meowcats734

[meowcats734]

When I came to, it was well past dark in Songserra. I warned the reconstruction workers that the sword had some kind of aura of death, but was otherwise harmless; indeed, once I’d managed to communicate to the blade that we simply wanted to move it out of the ruined battlefield, it ceased its psychic warning signals and allowed a few remotely-piloted golems to draw near. I made sure to schedule a follow-up, and made a mental note to ask if Ana wanted to come. From context, the blade was crafted by one of Songserra’s extraplanar allies that had been called in to deal with the Twenty-Seventh Magic… and had never managed to return. Even though sending the artefact back to its home dimension was likely impossible, maybe it would appreciate knowing someone else who lived through that clusterfuck.

Maybe Ana would, too.

The demolished city blocks were far enough away that the satellites visibly jumped in the sky when I walked back through the portal to Songserra proper. I took the tram back instead of walking and spent fifteen minutes staring at the magic mirrors on the walls as they tried to figure out what advertisements I’d be most receptive to in my exhausted, work-drained state. The mirrors settled on a family membership that gave out stimulants in exchange for kindergarten tutoring. There were families for everything nowadays, huh.

I hopped off the tram and made a stop by the supply depot to burn through a day’s grocery rations, picking up some shitty plastic oven mitts and a cheap poncho. Our two-bedroom apartment was just down the street; I buzzed myself in. Really, it was a one-bedroom nowadays; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept alone. The metallic scent our pipes gave off when they got hot filled the air before I even opened the door. Ana was home, then, and had been here long enough to shower.

She was curled up in one corner of the couch, hugging her knees to her chest as if trying to fold herself up into the smallest space possible. Flowers curled out from under her fresh clothes, little vines and buds weeping corrosive sap that discolored her t-shirt and shorts wherever they touched. I sat down next to her; wordlessly, she looked up and let her legs drop.

“I look like a man, don’t I?” Ana asked.

I shook my head, taking out the oven mitt and folding it into a pillow. Her acidic skin sizzled faintly as a few of my stray hairs dissolved, but I could lay my head on her shoulder and that was all that mattered. She smelled of petrichor; she felt solid, warm, and real. “Not to me,” I said.

“...Guess that’s good enough.” She let me share her weight, leaning into me as I leaned into her, and I set down the poncho so that I could swing my legs onto her lap. “How was work?”

I shrugged. “Took a talking sword quest. They’re a veteran of Twenty-Seventh as well, if you wanted to talk to them.”

Ana carefully folded the poncho over my legs, so that she wouldn’t burn me where we touched, and set one hand on my knee. “You can tell me later. There’s… there’s something I need to ask.”

I shifted around to glance at her face; her eyelids were closed, and my hair fluttered with her breath. “Go ahead,” I said.

She opened her eyes. They weren’t always green. “Do you ever think you’d be happier with someone else?”

The sheer absurdity caught me off-guard. “What? No. Never.”

“...Okay,” she said. Ana bit her lip. “I believe you.”

I slipped my hand into one of the oven mitts to hold her cheek. Acid sizzled against my gloved palm. “Did something happen while I was away?” I asked.

Ana shook her head, then leaned into the motion, nuzzling my hand with her cheek like a cat. Despite my worry, I managed to smile. “No. No, I just…” She gestured at all the layers of plastic we had to wear just to be close to each other without her mutated body burning me. “I mean, what kind of relationship did you dream of having when you were a kid? I know it wasn’t this. No child thinks ‘I wish my future girlfriend had to be wrapped up like a slab of steak every time I wanted a hug.’”

“It’s not perfect,” I admitted. “But I want to be with you anyway.”

I traced Ana’s cheek with my thumb, and she leaned into the touch like an eager cat.

“...Thank you. I… I think I had to hear that.” She inhaled, breathed in the same air I breathed out, and said, “I… I had to know. I had to hear you say that, because… I’m going to fix this. I’m going to make myself human again. And I don’t want you to worry that it’s because of you.”

To be honest, the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. But I knew what it was like to live in a world dominated by anxieties, and even though I’d never pry, I had a feeling this was one of those thoughts. The shadows of someone you cared about that grew larger the further they were from you, cast on the inside of your mind. 

“I’m with you,” I promised. “Whatever it takes.”

“Okay.” Ana breathed out, all at once, and said, “I want to get Thom’s forgiveness.”

“Thom?” I asked. “We were just doing our job, and Thom was doing… well, one of the few things that could have actually taken me out of play for good.”

“I know. But I still put them in the hospital. Because they were a kid with too much power and hurting things is all I’m good for and—agh. This is exactly why, don’t you see?” I squeezed her tighter as she clenched her jaw, held her until I could feel the tension in her shoulders through my palms. “Magic is… it’s just a trick of perspective, when it comes down to it. I’m like this because I see myself like this. I see myself as someone who it hurts to touch. So maybe… maybe if Thom forgives me… it’ll… fade.”

And if he doesn’t? I wanted to ask. But now wasn’t the time to rip holes in her theory, not now that she had a goal again. I wouldn’t take that from her, ever. “I’ll do what I can to help,” I said.

She held me back, not replying, and I took that as acceptance. This, finally, was something I could help with. Some part of the world I could push out of the way so that Ana’s path would be clear. First thing tomorrow, I was talking to Thom. And I was damn well making sure that Ana would get the forgiveness she needed.

A.N.

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That nonsexual intimacy of just being in each other's spaces, of gravitating towards each other, always subconsciously reaching out to each other. Finding comfort and satisfaction in being close to each other, breathing each other in, existing together.

[meowcats734]

I finally caught up on The Orchard of Once and Onlies. Thank you for writing, I’m really enjoying it! :)

You're welcome, and thanks for reading! Updates every Sunday.

[meowcats734]

The sword was not, in fact, otherworldly. Just like the ruined city around it, the half-meter shaft of luminous metal had been wrought by mortal hands. Just like the people who created it, the blade now brought senseless death to all who were unlucky enough to still be fighting over this insignificant patch of land. Just like the soldiers of the Twenty-Seventh Magic, the sword had no choice in the matter.

A child crested the crater surrounding the blade.

It had been designed to function as part of a grander construct, and though the blade’s higher functions were all but disabled, it still had plenty of energy stored in reserve. It blared out a warning in a language nobody who lived here knew, and the child startled, nearly falling as they raised a rock.

