shy-raccoon

[shy-raccoon]

tw: Drugged/paralyzed

Whumpee woke up slung over someone's shoulder, unable to move. It was dark, and all they could see was the forest floor shifting beneath someone else's feet.

They tried to squirm, but nothing happened. A small whimper escaped them as the person carrying suddenly stopped. Gently, they were laid on the ground, their back pressing against the cold earth. Whumpee could barely make out their features, whoever it was, they didn’t recognize them.

A gloved hand cupped Whumpee’s face, causing them to flinch.

The figure tisked, then rolled up Whumpee's sleeve and injected a syringe into their arm.

The moment the needle pierced their skin, Whumpee lost the ability to make another sound. The fleeting sensation they had almost regained in their fingers quickly faded. The figure patted Whumpee's cheek, smiling when no response came.

With a grunt, they lifted Whumpee back over their shoulder and continued deeper into the woods.

[shy-raccoon]

Small fantasy worldbuilding elements you might want to think about:

A currency that isn’t gold-standard/having gold be as valuable as tin

A currency that runs entirely on a perishable resource, like cocoa beans

A clock that isn’t 24-hours

More or less than four seasons/seasons other than the ones we know

Fantastical weather patterns like irregular cloud formations, iridescent rain

Multiple moons/no moon

Planetary rings

A northern lights effect, but near the equator

Roads that aren’t brown or grey/black, like San Juan’s blue bricks

Jewelry beyond precious gems and metals

Marriage signifiers other than wedding bands

The husband taking the wife's name / newlyweds inventing a new surname upon marriage

No concept of virginity or bastardry

More than 2 genders/no concept of gender

Monotheism, but not creationism

Gods that don’t look like people

Domesticated pets that aren’t re-skinned dogs and cats

Some normalized supernatural element that has nothing to do with the plot

Magical communication that isn’t Fantasy Zoom

“Books” that aren’t bound or scrolls

A nonverbal means of communicating, like sign language

A race of people who are obligate carnivores/ vegetarians/ vegans/ pescatarians (not religious, biological imperative)

I’ve done about half of these myself in one WIP or another and a little detail here or there goes a long way in reminding the audience that this isn’t Kansas anymore.

[shy-raccoon]

my take on pnw gothic

- something’s tapping your second-story window. there aren’t any trees or plants by it that could be causing the noise. its probably just the rain. probably. - the mountains close in on all sides of you, watching. their presence is so familiar it feels like home. - the road to your house is winding, going up a hill. your headlights catch a pair of eyes, staring back at you from the trees. in a moment they’re gone, vanished further into the darkness. - you’re driving through the country and pass through a town. its the same town you passed 30 minutes ago. you’ve been driving in a straight line the whole time. - in the winter you leave the house in the dark. you get home in the dark. you havent seen the sun in 4 months. - you step into a tiny little vintage shop. it goes on forever, taking twists and turns that seem impossible based on the outside dimensions. its filled with memories. memories and cowboy boots. when you finally leave 4 hours have passed. - its been a couple days without rain and the entire town is starting to get antsy. when it finally rains again you can feel everyone breathing a collective sigh of relief. - you see a group of crows. you try to remember the rhyme used to count them. one for sorrow, two for joy… theres seven of them. seven for a secret, never to be told. - september brings with it smoke and the faint terror that the fire is going to hop the river to where you are. ash is falling from the sky. life is continuing like this isnt happening. - it snowed again and the entire town is silent. we all know better than to try and go outside. - its dark out. you shut all the windows in the house. you don want to know what waits outside. - you’ve been driving for hours and have only seen a couple of lone houses sitting next to bright red barns. you wonder who lives there. the barns are falling down. - it rained all fall, winter, and spring. you want to light a campfire. there is a fire ban. theres always a fire ban. - everyone still has christmas lights up. its june. no one wants to go on their roofs to take them down. not again. - you rip out some blackberries. you’ve been at it for hours. your hands are bleeding. stupid blackberries. - youre being dragged to another pub. you order a burger on a brioche bun. thats all youve eaten for the past 5 meals. - it’s going to rain tomorrow at 12:47 pm. you havent checked your weather app, but you can smell it in the air. - you look out and its a sea of flannel and denim. the crowd looks like a swarm.

[shy-raccoon]

This pro birth we need to rise birth rates now bullshit is fucking terrifying because I don't know what will happen to me. I'm a cis woman with a genetic disorder that is very likely to be passed down and causes visable bone differences. I don't know if I'm going to be forced to give birth or forced to get sterilized. I don't know if I'll be a handmaiden or one of the disabled women sent to the colonies to clean up nuclear waste. Look at history it never ends well for disabled people when the goverment starts looking at the birth rate it will inevitably lead to the government deciding who should and shouldn't be contributing to the birth rate.

