#tw plague

[thatsbelievable]

[whimsicallywiddershins]

When I was young and I first read Briar's Book, it wasn't my favorite. It had slow parts, and it wasn't too exciting, not like wildfires and pirates.

But now, reading it again as an adult, after living through the covid pandemic, it's amazing.

I am amazed at the research Tamora Pierce must have put in for the book! The events of the books are nearly identical to the covid pandemic.

It's amazing she even chose plague as a topic for her fantasy children's story. It's not exactly a normal plot line for such books. And she didn't go the easy way out of *hurr durr medieval society uses leeches and doesn't understand how germs work* option that so many fantasy writers use. Instead, she came up with a believable system that supplemented magic with technology.

The healers using magic to check the body to see what the pox did, the magic sample boxes, the magic diagnosis tools, the use of herbs and magic gems to find the "keys" to the cure... even the use of magic to distill the essence of the disease in order to study it. All combined with the good leadership of Duke Vedris, who followed the epidemic procedures written by the Living Temple to try to halt the pox. He enforced quarantine on the guards that handled the sick, cleared out warehouses to make hospitals, forced everyone to wear gloves and masks, paid people to collect the dead and burn them, ect.

The way Tamora Pierce perfectly captured to fear of the pandemic. The fear of getting sick, the dread of the knowledge of new cases and deaths, the exhaustion of the medical workers and support staff, the way the healers drained themselves dry and got sick.

It all combined into a realistic magic plauge that made an incredible book far before it's time.

[confusedmothboy]

SOUND ON!! THIS IS ANIMATED TO A POEM!1!

if this. gets fucking muted like it did the three times i tried to post it on tiktok. im gonna crash out so hard yall will never hear from me again

[askhubertvonvestra]

One of the most fun things about Hubert is the range on this man, lol. I was listening The Plagues from Prince of Egypt (again, despite being agnostic af), and it just amazes me that he can be every single role in it.

Some changes and some lyrics skipped for canon/brevity, ofc.

Hubert: I send a pestilence and plague Into your house, into your bed Into your streams, into your streets Into your drink, into your bread Upon your cattle, on your sheep Upon your oxen in your field Into your dreams, into your sleep Until you break, until you yield

Also Hubert: Once I called you father Once I thought the chance to make you proud Was all I ever wanted… This was my home All this pain and devastation How it tortures me inside All the innocent who suffer From your stubbornness and pride

ALSO Hubert: You who I called father How could you have come to hate me so? Is this what you wanted? Then let my heart be hardened And never mind how high the cost may grow This will still be so I will never let your people go

And you can see it so many different ways too! Whose stubbornness and pride? His father's? His own? You could even say Edelgard if you wanna shuffle the canon around.

Not to mention that by referring to TWSD as his father's people, he'd be stripping the late Lord Vestra of his humanity. A big gesture.

[plumpitlouder]

Plague ghosts my beloved

[bakusnout]

Heads up Plague speculation below!

I'm having the most big brain take right now, what if plague isn't covered in some weird meat but rather it's all a fungus?

In nature (not the flight) there are plenty of fungi that imitate flesh and carcasses to attract flies, bugs, and whatever else to carry their spores and stuff far away or to other fungi for reproduction, and there's fungi that infect insects too!

So it wouldn't be far fetched to assume that the wyrmwound and all the little dips and bulbous shapes in plague would contain a goo like that meant to attract insects.

The reason the Gladekeeper is enemies with Plague is not purely because it's the whole life/death thing but rather because fungi aren't plants (biologically speaking).

She can't control fungi like she can with plants, they don't grow how she wants, and while it's not an issue with your fly amanitas and chanterelles it'd certainly be an issue if the fleshy mold of plague were to let loose over there.

The flights neighbouring Plague aren't in direct danger as none of them are particularly hostile with plague, or have certain natural defenses.

Arcane is already irradiated with pink stuff and would destroy any non native life trying to survive in it's soil in an instant, Shadow seems to be able to control fungi and convert them as shown by the border between their regions:

Those mushrooms look very similar to the ones on plague's side, except shadow-ey.

Earth is a rocky wasteland, there's hardly anything there worth growing on and infecting, and Wind probably blows away the spores also why fight the Windsinger he's a friend.

This is also why mirrors can't just chomp the ground and eat the flesh, because it isn't flesh at all, they can't process it!

