#The Founder's Curse whole book

[mylifesjustacarousel]

the sorcerer and the apprentice

pairing: james hook x gn!reader (requested)

summary: you, the child of merlin, and james hook make quite an odd pair (with obvious feelings for each other). but what happens when you two make magic together?

type: fluff, some teasing here and there

CW: none

WC: 1k

the prequel | part 1 | part 3

There were perks to being the child of Merlin, the principal and founder of Merlin Academy. You were well advanced in your wizardry skills, which was a blessing… and a curse. All of the other students were constantly lined up to try to get something from you; love potions, flying spells, blah blah blah… You name it, someone has asked you for it. But, there was one student that you always made an exception for, even if you couldn’t really explain why.

James Hook, one of the VKs in Uliana’s crew, was one of your nearest and dearest friends. You were quite the odd pair, seeing that you came from very different backgrounds. He admired your carefree personality, despite being the child of the person on campus who cared the absolute most… about everything. Well, it was more than admiration. Hook was absolutely head over heels for you. The way that you carried yourself with the utmost confidence, your intelligence and your care when it comes to your craft… he was hooked.

“Hand me the bottle over there, James,” you reached your hand out, waiting for him to put the bottle in your hand. When a few seconds went by and your hand was still empty, you looked over.

Hook had his eyes on you, a soft and warm smile on his face. It was a pretty rare sight, he usually tried to keep up his hard and cold demeanor, but he couldn’t help but let his walls down around you. You were safe, you were comforting. A home he never really had.

“James!” you shouted, nudging his side with your elbow.

He snapped out of his trance, almost jumping out of his seat. “Easy there!” he reached over, picking up the bottle, “Tears of sadness? You cry so much when you miss me that you keep a whole bottle of your tears?” Rolling your eyes, you snatched the bottle, “Ha. Ha. Ha. So very funny, James.”

His eyes softened as he watched you, your eyes carefully reading your spell book to make sure you got the exact measurements of the potion right. “Does it ever get… annoying, y/n?” you looked over at him, confused, “Does what ever get annoying? You?”

“Not what I meant.” He huffed, gently nudging your arm. “No, I meant everyone knowing who you are? Asking for potions and spells all the time?” you thought about it and ultimately just shrugged. “Sometimes. But, I also like knowing that I can make a change in other people’s lives.”

He watched silently as you poured a drop of the tears into the potion, carefully stirring it with the griffin claw. “Hey, when can I make a potion?” he asked after a minute, looking over at your spell book. While he loved spending time with you, there was nothing more boring, besides actually going to school, than sitting there and handing you bottles. You giggled, bottling up the love potion you had made, “Alright, Captain, let’s see what you can do.”

Grabbing your spell book, he stepped in front of the cauldron. He looked through spells and potions before finding one he liked. You sat down in the chair he once occupied, quietly watching him. The way his brow furrowed in concentration, the way his lips moved silently as he repeated the ingredients to himself. You couldn’t even help but get lost in his dark brown eyes.

When you two first met, you were enemies. After all, you were the child of the founder of your school, so he expected you to be nothing but a goody two shoes. He would taunt and tease you, along with the rest of Uliana’s crew. But, after you played a pretty harsh (and funny) prank on Uliana, he realized that you weren’t what you seemed on the surface. Once he learned who you were truly, you clicked and had become close.

Not as close as either of them would like, or would care to admit, though.

It was sickeningly obvious that they had feelings for each other, but they both had too much pride and just didn’t know how to talk about their feelings. They would never confess their feelings for one another. So they stuck with innocent flirting and teasing here and there.

“Do I have something on my face?” Hook teased, his lip curling up in a smirk. You quickly looked away from him, your face heating up as it turned bright red. “Nope, just making sure that you don’t mess anything up. You can’t afford to lose that pretty hair in potion mishap,” you mumbled, trying to find anything else in the room to look at.

Swallow me whole, ground, you thought to yourself.

“Well, I finished the potion, and my “pretty hair” is still there, darling,” He laughed, scooping a small amount of the potion into the bottle, “Come on, I wanna show you it.” He went over to your bookshelf, grabbing a vase of flowers that you had forgotten about, now dead and wilted, and brought them over to the table.

You raised a brow, your curiosity piquing, “What’re you up to, Hook?” he quickly put a finger up to your lips, shushing you, “Shh, trust me.”

He pulled his hand away, picking up the bottle of the potion that he just made. He poured a few drops over the vase of dead flowers, you quietly watching over his shoulder. Within a few seconds, the flowers had transformed. The once wilted and unrecognizable flowers had turned into a beautiful bouquet of roses. He picked them up, handing them to you.

“They’re for you, darling. Look, they’re the same color as your face.”

You tried to hide your grin as you looked at the flowers in your hands, but you couldn’t help it. “That was… very sweet, James. I’m impressed.” you put the flowers back in their vase, this time putting them on your bedside table right where you could see them. “If you let me take you to Castlecoming next week, there will be more where that came from.”

Your eyes widened and you whipped around, turning to face him, “Are you asking me out on a date?” he walked towards you, shrugging, “That depends on what your answer is.” you giggled, pretending to think about it before giving him your answer.

“Yes, I’ll go to Castlecoming with you, James.”

a/n: i had a lot of fun writing that! i’m hoping that they will get a lot longer as time goes on, but i’m super happy with how this turned out! and thank you to cafekitsune for the text divider, it is gorgeous

[blueberrypancakesworld]

Elijah Kamski x fem!reader - I want your soul

warning : minors don't interact/read, smut, p in v , mirror sex, some oral (f receiving), bondage, fluff/comfort, obsession

Summary : Elijah Kamski the genius behind the androids and their accessories. He was the genius of the most important man. Who was looking for someone to work with him on something. But did a genius like him really need help or was it something else he wanted, sought and needed to create something that would give him something in the end.

Info : Okay I've finally finished writing it I'm not completely satisfied for one thing because I've had this floating around for months and haven't finished it, I'm going to write an extra one with a few more themes that I hadn't done here. I hope the smut is good and the story is not too ripped out as always it should be as realistic as possible. Have fun reading :)

Ps : @thatsthewrongwallcraig I finally did it I hope you are still in your Elijah obsession have fun reading :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Detroid had changed since she was born in 2013, it seemed the whole world had changed. Everything had become more modern, more technological and more efficient.

The whole world wasn't just getting closer to the old movies about the future, it had already overtaken them.

It opened up new paths, more possibilities and development was at a level that made them all but immortal. Until the androids came.

Developed by one man, a genius with an IQ of 171, Elijah Kamski. The young genius who developed the androids became a kind of god to some and the devil to others.

The devil for the people whose jobs he had taken away with the androids. He had everything, at least if you could believe the press and the news.

With the invention of thirium and biocomponent technology, he was also the founder of Cyber Life and the richest man on the planet.

He was the incarnate one. The incarnate one who one day launched a public appeal. Not something for a new project since his retirement in 2028 or an assistant or perhaps a successor.

It was rumors that went around the world but especially in Detroid made waves. Until the announcement came from Elijah himself and it was weirder than they had imagined.

Elijah wasn't looking for a successor, he was looking for a maid to inspire his new projects. It was a headline that the magazines ran with and something that caused a boom, suddenly the whole world seemed to be standing in front of the entrance to Cyber-Life's main building.

No one knew what was waiting for them inside, but they all hoped to work for Kamski. It seemed that only one thing mattered to them all. To see Elija Kamski and his money. Because they all knew he would pay well, or so they said.

The kilometer-long queue that stretched out in front had all kinds of people. Everyone who wanted the job would fight for a place. All except for one person, a young woman who was standing in the queue like everyone else.

She wouldn't necessarily walk over dead bodies and would rather take good advice from him that she needed for her studies or a tip for finances because she didn't have any.

To be honest, she was only here to take advantage of this small, minimal opportunity to get the money to pay for her studies and to pay back her parents who had taken on extra debt. A fact that weighed heavily on her heart.

Which is why she could use the money and paying a publisher to turn her script into a book wasn't cheap either and realizing a dream like that would be nice too. But as much as she wanted to, she had to survive the queue first.

I certainly wouldn't be the first to die because of all this standing, she thought, remembering all the people she had seen with tents and chairs. How they came out of the building with their heads hanging or cursing. They had missed their chance.

But she also felt how her feet had been hurting for hours, she had run out of the university as early as she could and yet she was one of the last. But after hours in which the sun would set again in a few hours anyway, it was finally her turn.

Saw how the entrance gradually came closer and closer. She finally had the chance to get to it. Will he notice? the question popped into her head and she became all the more aware of the notebook in her bag.

She didn't know how she should feel about it. Meeting the man who had fascinated her for as long as she could remember.

Meeting the man who was the lover in her book, everything was exactly the same except for the name. Initially in her late teens it was just a model she had used but now. It was more.

More than she perhaps wanted to admit to herself. ,,Miss, it's your turn," a voice snapped her out of her thoughts and her hand slipped into her pocket. Past her notebook and to her wallet and pulled it out.

She thanked the security guard after he had looked at her ID. Before she went into the building with a pounding heart.

She knew it from videos and pictures she had seen in her primary school days. Vague memories went through her mind as she saw an android approaching her.

It seemed as if they wanted to hold back the free spirit and not let people walk around here freely. Like a fake bird in a real cage. ,,Good afternoon, Miss, would you please follow me," he said and she saw the Led flicker briefly from blue to a brief yellow.

He must be announcing me she thought to herself and followed the android with a smile knowing that many others were hostile towards the machines.

Some even went so far as to beat up and kill the androids that didn't fight back. There were unpleasant headlines about severed body parts belonging to several missing androids. Headlines that sent shivers down her spine.

After all, who said that all the androids wouldn't be dead soon? ,,What is it that Mr. Kamski wants from me?" she asked as they walked through the foyer and stood in an elevator. The android stood in front of her and turned his head slightly towards her.

She saw exactly how his eyes avoided hers for a second before he said, ,,A test to see if you are suitable for the job you are looking for," and turned forward again. The quiet hum of the elevator was between them again and her purse had disappeared back into her pocket.

Her heart seemed to compete with her nervousness as the elevator arrived at the top floor of the building. The floor she had never been on before, at least not then.

It seemed almost unbelievable to be back here now. ,,Please, you have to go through this door, good luck," the android said, pointing to what appeared to be a door in the large white hallway with a few modern paintings, plants and bright lights.

,,Thank you," she mumbled and gave the android a small smile before stepping out of the elevator and walking towards the door.

She heard exactly how the android got back in and she was alone in the hallway. She knew she had to go forward. She finally had to go to the door and felt how each step seemed to get heavier and heavier.

But after a few seconds the moment was over and she put her hand on the handle. Opened the door and stepped into the room where she found the man who would give her a job.

The light in the room was dimmer, not so bright that it stung her eyes, it was most like a foggy afternoon with dark clouds hanging in the sky and the threat of thunderstorms. Her eyes fell on the occupied armchair that stood behind a glass table.

The light illuminated the figure slightly and she saw him. ,,Good afternoon, Mr. Kamski," she said, surprised that her voice had held and that she hadn't thrown up from nervousness.

She saw how he leaned forward slightly, the dark strands of his hair framing his face. His bright blue eyes watching her closely as if she were the machine to him and the androids were the humans.

As he briefly pointed to the chair she should sit down on, she obeyed his silent command, her slightly trembling fingers pulling the chair back and sitting down. The slight clatter of her bag seemed to be too loud in the room before she turned her gaze forward.

His eyes met hers and she almost forgot to breathe for a moment. He was everything. He seemed like it came from her imagination, the pictures, videos and articles. ,,Do you think an android can get nervous?" his voice suddenly rang out, so engaging that it seemed to drown out her heartbeat.

The question echoed in her head over and over again. ,,N-no I mean yes" she began to stammer and felt the warmth jump to her ears and cheeks.

