Jacob's Font of Perspicacity

The best protagonist I have yet to encounter in any work of fiction is a character named Taylor Hebert from a web serial called Worm . An introverted teenager with the ability to telepathically control bugs, she becomes a supervillain fairly early on and proceeds to commit a wide variety of morally questionable acts over the course of the story, inflicting unnecessary harm in her desire to seem intimidating and eventually killing several people in an ultimately unjustified bout of rage. However, despite all this Taylor remains a sympathetic and even sincerely relatable character. While her actions are often extreme, they are always performed in service to sympathetic goals, backed by understandable reasoning. The reader can imagine themselves making the same decisions if they were placed in the same situation. The same cannot be said of Jay Gatsby, protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby . His behavior systematically eliminates his appeal to the reader, lessening th...

SCENE: A grand stone throne room. Towering statues of past monarchs line the walls in alcoves, most armored and armed for battle. Rows of lanterns, seemingly floating in midair, provide a deep purple light which fails to fully illuminate the huge room’s recesses. In the center, a throne is rigidly carved into an enormous stalagmite which thrusts up through the otherwise flagstone floor. Runic script twines around the tower of rock, and the ancient skull of some gigantic horned beast is impaled on its tip. Stone steps and a smooth walkway lead down from the throne to a simple wooden table awkwardly sitting in the room’s center. It is surrounded by several ordinary chairs and bears an unrolled map, an ornate orrery and two flagons. The floor and walls are intermittently marred with scuff marks and faint bloodstains, as if from a recent battle. AT RISE: OLORIN sits uncomfortably on the edge of the throne, wearing a flowing, verdant green cloak with a burnished gold clasp. His feet are ...

(This poem may make more sense if you’ve seen what it’s about. If you haven’t, you can search for “Falcon Heavy Test Flight” on YouTube and skip to around 21:30 in the resulting video.) On the launch pad The first Falcon Heavy stands Fog flows from its three towering cores Jets of water rise in salute At the fire which kindles in their midst Surging smoke pours out from under, expanding outwards The rocket ascends Riding a tail of incandescent white Soaring into the wide blue Both boosters fall away Spinning and plummeting back Two pillars of steel pierce the sky from above And settle to Earth amid rings of flame Lines of glowing red stripe the upper engine’s smooth, wide nozzle The payload’s walls blast away In a blinding blaze of reflected sunlight A convertible drifts through the void Our planet’s reflection oozes across the car’s polished red surface A spacesuit is driving One arm draped over the side, it looks forward And flies off into...

Oscar sat hunched over in his desk, his head propped up by a forearm. His palm had pushed up on his cheek to the point that it almost entirely obscured his right eye. His left eye stared absently at the hair-thin line of sunlight which peeked out from under the shade covering the classroom’s only window. This was the only portion of the classroom not plastered with inspirational posters sporting quotes from famous authors. Mr. Rivera was probably talking, but Oscar only heard the occasional drip of water from the faucet which someone hadn’t fully turned off. A brief interruption of the strip of sunlight by someone walking by outside was enough to jar Oscar out of his inattentive state. He pushed himself up and leaned back, stifling a yawn, and tried to make himself think about what Mr. Rivera was saying. Something about a culminating assignment for the unit, apparently. Oscar shuddered involuntarily at the memory of past essays for this writing class. He hadn’t been able to read a b...

Let me tell you a tale of a land I once knew A land which was almost entirely blue A land which was not at all lacking heart But where, in the end, things fell apart In this blue land, there was too much disease So an alchemist said, “I will cure all of these” In his house of the spirits he mixed and he brewed And all the while on mangoes he chewed His concoctions bubbled and bubbled for years While the blue people kept on weeping tears “We want a cure now!” they begged at his door So the alchemist came and said with a roar “A new world we’ll have when I find the cure One that is brave , without weeping to hear So please stay patient, for I am working hard And do, if you would, get out of my yard” Longer and longer the alchemist worked And over his house a black cloud of soot lurked This darkness was rising up from his lab And blocking the sky like an old hardened scab “ Our beloved country is no longer blue!” Cried people as...

(Note: This was written for school last year, but I figured I might as well put it here.) In winter, all was good and cold. Crisp air made walking nicely brisk. Skies overcast with murky grey, Gave pleasant rain to those below. But spring, a green assassin, creeps, And slays the clouds with sunlight spears. Their corpses fall, and soon are dew, To feed this vile season’s verdant minions. The sun lets loose its baleful gaze, Like a cruel tyrant smiting from on high. Horrific heat weighs down the weary people, No more clouds left to shield them from the rays. But even worse, whenever spring comes along, The dreaded summer will be upon us before long.