Curiously, they peeked their head over the crater’s rim, seeing nothing but rubble. The blade screamed its warning again, but the child would not be deterred. Frantically, it shifted tactics. It had not been designed to break language barriers, but the civilization that designed it knew that their creations tended to grow sapient when left untended for long enough. Connecting with entirely foreign minds was a standard ability granted to their creations, and the sword utilized the one tool it was given. It projected an image of what would occur if the child drew closer—the sores opening up on their skin, the weeping of their flesh as their insides sloughed out, the nausea and dizziness before their fall.

The child shrieked and drew back. Of the many terrors left behind in this wasteland, the blade was a lesser evil; certainly not an intentional or active one. It was the most and least the blade could do to serve something resembling its original purpose. 

And so the blade felt grateful as the child fled into the wasteland. It was surrounded by the still-rotting corpses of those who had tried to claim its power for their own. May there be one less person slaughtered by its interminable existence.

Rain sizzled and evaporated on the ever-burning blade, sun competed and failed to outshine the pale blue glow, but the blade remained unscathed by time and the elements. Until screams rang out across the empty rubble, until the frantic footfalls and yelps of agony that the sword knew heralded death drew near once more. 

They were a child no longer, hair ragged and dark, left arm missing from the elbow up. But they sprinted at a pace that the blade could scarcely believe, two boulder-sized, matte-black beetles close in pursuit. The blade readied their warning call once more, broadcasting the vision of demise through all minds in the vicinity—

And the child kept sprinting, unfazed. Both insects staggered, stunned, and the child took advantage of their distraction to flee. They leapt across the crater’s ridges as the blade watched, astounded. The child was surely doomed regardless. The skittering, armored creatures would recover and tear the lone survivor apart.

Unless someone did something. Unless the blade remembered a time before it was a sword. 

There was no decision to be made. The blade shrieked in the beetles’ minds, hurling their senses into unreality. The child skidded to a halt, catching their breath, but the sword was only dimly aware of their movements as they overloaded the mutated predators’ feeble consciousnesses. The blade hurled out every horror they’d witnessed, from the moment the city became ash and glass to the eternal nightmare of the ruined wasteland. They screamed out every death they’d witnessed, so many of which they’d caused, into a vessel which could comprehend little and feared all.

The beetles’ will broke. They scattered before the telepathic assault. Gradually, the here and now returned to the sword, its exhaust fans whirring to life.

The child had collapsed where they stood, too tired to hold up their trembling limbs. But before they fell unconscious, the blade felt something radiating from their mind, as powerful and real as the death that still haunted this crater.

Gratitude. 

A.N.

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Enriched uranium sword with a lead sheathe that is rumored to slowly kill its owner in exchange for god killing power.

[meowcats734]

I pulled out my phone and started scouring the Orchard listings. The jobs weren’t great today. DEVIL TORTURING HUMANS WITHOUT A CONTRACT? Problematic, but I’d had enough of devils for a week after the Shrimp Sex debacle. HOT LONELY TRAPPED INSIDE OVERHEATING BUILDING? I hated dealing with temperature control, but I forwarded the job posting to a good Firefighter I knew. SWORD REFUSES TO LEAVE STONE?

That sounded like something I could handle. I was good at telling people when they had to move on. I opened the dossier. While renovating an old apartment complex, Hammerwall found some sapient war relic. Nobody really wanted to undergo construction while a telepathic sword was screaming at them, so they put out a bounty and hoped someone would convince it to leave. Fair enough. 

There was no conflicting magic localized on my body, so instead of the trams I just went straight to the portal network. A ragged creature with six arms and insectile chitin desultorily held up a sign that read NEED FAMILY in old Kessil glyphs. I swapped contacts with them and added their account to my family for a week—they signed something I couldn’t understand and sent back a favor token. Aside from the beggar, the portal stop was largely empty, so I just navigated my way to the right door and walked on through.

Hammerwall was one of those families that devoted itself to clearing out the minefields left over from Twenty-Seventh Magic, and from the looks of the place, they’d done good work. Ghostbusters were hauling canisters of goblin and paladin souls to their next of kin, Clouds were straining the nanites out of the water system, and I even saw another Orchard talking to a very angry floating chestplate. The war-torn suburbia was paved clean for nearly half a kilometer, fresh foundations being laid while spectives shoveled rubble through interdimensional gateways. I nodded to the definer watching over the proceedings, showing them my membership sigil. Their strigine eyes flickered over my phone.

“Nonbiological technology and magic needs to be left outside the workzone,” the definer said, ruffling their wings. I set down my phone in the nearby lockers, one of which rattled worryingly, and headed off towards my assigned area. 

It was easy to fall back into the rhythm of work. I had a job to do, and everything else in my life could be safely tucked away on the other side of the portal. I was confident, focused, and collected, which was the only reason why the telepathic screaming didn’t bowl me over the instant I got in range.

The world around me wavered, flickering like a projection on smoke, and I was at the bottom of a dark and starless well. Water drifted upwards in weightless globs around me while my body was crushed into the ground, as if all the gravity in the world had been focused solely on me. 

But I had been here before. I had long since made accord with the insecurities and self-loathing roiling in my own skull; nothing that anyone else could project into my mind could be worse.

The rules around telepathy were different for every spective, but according to the dossier, the war relic’s abilities were closer to a conversation than a lecture. And so I replied with my answer to the pit. Someone else might have told a story of how they got back up, how they joined the wellspring and drifted into the night. I’m sure those people wouldn’t even have been lying. But that was never how my story would end.

I envisioned the bottom of the well cracking under my weight, felt bricks and earth and stone dig into my hilt and blade, and then—all at once—let it go. I fell through where rock bottom should have been, into a tunnel that bored through the heart of the world,  into a space devoid of light and end. With nothing pushing back against me, no matter how much I was weighed down, it felt like nothing more than freefall.

The relic’s mind reeled back from mine, shivering, and the wind picked up around us as we fell. Were we falling faster, or was time itself shifting? The ambiguity was, I suspected, the point that the alien mind of the living steel was attempting to get across. We began to shrink, or move further away from ourselves, our body the only thing for kilometers around—

Except in one place. I wrote them into the center of the world, and though we whipped past them too fast to make out anything but a blur the first time, and the second time, and the third, as we slowed and sank towards the center of this planet, they came into view. Seen through the senses of the blade, they were nothing more than points of light, thinking minds in the dumb leagues of rock, but to me they were Ana and Zem and Sha and all the other people who had fallen down pits of their own, who knew they could never reach the skies they once beheld but found ways to drift along weightlessly anyway.