Oh god pull yourself together! she screamed at herself in her head, swallowing the lump in her throat and digging her fingers into her jeans. ,,Yes... I do think that androids can get nervous. There are... deviants who show emotions, they are human too," she replied and looked up from her lap to the older one again.

Saw how he had tilted his head slightly. His gaze looked as if he was considering whether he should throw her out or do it himself.

,,So you're implying that androids are human? Are you questioning my work?" he asked, smirking as he could practically see the gears turning in her head. She was apparently trying to guess which answer was the right one.

After a few more seconds of silence, he saw in her gaze that she had found her answer. ,,No, I don't question it, I would say that it shows that the relationship between humans and androids is maybe doing something... maybe human," she dared to put up her tese and saw first to her fear how the small smile on his lips disappeared.

His bright eyes looked at her almost incredulously as if she had deeply offended him. I'll never get a job, she thought to herself and was about to reach for her bag when she heard the sound of paper.

,,Come to this address next week and have your tessellation completed Miss," he said and felt him put a card in her hand. She had it. She had the job.

She had finally got it. ,,Thank you! I mean thank you very much Mr. Kamski, I'll come," she said and grabbed her bags before walking out of the room. The big smile on her lips spoke for itself as the android seemed to rejoice with her on her way out.

But in that time, she hadn't even thought about what it meant to be with him. To move in with him, to be with him for more than just minutes or hours. Forever.

Because a mind infused with devotion and emotion overlooks the obvious. Overlooks the gaze of obsession.

The gaze of possession. The gaze of the rich and their greed for everything. Oh, he would do so much more with her than just have her around.

But she did what he said and came to the address on Monday of the next week. His house was out of town, secluded by roads, woods and rocks.

But when she parked her small car in front of the house, armed only with a bag, she realized once again what this meant. I feel like a little kid at Christmas, she thought as she walked up the stairs to his door. It was the season of winter, snow was slowly falling from the sky and looking behind her she saw the landscape slowly turning white.

Her coat kept her warm and the hat on her head kept her ears from freezing. Ringing the bell, she tried to concentrate on the time in front of her, not the cold.

A smile on her lips turned into a surprised look when a blonde woman opened the door for her. ,,Hello, you're Miss Sun right?" she asked the blonde woman who seemed as perfect as only an angel could be.

An android. ,,Yes, I am Mr. Kamski had given me his address for the job," she replied and saw that the blonde woman stepped aside to let her in. ,,Mr. Kamski is expecting you, please take a seat in the living room," she said, a small smile playing around her lips before she gestured towards the room.

The house was too big for one man to live in. But as she walked through the hallways and doors, the dark walls, saw the colorful paintings and the markings, she realized how different they were.

She was nothing compared to him and yet he had chosen her. He had seen something in her, something that set her apart from the others.

But what? What was it? Putting the bag down next to the table, she found herself in the living room. Didn't know whether she should sit down or not. Instead, she stood next to the table and looked around the room.

Only heard muffled footsteps coming towards her, the door opened and he came out. He came out of another part of the house. A black bathrobe on his body, she saw that his hair was still slightly wet, she could see a little of his upper body.

But his gaze, his bright eyes seemed to focus only on her, despite his appearance, he had lost none of his look. ,,Good afternoon, Mr. Kamski, your housekeeper said I should come here...I can wait too," she said and was about to reach for her bag when she heard his grin.

A smirk that led to an amused smile. ,,No, I wanted you to be here and that's why you're here. I suppose you found your way here all right?" he asked, but his interest was clear. She sensed that it wasn't about her life. It should be about her.

It was supposed to be about her work and what was going on inside her. ,,Yes, I did, I also revised my thesis again... Mr. Kamski could you tell me what the job is about now?" she asked as she watched him make himself a green protein shake, mixing the powder with the vegetables, the blender surprisingly quiet.

But he remained silent as he calmly made his drink before walking past her, gesturing for her to follow him. Grabbing her handbag, she followed him, not knowing whether she should walk beside him or behind him.

But she opted for the latter, not wanting to push her luck too far. She didn't want to compete with him. But why? Do I even have a chance? she asked herself and almost walked into him when he stopped.

,,Your room is all yours, I know it might be unpleasant but I would ask you to stay here. As far as my work is concerned, quick communication is essential," he said, leaning against the doorframe as he watched her. She watched as she looked around the room a little.

The room was three times the size of her own small room. Cave it could probably even fit her entire apartment in here. Staying here? For how long? the question popped up in her head and she looked at him slightly questioningly.

She saw that he knew what she was getting at and took a sip of his drink. ,,I don't think for a few more weeks...it depends on how good you are...oh and please just call me Elijah," he dismissed her with those words, closing the door behind him and taking her nervousness with him.

Her glance at her bag let her know that she had to go back to her apartment to pick up her things, but that she had still taken her book with her.

The words she had written about him, being in his house, working for him. ,,I really did it," she muttered and proudly began to unpack her things, set up her room and took her things with her. She tried to find Elijah only to run into Chloe who let her know that Elijah was at work.

Letting her know when he needed her to get her things. Which is why she found herself back in her apartment less than an hour later. Had walked back to the exit, past the pictures and cameras, past the Chloes and past his gaze without realizing it.

She didn't see what he was doing, she just knew she had to do something to formulate her thesis. And when she came back, she saw him again eating a salad at the table in the living room, but this time he wasn't wearing a coat.

He was wearing normal jeans, a dark shirt and glasses. ,,I see you're back, I'd like to read your thesis the day after tomorrow. To understand what's going on inside you," he said and gave her a slight smile. She felt her heart beat faster again, she agreed and went back to her room with her things. The smile on her lips was unmistakable.

Just as unmistakable as his approval. She did as he said as she joined him in his office, his workroom full of various technical things. ,,Elijah, I have my thesis," she said as she stepped inside after knocking and the door opened, she saw him working on an android model.

It was a construct of wires, metal and the pump that symbolized the heart, yet human features were recognizable.

He looked up from his work and something like surprise flashed in his gaze as if he was realizing something before he gave her a satisfied look and motioned her to his desk.

She handed him her tese and he grinned as he felt the paper in his hands. ,,Old-fashioned and yet not corruptibly good," he said as he took the paper properly before he began to read it. she remained standing next to him, watching his eyes run over the sentences.

He became more and more lost in her work, absorbing her words and becoming more and more absorbed in them. ,,Perfection, your idea of something non-living... very good, I'm proud. I would like you to design a model of it for me more deep thought" he baht she had turned towards her his hand had placed itself on her shoulder.

She felt his warmth, although she had always thought of him as cold, he was warm. He was welcoming and he made her heart beat faster, leaving her proud as he held her tese before giving her a smile and watching her walk out of the room.

Not knowing what his thoughts turned to as he went back to his latest project. Her thesis would help him. Everything would be perfect.

But she did what he said, worked on her work, didn't question him, wouldn't and shouldn't. Ate breakfast, lunch and dinner with him. Caught herself listening in the house to see if he was awake to go to the kitchen and make breakfast.

Usually did it with Chloe, who didn't need any sleep. The two of them talked and laughed and she forgot that the blonde was an android.

Forgetting what was happening around her, what was happening out in the world, what had ever happened. Because what she had was here. A job, a friend and a man who admired her and gave her support.

Or did she? Could she describe her life like this? How long had she been with him - days, weeks or even months? How often had she sat with him, revised her work and written down her inner life? What had happened?

,,My dear I will invite you to dinner and would like you to carry this here" she mumbled the words on the small card that lay on the gift wrapping paper that held something with fabric inside.

Unwrapping the gift, she saw the dark fabric of the dress and held it in front of her body. She could feel how expensive it must be, it was perfectly tailored to her body.

It was perfect in every way. As she stood in front of the mirror, she looked at herself in it and for a moment felt like she was on the same level as him. Was with him to the point that she meant something to him.

And she caught herself thinking that the only thing missing was the gold ring on her hand. But had she turned like this or had he made her like this? Did he want to make her like this? Or was everything bigger than he thought in the end? Was she programmed from the beginning to react like this, was it her feelings?

Was it his creation? She didn't let her thoughts get in the way and continued by putting red lipstick on her lips. She took one last look in the mirror before leaving her room. Hearing the clack of her shoes in the hallway, she walked into the dining room, finding no Chloe or any of her friends on her way.

She found only the silence of the house and heard the classical music coming from one of the rooms like a rhythm, the sounds played over and over again as she arrived in the candlelit room. ,,You look beautiful, I'm glad you put it on," he said, giving her the appearance of a choice she didn't have.

After all, what kind of woman would she be if she didn't comply with his request. ,,Thank you for the dress and the invitation," she replied, her gaze dropping for a moment before she saw him step into her field of vision, taking her hand and feeling his warmth as he led her to the table.

,,It's a multi-course meal to thank you for your work," he began, placing the first course of food, a simple soup, before reaching for the bottle of wine and pouring them both a glass.

She saw him sit down opposite her and they both ate in silence. But it wasn't unpleasant, on the contrary, the food, the sound of the cutlery and the music in the background created an atmosphere of comfort.

She couldn't see what was hiding behind his gaze as he concentrated on her. ,,Sorry I haven't had so much time for you in the last few days and weeks," he said, almost too suddenly, as he put down the spoon, his look apologetic but his voice seeming out of place. He was inappropriate.

A man who had spent time under machines could show emotion. ,,It's perfectly all right... I'm very glad we have this," she replied and finished her soup, not wanting to break the atmosphere.

She did as she was told before they got to the end of the meal and she didn't know what to do. She didn't have to because Elijah got up from his seat and walked over to her, offering her his hand before she walked next to him for the first time. His hand was on hers as they both walked towards his office.

His gaze was on her, watching her, looking for anything wrong. ,,I've taken the liberty of creating a new prototype...your notes and work helped" he began and walked over to the machine knowing she was listening to him, knowing she would do anything for him from this point on. He handed her the table with the data and watched as she looked over it, fascination in her eyes for his work.

He knew that she would always admire him, it didn't take much but he had read it. He had read her book and knew that she was truly the right person for his purpose.

That his inner self was right, his genius was right, his obsession was right. She let the shapes and processes on the table before she suddenly felt his hand on her shoulder.

He touched her in all the time she had been with him, he had never fully touched her now only when she had done something well. ,,What did I do well?" she asked, turning to him, the device with the thin screen still in her hand.

She kept still wanting more from him, the bond between them still far too strong. He saw her as his and she saw herself as his wife. It was and would be between them. It was her devotion in her brain for him, and it was his desire for her as his wife. For someone perfect.

,,Everything my love...you have no idea...what you've done to me," he murmured and she felt his other hand on her shoulder as he continued to touch her, praising her for something she couldn't do.

,,Can I do something for my existence?" she asked her inner question out to him, hearing his smirk, smelling the metal, the aftershave, snow and wine. Smelled him. Felt him so close to her and yet she didn't move. Stood still like someone waiting for an order.

Something he liked to have her the way he wanted her. Like an android. ,,You can help what you do... tell me, do you want to be free for a moment?" he asked, his hand moving over her shoulder and down to her hand. He gripped the tray and gave her the freedom to decide for a moment.

She could walk away or she could stay and give it to him. And she did. She gave it to him. ,,Free? But we're free, aren't we?" she asked, not knowing what he meant as he took the tray from her. Leaving the first kiss on her neck before he slowly moved her past the.

The office, like everything else, was just a pretext which she seemed to realize but it made no sense, it didn't matter, there was just the two of them and that should be enough. She hadn't been what she used to be for a long time.

But it didn't matter, it was about him and her, not about what had happened. She felt him leave more kisses on her skin as the doors opened in front of them and she felt the warmth on her cheeks, a natural reaction when she saw his bedroom. Dark walls reddish abstract paintings on the walls.

One might have thought that the pictures hid the portrait of a woman, but what did she know. At most, he saw her in the colors. Because he wanted to. Because understanding told him so. She felt him next to her, his hands gripped hers, her shy gaze found his.

