A character staring at their own missing person's poster
After surviving a traumatic event, the first time that character looks into the mirror and sees the new version of themselves
When two characters' relationship suddenly blew up, and later one reaches for the others hands and finds their friend pulling away
A character revealed to be nonhuman/living weapon finds their friends now flinch from them
Surviving character of a team looking back on old photos
A character surviving a natural disaster/war attack, only to be left surveying the rubble of their home
Newly amputated character experiencing phantom limp syndrome for the first time
A character who survives a threat in the frigid cold experiencing their first winter after the trauma
Vice versa, a character who was forced to survive in the desert experiences their first summer since the incident
The moment the extreme stress starts to cause skill degradation in something matters to the character. i.e. a singing voices cracking unexpectedly, a violinist's fingers slow down and grow stiff, an artist who begins to despise their art (finding their art style degrading)
Finding something striking in the rubble of war. A singed family photo. A shredded pet collar. A crushed instrument. A hair bow.
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The crux of the story is Brother Dean.
Brother Dean wasā¦isā¦a hate preacher. Red or blue, everyone agreed on that. His origins and his motivations, those were a little more mysterious. Different groups had their own legends. I had a class with a guy that was part of the campus pro-life movement, and the tale he gave me is the one that I give the most credence to.
According to him, Brother Dean had started out as a ānormalā pro-life preacher. Heād gone around campus, led parades, given speechesā¦ And then heād gotten punched in the face.
This led to a lawsuit against the school. Something about failing to provide adequate protection? The main result was that he got something like half a mil.
Half a mil is an incredible amount if youāre still working, but heād tried to use the money to fund a sort of pro-life career, and it had justā¦ trickled down. Ten years later he was running dead low on funds, and had taken to the particularly dumb strategy of trying to get punched in the face again. You know. For economic reasons.
It had become kind of a vicious cycle: Heād started off saying some objectionable shit to try and goad someone into taking the punch. The worse the shit he said was, the harder it became for him to find work doing anything else, and the harder it became for him to find work doing anything else, the less he had to lose by saying really objectionable shit. Throw in two years of living on ramen, and he was so desperate to get punched that he was quoting the Westboro Baptists. If you know, you know.
The pro-life group, to their credit, hated him the most out of anyone. They viewed him as the ultimate sellout, someone who was actively making their positions and beliefs look worse by the day, solely for his own enrichment. The other conservative groups held him in the same regard. The rest of the campus hated him for simpler reasons. It would be difficult to find anyone more detested anywhere else on site.
Brother Deanās antithesis was the Trojan Warrior. TW was a normal student by day, but maybe once a month or so heād don his hoplite armor and roam around, handing out free condoms. Trojan condoms. It was kind of his shtick.
Between the costume, and the whole character that he had going on, most people didnāt really recognize his alter ego. I myself am pretty good with faces, so one day I noticed he was behind me in the foodcourt and decided to thank him by paying for his smoothie. Small tangent, but if youāre looking to get good stories, buying lunches for interesting people works like magic.
TW decided that he was going to thank me for thanking him by giving me something like 10 feet of condom roll. I was mortified, aggressively single, and on SSRIās. He was not sure how many of those were permanent. I wasnāt either. He wound up giving me just a handful, and said that if nothing else, they could probably be used as water balloons.
I accepted. Who doesnāt like water balloons?
I finished my lunch with the warrior and left, considering targets for the "balloons". I passed by Brother Dean near the main commons and had my lightbulb moment. I spent a few minutes watching him from a distance, trying to find the optimal angle to get him without getting caught on camera (he always had someone filing in the background, it was a necessary thing for his hopeful future lawsuit). The time delay was useful for helping me realize that it really wasn't worth it. The sun had been bearing down so hard that the glue in my shoes had melted, and getting him wet would be a favor that day.Ā
So, mildly disappointed, I shelved my dream and left.Ā
A week later the monsoons hit. I left one class and ran to a campus computer commons to try and get some shelter and study between classes. Just before I got through the door, I saw Brother Dean, umbrella in hand, setting up his speaker and mic. He wasn't technically allowed this far into campus (the commons were owned by the city) but he'd gone to where his audience was and security was probably holed up somewhere cozy. I could hardly blame them.Ā
I made it up to the second floor and started studying when the mic picked up. All glass buildings are not very soundproof. He was loud, and he was annoying, and he was outside a library, under a balcony, and-
And I had condoms. Water balloon condoms.Ā
And he was under a balcony.Ā
I put my laptop away, pulled out my condom roll, and went to the bathroom. I wasnāt sure how big a condom could actually stretch, so I just kept filling it until it was about the size of basketball. Maybe a smaller watermelon?
