storyboard discord log

[8:15 PM] Legokiller: How dark is it?
[8:31 PM] macksting: Hrm.

(specific person omitted) IF YOU'RE READING STOP NOW(edited)
[8:31 PM] macksting: Well, the setting is that time is a forced scarcity.
[8:31 PM] macksting: Everybody does shitty busywork in really large amounts in order to make enough money to pay for basic needs.
[8:32 PM] macksting: The lead character in the short story I'm writing is "comfortably professional class," but in truth is simply on the less precipitous end of working class. He has time enough to live a real life if he doesn't mind borrowing against his future a little.
[8:32 PM] macksting: What qualifies as an emergency for him is when a friend of his drops out of their online games entirely, after multiple periods where he was disappearing abruptly for stretches at a time.
[8:34 PM] macksting: Rowe, the lead, is a student trying to frontload as much of his studies as he can, and is very proud of his time management and prospects.
[8:34 PM] macksting: He strongly believes his degree of freedom and comfort is a direct result of his personal merits and efforts.
[8:35 PM] macksting: By the end of the story, he finds his friend (Keating), whose position more precipitous than he let on and who has gone to selling his time full-time: his time is taken away from him to make precious jewels, shortening his lifespan.
[8:35 PM] macksting: In this way he is alienated from the fruits of his labor, or more accurately his time.
[8:35 PM] macksting: He has the unusual situation, for someone of his philosophy and position, of knowing what sleep feels like.
[8:37 PM] macksting: In the course of this story, Rowe will discover that much of his comfortable position reflects not his own efforts, but simply the circumstances of his birth; he's not sure how much, but he has seen someone with the same mindset and beliefs fall from dubious grace, lose the things he was most proud of, and drop out of society because he couldn't live a free life at the rates he was able to pull in.
[8:37 PM] macksting: So Rowe gets to go back to school pondering that, and thinking about the fact that he barely knows what sleep actually feels like, but Keating now does.
[8:38 PM] macksting: Rowe's going to be wondering if the future he's planning for will even exist.
[8:38 PM] Nef: neat
[8:38 PM] macksting: (specific person omitted) IF YOU'RE READING, DON'T READ ABOVE THIS(edited)
[8:38 PM] macksting: Yeah, so, uh, like I said, my stories are apparently depressing as shit.
[8:39 PM] macksting: It's intended to be a companion story to a novella I'm writing where the lead is rather more blatantly working poor, and loses access to the medication everybody uses in order to work as many hours as they do.
[8:40 PM] macksting: The allergic reaction temporarily gives him remote viewing, a.k.a. clairvoyance.
[8:40 PM] macksting: I don't intend to go full Mysterious Stranger with that sequence. It's not intended to be a screed.
[8:41 PM] macksting: Though I will say the story The Mysterious Stranger was pretty interesting.
[8:41 PM] Nef: the mysterious stranger?
[8:41 PM] macksting: Mark Twain.
[8:41 PM] Nef: haven't read it
[8:41 PM] macksting: Nobody has.
[8:42 PM] macksting: I blame being stuck awake for hours with no company but a wi-fi connection on my cell phone.
[8:43 PM] Nef: heh
[8:43 PM] Nef: I don't think it's excessively depressing
[8:44 PM] macksting: Heh. ^_^ It's not particularly happy.
[8:44 PM] macksting: I've decided a sort of mood piece for Rowe, the lead in the short story, is Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time."
[8:44 PM] macksting: Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.