#LACUNA project

[notthatmoth]

Don't you want to become a cult leader...?

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

The first letter written to Giovanni that Marsilio includes in his collection is placed directly following that friendship-spat between Lorenzo and Marsilio which never was ever wholly resolved. It was, to quote, a goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation.

Lorenzo, thinking Marsilio should pay him more mind, tetchy and hot headed: You tell us to love wholly, utterly, to write letters of love to one another, to write-write-write – well write me, you absolute –

And Marsilio, busybusybusy with his new parish, rector now of a church, he has lambs in a pasture to care for, cannot attend always to his young patron: I love you I love you I love you but remember always the importance of mirrors in Plato and how we reflect within each other – therefore I am with you and you with me &c. &c. &c. also your anger is sweetness, your bite is sweetness, your kiss is sweetness, nature mingles sharp and delightful together so this is natural your hot-cold, your anger-forgiveness, it’s fine. I’m fine. You’re fine. We’re all fine. Also, if we must come to it, Lorenzo, you’re the reason I am busy. I have thanked you for the parish you got me already, here I will thank you for another four paragraphs &c.  

How interesting, to place the first letter to the ostensible love of his life apres cette deluge of whatever it is Lorenzo and Marsilio are failing to do for one another. There is, naturally, a point to it.

Marsilio Ficino to Giovanni Cavalcanti, his unique friend: greetings. “Tonight I had decided to write to you in the morning like this: ‘come back, my hero! Hurry! Fly here, I beg you!’ Then, on more mature reflection, I deemed it wiser to dissemble my longing so that you would return all the more speedily, thinking me angry. Well, I am! But what’s the point? Will anger stir him whom love has not moved? I don’t think so. So I don’t know which way to turn – to entreaty or to scolding.”

See, look at the mirrors! The Janus-ian nature of this collection. Here it is Marsilio's turn to play as a supplicant begging for letters how Lorenzo had only two pages back. We are in each other, we are of each other, reflected, subsumed, consumed - God is whole and all and nothing. If we are in God then we are whole and all and nothing. Reflecting, refracting, through centuries.

Few of the letters in Volume One are dated, as Marsilio arranged them for effect rather than chronology though we can assume most of the letters were written between 1464 and 1473/74. He would, in future volumes, be broadly similar in approach except we can (more or less) stamp years onto them. Everything in Volume Two is from 1474 to ’76, Volume Three is ‘75/’76 to ’77. Volume Four is '77 and ’78 and - well. ’78 is what matters, of course.

By Volume Two the tone will change. Marsilio will not know this as he puts together Volume One as early as 1473. Indeed, it is dedicated to Giuliano de' Medici. But later, later there will be a knife dropped between One and Two. How we all were before 1478. How we all are after 1478. It haunts every letter. And after 1478 the letters will be haunted by 1492 and '94 and '96.

Haunting every letter is our knowledge of how it ends.

“Ah! Now that I have found a refuge. I shall trust in that heroic heart of yours which usually moves more quickly of its own volition than when spurred.”

Giovanni is an absence and a silence throughout Marsilio’s letters. This is not a new statement. That we know of Giovanni precisely because Marsilio loved – that is not a new concept. Most throughout history are understood through their absence. Their silence. Queer love is especially notable in it’s silence. Which can be a violent absence but, at the same time, silence can be what exists when words have lost meaning, when they cannot hold what needs to be expressed. Silence can be soft as much as it can be harsh. Sweet and sharp.

With Giovanni we are lucky for Marsilio's penchant for veering most verbose. He comes to us, now, in fits and starts. Little gasps and flutters of ah! Ah! I can almost see you! There is a glimmer of, at the minimum, how you were interpreted by another.

So here we have Giovanni who prefers not to be pressured. Who might have a bit of a contrarian nature. Perhaps there is some spark, some flare to him (we know, we will see later, his By Hercules! His stubbornness, his insistence on having his opinions heard). We are only just meeting him, you understand, in this letter. This introduction to the man who will haunt Marsilio’s works – all of them – in one capacity or another.

Indeed, while Marsilio's work is not a hauntology in the strict sense of the definition, there are moments when it could be read as such. Moments when we see him, it's 1495, and he's putting the final touches on the full twelve book series of letters and he opens Volume One and sees the original preface, the original dedication: Giuliano de' Medici. He must see ghosts, then. He must know he has captured men, women, a society, a world, that will echo forward through time shaping this and that while, simultaneously, falling to dust.

“Meanwhile, how shall I stop myself grumbling at you just a little because you are so unmindful of me? But I shall hold back my complaints and, not to bore you with the same old tunes, I shall embark on mattes of greater moment. I shall write about affairs of state. You ask what is going on in town. Serious matters are afoot. Listen! But tell no one! Many of the chief citizens are saying: ‘Oh Marsilio! Why have you been alone in town for so long?’ ‘Because the man who never leaves me on my own so wishes it.’ ‘He has not returned, then?’ ‘Not yet.’ I have nothing more to write you at present. I have written about the state of affairs in town; now it is for you to write about the country.”

Marsilio is often humourous in his letters to Giovanni. He will berate himself when he is not. When he cannot manage a jest, he will apologize. When he must think only on philosophic topics, he will still attempt to inject levity. There were philosophic reasons for this – the power of humour as a teacher, the importance of laughter in learning. Plato wrote about this, as did Church fathers, and Marsilio was ever devoted to education. But more than that, fundamentally at the end of the day, Marsilio liked to joke. He liked a laugh.

It is the nature of time and distance to obscure meaning. There are things we cannot fully appreciate because we are not them, we are not there, but what we can know is that they thought it funny, they found pleasure in each other’s happiness. Though, by some third-parties, Giovanni is painted as a rather serious man. A contrast to the impish Marsilio. Still, he must have appreciated Marsilio’s humour or Marsilio wouldn’t spill so many words attempting to be humourous for Giovanni’s sake.

“Stay! I have blundered! I do not require you to write, but to speak of them. If we speak together, my hero, we speak about the same things; if we write, we write about different ones; I write from memory, Giovanni, and you from forgetfulness. Now I wish I had not said that. My friend has not forgotten me because he has not forgotten himself. Look, he has already granted my prayer. Here he comes. Yes, he comes! Run to meet him, lucky feet. Embrace him, fortunate arms.”

The letter wends its way into a typically Ficinian conclusion: I was harsh! I meant not to be! Love me! Fly to me! I love you! Know your Plato! We are mirrors of one another – one, as we are in God.

Later, Marsilio will call their souls married. He will husband Giovanni in words. He will love all consumingly. He will rewrite the world for Giovanni.

Here and now, though, he wants Giovanni to remember him. He wants Giovanni to know they are within one another, a balm, a soothing constancy. All Giovanni (Marsilio) need do is to turn inwards. All Giovanni (Marsilio) need do is ponder the inner world, the inner life, the soul. Come to stillness. Come to a form of soft silence.

----

Sometimes you just need to go !̷̨̛̖̬̫̺͕̻̫͓̥̭̞̈́́͐͐̔͑͛̂̕̕͜!̸̜͕̣̘̳͎̖̐͐̓̀͒̔̊́̕͜͠͝!̴̢̧͈̩̥͊̈͒̈́̄͋̅͠!̴̯̝̜̟͍̪̌́̊!̵̡̛̗̳̪̈́́̋̊̋̎̑̍̽̆́̚!̶̡̡͉̟̞͈̆̏̎͆̈́͜!̶̜͍̗̩̰̪͙̪̦̯̮̘̊̄̈́͗͑̒́̾͒͗͜͜ă̵̢̧̤͚̳͎̘͍̈̒̇̽̇͘͘̕ḩ̷̩̦̣̗̗̪̜͔͙̪̲̻̞̜̈́̏̓̈́̕̚ḩ̷̡͚̜͚̭̫̼̥̥͕̐̏̓̈́̚͝h̵̨̛̰̗̱͉̮͍͓̪͌̽͂͝h̴͙̱͍̭͕̭̖́h̵̨̛͎̻͎͑̒̓͋͌̎͆̅͛͌͝h̷̢̹̯͈̰̲̮̜̥̮̲̖͊̐͗̌̀!̸̡̖̯̭̳̠̥͖͝ͅ!̶̩̠͔̩̱̜̳̲̣̹̥͍̆͋̈́̈͒ͅ!̸̧̢̗̗͙̪̝̹̦̣͓̪͕̂̀̾͒̈̍͐̐̄̀͠!̶̡͕̖̭̲̼̮̿̊̐͗!̷̢̛̦̂̿͛̀̉̎̌̓̌͑̑͂̾̕!̶͙̙̙̫̳̤̜̖̲̤̠͖̫̲̂̉͆͒̌̕̕!̵̛̻̆̀̀̓͊̽̔ about Marsilio's letters.. ,, . as a treat.

[annemissingshoe]

WTTMV Keeper!Poppy, Stitcher!Julie, [Observer!Wally]Theories (also a non WTTMV character, Solver!Frank in part two)part one

so yeah I’m going to talking about theories about Keeper and Stitcher, also will point out things I noticed about either blog. Also just the timeline or what I think when certain events happened. Umm so let’s start with beginning of Keeper’s story I’m probably going out of order with the timeline, not too soon after this XD

This where Keeper’s story started, the first part of the timeline. With her show being cancelled and the unfortunate consequences of that being her friends fading away until it was just her. Something I noticed was that her colours faded too just like her friends did, that one of the things she was referring to; she wondering why only her colours faded away but not the rest of her. Additionally there’s the fact her memories of the neighbourhood and her friends is also fading away. She doesn’t even remember what they look like anymore:(

This is when she became peaceKeeper, when a shooting star fell into her world and expanded it from what used to be. The arrival of the first of ms Keeper’s little ones; Fliante!Sally, the little shooting star was holding to what little life she left. Fortunately she had fallen into the wings of the right bird, who took care of her until she was better. yes I saw opportunity on that one and took it

I wonder how long was Keeper alone in her au; how many years passed before she met Fliante.

Keeper’s au changed a lot from when it got cancelled to when Fliante arrived there and to where we are now. People might had help with decorating the place. This is the first example of Keeper’s memories fading away.

I think this was the event that cause Stitcher to leave Keeper’s domain. Stitcher, Coupier and that thing attack Messenger, Keeper took notice of this situation and left her domain to save Messenger. After this Keeper decided that Stitcher couldn’t stay her realm anymore as she was a danger to everyone who there. Keeper still cares about Stitcher and believes she can change one day.

I think either Stitcher or Messenger lost an arm in this fight, I’m leaning more towards Messenger on this one tho.

Stitcher said that Observer destroyed her world, and was ejected into the out of bounds. The things is Stitcher isn’t a reliable narrator, his pov and how they remembers what happened isn’t something we can completely trust.

So we don’t know what exactly happened there I did send an ask to both Keeper and Stitcher asking how they meet, but if I had to guess how they met. I doubt Stitcher was doing ok after her world was destroyed especially since she lost a leg, Ms.Keeper probably noticed someone was in the out of bounds and wasn’t doing so well; she made the choice to call them to her domain.

He isn’t beating the murder allegations. Observer has a lot of blood on his hands from the looks of it, confirmed by Stitcher and Observer himself. I can’t say much about this part yet still waiting for more lore and asks to be answered.

As we can see she doesn’t like most of WWTMV cast and that she hates Observer. The only people he’s close to is Admin, coupier and Seamster. Despite whatever happened that cause Stitcher to leave Keeper’s domain, Stitcher still has a high level of respect for Ms.Keeper; it’s makes sense since Keeper would have taken care of her while she was her domain, she would had time to get to know her and to build respect for her too. Keeper is really nice, friendly and friendly it makes a lot of sense to me. I’m curious on why and how her and Admin are close, I find that pretty interesting.

This was the first time we saw Stitcher, Keeper tries and wants to help people even if it’s not the best idea too. She still nice to those who have hurt before, Stitcher probably is one of those people who have hurt Keeper but even now Keeper still wants to help her heal and move on from she doing. :(

Stitcher believes what she’s doing is right, that he saving her “friends” by “fixing” them and giving them shelter by putting them in her collection. In reality she turns them into monsters. Also more Observer Slander heh, Stitcher claims that Observer destroyed her “friends” aus which is why she offers them shelter in her collection.

Stitcher doesn’t care about making the multiverse perfect, she just wants a place where she can exist as she is. The whole wanting to fix the multiverse is Seamster’s thing, I think one of the reasons, she helps him with the perfect paradise because he accepts her as she is and actually appreciates everything she put into her work. She finally has a place where she can be herself without any judgement for it.

not to sure about it yet, but I have my eyes out for this one

part two

@arikihalloween

[autumnalwalker]

Empty Names - 20 - Changeling Child

Author's Note: In which Ashan helps out a fairy that just realized they aren't human and draws uncomfortable parallels to his own experiences. Also, Lacuna horrifies everyone with mad science. There were a lot of delays with life generally getting in the way of this chapter being written, but I am a little proud of myself for just barely squeezing this in before the year ends, as per the goal I set for myself a month ago (in my home time zone anyhow). That said, I didn't manage to give this chapter my usual once-over full reread before posting, so I won't be too surprised if I edit this post later, if only to add the spoiler commentary to the tags. Hope you enjoy, and Happy New Year, everyone. Minor edits to wording/typos have now been made and additional commentary has been added to the tags. Word Count: 11,337 Content Warnings: Fantasy fight scene violence. Attempted (but failed) mind control. Passing reference of blood and gore without detail. Mild body horror. Deadnaming and misgendering a trans person (not Lacuna for once).

<-Previous Chapter Masterpost Next Chapter->

It is a strange thing, to suddenly obtain a new material possession when one has previously made a point of keeping as few as possible.  Stranger still when that new possession is slightly too big to fit into the folded space within the sleeves of your robe to keep safely on your person at all times.  Eris did however include a white carrying case to go along with the matte-black laptop she gifted to Ashan last week, so that is something.  It is not quite the same shade of white as his robe, but it is close enough that Ashan appreciates the thought.

