my phd supervisor is notoriously lax on fieldwork safety but he’s also 6’7 so it’s like yeah dude no wonder you’ve never had to worry about bears they see you coming and are like oh fuck it’s the slenderman
everyone saying "art doesn't need to be perfect" hasn't taken into account the art monster, the monster that comes and kills you if art doesn't look exactly like it did in your head
"Not intentionally. Ghosts are just drawn to me. I'm a ghost sponge. A ghost magnet. When I'm hired to check out a haunted house, I walk in and take all the ghosts with me when I leave. And if it turns out there's a demon the ghosts eat 'em. It's a very efficient system."
"...Say that last part again."
"The ghosts eat the demons. Like a pack of hyenas taking down a wildebeest. I've seen the ghost of a 90-year-old Ukrainian babushka tear apart a demon with her teeth."
All throughout childhood, while my peers were socializing and making friends, I studied the blade read so many books that I am now almost legally blind, which left me with vast and deeply instinctual understanding of English grammar - and next to no ability to explain how it actually works. Friends will often ask me to proofread their writing and then get very mad when I say things like, "You need to completely reverse this sentence and cut this clause entirely; no, I'm sorry, i don't know why, I just know that the way it is now ITCHES 😭"
Now, what I want to see is a fantasy story where this plays out with MAGICAL grammar. Someone from a backwater town deeply steeped in folk magic arrives at Wizard Uni where all their fellow students are like "What do you mean, we should add another '𝞯∘⋇𝞿' to the incancation because it 'sounds better'? What do you mean, 'it could just be a regional thing'?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, 'THIS SPELL JUST FEELS LIKE IT NEEDS A LIVE RAT'????"
The toadstools grew in a perfect ring the width of a child’s hula hoop.
They were upside down and clinging to the ceiling like stalactites.
“I have concerns,” she said.
“So do I,” they said. “If I step under it, does it count as stepping into a fairy circle? I mean, if a plane flies over a fairy circle it doesn’t count as stepping into it, but do the same rules apply if you’re walking under a fairy circle?”
“Right.”
“Actually, what is the area of effect for a fairy circle? Is it like a sphere that has the same circumference of the circle, so if I just duck underneath it I’ll be fine? Or is it a cylinder? How far up does the cylinder go? Or down, in this case.”
“Right.”
“Some of the many mysteries of the fey we may wonder about forever.”
They continued to stare up at the ring of toadstools. Thoughtful seconds ticked by.
“See, my concerns are mostly about how much moisture you have in your room.”
“Sorry?”
“You have mushrooms growing out of your ceiling.”
“Oh.”
She patted their back with sympathetic pity. “I appreciate that you live in a world of whimsy and delight, and I don’t want to squash that because I love you, but I also really don’t want you to die of black mold.”
“She’s right, you know,” said the goblin sitting upside down in the circle.