[rataltouille]

GEOMETRY OF THE HOLY MOON (1 AM): A SHORT STORY

GENRE: surrealism, literary fiction.

POV & TENSE: this little space is not enough for how wild the form is so i talk about this later!!

SETTING: a small desi village, 1924-25.

TONE: dreamy, unsettling, melancholic.

THEMES: faith vs reality, how people perceive others and how they perceive themselves, grief dealt the wrong way.

AESTHETICS: the splash of water on a quiet night, thick clouds obscuring the sky, rippling the moon’s reflection on the water. the intensity of a garden in spring, the emptiness of a dying town, the suffocation from being singled out. hands grazing lightly but never fully held. a lingering sadness behind your laugh. believing in things you shouldn't believe in. putting faith on a starless sky.

STAGE: completed first draft, 4085 words.

LOGLINE: a young boy, surrounded by loss, claims to talk to god. the story follows him and his conversations with this god, all while his village spies on him as he weaves his way around the two most crucial and lonely years of his life.

LITERAL LOGLINE: on today’s news let’s talk about a small backward town that hates sad little boys who worship god, even though the place is lowkey a cult!!

CHARACTERS:

THE SUMMER BOY: he’s around thirteen, and he’s very emotionally attached to his past. he lost his family at a young age to an unstable force, so he spends his time talking to himself. he’s a quiet, demure and sweet person, always willing to help others. he’s outwardly oblivious and sees only the good in people to a point where he doesn't understand when they’re trying to do him wrong. but! considering how the story [like a lot of my others] has themes of perception vs reality, it needs to be said that he isn't all that innocent. he’s rather impulsive and rash, never afraid of hurting himself [and thus accidentally harming others].

A GOD: is he real? do we even know if he’s an actual god? a very elusive figure despite having a lot of screentime. he’s a surprisingly humanised character and arguably the one with the most empathy. he has a soft spot for the boy and the two have a deep bond which is not common for a human and a god to have. you don’t get insight to what the other gods are like, but they’re implied to exist. this story has a very messy and hazy view towards religion and godhood and their nature towards humanity, and this vague figure, a dreamlike character, is proof enough of that.

THE VILLAGE: okay so in general these people suck. the village consists of, well, the village, but they’re very fluid in the way they appear in the story? as in for the most part they appear as a collective, a unit. one character, the summer boy’s “friend”, is somewhat separate considering he’s a pretty important character. it’s very hard describing this unit of a character but essentially they’re the main antagonistic force and they hate the protagonist for seemingly no reason.

WHAT GOES DOWN:

sometime around this time, the boy chances upon meeting his “god”, this being who lives up in the clouds and whom he talks with often, except you don't know if this god is real or not. that’s one of the recurring themes of this story: what’s real and what isn’t. it’s :) a fun time :) for sure :)

essentially Things Happen And It Only Gets Weirder. i cannot even try describing what happens because it’s all very spoilery but let’s just say that this is a very sad story but not even in a “this makes me cry” manner, but rather in a “this is so fucked up wtf why”. the prose of this is very, very hazy and thick, in a manner that’s both smooth and suffocating. there’s also a lot of moon and water imagery which we love. i love the atmosphere + the setting—colonial india— as it’s a subtle but key element to the plot.

FORM:

OKAY YES be prepared for the true colours of how unhinged i am. i apologize for the form brainrot.

POV: so in this story i really said “what if it had all three of the main povs... jk jk... unless 😳😳” and then proceeded to use all three povs. you’re probably wondering, how did i do that? WHY did i do that? and my answer to that is: 🙂

the first-person pov: the summer boy narrates in first person. his pov takes up about 40% of the story, and this is where we unlock family backstory + how he feels about the various forces playing into his life. he’s an extremely unreliable narrator and he knows it; his narration oscillates between very naive and very self-aware, and this effect is pretty disconcerting. the summer boy is kind of a walking contradiction and we love that conflict.

the second-person pov: a god narrates in second person. his pov takes around 20% of the story, and his scenes all involve his conversations with the boy. his pov is extremely detached, and suspends belief because he seems awfully made up. there’s an edge to the prose in his narration, where you know that something's off, but you can’t exactly pinpoint what.

the third-person pov: the villagers narrate, either as a collective, or as an individual figure, in third person. they take up the other 40% of the story, and there are so many different people and differing opinions with this, and every time we read a third person excerpt it’s a different person, and this is mostly used to add onto the different ways in which the boy is perceived. this is also where the structural part of the form gets really wacky.