This was my answer to the question the sword had posed, the plea that was not a plea but a memory, the memory that was not a memory but a metaphor. And though our souls were different enough that we could never share a language expressed through words, as the earth dissolved and left us staring at the distant stars, I felt the blade’s intent as they handed control of this shared dreamscape to me for a moment. Like giving an author a blank page, a painter a fresh canvas, the sword let me reshape that beautiful sky.

What were your stars?

And oh, the tales I could tell this blade. I rewove the constellations into the barest glimpse of who I had been, the simple village I had hailed from time and worlds away, and the day I’d been ripped from my place among the heavens and cast down into the void. And though I’d given up going back long ago, I’d found new stars. Glimmering in the heart and minds of the people I could still devote myself to.

The constellations blurred. The night was always brighter through tears.

Somewhere else, I wiped my eyes. Here, I loosened my hold on the reins, giving them back to the relic.

I showed you my skies. What were yours?

A.N.

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Concept: cursed blade rehabilitation center. Destroying a sentient weapon is expensive and highly unethical, so adventurers bring them to the center where highly trained staff can care for them and eventually find them forever homes. It turns out most cursed weapons are products of trauma and are not strictly evil themselves. Some blades turn out to be fiercely protective companions. Others don't even want to be weapons at all, finding joy in simple work like blacksmithing or farming. Most blades just need to be loved.

[meowcats734]

“You don’t have to stay with me,” Ana said.

I glanced over at her. Sampson began to sprout vines from the cracks in his bones when he got too close to her altered body, so Ana was watching him gnaw at a stick with an achingly empty expression.

“Are you saying that because you think I’d rather be somewhere else? Or because you want time to yourself?” I asked.

The only sound was Sampson’s teeth gnashing around the stick. He tried to bring the stick to us, but Ana whistled sharply, pointed downwards, and he dropped the stick, confused. The blue flames around his ears dipped a tiny bit lower.  “I… I want time to myself,” she said.

“Of course.” I made sure not to stand up too quickly or look away. Made sure to hide the way my stomach dropped and the doubts that never dared show themself around Ana whispered she wants you gone, you hurt her by existing, you should never have dated her. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Tsu?” Ana asked, and fuck, there was nothing more beautiful than the simple fact that she wanted me to stay a moment longer. She met my eyes and said, “I’ll be back by sundown. Promise.”

“It’s a date,” I said, and she closed her eyes, basking in the words.

I let that warmth carry me out of the cemetery. I think I got out of her line of sight before the anxieties came back.

You need to help her.

“This is helping her,” I muttered to myself. 

This is your fault.

“What’s my fault?” I asked.

Everything.

“So the good stuff’s my fault too?”

The nattering anxieties quieted down for a second. Then, as if the past few seconds had never happened, the thoughts came surging back. You don’t deserve to exist.

Fucking hell. There was a reason I related so much to Thom. Speaking of which… that was when Ana’s spectivity started, wasn’t it? The guilt around hospitalizing Thom? Maybe I could reach out to him, see if I could arrange a meeting. I had the right to follow up on a previous client…

Ugh, not right now, though. Not when I couldn’t tell how much of what I was thinking was me and how much of it was a desperate need to fix and save and protect because how else can you repay the world for the cost of your existence, how else can you justify continuing to exist—

“Ana would be miserable if I died,” I said, slowly. A construction worker in a reflective vest gave me a quizzical look as I passed, and I shook my head. “It’s not like I’m physically capable of dying, anyway.”

The anxieties, of course, ignored such minor things as whether or not something was actually possible. She wants you gone.

“She wants time to herself. Not the same thing.” There was no reasoning with the buzzing chorus in my head, but I could maybe convince myself that was true if I said it aloud. Still, I’d probably be better off trying to distract myself. Ana had come into her spectivity while in another dimension, and that mingling of magics had mangled the process. Even if she managed to let go of the moment that conceived her new form, it was tainted by mixing with Erishen’s strain on the local worldskein. If I could convince Erishen to help us, though, we could unweave both aspects of Ana’s spective form—

I inhaled. Held it for three beats. Exhaled. Held it for three beats. Obsessing over Ana would admittedly soothe the anxieties, but it wouldn’t be good for me. 

Doesn’t matter what’s good for you. It would help her.

“She loves me,” I whispered. “She wants me to be okay. And this isn’t me being okay. It would hurt her if I never gave her space.”

Maybe that’s okay. 

I flinched.

Maybe you need to keep an eye on her. For her own good.

“So that’s what this is about.” I think it was almost a relief, realizing that part of me was an overbearing control freak. It fit well into my perception of myself. “You don’t really want to help Ana. You want to know she’s okay.”

What’s the difference?

“I can walk away.” And I did. This was far from my first time having to deal with the thoughts that thrived in the emptiness where Ana should be. If I couldn’t help her, I’d find someone else to aid.

A.N.

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[meowcats734]

It feels impossible to get out of bed. I'm not tied down or injured, not that I can tell. I've even dreamed I stood up, that I made myself my first meal in months. I wake up staring at the ceiling every time.

It's not like I get bored, or that I'm in any real danger. I think my metabolism slowed down—maybe it's from all the sleeping. I took a nap last week and woke up today, still feeling like I had a bee's nest where my brain should be. I looked it up, and the longest you're supposed to go without water is just a few days. I had a water bottle at some point, but I drank it all in the first month or so. Never came out the other end, either, so that's a plus. My phone's plugged in and there's no signs of it wearing down any time soon, so I have all the internet I could ever need. Honestly, I could see myself living like this for the rest of my life. Barely waking up, dreaming of standing, returning to sleep for another week or month or year.

I do have some regrets, though. If anyone lives in near the University of Michigan, could you look for a little black and white tabby? I found him as a stray, back when I could still get up and walk, and he put his trust in me. He begged me to feed him. I stopped hearing from him after the last time I slept. I hope he got out somehow. He deserved better.

I'm feeling quite tired now. I closed my eyes, just for a moment, and I thought I was still awake. I imagined that I was getting up, grasping the doorknob as the blood drained from my head and everything went all faint and white, and I dreamed that when I opened my eyes I was still standing. I knew it wasn't real when I saw him curled up by the kitchen, still waiting by his food bowl. It's an old pie tin, because I never expected to bring a little one into my life and I didn't have the time for anything more. In the dream, he wakes up when I walk in the room and he forgives me, or does not even know there is anything to forgive. He purrs when he sees me, that unconditional love and trust in his eyes as he twines himself around my ankles. And I crack open a tin of food and he laps it up, tail swishing in joy, and for just a moment I can imagine that he is still alive.

