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Young Writers Society


Squills 3/13/2017 - 3/19/2017



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Tue Mar 14, 2017 3:32 am
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Welcome to Squills, the official news bulletin of the Young Writers Society!

What will you find here? Tons of interesting news about YWS, including but not limited to: articles about writing, art, and the world of humanities; interviews with YWS members; shameless plugs; link round-ups; and opinionated columns.

And where will all of this come from? Take a look at our fantastic creative staff!

CREATIVE STAFF


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Of course, our content can’t come only from our staff. We also depend on you to help keep Squills successful. You’re all a part of a writing community, after all. If you’re interested in submitting to Squills, pop on over to the Reader’s Corner to find out how you can get involved by contributing an article or participating in other Squills activities. You can also subscribe to the Squills Fan Club , or PM SquillsBot to receive a notification each time a new issue is published!

Well, that’s all I have for now. So, what are you waiting for? Enjoy!

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Tue Mar 14, 2017 3:33 am
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Society Pages
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written by EternalRain < PM: >

This was a week full of top favorites, sleeping, and very random thoughts of YWSers.

@Wolfical’s grandma stroked her hand across her charcoal drawing in awe. Maybe... not the best way to show appreciation.

@RippleGylf has finally finished reading the famous book A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy .

A new hashtag #TopFiveFavoriteSongs has been circling, along with its two buddies #ThreeFavoriteTVShows and #TenFavoriteFoods . One of @Falconer’s favorite songs is Angela by The Lumineers. @dogsrule5 has Supernatural is her three favorite TV shows. @ElizabethLovelace likes Grandfather Larry’s Pickled Beet Hard Boiled Eggs.

@FairyLight has thrown herself into the void.

@Casanova has made an interesting observation regarding reviews:




Wow! We're barely into this month, and there's fifteen users with over 5 reviews, five reviewers with over 10 reviews, and two users with over TWENTY REVIEWS! This month's reviewing is going AWESOME! Congrats everyone so far!



@fortis is currently watching the cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender. Woo, go binge-watching! Along with TV shows, @Iggy is watching FRIENDS and she’s realized Chandler Bing is her spirit animal and @DeepRoses is super excited for the new Tangled TV show, Tangled: Before Ever After.

@CateRose17 has some great news -- they got third place in a regional writing competition!

Sleep seems to be a big topic this week. @Lupa22 just wants to go to sleep right now, @marmalade’s trying to get in the habit of sleeping 8 hours a night, and @Pompadour’s brain is going against their Saturday-is-my-sleep-day philosophy by keeping them up at night.

This has been a fun week, and with spring break coming up for many of us, post your break adventures!





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Tue Mar 14, 2017 3:34 am
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TWO CENTS: CONVINCING AMERICA WE'RE BAD OFF
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written by Aley < PM: >

One of the many tools you have as a writer is the ability to swing something, or to form a rational enough argument, that people will believe you. I think it is important to foster this skill as we grow, and consciously understand it at some point in our lives so we can see other people doing it as well.

One of the people you may see in the news practicing this sort of rhetoric is Donald Trump, the current president of the United States. During his campaign trail, he used a lot of language that suggested something was wrong with how things had been going. He used simplistic language to convince people he just didn't want to go into detail, and to connect with the average individual. I'm going to walk you through a couple of the things that have quickly become tropic of his language, or signals of someone mocking him, so that you can understand the rhetoric behind his victory.

Donald Trump's slogan, "Make America Great Again" is an implication that America is not great now, and while that might be an obvious statement, a lot of people felt it was true, and in that way, they felt like he was speaking the truth because he appealed to their sense of emotional distress.

It's no secret that people in the United States are having a hard time. Between shootings, poor employment rates, the decline of our educational system, and the war on terrorism that we're going to be facing for a long time yet to come, Americans overall had a sense of discomfort, and Trump was able to appeal to that through his language.

The key thing that Trump didn't do was nail down any one thing that makes America bad, anything his competitors created or did was the reason that America wasn't great. The Affordable Care Act, the regulations pushing for clean air, trade deals that were in final stages, and even petty things like scandals and relations with other countries became the one and only reason America was a horrible place, and the only one who could save it, was him.

Let's break down that logic. One of the huge things that Trump claimed he would do, and stuck to saying he would do, was to build a wall along the border of Mexico that would stop immigrants and drugs from getting into the United States. In political history, illegal immigration has always been an issue. It's something both sides debate about, and bat back and forth with no real clear definitive way to actually handle the situation because it's a complex situation to handle. It's not something that a simple act can fix. Trump saw their rhetoric, and said a simple act that he would do to fix it, build a wall.