[shy-raccoon]

Walmart

I rolled down the hill right into hell. 

I see a sea of cars that must be crossed.  

My eyes land on a car’s red lights.  

While my ears hear that I must beware.  

So, I must stop for a car backing up then I’m forced to dodge though the parking lot. 

I run though the last street and through the first doors. 

I grab my Walmart Cart and what's though the second set of doors pieces my heart. 

A dense sea of thousands of people pushing, pulsing, and roaring.  

I must dodge and weave now with a heavy cart throughout the halls of Walmart.  

I go through the clothes and only see those I loathe.   

I go to the home decor and see nothing I am looking for.  

I go to their electronics horde and see nothing I can afford.  

The part that I dread most of all is the groceries I can’t avoid.  

The narrow halls, the density of people, the noise louder than ever before.  

The people blocking the way to what I need. 

The risk of brushing against strangers I have never seen.  

Thousands of voices piece my ears to drown out the internal voice of my mind.  

After I get all that I need, one last trial is awaiting me.  

I stand in the checkout line for what feels like all time.  

Then cross the sea of cars back to the start.  

[shy-raccoon]

Social Anxiety

I can feel the judgement in their stares from my appearance to my character.  

Don’t speak, don’t see, please don’t notice me.   

I can hear their whisper and feel their stare piercing everything from my teos to my hair  

Don’t speak, don’t see, please don’t notice me.   

I fear what they will say about my interests and say I’m weird for what I care for.   

Don’t speak, don’t see, please don’t notice me. 

I must be like a ghost invisible to the world, so I never have to hear the words that could shatter my world.  

Don’t speak, don’t see, please don’t notice me. 

So many people don’t take social anxiety seriously as a debilitating disorder that needs to be cured. 

Don’t speak, don’t see, please don’t notice me. 

I never realized the cost of avoiding all those who I could have held dear.  

Don’t speak, don’t see, please don’t notice me. 

Until I was staring at a two person only ride at the fair.  

Don’t speak, don’t see, please don’t notice me. 

Until there was nobody to put as a reference on my resume or recommend me to their boss. 

Don’t speak, don’t see, please don’t notice me. 

No one to talk to too, No one to help me cope, No one to give me hope.   

Don’t speak, don’t see, please don’t notice me. 

I had sentenced myself to isolation to avoid persecution. 

Don’t speak, don’t see, please don’t notice me. 

[shy-raccoon]

I hate.

I hate doing History, because I can see the signs and how history will repeat due to ignorance.

I hate doing sociology, as I can see how society is created to be unequal for minority groups

I hate being a critical thinker, because I can use my mind to fight against propaganda - I'm always thinking

I hate having empathy because I can see the suffering people will go through

I hate my awareness ,because I know when I see how democracy death is praised.

I hate being here, because I can only watch the calamity that's about to unfold.

[shy-raccoon]

[shy-raccoon]

Anyone else know that feeling where your in a train tunnel staring at a train barreling towards you and you know you won't have enough time to get out of the way. So your stuck just helplessly staring at the train coming towards you as it gets closer and closer to hitting you.

[shy-raccoon]

[shy-raccoon]

a poem about stillness.

[shy-raccoon]

About ten, fifteen years ago I wrote a story about a guy living in a Capitalist dystopia. His walls, furniture, and tableware are all covered in smart displays. Basically animated wallpaper. It's sold as being able to turn your room or objects into anything - A nice forest view, outer space, a fantasy realm... but the companies that run this stuff keep sneaking ads in.

It gets so bad he's always being woken up by adverts that offer insomnia cures and better bedding that play when he tries to sleep.

So he buys the ad-free tier, and it's great... for a few months. And then he starts getting adverts from 'premium partners'. So he goes up a level... and the same thing happens.

So he jailbreaks his wallpaper and sends all the ad servers to 0.0.0.0 and voila... he can sleep.

Until this SWAT team blows his door off and drag him off to jail. The Ad companies are suing him for loss of revenue for the products he' notionally have bought if he'd watched their adverts, based on some weird 'The average consumer buys X products with an average value of Y' calculation.

The judge is like 'well I dun wanna annoy the sponsors' so he RICO's this guy's house and possessions and sends him to jail.

... which is a nice relaxed non-volent offender jail for the corporately disenfranchised. But because these people have no money... there's no ads and now he's happy because the only place he's free... is in prison.