I just opened my eyes again. He's gone, of course. The house is closed. The air is stale and still. If I get up and look around, I will see where he has collapsed, weakly, betrayed, hiding his illness from predators. From monsters. From me.

I think I'm going back to sleep.

(more by me)

[meowcats734]

Ask five Songserrans how they process grief, and you’ll get ten different answers. For those of us who still needed to eat and drink, there were quiet restaurants serving dark, salty broth that went well with failure and cost nothing but a promise. Anyone who had ears or equivalents and still processed the world in a mostly human manner could find their way to one of the alleyway amphitheatres where neverending anthems marched on as they had for decades, perpetually borne on the voices of an ever-changing crowd. 

But Ana had served at Twenty-Seventh Magic, and she had been scarred by a universe’s worth of corpses. When she was struck, she mourned. Even when the threat was a denial of healthcare, even when what strangled her was a web of policies and ideas that had no face. So even though she was still bleeding, even though she didn’t say a word, I knew she was headed towards another grave. Hesitantly, I stepped after her as she strode towards the insultingly sunny streets, suitcase shuddering as it rolled behind her. She glanced at me, jerked her head roughly, then whispered something to herself.

“You love me,” her lips outlined.

“I love you,” I confirmed, standing next to her.

She inhaled, exhaled. “You would worry about me if I left you behind,” she said, as if reminding herself. “Because you care about me.”

I nodded wordlessly. I didn’t have to tell her that she could go anyway. She knew that I’d leave her if she told me to. Instead, she simply strode due south. Gleaming tripartite lights shone down from overhead, a touch more cyan than they should be. Someone else would have to figure out what spective was getting too close. A wizard with a nailboard staff leaned on a nearby wall, chatting with a dirt-faced kid selling keychains. Terasnails—or maybe gigasnails, I could never remember which was which—were busily flattening what was left of a condemned restaurant, new greenery already sprouting from the slime trails they left behind. Nothing out of the ordinary there. 

I’d never asked too deeply about her past, but I saw the scars its talons had left in her skin. And once every now and then, a soul-searching spective or an article about the 27th Integration or, rarest of all, a moment of vulnerability showed me a little more of who Ana had been. So when she took a left towards the public kitchens I knew immediately what she was doing.

She waved her Veteran card at the sleepy teenage intern who was working the kiosk. A few large electric stoves and a handful of freezers were visible from behind, some occupied, most not. The kid waved her in without bothering to look, but held out an arm when I tried to follow. I stopped, started to complain, then thought better of it and shut up. Ana’s footsteps had slipped into an old and well-worn rhythm, a few sparks of blue fire wisping into existence around her as she moved. Once, Ana had woven a new magic into the pattern of reality here, and she slipped into its grooves with ease.

I leaned back against a nearby wall and watched as Ana cooked, staring obstinately into the pot as the shadows crept across the sky. After the infuriating tension of conviction, I welcomed the way time braided and spooled as I waited, past and present blending together. Ana had a dog once, I remembered. She made oxtail soup for him once every few months, spread out so as not to spoil him. Today, she drank it alone. She picked the meat from the bones with practised ease, sucking the cartilage from each joint, and set down the empty bowl. It rattled.

Then she gathered the oxtails and set them out to dry. When they were powdery with the memory of potato and turnip, she slipped them into her purse and headed to the graveyard. 

The wizards invoked magic with chants and crystals from atop their arcane towers, and I knew we had them to thank for the clear skies and smog-free air. But there was magic in the smaller rituals, more power in a frozen meamory than all the fireballs and thunderbolts in the world, and on this day she had a ritual of her own. So he was waiting for her at the graveyard gate, hopping with excitement as she drew near.

“Hey there, Sampson,” she said. There was no fur to ruffle, no paw to shake, but his tail went clack-clack-clack and the wind ruffled out a bark. The bones of a dog ate the bones of a soup, and if she closed her eyes, they both still felt warm.

A.N.

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[meowcats734]

May I add to this

•the last true megafauna, the building-sized terasnails, ooze through the city bringing greenery and scenery from the growths on their shells

•devils have set up the most toxic gaming livestream in the history of humankind. it is widely agreed upon that this at least gets their urges to torture themselves and others out in a more or less harmless way, and at least it's entertaining to watch.

•dimensional gateways conveniently cut down on carbon emissions by enabling four-dimensional urbanization. the city is walkable, but there are still roads for those with larger-than-humanoid body plans.

•a hospital run by tireless, sterile golems working with monsters who consume pain; they are, unsurprisingly, peerless surgeons and anesthesiologists.

(map of Songserra, the setting of a webserial I write)

i’m sick of doom-and-gloom, 2edgy4u urban fantasies with angsty Chosen Ones™ and constant hard darkness and entirely too many werewolves. so here’s a list of kinder urban fantasy things:

• pharmacies run by faeries who can tell what you need with a single touch and who are tipped with dollar coins and drawstring pouches of sugar (don’t worry, they have human employees to handle the iron supplements)

• dryads who tend to the parks and sidewalk trees and have the ability to purify little patches of air for asthmatics who have difficulty breathing in the polluted city air

• tiny water sprites living in public fountains who use the coins people make wishes with to buy thimblefuls of coffee– once they’ve granted the wish to the best of their ability, of course

• sphinxes who guard libraries and only ask riddles at the level each passing person is capable of answering

• and werewolves too, I suppose, but they don’t sit around angsting all day about being monsters because there’s a monthly bus service that takes them to special parks just outside the city where they can spend the night running around and roughhousing without hurting anyone. they also get the next two days following the full moon off from work since wolfing is very tiring.

because while cities can be hard, dark, unfriendly places, they’re also vibrant and bright and full of all kinds of wonderful people

[meowcats734]

Fun fact: Miraheze lets you set up a fictional wikipedia for worldbuilding in, like, five minutes tops. So nobody can stop you from making unhinged fake wikipedia pages like this:

(a worldbuilding snippet from a serial I'm writing)

[meowcats734]

They came to the devils to settle this, and Ana would give them hell. Holding her wounded arm to her side, she unzipped the trunk of artifacts she’d brought with her and pulled out a familiar brown box. She glanced at the camera, and I fancied I saw moonlight reflected in her brown eyes. 

