#I have unholy ideas of the worst kind

[daemon-in-my-head]

Guess who worked 50h last week but still decided to start another horribly detailed whatever-the-fuck?

This masochist.

[rcksmith]

Brick by Brick - Kaz Brekker

Requests: “Heyy, I wanted to request a Kaz Brekker x reader fic where y/n is Pekka Rollins' innocent and naive daughter, and she stumbles across Kaz when he breaks into Pekka's house. Kaz tells her to stay quiet and stuff and y/n obviously has no idea who Kaz is, only that he's handsome as fuck and she kinda falls in love with him despite the fact that he's literally robbing her father

Love, anon :3

P.S. I love your writing.”

Couple: Kaz Brekker/ Fem!Reader

Warnings: swearing.

Word count: 2k

A/N: Thank you very much for your kindness and sorry for the delay. I love you. My loves, requests are open and I am banning Kaz's smut request rules. U can ask for anything in the original universe, without being in a UA. I hope you like💕 English is not my first language, so I so sorry if have a mistake.

Requests are open. Love you ❤��

------------

Ketterdam was not a good place. It wasn't safe, it wasn't pretty, it wasn't healthy. Every dark corner, every ghostly street, every edge whispering curses, was fulfilled the entire list of unholy sins and harbored monsters as horrible as the harbor rats on the coast. If the soil in that place was cursed, the people were demons.

Pekka Rollin’s knew this like he knew how to count kruger. He was one of those monsters. He taught profanity and stained the ground on which his feet walked with innocent blood. Pekka destroyed homes, hopes, kicked people's dreams and hit each one soul with his staff of damnation.

Each one.

Because of it that he kept his daughter under lock and key from the ugly world, far from that wretched city that he himself helped build the horrors and desolations. Maybe it was out of love, maybe it was out of sensitivity. Or maybe it was because you were the only healthy and intelligent heiress capable of leading his empire one day. You represent too many precious things for him to risk losing control over you. Maybe Pekka would never be able to love anything or anyone other than his own greed.

Whatever it was, he covered your eyes to Ketterdam. He decorated the blood-stained walls with sparkling pink and said to you that the smoke that covered the tops of Ketterdam's houses at night was Aladdin's magical fog, which pointed the way to a cave full of treasures, and not that it was the incinerated bodies of his enemies, nosy people and families who starved to death on their land. Pekka deceived you with pretty tales that the big mansion you lived in was because he would always give you the best, and not that it was bought with money stolen from honest people and that he liked to see in material forms the extent of his capabilities of evil. Like a trophy.

Rollin’s wove the ties around your limbs like a cursed puppet, and pulled your strings according to his unscrupulous interests of greed. For all of Ketterdam, Pekka was a demon of the worst kind. But for you, he was a bearded, loving father who made you see magic and romance in every corner of that city condemned by God.

The worst types of monsters were those who tricked and manipulated their children like pawns in a game of chess. But, again, perhaps Pekka wasn't capable of loving anything other than his own greed.  And, if the price for having an heir who agreed, trusted him for the rest of the life, who would follow in his footsteps and obey all his order, was to make you believe in his goodness, in the beauty of a life with him only to implant wonderful - and illusory -  memories in your childhood, so be it. After all, you were a girl, and in his view, girls were sentimental. So how would you go against him in the future, or not act according to his orders or not run his business as he wanted when he was too old, if you only had memories of him being an excellent and loving father? You will feel so guilty! You would fall under the weight of your own mind's arguments that everything he once did was to protect and give you the best, so your only obligation would be to be a good girl and return the favor by obeying your father's orders.

Loyalty.

Maybe, if you were someone else and this was a different story, you would have realized the hoax at 16 years old. Maybe you would have born with a strong, inquisitive and responsive personality. Maybe you would have developed that spark and fire that wouldn't let you lower your head to any man, that would make you stamp your foot on the ground, lift your chin with petulance and unravel the mysteries of that dark empire alone and take justice into your own hands.

But this was no different story. And you were just you.

You were born with a sweet aura and gentle personality. You liked butterflies and flowers since birth because their color and beauty attracted you and made you smile. Your romantic nature was not only accepted by your father, but encouraged and recharged every day - for his dark game. 

For 19 years you lived in the theatrical farce that Pekka created with monstrous hands, believing and agreeing with every story in your bubble. But the blame can never fall on the shoulders of the pure in heart, who blindly believed in words and stories just because it didn't have a single wave of malice or disbelief in the veins. One should never condemn the soul that was born naturally sweet and destined to be the breath of light that such a terrible world as Ketterdam needed. 

 You believed in love, fairy tales and pure honesty, and that was not a defect. The Herculean guilt should fall on the shoulders of the devil who abused the innocence of a girl for his greedy benefit.

In your perfect world manipulated and distorted by the unscrupulous Pekka, you blossomed like a dazzling lily in the middle of Plato's allegory of The Cave. You acted with honesty, patience and affection towards everyone who crossed your path: employees, cooks, gardeners, bakers, painters, stylists, delivery people, friends of your father.

You were, genuinely, a kind soul. Your interests were related to literature, cooking and painting, your heart vibrated with the sunset, with the first snowflake falling to the ground and how twilight seemed even more stunning in books when they portrayed a couple in love beneath it.

You always saw the poetic, lyrical, angelic side of life, with the eyes of an artist and a passionate soul, smelling mystery and romance in the air when others only smelled wet grass because of the rain.

And being like that was, perhaps, the reason for your downfall.

It was three o'clock in the morning on a Friday the thirteenth. A combination so full of superticities, curses, fears and prague. While some saw that day and time as a condemned and satanic sign, you saw it as something mystical, mysterious and enigmatic. And maybe that was your mistake. Maybe you should be careful about the things you think, the things you wish. Maybe three in the morning on a Friday really was the devil's time. Because as you crossed the hallway of the mansion's library, unable to sleep, you saw him.

Dressed in black like the darkness outside. Skin as white as the moon's glow. Hair personified as a raven's feathers. He seemed to belong to the mysteries and occultism of the world as sin belonged to hell. The huge Victorian window behind illuminated him like an apparition, a mirage, a nightmare…an erotic dream. Or like a demon.

You should have screamed. You should have ran away. You should have done something other than get stuck in that same place, anything other than feeling inside you squirms and something sinks into your belly like warm honey.

His eyes, as blue as the deadly waters of icy Fjerda, were fixed on you with as much intensity as the dangers of Shadow Fold. For a split second, a human emotion passed through those irises; surprise?

An inattentive observer would not have noticed such a tiny sign, but you lived 19 years analyzing every detail of life.

Would a demon have such a mundane emotion?

“Who are you?” Your voice came out like a breath in winter. 

Your concentration should have been on your dad book under that man's arm, but it wasn't.

A single thick, black eyebrow of his was arched, and only there were you able to run your eyes over the details of his appearance.

“Do you always ask questions for thieves?” His voice was like the scratching of sand on a stone, like a withered willow branch brushing against human skin.

That man, in his entirety, seemed to have come out of the dark romance books that you read hidden in your room in the early hours of the morning. You should have focused on the fact that he just called himself a thief, not the way your soul seemed to be shivering because of his voice.

“Or you´re just stupid?” the thief continued.

Kaz never made decisions based on fear. Only in despair. 

His analytical mind rewound every step of the years he spent investigating Pekka Rollin's; every detail, every day, every season, every strand of gray that appeared in Pekka's red hair. Where had Kaz gone wrong? Pekka had no children. And Kaz made no mistakes. Never. But the girl in front of him, too curious for her own good and common sense, had too similar traits to Pekka to be anything other than his daughter.

Desperation hit.

This made EVERYTHING infinitely more Herculaneum. Your existence meant that Pekka had many more secrets than the Kaz discovered in their constant meticulous investigation. You were a loophole, and that meant there could be others. Loopholes that Kaz had no idea about. Kaz Brekker felt naked, even though he was covered from toes to neck. Being without clothes wouldn't have bothered him any more than the damn fact that he hadn't come up with the perfect plan. He failed. And that disturbed him deeply.

Suddenly, that library seemed sneaky and questionable, even though Brekker had studied the layout of the mansion for months.

How the fuck did he didn't have the knowledge about that girl?!

A daughter meant many things. But being caught by his daughter created a LOT of problems. Problems involving Kaz Brekker on a gallows.

Fucking hell.

The Barril's bastard waited for a scream, for an accusation, waited for the guards to be alerted at any moment and…the silence was sepulcher. A silence so solemn that he heard the sound of his own blood running through his veins. None of his muscles relaxed, but the part of his brain that worked in despair was activated.

Or he could kill you. But a body would add an extreme problem and…

‘’Who are you?’’ Your voice was so feminine that for a second Kaz thought he had fallen backwards and landed in a bed of roses.

Which was bullshit. Because he never falls. And he had never touched a rose in his entire life

Were you really talking to the man who was robbing your house?! Where was your instinct?! Your common sense?! Your discernment?! And where, by the damned Saints, were you all these years?

“…you don’t look like a thief’ That voice again. That damn voice that made him think of roses he never touched.

Why didn't you shut up and run away?

“Have you seen enough thieves to know one?” Normally Kaz had higher control, but he couldn't hold back his whip tongue, which seemed somehow wanting to hurt you the same way he was being hurt.

That atypical creature blushed. You blushed! For the love of the saints! Who blushes face to face with imminent danger?! Were you stupid or just terribly naive?! And why did that sweet blush remind him once again of a rose?

Bloody hell, where have you been all these years?! Why didn't anyone tell him about you?!

“No’’ you replied like a little animal being caught biting the sofa “but common thieves wouldn’t have that much intelligence to be able to bypass the security of this entire mansion’’

You had a point. But why were you worried about arguing with a damn thief instead of running away?

“That's yet another reason why you should keep your mouth shut about what you're seeing here.” His voice dropped to deeper, more threatening tones. “Bypass security is not as difficult for me, just like hiding a body''

That should have scared you. It made you scared; but with less than it really should. He was threatening you with death, his voice as cold and hoarse as a grim reaper, his eyes as serious as prophecies of the apocalypse. So why you could only think that this about him was overwhelmingly enthralling?

Maybe it was because there was a lack of excitement in your life, maybe it was because you've read a lot of erotic books about mysterious men entering the towers at night and taking the girl away, or maybe it was because Pekka deprived you of the world so much that he left you unaware of the true gravitas of situations. Whatever it was, there was something that grounded you like the roots of ancient trees, something that made you want to look at that thief more closely. Perhaps you liked the danger... That nameless man represented a large part of all the danger of Ketterdam that was so diligently hidden from you for 19 years. He represented death. But he also represented the new, the mystery, the unknown. And you, romantic by nature, loved the occult and its secrets. That man came from a world of shadows, mists, risks, deaths. Where every night was full of adrenaline and every second was a fight to stay alive. He smelled like the ghostly five a.m. fog that you watched envelop the mansion every winter, that made your heart clench with the feeling that there was so much more to the world than you knew. Very quickly, Kaz - even though you didn't know his name yet - became everything you'd always wanted to know, but had always been deprived of.

Once again, you weren't a different person to know about Pekka's disgusting game, but you were romantic enough to feel your soul begging for adventure. Even if these adventures meant ruin. A downfall.

Did it only take one handsome, mistery man for you to throw all your comfort in life out the window and want to ruin yourself with him? Want to get lost with him? The same stranger who just threatened to kill you? Apparently, yes.

You took a step into the library, and Kaz stood firm on the ground, his blue eyes boring into yours like a shining knife. Brekker thought you were extremely naive. Who knew that damn Pekka Rollin's daughter would be so pure? He would bet the Crow Club on the certainty that, if Pekka saw you now, he would have a heart attack. The monster sure had kept you in a little pink bubble your entire life, given that you seemed to not have a single ounce of survival instinct left in you. And how would you have? You certainly didn't know what pain, loss, hunger, cruelty were. This was comical and irritating to Brekker. You were a daddy's little girl. But it was in these waters of thought that his ship hit one fact: you must be very valuable to Pekka. Because otherwise that idiot wouldn't have made so many efforts to hide you from the entire world. To hide the wrong eyes from you. Eyes like Kaz's.

A shiver ran through Brekker's body; a damn good chill, a note of music he'd been waiting to hear his whole life. Revenge.

Brick by brick.

Oh, how ironic fate was. The boy who lost everything at Pekka's hands, was face to face with what was everything for the man. Like a breaking violin string, you have become the most valuable item in all of Ketterdam to be stolen. The most valuable item for Kaz Brekker.

The corner of his mouth turned up, as if pulled by the devil's rope as he set the book down again. He had something else to take away.

Kaz advanced towards yoou. And suddenly, as fast as lightning that cuts through the darkness, everything in your vision turned black and you fell into the abyss of unconsciousness as something pressed against your nose and mouth.

[overly-verbose]

Lol, I put this on submit instead of ask. Sorry if you see this twice, I have no idea how that function works on this hellsite.

---

Be a curse spirit.