And thus armed, I waddled my way out into the halls.
I cannot emphasize enough just how unsubtle this was. I was cradling this big, overfilled condom like some sort of phallic ghost baby, and it was so heavy that I sort of had to squat as I went. People saw me. Lots of people saw me. I passed by one room full of computer science students, all learning C++, and three of them waved at me.
And I waved back in that my-arms-are-full-but-Iām-excited-to-see-you-too way, where you jut your wrist up a little bit and flap your hand around excitedly.
I did, eventually, make it to the balcony. The buildingās high ceilings made the second-floor thing kind of a misnomer: I was easily forty feet up. I scooched my way to the edge, and the view I hadā¦ it was perfect. Brother Dean was directly underneath, thank God. If heād been even seven or eight feet out, Iām not sure if I couldāve shotput the condom-bomb far enough to hit him directly. Better yet his cameraman was only a few feet away from him, far too close to catch any action going up 40 feet above.
I managed to wrestle the payload onto the balcony, and with a gentle push, I sent it and Dean to destiny.
I realized that Iād made a mistake almost as soon as the condom began to fall. You know that sound that bombs make in cartoons, that long drawn out whistle?
The condom made that sound.
I had a second education in the seriousness of my mistake when the condom hit Deanās umbrella. It did not pop. Of course it didnāt pop. I had no experience with condoms, I swear to you, I promise, I did not know how much they could stretch. You can fit your whole leg into them. You can fit them over whole park benches. A gallon and a half of water was nothing compared to that.
It broke Deanās umbrella. It hit the top, and it snapped the stem like a twig, and then-
Violence. Unspeakable violence. It clipped Deanās shoulder and stretched down to his knees before recoiling back to its original shoulder height. It did not bounce. It floated in space, no wasted energy in the collision. One hundred percent of the kinetic energy, all 3300 Joules of it, were discharged into this sad wretch of a man.
He did not collapse. There was no time for that. He rotated on his axis. It was as if the hand of God had reached down and grabbed him about his waist, only to twist. In a fraction of a second, his head filled the space where his ass had been and his ass filled the space where his head had been, and then his cheek, carried by the shuriken motion of his body, slammed into the pavement with a noise like Shaq slam dunking a porkchop. Maybe wetter.
He did not move.
I panicked.
I want to make it clear: I did not mean to assault this man. I meant to get him wet and embarrassed. But I also have to confess that this was a beating. Mike Tyson himself can only put about 1600 Joules into one of his punches, and if he hit me I would bounce off five walls before I fell. I would not wish 3300 Joules upon anyone.
I walked into the building and sat myself in the back of the C++ class. The people next to, to my immense and eternal gratitude, did not question why I was wet.
A minute later, Brother Dean stormed into the building with his microphone.
He yelled. He screamed. He hollered. He informed the entire world that he had been assaulted, with a condom, by someone on the second floor. I was ecstatic that he was alive.Ā
Every person in that class knew who had brought this hell upon them. Every single one of them knew it was me. And if Iād done this to someone else, some Steven Crowder, some Ben Shapiro, someone wouldāve thrown me to the wolves. It would have only taken one person in that room of sixty. But Brother Dean was hated by everyone, literally everyone, and so the entire class sat in silence.
Some of that silence was gleeful, and some of it was bored, and some of it, a very small amount, was directly disapproving, but even the disapproving silence carried an understanding. A note of, āYes, yes, that was very irresponsible, and you should not do that again, but who could blame you? Something needed to happen. Not that something, butā¦something.ā
Security could be given grace to ignore the man when it was raining, and he was just outside the building, but they were not given such grace when he was inside with a microphone. Just a few short minutes later, a golfcart pulled up, and he was summarily marched out. There was maybe a minute of silence after that before the professor announced that his class was not open to visitors.