Then she opened the box, and a wintry, Songserran breeze that I knew would smell of walnut flour and baked potatoes swirled around Ana’s jeans. Chromatic light rippled off her body as she blurred into a rainbow of blues and greens, the power stored within that cardboard box mingling within the loose magic that had ravaged her body. For a moment, she was nearly transparent in her incandescence, as if she was nothing more than a candle’s flame in a quiet restaurant. The knife, her clothes, the suitcase—they all slipped through her body, glowing faintly as they left her spectral form, like scraps of wood tossed through a campfire.

Her right hand solidified, and she scooped up the knife and rammed it through her fluid, rippling chest. It splashed through her empowered body but left no lasting mark, and the devil went wild as Peheri sputtered in incomprehension.

“But that—that isn’t fair,” Peheri stammered, pointing at Ana. “Where did she—what even—”

“Sorry, let me play that back for the slower members of our audience. Did you come here, to the Department of Evil, and tell the devils that their competition isn’t fair? I need to clip this, hang on a sec.” Shrimp Sex fumbled with his keyboard gleefully as Ana congealed her form into the physical once more, whipping the knife straight through her left arm. The liquid colors just gleamed off the blade’s edge, and Peheri took an anxious step backwards.

“But you… she… she wasn’t even hurt. That—”

“Neither were you, bitch! Now get with the stabbing or give up!” Shrimp Sex was no less grating when he was ostensibly on our side, but I felt a grim thrill of schadenfreude as the golem turned to Enm, pleading. The sphinx judged the situation with expert eyes and nodded.

“Make the cut in the analogous location,” Enm repeated. “Your lack of the ability to…” Enm took a closer look at Ana. “...initiate a teleport jump to your same location, resulting in temporary intangibility… is irrelevant.”

Peheri let out a puff of breath, coughing up a sprig of cotton, and took out his ritual dagger.

It wasn’t nearly as clean or swift as Ana’s cut. He had to hack through a good few inches of cloth with nothing but a short tripartite blade, and he only had the one hand with which to do it. He didn’t bleed, not like Ana would have if she hadn’t inhaled a bottled moonlit night, but stuffing poured out and he swayed as if drunken, coming dangerously close to the edge of the circle. Still, with his one good hand he sewed up the wound, then looked straight into Ana’s eyes.

“Why do you care so badly about this?” He asked. “Your body is fine as it is. As it was, before you started cutting it up.”

Ana didn’t reply. The shimmering around her body dimmed a touch, the power she’d breathed in already leaking from her soul.

“Metamorphosis is normal. I was human once, too.” Peheri gestured at his one-handed, empty-chested body. “You can’t go back to who you were before.”

More wisps of color leaked from the edges of Ana’s blurry form. She looked a little more solid now, and—oh, fuck, that was what Peheri was doing, wasn’t he? He knew he couldn’t beat Ana when she was able to turn intangible at will, so he was stalling her out.

Shrimp Sex burped loudly and sat up in his swiveling chair. “Less blather, more splatter! You get five minutes between each round, then you forfeit by default.”

Peheri kept talking, and Ana clenched her fists as she figured it out, too. Shade by shade, the blue-green radiance dimmed as Peheri demanded Ana explain herself, justify her existence, dragging her magic to death by centimeters. The power Ana held was never meant to last, and it didn’t even take the entirety of the allotted time for it to flee. By the time Peheri had finished, Ana was nothing but mortal once more, bleeding from her arm and swaying on her feet.

Peheri smiled, a paternal, condescending thing, and placed the blade to where his jugular would be if blood flowed through his cotton body.

“I really am sorry,” he said, and made a one-inch gash. Easily patched up, even with his dexterity hampered. Only a single curl of stuffing poked out from under his skin.

Ana would not survive that.

Shakily, she reached for another artifact—but her new body could not safely channel a new magic so soon after the last, not if she expected it to have anything resembling its original purpose. The bottle of angel pills that Ana tried to chug instead expanded into a ball of brilliantly glowing wings, leaving a cerulean afterimage of eyes between spaces as Ana choked back a frustrated roar.

She’d brought everything she could bear, all that she wished and was, and in the end she’d simply been unable to outlast the fucking golem.

“Five minutes to choose,” Shrimp Sex said.

Ana’s eyes grew murderous, and I saw her muscles twitch, her grip on the handle so tight it audibly creaked. But all she did was hurl the blade at the floor.

“I yield,” she spat. “You win.”

And to the jeering of the devil and the sorrow of the golem, Ana stalked out of the arena before the camera could catch her burning tears.

A.N.

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indomitable queer spirit vs. the abject cruelty of society

trans shonen anime

[meowcats734]

She made oxtail soup for him once every few months, spread out so as not to spoil him. Today, she drank it alone. She picked the meat from the bones with practised ease, sucking the cartilage from each joint, and set down the empty bowl. It rattled.

Then she gathered the oxtails and set them out to dry. When they were powdery with the memory of potato and turnip, she slipped them into her purse and headed to the graveyard. 

The wizards invoked magic with chants and crystals from atop their arcane towers, and I knew we had them to thank for the clear skies and smog-free air. But there was magic in the smaller rituals, more power in a frozen memory than all the fireballs and thunderbolts in the world, and on this day she had a ritual of her own. So he was waiting for her at the graveyard gate, hopping with excitement as she drew near.

“Hey there, Sampson,” she said. There was no fur to ruffle, no paw to shake, but his tail went clack-clack-clack and the wind ruffled out a bark. The bones of a dog ate the bones of a soup, and if she closed her eyes, they both still felt warm.

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[meowcats734]

The contest’s judge was lithe, feline, winged, and easily twice as tall as Ana and Peheri. They towered over the two human-sized competitors as they slinked out from the ceiling, settling in a dignified, seated position near the center of the room.

The show’s commentator wolf-whistled at her. “Wowie. Are there more of you at home?” Shrimp Sex—still hated that damn name—called out from the room’s microphone. The sphinx flicked one ear but showed no other sign of so much as paying attention to Shrimp Sex, which earned a flicker of genuine anger from the devil.

“Oaths,” the sphinx stated. “Grant them to me.”