Not just any curse spirit, a special grade curse spirit. Complete with intelligence, an intimidating form, and a powerful technique that you wield with a level of expertise that only the oldest curse spirits can hope to match.

You're having fun, causing mayhem, maybe even eating a few of those humans that look so tasty.

You get into a few fights -- puny sorcerers who cannot hope to stand up to your might -- and relish the fear and terror you cause.

You go unbested, unharmed for a long while after you've formed. You doubt anyone can truly end you and your pride swells.

You feel invincible.

Then you come across a pink-haired human. A infant sorcerer judging by their curse energy.

You figure you could use a laugh and goad the human into a fight by killing a few baby humans that so happened to be lying around --

Or at least, you try to. The infant sorcerer proves to be more than a little bit skilled, along with fast. It rips the baby humans from your clutches and attacks you.

*A SERIES OF BRUTAL PUNCHES*

...okay wow, that actually hurt. A first for you.

Also, what the hell. How in the name of all that is unholy is this infant sorcerer so fast? And strong? You can sense its curse energy and aside from the delayed response from its curse energy it doesn't seem to be using any other techniques.

Is -- is it just naturally that fast and strong?!

That's...

No matter, as the infant sorcerer has left an opening for you to attack!

You lash out with your technique, laughing as it cuts through the infant sorcerer's flesh and bone --

Whoa.

Wait.

What?

Is -- is this sorcerer regenerating?

You cast out your elite special grade curse senses and -- okay yeah, that's positive energy.

Alright, so the infant sorcerer has reverse curse technique. No big deal, you have some regeneration of your own. Plus, you've gone up against your own kind many times in the past so you know what to do.

The infant sorcerer can't last forever, especially with all the curse energy its throwing out. You just have to wait for it to run out of energy and you'll have it.

*PUNCH*

Any second now.

*PUNCH*

Aaaaany second now.

*PUNCH*

...alright, what the FUCK.

How is this little insect's curse energy not going down?!

You must have hit it at least three dozen times in the last minute alone, each attack designed to be lethal as fuck! You can sense the positive energy in the air, you know its being used, and yet the kid's curse energy is barely affected!

Does this kid have a second technique?! Is that a thing?!

Alright, whatever. Whatever. You'll just wear this little twerp down and --

*FEAR*

*TERROR*

*THE EYE OF THE BEAST*

You are blasted with the worst wave of malice you have ever felt in your short life.

It as though hell itself ripped open, revealing the hunger and cruelty of a thousand demons who sought nothing more than to feed on your suffering.

The paralyzes you completely. The infant sorcerer takes advantage of this.

*BLACK FLASH*

*BLACK FLASH*

*BLACK FLASHx4*

FUCK THAT HURT!

Okay, you know what? Fuck this, you're going all out.

You whip out your Domain. The foolish sorcerer doesn't bother to escape, no doubt knowing that it is pointless. It is already within your guaranteed-hit effect and with how lethal your technique is, there is no way it'll have enough of its body left to regenerate.

You'll end this farce right here, right now -- !

"Oh?"

You stop.

Stop moving.

Stop breathing.

Stop thinking.

You stop everything and anything, for you know that if you make the slightest move, you will die.

"You dare lay a hand on my Vessel?"

The infant sorcerer was gone, having been replaced with a being whose name and deeds were carved into the very fabric of reality, so much so that every curse -- whether intelligent or not -- knows their name.

A being of all encompassing evil, of overwhelming might.

A being that all curse spirits fear and worship in the same breath.

"How every brave of you."

He sits upon a throne of Death and Despair, staring down at you with eyes that reflect all the pain and horror your end will become.

"How very... foolish."

Pain beyond the body.

Horror beyond the mind.

Violation beyond the soul.

A thousand tortures and a thousand nightmares descend upon you and you can do nothing but scream and scream and scream.

But the being before you only laughs and laughs and laughs, breaking and repairing you over and over and over again, ensuring that the torment is just as fresh as it was in the beginning.

You beg for death. Attempt to take it in your own hands.

But the Cruel God before you always brings you back, their many hands ripping you from the afterlife just as you begin to taste sweet oblivion.

You feel Fear. You experience Horror. You drown in Despair.

And it is only when your mind, body, and soul are unable to give the being the reactions it wants -- that you are finally allowed to die.

-----

Fighting Yuji is a nightmare in this universe, lol.

Not only is the kid crazy strong, crazy skilled, being taught by the two strongest beings in the entire verse, and has active 24/7 Wolverine regeneration on at all times (thanks SIkuna) --

But if by some miracle you manage to defeat him, you'll have to deal with a very pissed off, very overprotective King of Curses who will happily make the last few minutes/hours/days of your existence a torturous one.

I'd rather take on Gojo tbh.

The submission option worked well, just so you know for the future, but I noticed that you added/changed some things since then so I'll answer the 'revised' version haha :DDD

And- woAH woW WOWIE *insert that one Crash Bandicoot meme where he goes 'WOW'*

A beautiful fanfic for my fanfic (fanfic squared!!) holy macaroni I am HONOURED 🤗🤗🤗🥺🥺🥺

This is such a cool concept, and well, not too dissimilar from the truth heh - indeed, once Yuji and SIkuna get more in-sync with everything Yuji will be Quite the interesting opponent (i. e. not one you'd want to have against you even remotely lmao) to have for sure haha

I love the idea of the POV being an Outsider POV (how in-line with the Main Series proper haha) and the alien (not literally lol) nature of the POV character certainly adds an interesting perspective to how Yuji fighting with SIkuna's active help may turn out heh

And like, yeah, SIkuna's intensity with the revenge for the fight is very understandable and accurate, coming from him after Yuji got freaking mauled during the fight

- the first Special Grade got a taste of a similar thing for 'only' cutting Yuji's arm off heh, meanwhile here this almost-wanna-say-poor Curse not only hurt Yuji much worse, but it would have very likely killed the kid without SIkuna's interference, regardless of his amazingness

And that's, just a little bit Absolutely Unforgivable ::)

The way you described Yuji's fighting style (like his oddly high strength and speed without any CE usage) and SIkuna's intimidating-as-hell presence (Gotta Love Me Some Eldritch Horror) was very evocative, very Cool and Spooky indeed!!! :DDDDD

Honestly, yeah, I feel like basically anyone in the SG(LAT)-verse would rather take on Gojo, despite him being Gojo Freaking Satoru, rather than SIkuna in any way (and Yuji too tbh lmao)

- not getting into power levels and such, it's simply much much more likely to have a swifter death you know

SIkuna doesn't kill everything in this strong of a brutal manner sure, but he could - and that's just a bit too much of a risk ngl

(and just- The sheer dread and horror even his presence imposes on the world is Something Else Altogether, being in the other end of that whole thing also being actively malicious (or malevolent heh) towards you is just, not a Good Time 💀)

Anywayyy - thank you so much again AAAAA I cri (of joy) fr 🥺😭🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗

.

[sunderwight]

I love HOTD fic concepts where Lucaerys and Arrax accidentally kill Vhagar. I want more of them so bad.

Mostly because of the black comedy potential. I could go either way for whether or not Aemond dies too, but jesus that's such a great idea. The oldest, biggest, scariest dragon on the fucking planet and somehow sopping wet twink Lucaerys Velaryon and his tweenage mount manage to take her out? One little alteration and the tone of the whole conflict shifts almost entirely.

Of course some kind of freak intervention is required for it to work, and most of that's still pretty dark. Options I like include Vhagar actually just being so old that she's nearing the end of her lifespan and so it's less that Lucaerys and Arrax successfully kill her, and more that she just happens to die at the worst possible moment for Aemond, or else something like lightning from the active storm striking some of the chains on her (prospects also not good for Aemond with that one), or Arrax gets in a single lucky shot via breathing fire right down her throat and causing a fatal blowback of the whole firebreathing system that is like a 1 in a million chance type thing.

But then what? Everyone at Storm's End saw Aemond flip his shit at Luke and go chasing after him, plus Arrax is like snack-sized compared to Vhagar, you can't even plausibly lie and claim that somehow they instigated the conflict, not even with Luke's history of successfully landing critical hits against his uncle. Not that the "we're the victims" approach would necessarily do the Greens strict favors here, since Aemond's a grown man now and his side are hinging a lot of their cause on appealing to the same brand of Westerosi toxic masculinity that views losing a fight as a sign that the gods don't like you enough.

I haven't seen it yet but I also think it would be really funny if the Greens tried to paint Lucaerys as this like, unholy terror? Like they just have to exaggerate how horrible this one teenager is in order to salvage any shred of dignity from the situation. He is death from the skies! Tried to murder his uncle in cold blood when they were but babes! Thirsted for violence and slaughter ever since! The mad dog son acts at the behest of the evil false queen who spawned him, truly he is Maegor come again! A sinister bastard! And they're talking about this Disney Channel ass kid:

We can all hear the dramatic score from the show gradually distort into circus music in the back of our minds, right?

[eyedoeluhn]

Hey, I just want to say that I love your posts about bcf because it’s such an interesting clusterfuck of a story that i will never read. Every single thing I hear about it fascinates and disturbs me, and I think it’s very possible that you are the only sane person on the planet who actually knows enough about it to make posts and i’m very happy such a person exists. HOWEVER i wanna know what kind of unholy spirit is driving you to read this thing. Its so much. You could read so many books with content and plots and characters. Also your new post implies you’ve reread it multiple times which again is impressive and disturbing to me equally

I began to read BCF in 2020, when the fic was still largely new and I haven’t stopped. I have done several full rereads. I frequently go back and read entire chapters. I postpone doing things on update day where I sit and wait for a new chapter to be posted. I have read every word of god Lordroustabout has made, and don’t let the TV tropes page lie to you, there are several hidden in the sufficient velocity thread that didn’t make it into the AO3 comments.

I loathe BCF. I have hated BCF since its inception. I have hated the Celestial Forge document itself before BCF even existed because it’s a deeply stupid and infuriating idea. I do know good wormfic exists. I do know good long wormfic exists (there’s a certain someone who has been trying to get me to read Russian Caravan and has been subject to many a rant).

I post about BCF for reasons. Largely because you’re right, I am probably one of the few people who actually have stuck to it, who has read Worm (and Ward) and genuinely loves the world of PARAHUMANS and wildbow’s writing and has given the fic enough thought to speak of it. The thread is probably the worst sufficient velocity thread to ever exist. It is full of unironic adoration for every single detail and more. The brief glimpses of sanity when people tire of the pacing continually fade back into cheering when the next 23,000 words of powerwank drop. Some of the worst worm posting of all timehas gone down in that thread. It’s soothing to remember that no, I am not the only sane person and there are people who can read. And also because I can only subject that someone to so many rants about BCF before he kills me and binds a copy of Russian Caravan with my skin.

I read BCF because people who would recognize how deeply strange this fic is are put off by the atrocious Wordcount, stupid powers, and godawful pacing. This is an injustice. All of those things are true, but BCF is also terrible for a million other reasons. I could talk about how bad BCF is for 2.3 million words and still find more. Every second I spend reading it makes me loathe forums as a concept. And it is my sworn duty to make this everyone else’s problem.

Now if you excuse me I have to go summarize 138 thousand words of a fashion shown into something coherent.

[softquietsteadylove]

I have an idea for the family law au, what if Thena has a medical emergency (up to you what kind) and Gil comforts and helps to take care of her?

"Gil!"

"Oh, uh," he looked away from the nurse going through her charts, "that's her, actually."

"You know we can't let just anyone in here, sir."

But Sersi trotted over to them, swinging her arms tightly beside her. She turned her big, sad eyes on the nurse, "I called him. Please, we need help."

The woman sighed and rolled her eyes, but it was three in the morning and she waved them along.

"Thank you," Gil murmured, joining Sersi in her trip back down the hall. "Hey, are you okay?"

She nodded, continuing her anxious little tip-toeing that made it seem like she was looking for the washroom. "Thena isn't happy that we called you. But we didn't know what else to do. Just be warned."

He didn't have any trouble imagining the Thena he knew - the Ice Queen of the office - being too proud to call for help in a situation like this. "Sprite kind of told me what happened over the phone but I don't know if I have all the details."

Sersi sighed, coming to a halt and her shoulders sagging (deeply). She toyed with the ends of her oversized green flannel. "It's our fault."

"Hey," Gil corrected immediately and without hesitation, "that's not true."

"It is," she squeaked, sniffling through the tears she was trying to keep at bay. "We were too scared. We heard a noise and asked her to look downstairs."

"And she slipped?" he guessed, which made Sersi squeeze around herself tighter again. He gave her shoulder a squeeze, leaning down slightly. "Sersi, it's an accident. It's no one's fault, okay?"

She hiccuped quietly.

"I'm gonna say the same thing to Sprite too," he continued as he moved closer to the room again. Sersi positioned herself at the door.

"Thena?" Sersi knocked gently and cracked the door just slightly at first. "Gil's here."

"Come in, Sersi." The words weren't harsh, but the tone certainly was that of the Ice Queen of the office.

