funky-fox-fics
funky-fox-fics
i write interesting things sometimes
475 posts
@russetfoxfur's fic blog. I'll also reblog writing related things.
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
funky-fox-fics · 7 days ago
Text
oh yknow what might be fun? reply to this with a year and I'll do a few lines on what's going on with cave/caroline/aperture that year
49 notes · View notes
funky-fox-fics · 8 days ago
Text
Tumblr media
176K notes · View notes
funky-fox-fics · 18 days ago
Text
TW: medical, drugs
Okay I think some of the whump community needs a quick reminder that sedatives, hypnotics, tranquillizers, analgesics, and anaesthetics are completely different things.
Here's a quick rundown (disclaimer that I am neither a doctor nor a whumper):
Sedative: A sedative drug decreases activity, moderates excitement, and calms the recipient
Hypnotic: A drug that produces drowsiness and facilitates the onset and maintenance of a state of sleep
Tranquilizer: A drug that calms and relieves anxiety
Analgesics: A drug designed to control pain
Anaesthetics: A substance that causes lack of feeling or awareness, dulling pain to permit surgery and other painful procedures
As you can see, yes, they often overlap and, yes, many drugs are both but if you are sedating a patient for surgery... good luck.
Some examples (under the cut because of specific drug mentionsand the length of this post) for good measure:
Acetaminophen/paracetamol (Tylenol): analgesic
Nitrous oxide (laughing gas): sedative, analgesic (mild), anaesthetic (very mild)
Diphenhydramine (Benadryl): sedative-hypnotic, anaesthetic, analgesic
Quetiapine (Seroquel): sedative, hypnotic
Lidocaine: sedative, analgesic, anaesthetic
Diazepam (Valium): sedative, hypnotic, tranquilizer, anaesthetic
Oxycodone (OxyContin): sedative, tranquilizer, analgesic, anaesthetic
Fentanyl: sedative, analgesic, anaesthetic
Xylazine (Tranq): Sedative, hypnotic, tranquilizer, analgesic, anaesthetic (mostly used for animals though because it's so potent)
(Most of these have many more properties not listed here but I just wanted to try and illustrate the difference between some of them)
889 notes · View notes
funky-fox-fics · 18 days ago
Text
Writing a character who becomes severely malnourished/dehydrated/sleep-deprived?
Here’s what you’ll need to know! Learn all about the wonders of the human body and add scientifically-accurate drama to your stories.
MALNOURISHMENT
DEATH: average - 21 days (3 weeks), max ever recorded - 70 days (2.3 months)
6 HOURS: grouchiness and hunger due to lack of glucose.
24 HOURS - 48 HOURS: hunger very apparent; pains in stomach; body has entered ketosis and is using fatty acids as energy.
72 HOURS+: muscles begin to get broken down for energy.
You will become: increasingly depressed, irritable, hysteric apathetic; decline in concentration, comprehension and judgement; social isolation and withdrawal; possible self-harm.
If your character doesn’t eat for 5 consecutive days, they are at risk of Refeeding Syndrome. This is extremely dangerous and can be fatal.
recommended reading:
The Minnesota Starvation Experiment
Psychology of starvation based on the above experiment.
DEHYDRATION
DEATH: average 3 days; some live 8 - 10 days
for the calculations: TWV = total water volume in body; average adult loses 2.5 litres of water per day.
Assuming that your character does not eat, drink or absorb any moisture.
9 HOURS/2% TWV: thirst, discomfort, dry skin, loss of appetite; 50% loss of performance for athletes; elevated body temperature, rapid heartbeat, fatigue, dizziness when standing, decreased fluid secretion (sweat, urination, tears, etc).
24 HOURS/6% TWV: sleepiness, severe headaches, nausea, tingling in limbs.
36 - 72 HOURS/ 6 - 15% TWV: no urination, seizures, muscle spasms, shriveled skin, fainting, vision dimming, delirium.
72 HOURS+/15% TWV+: Organ failure.
recommended reading:
dehydration on the psychology wiki.
SLEEP DEPRIVATION
DEATH: not known, but can stay awake for 11 days; max chronic sleep deprivation ever recorded (until death) - 6 months.
NOTE: This does not mean you can stay awake for 6 months. It means you can survive that long with chronic sleep deprivation - going days without sleep and then sleeping once or twice.
24 HOURS: mental ability impairment of someone who has blood-alcohol content of 0.10%; everything is worse - emotional control, memory, attention, decision-making, hand-eye coordination.
