WritingWrittenWriting

[writingwrittenwriting]

All stories so far

The Dragon story

Vampires and Zombies

Recognizing Death

Hero to Monster

The God of Me

A Royal Prophecy

A Deadly Beast

I Know a Guy

Silver Mercenary

My Deal With the Devil

Tea Stories

Sky Blues

The night light

[throwtime]

I’m about to have a fun afternoon.

So my trainer’s bf cheated on her. She broke up with him. He’s holding her stuff hostage until she agrees to talk with him. Which she refuses.

She trains; for free mind you; three college linebackers, a college wrestler, two martial artists, a body builder, and… wait for it…. a Navy seal. We’re gonna go get her shit for her.

This should make for an interesting story.

[throwtime]

So everyone who commented on this being like the avengers, you are absolutely right. That’s what all of us had in our heads as we were rolling over to dude’s house. But I’m very proud to say, this ended without violence.

Arrival:

So the super friends all jumped into one of the linebacker’s explorer and headed over to dude’s house. Ok the squad: you all know me, but the other martial artist is a little wirey hapkido guy, the linebackers are all giants (an estimated combined weight of I’d say 750-800lbs), the wrestler looks like an escaped gorilla, then the navy seal looks like your average guy but something about him is unsettling. Really unsettling. Unfortunately, the body builder had to work. Anyway, we send the Hapkido guy and the wrestler to the door first and dude answers, screams at them, and then slams the door in their face. Then the giant linebackers head over and they ring the door bell again. Lo and behold, he was much more polite, but still denied access. Finally, me and the seal join the fray. I casually make my way towards the front of the group, but the seal decides to CLIMB THE BANISTER. We all just turned and started at him completely shocked when dude answers the door. He looks at this weird mismatched group of relatively threatening individuals and one guy perched on his banister like batman. He was like “FINE. Go take what you’re looking for.”

Retrieval:

So we’re all walking through the house gathering what we think are her things and putting them into two boxes. Mind you. We are completely guessing. We didn’t even tell her we were coming, therefore we had no list of items.The only one really being productive was Hapkido, who was legitimately looking for stuff. The linebackers were just randomly picking up furniture, turning it over, and putting it back down. Just showing off how strong they were. In case the numbers game wasn’t enough, I guess they were letting him know they could break him if they wanted to. The seal was just shadowing dude in his own house. Walking behind him, not saying much, just being creepy. Then there’s me. Who was causing general mischief…. He said to take what I was looking for, that’s what I was looking for. Ahaha and the wrestler made a fricken sandwich. Because “you guys look like you have it under control, and I’m a sucker for egg salad.” We were in and out in 15 minutes.

Delivery:

So the autobots rolled out and headed towards homegirl’s spot. She was conveniently outside when we rolled up. We got out and she was like, how do you all even know each other. The truth is, we don’t. She sent us all an email once and didn’t blind copy us all. She vented to all of us about dude holding onto her stuff and we started emailing and that was that. We told her that we went to see her ex. “OMG what did you say to him?” Nothing. We’re not messenger boys. We’re delivery boys. And we gave her her boxes of stuff. She went through the first box and said that was most of her stuff. Then she got to my box and asked “Wtf is all that shit.” So I explained that I took all the batteries out of his remote controls, his deodorant, the light bulb out of his master closet, every pair of dress socks that I could find, the laces out of his running shoes, and all the toilet paper in the house. The guys just looked at me and kind of nodded like they were impressed. She then unexpectedly started CRYING and thanked us. So you have this group of meat heads all standing awkwardly with this weeping trainer. It was quiet for a second when the seal was like “So…. chipoltle?” And we all got burrito bowls.

What a great day.

[impling]

I was thinking about this story for no reason and decided I should grace you all with it again.

[dduane]

Always reblog the Epics.

[tumblr]

Reblogs in a chain now get their own notes

The reblog chain is one of the things that makes Tumblr unlike anywhere else. All the notes on reblogs are attributed to the original post, no matter which branch people actually liked or reblogged. We want to keep encouraging conversations, and give contributors the recognition they deserve. 

Soon, you'll be able to like, reblog, or reply to any part of a reblog chain, and that note will go to that reblog's author. Each reblog will have its own counts, instead of one aggregated number from every version of the post. And yes, you’ll be able to like multiple posts in one chain.

If a reblog doesn't add anything, the love flows up to the last person in the chain who did. Your post doesn't lose notes just because people spread it quietly.

Past notes will stay on the original post — we're only changing what happens from here on out. Retroactively re-attributing all of them would be... a lot.

This is just the beginning. More changes are coming as we keep building this out – stay tuned!

[tumblr]

Let's talk about reblog notes.

We rolled out a significant change to how notes work on reblogs, and the reaction has been strong. We're not going to pretend otherwise. 

First things first: We're reversing the change. Your feedback in comments, emails, and especially reblogs, made clear that the rollout created problems we need to address before moving forward. We also should have communicated this differently from the start, and we didn't.

