My neighbors, the Perkinses, have started worshiping a Dread God and they just will not shut up about it.
"Oh, you'll never guess what The Unsleeping One showed us in our dreams!" they say. "We know many terrible truths now!"
Did they ask about my new haircut? No, of course not. I've caught them out shuffling around in the dark, trying to catch raccoons. Sometimes I see them talking to their mirrors, crying a little.
And of course I find them standing outside my windows in the dead of night.
I get 'em with the spray bottle, but that won't work forever.

I like the shows where Gordon Ramsay visits a struggling business and finds their problem and it's something like all the food is a nutrient-rich paste excreted by a semi-sentient snail in the freezer that has existed since the dawn of time in defiance of god's laws. "And the Snail..."
"We call it the Ygunngagupp."
*muttering* "fuck me they call it the Ygunngagupp. It makes the paste?"
"The paste, yes. It makes the paste that makes you hear the whispers."
"It whispers to you?"
"The terrifying secrets of creation, that's right, Gordon."

My fool godson, William, went down to the basement to get a snack four days ago
I told him--every time I tell him--to COUNT the stairs as he goes down. There's only 12. If it goes to 13, come back up and try again. And don't follow the thing singing down there
But does he listen? "Have you tried going down there and calling for him?"
Yes, smart guy, I did, and he called for me to come down and join him in the dark. So OBVIOUSLY, the thing down there has learned his voice. I'm a homeowner--this isn't my first hellmouth.

orc who gets laid off from rampaging across the countryside and has to get a new job as a high school teacher "Gregory. I have graded your essay."
"You can call me Greg, Mr. Bloodmaw."
"I would not grant you the honor of that, Gregory. Not after I have seen the weakness in your spirit and your textual analysis of Melville. You have earned this C, Gregory. Will you break beneath it?"

the "fandom is religion" discourse feels like it will end with paramilitaries named after disney characters
the Goof Troop will be a source of dread and horror the silhouettes of mouse ears cast by flickering flames of your burning home
the cheerful jingle of It's A Small World blaring from the detention van cannot drown out the wails of despair of those disappeared inside
you were warned not to cancel disney+
why didn't you listen

god damn it I wish people would stop sending me cursed portraits
every fucking time I open the mail there's some manner of hellworld sprawling out from a gilded frame, banished back behind canvas only through the oldest magic
I'd throw them out but someone worked hard on them one time I thought I was pinning up a nice drawing my kid did in art class on the refrigerator
it was midnight when I remembered I don't have a kid
took me days to hunt the horrific scribble-creature that emerged, its smile a crude grimace
goddamn abomination got in the pipes

I've seen tons of friends and fellow authors maintain their subscriptions to the New York Times through all the paper's terrible decisions. Where is the line? If you won't cancel even as they provide a platform for more calls to violence, when WILL you? What will it take?

https://twitter.com/abrahamjoseph/status/1268263716774195200

You value your pretentious appearance of faux intellectualism more than American lives? You value some vain "both sides"-ism more than a functioning government? What is it? What's keeping you supporting the calls to violence against your fellow citizens?

Tired: Rangers as noble guardians of the forest.
Wired: Rangers as unwashed maniacs wielding compound bows and hatchets, wandering the wilderness, obsessively following their quarry, muttering to squirrels, braiding party members’ hair while they sleep Tired: Rangers granted power by their deep veneration of nature.
Wired: Rangers granted power by being high as hell on six different kinds of frog, time slowing down all at once and third eyes being opened in the fugue, all while shouting commands at a rabid bear.

oh fuck
OH FUCK
I was supposed to slay Dracula, like
yesterday
god damn that totally slipped my mind all right
shit
I’m getting in my car right now hang on
so yeah wow
if your spouse has been abducted by a giant bat, that is entirely my bad

Tired: Half-Orcs with tragic origin stories steeped in violence.
Wired: Half-Orcs with embarrassingly doting human and orc parents who make terrible jokes and always send them to the dungeon with a box of food. “So you’re a Fighter now?”
“Ma, I just took a level in Fighter. I’m still a Barbarian.”
“Why couldn’t you just be a nice Cleric? That’s a very safe profession.”
“Ma...”
“Why not a Warlock? They get patrons. With tentacles.”
“DAD.”

consider: Donald Duck visited both Duckburg and his friends elsewhere, but Mickey and Goofy never visited him in Duckburg
was this intentional
were they forbidden were Goofy and Mickey enemies of the state? Or were outsiders forbidden from Duckburg?