“Ugh, buzzkill.” Shrimp Sex fiddled around with a sheaf of papers upon which the most horrendously, ostentatiously lazy handwriting I had ever seen was scrawled in thick black ink. “Peheri! On behalf of the Swifthealer hospital, do you swear to provide surgery and medical care for Anachel to reshape her body into the form she desires if she stands victorious at the end of this contest?”

“I swear,” Pahari said, his cloth lips smiling placidly.

“Anachel! On behalf of Anachel Anachel—that’s you—do you swear to drop all conviction against the Swifthealer hospital now and forevermore if Peheri stands victorious at the end of this contest?”

Ana’s cool, unfocused eyes met that of the golem standing opposite her, and she nodded. “I swear.”

“Contestants! Do you swear to make cuts matching that which the opponent makes on their own bodies, and accept that failure to remain within your designated area will result in your immediate forfeit of the contest?”

“We swear,” Ana and Peheri said in unison.

The sphinx spread their wings, casting both contestants in shadow. “I, Enm Cu’Domal, in my capacity as definer, hold you to your words in the spirit of which they were made.”

“Great! Fucking finally.” On my phone’s screen, Shrimp Sex launched himself from his lazy lounge into a hunched-over, vaguely upright position. The motion scattered the papers that he hadn’t so much as looked at, his grinning face parting the cloud of papers like a magician through curtains. I’d give him this much: he may have been a turd, but he was a decently polished one. “I’m gonna throw some knives at your faces now, so get ready to catch.”

Despite Shrimp Sex’s flippant tone, the standard-issue tripartite blades materialized placidly within each circle at Ana and Peheri’s feet. Runes sparked off the handles for a moment as the teleportation spell faded. Odds were the spell was losing efficiency due to the proximity of three spectives. 

“Now, I’m legally obliged to give you one last chance to talk things out like rational citizens and blah blah blah boring. Tell me when we can get on with the show, I’ve got my dailies to match.” Shrimp Sex kicked his heels up, pulling out his phone, as Peheri and Ana stared each other down.

“Believe it or not,” Peheri quietly said, “we are trying to help you. Harming yourself like this will achieve nothing.”

I wasn’t sure if Peheri was referring to the surgeries to remove the growths on Ana’s body or the medic’s duel itself. Either way, it would be solved if the damn hospital just did their fucking job and gave Ana her body back. I wanted to burst in there, to shout Pahari down, but I took a second look at Ana’s expression.

She hadn’t so much as twitched in reaction. Ana just watched Peheri, a loose, leonine readiness behind those calm, dark eyes. Ana didn’t need me to defend her, not this time. All she had to do now was endure and keep a steady hand, and she was the best in the world I knew at both. 

“Alright, you guys done?” Shrimp Sex waited a beat, then continued. “Defender goes first. And remember.” The camera zoomed in on the two little circles around Ana and Peheri’s feet. “Last one to leave their circle loses.”

Peheri hesitated, then sighed. “This is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me,” he said, picking up the three-colored knife. With a single swipe, he opened up the palm of his hand, cotton stuffing spilling out.

“And the defender goes for a classic!” Shrimp Sex crowed—fucking hell, couldn’t the devil have chosen literally any other name? “Challenger, don’t be shy now. Show us what’s under your skin.”

“You’ll have permanent damage,” Peheri insisted. He sewed up the cut on his palm with his other hand, and though the movement in the golem’s left palm was stiffer now, he showed no signs of being more than inconvenienced. “Drop your claim. For your own sake.”

Ana did not justify herself. She gave no explanation to the jeering announcer or the sickeningly condescending medic. She just held the blade and mimicked Peheri’s stroke, cutting her own palm open as well. She glanced at Enm, whose black quartz muzzle dipped once in acknowledgement. The cut was a valid one.

“Humans and spectives, we’ve got a game!” Shrimp Sex whooped. My fist clenched around the phone. Ana deftly bandaged her wounded hand, the golden-amber sap trickling out from her barklike skin. She met Peheri’s eyes and took out a roll of cotton, meticulously stuffing it in between her teeth, and an absurd memory of the last time we’d fucked flashed through the back of my mind. Ana pressed the tip of the tripartite knife to one of the blossoms growing out of her skin, and Peheri’s eyes widened slightly.

Then she cut the blossom off.

“Oooh!” Fucking hell, was the devil getting off on this? Shrimp Sex wolf-whistled as Ana bit down on the cotton, hard, and muffled a scream. But still she stood, her will unbroken, as she wrapped another bandage around her now-trembling forearm. “Holy shit, that has got to be the dumbest play I’ve seen this week.”

Peheri glanced at Enm, concern wrinkling his brow. “Do I… what’s the protocol when I don’t, ah, have the body part she’s cutting?”

“You will cut through the analogous space. Two centimeters above the midpoint of your left forearm.”

Peheri frowned at Ana, who met his gaze with eyes still sharp despite the pain. Perfunctorily, the golem moved the knife through the air around his arm, a rough match for Ana’s cut. Enm nodded once more, validating the move. “Why would…”

And even if Peheri didn’t understand, I did. It was a statement, not to Shrimp Sex or Swifthealers hospital, but to everyone watching the devil’s broadcast. Ana didn’t care about winning or losing, or hurting her enemies. She just wanted the flowers piercing through her skin gone, even if she had to rip them out one by one.

She hated speaking, but she communicated just as well through other means.

Something seemed to click behind Peheri’s eyes, and he reversed his grip on the knife, holding it over the tip of his chest. “You can’t win here,” he said, slightly baffled. “I gave you a chance to back out. Just remember that.”

Then Peheri plunged the blade straight into his chest.

There were no internal organs, no critical machinery of life to protect. Just white cotton that spilled out, and though its loss did seem to weaken him, he ripped the blade back out and staggered drunkenly, sewing the gaping wound back shut. 

I closed my eyes as Shrimp Sex crowed, reveling in the violence. I’d known that the Swifthealers wouldn’t play anything remotely close to fair, not when they got to choose the method of conviction. But there was a difference between anticipating foul play and seeing the Swifthealer defendant rip through the space where their heart should have been and more or less shrug it off. Peheri didn’t smile, but his shoulders sagged with the relief that one got after finishing hard labor, or finally finishing a particularly deep clean. He waited for Ana to concede, to drop the knife or step free from the circle.

Ana exhaled, tilting her wounded arm from side to side. Judging her capabilities, seeing if she was ready for what came next. Peheri took a step forward, stopped before he left the circle.

Then Ana pulled her trunk into the circle, and I heard a lifetime’s worth of artifacts rattle around within.

