मातृभूमि सर्वोपरि 🫡🇮🇳
आंतरराष्ट्रीय पत्रिका ~ सूजन अमेरिका में प्रकाशित हुआ मेरा लेख "मातृभूमि सर्वोपरि" ।
पढ़ने के लिए यहाँ क्लिक करें -
https://vishakhainfo.wordpress.com/2025/12/10/mathrubhumi/
#mywriting #DeshBhakti #ArticlePublished #ProudToBeIndian #patriarchy #writerslife #writer #Gujaratis #ILoveIndia #JaiHindKiSena
Hello December 🎄 | December Note
Click here to read - https://vishakhainfo.wordpress.com/2025/11/29/hello-december/
#december #lastmonthoftheyear #GratitudeMonth #memoriesmatter #mywriting #writer #momentsofpleasure
Wish Granted
This was my most popular drabble on tumblr so it gets to be the first one I post over here. Hope y'all enjoy it too.
CW: Restraints, mind control
Hero growled and tested their bonds. They didn’t find a way out. They squirmed and pulled at the restraints anyways, not willing to give up easily.
They’d been captured. They were in the hands of Villain, a supervillain with poorly understood powers and challengingly high competence. Hero had been trying to combat them, and ended up tied up instead.
“Do you know what my power is, Hero?” Villain asked, tone more conversational than anything else.
Hero glared at them. “We’ve been trying to figure it out. You seem able to influence reality in some way, but exactly what you do seems pretty random from one case to another.”
“I grant wishes. Never my own, and I can only directly affect the person whose wish it is. But it’s enough. Because I can grant them in a way of my choosing, and the best part: they don’t have to be said aloud.”
“Isn’t that, like, a cardinal rule of wishes? You have to say…y’know.”
Villain smirked at Hero’s hesitance to say I wish. They weren’t trying to trick Hero, but if they were it would certainly have proved difficult. “I’m not a genie, I’m a superhuman. Presumably the rules would be different.”
“But how would you be able to defeat heroes? They’re against you, not hoping for your success.”
“Well, that’s the delightful part, really. Your own Agency practically hands you to me. It works you lot into the ground. I can look in their heads and pick and choose the wishes that suit my needs. When Hero B silently wishes it was her day off and she was back with family, I can grant that in such a way that sends her home without adding a replacement for her, and I’m conveniently left unchallenged. When Hero C wishes they had a good excuse to take a break, I can incapacitate them for a while. When Hero D wishes he didn’t have to fight today, I can whisk him out of my way.”
“Now that we know, it won’t be so easy for you,” Hero said.
“You’re under the mistaken impression you’ll make it back to them.”
“I’ll get free eventually.”
Villain’s tone shifted subtly, their eyes no longer quite focused on Hero’s. “You wish there was a way for you to rest. You wish you could give up heroing without having to feel guilty about it. You wish it was out of your hands.”
Hero’s eyes widened. “No! Get out!” They struggled anew against their bonds.
“You wish you could be done without it being your fault. You wish you didn’t have such mixed feelings about it. You wish you were happier.”
“Stop it! I just wish to escape and go back to my duty.”
“But you wish it wasn’t your duty,” Villain continued. “You wish you could be free of the responsibility.”
“But I’d never wish for my relief to hurt people!”
“I don’t hurt anyone, not really.”
“What you do still isn’t right.”
“I can twist it so it’s enough. I get to interpret the wish, remember?”
“No! Stop!”
Villain ignored them, suspended in concentration. Then they smiled. “Gotcha.”
Hero felt Villain’s power flood into them. At first it was just the rush of power entering. Then it moved to their head. Their thoughts scrambled.
When Hero’s brain righted itself, things were different. Hero rested: not bodily, but in their own mind. It was like all the autonomous parts were comfortably sitting back or sleeping, while what remained was left to Villain’s direction instead of having to be self-powered. No longer burdened with responsibility, there was a new lightness in their readiness to do whatever Villain said. The conflict was gone: their devotion to Villain was single-minded. Guilt wasn’t even a question: this was what they were supposed to be doing. It felt right.
And they were happy. Bliss wrapped around their entire brain like a blanket, warm and comforting, muffling anything that might have seeded doubt.
In short, the wishes of Villain’s selection had been granted, in what the old Hero would have called all the wrong ways. But they were no longer in any state to be unhappy about it.