36 HOURS: hormonal spikes everywhere; losing time; lack of motivation; head buzzing like you’re dehydrated.
48 HOURS: microsleep, regardless of what you’re doing (you fall asleep for 1-30 seconds and then become disorientated);
72 HOURS+: say goodbye to higher mental processes like decision-making and planning. Also, say good bye to saying goodbye because even simple conversations are hard.
80 HOURS+: … and hello, hallucinations!
recommended reading:
this article of a soldier’s experience with sleep deprivation.
Eleven Days Awake; The Experiment.
56K notes · View notes
funky-fox-fics · 20 days ago
Text
immortal and the human they've been cursed to watch die over and over again
2K notes · View notes
funky-fox-fics · 20 days ago
Text
Fandom: The Stanley Parable Rating: General Word Count: 8,162 words (1/1 chapters)
"Oh, Stanley," the Narrator croons, voice echoing through the empty, empty hallways and making it all seem so suddenly claustrophobic. "I don't know what you're afraid of, really. I feel wonderful! There's nothing wrong with me at all. What're you so afraid of, really?" Stanley squeezes his eyes shut, frozen solid on the stairs, heart in his throat. I'm afraid you're not the Narrator, he thinks to Him, and his breath comes quick and rattling in his chest. What did you do to Him?
(Or: in which an aromantic, asexual Stanley is faced with an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and awfully lovesick Narrator. Horror spin on the Lovebug AU.)
Lovely Little Bugs
9 notes · View notes
funky-fox-fics · 21 days ago
Text
Rewrite a classic fairy tale by telling it backwards. The end is now the beginning.
106K notes · View notes
funky-fox-fics · 21 days ago
Text
An “I can see when people will die displayed above their heads” story but it is not the time of their death. It’s the order.
11K notes · View notes
funky-fox-fics · 21 days ago
Text
“Are you the witch who turned eleven princes into swans?”
The old woman stared at the figure on the front step of her cottage and considered her options. It was the kind of question usually backed up by a mob with meaningful torches, and it was the kind of question she tried to avoid.
Coming from a single dusty, tired housewife, it should’ve held no terrors.
“You a cop?”
The housewife twisted the hem of her apron. “No,” she muttered. “I’m a swan.”
A raven croaked somewhere in the woods. Wind whispered in the autumn leaves.
Then: “I think I can guess,” the old woman said slowly. “Husband stole your swan skin and forced you to marry him?”
A nod.
“And you can’t turn back into a swan until you find your skin again.”
A nod.
“But I reckon he’s hidden it, or burned it, or keeps it locked up so you can’t touch it.”
A tiny, miserable nod.
“And then you hear that old Granny Rothbart who lives out in the woods is really a batty old witch whose father taught her how to turn princes into swans,” the old woman sighed. “And you think, ‘Hey, stuff the old skin, I can just turn into a swan again this way.’
“But even if that was true – which I haven’t said if it is or if it isn’t – I’d say that I can only do it to make people miserable. I’m an awful person. I can’t do it out of the goodness of my heart. I have no goodness. I can’t use magic to make you feel better. I only wish I could.”
Another pause. “If I was a witch,” she added.
The housewife chewed the inside of her cheek. Then she drew herself up and, for the first time, looked the old woman in the eyes.
“Can you do it to make my husband miserable?”
The old woman considered her options. Then she pulled the wand out from the umbrella stand by the door. It was long, and silver, and a tiny glass swan with open wings stood perched on the tip.
“I can work with that,” said the witch.
63K notes · View notes
funky-fox-fics · 23 days ago
Text
Years ago a fey tricked you into giving her your true name. After several years of being her “pet”, today you overheard her true name.
4K notes · View notes
funky-fox-fics · 23 days ago
Text
Let’s talk about an Ariel who walks away—limping, mouthing inaudible sailors’ curses, a sea-brine knife in her belt.
Ariel traded her voice for a chance to walk on land. That was the deal: every time she steps, it will feel like being stabbed by knives. She must win the hand of her one true love, or she will die at his wedding day, turn to sea foam, forgotten. The helpful steward tells her to dance for the prince, even though her feet scream each time she steps. Love is pain, the sea witch promised. Devotion calls for blood.
But how about this? When the prince marries another, nothing happens. When Ariel stands over the prince and his fiance the night before their wedding, her sisters’ hard-won knife in hand, she doesn’t decide his happiness is more important than her life. She decides that his happiness is irrelevant. Her curse does not turn on the whims of this boy’s heart. 
She does not throw away the knife and throw herself into the sea. She does not bury it in the prince and break her curse—it would not have broken. She leaves them sleeping in what will be their marriage bed and limps into a quiet night, her knife clean in her belt, her heart caught in her throat. Her feet scream, but they ache, too, for the places she has yet to see. 