Gil didn't envy the girls as he closed the door behind him. Thena was obviously having a terrible time, propped up in her hospital bed, a large, uneven bow at the neck of her hospital gown, Sprite miserably leaning against the railing of the bed like a wounded puppy.

She looked up at him, pale and with a little purple at the corners of her eyes. "I'm sorry, Gil."

"Don't be," he excused just as easily as he had with Sersi. He seated himself next to the bed, while Sersi moved to the opposite side to join her other sister. "How're you feeling?"

"Like I broke my arm."

The girls winced, and he watched Thena physically reel in her sharp tone and cutting words. She visibly softened herself, looking at her younger sisters on her other side (her injured side).

"It's okay, the doctor said it's a minor fracture at worst, I'll be fine in a month."

Gil was willing to bet they had been told six weeks, if not longer, and she was doing her best to sugar coat things for the tearful girls. He leaned forward, making an effort to catch Sprite's eye. "You did the right thing, calling me, kid. It was the right call."

Sprite manged to lift her head enough to look at him. Despite the bluer colour than Thena's, they certainly had similar eyes. "Thanks, Gil."

Thena looked back at him, able to do little more than swivel her head and leave her arm cushioned in the temporary sling they had offered. "I'm sorry to bother you, I know it's an unholy time of night."

"Oh, that's okay," he shook his head, "I was up anyway."

"You were-" Thena shook her head faintly. "Why would-!"

Gil blinked, watching as Thena's face shifted through a couple different emotions. Usually he had to try pretty hard to read what she was thinking. But he watched as she outwardly went from confused, to horrified, to maybe even embarrassed. Without any makeup, he could see how pale she really was, and the natural blush in her cheeks.

"I-I'm sorry, we shouldn't have--I'll apologise to, uhm, whomever..." Thena trailed off, shifting herself in the bed needlessly, even risking moving her arm to do it.

Sprite and Sersi adjusted her pillows for her, trying to keep her from the need to move at all.

"You don't have to apologise," Gil frowned, just as confused. "Really, I don't mind. I mean, even if I was asleep, I would have come in a heartbeat."

Thena seemed to know even less how to respond to that. And the kids were just as confused about all of it. She cleared her throat, tilting her head in such a way that seemed like maybe she was just stretching her neck. He leaned closer so she could whisper, "I meant if I should apologise to your...date--I-I will."

"Oh!" Gil squawked, and way too loudly for a hospital at night. He shot back into his chair, ducking his head down as if someone would come into the room and shush him. "N-No, no, really, it's nothing like that!"

"Like what?" Sprite voiced first, although by now Sersi had caught on to at least something along the lines of it.

"Uh," Gil searched for the words, trying not to seem so embarrassed over what was, in actuality, nothing. He cleared his throat, "I-I just mean, you didn't wake me up. I've been working on this special recipe I've been wanting to try. It needs to be basted every three hours for a whole day, and I can't do it while I'm at work, so I try stuff like this overnight and set an alarm for myself."

"Dude, that's psycho," Sprite informed him, and was able to escape the consequences because her oldest sister couldn't reach her to pinch her arm. She corrected her statement, "I mean, uh, cool."

"How often do you cook through the night?" Thena frowned at him.

"Well, not often, and usually I would try it on the weekend, but it was on sale, and I wanted to get it at its freshest , so," he shrugged. Despite the nature of the misunderstanding, he had to chuckle a little. "I'll bring some over for you to try."

"Gil, you really don't-" Thena was in the middle of shaking her head to tell him he didn't have to do anything else.

But he did; he grinned. "I do, though. I mean, you at least need a ride home. That's why I was called, I believe."

Thena practically growled at being reminded of why they were all here together at such a terrible hour in the first place.

"And there's no way you can cook with one arm," he continued, gesturing as he did. "Even if you can type with your non-dominant hand, I wouldn't recommend trying to get in to work while it's still too fresh."

Thena huffed, throwing her head back against her pillow. "Fine, fine, yes, knight in shining armour, do assist us helpless maidens."

The girls snickered at their sister's attitude. But Gil stood and leaned into Thena's upward point of view. "Thena, I know you're more than capable. But maybe, if there's any time for me to help, it would be now?"

Maybe it was the exhaustion, or maybe it was the weird hospital lights, but he could swear her eyes looked a little glassy. "You've done more than enough already."

He did not agree. But he kept that to himself, resisting the urge to sort out her mussed locks of blonde for her. "I don't think of it as enough, or less than or more than. There's just what you can do, y'know? And I can, so I want to."

Maybe that was too reductive. Sprite didn't even look like she had followed what he had said. But Sersi seemed to, and had that excited look on her face as she was gazing at Thena, awaiting her response.

Thena furrowed her brows at him, creating that little knot between her eyebrows he thought was kind of cute. "Okay, counsellor, stop grandstanding."

He chuckled. She thought he made such corny jokes, but she was the one who told lawyer jokes like an old dad at a barbecue. "The defense rests?"

She didn't really laugh, but she kind of puffed out of her nose in a way that seemed amused. And she was smiling. "Fine, but at least sleep a little before you tell the office that they'll be free of me for at least two weeks."

Two weeks off for a six week injury--some would think it unreasonable, but only Thena would look at that ratio and think it was being indulgent.

"Uh, you mean I'll get us some coffee while you're waiting for that cast. Then I'll take us all home and get started on some food for you to keep microwave ready."

"Gil," she scolded him.

"That sound good, girls?" he prompted his two best allies in this argument. He could feel Thena glaring at him extra coldly.

"Yeah Thena, let Gil help," Sprite pleaded first, pinching the blanket thrown over her legs. "He has to drive us home anyway. And you're always telling us delivery fees are too expensive."

"They are," she managed to growl out even amidst her personal conflict. "Fine, but you two are going right to bed when we get home, because tomorrow is school again."

"Bro!" Sprite voiced (loudly).

"Shush," Thena silenced her with one pointed finger. "You're not the one with the broken arm, you don't need any more missed days this semester."

"Why do you get two weeks off?" Sprite grumbled lastly before slumping against the bed railing again. Although, Gil observed, she was still holding onto the blanket as a gesture of comfort. Sprite's huffing and puffing was, in its own funny way, her attempt to seem unfazed by all this.

"Because I can work from home," Thena proclaimed whether that was entirely true or not. "You can't. School tomorrow."

"But," Sersi broached as the true mediator of the three. She leaned on Sprite's shoulders, batting her eyelashes at Thena. "Breakfast sandwiches? Gil can drive us."

Thena gave Sersi a much dryer look. "Don't volunteer people to do things for you, Sersi."

"I don't know what's open right now, but maybe by the time we get all signed out," he offered, glancing at his watch. "But hey, if you guys wanna see what's in the vending machine, I won't stop you."

Thena sighed as the girls accepted his kind cash offering, waving at her on their way in promise to bring her something. She tilted her head on the pillow at him again, "what have you done?"

He leaned closer again, "I sent them away so you can tell me how you're really doing."

"My arm fucking hurts."

He chuckled again, although this time he did pull her blanket up again and at least get some hair out of his way of seeing her properly. "Did they give you enough meds?"

She made a face, and he recognised some true discomfort there. "I didn't want to ask for more while the girls were here."

"Well, that's why I'm here, isn't it?" he smiled, pressing the handy little button hanging right there for a nurse's assistance. "Don't worry about them, Thena. I'll take care of them and I'll get you all home, okay?"

She sighed, really closing her eyes since his arrival, despite her own exhaustion. "I still wish they hadn't have called you like this. But...thank you, Gil."

He would carry her if he really had to. But instead he said, "any time."

"If they get a bunch of sugar from the vending machine, don't tell me I didn't warn you," she mumbled.

"I'll take responsibility for it," he promised as he pulled his jacket off, settling in to be with them until release. "Do you want another blanket or anything too?"

"Ask if the girls can have some? We ran out of the house with whatever we could throw on in a few seconds."

"I will," he promised her, slipping her hand under the blanket and patting her arm.

[gojos-thot-patrol]

It's fun to be the main character, isn't it? Welcome to

where you are the center of our universe and we are only here to please you. You're the guest of honor tonight, Dear reader, and we're all so eager to please.

Pick your poison Darling.

O U T D A T E D

Ryomen Sukuna

Sukuna isn't the type of person to say "I love you." He's not the type of person to love. He was a demonic warlord, known for his cruelty and lack of empathy. What part of that screams "lover boy" to you?

Baby, You're a Haunted House

Society will tell you that playing with ouija boards is a bad idea. this fic begs to differ. a demonic Sukuna smut

Close Calls

Love is scary, Isn't it Reader? Sukuna thinks it is. but at least he's facing his fears for you. a soft Sukuna smut.

Sacrilegious

Feeling holy? Maybe a little less than holy? Do you want to have your guts rearranged by a God in his own temple? yea, me too. a godly Sukuna smut.

Requesting something Unholy

Did you like the idea of the previous fic, but think you'd relate to it better if the reader was of the male variety? well, do I have news for you! A smutty Sukuna drabble

Seven Minuets in Heaven

Maybe you're feeling something a bit more modern reader. Something more relatable? Like a college au where you lose your virginity to a frat boy named Ryomen A modern day Smut

Better off as Lovers

Dating is hard and falling in love is harder. Ryomens love isn't up for debate, but if he's truly ready to give up his playboy life style for you is a little more questionable. Part two of Seven Minuets in Heaven. A smutty hurt/comfort fic

New Mistakes

I would say being left at the altar was the worst thing that could have ever happened to you, but I think the revenge sex with Ryomen makes it all worth it, don't you agree Reader? A modern day revenge smut.

Satoru Gojo

He was the Satoru Gojo. He was the strongest of all sorcerers. He was a man who didn't need anyone. He was the heartbreaker here damn it.

In the Middle of the Night

Loving someone is hard. Loving someone who will never love you back is hell. Gojo can do anything expect win your heart. a late night Gojo angst

Sooner or Later

you've gotten quite close to Nanami, haven't you Reader? theres no way Satoru will take this well. a toxic Gojo drabble

Here Kitty Kitty

Gojo just got his favorite kitty a brand new collar a pet play Gojo smut

Heaven is a Place on Earth

Gojo was a devout man of the cloth. Until it came to you. No amount of repenting was going to save his soul from the sin he was about to commit, but do you think that was going to stop him? a blasphemous Gojo smut

In Her Eyes

Gojo was more that a little bit nervous about the birth of his daughter, but, the moment he sees her that all melts away. a fluffy Gojo drabble

Me and You Under the Honeymoon

Congratulations to the newly weds! You and Satoru spend your first night together as husband and wife on your honeymoon A fluffy Gojo smut

Kento Nanami

He stood tall and proud. His eyes held an ice to them that dared you to try and melt them and his cheekbones could cut diamonds. He exuded the kind of confidence that only a man that would wear a leopard print tie in a room full of young adults and know they couldn’t make fun of him would have. 

Requesting Nanami Relax

It's been a long day. Relax baby. Nanami's got you, just as he hopes you've got him. a fluffy Nanami drabble.

After School Detention

You had been so sure that you were immune to the charms of your devilishly handsome calculus teacher. Who falls for a calculus teacher anyways? You do reader, You do. an educational Nanami smut

A Thousand Miles Away

It's frustrating dating a Jujutsu Sorcerer, especially when their run so thin your boyfriend seems to almost never be home. Will your relationship survive? a gutting Nanami angst

A Place That Feels Like Home

Was A Thousand Miles Away just a little bit too much for your tender heart to much for your heart to take? Worry not dear reader. You and Nanami can find your peace in this follow up. A reunion smut

You Up?

You and Nanami have been hooking up on the regular for quite awhile now, haven't you reader? I'd be careful with that if I were you. I think someone may have caught feelings... A fluffy smut

Suguru Geto

His long black hair perfectly framed his sculpted face. His kind eyes seemed mismatched with his almost mischievous smile. You couldn't help but be sucked into his orbit.

Where the Spider Lillies Grow

You're remeincing about your first love ever, aren't you? The one that left a ruined shell of who you used to be? that can't be good for you darling. a heart breaking Geto angst

Ghost Of You

You're still not over him, are you reader? Darling, it's been six months, the two of you weren't even official yet! well, Don't look now, because he's at this party too. A Possessive Ex Suguru Smut

None of this appeal to you reader? Not a problem. we're here to please You and only you, so as always, request are Open for any of your JJK needs. the only rule is if I find it uncomfortable, I don't have to write it.

Oh, and while I have you here, Why not check out some of our Headcannons? We hope you can agree on at lest a few. And please don't forget to check out our Valentines Day Event! If you're looking for something not on this list it's sure to be there. Or it could be Here, In the Birthday Event Masterlist!

We hope you enjoy your stay here dear reader. You're welcome back, any time.

[celestiall0tus]

Into Another World - Foxes

Table of Contents

            Gateways in the sitting room between worlds lit up. Portals spun and people emerged from them all in various fox-themed outfits. They all exchanged cautious glances as they sized one another up until Vixen took a long drag from her false cigarette.

            “How curious. Other little kits. Never thought I’d see others,” Vixen purred.

