zombiephilosophers

[zombiephilosophers]

8.

Sometimes my grief is a sound.

A sibilant echo of you in a strangers laugh,

A snatch of a song that played on one of our dates.

A tune you hummed while you were washing my love off of you in the shower.

Sometimes my grief is a place.

A square on the seafront where I first realised I wanted you.

A shop we got donuts from one spring afternoon.

The floor by your bed where you told me about Her.

The park where we held hands for the first time.

Sometimes my grief is a smell.

The salt of the ocean, my tears, and chip dates.

The smell of food I learnt to cook for you.

I smelled your shampoo on a friend of mine the other day and had to hold back tears.

And sometimes my grief just is.

Sometimes there is no visible reason, sometimes there is no obvious connection, sometimes I'm in the middle of joyous delight and suddenly you have invaded my thoughts.

You are an imperial power I cannot escape,

A conquering force I am helpless against.

A foreign army that is waging war against my walls.

And I am powerless to stop you.

- A Grief of Many Colours

#my writing #original writing #poem #poetry #grief #heartbreak

[zombiephilosophers]

7.

Today I woke up and was angry,

I awoke in a tangle of sheets and rage - my breathing puncturing the air.

This was not a massive change from normal,

What was different however, is that I was angry at me.

How dare I take you back?

How dare I forgive the things you did?

How dare I apologise for my tears?

I'm so overwhelmingly angry at my weakness, at how you seem to be the newest tool in my arsenal of self destruction, at the ways in which I seem to find the things worst for myself and then I gorge on them.

At this point, you are self harm by another name.

- I Still Don't Trust You.

#my writing #original writing #writing prompt #writeblr #writing #poem #poetry #heartbreak #toxic relationship #forgiveness #cheating #self destruction #self harm

[zombiephilosophers]

6.

I wish I was like those women in stories.

Strong. Gracious. Proud.

But when you broke my heart I turned into a gorgon,

Spewing venom,

screaming death,

clawing until your wounds matched mine and our blood mingled

into an impressionist self-portrait,

our rage and hurt inscribed bloody on the floor.

And after all of that, I still took you back.

- At Least We Match

#my writing #original writing #poem #poetry #heartbreak #betrayal #blood #gorgon #medusa #mythology #writeblr #writing #cheating

[zombiephilosophers]

5.

Once upon a time

There was a boy and girl.

And they were in love.

Once upon a time

There was a wolf and a girl and a grandmother.

And the wolf ate the grandmother, and attacked the girl and the beast ended up dead.

The girl survived but with scars on her skin and her soul.

I wonder how often her dreams were painted with blood.

Once upon a time

There was a girl in a tower.

A dragon and a Prince battled over who would get to keep her.

I wonder

Did anyone ever ask her who she wanted to win?

Did she ever wish it was the dragon?

When the Prince carried her off to her 'happy ever after', did she weep for the monster that had died defending her?

Once upon a time

There was a magic boy

And a normal girl

To whom he promised adventure

And stars, and flying

And the only price she had to pay was leaving her whole life behind.

'Trust me,' he said with the smile of a friend and the eyes of a liar.

I wonder how often she thought of leaving him,

And when she finally did leave,

I wonder how often she thought of returning.

Once upon a time

There was a boy and girl.

And they were in love.

And they lived, although not necessarily happily.

Once upon a time you were a wolf, and a dragon, a lying magic boy, and a Prince.

And I was just a girl.

A girl with dreams painted with blood, with songs lamenting a dragon, with wishes of returning to a land that did not want me.

I loved these stories growing up,

I read them, watched them, sang them, breathed them.

I guess it's no wonder that I believed you, when you promised me

Happily ever after.

- Where the Fuck Was My Happy Ending?

#my writing #original writing #writeblr #writing #poem #fairytale #fairy tales #peter pan #sleeping beauty #little red riding hood #heartbreak #blood #unhappy ending

[zombiephilosophers]

4.

