Have you ever thought “Man, I feel impossibly shitty and I don’t know why”?
Run through this checklist before you do anything else.
What have I eaten in the last 24 hours? Is it enough? If not, go and eat some food, you butt.
Am I hydrated? If not, put some fluids in your body, fool.
Have I slept an acceptable amount in the last 24 hours and preceeding few days? If not, do your utmost to have a nap. You need a reset, bro.
Have I been outside/partaken in whatever form of exercise I am capable of? You’re stagnating, homie.
Have I communicated with anyone? At all? About anything? In the last 24 hours? Sup, you’re not actually a lone wolf, and even if you’re just shouting BUTTLUMPS at someone over the intertubes, it’s better than shouting it at yourself inside your own head.
So basically: eat, drink, sleep, walk, and talk. If you still feel like emotional ass after that, start looking for more involved explanations.
This shit is no joke.
All of these are extremely important.
Adding: 6. Have I communicated too much? Am I overstimulated? Do I need some quiet time? Go stare at a blank wall in utter silence for a bit.
I try to go through this kind of checklist whenever I feel funky. It really helps.
One is the Lady of the Waking Waters, an immortal mermaid. The other is a thief, who steals lives until a wish can be fulfilled, and a life-changing choice can be made.
This is a cool short story about love and obsession and needing to find the balance between them. It’s poetic and surprising, although maybe not quite as beautiful as I expected from that gorgeous cover art. I’m glad I just read it on the website instead of buying it because I don’t think it was long enough to make buying it worth it, but if you have like ten minutes to kill this is a good choice to squeeze in.
A composer in an unstable city-state accidentally discovers the perfect singer for his work—a clockwork man—and sows the seeds of revolution.
What a beautiful story. Even though it’s a little thick to work through, it’s also rich, inventive, and strange. This story doesn’t explain anything. It doesn’t offer context. It just exists to offer a peak into a city on the brink of revolution, full of wonders and common horrors. It has the feel of a dream, but the emotional weight of a novel. I may not understand any of the characters, but I am full of emotions from their story, and that matters more.
Avi comes across these foreboding words scrawled on the bathroom mirror, but what do they mean? Is this a curse, a prediction, or a threat? And how does anyone know his real name when he hasn’t even told his mother yet? Then there is Ian—the cool new guy at school who is all sunshine, optimism, and magic. All the things that Avi doesn’t know how to deal with…yet.
Words can’t express how much I love this story. If you check out only one novella from this post, please make it this one. It’s got sunshine boys, grumpy boys, an overabundance of moms, support for queer kids and perfect Jewish representation. It made me tear up about these boys and bounce at the Jewish jokes. Its official tagline is “A romantic, #ownvoices fairy tale for trans boys,” and I guess that’s a good review too.
You can read it for free at thebooksmugglers.com here.
These books can also be purchased if you’re inclined and would like to support the authors/publishers! Or, support them by reading and reviewing.
If Cthulhu can be summoned by humans who are so far beneath it, why can’t humans be summoned by ants? The answer is they should be.
Well if a bunch of ants formed a circle in my house I’d certainly notice, try to figure out where they’d all come from, and possibly wreak destruction there.
That’s why knowing and correctly pronouncing the true name is so important to the ritual. Imagine how impossible it would be to not go take a look if the circle of ants started chanting your name.
And they’re like, you can’t leave because we drew a line made of tiny crystals – now you have to do us a favor.
And you’re like, let’s just see where this goes “yup, you got me… what’s the favor?”
and usually the favor is like, “kill this one ant for us” or “give me a pile of sugar” and you’re like… okay? and you do, because why not, it isn’t hard for you and boy is this going to be a fucking story to tell, these fucking ants chanting your name and wanting a spoonful of sugar or whatever.
And SOMEtimes you get asked for things you can’t really do, one of them, she’s like, “I love this ant but she won’t pay any attention to me, make me important to her” and you’re like… um? how? So you just kill every ant in the colony except the two of them, ta-da! problem solved! and the first ant is like *horrified whisper* “what have I done”
for some reason my brain won’t let go of this one, so….
Meanwhile another colony of ants invades your house, and evidently that last ant has gotten some of them to join her in a circle and taught them the ritual because you’re coming out of the bathroom one day and you hear the ants singing your name. Sure enough it’s that ant, but she’s dark and fucked up now, and she’s like, “kill the queen. I will rule this colony” and you’re like, sure, I guess I kinda owe her, and you do it. And she manages to become queen, and they worship you. Which is cool, you’re not, you know, very important in the human world, but to these ants you’re practically all-powerful. You can’t be just, doing everything a bunch of ants tell you to, though, when would you watch netflx? So you tend to only show up for super important ants; you teach them some extra words and when hear them you go see what’s up. Usually. Also just to your name, if you’re bored. And, sometimes some of the ants are like, tell us more human names, and you’re kind of jealous of the idea of some other human diluting your private godhood, so you refuse.