We still believe there's a better version of how reblogs can work. One that gives every voice in a chain the credit it deserves. But we want to get there with you.

In the coming days we'll share more on how we plan to do that,  including ways to work directly with some of you on this and future changes before they ship.

Keep an eye on @staff for updates to come soon. 

[writingwrittenwriting]

I don't know if it'll seem as easy on your end as it seems on mine, but If I may offer a suggestion, I believe it may be more intuitive (as well as palatable to your main user demographic) to offer a format with the ability to choose different options for recieving notes on different posts. By offering the ability for a user to view every note on their own post, only notes containing tags, only notes containing additions, or only notes that directly respond to the original post and none of the reblogs/subsequent conversations, users will have more control to improve their personal experience here on tumblr.

As I'm certain analytics and historical evidence will show, tumblr users choose tumblr because they prefer to control their content and create their own experience. Most tumblr users barely bother with other social media sites, finding the algorithms, lack of privacy, and unflexible aspects to be frustrating and undesirable. While many tumblr users will try to find replacements, or create private chatrooms to try and salvage a modicum of substitution, there comes a point when you push a neurodivergent client to far and they just never come back.

Realistically, tumblr possesses a large percentage of users who, through various neurological conditions, vastly prefer features and structures that feel extremely counterintuitive to the standardizing templates and features now implemented in social media. Tumblr users hate change. Tumblr users hate being forced into situations without choice. Tumblr users mostly hate other media sites. Tumblr users hate ads. Tumblr users hate being treated as though they only exist to be profited from.

What tumblr users love, however, is choice. Personalization. Clarity. Silly little games. Terrorizing each other with childish pranks. Sending money to deserving content creators. Earning silly little badges. Games where they can methodically sort, categorize, count, or answer questions endlessly. If you give tumblr users things they'll actually want, you may find you get genuinely loyalty and not a begrudging toxic dependancy relationship.

If you want to make money, maybe you can make mini-polls or questionares from research corporations available in a game like format. The more polls completed, the more points a user earns. Tumblr users do love sharing their opinions after all. Then, all you have to do is offer a prize tumblr users will enjoy. Let them acquire points easily and use them to gift other tumblr users various badges ranging from terrorizing each other with cat butts, to giving a high-points earned trophy to another user. If points can only be earned, imagine how many surveys tumblr could get paid for having their users take, so the users can gift hours of saved points in the form of a bouquet of roses badge or olympic gold medalist shitposter badge to another. Can you imagine the profit of a tumblr-style golden badged kungpowpeen from multiple users idly telling amazon that no one wants 5% off 5 suspicious bags of trailmix for hours?

Sorry I got off topic, but I just wanted to give you a reminder that you're trying to keep in touch with a demographic that hates to be touched. If you want to excite your users, you need to know where to light your farts on fire, and where to text instead of ringing the doorbell.

[johannestevans]

Children near a magical wood catching bugs and their family are like. Please do not catch pixies and small fae and bring them into our home. They are sentient and they are intelligent

And the kids are like "but they get into our bug traps" and "we didn't catch him he followed us home"

And their parents are like. Please i do not believe that 6 fucking pixies smuggled themselves into our garage on the underside of your bicycle saddle and then set up shop in the old dolls house. These are living beings they're not toys it's not kind to treat them like this

And the kids are like we are NOT treating them like anything you said we're not allowed to trap them and they always get into our traps so we always run away when they see us and then they follow us and get inside our backpacks and stuff

And the parents are like

Stop lying!!!

And then they set up wildlife cams and not only can pixies apparently do all of that and are very desperate to hang out with these human kids (who have fun life-sized toys and are covered in wonderful things like glitter and are a free source of fresh bugs and pop tart crumbs)

But they can also like. Fully just pick locks and shit.

Setting up little cameras and having to come to terms with the fact that not only are these small fae initiating every interaction with the kids but have also taken their cat's side in the war against pigeons and keep riding it into battle

[doccyuk]

The fae quickly realise the camera is a camera, and just as quickly invent silent movies

Each intertitle card has been crafted from words cut out of other writing, so a piece of paper looking like a ransom demand states "BuT Hoo wil SAVE the Dams3l?" is pulled away to reveal a doll tied to train tracks

[cafffine]

woke up this morning, rolled over, and very confidently tried to blow out my alarm clock like a candle. absolutely no precedent for that.

[rumplefuckingstiltzkin]

Ebeneezer in 1742 wakes with a start as for some reason he has put out his guttering candle by slapping atop it ith the palm of his hand. His hand is burned and his nightgown and cap are spattered with hot wax.