            “How is this even possible?” Of Virtue and Sin Kagami demanded.

            Vixen shrugged as she sauntered over to the ring of couches. “Why worry? Well, you can. I’m going to relax, maybe see about making myself a drink so I can better enjoy the show. Perhaps a martini? I wonder if this place has what I need.”

            Prismatic lights swirled next to Vixen and created a martini. Vixen cooed and took it while the others stared in disbelief. Vixen casually took a sip and sat down.

            “Could I… could I get one too?” Kagami coughed.

            Prismatic lights swirled and created another martini. Kagami took it and sat next to Vixen.

            “My, quite the change of heart, kit,” Vixen cooed.

            “There doesn’t seem to be any immediate danger. Besides, it may not be the worst idea to share a drink with a fox like yourself,” Kagami admitted with a slight blush.

            Vixen chuckled and took another sip. “Come, little kits. No point standing around. Where’s the fun in that?”

            The others shrugged and joined Vixen and Kagami while All That Remained Volpina lingered behind.

            “Are you insane? We’re all deception. How can we even trust each other?” All That Remained Volpina demanded.

            Miraculous AU Volpina snickered. “Seems like a little kit hasn’t learned her lesson yet.”

            “Wait, what lesson is that?” Masetro asked.

            “Nothing is ever true. Even if we were to tell each other the truth, we’d doubt, even if it was true, we’d think it false. Thus is the paradox of deception and honesty. What is true? What is false? And to those questions we will never have the answers to,” Rapture Lila explained.

            “That’s stupid,” All That Remained Volpina hissed.

            “And the point of Trixx made all the more true,” Rena said.

            “I’m confused. How are we supposed to know what to believe then?” Fantastic Fox asked.

            “You don’t. You doubt everything, as you should. Never believe in everything. You’ll be played for a fool time and time again,” Absolution Volpina warned.

            “Better to be the cunning trickster than the gullible fool,” Void muttered.

            “Ugh! I’m bored! Can we talk about anything else?” Finesse demanded.

            “Uh, maybe a little about ourselves?” Fennec suggested.

            “Oh, yes! I would love to hear about you all. Especially the other mes,” Court of Miracles Lila cooed.

            “Then allow me to go first. I’m the dreaded Volpina, fox demon of Venice. Be warned to all who travel at night for she’ll steal your daughters to sacrifice them to her unholy father. Oh, the tales they spun. I only stole away a few daughters, but I never sacrificed them. Though they were often praying to their God in my presence,” Miraculous AU Volpina snickered.

            Vixen snorted. “Quite the menace you are.”

            “Oh, you flatter me. That was only when I needed to whet my appetite for flesh. I usually spent my time terrorizing big business, politicians, and petty bullies. I stole their secrets and would ruin their reputation for the people.”

            “Quite the noble cause, kit. What led you along that path?”

            “Trixx, of course. He taught me to keep the light in my heart. It was also because of him I learned to see the lies and deceptions of everyone around me. It annoyed me seeing those who thought they were bigger, better, ravenous pick on the kind fools. Especially when I occasionally fell in their sights. So, I repaid them with fear.”

            “What about Marinette? Have you made her pay for what she’s done to us?” All That Remained Volpina demanded.

            “Marinette? Oh! You mean Bugaboo! She’s hardly done anything to me. More the other way around. More than anything, I would like to tap that ass, but she’s not interested,” Miraculous AU Volpina said.

            All That Remained Volpina curled her lips. “How could you want to do that? She’s evil!”

            “Hardly. She’s a savior,” Absolution Volpina remarked.

            “Savior? How can you say that? She ruined my life! I never did anything to her, but she ruined everything! My lies weren’t hurting her, but she took it all personally and ruined me. Now I’ll ruin her!” All That Remained Volpina yowled.

            “Sounds like, how do they say it? A skill issue?” Court of Miracles Lila cooed.

            “Excuse me?” All That Remained Volpina hissed.

            “I’m just saying. If you can’t even lie well enough that one person sees through all your bullshit, you don’t seem worthy to be a fox. You aren’t even worthy of being a Lila,” Court of Miracles Lila pointed out.

            “Oh yeah? What about the other Lilas? What about the rest of you?” All That Remained Volpina demanded.

            “I work with my Marinette, our Ladybug. It is only with her that we can find salvation. Until she comes to save us, I work in the shadows protecting the people from the crazy butterfly woman we fight,” Absolution Volpina said.

            “I could give a rat’s ass about my Marinette and her Highborn privileged ass. Especially when I’ve been given a chance to become more thanks to Velze. I plan to embody all that is deception, all that is Trixx, and rise to become one of the elites. Then I can put my plan into motion,” Court of Miracles Lila said.

            “I’m supposed to be seducing my Marinette. My mother would like to have the royal family in our pocket. I was just going to mess around and fuck with people, but I’ve considered trying to sleep with her myself. I mean, why not?” Rapture Lila commented.

            “I wouldn’t blame you. She’s an absolute freak in the sheets. Or not. She’s not shy about where,” Finesse cooed.

            “You’re with your Marinette, pretty boy? Lucky!” Miraculous AU Volpina pouted.

            “Oh yeah. Sure, I’m lying to be with her, but it’s worth it if I can lay claim to what is rightfully mine,” Finesse boasted.

            “Enough! I’ve had it! Don’t talk about my cousin like that!” Void roared.

            “Wait, cousin? Bridgette?” Miraculous AU Volpina asked.

            “Damn right, and I’m done listening to this. It was passable listening to the girls, but I won’t tolerate a sleazeball boy talk about her like she’s his property. She is her own person! Fuck, my little Mar-Mar doesn’t even like boys!”

            “Oh, she doesn’t? Well, if you’d like, I can change that for you. I’m sure I can turn any Marinette straight,” Finesse boasted.

            Void snarled and grabbed Finesse’s throat. “That’s it. Time to take out the fucking trash.”

            Finesse yelped as Void lifted him up. A portal opened at the edge of the room. She tossed him through it, and he was gone.

            “Take out the other trash!” Miraculous AU Volpina yelled as she pointed to All That Remained Volpina.

            Void nodded as she grabbed All That Remained Volpina’s cloak and threw her through the portal. She shook herself off as the portal closed and she took a seat.

            “Finally! Can you believe there are foxes like that? Ugh. Disgusting. My condolences, Trixx,” Miraculous AU Volpina remarked.

            “Indeed. Now, let’s see. How about you, red fox? Tell us about yourself,” Vixen cooed.

            “Me? Oh, there’s not much to my story. We’re currently in a game that the kwamis play. Trixx approached me and gave me a way to be free. Both from my captors and to be myself,” Fantastic Fox admitted.

            “Captors? What happened?” Vixen asked.

            “Oh, just, I was out with friends and got super embarrassed. I ran off and a monster attack came. I was with Adrien, and we tried to run, but was cornered by Felix, who is under Colt’s complete control. He captured us and as someone, at the time, with no powers or anything, I was trapped. Now I keep up the illusion that I’m still trapped, when I’m actually free,” Fantastic Fox explained.

            “Oh! So, what plan do you have? What’s the lead up to your trick?” Miraculous AU Volpina asked.

            “Well, I want to get Felix to fall completely for me. I’m thinking maybe I can get him to muster some will to fight against Colt and assist us. It hasn’t been hard since Felix is already smitten with me. Though I do feel bad at times for tricking him like this. He’s very handsome and has a good heart, but, you know,” Fantastic Fox said.

            “Sounds like you do care for him more than you thought,” Vixen commented.

            “No! I mean, yes? I don’t know. I like him, but I also like Nath-,… I mean, Familiaris, but-!”

            “Wait! Nathan? As in, Nathaniel?” Miraculous AU Volpina asked.

            “W-what? No! No, not at-!”

            “Oh. My. Gosh! Sleuthy? Marc? It’s you!”

            “M-marc? No, I’m not-!”

            “Oh, it is you! It is you! I’d recognize you anywhere. Shame you spend your time chasing after an oblivious redhead like him.”

            “You too? Do all Marcs do this?” Court of Miracles Lila asked.

            “Not mine. Granted when I see him, he’s usually being ridden by the boss like a horse all while he howls like a bitch in heat,” Kagami commented.

            “What?” Fennec yelled.

            Fantastic Fox’s face turned beet red. “O-oh? Who… who is your boss?”

            Kagami created an illusionary image of a memory of her boss, Luka Couffaine. Maestro and Fantastic Fox’s jaw dropped, Rapture Lila catcalled, while Rena and Void raised their brows.

            “Is that… Luka?” Maestro asked.

            “Indeed. He’s my boss, only because he has the black cat. It makes him one that you don’t want to cross, and the one that everyone wants,” Kagami answered.

            “Everyone? Really?” Fennec challenged.

            “Well, of course. Look at that man. He’s gorgeous! Well, not as sexy as the Luka I know, but this one is a solid 10,” Rapture Lila cooed.

            “He looks like a little bitch,” Void hissed.

            “He is,” Kagami agreed.

            “Do you seek his company as well, kit?” Vixen asked.

            “No, but I’ve seen all the places his dick has been, and I don’t want to partake. My eyes are set on a different prize. A challenge to secure, but one I’m confident I’ll win,” Kagami declared.

            “Oh, yeah? Who would that be?” Miraculous AU Volpina cooed.

            Kagami changed the illusion to Of Virtue and Sin Juleka. Miraculous AU Volpina’s jaw dropped, Rapture Lila catcalled, and Vixen whistled.

            “She’s quite the beauty. Is no one pursuing her too?” Vixen asked.

            “No. She’s the boss’s sister. He warned us all that he’d kill any of us without hesitation should we lay even a finger on her. As such, no one goes near her, except for me.”

            “Hot damn! She has been well endowed with beauty!” Rapture Lila praised.

            “Where can I get one of those?” Miraculous AU Volpina asked.

            “Can we please not talk about my sister that way?” Maestro asked.

            “Sister? You’re a Luka?” Kagami asked.

            “I… yes. What of it?”

            “You look pathetic.”

            “Hey! I like it. Besides, Trixx doesn’t mind. He likes it too.”

            “How did you end up with such a kwami?”

            “I found him with Barkk when I was out with my boyfriend.”

            “Ugh, boring! Hey, you! You’ve been quiet,” Rapture Lila said.

            “Not much to say. I enjoy watching over talking. But I am soulbound with Trixx. My soul has been bound to him throughout the lives I have lived. Whenever I live, we will find each other,” Rena explained.

            “Woah! That’s so cool!” Miraculous AU Volpina yelled.

            Rena shrugged.

            Miraculous AU Volpina hummed. “What about you, short, dark, and scary?”

            “I’m cursed with deception. All my life, even if I spoke true, no one would believe me. Well, the foolish believed me. I was set to be the ladybug after making a deal for my Mar-Mar, but that changed when Tikki wanted Mar-Mar over me. Trixx made a new deal that he’d give up Mar-Mar, but he wanted me. So, a bargain was struck,” Void explained.

            “That’s sounds rough. I don’t think I could handle such a curse myself,” Vixen commented.

            “It was… is not easy, but you learn to just live with it,” Void muttered.

            “Well, this got depressing. You, fennec fox looking shrimp, what about you?” Miraculous AU Volpina yapped.

            “Me? Uh, not much to say. I’m an artist and was given my miraculous by Bloody Bug,” Fennec answered.

            “Ugh! Boring! And what about you? You gonna sip on that martini all day, or you gonna share something with the class?” Miraculous AU Voplina snapped.

            Vixen chuckled. She finished her drink and stood. She sauntered over to an open space around the couches. The room shifted and gave her a stage and mic. She smiled and took her place.

            “I have no tales of heroics. No villains to befell. No holds to land or tangible power. I have lived a simple life pursuing a passion that has left its own legacy. One I impart on you all,” Vixen announced.

            Vixen took the mic and sang. She used the power of illusions to create a phantom band to back up her vocals. Everyone turned and watched her perform, enraptured by her display. She grinned and used her powers again to spin illusions into scenes she sang about.

            Maestro’s eyes lit up as he listened closely. He caught onto the melody and joined her illusionary band with his own illusions. Vixen smiled softly and welcomed him to her stage. They worked in tandem as they put on a concert for everyone and took turns singing whatever came to their minds. They switched up along to romantic ballads, swing, jazz, heartbreak, and everything in between. They finished and took a bow while everyone gave an uproarious applause.

            “Encore!” Kagami called.

            “Yeah, encore!” Miraculous AU Volpina yelled.

            “Encore! Encore! Encore!” Rapture Lila added.

            Vixen chuckled. “Well, little kit, what do you say? Do we give them another show?”

            Maestro beamed. “Yeah!”

            “Alright, my darling foxes! One more number!”

            Everyone cheered as Vixen and Maestro started up again. Miraculous AU Volpina, Rapture Lila, and Court of Miracles Lila added their own illusions as they bopped along. Absolution Volpina, Void, and Rena leaned back and listened. Kagami’s eyes were glued to Vixen. Maestro invited Fantastic Fox to dance with him, and Fantastic Fox joined him. Fennec grumbled and watched Fantastic Fox and Maestro dance. Fennec’s eyes glued to them until Maestro dipped Fantastic Fox and kissed him.