Now whether he was serious when he said it or not is always debatable. Everything Trump says is up for a debate about its validity not only in facts [as in "the sky is blue"], but also in opinion [I believe the sky is blue], political controversy [we need to agree on whether the sky is blue or not], and consistency [I have never said the sky is the wrong color], so it's a difficult way to start. Trump will frequently double talk, or say both sides of an issue are his opinion, which shows how much his audience matters to his rhetoric.

That being said, let's go back to the wall. His competitors had long drawn out ideas for how to handle immigration, he chose a simple one. This is the basic of how Trump works. If Clinton said X, he would say –X. Therefor it became impossible to agree with him, but also to counter him because he would say that he didn't say –X in the first place.

How can we work with this? There are a few things we can learn from listening to anything Trump says, first off, he's a great character study. Listening to him speak and trying to figure out what type of thing he's going to be saying creates an amazing pastime while you're sloshing through the hours of angry ranting that he provides. This can be created as a character in your story for any type of person who you want to be a bully, a liar, or someone who's just very, very irritating. He's a "smooth talker" but that just means that he knows what his audience wants to hear, and he says exactly that.

The second thing we can learn is how to argue. He has very complex methods for getting out of sticky situations and winning the trust of his audience, who are his primary focus, while not sticking just with a particular cast. For instance, he doesn't nail down a lot of what he means for long. He might say he's never said something different, but it's pretty easy to find him saying just about anything.

If you look at his track record with women and you just listen to him, you would think that he is "wonderful with women" and that "women love him" but in reality, he's been recorded bragging about harassment, accused of such, and if you actually listen to him talk about women, and you just look at what he's saying, he objectifies them and belittles them. He is capable of strongly stereotyping someone and pegging them into a role that their appearance dictates for them, and responding with a shrug and a "I didn't do that" attitude that people believe.

For this reason, I find the rhetoric of him interesting, and I listen to him speak, and watch things about him to see how people are interpreting his words. His simple language like "I have the best words, I have all the words" has become such a trope for him, that you can basically fill in "I have the best" and "I have all" will be right after it. It's common to see him repeat his language from one location to another because he has such a wrote way of setting up himself as a good character.

Whenever he's saying he's good at something, he always escalates it. He goes from "I am good" to "I am the best" and once he is the best at something he "has all" of it, and since he has "all" of it, he is suddenly the only authority on that subject. It escalates in all of two seconds. You just have to listen for that repeat of "I'm good at x …" and then he'll intonate it differently like he's being humble "I'm Good at X" and then he'll use a name, say he's the best at it.

So next time you get in a pickle with a villain, or someone who's just a little slow, try that technique of escalation with their language about themselves. See if that gets you in the mindset of someone who believes a fallacy, because once you're the best at something, there's no backwards movement. You Are Number One.





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Tue Mar 14, 2017 3:34 am
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POETRY CORNER: ROBERT FROST
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written by Aley < PM: >

Hello everyone and welcome to a Poetry Corner. Basically I'm going to be trying to do a new column where I'll be quickly going over a poem or poet I love and sharing it with you so that you can get a taste of different poems! This week we're going to start out with Robert Frost!

Background

Robert Frost is an American poet who always wanted to be close to nature, but often would end up doing very poorly in it. He liked farming a lot, but he was not good at it, and in the end, he is best known for his poetry related to nature. He has a sense of humor as a poet, and uses rhymed poetry, so he's relatable for a lot of people who believe poetry should only be rhymed.

If you don't like his poetry, chances are it's because his style is rhymed and he's become something of a staple. People think he's overdone. That being said, I enjoy his poems because of the humor and depth they can provide!

Poems By:

Robert Frost is best known for "Mending Wall", "Nothing Gold Can Stay", "The Road Not Taken", "'Out, Out, -'", "After Apple Picking", and a handful of others. Today we'll take a look at "Closed For Good".

Closed For Good

Much as I owe I owe
The passers of the past
Because their to and fro
Has cut this road to last,
I owe them more today
Because they've gone away

And come not back with steed
And chariot to chide
My slowness with their speed
And scare me to one side.
They have found other scenes
For haste and other means.