A.N.

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[meowcats734]

“Give me my medical care,” Ana whispered. It came out as a whisper because she was terrified, because she had to go over this one simple line a half-dozen times in her mind just to be able to say it, but damn if it didn’t come out as intimidating and self-assured to anyone who didn’t know Ana as well as I. 

“Cosmetics aren’t medicine,” the secretary said, and even if she was denying Ana the chance to feel human again I had to feel sorry for her. Judging by the bags under her eyes, she was either overdue a shift change or had begun transforming into a raccoon. “Press further and we’re bringing this to the Department of General Evil.”

Ana fell silent, and an onlooker would have thought her cowed by the threat but all she needed was time to gather herself, so I bought her that time. “We’ve already made our position clear. Formal conviction has to go through the Evils anyway; we’re not giving up just because you’re waving the legal system around. Now, if you really want us gone, either get her a consult with a surgeon or tell us how far the Swifthealers hospital is willing to go to deny Ana care.”

Ana gave me a grateful nod, almost brushing the back of her hand against mine before remembering the shimmering, acidic growths she’d been cursed to bear. I held her hand anyway, heedless of how it coated my gloves in stinging sap, and she squeezed my hand back. 

Of course, that entire exchange was invisible from behind the other side of that desk. The receptionist rubbed her eyes twice, then sighed. “Standard policy dictates that any formal conviction be answered by a medic’s duel.”

Well, fuck. I glanced at Ana for direction, but I’d bought her the time she needed to recompose herself. “I accept,” Ana simply said. 

There was no swirl of magic, no shift in the spectrum. What happened with those two simple words was far more fundamental. With a single sentence to the right person at the right time, Ana ensured that this would end with either her or the Swifthealers champion bleeding out on live TV.

#

It was hard to sleep when we couldn’t cuddle. I’d gotten used to clinging to Ana’s chest as I drifted off, but she didn’t want to be touched and I was pretty sure the sap coming off her body was making the sheets slowly dissolve.

“I could be your champion,” I said. Ana shifted to look at me and shook her head.

“Can’t let you do that,” she replied. “You know what it’ll do if you hurt yourself.”

“We could ask one of our families for help, maybe,” I pleaded, but even to my ears it sounded like bargaining.

Ana just shook her head. “Chainbreakers don’t care about refusing service, just about indentured servitude as recompense. Homeland’s not going to give a shit if it isn’t basic food and housing. And unless they send a rogue spective to be their champion, the Orchards won’t even bother watching.”

“I can call them anyway,” I said. “We’ve been Orchards for years. Maybe they’ll—”

“If it makes you feel better,” Ana said, “you can talk to them. But it’ll be my blood on the field tomorrow.” She scowled down at her barkskinned arms. “Or sap. Or whatever the hell I bleed now that my body’s… like this.”

Fuck, I just wanted to hold her. But she asked for her distance, and I would respect that. Just as I’d respect her choice to take this to conviction. 

I stayed up all night making call after call. 

All I got were empty platitudes. We were on our own.

#

Ana got a shaky night’s rest, but she was no stranger to poor sleep. The tram was down because some well-connected asshole disliked how much noise it made, so we took the trebuchets instead. We landed just outside the Tournament Arch, a gaudy silver horseshoe that squatted on Songserra’s skyline. Ana inspected the box of artifacts she’d brought, making sure none of them had touched each other in transit, then clipped the suitcase shut and lugged it behind her with ease.

Medical duels were one of the old trials, from the days before the devils became a branch of government. As such, it was a blood sport, and treated with the dignity and respect such trials deserved. Namely, the television feed was on a five-second delay and there was a viewer advisory for those with adverse reactions to ritualized self-harm. Admittedly, “ritualized self-harm” was a good way to describe most of the things I had to do to keep a roof over our heads, or put food in our bellies. 

But it usually wasn’t quite so literal as this. Ana and I stood in one of the doors into the clean white room on the eighth floor of the Tournament Arch. A medical golem with a stitched smile on its lips stood inside, standing in its designated circle. 

“Of course they brought a golem,” I muttered. “How much do you want to bet that they can’t feel pain?”

“...” Ana didn’t reply to my jab, and I took a second look at her. She had the unfocused look in her eyes that she always got before combat, as if she could see everything in the room at the same time. 

“Hey.” Ana glanced at me as I spoke up, and I gave her a weak smile. “I’m rooting for you.”

The corners of her eyes crinkled up a little, and she took in a deep breath. 

Then Anachel nodded once and stepped through the door. It shut automatically behind her.

I pulled out my phone and switched to the live feeds. The devils were inarguably the most popular streamers in the worlds; having a complete monopoly on televised real-life violence and torture tended to do that. And as much as I wanted to beg Ana not to make herself part of it, this… wasn’t about me. This was Ana’s moment. Her will against the Swifthealers hospital’s. 

“Finally!” The voice of the devil was tinny, young—they could have been a human teenager. “Welcome back to another episode of conviction! I’m your host Shrimp Sex, and today we’re gonna watch some idiots stab themselves until one of them gives up or dies. Let’s get the formalities out of the way, shall we?”

The camera zoomed in, split-screen, on Ana and the golem. Shrimp Sex—god, I fucking hated devil names—popped their face in the bottom-right corner of the screen. They couldn’t have been more than a few years into their teens, stubble just poking its way out of their chin. 

“Contestants! Get in your circles.” Neither Ana nor the golem—Peheri was his name, judging by the little split-screen—moved; both were already in position. “Neither of you are baseline humans, so we’re going to bust out the fancy equipment.” Shrimp Sex ostentatiously pressed a button, and a door in the ceiling opened, allowing a jet-black, glossy, living sculpture crawl out from the ceiling.

“Confirm your oaths, contestants,” Shrimp Sex said, “and conviction shall begin.”

A.N.

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Darned if Dark Souls 2 didn't summarize American politics...

[meowcats734]

I'm choosing to imagine this as some fantasy world's equivalent of insurance deliberately denying healthcare claims to save money. It's cheaper to hire out a couple ogres to scare off any potential claimants than it is to actually pay out for healthcare.

Darned if Dark Souls 2 didn't summarize American politics...

[meowcats734]

"It doesn't make sense to have trans people in historically-inspired fantasy because they don't have modern medicine" is wrong on like 6 different levels. People can, like, exist whether or not they want or have access to surgery. "Modern medicine" includes like electrolysis and vaginoplasty but we've had hormone therapy and orchiectomies since the Bronze Age. But most of all, most of all,

It's fantasy

Is there a wizard?

