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Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

#Novmemeber 14

So the main antagonist of #Tenement is... the Tenement 😅

But I also did one for Collector Mortimer, who's the main human antagonist.

Forgot to record myself again but I swear I didn't cheat! 60 secs each ✋

Rough sketch of a Tenement hallway, just a hallway with wood floors & ceiling, some doors & a picture on the wall, one lightbulb in the ceiling, and at the end it disappears into darkness

Rough sketch of a bust of Head Collector Nicholas Mortimer, an old man with short hair and a pointy chin, looking a little thoughtful(?) / scheming(?) / smug(?) Not sure what this expression is. He wears thick robes wrapped around his shoulders.

November 14, 2025 at 3:34 PM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

#WIPSnips #amwriting #writingcommunity #writers #writesky

Late today due to sleep-needing reasons! Kazuo is daring Noah to go explore a creepy place. (Let's be real, Noah would totally do it even without the bribe 😂)

From #Tenement, my dystopian mystery about people living in an infinite building.

He squinted, pretending to think it over. His eyes gleamed in that Kazuo-ish way that made you feel like he knew exactly who he was and exactly who you were and exactly how to come out on top no matter what. It was his card-playing look. Everyone always hated playing cards with Kazuo. He loved it that they hated it.
“Alright, Noah.” He stroked his chin. “How about this? You go in there, mm, ten paces? And I’ll let you keep the Nwissy for a week.”
“Five paces, and I keep the Nwissy for good.”
He winced. “Oh now, Noah. If you’re going to be that way about it, we can just forget it. I don’t care about you going in there that much.”
“You guys!” Jon growled. “I really don’t think anyone should be—!”
“Alright, fine,” I backpedaled. “How about I go in... twelve paces, and you let me keep the Nwissy for... a month?”
“Deal!” We shook on it.

November 14, 2025 at 2:46 PM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

I did one too! Yep this looks about right 😄

November 14, 2025 at 2:53 AM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

#Bookvember 13

A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS by Khaled Hosseini was one I read YEARS ago. I remember it impacted me a lot with its portrayal of women living under religious extremism that strips them of their rights. At the time I thought, surely this only happens in other countries. Ha, haha, haaaa 🙃

Cover of A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS by Khaled Hosseini

November 13, 2025 at 5:41 PM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

Lol well I've been writing #Tenement the past few days & quite proud of it, but it's ALL insanely spoilery & I seem to have acquired an adorable conspiracy fanclub lately, so alas I can't share.

So here's a bit I wrote a week ago from #Charagma, aka the book I *intended* to work on this month 😅

“You understand,” the old woman told Constance as she spread a thick blanket over a long workbench, “this won’t change anything about the child’s fate when she dies.”
“I know,” Constance murmured.
“El has already foreseen her choices,” the old woman went on. “She has no mark because she’s destined to reject his salvation. No matter what we do, this girl is damned for eternity. It can’t be changed.”
“Yes, I said I understand,” Constance replied in a sharp whisper. She gazed down at her daughter, her hopelessly doomed daughter, and felt the overwhelming grief swell up in her again. A grief so much larger, so much darker and heavier and more suffocating, than any she’d ever imagined she was capable of feeling. This was worse than her daughter dying. She would have much preferred for her daughter to suffer a painfully short life, to die before she ever got to live, but still to have a charagma—still to at least be taken up to El’s paradise after her life ended.
But this? To know that no matter how long she lived on this earth, no matter what kind of happy life Constance tried to give her, her precious little one was condemned to burn in endless agony until the end of time, and there was nothing Constance could do—nothing anyone could do—that could ever, ever spare her from that cruel fate...
It would have been better if she’d never been born.
But she was born; it was too late. She was here, with her sister, her much more fortunate sister. The least Constance could do for her was let her live a normal life, in this short time she had on earth.
“It must be good,” Constance insisted to the old woman. “It must be absolutely flawless. No one can ever suspect it isn’t a real charagma.”
“Of course,” the old woman said casually.
“No, listen,” Constance commanded her. “This girl’s father is a Shepherd, you understand? He hunts down secret Reprobates every day. It has to be good enough to fool even him.”

November 13, 2025 at 3:59 PM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

#WIPSnips #amwriting #writingcommunity #writers #writesky

Noah just has a few questions about this place...