Her uncertain, his almost demanding, the glasses helped him to see her better, even if he didn't need them. He would have her anyway. He slowly placed his hand on her side and pulled her close.

On the contrary, the closer he touched her, the more intimate she became. The more she wanted him. ,,That's it," he said with a murmur, apparently listening to her thoughts before she felt his lips on hers, kissing his warmth over her as she clung to him, almost searching.

He wanted the kiss more knew he was getting it. But she gladly gave herself to him. She felt safe. He had given her a job, given her a dress, given her everything.

Now it was only fair that she gave him something back, wasn't it? It was always like that. She only felt a dull sensation as he moved to her back and unzipped the expensive fabric flowing from her body. She stepped out of her shoes as if automatically, not wanting it to be over like this.

She wanted to please him without realizing that she was doing just that. ,,I've liked you ever since I saw you... like a perfection for me," he said, taking away her fear as he went to the bed, leaving her standing there, almost confused and full of shame.

The warmth on her cheeks increased as she felt flattered and crawled towards him on the bed, knowing that he was watching her, not hiding the fact that he found her attractive.

That he saw exactly how her nipples had hardened slightly from the cold. That his hands lay on the fabric and her shaky exhale. He had her body to himself, had her to himself. ,,Elijah you-me...you are everything," she murmured, knowing it was her mind veiled in lust.

The spirit that longed for Elijah wanted more. Wanted more of his touch. ,,I know that... I know everything, my love," he whispered to her, pulling her into another kiss before he let his hand wander over her breast again. He felt her shudder. ,,Poor girl...all these months without touch or pleasure...without me," he said, watching her.

Watched her through his Chloe's or had to know. Had given him lust without her knowing who his cameras were. She had shown him everything he needed to know. Always in the quiet of the night, he had touched himself to see what she had done.

He pulled her onto his lap, feeling her quick pulse as he kissed her neck, beginning to leave colorful marks on it, her warmth mingling with his as she held onto the cover in the dark bed.#

His hand that was not on her breast moved to her thigh. She felt her hips thrust out towards him, full of devotion, needing him. ,,I'm going to make you feel good look" he whispered to her biting lightly into her lobe hearing her shaky exhale feeling her lust could feel the tingling in her body as his rough fingers slipped under her bra.

Moaning his name, she pressed herself against him, feeling his own arousal against her back, yet he focused on her. Wanted to see her fall apart when he actually touched her.

She opened her half-closed eyes and looked at herself and Elijah out loud in surprise. Her own reflection in the mirror built into the closet. ,,Beautiful forever," he whispered to her and she moaned as she let his fingers wander over her center.

It was different where her fingers weren't even close enough, his seemed so much better. He felt her wetness through the fabric of her underwear, took his hand from her breast and let it wander over her body. Leaving red scratches, small bites, marks and kisses.

Driving her on as he repeatedly focused his attention on the little bundle of nerves. As her voice filled the room, the classical music drowning in it, he was also completely hard but with each of her shaky movements his hardness got some relief.

He rubbed himself lightly against her his breathing was slightly shaky and yet it made no difference. Because he dealt with her. Giving her more of what she wanted while his blue eyes were on her. Her gaze on the mirror. The trembling spread to her legs as she begged him for more.

But he knew he had watched her closely and knew when she was slowly coming to the end. ,,Look at you, darling... everything just for me," he continued to murmur, finally wanting to show her. His finger moved out of her only to add another one, keeping her better than her own, her hips in rhythm with him. His praise took her mind away.

His pace increased, her trembling increased and when he heard her murmur he knew she was nearing climax. ,,El-Elijah please," she said, resting her head on his shoulder, finally wanting to let go, her fingers digging into the dark bed. He gave her body more kisses before he gave her the okay.

He took his hand from her breast and gripped her jaw, forcing her to look at herself in the mirror. She fell apart around him with a throaty moan.

He pulled out of her, her heavy-breathing form relaxing to just a sporadic twitch of her legs as she came down from her high. Closing her eyes, he withdrew from her. Licked his hand clean and slowly pushed her away. Watched as she still wasn't completely back, but she didn't have to be. ,,Thank you for your time, my dear," he said, hearing only a murmur, but his gaze went to the mirror.

A flicker caused the android behind it to take away the image of the mirror, the projection disappeared and her image emerged in the form of the android.

,,I have recorded all the data, sir," said the android's voice, turning her gaze away from her human image. ,,Very well, interpret the data I want perfection darling," he said and his hand passed over hers but warmth met cold. The coldness of a machine before it went out. He was left alone with his muse, his darling.

Saw that she was asleep saw that she was unaware. Didn't know what his search for her had driven her to. ,,Sleep well my love," he said and withdrew from her, opening and closing the door. Left her alone.

Until he wanted her again, knowing that she would give him everything. That he had rebuilt her so that when her human shell died, he had her eternally living one. She was his, right down to her soul, she belonged to him and always had.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A link-clump demands a linkdump

Cometh the weekend, cometh the linkdump. My daily-ish newsletter includes a section called "Hey look at this," with three short links per day, but sometimes those links get backed up and I need to clean house. Here's the eight previous installments:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

The country code top level domain (ccTLD) for the Caribbean island nation of Anguilla is .ai, and that's turned into millions of dollars worth of royalties as "entrepreneurs" scramble to sprinkle some buzzword-compliant AI stuff on their businesses in the most superficial way possible:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ai-fever-turns-anguillas-ai-domain-into-a-digital-gold-mine/

All told, .ai domain royalties will account for about ten percent of the country's GDP.

It's actually kind of nice to see Anguilla finding some internet money at long last. Back in the 1990s, when I was a freelance web developer, I got hired to work on the investor website for a publicly traded internet casino based in Anguilla that was a scammy disaster in every conceivable way. The company had been conceived of by people who inherited a modestly successful chain of print-shops and decided to diversify by buying a dormant penny mining stock and relaunching it as an online casino.

But of course, online casinos were illegal nearly everywhere. Not in Anguilla – or at least, that's what the founders told us – which is why they located their servers there, despite the lack of broadband or, indeed, reliable electricity at their data-center. At a certain point, the whole thing started to whiff of a stock swindle, a pump-and-dump where they'd sell off shares in that ex-mining stock to people who knew even less about the internet than they did and skedaddle. I got out, and lost track of them, and a search for their names and business today turns up nothing so I assume that it flamed out before it could ruin any retail investors' lives.

Anguilla is a British Overseas Territory, one of those former British colonies that was drained and then given "independence" by paternalistic imperial administrators half a world away. The country's main industries are tourism and "finance" – which is to say, it's a pearl in the globe-spanning necklace of tax- and corporate-crime-havens the UK established around the world so its most vicious criminals – the hereditary aristocracy – can continue to use Britain's roads and exploit its educated workforce without paying any taxes.

This is the "finance curse," and there are tiny, struggling nations all around the world that live under it. Nick Shaxson dubbed them "Treasure Islands" in his outstanding book of the same name:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780230341722/treasureislands

I can't imagine that the AI bubble will last forever – anything that can't go on forever eventually stops – and when it does, those .ai domain royalties will dry up. But until then, I salute Anguilla, which has at last found the internet riches that I played a small part in bringing to it in the previous century.

The AI bubble is indeed overdue for a popping, but while the market remains gripped by irrational exuberance, there's lots of weird stuff happening around the edges. Take Inject My PDF, which embeds repeating blocks of invisible text into your resume:

https://kai-greshake.de/posts/inject-my-pdf/

The text is tuned to make resume-sorting Large Language Models identify you as the ideal candidate for the job. It'll even trick the summarizer function into spitting out text that does not appear in any human-readable form on your CV.

Embedding weird stuff into resumes is a hacker tradition. I first encountered it at the Chaos Communications Congress in 2012, when Ang Cui used it as an example in his stellar "Print Me If You Dare" talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njVv7J2azY8

Cui figured out that one way to update the software of a printer was to embed an invisible Postscript instruction in a document that basically said, "everything after this is a firmware update." Then he came up with 100 lines of perl that he hid in documents with names like cv.pdf that would flash the printer when they ran, causing it to probe your LAN for vulnerable PCs and take them over, opening a reverse-shell to his command-and-control server in the cloud. Compromised printers would then refuse to apply future updates from their owners, but would pretend to install them and even update their version numbers to give verisimilitude to the ruse. The only way to exorcise these haunted printers was to send 'em to the landfill. Good times!

Printers are still a dumpster fire, and it's not solely about the intrinsic difficulty of computer security. After all, printer manufacturers have devoted enormous resources to hardening their products against their owners, making it progressively harder to use third-party ink. They're super perverse about it, too – they send "security updates" to your printer that update the printer's security against you – run these updates and your printer downgrades itself by refusing to use the ink you chose for it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

It's a reminder that what a monopolist thinks of as "security" isn't what you think of as security. Oftentimes, their security is antithetical to your security. That was the case with Web Environment Integrity, a plan by Google to make your phone rat you out to advertisers' servers, revealing any adblocking modifications you might have installed so that ad-serving companies could refuse to talk to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

WEI is now dead, thanks to a lot of hueing and crying by people like us:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/02/google_abandons_web_environment_integrity/

But the dream of securing Google against its own users lives on. Youtube has embarked on an aggressive campaign of refusing to show videos to people running ad-blockers, triggering an arms-race of ad-blocker-blockers and ad-blocker-blocker-blockers:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-will-the-ad-versus-ad-blocker-arms-race-end/

The folks behind Ublock Origin are racing to keep up with Google's engineers' countermeasures, and there's a single-serving website called "Is uBlock Origin updated to the last Anti-Adblocker YouTube script?" that will give you a realtime, one-word status update:

https://drhyperion451.github.io/does-uBO-bypass-yt/

One in four web users has an ad-blocker, a stat that Doc Searls pithily summarizes as "the biggest boycott in world history":

https://doc.searls.com/2015/09/28/beyond-ad-blocking-the-biggest-boycott-in-human-history/

Zero app users have ad-blockers. That's not because ad-blocking an app is harder than ad-blocking the web – it's because reverse-engineering an app triggers liability under IP laws like Section 1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which can put you away for 5 years for a first offense. That's what I mean when I say that "IP is anything that lets a company control its customers, critics or competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

I predicted that apps would open up all kinds of opportunities for abusive, monopolistic conduct back in 2010, and I'm experiencing a mix of sadness and smugness (I assume there's a German word for this emotion) at being so thoroughly vindicated by history:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

The more control a company can exert over its customers, the worse it will be tempted to treat them. These systems of control shift the balance of power within companies, making it harder for internal factions that defend product quality and customer interests to win against the enshittifiers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

The result has been a Great Enshittening, with platforms of all description shifting value from their customers and users to their shareholders, making everything palpably worse. The only bright side is that this has created the political will to do something about it, sparking a wave of bold, muscular antitrust action all over the world.

The Google antitrust case is certainly the most important corporate lawsuit of the century (so far), but Judge Amit Mehta's deference to Google's demands for secrecy has kept the case out of the headlines. I mean, Sam Bankman-Fried is a psychopathic thief, but even so, his trial does not deserve its vastly greater prominence, though, if you haven't heard yet, he's been convicted and will face decades in prison after he exhausts his appeals:

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/sam-bankman-fried-guilty-on-all-charges

The secrecy around Google's trial has relaxed somewhat, and the trickle of revelations emerging from the cracks in the courthouse are fascinating. For the first time, we're able to get a concrete sense of which queries are the most lucrative for Google:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/1/23941766/google-antitrust-trial-search-queries-ad-money

The list comes from 2018, but it's still wild. As David Pierce writes in The Verge, the top twenty includes three iPhone-related terms, five insurance queries, and the rest are overshadowed by searches for customer service info for monopolistic services like Xfinity, Uber and Hulu.

