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Description: Listen carefully.
We think the entity is the sun there. Whatever's in the sky above the Zone. We're not sure. We're taking Dave's word for it. Oh, that's key: if you get into DACTYLON, just find Dave and check on him. Listen for the sound of an engine, or a hissing sound. Make sure he's doing okay.
Nobody from the Skyhawk Battalion has been able to make contact with the Metaph here. We've tried. It doesn't seem to mind or care that we're there. Shelby actually tried getting on a goddamn ladder and reaching towards the sky. We didn't stop laughing for six minutes. She bought the first round at the bar that night.
For that reason, we're not going to talk too much about the Metaph here. I know it's against protocol. You figure out how to touch the sun from the ground and then come give us grief about it.
DON'T LET DAVE LEAVE.
Background: Area DACTYLON is centered on Wilson Park in Dresden, Tennessee, United States. Area's about a quarter of a mile in diameter, little over 30 acres. Thank God for low population density. We actually only had to relocate ten or fifteen families. They were very motivated to sell.
From the outside, the area looks… fuzzy? You gotta be there to really understand. Locals say it basically just looks like it used to look. You know, before. Before it was different.
One local told a story that made it make a little more sense. She said that when you live somewhere and you look out the window at something, there's a whole background that your brain just fills in. You look at your dog in your yard, and behind him, there's a field. You know what it looks like in that field, so you don't have to stare at the details, the old farm equipment out there, the big glyphosate tank, the old barn, the park beyond it. But now it's like you can't stare at it. The whole thing's just… out of focus. You try to make out that old disc harrow, and you can see a smudge of red, but that's it. Stare any longer and you get a migraine.
Cross into the Area and all bets are off. Everything goes dark. There's a Sun above you, and it looks bright, but none of the light is really going anywhere
Location and Population:
Hunting or Procurement Methods:
Encounter Records:
Additional Notes:
Halloweencon probably-never-gonna-happen tale
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- FUCKIN' LEARN HOW TO DO DIV BOXES, I GUESS
- FUCKIN' LEARN HOW TO DO WHATEVER OTHER GOOFY TECHNICAL SHIT I NEED TO MAKE AN ALEXYLVA HUB 'CAUSE THESE FUCKIN' REPROBATES DON'T GIVE A TOOT ABOUT THE PUNIC WARS
- probably develop a useful and helpful personality for the benefit of others
- that might wait
- WOOO WE'RE BACK OKAY AUTHOR PAGE IS BULLSHIT, PROBABLY REDO THAT
- * ANGELFIRE THEME? YOU BET YOUR BULLBALLS
- WRITE OTHER SHIT
- BECOME GOD
- RETIRE
- FISH
IDEAS OF THE NEW AGE:
1. J. Bennett Patterson, motivational speaker. Go back to the earth.
2. John Deere 955 tractor, mansplained by an elderly redneck (SCP-955-EX-FEM)
3. More technetium! (Ionized Tc-97)
4. Sequel to Wayward Prince, 2998 (Three Arrows)
5. [Sumerian? Mississippian?] binary carved computer virus
6. Dialogue Guide: an unbelievably shitty conversation that becomes progressively less shitty
7. Rewrite of the Expungement Guide
8. Creation of an Alexylva hub (probably needs to be first)
9. SCP-4321: Currency Plague (from Happy Ending)
10. Perpetual divorce: they can never separate, they keep producing children, they never talk about it. The Things Not Said.
11. OKAY DUDE IT'S LIKE THIS
- WU-TANG CONVERTS TO FIFTHISM AND RESURRECTS ODB
- FOUNDATION CONTAINS WU-TANG EXCEPT CAPPADONNA BECAUSE WHY WOULD YOU BOTHER
- BUT ODB IS UNCONTAINABLE BECAUSE HE LACKS PHYSICAL FORM
- FOUNDATION AND ORIA COMBINE TO USE AN AMERICAN DJINN HOUSE TO BRING KENNY DENNIS AND THA GRIMM TEACHAZ INTO MAINLINE REALITY
- THEY MUST COMBINE THEIR POWERS TO KILL ODB'S GHOST
12. ORIA documenting a WMD to destroy the world (not the first one! make that clear!) using SCP-2747
13. An SCP that exists to create enigmas for the purpose of distracting researchers from researching something else
14. SCP/ORIA joint where a rogue djinn inhabits a group of (terrorists or immigrants) from the Middle East and starts wreaking havoc — SCP needs ORIA to come get rid of it, ORIA agent who comes to pick him up is the djinn's DAD OH MY GOD TOUCHING MOMENT HERE GET THE KLEENEX
15. Mechano! Grump mechanic garden gnome (?). Fixes everything nearby. Contained by being provided with a regular supply of things to fix. Writing his personality will be key. He's an overworked Southern farmer grandpa who thinks he's smarter than you and will teach everyone nearby what's wrong with this here starter, nahw.
