(Released on Patreon 22 months and 5 days earlier, because: depression.)
(As mentioned, I have a some already written stuff I can start sharing. Not much prose, though, mostly story ideas like this instead of actual stories.)
The premise is simple enough: Dude frees Genie from a bottle or lamp or whatever.
It's an old school genie: grants wishes as thanks for being released from confinement, so there's no worries about getting screwed over by the wording of the wish being off, and there's no limit on the number of wishes, but there's also no magical obligation, genie can just say, "Fuck you," and walk off. The problem is that it's deep-seated ingrained cultural belief for the genie that the scales need to be balanced and payment to the one who set them free must be made.
Things start off pretty simple, wealth, power, every gaming system on earth, improvements to housing, that sort of thing. Then dude gets his eyes set on a potential romantic interest, and genie's all, "Look, there's shit we don't do, and making someone fall in love is one of them. I'm not gonna magic roofie someone for you."
Dude is persistent with, "Well, can't you do something?" And genie's like, "Fine, I owe you, I'll do something. I can make you more desirable to her, but first I have to know what she's into, and I can't read minds either, so I'm gonna have to get to know her, and that's gonna take some fucking time."
Dude's impatient and makes no secret of that, and he's constantly asking for updates and pushing for results, but getting to know someone takes time, and he's forced to wait around all the while getting more snippy and less kind toward the genie.
And I keep flip flopping on the genie's sex, because what first put this into my head was coming across a description of some old movie where the dude was lusting after one woman while a hot female genie who was enamored with him was right fucking there, and that female genie setup could work just fine, and I'm sure you can see where it would go, but at the same time, I'm me, and I put trans stuff everywhere, and the genie realizing she's trans would work fine too.
Genie's been locked in a bottle/lamp/mystery box/jar/whatever for a long time, depending on the culture they were in beforehand, the entire concept of being trans might be unknown to the genie.
So you could have:
Object of affection: Hey, thanks for standing up for [name] back there, she gets a lot of flack for being trans, and she deserves better.
Genie: Trans?
Object of affection: Oh, you didn't know? Well, thanks anyway.
Genie: What's trans?
Object of affection: Wow, you don't . . . sorry, that sounds condescending, I just . . . it's like . . . ok, so, when you're born the doctor looks at you and says, "It's a boy," or, "It's a girl," but some people, when they grow up, they realize the doctor was wrong.
Genie: So, what, they just decide, "I'm a girl now," and...
Object of affection: Something like that.
Genie: That's an option?
Object of affection: I wouldn't call it "an option" per se, you either are trans or you're not, but it is something some people realize.
*genie stares blankly into space*
Object of affection: Are you . . . ok?
Genie: How . . . how do you know if you're trans?
Object of affection: Um, well, I'm not really the best person to describe this because I'm--
Genie: It's ok, I'm not . . . I'm not gonna get mad at you for not being the most knowledgeable, and I'm not gonna hate you if you say something wrong, but . . . but . . . please . . . how do you know if you're trans?
Object of affection: Well, I think you . . . just . . . try out other genders, like, try out a new name, or a new haircut, get some gender coded clothes and see how you feel when you wear them, take . . . take like a test drive of being another gender, and if it feels right, if it feels like you're more your true self while you're trying that than you are normally, then you're probably trans. *pause* Or at least gender non-conforming. I . . . like, stuff is complicated, and I'm not an expert, but just . . . try. Preferably with friends you can trust, but even just at home on your own, you can just . . . experiment, I guess. I'm . . . I'm really not the best person to ask.
Genie: (mostly to self) I don't really have any friends.
Object of affection: I'm your friend.
*genie blinks*
Genie: We barely know each other.
Object of affection: I mean, true, but I like talking to you, and I think you like talking to me, and we've had fun hanging out right?
Genie: (somewhat weak/disbelieving) I guess. (normal) I honestly thought I was bothering you.
Object of affection: (cheerfully) Well you thought wrong; I've had a great time.
Genie: (doubtful) Really?
Object of affection: Really. *pause* "And if you're really thinking . . . wondering . . . uh . . . if you're really that, why don't we go clothes shopping together?
Genie: I . . . um . . . but . . .
Object of affection: You can say no. It's fine to say no. This is . . . a lot to spring on you all at once, and it's not like I . . . I mean, I thought you already knew, so it was an incredibly rough introduction, but . . . I don't know; you've been really nice to me, and if I can help you figure yourself out, I'd like to, and it's . . . (expression changes, shoulders drop) it's probably a stupid idea, but (rambling) I just got it into my head that there was this thing that I could do for you that might help you a lot, and then I'd be like . . . I don't know, a hero or something, but really what I'm trying to do is convince you to do something you're clearly not comfortable with, and that's not nice, and I should probably be ashamed of--
Genie: Where would we shop?
Object of affection: (completely lost) What?
Genie: If we went clothes shopping, where would we go?
Object of affection: I . . . um . . . so the thing is *beat* I have no plan. I'm just saying whatever comes to mind because I don't know what I'm doing, but . . . I think that would probably depend on how much money you have to spend.
Genie: (half serious, half playful) Money is no object for me, it's a complex and convoluted story full of lies intrigue and and things man is not meant to know--
Object of affection: Not a man.