All-in-all, we're living through a hell of a moment for piercing the corporate veil. Maybe it's the problem of maintaining secrecy within large companies, or maybe the the rampant mistreatment of even senior executives has led to more leaks and whistleblowing. Either way, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the anonymous leaker who revealed the unbelievable pettiness of former HBO president of programming Casey Bloys, who ordered his underlings to create an army of sock-puppet Twitter accounts to harass TV and movie critics who panned HBO's shows:

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/hbo-casey-bloys-secret-twitter-trolls-tv-critics-leaked-texts-lawsuit-the-idol-1234867722/

These trolling attempts were pathetic, even by the standards of thick-fingered corporate execs. Like, accusing critics who panned the shitty-ass Perry Mason reboot of disrespecting veterans because the fictional Mason's back-story had him storming the beach on D-Day.

The pushback against corporate bullying is everywhere, and of course, the vanguard is the labor movement. Did you hear that the UAW won their strike against the auto-makers, scoring raises for all workers based on the increases in the companies' CEO pay? The UAW isn't done, either! Their incredible new leader, Shawn Fain, has called for a general strike in 2028:

https://www.404media.co/uaw-calls-on-workers-to-line-up-massive-general-strike-for-2028-to-defeat-billionaire-class/

The massive victory for unionized auto-workers has thrown a spotlight on the terrible working conditions and pay for workers at Tesla, a criminal company that has no compunctions about violating labor law to prevent its workers from exercising their legal rights. Over in Sweden, union workers are teaching Tesla a lesson. After the company tried its illegal union-busting playbook on Tesla service centers, the unionized dock-workers issued an ultimatum: respect your workers or face a blockade at Sweden's ports that would block any Tesla from being unloaded into the EU's fifth largest Tesla market:

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-sweden-strike/

Of course, the real solution to Teslas – and every other kind of car – is to redesign our cities for public transit, walking and cycling, making cars the exception for deliveries, accessibility and other necessities. Transitioning to EVs will make a big dent in the climate emergency, but it won't make our streets any safer – and they keep getting deadlier.

Last summer, my dear old pal Ted Kulczycky got in touch with me to tell me that Talking Heads were going to be all present in public for the first time since the band's breakup, as part of the debut of the newly remastered print of Stop Making Sense, the greatest concert movie of all time. Even better, the show would be in Toronto, my hometown, where Ted and I went to high-school together, at TIFF.

Ted is the only person I know who is more obsessed with Talking Heads than I am, and he started working on tickets for the show while I starting pricing plane tickets. And then, the unthinkable happened: Ted's wife, Serah, got in touch to say that Ted had been run over by a car while getting off of a streetcar, that he was severely injured, and would require multiple surgeries.

But this was Ted, so of course he was still planning to see the show. And he did, getting a day-pass from the hospital and showing up looking like someone from a Kids In The Hall sketch who'd been made up to look like someone who'd been run over by a car:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53182440282/

In his Globe and Mail article about Ted's experience, Brad Wheeler describes how the whole hospital rallied around Ted to make it possible for him to get to the movie:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/article-how-a-talking-heads-superfan-found-healing-with-the-concert-film-stop/

He also mentions that Ted is working on a book and podcast about Stop Making Sense. I visited Ted in the hospital the day after the gig and we talked about the book and it sounds amazing. Also? The movie was incredible. See it in Imax.

That heartwarming tale of healing through big suits is a pretty good place to wrap up this linkdump, but I want to call your attention to just one more thing before I go: Robin Sloan's Snarkmarket piece about blogging and "stock and flow":

https://snarkmarket.com/2010/4890/

Sloan makes the excellent case that for writers, having a "flow" of short, quick posts builds the audience for a "stock" of longer, more synthetic pieces like books. This has certainly been my experience, but I think it's only part of the story – there are good, non-mercenary reasons for writers to do a lot of "flow." As I wrote in my 2021 essay, "The Memex Method," turning your commonplace book into a database – AKA "blogging" – makes you write better notes to yourself because you know others will see them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

This, in turn, creates a supersaturated, subconscious solution of fragments that are just waiting to nucleate and crystallize into full-blown novels and nonfiction books and other "stock." That's how I came out of lockdown with nine new books. The next one is The Lost Cause, a hopepunk science fiction novel about the climate whose early fans include Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben and Kim Stanley Robinson. It's out on November 14:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/05/variegated/#nein

[2screamingpears]

A not-complete list of wonderful changes, translation and localization I noticed when I went to see Book of Mormon in Madrid!

Hey! So I went to see The Book of Mormon last month in Madrid, and since I had watched (bootlegged) and listened to the original production, I was able to enjoy some changes they made so it could be enjoyed by spanish audiences!

First off, I should say that it wasn’t a replica production (and I think I much prefer this one!). The choreography was amazing, and definitely more elaborate than on broadway ! Here, have a look: https://youtu.be/NZ5UxjN2MPs?si=UErYQUODo5Qs-EMC

Some of the first changes I wondered how they were going to make was the opening number: both Hello and Hola have the same syllables but hola cannot be used, since the accent falls on the first syllable in hola and the second in hello….. so spanish mormons just end up saying how are you (¿qué tal?) 😂

Second change comes during the second number, two by two: one of the jokes is weirdly untranslatable, which is the addendum at the end of the phrase “we are the soldiers of the church of jesus christ (of latter day saints)”. Since in spanish “of la-tter day saints” (5 syllables) would be “de los úl-ti-mos dí-as” (7 syllables), they changed it to “yo-soy-mor-món” (i am a mormon) which fits! There is a joke lost, but mormonism isn’t as widespread as it is on the US, so it’s hardly noticeable.

This one is mostly to update the content, but during two by two when the trip to japan gets announced, the mormons are excited about soy sauce and godzilla (instead of mothra)

Next comes a change i also wondered about: how do you make a joke out of Elder Price’s wish to go to Orlando, of all things? In the English version, Elder Price would like to go to orlando because of Sea World, Disney and putt-putt golfing: spaniards have no cultural knowledge of what Orlando is, so the translated line is “Orlando! Disney me espera, soy fan de Frozen” (Orlando! Disney is waiting for me, I’m a Frozen fan) which really drives home the ridiculousness of choosing that place as your mission trip. Also, if you watch the video i linked, the joke is super amplified through choreography, which is part of why i love this production so much.

Hasa diga eebowai gets one change Very right: instead of saying fuck you god, they say “me cago en dios” (i shit on god) which is a very common way of cursing about things in spain: you can shit on the milk (me cago en la leche), on your mother (me cago en tu madre) and indeed, you can shit on god!

One fun localization comes in at the end of All-American prophet, a song that’s basically a sales pitch or infomercial : the fun little gag at the end where Elder Cunningham says “if you order now, we’ll also throw a seat of steak knives” gets changed to “if you order now, we’ll throw in a thermomix for free” For people who don’t know, a thermomix is The Product everyone gets from infomercials/ through independent sellers: it’s a chopper/blender/cooker/scale/kitchen robot, very convenient! My mother has one :) one of the ugandan ladies asks Cunningham about the thermomix inmediatly after finishing the number and he excitedly begins explaining the whole shtick every middle aged spanish lady has heard before, that got a big laugh :)

In the sequence before spooky mormon hell dream, when Elder Price’s so happy that he finally reaches Orlando, he throws in another elsa joke, saying that he’s blonde like her, so thats why she likes her😂

During Spooky mormon hell dream, one change that got Such a big laugh was seeing the four people that are in hell according to Elder Price: Genghis Khan, Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer and, instead of Jonnie Cochran (idk even who he is) we got Silvio Berlusconi, politician and founder of communications company Mediaset, which runs a thrash tv channel called Telecinco (and that’s what he’s in hell for, according to the song)

The thing elder cunningham always says “tomorrow’s a latter day” gets changed to a saying a lot of catholic old people say, “mañana dios dirá” which both fits in the metric and localizes it, since mormonism isn’t that well known.

And that’s it! It was such a wonderful performance, and a testament to the beauty of translation: even if i know I understand English fairly well, seeing the jokes on my native language made everything 100x times funnier! Strongly recommend!

[beauty-and-passion]

TMA - Chapters 21-30: Andorra is a beautiful place

Here I am, once again, back with 10 more TMA chapters.

Things are starting to get very, VERY interesting.

<< Main Masterlist < Previous post

_______________________________

MAG 21 - Freefall

A statement all about skydiving and my mind flies to Ex Altiora. I’ll admit it: I kept wondering if the supernatural shit of this statement was related to this book in particular - or to any other book from my man Leutner.

But nope, today’s supernatural shit is something both weird and horrific at the same time: the sky itself, that ate a guy. The account is purposely left as vague as possible, with a clear emphasis on how difficult it is to describe the whole thing, but the image of the sky shifting and enveloping Robert is both beautiful and eldritch-esque. I really liked it.

And here we go again with the familiar names, this time it’s Simon Fairchild. Why is it so familiar? Why is every name so familiar?

But most importantly: how badass is he? Just think about this man, who decided to give Robert the scare of his life and not because he had something against him, but just because. And he did it, by saying the most harmless thing ever. He literally woke up and chose violence.

Also, what the heck happened in the end? Glad to know Martin is back, but what’s happening? Did he bring slugs with him? Worms? Jane Prentiss? Some other supernatural shit?

_______________________________

MAG 22 - Colony

Holy shit, it really was Jane Prentiss again.

I wondered if we would’ve seen more of her victims, but I never wanted Martin to be one of them! Well, it is kind of his own fault - I mean, his zealousness is admirable, but was it really necessary to go twice into that scary basement? And he even tried to take a photo, to prove to his boss that he was not insane! Martin needs a vacation away from all this shit.

And he survived for 13 fucking days, with Jane Prentiss (who is officially a trypophobic’s nightmare) knocking at his door every now and then and one trillion worms trying to find their way inside his house - and possibly inside him too. Disgusting, draining, terrifying, hats off to him for surviving. 

So the famous stomach problems were not real: it was Jane Prentiss doing shit with Martin’s phone. And she even has the balls to write something like “Okay, sheesh, keep him”. Kind of a boss, I’ll admit it.

O-oh, what is the “Archivist’s crimson fate”? Is it a sort of “curse” placed on the Head Archivists of this Institute? Maybe that’s why Gertrude Robinson died: the man from MAG 11 tried to warn her, but it was too late and the “curse” activated before she could escape it. But considering that there are supernatural shits everywhere, is the “crimson fate” a curse or just another supernatural shit?

(Don’t you DARE to tell me any spoilers)

One last thing: John has been very understanding, which proves he’s a nice guy after all. Even if he always tells shit about Martin, this time he gave him a place in the Archives, reassured him and told him he would hire extra security too. He trusted his words. Finally, Jon is becoming a better person XD

He also mentioned a statement from Jane Prentiss herself, so if I’m getting this series right, I guess MAG 23 will be about that statement.

_______________________________

MAG 23 - Schwartzwald

It wasn’t Jane Prentiss’ statement. Sad :(

But we got a statement given to Jonah Magnus - who I suppose is the founder of the Institute. Pretty cool.

Okay, so we have the tomb of this Johann von Württemberg guy, a man with no eyes, a disappeared coin, a mysterious book and a lot of eyes again. The book immediately made me think of my man Leutner, while the eyes are a constant reminder of MAG 11/all other MAGs before & after and I am 100% sure these eyes are part of some other supernatural shit we still have to see. Is it related to the “Archivist’s crimson fate”, maybe? Only time will tell.

Here we are, the most important part of the statement: Albrecht is ready to enter the mausoleum, even if a weird guy gave him a weirder warning. The tension builds, Albrecht is here, he lights his lantern… and then we have Martin, who is apparently walking around the Archives naked and I burst out laughing because I just had this wonderful image of Jon all focused on the statement, while Martin is chilling around wearing nothing but his boxers. Best way to build the tension and break it at the same time, 10/10, kudos to the author of this series for doing that, it was the funniest shit ever.

