Ooo Intriguing!

Yep, yep, yep. I had an ethics teacher who would harp on us about in detail research, yet would use AI images instead of finding ones for their announcements. I aced the final paper anyway (mostly by doing it my way instead of following the weird as Hell advice they gave).

I don't really want to say the statement "you're always smarter than anyone who's first instinct is to use AI" but...no, you know what? "You're always smarter than anyone who's first instinct is to use AI".

On the subject of non AI resources, I assure you that if you make it clear you will actually support non AI versions of something, people will make it. People often want to put in the time and energy to make these resources, they're just hesitant to because they fear no one will use them. Do not get me started on how many character blogs there are out there for popular characters that get no asks or interactions whatsoever, because people would rather use character.ai.

"I have social anxiety", I get it, I really do. And yes, a part of keeping these none AI resources alive is you have to stop being a lurker and actually interact with them. It can be scary, but I assure you it is worth it to let the people who create these resources shine.

Hi peeps! As I work on Every Hero Needs a Villain, do y'all want me to make the community for it so you can see some funny behind the scenes stuff and potentially certain bios as I make them? You can also make suggestions for stuff there if you want. Trying to encourage myself to complete them.

Tag list: @aweirdshipp, @floofyboi57, @aralithmenathere

If this isn't a mood idk what is lol.

I can normally picture my characters in my head really easily, but the villain of my current WIP was eluding me until today. I kept getting stuck trying to describe him. Some brainstorming with my writing group finally gave me an idea of what he should look like. Unfortunately, now that I can see him, I am, predictably, in love with him

May your prose be gut-wrenching to readers and unintelligible to AI

Oooo this was beautiful!

Here is the first lesson we can learn from the wandering druids: every grove is a sacred grove.

It does not matter if it is an ancient copse nestled in the heart of the forest, or a handful of shrubs sprouting anaemic from the oil-clogged veins of a city.

A garden that springs up on the rooftop of a building by mistake is still needful and worthy of our veneration. It will also need a little more help, since its connection to wider nature is much more tenuous.

An ecosystem cannot exist in isolation after all, so it is the work of those mortals who fractured it to kintsugi the fragments together. It is the work of the leafwalker to *show* the grove how to be sacred.

We see this in the roadside orchards planted by the druid Richmond Crabapple. Turning the highways into snaking green creatures, her trees offer shade to travellers and fruit to the needy. It is easy to remember a thing is sacred, after all, when it so obviously gives you life.

Here is the second lesson: everyone and everything is nature.

We are animals. Our towns and cities are animal habitats. The separation of the urban and the rural is as much a mental one as a physical. It is a mind game we play to give us the illusion of mastery, and to excuse the damage we do.

A good earthspeaker will tell you to listen to those who have stayed in conversation with the world. Those people who know the give and take of blood and bough and mulch. Those peoples who, so often, we have called savage. Those who we looked down on from our towers made of bones.

Listen. Listen and follow, if they will have you and if they will teach you.

We see this in the truce the druid Cambridge Ironweed made with the Skullcluster. This spirit takes the form of a pack of skeletal cats, and was thought to be a genus of demon predator. When Ironweed planted his feet in the dirt offered them his throat, he made himself a conversation between two worlds that should always have been one.

Now everyone in its domain lives with a skeletal cat. They know that, one day, they will die and it will eat the flesh from their bones. This is how their flesh and spirit will return to the earth.

Remember Ironwood's dying words: “Oh, you think we are special because we have souls? Here, let me show you how widely the river of the anima flows…”

Here is the third lesson: we tend that which we would see flourish.

If you would see people fed, grow food. If you would see forests thrive, tend trees. If you would see the a community safe from predators, grow thorns.

But never forget that anything that cures can also kill. Crops can choke a landscape and a sick landscape kills its creatures. A forest grown thick is fuel for wildfires. A town that is safe can forget it is part of a wider world and turn thorns into spears.

We see this in the work of the druid and rootweaver Devonport Blackwood.

The many buildings created by Blackwood are things of beauty not because of their aesthetic, but due to their function. In the towns and cities Blackwood traveled, they planted webs of needroot beneath the foundations. Needroot is weed-like in its dormant form, a wispy white root happy to live in pavement cracks and kiss the boots of commuters.

But if you need shelter? If you are desperate and vulnerable and cry your needs out like burnt offerings to the heavens? Well, if the heavens don't need you, the needroot will.

The structures it builds are strange things, bulbous and pale. They use whatever materials are to hand. They claim whatever space is unused (though not necessarily unowned). They look like nests built out of discarded tarmac, copper and mycelial strands - a mix of turnip-pale rubbery organic matter and urban detritus. As if someone had reconstructed the mythic roc from mushrooms and given it a building permit.

Everyone who needs a home in these places has one. This is the need Blackwood sought to tend.

But, because local landlords were rarely happy about this, they also left a twist in the tale.

So the needroot also provides every settlement with a communal poison garden. They are lush, lovely and deadly.

After all, many natural things need teeth to flourish.

---

This particular story was inspired by this post about druids, which y'all should read.

Enjoy my stories and want to support my work? I'm currently fundraising for my live show. Check it out here: https://igg.me/at/poorlifechoices/x/8175219

signed hardcover giveaway!

my queer cozy fantasy THE KEEPER OF LONELY SPIRITS has been out for one month. to celebrate, I'll be giving away one (1) signed hardcover

the giveaway is open internationally to countries that can receive USPS packages. it'll run across platforms, but there will only be one (1) winner

enter by 5p.m. EST on Friday, May 2, by...

following me

reblogging this post

bonus entry: tag a friend

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Find an angry spirit. Send it on its way before it causes trouble. Leave before anyone learns his name.

