For Patty Morss, the common fear has to be silverfish. It's like not an overwhelming fear, by no means a phobia. Other insects, you know, it's like take it or leave it for her. Considering her life, maybe she disliked bugs more than she does now. But silverfish never budged from the top. It's just that funny way that memory works. Even as eternity stretches out before her, she swears she'll never forget when she was five. She touched a silverfish crawling up a curtain covering the backyard screen door, made from a glass panel actually. A nasty little silverfish was crawling up the vertical curtain, and she happened to be there, up close, watch it, and reach out to touch it. It fell apart at her slightest touch. Something about that abhorrent loathsome moment burned into her memory. She will never tolerate silverfish. Her uncommon fear is that she will eat her girlfriend. The attraction is there, and the parasite attached to her psyche doesn't differentiate love of any kind. Platonic, romantic, sexual, or gourmet. She's the youngest member of her cohort, and there's no instruction guide to follow, no mento to seek council from, she's as on her own as the rest. Letting Funny Bunny into her life as her partner would naturally attract the parasite to blur the lines between love and devour. I'd say that's an uncommon fear, not everyone struggles with the risk of compulsory cannibalism but there you go

@Gs S Eventually she does, but to be honest she's just not in any situation to avoid it. Her life was completely falling apart, losing her job and estranging herself from her family. And after meeting Patty for the first time, as the bond is formed between them, Funny Bunny takes on the nature of Patty's condition. That being, a total systemic falling out from society: functionally unnoticeable, a complete removal of her name, all traces of her existence, to everyone she's ever known or who have ever known her, aside from Patty, the other nine, and their human bondmates, sometimes called familiars. So she has nowhere else to go. The human side of Patty knows this, and regrets this, but the insect parasitic side is both completely dedicated to setting her up for failure (eating Funny Bunny) and devoid of any human emotion, or even intelligence as we understand it.

Funny Bunny's introduction, taking up most if not all of chapter one, is just a series of complaints. In general, she hasn't felt seen her entire life, but the last year was the worst. Part of her job is not being noticed, or that is to say it might be one of the most willfully invisible public jobs out there, as a sanitary worker. Very rarely does any one thank her for emptying trash cans. When they do, its short, a little curt, and its hard to feel like actual sincerity is there in their words. She gets it, it comes with the job, cleaning the oncology ward isn't the most desired position. She just wished she didn't feel like a ghost for most of the week. She hates her therapist, who doesn't seem to be so very receptive to her recently started HRT. Well, maybe its just in Funny Bunny's head. She can be sensitive, and she can be wrong. And she can be paranoid. Well, she's very paranoid, and that can manifest in some shitty treatment at work from her coworkers. Their complaint with her is that she always convinced the next mass shooter will be walking into their hospital. They tease Funny Bunny for sitting in the cafeteria corner, for always gripping her keys in her pocket like makeshift brass knuckles. Its part of that fight-flight-freeze things she's always going on about. Honestly, there all kind of jerks, and there's not a ton that can be done. In the work culture of departments like Enviromental Services, a mix of job veterans there for decades, and a revolving door of new talent, trying to preserve something like mental health awareness going in one ear and out the other. Finally, I think Funny Bunny regretted not changing her legal name sooner. Well, not the name Funny Bunny. Because that isn't her actual name. Its not her preferred name either. Its a nickname given to her by Patty, ten of ten, and when they started datng, Funny Bunny lost her preferred name, and whatever utterly irrelevant legal deadname was in the books either. And she can't remember it. Incapabile. Its part of the deal when dating a person like Patty, ten of ten.

ParaPsuedo's elements are hard to articulate, but in conversation I say its "new weird" or "psychedelic queer horror." Which kind of hints at the otherworldly elements. The introduction, before the first chapter, I'm using to tease the extent, the rules, and the small cast of these figures that at the center of the fantastic aspects. However, in other ways, the world is akin to our world. Reality works the way it should, magic does not exist, and all laws of energy, matter work as they should. However, this normality operates because of a hidden element, a secret and invisible greater force that operates within the universe that governs all other rules and laws in a far more fundamental and supernatural manner. I think I try to approach these ideas carefully, not to over explain, to get bogged down in terminology, but I also want to use these fantastic elements as a means of exploring ideas and themes that do resonate in our own lives.