For the time being, that laptop has stayed hooked up inside the guestroom within Bridgewood Manor that Ashan has been occupying since that first mission with Road nearly two months ago.  At Lacuna’s urging he has tried to incorporate it into his morning and evening routines, if only to check the electronic mail.  Thus far that has mostly just consisted of messages from Lacuna containing images with humor he is still grasping, the occasional suggestion from Eris regarding educational resources, and one from Bridgewood congratulating the three of them on connecting to the Manor’s WiFi.  That last part had been nearly as esoteric process as Lacuna’s explanation of memes, and that had rapidly devolved into a rambling lecture about long cats, defunct deities, a philosopher called Plato, dual linguistic meanings lost in translation, and the ultimately futile and deceptive nature of the written word.

Whether it had been Lacuna’s intention or not, that extended feline rant led to his spending even more of his downtime on the computer than in the Bridgewood library since then.  Not for the memes, but to find out who Plato was.  That reference to an (apparently) historic figure as if familiarity were assumed once more drove home the fact that being stolen away before even completing an elementary-level education made him a foreigner in his own homeland.  True, Aliana had tutored him on mathematics, logic, literary analysis, and other such skills in addition to magic, but none of the history or philosophy he learned under her guiding hand came from Earth.  And why would it have?

But now this strange little bifurcated box offered a way to, if not fully amend, then at least mitigate that ignorance.  While Ashan had long been aware of the Internet and its theoretical use as a store of knowledge and a communication medium, between a childhood in a home without a computer and adolescence spent in world without electronics he had never really experienced it until Eris showed up at the Lonely Walk office and handed him a surprise gift.  To hear about it is one thing, but to actually scroll through the pages upon pages listing titles for tens of thousands of transcribed books free for access and hyperlinked inter-referencing encyclopedia articles tracing an interwoven tapestry of conceptual linkage from ancient philosophers to arboreal bearcats was another thing entirely.  Ashan had known scholars on Orthon who would weep with joy and envy at the mere idea of such a library. 

Admittedly, there were some complications with exploring the wider Internet caused by his translation charm not knowing how to handle trying to use a keyboard.  Writing words by hand had been bad enough ever since the onset of his condition, causing whatever he wrote to come out as a pidgin of a dozen or so different languages - many of which he had never even personally encountered before - that was effectively gibberish to anyone without translation magic of their own or a very intense interest in linguistics.  Trying to force his thoughts through a single achingly unrecognizable symbol at a time to try to form words specifically in a language that had been stolen from him was… distressing.  Speech recognition software had proven no better, with the device - as Eris explained it to her - responding to specific physical sound patterns without any true perception happening for his charm to tap into.  But he still has the collection of links and bookmarks his friends had sent him, and that is proving to more than suffice.  Just those first two resources Eris provided him with were more than could be read in a single human lifetime.

Friends.  What a wonderful thing to be able to call someone.  How had he never realized what he was missing?

So now, on this particular morning, after his long-standing morning rituals of exercise and meditation (and a breakfast that he is perfectly capable of remembering and not putting off when there are not more pressing matters to attend to), Ashan turns on his laptop and checks his electronic mail.  There is one new message, sent from Lacuna at two in the morning.

Its subject line reads “Simulations are done.”

Ashan is not normally one to hurry or rush things.  Ashan barely takes the time to skim the full text of the message before closing the laptop and departing from Bridgewood Manor and the surrounding Estate at the quickest possible pace that will not leave him visibly winded.  The brief time that it takes to reach the tree bridge that will transport him to its twin tree across the street from the office feels like an age in his excitement, and he tries to remind himself that after this long of a wait a few extra minutes will not make a difference.  It is certainly nothing worth breaking decorum over, even with no one else around.

An eager grin the like of which has not graced his face in years creeps in all the same as he steps out of the Bridgewood Estate’s secure transit between the trees and into the early morning sunshine.

He crosses the street and then the sidewalk, and then the outermost of the security wards surrounding the Lonely Walk Outreach Agency.  Invisible to the mundane or inattentive eye though they might be, after all the time he has spent adjusting and fine tuning them it is difficult for Ashan not to perceive them as a shifting rainbow lattice-work overlaid in concentric bubbles around the refurbished antique building.

The front door is unlocked, indicating that Lacuna must already be inside, given that Road and Eris were not expecting to be back from the followup to their most recent mission for another day or two.  Ashan heads straight downstairs towards Lacuna’s basement lab; the woman is hardly ever anywhere else these days.

And yet, when the door slides open he finds her usual chair unoccupied despite all the computer monitors surrounding it being turned on.  Ashan’s first thought is that she has simply stepped out for a moment to feed or relieve herself, but then he notices the figure displayed on the monitors.  Eight different cameras at eight different angles and levels of zoom are displaying eight live feeds split across two screens  Eight mechanical eyes watch a faceless white mannequin in worn and baggy clothes standing almost perfectly still in the middle of an evenly-lit blank white room.  Its chest and shoulders rise and fall to the rhythm of slow and steady breaths despite the lack of mouth or nose.  A timestamp on one of the video feeds tells Ashan that the recording has been running for nearly five hours now.

Ashan crosses the lab to the testing chamber door where he finds the clothes Lacuna was wearing yesterday lying crumpled on the floor.  Curiosity morphing into concern, he hits the large red button to open the testing chamber doors and steps inside.

The mannequin takes no notice of him.

“Hello,” Ashan softly calls out to the figure.

No response.

“Lacuna, is that you?” Ashan asks, sliding his wand out of his sleeve and into his hand in a practiced gesture.

A shudder runs through the mannequin.

“Lacuna,” Ashan emphasizes the name, “are you alright?”  Cautiously easing closer, he realizes that the mannequin is making a fist around something in one of its hands.

The mannequin twitches and jerks, contorting its limbs.

“Lacuna, may I see what that is you are holding?”

The mannequin goes still again before slowly turning its head down to eyelessly look at the hand it has brought up to chest level.  Its fingers uncurl to reveal a sphere of interwoven plastic tendrils that rolls off of its hand and shatters when it hits the ground.

In an instant, the mannequin grows three inches, shifts its skin from blank white to a mere sickly pale with the occasional freckle, sprouts hair, and contracts its blank face to reveal the contours of features.

It surprises Ashan just how light Lacuna is when she falls forward into his arms.  He is barely even eye level with her shoulder on the rare occasions she stands up straight, but he realizes now just how much she is skin and bones beneath the loose-fitting clothing she always seems to favor.

“Don’t tell Eris,” Lacuna breathes into his ear before passing out.

*******

“I’m sorry,” Lacuna apologizes for the tenth time since waking up.    The first three times had come in quick succession upon regaining consciousness a minute or so after fainting.  The fourth came when asking for a moment of privacy to change back into her clothes from yesterday, and the fifth when emerging from her lab some minutes later.  The sixth was a part of turning down Ashan’s advice to put herself into the autodoc suite.  The seventh was instigated by her stumbling on the stairs ascending out of the office’s basement, which in turn led to the eighth when accepting Ashan’s offer to help her up.  The ninth took the place of thanks when Ashan unstuck the cap she was struggling with on the bottle of apple juice she retrieved from the refrigerator.  What this latest one is for is less immediately apparent.

Now she sits at the other end of the kitchen table from Ashan, staring down at an empty wrapper of plain salted crackers.  Stripes of morning light cut between the window blinds and divvy up the space between them.

“For what are you sorry this time?” Ashan prompts.

Lacuna flinches at the question, withdraws momentarily, and hesitantly answers, “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?  That must be annoying, sor- Gah!  Why do I keep - I mean -” She stumbles over her words a few more times before closing her eyes, holding up one finger, and taking a long drink to drain the rest of her glass.  Setting down the glass, she opens her eyes and tries again while drumming her fingers on her arms in a rolling motion.

“I should have gone to bed and gotten a decent night’s sleep after sending you that message.  So that I’d be able to help you today.  Instead I got over-excited and tried to squeeze in a little bit of time now that the server load was free.  For a personal project.  Selfish.”

“Apology accepted,” Ashan says, keeping the disappointment out of his voice.  He tries to tell himself that just one more day of waiting will not hurt him.  And if Lacuna is a reckless enough enchanter to run some manner of botched transmutation ritual on herself, perhaps it would be for the best that he does not let her try to experimentally “help” him.  “But why did you not want me to tell Eris?  Friends are supposed to aid one another when distressed, are they not?”

“I don’t want her to worry about me.  Same for Road,” she mumbles.

“You mean to say that becoming stuck as a faceless imitation of a human being all night is not cause for concern?”

“It’s fine!” Lacuna snaps defensively and then shrinks back from her own raised voice.  “It’s fine,” she says more quietly.  “I’m fine.  I’m fine.  It’s a problem I’ve been working for a while now and that’s not even the worst thing that’s happened to me so far.  And the enchantment had a safety timer built in, so I would have been fine.” She raises her head, looking through Ashan rather than at him.  “Compared to some of the other mishaps, this one actually felt… nice?  It was quiet.  Like all the thoughts going in my head all the time finally shut up for once and let me just be.  Awareness without a sense of self to be aware of and in a room with no external stimulus.”  She slaps a hand to her forehead and laughs.  “Okay, wow, that does sound bad when I say it aloud, but I promise I’m fine.  It was actually about as restful as sleeping, I’m just a bit frazzled right now from the sudden jolt back into things.  And probably dehydration.  And maybe low blood sugar.  But I’m good now.  Mostly”

As Ashan opens his mouth to form a reply to that, several other noises interrupt him at once.  The sharp ringing of the outer barrier detecting an intruder with violent intent.  A shout of fear.  A howl of pain.

Before Lacuna can even make a surprised exclamation of her own, Ashan is already out the kitchen, past the repurposed check-in counter, and throwing open the door.  The frightened and haggard individual sporting a denim jacket covered in enamel pins on the other side stops dead in their tracks at the motion of a wand coming within an inch of poking their eye out.  Looking under and past the unexpected visitor’s placatingly raised arms, Ashan catches a glimpse of a smoking pantherine shape on the sidewalk dissipating in a sparkling green haze.  The tree-lined street is left empty except for fallen petals and parked cars.  The blue electric hatchback with claw marks on the side parked nearest to the former bed and breakfast had not been there when Ashan arrived barely half an hour ago.

Ashan’s eyes flick back to the individual standing in front of the door, locking gazes.

“What was that?” he asks.

“I was hoping you could tell me.  Now please, you gotta let me in.  Before it -” 

They double over groaning in pain.  With effort they crane their neck up to reveal a face flickering between two forms.  One of an unremarkably average brown-eyed human with two or three days of unshaven stubble, and the other violet-eyed with smooth, waxy leaf-green skin.  Violet eyes or brown, the look of desperate fear and confusion is the same.  It strikes Ashan how young they are.  No more than late teens.

“Help me,” they gasp.

Ashan guides them to a couch in the nearby living room, locking the door behind them.  They recover quickly enough after lying down - Lacuna catches up just in time to see the surprise guest’s face flicker for the last time - but even after their face settles back to human their left arm remains green.  They cradle it to their chest, as if it were still in pain.  Or as if they were trying to hide it.  Shame?  Fear?  Embarrassment?  All of the above, Ashan guesses.

“Name,” Ashan says, instruction more than question.  He remains standing, alert for the first sign of treachery from whomever he just invited in or of another attempt at entry from whatever that was outside.

“Tam,” the individual on the couch stammers.  “Tam Lin.”  Their green left hand clutches tighter at the utterance.

Ashan stares this Tam Lin down.  On the one hand, that sort of fear - the bewildered fear of having been abruptly thrust Backstage for the first time - is as difficult to fake as it is recognizable.  On the other hand, that which he suspects them to be are known to be excellent actors and none of their kind would so easily give away their Name.

“Tell me Tam Lin,” Ashan asks, “what brings you here today?” 

The green hand twitches at the Name’s emphasis, even without any attempt at nominal magic infused into his voice.  Yes, definitely one of the fair folk, but why the guileless deception?  Why take such risk with a Name freely spoken, as sensitive as their kind are to that?

“The website,” Tam says,  “it said you can help with weird stuff like this.  You can help me, right?”

“Most likely,” Ashan answers, “but first we need to know more specifically what your problem is.”

“If I may,” Lacuna speaks up from where she has perched on an ottoman at the other end of the couch from Tam.  As she slips her phone back into her skirt pocket and intently looks Tam up and down all her earlier disorientation has vanished completely.  Ashan knows that eager, almost hungry look.  It is a look he has seen on experimentally-minded wizards presented with a unique specimen and alchemists greedily eying rare reagents.  And on children seeing their favorite animal in the flesh for the first time.

With only the slightest misgiving, Ashan nods in assent.

Lacuna’s eyes light up and she leans in even closer.  “Right.  So.  Tam.  Let me know if I miss the mark anywhere.  As a kid you saw all sorts of fairies and similar magic.  When you got older you wrote them off as childhood make believe, but ever since you had strange and vivid dreams about them.  Maybe you even were one in your dreams.  When you hit puberty, those dreams got more frequent.  More intense.  Easier to remember.  Almost a second life whenever you were at your lowest points.  Still just dreams at the end of the night though.  Nothing you couldn’t put out of mind and focus on the ‘real world.’  And then one day.  A recent day.  I would guess.  One or both of your parents died.  Ever since, you’ve started having those dreams every night.  And then every time you closed your eyes.  And then when you looked in the mirror, wide awake, you looked like you did in your dreams.  That’s when something started following you.  Not knowing where else to turn, you turned to the Internet, and found us.  No one answered your calls or the message you left.  That’s my bad.  Real sorry about that.  So you hopped in the car and drove all night to our address.”

Tam stares at her, eyes wide and jaw agape.  “My moms are still alive, but everything else is - how did you know?”

Ashan tilts his head, surprised and curious to know himself.

Lacuna slips back into her usual discomfort, awkwardly rubbing the back of her neck.  “Sorry.  That was weird of me, wasn’t it?  Got carried away.  Touches on a… special interest of mine.  So.  Basically.  You’re a changeling.  A fairy swapped with a human baby to be raised in its place to take its Name.”

“You’re joking,” Tam denies.

“You were quite literally shapeshifting in front of me,” Ashan points out.

“Not intentionally,” Tam says.

“It wouldn’t be,” Lacuna says.  “Historically speaking, most children accused of being changelings were just some flavor of neurodivergent.  The real ones tend to blend in as normally as the baby they swapped with would have, fooling even themselves.  Not that there isn’t overlap between the two from time to time.  A Name isn’t just the name it’s tied to, it’s a whole identity, physical and mental.  Most changelings have no idea they’re not human until something triggers a change, at which point whatever fae liege made the bargain will come to retrieve them.  Or send a servant to do so.  Kinder ones will be upfront about it and explain things.  Maybe even make an offer to continue living as you are.” 

