RavenInk

“And we loved it, we were all having a great time, but then he saw my sister and I, and he just got this - this look in his eyes, and then-”

She hesitated, worrying the coarse material between her fingers. “Things got pretty bad after that,” she muttered. “I know it’s silly, but I try to keep - her - comfortable. We don’t know if she can still hear us, or see us, or if she’s even still in here, but I like to think she is. I talk to her when I can, I leave music on when I’m out of the house. I tried to convince my parents to bring her with us when we went to Disneyland, but they didn’t - didn’t really take that well.”

no leaves, but plenty of eyes.

inspired by me spacing out on a long drive & staring at trees. this happened earlier this year, and birches ended up growing leaves before i finished the doll.

hi i put one of my favorite passages from the book on a little aesthetic thingy that will get muncha crunched by tumblr's photo upload so also, here's what it says:

"It was lonely still, to be without family, but her sister had been gone for so long that the ache was familiar. A hole where a tooth should be, where the tongue would come to rest. She could live with that ache.

When spread across a hundred thousand bodies, she could hardly feel the ache at all."

Ireland is coming to the end of a three year pilot of Basic Income for Artists.

2000 artists received €325 a week for three years, and every euro paid to participants resulted in society receiving €1.39 in return.

Part Three

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Fearne is a goat woman from the feywild whose wonderful and doting grandmother is An Actual Nightmare Hag with multiple faces and a variety hour's worth of body horror. Laudna looks like first crush material when that's your home life.

Ashton is a disabled punk made of rocks who has been through at least two catastrophic magic accidents that have changed their body in ways that make them visibly different from everyone else on Exandria. He’s going to feel a kinship with the dead woman immediately, and we saw that in episode one. Did I mention he's a punk? Because that’s important! Ashton is predisposed to get closer to the weird ones who don't fit in because the normies are fucking dangerous.

Imogen, while she can pass as normal (with a lot of personal distress) was already so deeply othered in her own small town that when someone who looked different showed up she was on board to do the punk thing and throw in with the other person who might not shun her, but on top of that, she can here Laudna's thoughts! The core of her! Of course she sees her as delightful; Imogen had a fast track to all of the joy in Laudna’s heart that makes her so fun!

FCG (this is a weird one) so FCG definitely sees Laudna as other, possibly dangerous, but FCG is also a robot with a strict hierarchy of who gets to be important in Exandria, and while Laudna did admit to being dead, she's still the shape of something with a soul, and FCG puts all soul-havers above themself (which gets funny later when it is confirmed by Pike that FCG does have a soul, while Laudna's is in question in the shadow version of Whitestone)

Orym, while definitely the most freaked out by Laudna, has a very strong moral bound-by-duty core, and so when it becomes apparent that Laudna is here to help, he trusts that they have the same goals, and treats her as a fellow soldier. It does get shaky later on when Laudna’s differences become more than just a quirky thing he can write off (sword gate my beloved) but by that point they’ve been soldiers at arms together long enough that he can’t just see her as an undead monster who’s gotten out of hand. (even as she puts her trust in Orym to cut her down if she loses control again Sword Gate My BELOVED)

And Chet was very freaked out by her in the beginning, but Chetney is a werewolf! And he loves being a werewolf! He gives her a pass as a fellow body horror enthusiast. Also, and I know they make this out to be a joke a lot: He is Old as Balls. Being old colors your perception. Being 400 means you’ve fuckin’ seen it all. Something weird is going on with that gal, but it’s not hurting anybody and she seems happy with it? Cool. Not my problem.

I was so so so anxious to be on panels because it took almost a decade of going to the con as an attendant before I managed to really talk to people instead of hide myself in the bathroom, and I still worry that I like, messed up somewhere, really borked it and said something wrong or got too figity and distracting, but the first panel I did was about body horror and disability and I got to speak about T. Kingfisher’s Alex Easton books and John Wiswell’s Someone You Can Build A Nest In and Cassandra Khaw's terrifying librarian in The Library At Hellebore. And the last panel was on tropes in fanfic and how they can bleed over to traditionally published work and I got to talk about author contract and subverting expectations (yaaayyyy) and I feel like those two panels bookended enough of the convention in super good that the squishy anxiety bits in the middle aren't quite loud enough to drown out the good.

