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nc_ooc2021-08-01 08:57 am
iam_senpai) wrote in nc_ooc2021-08-01 08:57 am
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August 2021 Writing Prompts!
The summer continues to crawl on regardless of our readiness for it. It's another new month and with it we bring the promise of more inspiration for you and yours. A warm welcome to some of the new faces in the community, because we wouldn't be here without all of our players~
And As always--
Disclaimer: I never close old writing prompts from previous months. People can and should be encouraged to post on old month's prompts and I highly encourage players to track these posts to catch stragglers or new people writing on old prompts.
Now. With that out of the way, onto this month's prompts.
1. "You could stand to be the responsible one, for once."
2. Write about a summer holiday/festival/tradition that's important to your character even if not beloved.
3. Culture shock
4. "I only pretend to know everything."
5. How does your character handle long trips? Do they Have to be the one driving? Are they more content to be in the back sleeping the whole way? Do they want to stop every hour to take pictures?
Bonus image prompt:
no subject
4 - “I Only Pretend to Know Everything.”
The folks down at the Crossroads Cafe were diligently working on finding Coyote, who apparently started this mess. But at least the damage done was temporary, or so they said. Which meant that Isamu would be back to his old self again soon.
Which was why, somewhere between cat naps and energy drinks, Minoru was awake and diligently working on wearing a trench in the floor beside his brother’s hospital bed. His usual calm and collected nature be damned, he just couldn’t help it. This was exactly why doctors should never work on their loved ones. The orderly had to be there. He had to make sure Isamu was okay.
“Bro?” He spun around the moment he heard the shuffle of bedsheets. “Bro?”
Isamu mumbled something unintelligible and groaned. Minoru all but dove into the chair next to the bed, and put a steadying hand on his brother’s arm. Isamu blinked tiredly, eyes slowly adjusting to a room that wasn’t part of their apartment.
“Wh.. what…?”
“Easy there, Bro.” Minoru squeezed Isamu’s arm gently. “You’re in the hospital. Things got bad yesterday. Don’t even know if you remember any of it, but…”
“Hospital?” He turned over slowly, almost methodically. Minoru could almost hear the gears in his brain slowly clicking into place.
“Yeah. You woke me up in some kind of crazy manic episode. Which pretty much turned into the worst migraine on earth…” he gulped. “You couldn’t tell any of us what was wrong. Or what happened to you. But this kind of stuff was happening all over the Nexus, and I had to go to work to help out. I couldn’t just leave you, so…”
After rubbing his face with an IV-laden hand, Isamu met Minoru’s panicked eyes. Immediately, he wished he hadn’t. It was a look he hadn’t seen since they were four years old and their mother nearly died. It was a look he never wanted to associate with his brother again.
“I… I’m sorry…” he slurred, still feeling the effects of the pain medication, even as the sedatives slowly worked their way out of his system.
“Hey! No, no, no. Don’t be sorry. You were no trouble at all, I promise!” Minoru clutched his brother’s hand.
“No, not that…” Isamu shook his head. “I mean for… my wish.”
“Your what?”
As much as Isamu wished he could feign ignorance of the entire event, that was impossible. Although most of the knowledge he’d magically acquired had faded into a scrambled dreamlike haze, he very clearly remembered how it all started.
“An anthropomorphic Coyote approached me in the plaza and asked me what I wanted most.” Isamu replied guiltily. “And so I told him… I said I wanted to know everything.”
Minoru was quiet for a second, and then cocked his head to the side, confused.
“Really? But you already know everything, Bro.” He smirked.
As much as his ego loved hearing that, this time, Isamu’s pride was tempered by harsh reality. He remembered the elation he felt as the wonders of the universe seemed to reveal themselves to him with each sensation that followed. He could look at a tree and instantly understand everything about its biology and that of countless other species from worlds he’d never even heard about. He could smell the air and instantly catalog the chemical components that every species depended on for survival. He could read and speak every language. He could inherently feel mathematical equations and calculate them in bases and number systems that he’d never studied. He could understand the universe itself on a level that rivaled angels and gods alike. For a moment, maybe he even was a god.
But human minds weren’t meant for that kind of knowledge. Any god or angel could have probably told him that.
It wasn’t long before he knew he’d reached the physical limitation of human neuronal connections, but the knowledge didn’t stop accumulating. That was the point where he knew he’d made a grave miscalculation, but in the same moment, he didn’t even care. Let it hurt, he remembered sparing a fleeting thought between keystrokes and scribbled equations. The ends justify the means. The papers he could write, the prestige he could garner, knowledge was power and he literally had ALL of it.