When I ran out of tears the first time

It wasnt like the end of a flood.

Instead it was like being swallowed by a vast empty void.

It was like nothingness itself had engulfed me.

Invaded me.

It hollowed me out,

Leaving only a brittle shell with a painted smile.

I was an empty person

A person made of paper

Delicate, almost see-through,

And one wrong move away from tearing wide open.

Bitter and blinking

In the light of the new reality.

It did not last.

The tears always come back eventually.

- Sometimes, Feeling Nothing is Worse.

#my writing #original writing #poem #writeblr #writing #heartbreak #tears #sad poem

[zombiephilosophers]

3.

You told me,

Earnestly,

That you knew now,

You had learned.

You could see,

So clearly,

Your future was with me.

You painted a picture so bright and lovely,

You held me, so close, so tightly,

Caressed my face,

Whispered gently,

That you were sorry,

And asked me,

'Please, can you forgive me?'

But all I could think as my grief became a flood, hungry waters that I had no barriers against,

was why did it take another girls lips for you to know for sure?

What was wrong with mine?

- I Would Have Given You the World.

#my writing #original writing #writeblr #writing #poetry #poem #heartbreak #betrayal #cheating

[zombiephilosophers]

2.

You whispered "sorry,"

But all I could scream was "why?"

Your love, wounds too much.

- The Haiku lodged in my windpipe

#poetry #my writing #original writing #pain #story #writeblr #writing #heartbreak

[zombiephilosophers]

Hey, this is just a heads up for everyone, I found a bunch of poems I wrote a while ago, I've spent the last month proof reading, drafting and editing and I'm just unleashing them on my queue.

I wrote them at a really shit time of my life (I'm okay now!) But yeah, if you don't want to read some sad/depressing poems, maybe blacklist me for the next week.

Peace and love xx

ZombiePhilosophers

#author's note

[zombiephilosophers]

1.

When my heart broke

I thought the impact would be bigger.

I expected the sun to fall out of the sky,

The moon to crumble into ash,

The seas to boil

The earth to crack at every fissure

Mountains to slide in calamitous avalanches and bury villages, towns, cities.

It was a humbling thing to realise as I was spinning out of orbit,

as I was sliding down walls of mountains,

as I was being smothered in a landslide,

as I choked down rivers of lava spewing from the molten chasm in my heart,

The world noticed nothing.

People kept commuting.

Birds kept migrating.

Rivers kept flowing.

And it was a reminder that one day,

I would patch myself up, dig my way free,

one day this would just be an interesting geological feature,

swallowed by time

and one day, I will join in with the movement and harmony of mother nature again.

But today is not that day.

Today I am the remnants of an asteroid burning in a crater.

Today I am trapped in the rising floodwaters.

Today I am being devoured by lava.

And knowing that today will not be forever, is like whispering into a hurricane.

- My Own Apocalypse

#my writing #original writing #poetry #heartbreak #betrayal #nature #writeblr #writing #death #earth #sea #apocalypse #volcano #mudslide

[zombiephilosophers]

AN: So, I loved prompt so much I’ve adapted it into a Witcher fanfic I’ve been planning... So here is part 1 x

Theraes was devastatingly lonely. The first few hundred years had been a wonderful blood-soaked rollercoaster. The death, excitement, seduction and revenge - bewitching the men of humanity to their watery deaths, lurking in the depths with her sisters, aunts and the varying siren matriarchs - all of them unleashing unholy vengeance against men who looked so like the men that had rendered them monsters.

Of course, not everyone knows how to make a siren, and the sirens rarely share their secrets, but Theraes knew intimately. You take a girl, full of innocence but on the cusp of womanhood, you fill her with love, feed her promises and shower her in gifts. And then you kill her. You take her body and throw it into the ocean to hide the evidence. And as she is dying she must look at you with a hate-filled heart, with betrayal on her tongue and she must promise to have her revenge. And oh my gods will she have her revenge. It will be bloody and it will be long and painful. And she will have her revenge on every man who looks like you for the next few thousand years.