[feyosha]

Fascinated by the perceived necessity of an Equivalent Exchange

[wizardarchetypes]

speaking of peeing the bed it's been long enough that i can tell this story publicly. in high school i went to a party at some house with no adults, as you sometimes would, and at the end of the night like 10 people all clonked out together in the same bed. fully clothed, one of those teenage moments where you're like wow heehee how rule-breaking, because sure a lot of our parents wouldn't like us sleeping in a bed with a bunch of other teenagers and no adult supervision blah blah. fond memories. anyway.

i'm an extremely light sleeper, so i barely slept, and sometime around 6 am, i woke up to a girl totally panicking, very quietly, because she peed the bed in her sleep. and listen. this wasn't a group of mean kids by any measure. but there's no level of kindness or understanding in the world that will make peeing the bed when you're 17, surrounded by people you only sort of know, a gentle blow.

so i sat up and she was like "oh my god" and I signaled at her to be absolutely silent and I said I'd be right back. And I crawled over everyone and out of the bed like a stupid cat.

and the thing is, by senior year i wasn't getting bullied much anymore. i was generally pretty well liked by my peers, but, if this makes sense, people still didn't always expect very much from me. i was still figuring out how to mask (autistic) and i still often said or did something that made everyone remember i'm weird and they'd just be like "well. that's story for you. i guess." and for the most part i'd become pretty secure in that.

so what i'm saying is i had nothing to lose and this girl had everything to lose.

so i went downstairs and i made tomato soup. and by "made" i mean i put a whole can of tomato soup in a too-small mug and microwaved it until it was lukewarm so as to be convincingly "made" but not so hot to burn someone.

and then i walked back upstairs, and no longer like a cat, i clumsily "attempted" to crawl back into bed, loudly lost my balance, and spilled tomato soup all over the girl and her lap and several other people's laps and heads and the mattress.

everyone woke up confused and anguished and i was like, "oh my god, I'm so sorry. I just got really hungry and it's all i could find."

and everyone immediately accepted with absolutely no further questions that I would go downstairs, make tomato soup at 6 am,and bring it back to bed. everyone just begrudgingly climbed onto the floor and went back to sleep while I put the bedding right into the laundry.

i don't even know this girl's name. i only remembered this story recently because i'm in my hometown for a few months and recently a high school acquaintance said, "hey. do you remember spilling soup on everyone after prom? why did you do that?" and for a moment i genuinely did not and i stared at them completely dumbfounded while the memory loaded and then i started laughing too hard to answer for 2 minutes.

the best part is i can tell this story, and even if it reaches the people who were there, none of them will know which one of them peed the bed. thanks to tomato soup.

[wizardarchetypes]

people keep pointing out how bewildering this must have been from her point of view and it's making me laugh to tears. i never considered it. i had such a solid plan in my head. i went downstairs to find something to dump on the bed and when i saw the tomato soup i knew it was perfect because it has a distinct smell that would cover anything else and a color which would do the same.

i was so focused on my mission that in the 14 years since i've never once considered what it must have been like for her to decide to trust me because she had no other options, sit there in anguish for three minutes, and then watch me walk back into the room and dump soup on everyone.

[memecucker]

You can tell when someone’s frame of reference for “normal people” is more “people at the church sponsored ice cream social” and less “people on the bus”

[latining]

the people in the notes saying “people on the bus aren’t normal” are the people this post is talking about.

[gallusrostromegalus]

I took the bus for three years when I lived in Honolulu and haven't lived anywhere with even usable public transit since, but in those three years I had dozens of utterly bizarre experiences that were also Perfectly Normal. This is because the human condition is vast and also Very fucking Weird.

Kid one the bus next to me whose backpack starts moving and it turns out he's got three chickens and a painted turtle he caught in there? This is Perfectly Normal. Humans have been catching small game and transporting it home in whatever they had since we invented bags to put chickens and turtles in.

I traded him three king-size snickers bars I had on me for the turtle because I vaguely remembered that many freshwater turtles were toxic to eat (incorrectly, as it turns out, but this was when I still had a Nokia Brick that lived a blissful, internet-free existence), and didn't want him accidentally poisoning his family, but didn't want to just. Steal his hard-won turtle. This is Perfectly Normal. Humans have been cautious about poisons, looking out for strangers kids and bartering shit since before we were technically humans, probably.

Having acquired a turtle, I now needed to transport the turtle to the on-campus pond that effectively served as an Invasive Freshwater Turtle Containment Zone, but did not have a bag that could adequately contain him so I had to sit the rest of that bus ride, at the station and all through the next bus ride holding the turtle like the world's angriest hamburger. Multiple people were curious about and delighted with the turtle. This is Perfectly Normal. Humans love an animal, especially one that is capable of appearing grumpy, and hands are for holding things.

By the time I got back to Campus, the anthropology and child psychology building that the Invasive Turtle Containment Pond was in had closed, so I had to figure out how to climb the tree over the wall and get down off the roof while holding The World's Angriest And Sharpest Hamburger. I eventually ended up having to briefly shove the turtle into by bra to get up to the initial branch and off the roof without breaking an ankle. This is Perfectly Normal. Humans are, as a species, a bunch of barely-evolved arboreal frugivores and really good at Tree Physics, and I don't know a single titty-having bitch out there that hasn't used their bra as Emergency Pockets at least once, if not daily.