By the time Minoru realized something was wrong, the pain was almost overwhelming. The more Isamu knew, the less he could explain. His head felt like it was going to explode. Everything he wanted… everything he always wanted…
“Minoru, I… I do not know everything…” He admitted quietly, his gaze falling on his brother’s hands. “I only pretend to know everything.”
Silence followed the confession, and tears began to follow the silence. Isamu weakly tried to pull away from Minoru, to turn away and hide his shame. But Minoru didn’t, and wouldn’t, let go.
“Isamu…” he whispered, reaching over his brother and pulling him gently back into a safe embrace. “It’s okay…”
“It is not okay!” he choked on his sobs. “I… I wanted it… I wanted it more than anything. And… and I liked it… I was… I was elated! I liked not having to pretend…”
Minoru held him, letting both the tears and words fall as they may. They were both long overdue.
Ever since they were children, Isamu’s entire identity was completely wrapped up in being smarter, testing higher and knowing more than everyone else around him. The emphasis their parents placed on academics was more than enough motivation to feed that drive and Isamu was rightfully proud of every single one of his accomplishments. He really was a genius. His IQ was measurably well above average. He could read and retain information at a rate that really was beyond that of most people. He was valedictorian three times. And Minoru lost count of all the times he introduced his brother as a walking encyclopedia.
“Isamu… nobody - not me, not Mama and Papa, nobody - will ever think you’re any less of a genius because you don’t know something. And you shouldn’t either.”
“But…”
“No, listen to me, Bro. It’s important.” Minoru insisted, pulling back just enough to look his brother in the eyes. “Not knowing everything? THAT’S what makes you a genius. Being able to see connections between all those crazy facts and figures that other people can’t? That’s what makes you a genius. Reading all those books, filling in the missing spaces because you’re inspired by something completely unrelated? That’s what makes you a genius.”
Isamu sniffled, but he didn’t argue.
“And if you ask me, that’s what makes you happy.”
When a teary-eyed Minoru started to pull his brother back into another hug, Isamu closed the distance first. He was still weary from the medication, but he managed to squeeze Minoru with every ounce of his strength. Minoru knew at that point that the Coyote’s spell, or whatever it had been, was truly broken. He knew his brother was going to be all right.
“Don’t ever think you have to know everything. Or even pretend to know everything. Just be you, okay? And you’ll always be a genius to me.”
no subject
no subject
“Cheese pool” or “you could stand to be the responsible one, for once.”
“Despite this, the isothiocyanate sulforaphane that we isolated from broccoli is easily among the most potent naturally occurring inducers of human KEAP1/NRF2 pathway…” Isamu described one of his many ongoing IRIS projects when his PINpoint pinged for the fifth time. “One moment.”
Minoru munched on his oatmeal, watching his brother smirk before replying back quickly.
“Okay, there is no way that’s from work.” He gestured with his spoon.
“Astutely observed. It is not.” Isamu replied, setting his device back down on the table next to his laptop. “It was actually Aarne.”
Minoru snickered. Despite the grief his brother had given him about the irresponsible antics of the rock stars, ever since they worked on that experiment together, his attitude toward the band members had changed. He saw, first hand, what it took to do what they did. He found some common ground. Maybe even made some mutual friends.
“Oh? What’d he want?”
“Do not be surprised if you receive an invite for a pool party in which the pool is crafted entirely out of Gruyere cheese and filled with Jack Daniels.”
Minoru cocked his head, “Wait, what?”
“Gruyere has a tensile strength of 70 kPa. Take the proposed depth (3 feet) times the water density (1 kg/L) times gravity (obvious) times the proposed pool radius (15 feet) and divide by 70. The wall of cheese only needs to be two feet thick to withstand the pressure of around the proposed 18,000 gallons of liquor.”
Minoru just stared, eyebrow raised.
“Yes, I am aware that calculating using the tensile strength of fiberglass would produce the same result with only a millimeter of thickness. But once the discussion of obscenely large soft pretzels came up - did you know he is quite the chef? - there was little that could be done aside from choosing an appropriate complimentary cheese. When I picked up the classic 456-page Cheese Rheology and Texture handbook for a little light reading junior year, I never expected it to come in so handily.”
That eyebrow hadn’t budged.
“Oh! I also volunteered that we would pick up a couple of fruit trays.” He added. “Please do not let me forget to add that to the grocery list schedule.”
Eventually, the silence broke. Minoru just burst out laughing.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Geez, Bro.” He lightheartedly rolled his eyes. “You could stand to be the responsible one, for once.”