“And crueler ones will send a hunting beast to drag you back kicking and screaming,” Ashan posits.

Tam’s nervous nod is all the confirmation Ashan needs as to what tripped the wards around the office.

“What I’m still hung up on,” Lacuna says, “is what triggered your change.  Normally it’s the death of whichever parent made the deal, but…” She trails off as her eyes alight on one of the pins adorning Tam’s denim jacket.  A heart of four stripes.  Yellow, white, purple, and black.  “How long ago did you start calling yourself Tam?” she asks.

“A little over three years ago.” Tam answers.  “Just before I turned sixteen.  But, come to think of it, the dreams actually stopped for a while when I came out, if that’s what you’re getting at.  The therapist my moms had me see told me it was probably just a repression thing that didn’t need an outlet anymore now that I’d accepted myself.  I’d just about forgotten about them until this all started out of the blue a couple weeks ago.”

“You said ‘moms,’ plural,” Ashan observes.  “What about a father?”

Tam shakes his head.  “I asked about it once and they told me they went through a fertility clinic.  Anonymous donor.  No legal way to know who.”

“Oh, that’s clever,” Lacuna says.  “Dirty dealing and a really messed up way to get around the classic ‘firstborn child’ contract, but clever."

“Clever or not,” Ashan says, “I suspect it is beside the point at the moment.  The more pertinent question is this:  What do you want Tam?”

“What do I want?  I want to stop being chased by a giant monster cat!  I want to stop randomly turning green!  I want my life back!”

“Do you truly want that?  Even knowing what you know now?  Even with the knowledge that it may not be your life to begin with?”

“Of course it’s my life!  So what if I was switched with some other kid at birth?  It was me that everything happened to.  It’s me that everyone in my life knows.  My moms, my friends, my experiences, and my life!”

“And you are not the least bit curious about what else your life could be if you found more answers and embraced what you really are?”

“Oh screw you and your mind games.  Do I look like I give a shit about some absentee fairy king dad wants for me?  I know who I am and don’t you dare imply that my life hasn’t been real.”

“Good answer,” Ashan says.  “Now hang on to that conviction.  You shall need it.”

“What for?”

“For when we go tell a fae liege unused to being told ���no’ that they cannot have what they want.”

*******

“Last check if you want to wait until Road and Eris get back,” Lacuna’s voice says through Ashan’s earpiece as he stands just inside the picket fence marking the border of the office and the unwarded sidewalk.

“Road left me behind for the express purpose of helping any clients that show up needing help while they are away, and that is exactly what I am doing now,” Ashan responds.  “We have taken the necessary precautions and I see no reason to doubt my ability to resolve the matter.  Or are you saying that you would rather wait?”

“I’m nervous, not gonna lie, but what else is new?  You’re the one with the hard job here, so we’ll be fine.  Anyway, mirror charm’s still holding strong on this end.  Tam still looks like you in here, and you still sound like them.  Let’s just hope it fools everyone else as well as it fools me.” 

According to Tam, the beast that has been hounding them for weeks now only shows itself when no one else is around, which presented a complication for any plans to assist them.  Fortunately Lacuna had been able to dig up a pair of bracelets she had enchanted some time back as part of one of her ever-vague “personal projects.”  Allegedly they operated via a modified perception filter to cause observers to perceive one wearer as the other while leaving the wearers’ perception unaltered.  That last part had caused Lacuna to deem the bracelets “an experimental failure but exactly what we need now,” while leaving Ashan and Tam to take her word on their efficacy.  While even now Ashan can tell that the bracelet is doing something whenever he glances down at his wrist, actively focusing on it is nearly as nauseating and disorienting as that concealment ritual of hers.  

The same goes for the little metal rectangle engraved with a not-quite-fractal on either side now hanging from a cord around his neck and tucked beneath his robe.  According to Lacuna it is supposed to provide protection from anything trying to get into his mind.  It was the one amulet out of the whole clinking mass she had tried to foist upon him that he accepted, and mostly just to placate her, if he is being honest.  She had been busy these past weeks with enchanting trinkets from her library of pre-recorded rituals from her old job and if Ashan had hung all that she had offered around his neck the combined static noise of their auras that close to him would have run the risk of making him sick.

Once again, he wonders how she has not accidentally killed herself already.  Or at least blown up her lab.

But enough of that.  What comes next requires a clear mind free of distracted musings.

A static tingle runs over Ashan as he steps through and beyond the outermost ward and onto the unprotected sidewalk.  He continues forward, past the car Tam hastily and crookedly parked on the curb.  The claw marks on the vehicle are long and deep, and numerous enough to indicate multiple attempts at retrieval. He comes to a stop with one foot on either side of the painted divider line bisecting the empty street. 

“I am ready now,” Ashan says to no one.  “Guide me to your master and I shall follow of my own free will.”

A sudden breeze carries the scent of dry leaves and kicks up a swirl of sparkling green dust.  The same synesthetic mapping that allows Ashan to “see” the wards around the office shows him a rapidly growing ring within the verdant haze.  A low growl rumbles out of the hole within the formless ring and a pantherine shape slinks out from behind the breeze. 

The great cat sharing the street with Ashan would be longer than he is tall even without the tail that coils and unfurls as it slowly sweeps back and forth.  The beast’s baldness only accentuates its bulging muscles and the isolated shock of dark hair atop its head. The brown eyes that stare up into Ashan’s look just like Tam’s.  It snarls, barring too-human teeth for the shape of its head, and then turns away. 

Ashan follows the hunting beast across the street to a fairy ring of white mushrooms near the bridge tree that most certainly had not been there when he arrived earlier this morning.  It pads around to the far side of the fairy ring, looks back to Ashan, gestures downward with its head, and flexes its claws.  Its front paws have thumbs. 

The message is clear enough: Step into the ring.  Run again and claws will catch. 

If the earlier swirl of dust was a tunnel, the fairy ring is a hole beckoning him into its depths.  Ashan knows better than to let himself fall in. 

He leaps. 

He does not look before nor during the leap.  Such transitions do not wish to be perceived.  It takes longer than it rightly should for his feet to touch the ground.  He keeps his eyes closed and tries not to heed his less biological senses lest nausea take him as he falls.  Not that “falling” is the correct word for it. That would imply an up or down. 

His arrival is signaled not by an impact but by the smell of dry leaves and the tickle of inhaled dust. He pinches his nose to stifle a sneeze and opens his eyes. 

The space he finds himself in cannot seem to decide if it wants to be a forest or a castle.  He is surrounded by pale-barked twisted trees.  He is standing in a solid-walled narrow corridor.  Fallen leaves crunch under his feet as he shifts his weight to look around.  A neat carpet stretches behind him off into shadows and before him up to an ornate beaded curtain.  A cloud-muted sun filters down through a canopy of desiccated foliage.  A star-backed moon shines through a high vault of stained glass.  Either way, motes of dust catch the weak light, shifting through the slow motion gyre of a breeze too weak for flesh to feel. 

“Are you alright?  We lost the feed for a minute there.”  The static crackle of signal decay does little to conceal the concern in Lacuna’s voice.  Is that not the tone she normally reserves for Eris?  Are she and Ashan closer than he realized, or does she worry like that with everyone she considers a friend?  He has little basis for comparison to correlate sensitivity of concern for safety with emotional investment. 

It is a distraction. 

He wants to ask her what she sees through the filter of the camera atop his ear.  To verify the chimeric nature of his environs that shifts with every turn of his head and blink of his eyes.  To tell her that her charm of mental protection does not work to shield his senses.

But he is playing the part of Tam Lin right now and Tam would have no reason to ask such questions of the empty air. 

He nods and hopes she takes the cue to be silent when the hunting beast pads past him toward the hanging moss (beaded curtain).

For all that Ashan prides himself on stepping as lightly as any thief or dancer, he cannot help but stir up puffs of dust from the carpet (pulverize dry leaves into blooming clouds) with every step.  The hunting beast’s guiding passage leaves no such trace.  It is its master’s creature within its master’s demesne.  Unlike Ashan, it is not showered with gray powder when passing through the moss (curtain) and into the throne room (parched glade) beyond. 

The hunting beast crosses the space and seats itself on its haunches in front of a tangle of roots (a bas relieved throne), from atop which presides the fae liege with whom Ashan has come to bargain.  It/He/She/They/Fae wear(s) wears robes of gray that are in the active process of becoming moth-eaten before Ashan’s eyes.  Fingers and forehead alike are adorned with bechained jewelry; metals tarnished and patinaed, gemstones dull.  Its/His/Her/Their/Faer face is an overlaid multitude that blurs expressions into an indistinct haze of imperfectly aligned features. 

Ashan nods his head and sweeps an arm in a gesture of respect.  It is not something Tam would do, but while Ashan has not dealt directly with the fair folk before he has been trained well enough to know the danger of losing oneself to a role in a place such as this and a true wizard bows to no higher authority.  Fortunately, this lukewarm obeisance does not seem to perturb the figure on the throne.

“The Seventeen-Named Count of Curses and Dust bids you a welcome homecoming and congratulations on joining the ranks of the Named, Carter, my little changeling.”

With that proclamation one of those seventeen unspoken Names is chosen for temporary prominence and a conceptual waveform collapses.  Ashan’s surroundings solidify into a single hybrid of a forest woven together into the shape of a castle.  Tight-packed trees interlace branches to merge into solid walls.  Leaves fallen from the canopy above have been carefully arranged into patterns on the forest floor. The fae liege now sits upon roots that have been expertly coaxed into the shape of a throne and wears only a single grandfatherly face.  The hunting beast at the foot of the throne winces.

“You honor me with this audience, great Count,” Ashan says.  “Pray tell, what next lies in store for a newly returned changeling?”

“So you do still recall the tongue of your true people in waking as well as dream.  That shall save us much time in preparing you for your role as one of my emissaries.  Once you have resworn your oaths of fealty to me your training in the ways and arts of my court shall commence.  There shall be no time wasted on pointless festivities, for ours is the dominion of the dust to which all things return.  To be my emissary is to weave the curses that will hasten that return, especially for those foolish enough to believe they can postpone it indefinitely.”

“Well, there’s your offer,” Lacuna says to Tam on the other end of the comms link.  “Magic and probably a bit of world-hopping.  Still want out?”

“Hell yeah I want out,” Tam exclaims loudly enough to be picked up by Lacuna’s microphone.  “Screw this dust-to-dust reaperman crap.”

Ashan nods in silent acknowledgment of the expected response and addresses the fae lord in front of him.  “O great Count, thank you for your answer, but I must now take my leave.  To be one of your emissaries is not my place.”

“You misunderstand your position, little changeling,” the Count says, “your role here in my court was ordained long ago.  Now Carter, kneel before me and renew your oaths.”

The hunting beast crouches and growls.  Ashan stands unbowed and serene.

“I do not answer to you.”

“Such impudence!  Have you no gratitude for your liege who saw fit to grant you a Name purchased in fair contract?  By that very Name, Carter, I command thee kneel and renew your oaths!”

The Count’s voice echoes through the forest and shakes the dust from the trees.  The roots of the throne writhe and the leaves stir from the floor.  The hunting beast yowls and Ashan stands unbowed and serene.

“I do not answer to you.”

Another of the Count’s Seventeen Names takes prominence and the parched forest glade closes into a vaulted stone audience chamber.  Fallen leaves sew themselves together into a threadbare tapestry of a carpet.  Soft wrinkles stretch smooth and tight over a sharp-featured skull.  From atop a marble throne embossed with arboreal motifs, the steel-eyed Countess of Curses and Dust glowers down at Ashan.

“You are mine.  You.  Shall.  KNEEL!”

A will that is not his own claws at the edge of Ashan’s consciousness, ancient and vicious.  The mental wards he was taught early on and has diligently kept up ever since fray and fracture.  The invasive presence reaches in and touches a stray surface thought, withering it down to a vague sense of something forgotten.  Perverse delight seeps in from the outside at the prospect of doing the same to every other thought until his very self is reshaped by erosion into an ideal servant.

The amulet beneath Ashan’s robe oscillates between burning and freezing against his skin.  The intruder in his mind recoils and retreats.  The Countess of Curses and Dust lets out a scream from her throne that sends the feasting moths fluttering away from her regalia.

“I.  Do not.  Answer.  To you.”  Ashan gasps.  He has denied the fae liege for a third time.   By the Law of Threes he should be safe from that avenue of coercion for now.

“What trickery is this?”  The Count(ess) asks.  Their face and hall flickers between aspects on every third word.  “You are not my changeling.  What are you?  You are full of shards of glass and shattered iron that writhes and drips with rotted ichor.  I will have no dealings with mad and broken gods or spawn of the eldritch.”

Suppressing a shudder at the thought of what Lacuna has hung around his neck and wrist, Ashan slips off his bracelet and the glamor disguising him as Tam Lin with it.  With an audience gained and the nature of Tam’s would-be master displayed, there is no further need for that ruse.

“I am the student of Aliana Glassgaze, wizard, warder, and master of the Dancing Dream Paints style.  I am here as the appointed champion of Tam Lin whom you would call Carter to speak on their behalf.  I have judged the treatment you would afford your vassals and would now negotiate their release from your service.”

The room settles back into a hall of stone.  “Interloper,” the Countess accuses, “you have no grounds on which to negotiate.  Carter was one of mine when still Nameless and accepted the offer to become a changeling with full knowledge of and agreement to the terms that would come after.  Whether or not he still remembers that agreement is immaterial.”

“Contracts made before a change in Name are not binding except between the Name’s new and original owners, and you were merely a middleman in that exchange.  Elsewise you would not require a renewal of oaths.”

“You argue semantics of the general where it is the spirit of the specific that matters.  Changeling contracts are always between intermediaries for neither the unreal Nameless nor the unborn Named are fit to negotiate.  This contract was made and fulfilled in accordance with custom.  All services to the blood father of the prior Name-holder were rendered as contractually agreed upon and fairy was swapped for child as payment rendered.”

Ashan puts one of the practiced smiles he copied from his mentor; the narrowing of eyes and lopsided upturn of the lips that lets an opponent know they have just walked into a trap.  He never was able to muster the emotion she put behind it, but it remained an effective tool of intimidation and unbalancing provocation whether applied hot or cold.

