Escape into the Shadowrelm

USE OUR SHIT, PLEASE!!!!

I can't speak for other systems but the budget cuts for mine have gotten so bad they've nuked the programs for out of state holders entirely. Please do not listen to these rancid-ass takes, if you've got a question about library services, ask an actual library worker!

He did a wonderful job, but as he was returning my plant to my custody, he explained "I watered her every other day, I gave her new dirt, moved her into the sunshine, prayed the rosary-"

"What?"

He looked at me, confused. "Isn't she a plant you pray with?"

"No," I said slowly. "She's a prayer plant. That's the... colloquial name of the plant."

Upon seeing his stricken face, I realized something went wrong. Turns out, this entire time, he's been including my plant in on his prayers and leaving her near icons.

Behold, Dorothea

He turned to me, sighed, and said in a very deadpan tone-- "Plants don't have covenants, Joy,"

i often see writers sharing a sentiment of struggling with writing kiss scenes which honestly bleeds into other portrayals of physical intimacy. i see it a lot in modernized styles of writing popularized by the recent trend in publishing to encourage short, choppy sentences and few adverbs, even less descriptive language. this makes intimacy come across awkward, like someone writing a script or clumsy recounting of events rather than a beautiful paragraph of human connection.

or just plane horniness. but hey, horny doesn't have to be mutually exclusive with poetic or sensual.

shallow example: they kissed desperately, tongues swirling and she moaned. it made her feel warm inside.

in depth example: she reached for the other woman slowly and with a small measure of uncertainty. the moment her fingers brushed the sharp, soft jaw of her companion, eliza's hesitance slid away. the first kiss was gentle when she finally closed the distance between them. she pressed her lips lightly to gabriella's in silent exploration. a tender question. gabriella answered by meeting her kiss with a firmer one of her own. eliza felt the woman's fingers curling into her umber hair, fingernails scraping along her scalp. everything inside eliza relaxed and the nervousness uncoiled from her gut. a warm buzz of energy sunk through her flesh down to the very core of her soul. this was right. this was always where she needed to be.

the first complaint i see regards discomfort in writing a kiss, feeling like one is intruding on the characters. the only way to get around this is to practice. anything that makes you uncomfortable in writing is something you should explore. writing is at its best when we are pushing the envelope of our own comfort zones. if it feels cringy, if it feels too intimate, too weird, too intrusive, good. do it anyway! try different styles, practice it, think about which parts of it make you balk the most and then explore that, dissect it and dive into getting comfortable with the portrayal of human connection.

of course the biggest part comes to not knowing what to say other than "they kissed" or, of course, the tried and true "their lips crashed and their tongues battled for dominance" 😐. so this is my best advice: think beyond the mouth. okay, we know their mouths are mashing. but what are their hands doing? are they touching one another's hair? are they scratching or gripping desperately at one another? are they gliding their hands along each other's body or are they wrapping their arms tightly to hold each other close? do they sigh? do they groan? do they relax? do they tense? are they comfortable with each other or giddy and uncertain? is it a relief, or is it bringing more questions? is it building tension or finally breaking it?

get descriptive with the emotions. how is it making the main character/pov holder feel? how are they carrying those emotions in their body? how do they feel the desire in their body? desire is not just felt below the belt. it's in the gut, it's in the chest, it's in the flushing of cheeks, the chills beneath the skin, the goosebumps over the surface of the flesh. everyone has different pleasure zones. a kiss might not always lead desire for overtly sexual touches. a kiss might lead to the desire for an embrace. a kiss might lead to the impulse to bite or lick at other areas. a kiss could awaken desire to be caressed or caress the neck, the shoulder, the back, the arms etc. describe that desire, show those impulses of pleasure and affection.

of course there is the tactile. what does the love interest taste like? what do they smell like? how do they kiss? rough and greedy? slow and sensual? explorative and hesitant? expertly or clumsily? how does it feel to be kissed by them? how does it feel to kiss them?

Ooo looks like someone else didn’t do enough

Looks like someone didn’t protect their little sibling and is projecting their trauma onto me ✨

She tenses, ready to bolt, but then Zoey's on her lap, her hands pressing into Rumi's waist.