MY (WO)MAN MARY KEAY. Don’t be silly, Jon, of course it’s not a coincidence - there are no coincidences in this series. This woman is the mother of my man Gerard, I am 100% sure. And I love how the Keays have always been involved with supernatural shits, ever since their ancestor Albrecht. It kinda explains why Gerard is always around them. It’s not that he doesn’t have anything better to do: it's literally part of his DNA.

And it could also explain why he’s searching for Leutner’s books: maybe the one in Johann von Württemberg’s tomb really was a Leutner’s book and Gerard is searching for all others.

That's very, very interesting.

_______________________________

MAG 24 - Strange Music

A weird calliope organ and some murderous clown dolls. Not the most exciting story ever but hey, at least there are a couple interesting things here:

We hear Sasha for the first time and she appears for the most useless speech ever. I hope she will be more useful in the future. And Jon is sarcastic with her too, which proves to me that he’s not an ass: just a typical British guy XD (my dear Brits, you had it coming XD Don’t take me seriously, we’re all bros here <3)

Someone “legitimate” took the calliope. And my mind flies to our favorite delivery company “Breekon and Hope Deliveries”.

The Circus of the Other. What the heck is the “Other”? My bet is another supernatural shit.

Holy shit the organ is in the Institute?! Was it the Breekon and Hope Deliveries to deliver it or did the Institute take it?

Is there something Elias knows for sure, or all he knows is that things are “maybe/probably somewhere”? This man is useless XD

Now that I think about it: Elias is the head of the Institute, right? So he bought it from some of Magnus’ successors, I suppose. Now, does he know about the “Archivist’s crimson fate”? If this “fate” is some sort of curse that takes all Head Archivists, it probably took more Head Archivists before Gertrude Robinson, right? And Elias never asked himself why all these Archivists were casually dying under his nose?

Or maybe I’m getting it all wrong and the “crimson fate” isn’t a curse that affects all Head Archivists. Well, then I have another unrelated question: how's it possible that the goddamn Head of the Institute knows nothing of his Institute? How involved is Elias in the Institute and its organization?

There are still many missing things and I can’t wait to connect them all.

_______________________________

MAG 25 - Growing Dark

The statement itself isn’t very interesting, just “guy finds some random shit in a dark creepy place”, but there are a few details that caught my attention.

First of all, here we are again with a closed eye. I suppose that the People’s Church of the Divine Host and these Hither Green Dissenters are all part of the same gang, considering they both share closed eyes as their symbol. Also, now there’s Alesund mentioned too. Is this the birthplace of the supernatural shit they all worship? And are closed and open eyes related to the same supernatural shit or they're two different shits?

We also have the exact date in which Gertrude Robinson died: May 15th, 2015. And this is a problem for me, because I don’t remember any date and I suck with dates in general, unless I have a scheme/timeline/whatever. So tell me: should I do a timeline?

Fuck, I’ll do it anyway.

_______________________________

MAG 26 - A Distortion

Holy shit. HOLY. SHIT.

*I think I’ve finally found my Michael. And it’s not Michael Getty, Michael Crew or Michael Whatever: it’s Michael the Supernatural Shit. And I love him. I mean, he is:

a chill guy, who buys flowers and drinks coffee

a poet, considering that when Sasha asked him what he is, he said: “How would a melody describe itself when asked?”. Best way to answer, he’s amazing, I’m in love

a cool boy who is creepy as fuck while not appearing creepy at all

probably the guy “with all the bones in his hands” mentioned in MAG 8

a good boyo who wants to help

*I wrote a timeline just in time, because as soon as I heard the name Timothy Hodge, I instantly remembered he was from MAG 6. The timeline is useful: I will keep updating it, then.

*Poor Martin is being stalked by the goddamn colony of silver worms. Martin, I think it's time for a vacation far away from all these supernatural shits. What about Andorra? Andorra is between the mountains, so good luck finding it. The population is less than 90k, so basically there are more people in my backyard than in the entire state. And it’s in the Pyrenees, so I’m pretty sure the nights are probably shorter than in Norway.

Think about it, Martin: no supernatural shits, no worms, long days. And spas. They have spas too.

I dream this for Martin.

*Two statements ago I asked for Sasha to be more useful and here she is. She is useful indeed! Thank you for your service, Sasha: you finally gave me my Michael and you’ve probably saved Jon’s life. Great job.

But you know how you can save everyone's life even more? Move to Andorra. They also have traditions related to fire and burning things, just in case some worms find you. Listen to me and run away from all this shit.

Andorra is a wonderful place.

_______________________________

MAG 27 - A Sturdy Lock

Another not-very-interesting story, just “supernatural shit knocks at my door during the night”. Also, it comes after that bomb that was MAG 26, so the backlash is even stronger. I mean, after all the shit Sasha told him, Jon thought it was a great idea to record another statement. Seriously?!

Andorra, Jon. Andorra is a nice place to live.

Also, who the heck is Sarah Carpenter? Is she important too? Should I remember her too?

Even more important, what does that mean that Mr. McKenzie’s bedroom door “does not have a keyhole or a lock”? Was his door just a wood panel? Did it have only a handle? I’m kinda confused by this, honestly, but maybe it’s just me not being able to visualize it.

_______________________________

MAG 28 - Skintight

The statement isn’t particularly captivating, but Sarah Baldwin peeling off her skin and putting it back is a bit creepy, I’ll accept it.

Also, since Jon said she was in some previous statements, I searched for her and here she was, among all the missing people mentioned in MAG 1: disappeared in August 2006, while this statement is from April 2016. So the girl here clearly isn’t Sarah Baldwin.

That kinda explains her weird words about trespassing: she (it?) was probably apologizing to another supernatural shit in the hospital for entering their territory. But if I’m right, that means every supernatural shit has a territory like mafia bosses and no one can invade them? Or maybe this applies to some supernatural shits and not others. Maybe there is a hierarchy or similar and the most powerful can do whatever they want and go whenever they want, while others control specific, limited territories. Can’t wait to find out.

_______________________________

MAG 29 - Cheating Death

Oh, that was interesting! So, according to this statement, when you win death, you become death. Until someone else wins, then they become the new death and you turn back into a human, but you’re immortal. Very cool, a good variation to the topic of defeating death/cheating death/immortality.

Once again, the series listens to me and provides an answer to my questions: I wanted to know more about Elias and here we find out he was a filing clerk when Gertrude Robinson was still alive.

Well, this explains why Elias never cared about other Head Archivists before Getrude: he was just a clerk. Maybe he wasn’t even hired yet, when there was someone before her.

This also explains why he doesn’t know a lot of things: he was just a clerk, after all.

Still, it’s very weird that he managed to go from filing clerk to goddamn head of the Institute in the span of nothing. What happened to the previous head of the Institute? Did they die too, along with all the previous staff members? How? And only Elias survived this unexplained massacre? That’s very, very suspicious. If I were Jon, I would ask Elias a couple of things.

But if I were Jon, I would’ve already moved away from all this shit, so I wouldn’t ask anything anyway.

_______________________________

MAG 30 - Killing Floor

I’ll quote Jon for this one: “Hmm. More meat. Interesting.”

Is meat part of another supernatural shit? Should I be scared by it? In this case, it kinda failed to do so. I mean, this isn't a bad statement… just a little meh. After all, it’s just an endless slaughterhouse featuring the Obligatory Dead Guy. Nothing truly amazing.

And it’s kinda sad, because we had MAG 26 and now this post ends not with a bang, but with a meh. Sad :(

But even more sad is that Jon, despite all of this, is still recording statements.

Listen to me, Jon. Andorra is a nice place to live.

_______________________________

In conclusion

So, that's my theory for now:

There are a lot of different supernatural shits in this world. Some are more powerful and can do whatever they want, others are “minor” and they control smaller territories.

The Magnus Institute contains the worst/more powerful supernatural shit of them all. The Lukas family took/found this shit in Norway and decided it was very cool - but a little hungry too, so let’s close it in the Institute and let’s use the Institute as a huge “feeder” to feed it.

This supernatural shit is what Jane Prentiss referred to as the “Archivist’s crimson fate”. Every Head Archivist is somehow “cursed” to become food for this thing. That’s what happened to Gertrude Robinson, that’s what happened to her staff and that’s what happened to the staff before them.

Elias somehow survived and either 1) he turned into a supporter of the Lukas family or 2) he’s used as bait to find more people to feed to the supernatural shit.

How much of this is right? How much is wrong? Only time will tell me :D

Speaking of Jonathan: my man, I’m a skeptical person too, so I understand that you’re skeptical. But you literally have silver worms everywhere, someone threatened you via Martin’s phone, the most reasonable member of your staff told you she met a supernatural shit in real life and the supernatural shit confirmed something bad will happen to you. And after all of this, you are still recording statements as if it’s nothing?! My man, that’s not being skeptical, that’s not having any self-preservation instinct at all! First Martin threw himself into a basement that screamed “DANGER HERE”, now you're ignoring all red flags, wow you’re perfect for each other…

Wait... wait... are you two the homoerotic couple? Are you two gonna fall in love? I’ll admit it, it would be very funny if it’s you two. But, again, only time will tell.

So let’s wait and see what will happen: will my theories be correct? Will Michael the Supernatural Shit become Best Boyo of the series? Will my man Leutner still wreak havoc all over the world? Will Gerard come back to deal with this shit like he always does? How many more iconic weirdos will I find in the next 10 episodes? Will Jane Prentiss still haunt these poor people?

And most importantly: when will Jon and his staff finally listen to me and move to a better place?

>> Next post

(How about a coffee? ☕)

_______________________________

TAGLIST:

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[ramshacklefey]

I am here to request more Mormon facts🎤

Your wish is my command! I'll even sort them into categories for you.

Amusing:

The fact that there weren't horses in the Americas until European settlers has caused serious problems for their claims that their book is historically accurate.

This has led some to speculate that when the book says "horses" it means "tapirs."

All Mormon men think they're Paladins: at age 12, every amab person is inducted into their priesthood which is supposed to literally bestow on them the power to do miracles in the name of God as long as they are acting in accordance with God's will and living righteously.

They make a big deal of their "sacred secrets" in the temples, mostly so the members don't find out that they're just masonic rituals with the serial numbers shaved off.

Actually their whole structure is basically just a more bizarre version of the masons.

Their mythology makes free will impossible (something I figured out when I was 12, much to the consternation of my youth group leaders)

They believe that the righteous (men) will eventually become Gods and get to start their own universes.

Their supposedly eternal and absolute rules about what constitutes modest dress have nevertheless semi-consistently been updated to keep up with contemporary fashion.

Less funny:

Salt Lake City, Utah, is an unbelievable hotbed of multilevel marketing schemes. Women trapped at home keep getting into them. I guess if you're caught up in one, it's easy to buy into another...

They're well known for community support within their group, but the Church itself is an international multi-billion dollar organization and never gives significant aid to members.

Everyone in the church is required to pay 10% of their (pre-tax) earnings directly to the church.

Every young man in the church is required to serve a 2 year, volunteer mission. They have to fund these themselves.

Church leadership is supposedly called by divine revelation, yet somehow they're almost all from the same enclave of families whose roots trace back to the founders of the church.

My youth group leader once tried to tell me that rock music was spiritually bad and instead I should be listening to musicals and opera. Because the lyrical content was more spiritually pure.

They're in the "we are fighting a literal war against the Forces of Evil" category of evangelicals, but it was to my immense disappointment that this did not mean there were any sexy demons around.

If they took their own morals seriously, they'd all be communists.

Not Remotely Funny:

The church has a truly massive endowment, and their fingers are in a lot of corporate and political pies.

When California was voting on gay marriage back on 2008, the church organized a concerted effort of members buying property in the state so they could vote against it.

Seriously, I cannot stress enough to you how much money and influence the church has. They just don't wave it around as much as some groups.

Joe Smith and his successor, Brigham Young, were pedophiles who used their church doctrine to force teenage girls to marry them.

They're one of the groups that believe peace in the Middle East is a harbinger of the apocalypse.