“You would invoke the spirit of tradition, but this contract violated even that.  You failed to account for the realities of modern anchor world humans.  The exchange of child for changeling as a valid price is predicated on the bond between parent and child, but no such bond existed between the contract holder and child in this case.  This so-called blood father was a mere anonymous donor of seed who met neither mother, child, nor changeling.  It is doubtful he was ever even aware of the stolen child’s existence and certainly had no part in the bestowing of a Name.”

The audience hall shrinks down claustrophobically close.  Peeling wallpaper faded to gray surrounds the empty and dust-covered royal nursery.  The petulant Heir of Curses and Dust pouts from atop a pile of broken toys.

“That doesn’t matter,” they insist.

“Does it not?  You were tricked into providing your curses to a human for free and in the process inflicted harm upon an uninvolved third party.  That Name was not sold but stolen and was given to the changeling on false pretenses.”

“Liar!”

“If you truly thought I was such, you would not be wearing that face.”

The Count of Curses and Dust regains his composure and returns to being an old man on a throne of roots.  The moths return to resume their eternal feast on his regalia.

“All of this is beside the point,” the Count says with a dismissive wave of his hand.  “By my station, it is well within my rights to compel any courtless fairy whose Name I have command over into my service.”

“Then let us make a bargain,” Ashan suggests.  “What is your price for leaving Tam Lin whom you call Carter and their friends and loved ones alone in perpetuity?”

The Count stares into Ashan’s eyes for a long moment and once again the young wizard feels an alien touch brush against the edge of his consciousness.  This time the Count’s will does not seek ingress but instead traces the outermost border.  An assessment of general shape if not interior contents.  Twice Lacuna’s charm grows warm and twice the presence momentarily retreats before returning more cautiously.  On the third time the Count breaks the silence.

“You would deny me the return of a changeling whose Name I bargained for, so it is only fair that I receive the means to create another in return.”

“My Name is not for sale.”

“Neither of them?  You have two, do you not?  One you wear now and one you have all but abandoned since childhood.  A childhood name for a new changeling child would be most fitting indeed.”

“My Name is not for sale.”

“Are you sure?  I would think I would be doing you a favor to unburden you from it.  I can tell that all the recent times you’ve worn it have been marked by loss and longing.  Wouldn’t it be better to let that pain go?  To allow yourself to be fully the you that you are now?”  The Count leans forward with a smile that is kindly at first glance.  “Think about those loved ones you wish you could be with but cannot bring yourself to embody that old Name like you would need to.  They could have the you that they remember back and the you that you are now could finally move on.  You would be doing them a kindness.”

“My Name…” Ashan hesitates.  It would be a kindness.  As he is now, he cannot possibly hope to return to his parents without causing more pain than healing.  But a changeling with his old Name unburdened by everything he has been through?  A fae liege of the Count’s power could probably even alter memories and spin a story well enough to avoid a Masquerade breach.  Without that wounded Name, perhaps he could even find it within himself to forgive Aliana and they could travel together again the way things were.  Maybe he could even talk her into joining with Road and working with his new friends.

Maybe…

*******

“Maybe we’re wrong,” Eris said to Ashan the night after their mission with the vampire crypt beneath a suburban basement.  Hot drinks late at night in the office’s kitchen had become something of a post-mission ritual between the two of them.  At least when the two of them were both well enough to stand.

“Wrong about what?” Ashan asked.

“About family.  Love.  Broken bonds.  All that stuff.”

“I am not sure I follow.  Perhaps having been drained of blood is still affecting your cognition.”

“Eh, I’m mostly fine.  What I’m saying is the Masquerade's done a number on both of us.  You feel like you can’t go home after running away and my parents straight up disowned me after I came home covered in blood I couldn’t explain one too many times.  But maybe we’re wrong about not being able to go back.”

“That is highly doubtful.”

“Doubtful, but not impossible.  Look, let’s make a deal.  If you ever change your mind and decide to try talking to your family again, I’ll go with you to support you and back up whatever you decide to tell them.  Masquerade cover story or the truth, doesn’t matter.  Then after, we’ll go see my folks.  If it works out, then great, and if not, at least we tried and we’ll still have friends here to come back to.  So, what do you say?”

“I say that blood loss and blunt force trauma are impairing your judgment, and even if I were to accept your deal I would not change my mind on this matter.   But…”

“Buuuuut…?” 

“Maybe I am wrong.”

*******

“My Name is not for sale,” Ashan says for the third time to the Count of Curses and Dust within his wilted forest glade.

“So be it,” the Countess of Curses and Dust proclaims, her voice echoing throughout her gloomy stone audience hall.  “In that case, let us balance the deal with a more finite service in exchange for the denial of a servant.  A favor of my choosing to be decided upon and called in at a later date, as is the most traditional price of contract between fairy and mortal.”

Ashan imagines the way Aliana would laugh off such an offer but chooses not to mimic it.  “Do you think me naïve?  Once again you invoke tradition, but this is a tradition that any knowledgeable mortal would know to avoid.”

“Then this negotiation is at an end, for you have nothing else to offer me.  If you will not offer me your lesser Name, then you would certainly not part with your far greater one, and if you would refuse a single favor then I cannot hope to extract any other oath of service from you.”

“I have access to the library of the sorceress Bridgewood,” Ashan proposes.  Any payment out of the Bridgewood Estate would need to be negotiated with the current Bridgewood of course, but this fae lord does not need to know that.

“So that is why your mind is so hideously warped and sharp to the touch.  Speak that name no further in my presence.  I have never known a more unclean thing with a refusal to return to dust than that sorceress, save for the attack dog she made her consort.  If you claim to be her ally, then we truly have no more to negotiate”

“If you truly put such stock in tradition, then let me make one final offer on behalf of Tam Lin whom you call Carter.  Let us both put forth the prices we would otherwise be unwilling to pay as stakes on a wager.  My aforementioned request for noninterference against your request for a future favor.”

“The favor, and your childhood Name.  As the price of mentioning that hated sorceress in my home.  What is to be our game?”

Aliana’s way of doing things it is then.  Yet again.  Did she too try and fail to avoid this route time and again before giving in and making it her first option at every occasion?  Unlikely.  She always enjoyed it too much.

“I invoke the rite of trial by combat between appointed champions, to be held on neutral ground.”

*******

Hours later, after extensive negotiations regarding the precise wording of the terms of the duel and subsequent prices the loser must pay, Ashan finds himself standing on one of the few level rooftops in Crossherd’s outskirts.  This far out from the pocket dimension’s heart geometry and geography get strange.  The buildings here were dreamt up to give the impression of an endlessly expansive city skyline, not for use or habitation, so while they look normal enough from a distance upon closer inspection they quickly become nonsensical.  Overlapping windows tilted at odd angles, doors that open up to the outside seven stories in the air, fire escapes that connect to neither windows nor the ground, sometimes even whole buildings intersecting with their interiors leaking into one another and corners erupting from each other’s faces.  The interiors are even worse; where they are not completely hollow facades they are unnavigable mazes of doors that open into flat walls, stairs that recursively loop back on themselves, and floors with no route between them.

This particular rooftop however has become something of a fixed point in the city’s inconstant periphery owing to its repeated use giving it a firm place in the collective consciousness in a certain portion of the city’s residents.  In other words, while Ashan was handling the contract negotiations, he had to send Lacuna out ahead to make sure that no one else was already using the rooftop to violently settle a dispute away from potential collateral damage today.  Or rather, Lacuna sent one of her remote drones which even now hovers on paratech repulsors above the scorched and pitted ring of concrete where the half-formed air conditioning units and ouroboric ductwork has been cleared away to give would be duelists, pit fighters, and blood feuders room to do their work.

Crossherd has ever been a city built on symbolic stereotypes and tropes, and the climactic rooftop showdown is a powerful one.

Ashan’s opponent - the very same hunting beast that had been sent to retrieve Tam Lin for its master - impatiently paces the far side of the rough ring.  Someone has clad the nearly hairless felid in ill-fitting pale gray plate armor and strapped a rusty sword that it has no good way to wield to its back.  If it were not for the anger burning in its too-human eyes every time it glances his way Ashan might pity the poor creature.

Behind their two designated champions, Tam Lin and the Count of Curses and Dust stand witness.  In the Count’s case he is possessing the body of one of the Nameless fairies under his command.  Much like the surrounding buildings, the empty-eyed wretch looks normal enough at a glance but the illusion falls breaks apart and tumbles down into the uncanny valley under scrutiny as if someone described what a human looked like to some skilled alien sculptor who had never seen one in person and thus thought the eye whites and teeth should be the same material and was left to guess as to whether clothes were part of the body or not.  The fact that Tam has been having trouble maintaining human form every time he looks at their distant cousin whose fate they presumably once shared has not escaped Ashan’s notice.

“This is your last chance to put aside this foolishness,” the Count says through his Nameless vessel.  “Call off this farce of a duel Carter and renew your oaths to me.  Do it now and I will not hold this tantrum against you, for you are young and confused.  You do not realize the value of what you are and what you would be with me.”

The emphasis of the Name elicits a scowl from Tam and a growl from the hunting beast.

“That’s not my name anymore, old man!”  Tam shouts back.  “So you can shove your offers.”

“Nonsense,” the Count says.  “You cannot simply create a new Name for yourself.  That is a privilege reserved for mortals, and no matter how much you believe you are one that can never be.”

Ashan tunes out whatever further barbs Tam has to exchange with his erstwhile and would-be master.  He slides his wand into his hand and takes a stance, already envisioning the anchor points from which he will draw his conjurations.  He focuses on the hunting beast, the way it moves, the range of motion of its joints, the places where the armor hangs loose.  Which way will it dart once the duel begins?  Can he incapacitate it before it gets the chance to close the distance between them?  Should he open by tying it down with point restraints or start with a loose encapsulation and tighten his grip from there?

No, do not overthink it.  Remember Aliana’s advice: A duel is a dance and he must adjust his rhythm to that of his partner.  He has already avoided the mistake he made with Logos and set the stage in a locale that does not favor his opponent, now all that is left to do is wait for the signal.

Somewhere in Crossherd’s heart, a clocktower bell tolls the changing of the hour.

The hunting beast lurches forward, then to the left, then to the right.  It leaps with claws out and fangs bared.

Five fingers on one hand point to five points on the rooftop.  The hand makes a fist and five threads tie themselves to four limbs and a neck.  A wrist twists and the threads pull tight enough to keep claws from reaching throat.  The fist falls and the hunting beast is dragged crashing down to the concrete.  A wand draws a circle in the air and a shimmering disk appears.  The wand slashes downward and the disk falls onto the hunting beast pressing it further into the rooftop until the conjuration molds to its target’s shape, sealing off any struggle.

The duel is over before it begins.

But then the threads go slack and the disk goes flush with the concrete below.  

The hunting beast is gone but for a shimmering emerald haze.

Ashan spins a glass cocoon around himself just in time to block the claws seeking to tear out his spine.  The hunting beast disappears once more from behind him and then reappears to his left.  Then to his right.  From behind again.  In front of him where the prior conjurations have since dissipated.  Each time it reappears it strikes at Ashan’s conjured barrier, probing for weaknesses and finding none, then disappearing again in a cloud of green.

Ashan holds steady and examines his foe’s movements for a way to counter them.  The delay between reappearances rules out true teleportation.  No sign of active cloaking magic or illusions, so probably not invisibility.  No active magic signatures at all save for a fraction of a second when the green haze appears.  A phase shift then, or possibly stepping in and out of its master’s demesne.  Either way, he can work with that.

He pushes outward on his translucent cocoon, turning it into a tight bubble just big enough for him to properly move his arms and legs, but too small to fit both him and the hunting beast lest it try to reappear inside the barrier.  Bending down, he begins drawing the first of a sequence of glistening symbols on the ground to turn the surrounding area into a planar-locked ward.

“Arise, my servant!” the Count’s name echoes across the rooftop.  “Be not a savage beast, but my noble knight!  Become my Champion of Curses and Dust!”

Bone cracks, pops, and knits back together.  Skin stretches, tears, and heals.  The armored hunting beast stands upright on its still-feline hind legs and hisses through its muzzle protruding from beneath its helmet.  It reaches a forepaw-now-hand behind its back and unslings the rusty sword.

The Champion of Curses and Dust charges Ashan once more.  The wizard speeds up his drawing of the ward and begins the chant for the spell to activate it.  The air inside Ashan’s bubble grows cold and frost covers the ground.  The sigils flash.  The spell completes.  No more teleporting to worry about.

When the rusty sword makes contact with the conjured barrier it passes right through, melting a hole that causes the rest of the conjuration to unravel.  Ashan barely manages to spring backwards in time to keep from being impaled.  Instead the rusty sword cuts through the ward’s central sigils and into the concrete beneath.  

Staggered as he is by the dual backlash of two actively maintained spells being violently disrupted, Ashan fails to press the opportunity presented by his opponent’s blade getting lodged in the rooftop.  As the Champion of Curses and dust works the sword back and forth the concrete cracks and crumbles with a century of erosion passing in the blink of an eye.  When the sword is at last prised free, a hole in the rooftop the size of a grown man’s torso collapses into the room below, exposing rusted pipeworks and corroded wiring.

With the ward destroyed before it even got a chance to do anything the Champion disappears into green haze once more.  By reflex, Ashan throws a hand behind himself to conjure a shield in anticipation of the next strike before realizing his mistake.  He jumps to the right quickly enough to dodge the worst of the blade’s path when it reappears and once again passes through his barrier as if it were nothing, but the tip of the rusty sword manages to clip the edge of his arm, just above the wrist.  The wound itself heals before blood can be spilled but his hand grows old and wrinkled before his eyes and he can feel the same happening to his arm beneath his sleeve.  Arthritic pains flare up from his fingers to his elbow as joints seize and grow stiff, forcing a strained gasp from the otherwise young wizard’s lips.

A twist of his heel sends Ashan spiraling into the air to gain distance from his attacker but the corkscrewing conjuration propelling him is cut down, disrupting his trajectory and crashing him into one of the remaining air conditioning units halfway across the rooftop.  He rolls to his feet but still finds himself on the back foot with precious little to do but avoid and evade.  Bereft of his usual kinetic barriers he resorts to retooling his technique to conjure streams of fire, wind, and lightning, but even those do little to deter an opponent that can effortlessly shift in and out of this plane of existence, and is an inefficient enough power draw that his breath quickly stings his lungs from the cold air.  