            Fennec’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Fantastic Fox was shocked for a moment before he returned the kiss. Miraculous AU Volpina, Rapture Lila, and Court of Miracles Lila all catcalled and whistled.

            “Get some, boys!” Rapture Lila called.

            “Don’t be shy. Show some tongue!” Miraculous AU Volpina goaded.

            “Don’t encourage all that!” Fennec yelled.

            “Why not? They seem to be reciprocating. What’s the issue?” Rena asked.

            “Yeah, why? You jealous?” Miraculous AU Volpina challenged.

            “No! I just… I’ve seen enough. I’m leaving!” Fennec declared.

            A portal opened on a wall near Fennec. He approached it, looked back at Maestro and Fantastic Fox, before he stepped through it.

            “He was so jealous,” Miraculous AU Volpina cooed.

            “Totally,” the Lilas said.

            Vixen chuckled as she watched the boys. They shared a final kiss before reality set in and Maestro pulled Fantastic Fox up.

            “S-sorry about that. I… I got a little caught up in the moment,” Maestro admitted.

            “No! I mean, no need to apologize. I… it was very romantic,” Fantastic Fox said.

            Maestro smiled and took Fantastic Fox’s hand. “Only the best for you.”

            Fantastic Fox’s eyes lit up. He smiled, hugged Maestro, and kissed him. Miraculous AU Volpina and the pair of Lilas catcalled and whistled again. Vixen sighed and shook her head. She stepped off the stage and headed towards a portal that opened up.

            “Wait! Where are you going?” Kagami called.

            “This has been fun, but this old girl can’t perform quite like I used to. I need to rest, but this was fun. Farewell, everyone. And, kit? Good luck in your hunt,” Vixen cooed.

            Kagami stood and rushed over to Vixen, but she stepped through the portal. Kagami halted and uttered every curse under the sun. Absolution Volpina, Void, and Rena all stood and left through their own portals. Maestro and Fantastic Fox shared a pair of long goodbyes before they went their separate ways.

            Volpina and the pair of Lilas stood. They all went through their own portals, leaving Kagami alone. Kagami sighed before she left too.

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[littledead-ridinghood]

Yes sorry Ollie is a cop. He is a cop in the way nearly every DC hero is a cop and part of copaganda. We have multiple articles on how all super heroes are cops but that you can enjoy them and find catharsis anyway. Ollie gives people justice who are ignored by the system and Ollie is a cop are both true that's ok. You can look up super heroes and copaganda on youtube and find multiple nuanced videos.

okay, I wasn't going to respond to this at first, but this is my opinion on cops in the dc universe. It's not fully fleshed out yet, I feel, but I've been mulling it over in my head for months, and is something I've wanted to talk about for a while now.

Plainly speaking, I think cops who work with vigilantes are inherently bad cops. Vigilantism is illegal and when cops team up with vigilantes, they are adhering to their moral code rather than the law ie copaganda.

It's a play on dramatic irony where we as the audience know more than the characters in the story. We can see Detective Jim Gordan, for example, working with Batman (who were told is a good guy) because he knows the GCPD is corrupted and he can't trust his fellow officers. Therefore, because Batman is headlined as "the good guy" in these storylines that reflects on Jim Gordan making him, in turn, "a good guy." We're told to view him as such because Jim's morals are "clean," "see he also wants to clean up Gotham City, so he's partnering with the people who are actually trying to do that."

The problem is that in these instances, Gordan is adhering to his morals over the law where his morals are to protect the people where the law says to protect property. We can say that it's for the greater good, but that doesn't change the fact that it's illegal, argo, making him "dirty". And that is copaganda! Upholding Gordan for breaking the law because "he knows better than the institute" is literally some of the most common copaganda in media. It's right next to writing cops as if they're your friends so that people will instill trust in the institution (think B99).

Cops and vigilantes should inherently not get along because vigilantes would not exist if the system--if cops--worked. But the system doesn't work, so these individuals take justice into their own hands via criminal action. Now, we look at these heroes and say "yes, they're criminals on a legal basis, but we understand that morally speaking, they're doing good work." Jim Gordan doesn't have the luxury of that grayness. He can try to clean up Gotham, but once he starts doing so outside the law, he, himself, is also a criminal and an accomplice.

Personally, I don't think your moral compass should start and stop with the law because the law isn't always morally correct. Many laws throughout history have been created by those in power to stay in power. And if you can't recognize how the law can be used to impede on others' natural rights then you have an unholy amount of privilege. Having said that, most fiction where cops are allowed to uphold their morals over the law is written as them protecting the people (as stated with Jim) rather than the real-world equivalent where upholding "morals" is usually off-the-rail abuse of power. This is where cops use the excuse "I thought they had a gun!" and jump straight to brutality rather than assessing the situation and attempting to talk a person down. Because it's not actually about morals like portrayed on t.v. but, again, that idea that laws exist to keep the top on top.

I disagree with your statement: "[Ollie] is a cop in the way nearly every DC hero is a cop and part of copaganda." Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but this is a very "a square is a rectangle, so a rectangle should also be a square" kind of argument.

I think characters can have instances of copaganda (any story that has cops in it is inherently copaganda, even if portrayed in the worst light possible, for the simple fact that cops are present) but, that doesn't make them a cop.

By saying Oliver is a cop, I presume you mean because he goes after criminals, which completely undermines what a cop is. That's like saying an attorney of law is a cop because they work in the legal system to prosecute the accused i.e. going after criminals. Cops exist to protect property, uphold the law (but they have no legal obligation to protect the public a la DeShaney vs. Winnebago(1989), Town of Castle Rock vs. Gonzales(2005) and re-enforced after Uvalde in spring '22), and was created to control weaker groups of people.

That's just not how Ollie's portrayed. Oliver is portrayed as an anti-fascist, social justice, cop-hating, criminal. He's literally juxtaposed with cops. Holding himself accountable in law is not an endorsement of the legal system but rather a stance in his morals that no one is above accountability which is how the law should work. You can say all of his writing, just by including cops, makes his comics copaganda, but that doesn't reflect on Ollie as a character endorsing the police nor does it "make him a cop". Copaganda reflects on cops as an institution and how writers want us to view them. Oliver is literally one of the characters whose stories actively revolve around him sticking up for those who are victimized by the police. You said it yourself, anon, "Nearly every DC hero is a cop." You just happened to pick one of the ones who falls into the small minority of non-cop abiding.

Furthermore, though I assume you mean Oliver metaphorically embodies what role cops fill, in the literal sense as well, your claim is fundamentally wrong because Oliver Queen has never been an actual cop before either. Someone who would fit your sentiment would be Dick Grayson who has been written in the role of an officer before (literal) as well as upholds the system as best he can (metaphorical).

The difference between Bruce, Oliver, and Dick in their inherent "all stories that have cops are" copaganda is that Dick and Bruce both constantly get aligned with cops by others including the police whereas the Police actively hunt Ollie down because they see him as a threat to their power. Ollie actively hates cops. Bruce and Dick (usually) actively don't. Ollie works against the Police whereas the other two work with the police so much so that, again, citizens relate their brutality to that of cops.

I was reading Hal and Ollie's road trip arc a good handful of months ago (of which is about the dichotomized relationship between Ollie "loud and proud leftist" Queen and Hal "before his rebellious phase" Jordan), and one of the issues was made up of two stories. The second one is of Hal and Ollie at odds over the best way to solve something via the authorities or good ol' fashion revolution, but I want to focus on the first half of the issue. It takes place in Gotham where Officer Bullocks literally commits an act of heavy Police Brutality against a gang of older teens and young adults who wronged him(they trashed his entire apartment) and he gets away with it because he "felt bad." It was horrifying to read; there was no accountability.

So I agree with you, there is a wild amount of copaganda in comic books both because of writers' political beliefs and views on the world (bullocks getting away with it because the writer thought it was fine) but also in the context of the stories. An example of in-story writing would be the first thing Jason ever said to Bruce in rebirth: "You want to beat up on a kid, go enlist in the G.C.P.D. like every other bully in this city." So in the context of the batman universe, Jason and people like Jason (i.e. the weak and vulnerable) do relate vigilantes to cops because they constantly see them working with each other. Dick Grayson was a cop for a period of time joining the Blud. police department because "those were the morals his father instilled in him." And I could go on and on about the faith comic characters constantly put in law and order.

Oliver holding himself accountable under the law, though, is not endorsing the system like Bruce and Dick do, he does not place his faith in law and order. That is him actively taking a stance saying he is not above the law. Where on most cases, Bruce does view himself as being above. And even when Bruce admits to going too far, he will never fess up to the public that he, Bruce Wayne, did it, whereas Ollie doesn't allow himself to hide behind his persona. A big difference between the two men is that Oliver being Green Arrow is very public knowledge and Bruce tries to hide his life as batman as best as he can. It all comes down to accountability.

Now, you sent this about Ollie, so why am I talking so much about him in relation to Bruce. That's because Ollie and Bruce are constantly being related to as the same, usually in the vein of "well, they're both hella rich with no powers who play dress up, right?" But this is a complete misunderstanding of Ollie's character (for one, he's not rich, or at least he's not supposed to be).

I think this constant water-downed view of Ollie is what allows people to project Bruce's less-than-iron beliefs onto Ollie.

There are decades worth of canon where a core of Ollie's is the fact that he can't stand cops and doesn't believe the system that's used now can be saved, only mitigated as something better replaces it. He holds himself accountable for his actions as Green Arrow because he knows that just complaining isn't enough. He needs to step up as a leader and not just help overthrow a discriminatory institution but actually actively help rebuild it. Whereas Bruce actively believes the system can be saved. Most notable that comes to mind right now is the new Batman movie where Bruce, in his final monologue, just saw how the cops failed to protect Gotham from the riddler, but states how, just like the bat symbol is now established with hope, he now has hope that the police can do the right thing. He doesn't learn that the current system will never truly work and instead now believes that it could work (when we know it can't).

If you want to focus on copaganda in DC comics, Arrows just aren't going to be your strongest contestants. Because Copaganda does exist, but your best bet is going to lie within most bat-adjacent characters who literally try to uphold that system. Or you can look at lanterns whose stories not only are about literal space cops but have also deviated from Hal Jordan rebuilding his moral compass and calling out the guardians for their fascist tendencies to turning Guy Gardener, a man previously written as to be a notorious cop hater, into working in the Baltimore P.D. as an actual cop. Those groups have the basis for talking how police are glorified. Arrows just don't have that historical canon for a strong argument.

[cheerfulnihilismqualitysuffering]

Most mothers I know feel like they're drowning on a regular basis, but we are mostly good at not talking about it and presenting a facade of competence. I can see them drowning behind the wall of pictures of their smiling children. No pictures of them, though. They don't talk about themselves. There's never a mention of difficulty or struggles, or if they do it's a sanitized version, or a vague post that smells like fear of judgement.

I ponder the damaging nature of our cultural values in America on a regular basis because I sincerely believe the pathway towards sanity is to deculture yourself as an adult. American values are rooted in the unholy triumvirate of puritanism, the bizarre wealth doctrine that suggests that the Lord shows favor by bestowing "ca$h money, son," and, of course, the worst institution that humans have never been able to give up, slavery.

How do you deculture? Reject the cultural dictates that demand that everyone follow a similar and comprehensible pathway. You don't have to go to college, get a mortgage, get married, have kids. You can opt out of the expected pathways. It's difficult because there's no model, no one to look to to see how to do it - but it also liberating because you get to choose what your life looks like. Instead of a life path that's clearly laid out with no deviations - so that you can see from this moment until the end of your life with a boring clarity, you can embrace groundlessness (as Pema Chodron put it). The amount of criticism you receive will increase exponentially, but you'll also be able to find people who accept you fully for who you are because you become ruthlessly authentic. Then, the only people that want to stick around are the people that really actually do like who you are as a person and not what you do for them or the image or idea that you project that they want to associate with themselves for marketing and branding purposes.

Humans used to be adventurous and now there is a very loud proportion of our population that thinks it's okay to just demand that everyone believes and does only that which we ourselves feel comfortable with. The only thing I can't abide is when someone tries to force me to live and believe as they do. I can't tolerate living with that kind of fear. It's exhausting to think about.

Wealthy people hoard their money like hoarders collect garbage. A healthy system depends of circulation. Stagnation is death. Eternal, unending growth is the definition of cancer. Instead of collecting money, try collecting life experience. When you're dying you leave behind any material wealth you accumulated. The only thing that ever truly belongs to you are the vivid experiences you can string together to tell your life story, and the individuals whose lives you touched in some way.

A friend of mine ended his life a few weeks ago. I wish he could see the people still posting pictures or memories with him. He had a rich wealth of friendship and connection, but struggled in poverty like the rest of us. And it breaks my heart that we continue to participate in a society that teaches us that even in the face of a wealth of friendship, love, and connection, we are unworthy unless we hoard our wealth and exploit others to enrich ourselves.

