The Official CEO

your dark fantasy novel doesn't need a logic-based magic system it needs a bear with a human face

the human-faced bear principle of storytelling: the amount of people who will remember the exposition about the rules of magic or the history of elf culture inherently pales in comparison to the amount of people who will remember the scene where someone gets mauled by a bear with a human face

this isn't a call to necessarily include a literal bear with a human face (though you should at least consider it. obviously.) but pointing out that, while a lot of sf/f writing advice places heavy emphasis on fleshing out the small details of a fictional world as much as possible (which can be fine and valuable for many stories), there's often little attention given to the value of including effective "bear attack scenes", for lack of a better term; tense, scary, shocking, weird, or otherwise visceral scenes or concepts (the pale man, the chestburster, the sunken place, the raptors in the kitchen, artax in the swamp, the annihilation bear, the parasite basement, the blood test in the thing, etc) despite those having a significantly higher hit rate of making a story striking and memorable and recommendable to people

when a cartoon character has a little nutsack or dick visible at all times it might raise some eyebrows but is ultimately seen as funny & acceptable. on the other hand you couldn't make Crazy Frog with a cunt. one of society's great inequalities

Why is this heat so hot 😩

It’s the heat

Source?

its interesting how the people who say "my trauma made me funny" are never actually funny just uncomfortably self-deprecating

really fond of humans just from an appearance standpoint. the long legs. the manes of hair that can come in practically any colour and texture. those crazy high-contrast eyes with the white scleras and colourful irises. the fingers being so much longer than the toes. there's a lot to love. solid 10/10 animal species

hey there just out of curiosity are you not human, too?

hilariously enough, I am probably the most human out of anyone on this entire site. earlier today I was posting about getting "species euphoria" from doing human activities like ecosystem management. I'm the worlds first therian to have a kintype that aligns with his biological species. shirt that says "I ❤️ being a sapient omnivorous primate & bipedal persistence predator" on the front and booty shorts that say "largest gluteal muscles to body size ratio on the planet"