I released the turtle into the Turtle Containment Pond and then had to solve the problem of getting back OUT of the locked building, but Nokia Brick never loses a signal or drops a call (including that time I accidentally dropped it off a 13-story building in the middle of a call to my parents and the damn thing BOUNCED but kept the line open. I miss that phone every day.) and while campus security has been carefully trained to not let people IN to places without proper ID and a call to someone inside, they assume that if you got locked in somewhere, that you got in by legitimate means and not Lemur Shenanigans, so i just called them, apologized that I'd been working late with headphones on and didn't realize I'd been locked in. This is Perfectly Normal, people have been lying to cops since laws were invented, and will continue to do so because all cops are bastards.

Anyway, everyone should have access to good public transportation because freedom of movement is a human right and meeting a broad spectrum of humanity is good for your mental health and spiritual welfare.

[writingwrittenwriting]

AISH cutting financial support to $1700 a month- From a poverty wage of $1900

Sign the Petition

Protect Albertans with Disabilities — Stop the Transition from AISH to ADAP

I'm on AISH because I can't work. I have multiple disabilities I was born with, which I have fought in an exhausting, confusing, and traumatizing battle to overcome since I was only 12 years old. Without the proper supports or interventions growing up, I had a miserable existence. I didn't look disabled, only making things harder for me as I didn't get the support and empathy I needed to feel as valued as my peers, or to learn in a way I could understand. Instead, I was shamed, punished, ostracized, berated, disliked, and treated as though I chose to fail. I was treated as lazy, stupid, stubborn, and often called a whiny brat when my best wasn't enough, inevitably failing. No one believes a 5 year old kid with chronic joint pain from undiagnosed juvenile arthritis, or that a 5 year old can have chronic depression. No one believes a preteen who claims they can't join Phys Ed for two weeks out of every month because of severe cramps from undiagnosed endometriosis and PCOS, obviously she's lazy. And her inability to focus in class is because she doesn't care. A girl who knows how to articulate inspired concise condemnations of her teachers with vicious English skills couldn't possibly be autistic, that's obviously just a rude punk. No, they couldn't possibly be a lonely autistic kid who struggles to connect to real people and thus reads mountains of old books to replace friends, becoming obsessed with the wild west of language that is English. No one is going to believe the same well spoken teenager having regular anxiety attacks isn't just trying to get out of class because they dislike math. It couldn't possibly be a result of a learning disability like dyscalculia, mixing with the devastating severity of their anxiety disorder from a childhood of being shamed for things outside control.

My experiences have only gotten worse, and my quality of life along with it. A constant life of shame, judgment, and guilt for having mental illnesses, learning disabilities, and invisible chronic pain. It hurt me so deeply in my soul when I first shared my experiences with hallucinations brought on by stress. I wasn't treated with kindness, I was treated with fear and judgment. People have assumed I'm a drug addict and treated me horribly for it, I've cried as many days haven't.

The disregard and cruel jokes from those who were older than me when I was 20 years old and dumb enough to complain about my severe back pain, only to be laughed at and told to "just wait until I'm older" when the pain is already so bad that there are times I can't get out of bed. Only to be forced to make my back worse by working any entry level jobs I could get, all of them expecting heavy lifting, just so I can scrape by renting a disgusting room, buy an overpriced bus pass, and maintain a diet of discontinued discount food.

All my life, I've felt less valued as a human being for things I did not do to myself and can not change. I've been taught that if I don't earn my own share, I am lazy and greedy. I have forced myself past my limits to barely scrape by with a substandard quality of life. I've been punished for being inconvenient, for being a burden, taught that asking for help is greedy if I have nothing valuable to give in return. Told I should be grateful to have what I do have, that others have it worse than me.

This mindset only ended up with me permanently worsening my health. I'm Autistic, Bi-Polar, I have General and Social anxiety. I have severe OCD that causes me to burn all my energy out refolding the same pair of pants for 3 hours until its perfect, and I don't want to do it but I can't let it be wrong. I have chronic fatigue that's treated like a joke, but dealing with my mental illness salad is so exhausted that I typically sleep 24 hours at a time, or only manage 8 hours of wakefulness per 24 hour period. I have to keep a list of my formal diagnoses' on my phone, because I keep collecting them like a messed up game of "How can we make this sound even more made up".

My cognitive abilities fluctuate, I don't know why and I don't have the energy or support to get the help I need to understand why. I get frustrated and angry at myself and the world because I know I used to be smarter, or more capable, or have an entire topic memorized, but some months I feel like a scared 12 year old trying to learn how to make a doctors appointment. Some times I can't fill out a basic form and I don't know why I'm suddenly so stupid, stressed, overemotional, and then I'll end up unable to get up from bed due to back pain and I'll just lay there crying because I'm not even 30. The next day I'll be fine and make pulled pork like nothing happened. Then I'll have 3 months where I'm too much of a cognitive and emotional mess to clean my home or see the dentist. Never mind try and figure out the excessively confusing and stressful state of my finances under the unreasonable whims of a government that believes disabled people are fine living under the poverty line. All I can do is take my medication, do my self reflections, and take it day by day.