[wooglebear]

so what's the deal with Melvinborg’s sister?

in tetocu23, Hazel is virtually unrecognizable next to her ACIT version.

It all starts with Melvinborg's situation. He isn't a cyborg in this AU, so Hazel will need to have a new motivation to travel back in time. And since it's a reboot, her dynamics with krupp/cu, melvin (melvin's her half brother after all), Gooch, Bo, Jessica and the Sophies, Erica, Stanley, Dressy, cash networth, Cara, and the boys will be drasitically different from ACIT (I'm covering Cara, Cash, and the Melvins)

i imagine Hazel as someone who's come from an offshoot, not the timeline where Melvinborg is from. She'd mostly want to make sure that an alternate timeline where Melvinborg doesn't even exist becomes the main timeline- or what she sees as a Better Timeline - and try to set up the parameters for its existence but it goes sideways in some way. As for what her second reason is... perhaps she's trying to keep Melvin from falling under Melvinborg's control - not because she wants to save or protect him, but because she doesn't want her half sibling to leave her, causing her to go to great lengths to save Melvin.

Like canon ACIT, Hazel shows up in the equivalent of the season 2 ep 1 (or according to the writers of the Au, the season 2 two-parter).

Hazel starts off not really associated with anyone else in class because she's quiet people forget she's there. She starts to gain real self confidence instead of relying on the detective shit

She's part of a system, with Private Hazel being her alter ego. Fun fact: Private Hazel and Hazel talk to each other via voice recorder and a notepad respectively. I got this idea from the Sticky Notes AU by @infini-tree. Only instead of Sticky Notes, it's a notepad.

Cara shows up in the latter half of the season (which, accroding to the writers of the AU, hybridizes aspects of season 3 and a little of the space season, so now the kids are in a camp for spring break mandated by Melvinborg) with Cash in tow.

I basically COMPLETELY rewrote cara from a hacker (like in canon ACIT) into something a little more plausible for a girl who came from space, but I kept things like her hacker skills. in this version, she’s an evil genius.

Cara does plan to take over the world; it's just very low on her priority list. So for now, she tries to make Hazel her servant (unwilling servant, mind you).

The only problem is… she’s falling for her.

Yup, unlike in canon ACIT, Cara’s going to end up with an enemies to lovers plot with Hazel.

And then we get to Cash himself. Cash is basically his canon self, but with a dash of "deliberate drama causer" and a pinch of dt17!Scrooge McDuck seasoning mixed in. The Scrooge to Hazel's Webby and Cara's Lena.

This is Cash Networth, billionaire owner of Camp Uppercrust. HE'S SHOWN UP LOOKING TO STIR UP SOME TROUBLE AND BECOME A FULL TIME QUESTIONABLE INFLUENCE ON HAZEL AND THE KIDS. EVEN THOUGH LENA SEEMS ABOVE IT ALL, HE ACTUALLY COMES TO LIKE ENTHUSIASTIC HAZEL, AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP IS A UNHOLY MASHUP OF BFF FOR HAZEL AND, FOR CARA, WFE (WORST FRIEND EVER).

Cash has some kind of big history and backstory (it doesn’t really play that much into the main story), which is sort of a parody/takes inspiration from The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.

Cash's design is his canon one, but sometimes he wears a plaid jacket over his pink shirt.

Hazel is so hellbent on trying to get rid of her brother that it actually shoots her in the foot sometimes.

Also, Cash has a niece... who I'm not gonna tell you about, for it'll be told about when I get to her.

(tetocu23 AU: @infini-tree / @cartchytuns)

[bladesalvation]

𝕆ℂ 𝕄𝔼𝕄𝔼

tagged by lbr. I stole this from the lovely @bloodyarn

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꒰ 𝗕𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒 ꒱ 

Full name: Nicholai Elenwyn Faalgard, known as Nihil Rot Gender: Nonbinary masc presenting Sexuality: Pansexual + demiromantic Pronouns: He/They

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꒰ 𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 ꒱ 

Birthplace: Auburn Trail, Baldur's Gate outskirts Job: Unholy Assassin Cult Leader Priest of Kelemvor and Medical Examiner Phobias: redcaps. His stress goes up 200% around redcaps and he gets real twitchy.  Guilty pleasures: Pumpkin seed and cranberry bread, preferrably with butter on it and a coffee or tea on the side. He's a sucker for it and probably the most chill you will ever see him

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꒰ 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐀𝐋𝐒 ꒱

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (Neutral by end of redemption.)

Sins:

Vengeful: Unsurprisingly, the guy attracted to vengeful types has a vengeance boner himself-- and he is liable to not take any half-assed punishments as a fair trade unless you can really appeal to his humanity. Implusive: Nihil is a wildcard-- he has a method to his madness, but it is usually short-sighted and prone to last minute change. Indecisive: Honestly goes hand-in-hand with his impulses in the worst way. Nihil will go from ride or die on your plans of ascension to wrestling you to the ground and screaming at you about how stupid you are for going for it.

Virtues:

Loyal: Nihil is a ride or die no matter what bad decision you've made-- your best bet to break his loyalty is to turn on him or someone else within the Circle of people he trusts. Protective: He will defend those close to him with his life. Man is a guard dog in an elf body.

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꒰ 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐎𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 ꒱

Introvert / Extrovert

Organized/ Disorganized

Close-minded / Open-minded

Calm / Anxious / Restless

Disagreeable / Agreeable / In between

Cautious / Reckless / In between

Patient / Impatient / In between

Outspoken / Reserved / In between

Leader / Follower / Flexible

Empathetic / Unempathetic / In between

Optimist / Pessimist / Realist

Traditional / Modern / In between

Hard-working / Lazy

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꒰ 𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐏𝐒 ꒱

All of these are specific to Nihil only based on his story, not RP-- RP is always open ended because I would LOVE to have other insights, this is just the ideas I got

OTP:

Astarion : I'm sorry, they share a single braincell. They really do. I could write out Nihil's approvals and it would line up to Astarion's 95% of the time. They get along disturbingly well and Nihil would do just about anything for Astarion. They were both thrust in a life or death choice by a manipulative person and made the decision to survive only to pay for it by becoming chained to that person forever. Both use sex to manipulate and are numbed to killing, even having fun in doing it. Both are also just kinda here for the vibes in the worst way possible. Gortash: Ok ok I have been vocal abt the idea that Nihil and Gortash had a strictly sexual relationship with repressed feelings for each other for a bit, but what definitely gets me is both were hated and considered some kind of burden without truly knowing why and were picked up by their gods for their potential (and seemingly at their lowest point). Nihil was freshly widowed and his s/o someone who was one of the only people who didn't think he was a monster. So Gortash, this brilliant, well-spoken and frankly dashing man not only seemingly trusts him and values their partnership genuinely but re-iterates he isn't a monster? It's over boys.

Acceptable Ships:

Shadowheart : Shadowheart was my original plan for Nihil honestly-- also a lot in common, worshipping "misunderstood" gods (though one could argue that at least Kelemvor is just distant, he isn't out here making people commit mass murders for him that I have seen. Bhaal? Got me there), they're fairly secretive people and like people who can respect their boundaries and let them come out of their shell, they want to be kind even if its not supposed to be in their nature... Honestly she should be in the OTP category but its not hard for him to be set up with any of the companions. Lae'zel : Gith have Nihil's whole heart. Really, her biggest drawback that made her not an OTP for him is just that she is snippy towards him asking questions which is really just a no go. But loves her loyalty and decisiveness and does what he can to understand why she is how she is and give her proper space and respect. Also he just loves siccing her on people. It's fun. Wyll: Honestlyyy I kinda accidentally fell in love with them dancing, I was expecting to find them so cute. But Wyll, like Karlach and Gale, deserve far better than a nightmare void of a man. I mean everyone deserves better but mostly Wyll, Karlach and Gale.

OT3: I wanted Nihil/Astarion/Shadowheart so bad y'all don't even know. YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. I want Astarion to get his mean goth gf and slutty goth bf

Brotp:

Gale: I feel like not much needs to be said, he's a squishy wizard and kind of a pain in Nihil's eyes but he likes the guy and his stories, they're real fun!

Notp: Fuck Wulbren Bongle, I don't give a fuck abt this motherfucka's problems--

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꒰ 𝗕𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘 ꒱

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𝐏𝐀𝐒𝐓 (tw pregnancy loss, cannibalism ment) - bullet points to go faster

Born to Kelehan Faalgard and Dannikah Hjol-- the son of an esteemed fabric merchant and a third generation Seldarine Drow immigrant respectively. Born in a small village outside of Baldur's Gate called Auburn Trail.

Danikkah struggled to keep a pregnancy throughout the first few years of marriage and exhausted every avenue to try and have a child with her husband. Her final loss in her second trimester drove her to seek out a hag living in the forest hugging the south of the village with the reluctant blessing of her husband.

Struck a deal with the hag, Mother Radley; a child with the power to beat the odds in exchange for what the couple cared for the most. Danikkah agreed, believing what she cared for the most was her family's long-standing farmstead. She was given an infused piece of 'a divine's flesh' to eat and successfully fell pregnant.

The family was shunned during the pregnancy when word got out how Danikkah got pregnant and Kelehan's tailor shop took a hit but despite the stress, the pregnancy progressed.

A drow girl appeared in their sheep's meadow a few weeks before Danikkah was due to give birth--With a surprising clarity the girl called Danikkah her mother, as 'Lady Silverhair told her to'. Believing the girl to be a late-answered prayer from Eilistraae herself, Danikkah was overjoyed to take her in and name her Dirzarra-- her soon-to-be son's older sister.

Nicholai was born and when Mother Radley came to retrieve her end of the bargain, she revealed that their daughter was the prized possession she wanted. The family refused and in turn were offered an ultimatum: Dirzarra came with her, or Nicholai would be undone. She gave the couple until their son turned 8, imbuing him with a magic illness that could not be cured until either a decision was made or the boy died.

Nicholai's parents would seek out clerics and priests to help, knowing the sickness could not be cured but willing to try. They were even more outcasts and it spread to the kids as time went on.

Nicholai spent most of his days ill at home, unable to play and help with chores and it only worsened as his time ran out. Days before his 8th birthday, he and Dirzarra were jumped in the meadow by one of the hag's servants. In a desperate attempt to save his sister, Nicholai unleashed his fury and frustration on the redcap and savaged it until it died.

When his time came, Nicholai was rushed to Baldur's Gate and the Stormshore Tabernacle for help, every other temple refusing the family's begging. When it was clear he was beyond saving, a priest of Kelemvor approached to read his last rites as a kindness to the family.

As he was about to pass, Nicholai was intervened by Bhaal, naming himself a savior to the boy and able to rid him of his disease if he vowed his soul and talents to him. Nicholai agreed and was saved, allowing those around him to believe it was Kelemvor that took pity on him and spared him this death.

As he grew, more murders around the village would spring up. The residents were panicked but unable to solve the killings, even when the Flaming Fists and various adventurers were called in. Nicholai proved himself a perfect assassin and worshipped Bhaal fervently. When he was 15, he would have a vision bidding him to kill the hag, Mother Radley. When he did, he would find the contract between the hag and his mother for his birth, as well as letters detailing his illness.

Outraged, his rancid blood bid him to turn on his parents and sister, failing the attempt before running away to Baldur's Gate under the false pretense of wanting a higher education and to eventually join a small group of Kelemvorite priests. There he would seek the attention of the Bhaalist cult, eventually being summoned to meet Sarevok and was christened as an initiate, changing his name to 'Nihil the Rotten'

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𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓

Nihil would train under the previous leader of the Bhaalist temple as an initiate from the age of 16, alongside his kin, Orin the Red. He would assume a false position as a medical student and Kelemvor cleric, specializing in the last rites of murder victims whose families could not afford services.

He would attempt to leave the cult at 21, with the help of his lover, a Lathanderan vengeance paladin named Flynn Bardr. However, he succumbed to his Urges shortly after a quick union and kill his new husband. Destroyed at the outcome, Nihil returned to the temple to face his kin and his mentor.

When he returned, the high priest attacked with the intent to kill the traitor, only for Nihil to kill him instead and claim his betrayal a test of his faith and take the high priest role for himself. He would proceed to grieve for his lover and beg Bhaal's forgiveness in private.

a few years later he would meet arms dealer and Banite Enver Gortash and they would agree to a tentative alliance at the behest of their gods. Over time they would both eventually be appointed as Chosen and enact Gortash's Accelerated Grand Design (not canon to RP, they would start a sexual relationship shortly after the theft of the Crown of Karsus.)

Orin and Nihil's relationship, already strained by his betrayal as she did not believe it a test of his faith, worsened as he took what she believed was her rightful place and began to brush her off, deeming her 'beneath him now'. This would lead to her betrayal in the Illithid colony.