*crawls out from under your bed as you sleep* anyway another cool thing about #TheWitcher is how they weren't worried about subversion or deconstruction. A lot of the characters lean on tropes and let the relationships between them explore the depth of those tropes. *disappears as you wake up in a cold sweat* it's a cool thing to observe in this day and age. Stories, especially long-running nerd stories, tend to get catalogued, codified, arranged, so that subversion is the only joy left. #TheWitcher avoids this by being unconcerned with it.

Some writers will try to say “why do you use f-f-foul language when there’s so much more extravagant/fanciful/majestic words!”
Beyond being just a shallow ploy, your job as a writer isn’t to use the biggest word, it’s to use the right words. And sometimes the right word is ass. just so we’re clear, though, 95% of the time, someone fretting about f-f-foul language is upset about something else in your work they’re afraid to bring up

*collapses through the ceiling into your bedroom* anyway, another thing I really like about #TheWitcher is how it was totally fearless about not tying up conflicts. They frequently ended messily or ambiguously resolved and in doing so made the consequences much heavier. *chases you as you run screaming out of the room* The show always recognizes that the characters are what's important, not the lore. The events, the history, all of it is more important as a spark to set things in motion, framework to squeeze the characters.

What is the most obscure video game you are a fan of? Mine was probably Crimson Shroud, a 3DS eShop game. Weird little RPG, but it had rad character design and it rolled actual dice to determine effects.

Hags in DnD are cool because they just look like they’re having a blast whilst doing villainies
they are the monsters whose motivation is most often “because that shit was funny to me” #HagFact: Hags come from many different environs and are always jerks, just in different ways
A Forest Hag will attack you by hurling raccoons at you, whereas the more passive-aggressive Ice Hag will likely stand in winter conditions in a nice coat and say "you look cold"

I've said this before, but to flesh out your characters, give them interests that have no bearing on the plot.
It may seem odd, but we're more interested in a hero that wants to save the world and loves to cook or garden than we are in a hero that only wants to save the world. Mind you, that's not to say you need to dedicate a chapter to exploring their interest. In fact, it's best to keep it minimal. When you allow the audience to imagine what they do in their free time, the more invested the audience becomes in the character.

I’ve always said I write broken, damaged, wounded characters because they have more conflict. And that’s technically true. But deep down, I think I just want to figure out how people go back to being okay. To living with their wounds. I guess that’s why scars figure so heavily into my books. They’re reminders of what happened. You can never make them go away, so you just sort of figure out how to make them work, figure out what they mean to you, how to accept them as a part of you.

Like any pain, really.

neil gaiman came through the television to tell me that satan is Extremely Dope and now I am damned and also on the drugs and jazz music please 1 like equal 1 prayer

https://twitter.com/independent/status/1141714777007415299

please help me I was sitting quietly and reading the lord's bible when neil gaiman emerged out of the warp pipe and slapped it out of my hands and put a satan's comic book in it and now I am weeping and also on the drugs and jazz as I read The Devil's Pornograph

if you meet an old man in a cave and he offers you a sword, definitely take it
life is about to get fuckin sweet same if a woman in a lake gives you a sword, take that shit
she would want you to use it to fuck a dragon up

what if the real twist is that all this time Thanos had a fatal weakness to arrows *twang!*
“OW! FUCK! Man, that stings! Wait no don’t shoot another—“
*twang*
“ARGH! STOP! That’s really dangerous! You could put someone’s—“
*twang*
“AAAAAAAAHHHH MY EYE WHAT DID I JUST SAY”