All I wanted for myself as a kid was to be a self supporting human being deserving of respect and kindness. Instead my life is a nightmare I can only describe as the existential equivalent of needing to scream into a pillow, but you don't know how to scream so it's trapped inside you building up forever.

Changing my income doesn't change the fact that I'm unable to reliably hold a job. Changing my income doesn't create new jobs that want to hire and support "problematic/difficult" disabled workers. Lets be honest and not sugar coat the truth, the majority of jobs "offered" to disabled people are terrible, stressful, and without respect. Companies with arbitrary "policies" make disabled employees feel guilty for every accommodation they need. Humiliating them by demanding personal information and expensive doctors notes with arbitrary guidelines for the specific structure the doctors note must conform to (But employers wont give you that guideline, so keep getting more doctors notes until you get it right) all for an uncomfortable stool to precariously perch upon, stuck at a till designed for standing use only.

Never mind getting overwhelmed and having a breakdown at work, being sick from medication side effects, panic or anxiety attacks, unscheduled flare ups of chronic pain or OCD… Anything where you either look bad or have to leave early. Employers don't want to deal with that. I don't know if I should blame them or not, but the puzzle pieces just don't fit. There's no compassion in retail, food service, customer service, or "entry" level jobs under companies. There's just more stress, pressure and guilt. The impact of being forced into these ill suited jobs worsens chronic illness further and reduces quality of life all the more.

Every entry level position for even the least desired jobs already have 200 desperate applicants without disabilities, 20 applicants with ties to the hiring managers, and no need for accommodations. Who the fuck wants to hire someone with an annoying disability when they can hire literally anyone else.

This change is absolutely delusional, and doesn't cater at all to those who are on AISH. This is so plainly about not giving money to people, that any excuse or explanation to try and give credence to this decision is a bold faced lie, and just another reminder in a lifetime of reinforcement: I am disabled, and I am not valued.

I remember watching an anthropology documentary as a kid, I don't remember the documentary, but it featured examples of ancient human remains. Injuries that would have been a death sentence to a lone individual were able to heal, indicating help from others. Remains indicating humans disabled by age or birth lived through the support of their communities, despite being unable to do so on their own. Elderly humans without teeth would have their food either ground up or chewed for them. Humans with markers of severe deformations were raised and cared for into adulthood. Literal neanderthals with more compassion than our own government.

The compassion and support of humanity is what makes humanity strong. The best judgment of a society is in the quality of life given to the vulnerable, for in that measure you may clearly see the value of human life, dignity, and compassion. If telling the disabled in Alberta that they aren't worth a living wage isn't bad enough on it's own, telling them its an opportunity is the holy grail of the most vile shameless insult, one only a truly cold blooded villain disconnected from the reality of human life could pull off.

The average living wage network states that the average living wage for 2025 in the city closest to me is $20.65 an hour X 40 hrs average work week $826.00 X 52 weeks a year $42,952 ÷ 12 months a year $3,579.33

$3,579.33 a month is a minimum living wage in the city nearest me. I live in a small town where food and transportation is more expensive, but living in a city is hard on me due to my autism.

Tell me, how am I supposed to survive when my rent is 1025$ a month, low income housing is literally impossible to get, and the anger I used writing this comment is likely going to use up all the mental energy and thus my cognitive abilities for the next 3 days to four weeks?

[animentality]

[hikarisakurariver]

Your middle aged Aunts lead the first online charge for yaoi and your great Aunts lead the first conventions for fandoms and wrote yaoi fanfiction on paper. (It just wasn’t called that at the time)

Sometimes they didn’t even show anyone. Sometimes they showed a few fellow fans.

You simply live now, following in their footsteps path they laid.

[minkhollow42]

On a related note, passed my way by a friend:

[skribblegurl]

some people think writers are so eloquent and good with words, but the reality is that we can sit there with our fingers on the keyboard going, “what’s the word for non-sunlight lighting? Like, fake lighting?” and for ten minutes, all our brain will supply is “unofficial”, and we know that’s not the right word, but it’s the only word we can come up with…until finally it’s like our face got smashed into a brick wall and we remember the word we want is “artificial”.

[heywriters]

I couldn't remember the word "doorknob" ten minutes ago.

[bumblewyn]

ok but the onelook thesaurus will save your life, i literally could not live without this website

[breelandwalker]

REBLOG TO SAVE A WRITER'S LIFE

[myfairkatiecat]

LIFE SAVED

REBLOGGING TO SAVE ANOTHER WRITERS LIFE

[sirowsky]

I use this every time I sit down to write. It's the best tool in the world and I would be lost without it!

