Yo Wigleaf, I've been thinking about tropes. Do you ever think about tropes? I like to pick a genre—westerns, like, or high fantasy—and make a list of the tropes associated with it. Ladies tied to railroad tracks. Princesses trapped in castles. That's what this Wigleaf piece is. I gender-flipped it because that's a cheap way to make it more interesting. I flipped the railroad tracks thing too, but that story got real violent so I had to submit it to Drabblecast. There's no limit to the number of people you can tie to railroad tracks, you know. You can just keep tying. Anyways the game is that you pick a trope and see where it takes you. Here are some examples:

- Evil twins

- Underdog team wins the championship

- Walking the plank

- Meet cutes

- Tooth fairies

At first I had a "no metaphors" rule but everything's a metaphor, pretty much. You can't just write something literal. People will think it's about your mom. What's your favorite trope? Mine is quicksand. Not metaphorically, it's a boring metaphor, but literal quicksand. Imagine if you found yourself dying in it, how exasperated you would be. But there's a limit to the number of people who can die in quicksand, right? At some point you'll stop sinking. You'll hit bodies. If a villain ever makes you choose between getting tied to railroad tracks or thrown in quicksand, definitely pick the quicksand.

- Sasha