Ariel will not be sea foam or a queen. There is life beyond love. There is love in just living. Her true love will not be married on the morn—the prince will be married then, in glorious splendor, but he had never been why she was here.
Ariel traded her voice for legs to stand on, a chance at another life. When she poked her head above the waves, it wasn’t the handsome biped that she fell for. It was the way the hills rolled, golden in the sun. It was the clouds chasing each other across blue sky, like sea foam you could never reach.
(She does reach it, one day, bouncing around in the back of a blacksmith’s cart, signing jokes to him in between helping to tune his guitar. They crest up a high mountain pass and into the belly of a cloud. Her breath whistles out, swirls water droplets, and she reaches out a hand to touch the sky. Her feet will scream all her life, but after that morning they ache just a little bit less). 
I want an Ariel who is in love with a world, not a prince. I don’t want her to be a moral for little girls about what love is supposed to hurt like, about how it is supposed to kill you. Ariel will be one more wandering soul, forgotten. Her voice will live in everything she does. She uses her sisters’ knife to turn a reed into a pipe. She cannot speak, but she still has lungs. 
Love is pain, says the old man, when Ariel smiles too wide at sunrises. It’s pain, says the innkeeper, with pity, as Ariel hobbles to a seat, pipe in hand. At least you are beautiful, soothes the country healer who looks over her undamaged feet. The helpful steward had thought she was shy. Dance for the prince even though your feet feel stuck with a hundred knives.
Her feet feel like knives but she goes out dancing in the grass at midnight anyway. She’s never seen stars before. Moonlight reaches down through the depths, but starlight fractures on the surface. Ariel dances for herself.
She goes down to caves and rocky shores. Sometimes she meets with her sisters there. Mouths filled with water cannot speak above the sea, so she drops into the waves and they sing to her, old songs, and she steals breaths of air between the stanzas. She can drown now. She holds her breath. She opens her eyes to the salt and brine. 
Ariel uses canes and takes rides on wagons filled with hay, chickens, tomatoes—never fish. She earns coins and paper scraps of money with a conch shell her youngest sister swam up from the depths for her, with her reed pipe, with a lyre from her eldest sister which sounds eerie and high out of the water. The shadow plays she makes on the walls of taverns waver and wriggle like on the sea caves of her childhood, but not because of water’s lap and current. It is the firelight that flickers over her hands. 
When she has limped and hitched rides so far that no one knows the name of her prince’s kingdom, she meets a travelling blacksmith on the road with an extra seat in his cart and an ear for music. He never asks her to dance for him and she never does. She drops messages in bottles to her sisters, at every river and coastline they come to, and sometimes she finds bottles washed up the shore just for her. 
They travel on. When she breathes, these days, her lungs fill with air.
Some nights she wakes, gasping, coughing up black water that never comes. There is something lying heavy on her chest and there always will be.
Somewhere in the ocean, a sea witch thinks she has won. When Ariel walks, she hobbles. Her voice was the sunken treasure of the king’s loveliest daughter, and so when they tell Ariel’s story they say she has been robbed. They say she has been stolen. 
She has many instruments because she has many voices—all of them, hers; made by her hands, or gifted from her sisters’ dripping ones. Ariel will sing until the day she dies with every instrument but her vocal cords. 
She cannot win it back, the high sweet voice of a merchild who had never blistered her shoulders red with sun, who had never made a barroom rise to its feet to sing along to her strumming fingers. She cannot ever again sing like a girl who has not held a dagger over two sleeping lovers and then decided to spare them. She decided not to wither. She decided to walk on knives for the rest of her life. She cannot win it back, but even if she could, she knows she would not sound the same. 
They call her story a tragedy and she rests her aching feet beside the warming hearth. With every new ridge climbed, new river forded, new night sky met, her feet ache a little less. They call her a tragedy, but the blacksmith’s donkey is warm and contrary on cold mornings. The blacksmith’s shoulder is warm under her cheek.
Her feet will always hurt. She has cut out so many parts of her self, traded them up, won twisted promises back and then twisted them herself. She lives with so many curses under her skin, but she lives. They call her story a moral, and maybe it is.
When she breathes, her lungs fill. When she walks, the earth holds her up. There is sun and there is light and she can catch it in her hands. This is love. 
83K notes · View notes
funky-fox-fics · 23 days ago
Text
You wake up suddenly to find an androgynous being by your bed, congratulating you on your ascension to godhood and vanishing without explaining your domain or power set. Now you have to figure out what kind of god you are, and why you're a god to begin with
11K notes · View notes
funky-fox-fics · 23 days ago
Text
You never knew your birth parents, growing up across the country in orphanages. While alone you learned to cook and shared your meals across the world, eventually owning your own business. One day you suddenly find out what your parents were. They were Fae… you’ve fed thousands Fae Food.