I left. Heād made his point.
It was a few weeks before I saw Brother Dean again, and his black eye still hadnāt healed all the way when I did. He was, however, still preaching the same old things as always. Percussive maintenance works better on vacuum tubes than human brains. I will say that he definitely made a point to stay away from balconies after that. And the next time it rained, I actually went out to watch him put his speaker and his mic into the back of a wagon and wheel it off the campus.
It appeared that heād developed some opinions about the kind of weather he was willing to preach hate in.
In world where there are two types of tower-dwellers, a Princess is locked in a tower.
There are two types of tower-people: A Princess, put there to remain pure until marriage or until rescued, and a Wizard, put there by choice to study and learn in isolation. Princesses are defined by their beautiful long hair, and Wizards are defined by their beards and impressive 'stache.
There is a Princess, and she lives in a tower. She was put there recently by her mother and father, to keep her pure and untouched until they can secure the marriage to another kingdom and a prince shes doesn't love. She has long, almost brown sandy-blonde hair, pale green eyes and a slim, tender build. She is not the fairest in the land, but she is tall and pretty. If compared to a rose, she would be the humble yet graceful willow tree, slender and long. She has wanted to be a wizard since a young age, but there is no way for a princess to become a wizard. Princesses are delicate girls to be protected and sold off until their either dead or Queens or have found True Love, unsuited to the life of experimentation and study of a wizard. That is what her mother tells her, in a quiet scolding that is far more forceful and cruel then it has any right to be. And the princess, terrified, believes her.
She used to run the castle halls, stick in hand, robe fashioned out of a delicate silk bedsheet, shouting fake spells at birds while her servants chased her. But as she grew older, her restraints became tighter, and more and more often, she was confined in her room to embroider in solitude with barely the comfort of a window or a maid. The life she is forced into makes her hang her head low, makes her hands be paper-soft, and demands her hair be long and beautiful and perfect like all other princesses. The world she longed to be a part of was a world of study and experimentation, and as the kingdoms princess and tool, she could not even dare to hint at her desires into adulthood. She could become a witch, she knew, flee the castle barefoot and sink into the loving embrace of the swamp. But witches donāt live in towers, and they make potions instead of spells, and they donāt grow the flowing whimsical beards that wizards do.
But that does not mean she has to be bored in her tower. Fascinated by magic as she always has been, she arranges with a long string of bribes for books on spells and forbidden potions to be smuggled along with her meals. She studies them while the clock ticks down for either a prince to arrive or her marriage to be finalized. Either one will doom her, and she wants to enjoy herself as much as possible until her marriage. She pours over the books long into the night by candlelight, and all day, she rests her pale, tired eyes. She experiments, and she reads, and she studies non-stop, barely stopping for meals and littering her books with an assortment of food stains. She cuts off her hair to use in bubbling gold potions, her skin becomes scarred with a rainbow of the consequences of failed experiments, and her dresses turn into makeshift cheesecloths and fire-fuel. She washes late into the night after she is done with her work for the day in the darkness, not glancing into the mirror that has become cracked and dusty. When her eyesight starts to fail from strain and working in darkness, she fashions for herself bottle-round glasses, blown by herself in the depths of her tower. Engrossed as she is in her studies, she does not notice the tower warp, and the meals stop rotting, and how she started out in one circular room but now has a loft and a second floor and the fact that the tower seems much much taller then it was originally.
What she DOES notice though, is when brushing crumbs from her face she feels facial hair on her upper lip.
She rushes to the bathroom and thrusts a candle into the holder as she looks at herself. In the dusty mirror, she sees the beginnings of a bushy mustache sit on her upper lip, much further along in growth then be logically possible without her noticing. Itās a pale blonde, like her hair, and she notices faintly that there are streaks of grey in it, a very familiar shade of classic wizard grey. She brings a trembling hand to her upper lip.
Much, much later, a prince rides up to the tower. It is tall, and warped, and very clearly belonging to a wizard, despite the royal family claiming their daughter lives here.
He shouts up, a bit nervous because of the thorny vines wrapping the beautiful stonework.