From chapter 1 of #Tenement, my dystopian mystery about people living in an infinite building.

“Noah Boy,” she’d say to me, pinching my ear. “They’ll really be after you. You think all those bad thoughts—makes you as tasty to them as a chocolate truffle.”
I didn’t exactly know what a chocolate truffle was. (According to legend, Nan Enokido had once stumbled across one in an empty room when she was a young woman, and had spent the rest of her life hoping to find another.) But I knew what she meant. She always said things like that to me, especially when I would get into one of what my father called my “why moods.”
Why hasn’t anyone ever tried going all the way to the end of the Tenement? I’d ask. Or,
Why do we even have a Front Door if we’re not allowed to open it?
Why don’t we ever see the Landlord?
How do we know there’s really nothing outside of the Tenement?
If the Tenement’ll fall apart without the Rules, then why didn’t the Landlord just build it better in the first place?
“Noah.” My father would sigh at my questions. “Please stop.”
I didn’t mean any harm. But those questions were always popping into my head. If someone had given me some good answers, I would have stopped asking.

November 13, 2025 at 10:41 AM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

seen as a luxury.

Due to all this combined, most of their clothes generally look like a lot of patched up gray/beige sacks that fit them "close enough" 😂 But women also have a rule where they have to cover up almost completely, so they basically just wrap themselves in sheets.

See Noah & his mom:

Digital illustration by @sarkastiklover.bsky.social of Noah Walker, a young man with medium-dark skin, very short brown hair, and a loose-fitting beige shirt standing in a long narrow corridor with yellow/brown wallpaper with a rose pattern near the base, wooden floors, & a naked lightbulb hanging from a slightly cracked ceiling. He is standing back-to-back with his mom Cassie, a woman with large curly brown hair, who is looking back over her shoulder fearfully toward him. Diagonal cross-sections separate the two, with Noah in the present & colored, while Cassie is in the past & black and white. In Noah's left hand he holds the Nwissy (a compass).

November 12, 2025 at 5:14 PM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

#WIPSnips #amwriting #writingcommunity #writers #writesky

Another shorter one today! It's Rent Day, so everyone's expected to wear their "good" clothes (i.e. the least shitty ones, lol)

From #Tenement, my dystopian mystery about people living in an infinite building.

I hated to leave her like that, but I had to go. The clock in the hall read 4:37, and the Rent-Collectors would be coming around 5:00.
“Oh good, you’re back!” Nan Enokido exclaimed when I walked through the door. She was heating an iron on the potbelly stove, with my father’s good shirt spread on the ironing board. “Hurry up and change. You didn’t see the twins out there, did you?”
“Nope.” I gave Ozzie a pat as he bounded up to greet me, and hurried to the bedroom to hide my contraband book. Kazuo nearly bowled me over.
“Coming through, dingus!” he barked. “Hey, Nan, where’s my good belt?”

November 12, 2025 at 12:07 PM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

#Bookvember 11

May be cheating, but I think it's hard not to look at all we know about Hans Christian Andersen & not conclude he wasn't neurodivergent in some way ❤️

I've always loved his stories. The Snow Queen is not only my favorite fairytale of all time, but I'm working on a retelling of it!

Snow Queen illustration by Nika Goltz: white patterns on a blue background form the swirling abstract image of a woman with a large white hat. Below her in the bottom right corner, a blonde boy dressed in red, with blue frozen skin, kneels on the ground reaching for something.

Snow Queen illustration by Nika Goltz:
A young blonde girl (Gerda) in a red dress with a white apron is holding a lantern and tiptoeing through a palace alongside a raven and his wife. Above their heads, ghostly shapes of a hunting party on horses with dogs ride through the air.

November 11, 2025 at 6:59 PM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

#Bookvember 10

Catching up today!