[depsidase]

[shock]

if fallout 76 really is a world where “every character is a real person” & there’s no NPCs im making it my civic duty to be like this lowly tavern barkeep and then once i’ve established enough of a rapport i’m going to nuke all of west virginia and it will be in character 

[b0gchamp-deactivated20230613]

someone help where’s the screenshot of some post somewhere about the mmo player who barkept for a longass time then fucked absolutely everyone over

[yessica-k]

This one?

[asteroidtroglodyte]

[vaya-writes]

You shouldn’t be in the basement. But damned if you aren’t curious. Incensed at being forbidden from parts of your own home. And bored.   

The door opens with a creak. The key, worn and unassuming, twists with a groan. The dust is thick with years of neglect, and rises with little puffs as you step through it. 

It’s a small basement. Lab equipment to one side. Bookshelf and mouldy works to another. So your eyes land on the creature quite immediately.  

“What on earth,” you whisper. But you’re moving before you can consider the answer.  

The creature before you is unlike anything you’ve seen, and while it’s covered in a layer of fur and its eyes are large and insectoid (are those wings tucked tight against its back?), it's clearly no beast.  

Curled in on itself, one of it’s legs tethered to the ground, hands (fuck, those hands are too human) caging an injury on it’s torso: it’s a pitiful sight.  

It shuffles back when you near it, but you kneel, pausing only a moment as it chirps at you, the sound a question – and a warning. It’s large, and even sitting with its knees clutched to its chest its head sits above yours.  

“What did he do to you?” 

Because it’s no question that this is why you’ve been forbidden from the basement. This is why your grandfather forbade you from leaving your room at night, and why he’s always ignored certain questions you’d asked.  

For a moment you’re torn between going for the injury and going for the rope. You hesitate, going over your options.  

The wound is clotted and old, and you know little about first aid, other than stopping the bleeding.  

The rope, however, is mundane in appearance. You wonder why the creature hadn’t set itself free until your fingers graze the fibres, and your hand jerks away with a sting. 

A red welt raises where you’d touched the rope. You stare at the creature’s ankle with horror – the fur and flesh beneath the tether is blistered and burnt. The fur is missing in patches, damaged badly.  

“I’ll be back,” you promise, before eyeing the lab equipment.  

Glassware, a burner, metal instruments – none of it is particularly familiar to you, but the set of tongs and the scalpels look useful.  

You snatch them up and return to the creature – it looks more and more like a giant moth upon closer inspection. It’s wings which twitch and shudder at your scrutiny, are beautifully patterned, and covered in a thick later of some kind of dust.  The creature – also unnervingly humanoid in shape – wears no clothes, but its short fuzzy fur is thick enough to obscure its bodily features. 

It chirps again the sound higher in pitch, almost alarmed when you return, and rears back as far as the tether will allow. 

You wince at the implication, and hold one of your hands out in supplication. “I’m going to cut the rope. Will you let me?” 

It grows still at your words, and you wonder how much it understands. 

It’d be easier to cut from where you are, but then that’d leave the moth creature with a ring of potentially magical rope stuck around its ankle, and you doubt it’d let you close enough to help once it’s loose. 

Slowly you close the distance. It allows the movement, though visibly tenses when you pick up the tongs. You use the metal to lift the rope from its leg, and it lets out a hiss. 

The scalpel is a poor choice, but it does the job. Frustratingly, slowly, you pick at the threads until the rope comes apart and falls from the creature.  

For a moment the pair of you are still.

You dare to meet its eyes, curious as to what it’ll do next. It seems equally hesitant to break the tension, staring at you with an intensity that’s almost unnerving.  

A thump from upstairs jolts you from the moment, and like a bolt the creature is standing, fur on end and wings fluttering with unease. 

“There should be a back door,” you whisper, scanning the area with mounting unease.  

The basement is small, but you’d seen external door during your trips around the grounds. With three of the walls apparently bare and the fourth leading back to the house, you frown. 

You eye the bookshelf and move to shove it aside. Several sheets of paper flutter to the ground, and you curse, bracing yourself and pushing harder. 

The shelf moves with a sudden lurch when a set of hands appear above your own, and the heat of another body slots behind yours. You don’t have any time to start at the creature’s proximity, though, because the door comes into view. It’s not locked – thank god – but the bilco doors at the top of the stairs are barred shut.  

There’s more noise from upstairs, and your breathing hitches. You’d be in trouble if he knew you were poking around in the basement. And you shuddered to think of what he’d do to you if he found out you’d freed his ‘pet’.  

You claw at the wood – it's nailed to the door and you let out a despairing whimper.  

The creature pushes you aside, digs its fingers into the rotting wood, and pulls it free with a loud groan and a crack.  

Those are footsteps on the stairs – your grandfather is entering the basement. 

“Go, go, go,” you whisper, shoving the creature on the arm.  