12K notes · View notes
funky-fox-fics · 23 days ago
Text
This is like… the Flesh, but silly- “They’re Made Out Of Meat” by Terry Bisson. He was an author who wrote a lot of really cool stuff and just died recently- while I can’t currently find the link to the original story, here’s the version I copied to tumblr-
“They’re made out of meat.”
“Meat?”
“Meat. They’re made out of meat.”
“Meat?”
“There’s no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”
  “That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?”
“They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines.”
“So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact.”
“They made the machines. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Meat made the machines.”
  “That’s ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You’re asking me to believe in sentient meat.”
“I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they’re made out of meat.” “Maybe they’re like the orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage.”
“Nope. They’re born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn’t take long. Do you have any idea what’s the life span of meat?”
“Spare me. Okay, maybe they’re only part meat. You know, like the weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside.”
“Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They’re meat all the way through.”
“No brain?”
“Oh, there’s a brain all right. It’s just that the brain is made out of meat! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“So … what does the thinking?”
“You’re not understanding, are you? You’re refusing to deal with what I’m telling you.  The brain does the thinking. The meat.”
“Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat!”
“Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat.   The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?”
“Omigod. You’re serious then. They’re made out of meat.”
“Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they’ve been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years.”
“Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?”
“First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual.”
“We’re supposed to talk to meat.”
“That’s the idea. That’s the message they’re sending out by radio. ‘Hello.  Anyone out there. Anybody home.’ That sort of thing.”
“They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?” “Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat.”
“I thought you just told me they used radio.”
“They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other.   They can even sing by squirting air through their meat.”
“Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?”
“Officially or unofficially?”
“Both.”
“Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing.”
“I was hoping you would say that.”
“It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?”
“I agree one hundred percent. What’s there to say? ‘Hello, meat.   How’s it going?’ But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?”
“Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can’t live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space.  Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact.”
“So we just pretend there’s no one home in the Universe.”
“That’s it.”  
“Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You’re sure they won’t remember?”
“They’ll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we’re just a dream to them.”
“A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat’s dream.”
“And we marked the entire sector unoccupied.”
“Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?”
“Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a class nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again.”
“They always come around.”
“And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone …”
320 notes · View notes
funky-fox-fics · 23 days ago
Text
The hero and the dark lord have both disappeared after their battle, making everyone think they both perished. In reality, they are living on a farm, living the life of their dreams.
7K notes · View notes
funky-fox-fics · 23 days ago
Text
The fire in the circle of stones crackled in the night.
Then — because the battle was done, because they had been travelling together for months, and because this might be their last conversation — the fighter said, “Can I ask a personal question?”
The wizard stopped writing in her notebook mid-scribble. “Uh,” she said. And — possibly because the battle was done, and because they had travelled together for months, and because this might be their last conversation — she answered, “Possibly?”
“How do you do that?”
“How do I do what?”
“That. The thing you do when you talk without moving your lips.”
“…Oh.” The wizard closed her notebook.
“Because I know it’s not telepathy,” the fighter went on. “Telepathy goes straight to the brain. You don’t hear it with your ears.”
“Right.”
“And I didn’t want to question it, because we were busy and there were more important things going on.”
“Of course.”
“But—” The fighter waved her arms vaguely to sum up the past few months. “And now that everything’s kind of settled down, I just — I have to know how you do it.”
The wizard nodded.
“So if it’s not telepathy, is it some kind of — I don’t know, sound magic? Do you manipulate the vibrations in the air? Is it something like that?”
“No, no, nothing like that. It’s—”
The wizard pursed her lips. Then she reached up and pulled the corner of her hood open.
A tiny, black-feathered face poked out from between her curls.
“Uh,” said the fighter.
“This is Raspberry,” said the chickadee in the wizard’s voice. “She’s my — I guess you could call her my speaking-aid familiar.”
“Oh,” said the fighter. “Oh!” she said when her brain caught up with her. “Sorry, I had no idea.”
“It’s fine,” said the chickadee — said the wizard. “I try not to let people know.”
“Well — thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” The chickadee wriggled back into the shade of the wizard’s hood. The wizard turned back to her notebook.
The logs in the fire shifted with a soft, crunching noise. Sparks whorled up in a spiral.
“Sorry — can you cast spells if it’s technically someone else speaking for you?”
“It’s my words, isn’t it?” said the wizard.
2K notes · View notes
funky-fox-fics · 23 days ago
Text
Tumblr media
I love the idea of a roomba topography map being the jumping on point for a liminal horror story. House of Leaves II: Roomba.
65K notes · View notes