I also have to go with PARABLE OF THE SOWER by Octavia Butler. I expected to like it, but damn I did NOT expect how profoundly it would get to me! One of the most horrifically real depictions of an apocalypse + a revolutionary, hopeful ideal for humanity ❤️

Cover of PARABLE OF THE SOWER by Octavia Butler

November 11, 2025 at 6:41 PM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

#Novmemeber 11

Noah from #Tenement would be a mongoose! Lil cutie, doesn't seem that threatening, but is actually a fierce scrappy dude who is quite persistent & resilient, and isn't afraid to take on scary foes (and he can win 😈)

Picture of a cute light brown mongoose with a pink nose

Digital painting of Noah cropped from @sarkastiklover.bsky.social's Tenement piece. He is a young man with medium-dark skin, very short brown hair, and a loose-fitting beige shirt standing in a long narrow corridor with yellow/brown wallpaper with a rose pattern near the base, wooden floors, & a naked lightbulb hanging from a slightly cracked ceiling. In his left hand he holds the Nwissy (a compass)

November 11, 2025 at 3:51 PM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

Convincing you to read my novel by the first sentence. Share yours if you want!

In case it wasn't clear...
#Tenement

Screenshot of the first lines of my surreal dystopian mystery, TENEMENT.
-------
CHAPTER ONE: THE RULES
No one ever left the Tenement. That was Rule Number One.
[Text Box:]
[~~~RULE ONE~~~]
[Under no circumstances shall anyone leave the Tenement.]

November 11, 2025 at 3:37 PM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

#WIPSnips #amwriting #writingcommunity #writers #writesky

Nothing close to a burger in any of my WIPs, so here are some other "culinary delights" 😋

From Mem & Light's first meeting in #Charagma, my SFF dystopia where all people are marked saved or damned from birth.

While waiting for one of the attendants, Mem scanned the bar’s shelves. Not surprising, there were several bottles of what she assumed must be alcoholic drinks, some of which she recognized, many of which she didn’t. There were also a selection of various things that could be smoked, and the implements with which to smoke them. A moving carousel of decadent foods—sauce-slathered meats, sugary pastries, crepes drowning in gooey cheese—rotated in a perpetual circle in and out of the kitchen area and around where the guests were seated at the bar. People snatched up the dishes as they passed by. About half of the dishes, and half of the drinks in the patrons’ hands, were glowing with a faint light, infused with numen for the holiday.
“Have you ever tried numen-infused food?” she asked Light.
He shook his head. “Too pricey for me. You?”
“A few times,” she replied, not wanting to admit that her family was rich enough to have it about once a month. “It’s amazing. Care to try a numen drink now? I’ll buy it for you.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she worried she might offend him by the offer. He did make a face at her, but not one of wounded pride—more of skeptical disgust. “You want to spend your money on that? What’s so special about it, anyway? I’ve never understood the appeal.”
“It ‘illuminates the mind, awakens the body and refreshes the soul,’” she said.
“Without the advertisement script, please. Does it actually taste better?”
“It does!”
“Oh, in what way?”
“I can’t describe it,” she shrugged. “You’ll just have to try it.

November 11, 2025 at 10:11 AM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

I am late to the picture party but I guess this is my contribution... I don't have any cool pictures 😂 Closest I can get to cool is uhhhh hat, and... books, and... stuffed animals? 🤣

I don't know how to do the stickers either so y'all get scribbles lol

Picture of me sitting in a bright cluttered room with a shelf of books and stuffed animals in the background. I'm wearing a flower print black shirt and a black bucket hat. My face is hidden behind a pink scribble

November 11, 2025 at 5:30 AM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

#WIPSnips #amwriting #writingcommunity #writers #writesky

Bit of a stretch, but I'm going with ✨vibes✨

Constance Blake seeks out a local place to help her new daughter born without a charagma.

From #Charagma, my SFF dystopia about a world where all people are marked saved or damned from birth.

“If I weren’t a law-abiding woman,” the midwife had said, after seeing Constance’s inconsolable horror at her child’s missing charagma, “I might be inclined to say I’d heard a rumor.”
“A rumor?” Constance had asked, too distraught to catch the meaning of the woman’s tone, at first.
“Only a rumor,” the midwife went on. “Of a place in St. Epiphany’s District known for changing fates, so to speak. But of course I’d never advise anyone to chase that rumor. We all know the law of El, don’t we, Mrs. Blake? We all know what’s to be done with a child like that.”
Insane of her, to even make the insinuation—even with plausible deniability—knowing that the twins’ own father was currently away prosecuting forgers and secret Reprobates.
Insane of Constance, too, to respond not by reporting the woman to the authorities, but instead by asking another question: “Where might a not law-abiding woman find this place?”
St. Epiphany’s District.
Five blocks east of the trolley station.
An unassuming clockmaker’s shop across from a run-down chapel.
Ask for a clock with an extra hour.
The old woman behind the counter of the shop was busy polishing a crystal clock face when Constance uttered this question in a low, urgent burst.
Constance had half-expected to get no response except confused laughter from the woman, or at the very least an odd look. But the woman’s expression remained still, and only a slight hesitation in her polishing gave away that the phrase meant something to her.
“I’m afraid those clocks are only for our very needy customers,” she said after a moment. “We wouldn’t want to give them away to just anyone.”