The murder, the mayhem and the vicious savage strength had fuelled Theraes with violence and fear and power and she had loved it. Her sisters, the other fierce broken women were an army of valkyries wreaking bloody havoc and it was glorious - at least for the first few hundred years.

It grew dull after a while, the violence losing it's feeling of vengeance. She'd long ago killed the one who did this, and the others were merely hollow substitutes for him. But she loved her sisters, and enjoyed their company and carried on enjoying her time in raucous song with them, albeit avoiding the killing fields as much as possible.

Their numbers had grown, had swollen to unmanageable numbers, had filled the ocean with their fangs and their fury, the sheer volume a monument to the greed and betrayal of men. And the humans had found out, had called them monsters, and they'd called in the specialists to hunt them. Witchers they were called. And my god had they been hunted. The bodies of sirens carpeted the ocean floor - a graveyard denoting a genocide. It was beautiful in its own way, their corpses providing the ocean floors with nutrients, creating blooms of coral and housing gorgeous shoals of fishes. Theraes could not look down without seeing the women she had known and loved. 

The witchers had gone further. Taught their hunting methods to the fishing men. And more and more sirens became corpses. Many were enraged and became even more violent, and were killed all the quicker for it. But Theraes was tired, she swam to the shallows, a craggy little fishing cove next to a small village and waited patiently for her death to come. It would be a beautiful place to die. The flickering water, the ice white stone cut into towering structures by the water, beautiful schools of fish all lived alongside her, and she resigned herself to death. She had lived for a long time, nearly a millennia, and was ambivalent with regards to her inevitable fate at the hands of these witch men.  

But death did not come. In the absence of any killings, the village  men concluded the waters of her little cove were safe, and did not call for any witchers, and Theraes kept on living. Eating fish, bathing in the shallows, and utterly devoid of company. Entirely alone. 

Centuries passed and her apathy grew, until one unremarkable day in one unremarkable century, something new happened. A child fell overboard a boat.

It was a male child. It was pink and had hair and Theraes estimated it was between 1 and 10 human years old (it was always hard to tell with the small ones). It opened its mouth to scream underwater, in fear, and instead started swallowing the water in immense gulps. It was drowning. Theraes remembered drowning. She remembered clawing at the water, thrashing, not yet seeing the water as her home, a haven, but instead her tomb. She remembered being terrified, and she sprang into motion.

Without thinking Theraes darted into action. Diving, she slammed her webbed forelimbs outwards, and snapped her tail back. She flew at it. Scooped the child up, and thrust herself through the surface with the force of those seaharpoons that killed so many of her sisters. 

She slammed into the wooden vessel, the human child cradled in her webbed forelimbs. It was spluttering, water coming out of mouth in bursts, but it was still breathing. Some unconscious reflex made her gently rub its back. It was only then that she registered the sound. It was a woman screaming, begging desperately, sounds she was intimately familiar with. 

Theraes looked up, whilst still rubbing the child's back only to see a sobbing woman desperately trying to reach her, being restrained by a man who was glaring at her with ferocious suspicion, reaching for some sort of weapon. Glaring at him she shivered herself free of the features the water had gifted her so long ago, gaining human limbs, most importantly, legs. Stepping forward, and ignoring the angry man, Theraes handed the child to its mother who clung to him desperately. 

Falling to the floor the woman hid her face into her child's hair as it, equally shaken, clung to its mother. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," the woman sobbed, rocking her child in obvious relief. And without thinking Theraes uttered, "you're welcome." 

The sirens voice is one of many tools in their hunting belt, it is what makes them such efficient killers. It is the alluring light that angler fishes use to lure in their unsuspecting prey, because how can something so beautiful be deadly? 

Theraes knelt down next to the woman, and laid a hand on her shoulder and smiled a closed lipped smile, hiding the teeth that never truly leave a siren. "Just keep him safe. I may not be in the waters next time." The woman chuckled a little hysterically and gave a watery smile, when the man behind Theraes grabbed her.