Genie: (smiling) Things beyond one's mortal ken.
Object of affection: I love seeing you smile.
*genie blushes*
*pause*
Genie: Uh . . . you pick the place.
And then genie transitions, and the story eventually ends with the two of them becoming lovers while dude is left on his own.
He doesn't manage his wealth the best, his power crumbles with it, and he probably somehow ends up losing his gaming systems too, because by the end of the story you realize he's a misogynistic, homophobic, transphobe, so no happy ending for him.
That's where this originally ended but I'm gonna spitball some more stuff.
Definite happy endings for the genie and love interest. In a world with magic beings like genies there's probably some force that's a limiting factor on how much one can do to change the world with one's magic, but whatever the uncrossable line is, genie would routinely go right up to it, with her probably-anarchist definitely social justice conscious girlfriend (and eventual wife) helping her figure out the most good she could do with her power.
Also, they probably have every gaming system on earth, running on magic with a negative carbon footprint, because why should the jerk be the only one to have that going for them?
Food, water, shelter, medical care, education, and videogames for the underclasses of whatever place they happen to live in. Videogames mostly just because I said that that the dude used a wish to get every gaming system, but also because entertainment is important in itself.
The local library may end up bigger on the inside with an impossibly comprehensive collection. People who don't want poor people in the library will find their fortunes suddenly take a turn for the crap end of the spectrum, and all will know, especially children, that if you need a safe, warm, and dry place to be during the day, you can go to the library and read all day.
[You can stop reading here, things are about to go off the rails hard.]
[Hard enough for me to go back after I finished writing and add this note before posting.]
The genie and love interest may end up with an impossible pet, just because. An adorable little velociraptor, a dodo--
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Ok, I just did a search for "coolest extinct animals" to find something to put after "dodo" as an option, and the top of the list google decided to pick as its definitive list was "Neanderthals", and yes, fucking yes, they deserve so much credit for being awesome.
The oldest surviving art on earth (that we've discovered) is a Neanderthal hand stencil. You know, hand stencils being the thing that children do to this day. These people were so much like us, and one of the few things we know about them is that they cared for the sick and injured. People who required more work done to keep them alive and healthy than they could ever do in return, but Neanderthals did that work because fuck capitalism and fuck the idea that someone needs to earn their right to be alive.
"Neanderthal" needs to stop being an insult and start being something we recognize as sadly departed family.
If we'd understood the dangers of habitat fragmentation and the resulting inbreeding a hundred thousand years ago, they might still be with us, but back then no one knew that staying in an isolated village for untold generations would spell your doom. If they'd known they had travel to other villages and interbreed to survive, they were more than capable. It sucks that we lost an entire branch of our family tree just because, when they didn't have a compelling reason to migrate, they preferred to stay home instead of chase the horizon.
That search result is obviously useless for picking an impossibly cool genie-summoned pet, because I should have been searching for "coolest extinct non-human animals", but I am none the less glad I saw it, because fuck do we need to be less racist and give more credit.
Pretty much every new result about Neanderthals says that we've been unfairly maligning them. (Also, the fact that we're only willing to consider the possibility that a tool was their doing if we know for a fact that anatomically modern humans weren't in the region when it was made is just fucky. We know there are tools they made, their teeth show evidence of them creating cords, so on, so forth. We just want all the credit for ourselves.)
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Anyway, that's a long tangent completely unrelated to the rest of the post, but this is actually important to me because they're not just our family, they're also, for all of us who have heritage outside of sub-Saharan Africa, our ancestors. They're part of us (for the value of "us" in the previous sentence.) They deserve our respect, and also we should be proud of that heritage, because they figured out shit that had never been figured out before.
(Unless new research has changed our understanding...) The only reason they're not a larger part of us is that the Neanderthal Y chromosome doesn't seem to mix well with something in modern human genetics. The modern human X chromosome would be my first guess, but given that any half-breed also would have one each of all the modern human non-sex chromosomes, it could have been anywhere in our genetic code.
. . .
I don't know, it just pisses me off when people disrespect Neanderthals, because what precious little we know about the kind of people they were says they were altruistic, and for people like me, they're part of us. Not distant cousins; distant ancestors.
Also, while there are other things we may de-extinct, I think they're gone for good. Even if we did bring them back, their culture would be lost, but I don't think we can ethically bring them back regardless, because we can't even treat other modern humans with dignity and respect, so if there were another species of human, we'd label them subhuman and curtail all their rights.
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Back on point, Tasmanian tigers are smaller than I realized, and with magic involved to keep it from eating your face, it could be a viable impossible pet, and for a larger option . . .
Wait, Quagga aren't extinct anymore?
. . .
Oh, they still are, but there's a project to breed something Quagga-like from their closest surviving relatives. Anyway, I was thinking something smaller, hence velociraptor being at the front of the list, but I do love equines.
And rather than go on further unrelated tangents, I'm gonna end there.
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It was suggested in a comment that microraptor could be an impossible pet. I approve of this.
If you've never heard of a microraptor, look them up. We know a surprisingly large amount about them given how long they've been gone; like the fact their feathers were iridescent which is not something I would have expected to be determinable based on fossils.
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