November 10, 2025 at 11:51 AM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

#Bookvember 9

I'm gonna be very English teacher & go with The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde 😄

I read this book in my teens, and both the horrific premise & witty writing style captivated me. I was still a sheltered fundie kid at the time, & this book def changed my brain chemistry a bit.

Painting of Dorian Gray. Tulsi Palmar. “The Instagram of Dorian Gray,” 2023. Accessed via https://tulsiparmar26.medium.com/the-instagram-of-dorian-gray-619d90a3e202
A painting of "Innocent" Dorian Gray, a beautiful blonde young man in a nice suit on the left, standing back to back with his dark portrait self: a wrinkled scowling cruel-looking old man

November 9, 2025 at 3:59 PM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

#Novmemeber 9

I did this last night! Maayyyyy have used an extra couple of seconds, sorry 😅

It's Noah from #Tenement 🫶

Very rough 60-sec(ish) sketch of Noah, the MC of TENEMENT. He's a young man with close-shaved hair and a serious expression holding a compass (it's supposed to be a compass lol)

November 9, 2025 at 2:44 PM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

#WIPSnips #amwriting #writingcommunity #writers #writesky

Just a short snip today to avoid spoilers 👀

From #Tenement, my dystopian mystery about people living in an infinite building.

The grief hit me like a punch in the stomach. It must have hit Kazuo hard too, because I heard him suck in a breath and hold it. He turned away from me, pretending to look at the pictures on the wall, though I knew he was just trying to hide how much it affected him.
“So, where’s the damn letter?” he asked, putting on a detached tone, though he couldn’t suppress the quiver in his voice. “It better be here after all we went through.”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “He didn’t tell me.”
“Oh, great.”

November 9, 2025 at 10:16 AM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

Ok Sam here's one of me when I played a fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream 😁

Photo of College Emily sitting on a stage in a blue fairy costume doing my makeup

November 9, 2025 at 5:06 AM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

I think, at least in my #Atlantis WIP, it's that while it's absolutely fine to want to leave a legacy or wrestle with big philosophical concepts, in the end nothing lasts forever, so the relationships you have with people right now are what really matter more than anything.

It had all always been fragile. Yet what had she been doing all this time? Playing silly games, procrastinating, telling herself “someday,” or “maybe tomorrow,” or “eventually.” Assuring herself that there was no need to act now because it was all inevitable anyway. Debating with herself over pointless philosophical questions about fate and free will when it didn’t really matter, did it? The only thing that mattered was that it was all going to end, one way or another, maybe sooner, maybe later. The only thing that mattered was reaching out into that abyss and finding a hand to grasp so that you knew you weren’t really alone. (Mireia about Kena, Book 2)

“I wanted him to be something more. But he never cared about that. He only wanted to fish and have his family, and enjoy each day one at a time... I didn’t understand him back then. But I think I do now. And I think, maybe, he was right after all. Maybe it’s not important to prove you existed to people who won’t be born for another hundred years. Maybe all that matters is proving it to yourself, right now. Maybe the next hundred years, or thousand years, or ten thousand years—maybe they don’t really matter. Maybe all that really matters is today.” (Mireia about her father, Book 3)

November 9, 2025 at 3:24 AM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

#WIPSnips #amwriting #writingcommunity #writers #writesky

When Mem & Light first meet, she doesn't pick up on the red flags that he might have some... Luigi tendencies.

(And I don't mean the Mario brother 😅)

From #Charagma, my SFF dystopia where all people are marked saved or damned from birth.