"Marry me!" He demanded yanking on her arm pulling her forward. "You are stunning, beautiful, a goddess. I must have you." As she struggled to pull herself free, again he cried, "marry me!"

The woman turned to her husband in disbelief. "Steven what are you saying?" But he ignored her and continued attempting to get closer to Theraes. 

Like a striking eel, Theraes sent one arm flying out and struck him in the throat. He fell back, head hitting the deck of the boat, out cold. Hurriedly, she reassured the woman, "he's okay, I promise, he's just asleep."

The woman, who had admittedly had quite a stressful day, began to cry. "How could he say such a thing? We've been married eight years we have have 3 other children, I-"

"It's my fault," Theraes cut her off. "I'm so sorry, I should never have spoke with him here." She copied a movement she'd seen humans use before, and lay a hand on the distraught woman's shoulder. "Human men are so weak, it's not his fault." This did not appear to be much comfort.

"Spoke? I... what?" She stared at Theraes's face a little longer before understanding tinged with fear dawned on her. "You're a siren," she breathed. Then she looked incredulously down at her child who was chewing on her collar. "Why would you... why would you save Caleb?" Her confusion was understandable after all, everyone knew what sirens did to humans.

Theraes didn't have a particularly well thought out response, she'd acted on impulse, a child needed help, and she'd helped it. After a pause she murmured, "he's innocent. And I remember drowning, no children deserve a death like that, not even humans." The human woman looked a little horrified, which was fair, as drowning was pretty horrifying.

There was a rather long rather awkward moment where no one said anything. Theraes looked around, noticing the interesting quirks of the humans water vessel. It was painted, and there were shiny rocks inlaid in the surface, she recognised the pearls, but nothing else. This must be a wealthy human's vessel. Theraes saw some writing in a dark red colour, and casting back to the rarely used recesses of her memory she recognised the letters, 'the duchess'. She had vague memories of a duchess, and recalled emotions of admiration and envy. 

Her thoughts were interrupted by the woman clearing her throat, "my husband," she enquired, will he recover from your," she paused, "your voice?" 

Theraes chided herself internally, of course she'd be worried about that. "He'll be fine." She said emphatically. "Men are weak, but it wears off quickly." She grinned widely showing off her fangs, and the woman flinched back automatically. "Its only supposed to be long enough to drown them after all." The woman looked a little ill, and Theraes realised that probably wasn't the best thing to say.

Glancing down at her husband, the woman seemed to steel herself, before saying, "Siren, you have saved my child. I owe you anything you would ask for. I am of a powerful family, we have much wealth."

"I have no need for wealth," Theraes stated bluntly. "And my name is Theraes, not siren. I don't particularly want anything, just let me continue living in the cove, and bring Caleb back to visit every once in a while." Theraes eyed the unconscious husband sceptically. "Not him though, you can leave him behind."

The woman chuckled and responded, "very well... Theraes. I am the Duch-" she seemed to pause, before saying, "you may call me Catteleigh, and of course you've already met Caleb." She glanced down at the boy who, despite the chaos had managed to fall asleep, his mouth hanging open. She couldn't help but reflexively grin at him. She looked up at Theraes, "Thank you." She emphatically repeated.

Visibly uncomfortable, Theraes nodded, before climbing onto the edge of the boat, " you're uh, you're welcome?" She said, before diving back deep into the water and shedding her human body shape. 

She hung underneath the boat for a while, waiting for the man to wake whilst thinking of the events of the day. She'd saved a human. She talked to a human. Clearly the isolation was getting to her. She wondered what her long dead sisters would think of her now, consorting with humans, saving humans, and laughed to herself. But the underlying feeling of it all was giddy delight. She had missed company. She hoped Catteleigh truly would come back to visit.

A Siren joins a sign language class so she can hold actual conversations with people without bewitching them.

