Righteous fury. That’s what I like to think carries me forward. Of course, in reality, it’s not anywhere as glamorous. It’s just pure, unadulterated hate. But can you really blame me? It’s a desire to cause as much pain and death possible among the nameless, faceless hordes of the others, the ones who ruined my life. They created me even as they destroyed me, revealing a dark, ruthless person hell bent on wreaking as much damage upon them as possible. Some overpaid, comfortable, plaid shrink would probably call it a coping mechanism, albeit on steroids. Most coping mechanisms don’t end with a meticulously maintained list of damages inflicted, assets destroyed and lives taken. It’s like the inverse version of rebuilding my shattered reality. Call it Evil Santa’s List. Righteous fury, and hate. Not so different from each other. And the easiest way to get at them? Join the one place that gives you a giant gun with its own transport, and then orders you to use it with extreme prejudice. It’s ridiculously convenient. * A lone uniform floats through a haze of bloodied metal, listless and weaving. Its owner’s skin is stained a similar shade, and broken pale where the unblemished surface screams through. The figure carries a long cylinder, which is suddenly smashed against a tree. Light blossoms through the darkness, illuminating the holder’s face. Slashes across its length. A shattered nose. Razed hair. And a pair of eyes that burn a long streak through the trees, searching for more lights. Lights that come rattling through the overgrown mess of the environment, jamming to a halt before the lone figure, now slumped against a boulder with the flare stuttering next to it. Shouts follow, and a stretcher, and doors opening and slamming, and narrow tires lurching around in clumsy turns, returning to their origin. Throughout, the pulse of the figure remains unbroken. Driven by righteous fury. Or hate. * It was not them who halted my charge. They would not have allowed me to live, had I survived. Therefore, a separate party. Therefore, a problem. An obstacle. No. A target. I will not be stopped. I will simply add to my list.

*ecstatic giggling*

Nah, didn't have him in mind when I was writing this.

I love garages.

The fact that in this time, they use tanks in teams to battle for fun without - I assume - killing each other but still destroying the tanks, so also using more advanced tech that wouldn't have been available in the War. That, or this is just a really bloodthirsty society.

Presumably, this is set in a post war Tankiverse, where tanks are used as recreational vehicles rather than vehicles of war. Imagine the look on Fred's face.

I am not a monster. I was just an average person, once. I even had a family. A home. A job. A normal life. But that didn’t last. My world tore itself apart over the course of many years. More than a decade, anyway. The rise of a dictatorship, consuming all that opposed it in its path, and the subsequent uprising and demolition of that dictatorship, followed by the constant squabbling for power, resources, and life that continues to this day. And somewhere along the way, they took everything from me. My sons, they took to fight their wars. To fight in cramped battlefields, to fight those who were no older and no wiser than them, and to die, to die for something that they did not believe in, trapped inside the metal coffins that serve as their vehicles of war. My wife and my home were taken by their guns. Their guns, that came in the dead of the night, when those who could fight back were away and our neighbourhoods lay undefended. They looted and pillaged, burned and destroyed, and took everything in the name of their “cause”. Their cause. Who knows what that means anymore. It’s been altered, stretched, changed, demolished, rewritten. Lost. But once, there was a cause. Something to believe in and to protect. The one thing that held us together in the face of all odds. Unity. We were united as one, once. No separations, no distinctions, nothing to come between us other than our humanity.There were no power struggles, no petty quarrels that escalated into full blown wars. Our resources and our minds went to solving problems for the betterment of humanity, for the betterment of ourselves. And look at us now. * Emblazoned on the side of a mechanical beast are five words. Come hell or high water. The words are striking, even viewed through the various gashes and cuts that litter the surface of its background, relics of battles past. Despite its appearance however, the tank is polished, the setting sun reflecting off its treads. On its left side, at least. Its right side is shattered and broken, gaping holes punching through the metal cocoon of its cabin. The driver, gunner, and navigator are all slumped in their seats, distinguishable only by the copious amounts of red covering them. Gasoline slithers down the side of the mangled wreck, inching ever closer to the superheated engine bay nestled at the rear of the vehicle. The scene disappears in a plume of orange, complementing the fiery sky above it. The accompanying sound acts as a bird scarer, albeit one that deals with ten tonne steel and titanium birds. Five tanks break ranks and scatter, rationally accepting that there is no saving their fallen comrades. With little care for concealment, they weave through the bushes and trees, desperately trying to avoid a shot that does not appear. * I regret their loss. Watching the glow of the explosion settle, I am seized by a sudden sadness for the loss of life that I caused, have caused for the last month. I do not wish to bring more grief into this world, and yet I must, if I am to show them that they must return to the ways that humanity once followed. I have seen the actors of both factions burst into flames through my scope, and each time it has struck me that in that final moment they are all the same. The flames consume, regardless of whose emblem glows through the darkness. I am not a monster. I am still just an average person. I have lost everything. And yet gained one vital asset. Purpose. Unity. Come hell or high water. I will make them unite.