"Don't leave," she pleads, her voice soft and fragile that Rumi worries that moving might break something, which she supposes is the point.

"Patterns," she stutters weakly.

"We know," Mira says softly, even as she upsets Rumi's entire worldview, "We've known for a while. We don't care, you're still Rumi,"

"How...,"

"You got drunk, you freaked out and cried about it, passed out, then we freaked out and cried about it," Zoey explains, taking Rumi's hand in hers, pulling her attention from Mira's ministrations, "You didn't remember. We were hoping you'd come to us eventually, but you never did. Mira and me have kinda been racking our brains how to tell you we knew without you running, freaking out, or shutting down,"

"I-I'm sorry-,"

"Don't." Mira says quietly, "Please don't. We were upset that you and Celine lied to us, we are upset that you never trusted us enough to come to us on your own terms, but we understand why you hid,"

"Celine's whole 'Anything with patterns is a Demon, all demons must die' speech made it very clear," Zoey says, her voice tinged with a rare, distraught anger.

No one speaks after that. Mira's hands are gentle, Zoey's weight on her lap is grounding, and she's finding it harder and harder not to cry.

Eventually, Mira presses a bandage to her wound and wipes her arm clean of everything except the patterns.

"Do your patterns hurt?" she asks quietly, her finger pressed lightly against a stripe high on her shoulder.

"N-no. Not physically,"

"That's good," Mira hums, nakedly relieved, resting her head on Rumi's shoulder.

"They're very pretty," Zoey says, and Rumi feels her ears burn.

"You don't have to pretend,"

"I'm not pretending, Ruru. Demon patterns are pretty, they're usually just attached to soul sucking jerks. Luckily you aren't a soul sucking jerk, and a certified hottie on top of that,"

17yrs old is too young to be forced into an arranged marriage but 17yrs old is old enough to be parentified…to two other children & a grown ass adult man who was also their father…

A little over a year is too long to process being kidnapped from your home, killed, remade & then reborn, watch your younger sister wither, be forced into a war, watch your father get killed right in front of your eyes, watch your now mate guts be damn near torn from his body, the enemy nearly kill you both, so on & so forth but 10yrs consistently crashing out over the death of your mother?…no problem. Nearly 540yrs being & still clinging onto something that happened 523yrs ago??…no problem.

So this guy has been extremely active for around fifteen years, during which he spread these beautiful, high quality pieces all over the country, way over a thousand of his standard signature, and probably thousands more. He did completely batshit stuff like literally spray painting an entire train from top to bottom or leaving his signature at the top of a 600ft tall overpass and this whole time, only five people from his crew know who he really is. To everyone else it's a complete mystery.

And then he dies at the age of 35. A few weeks after his death, his crew shows up at his completely unassuming parents' doorstep, reveals who they are and asks if they can host a memorial exhibition of his art.

I went to the memorial exhibition his friends and family hosted and it was probably one of the most breathtaking experiences I've ever had. The entire art scene of the city showed up. They screened a movie they made out of videos EXUDT shot of himself painting and it was so crowded that not everybody fit into the backyard where the exhibition was.

His mum baked his favourite cake for the exhibition visitors 🥺🥺🥺

EXUDT left his standard signature in every single town/village in the federal state and there was a showcase with a map of the state, surrounded by photos of all signatures which were connected to their location with a thread. I overheard the guy who set that display up asking his friends over and over if it's good and dignified enough to honour his friend. Despite the fact that he increasingly withdrew, this guy was so, so loved by his community.

In the area where I grew up you practically can't go anywhere without seeing his signature. When I take the train to my beloved, I pass by 25 signatures visible from the train alone. On my way from home to my university campus there's 13.

Despite increased police presence in the city center, his crew managed to leave a small memorial painting right at the control hotspot. It reads "EXUDT 4 EVA - DANIEL FOREVER."

Like suddenly it stops being a problem once she’s only sleeping with the one guy everyone (the characters not the audience) wants her to end up with.

OpenAI scraped the entire web. All of which had been a labor of love from humans. Wikipedia is the backbone of a lot of LLMs, and that was volunteer human labor. They stole it and now they're selling it back to us.