Which at the time was a bit much and now it's like: Called it.

Elon's suing companies for not advertising because he's losing revenue. He's also cranking the price of Ad Free Twitter. Disney and Amazon play adverts on their paid service when services used to be free because of the adverts... and now you have to pay to watch the adverts or go up a couple of tiers.

And google's going around freaking out about ad-blockers.

[shy-raccoon]

💫Writing Prompt #8

Villain grew up as the youngest child in a corrupt and distant royal family. When they come of age, they murder their siblings and the king to ascend the throne. They’re ruthless and brilliant and catapult their empire into a new age of conquering. Everything is smooth sailing for Villain on their path to world domination until a road block pops up from an unexpected place. A small sea side kingdom, which by all means should not be able to fight back with their vastly inferior resources, is resisting attacks. Time after time Villain’s army is coming back defeated. Excited by the challange, Villain personally goes to investigate. Turns out the little kingdom has an up and coming general who thwarts Villain’s plans in the most creative ways. Hero. Eventually after a fierce battle of wits Villain overthrows the kingdom and takes Hero prisoner. Villain is extremely pleased with their new captive, who they consider as someone on their level and able to hold an educational conversation. Hero however is vastly different than Villain. They grew up surrounding by friends and family and suppport. The blow of loosing their kingdom is too much and they become depressed. Villain finds that it’s not as fun to tease Hero anymore and they can’t explain the weird aching feeling in their chest when they see Hero’s dull gaze as opposed to their usual passionate energy. By the time Villain finally realizes they’ve fallen in love with Hero, it’s too late. They’ve already crossed too many lines and some things can never be taken back. Villain has just found something more valuable then any gold or land and they’re about to loose it. Desperately, they��re willing to try anything to please Hero. Everything except letting them go.

[shy-raccoon]

Royalty Prompts

It was close, but Royalty won the poll, so here you guys go!

1. A human prince finds himself engaged to the Queen of monsters in order to build an alliance between their two kingdoms and ease tensions between their peoples.

2. Royal is a prisoner of war to the barbarians that sieged and nearly succeeded in taking their kingdom. Luckily, their armies have held them off so far, but Royal isn’t sure how long their people can stand without them. Or—the more they live amongst the barbarians—how much they deserve to keep their homeland based on its history.

3. A royal emissary is traveling on a starship to scout out the kingdom and planet of their Monarch's upcoming marriage alliance. Unbeknownst to them, the nice fellow passenger they've been building a friendship with is the Monarch's future spouse who is traveling home after attempting to learn the customs and culture of the Monarch's home planet. However, it seems there's been a misunderstanding about the emissary's identity: the future spouse believes they're the Monarch in disguise.

4. Overthrowing the kingdom was supposed to be the hard part, but now that the commoner-turned-royal is on the throne, they realize that being ruler is much more complicated, especially when half the kingdom wants them dead, and they don't know who they can trust.

5. The Kingdom's ruler is despised by everyone but their poison taster. Because of this, their food is poisoned almost daily, which is why the taster--secretly a creature who lives off consuming deadly poisons--likes them so much. They are living in the lap of luxury with this job, and all they have to do is keep switching out the bad food with something good.

6. A royal runs away from their kingdom and into the dark woods, inadvertently stepping into a faerie circle. The fae that steals them does not know what they’re getting until it’s too late: an incredibly spoiled, over-demanding, oblivious brat with no self-preservation skills.

7. The crown prince/princess has never felt the danger of living on the outskirts of the dark woods. In fact, they often take rides or trips into its depths and have never seen anything so strange as the rumors say. Unbeknownst to the kingdom, and themselves, the forest is biding it’s time with the future ruler’s ignorance, for they are a changeling switched at birth, and when the current monarch dies, it will finally be the otherwordlies’ turn to reign.

8. A magical assassin is sent to kill the current monarch of a kingdom, but when their window comes, they take pity on them and transform them into an animal instead. Now the assassin is masquerading a very bitter ruler as their familiar while lying to their teammates/bosses about their death. They also sort of wish the spell did not include the telepathic link, because they don’t need to hear the monarch calling them names on top of everything.

9. The second sibling of a royal family is kidnapped by a dragon who is very intent on keeping them. Once they get past the mortal terror of possibly being barbecued or eaten alive, it’s quite nice being treasured.

10. A too soft king/Queen is overthrown by conspirators and sacrificed to the mountain dragon by their superstitious people. The dragon takes the monarch away much to the people’s glee, but instead of killing them, they take them back home to the mountain peak. The dragon is horrified that these humans can keep sacrificing their own, especially their own ruler.