āHey! Does a Princess live here?ā
A young man with large bottle glasses and a rather impressive mustache leans out of the tower, his short, sandy-blonde hair spilling lightly in the wind. He starts to say something, then glances back into his house. A smile breaks out on his face as he seems to realize something.
āNo!ā He shouts back, after a moments hesitation. āBut a wizard does!ā
TW: dysmorphia kinda?
"I hate mornings," the hero groaned irritably, stretching in bed and violently smacking her phone screen as the alarm ringtone blared in her ears.
In a ridiculously deep voice. Her morning voice could not have possibly been this bad. Could it? She shook her head, electing to go to the bathroom and get ready for the day, noticing how her feet seemed to have doubled in size. That must've been the grogginess, right? It was making her see things. Her clothes felt ridiculously tight even though they'd been perfectly comfortable the day before.
No matter, she walked into the bathroom, and when her eyes caught her reflection in the mirror, she couldn't help but scream.
Her hair was short, dark brown and a mix of wavy and curly, and there was stubble on her face. Her lace top was one wrong move away from being torn to shreds on her now ridiculously much larger chest, her upper body a mix of more lean muscle than usual and scars. And her voice. Her stupid voice. Not even her scream had come out normal.
Some way, some how, she'd morphed into a man. And not just any man.
The goddamn villain. The one whose blood had just left stains on her suit last night. She'd never seen him without a mask, but that voice, that voice was unmistakable.
And in frustration, she found the top on her chest, which was short enough to expose most of her stomach tearing as she let out a rough breath. She truly hoped this was just a ridiculous nightmare. How the actual hell had she turned into him, or an exact copy looks-wise at least? How would she go to work looking like this? Who the hell would believe her? Was this even reversible? Goddamn it, what would she even wear?
She wanted to scream again, but she seriously didn't want to hear that in the villain's voice. No matter, she let out a snarl any way, smacking her fists on the wall, throwing the remains of her shredded top to the floor, the shorts probably about to follow suit.
The hero stared blankly at the mirror again, fully taking in the villain's, her features for now. His eyes were the grey of storm-clouds, his jaw sharp, a small scar on his lips. He had veins along his arms, prominent like tree branches. And muscle his suit must have concealed. The hero had always been fit but now she was inclined to know what the hell the villain ate for breakfast to look like this.
And abruptly, like the rude shock of being woken up with a splash of cold water, the hero felt guilty. The villain was evil and a bastard and desperately in need of a jail cell, but she didn't feel quite okay with staring so extensively at his face and body when he wasn't there to approve it.
Still, where did her body go? If she completely abandoned the dream/hallucination theory, then. . .
No. She didn't want to think about it. Or the consequences. Or the fact that the villain could now possibly be prancing around committing atrocities in her name.
And there was only one way to find out.
But first, clothes. There was quite literally nothing in her closet that was even remotely tall enough for the villain's body, or loose enough. The hero wasn't really short by any means, but her nemesis was ridiculously tall.
She looked again, desperate for anything and to her luck, she found some gigantic pair of pyjamas that her aunt had gotten for her birthday that she was sure could fit both of her parents together, but she prayed it would work for now. There was a frilly, crowded Hello Kitty print on the pants, a criminally bright hot pink, and the half-sleeve t-shirt was white with the titular cartoon cat up front and center.
Well, at least she thought it would be funny if the villain was seen dressed like this, and it actually managed to fit. The t-shirt was a little short, but at least no part of her stomach was exposed.
There was no escaping this now.
. . .
The villain wanted to smash the mirror into tiny little smithereens. He also really wanted to do the same to the hero, who he was completely sure had managed to curse him into being stuck with her body. He was about a head shorter now, drowning in his hoodie and boxers, build slender but surprisingly well-muscled. His hair was long, auburn and curly now, freckles speckled all over his nose and his eyes were a soft, golden amber, lashes long and curled.
When he scowled, it looked ridiculously ill-fitting. Well, at least he was pretty, snorting for a second before sobering up at how bloody weird this was. Pretty or not, he would much rather have his own body back and not have to listen to everything he said in the hero's damn voice.
He was going to make her fix this. Or she was going to pay big time.