After over two hundred years, Peter Shaughnessy is ready to die and end this cycle. But thanks to a youthful encounter with one o’ them folk in his native Ireland, he can’t. Instead, he’s cursed to wander eternally far from home, with the ability to see ghosts and talk to plants.

Immortality means Peter has lost everyone he’s ever loved. And so he centers his life on the dead—until his wandering brings him to Harrington, Ohio. As he searches for a vengeful spirit, Peter’s drawn into the townsfolk’s lives, homes and troubles. For the first time in over a century, he wants something other than death.

But the people of Harrington will die someday. And he won’t.

As Harrington buckles under the weight of the supernatural, the ghost hunt pits Peter’s well-being against that of his new friends and the man he’s falling for. If he stays, he risks heartbreak. If he leaves, he risks their lives.

click here to add the book on TheStoryGraph: link to The Keeper of Lonely Spirits on TheStoryGraph

I adore this so much. The emotions of the characters can just be felt. I don't know the full context, but even so, it was clear how much they cared about each other, and they truly felt like family.

I wish we could love.

WIP; Out of Sight and Mind

Context: Ari, who has returned to his hometown following his parents death, was a teenage runaway who faked his own death to escape abusive parents. This is a conversation between him and his brother about being in love for the first time since he left, and the childhood that pushed them apart.

Neptune is Ari's childhood best friend, who he loved but dragged into some shit situations.

Edward is Ari's current love interest.

Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial

--

"I loved her, and I haven't loved another person since," Ari whispered with intense soberness to the ceiling. His eyes were red in the glare of the morning sun, yet dark as if the night had never left him.

"I know," Eli sat down with surprising tenderness in his voice - a moment of peace he rarely had, given only for the expressive heartache Ari rarely showed. Not even time could truly sever a brother's love.

"It feels...wrong, somehow."

"Because you love him, or because you're loved at all?" Ari breathed in the air, and it turned into something sickening in his stomach. Nausea fell like waves upon him, his hand finding his forehead just to press down, feel less like every piece of him was falling away.

"I suppose I don't have a leg to stand on, to be upset she lied to my face...after leaving her."

"It broke her into pieces, but it pushed her to her own freedom."

"I was a chain on her."

"You were," it was solemn, truthful, "...you pulled her downwards, and letting go was the only way she'd see the sky again." Ari felt the tears burn, hearing it spoke so plainly. "But you were a teenager, forced to make decisions no teenager should have to make - it'd hardly a blame you chose the wrong one."

"You never forgave me." What if he hadn't changed, what if all these years were a mirage, and he only ended up breaking Edward the way he broke Neptune?

"I never understood." Ari pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes and begged the tears to stop. His body felt hot with the want to curl up in a ball away from Eli, from Neptune, from everyone. He'd hardly had a second of silence since he'd got to this god-forsaken place. "But I overheard you talking to Edward, and I do now."

"I never wanted you to know."

"I know," Eli's voice cracked, "...you subjected yourself to years of my anger to protect me from the truth."

"I wanted you to have good parents, and they loved you-"

"But they hurt you."

"It made me stronger."

Eli shook his head "...not stronger, traumatised, look at you Ari; a boy tells you he loves you, and you feel like it's the end of the world, that's not strength, that's pain."

"I just don't understand."

"You are so much more lovable than any of us have ever made you feel," Eli's voice shook with a deep tremble that reminded Ari of thunder rumbling through the sky. The natural order, disturbed by a tremor in the humidity. "Alicia is better at this than I," he laughed with discarded mirth, "...you are my brother, and you came here for me knowing it would tear you to pieces, and I love you."

Ari didn't know what to say, his mouth opened and closed, but the words burned and stopped in his throat. He desperately wanted to say it, to tell his little brother he would jump in front of a bullet for him, that he'd tear apart the world to keep him safe. But he didn't. He looked at Eli with something dejected and fearful, and just prayed that he understood.

If you're a writer you're supposed to write a lot of bullshit. It's part of the gig. You have to write a lot of absolute garbage in order to get to the good bits. Every once in a while you'll be like "Oh, I wish I hadn't wasted all that time writing bullshit," but that's dumb. That's exactly the same as an Olympic runner being like "Oh, I wish I hadn't wasted all that time running all those practice laps"

For Storyteller Saturday, can you tell us something fun about your current WIP? :)

Thank you for the ask! 💚 /p

So, as the title suggests, in Every Hero needs a Villain, every hero in this has a villain counterpart that sort of serves as their opposite in some ways. I made it this way to help inspire more personality diversity in the cast. Heroes are inspired by the dreams and hopes of humanity, while villains are inspired by the nightmares and fears of humanity. My favorites so far are Mrs Robust, inspired by people's fears of two sided businessmen, Nurse Sanguine, inspired by fears of an overly chipper nurse, and Cuddlefort, inspired by hopes of having a good intimate relationship with a partner.

(Btw, if people want to send my worldbuilding questions for the hero and villain society I am working on for this, I will happily send some back in kind).

I might make a community for it where I share more bio stuff as I work on them, if people are interested.

writers are creatures that feed on comments by the way. if you want more of your blorbo from them, give them lovely comments. they love that and will most likely give you more fics about your blorbo