11. A royal guard must flee a recently usurped kingdom with their young royal charge. Their only hope is that one day, when the royal is old enough, they might be able to return to take the kingdom back. In the meantime, they must go into hiding. A chance encounter with a morally gray city thief gets them new identities, a place to stay, and more found family than they bargained for.

12. The crown prince/princess has always had a weak constitution, so they see the royal apothecary daily for tinctures and elixirs. Their childhood apothecary retired a couple years ago, replaced by a younger apothecary they once apprenticed. With their constant contact and the apothecary’s complete understanding of medical problems that others find tiresome, the royal can’t help but grow attached.

[shy-raccoon]

Selkie Whump! (request)

Shapeshifting between seal/human forms:

- Seal skin stolen -> bound to a human until their skin is returned and forced to obey (the human holding their seal skin may be abusive), selkie may be forced to marry the human and live on land, the human whumper cutting away the webbing between the selkie’s fingers/toes (folklore suggests selkies retain this webbing even in their human form!)

- Changed to human form -> suddenly too loud/bright on land, struggling to walk, they can’t find the right food and their previous diet making them sick, treated like a child by kind humans or abused by others, desperately throwing themselves back in the sea and almost drowning/hypothermia

- Forced not to shift -> constantly distracted/tired/miserable while stuck in one form, the fur of a shifter’s animal form becoming matted through lack of care/use, hard to shift after a long period of not shifting, feeling itchy when they’re stuck in one body, unable to digest food and being starved

- Shapeshifting into a seal -> losing their human identity when in seal form, treated like a pet by the whumper, trapped in seal form through magic, hunted by humans who think they’re just a seal

- Shifting itself -> painful process of bones breaking and reforming when they shift, teeth pushing through gums, struggling to change back into a human, disorientation after shifting for the first time

Other selkie whump:

- Emotional whump -> extremely lonely when separated from other selkies, longing for the sea when stuck on land/ longing for a human lover whilst in seal form

- Seal tail tangled in fishing net -> their skin torn/bleeding as they try to get free, panicking, calling for help, other selkies trying to get them free but not fast enough

- Caught and studied -> glass tanks with nowhere to hide, starving selkie trying to eat the plastic vegetation in their tank, being experimented on, selkie getting ill because of scientists’ ignorance of their needs

- Hurt by their own kind -> seal getting taken to dangerous water by their “friends” and then abandoned, refusing to share food, deliberately cut by a whumper to attract sharks

- Getting lost -> seal getting separated from their group, straying into dangerous water and getting thrown against rocks in a storm or trapped in a whirlpool, tangled in seaweed forests and disorientated

- Habitat loss/destruction -> lack of fish to eat/fish poisoned, coral reefs dying, accidentally setting off an old bomb on the seabed and losing their home/being badly burnt, a change in water currents so the water is too cold/warm for their biology

- Boat whump -> a new shipping lane meaning a sudden influx of huge ships polluting the selkie’s water, tail getting cut in boat propeller, the noise of ships becoming overwhelming, bright lights of ships disrupting their hunting/their sleep

NOTE: this was a mixture of shapeshifter + mer!whump + specific selkie whump - if anyone has any ideas to add, go ahead. I hope there’s useful stuff in there for you @halibellecter!! Thanks for the request! :)

(Mythical whump series 07 - continuations on request)

If you’d like a mythical creature done for this, send me an ask!! <3

[shy-raccoon]

Urban Fantasy concept: Minotaur as an emergent phenomenon. Any sufficiently labyrinthine structure, left unattended for long enough, has a chance of generating a minotaur, if the area is properly “primed” by any kind of mass “sacrificial” death; from there the minotaur self-perpetuates by murdering Urbex practitioners, health inspectors, and dumb teens looking for a hangout. 

Premodern Minotaurs were generated at human sacrifice sites and perpetuated themselves due to, you know, already existing at human sacrifice central. Contemporary Minotaurs are generated at the sites of major industrial accidents resulting from negligence, such as the triangle shirtwaist fire, mine collapses, and the Chernobyl meltdown.

[shy-raccoon]

hi um my liege y-you asked me to um. report back to you when the prisoner you sent into the labyrinth had been, um, dealt with by th-the minotaur. well y-your highness t-there seems to be a bit of an, ahem, issue. no, no the prisoner is still in the labyrinth, y-yes the minotaur found them. i-it just ah, um, it appears that the. it appears that the prisoner and the minotaur are, um, they're-