This blog is dedicated to archiving the written word. Anything from poetry, flash fiction, short stories, comics, or others can be found here by searching those tags. My goal is simply to create a place to scroll infinitely and find interesting pieces of workl
Youāve been tasked with seeking out new food sources for your village. Food is scarce, but thankfully, your community isnāt picky. You canāt afford to be picky.
One day, you find it: a miracle food source hidden away in ruins no one goes in anymore. Everything about it is strangeā the terrain is unfamiliar, the food is delicious and plentiful, the circumstances suspicious. Could this be divine intervention? You decide it doesnāt matter much.
Your squad feasts. You eat well. With your bellies full of food and your hearts full of joy, you carry as much of the food back with you as you can carry. You feel very confident for the first time in a long while that your community will be fed.
Your village feasts. The banquets are endless. Squads are sent to continuously replenish this wondrous food supply. Everyone is fed and happy and it is good.
And you almost donāt notice at first, but you very, very slowly fall ill.
You donāt immediately connect it at first, blaming it on this and that. Youāre just more tired than usual, is all.
But all of your squad members fall ill, too. The oldest one dies.
The plague (curse?) spreads throughout the entire village. Being well-fed isnāt enough to stop it. More and more families fall sickly en masse.
The squads are hit the hardest. Thatās when you finally make the connection. The food is bad.
But itās too late.
No one can recover fast enough. Everyone has eaten the food.
When the beloved matriarch falls ill, you know this will be the end for your village. Thereās no way to recover enough people, especially without any proper leadership. You know your village will silently disappear, and you know you wonāt be around enough to see if any survivors will make it out ok.
If only you could be there to warn them not to eat the mysterious food in the future. If only you could warn them that itās a trap.
āMost living entities and systems on this planet obviously do not live by the Western human clock (though some, like the crows who memorize a city's daily garbage truck route, do of course adapt to the timing of human activities). To watch a brown creeper as it inches up and down, peering into crevices and extracting bugs with its little dentist beak, is thus a way of catching a ride out of the grid and toward a time sense so different that it is barely imaginable to us. In Jennifer Ackerman's book The Bird Way, I learned that the male black manakin, a South American songbird, can do somersaults so fast that a human can see them only in slowed-down video. Some birdsong contains notes that are sung too quickly or are too high-pitched for us to hear. Veeries, a species related to the American robin, can predict hurricanes months in advance and adjust their migration route accordingly, and no one currently knows how. Birds own bodies and their movements are an entanglement of time and space: If a loon is in the higher latitudes, it's summer, and the bird is mostly black with a striking pattern of white stripes. If the same loon is near my studio in Oakland, it's winter, and the bird is almost unrecognizably different, a dull grayish brown.ā
Jenny Odell, Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock (emphasis mine)
they got out of the car with flashlights and walked the road and one of them in in the front yard now. they didnāt hit anything what are they doing??
they came to the house so i grabbed one of my dads handguns and hid it in my waistband and when i answered the door the neighbor guy was asking for my dad but its just me here and okay all 3 of them looked SHOOK and they were like āuh there was some skinny naked dude running around in the road can we use the landline to call 911ā bc theres no cell service out here and what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck
they described the guy as having shoulder length bleach blonde hair and thatās what one of the neighbors across the street looks like so i tried calling them and no one answered and so i called dad and heās on his way home
the police still havenāt shown up and okay dad just got home and was like āyou hit him???ā and neighbor dude was like āno???????ā and dad was like āyour carās been hitā and so we all went and looked and the truck they parked in the road has been PROPER fucked by something like itās been hit by something one of the headlights is in the ditch now and itās leaking antifreeze but that doesnāt make sense bc no oneās been down this road itās a dirt backroad and no oneās been down it since they turned the truck off and none of us heard anything hit it??????? i am freaked the FUCK out right now i am shaking so bad weāre waiting in the house for the policeĀ
AN officer showed up and you could tell he was super apprehensive to search the woods alone after seeing the truck and hearing what happened so neighbor guy got his rifle out of his truck and dad grabbed one of his rifles and i still have the handgun and weāre preparing to search the woods because i do not want to be in the house alone and fuck my adrenaline is pumping and im worried because if it is my neighbor???? heās a friend of the family??? and like what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck
we were out there for like 30 minutes and we found a trail of bare footprints and like broken branches and stuff like someone came stumbling through and there was one stick near the end of the trail that had broken and it had blood on the end of it and then the footprints just fucking stop. like there werenāt any trees within jumping distance or anythigng and the footprints just fuckign stopped and like every thign was dead silent the wind had stopped there werenāt any coyote noises or anythig it was just completely dead quiet and we got the fuckout of there because like it was so creepy and we went back to the house the blonde guy owns and his car wasnāt even there heās not even home no oneās home im freakign the fuck out because who was it then
the police officer left and was like ājust call if you see him againā and the neighbor and his two dudes left and its just me and dad now and its like eerily quiet in the house because honestly what the fuckā¦ what the fucking fuck was that.., he said after he calms down a minute heās gonna try to call our neighbor again and after that call the neighbors sister to see if she knows where he is
oh and yeah yeah they were able to start up the truck and they drove it home and theyāre gonna take it in to a shop in the morning to see if anyone could figure out what the fuck happened to it
Okay okay when we woke up in the morning both of us has weird scratches on our arms and hands and i even had one on my nose that were like all bloody and like it couldnāt have been the woods because we wore coats and gloves????????? and neither of us have blood under our fingernails?? and we went and looked out where the truck was and there was nothing of note that we missed in the dark but when we went to find the trail again it was just gone. it hadnāt snowed or rained or anything and the stick with the blood was gone??? like someone came back and just took it?? what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck
I wanna talk about this a little because it DID start out with a kernel of truth, but also my doctors had put me on babyās first antidepressant like a week prior and I was extremely manic and this whole thing just kinda spilled out of me in an effort to entertain and justā¦ get some creativity out, I guess. BUT. the first two entries on this thread are true. Some neighbors stopped off in front of my house to look around- but it was for a lost cow that had gotten out of the pasture. After that point itās all fantasy. BUT I am very proud of this piece mainly because it was a sort of proto ARG before I had even started like, actually intentionally making them. And while the punctuation and grammar are HORRENDOUS in this thread, I remember intentionally making it like that to have it come across as more rushed and panicked and boy did it WORK. As unconventional this whole piece is, it does a very good job at serving its purpose, to entertain, to give chills, to communicate what a modern day cryptid encounter might look like. And I had a LOT of fun writing it and seeing peopleās reactions. Thank you, for playing along.
remembering that octopus brains are donut shaped cause their esophagus goes thru the middle of their head and sometimes they die from brain damage from meal too big, and saying a long prayer before bed every night that if something like that happens to me i will be able to handle it gracefully
FEDERAL DICK TRIED TO PULL ME OVER FOUR A LITTLE BOOZING + CRUISING BUT I REPLACED EVERY WINDOW IN MINE HUMLE SHITBOX WITH STAINĆD GLASS & WHEN THE SUNLIGHT HIT HE WEPT IN REVERENT AWE
Elves (and other long lived fantasy races) as serial monogamists who have set end dates for their marriages; your first marriage contract is set for 50 years, and you can renew it if you're still happy by the end of it- but if not, or if you just want to try something new, you can part ways amicably and move on.
A second marriage is supposed to last longer (you should know what you like now that you've had practice with your first!) but you need a 'cooling off' period between marriages so many people don't get second married until their late 100's or early 200's... and of course you want to match with someone who is also on their second marriage, though 'mixed' marriages do occur. The calculations for the appropriate end date of a marriage based on age and previous status is a complex affair.
In the later stages mixed marriages are less of a problem and often considered ideal- towards the end of one's life one wants a slightly younger partner to be able to take care of them after all. Young enough that they'll have time to find a 'ending' partner of their own once their current spouse has passed, but not so young that they at completely different stages of life. Match makers are much more common for older folks than younger ones for this reason.
Of course this also creates avenues for unique tropes in the elven romantic annals. Star Crossed lovers who found each other when one was near the end and the other was just beginning; remarrying your first partner centuries later as you realize they were what you wanted all along; people coming to the end of their marriage who realize they don't want it to end- but does their partner feel the same???
The complex web of previous marriages this creates in elven societies is also a font for drama, and elves need to keep track of their various step parents and half siblings to avoid crossing family lines- (yet another reason not to date to far outside your age range). Nothing is more awkward than bringing home a new partner only to realize they're your mother's first wife.
I was going to have this at CALA last week but I ran out of time, but then I came back and finished it and here it is. CALA was a really great festival, bursting with talented folks and kind fans.
This is the longest Sex Fantasy yet by a wide margin! As always, you can read every Sex Fantasy by perusing this tag here.