They leave the road to me
To walk in saying naught
Perhaps but to a tree
Inaudibly in thought,
"From you the road receives
A priming coat of leaves

"And soon for lack of sun,
The prospects are in white
It will be further done,
But with a coat so light
The shape of leaves will show
Beneath the brush of snow."

And so on into winter
Till even I have ceased
To come as a foot printer,
And only some slight beast
So mousy or so foxy
Shall print there as my proxy.

The Poetry of Robert Frost; The Collected Poems


I picked this poem because it's classic Frost. He has a cute ending after a very meaningful middle and beginning. The story changes over time from talking about how people who came before us sort of pave the way, but they don't stick around to see what way they paved, they're gone. They die.

Just like Frost paved the way for millions of people to access and love poetry, and he is gone, so will we be gone one day whether we're noticed or unnoticed. The transition to the ending, the playful "foxy" and "proxy" rhyme makes a stark contrast between the absence and the filling of nature in the place of people. There's a lot that can be read into this poem, and I hope you enjoyed this week's pick! If you have a suggestion of a poet you'd like to see, or a poem you'd like done, get in touch.

Until next time!





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Tue Mar 14, 2017 3:35 am
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Chicken Appreciation Post
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written by Nikayla < PM: >

This is a Chicken Appreciation Post



So, I really love chickens. I think they're the best thing on the earth. Do you know why? I'll tell you why I love chickens so much. You can basically fly on them. You know, like in Zelda when you pick a chicken up and then jump off a cliff. Now, I don't know if I'd advise doing this down a cliff that's more than a couple of feet off the ground.

Chickens are also great companions when going on long journeys. You think you need a wolf or something else vicious to protect you? Think again. Chickens do just as good of a job at protecting you. Even better, they can help you get from place to place, if you're tiny enough. You can ride a chicken, it just has to be your size.

Whether it's a chicken in its normal size, or if you had to make it larger with a magic potion. I just think that chickens are better than roosters or stallions, in terms of mounts. I don't know, does World of Warcraft offer chickens as a mount? I sure hope so, otherwise, I don't see why anyone gets so addicted to that game. I mean, griffins are basically big chickens, aren't they?

I just kinda wish I had a whole lot of chickens. Is there a chicken Pokemon? I sure don't think so. Maybe that should be the next legendary Pokemon. That'd be woke. I'd play that game. What type would it be? Chickens don't really fly, so I guess it'd be a Farm type. Do they have those? Pretty sure they do. I actually do kind of want to draw a comic. Yeah, one with a girl who has a chicken for a hat and goes on adventures. The chicken, also eats the bugs that ever try to come near her hair. If that was an advertisement for a hair product, I would buy it.

I love chickens. Don't you?





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Tue Mar 14, 2017 3:36 am
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INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
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written by marmalade < PM: >

Let’s be honest, most people when they think about International Women’s Day probably think it’s just some unnecessary “feminist” holiday made by man hating women. Many don’t think of the holiday as that big of a deal, but I’m here to tell you about the history of International Women’s Day and remind you of how far we have come as a society.

“If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree.”
― Michael Crichton


IWD started in New York in 1908 when 15,000 women marched through the city demanding shorter hours, better pay, and voting rights. It was actually a march in Russia on March 8th 1917, when working women marched in Petrograd, Russia for their rights, that ignited, one of the most significant events in history as we know it, the Russian Revolution. Here is a quote from Leon Trotsky about the event,

...We did not imagine that this 'Women's Day' would inaugurate the revolution. Revolutionary actions were foreseen but without date. But in morning, despite the orders to the contrary, textile workers left their work in several factories and sent delegates to ask for support of the strike… which led to mass strike... all went out into the streets.


International Women's Day was celebrated for the first time by the United Nations in 1975 and in the 2000s the event was stalled as women’s rights wasn’t a popular topic, but in the more recent years we have seen a re-ignition of advocacy on the subject.

What are your thoughts on International Women’s Day? Post a status with the hashtag #IWD so I can see your responses.





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Tue Mar 14, 2017 3:39 am
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SHAMELESS PLUGS
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written by SquillsBot < PM: >

We love to run articles and questions, but we also love to advertise for you. Let people know about your new blog, a poem or story you’re looking for reviews on, or a forum thread you’d like more traffic on through Squills’ Shameless Plugs. PM @SquillsBot with the exact formatting of your advertisement, contained in the following code.

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Tue Mar 14, 2017 3:40 am
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written by SquillsBot < PM: >

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Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.
— Enid Bagnold