Then the wizard did it. Problem solved.

[meowcats734]

Alright, lemme give this a try...

“Give me my medical care,” Ana whispered. It came out as a whisper because she was terrified, because she had to go over this one simple line a half-dozen times in her mind just to be able to say it, but damn if it didn’t come out as intimidating and self-assured to anyone who didn’t know Ana as well as I. 

“Cosmetics aren’t medicine,” the secretary said, and even if she was denying Ana the chance to feel human again I had to feel sorry for her. Judging by the bags under her eyes, she was either overdue a shift change or had begun transforming into a raccoon. “Press further and we’re bringing this to the Department of General Evil.”

Ana fell silent, and an onlooker would have thought her cowed by the threat but all she needed was time to gather herself, so I bought her that time. “We’ve already made our position clear. Formal conviction has to go through the Evils anyway; we’re not giving up just because you’re waving the legal system around. Now, if you really want us gone, either get her a consult with a surgeon or tell us how far the Swifthealers hospital is willing to go to deny Ana care.”

Ana gave me a grateful nod, almost brushing the back of her hand against mine before remembering the shimmering, acidic growths she’d been cursed to bear. I held her hand anyway, heedless of how it coated my gloves in stinging sap, and she squeezed my hand back. 

Of course, that entire exchange was invisible from behind the other side of that desk. The receptionist rubbed her eyes twice, then sighed. “Standard policy dictates that any formal conviction be answered by a medic’s duel.”

Well, fuck. I glanced at Ana for direction, but I’d bought her the time she needed to recompose herself. “I accept,” Ana simply said. 

There was no swirl of magic, no shift in the spectrum. What happened with those two simple words was far more fundamental. With a single sentence to the right person at the right time, Ana ensured that this would end with either her or the Swifthealers champion bleeding out on live TV.

#

It was hard to sleep when we couldn’t cuddle. I’d gotten used to clinging to Ana’s chest as I drifted off, but she didn’t want to be touched and I was pretty sure the sap coming off her body was making the sheets slowly dissolve.

“I could be your champion,” I said. Ana shifted to look at me and shook her head.

“Can’t let you do that,” she replied. “You know what it’ll do if you hurt yourself.”

“We could ask one of our families for help, maybe,” I pleaded, but even to my ears it sounded like bargaining.

Ana just shook her head. “Chainbreakers don’t care about refusing service, just about indentured servitude as recompense. Homeland’s not going to give a shit if it isn’t basic food and housing. And unless they send a rogue spective to be their champion, the Orchards won’t even bother watching.”

“I can call them anyway,” I said. “We’ve been Orchards for years. Maybe they’ll—”

“If it makes you feel better,” Ana said, “you can talk to them. But it’ll be my blood on the field tomorrow.” She scowled down at her barkskinned arms. “Or sap. Or whatever the hell I bleed now that my body’s… like this.”

Fuck, I just wanted to hold her. But she asked for her distance, and I would respect that. Just as I’d respect her choice to take this to conviction. 

I stayed up all night making call after call. 

All I got were empty platitudes. We were on our own.

#

Ana got a shaky night’s rest, but she was no stranger to poor sleep. The tram was down because some well-connected asshole disliked how much noise it made, so we took the trebuchets instead. We landed just outside the Tournament Arch, a gaudy silver horseshoe that squatted on Songserra’s skyline. Ana inspected the box of artifacts she’d brought, making sure none of them had touched each other in transit, then clipped the suitcase shut and lugged it behind her with ease.

Medical duels were one of the old trials, from the days before the devils became a branch of government. As such, it was a blood sport, and treated with the dignity and respect such trials deserved. Namely, the television feed was on a five-second delay and there was a viewer advisory for those with adverse reactions to ritualized self-harm. Admittedly, “ritualized self-harm” was a good way to describe most of the things I had to do to keep a roof over our heads, or put food in our bellies. 

But it usually wasn’t quite so literal as this. Ana and I stood in one of the doors into the clean white room on the eighth floor of the Tournament Arch. A medical golem with a stitched smile on its lips stood inside, standing in its designated circle. 

“Of course they brought a golem,” I muttered. “How much do you want to bet that they can’t feel pain?”

“...” Ana didn’t reply to my jab, and I took a second look at her. She had the unfocused look in her eyes that she always got before combat, as if she could see everything in the room at the same time. 

“Hey.” Ana glanced at me as I spoke up, and I gave her a weak smile. “I’m rooting for you.”

The corners of her eyes crinkled up a little, and she took in a deep breath. 

Then Anachel nodded once and stepped through the door. It shut automatically behind her.

I pulled out my phone and switched to the live feeds. The devils were inarguably the most popular streamers in the worlds; having a complete monopoly on televised real-life violence and torture tended to do that. And as much as I wanted to beg Ana not to make herself part of it, this… wasn’t about me. This was Ana’s moment. Her will against the Swifthealers hospital’s. 

“Finally!” The voice of the devil was tinny, young—they could have been a human teenager. “Welcome back to another episode of conviction! I’m your host Shrimp Sex, and today we’re gonna watch some idiots stab themselves until one of them gives up or dies. Let’s get the formalities out of the way, shall we?”

The camera zoomed in, split-screen, on Ana and the golem. Shrimp Sex—god, I fucking hated devil names—popped their face in the bottom-right corner of the screen. They couldn’t have been more than a few years into their teens, stubble just poking its way out of their chin. 

“Contestants! Get in your circles.” Neither Ana nor the golem—Peheri was his name, judging by the little split-screen—moved; both were already in position. “Neither of you are baseline humans, so we’re going to bust out the fancy equipment.” Shrimp Sex ostentatiously pressed a button, and a door in the ceiling opened, allowing a jet-black, glossy, living sculpture crawl out from the ceiling.

“Confirm your oaths, contestants,” Shrimp Sex said, “and conviction shall begin.”

A.N.

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on one hand I want canonically trans/non-binary characters in my sci-fi/fantasy/historical fiction

on the other hand nothing is more awkward and immersion-breaking than reading a story set on a different world or in a different time period in which the characters talk about being trans in an incredibly specific, modern, politically correct way

[meowcats734]

was mindlessly clicking the random comic button on xkcd and my 2am brain started assembling them into some semblance of a story (loosely based on this webserial i'm writing)