Idra Fallow
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idrafallow.bsky.social
Idra Fallow
@idrafallow.bsky.social
300 followers 95 following 1.1K posts
Garden hermit. Occasional persona of
Pinko Scare.
she/her
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idrafallow.bsky.social
CW: gross
When the insects had all disappeared—down my throat or deeper into the rocks—my frenzy ended. I rinsed my hands and mouth, fought the urge to vomit, and continued my journey north.
December 31, 2025 at 3:44 PM
idrafallow.bsky.social
I've started a just-for-funsies wip, which is an epistolary novel told from the perspectives of two supporting characters in my almost-completed first novel. I don't think this is one I'll ever care to publish but I am having a lot of fun.
December 31, 2025 at 11:04 AM
idrafallow.bsky.social
One of my favorite little pieces of world-building. #WIPSnips
Abashu was hiding behind his shroud again the following morning. A weak, watery haze stained the edge of the eastern sky, while the rest remained a brooding shade of dark blue-grey, blank and starless as a piece of flint. It was a fittingly somber dawn—the first day of the festival was for honoring the dead.
December 31, 2025 at 4:25 AM
idrafallow.bsky.social
A new scene I wrote yesterday! It was not an easy one to get right but I'm pleased with how it came out. Names removed for spoiler reasons, as usual. And I'm subbing "strike" for "clobber." #WIPSnips #WriteSky
He shook his head and said nothing more. I stood. He remained kneeling at my feet, gazing up at me. My hand twitched with the urge to strike him. But we were in the Mother’s house, inside the circle, and any violence I did to him would break the edicts, though he was free to hurt me as he pleased. “You want me to be grateful.” He bowed his head. “I wish only to be merciful, and to serve the Mother.” I glared down at him, breathing hard, my blood a deafening drumbeat in my ears. As frightened as I’d been before, my anger was even worse. I was sick with it. I could not endure it. “Fuck you.” There was nothing more I could do or say, and so I left. I fell into the stars, I fell into the earth. I was swallowed by the hungry, pressing, black.
December 29, 2025 at 5:59 PM
Reposted by Idra Fallow
foxes.hourly.media
December 23, 2025 at 5:27 AM
idrafallow.bsky.social
This interview really resonates for me. Inside me there are two wolves (sorry, couldn't resist, wolves are a theme in my wip). One wants to write a fun, engaging fantasy novel. The other wants to write a long, pensive, somewhat weird and uncomfortable exploration of human social organization.
annakornbluh.bsky.social Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 11d
"the novel has all of this technology we don’t use anymore. there has been a wholesale deaccessioning of narrative technology from the novel as a form"

instead:
scale, mediation, Lukacs, 3rd person, full Dickens, full Morrison - all the IMMEDIACY keywords
countercraft.substack.com/p/processing...
Processing: How Brandon Taylor Wrote Minor Black Figures
The author on embodied characters, writing process, and how “a novel should show people fighting and striving against and with and for and alongside each other.”
countercraft.substack.com
December 22, 2025 at 5:16 PM
idrafallow.bsky.social
Another one about wolves, because why not? #WIPSnips
A long, mournful cry split the night. I stopped walking, head tilted, listening for the answering calls. But none came. The faraway wolf howled again, a lonely keening. I should have been afraid of it. I was afraid of it. But in that moment, I felt an ache of sadness for the creature. Where were its fellows? Its family, its pack? Wolves weren’t meant to run alone. It called again, and a mad urge to answer seized me. I drew a breath, cupped my hands around my mouth, and let out my own mournful, keening cry. I’m here too, and alone like you. A long pause. I thought perhaps the wolf was not fooled by my imitation. But then there came another howl, rising high and then deepening at the end. We are together in our aloneness.
December 19, 2025 at 1:50 PM
Reposted by Idra Fallow
tangledwilderness.bsky.social
As makers of anarchist zines, we are asking you to help this person who was arrested and is facing deportation for allegedly having anarchist zines.
