm sorry about that. If you don't see yourself on there or you think your flash prompt is wrong then bitch about it and I might do something. Edit: I have a job and a social life, which I must now sacrifice for THUNDERDOME. ![]() Benagain fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Jan 12, 2013 |
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Fanky Malloons posted:762, you buttlord I know, I know. It's one of those slips like constantly misspelling my username ![]()
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Iroel posted:I know, I know. It's one of those slips like constantly misspelling my username Touche. It's in my head like that forever now though, so you'll just have to deal with it. ![]() PS: Judgement of your Thunderbrawl will commence imminently.
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Hey! I'm not lazy, I'm just poetically uncreative. ![]()
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THUNDERBRAWL JUDGEMENT: HiddenGecko vs IroelHiddenGecko posted:
I like the quiet appreciation of the landscape that you worked into this. Even though I hate butterflies, the narrator’s awe of the horrible bug can easily be a metaphor for my intense lust for the wilderness of Cape Breton. However, your incorrect use of “it’s” and a random tense change at the end do not work in your favour, so let’s see what Iroel (spelled correctly, WHAT) has to offer, hm? Iroel posted:
Your descriptions sound very technical and cold, lovely as they are. I feel like you just googled up some pictures and described them to me, and that you may or may not have ever actually been in a forest. Also, you went over the word limit and that last line is the worst thing, because I loving hate it when people pull that random, non-sequitur, I can't-think-of-a-real ending poo poo. I'm going to toss a coin. Heads, Gecko wins, tails, you both lose. I'll report back shortly. Edit: I flipped two coins at the same time (one for each story) and they both came up tails, so I guess the universe agrees with me that you both lose. I guess this thunderbrawl is going to have to go to ROUND TWO. Fanky Malloons fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Jan 12, 2013 |
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I don't think that you hate the last line because it's a non-sequitur. Because the logic is pristine: Afraid to forget -> Understands that nature is silent and indifferent -> Forgets and pays the price for looking in the wrong place (the price is cynical matter-of-factness. I think you don't like the last line because the message of the story is "gently caress you nature, you are not beautiful and you suck, art is where it's at". And the last line is essential to drive home this point. Edit: ready for round two.
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Iroel posted:I think you don't like the last line because the message of the story is "gently caress you nature, you are not beautiful and you suck, art is where it's at". And the last line is essential to drive home this point. Actually, the point is that you suck. But so does Hidden Gecko, per my above edit.
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Fanky Malloons posted:Actually, the point is that you suck. But so does Hidden Gecko, per my above edit. I do agree. And I know you don't care, but the first paragraph and the last line where actually born together and then I worked in the middle. The reason I'm saying this is because I fail to understand why the point didn't get across (to understand which is one of the reasons I'm submitting my writings). Anyway I wanted to make a proposal: what if the contestants of a thunderbrawl had to analyze in depth the other challenger's writings after the fight is settled, in the same way we have to do with the pairings for the regular contest?
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Iroel posted:I do agree. And I know you don't care, but the first paragraph and the last line where actually born together and then I worked in the middle. The reason I'm saying this is because I fail to understand why the point didn't get across (to understand which is one of the reasons I'm submitting my writings). Blah Blah Blah Stop talking and get ready to write and make sure it can stand on its own this time without you having to jump in and defend it.
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Martello fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Apr 9, 2013 |
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HiddenGecko posted:Blah Blah Blah It's because I believe that my work will stand on it's own that I can allow my self to be annoying (I'm a stupid newbie afterall). But again it's not a defense, it's an attempt to understand why I'm misunderstood. And again, I'm being misunderstood. Iroel fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Jan 12, 2013 |
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Martello fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Apr 9, 2013 |
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THUNDERBRAWL In the finest tradition of monkey duels, watch as I hurl feces at my opponent. pre:Night Dawn strips illusions away Darkness, dearpale light forcing them out is when I can love you,muttered lieslovefirst wrapped in dreams and secret empty mimicry of emotions shadows, hands reading soft wordsnot even aches anymore from the curved tome of your bodysleepwalking through drumming soft slow along your spine endless rituals decipheringyouPlease don't listen,false intimacy, to the lies squirming slowly out.blood on demand truth comes from dark placesstone heart wants deep in the soul to stop beating buried please
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Iroel posted:It's because I believe that my work will stand on it's own that I can allow my self to be annoying. I had to learn the lesson a long time ago that, if more than one reader doesn't grasp what I'm trying to say, the work probably doesn't stand on its own. And readers who don't understand what you're trying to say can't tell you how to communicate what you want to communicate... because they don't understand what you're trying to say. Best to break everything down to first principles and keep rebuilding from the bottom up until you get your point across, then work backwards to figure out why the original configuration didn't do what you wanted it to do.
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Benagain posted:THUNDERBRAWL This reminds me of when I wrote a sonnet about love and farts for my creative writing class. ![]()
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Good my message came through.
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We're getting into Saturday evening Noah. I'm expecting that poem soon.
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![]() ![]() Time to squat over the ceremonial Thunderdome Judge kazi and unload a few dozen pounds of impacted wisdom. Bad Seafood vs toanoradian 100 words, "rotten food" toanoradian: being human Reading toa's stories sometimes make me feel like I'm watching a Javanese redub of a long-running Uzbek soap opera, with glitchy english subtitles. Which is loving awesome. I liked the greasy physicality of this piece, the nausea of it. It doesn't try to set a scene or tell a story or demonstrate character, and is all the better for it. Just some dudes and their delicious maggoty cheese. Strong work. That said, you don't get much room for error in 100 words. I couldn't parse the physicality of dropping a cheese, falling backwards and having your hand land on the cheese you just dropped. So knocked back a notch for that. Bad Seafood: weeding Though it doesn't have the visceral punch of toa's piece, this one is tight. Steps up, lays out its cards, sits back down. And it's a beautiful bit of craft for it. I think you could have cut the final 'still', but otherwise the writing in this is exactingly good. Strong work. Judgment They're essentially neck and neck, but I'm going to dock toanoradian a bisected maggotsworth of a point for the falling over thing. So the narrowest of victories to Bad Seafood.
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A domer asked Martello, "Why should I waste time on flash fiction when I'm trying to finish my brilliant novel?" Martello replied, "I certainly like both pork chops and prosciutto!"
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It's more like "why are you applying to work in a French Restaurant if you can't cook ramen."
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HiddenGecko posted:We're getting into Saturday evening Noah. I'm expecting that poem soon. Oh sorry, it's only 1pm here. Poem is done, just shaping it. Can you give me a deadline?
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:It's more like "why are you applying to work in a French Restaurant if you can't cook ramen." That's not obtuse enough. It's a koan you kunt.
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Noah posted:Oh sorry, it's only 1pm here. Poem is done, just shaping it. Can you give me a deadline? let's say 4pm your time. Just so you have a hard number to work with.
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# ? Feb 15, 2025 23:00 |
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HiddenGecko posted:
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