tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80634359186359803512011-07-30T21:21:13.592-07:00A fiction-blog, or text webcomic. <a href="http://aspirantquality.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-is-quality-of-aspiration.html">Details.</a>Cavalcadeofcatshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15615450270148160319noreply@blogger.comBlogger321100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063435918635980351.post-42131034853491390742010-03-10T01:04:00.001-08:002010-03-10T01:06:00.248-08:00

David: sirtell methe winding waynick: But I am asleep!(so tired)Okay.So.There was a dude.Walking his dog.As dudes sometimes do.David: ...hmnick: But the dude walked into a happenstance!David: umnick: Five dudes, all beatin' each-other up with sticks.(Like, quarterstaffs.)(Big long sticks.)Dude went, !What the heck!So he said, "Dudes, what the heck!"This was a mistake.They beat him up, too!Left

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In a land ruled by Light, there arose a spirit of the earth. Of shape it was manlike; of spirit it was gentle; of form it was comely. And it looked about itself, at the flora and fauna and the earth and the sky, and cried out with a mighty voice, "It is good!"  And into the depths of the earth this cry shuddered; and creatures of shadow wriggled and writhed, hissing, "Our savior, our salvation!

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(Original posts begin here; they're slightly vandalized.) This is a tale of three men. Each suffered tremendous adversity; each overcame it, in their own way, and found their own success. Each would, by their life’s end, shape the future of multitudes. Jeremy Desmond was born to privilege. He was raised by the finest of nurses according to the best practices known at the time of his childhood,

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Daniel Zhao carried her body in his arms, his heart and head both heavy. His apartment-mate looked up, startled, as he entered the room with his grisly burden. His eyes instantly filled with pity and commiseration. "How did she die?" he asked Mr. Zhao.  Mr. Zhao looked up. His eyes flashed.  "I killed her," he snarled.  His room-mate backed away slowly, watching in paralzyed fascination as Mr

Cavalcadeofcatshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15615450270148160319noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063435918635980351.post-76035928547695205782010-02-11T01:01:00.000-08:002010-02-11T01:14:25.771-08:00

The doors slam open. A silver-haired youth staggers in, his school blazer torn and bloodied. He stares forward for a long moment; then his eyes roll up in his head, and he collapses to the floor.  Three others stand in the lobby: two girls and a very confused-looking boy. All wear school uniforms of the same make, though the boy augments this with a pair of large headphones, presumably not

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Julia and Robert leaned together, safely hidden in the shadow of a towering iron golem. Robert leaned close to Julia, his lips pressed to her ear as he whispered. "I have learned something terrible, my darling," Robert said. "It's about the War."  "The War?" Julia asked. "Between our two races - the witchcraftsmen and the witchcraftsmen, cursed to be forever divided by the curse of

Cavalcadeofcatshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15615450270148160319noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063435918635980351.post-51562390562263590762010-02-09T00:00:00.000-08:002010-02-09T00:00:05.504-08:00

I was very greatly surprised to meet those two on the road: a man and a woman, seemingly young, with one's hair colored azure and the other's violet. Their reputation was known to me, as notorious malcontents and villains; seeing them in the flesh, still seemingly as young as in their photographs from years ago, I deduced (in a flash of intuition) them to be oni, evil spirits, and leapt back in

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 Owing to an unfortunate series of undeserved indignities, I was beheaded and tossed off the side of an island. Yes. Subsequently, I found the thing that lurked in the endless storm at the center of the world... but the heart of the tale is the journey, so let's fall back a moment, and speak of how I came to find myself there. Thus: -  I fell tumbling through the air, my body consistently fifty

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(When we left off, our hero was dead! Well. Basically.) (He got better.) (As follows:) I awoke groggily, feeling at my neck.  Damn it! It had left a scar!  Well... it wasn't so bad. When and if I ever made it back to civilized society, I would have to order my servants to outfit my wardrobe with some very high collars. Until then, it wouldn't matter. Where was a gentleman to find a lady

Cavalcadeofcatshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15615450270148160319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063435918635980351.post-51367987718511602932010-01-20T22:03:00.000-08:002010-01-20T22:03:44.087-08:00

The world of business is a shady one. Vast orbitals hover overhead, casting the world into darkness as they pass. The businessmen, wearing suits and ties to a man, sometimes glance up as the jewel-studded orbitals pass; but then they turn back, sighing, their necks bent. It has been very long since any of them saw the sun.  Once, they say, things were different. In the time of King Aldric, "the

Cavalcadeofcatshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15615450270148160319noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063435918635980351.post-73941390367760846612010-01-19T19:23:00.000-08:002010-02-04T21:46:56.282-08:00

(The Last Gaylord lives in interesting times. Let's talk about him more.) (Where was he?) (Oh, right. He'd just jumped off an island.) (Let's see how that goes for him!) Jumping blindly off the witch Circe's balcony had seemed to make perfect sense at the time, but in retrospect - I thought, accelerating slowly downward and outward with no land in sight - it may have been something of a poor

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I pushed myself onto my feet, rising from the rough rock ground. The light was much brighter than inside the cave; I blinked repeatedly, my eyes adjusting. The sky shone bright blue directly ahead of me. It was also a bright blue above, to the left, and to the right - 'below' only being exempted due to the thick layer of clouds that swirled there instead.  I swore.  It was a sheer cliff to

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Gruntlesnout straddled the top of the blogosphere. "'Ey!" he bellowed, surveying the landscape for threats. "I'm the King of the Blogosphere now! Anyone 'oo wants to take my place better come and get it!" He waved his great two-handed sword for emphasis.  A large chrome-plated crab promptly teleported behind Gruntlesnout, claws waving wildly. It chittered.  "Come on, Gruntlesnout," the crab

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Once there was a life within the Sun; the girl Iphigenia, whose eyes shone like jewels and whose smile pushed the world (each and every day!) into a brighter tomorrow. Today, this is not so. The sun is simply a golden disk in the sky, devoid of purpose and intent, and Iphignia -  Iphigenia is no longer hot; and I will tell you why. Here where we stand, upon the surface of the earth, we see the

Cavalcadeofcatshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15615450270148160319noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063435918635980351.post-21289170235707260812010-01-08T23:24:00.000-08:002010-01-08T23:24:37.489-08:00

Oyu is a space whale! He does not actually look very much like a whale. That is because he lives in space. So instead of normal baleen, he has space-baleen, which filters out delicious baryonic matter from the solar wind! And instead of a water-spout, he has a set of ion-spouts, which fire charged particles in any one of three directions to give him fine control over his direction! And instead

Cavalcadeofcatshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15615450270148160319noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063435918635980351.post-56773431499572713532010-01-07T21:59:00.000-08:002010-01-07T21:59:48.594-08:00

The Lady Beth waited with increasing impatience for her steam-powered slippers.  "Maid!" she called out, her temper failing. "Maid! Where are my slippers? I have been waiting for fully a quarter of an hour now, and my patience is quite worn out!"  "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Violetta cried, rushing out of the closet and curtsying repeatedly. "I've looked and looked, but for all the King's horses, I

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Lord King stood in the tallest tower of the great citadel in the thriving city of Fyogrostadt. He stared over the landscape, clouds of smoke from the city's industry drifting over fertile farms beyond, and contemplated.  "I want some really big guns," he said.  "Pardon, my Lord?" his advisors asked as one.  "Like, really big ones," Lord King said, miming their shape and size in the air. "

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On the roof of a deserted office building, late at night, a stairwell entrance cracked open, spilling forth a burning orange glow. From it came a loose mob of men, dressed all alike in dark clothes; in their center was a struggling figure, bound and gagged. Holographic tattoos shone faintly from his exposed chest; writhing chains on a shoulder, a burning heart above his own. The other men kicked

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"I know Ur-Zhul is real," Ely said, her face set in concentration. "I know he loves us. I know he died for us."  "But?" Sven asked.  "But ever since he came back, with all his flesh rotten and a persistent desire for brains, I feel it's just not been the same," Ely concluded sadly.  "Braiins," Ur-Zhul moaned from below the makeshift barricade Ely and Svet had hurriedly blocked the float-shaft

Cavalcadeofcatshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15615450270148160319noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063435918635980351.post-13017942879013132402009-12-31T00:00:00.000-08:002009-12-31T01:12:40.514-08:00

Nearly twenty years after the adventures of Tjesmond and Elspeth... The skies of Rejjvik were grey and cold; the streets powdered with dirty snow. Crossbowwomen on the walls watched the clouds warily for signs of hail, or worse; guardsmen walked their beats warily, listening for the cries of a food-thief's victim, or a wider alarm. And on the Aristocrats' Street, where the lords kept their homes