“Thank you,” Hero said to Villain, with a loving, genuine smile. They’d do anything Villain wanted, and they’d like it.
Villain’s grin was a little more wolf-like. “My pleasure.”
Also, after you watch it, feel free to read the article I wrote for @animefeminist comparing the film to its source material, “The Clever Princess” by Diana Coles. I discuss how they both present unique feminist narratives, and why both interpretations are valuable.
☣️ 10 Signs You're Not a #Zombie ☣️
https://diaspora.psyco.fr/posts/11682624
🏷 #checklist #community #courtesy #ethics #etiquette #humor #humour #introspection #manners #morals #mywork #mywriting #ZombieApocalypse @nycework_braye
My newest article for @animefeminist is now online! I talk about the three major LGBTQ+ characters in the "Guilty Gear" franchise (Testament, Venom, and Bridget), the ways their personal narratives in "Strive" show queer self-acceptance, and how LGBTQ+ representation has changed since their initial creation.
https://www.animefeminist.com/queer-self-acceptance-in-guilty-gear-strive/
Recently picked up the wonderful book, "Steering the Craft" by Ursula K. LeGuin, whose writing I simply adore. Her short text on the craft of writing is also endlessly instructive. She thrusts the keyboard at you and dares you to write.
Here's a bit I wrote for the exercise "Being Gorgeous." (This exercise encourages the writer to write a passage to be read aloud, with onomatopoeia, alliteration, rhythm, etc. and enjoy the sound and beauty of the words.)
The winds whispers secrets, but mostly I've ignored them, scorned them, failed to heed their forbidden lore and treasures. I've been too busy you see; listening not the wind, but to The Cacophony, the disquieting musics of life, the hammering of toil, the piles of paper, and the boiling turmoil in the cauldron of my brain.
Just thoughts themselves are loud enough. Add to that the pressure of work, taxes to file, forms to fill, audits to survive, meetings to endure, company politics to navigate, and the sum total of life becomes quite noisy. Deafening even.
But I digress; what was the wind saying? It seemed so important, but like the wind of yesterday, The Thought has moved on. The scent of wildflower has been replaced by the smog of cloudy indignation.
So I must remind myself again to listen. The world is full of incessant importunities, but these distractions are not so urgent that one should ignore the messages of spirit, however indistinct.
New story! 🧸🧸
Alysia Goldenseal, Teddybear Princess Ch.5
https://shaker-e.dreamwidth.org/8132.html
In which a forgotten friend returns!
Possibly forgotten even by the author! 😅
Forlorn - Chapter 8 - Apprenticeship
Finally! Oomph, this one was hell to write and it's also Forlorn's longest chapter so far, sitting at almost 4k words!
In this one, Crow and Arnath at last get to meet Lord Calmbank's ghost - but the job doesn't go as smoothly as they'd like it to.
You can read it here! --> https://archiveofourown.org/works/55294801/chapters/169144012
As always, I will be eternally grateful for any comments. To the people who already told me what they think - thank you, you guys are my fuel to keep doing what I'm doing! <3
I need to write more. I've got ideas but no motivation at the moment.
Until then, all my fanfic stuff (mostly Veilguard currently, though I want to write more Baldurs Gate stuff too) is all here:
For the evening crew: https://blackbirdpublishing.com/interview-scents-drifting-on-a-breeze-by-meyari-mcfarland/
First time I've had a proper interview about one of my stories. Also a lovely anthology full of amazing haunting stories. Mine is very soft, very light and very gentle. Others are... not.
Enjoy!
#writing #publishing #newrelease #interview #mywriting #yay
For @cthulhudeadite , a tender moment between Alana de Riva and Ivy Ingellvar in the Necropolis Gardens.
Some more #Veilguard #Fanfiction for this week's #FanficFriday
Now that everything is settled with my current book, I’m diving right back into writing with a YA fantasy story about a young woman who can hear the song of gemstones and learns she can craft them into rings of power to save a dying world.
#writersofmastodon #Writing #writingcommunity #amWriting #writingWIP
#indieauthors #indiewriters #mywriting
My new book is available for preorder. Releases May 31, 2025.
#writingcommunity #writersofmastodon #mybook #mywriting #indiewriters #apocalypticfiction #werewolf #zombie
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F7GKRK3Q?ref_=pe_93986420_775043100
Got my book, Howls & Hope unloaded to KDP, just waiting for final approval & I’ll post the preorder link. Feels strange to finally be totally done with the writing/editing process for the book. It was a long journey from the first spark of the idea to the final story stage. Worth every step.