All in all, it is nearly as bad as trying to fight Eris when she is wearing those dispelling gloves of hers, a sparring setup that Ashan is yet to emerge victorious from in their regular matches between missions.  

A memory flickers in the back of Ashan’s mind of waking from unconsciousness when his mentor thought a monster had just killed him.  In her cold fury she had filled the cave with conjured wires and floating shards of glass.  The monster’s own weight had forced it through the deadly web like so much cheese over a grater.  And then his mentor had set the wires and shards in motion and it became more like meat through a grinder.  The sight had given the young Ashan nightmares for weeks afterward, but maybe if he could now duplicate the technique at a lesser scale to merely injure…

Ashan begins to envision and draw the net of monomolecular wires and spinning blades around him for his opponent to cut itself on but hesitates just short of funneling in the energy to make them a reality.  Unfortunately, a lifetime of being careful to never kill nor maim with power that could easily do both deeply ingrains inhibitions that are not so easily overcome.  That hesitation very nearly costs him the use of his other arm.  Fortunately, a lifetime of training for blows coming from the periphery of vision ingrains reflexes that are not so easily overcome.

Another burst of flame buys him some breathing room at the cost of a chill seeping into his bones.  If only he could buy himself a moment to draw another planar ward.  If only that sword could be taken out of the picture.  If only the Count of Curses and Dust hadn’t transformed his Champion mid-fight.

If only…

Gods take him for a fool.

“I call foul play and outside interference,” Ashan manages to say between dodging sword strokes.  “By the agreed terms of the duel you must either forfeit or allow a counterbalancing interference.”

“Counterbalance accepted,” the Champion of Curse and Dust laughs from the mouths of Nameless servant and hunting beast simultaneously.  “Let us see what my wayward changeling can do to earn his freedom.”

Ashan locks eyes with the frightened Tam Lin watching from the sidelines and shakes his head.  No need for them to act.  They are not Ashan’s only ally present to act as witness and second.

“Lacuna!” Ashan shouts.

“Already on it!” her voice calls back from the hovering drone above.

The projector mounted on the underside of the drone flickers on and shines a ritual circle down onto the rooftop in the center of the designated arena.  The shifting glyphs spiral into a nauseating self-recursive mess that makes the incomprehensible guts of the building beneath seem logical by comparison.  The drone’s speakers begin screeching an ear-piercing white noise and the accelerated, computer-generated ritual begins.

The second sight of a well-trained wizard and the sensory organs of a beast tailor made to hunt prey across dimensions are sensitive things capable of picking up on the subtle shifts, folds, stains, and cuts in the fabric of reality that make up what is known as “magic”.  Whatever Lacuna is doing is anything but subtle.  From the sensation of hooks digging into his skin and intestinal lining, Ashan would guess that it is meant to be a combination of planar lock and teleportation anchor kicked up to a degree that would be overkill for anything short of a demigod or one of the eldritch.  Or perhaps a fae liege.  Even without that, the sudden chaotic mess of metaphysical noise is enough to set him clutching his head and retching out his breakfast.  Blurry glimpses through tear-filled eyes suggest that neither Nameless vessel of the Count/Champion of Curses and Dust are faring any better.  Tam Lin however seems unaffected and comfortably human once again.

Having experienced a few of Lacuna’s abominable rituals before - although none nearly this horrific - Ashan is the first to recover.  A flick of his wand is all that it takes to wrench the rusty sword from his howling opponent’s grip.  By the time the Champion of Curses and Dust is back on its feet, Ashan has already conjured chains linked to each plate of its armor.  He stabs his wand forward then pulls it back and the chains strip away the armor in a single motion.  His opponent attempts to disappear but there is no green haze to vanish into, only the pain in its gut and the noise in its bones as it drops back down to all fours.  A simple dome is all it takes to contain it to the point of being unable to fight any further.

Ashan staggers over to his trapped opponent.  Doing his best to ignore the wretched droning of Lacuna’s ritual he asks, “Do you yield?”

The hunting beast in the dome whines.

“I said, do you yield?”

The hunting beast looks up at him with human eyes and whimpers.  Once again Ashan is struck by the similarity of those eyes to Tam’s when they are in human form.

“My champion yields,” the Count of Curses and Dust says through his Nameless servant on the sidelines.  “You have bested us both, now stop that accursed spell.  Not even that hated sorceress would resort to a distortion so vile.”

“Lacuna, please stop,” Ashan says.

The noise, audible and metaphysical, cuts out and the projector goes dark.  The drone drops down to eye level with a flurry of apologies from its speakers.

“Was it really that bad?” Lacuna’s voice asks.  “It took a bit out of me, sure, but I didn’t think it was that far off from standard parameters.”

Ashan merely stares into the drone’s camera at a loss for words.

“I did not know the sorceress had made constructs that could speak and work magic,” says the Count.  “Little wonder such a thing is insane.  As are any who would trust it.  No matter, the duel is done and the contract sealed.”  The Count’s vessel turns to face the approaching Tam.  “Enjoy your freedom, Carter.  Love and lose those mortals you think you can be one of.  And when the pain of outliving everyone -”

“For the last time, old man, that’s not my damn name!” Tam shouts.  “My name is -”

“I introduce to you, Tam Lin,” Lacuna interrupts while maneuvering the drone between them, “whom my friend and ally Ashan Glassheart has acted as champion for today.  Tam and Ashan, for whom this formal introduction serves to prevent the accidental giving away of Names by acknowledgement, you know the rules, don’t blame me, oh goddess that was incredibly rude of me I can’t believe I just said that to a fae lord please forgive me just trying to help just ignore me and forget I exist I’m going now.” 

There is an audible pop of static from a microphone being turned off and the drone rises back into the air.

“A thoroughly insane construct,” the Count mutters before turning his attention to the still-recovering hunting beast.  “Enough of this.  We depart.  Now.”

“I’m not done yet!” Tam says.  “Yes, that’s my Name.  The one I chose for myself.  Because ‘Carter’ was never my Name.” They turn to address the hunting beast.  It’s yours, isn’t it?”

“Don’t you dare,” the Count threatens.

Tam ignores him and kneels down eye to eye with the fallen beast and touches hand to shoulder.

“I return to you the Name of Carter, which was wrongfully stolen and passed into my care.  I return it to you, its rightful owner.  I return this Name to to you, Carter, my brother.”

This time the shifting of Carter’s form to a more human one is smoother, not wood being hacked apart and nailed back together but water poured into a new container.  When the transformation is done the two fall into a tearful embrace.  Hoarse “thank you”s choke out between sobs from a throat that has never been allowed to make its own words but now knows how thanks to the experience of a well-used Name.  Carter’s nails and canine teeth are still a little too sharp, his body's muscles still bulge from years of hunting prey, and the vestige of a tail still protrudes from the remaining cloth scraps of underarmor, but otherwise he could very likely pass for being fully human with minimal effort.  He and Tam could even pass for twins who just happened to take very different paths in life.

It occurs to Ashan that that is exactly what the two of them are.

“Remember,” the wizard says to the Count, “the terms of the contract include non-interference towards family as well, and non-retaliation towards the winning participant or participants of the duel.” 

The Seventeen-Named Count(ess) of Curses and Dust scoffs and its/his/her/their/faer Nameless vessel steps behind the breeze to depart without further comment.

“So, now what?” Tam asks.  They and Carter both look towards Ashan expectantly.  The fear of the unknown future for a life that has just been turned upside down thrice over is already beginning to creep into their relief at their ordeal being over.

“Now, we return to the Lonely Walk Outreach Agency.  We have multiple guest beds there where you may spend the night in safety.  When our leader, Road, returns they will be able to help the both of you find a way to return to the life that was stolen from you.  Or to help you find a new one Backstage now that you are in the know.  Balancing the two is always difficult, but it is also an option.”

The new twins nervously nod in unison.

What would Aliana say here?  Better yet, what would Road say?

“Not that either of you need to worry about any of that just yet,” Ashan says with a nearly genuine smile of reassurance.  “You have both had a long day and deserve to rest.  Tam, you have handled the sudden revelation of the existence of the supernatural as well as anyone ever has.  You should be proud.  Carter, while I hope you never have to do so again, you fought well today and I am honored to have faced you.  May that strength keep you safe in the future.  Now then,” Ashan looks around to hide his sudden embarrassment with the act of searching, “let us find a way down from this rooftop.”

“Hey,” Lacuna’s voice says directly into Ashan’s ear through the comm piece he forgot he was still wearing, “you did good too today.  The real hero here.”

“Thank you,” Ashan whispers back.  He conjures a platform to take him and the new twins down to the ground and suppresses a shiver.

“You’re welcome.  And sorry if this is weird to say, but if you ever want to talk about whatever that was with you having two Names, I’m here for you.  I don’t think it’s quite the same thing, but I’ve got some experience with that.”

“I will keep that in mind.  Thank you, my friend.”

No, it is not the same, not nearly.  But a friend’s experiences need not be identical to share a burden.  And who knows, Ashan considers while looking at Tam and Carter already smiling with wonder and comparing memories of mothers that only one of them has met in the flesh, perhaps a change in Name and a foot Backstage need not be the end of everything.

Maybe he is wrong.

Today is not the day to find out though.

He has plenty of time.

Maybe one day he will be ready to find out for himself.

<-Previous Chapter Masterpost Next Chapter->

[assaultmystic-archive]

ive shared this essay on tranmisogyny and nihilism with a few friends, and then realised u might as well all have it. circa 3k words. enjoy x

Apology

The complete and systematic account of transmisogyny is, of necessity, a hopeless exercise. Abjection is the mother of the totality after all. We are talking about the constitutive incompleteness of the world, the necessary impotence, the weeping lacuna of artifice that begets all things! If we theorised the whole world, we would not speak of transmisogyny once, because it is a condition on the possibility of theory, and so must be forever excepted

So, what little that follows is a betrayal. Partial by design (to let the light in) and necessity (I am tired. I am weak.), it is a betrayal nonetheless. Nothing could fail to be. So let's be honest. To theorise transmisogyny in full would be to draw borders around its extent and its diffusion. To theorise transmisogyny in full would be to construct and fortify its privileged subject -who is and is not transmisogynised. To theorise transmisogyny in full would be to tell "the transmisogynised" what to do about it. I don't want to do any of these things, and I will fail. There is no conversational path into discussion of what's possible that does not foreclose some options. We, the disinherited, conduct our peculiar miracle by fleeing down paths others cannot even see. So, take what you like and laugh when I give away my limits. Have fun.

Preliminaries

All of this is play, everything is. Nothing really matters. The real, in fact, is a mesh of overlapping consensuses that have been built not merely incidentally, but structurally, on our expulsion. There is no serious, real, or proper way to be a tranny. In fact, it remains integral to the notion of consensus as such, and reality by extension, that we are delusional in our self-articulation, paranoid in our recognisance of our exclusion, and dangerous at the point at which we express any of this. We are thus freed to recognise everything as play, for though those involved in playing out the real have their stakes in us (though they are loathe to admit it) we are disbarred from ever really holding stakes in the real. Because that's what real means.

The enshrinement of this exclusion as unreal is both necessary for the sustaining of the real as really important, but is also absolutely critical to facilitating the social character of transmisogynisation. All affordances granted to us allow us to play, however temporarily, at admission to reality. Those on the inside know we ought to be grateful for this mercy. It is particularly advisable for those who would like more sway over consensus (those who do not see themselves as having that sway already) to let us play inside sometimes. We get cold out here. Some of us get so cold we become frozen, we forget we are playing, we become unable to move, so keen on coming in that we harden into fixed things, like those inside are. But we will know no benefit for it. Even if they wanted to, they could offer us no rewards. Whether they know it or not, it is just a game.

Each magic circle that defines with its border the games of the real is drawn in our blood. Each empire and every banner they flew. Every flag. Every cause. All of it, all of it had its stakes in us. All had to eject us. We were understood to stand for nothing. For annihilation, for nullification, for endings. The family line ends here. The revolutionary project will see no children. In fact, there only was a "we" insofar as we were taken to stand for nothing. We are unified in that we are constituted by resistance to that which ejects us from the social, every social. We are unified in this alone. The trappings of inheritance, family, reproduction, legacy, futurity. What world that is, or was, or is being built could truly love the tranny? At best they'll have us die in the shadow so that their gleaming future would shine more brightly for contrast. No. We have each other. There never was a world for us, because wherever a future was believed in we threatened it in our nihilising impotence. This keeps us vital. Keeps us dangerous. Keeps us laughing.

Strategy, or, how to play

We have no interest in talking about identity independent of conversations about strategy. The way we constitute ourselves is conversationally liquid. To rebuke a tranny for their identificatory strategy is to reproduce transmisogyny, to think you know what living her circumstances might take better than she does. We call ourselves what we need to to survive the imposition of gender upon us. Recalling our movements through the social this becomes trivially obvious. Confronted each with your boss, your local tboy callout artisan, the police, a John, your mother, your ex, the gender clinic, who wouldn't call herself what she did only as an attempt to get what she wanted? When we meet others like us then, we cannot presume they know that we would love them whatever they called themselves. They might see a cop in front of them, might see a John, might worry this'll come back around - the local scene might shun a girl for calling herself a crossdresser, even as a joke (let alone for 'real'). So can they trust you? Do you intend to make that clear? But between us, once we know we are among friends, identification is about options, about imaginative flight, about the proliferation of lifeworlds bleeding from the critical harm done to us. Because what could we stand to gain by insisting that girls cannot be faggots? That boys cannot be trannies? Every should've-been-man of us has run, by herself, the labyrinthine complex of gender as domestication. Are you going to begrudge him calling himself a sissy now, after a lifetime of living in the word's shadow? Get over it! You are being invited to play, to walk through walls! Fool that you are, you cannot see the smile on the face of the trannies you claim to love while they call themselves the things you promised yourself it was really unacceptable to be. You have lost sight of the game, and now you come back to your sisters and you ask them to sober up, to get real. After all, we have cisgenders to convince, don't you know? Real people. Why, if they heard you talking like that we'd all befucked! But they are not here. Or at least, they were not here until you started doing their work for them.