I'm sorry for asking you on a blank blog. I'm just so horribly shy and wanted to still have a chance to ask you. I saw the hate you were getting and I was in awe how you handled yourself. I also see your fics doing well and wanted advice because it sucks when you don't get recognition for the effort you put in and ugh it's frustrating sorry it's late here and please just ignore me if this makes you uncomfortable
Justā¦ have fun with it.
I swear Iām not being flippant. I know it sounds like the kind of fake-deep nonsense youād find written in cursive on a mug sold at an Etsy shop, but it is genuinely the best advice I've personally recieved. Did I listen? Of course not. Did I get burned every time I joined a new fandom? Oh, like a moth to a flamethrower, baby!
Because hereās the thing: sometimes you get lucky. The algorithm pats you on the head, the stars align, and suddenly your post gets 10k notes because you wrote one spicy paragraph and Tumblr collectively lost its mind.
Other times? If youāre chasing clout, you end up posting daily like youāre running a content sweatshop in your own brain, churning out stuff you donāt even like just because you know the fandom will gobble it down.
And yeah, I'll be the first one to admit that the numbers are nice. The recognition is nice.
But itās fandom.
Not a job.
Not a career.
Not something worth losing sleep, joy, or sanity over.
One day, you'll sit back and realize:
Waitā¦ who actually cares if no one reads my stuff?
Itās fanfiction. I had fun writing it. I laughed, cried, spiralled dramatically, tried risky styles, dove into weird genres that would never see the light of day anywhere else, and goddamn, it was FUN.
And hereās the unfortunate cosmic punchline: say you really do sell your soul for clout.
You blow up. Your notes skyrocket. Your follower count climbs like a stock market bubble.
And thenā¦ what?
Suddenly one story āunderperformsā and youāre spiraling.
People expect more and youāre drowning.
Your joy evaporates, and youāre producing for numbers instead of passion... and even the numbers start feeling paper-thin.
It's like eating sugar for dinner, fun at first, then...just hollow.
Most readers, most lurkers, most of the internet? They consume quietly and leave you just the same. Thatās normal.
But the few who stay: who get your humour, your brainrot, your storytelling voice, now those people become creative soulmates. None of that comes from chasing external validation.
It comes from creating freely.
For yourself.
For fun.
For that ridiculous idea that makes you snort at 2 A.M.
Your fun starts the second you stop handing out permission slips for your own joy.
(Sorry for the rant, and taking a while on answering asks...I'm trying to catch up š)
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When Elliot Marrin, a curious adventurer with a love for urban legends, accepted a dare to spend the night inside Harrowby Manor, he thought it would be an easy way to impress his friends. Rumors claimed the old mansion was haunted by mischievous spirits who loved playing pranks on anyone foolish enough to trespass. Elliot didnāt believe in ghostsāat least, not until that night.
As the clock struck midnight, a strange chill filled the room. Elliot, exploring a dimly lit hallway, felt his jeans suddenly tug downward as if an invisible hand had grabbed them. He spun around, embarrassed but aloneāor so he thought. Then came the laughter. Soft, echoing giggles that seemed to bounce off the walls.
Before he could pull his pants back up, glowing strings of light wrapped around his wrists, lifting his arms like a puppet. His heart raced as he realized he was being controlledālike a marionetteāby two translucent spirits that shimmered with ghostly blue light. The pair, Lira and Toven, had been lonely for decades, and Elliotās arrival offered them a chance for some āfun.ā
āDance, little mortal!ā Lira teased, her laughter ringing like windchimes.
Despite his fear, Elliot tried to reason with them, promising to tell their story if they let him go. Amused, the ghosts agreedāon one condition: he must perform one final act, a dance of apology for disturbing their rest. The strings lifted him again, and Elliot, in nothing but his underwear, awkwardly twirled in the middle of the haunted hallway. When it was done, the ghosts bowed and vanished into a swirl of glowing mist.
The next morning, Elliot stumbled out of Harrowby Manor, exhausted but alive. His friends didnāt believe a wordāuntil they saw faint glowing marks on his wrists, shaped like strings.
From that day on, Elliot never laughed at ghost stories again. But sometimes, in the quiet of his room, he could still hear faint laughter, tugging gently at the edges of his dreams.