By the way, Sean T. Collins wrote an eerily perceptive review of Sex Fantasies 1-4 on TCJ, check it out. I oddly never felt that Iād spilled my guts with these zines but Sean has revealed that I indeed do.
average United States contains 1000s of pet tigers in backyards" factoid actualy [sic] just statistical error. average person has 0 tigers on property. Activist Georg, who lives the U.S. Capitol & makes up over 10,000 each day, has purposefully been spreading disinformation adn [sic] should not have been counted
I have a big mad today, folks. It's a really frustrating one, because years worth of work has been validated... but the reason for that fucking sucks.
For almost a decade, I've been trying to fact-check the claim that there "are 10,000 to 20,000 pet tigers/big cats in backyards in the United States." I talked to zoo, sanctuary, and private cat people; I looked at legislation, regulation, attack/death/escape incident rates; I read everything I could get my hands on. None of it made sense. None of it lined up. I couldn't find data supporting anything like the population of pet cats being alleged to exist. Some of you might remember the series I published on those findings from 2018 or so under the hashtag #CrouchingTigerHiddenData. I've continued to work on it in the six years since, including publishing a peer reviewed study that counted all the non-pet big cats in the US (because even though they're regulated, apparently nobody bothered to keep track of those either).
I spent years of my life obsessing over that statistic because it was being used to push for new federal legislation that, while well intentioned, contained language that would, and has, created real problems for ethical facilities that have big cats. I wrote a comprehensive - 35 page! - analysis of the issues with the then-current version of the Big Cat Public Safety Act in 2020. When the bill was first introduced to Congress in 2013, a lot of groups promoted it by fear mongering: there's so many pet tigers! they could be hidden around every corner! they could escape and attack you! they could come out of nowhere and eat your children!! Tiger King exposed the masses to the idea of "thousands of abused backyard big cats": as a result the messaging around the bill shifted to being welfare-focused, and the law passed in 2022.
The Big Cat Public Safety Act created a registry, and anyone who owned a private cat and wanted to keep it had to join. If they did, they could keep the animal until it passed, as long as they followed certain strictures (no getting more, no public contact, etc). Donāt register and get caught? Cat is seized and major punishment for you. Registering is therefore highly incentivized. That registry closed in June of 2023, and you can now get that registration data via a Freedom of Information Act request.
Guess how many pet big cats were registered in the whole country?
97.
Not tens of thousands. Not thousands. Not even triple digits. 97.
And that isn't even the right number! Ten USDA licensed facilities registered erroneously. That accounts for 55 of 97 animals. Which leaves us with 42 pet big cats, of all species, in the entire country.
Now, I know that not everyone may have registered. There's probably someone living deep in the woods somewhere with their illegal pet cougar, and there's been at least one random person in Texas arrested for trying to sell a cub since the law passed. But - and here's the big thing - even if there are ten times as many hidden cats than people who registered them - that's nowhere near ten thousand animals. Obviously, I had some questions.
Guess what? Turns out, this is because it was never real. That huge number never had data behind it, wasn't likely to be accurate, and the advocacy groups using that statistic to fearmonger and drive their agenda knew it... and didn't see a problem with that.
Allow me to introduce you to an article published last week.
Statistics on captive lions, tigers, and more helped fundraise and pass new laws. The implications are under dispute.
This article is good. (Full disclose, I'm quoted in it). It's comprehensive and fairly written, and they did their due diligence reporting and fact-checking the piece. They talked to a lot of people on all sides of the story.
But thing that really gets me?
Multiple representatives from major advocacy organizations who worked on the Big Cat Publix Safety Act told the reporter that they knew the statistics they were quoting weren't real. And that they don't care. The end justifies the means, the good guys won over the bad guys, that's just how lobbying works after all. They're so blase about it, it makes my stomach hurt. Let me pull some excerpts from the quotes.
"Whatever the true number, nearly everyone in the debate acknowledges a disparity between the actual census and the figures cited by lawmakers. āThe 20,000 number is not real,ā said Bill Nimmo, founder of Tigers in America. (...) For his part, Nimmo at Tigers in America sees the exaggerated figure as part of the political process. Prior to the passage of the bill, he said, businesses that exhibited and bred big cats juiced the numbers, too. (...) āIām not justifying the hyperbolic 20,000,ā Nimmo said. āIn the world of comparing hyperbole, the good guys won this one.ā
"Michelle Sinnott, director and counsel for captive animal law enforcement at the PETA Foundation, emphasized that the law accomplished what it was set out to do. (...) Specific numbers are not what really matter, she said: āWhether thereās one big cat in a private home or whether thereās 10,000 big cats in a private home, the underlying problem of industry is still there.ā"
I have no problem with a law ending the private ownership of big cats, and with ending cub petting practices. What I do have a problem with is that these organizations purposefully spread disinformation for years in order to push for it. By their own admission, they repeatedly and intentionally promoted false statistics within Congress. For a decade.
