something i’ve spent years grappling with, a law of fiction writing i’ve tried over and over to skirt or exempt myself from, is that the craft of composing a novel is not a linear function.

there’s this endlessly seductive notion, if you’ve failed to write a book or six, then you think alright, maybe i’m not cut out to produce a full length novel. but i’ve still gotten somewhere. so, if i can write 30% of a novel before stalling out, surely it must be possible to deliberately write only 30% of a novel.

(it must be possible‍ ‍‍—‍ you’ve done it!)

but it’s not going to be that satisfying to write only the beginning 30%, so what if you… evened it out a little bit? pretty easy to take a page and summarize it in a paragraph 30% as long, so why not write a summary of a novel? compress the pacing, cut out some connective tissue, but certainly creating this blurry, scaled‍-​down blueprint should be easier than writing the full novel!

i’m starting to think this endeavor might be doomed by its very conception. if it took all of one’s striving just to fail to write a novel, then what fruit comes from the pen that has given up before a single word has been written? is it a surprise if one fails once more to produce the three‍-​tenths fraction, and only yields something more meager still?

though i guess that might be misunderstanding who has the power in this situation. hard not to wonder what it’d be like‍ ‍‍—‍ it’s got to feel really good for one of you, right?

imagine spores clinging to your chitin, roots digging in with a sting like clawed groping or a lover’s bite, a fever burning like insatiable desire and need, headaches like you can’t stop thinking about her, trembling and weakness and a thirst that no amount of guzzling water can quench, and throughout it all, an itch that no matter how you rub or scratch it still leaves you yearning and squirming for… it hurts, and you’re so anxious for… for her.

there’s a twitch beneath your shell, something crawling, growing, seeking in your veins. your limbs start moving on their own. she’s not in your head, she’s in your flesh. she doesn’t speak, she doesn’t tempt or tease or taunt you. she just… invites herself in.

water and protein and dirt, you ingest more and more, but it’s not for you. she walks now, she moves your mandibles, she grasps and gathers. you’re refuse, you’re salvage, you’re a nest. your entrails and viscera bloat with her advent.

the wind feels like gentle kisses on your itching, burning, rotting body. she climbs now, she ascends. you’re lucky to even witness‍ ‍‍—‍ to feel her so warm and near, to be the medium, her canvas.

she feeds her roots you and still further she grows. but you’re too small. you’re not enough. your limbs twitch faster and more urgently. she is scrambling with panicked speed, as if moving fast enough could escape your limitation, the corporeal confinement. she needs to go.

this wind must be blown from heaven‍ ‍‍—‍ so cool, such a relief. but you’re still itching, like steel thorns scraping dry throats and weeping wounds.

and then, finally, it’s all too much. the glass breaks as if the wind were carrying some high angelic note. bleeding holes tear into your sclerites. and at last comes the heads, round and soft and questing eager, like fingers into unfilled holes. they squeeze together as they force you open, doubly and triply penetrated.

you feel her flexing triumphant, an entire root network undulating. you shiver her excitement, and you scream as her caps push away the last chunks of dying, innervated cuticle, and at last making way for her fruiting body to bloom.

she reaches now, stalks of her fertile motherly love stretching high in the cool breeze.

and, for all that tight and coiled suffering, the burning inside you that reached a limit and just kept edging further, now all at once comes undone in this culmination of all her training, and molding, and claiming you.

spores are released, by her, by you. what’s the difference? she’s made the both of you mothers, now. you are hers, and each unborn seed ejected from this union is hers.

as your legs and body fall limp‍ ‍‍—‍ used, unnecessary now‍ ‍‍—‍ but for a deathgrip holding you forever aloft, she is drifting on the wind. she is free.

and she wants more. do want to help her do it again?

(you already said yes, of course‍ ‍‍—‍ that was the last gasp leaving you)

i was thinking about this the other day. something that’s frustrated me for a long time is that, near as i can tell, no one actually hates my stories. the feedback i get is all praise, and even the people who don’t like my stuff admit i’m skilled, it’s just not for them.

(how am i supposed to feel like a real writer if i don’t get mean comments?)

then i remember, oh right, the first story i posted got a negative review once. so i went and reread it and came back to post a crying emoji. “it’s not even that harsh,” i complained.

which absolutely bewildered people in chat. this is a review that opened with “The story has barely anything going for it.” and has such choice lines as

Any action present is very lacklustre, and hardly entertaining in any way.

Reading this story is a challenge, it’s more exhausting than it is entertaining,

2. Story events and action present in the chapters are not only very influenced by point 1 (monotony) but are generally speaking not very emotional or engaging.