The thing is that usually morbid creative writing is likely to resonate with an audience, which is why a lot of people write so much of it. Despair is something that's universal, and it's usually the same things that are likely to make someone sad, like death or loneliness which makes it easier to relate to. However, reasons for happiness are much more varied, and nailing happiness without sounding cheesy is a tad harder, but getting it right makes for amazing stories. Also, it sounds like your teacher is just a wee bit biased in their rating of stories. There's no cure for that but to keep writing quality stories that have more positive themes. As for creative writing being trash, that's probably because they've read trash creative writing. Again, no core for that but to keep writing quality stories, and it doesn't hurt to write about things that they're likely to relate to.

So that's where it went. FLEX GIMME BACK MY PROPERTY!

The reverse psychology is real.

'mazing work.

Love. I devoutly hope that the answer to this is "not for a long long time."

*D&D intensifies*

*psssst* https://www.teamopolis.com/tools/bbcode-table-generator.aspx

It was truly an amazing experience being part of the Newspaper, and it still thrills me to see a new issue out. Here's to the future!

Loved the descriptions and similes!

Interesting stuff. Personally, I started writing as a way to put things that I couldn't otherwise talk about into words, which is something that I still do on and off. More recently though, ideas hit me at random times - like, say, when I'm walking up the stairs, or just reading something. Usually it's like an image and a story to go with it gets flashed into my mind. For example, for Stargazer, it was an image of the roof of my mates house, under the stars, with the silhouette of someone sitting at the edge of it, along with the story, and I knew I had to write it right then or the inspiration would go *poof*. I also usually have my headphones on with music playing in the background, and sometimes it has to be a very specific song or artist to keep the flow going (Spotify is bae). It's a very...varied selection most of the time, jumping from Jimi Hendrix to the Foo Fighters to NewRetroWave. One thing I try not to do is to force myself to write, especially for fiction. Writing is something that I do for myself, with no reward or prize expected (Except reviews. Gotta love the reviews), and I try to keep it that way.

*blush* I have left the Newspaper, but I haven't left Tanki as such; I'm lurking in the background. I still log in and read articles in the AWS as well, so you'll probably spot me there for the most part.

Approved. -Changed the font to Trebuchet MS. Fabulous. If I may say so though, I'd have expected Nester to have a bit more significance, especially since he's mentioned so much.

There's two kinds of people...

Unfortunate. I assume that when he returned to the truck with the spares, it had been destroyed by a rogue group of enemies?

Love the descriptions, and the last paragraph made me very happy indeed!