#my writing #writing prompt #writeblr #original writing #1 hour writing challenge #siren #magic #myth #mythical #witcher #fan fiction #story #short story

[zombiephilosophers]

Journal 1 - The Pursuit of Happiness

I’ve been thinking about happiness - or rather the idealistic, often illogical, idiomatic ‘pursuit’ of it. To pursue is defined as to chase or to hunt something, and I feel like this use of language in conjunction with the genuine beauty of the feeling of true joy, reflects the worrying human tendency to feel we must conquer something beautiful. 

I’ve been reading modernist Toaist literature and nihilistic philosophy that would argue that the pursuit of nothing is the only way to prevent dissonant dissatisfaction and internal divide, but I feel that this is just the opposite end of the spectrum to the ‘pursuit of happiness’, two extremes missing the beauty and stability, of the middle. 

Abraham Piper, the TikToker, argued in a January video that pursuing happiness is akin to addiction, and I think in some ways it might be. This message has lived in me for months, turning over in my head like a conversation you still can’t work out if you enjoyed, but you know it challenged something. 

If you are chasing down with reckless speed finite moments of joy to fight off the gaping maw of an apathetic abyss, it will only ever be a temporary height from which your fall will be inevitable. And falling hurts. But then he goes on to discuss the benefits of pursuing nothing, to avoid disappointment, and I don’t know if I’m just not built in such a way that this mindset feels so dissatisfying to me, or if I’m so entrenched in my fixed worldview that not to reject it outright, would be a betrayal of my constructed self. 

But for me the pursuit of happiness is like someone who loves plants, and tries to fill their home with flowers. They pick every beautiful flower they find, and fill their rooms from the skirting boards to the ceilings with colours akin to a rainbow, or a stained window or a field. It is bright, and arguably beautiful, and every second of every breath in that home is tainted with a decay that started at the onset of picking. And so more flowers must be picked in a never ending sisyphean cycle in order to hide the blankness of the walls lurking behind. It is a struggle, a fight against acknowledging the truth of decay, existing in a state of determined and active denial. 

I love plants. And I also love empty walls. And I hate watching flowers die. And I suppose if we extend the metaphor, I’ve taught myself to garden. Because a picked flower’s death is not only inevitable, but literally round the temporal corner, but plants, if cared for properly, can last a lifetime. 

I’ve been trying to unlearn my imperialistic pursuit of happiness. I’m trying instead to cultivate it. To plant enough beautiful things in my life, that there is always joy growing. And my god is it hard. But it is the only place of tension I have been able to find that is truly stable enough to root myself in, that is not a shallow consumption-obsessed temporary simulacra of genuine joy, but also not the embracing of nihilism and nothing. I know some people can find joy in both extremes, but I also know I cannot.

I hope my joy, and yours, will continue to grow.

#journal #diary #happiness #joy #sadness #my writing #writeblr #abraham piper #toaist #toaism #nihilism #flowers #gardens #the pursuit of happiness

[zombiephilosophers]

bird twitter is lighting up

[zombiephilosophers]

Writing Theory: Making your Heroes more Believable and less Flat

One thing that often happens when writing heroes is they often appear more flatter and less developed than they should be. A flat hero leads to an alienated audience who will likely not vibe with the hero. Disclaimer: this is not about the flat character trope itself but characters who do not come to life. The hero can never be flat.

What makes your hero seems flat?

Flat characters are sometimes confused with Mary Sues, they are nearly always perfect with just a hint of imprefection thrown in. That hint sits on the character like a dollop of cream, never truly mixing in with your character. It doesn't effect the character in any way.

They have no complexity. They are very simple when stripped down to their bare bones.

They possess no traits or flaws that are in direct conflict with their outward persona.

They are mostly passive even when in conflict.

There is no development in them from beginning to end, they learn nothing and they pass through the story unblemished.

