Something I’ve Learned From Querying: Everything Has A Million Subcategories, And It Is Crucial to

thinking non-stop about the Terry Pratchett Method of Deconstruction (TM) and how it works

[...] the wages of sin is death, but so is the salary of virtue, and at least the evil get to go home early on Fridays. (Witches Abroad)

Take a common concept, metaphor, idiom, trope etc. "The wages of sin is death."

Invert, reverse or subvert it to highlight the inconsistency or issue. "But so is the salary of virtue." (Well, actually, everybody dies, right?)

While everybody's contemplating the philosophy revealed, overextend the metaphor and whack them in the back of the head with the joke like a comedic quintain while they aren't expecting it. "At least the evil get to go home early on Fridays."

He does it quite often and I love it every time.

Sometimes you need to outline a whole ass fantasy novel in a single day instead of dealing with your feelings

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one that added 35k extra words to the projected length of this fucking story ahgeilahgleiag

Listen, I'm having fun playing with the ultra patriotic voice, but after a couple years in blue-collar landscaping jobs, you really do need to phrase things like that.

"I'm pretty sure that fella ain't here legally."

"Well, that ain't your business Chip, it's his."

They hate being preached to. If you pull out words like 'gender wage gap' they'll tell you you're brainwashed by the far left media.

"He's one of them transgenders."

"He got freedoms too, Jimmy."

Hello! I’m a horror & dark whimsy writer/content creator, and I was just published for the first time a couple months ago with my environmental horror short story “HAUSTORIUM.” It’d mean a lot if folks checked it out! Keep an eye on this space, more to come 👀👻🌲

devour-journal.com

Haustorium | 𝔇𝔢𝔳𝔬𝔲𝔯 ☙ 𝔐𝔬𝔯𝔰𝔢𝔩𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔊𝔢𝔫𝔯𝔢 𝔏𝔦𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔞𝔱𝔲𝔯𝔢

A dying lumberman joins a logging crew for one final job, only to face a supernatural nightmare when an ancient tree resists its felling.

i know i've said this before but i'm going to say it again because the more i work with geriatric women the stronger i feel about the fact that the only anti-aging that women in their 20s/30s should be obsessed with is building strong bones and muscle mass. that's like the most important thing you can you can do right now to lay a good foundation for healthy aging. you can botox the shit out of your face but that's not going to do anything to save you from dying prematurely from a fatal hip fracture that you can't bounce back from because you didn't do anything to prevent yourself from becoming frail and breakable. like i know that sounds harsh but that is reality for a lot of older women and i don't want that to be you.

Do you know if Sherlock was ever actually used as a name? Or did Arthur Conan Doyle make it up?

Yes! It was an actual name of Middle English origin, sometimes a nickname for a blond person. Shir meaning bright or fair (possibly related to the root word for shine? idk) and lock meaning hair. It was more commonly a surname before the Sherlock Holmes books came out but it was occasionally a first name. An adjacent name is Whitlock, meaning white haired (or blond) which is a pretty common surname too.

i hate when ppl act like the only reason to not like a "sad" ending is because you can't take it or whatever. personally as a tragedy enjoyer, i hate a poorly written ending. i hate an ending that is just kind of a bummer. i hate an ending that feels mean-spirited to the audience. i hate an ending that's redundant. i love a sad ending that is thematically consistent, poignant, and bespoke to the rest of its narrative.

I had a dream about angels last night. Or like this morning depending on your view because I woke up at 3am to give Leeloo her inhaler and this dream happened after that.

So this group of angels had descended to earth on a mission and ended up in a living situation with a bunch of humans. Like they were just roommates with angels. The angels were attempting to carry out inscrutable divine plans but were handicapped by the fact that the world was too much for them.

Every sensory experience was a massive overload to them. One tasted garlic and burst into tears. They could barely function let alone fulfill their purpose on the mortal plane. So one of the roommates came up with a sensory acclimation program for the angels.

Each angel was paired off with a human to attempt some experiences. The humans job was to help them through it. One angel was going to brave the movies. Buttered popcorn was an overwhelming cacophony of sensation. Another wanted to attempt a short walk on the beach. Like, their goals were very modest normal guy stuff.

There was just one problem. All of the human buddies. Desperately. Wanted to fuck their angel. They all wanted the angels to be down with sex acts so bad, they had the major angel hornies and there was no cure. One person successfully seduced their angel and all the other humans lost their shit trying to up their seduction game on these sheltered divine ding dongs who could barely handle the taste of popcorn.

So most of the dream was spent watching people engineer elaborate situations in which they might go to ethereal pound town while the angels blundered around licking frogs and sticking their hands in garbage.