STRUCTURE: if my story isn't told in vignettes is it my story though /j. gothm is told in vignettes, each one between 50 to 500 words. the first and second person bits are normal-ish vignettes, with straightforward narration. the third person vignettes, on the other hand, are super assorted. we have a lot of epistolaric sections— there’s a letter, a folk song [which was found around the summer boy], and most of the conversation is told as just plain dialogue without tags. there’s also a phone call transcript, and finally some normal chunks of prose. what am i doing wtf.

also to add onto this the story is told non-linearly. 😀 the only thing that keeps me from going insane is the fact that there are chronological tags before most vignettes [also the manner in which they're tagged differs from pov to pov. for example a few of the third person conversations are marked just as “sunday” or “thursday”, while the summer boy’s narration is marked with the full date and year]

in all this clownery i completely forgot to mention what the tense was [the way everything else was so complicated that i forgot tense was a thing lmao] and good news!! it’s the only sane thing about this story!! it’s told fully in present tense. thank everything.

AN EXCERPT:

okay i’m once again not sharing much because this will be submitted to litmags 🧞

[The boy is scrawny as always. He carries an air of diswant— even death had rejected him when the plague killed only his grandmother— but walks like he doesn’t notice. He smiles at them, jitters, and wipes his hand across his knees. Blood comes away in thin, translucent lines. He saves it on the kerchief he keeps tucked in his shirt, careful to dirty the cloth even more. The villagers scrunch their noses in disgust; who knew how old and rotten the kerchief was, or how long it had carried blood like the unwashed sword of a warrior?]

also by the way this excerpt is in square brackets because it is a third-person interjection in a vignette that is otherwise first-person [at this point...]

SPARE THOUGHTS:

this was inspired by a conversation i had with my grandfather, where he was telling me about how people used to sing songs to the skies, as a way of devotion to a specific god. he used the [loose translation of] the english word “yearning” to refer to the emotion the singers would invoke, and that sparked the concept of a disillusioned young boy who talks to the moon as a way to please the god he’s in love with. it’s a very softly disconcerting story and once again deals with the theme of “perception vs reality” which if you know me and my work, is the theme i’m forever obsessed with.

i really like how this turned out? the atmosphere is exactly how i wanted it to be, and there’s so much i have to add on as i edit and i’m really looking forward to that. this is also the only short story i’ve written where i knew which litmag i’d love for it to be published in? like i never write things with publishing in mind, but for some reason while writing this story it occurred to me that it would be a perfect fit for this specific magazine and i love that. anyway if you’ve made it through the post till here,,,, bless you and your braincells. and that’s all for today!!

[live-love-laugh-lesbian]

Bloom

Okay, I had to split the first chapter into two. @simplestoryteller, you were interested? And @scenecipriano helped with writing Remus!

I’m using this rpg to write this, which is exciting!! - https://litzabronwyn.itch.io/bloom

I highly suggest checking it out, it’s so good!

Anyways, content warnings: Horror, gore, medical shit, body horror, Remus being weird and making references to sex, illness.

Remus, Virgil and Janus are 18, and it’s set in a British School - ages 11 to 18.

Roman and Emile will be 15, Logan 18, Remy 17, and Patton 14. Just so you’re aware!

Remember, this is a horror story. It may well not end happily. People may die. Be aware.

Day One

Usually, waking up early in the morning to the sound of your classmate screaming would be alarming, and shocking to say the least. But Janus had long since gotten used to it. A year ago he had been upright immediately every time, but now all he found himself doing was glancing at the bolted shut window.

It was still dark, with the moon glaring through, illuminating the screaming student  in a sickly light.

Janus didn’t know them, they were in one of the younger years, and simply moved in whilst their roommate was in the sick bay. The boy had long tendrils of vines and leaves forcing their way out of one ear, slowly twisting and turning as they did.

The boy howls, screams again, and sobs as he convulses, and when he calls for his mother in a hoarse pleading voice, Janus hears Virgil awake and go to comfort him. Perhaps just as well, because neither Janus or Remus, the only other inhabitants of this room, were much good at comforting.

Hell, when Remus’ younger brother’s legs began to fuse into a long scaly snake-like tail, Remus had simply stared. Even Remus, who usually had so many disgusting and awful things to say, seemed unable to process the horror of it all.

