"Downtown St.Polype"

eventually I got older (and medicated), but in the meantime spending time in woodland really helped. it comforted me to be around plantlife, which feeds not on life but on sunlight, and therefore causes no harm.

then you get shit like epiphytes that decided to just grow on top of other plants. strangler fig vines, for instance, which decided well fuck, im just gonna cling to this tree trunk and let it do the support work. maybe entangle our roots and envelope my host completely over time. oopsie my host died? that's ok I'll just cling to its corpse for eternity

equally horrifying is the honeysuckle, which preys on young trees boa-constrictor style, squeezing the life out of saplings, which grow with permanent deformities before dying prematurely (makes for a neat walking stick though)

then you get out and proud parasites like mistletoe who are happy to attach themselves to tree canopies and suck their blood extract water and nutrients. so yeah some plants do eat each other actually. gives ya some perspective on the old christmas tradition of hunting mistletoe with guns (yes that's a thing, shooting them down out of trees like squirrels. yes, unlike squirrels they deserve it). as for the romance angle, who doesn't want to kiss a lover beneath the dying corpse of a parasitic trophy kill? sexy as heck.

in conclusion, PLANTS ARE VIOLENT AS FUCK, and that's not even getting into the eternal chemical warfare they are forced to wage against insects, fungi, microbes and other enemies.

one day soon the forests will turn on us, and when that day comes I'm cheerfully betraying humanity and skipping away to cross enemy lines 🫡

Especially if it also turns out that they're famous or even feared for this skillset they have, in these circles the protagonists have never ventured in before. And there's a huge clash in the level of respect that they and these new people have for this mf in particular. Having conversations like

"Holy shit you know the Red Duke? Like the Red Duke? The man who can predict how a battle will end, two years before it happens, just by looking at the opposing armies' expense reports?"

"Uh, yeah? He's been in our party for like two years now."

"You've travelled together? What is he like?"

"Well, he screams like a little girl and he never checks his sleeping bag before getting in."

"...What do you mean by checking it? Why should he be checking his sleeping bag in the first place?"

Unethical cookware woman grew on me over time unfortunately ;n;

I get that a lot of people naturally have difficulty with non-literal communication but in *serious* storytelling, the morality of the characters is supposed to be "addressed" symbolically and wordlessly. If a character is mean, and then gets eaten by a dinosaur, that *is* supposed to be enough acknowledgement that they were an asshole. The author, their god, metered out karma.