#writersofmastodon #mybook #mywriting #writers #sff #zombie #werewolf #apocalyptic
Since I'm writing more these days (yay!) I thought I'd bundle everything up at the end of the week and do a #FanficFriday, so here's a little thread 🧵 :
First up, today's scene featuring a young elf fledgling without a name:
They said Abigail had always loved poetry. But it was more than love - when she delved into the words, it was like a kind of possession. Be it the old classics like Poe or Lord Byron, or the works of her peers they inspired, she fell into their thrall all the same. But it wasn't until she finally picked up the pen to write her own, when she finally understood her obsessions.
It happened in an evening, and in a week, and in many ways, at the very end of her life. Though she had loved poetry, though it felt like it captured her very soul, she had always feared it more than anything. The vulnerability it demanded, the perfect and delicate prose, the secret rhythms and structures lying underneath - she was not good enough for any of it, and she knew it.
And if it hadn't been for the dreams, she would have gone to her grave believing it.
They started in the week leading up to her senior Language Arts project. She'd been stressed about it for the entire year, but it was only then that it'd become apparent just how critical it would be for her final grade. Her teacher, Mr. Ward, had taken the time to sit her down and make it clear: If hers wasn't perfect, she would be failing his class - and by extension, failing to graduate.
If only the project hadn't been poetry.
And not poetry as Abigail loved it, free to flow and express ideas and bare the soul to the world. The project demanded restrictions be placed on her work - the same restrictions Mr. Ward placed on all his torturous poetry assignments over the past year. The same ones Abigail had chosen to fail her assignments for, rather than deal with. But the thought of failing the class - of being held back a year to go through it all again - filled her with dread. At her core, she knew that to fail here would mean her death.
It was then that the dreams began. Visions of her poem, half-written, her hand moving like fluid across paper as she sat there, her only focus on the words that spilled forth from her pen. Night after night, the sound of pen nubs scratching against paper and the multitude mumblings of half-remembered stanzas filled her mind as she watched the world unravel in a sea of ink and ideas.
The last night of her project was upon her before she knew it. Her heart in her stomach, she sat in front of a blank piece of paper, almost willing it to be filled. In her hand was a pen, but her fingers were frozen around it. She couldn't bring herself to begin. A quiet despair welled up from within, torn between the utter travesty she knew her writing would be and the months and years of hell she would receive if she did nothing. A burning panic threatened to overwhelm her very mind.
But before it could truly conquer her, she felt something. A presence, a hand resting atop her hand, warm and gentle.
Voices, calm and reassuring, whispered to her from the back of her mind. Though her memories of the dreams had faded like smoke upon waking, she recognized them - the voices of her poem. They spoke reassurances to her, spreading up her arm and through her mind. Where it touched, the cool calm relaxed her tension and banished her fear. Half-delerious, listening to the whispers, she let her pen find the page.
And she began to write.
Even as a vessel for what felt like a higher power, her first work was terrible, just as she'd known it would be. But though the prose was purple and the structure was wrong, she felt no pain or shame for having made it. It was her, vulnerable, bleeding her heart and soul onto the page, and it was terrible. And she felt nothing, save for a small spark of pride, as she set it aside.
The next was better, but only somewhat, as was the next after that. Even as her hand cramped and her belly ached, she kept going, egged on by the growing voices in her mind. Writing with ever-increasing desperation and haste, losing herself in a manic spiral downwards, time began to lose all its meaning. Everything began to lose its meaning. There was only the work.
As she worked her way down the pages, her own writing became alien and incomprehensible to her. The lines collapsed into shapes and diagrams on the page, as the room and the world around her dissolved into a slurry of words and meaning. She watched through eyes that burned like fire as structure formed from the chaos, even as the paper and pen and her own hand, too, disintegrated into the lettered mass. And in that structure, for a brief moment, she found true understanding.
She failed her project, in the end. The jumbled, unintelligible work more closely resembled a spiral pattern than a genuine poem. Its content was unsettling, it was covered in scratches and spots of ink, and its structure and pacing were all over the place - to say nothing of the fact that it didn't even rhyme. In short, it broke every single restriction Mr. Ward had laid out.
And yet it found its way onto the wall, regardless.
For Abigail had learned why she had always loved poetry so. All the world was a poem, and she was its humble author.