December 4, 2025 at 9:18 PM
Reposted by Idra Fallow
mobydickatsea.bsky.social
I thought I might as well go below and make a rough draft of my will.
December 18, 2025 at 7:47 AM
idrafallow.bsky.social
This dude's lawyer is amazing
wereallyloveluigi.bsky.social 💚 24 / 7 Luigi Mangione Posts @wereallyloveluigi.bsky.social · 15d
UPDATE: in September, Luigi's bogus terrorism charges were dropped and he was cleared off all terroristic allegations. Today, the judge ruled the interrogation of Luigi Mangione inadmissible due to failure of police to Mirandize him and Luigi's repeated statements that he did not wish to talk.
Luigi Mangione looking thankful in court
December 17, 2025 at 2:54 AM
idrafallow.bsky.social
Finally got to a chapter that didn't need rewriting.
December 16, 2025 at 12:43 PM
idrafallow.bsky.social
Subbing in "damp" for this one.
I didn’t want for water, at least. There were springs hiding in the rocks, and shallow streams of snowmelt trickling away down the hillsides. And if I couldn’t find a spring or stream, there was always the morning dew. It formed droplets on the cedar branches and wet my clothes and hair. In the heat of the day, my damp tunic clung to my sticky skin, and at night I shivered, unable to get warm in my sodden garments.
December 16, 2025 at 12:37 PM
idrafallow.bsky.social
I'm the guy taking two stars off from my goodreads review of "Totemism" by Lévi-Strauss because it's "not an enjoyable read" and requires the reader already be familiar with early 20th century Structuralist anthropologists.
December 16, 2025 at 12:32 PM
idrafallow.bsky.social
I keep getting myself stuck doing this rewrite. There's all these things that I realized needed more emphasis, and I'm having a very hard time accomplishing that without making this much longer and/or fully rewriting every chapter. :(
December 15, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Reposted by Idra Fallow
miawong.bsky.social
They're just Doing It lol

Moreover, ICE must be destroyed
Murder is actually really frowned in Japan. It goes against the traditional concept of 生きる, which means "to live"
December 15, 2025 at 3:43 PM
idrafallow.bsky.social
Another one where I have a lot of choices. My characters love a good blanket. #WIPSnips
Outside, the wind howled on. We rejoined the other two, and all of us wrapped ourselves up in our blankets. The patch of sky above the smoke hole grew darker, the shadows slipped inside, and the fire in the hearth burned low. Around us, the conversations dropped to whispers.
December 15, 2025 at 3:41 PM
idrafallow.bsky.social
If you don't have a brooding boy somewhere in the story, is it really a bildungsroman? #WIPSnips #WriteSky
The flames had gone out now. All that remained was a clutch of embers glowing red in the surrounding black, but it cast enough light that I could see his scowl, the furrows on his brow, his mouth a thin, tense line. “What else is troubling you?” I asked.
December 14, 2025 at 12:04 PM
Reposted by Idra Fallow
charliesaito22.bsky.social
December 13, 2025 at 4:40 PM
idrafallow.bsky.social
Last one for the day, I promise!

This is one of the visions my protag has, which are based on Mesopotamian myths. This one is from Inanna's Descent to the Nether World, made available by Oxford University's Electronic Corpus of Sumerian Literature etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr1...
My minister went to my father’s house to make her lamentations. She stood before my father. She lacerated her eyes before my father. Before my father, she lacerated her nose and ears. She beat the drum and said to him: “Do not let anyone kill your daughter in the underworld. Do not let them kill your daughter in Ganzir.” My father bowed his head in grief and sorrow. “What has she done? What has my daughter done? What has the mistress of heaven done?” To the spirits he said: “Go and direct your steps to the underworld. Go and direct your steps to Ganzir. Flit in past the boundary stones like flies. Slip in through the entryway like phantoms. They will offer you a riverfull of water. They will offer you a field of grain. Do not accept it. Say instead ‘Give us the corpse hanging on the hook.’ Take the corpse of my daughter from the underworld. Do not let them kill her in Ganzir.”