Yes, they really are that racist.

They encourage members to adopt Native children in order to "save them" from the curse of their ancestors.

They have one of the largest genealogical databases in the world, and they mostly use it to perform proxy baptisms on dead people, including massive numbers of holocaust victims.

Their culture normalizes and even valorizes child abuse by men. All of the most respected men in my congregation growing up regularly beat their kids. This was considered normal and even funny.

Abuse and bullying are rampant for young men on missions.

They're also ableist in the weirdest way. They believe that everyone's soul is a "perfected" version of their body, see. Any neurodivergent or mentally disabled people are "normal" souls trapped in defective bodies.

BYU (the church-owned university) has a rampant problem with suicides among queer students.

Utah has one of the highest rates of depression in the country, especially among women.

[threadsun]

Well, let’s expand on our favorite puppy, shall we? And I do mean puppy, see Bo wasn’t born in the town, he literally came from the woods when he was in his late teens. He didn’t speak english back then so the founder basically said “Well, if you don’t want me to keep you, speak up” so he kept him. Bo was feisty when he was first brought “home” he had a muzzle for the longest time, but being so scary helped him do his job, protecting the founder

He probably would have stayed like that if it weren’t for Nick. The founder had looked for anyone who wanted to train his dog for him and Nick was in enough of a bind that he took up the job. Things were rocky at first but everything changed the night Nick snuck Bo out to the border of the woods he came from. He took off his collar and muzzle and nodded to the woods, telling him he could leave if he wanted to. After seeing just how much trust and care Nick had for him he slowly came up to him and licked his cheek, cementing their new friendship

Bo was basically a human-ish looking dog before, but with Nick’s training, Bo started to learn english, and spanish actually. Bo isn’t conversational in spanish but he knows it well enough to know what’s being said to him and curse out anyone he doesn’t like. He chooses not to speak most of the time because he likes being in his puppy space and he feels like talking kinda ruins it

Nick is also the reason Bo can even go into puppy space, though he usually, consensually, brings Bo out of it when they hang out. After all Nick’s hard work, Bo is the goodest boy known to man, he knows all the tricks in the book and, thanks to the propaganda Nick makes for him, loves his master. Bo would do anything for the founder now, and he has. Few people could forget how Bo ripped a guy’s throat out on stage at a public execution

The founder dies from natural causes so Bo just had to sit there and watch his master slowly deteriorate in front of him. He tries everything he can think of, bringing him his favorite toys, curling up at his feet, licking his face, but nothing can stop the march of time. Bo’s there when it happens, and the howl he let out when he passed could be heard through the whole town

After the funeral he just curled up right where he always slept, wishing his master was there to pet him to sleep like he used to. He’s a wreck, only eating when Nick brings him food, and even then he barely touches it. The poor thing looks more like a skeleton than the founder did before he passed, the only thing that can save him is a new purpose, a new master. You

Oh poor thing!! I love him so much, I love the balance between his human side and his dog side, and the bond between him and Nick 🥺 I can imagine how insane he'll be when you show up tho :3c

[andywinter16]

Terror. Madness. Grief. It flashed all through Regis head when they got safely back to Insomnia. Poor Noctis cried the whole time for Luna. Luna and Ravus, he left them in their enemies hands. He sweard to Sylva, that he will get them back. Niflheim would pay for their crimes ! After leaving exhausted Noctis in hands of his caretakers, Regis went alone to the Crystal chamber. To have a word with his ancestors who silently observed their lifes. 

--

Regis ordered everyone to leave. No one understand why, yet who they were to questioned the king´s decision. After that the chamber became cold, it felt even hostile to be alone there with Crystal. Regis  without any pretensions summoned the power of the ring after more than eight years since he lost her, love of his life. He yearned for his Queen so much, for her soothing touch, her breathtaking smile and a raucous laugh. Those joyful memories still hurted when he though about her. You left us too soon, my love. 

--

The kings and queens of Yore showed themselves before the current king. The time itself froze in the moment. A powerful magic was unleashed and Crystal reacted. 

“ Why did you called upon us, child?” said the Founder king strictly on his massive throne. Regis felt so insignificant in their presence. 

Drained Regis spoke to him as politely as he could. “"I wish to speak to my dear wife. She should be here among you as rightful ruler of Insomnia.” He stood there in anticipation, but no one showed up. The kings and queens were silent, until the Rogue queen took pity on him and said. “Young king, her soul is not here among us.”  Regis was shocked. “ Then where is soul of my beloved?”

“ What an insolence, to think a mere mortal could be in our ranks.” the Warrior king said offended, many of the attendees agreeing with him.

Regis narrowed his eyes at the old king. “ Let me remind you o mighty king, that you all were once mortals like myself. And you especifically should know, what it is to lose your loved one.”  One by one Regis looked around and exclaimed coldly. “ I ask you once again rulers of Yore, where is my wife?”  Yet again no answer was given to Regis.

“Perhaps, I can give you the answer, your highness.” a woman emerged out of nowhere before Regis. He fastly drew his sword in defense. The woman came closer unarmed, as Regis noticed. She looked very young perhaps in her early twenties. “ You can´t expect answer from those who Bahamut chained to do his biding, my lord.”The woman looked at him with regret.” A cursed line of Lucis Caelum, to never know rest. You were ripped from my lady´s hands, when she wanted to bestow blessing upon your bloodline, your highness.”  Regis was wary of her, yet something in him told him to listen to this child. “ If only I was stronger, then I could ripped Bahamut apart for his treachery.” the woman clenched her hand into a fist,” Your highness, you want answers that I can give you, my only condition is that you listen to what I have to say.”  Regis briefly thought about it, he didn´t see  harm in it.

“Let´s say young one, that I would accept this proposal. But first tell me, who are you and about what lady you spoke of to?”  curiosite got better of him.

The woman bowed deeply. “ Hope your highness will pardon my rudeness. I am here on behalf my lady, Etro. And as for me, I am her humble servant Andrea, but perhaps  you will be more familiar with a name  Leo.”  mischievous smile played on her full lips. Regis froze in place upon hearing that name. He remembered the ancient books, in his youth, that told about that name: Leo the beast of Etro´s gate and guardian of dead.

[chilakillme]

I just need to vent lots of things regarding the Harry Potter reboot so bear with me

First of all WITH ALL OF THE POTENTIAL STORIES IN THE WIZARDING WORLD THEY DECIDED TO REBOOT THE OG THE WORLDWIDE LOVED ONE???? No marauders? No Hogwarts founders? No Tom Riddle origin story??? Like....how can they expect a random british boy to create the IMPACT Dan Radcliffe's face had on the world....like no. And also the only person of that cast that'll return will be Felton, I just know it.

And also, the movies are RECENT, yeah the first one is 20 years old but 20 years is not long enough to reboot a series that had the IMPACT Harry Potter had, like they still sell LEGOs and cutlery sets with the original actors face at my Walmart and they don't seem like antiques. Think about Indiana Jones or any other iconic character that has only been played by one actor, that's what Harry Potter should be (with exception for the play that most of us ignore) BUT NO THEY WANT A WHOLE NEW CAST

Now, the fact that JKR is going to be super involved and they're going to try to be as loyal to the books as they can is a blessing and a curse because of course having the author in a project like this is something fans love but we're talking about JKR and, she, you know, got herself into some messes recently and...yeah. But also, as much as I would love to see more of things that the og movies skipped and more depth to characters I still love, I can't help but think that it's going to turn into some political agenda (and I know everything is political but I'm talking about blatantly obvious political) or some kind of statement idk. Also, if it's going to be an almost book to screen copy they're going to run into a wall called plot holes and wonky worldbuilding.

As someone who read the books 11 times in a year because they had no friends in elementary school and revisited them constantly until a couple years ago, I can say that the series is full of plot holes and yeah they're going to need to fix that, but also some of the world building is just not done right, many things don't make sense or contradict themselves, and I'm not saying I don't appreciate the world we were given, I loved ot and still do, and I really appreciate the mythology, research and work that went into it but there's a point where some things just get ridiculous. (Examples: the secrecy things with wizards has some big questions to be solved, why are dentists unknown to wizards, do wizards know math or what do they do before hogwarts, the sirius black trial, why are the weasleys poor in the wizarding society, like there's really no sense in that (or at least I think so))

Also JKR should not go anywhere near the script, she wrote the scripts for the first Fantastic Beasts movies and then the third that was a little bit less of a mess had another screenwriter but by that time it was already too late and we all know how that went.

Also, this thing is going to need a gigantic budget but it's going to be a series and we know warner had some troubles or something recently (I don't remember all the details but yk, the discovery situation and them cancelling movies and originals from max). But the thing is that we could be looking at an amazon's lord of the rings situation where the firsts episodes were a success but only 40%-50% of viewers who started the series watched until the finale. And they want to make this a decade long project and I don't know if they're going to make it past season 4 even, but who knows I'm no expert in economics

Overall this shouldn't be happening but...

[frosteee]

The Tragedy of the Hassan of the Hundred Faces

'Finally, after roughly two centuries, the Assassins disappeared from history, leaving only an ominous word as their legacy.' - Day of the Assassins, Michael Burleigh.

I love the Hassan servants, but to me none capture the sense of lost legacy and individual struggle than the Hassan of a Hundred Faces.

The OG Assassin

Hassan of the Cursed Arm has legacy as his personal motive as well, but as much as I love Uncle Cursed Arm, I have to admit that it feels more like a redo of Hundred Faces, distilled into a single Servant. One personality of HF, Zayd, declares his intent to be personally renowned in history, like Cursed Arm wishes to be.

History

Rarely do the names for Assassins come up in the history books aside from the founder, Hassan-i-Sabbah. I have only discovered one so far. They are mysterious, nameless killers. We are far more likely to get details about the victim than the Assassin who killed them. Time has made them an amorphous blob, known for the whole rather than the sum of its parts.

It is fitting, then, that in a desperate attempt to avoid this fate, the man who would become the Hassan of a Hundred Faces would forcibly fragment his own psyche in an attempt to compartmentalise all his knowledge and skills.

Lost Face

Whatever he attempted to achieve with this in life, he did so in death, able to manifest these personas in one hundred individual bodies. These personas are so distinct that they have their own specialisations, personalities and appearances.

However, by separating himself in order to stand out, he lost something important. Each individual Assassin is weaker by itself than when it was part of the original. The man who became Hundred Faces weakened himself one hundred fold. And because there were only so many skills to divide between the individual personas, some are Assassins only in name and, like Zayd, are so lacking in talent that losing them has little effect on the group's overall strength.

But not only did the person who bacame Hundred Faces nerf himself x100, those one hundred people also had distinct personalities of their own. Some are 'glory-hounds' who 'ignore orders like fools', and one of their dislikes is listed as 'in-fighting', something which is garuanteed to happen when such a large group with individual personalities are forced to co-operate.

The only time in Fate/Zero that the Assassins act as a group is in their confrontation of Rider, Saber and Archer in that war. We don't know what their plan was, but once Rider pulled the rug of reality from under them and took them to a place where their army of a hundred had to square off with another, their unity fell to pieces.

They would have lost regardless, but the fact of the matter is that when the situation called for them to come together, their conflicting selves made that impossible. The female Assassin gave up and accepted her fate. The others ran - many dying with spears in their backs - and the remainder only fought when cornered.

There was zero (pun intended) co-operation between the individuals. It was every man (or woman) for himself.

Motive

There is a sense among each Assassins of Hundred Faces that they have lost themselves. Their goal is to return to being a complete personality. But they don't just want to be complete, they want to be 'perfect'.

That's why they can carry on despite the loss of one or more of their members. But even with this lofty goal in mind, there is an uneasiness in each one of them. In the Zero manga, the female Assassin dismisses Zayd's death, comparing it to the loss of a little finger. We don't rely on our little finger nearly as much as the others, say the index finger, and if it is lost we can get by fine without it.