And as scared as I was, I am glad I was obligated to speak this year. I met some amazing authors whose books I’m so looking forward to, met with some folks I had seen in passing but never met in earnest until this con, and got to spend time with my emotional support writing group throughout all of it and celebrate my book release and drink and pay way too much for pretzels and stay up way too late and still hide in my room to go over my notes for like so much of the con because I needed a good grade in panelist… and I even got a bathroom selfie with T. Kingfisher who is maybe the sweetest person in the world!

Once upon a time, in a kingdom that was not enormously large, nor very small, there lived a sad and lonely princess.

She was not sad because she was lonely, as one might believe, but rather she was lonely because she was sad. All of her ladies in waiting would chitter and pace at her bedside, urging her to rise, to dress in some of her many fancy adornments, and leave her tower to go and dance in the great hall with them, but the princess always declined.

Soon, they stopped asking.

For years, people lost their will to bother her. She was alone in her tower, and as the months passed her loneliness grew until she could do nothing else but stare out of her decorated window and sigh wistfully out it at the common people below.

But dear lord, this is not a sad tale, I promise it.

For in this kingdom there lived a strange and magical creature. Members of this kingdom might not know what it was called, or where he was from, but the magical creature had a name, and his name was Ricodimous.

Ricodimous had a face like a mouse, eyes cunning and dark, and a shell by which he rolled himself into, in case the world got too much, too loud.

One day, Ricodimous was puttering through the market when he heard the most wistful sigh he had ever heard in his entire life. He looked about, questioning, but saw nothing until he rolled back onto his shell and gazed up, up high until he could see a window over the market square, where the saddest and loneliest princess of all sat on her window seat.

"Hello Princess!" He called. And even though the distance between them was great, Ricodimous was a magical creature, and the Princess heard him perfectly.

She gazed down at the wondrous little creature Ricodimous was, and sighed again.

"Hello Ser," she greeted politely. "You should roll along, for I am not of the finest stock for company."

Ricodimous tilted his head.

"You look to me to be the finest stock of anything," he replied. "Why do you believe not?"

The princess simply shrugged.

Ricodimous pondered for a moment. As a magical creature, his guesses on the ailment of princesses were often correct.

"Your heart is aching," he declared. "But you are too shy to say it."

The princess raised an eyebrow in surprise. "You assume much, Ser."

"I assume enough. Pray, would you come down from your tower, and we shall play a game."

The princess could not deny that she had longed to play a game for a time, even if it was with a mouse like creature.

For the first time in years, the Princess dressed herself in her finest silks, and exited her tower with a flourish. Dressed in deep blues and greens, she at last came down to the marketplace and met Ricodimous by the gardens entrance.

The game they played my lord, is one similar to Croquet. I will admit my lord, that this is a game I myself have never played, so you must use your imagination with my storytelling, and simply believe that while you know the rules, so do I.

And so the Princess and Ricodimous played their game, over the course of which the Princess found herself more and more joyous. She indulged in a full commitment of the sport, soiling her finest clothes all so she could kneel in the mud and get a better angle.

Even more scandalously, the Princess was referred to by her royal title less and less, which tends to happen when one is losing a game so terribly he must roll up into his shell and rock back and forth from frustration. So over the day the Princess was called more and more by her name, Ashley, and Ricodimous was simply called Ric.

But the sun was soon to set, and all stories, no matter how brief must end.

At the end of their game there was only one true winner, and Ashley wiped her royal brow and shoot Rics paw, smiling in victory. The magical creature was not disappointed, for he promised to never give up, and that he would return the next day for a rematch.

Princess Ashley was surprised.

"You mean that you'll come back?" She asked, and she realized how excited she was at the prospect.

"Of course I will!" Ric replied. "I would never run around and desert you."