December 13, 2025 at 5:45 PM
idrafallow.bsky.social
I do have "fourth," but it's referring to the calendar which I did already with "third." So instead I'm using "quarter," of which there are many instances, since circles and moons feature heavily in this story.

Also, one of my favorite conlang words, which means "little snake" :)
I emerged from the forest further west around the circle than I usually did. It was disorienting, as if the world had turned without my noticing. And of course there were the usual stares and whispers. I kept my eyes low as I walked along the edge near the treeline and tried not to hear the laughter drifting from the camps I passed. I almost made it to the southern quarter without anyone talking to me. But not quite. “You’re far from your part of the circle, aren’t you, inishkat?”
December 13, 2025 at 5:30 PM
idrafallow.bsky.social
I don't have "design," but here's a description of one, and also a character introduction I'm rather fond of.
There was a shout behind me, and I turned around. One of the youths—a girl several years my junior—stood on the rock where I’d left my things. She shouted to me again.  “Kalay!” I swam over to meet her. She crouched down, I folded my arms onto the rock, and we matched each other’s curious stares. She was slim, long-limbed, her skin the golden-brown of grain grass ready to be threshed. Tattoos in black ink followed the contours of her collar bones and curved along her shoulders, vines and dots and hatchmarks. “Han’ta mahk?” she said. I recognized the same words Chalīr had spoken when I first saw them, though I still didn’t know what they meant. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” She pulled her long, dripping hair over her shoulder and wrung it out. “I ask you who you are.”
December 13, 2025 at 5:20 PM
idrafallow.bsky.social
I have not posted many snips showing the "magic" in my wip. I fear this one is a touch spoiler-y, but I like my writing here.
He pulled me with him past the Caul. We fell together into murky water, drifted in a gentle current. His mind and mine mingling together until I no longer knew where my own self ended and his began. I felt the full force of the thing I’d seen in him the first time he held me in his gaze. A yearning for some indefinable thing he could not hold onto and did not understand, and yet he sought it anyway. It overwhelmed me, it reached inside me, filled my nose, my throat, my lungs. I thought I would drown in his desire, but then that too faded, chased away by a vision not my own. A woman stood before a mountain. She raised her arms and demanded it submit to her. Her voice was music, her voice was thunder, her voice was the first rainstorm of spring. The mountain cowered and crumbled at her feet in a violent cloud of ash and fire. It barreled over me, swallowed me up and swept me along, then spat me back out into the here-and-now.
December 13, 2025 at 5:11 PM
idrafallow.bsky.social
I don't have "smash" but I do have "mash," which is pretty close. And the grain mash is one of my favorite thematic items in this story.
He placed the bowl in my hands. It was very unlike the hollow gourds I’d been served from the day before. This one was carved from dark wood, incised all over with squares of alternating horizontal and vertical lines to resemble a woven basket. The portion of grain mash it held was mixed with dried prickleberries, dark red specks among the brown, coarse-ground grain.
December 13, 2025 at 5:05 PM
idrafallow.bsky.social
My favorite scene, but I say that about every scene with this character :)
I shifted where I sat, crossed my legs, straightened my back.  “I’m ready.” She took my wrist and stretched my arm across her knees. “We start with the tail, then work upward.” She pointed with the needle cluster, tracing a path through the air just above my arm. “If you coward, you stuck with headless snake.” I nodded. “So no screaming, no crying. And no fainting, neither.” “Alright, I’ll do my best.” Screaming and crying I could hold back, but I wasn’t sure I had much control over fainting. She raised an eyebrow. “I mean it. No fainting, or you fail. And then you have half a snake on you, so everybody see how you fail.”
December 13, 2025 at 4:58 PM
idrafallow.bsky.social
Things I like about this book:
-archaeology nerd shit
-soft magic system that refuses to say if the magic is "real"
-animism
-critique of gender and civilization
-loving critique of anarchism
-thicc! (idk the word count but I love a long read)
-bittersweet, hopeful ending
-three genres in one!
December 13, 2025 at 4:18 PM