“I don’t think that’s true, actually,” she said. “Do you really believe that?”
Light looked surprised. For a moment he just stared at her, thoughts flickering behind his eyes, and finally gave her a shrug and a smile of surrender.
“Alright, you’ve called me out, Mem,” he admitted. “I guess I need to think more carefully about my words. I only meant that—the little flaws, the little pieces of yourself that everyone worries about, those things don’t make you broken. And you shouldn’t—I hope you’ll try to be kinder to yourself. But yes, I suppose, there are people who are broken in certain ways. Including me. Sometimes life gives you injuries you never really recover from.”
“El, that’s true,” Mem sighed.
“And also,” he added, “I think there are some people in this world—many people—who are... rotten, on the inside. Whatever part of the soul makes us human, somehow they don’t have it. Maybe they were born without it. Maybe they had it once, but they strangled it dead so it wouldn’t bother them anymore. Could you call those kinds of people broken? Maybe. Though to me, I think of them more like garbage—waste. A broken thing doesn’t pollute the space it lives in, but garbage does, and it’s the same with those people. The world would be healthier without them.”

November 8, 2025 at 11:07 AM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

BONUS: Obsidian!

It's a super common material in Atalantis, used in everything from jewelry & decorations, to mirrors, to weapons.

It's associated with the dark side of the moon, insight, fortunetelling & magic.

Small round obsidian mirror reflecting a tree & the sky

November 7, 2025 at 12:08 PM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

#NovemberWorldbuilders 7

My queen, my Shadow Mommy 😍

Actually, returning to the clergy ranks (sorry), at every large temple the Grand Priest/ess, or 2nd in command, wears black robes.

Most notable for my story is Grand Priestess Icozoue, this gorgeous grouchy badass whom I love very much 🖤🖤🖤

Digital drawing by me of Icozoue, a middle aged woman with viking style braids and a stylized wolf tattoo across the left side of her face. She wears black robes, is holding a goblet of wine, and has resting bitch face. A small crystal hangs around her neck. She is Shadow Mommy.

Colored digital drawing by me of just Icozoue's head, making a grumpy face & thinking a thought bubble with a skull in it, either because she's wishing for death or thinking about murdering someone (most likely a little asshole teenage goddess 😂)

November 7, 2025 at 12:08 PM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

#WIPSnips #amwriting #writingcommunity #writers #writesky

Constance Blake is dreaming/reminiscing about her husband, who's currently away on a dangerous mission.

From my new WIP #Charagma, a SFF dystopia where all people are born saved or damned, & the Elect have a holy mark on their forehead.

She hadn’t planned what else she would say to him after that, so without another word she’d stood up and left him alone. Part of her had felt like the biggest fool in Arx Lucis. But another part had also felt elated, thrilled merely to have spoken a handful of the words that had been boiling inside her for weeks. And a third, secret part of her had felt triumphantly satisfied—had sat quietly back to wait—certain she’d begun a ripple effect in him that wouldn’t settle.
Sure enough, the next time the class was required to do a long recitation, he had come to her and asked if, perhaps, she might like to practice her prayers with him. And they’d never prayed with anyone but each other from that day onward.
“Give me a prayer, Elis,” she whispered to him now.
He began to recite a psalm about the sea, about a ship adrift on a stormy sea, asking El to shine his light and guide the ship to safe harbor. Constance was the ship, and Elis was the ship too, and they were each other’s harbors, and the sounds of the prayer were the movements of the ocean. She began to recite it with him, their whispers blending together as they formed words so familiar they were more like the notes of a bird’s song, empty of meaning but full of the soul of creation. And when the prayer was finished, she pulled him down to her and kissed him long and deep, and her heart groaned with how much she missed him.
He isn’t really here.

November 7, 2025 at 11:18 AM

Prof Emily

@professoremily.bsky.social

🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

As if she hadn’t heard my question, or was choosing to ignore it, [Ms Redacted] simply began to hum to herself, then to sing under her breath.
“Hello darkness, my old friend... I’ve come to talk with you again.” She glanced back over her shoulder at me, raising her lantern. “You know that song?”
“What song?”
“‘The Sound of Silence’? Simon and Garfunkel?”
“Simon and Whofunkel?”
“Ah,” she sighed. “That’s too bad. You used to love that song.”

November 6, 2025 at 3:05 PM

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