There is after all, no real identity. Or, rather, the claim to a real identity is one move among others, and holds no special weight. It is special only in that it invokes the game of the real, the inside of the magic circle, to push others out. This can be great when you are having sex and a tranny tells you that you're not a real woman like her and that you should [do what she wants] about it. Otherwise it's quite fucking boring. If it happens that the world has fallen at your feet in such a way that you find labels more personal to you, that is, they feel like more than social tools for communicating how you would like to occur to others in the world, we're glad for you. Just don't expect us to feel the same. There is nothing we really are underneath this, in fact there is no need for an underneath. What good has the legitimate, the true, the valid done for any of us?

Transmisogynisation, or, how to draw a circle

A popular school of thought sees transfemininity as intentionally performed through a succession of discrete speech acts through which one establishes a relationship with womanhood while cAMAB. More simply - we identify as trans women, or as transfeminine, and so become subject to transmisogyny. This is a hangover from a history of "born this way" queer sloganeering. That we must always have been settled on the inside, and our targetting is a matter of some transfeminine essence. It's bullshit, which is no problem, but the trouble is that it's bullshit with extremely low explanatory power.

More to the point, transmisogynisation describes a matrix of concrete social and institutional processes, through which cAMAB people may become (forcibly) disidentified with masculinity, and become a part of the gendered abject. What the prevailing model correctly understands, is that some of these transmisogynising processes can be willingly submitted to. We might choose self identification as trans woman or other locally prevailing transfemininity, working “as a woman”, engagement with legal or medical apparatus of gender. However, none of these social affordances (that are deployed by social institutions to effect the circumscription of transfemininity) are free from the potential for coercion. If we want access to any of the processes described we experience pressure to present a legible transfeminine gender identity. If you do not call yourself by the terms of the locally prevailing models of transfemininity your access to social, legal or medical affordances is immediately threatened. There is immediately a pressure to be a certain kind of tranny - the institutionally respectable kind, and this pressure weighs on our self descriptions whether we know it or not. Identity, then, is always already under pressure. What would I have called myself, if I had never had to call myself anything for the sake of estrogen, or for a job, or for community? I will never know. Neither will you. What the position outlined fails to account for at all, is that many processes of transfeminisation are straightforwardly coercive, have no choice element because they are inductive abuse. We did not choose our subjection to social practices of violent harassment and exclusion based on perceived difference, for example. Did not choose to be called faggots, sissies, or retards because of the position we were being forced into of not-a-real-man. Did not choose the rape, the beating, the manipulation that othered us from manhood, carried out in sacred silent complicity over a whole lifetime. Every cis woman ex who forced you into a feminised position of permanent care is in cahoots with your dad who hit you is in cahoots with the tboys you gave a bad vibe are in cahoots with the boys in your high school changing room are in cahoots with your rapists. There was, in fact, a conspiracy to forcibly feminise you. It just wasn't glamorous, sexy, or conscious. It doesn't make sense to speak of our transmisogynisation, then, as a matter of our personal identity so much as it does of our being identified. Target lock, y'know? Maybe something gave you away, maybe it didn't. But identifying a boy who's never gonna make it is socially critical, and you were picked. Picked so other boys could differentiate themselves from you, so girls could have you and know you weren't like other boys - they could hurt you and get away with it. So your ejection from your family could be justified. Even if none of them ever once called you a tranny, they were making one of you.

All this to say, the representational force of specific visions of transfeminity cannot be substitute for solidarity along the lines of that we are transmisogynised. Personal identification, pronouns, these things are secondary - and are no substitute for attending to the specifics of our oppression. We can call ourselves what we want, but falling behind the banner of a fixed identity category just limits our solidarity, makes us rigid, makes us easier to kill.

Theory, or, giving the game away

Transmisogyny is itself transmisogynised. Like us, our oppression is always novel, always ready finallyfor a good welcoming into the fold, always unmapped, always a great way to sell a book. Yours could be the first real, definitive, proper text on transmisogyny! Imagine! Over the past decade alone (say nothing of techniques perfected in milennia gone), round after round of coordinated harassment campaign and social media clean up have left us with a legacy of articulating ourselves over and over, hashing out the same points for each new spawning. A neotenised theory, in a forced state of arrested development. Our place in history continues to be the damnatio memoriae.

The kinds of theorisation that tend to stick around share a basic structure - they are outreach oriented, interested in engaging with a "broader" feminist or queer or historical or marxist tradition. Of course the subsumption of transmisogyny as a mere articulation, a phenomena within this or that more important, more material, more real tendency follows.Theory looks to place transmisogyny on terms that others might recognise, fixing some points of reference in order to reach a presumed shared audience. The trouble of course is that now you are looking to share points of reference, an audience, with a cisfeminist, a twerf, a "transandrophobia" spewing tboy. You might tell yourself that this is only in order that you might convince the undecided, to win new people round, so they see the natural integration of the theorisation of transmisogyny into your school of thinking.

These institutionalising desires exact costs. Foremost amongst which is the need to identify a positive transfeminine subject. The identification of this subject (presently, the sID'd transgender woman) ensures that the framework shares identifiable points of reference with rival theories of gender that emerge within hegemony, in order to more legibly engage with them. Put more simply, it makes it easier to argue with the tmra, the cisfeminist, the twerf, if everybody arguing presumes themselves to already know what we’re talking about, but to just differ in attitude. Whether she's valid, whether she's more or less privileged, whether she's really a woman. Such fun!This is the process of theorisation as marketisation - an audience after all is just a cipher for a market. All debate is in fact spectacle, safely ensconced within its academic home. Irrecognisance is complicity.

By entering into the bloodsport of theory we can endlessly defer the practicalities of articulating relations between the transmisogynised that are aware of the endless hatred the real holds for us, and avoid responding to that weaponised reality lucidly. We can foreclose the conversation about what we do, so that we can settle, once and for all who we are. Of course, whoever finds themselves on the outside of our shining new identity (once we've settled it - won't take long) will perhaps lack our enthusiasm for whatever solidarity we seek to build without them after the fact.

I'll concede that I only speak in these terms (not my own) because you are my kin, and I want to reach you. I am a hypocrite. I made my apology already. I believe in you more than I ever believed in anything real, so I'm going to let you make a hypocrite of me.

For the road, or, from the sickbed

I am tired now, and quite sick. I caught what might be the flu, or might be covid the other day. Things occur to me through a thicker haze than usual. So I am going to be presumptive and pass on some things I have learned talking with my friends, as though you’ve any need.

Pay attention to the way that transmisogynisation picks at and worries received views of agency. When girls tell you that their transness is something they affirmed, they are of course right. The same girls are also right when they talk about how this was done to them. Histories are mobile, histories are strategic. Stories we tell about ourselves are social technologies. We never have to be one thing, never have to resolve (scorn anyone who tells you otherwise), we exist with contradictions of coercion and choice. We have to. What does this mean for the possibility of the transmisogynised historical “subject”? What might we have to say about the necessary diffusion of subjectivity experienced by many like us- what kinds of politics is it incompatible with?

Pay attention to the lines along which people draw their politics. What kind of insults do they use? They are telling you who is other to them. They are telling you who they do not feel they need to answer to, and so in whom the stakes of their real will be placed, alongside you. If they speak of lazy stoners wasting their time in queer organisation instead of joining this or that political project - in my opinion, they have told you more than enough. Anarchist or otherwise. These are the lines that need to be drawn so that a politics can be defined. Those who speak this way, our kin not least, hurt themselves. They do this for a cause.

Kindness is never, ever, called for. Will never be called for. It is not politically substantial. People will tell you that kindness is radical and they are wrong. People will tell you that kindness is no part of a coherent politics - not something you ever owe and they are right. You need never be kind. This is because kindness is an excess. Kindness is an inherently unjustified and unjustifiable gesture, an overabundance of care that no politics invested in its own reproduction could ask for. When you meet trannies, I would really appreciate it if you could be kind to them.

[rynquestionmark]

‘Something with that boy ain’t right’

Mikael Demetri - Alice in Wonderland - Auspex Gone Awry

[knnichs]

you were mine (but you were awful everytime.)

with kinich’s busy schedule, he somehow can’t find the time to even send you short letters on how he was doing.  or: watching your childhood friend disappear from your hands.

c. kinich & gn!reader ( platonic or romantic, not explicitly stated )

t. character(s) are childhood friends with reader, can be read as platonic or romantic, word vomit, NO BETA WE DIE LIKE .... LIKE WHO???, angst, hurt/no comfort wow i can finally use this tag, little to no dialogue, wc: 1.4k

taglist. @honeyney @pneumosia @tragedy-of-commons @gl4di0lus @ariadnehelx @azuresaqua @mikashisus -> join the taglist here!

A REQUEST FROM @ MIKASHISUS: i’m here for the valentine’s event >:3 may i req iris + evanesce + kalopsia + lacuna for kinich? 🤍 GARDENERS NOTE: RAY IM GOING TO STRANGLE YOU. THIS WAS LITERALLY SO INSANE TO WRITE heres me self projecting AGAIN!

more author notes at the end !

“You don’t think that one day we’ll be separated, right?” 

You played with the grass underneath you, plucking out one after the other and attempting to braid them together to create a makeshift crown. It doesn’t work, it unravels itself on your palm and the blades of green straighten itself back to its original shape. The sun was just setting, this was yet another boring day in the fields of Natlan. The boy beside you scoffs at your question, almost offended if you listen in real hard. 

“No. And I’ll make sure of it.” 

Kinich never liked to talk of the future. When you ask him of what he sees himself doing a few years from now–he would redirect the conversation and ask you to help him with some chores the tribe chief assigned him to do instead. He buries himself in work, even as a child, just to stop his mind from drifting to those kinds of philosophical questions. Who has the time for it anyway?

You, ever so displeased by his straightforward answer, pressed him even more. You wanted to hear more–what he thought of you, what he would do if you were ever to drift away from him, so you asked him: How?

He fell silent for a moment, looking down to his feet. Kinich fiddled with something in his hand before he turned to you, giving you a weak smile. The boy hands you a flower, white and pure, and sits right in front of you. 

“I’ll make a promise,” He raises his pinkie, tilting his head as he did–his bright eyes sure to be forever ingrained in your memory. “That I’ll promise to stand by you until we both die. Is that enough?” 

“But how will you make sure that you’ll keep that promise? Swear it.”

He reaches for your hand, trying to set up the pinkie promise ceremony to get this over with. 

“Then… I swear on my heart, I will be with you.”

You hook your finger around his tightly, as if trying not to let go of the moment. Kinich blocked the sun–but the orange glow reached the tufts of his hair and seeped through the black strands. He used his other hand to cover where the two of you linked, sealing the promise, and he let go.

“You better make sure of it–or else I’ll haunt you for the rest of your life.” You say, pointing a finger at him accusingly. He raises his hands up, surrendering to your wishes. 

Kinich has always been popular in the Scions. You remember the people who once made fun of him as a kid were now fawning over his looks now that he was older, you were really only the real person who stuck by him through the years. You were there when the other kids picked on him, and you were there even after he had gotten his vision.

But now? You could only wish to be a part of his itinerary. 

You don’t blame him, life as a saurian hunter is difficult. Yes, not many would go into that kind of profession, it’s cruel, but someone has to do it. Kinich had no issue choosing to go to that rabbit hole even when you explained to him multiple times that you were concerned about him going through all of that just for some pouches of mora. Well–the amount of mora you get per commission is indeed quite a lot, but there must’ve been some better way to earn it, right?

Day by day, you never fail to return to the same tree where the two of you had made that promise. An emptiness would fill your chest–one so painful you’re sure nothing or no one else could help fix it but him. You hold Kinich so dear to your heart that it’s difficult to imagine a world without him. What if you had never met? Would things have been different then?

The same sun would sink below the grass, the same gust of wind that greets you–brushing past your hair with the gentlest touch. The same tree would shed its leaves seasonally, and the occasional smell of nostalgia hits you hard. How you had missed lounging around here, under the leaves, with your friend. How you missed when days were boring, and your biggest worry was how you’d get home before it got dark and your parents would scold you for being out too long.

Kinich held your hand when you walked through the streets of Natlan once the moon rose, he held your hand when talking to the vendors in the market and you had no clue how to talk to them–they were intimidating, he couldn’t blame you. It’s a shame he was forced to grow up so young. He protected you as a way to heal his inner child–to give the love he never got. 

You just had to ruin it. 

You just had to be so selfish–to ask him for more time, just a few minutes more or seconds, even. Just a little more time to spend with him, just enough to watch the sun rise or fall, just enough to have one more conversation about nothing and everything. When he does give in to your requests–the two of you end up saying nothing, the silence speaks volumes, you’ve drifted apart. There’s nothing to talk about but the past. You know almost nothing of his life now that he seems so far. 

Those were the same eyes that looked at you with such fondness it was hard to express it in words. You remember the sound of his footsteps when he’d creep up behind you to greet you, you remember the messy handwriting he had when he was just learning–the random letters he’d give you throughout the day just to show you how appreciative he was of your presence. Because you were there when others weren’t, you made him feel loved when the others didn’t think of him as someone equal simply because of his childhood.

His name has always been on the tip of your tongue, a silent prayer of wanting to see him for just a second, swinging through the trees with the boxes in hand for his delivery. The bright yellow of his saurian companion, the brightness of his eyes, the sound of his voice. You had never imagined it would end like this, with him frustrated–your tears close to spilling, under the same tree you had spent time with the most, he would tell you how much you bugged him asking for time out of his very busy life. You couldn’t say anything but recall the times of your youth. 

“No one has the right to dictate my time,” He’d glare at you, his voice laced with something unfamiliar–for the very first time he was angry. “Even you.”

“You promised… you promised you’d stick with me until death. Does that mean nothing to you, at all?”

“We were kids, I don’t believe that counts–you know what? Give me a break. I already have so much to my plate that I don’t think I have the energy to do this.”

The situation was helpless. You didn’t trust your voice enough that you would retort with some witty remark like you used to as a child–you couldn’t shout back at him for being rude to you when all you’ve ever done to him was treat him with the kindness he didn’t know existed. Each word shared between the two of you were etched deep within your mind, he was a part of your soul. You couldn’t believe he would leave you this easily.