But, she adds, "a loss is still a loss". No matter how weak he was, Zayd still mattered. He was not fodder to his fellow Assassins. His death was felt by them.

Tragedy

What is so tragic about this is that if the Assassins could reflect on this just a bit more, they would realise that this isn't just the grief of a lost comrade. As weak as he was, Zayd was just as much a part of the whole as each of his ninety-nine fellows. They are all part of the same being, and losing even one dooms their goal to failure. They can never be complete.

It of course didn't help that their Master was Kirei, a man who viewed them as nothing but pawns and never intended to use them as much more than scouts. The Assassins go on their individual missions with few, if anyone, backing them up. They are thrown to the wolves in almost every scenario, particularly the last, where they are disposed of.

This isn't to absolve the Assassins themselves entirely from blame for their own misfortune. Their setup from the get-go puts them at an extreme disadvantage. Their only strength is in numbers, working as one unit, but with so many individuals with conflicting personalities, strengths and weaknesses, each containing only a fraction of the original person's talent, if they fail to function as a unit then they cannot hope to succeed.

Their biggest failing is in striving to achieve the 'perfection' the original person sought. Because each of them has their own sense of self, they each view themselves as the one to achieve that goal. They all see themselves as 'the original', or the one worthy to become the original. Zayd states this outright in the 'Consultation Room' episode, vowing to ensure his name echoes throughout the ages. Because every persona has its own name.

It's even noted that the Assassins - one, more or even all of them - were planning to beat both Kirei and Tokiomi Tosaka to the punch and get the Holy Grail themselves once they'd got a leg up (which would have been so funny to see). This would have ended supremely badly for all of them if they'd gotten half a chance to actually put this plan in motion.

You could argue that this is the result of dissatisfaction with being a servant of a servant, having a Master who only sees them as fodder, but it's just as plausible to imagine the more rebellious ranks in their number pulling the same stunt on a Master who genuinely cared, so even if they did get far in the war, their disunity would still be their undoing.

Even worse, only a maximum of eighty of the Hundred Faces can be summoned at one time, so even if the Assassins got the Grail, a full twenty other personas would be left in the void. They would still be incomplete. Even if they won, they would still lose!

The Best Case Scenario (fantasy)

In the best case scenario, their Master would be able to summon all one-hundred personas. That Master would be a person who respected not only all one-hundred individual strengths and weaknesses, but also acknowledged that they were each an equally important part of a whole, and that the perfection they sought was impossible.

That Master would also be able to succeed in the enormous task of memorising every single one of their talents, weaknesses and personalities, and be able to use that to its fullest potential to get ahead. Not impossible, but a massive task very few could actually pull off.

But this would rely on the individual one hundred faces of Assassin agreeing to throw their ideals of perfection away, resolving to become the person they once were, and coming together to make that happen.

Until that day, they will remain forgotten.

[snowbatsims]

Pastell Legacy - Sims 4 catchup post

So, a while back, I did a recap post of the old sims 3 side of this legacy, in case I would start posting more stuff on my simblr about that.

And now I think it's time to do it for the sims 4 side of it!

We'll start with the beginnings: Anne and Edda Pastell. (photo from 2017)

They're sisters! While Anne was the founder of my Sims 3 legacy (linked above), I figured it would be fun to say she actually had a sister all along, and just do her side of the legacy in the Sims 4. Because sure, why not.

This side will probably be played somewhat like a really loose not-so-berry, just without the rules. Still doing some color theming on the heirs, subtly or not.

At some point, Edda joined the Avant Gardes. That's where she met Gunther Munch, whom some of you may know already. They got along well, and ended up getting married. probably because they're both nerds

However, it turns out Edda was carrying a curse of some sort. And so, their firstborn baby Rune was born a vampire. His vampiric traits slowly showed up over time, really ramping up with puberty. People are still unsure about the details on how he was like this in the first place, and Rune has no idea either. This is just the way he is.

He ended up moving out - moving in with some vampire friends he met instead. I have posted a bunch of my gameplay with them already.

In fact, they're the reason the actual legacy game stalled for so long. I love these dorks, you see :3 And since they're immortal, we'll still be checking in with them from time to time, mostly in intermissions.

Anyway, onto the rest of this generation!

Next up is Rune's younger redhead brother Snorre. He was a completely normal mortal human, much to the parents' relief. As for how his life went; he married a nice lady and had two pairs of twins! One pair was from an alien abduction, funnily enough. He's also already dead, but his children are still around as adults.

[pictured: snorre's twin pairs - ingrid and inger, saga and sagn]

Then,

Frøya. Also human. Since this legacy was originally intended as a matriarchy, it was the oldest girl who ended up being the heir... well, "girl" in Frøya's case. She's nonbinary; she/they pronouns. They're still alive currently, as an elder, and they have been known to be a bit eccentric. She got married to their husband somewhat unceremoniously at the love festival a while back.

So yep. Three kids in this generation, surely that was enough, right??

NOPE.

After the birth of these three, Gunther somehow got abducted by aliens, and came back with grey alien twins. Their names are Odin and Frigg.

Anyway.

Here, have some old art of the gen 2 siblings, which I drew:

Anyway! Now we're at gen 3.

Frøya and Nobuya had a pair of identical twins: Ravn and Kråke. Which, honestly, is really just Norwegian for Raven and Crow. (my game is in norwegian you see)

Ravn was always the smart kid at school. Kråke was more of a troublemaker. Still, these two are very close and care for each other.

So really, you'd think Ravn would be the heir, but she denounced it and decided to go live her own life with her wife instead. She's very much a lesbian, and the thought of being forced to have a kid is just not in her books. The parents respected that.

Meanwhile, Kråke is a trans man. His situation is not much better, but he was determined to have a kid anyway; after all, who else was going to do it? He was so ready for this... and then, his fiancé suddenly died to a stovefire and Kråke's world shattered to the ground.

He's okay, really, it's fine - no. He's not okay. He must get his beloved Rolf back, no matter what. It's the only thing that matters to him anymore.

Anyway yeah he's kind of a sopping wet cat of a man at the moment. That's our protagonist this generation. Let's go.

Also, since you read all the way to the end, thank you!

Here's a link to the whole family tree while I work on putting a proper graphic together :3

[FAMILY TREE]

[harusaki-hugo]

May i request sdc crew having kokomi! S/o from genshin impact? (S/o has same personality,powers and maybe looks as kokomi)

I know you ask for SDC crew but I only manage to write HC only for Jotaro , kakyoin and Polnareff.

First Meeting: You are the Divine Priestess of Sangonomiya temple ,known by your power to heal people as well as you also one of the leader in a secret foundation call as Speedwagon Foundation. Being the war adviser and the head research of Stand Arrow , all of foundation know who you are. Everyone repect you , praise you and even state that the foundation is still standing thanks to you. Of course , being the closed one to the founder himself , Joseph Joestar curious about you. So , when he know his daughter curse , you are the first one he seek for help , begging to lift the DIO curse. With one glance at Holy condaction you give Joseph a bitter smile , stating that the only way to lift the curse are by destroying the curse himself. You then offer him your help , stating that you will join them in the adventure. 

Kujo Jotaro: 

Like always the first one to object this decision . Saying that he not need someone who weak. But you just join them ignoring Jotaro with a smile , yet he can see something else in that smile.

Jotaro is not the one who look only by look and yet when his eyes land on you , his heart skip a beat but only for a second before he back to his cold and empty heart. 

It’s just a look nothing more , no matter how stunning you look or alluring you are...Okay , first at all , how dare you being this wonderful and cute ,you look excatly like mermaid/merman/merperson he dream when he still a kid.

He didn’t show it he become overprotective of you when you almost get hit by some creep in front of convineon store. He just protect you since you weak , okay?

The first time he see your power are after him fighting with Two-blade Polnareff . Without even wavering or worrying , you lead him to victory. He don’t know how but he just unconciously follow you lead, now he realize how worthy is you.

After the fight you stand in front of him holding your hand out , he thought that you are helping him up so he almost slap you hand away when a small fish made by water appear on your palm . He watch the fish with curious eyes , seeing it swiming closer to him before it explode dranching him whole. 

He grit his teeth ready to yell at you when his wound start to heal. Right , a healer . At least that fish is cute tho , like the owner.

Let’s just say when you guys finally get together , with Joseph help of course , Jotaro change a bit , just a bit , he call you by scienetific marine pet name. You see this is the real life beauty and the beast , which another Joseph joke , at least Kakyoin is supportive tho.. 

When he see you able to walk on water , let’s just say he question his sanity but never his love , he still love you even tho he almost mutter the ‘jesus?’ joke in front of you.

N.Kakyoin

Love at first sight. 

Quite worry about letting you join this adventure , since you look so fragile and soft and beautiful/handsome. Already create a plan of protecting you from enemy , one of it by stick close to you.

Totally adore your two tone color hair and your eyes , boldly compliment it earning a small blush on your face which he totally over the moon when he see it.

He always see you reading some kind of book , when he ask you about it you offer him to stay with you so you two can read it together. It feel like date. 

When he first see your power are on N’dol fight , i mean , he not really can see it, he can feel it cause you know his eyes ...anyway , he can hear your soft voice telling him it going to be okay and then he feel it , a warm sensation and calmness wash over him. 

When you ask him to open his eyes , he do it after a second of hesitation , he is shock when he see you hover above him with his head on your lap. A school of fish swim around you two acting as barrier while you heal him.

“..What a beautiful angel.” He mutter before fall unconcious , which is awkward but kinda sweet.

The first one who confessed. 

J.P.Polnareff

Instant flirting when he see you for the first time.

Even if he under DIO bud control he never try to attack you when you alone , since you look so fragile in his eyes , he vow to make sure nothing can hurt you not even DIO.

A real knight in shining armor , when he join the gang , he stay true to himself , protecting you from every Stand attack.

So that why when he under Anubis infulend , he force himself , with a bit of his sanity he will not attack you. Which is impressing you and Jotaro.

When he first experience your power , he melted , like really , he cry saying that an angel come to save him.

[1tarashka1]

I’ve been playing Clangen a lot lately, so here is some lazy sketches of my very edgy Ruinclan

So I won’t explain the Clanmates because I plan to draw them at least seminormal, but I will explain how clan was formed, the first leaders death (the second thingy) and clan founder

!Warning! This will have small desription of deаths of cats and about a plаgue so

This is propably very cringey and not accurate. I haven’t been in this fandom for around ten years or so. Also english is not my first language, sorry for all of the mistakes

So Ruinclan has started as a rescue mission of sort. Cats were running from the great plague that killed almost everyone in their previous clan. So small group of survived cats was sent away to start a new clan. Thats were clan founder comes in. Alderfern (she-cat) decided to show up as a ghost and show them a place were her clan died as a new place for their clan. Cats thought that she was joking when she said that her whole clan died because of a curse. This was propably not a joke (most of my cats died just been one moon in clan). Cats decided to call themself a Ruinclan because they started at the ruins (ye very smart me)

So the first leader was Tulipstar (tom). He was very wise and got buried alive by colapsing burrow at 154 moons of age on the second moon of the clan. Alderfern wasn’t very impressed.

Also addressing the eye in the middle of the leaders cats head. I know that there were no such thing in Warrior cats, but I mean, there are cats that are getting 9 lives and technically become immortal(ageles???) in this books(or at least in the game, I can’t quite remember the books), so why not an eye in the middle of the head to show that

[luxurypropertiesworld]

Meet the Ten Gurus: The Men Who Shaped Sikhism

Patshahi is a word which is derived from Persian culture. This means emperor or king. But is Sikhism it has spiritual value and it understands as gurus or masters of the Sikh Community.

Patshahi means Gurus of Sikhs and there are total 10 gurus in Sikhism and they all follow their Gurus in a very pure way. The 10 Patshahi or the Ten Gurus of the Sikhs are very knowledgeable and they provided the way of living life in very positive manner without creating any kind of issues. There are highly believed consideration that these Gurus are sent by God to teach us the ultimate truth of life.