The bilco doors shudder open, creaking in protest, just as your grandfather swings the basement door open and lets out a shout. 

You don’t really have time to process what happens next. The creature wraps an arm around your waist and holds you against its chest. You don’t have a chance to marvel at it’s strength, or kick your legs as your feet leave the ground. 

Then it moves. With unnatural speed it bounds a few steps across the estate grounds before jumping into the air, wings snapping open before launching you into flight.  

You’d shriek if it weren’t for the hand that presses against your face, covering you nose to jaw. Crushed against the creature you still loop your arms around its neck, terrified of the sudden drop beneath you.  

The fear doesn’t abate, but after a few minutes of flight you grow used to the position, and your trust that the creature won’t drop you grows. You realise that it had saved you from your grandfather. From having to explain away your misdeeds. Your guilt.  

When the creature sets you down at the edge of the estate grounds, you know you can still go back. That if you sneak into your bed right now, you can continue your life of moderate luxury without fear of consequence.  

Nobody has to know what you’d done.  

You hesitate to step out of its grasp.  

It chirps a question at you and you swallow.  

Grandfather will have discovered the creature is missing. What will he do first? You’re not that great a suspect. He won’t go to your room immediately. Will he give chase? Summon a tracker? A mage?  

Either way, morning come he’d be making your life miserable. You might escape blame but he’ll still be in a rage for gods-only-know how long. Breaking your things. Beating the staff. Perhaps even locking you in your room again.

“I don’t want to go back,” you murmur. Further consideration isn’t really needed. 

The creature tilts its head. Lets out a low grumbling chirp, accompanied by a shrug. And opens its arms to you. 

You loop your arms back around its neck and it lets out another noise – this one more like a purr. Apparently you’re welcome to go with it. 

[beemovieerotica]

Do u not enjoy tasting things

true story my spouse made me start chewing my food more often and I was shocked at how flavorful things are. I'm 32

[redrook]

when he first started dating he was sick a lot, and told me about a family legend that they were cursed with stomach problems because his ancestor was a samurai who had failed to commit sepukku, and now they all needed to experience the pain that he should have

and then one day we were having dinner and I was like. hey. are you not chewing your fucking food

and then I met his family. and they all just unhinge their jaws like snakes. horking shit down like wide-eyed seagulls at the beach

anyway he mostly chews his food now and the ancestral samurai's curse has left him

[beemovieerotica]

correlation is not causation

[hellenhighwater]

My stage career began when I was a little under two months old, when I took the spotlight as Baby Jesus in a Christmas pageant. I’m told that I did a wonderful job and slept calmly through the whole thing, which can only speak to my talents as an actress, because I was 1. the wrong gender 2. a colicky screaming demon of a baby and 3. about as far from divine as it’s possible for an allegedly-human child to be. 

I continued to be actively involved in theater as a kid (and frequently played roles of various small animals, because I was tiny for my age). Around the age of ten, I was cast as the lead character in a musical about cowboys that I no longer remember the name of. It was my first real lead role, and I took it very, very seriously. And because I am myself, that means I maaaaybe went…a little overboard.

My character’s introduction was early in the play, accompanied by the crack of a bullwhip. This was more-or-less pre internet (or, at least, our director was not tech-savvy enough to find sound effects online) and we didn’t have a sound effect track for that noise. There were plans to acquire the appropriate sound effect before opening night, but I rapidly tired of making my entrance during rehearsals to the sound of someone yelling “BULLWHIP NOISE!”

This, I thought to myself, is a problem I can solve.

I learned early in life that it’s good to be friends with people who have skills; they always come in handy eventually.  After rehearsals one day, I put on my cowboy boots and biked a couple miles over to my friend Grace’s house. I went down to their basement and knocked on her older brother’s door.

“Hello,” I said. “I need to learn how to use a bullwhip.”

“….Okay,” he said. It did not seem to occur to him that he might ask further questions about why I, a tiny horrible munchkin composed exclusively of rage and pointy elbows, needed to be weaponized any further. Clearly, I had come to the right person.

My friend’s older brother would have been an SCA nerd, if SCA was a thing where we were. Instead, he was one of those unsupervised 4H kids with weird hobbies, largely oriented around ancient forms of combat. He was somewhere in his late teens at this time, and he liked to make stuff. It was an urge I, even at age ten, could sympathize with. His name was Aron. 

Aron got out his bullwhip (which I had noticed hanging on his wall on a prior visit, and had filed away mentally under a for future use tab) and we went to the backyard. 

“Step one of using a bullwhip,” Aron began, “Swinging the bullwhip.” 

We rapidly discovered that since I was god’s tiniest, angriest creation, a full-size bullwhip was way too long for me to use. Aron’s shins suffered for my attempt. 

“…Step one of using a bullwhip,” Aron said, “Making a bullwhip.”