“your dragon scales are showing, snug,” the chat told me.

but tbh, i stand by it? “thing bad” means little to me, for a bad review to really get under my skin i think it would have to argue its point convincingly. if you scrape away all of the verbiage that amounts to ‘i dont like it :c’, and look at the specifics, then it’s very hard not to read the rest of the review without imagining the “waow” (based based based) girl

oh, the protagonist is a scatterbrained clutz with overwhelming anxiety issues? she’s constantly thinking about how her friend looks and walks and acts? it’s slow paced and focused on minute details of worldbuilding? oh noooo…

honestly, the most brutal criticism in that review imo is that it compared my magic system to fucking harry potter. that one stings. but this was in 2019, it hit different back then

but yeah. this is the worst my critics have to offer, and it’s been six years. what am i doing wrong that no one thinks i’m doing wrong…

content is not infinite

you have to remember this‍ ‍‍—‍ it’s easy to forget, with just how vast the sea of media has gotten‍ ‍‍—‍ because thinking otherwise exacerbates the explore/exploit dilemma

i think part of why i finish fewer books and fics these days is whenever i think about starting one i already know about, a part of me is like. but what if

the illusion of infinite content provokes this faith that somewhere out there, there’s a story that’s not only really good, but arbitrarily tailored to your interests

so even when i find something that’s good enough to hook me and pull me in for a few chapters, once i’ve gotten a taste, the dilemma come creeping back, because now i know how good it is, and worse, i’m aware of its faults. so sure, i would enjoy reading more of it. but what if

who knows how good the next fic i find might be? let’s go gambling!

i guess a good rule of thumb might be never spend more time looking for fics than reading them, or some higher ratio than that

or perhaps rejecting the idea that future and present are interchangeable. if it’s good enough to finish some day, finish it now or just drop it

Red sun, blazing horizon… those rays always looked like knife tracks. It fit, didn’t it? A deep gushing stabwound, bleeding out‍ ‍‍—‍ engulfed entirely‍ ‍‍—‍ into in calm waters. I’d have gone out like that, if it wouldn’t last so damn long.

Always they said that warmth above was some kind of love. Was it more like dying rage? The frantic tremors from muscles straining‍ ‍‍—‍ a desperate heart not realizing its efforts only made it so much worse?

As the sun rose, I crawled down into my hole. Maybe I didn’t want to be a witness.

Or maybe it was projection. Blood on my hands, enough of it that it was all those fingers felt anymore. Sticky‍-​slick and flaking. Metaphorically. I kept myself clean, always.

Red flame, flicker‍-​faint, that little mote of red encased in yellow seeking around like an eye. Was it odd that snuffing candles with pinched fingers was almost as satisfying as gouging‍ ‍‍—

I’m getting heavy‍-​handed here, aren’t I?

So now I slump back, nestling into the carved dirt of this hole in the ground, and I just peer into that flickering flame, that seeking gaze too anxious to make sustained contact with my eyes.

I contemplate hate and need.

I hated hiding in a hole in the ground all day‍ ‍‍—‍ could you guess that much? …No, I didn’t really hate it‍ ‍‍—‍ I only did it because it was the option I hate the least.

At night, the air grew cooler, and dark made easy hunting. Creep around in daylight, and I was the one being hunted.

No, what I hated was that it was the best option, that it had come to this. That every face I met now must be fearful, suspicious‍ ‍‍—‍ if they weren’t, they’d be so much sticky‍-​slick guilty dripping off my claws. Easier to dig through dirt than muscle‍ ‍‍—‍ but so much easier to wash off the earth.

But I didn’t really hate it, do I? I needed it. I only do it because it was the option I wanted, and chose.

The flame stopped flickering. Stared like an accusation. Like a knowing glance.

It was what we wanted.

“What you wanted,” I mutter.

The flame crackled like indignant embers.

She needed it, and I hate that I have to feed her flesh like firewood, blood like oil, to stoke this lonely fire of ours.

It was what I wanted. Hated the least. Need. All the same.

I hate that a little candle in a dark hole felt so much warmer than the sun bleeding out above me, and all the smiling faces watching.

Warmer. More intimate. Loving‍ ‍‍—‍ needing me.

The flame had stopped its anxious flicker, its staring stillness, and now it wavered like every curling wave was a hesitant smile.

I reached out, my fingers shivering from her anticipation, limned lucent silhouettes in her light.

And I pinched and snuffed her out.

It was what I hated least.

it’s a roguelike, right.

except instead of a typical grid or node based dungeon/gauntlet, you have a 9x9 grid

fights, elite fights, traps, treasure rooms, campfires, shops, and a few variants of these are distributed throughout the map according to the rules of sudoku (potentially with additional constraints adding as blessings/curses)

now, when you’re on the map screen, you can try to guess what a room contains. when you enter a room you’ve guessed correctly, you get a bonus (tactical advantage in fight, discount in shops, extra healing, etc.). if you guess incorrectly, you get a big penalty

you still can only go to adjacent rooms in cardinal directions, and there’s certain rooms types you never want to go in (e.g. traps), and you can’t go into rooms you’ve already been in

but i think that’s enough to make navigation a neat lil minigame played in between the actual combats

you know, for the longest time i’ve stood blinking in bewilderment as the tgirl hornyposting circles i run in have been overrun with mech pilot posting

privately, i’ve called it the “mechslop mind virus”, and while i was never vocal about my distaste for it, my body deployed antibodies of eyerolls and quiet sighs‍ ‍‍—‍ dare i say the c word?‍ ‍‍—‍ and i always found it inarticulably offputting in an ultimately harmless way

but chat, they finally got me. they fucking got me.

found a fic promising enough even i couldn’t resist clicking on it, and well written enough no amount of cynicism could shield me from appreciating it

oh my god. i get it now