I pull myself up over the edge of the wall, the rough concrete grabbing at my hands, and the slight breeze behind me pushing me up and over with a gentle laugh. The sky is clear and cloudless, the stars punching bright white pinpricks through the deep navy backdrop. The moon fights for attention with the millions and millions of dots scattered everywhere, and illuminates the roof in front of me. A ventilation box in the middle, a ladder stretched languidly across its length, and a person sitting on the opposite side, her palms splayed out behind them, legs dangling dangerously over the edge, and her head perpendicular to the ground, fixated on the great dark dome above. I stumble towards her, sand and bits of detritus pricking at the soles of my feet as I go. The soft crunching alerts her to my presence, and she lets her head drop backwards completely, revealing a pair of brown orbs staring at me. They dance merrily as they take in the seven year old standing there, and the mouth suspended above them spreads into a wide upside down grin. “Hey, kiddo. Why’re you up here?” comes the greeting, as my sister flips her head the right way up and half turns around to look at me better. I move towards her, smiling, arms outstretched, into her waiting embrace. “Can’t sleep”, I mumble, burying my face in the ratty white shirt that she uses as a pyjama top. She laughs softly, pulls her legs up off the edge to move closer to the middle of the roof and sits cross legged. I clamber into her lap, with the smooth ease of having done the same thing for five years. “You’re too young to not be able to sleep, you know. Weren’t you playing with that kid from next door after school?” “We only played inside. She wouldn’t let us go outside today.” Another soft laugh. We both knew who she was, and also why it was said with all the venom a seven year old could muster. “Why do we have her everyday anyway? When’re they going to come back? We also knew who ‘they’ were. That word brought a quiet sigh, not a laugh. “I don’t know, kid. Whenever they feel like it is when. Is that why you can’t sleep?” I didn’t reply. I didn’t know how to properly say why I couldn’t sleep. Or why I was up on the roof in the middle of the night. Another quiet sigh. “Tell you what. How about I show you how to have fun with the stars?” “Okay!” “See, not all of those stars come out every night. Most nights you’ll see that one there, and that shiny one there, and if it’s cloudy you won’t see any, but usually they switch places.” “Why?” “Easy answer, or real answer?” “Easy.” I didn’t want to try making sense of the complicated truth. “Well, shining all night is hard, and sometimes the stars get tired, so they don’t want to come out at night. Kind of like how if you play all day and get tired, you don’t want to go to school.” “So are stars like people?” “Yeah, they are. You remember that movie you saw the other day where all the people formed up and made patterns?” “Yeah!” “Well, just like that, some stars like to make patterns of different things. The grown-ups noticed this a long time ago, and they pointed at the stars and said ‘that group of stars looks like a dog’, or ‘that lot look like they’re making a bear’, so they made a map of the sky with all the shapes in it, and then they called the shapes ‘constellations’." “Constellations?” “Yeah, constellations. But the thing is, you might not see the same shapes that they saw.” “So?” “So you can make up your own ones. See, look at those ones near the moon. Tell me what you think they look like.” “They look like…a hat!” “And those ones over there?” “A clock!” “See, you’re getting the hang of it already.” The moments dissolved into each other, becoming a blur of new shapes, laughs, and the shared warmth of two siblings with nothing to do but look at the stars and make things up. I woke up the next day in my bed, with my sister curled up next to me, fast asleep and still in her pyjamas. Ten years later, I lie on a different roof and remember that warmth. And miss it. Why was she on the roof that night? Probably for the same reason that seven year old me was, except that she knew why no one told us to come down. Or why no one was there to tell us to come down. The stars above me are still punching white pinpricks through the navy sky. The moon is still fighting for attention. The grown-ups are still sticking to their shapes and calling them constellations. My sister won’t be looking at the stars tonight, though. She hasn’t been for a long, long time, not since that day with the speeding car, and the broken light, and the hospital, and the big black box. So I’ll stay here. And tonight, I’ll look at the stars. And maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up in my bed, seven years old, with my sister curled up next to me. I probably won’t. But I want to. God, I want to.

I have this weird gut feeling that our comrades with the tank are being set up. That, or I ate something funny for lunch.