So we went back inside, found a tanned cowhide (that he just…had? I don’t remember if there was a reason for this.) and some razor blades, and I learned how to cut and braid a bullwhip. It took a few tries, and I wound up coming back for a while, because I kept getting frustrated with the bullwhip-braiding process and Aron kept distracting me with bait like: “Hey kid, wanna learn to make some chainmail?” and “Hey kid, wanna fletch some arrows?” and “Hey kid, wanna try doing horseback archery?”

Obviously the answer to these questions was “BOY, WOULD I EVER!” Some delays are necessary to the artistic process.

(At one point my mom asked me “Hellen, what are you doing over at Grace’s house all the time?” And I, perfectly innocent, said, “Making weapons!” and my mother, who never understood why I was like this, but accepted that a girl has needs and those needs occasionally involve stocking a personal armory, said “Okay! Have fun!”)

Soon, the bullwhip, size extra small, was finished. The lessons on actual bullwhip use commenced. 

It should be noted that Aron was self-taught, and really had no idea what to do, so this was mostly an exercise in the two of us standing twenty feet apart and flailing wildly with our respective whips until snapping noises happened. And then we figured out what we’d done to make the snapping noises. And then we kept doing that. Extremely vigorously. So vigorously that at one point one of the bullwhips launched into the air and caught on a tree branch and we hand to drag the trampoline over so Aron could bounce me high enough to grab it. But we persisted!

Eventually we reached a point where we could line up pop cans on a fence rail and hit them off three times out of five.

Feeling extremely accomplished and like I finally understood method acting, I packed my bullwhip into my backpack for the next play rehearsal. Soon enough, it was time for me to make my entrance. 

I leaped on stage in my cowboy boots and cracked the bullwhip as hard as I could, immediately launching into the song despite the fact that the sound of five feet of braided leather breaking sound barrier had startled the accompanist so badly she’d keysmashed on the piano.

The director shouted something she probably shouldn’t have shouted in a room full of small children, and then demanded, “WHERE DID YOU GET THAT!”

“I made it!” I declared proudly. “I’m a cowgirl! I can make my own bullwhip noise!”

“You…made it?” 

“Yes! Because we needed a bullwhip sound effect. And bullwhips are where bullwhip sound effects come from!”

This was, of course, impeccable logic.

It is apparently difficult to argue with a gleeful ten year old who happens to be armed with a bullwhip longer than she is tall. After some negotiation, the director agreed that I could use my bullwhip for my opening song, provided that I didn’t pop it while anyone was anywhere near me on stage and I didn’t let anyone else play with it. These terms were acceptable to me. 

Somehow, no one was injured and the play went off without a hitch. We can only chalk up these things to the magic of the theatre. 

Nearly a decade later, an unsuspecting college classmate asked me, “Hellen, wanna take a class on bullwhip combat with me?”

And obviously I answered, “BOY, WOULD I EVER!”

[inbabylontheywept]

In the D&D campaign I'm running with my wife's siblings, one of them learned about how trolls regenerate within minutes of any damage not caused by fire or acid, and then asked why people don't just like. Cage them and eat them, forever. Why there aren't troll meat dungeons in the king's castle as a safeguard against sieges or famines.

And you know, I thought it was a fair question, so I said that if you eat enough troll meat, you start getting troll-y. And then I went further and just treated it like troll flesh is a general contaminant - if you eat enough troll, you'll turn into a troll, but if you bury enough dead troll flesh in a forest, the trees will start growing in strange ways, and will scream and heal and bleed when you hit them with axes.

I liked this idea. So as we played further, I just played around with the idea of Troll Origins, and I came up with something sort of like the Odyssey, but instead stealing Helios's cattle, it was Hathor's, and the horrible, awful, unending immortality was her curse of the army that pillaged her lands. A god of healing does not condemn you to die, she condemns you to live.

And then I got this fun idea for maybe the king that led the army is still kind of alive in the troll taint. Like a sort of literal fisher king. The kingdom is sick because he is, literally, the kingdom. The trees that bleed, bleed his blood and their screams are his screams. He is both the faintly green bear running down the mountain and the faintly green deer and there is no way past this without suffering. He is the entire ecosystem, and he eats nothing but himself and he dreams nothing but death and yet still, on and on and on and on, he lives.

Anyway they're traveling next session so I'm throwing this shit at them. I already have some gross ideas for like. Describing everything like it's a body (flowers red as blood, white as bone, pink as meat, grass fine as hair) then finally throwing horrible living things at them. Trees that grow eyeballs that turn and stare at them, or flowers with teeth instead of petals and trolls that speak in long dead tongues about how they wish they'd never tried to rob a god.

Anyway I'm passing this on because this is my new troll lore and I want it to become canonized in the way that all D&D lore becomes canonized: By having eople read it and go "oh, neat" then start doing that too.

[wishingforatypewriter]

Do y'all ever read a fic so good that it makes you want to elevate your own craft and also befriend the writer? It's almost like, "Hi! You write so well that you've inspired me to embark on a creative training arc. Also, can I yell about the character in your dms because you get it?"