Combatting Flatness in your Heroes

Heroes must be flawed. They must make bad choices or have some kind of imperfection. And the flaw must impact their choices and they way rhevellook at the world. Heroes are not wholly perfect, no person is. Readers do not like perfect characters, they cannot fathom them or even understand them. For example, Harry Potter is incredibly flawed. He is an ardent procrastinator and can sometimes be quite lazy. During the Triwizard Cup, he does not attempt to work out the clue to the second task until the last minute which leaves him very unready and a little all over the place.

Heroes must have an arc. They have to change throughout the story. They cannot be the same fresh faced dew drop they were before you got your mits on them. They have to grow and change, be affected by the story. For example, Daenerys Targaryen grows from a quiet child bride into a fierce dragon riding Queen campaigning for justice.

Make your Heroes complex. Allow them conflicting traits and attitudes. Complexity lends a believability to your character by allowing them to have inner conflict. For example, Kaz Brekker of Six of Crows is both a ruthless gangster capable of cruelty but is also incredibly vulnerable and insecure.

Make them less stereotypical. Stereotypical characters are the death of any novel for me. Stereotypes make a character flat without the writer even trying. It makes them predictable and bland. The reader knows what your character is about in a few lines. Make them less predictable, allow them to contradict their stereotypes. For example, Liesel Meminger is a child growing up in Nazi Germany, involved in Hitler Youth. We expect her to be the stereotypical Nazi supporter, close minded and prejudiced but instead, she is open minded and accepting to Max, the Jewish refugee in her basement.

#writing #writing tips

[zombiephilosophers]

Paul Eluard, “Right in the Middle of the Month of August”, Selected Poems (trans. Gilbert Bowen)

[Text ID: “We shall inflict hope We shall inflict life.”]

#God I love this #Fuck yeah #I shall inflict my hope upon you #And you shall buckle from its weight

[zombiephilosophers]

There is nothing naive about hope.

There is nothing childish about choosing to be joyful, 

Choosing to awe at the beauty of the world.

And it is a choice. 

Do you have any idea how difficult it is

To see the burning planet,

To see the jagged scars people have left 

Etched deep in your skin,

To see the damage we have done,

To feel every fracture, every seeping wound 

And to still believe that humanity is full of wonder?

Full of light, and curiosity and staggering creativity,

To still choose optimism to be the clothes you wear today,

To look at our people and see a collective community of people who care

In the face of tremendous heartache.

The enemy of hope and joy is not misery

It is apathy. 

Because if you are sad - it means you cared

And I will keep choosing to care.

Because there are so many incredible things and people to care about.

So you can take your grim pessimism, 

your cynical sarcasm,

And leave. 

There is no place for you, in our hopeful future.  

- Hope Is A Battle That I am Determined To Win by ZombiePhilosophers

Inspired from Photography by gettinglostisnotawasteoftime.

Mamaku Night Sky

#poem #poetry #my writing #image prompt #art #hope #joy #original writing #space #beauty #optimism #pessimism

[zombiephilosophers]

Some reader, lightly commenting on my fic: hey i liked this.

me, me eyes enormous: you COMMENT me? you comment on my fic, like the story? oh! oh! love for reader! love for reader for One Thousand Years!!!!

[zombiephilosophers]

how to make stories even sadder

put your character in a situation that reminds them of the worst parts of their childhood

Kill an important character in an entirely ordinary and mundane way (illness, home invasion, car accident, etc.)

Slowly turn a character that is always kind and good into an antagonist, because they couldn’t take being overlooked any longer

Destroy something that was an anchor for the protagonist; not necessarily a person, just a symbol of comfort or safety

Properly written nightmare scenes

Take away the character trait that they most rely on in themself (being trusting, kind, quick-thinking, etc.)

Make them fear something that is loved by someone they are close with

Have a character try to sacrifice themself for another character, but fail

Kill a character right before they tell the others something important. Not something relevant to the plot, but a personal thing they want their friends to know

Establish them as part of some sort of family before you kill them

#writing #writing tips #sad #angst #death