The Ten Gurus or Ten Patshahi is:

Guru Nanak Dev Ji (1469-1539)

Guru Angad Dev Ji (1504-1552)

Guru Amar Das Ji (1479-1574)

Guru Ram Das Ji (1534-1581)

Guru Arjan Dev Ji (1563-1606)

Guru Hargobind Ji (1595-1644)

Guru Har Rai Ji (1630-1661)

Guru Har Krishan Ji (1656-1664)

Guru Teg Bahadur Ji (1621-1675)

Guru Gobind Singh Ji (1666-1708)

Each of the Gurus has played a vital or important role in the development of love and they also help in spread of Sikhism across the Globe. They started teaching as they established Sikh Institutions which is renowned as Gurdwara (Sikh Place for Worship) and also provided Langar. They composed they composed pure Guru Granth Sahib, which is known as the Sikh Holy Scripture. The main motive of all Gurus is to believe in brotherhood, equality, and service to humanity. All of the Guru live truth and righteous life and always stands for the right thing and takes action against wrong practices. Their teachings is continue to inspire not only Sikhs but the whole world.

Guru Nanak Dev Ji

Guru Nanak Dev Ji known as the first Guru of Sikhs and he is the founder of the Sikh Religion. He was born at Talwandi (which is now known as Nankana Sahib in Pakistan) on October 20, 1469. Guru Ji has learnt a lot of languages like Punjabi, Sanskrit and Persian at very young age. He taught that there is only one God, who is all-loving and compassionate. He also taught the importance of equality, brotherhood, and service to humanity.

Guru Angad Dev Ji

Guru Angad Dev Ji has introduced the written form of Punjabi which is known as Gurumukhi. Guru Ji was born in 1504 and he is the second Guru of Sikh Community. The Holy Scripture of Sikhs “Guru Granth Sahib Ji” is written in Gurumukhi. He also established the first Gurdwara at Amritsar, which is now the holiest Sikh shrine in the world. He also started the Akhara for the physical wellness of the humans. He also compiled the Adi Granth, the holy book of the Sikhs.

Guru Amar Das Ji

Guru Amar Das Ji is the third Guru of the Sikh Community and he started to give justice to the caste system and restrictions and the curse of un-touch ability. He is born in 1479 and he spreads the culture of the Langar. Hewas born in 1479 and died in 1574. He was a great social reformer. He abolished the caste system and other social evils. He also introduced the Anand Karaj, the Sikh marriage ceremony. Guru Amardas introduced the Anand Karaj marriage ceremony for the Sikhs by replacing the Hindu form.

Guru Ram Das Ji

Guru Ram Das Ji is the Forth Guru of Sikh Community and he is the founder of Amritsar city and he started the construction of the very famous Golden Temple at Amritsar City. Amritsar City is known as the holy city of the Sikhs. He compiled the Holy book of Sikhs “Guru Granth Sahib Ji” and he is a great builder in Sikh Community. He excavated the sacred Amrit Sarovar (Pool of Nectar) at Amritsar. He also composed many hymns for the Guru Granth Sahib.

Guru Arjan Dev Ji

Guru Arjan Dev Ji is the Fifth Guru of Sikh Community and he is the third son of Guru Ram Das Ji. He Compiled the Adi Granth, the renowned scriptures of the Sikhs, and Guru Arjan Dev Ji wrote Sukhmani Sahib. Guru Arjan Dev Ji completed the construction of Sri Darbar Sahib which is also known as Golden Temple of Amritsar. Everyone is welcomed in Golden Temple without any discrimination which shows the equality in all caste. He was also martyred by the Mughal emperor Jahangir for refusing to convert to Islam.

Guru Hargobind Ji

Guru Hargobind Ji is the Sixth Guru of the Sikh Community and he is known as Soldier Saint and he was the son of Guru Arjan Dev Ji. He militarized the Sikh community by established small institution to defend themselves against persecution from the Mughals. He is also renowned by the name of Warrior Guru. Guru Ji was one of the first Gurus to take up arms to protect the faith. At that time only emperors were allowed to sit on a high platform called Takht or throne. At the age of 13, Guru Hargobind established Sri Akal Takht Sahib ten feet above the ground and wore two swords, Miri and Piri, representing cosmic and spiritual power.

Guru Har Rai Ji

He promoted peace and tolerance between Hindus and Muslims. He also established a number of Gurdwaras in India and Afghanistan. He invested his most of life in devotional meditation and preaching the teachings of Guru Nanak. Guru Har Rai Ji is the Seventh Guru of the Sikh Community and he is known for his peace and calm nature. He is the grandson of Guru Hargobind Ji and he continued the great task of his grandfather to build one nation.

Guru Har Krishan Ji

He is the Eight Guru of Sikh Community and he is one of the brave Gurus in Sikh community. He was the youngest of the Ten Gurus and only served as Guru for seven months. He is known for his wisdom and compassion. Guru Har Krishna Ji was the youngest among the Gurus. He became so knowledgeable Guru that he amazed the Brahmin pundits with his knowledge and spiritual powers at very young age and he knew all the good things. Guru Har Krishan Ji is the youngest Guru among all Gurus but he is one of the best knowledgeable Gurus along with other Gurus.

Guru Teg Bahadur Ji

He is the ninth Guru of Sikh Community and he is known for his bravery decisions as he is known for his determination that he refused to convert his religion into Islam. He was martyred by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb for refusing to convert to Islam and for speaking out against the persecution of Hindus. He is known as the "Martyr Guru." Guru Teg Bahadur Ji is the brave Guru as he sacrificed his precious life in order to protect or reserve the freedom of religion of the Hindus.

Guru Gobind Singh Ji

He is the Tenth and last Guru of Sikh Community and he is Guru of Khalsa and he is the founder of the Khalsa, a martial order of Sikhs. He also compiled the final version of the Guru Granth Sahib and declared it to be the eternal Guru of the Sikhs. He was last Guru and great warrior and a spiritual leader of Sikhs. He also compiled the Guru Granth Sahib, and he known as the last human Guru of Sikhs after his death Guru Granth Sahib is eternal Guru of Sikhs.

All the Ten Gurus of Sikhism were so great that they only teach us the right way to live or life by following the path of truth and righteousness to the whole world. Their knowledge are still relevant and so effective that we should all learn from their example and thoughts and we should try to live our whole live according to their principles.

[marcianoliterati]

June Book Reviews, Part IV

3 romance books, ranging from thanks i hated to that was actually pretty fun!

Oblivious roommate, by Devon Doe

 I think this is based off a reddit post about a guy complaining about the guys his rommate brings home only to realise it bothers him cause he likes the guy.

The premise is that the MC is transferring colleges and moving in with his best friend from back home, after a breakup, and upon learning said friend is gay and in relationship has a bit of a existential crisis. 

It’s a nice idea, and I certainly enjoyed the reddit post, but the problem in this book is basically that the MC is a giant asshole.

 It makes it really hard to root for them as a couple when one is so fuckin immature and behaves in really stupid ways. Which is a shame,cause the other guy seems really nice actually. 

But my favourite ships are always the ones where I like everyone involved, and the way he acts is so insecure and ridiculous i’m not sure the couple will really stay together.

He thinks he might be gay  and like him so his idea is to trick his friend into kissing him and then lie to him about it? He goes digging around for dirt on the boyfriend cause he thinks “i dont like him and i dont know why so he must be a bad person, so i’ll help my friend get rid of a bad guy and then he’ll be free to be with me!” he actively sabotages his best friend’s relationship

It’s like all those awfully toxic tropes found in het romcoms but this time its gay

I do not recommend this book. 

The ex hex, by Rachel Hawkins/ Erin Sterling

3 stars

This book is urban fantasy, an ‘our world but a little bit to the left’ plot, just add a little magic. 

It’s set in a small town somewhere in the US, it’s a made up town hidden somewhere in the mountains. I think the location is mentioned but I forget, it hardly matters. 

It starts with a young witch who just got her heartbroken and while she and her cousin drown their tears with alcohol they decide to curse the guy who did the breaking.

Fast forward to nine years later when the guy is back in town, and the curse is causing real issues for the town, so they have to work together to fix it and uncover the hidden story of the town’s founding.

The town has sort of a gilmore girls feel so i’m guessing somewhere in new england, it has a witchy reputation they love to play up and actual magic users, including a whole magic faculty in the local university. 

It’s sort of a murder mystery cause there is death, and ghosts, and mysteries to solve.

They don’t work particularly hard at the world building tbh. The university has classes on magic, though we don’t get a lot of detail on that.

The MC’s family owns a magic shop that sells both trinkets to tourists and real magic items, the coffee shop runs on subtle magic and sells potions disguised as coffee, stuff like that.

Like the movie practical magic.

It’s all quite wholesome and it’s well done. 

And in the middle of it all, the MC and her ex are dealing with rogue magic.

Cause the ex, who is a descendant of the founder, is in town to “charge the lines” but learns quickly upon arriving that his magic is on the fritz and this causes a lot of issues, and his life may be at stake, so they have to fix it, before it hurts someone, and before their founders day festival cause if bad things happen then it could hurt the economy and destroy the masquerade.

It is very entertaining, and funny at times. 

It’s no great work of art but it is a good read, if a bit light. 

Plus two, by Natasha West

2.5 stars

This is a sequel to “plus one” where a woman is need of a date for her sister’s wedding, after her gf whom she’d talked up, suddenly breaks up with her, so she finds a service that hires people to act as emotional support for big events.

and the woman that shows up to play pretend for a day, is no other than a woman who a decade prior was her first love and first heartbreak. 

This book finds them a couple of years later, everything is going smooth until one of their parents brings up the baby talk and it reveals cracks in their seemingly-perfect relationship.

Tbh, i didn’t like it as much as the first one, there is just so much baby talk it gets a bit tired.

What is interesting is how they react to it, how they deal with said baby talk and the issues it presents. 

[sistahscifi]

Lauren, glad you are excited to read more about hoodoo and voodoo magic set in New Orleans!

@IsisAsare, the founder of Sistah Scifi, asked @Diane_Marie_Brown the difference between hoodoo, voodoo, and witchcraft during a Sistah Scifi Wine Down Wednesday. Swipe for the author's response!

Check out the whole interview on @sistahscifi's @instagram page! And we have first edition hardcovers of Black Candle Women signed by Diane Marie Brown in stock!

Better yet, check it out from your local #library!! Today we highlight @nolalibrary

#BlackCandleWomen #DianeMarieBrown #SistahScifi #sistahscifiwinedownwednesday

#hearourvoices #hov

Image reposted from @laurensbookvibes

Black Candle Women

By: @DianeMarieBrown

Pub Date: Feb 28,2023

Thank you @hearourvoicestours and @graydonhousebooks for the gifted copy and opportunity to read and review!!

Reminiscent of Practical Magic, this multigenerational book is about mother/daughter relationships at its core. It’s about the passing down of stories, beliefs, traumas, and fears. I loved how each member of the Montrose family was so different from each other but all shared a similar desire to be loved, and protective of each other. Augusta, Madelyn, Victoria, Willow, and Nickie.

We have Great Grandma Augusta, the matriarch and one responsible for the bond and possibly the curse between the women. Madelyn, Augusta’s daughter who comes to stay with the family after being disconnected from them for years and years. She kept me laughing from the moment she arrived. Victoria, the sensible daughter of Madelyn and overbearing mother of Nickie. She’s made it her mission to make sure her daughter doesn’t suffer from the family curse the way she had. Willow, Victoria’s free spirited sister and Nickie’s confidant and conspirator. And Nickie, the youngest of the Montrose women who is mixed up in all the family drama in the midst of finding and growing into her self and magic.

I really enjoyed this book and I want to read more on Hoodoo and Voodoo magic and all the history of New Orleans! I recommend this book to lovers of witchy tales and multigenerational dramas. This was a wonderful debut novel, and I would love to read more from Brown!