Rounds one and two of the Tildes Writing Club have been smashing, if small-scale, successes. In the interest of luring out a few lurkers with a timely provocation, I want to establish this month's theme by fiat.

What do you have to say about madness? Your contribution can resemble a clinician's assessment, a confession, a polemic, an absinthe specter, the cry of the cuckoo, the diagnosis offered by Major Clipton (but hopefully of greater length), or a 1980s ska band. That is, whether you take the word to be romantic, offensive, biographical, inspirational, or risible, take it as inspiration for your writing this month.

Just follow these easy guidelines:

Your submission can be prose or poetry of any reasonable length. Less than 7,000 words, surely.

Watch for the April 23 submissions thread to appear. Reply to it with a link to your work, which may be housed anywhere you like, including on Tildes. Prioritize venues that are not known to be aggressively anti-privacy (e.g., Google Docs). You may provide questions for readers.

You must provide feedback on 3 submissions if you are posting a submission. Only one needs to be a substantial critique. If you see a post without feedback, consider giving it preference in the order of your responses. No one likes to be left hanging.

You don't have to follow the theme. Your detective fiction about beaver glands is welcome, too.
Feel free to post questions or comments.

Maybe that atmospheric death metal band you like recorded an acoustic folk cover of a Rihanna song. Maybe that bubblegum pop artist you follow made an experimental post-rock album.

The goal is to highlight range: try to find two songs that are as "far away" from one another as possible while still being from the same artist.

Link the songs here, and identify what makes them so different.

I've been thinking a bit lately of starting to look for another place of work. Nothing is really bad at my current employer, but I've been there since 2017 and my feet are starting to itch a bit. In addition, I'm not really to engaged in my work at the moment since I feel the domain is fairly boring and the tech is rather mundane. This might be a reflection of my sentiment of IT industry in general, i.e. lots of toys but mainly they are just different flavours of the same thing (especially when it comes to building XYZ web app).

Formerly my approach to finding a new job has been to look for companies that are looking for people with skills in technologies I am interested in learning. However, since I'm a bit dissilousioned with tech I think I need to switch my approach and look more for a mission driven organisation I can get behind!

What are your thoughts on organsations that do some kind of important work? If you were to pick a top 3 organisations where you would work which ones would you pick?

Note they don't have to be tech focused. I'm generally curious about different organisations I should look into and also to hear your thoughts on the matter!

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Give an honest review of something that you've been using (or possibly stopped using) that's at least a year old, so we get an idea of what it's like for long-term use, rather than fresh. Anything is fair game: webhosting companies, kitchen gadgets, facial cleansers, etc.

I’ve missed a lot of the older mmos growing up like Everquest and dark age of Camelot. What are some good older mmos to play that can still be enjoyed either as a single player or coop experience with friends that still have online and supported servers? Doesn’t have to have a massive player base or anything, it can even have just a few thousand players. I would also like to avoid WoW, I’ve had a fair amount of time in it and don’t have any desire to go back.

My husband and I recently started listening to Tones and I who has a song called Johnny Run Away. It’s a short story about a boy who has feelings for another boy and is told by his dad to “run away” not because the father is homophobic but because he’s trying to protect his son from getting bullied:

His daddy walked by with a sigh
Said, "Johnny, sit by my side
I'm gonna give you the best advice
You've ever heard in your life
See that boy named Jimmy, yeah, he's a cutie
But no, no, Johnny, no, no, no
Johnny run away”

I like the song partially for its musicality (so catchy!) but also its narrative is genuinely touching to me. My father-in-law once told me he knew his son (my husband) was gay early on. He said that never changed how much he loved his son, but he was always worried about how much harder life would be for him because of that. I think a lot of parents support their LGBT kids but also live with the very real fear of knowing that the rest of the world won’t necessarily do the same, and I think this song captures that perspective.

Anyway, I would love to hear about other songs that feature LGBT stories and perspectives, especially if they’re personally resonant for you or someone you know.