Your roommate Greg is like, yo, that’s fucking awesome, I want ant worshipers! But whenever he approaches any, they run away, because it turns out that the illusion of control from the named summoning is what makes them feel safe around you. That’s great, because Greg is a dick who never does the dishes, and one day you decide to teach Greg a lesson.
So you show up at the colony, and you’re like, “yo, witch queen, did you think there would be no price for all these things? Your colony must do something for me, go to the Room of the Housemate, I will meet you there.” And you go sit on the couch and play Overwatch for a while. You’re like, right there, you can clearly see the ants all marching along the wall to Greg’s room, but to them you’re not even there, you’re so far away they can’t see you. It takes them, like, an ant week to make the journey. They have to figure out ways to get over and around things. Some of them drown, or get stepped on by the dog, or whatever. You win a game, you lose a game, you look over, and they’re trying to get through some cobwebs… looks like they’re mostly going to live, you keep playing, you look over, okay they’re all in there, and you stand up and walk over and by the time they’ve chanted your name once, you’re there. “right, hold on” and you look around and you see a twelve-pack of Greg’s precious fucking soda, that he keeps in his room and refuses to ever share, even though it’s a communal food household and you share your hot chocolate with him all the time. So you gather the ants unto you, and you poke a little hole in each of the sodas and you leave the room to the sound of the ants rejoicing. Greg will suspect of course, but he’ll never be able to prove the ants didn’t chew holes in the plastic and steal his stupid drinks.
But later, while you’re at work, Greg destroys most of the colony in a rage, and you come home to find the witch queen gasping her last “the Dew of the Mountain, which you had us steal, was cursed – and so I lay my curse on you” and then she dies.
Well first of all, you don’t really believe in curses, but last month you didn’t believe ants could know your name, so that’s unsettling. And second of all, you feel kind of bad. You know, not SUPER bad, cause she’s like, an ant. But still. And most importantly, third of all, Greg must pay.
But Greg has done more than kill a bunch of the colony. As you wait for eggs and pupae to replenish the ant population, you discover he has found some ants that didn’t go on the Mountain Dew raid, and he’s spared them, told them his name, and made himself a good sized cult in YOUR fucking ant queendom.
Greg has started locking his door. So now you NEED the ants. Once again you direct the ants loyal to you to journey to Greg’s room. You meet them at the door. A locked door means nothing to the ants, they don’t even know there is a door, and can barely perceive the difference between it being open and shut – either passing the threshold on the floor regardless, or being on its surface no matter the position. But you need them to get inside. You’re going to put itching powder in his underwear drawer and leave a raw fish under his bed. So you instruct the leading party of ants how to go into the Cave of Keyhole, and position the Magic Megaliths inside just right to enable the opening of the Great Door and allow you to pass into the Realm of Housemate.
Crouched by the door, you can hear when your ants are met by a party of Greg Cultists, who insist that if the Great Door is opened, the colony will be doomed. There is fighting. Your ants prevail, the lock tumblers are moved into place, and you swing the door open…
To find Greg! In his room all along! It’s a trap! His cultists attack you! I mean, they can’t do much real harm, but it kind of hurts and it’s super annoying. You order your ants to attack him, and they do, but he storms over and pours bleach down the colony entrance.
Now you and Greg are at war, and you both understand the unspoken rules to your fight. You can’t do things directly to each other, why, that would be assault. But anything you can get your ants to do is fine, because “she told the ants to do it to me” isn’t going to get very far with any authority figures that get involved.
Later, nursing your anger, you confer with your few remaining ants and stare moodily at your new prize, the ant farm that came in the mail. Bullet ants don’t usually get along with sugar ants, but you’re betting they will if a god tells them to. Meanwhile, you’ve got a laptop schematic to go over with your high priestess. It’s finals week, and if you time it right, he’ll lose everything…
Feel free to add your own stories paralleling human/otherworldly with insect/human interactions!
I’m going to have this repost a few times because I want to see which of my mutuals are into this kind of thing because I’m preparing to test drive a fiction share and writing prompt project
The Idea of the old gods obeying us not because of supernatural reason, but because they think it’s funny to watch the tiny animals fight IS the answer to everything
just moving along like everyone else 