16. Jenny Everywhere's revenge. Start as an SCP laying out the implications of pataphysical human trafficking. "they gave my rights away, spread me around for anyone to use, I was forced into porn, etc." Leads to an MZL tale where Fred is killed, very, very dead. Collaborative tale. Lots of references to readers and writers.
17. Voiceless Donut: A donut that makes the reader think all donuts are capable of speech, but this one is weird, because it can't.
There is only the new age. There is no old age.
We Will Critique It For You Wholesale. Also available in 2013 flavor.
I'll tell you what happened, but I can't say it directly.
Escobar ( Dave ) Interview Wayward Magazine 2019
Not only is Escobar the author of the Highest Rated and Most Popular on the site,
he is also one of our most active critiquers, helping other authors bring their work to the next level.
1.
How do you balance writing and critiquing with a full time job and family life?
I mean, the only way to balance it is to balance it. I'm usually on Discord early morning after I wake up, I check it sporadically throughout the day, and I usually spend my lunch break writing critiques if there are any posts that need critique. After my son goes to bed, I usually have an hour or hour and a half to… well, stare at my laptop with the idea of writing in my head. Usually with writing, I either knock the finished product out in a few frantic hours of drafting and a couple hours of editing, or I slog it out for weeks on end. I'm currently in the middle of a slog. A paragraph here, two sentences there. It'll work out over time, gradually.
2.
It's no secret that the basis for The Forest Grandfather is Jordan Peterson.
What was it about that man which inspired you to write a parody article about him?
I came back to the anomalous writing community about a year ago, and one of the first things I did was to just brainstorm ideas for new SCPs (Wayward hadn't splintered off yet at that time). Out of a list of seventeen different ideas that I came up with, sitting on a tractor at work, typing frantically onto my phone, the very first words I put down were
`1. J. Bennett Patterson, motivational speaker. Go back to the earth.`
The initial idea was going to be an SCP-001 proposal, where J. Bennett Patterson would be a motivational speaker with supernatural powers who was going to begin convincing people to abandon the decadent and distracting 21st century life and go back to simplicity, farming, hunting and gathering. And when Patterson began to address the Foundation, their employees would start abandoning their posts in droves. And when *that* happened, the anomalies they were guarding would just start… disappearing. Anomalies would turn normal once the Foundation would stop paying attention to them. Ultimately, Patterson would completely dissolve modern society, and the Foundation with it, and everyone would end up being happier for it.
So when I came to Wayward, all I had were the words "J. Bennett Patterson" and "go back to the earth". I must have been at work when the sentence popped into my head:
`J. Bennett Patterson killed my son. I will pay $1,000,000 for his head.`
I'll be honest, I don't know why it has to be a million dollars. I just really knew I wanted someone to ask, John-the-Baptist style, for someone's head to explicitly be removed from their shoulders, and I wanted them to explain exactly why they wanted that first. To further be honest, the rest of the article consisted of figuring out how to start with "J. Bennett Patterson killed my son. I will pay $1,000,000 for his head." and eventually get to "Go back to the earth."
3.
Did you compile a database of facts about Peterson before you wrote the story or did you channel his energy and write by virtue of inspiration?
Before I wrote it? No. I'd read 12 Rules for Life, I'd heard him speak a lot, and I knew there was a lot more nuance to his feelings and attitudes and expressions of opinion than the meme-generators knew about. I honestly went into it with more positive feelings about him than not; the parody is innocent fun and a little fridge horror, not some protest writing.
I did a little research to place exactly where and when I wanted to set the JRE podcast episode (after the Mizzou protests). I think I might have put one of JBP's Joe Rogan episodes on to try to catch glimpses of Peterson's tone, the very specific way he pauses at certain points when he feels like he's going to say something controversial and he wants to enunciate very carefully, the other times when he wants to try to be funny and just awkwardly say whatever was on his mind while chuckling.
Basically, the facts about Peterson were a little irrelevant. I knew what he needed to believe to make the story work, and I knew approximately how slowly I wanted him to just start… *slipping* it in there. As I was writing it, I was reading what I was writing in Peterson's voice the whole time, checking to make sure that it felt right. Little things. The way he sometimes pauses when he catches himself about to say something more rash than how he feels, when he needs to recalibrate.
Basically, the "facts" about Peterson weren't really going to help me write a bigger story. Except when they did. The first priority was and is to the story.
4.
What is your favorite article on Wayward that you didn't write?
The Boreans is one of the best articles on the site that doesn't get enough love. As close enough to the Wayward version of an old-school leprechaun yarn as we have. I don't know if it was just too long for some people's tastes or what, but I don't hear nearly enough said about it.
5.
What are you working on right now?
What is your next tale or article going to be? Can you give us a hint?
—YOUR MAGIC EARS TO SPREAD OUR SONG!
[Beyoncé's eyes begin to bleed.]
Beyoncé: I AM WHAT THE DEAD HEAR WHOM THE GODS DEEM WORTH—
[Videotape ends.]