No wonder it never made sense. No wonder no matter where I looked, I couldn't figure out how any of these groups got those numbers, why there was never any data to back any of the claims up, why everything I learned seemed to actively contradict it. It was never real. These people decided the truth didn't matter. They knew they had no proof, couldn't verify their shocking numbers... and they decided that was fine, if it achieved the end they wanted.
So members of the public - probably like you, reading this - and legislators who care about big cats and want to see legislation exist to protect them? They got played, got fed false information through a TV show designed to tug at heartstrings, and it got a law through Congress that's causing real problems for ethical captive big cat management. The 20,000 pet cat number was too sexy - too much of a crisis - for anyone to want to look past it and check that the language of the law wouldn't mess things up up for good zoos and sanctuaries. Whoops! At least the "bad guys" lost, right? (The problems are covered somewhat in the article linked, and I'll go into more details in a future post. You can also read my analysis from 2020, linked up top.)
Now, I know. Something something something facts don't matter this much in our post-truth era, stop caring so much, that's just how politics work, etc. Iām sorry, but no. Absolutely not.
Laws that will impact the welfare of living animals must be crafted carefully, thoughtfully, and precisely in order to ensure they achieve their goals without accidental negative impacts. We have a duty of care to ensure that. And in this case, the law also impacts reservoir populations for critically endangered species! We can't get those back if we mess them up. So maybe, just maybe, if legislators hadn't been so focused on all those alleged pet cats, the bill could have been written narrowly and precisely.
But the minutiae of regulatory impacts aren't sexy, and tiger abuse and TV shows about terrible people are. We all got misled, and now we're here, and the animals in good facilities are already paying for it.
I don't have a conclusion. I'm just mad. The public deserves to know the truth about animal legislation they're voting for, and I hope we all call on our legislators in the future to be far more critical of the data they get fed.
can you guys tell me something? when you read this comic, what do you feel? dread? sadness? nostalgia? I got a lot of wildly different responses from this and Iām shook at how differently people view this omg
my uncle was somewhat of a rascal. we were hanging out on the roof of his barn when i was ten, and we saw some shooting stars. he told me they were angels carrying messages from god. then he handed me his old hunting rifle and taught me how to nick one out of the sky, even when it was travelling all fast like that, and how to triangulate its location ā taking me out in his rusty truck down dirt roads, unerring and unceasing, until we saw that gleaming lantern. he pocketed the note from god and took me down to a pinboard where he was working on deciphering the language with his friend who was a linguistics major but got kicked out of grad school. after they shook hands, they held on for just a bit too long and i started wondering why my aunt doesnāt live with my uncle anymore, but then my uncle took me back up stairs and taught me how to fry the angel up real nice, halo and all. it was tasty
A gothic horror story where a gentleman from a good family gets haunted by something monstrous, which follows him around and keeps killing people around him at utter random, in cruel and horrifying ways. Specifically within circumstances where the protagonist has no alibi, and everything indicates that he committed the murders.
But the real horror is not that he would find himself accused of the murders, but that the people around him naturally assume that he did do it, but genuinely do not care, because the victims are never people that the society around him considers "important". The scullery maid of his household is found brutalised beyond recognition in a room where even the ceiling has been splattered with blood, and a constable of the local police brushes it off as a case of household discipline gone wrong, being horrifyingly casual with the assumption that the protagonist severely beat a girl in his service to death, and will dismiss it as an accident. The street urchin that the protagonist was seen talking with - wanting to help this poor little orphan - is found decapitated, severed head in the protagonist's fireplace. This, too, is calmly swept under the rug.
After every horrifying murder, the protagonist tries to seek help, to present the crime to authorities in hopes of getting some semblance of help, or at least clearing his own name of this, but every time it's brushed off. "These things do happen", he is reassured, like it's perfectly normal that a mansion of that size has a secret garden of unmarked graves in one shady corner.
The real horror is the ever-encompassing implication that this is perfectly normal.
"aw i love your earrings, they're so cute!" i say, making the barista's day. i sit down with my coffee and send a respected mutual an anon ask reading "you look like you've got that homestuck kinnie pussy." thus i have maintained the balance of suffering in the world for another day. as i wander down the beach of life, my footsteps do not even disturb its grains
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