Janus looks away from the boy when the tendrils begin to tangle into his hair, when the boy goes limp before another convulsion, one that creates a scream that comes to a stop with a screech.

He breathes deeply as agonizing sounds rip through the air. He couldn’t let himself get bothered by it.

Eventually he falls asleep, his dreams plagued by endless tormented screaming.

When Janus awoke the kid wasn’t around, but Remus and Virgil were both already awake. Well, Janus wasn’t sure if Virgil had actually slept. He was paler than usual, and the dark sunken eyes he’d developed made him look endlessly tired.

“You look great this morning,” Janus says dryly, but not with malice.

Virgil rolls his eyes, and goes to speak only to be cut off.

“You look like you were kept up all night riding a spiky dick!” laughs Remus.

“Shut up both of you,” Virgil scowls but then huffs, slumping slightly as he explains that he hadn’t slept, because eventually he had to take the boy to the medical bay.

For a moment none of them speak.

“I’m sure he’ll be okay,” Janus lies, and switches his focus easily to survival. “We should get breakfast. And maybe a shower for you, Virgil.”

There wasn’t much electricity anymore, but the water ran, and there was enough to power showers and the essentials. Although all three missed their social media accounts. Why, Virgil’s tumblr of conspiracy theories was so dead by now it likely had become a conspiracy by itself.

“Yeah, that...might help…”

Remus ruffles Virgil’s hair, causing it to frizz and fluff up, and laughs when Virgil protests.

“Come on, Virgey ya gotta loosen up! Ya know, like I do when it’s a good night!” Remus teases, “come on, I got something special that will cheer you up - both of you!”

Fascinated, the two watch as he wriggles under his bunk, almost climbing fully into the small space, before coming out, his sharp quill-like hair dusty until he shakes it off.

“Here!” Janus’ eyes widen and Virgil gasps as Remus holds out a single milk chocolate bar.

“When did you get that?!” Janus demands, and lowers his voice, “Remus, there is no way you got that easily-”

“I didn’t - had to fight off Logan for it-” Remus trails off suddenly before forcing himself to perk up slightly. “Besides! It’ll make our threesome ten times as sweet!”

Janus watches Virgil glance to the door nervously, and then to the chocolate. Janus’ stomach growls, and he hates to admit he can’t bring himself to think of the others right now. It was him, Virgil and Remus, and so long as they were okay, everything would be okay…

“Well…” Virgil bites his lip and pulls his hands from his too-big hoodie. “...I do want a piece-”

And so it was decided.

Remus was right, they did deserve this. The last year had been something of a nightmare. Ever since the Tox set in…

Right, the Tox. Janus doubted anyone outside the uninhabited island the school was based in, that wasn’t military or a politician, knew about it. A terrible plague that changed things. Animals and plants and even the students.

For some reason, the adults simply fell ill, and the younger kids were worst affected. Their friend Emile had suggested it was to do with puberty. But nonetheless, one by one people died, were still dying, and they had but two teachers, and maybe half the population of the school left.

The changes were painful. Janus had developed scales over one half of his face that itched so much he wanted to rip them off the first few weeks. But like Remus had gotten used to his new “hair”, and Virgil his sunken eyes, he learned to deal with it and ignore the itching.

He could deal with a lot.

But…

“Remus, you have a fever,” Janus tells him bluntly, looking at the thermometer carefully.

“Nah, I’m fine!” Remus insists, waving his hands, “In fact! I’m so fine that I’m sure a mountain lion would take me as it’s mate and remind me who I belong to!”

“That’s gross,” Virgil remarks, face scrunching, “what the fuck Remus?”

“Yes, Remus,” Janus chooses to ignore that statement, “40.3 degrees is an amazing temperature. Definitely not something to worry about!”

“It’s fine. What can I even do? Ask a doctor for help? Last I checked they’re all taking turns eating each other’s hearts! ” Remus almost snaps, his quills spiking up.

“No!” Virgil pauses to breathe, trying to calm himself, “just…” Virgil flaps his hands, clasping his fingers together then unclasping them. “Just rest, okay?”

“If you get ill they’ll send you straight there.” Janus points out, “...so yes, just rest.”

Remus makes a loud indignant noise and throws himself back on his bed, somehow missing his pillow and instead smacking his head on the wall behind.

“Dork,” Virgil says with a suppressed chuckle.

“Did you know-”

“Yes we know it means whale penis!”