So you whisper–because you can’t shout, you can’t speak. 

“Don’t be a stranger,”

Your vision was blurry when he finally turned his back on you. You’re not sure if that was still him, stopping in his tracks, or if it was the tree swaying from the wind– almost mocking you of what just happened, giving the illusion that he was still here, that he’d be willing to salvage whatever the two of you had.

When you call out for his name, no one appears. He wasn’t there to lend you his bandana to dry your tear stained cheeks, stop you from roughly rubbing your eyes so it wouldn’t get itchy later. 

He was truly the only person that felt like home, and on the day of love–you had never expected for him to leave so easily. 

@ knnichs 2023 ﹑ do not repost, republish, translate, feed to ai or modify any of my works. doing so can and will result into me blocking you.

reblogs with comments are INCREDIBLY appreciated! go scream go feral idc i will eat all of them up and run away with a familiarly shaped reblog in my mouth, thank you.

DAWG THE WAY THIS WAS SO SELF INDULGENT UM the prompts reminded me of something that happened way back THIS IS MY FIRST TIME WRITING ABOUT IT SO I HOPE IT WAS SO BAD UMMMM i literally dont know how to put my feelings into words if u can tell LOL! anyway probably my first time ?? writing hurt no comfort or pure angst ... this is new TO ME !!!! i hope its ok !!

[gtwscratch]

GASP!

What’s this? The first chapter of Project X is published and ready to read?? Before all the characters have been drawn and revealed???

That’s exactly what this is. :)

Enjoy.

[lacunajulie]

it’s great to see you’re doing just fine

Hey Sally how are you doing? I heard you have a kid now.

[black-arcana]

LACUNA COIL's CRISTINA SCABBIA Discusses How Being A 'Workaholic' Inspired New 'Sleepless Empire' Album

By David E. Gehlke

LACUNA COIL's career-altering 2002 "Comalies" studio album received the re-recording treatment in 2022 upon its 20th anniversary. For the Italians, "Comalies" was the album that brought them in front of an international audience, particularly Stateside, where the "Heaven Is A Lie" video was on regular rotation on MTV2's "Headbanger's Ball" to go along with repeated trips across the pond. While LACUNA COIL's updated rendition of "Comalies" was intended to introduce it to a new generation of fans, it helped serve as the starting point for the band's latest studio foray and first in six years, "Sleepless Empire".

Arguably the most cohesive and enjoyable LACUNA COIL since the aforementioned "Comalies", Sleepless Empire" finds the band bringing back some of the atmospheric elements that were so pivotal to their late 1990s/early 2000s work, in addition to guest vocals from LAMB OF GOD's Randy Blythe and NEW YEARS DAY's "Ash Costello. Furthermore, the record tackles an all-too-familiar topic: The need for humankind to always be connected (see: phones) while feeling even more disconnected. Here to wax on "Sleepless Empire" and other topics with BLABBERMOUTH.NET is frontwoman Cristina Scabbia.

Blabbermouth: How much did the "Comalies" re-recording inspire the direction of "Sleepless Empire"?

Cristina: "When we did 'Comalies XX', it was our way to celebrate a record that means a lot to us in a proper way. 'Comalies' is the record that made us take a step ahead in our career and it's a cult record for all the fans. We didn't want to do a simple remastering with a new cover. We asked ourselves, 'What's the best way to celebrate and do something special?' Then we started wondering, 'Why don't we re-write it in the way we write today, with the knowledge, experience, technology we have today?' Also, our tastes have changed over the years. At first, it was kind of weird since so many fans were attached to the record. We weren't sure whether the fans liked or didn't like the results, but in the end, they liked it more. This is a sign that our fans grew with us. The new ones were approaching it at the same time because the sound was more modern. They got in touch with a record that is 20 years old. It was an interesting project and was the first time we started working on music again, considering the pandemic. So, it was not the genesis. It was the start, but it sparked our love of music again after the depression of the pandemic where everything stopped and we weren't inspired at all."

Blabbermouth: You indeed weren't alone in that department. Many of your peers reacted the same way.

Cristina: "Some bands and artists reacted in different ways. Some people decided to write even more because they had time off. For me, it was the other way around. To write music, we need to be together in the same room, exchanging ideas. For us, it's really important to get inspiration from the outside world. Not being able to tour and not being able to meet each other was devastating. I was like, 'Okay. Let's do something else to get out of our heads. We'll come back to music when it's the right time.'"

Blabbermouth: Did that give you the opportunity to think about what things were like 20 years ago? It was a much different world back then.

Cristina: "Yeah and when I think about what it was like back then, everything was different — the fact we were doing things without the internet, computers and smartphones. There was no Spotify and no way to connect as quickly as we do now. It was everything through expensive phone calls. Fax. We got the first proposal, the contract proposals, by fax, then called Germany on the phone. It cost a paycheck for the whole month. [Laughs] It was super-expensive. It was also very different in music; even recording a few songs required your presence in a studio. You couldn't do it at home. Now, you can literally grab your phone and use an app and write a song, even if it's not professionally done. You can still do it. You can still put down your ideas. Back then, this was not happening. I think there was an even bigger selection between bands because the ones that were doing it were doing it because they really wanted to do it. They loved what they were doing. They were spending money and lots of time touring around the world. Now, some people are doing it for the love of it, but there are a lot of people who are doing it, 'Okay, let's see what happens.' Or, 'Let's see if I can become famous or rich.' Maybe the mentality has changed."

Blabbermouth: That ties into the theme of "Sleepless Empire". For you, as a public figure, where do you draw the line with your phone and being connected?

Cristina: "It's not hard. I'm very realistic. I'm always kind of able to look at things from the outside, so I put myself in the 'Sleepless Empire' as well. I am like that as well. I feel I always need to do stuff. I always feel that I have to be productive, not for others. I think it's something that kind of belongs to me. I'm a workaholic. It's really hard for me to take breaks. The 'Sleepless Empire' gives us the impression of a generation that never sleeps. You have to do so many things. You have so many connections through the computer and phone, but at the same time, you're very disconnected. I try to find time in my schedule to be, 'Okay. I'm going to go out. I'm going to leave the phone at home.' But, realistically, I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is grab the phone to see who sent me a message. I am anxious if I am unable to answer them all in a few minutes. I think we were all in this, pretty much. I don't want to say, 'Oh, you guys are doing this.' I put myself into it as well. This should be a common realization and a common moment to realize that it is okay to do stuff. It is okay to be connected. Some connections are amazing. Now we're here, having a great conversation and using the instrument properly because I'm unable to come to your house in five minutes. At the same time, we don't need to forget that there is a real world out there. It's important as well. We should take a look at it as well from time to time."

Blabbermouth: There was an element of patience before all of this. You don't necessarily have that nowadays.

Cristina: "Oh yeah. Now, it's like, 'Oh my god. I sent a message. You didn't reply in the last 20 minutes. He's dead!' Back then, I remember my parents were like, 'Go out and play.' I would go back home for lunch. Then, I would go out again and come back for dinner. Nobody was worried that something happened to me. Now, it's the opposite."

Blabbermouth: You've picked a timely topic. It's not like any of this is going away soon.

Cristina: "It's not a criticism because the album talks about other topics. We liked it as a title and thought it represented what we wanted to say and the mood behind the record. It also inspired the artwork of the record. It was created perfectly. We are still lovers of a full record instead of singles. Maybe this is an old-school thing. I still love to hear a full record. It's like a soundtrack, like watching a movie."

Blabbermouth: "Sleepless Empire" has a little of the old LACUNA COIL style mixed with the new. Has the songwriting dynamic between you, Marco [Coti Zelati, bass], and Andrea [Ferro, male vocals] evolved and played a role in that?

Cristina: "It's pretty much the same. The difference here is that Maki [Zelati] switched houses. He didn't have a studio in this new house, so we rented another place. For him, it was a little bit difficult at first. For many years, he wrote in the basement at his place. It was comfortable; he had this place that was literally home, but it was not there anymore. We found another place and it took a while for him to arrange and feel like it was home again. This was a little bit challenging at first. Once we got comfortable, we started to go there and exchange ideas. Maki was always responsible for the majority of the music, even with the previous records, going all the way back to the first records. We are comfortable, Andrea and I, and we trust him completely. I mean, not only do we love what he does, we call him 'Captain'. He was the one who gave us deadlines. He really is the leader. If not, we're procrastinating. He's like, 'We're going to meet here. We need lyrics.' You need a person like this in a group. I love the fact that whatever he does, he's always really objective. If there is something he thinks that is not good, he's the first to say, 'This sucks.' He never falls in love with what he does, which is something peculiar. Usually, an artist is like, 'Ah, I love this vocal part! I would love to keep it.' Maybe you don't explore other chances that could be even better than what you did. He's constantly changing and trying to improve, which is something I admire. I tend to fall in love with my ideas. When I do something I love, I want to keep it. It's just like, 'No.' 'What do you mean?' 'You can do better.' He's always pushing me to give my best. This is something I like very much."

Blabbermouth: Every good band needs a guy like Maki.

Cristina: "I think we've reached the perfect balance because Maki is responsible for the music and all the musical parts, like mixing, mastering, taking care of all these details. Andrea is more on the commercial side. He's the one who talks to the manager. That takes care of that stuff that Maki and I don't want to take care of. Andrea loves it. His organization is amazing. And I am the creative in another way. I'm the one who takes care of socials and finds new ideas. I'm a people person. I'm always out and talking to people, and Andrea and I write the lyrics and vocal lines. We've reached the perfect balance. Richard [Meiz], our drummer, is amazing. We love him dearly. Daniele [Salomone], the guitar player who just entered, is awesome, too. I think there is a great balance in the band where everyone is doing something for the band. That's how it should be. It's like a company. A band, when it becomes work, when it becomes a job, it has to be a company, in which everybody has to work."

Blabbermouth: We can jump to this now: Are you in a good place with the lineup? Changing members is never fun.

Cristina: "You never want to do it. Of course, it's cool to have the same people around you and be happy forever. There are some times, as I said, throughout the years, we changed the lineup for many reasons. Some members wanted to change their lives completely; they weren't comfortable on the road. Some members moved, like our ex-guitar player who went to the States. Our ex-drummer was American, so it was always a problem to come back and forth. Sometimes, it happens that a member doesn't give one hundred percent. That one hundred percent is necessary for the band because the band is much more than the single elements, the members of the band. It's something bigger, especially when it's a business. Taking the romanticism away, the fact that we work with the band allows us to keep on writing music and bringing it around the world. Everything has to work. And if you're not dedicated, it's better to stay out."

Blabbermouth: LACUNA COIL hasn't gone the guest vocalist route too much in the past, although getting Randy from LAMB OF GOD is a nice touch. How did that come together?

Cristina: "We love his voice and LAMB OF GOD. We toured together years ago and clicked immediately. They're great people. Randy is such a character. He's not only iconic and legendary for his status, but he really is one-of-a-kind. We love him dearly. Every time he's in Milan, we go out together. Every time we cross paths at a festival, it's always a party and we're all happy. So it happened we wrote 'Hosting The Shadow'. We immediately thought of his voice. We said, 'Why don't we ask him if he wants to be part of the song?' We asked really respectfully. We didn't want to take advantage of our friendship because we understood his status. So we said, 'Please feel free to say no. We will understand. There will be zero problem.' Instead, he was super-excited. He was like, 'Yes! I love this. I love the song.' He killed it. I didn't have doubt, but when I heard the final version, it was awesome."

Blabbermouth: You will be returning to the States soon. Why do you think LACUNA COIL resonated over here? You were almost an underdog in a way at the beginning.

Cristina: "I would say we were more than an underdog; we were doing something different because our sound was very European. It caught more attention because of that. Then there was 'Heaven Is A Lie'. It was a little controversial for many people who thought it was a religious song. We did a tour with P.O.D. and fans were coming to the merch table, saying, 'I love your music, but you're singing 'Heaven is a lie', so I can't support it.' We didn't think about this; we weren't expecting success from that song! But, the funny thing is that being young and so much time has passed since then, but I don't know if it's music or the type of career we have, time passed differently. It doesn't feel like so many years have gone by. It's like I condensed everything in my head, and I remember what happened. It's deluded. It's so concentrated that it's almost weird. We still have the excitement. It's not that we're doing it because, 'Oh, what would we do if we didn't put out a new record?' We're seriously excited to write new music, be on the road and play concerts. That hasn't changed. We're even more excited."

[notthatmoth]

You would think after so long you'd understand where you are.....

[thewollfgang]

Rating: Mature

Relationship: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks

Summary:

The thought is trite, yet true—Lucifer has never felt like this. It’s like freefall, like the gravity well of a singularity, like the first time he lit a star. He can't possibly put the feeling to words, so he resorts to the first language he knows. Praise.