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When Elspeth discovered Tjesmond, the boy was curled in the center of a deer trail, shaking from the torments of some strange ague. His body was skeletal, completely devoid of fat; his clothes were worn to paper-thin rags. He would certainly die if Elspeth did nothing.  Elspeth was raised as a devout follower of the One God; and, beyond that, she had learned some compassion in her nineteen years

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Tjesmond was born in Estlunde, and he was dead. His family was poor, and used to hardship and suffering; his parents shed no more than a few tears over Tjesmond's unbreathing body before they took it to the river and threw it in. His mother, supported by her two oldest sons, watched the body float away until it passed around a curve and vanished from sight; then, slowly, she turned away, and put

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"On to the next order of business," Ühunt, court advisor and minutes-keeper for the meeting of the Lords Remaining, suggested. "The freewoman Carin, ranked second in the notable Tjesmond's Trusted Companions, has brought to this council's attention word of Crow scouts prowling the northern villages. She suggests a swift response - "  Carin rose. "I suggest," she said, "That I should be freed to

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Jason's floorboards were bothering him. It was not that they were too rough, he thought, padding the halls barefoot. Not that they were too smooth, either; he found his footing easy to keep. Their hue seemed acceptable enough, a sort of soft warm brown; their whorls and knots contained nothing that Jason could fairly censure. No, he thought, it was something else...  Two days later he stood up

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Tjesmond marched through the dense forest, his blade at his hip; and behind him and before him marched his Trusted Companions, a hundred strong, proud and disciplined and clad in leather and mail. They moved in file, each stepping in the footsteps of the one before to ease their passage and disguise their number; all were veterans of the wilderness, and few in Estlunde could be said to match them

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"Why are we fighting?" Sara asked, nimbly rolling to avoid a white-hot plasma blast.  "Why are we fighting?" Evryn parroted, her voice incredulous. "You've forgotten already?" She fired another plasma blast, melting a large crater into the face of the derelict starship Sara had taken cover behind.  "All the plasma fire is pretty distracting," Sara said. "Easy to forget things when you're

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The Sludge-Beast walked step-by step out of its dolorous shack. It blinked at the daylight. It oozed, perhaps a little sadly. These were all things that Sludge-Beasts commonly did - when there were Sludge-Beasts, that is. They thrived in meadows and hills! They swam in the oceans, they galumphed across the plains! Some - a very lucky few - even soared across the sky by means of swift-spinning

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Starbirds make stars! They're born in large creches, deep within the hollow earth. They grow, they're nutured - fed by the Deep Things that lurk within the strange crevices of the Earth - and then, when they're old enough, they're set free. "Fly!" the Deep Things urge, hissing in tongues alien to the races of man. "Fly, upwards, into the sky! Fufill your purpose!"  Some of the starbirds never

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The boy carried the lantern into the cellar, sloshing oil onto the steps as he walked down. He paused for a moment, anxious, at the bottom; then he drew from his right pocket a match, and lit the lantern. Its light was dim and flickering, and gave everything a sickly sort of glow; but it was enough to see by. The boy walked to the cellar's far wall, worked for a moment, seemed to activate some

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The King summoned his court.  Word spread quickly throughout the castle; by messengers sent to important courtiers' doors, and from there swiftly by grapevine to the rest. All the important figures of the kingdom appeared before the court room's doors, to wait and speculate amongst themselves as to the purpose of the King's summons. The Nobles were all there, dress swords at their sides; the

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Two girls walked along a road, their features shadowy in the evening darkness. One was somewhat taller than the other. It is entirely possible that they were going to get pizza. They encountered a young man, walking along the same road in the opposite direction. He looked at the taller girl, his gaze holding peculiarly long; then he turned away abruptly. The tall girl's curiosity was piqued. "

Cavalcadeofcatshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15615450270148160319noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8063435918635980351.post-69157719480918534222009-12-04T21:47:00.000-08:002009-12-23T22:51:38.162-08:00

Might be a bit past time to explain this, no? The first question is the simplest:  What is A Quality of Aspiration? Well, it's a place where I write fiction. Sometimes it's stuff about space aliens and ray-guns. Sometimes it's stuff about monsters and dudes with swords. Sometimes it's stuff about, well, ordinary people.  This, I think, covers the gamut.  Another question:  Why do you write

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