I love how yokai range from “You smiled at me a little bit so now I will kill you with my razor-sharp hair.” to “Hey man, heard you were feeling down on yourself again so I thought I’d drop by and do a funny little dance.”
I’m working on a data audit at work, checking and correcting some info gathering that our interns did on job titles and industries, and so far my favorite errors I’ve caught are:
1. Occupation: Heir
2. Occupation: Dead
3. A guy who owns a home-security company having his industry listed as “Homemaking.”
story concept of the day: a “medical mystery of the week” serial set in a world with monsters and superpowers and mutants and aliens
It would be like. One part comedy, one part drama, two parts world-building. The hospital has an aquatic wing for mermaids and sea monsters. How do you treat someone who has telepathic influenza? We’ll figure it out, I guess!
Some storyline concepts:
—a woman from a telepathic race based on anglerfish shows up in the ER in a panic because her mate, who is tiny and permanently attached to her body, has stopped communicating through their telepathic link
—the air-breathing doctors have to take over the aquatic ward after a mysterious illness spreads through the water-breathing staff
—an ambulance brings in an unconscious alien from a species totally outside of medical literature, the staff scramble to save their life while flying blind
—the first outbreak of lycanthropy in 50 years occurs following protests against the vaccine, the hospital is quarantined while the on-staff pharmacists try to control the situation
If I write this, I’d want it to be like. Scrubs meets WTNV.
Character concept: a demon who works in the ER because their ability to “steal” souls means they can bring back patients who are medically dead but still repairable if you can just get them breathing again.
He has some insanely generic sounding name like Doctor Fred and has that “snake tongue, fangs, ram horns, red skin, yellow eyes, long tail, black bat wings” thing going on
He’s like 35 and the object of unrepentant longing from most of the interns and junior staff. He’s kind and patient and great with kids and has the cutest hiccupy laugh and is absolutely the guy you want overseeing your training because he never yells. Everyone wants to marry Doctor Fred.
It’s a running joke that he’s probably a literal Incubus but there’s no aura or magic at play, he’s just got a perfect personality.
I think I’m naming this story “doctors and demons” for now
Another character is just. Nessie. The Loch Ness monster is here. She works at the front desk for the aquatic ward and pokes her head out of the water to pass notes and files to the other doctors.
One of the aquatic doctors is Doctor Lagoon, who is the creature from the black lagoon. He’s very intimidating but can be immediately be calmed down by bringing up his human wife or their daughter. There’s a picture of him holding his wife bridal style on his desk.
The actual protagonist is a human woman who considers herself totally normal but actually has SOME sort of powerful telekinesis that she constantly explains away as coincidence.
There’s a character named Cadaver or Caddie who is a living corpse that constantly regenerates. She’s vital to the hospital for organ transplants but an absolute nightmare for the staff because she does things like host speed dating for zombies in the morgue and eat everyone lunch out of the staff room fridge.
Also I think the protagonist’s name is Jane Doe or Doctor Doe, as a joke on her being average but… not at all.
I think the trio of main characters are Doctor Fred (emergency), Doctor Doe (in-patient) and an alien surgeon named Doctor Hive, who is close to an insectoid Cthulhu. A running joke is her ability to keep track of her hundreds of children but not the names of any of their fathers or her coworkers except her very favorites.
This is like the Fantasy version of the Hospital Station stories
and I want it.
I am no Philosopher (though Some may say that Itself is a Philosophical Position), but I know Something of those Sensations which you describe and, after Some Years with them, have come to an Answer with which I am at Peace, though it may not serve your Purposes as Well as you may hope.
The Conclusion which occurred to me some Time Ago is this: that as it is an Unnatural Torment to be for Ever in Misery when one’s Circumstances are Comfortable, so Much so that the Distemper is regarded as Illness, so too is it Impossible to be Eternally Happy. Indeed, there is, I have observed, an Unattainable Degree of Contentment and Fulfillment to which Many Persons, who are Otherwise Quite Sound and Intelligent, aspire; It is an Empyrean of Joy unheard of by Even the Greatest of Men, and Fixation Upon this Imagined Felicity causes More Heartbreak than the Most Prolific of Cads.
These Moments of Hollowness to which you allude are a Strain, it is True, and in Face of them it is a Difficulty of the Highest Order to accept the Balm of Little “Vices” Such as this Journal, yet they are, in my Experience the Foundation to building the Staunch Heart for which you yearn. If, for Example, you feel your Spirit darken, you may say to yourself, “Ah! But these are Petty Distractions from my Dissatisfaction and Distress.” Perhaps that is so. Yet is does Only Ill to think, Simply because it is a Passing Distraction, that the Uplift they provide is Insubstantial or Without Worth. The Staunch Heart (of the Metaphorical Kind) is not one Contiguous Mass or Monolith of Success, Romance, Fulfillment, &tc., but Rather a Hodge-podge of Small Pleasures, Beloved Persons, Interest pursued for Edification’s Sake, and so on. It is for this Reason that no Two Hearts are Ever Precisely the Same, and thus I cannot tell you in what Measure you require Such and such a thing to bolster your Disposition, Only that you must build your Heart, with Whatever Aid you can find, in hope that Some Day it will be Enough.
Yours &tc., The Editor
(mod note: this is the last mental health related question i’ll be answering.)
I’m pretty sure this ad is just trying to imply that Burdock Blood Bitters are meant to make you young again, but JESUS CHRIST what former penny-dreadful illustrator thought this up?
Before you ask, Burdock Blood Bitters was an old snake-oil tonic – it was an herbal tonic for the blood and not made of blood.
(Courtesy the Ephemera Society Of America’s blog post on “Bursting Forth”.)
Mooncustafer 