randomperson448

[randomperson448]

Characters who were raised by wolves but somehow still learn how to speak and act human despite of having spent the key developing years without human contact are both unrealistic and frankly kind of boring and overdone by now. Imagine a character team where one of them is a (somewhat) realistic raised-by-wildlife grown feral child, and the other one is essentially a glorified handler, who manages all the people-business for both of them.

And the companion is the only other human person that the feral one trusts in any way at all. Better yet, make them clearly be romantically involved with each other. Like

"Wait, she's your wife? ...Uh, with all due respect, but can she like... Can she even consent?" "Look lad. I respect you being worried for her welfare and for being direct about that instead of circlin' around so I'm gonna be straight about it right back at you: She's bigger than me, stronger than me, and frankly, I don't think she spent much time wondering whether I'm consenting."

[randomperson448]

family outing

[randomperson448]

question: how does it feel to watch people you care about be mistreated? how would you describe that feeling?

[randomperson448]

Another fantasy trope story:

A story where a prominent prophesy very clearly states that this specific important thing Must Be Done by the firstborn of one specific guy. So three young heroes head out to fix this: This Guy's official firstborn heir, his bastard he didn't even know about before getting married, and his unofficially adopted orphan kid who just started living with him at some point, who is the oldest of the three so technically speaking is still the one who was born first. And all three must go because while the meaning of the prophesy itself is very clear, it's an utter mystery to everyone which one of them counts as their father's firstborn.

[randomperson448]

“When your cat trusts you so much that she brings her newborns to you for shelter and protection”

(via)

[randomperson448]

Thinking about the team being forced to play hide and seek in the tower as a mandatory team building exercise, most of them say “We’re grown adults, we’re not playing hide and seek.” Until someone (John) gets called as the seeker and the rest immediately drop whatever they’re doing and run.

[randomperson448]

[randomperson448]

the opposite of that "orc can't read ulysses" is an elf who smugly delivers a lecture misinterpreting the Very Hungry Caterpillar

[randomperson448]

I was more or less stunned by what had happened. I had been prepared for criticism and ridicule - I was accustomed to them. But it had never occurred to me that people might want to hound and persecute me for my change in role. I had lived as a woman because that was my social standing, and had been made fun of and called 'half-man', and now when I had faced the situation and righted the grotesquely false position in which I had lived so long, it seemed that the public would damn me because I had once, perforce [by force, by necessity], worn skirts. I tried to get other hospital work. I went to the men who had been my chiefs and told them the truth and asked their aid in securing another position; to a man they turned me down. I tried to get other sorts of work and failed tor the same reason as soon as I gave my name. Then my family employed counsel and instituted proceedings to have my name legally changed; and the medical school from which I had been graduated served notice on us that if we persisted they would rescind my diploma and have me disbarred from practice.

— excerpt from Letter from Alan Hart to Mary Roberts Rinehart, August 3, 1921, on the subject of his transition from female to male and the impact of being publicly outed by a woman who recognized him. Alan Hart was one of the first men to get a hysterectomy in the US, and pioneered the use of X-rays in the diagnosis of tuberculosis, which ended up being crucial to treatment as the disease was asymptomatic early on.

[randomperson448]

still thinking about that r/hypotheticalsituation post where someone was like "what if a potato chip spawned somewhere randomly in the world. and every hour the number of potato chips at that location would double. and the only way to get rid of them for good would be to eat all of the potato chips before they doubled again." and someone calculated that it would only take like, 48 hours of people ignoring a weird pile of potato chips before an absolutely irreconcilable number of potato chips was blanketing a city.

and then people were like "no wait if it spawns randomly in the world, it's highly likely it would be in an ocean" and then people were debating whether there were enough small fish swimming at the surface in the open ocean that would be able to eat a potato chip and thus save humanity from the potato chip apocalypse.

[randomperson448]

There is probably some 50-year-old chinese trans woman out there who gets gender euphoria from visiting family and realising that she is such a goddamn stereotypical 50-year-old chinese aunty. Showing up at the family function and she has the exact same shoes, purse and sunglasses as the other ones and none of them planned to have an uniform.

[randomperson448]

Stories should have in-universe clichés and stereotypes. A teenage dragon rider who gets a dragon who will be his steed for life and is a solid inky black and immediately names her Midnight. He then immediately encounters someone who sees his steed who goes "lmao please don't tell me you're one of those young riders who gets a dark-colour dragon and immediately names it Darkness or Midnight or something, and starts acting like being dark and broody has been their whole thing their whole life."

And he immediately scrambles back like "oh no of course not that's cringe, her name is - uh - Daisy."

Meanwhile the Morbid Broody Dark Gothy One is bonded with a bright dandelion yellow dragon, naming her steed Sulfur and then revamps her whole aesthetic into a black-and-yellow Toxins, Poisons And Venoms -theme.

[randomperson448]

“This wee lady that has been stopping by the bakery I work at all week”

(Source)

[randomperson448]

Grave offerings and burying the dead with tools and goods is actually such a deeply human thing to do. It's not really even necessarily about how much you believe in a literal afterlife or them taking the tools with them. It's also just going Wait, I'm Not Done Taking Care Of You, let me make you one more pair of socks so your feet won't be cold when you go wherever it is where I can't follow.

[randomperson448]

Randomly remembered something I saw online and can't remember the exact details of - a translation of an ancient Egyptian letter that a young soldier sent his family from abroad, I think from Rome. While all the other details are lost to me, I distinctly remember the tone of the letter, because the attitude in it was so shockingly different to the way I was raised. In Finnish, the word for "conceited" is literally "self-loving", and there's a saying about how self-praise reeks, and any kind of praise of one's own is downright shameful. Entire generations have been raised with the idea that saying anything positive about your own children will rot their moral core.

And this guy in this letter was like "Dear father, dear mother, I am now here in Rome! I am sure to prosper thanks to how excellently you have raised me. I have commissioned a picture of myself in my new uniform, so you can see how handsome I look in it."

Like... Damn. Imagine raising a kid to be that unwaveringly confident in their own worth and prospects, and unhesitant to praise you as well. Why would you raise your kid any other way.

[randomperson448]

No wait, random worldbuilding idea:

A people who have an age-old tradition, that when warriors left home to go to war, their family that remains home prepare funeral goods for them while they wait, sewing them the clothes and preparing the tools and all that they will be buried with - to emotionally prepare them to the hard possibility that the one who left will not return home alive. If the warrior returns, their burial goods are all burned in a bonfire that is lit for the celebration of their return.

And to this modern day, mothers of the culture will tell their children "fine, but let me take your measures for burial clothes before you go" as a way of telling them that something they're about to do is lethally stupid. Sharing stories about just how dramatic their mothers are, someone tells their group of friends that his mother once actually took out a measuring tape to start taking his measures when he said he's leaving home for a work trip.

And another one goes "pfft, yeah. This one time I went to a rock concert and came back home to mom sitting on her sewing machine, fucking making me a funeral coat."