[reneesbooks]

Plot notecards -- elaborate?? (If you want to? Says a writer desperate for any plot tips she can get)

Also I need to meet Will Moore

--@oh-no-another-idea

yes i will happily elaborate i love notecards i use them for like. everything. i have a postit dispenser on my desk at work that i filled with notecards lol

so this is a method i developed when i was in a novel writing class in college and does require a fairly large number of notecards but that's it in terms of supplies! low budget option for if you're like me and need to see things visually laid out but also need them to be portable and rearrangeable and easily exchangeable. i have color coded notecards for some wips because i am Like That and i will be using the thieves of morbhard (red) for this example but you might see some lacuna ones (blue) sprinkled in there. tragically i couldn't find my original three moons notecards and think they might have gotten recycled in the move T-T

you can do this with or without chapter notecards--the original project i did this for had no chapter divisions and thus no chapter notecards but i made them for thieves before the scene ones. they're a good way to outline the big strokes of the story even if you don't know how many chapters you'll need. you can always make a new notecard if things change! allow me to explain

here's a chapter notecard from thieves. one the blank side i put a quick descriptor of the main event for the chapter and/or the chapter name if i know it, a number so i can easily put everything in order later, and a label so i know which wip it belongs to. the lined side has my actual notes for the chapter--this can be flexible depending on your style! i like to at least have an opening and closing scene to anchor myself when i actually sit down to write, and then just some quick and dirty notes on what i imagine happening/what scenes i hallucinated in the shower seem like they fit in this general part of the story/major emotional beats, etc. this can be as detailed or as sparse as you like! another less detailed example from thieves, this time chapter 8:

obligatory kitty picture (she's helping!):

ok so the scene notecards. this is the real meat of this method. this originally started as a nanowrimo method and the idea was that i would have this little deck of scene cards to pull from when i was feeling stuck/didn't want to write/hadn't hit my wordcount yet and then i would have to write whatever that scene was. this is still a really good strategy for me and is the main reason that i love using actual physical notecards.

on the blank side is a short descriptor of the scene. these are all from different chapters of thieves and some of them are really short scenes with a lot of emotional weight, and some are major story beats that probably take place over multiple scenes. there's no rules as to how you divide up your scenes on the notecards! as long as it's something distinct enough that you'll know what you're talking about when you pick it up after a week or two. if your notecards aren't color coded a wip label probably wouldn't hurt

second kitty picture (she's NOT helping)

the backside is similar to chapter notecards in that it's super flexible what you put there--i've got explanations for plot points, emotional beats, i've even written snippets of dialogue that i thought of or a descriptor i think sounds cool. this side of the notecard can even be blank! i also label them with which chapter they come from (if i know) for ease of organization if they get all mixed up when i don't want them to be. here's those same scene notecards from thieves again:

you can use the scene cards and the chapter cards together, to organize when things happen in the story/what order they happen within the chapter. here's an example from lacuna of my scene and chapter cards for chapter 1:

another thing i like to do, especially when i'm still making the notecards/not drafting yet--take out the chapter cards and shuffle the scene cards, then flip through adding notes to the back side until they all have something that i feel like i can work off of when i sit down to draft. i've gotten a pretty detailed outline of thieves with this method before writing any actual prose! this also works in retrospective (which is how it started anyway) like i did with lacuna, where i had a draft and then made scene cards based on what i'd already written/what i wanted to write/what i felt like was missing and organized from there. all around a super versatile method and medium for plotting!

[autumnalwalker]

Heads Up 7 Up

Thank you for the tag, @druidx (albeit under the guise of @nine-blessed-hero).

Passing the tag to @blind-the-winds, @ceph-the-ghost-writer, @papercutsunset, @nightshadetheghost, @cljordan-imperium, @alesseia, @writernopal, and an open tag for anyone else who wishes to participate.

Pulling this from the next chapter (15) of Empty Names. Doing 7 paragraphs instead of 7 sentences, so hiding this one under a "Keep reading" line.

“Where does all the ice come from?” Ashan asks as the testing chambers close, leaving said ice to safely melt into the chamber’s cleaning system.

Lacuna tilts her head to the side.  “What do you mean?  It’s an enchanted ice spear; it freezes things and makes ice.  Well, maybe more like it manifests the idea of freezing things?  In theory, based on the simulation results it should be able to totally encase someone and just put them in stasis to be thawed out later no worse for the wear, unlike normal ice.  Haven’t figured out an ethical way to actually test that though, so probably best not to try it.”

“But where is the water for all that ice coming from?”

Lacuna shrugs.  “I don’t know, same place as your barriers and fire?”

“My conjurations are all simply energy manipulation,” Ashan corrects that terrifying answer.  “The barriers are pure impartations of kinetic friction onto an area of space with no material component.  The fire is the controlled ignition of the oxygen in the air.  The frost and mist that often forms around me is merely a side effect of rapidly lowering the ambient temperature to fuel those other processes causing the same changes on humidity the same as any mundane overnight cold front would.  What it is not is a violation of the conservation of mass.  Or at least, not beyond the limits of an anchor world’s ability to stretch.”

“Ooohhh, so that’s the difference between conjuring and summoning,” Lacuna says.  “Fascinating.  I’ll need to go take a look at some of the source rituals the program drew from for the enchantment sequence later.”

Ashan dearly hopes that whatever that spear is doing is only a variation of summoning.  But even then, where is that water being summoned from?  An elemental plane?  The nearest ocean?  A random comet orbiting the solar system?  For all any of them know it could be ripping the bodily fluids from some unknown, distant victim, killing someone every time the spear’s magic is used.  That last one is highly unlikely with the Autogenesis Principle in play, but the point is that Lacuna is casually experimenting with magic that would normally take experienced mages and enchanters decades to master without even knowing the answers to such basic questions about how it works.  When Ashan asked her several days ago what such complex, high-output rituals use as a power source for their casting without a strong ambient aether field, ley lines, or other such element lacking from an anchor world (even a pocket dimension with loosened anchoring such as this), she had given the frankly horrifying answer that the power generation issue had been solved before she joined the project and she had never gotten around to reviewing that part of the legacy code so she just took it as a given that it worked safely and stably.

[ringsidechoir]

The work of defending the assembled Pacific coasts against Kaijus should be impartial, humble, and for the greater good. Unfortunately, that work is done by people, who aren't very inclined to any of these three things. Or: Will Ospreay, Kyle Fletcher, and the Tiger Driver.

...hey, guys! i wrote a multichapter pacific rim AU fic. it's the longest single thing i've ever completed. i don't know what got into me. it's inspired by @aerodaltonimperial and @freshlyhooked's fic drift compatible which is amazing and heartwrenching and sold me on AU fics. will and kyle were mentioned for like 10% of the fic and i pointed at them and went "What's going on there."

so, shake tramp was born. below the cut is, borrowed from an out-of-fandom friend, my liner notes! thoughts about what i included, my process, some funny lines i said while losing my mind writing this thing, reasonings, and the moments i took and changed from canon. here there be spoilers! ...for my fic! ...and i guess wrestledream?

let's start with the title! it's taken from shake tramp by the canadian band marianas trench, off their first album. my friend irl is a superfan of this band, so we'd went to go see them twice on their latest tour, and got VIP tickets both times which allowed us into a Q&A segment! one of the questions asked of the lead singer-songwriter was something along the lines of "are there any songs that were received differently than you thought it would by the fans?" his reply, paraphrased, was: "shake tramp is actually a serious song. when we'd been looking around for a music label, none we contacted would accept us with two of the original members of the band. and we kept being like, no, fuck you, take us all, but we kept asking, and it kept being the same. so we let them go. i wrote this song talking to myself, calling myself a sellout and a whore. ...and then it was really catchy, and our music video for it is silly, but it's a serious song."

so i thought of kyle. wanting to keep his integrity and his best friend, but just not being able to.

Did I let you down to get that sound?

they slap you like a bitch and you take it like a whore.

my fic-writing style is usually to stick to canon and fill out the lacunae around it, and that ended up being no different with shake tramp. which is wild. CHAPTER ONE

chapter one's kaiju fight and the argument with will and kenny are taken from the same night; 8/24/22. it's the trios title tournament before all out '22-- united empire defeats death triangle. the kaiju is named stonehitch because it turns out that the death triangle is also a rock-climbing anchor that actually sucks and does its job terribly. a stone hitch is a similar anchor that... kind of has the same problem, but not really. i never said these names were clever. as for the argument: here it is in its canon form.

"I gave you the impossible task of filling my shoes. But maybe I shouldn't've given you a pair of shoes when you still haven't grown out of your diapers."

REAL LINE. other assorted details: - i'd mentioned in the comments of ch1, but the whole thing about decompression sickness at the beginning is real! in will ospreay's close up with renee paquette, she's talking to him about what planes do to HER body, and how she can't imagine how will feels, with what he does for a living. will starts his reply with, "i'm constantly in pain," and then goes on to say that the plane ride actually ends up meditative and peaceful. but i was like Ah. Yay. A bad thing occurring - marshal omega's medals are meant to parallel his belts in his belt collector run. callis goes right to straightening them. - will is weirdly drift-compatible with a lot of people, but i end up only mentioning okada here in the rainmaker. aussie open is its own jaeger, and so's united empire! will only starts using the tiger driver as a move after he came back from wrestle kingdom 17-- where will gets his ass thoroughly handed to him by kenny.

CHAPTER TWO

chapter two starts with mark breaking his wrist 10/01/23. yes, we've timeskipped pretty far. i cannot thank gh0st-patr0l enough for the kyle fletcher correspondence, which helped me get this as close to canon as it could've been! kyle doesn't start out as a singles guy. after mark breaks his wrist, will puts in a good word for kyle with callis, who teams him up with takeshita. when kyle eats the pin in their match with [shaky sigh] kenny omega and chris jericho, callis pits takeshita and kyle against each-other. that's what the second half of the spar scene is; 10/27/23. here that is. after the match, kyle gets so mad that he takes a chair to hobbs and takeshita's backs-- and callis says that's exactly what he wants. and yes, he DOES cradle kyle's face like a weird bald pervert.

additional details: - kyle does put on a lot of muscle after joining the DCF. i wistfully and artfully smoke a cigarette. - "the manchester" is a real restaurant. no, i haven't been to it, but i looked around on google maps for restaurants near LAX and it looked fine enough. i love to put wrestlers in restaurants that are real. - kyle immediately thinks that will's problems in tokyo are stemming from the other pilots. they're not, it's the kaiju causing problems, but the fact that kyle's mind doesn't jump to the kaiju first is... callis's influence. - for will, this is after the AU's equivalent of wrestle kingdom 17. he's not having a great time, but he's not telling anyone this. - welcome to ~march 2024! kenny has been out for three months. the bucks are already the sole EVPs-- i mean, co-marshals. - i jostled the order a little, but the sparring's all based off of matches will has in the ~early days of him being full-fledged in the DCF. vs hobbs, vs takeshita, vs kyle. - will's drift scene in this chapter is supposed to also be from wrestle kingdom 17. it really got to me, okay. kyle's is from just earlier in this chapter! - the kaiju they fight in this chapter is... uh, not seen, but it's supposed to be MJF. heatseeker is one of his finishers. will's feud with MJF ends up being about the tiger driver (move), so i thought it was perfect! after-fight dialogue taken largely from this clip, post kyle vs MJF.

CHAPTER THREE

this is the chapter post drift-compatible! we're now in the august-september 2024 season. despite this, will's conversation with callis is lightly taken from this clip in july. the kaiju fight is based off of will & kyle vs the young bucks at grand slam-- the kaiju's name taken... loosely from the arena they held grand slam in? arthur ashe? flash... bang? whatever. kyle's drift scene is from the equivalent of the MJF match, and will's is also from the above-linked clip. the kaiju's gimmick came to me in a dream. i made it up. it can't be hit by plasma weapons! and will's panic is from specifically chapter 7 of drift compatible, his side of being flung around after the EMP.

and the screwdriver. in the match, callis slips kyle a screwdriver to attack a buck with. to win the match. will stops him. it's proven to kyle, now, that he has to choose between his friend and his success.

ricochet is here! i can't believe i'm the first guy on ao3 to write and tag ricochet. their spar is loosely based off of their match, including takeshita's interruption at the end of it.

additional details - stamford is a WWE reference and i thought it was funny. - one of the people will drifted with in his little, for lack of a better term, time spent drifting around: bryan danielson! the legend! yup, this is dynasty 2024, one of my favorite matches of all time. the tiger driver (move) isn't alt'ed as dropping someone on their head, it's a headbutt, with most pilots in the head of their jaegers. usually, it's safe. sometimes, it isn't. that risk should not have been taken with brittle bones bryan. bonus: his jaeger is the american dragon, and his copilot is nigel mcguinness, who is so, so incandescently pissed that bryan got to name the jaeger, that bryan is more popular, that bryan got all the fame and nigel got benched. - takeshita grabs will's bad wrist.

CHAPTER FOUR

i had brutus (instrumental) on while writing half this chapter and i got really scared so i had to turn it off. kyle and callis's conversation comes from this clip, which is after this conversation between will and callis, where kyle couldn't take a screwdriver to will's head. the will-callis convo is later reused in the drift scenes!

kenny is officially out of the picture 5/1/24. the bucks and callis are doing some shady dealings. is anyone surprised.

the kaiju fight in this chapter is actually based off of will vs ricochet vs takeshita at wrestledream 2024! the name akiyama is taken from the innovator of the blue thunder bomb, jun akiyama-- the blue thunder bomb being, of course, takeshita's finisher. i was about to name it blue thunder, but i wanted takeshita to be a pilot in this fic, and not a kaiju. i kept all of these names pretty vague and distant from their wrestler-counterparts on purpose. the drift scenes are... oof. - will-callis conversation, mentioned above. will tries to show kyle this to shake his loyalty, but it doesn't work. - kyle's POV of the first will-kenny convo in chapter one. kyle seeing will as hotheaded and disrespectful. - will-kenny copiloting tiger driver in the equivalent of forbidden door '23, where in-canon will hits kenny with the tiger driver and solidifies his allegiance to don callis. showing kyle that will is just as bad, and just as petty. - the kyle-callis conversation from earlier this chapter. will forcibly redirects into a new memory because he cares, because he doesn't want to see kyle vulnerable and berated - and their first meeting. this is taken loosely from kyle fletcher's close up, where kyle tells renee his first meeting with will is unplaceable in either of their minds but definitely making fun of another wrestler. will wants this to be a reminder of their bond, but kyle reduces this to: "he'll always see me as that scrawny kid."

additional details: - i slipped in a PWG mention with the battle of los angeles line. i think i'm very funny. - private party have the same chest missiles that the actual jaeger in pacific rim, striker eureka, does! shots, shots, shots! - kyle does to will what the tiger driver does to monsters. headbutt. at the end of the match at wrestledream, kyle tiger-drivers will. - there's a really nice visual parallel between the pacific rim circuitry suits and the graphic kyle walks out to.

serendipitous.

CHAPTER FIVE (epilogue)

bet we all forgot about mark, right? he's back! he comes back 10/30/24, on fright night dynamite. his conversation with kyle and his conversation with will are, of course, also based off real conversations he has.

the end! i'm sure i have reasoning for like 90% of the things that happen in this fic, and my askbox is always open. thank you for reading :3

[invisobang]

Lacuna

by @nootscoot83

After Danny Fenton decides, for both his safety and sanity, to split from his ghost half using the Fenton catcher, he feels like everything is finally right in the world. Phantom fights crime, while Fenton focuses on college, and both are able to confide in one another for things others wouldn’t understand. Now, it’s been 3 years since the split, and Phantom suddenly goes missing. Fenton quickly realizes that the fear and worry he feels for his best friend's disappearance isn’t just that of a friend. Meanwhile, Phantom struggles with keeping himself together long enough to make it home.