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𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐍𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐈𝐋𝐎𝐈𝐃 𝐂𝐑𝐀𝐒𝐇

Overwhelming loss of memory, the only proof of who he is a scrap of paper of prayers and last rites read by clerics of Kelemvor and a dagger made of surgical steel, Nihil set out to seek aid where he could not provide it to himself. And yet, despite everything pointing to his divine position, he cannot hear his god like any other cleric...yet he still wields the arcane power of a priest.

Who is this power really coming from?

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[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Tom Slater

Published: Nov 30, 2023

Why do so many leftists struggle to condemn Hamas? Why do so-called progressives make excuses for Jew-killing, misogynistic, gay-bashing Islamists? It’s a long and damning story. Here, Tom Slater traces the history of the Islamo-left, an unholy alliance between left-wingers and Islamists that has once again burst out into the open following the pogrom in Israel on 7 October. Watch, share and let us know what you think in the comments.

Tom Slater: Is Hamas a terrorist group? Most people wouldn't struggle with that question. After all, this brutal Islamist organization, which rules over Gaza with an iron fist, just butchered 1,200 people on the 7th of October. The youngest victims were infants, the oldest were Holocaust survivors. Women were raped, hostages were taken.

When former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was asked this question on talk TV a few weeks back, he couldn't bring himself to utter the t-word.

Jeremy Corbyn: Can we have a discussion? Piers Morgan: Can you call them a terror group? Corbyn: Can we have... Morgan: Can you call them a terror group? Corbyn: Is it possible to have a rational discussion? Morgan: Are you prepared to call Hamas a terror group? Corbyn: Is it possible to have a rational discussion... Morgan: You can't, can you? Corbyn: Is it possible? Come on, answer that question? Morgan: You can't, can you? Corbyn: You answer it. Morgan: No.

Host Piers Morgan invited Corbyn to describe Hamas as terrorists no fewer than 15 times. But he refused. He couldn't. Instead, Corbyn just wittered on about needing to start a process that leads to a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. He has since found the mineral to call Hamas a terrorist group in an article for Tribune. But that would perhaps be more reassuring if it wasn't for his long history of cozying up to Hamas and other Islamist terror groups. In 2009 addressing a public meeting, Corbyn infamously referred to Hamas and Lebanese Islamist Hezbollah as quote, "friends," unquote. He went further, railing against the designation of Hamas as a terrorist group.

Corbyn: And the idea that an organization that is dedicated towards the good of the Palestinian people and bringing about long-term peace and social justice and political justice in the whole region should be labelled as a terrorist organization by the British government, is really a big, big historical mistake, and I would invite the government to reconsider its position on this matter and start talking directly to Hamas and Hezbollah. That is the only way forward to bring back...

Slater: And that's not all. In 2011, Corbyn invited Riyadh Salah, an alleged Hamas fundraiser who believes the Jews were behind 9/11 to tea in Westminster. During a visit to Tunisia in 2014, Corbin was filmed laying a wreath near the graves of the Palestinian Black September terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

You can see why, after all these sordid details trickled out, Corbyn proved to be such electoral cyanide, helping to deliver Labour's worst election defeat since 1935.

But there has been an unhelpful tendency to see Corbyn's dalliances with Islamists as a kind of personal moral failing on the part of him and his hangers on. The truth is that the rot runs much deeper. Corbyn is just one useful idiot among many on the dregs of the British left who have come to see Islamism not as the fascistic terroristic menace it is, but as a movement at the vanguard of global resistance to a malevolent West.

This is the unholy alliance that we've seen out in force on British streets in recent weeks, where Islamists and left-wingers have marched side by side, united in their hatred for Israel and barely batting an eyelid as antisemites shout Arabic War slogans and wave Jew hating placards.

Welcome to the Islamo-Left, a sinister marriage of convenience that all good people, whether left or right, religious or irreligious, must confront and reject.

This story begins with the radical left's abandonment of the working class and its decision to seek out new constituencies and embrace identity politics.

From the 1980s onwards, figure son the left perversely came to see working-class Brits as a reactionary block on progress, while mistaking radical Islamists, among other groups, as a potentially revolutionary force. This coincided with the rise of state multiculturalism, which had the effect of elevating and funding reactionary Muslim community leaders who were falsely presented as the supposedly authentic voice of British Muslims.

It is from this ecosystem of a growing Muslim identity politics that the grassroots British Muslim campaign against Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses sprung up in the 1980s. Indeed, some of these groups were instrumental in pressuring Iran's supreme leader to issue his Infamous fatwa against Rushdie.

During the 1990s, sections of the Left, these supposed radicals and progressives, became increasingly, disturbingly sympathetic to the fundamentalists who continue to rage against Rushdie and his supposedly blasphemous book. Muslim identity politics was particularly appealing to a disoriented Left because it mapped onto their support for Palestinian self-determination. Many Leftists were prepared to overlook the dark heart of even full-blown Islamists in the interest of backing the supposed struggle against Western imperialism. The Palestinians became merely pawns in some grand conflict between the west and the rebellious global OIther. This is why today you'll notice that many Leftists ignore Hamas' trampling of the rights of the Palestinians and Islamism's usurpation of the Palestinian national cause.

Back in 1994, Chris Harman, then editor of the Socialist Worker, the party newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party, wrote a bizarre but revealing pamphlet entitled "The Prophets and the Proletariat." In it, Harman admitted that Islamism has some pretty fascistic qualities. From its opposition to modernity to its murderous intolerance and its brutal treatment of minorities. Which is all very good of him.

But the Islamists aren't all bad, he concluded. Islamists, Harman wrote, had opposed the state and elements of imperialism's political domination, particularly Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza. In this, he presented Israel as little more than a Western imperial outpost. And so Islamism, Harman concluded, is born of a quote, "feeling of revolt that could be tapped for progressive purposes," unquote.

Failed Western revolutionaries were increasingly keen to outsource radical agency to Islamists, and to whitewash these reactionaries as a progressive force. This marriage of convenience was then consummated in the 2000s in the aftermath of 9/11 and amid the war on terror.

In 2002, the Stop the War Coalition, dominated by the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party of Britain, formed an alliance with the Muslim Association of Britain. Both Stop the War and the MAB had a pronounced presence on the anti-Iraq war protests of the early 2000s. And both groups are among the most prominent organizers of the quote, unquote, "Pro Palestine" demos that have recently been roiling London.

The Muslim Association of Britain might sound benign, but it was founded by none other than Mohamed Solwa, a former Hamas chief who now lives in London. His son is its vice-chair.

Over the years, leading figures from Stop the War have' been pretty open about their fondness for Hamas. One of Stop the War's co-founders, John Reese, once dubbed these antisemitic terrorists a, quote, "legitimate resistance movement," unquote.

At a Stop the War conference in 2006, Lindsey German a leading SWP figure said quote, "whatever disagreements I have with Hamas and Hezbollah, I would rather be in their camp. Democracy in the Middle East is Hamas, is Hezbollah," she said. Followers of the conflict will know that there hasn't been an election in Hamas-run Gaza since 2006 when German made that ridiculous speech.

Jeremy Corbyn was, of course, chairman of the Stop the War Coalition from 2011 till 2015 when he became Labour leader. German served as his vice chair. Stop the War consolidated the fledgling relationship between sections of the hard Left and actual Islamists. In doing so, it also fatally undermined many of the things that used to be essential to being left-wing, such as universalism, reason and humanism.

Anti-imperialism was reduced to little more than anti-Westernism, transforming regressive Islamists from Iran or Gaza into anti-colonial heroes in the process. And all this has fuelled identity politics here in the UK, transforming us from citizens with interests in common, into members of competing ethno-religious groups.

In particular, this anti-war Left and their Islamist allies have cultivated a divisive Muslim identity politics. Their cynicism paid off for the 2005 general election, when Respect, a Stop the War spin-off party led by George Galloway, won the East London seat of Bethnal Green and Bow, which has a large Muslim population. it was a triumph of militant anti-Westernism and pork-barrel identity politics.

These malign trends have since spread to the broader bourgeois left. Take Novara Media, a popular Corbyneaster YouTube channel and website run by a group of perennial postgraduates. In 2014, the Novara website published a glowing profile of Muhammad Deif as part of a Radical Lives series. It described him as an, "uncompromising and shrewd freedom fighter," who has contributed to the, "impressive evolution of the resistance in Gaza." Deif is the commander of Hamas' military wing and a vicious Islamist. Nine years after Novara's puff piece was published, he became one of the architects for Hamas' brutal incursion into Southern Israel earlier this year.

No wonder that one of Novara's editors, Rivkah Brown hailed the events of the seventh of October as a quote, "day of celebration for supporters of democracy and human rights worldwide."

After Hamas launched its brutal pogrom in Israel, many were shocked at the apologism and even cheerleading that some on the British left engaged in. The Socialist Worker, the paper once edited by Chris Harman, greeted the massacre with the headline, "Rejoice."

But while we certainly had a right to be shocked at such inhuman and depraved talk, we probably shouldn't have been surprised. For decades now, Britain's radical Left has been morally self-immolating. Its deranged alliance with Islamists has stripped it of any claim it might once have had to the moral high ground. So now, weekend after weekend, we see supposed anti-racists and anti-fascists march alongside people chanting for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel.

They can dress this up as resistance or anti-imperialism all they want, but it really is nothing of the sort. The supposed left-wingers have embraced barbarism. They've got into bed with bona fide fascists. Identity politics has rotted their brains and their souls.

==

A while ago we were hearing that "pro-Palestine does not mean pro-Hamas." Except it does and it always has. ever since Hamas was elected in the region. They've been endorsing and supporting terrorists for almost 20 years.

The irony is that there's no more imperialist, colonialist ideology than Islam. The entire objective of Islam is to establish a worldwide Caliphate under which everyone will be subjugated to Allah's sharia, per the quran and the sunnah. And where you won't get to march in the streets chanting pithy slogans against those in power. Instead, you'll be publicly beheaded.

[exileseverafter]

The Author of Exiles Rereads All Of Exiles Published So Far

That's right, I did it. In preparation for Book 4, I started rereading something I started writing...like...ten years ago or something. And you know what? It's pretty good! Turns out I like my stuff!

Behind the cut are a lot of rambling thoughts on each book, along with anything I might have done differently. Mild spoilers, but mostly just authorial navel-gazing.

Book One thoughts: Hey, did you know that if you're making any kind of longform work you should consider taking notes on things like character hair/eye color and background details? And also, it's good to have a beta reader? Because I don't know if I had either at the time of book one! And there are sooo many little continuity errors I noticed! They aren't things you're likely to catch unless you're looking for them, but it makes me think I want to go back at some point and not rewrite book one entirely, but just edit it a little. Fix some errors. It's still solid, and I'm pretty sure me being the author is the only reason it kind of felt like that "Spot the Errors" episode of Garfield and Friends. (Side note: If you can find it on the web, please watch the Garfield and Friends episode "Mistakes Will Happen." It's one of the funniest things ever, with far too many jokes to catch in one viewing for something that predates the internet.)

Also, it turns out that if you try to read something by downloading it in PDF form off of AO3 and putting it on your phone via Kindle, it does unholy things to the formatting. So I do not recommend reading Exiles (or anything else) like that.

Errors aside, god, this was nostalgic. One reason I started this reread was to get back into the heads of the characters, and it all started coming back to me right away. I can go oh, there's where I figured out how this would end. That's when this first comes up. Neat! Also there are some genuine accidental foreshadowing bits that lead into book three, of all things.

Book Two thoughts: Wow, this is long. It's easily the longest of the three, and I'm not sure how well the pacing holds up in retrospect. I was very much writing as a "weekly serial" rather than a novel at this point, and it shows for better or worse. There are chapters where I can tell I was just trying to get something up. Did you know if you write something with regular updates, it's a good idea to have a backlog instead of just writing week to week?

That said, this is where I started to shake off the constraints of "everything must be rooted in some preexisting fairy tale" and I think that's for the best. I started pulling inspiration from 50s pulp sci fi, Little Shop of Horrors, what people in the 90s thought VR was going to be like, and buddy cop flicks. I was figuring out my gender at the time I introduced Rem Tera, and wanted a nonbinary character whose issues were not centered around what were Nonbinary Character Tropes at the time, i.e. 'figuring out nonbinary was a thing, explaining it to others, which bathroom to use, etc.'

I also like playing with scale in unusual ways, and one thing I wanted to lean into was how to create a threatening antagonist who was a few inches tall in a world where people came in giant size. It turns out the answer is 'give him some big monsters to command and scary levels of manipulative charisma.' Lord Germain, you are the worst but I am so proud of you.

Note: I think there may be a chapter missing from the original Jukepop posting. I'll try to go through and fix it soon.

Still also very happy with the final arc, even if the story does a bit of narrative water treading to get there. This book has the most 'quiet time' with the characters, and I think in the long run it helped me flesh out the relationships established in book one and the new ones forming in book two. Especially since book three is pretty story-heavy. Speaking of! Book Three thoughts: Wow, this is like post-timeskip One Piece where one thing just leads right into another. It's unsurprising, since a lot of the plot threads laid in books one and two really activate here. Libra and Valerian have a been a presence from the beginning and Blue was hinted at as far as the Moonflower Market. So yes, I was sitting on those for a while and happy to set them off here.

No Reflection is probably the most difficult original fic work I've written so far. To give you an example, I started it too soon after finishing Of Rot and Bloom and was stalled out for years afterwards. The good news is that like any creative project that isn't made of expiring materials, you can pick a story up at any time. One day I finally decided to ditch the chapter I was stuck on, write something else and start the ball rolling again.

And it worked! I finished it. More or less. There's something of a Nona the Ninth/Alecto the Ninth "book 3 and 4 are part of a piece" feeling to the end of Book Three, but I do try to end on at least a climactic element. There are just a lot more cliffhangers this time around.

Man, I'm mean to Basil in this book and this isn't even his book! Poor guy is gonna have it rough in Book Four.

ALSO, there are at least two missing chapters, and they're important ones that reveal major plot elements. In fact, one is right in the climax. I need to fix that ASAP. Presumably AO3 lets you insert chapters? I'll figure out how.

So, what does this mean for Book Four? It means it's definitely happening, though I don't want to say it's happening immediately. Maybe after the New Year. I have some chapters prewritten for Book Four I want to revise, and this time I'm making sure I have a healthy backlog and a plot outline worked out.

For everyone who's read any part of Exiles, thanks so much for supporting me thus far! I really appreciate it. Wouldn't be able to keep up this much enthusiasm without you. And if you're thinking of writing (or drawing, or animating) your own original thing, my advice is just to do it! Just jump in. Yeah, it won't be perfect, but you'll learn by doing, and an imperfect story that exists is always better than the idealized one trapped in your head.

[thesinglesjukebox]

KIM PETRAS - "BRRR"

With Leah's help, we turn our attention to Kim Petras.

[4.94]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: When she's not being a trailblazer for the world's worst song (can you imagine the hypothetical TSJ blurbs for "Unholy"?), or receiving ire for Feed the Beast (which I secretly adore for how plodding and simple its pop vision is), it turns out Kim Petras remembers how to write a fun hook. "Brrrr" is camp embodied, far from transgressive, but delightful in its queer, whirring onomatopoeia. [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I lived in queer co-ops from 2018 to 2020 so I've spent a non-negligible amount of time trying to appreciate Kim Petras. In that time -- and in the years following -- I've gotten precisely nothing out of this endeavor. The arc of Kim Petras's career is unintelligible to me, a grand chronicle in a language I can't read. If anything, her journey from "fake pop star my friends swear by" to "maybe real pop star that my friends don't talk about" is one of attenuation -- whatever star-like qualities could be discerned in her strongest early appearances ("I Don't Want It At All", the SOPHIE one, the Charli XCX one) is absent entirely on "Brrr" -- even the campy thrill of "Coconuts" and her vampy turn on "Unholy" is hard to discern here. The Kim Petras of "Brrr" is a rictus grin of forced slay, a joyless demonstration of force of will wrapping in third-generation Yeezus pop-industrial beats. [2]

Hannah Jocelyn: Alright, who gave Rami Yacoub the SOPHIE sample pack from Splice? Forget hyperpop; this is hypopop, devoid of any sort of invention or interesting production that once defined the genre. This is what CRASH sounds like to people that hate CRASH; this is what 10,000 Gecs sounds like to people who hate that record. Petras has no distinctive identity here; I don't even hear a woo-ahh; she even says "you don't know me all too well" and I agree. [3]

Oliver Maier: Don't have any idea what "if you think you're so cold, brr" is supposed to mean and producers ILYA and Rami evidently got overexcited with the SOPHIE sample pack. Improbably, it mostly gels. Kim Petras is probably evil but her performance here is seismic. [7]

Will Adams: I'll give her this: I can't remember the last time a pop song's central hook landed with such a tremendous thud as "IF YOU THINK YOU'RE SO COLD. BURRRRRR." [3]

Brad Shoup: That hook -- ouch. It would kill in the writers' room of an industry drama. The pre-chorus -- where she retreats for a second just to explode -- breaks up the squelch just fine. This looms more than it bangs, which feels right for a song I thought said if you like it baby, haunt a lobby. [4]

Nortey Dowuona: The bass drum in this is novel in that nothing is actually done upon closer inspection. There's a lot done with the synths, especially with the quick zaps of melodies that bubble up during the second pre-chorus, the quick bubbly riff at the tail end of the chorus, and the light motif at the beginning that is so thin it disappears upon quicker inspection. These all sound delightful, but listen to the bass drums, stripped of their ability to carry the baseline or shift the rhythm of the song. They could've been replaced with literally any kind of drum sound and it would function the same. It's just thrown in there since capital-p Pop music has absorbed rap production techniques wholesale without paying attention to how it's used. This could be coming from say, house or bass music, but nobody who made bass music would program bass drums this way, right? [4]

Micha Cavaseno: Extremely funny to hear the punchline flow still utilized as a hook in pop in 2023, because all the parts that feel very much like the past aren't the obviously retro-touches. The robotic elements of the production going for tech-electro knuckle-drag are nice and sleek, a classic vehicle if ever there was one even 40 years after this stuff was a trope. But the brrr, the filter on the backing vocals, the devil-may-care attitude gone world weary all meanwhile feels like the clichés of a decade ago that don't quite feel ready for nostalgia. I guess there's something to be said about a record that feels beholden to its dated elements being so "cold", but not everything cold is super inviting. [3]

Will Rivitz: As cold as a fridge set a degree or two above the FDA standard, and as enthralling as a piece of iceberg lettuce dessicated after a week left inside. [4]

Aaron Bergstrom: *Kenneth Parcell voice* "What's cocaine like?" [2]

Alfred Soto: What sucks is that this song doesn't suck. My students could've commissioned the vocal from several AI resources, the electronics don't grate. What sucks is that the hook sucks. "Did she really sing, 'If you think you're so cold, brr'?!" On first listen it sounded like "If you think you're so-ber." Guess which I prefer. [5]

Taylor Alatorre: Kim Petras released two albums in 2023 and I honestly didn't remember that this was on one of them. It provides a glimpse into one potential Bad Ending to her still-promising career: getting so hyped off the Sam Smith streaming numbers that she loses the ability to discriminate between "bad bitch energy" and movie trailer music. [4]

Harlan Talib Ockey: After the mediocre "Unholy" and laughable "If Jesus Was a Rockstar", "Brrr" actually sounded... good? Petras' delivery in the chorus is like getting smashed with a warhammer. The production is utterly headache-inducing (compliment). However, the verses feel less and less substantial on repeat listens, and it never builds to a peak higher than its first chorus. This is a solid album track, not a course-correcting lead single. [5]

Katherine St Asaph: Feed the Beast was named for its raison d'etre: source enough pop songs to hit your label KPIs, then spray and pray and slay. What's less remarked upon is how many of these songs come from writers and producers who really haven't released much lately: Sarah Hudson, Ali Tamposi, Ester Dean (!!), and "Brr" producer Ilya. (Unfortunately, Dr. Luke has released plenty lately.) Also involved in "Brr": a session guitarist for The Weeknd and a guy who goes by the Instagram handle @industryplant; this ain't the A-list. One wonders how long this material was sitting in the pantry before it fed the beast. Specifically, "Brr" sounds like a demo written for Thank U, Next (in which Ilya was heavily involved), then rejected for sounding less sexy than sad. Whatever the song's provenance, Petras has it now, and she executes the motions of flirtation with bleak competence. And I don't hate it! The record's already cynical as fuck; why not put that subtextual cynicism into the music? [7]

Ian Mathers: The sound of not just calling someone's bluff, but relishing in it. There's no winning; either way, you're going to prove her point. Rarely does a discussion of temperature sound so purely withering. [9]

Leah Isobel: SOPHIE's absence hovers over me a lot, which is dumb, because we never met. I am just a fan; I saw SOPHIE live exactly once, about six months after I started hormones. I can picture myself that night vividly -- in a thrifted jersey dress, cut low, that I had to duct tape to my tits so I wouldn't break the law; in impractical high heels that another girl, who I don't talk to anymore and who probably didn't really like me, gave to me; my eyeliner as sharp as I could draw it; my hair tangled and messy but long, the way I liked, the way I'd dreamed about for years. I remember that night and I remember the relief, the stupid fucking unbelievable unbearable incomprehensible relief of that whole year, how I had denied and ignored myself for so long that just being who I wanted 2 be was incredible enough to set my head spinning.

That year, the girl who doesn't talk to me anymore got into Kim Petras. I treated her work like a guilty pleasure; "Hills" was spacey and fun and exuberant, "Hillside Boys" was tender and sweet and exuberant, "All The Time" was bouncy and bright and exuberant. But all that joy was tempered by the knowledge of Dr. Luke's fucking greasy hands gripping her recording contract. His presence indicated something that I didn't understand yet, and maybe still don't, though it makes sense intellectually: that if you want to be a part of society, the recognition you feel within yourself doesn't actually matter that much if everyone around you hates you for it; that people are ultimately social, and being forced to choose between external ostracization (with the threat of physical death by violence) and internal spiritual death (with the threat of physical death by isolation) is one of the cruelest things to do to a person, and yet this is the choice I was given, that #girlslikeus are all given. No matter what I choose, there will be genuinely evil soulless fuckers who look at me and say that it was really my fault to begin with because my presence -- just my existence in the world -- is proof of moral, social, civilization-wide decay. Cisgender women get to talk about their innocence as if it's a birthright. Transgender women are not given any innocence to begin with. Kim was put in front of the media at sixteen years old to explain her decision to get bottom surgery; it makes me feel crazy to watch those interviews, to know that what everyone is actually talking about is her body. No matter how ostensibly supportive those interview segments were, no matter what the intent, the knock-on effect was to make her teenage body a matter of public record, to take away her privacy and dignity because it's just so interesting that trans girls exist and, please, tell us more about your genitals! I see the neon-bright straight line from the invasive, violating, violent "curious" "empathetic" gaze in these interviews to the music Kim would go on to make, in which the fact of her body hovers on the edges of her songs, freighting them with meaning, making their frivolity feel manic and fearful and rebellious and unbelievably significant.

Jules Giles-Peterson describes the opening line of "Hillside Boys" -- "My silhouette is in the frame of your shades again" -- as evidence of her desire just to be seen, linking the heterosexual gaze of the individual man and the patriarchal gaze of the pop industry together. Her whole perspective on herself is compromised by the knowledge that she has to constantly prove her worth to other people and to society at large; there is never, ever a moment of rest. But that song held up the capacity for feeling as proof that things could change someday. "It's over in your Range Rover... You look so pretty when you're breaking me, yeah" mourned the loss but rejoiced in the ability to feel it. But when "Brrr" revisits that Range Rover, it's to remove all sense of warmth, desire, or real emotion from the image: "Turn the heat up in your Rover Why don't you take it out on me?/ If you think you're so cold, brrr." "Brrr" leaves absolutely no space in its tense, cold atmosphere for Kim to express a desire that feels authentic and real; it is about embodying what other people want from you so thoroughly that you have gone numb to what it is that you want. In Kim's work, being a woman and being a pop star are the same thing; the gaze is constant and inescapable. There is no interiority anymore. The demands of disclosure and confession and surveillance are too great. In the background, faux-SOPHIE wubs and schwacks and clangs rattle like ghosts, banging on the wall between death and life, between what should be -- what was promised -- and what actually is. More than anything, in "Brrr" I hear a grief so wide it could -- and should -- swallow her whole. SOPHIE is gone. Kim remains. But in our broken promise of a world, where her body -- my body -- is public property that politicians and lovers and friends and music producers can dispose of at will, what is there left to take joy in? This is the truth: being trans is wonderful, and everyone around me sees it as terrible. Transitioning saved my life, and everyone around me thinks that I died. I have never been this happy; I have never been this desolate. I have never loved so deeply. I have never felt loss this acutely. "Brrr" is purely evil in its emotional perspective, in what it says about the world we live in. And it is also the most honest song ever made. [10]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

[reviewsthatburn]

I read Dracula as part of the Dracula Daily emails from May to November in 2023. This is an annual event and will likely continue to be available in the future. 

Dracula is a book which has been around for over a century, and it's a story that has known problems of racism and antisemitism baked into its premise and its execution. What I primarily want to rate here is my experience of reading the book through Dracula Daily, where everything is emailed in order based on the date of the piece of writing, rather than being in the order Bram Stoker envisioned. I, as a person, got kind of stressed out by knowing that this book was going to take months to read. On the other hand, since I don't have a strong sense of the passage of time, it was very cool to get more of a idea of how long the characters were waiting for news or how very long all of this travel took. When the characters were waiting for word or would put in their diaries that they were still waiting on a letter or didn't have information they needed, that resonated more because I also had been waiting. Or, occasionally, I was able to read a letter that was written but had not yet reached the intended recipient.

Overall, I enjoyed it as an experience, but if you are looking for a vampire story to read there are ones with fewer old-timey bigotries. The emails definitely are an easy way to get the epistolary feel, if that's what you want.

Full review and CWs at link